CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
The last ditch. 
 
 3 1924 013 628 494 
 
Il 
 
 liilf 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^9^ 
 
 Cornell University 
 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/cu31924013628494 
 
The Last Ditch 
 
 by 
 VIOLET jJUNT 
 
 Author of 
 
 "Their Lives," " The House of Many Mirrors ' 
 
 " The Celebrity's Daughter," etc. 
 
 ' Afflavit Deus . . ." 
 
 LONDON 
 
 STANLEY PAUL & CO., LTD. 
 
TO 
 
 VALERIE VIOLET MARLEY 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 CEAflSR 
 
 I. Introduction 
 
 II. Feom The Lady Arles to Mrs. Laura P, 
 QUINNEY 
 
 III. From The Lady Venice St. Remy 
 
 IV. From The Lady Venice St. Remy 
 V. From The Lady Arles . 
 
 VI. From The Lady Arles . 
 
 VII. From The Lady Arles . 
 VIII. From The Lady Venice St. Remy 
 
 IX. From The Lady Arles . 
 X. From The Lady Venice St. Remy 
 
 XI. From The Lady Arles . 
 XII. From The Lady Venice St. Remy 
 
 XIII. From The Lady Arles . 
 
 XIV. From The Lady Arles . 
 XV. From The Lady Arles . 
 
 FAOB 
 
 3 
 
 15 
 
 81 
 
 42 
 
 55 
 
 64 
 
 79 
 
 91 
 
 .103 
 
 111 
 
 141 
 
 157 
 
 166 
 
 178 
 
 178 
 
viii 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART II 
 
 CHAPTER PAOj' 
 
 XVI. From The Lady Arles . . . .191 
 
 XVII. From The Lady Venice St, Remy . . 202 
 
 XVIII. From The Lady Arles . . . .214 
 
 XIX. From The Lady Venice Sx. Remy . . 221 
 
 XX. From The Lady Arles .... 232 
 
 XXI, From The Lady Arles . . . .237 
 
 XXII. From The Lady Arles . . . .245 
 
 XXIII. From The Lady Arles . . . .252 
 
 XXIV, From The Lady Venice St. Remy . .263 
 
 XXV. From The Lady Arles . . . .271 
 
 XXVI. From The Lady Venice Bar , , .279 
 XXVII, From The Lady Arles .... 292 
 
PART I 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 On this twenty-fourth of August, 1915, I, Laura Quinney, 
 born and bred a British subject, am almost surprised to find 
 myself sitting high and dry, without a scar or recollection of 
 one, out here on the piazza of our house at Newport, R.I., 
 watching American citizens of both sexes taking their 
 summer pleasure, while over there, across the seas, the old 
 world that I sprung from agonizes. 
 
 Young men of fighting age in flannel and bathing suits, 
 go in no fear of being forced to doff them for khaki; 
 girls dressed up, like myself, to the very nines of expensive 
 simplicity, walk about with sticks and help these active 
 young men to do nothing. 
 
 This very expensive simplicity I say, with irony, we 
 opulent Americans can the more easily afford, since it is paid 
 for, more or less, by the vast indebtedness which old England 
 is running up with us for the prosecution of her War of 
 Regeneration — ^her war to end war ! Poor dear ! 
 
 Here, where everything is on such a large scale that it 
 makes us cynical and fearless, unappalled, unexcited by 
 dangers, fortunes, and krachs and splashes, it seems absurd 
 and pathetic to think of that small house over there, over- 
 furnished with curios — that queer, courageous, unbusinesslike 
 bit of all-right, defying militarism, pretending to have a 
 mission to maintain the balance of the Continent, holding 
 up old Europe on the palm of its brave little hand, like Atlas 
 in the advertisement of the Insurance Companies. I am, 
 I suppose, absurdly proud of my old country, although ever 
 so long ago I made myself, by marrying, into an American. 
 My sjrmpathies should be utterly American, my husband 
 says. So they are. But all the same, it drags at my heart- 
 strings to think that, three thousand miles away, my mother 
 and sisters are wallowing in that civilian slough, living 
 from day to day on short commons and insufficient news, 
 with nothing in the world to do but make swabs and sit still 
 
 3 
 
4 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 to be taxed. Their job is to keep quiet and foot the bill 
 that keeps all the male folk they love on the other side of 
 the Channel, amid the booming of guns and showers of 
 shrapnel, in fullest life, nighest to death. 
 
 My people have nobody actually out there, that's one 
 comfort, since my brother died of consumption five years ago. 
 It must be a comfort to Mamma to think that Romanille got 
 himself out of it neatly, before the trouble, and that poor dear 
 Papa at the break-out of the war was already over age — 
 seventy-five — ^and has any way done his bit in diplomacy 
 with credit. He was Ambassador to three Courts. They 
 do say that it is faulty diplomacy which has brought on this 
 war — ^that it might, if people had listened to Sasonof, have 
 been averted. Diplomatists won't trust each other. 
 
 I know well, of course, that as a nation our sympathies 
 are bound to be with England, the home of our language, the 
 warden of our ancient playground, the custodian of our 
 rococo pleasure-house. Why, just think ! If the Allies fail 
 there'll be no " Parus " for us, no Vichy or Contrexeville, no 
 brocanteurs, no museum, not an antique left for our million- 
 aires to buy and bring over here. That is all England is to 
 us, really, a clearing house of objeis d'art and a nursery of 
 pleasant titillations of our artistic sense. And the cant 
 phrase about all our sympathies being with her that is always 
 on our lips makes me sick. We are, because we can't help it, 
 profiting by their distress. We are making money out of 
 them, hand over fist. 
 
 The poor prisoners, somebody says ! Yes, it is rather nice 
 to think that we are the mainstay of the poor prisoners in 
 those dreadful camps, and the soup kitchen of poor dear 
 Belgium. But that is about all you can say for us. Romantic 
 idiot as my husband tells me I am, I should like to see the 
 money-making instinct superseded by an altruistic effort to 
 arrest the butchery that is going on. That isn't any of our 
 business, they say ; I say, I beg my adopted country's pardon, 
 but I do consider it everybody's business to help to put out 
 a fire, or to keep back the wolves from a forest clearing, or 
 avert a collision at sea if one has the power. And although 
 I am aware that any amount of moral effort could not pre- 
 vent a collision when once two ships get near enough to each 
 other through accident, I do not think the shock of advancing 
 armies is so inevitable, for that is a matter of planning and 
 pourparlers, and some moral suasion must enter into that. 
 
THE LAST DITCH 5 
 
 Nations are like dogs straining at a leash ; the guilt of blood 
 rests with those that hold the leash and do not try their 
 uttermost to pull the screeching curs back. 
 
 Americans appear to have thought that dogs that want 
 to fight must be allowed to fight, and that if nations feel like 
 that, the pretext is not of the slightest importance. My 
 little American niece comes to me and says, " Aunt Laura, 
 dear, do tell us what they are fighting about over there ? " 
 and " Couldn't it all be submitted to arbitration ? " One of 
 the older boys snubbed the child, and told her curtly that 
 there was nothing to submit. " They've got momentum now, 
 and can't stop till they've torn each other limbless." And 
 when, in my despair at so much wrongheadedness, I tell 
 them the pretext was good enough in all conscience, the 
 violation of Belgium, and hint that, after all, Germany began 
 it, they say : 
 
 " Oh, everybody's forgotten all about that now, and you'll 
 see when it's all settled, history'll lay the blame on both 
 parties equally." And I know that that is true. That is 
 Life. 
 
 They just strike me dumb. I think the more. Though 
 I'm no politician, my father is a diplomat, I've lived all my 
 childhood in Courts and Embassies. My husband is a 
 Quinney, and a Congress man of '76, and I hear enough of 
 politics one way and another to set me up in an opinion or 
 two of my own. 
 
 I knew enough, in the beginning even, to be more upset 
 than the people at home. Ilsa never wrote about it at all — 
 never has — and Mamma put it second in her immense pre- 
 occupation about Venice and her future. Except Papa — • 
 I did get a letter from Papa in which he said that in his 
 opinion anything might happen, after Sarajevo ! 
 
 But it is really astonishing how very few people in Europe 
 were warned. Mamma, who although she talks a lot of 
 nonsense and gives herself out for a fool, is not one, really, 
 went on just as usual : she kept on Anatole, and signed the 
 agreement for the house in Scotland after the sixth of July. 
 Papa objected ; but then, every one knows what Mamma is : 
 absolutely mulish when she has made up her mind to a 
 course, especially, anything that remotely concerns Venice. 
 What Venice wants has to be, one way or another. Venice 
 is her lodestar, and no one has any influence over her except 
 Venice, Venice could work Mamma for her own good, but 
 
6 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 Venice doesn't ever know what her own good is, and doesn't 
 think she cares. She's like a dog after truffles ; she digs for 
 them, and so long as she gets them she wants nothing else. 
 Truffles with her mean immediate gratification. She is very 
 short-sighted, is my little sister, and chock-full of crazes— 
 the literary one, at present. That Mamma cannot give her. 
 But Venice has a very good eye for creature comforts as well, 
 and that is Mamma's business. The summer holiday has 
 been a difficulty since they gave up Beardmore. Mamma 
 fancied that of the things that offered just then Venice pre- 
 ferred a house in Scotland ; it was just a chance that they 
 did not take the chateau of the Baron De Crawhez at Spa 
 for the summer. Mamma always said that De Crawhez was 
 mad on Venice, but I rather fancy that the Belgian Count 
 hankered after some of the advantages of the Aries prestige — 
 an English countess, ma foi ! one of the best, the oldest 
 English families ! Anyhow, De Crawhez offered to let his 
 chateau to Mamma at a ridiculously cheap rate, and that 
 appealed to Mamma so much that if Venice had lifted up 
 her little finger in favour of it she would have closed with 
 him in a moment. But Venice wouldn't ; she had never 
 been at Spa during the August season, and old Colonel Dysart 
 there told her it was always full of Germans then — no 
 English or French or Americans at all. 
 
 In the light of what has happened, it's lucky they didn't 
 take it 1 I am sure I don't know what would have happened 
 to them. Spa was spared, for it didn't resist. Still, they'd 
 have been locked up there for ages. 
 
 When Venice is pleased, or even content, Mother is more 
 than pleased — she is jubilant. It is absurd, but Mother 
 lives for Venice, and she isn't on the shelf by any means. 
 She married at sixteen, a fact that people always forget to 
 take into account when they marvel at her enormous vitality. 
 She has still pretensions. She's the mother duck who has 
 kept her hair and her figure, . and my husband says that, 
 taking her altogether, he'd back her any day against what 
 he calls " the over-rated Venice." And.the young men find 
 the mother quite as attractive as the daughter, by all accounts. 
 She is the one at parties that they surround, while she tries 
 to efface herself in favour of Venice, and does not succeed. 
 My theory is that men will go after the woman that amuses 
 them most at the moment and gives them the quickest return 
 for their expenditure of energy, for that's all it is. Society's 
 
THE LAST DITCH 7 
 
 a game, like cricket or golf or billiards. That's my explana- 
 tion of the fact that Mother really seems to have more 
 professed admirers than Venice. There is Sir James Molen- 
 dinar, the railway king, always to be met at Park Crescent, 
 and taking Mother to tea on the Terrace all the time ; and Sir 
 Audely Bar, whom she took to her own use when Venice was 
 a mere child and Papa in Diplomacy, and whom she has 
 kept ever since. 
 
 I've never seen him, but they used, at Bucharest, to call 
 him " the curate," and certainly Mother works him just as I 
 have heard vicars' wives do use curates. She calls him " the 
 useful creature." He is a poet, but so rich that I suppose 
 he's what they call a dilettante. He travels too much to 
 settle down to anything. I suspect that during Ilsa's palmy 
 days he was one of " hers," and having had no use for him, 
 as indeed she never did have for anything respectable, she 
 ceded him to Mother, She would cede anything to anybody, 
 that's the worst of my second sister. 
 
 Sir Audely is quite an elder brother to Venice, so I hear, 
 and gets her poems into magazines for her. She is said 
 by the papers to " be possessed of true poetic genius." 
 They make a fuss about her and her gift over here, but I 
 fancy her title goes a long way. I never can see anything 
 in what she writes, myself; but then, I am only a sister. 
 What amuses me is the way Mother looks upon her daughter's 
 faculty of verse-stringing : she treats it as a cat does a mouse, 
 letting it run a little way and then recalling it by a pat, 
 alternately encouraging it and snubbing it. She is proud 
 of her talent, but she is afraid that it will stand in the way 
 of her getting married. 
 
 My second sister Ilsa, short for Elizabeth, is her danger 
 semaphore, as it were, for Ilsa is supposed to have mis- 
 managed her marriage prospects. She has certainly managed 
 to get talked about. She is the wit of the family, although, 
 apart from her impediment, she never seems to me to say 
 anything so very remarkable. The moment she begins to 
 drawl, they are all at attention, and begin to he-hee as a 
 matter of course. I think it is half kindness — ^the wish to 
 please Ilsa and give her something to live for. And wit 
 is quite a good asset in a girl who has outlived her vogue as 
 a beauty and is beginning to grow rather stout and puffy. 
 Ilsa was quite lovely as a girl— like Mother, very fair, with 
 splendid honey-coloured hair and soft complexion. I don't 
 
8 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 know how she has worn, but Cyrus P. Whiteing, whom I sent 
 over with a letter of introduction, said she was handsome 
 but washed out, like a mirror you had breathed on. Re her 
 wit — ^in comparison with Mother and Venice, who were abco- 
 lutely incapable of seeing a joke, she was a humorist. Ilsa 
 is more like Papa, and some of his sayings are recorded in 
 contemporary memoirs ; but from Cyrus I gathered there 
 was very little left, except the twinkle in his dear kind eyes. 
 
 I sometimes wonder if it is Ilsa's sense of humour which 
 has ruined her — or saved her ? It depends which way you 
 look at it. She was always, from her sixteenth year, sub- 
 limely reckless, but when it came to the point of fulfilling 
 the expectation she had raised, her sense of the ridiculous, 
 which stands her in stead of dignity, prevented her from 
 realizing the fruits of her dash and daring, and she retired, 
 maimed in her honour, maimed in every sort of way. . , . 
 
 I remember her in her youth — I have heard of her in her 
 middle youth — she was up to anything, said anything, looked 
 anything, did anything, threw her bonnet over the windmUl, 
 but as I gather never actually went after it, brought her 
 mad acts to their logical conclusion. That's my explanation 
 of the scandals about her. I mean, that in the old days Ilsa 
 would have been a king's mistress, and doubtless an exceed- 
 ingly kind, charitable, and altogether meritorious person; 
 but in the London of the twentieth century, what could a 
 girl of that temperament do ? 
 
 Of course she was too lazy to fall in love and lose the 
 world for it ; she just preferred nice circumstances, good 
 clothes to wear and luxury all round her, like a complacent 
 fish swimming in a tank of warmed water. One sees how it 
 was. She just got talked about and then " left," and poor 
 Mother thinks it is her fault, and harries poor little Venice 
 socially in consequence. 
 
 She considers that poor Ilsa is her " failure." Nonsense, 
 1 say, if it wasn't so pathetic I Ilsa is just an anachronism, 
 and Mother's treatment had nothing to do with her way of 
 behaving. Nature — ^the old Adam of old families I 
 
 Of course I should be banned if it was known that I had 
 formed such theories over my own sister, and what, to be 
 practical, one has to do, is to shut one's mouth and help 
 her — ^using her title and position for all they are worth ; 
 and when the smoke of her misdeeds blows over here, pass 
 it all off as the tittle-tattle of the jealous, and an instance 
 
THE LAST DITCH 9 
 
 of the supreme arrogance of the British aristocracy who have 
 not, nor need to have, any care for appearances. Before the 
 war I tried to get her out here for a season — I believe I could 
 have married her off — but she wouldn't come. None of 
 them will come. They prefer to jog along together. 
 
 There is one thing to be said : my family is a very united 
 one. They are all devoted to each other in their funny 
 ways. Mother, of course, adores Venice and Papa, but is 
 rather shy of Ilsa, whom she doesn't pretend to understand, 
 but whom she consults on every point. Venice adores Ilsa 
 and tries to love her mother as much as her mother loves her, 
 but finds it uphill work, for she is so totally remote in tem- 
 perament. She harks back to our great Aunt Corisande 
 Wheler, the poetess of her day — a rather wild creature, I think, 
 who died in a convent. Venice is really devoted to Ilsa, who 
 only really cares for her father. Indeed, they all are devoted 
 to Papa, and do what he tells them, in the ultimate resort. 
 Even Mother obeys Papa when once he puts his foot down, 
 though it is the object of her life to keep that foot off the floor. 
 
 And all the minage revolves round Venice ; they toady 
 her just as if she were the boy that's gone. I call her 
 Romanilla. There's Effel — they call her Effel because 
 Venice can't manage " th " : a sign of race, Audely Bar says, 
 I am told — Effel is kept on as companion, because Venice 
 doesn't mind Effel and is willing to go about with her, and 
 Mother can trust her anywhere with Effel. I don't know 
 what they would do without Effel, and I don't know what I 
 should do for news of my family without Effel's letters to 
 correct the others', for really, they do have tales ! They 
 are all literary artists when it comes to relating experiences. 
 
 I get a clearer idea of the family politics and aims and 
 characteristics from Effel, who writes quite frankly, without 
 a notion that she is giving them away. She doesn't realize 
 in the least that I can see she hates Venice and adores Mother 
 and has a more than tenderness for the tutor. 
 
 " Lucy," otherwise Mr. John Everard Lucing, shares 
 with Effel Jones the honour of being what Mother calls an 
 old retainer of the family. He was Papa's secretary — one 
 of them — at Vienna, and when Papa retired they made him 
 tutor to Venice, by way of giving him a job and excuse to go 
 on living with them. He has given Venice all the education 
 she has got, chiefly Latin which she is very quick at, though 
 never good at cours and classes. Too proud and inattentive, 
 
10 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 and Mother always backed her up in insubordination. She 
 had a try at sending her to one of the High Schools Aunt 
 Minna patronized, and there is a story of Venice, when she was 
 scolded by a timid head-mistress for some neglect of duty, 
 turning round and giving her the full benefit of the Aries 
 Stare. " Insolent creature ! " she remarked. But the class 
 mistress was not floored, the imposition was imposed, and 
 Venice was shortly after removed from the school. 
 
 Lucy is humble, and has no notion how useful he is and 
 how badly they would do without him. He is just grateful 
 for being allowed to make one of the family and being near 
 Miss Effel Jones. He loves her, but it has been established 
 that the unfortunate two can never afford to marry. Mother 
 could not afford to lose them, that is nearer it. They neither 
 of them ever ask for or get a holiday, because they can never, 
 in the nature of the St. Remy routine, be spared at one and 
 the same time, and unless they took their change together 
 it would be no good to them. Papa needs an arm to go up 
 and down stairs with, if there was nothing else, and there 
 is — ^lots more. 
 
 Papa is getting to look very old and infirm, I hear. Mother, 
 on the other hand, seems to keep her looks, such as they are. 
 Cyrus Whiteing spoke of Papa's " child wife " and her yellow 
 mop of hair against his grey tufts. He liked Mother best 
 too. He is nearly a millionaire, and I thought Venice might 
 take to him, but he didn't. His comments on her were 
 crudeness itself, but most illuminating. And as he wasn't 
 going to be my brother-in-law, and I need never see him 
 again, I let him run on. He quite saw through Mother's 
 game. It is so pathetically, nobly, transparent. And he 
 was quite determined to tell me, her daughter, and the sister 
 of the foolish virgin — ^that's what he called Venice — where 
 exactly it had failed. He exonerated Venice from husband- 
 hunting, and so I was able to listen to him. 
 
 Mother, he maintained, goes the wrong way to work. 
 She is so fond of Venice that she wants her to enjoy herself, 
 and prepare at the same time for a moneyed future. So 
 she commits the error of cheapening her exquisite goods, 
 lets her hob-nob with Tom, Dick, and Harry, and sandwiches 
 eligibles with detrimentals in a way that is detrimental to 
 the eligibles, making them feel that the Lady Venice is no 
 particular catch. Venice, who didn't ring his bell, is, he 
 admits, from one point of view the sweetest-tempered, most 
 
THE LAST DITCH 11 
 
 generous and most guileless creature in the world, but from 
 another, equally cogent point of view, the vainest, most 
 egotistical, most " affected piece " he ever came across. He 
 does not mince phrases. She is — ^the way he sees her — lazy, 
 idle, and unoccupied, and yet fancies she fills every moment 
 of her time, and is overdone with work. She keeps animals 
 she lets die of neglect ; she fusses and complains about the 
 working of the household, admirably run by her lady mother, 
 but does nothing to remedy it. She likes visitors about the 
 place, but does not undertake to entertain them. She is 
 untidy, and puts on her clothes so carelessly that he was sure 
 she wouldn't keep together if it wasn't for the gentleman 
 called Lucy, who " does up " her back, ties her shoelaces, 
 pushes random hairpins home, and lends her his large man's 
 handkerchief when she has spilt a teacupful of tea or a pound 
 of black treacle, of which she is very fond, over the front of 
 her dress ! If Lucy wanted her : he's the man that deserves 
 her. Cyrus P. thinks her pretty in a sort of way, but that 
 she does not make the most of her points. He says her long 
 neck is nearly worth a trip to Europe to see, but that her 
 underlip has a nasty trick of shooting out that will spoil her 
 looks later on. 
 
 " Imagine Lady Vennus mistress of my house, slopping 
 about in Empire teag6wns first thing in the morning, dipping 
 her sleeves in the butter, with her neck bare and covered 
 with bead necklaces 1 Imagine the hash she'd make of the 
 " books " if she did condescend to look at them 1 She's got 
 a cheque-book all right, but she lost it twice while I was 
 there, and the second time it was found in the dust-bin." 
 
 He said the sight of her eating figs spoilt his lunch one 
 day, and that the crack of her gnawing nougat all day long 
 would " rattle him back to America." 
 
 " Say 1 She won't have the ghost of a complexion in a 
 year or so," he warned me. " She won't last like that 
 Venetian Bead, Lady Ilsa. And their chef is enough to ruin 
 the complexion of any girl in the world who didn't set a 
 watch on her appetite. Queer-looking fellow, too ! " 
 
 There was something very fishy about the way they got 
 Anatole. He produced all sorts of credentials, but anybody 
 can forge letters. But Mother went headlong as usual and 
 he had no objection to coming to England, so as to improve 
 his command of language. Mother really treated De Crawhez 
 very badly, carrying off his cook like that, though it will 
 
12 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 hardly affect him now, for I believe he was shot in the first 
 week. Mother has now left off crowing over the affair, 
 and teUing everybody how the moment her teeth met in 
 his Chateaubriand de pommes at the lunch poor Da Crawhez 
 gave them at his place at Marteau, she was determined to 
 have him. I am convinced it was Venice's teeth that met 
 and closed on that Chateaubriand. She is the greedy one ; 
 Mother doesn't care what she eats. In the end they secured 
 the services of Anatole at £80 a year, and took him back to 
 England with them. Venice wrote complacently that he 
 looked delightfully sinister, and added a distinct lustre to 
 their party, for everybody thought he was their courier, and 
 he gave himself the airs of one, and as a matter of fact helped 
 them a good deal in many ways, by palavering officials and 
 getting their luggage through, and so on. I understand they 
 bought up a whole place — ^Montjoie on the German side, 
 famous for marquetry furniture. They take some getting 
 through, they do. 
 
 Venice created quite a scandal on the joat and in the 
 hotels by hanging about the dark courier. She found his 
 conversation so interesting. She couldn't get enough of it 
 at first. She used to get him to talk about his wonderful 
 past. He admitted, she said, to having been in all sorts of 
 tight places ; to having been arrested in Odessa, and thrown 
 into Peter and Paul in Petersburg ; that he had fought at 
 the siege of Adrianople, and got a scar there, which was 
 the reason he always wore a beard — " not to frighten the 
 ladies." 
 
 Effel, had a thorough distrust of Anatole, and told me 
 that after he came she was careful to lock her door at night. 
 Funny, when on the other hand Anatole was sleeping in the 
 pantry to cherish the plate 1 I never supposed for a moment 
 that he was a mere ordinary thief ; that would be to insult 
 his peculiar talents. He seemed far more likely to spare 
 their property and cut their throats one dark night, just to 
 keep his hand in, if one was to believe all those tall stories 
 of his previous career I 
 
 After Venice, and Papa, and this Sir Audely Bar, Anatole 
 was the person Mother set most store by. He made himself 
 indispensable to her. And there's no denying that Cyrus P. 
 was awfully impressed by Mother's chef, and considered 
 him her best social asset, and that his cuisine would have 
 got Venice off if anything would. 
 
THE LAST DITCH 18 
 
 And isn't it, in the end, all queer together ? For my queer, 
 fussy, muddly, darling people are, after all, and in effect, 
 the real genuine article, the aristocrats of England, the old 
 feudal system personified, its outcome, the inheritors of all 
 its glories and responsibilities. And there they are, carrying 
 on over there in their own queer fashion: Mother buying 
 furniture cheap, sneaking other people's servants, wearing 
 her dozen or so of woollen petticoats with the strings tied 
 round her waist, and using her funny old North country 
 expressions now and then that are so valid and striking. 
 Venice — ^well, there it is — Cyrus P. was disappointed in 
 Venice. She should have been like Tennyson's Maud, 
 " icily regular, splendidly null," but she had a pout and 
 ate like a pig and put her clothes on anyhow. 
 
 I had to explain to him that that was all there was, 
 in this kind, and that we over here don't realize how human 
 and humdrum aristocrats are, with all the bourgeois virtues 
 and smugnessess, and hardly picturesque, according to 
 America's false, vamped-up ideal. 
 
 Something back of it all, that comes out — at least I think 
 it does — ^in these letters; something like a patina, un- 
 alterable, ineradicable, ... a saving grace that will stead 
 them — in the Last Ditch — ^if they come to it I 
 
 Sitting here at my window, looking out over the white 
 yachts towards Jamestown and Sanderstown — and there is 
 a grey destroyer pushing up towards the hidden Naval School : 
 if we did but come in 1 — I seem to see that funny, dear little 
 dot of green over there where the trees are so heavy, like 
 painted copper, not like our trees, mere wisps of thin-leaved 
 tallness, eaten by bugs and worms and katydids till they are, 
 in August, as leafless as in November — ^that odd rococo 
 anachronism of a beloved island of ours. And even to-day 
 she has muddled through — if not to victory then at least to 
 honour: to the honour of my own people, the queer, 
 feudal survivals who won Waterloo in the playground of 
 Eton — and conducted the wonderful Mons retreat from the 
 Carlton Grill and the Night Clubs ! . . . But the traditions 
 of honour, of Crdcy and Agincourt — and of Bannockburn and 
 Rhudland — survived at least far enough to let poor old 
 England say to the German Chancellor that when it came to 
 sustaining treaty obligations Great Britain was not accus- 
 tomed to consider the consequences I A fine speech tha.t, 
 that our — yes Our ! — ^Ambassador made on August 4th, a 
 
14 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 year ago. And it was dictated by my people: by our 
 traditions. ... 
 
 For I suppose we aristocrats are, literally, in the Last 
 Ditch ! However the war goes, Armageddon will wipe out 
 Cricy ; and however many of our boys win their spurs in 
 the Ypres salient. Privilege will be at an end in the world, 
 one way or another. . . . 
 
 Or perhaps it mayn't ! . . . Perhaps this Last Ditch that 
 we are in, may be The Last — because we shall never be in 
 the ditch, or even down the drain again ! We may go forward 
 victoriously, and for ever, after this , . . ? 
 
 And after all our country might do worse. You can't 
 say that my mother is an ignoble woman — with her extra- 
 ordinary simplicity and singleness of purpose over cooks and 
 houses and junketings all during Armageddon, just to get her 
 daughter happily married ! For, I suppose, she unconsciously 
 recognizes it is her main job in life — ^just to perpetuate the 
 species — and drives straight to it like a horse with blinkers on, 
 in the storm and hail of shells and a world crumbling before 
 her feet. ... I admire her, though she is my own mother. 
 I forgive her poor little attempts to reconcile conflicting 
 spheres of interest — her palterings, and want of civic 
 imagination. . . . And my father is all good. . . . And 
 Venice is a prig — but she is rather a dear, too. . . . And Ilsa 
 is a buccaneer ; but buccaneers are needed in Island races. . . . 
 It was my father's tradition that made us declare war on 
 Germany, when on August 4th, 1914, they violated neutrality 
 by crossing the Belgian frontier " near a place called 
 Gemmenich." 
 
 Perhaps it didn't pay us — ^to vindicate honour ! God knows 
 whether it will pay us or not ! But " paying " isn't every- 
 thing; and if our (yes, I will write our in spite of Congress- 
 men and senators and the three-and-forty stars on Old 
 Glory), if our Empire goes down in a Last Ditch alone with 
 the barons of Crecy and Agincourt — and Ciro's ; if the 
 whole nation goes down with the Last Ditchers — one and all, 
 in a universal conflagration — dying so, we shan't go without 
 our little blaze of glory . . . our trailing clouds of it. . . . 
 
 And then. ..." Afiflavit deus et dissipati sunt 1 " Eliza- 
 beth put upon her Armada medal. Perhaps God will still 
 
 blow, and the b y Huns be dispersed 1 
 
 Dear God, do it soon / 
 
II 
 
 From The Lady Arks to Mrs. Laura P. Quinney 
 
 Paek Obbsobnt. 
 Oh what a plaguy world this is of ours, dear, especially 
 when one gets up against people who are obstinate for 
 obstinacy's sake and just to assert their dormant authority. 
 Now Aries is a very good sleeping partner and very seldom 
 attempts to put his foot down. I generally manage to 
 get in first and put mine. I shall pull this new difficulty 
 all right in the end, but it is awkward for the moment, for 
 it cuts at the root of my plans for the summer. This 
 horrid mess in the Balkans will have no results politically, 
 nothing ever does over there : it's a pot that's always stewing 
 and never comes to the boil; but the murder of the Arch- 
 duke has upset us all a good deal, especially Aries, who 
 is getting to be an old man. He didn't care for the Arch- 
 duke personally so much, it is more as it affects Us. He 
 has taken all sorts of absurd precautionary ideas into his 
 dear old head : wants me to dismiss our excellent Anatole, 
 and give up the idea of going abroad at all this summer ! 
 
 Now, we haven't missed for ten years, and Ilsa and Venice 
 have grown to count on it. In the discussions re the place 
 we should choose, I tended to Nauheim, and do still. My 
 knees are rather worse than I like to own, and dear Dr. 
 Bittelman understands them, and has only to take up the 
 thread again from last year when I put myself into his 
 hands, unreservedly. But though Venice is quite nice 
 about it, I rather suspected her of wanting to go to Spa, 
 where we also were last year, as you know. Baron de 
 Crawhez admires her, certainly, and it does make a health 
 resort so much more interesting to a young girl if there is 
 some one there whom she knows is ready to philander with 
 her and who wouldn't be a match I should absolutely have 
 to disapprove of if it came to anything. He really gave up 
 
 16 
 
16 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 Anatole to us because he could not refuse Venice anything, 
 not even a cook, that she had set her heart on. He now 
 offers to let me his house at Marteau cheap, but that's not 
 much good, for he can't both let his house to us and live ia 
 it and entertain us, so one of the reasons for Spa is gone. 
 Nauheim was in the ascendant until this tit-up at Sarajevo, 
 and Aries' craze of forbidding us to go abroad till things are 
 more settled. I have said that he must have it out with 
 Venice himself, putting it all on him. He may succeed in 
 influencing her, especially as she does not quite know her 
 own mind. . . . 
 
 As for England, I have plenty of alternatives. In Scot- 
 land — she liked the idea of Scotland if it has to be England — 
 there is the Musters-Graham's house just over the border 
 that I could have, only I have let it slide because Venice 
 said abroad in August, whatever she did in September. 
 
 The affair of Sarajevo touches the elder generation, to 
 which Aries and I belong, more closely than it does the 
 younger ones. I knew the poor dear Archduke well : he was 
 dear to me during all the years that Aries had Vienna. 
 I quite loved him and his wife. It is shocking enough 
 that any one with whom one has been in direct personal 
 contact should have met with a violent death, but it is 
 one of the penalties of greatness that the Anarchist is 
 always lying in wait. Even our Edward the Seventh was 
 shot at in the station at Brussels, and was, I heard, very 
 generous and unrevengeful. Of course he wasn't touched 
 at all. If you number crowned heads among your friends 
 you must expect shocks of this kind now and then. Still, 
 I don't think any international fracas of that kind should 
 be allowed to affect one's ordinary plans over here. These 
 half savage people have recourse to the sword and to 
 chemicals in settlement of the most trifling disputes, and 
 are always shooting and murdering and bombing each other 
 in cafes and public processions. I've got a piece of the 
 Queen of Spain's dress that was all spattered with blood 
 when they tried to kill her and her husband at Madrid. 
 Gruesome relic, isn't it ? 
 
 I must contrive to manage Aries, if Venice really is set on 
 a foreign trip. He is so annoying when he gets on his high 
 prophetic horse, and works off the stale political tips he 
 acquired in his ambassadorial career. I should be the last 
 
THE LAST DITCH 17 
 
 to belittle his usefulness, only it was rather long ago and 
 events move so quickly. So when he waggles his dear old 
 head and says that after Sarajevo anything may happen, I 
 say Che sard, sard ! and that it mayn't even sard, but turn 
 out a mare's nest after all. At all events I am certain I 
 ought not to sacrifice my daughter's future to his fears. 
 
 The season has been disappointing to both of us, and Venice 
 is looking paler than usual — she is called The White Snow- 
 drop, you know. One is bound for her sake to make some 
 coherent arrangements for getting away, even if one does 
 give in to Aries' prejudices and stay in Great Britain. And 
 if others take fright too, and there are plenty of nervous 
 people about, houses in England will be hard to get, and I 
 believe that I had better secure the refusal of Lochroyan 
 Hall for next month. If the season doesn't improve Venice 
 will agree to anything just to get away and shake the dust 
 of it off her feet. It's been no good at all this year. Venice 
 hasn't had at all a good time, and resents it. Nobody has 
 given anything to speak of, not even garden parties, and 
 the weather has been perfect. But people seem to have 
 been too spiritless even to profit by the cheapness of straw- 
 berries that we have had quite a glut of. It is too late for 
 things to pull themselves together again. The season is a 
 delicate plant, and anything, almost, that gives it the slightest 
 jog in the wrong direction ruins it. A solidly rainy June of 
 course finishes it. If the Fourth, when we used to go down 
 to see my boy at Eton, was showery, my heart was always 
 in my boots. 
 
 This year — ^well, the Irish business perhaps was what 
 did it and feeding Suffragettes through the nose ! Tiresome 
 creatures ! And ould Ireland always is a bother. And both 
 not a bit of good, socially speaking. Without Anatole it 
 would not be the least good in the world taking a house and 
 hoping to get the right people together. And if I diplomatize 
 and allow it to be known that I am giving my chef a holiday 
 and taking a temporary cook for the time being, or borrowing 
 Lady Dowlais' Myddleton, the notion of that will drive 
 them away all the same. I see them saying, " We will wait 
 to go and stop with dear Beaty until she has got back her 
 chef ! " 
 
 If I were to propose it to Venice, of course she'd say at 
 once, " What fun ! " and that it would be exactly what 
 she'd like to do — ^return to Nature. But I know her nature 
 
18 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 better, and so does Anatole. He would do anything he says 
 for Lady Venice, because she is greedy, as every pretty 
 woman ought to be. I'm no satisfaction to him, for I don't 
 care a hang what I eat : as often as not I lunch oft a boiled 
 Spanish onion and breakfast on porridge, taken standing, 
 so as to be quick and get after my affairs. 
 
 The one real drawback to Anatole is his temper. Indeed, 
 when I'm giving an important dinner, crowned heads and so 
 on, and Anatole feels that his European reputation is at 
 stake, our basement becomes a veritable Inferno for all 
 concerned. Audely compares it to the stokehold of a 
 Dreadnought during a naval engagement, and Anatole him- 
 self to the King of the Infernal Regions, Pluto, or Lucifer, 
 the Prince of Darkness, and I don't know what abusive 
 terms collected from his reading, for which he has more time 
 than I have. 
 
 Anatole is certainly odd looking; I wish you could see 
 him, Laura. He has very red lips, peeping out of a little 
 pointed beard as stiff as a shaving brush. He wears his 
 hair brushed up into a toupet ; and it must be dyed, it has such 
 queer steely blue lights in it, when you see it in the sun, 
 which I don't very often, for he mostly wears a bowler 
 which quite hides the top of his head, being several sizes too 
 big for him, I should think. He never takes it off when I 
 meet him coming in from his daily drive — -he has a little run- 
 about of his own that he goes all over the place in, driving 
 himself. He is so clever and handy. He has told me that 
 he prefers women servants to deal with, so to please him I 
 have got rid gradually of all the men, excepting old Crookes, 
 who has been with us since Ilsa was born, and who isn't 
 much good now, except at announcing in a special voice 
 he gets up for the occasion and which rather startles and 
 amuses people. Anatole has no objection to Crookes, but 
 he says young footmen are more trouble than they are worth. 
 I never demur on questions of management with Anatole, 
 but treat him like the artist he is. And I never presume to 
 pump him about his wonderful past, though Venice does 
 sometimes. She has pieced out the dear man's history from 
 what he lets slip in moments of confidence, and is quite 
 sure that he has been at some one time or other in the Secret 
 Service of some country, perhaps our own 1 . . . 
 
 Her father laughs at her, saying that we don't need the 
 services of such scallywags as that, and that he is probably 
 
THE LAST DITCH 19 
 
 an ex-Apache or perhaps a circus-master. Aries' grudge 
 against Anatole is really a culinary one, and began from the 
 moment he entered our service and put forth his powers 
 and made a magnificent PdtS de lievre. Aries, whose 
 stomach has been ruined by foreign cookery, yelled for some- 
 thing plain, and got the kitchenmaid to fry him a mutton 
 chop and a boiled potato. 
 
 " That man will kill me some day," he observed humor- 
 ously. 
 
 He has got Anatole regularly on his nerves, although 
 Anatole is a brick and risks spoiling his hand to give Aries 
 the simple English stuff he wants, and he never sees him now. 
 We think it wiser. That will make it easier to get Anatole 
 with us to Lochroyan, if I do finally decide to clinch the 
 matter and deceive Aries for his good — or rather Venice's. 
 
 For of course it will be for Venice and her house party 
 that I shall run my neck into the noose. ... I don't care 
 what I do if I can only get her settled in the only proper 
 way for women, i.e. happily married to a good man of her 
 own rank. I say a good man, somebody equal to her in 
 every way ; while it has come to this with Ilsa, that any sort 
 of merely respectable engagement I would welcome for her. 
 But Venice must not be allowed to drag her beauty and her 
 title in the mud as poor Ilsa has done one way and another. 
 Of course, re the tittle-tattle Ilsa has incurred, beautiful girls 
 always do lap up jealousies, and I do not — nor do you, I 
 hope — believe for one moment one tenth of the horrid things 
 they say about her. It is just idle club talk, most of it, the 
 sort of disgusting things men do dare to say about the women 
 they have been playing with, when they get back to the 
 smoking-room. 
 
 Lucy always maintains that men don't talk in smoking- 
 rooms, that that is a pure woman's delusion; and when I try to 
 get from him the substance of what they say, declares stiffly 
 he never hears anything at all about the Lady Ilsa except 
 what every one knows, that she has a tongue and flicks men 
 frightfully on the raw with it sometimes, not to speak of 
 the women she pulverizes till they revenge themselves by 
 scandalizing her. . . . Lucy is so very gentlemanly I can 
 get nothing out of him, though I think it is his duty, as my 
 servant, to keep me in " the know " as to the things he knows. 
 
 Your Aunt Minna takes care to do that. She always 
 makes it her business to retail the gossip she says she hears 
 
20 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 from men. Queer sort of men, to abuse and backbite a 
 woman's own niece — by marriage — to her face ! I believe 
 she invents things, especially what D'Acosta said about the 
 fiver, which I own worried me a good bit, because it is so 
 insidiously destructive of a girl's reputation. Effel, dear 
 staunch Effel, tries to comfort me by saying, that taking it at 
 the lowest and most cynical, she is certain Lady Ilsa is too 
 lazy to put herself out to get a five-pun' note free — that the 
 very smallness of sum named makes it impossible, and only 
 a baseless aspersion of D'Acosta's, whom I shall cut dead next 
 time I meet him — in the only place where one does meet 
 cads like him, your Aunt Minna's drawing-room. 
 
 Even Effel admits that she thinks that dear Lady Ilsa 
 has made herself a little too cheap here and there, out of 
 good nature more than anything else — " trailed " too much, 
 and wasted the most splendid opportunities a young woman 
 ever had. 
 
 She was indeed the sweetest creature to look at when she 
 was twenty, all pale gold and pink and white, slim and tall, 
 and even then so fond of admiration that she could refuse 
 no one anything if they flattered her. And they do still. 
 She has tons of admirers. As she says humorously, all 
 the small men in London are at her feet. Jerry Teague, whom 
 I know she refused, is only five foot one, and as spiteful as 
 cripples usually are. It is quite likely that he is responsible 
 for the fiver story : a pound a foot — of malice ! She is five 
 foot six in her silk stockings. 
 
 And rich men do seem to gravitate to Ilsa as to a magnet, 
 and she does not spurn them, altogether ; why should she ? 
 They are harmless if uninteresting, and most of them have 
 got wives whom they would bring here if I asked them, and 
 who don't seem jealous. She makes no difference between 
 old or young, providing they pet her and spoil her. She was 
 like that from a baby, when I remember her in her little 
 fluffy white frock, sitting on old M. Bloch's knee, and trying 
 to pull the diamond off his watch chain. 
 
 That's pretty well what she does now, except for the 
 difference of age and petticoats. . . . She loves baubles, 
 and these old boys, who make a thousand pounds a minute 
 in their businesses and are running over with unused cash, 
 like to see her happy, and are quite content with a smile 
 now and then. They spoil the look of our drawing-room 
 a good deal ; but then, I had rather she forgathered with 
 
THE LAST DITCH 21 
 
 them here than be constantly seen about in their company 
 in restaurants. Then there are the journalists, who simply 
 infest the house, imploring her to let herself be interviewed. 
 She says it pays her, as well as being kind ; for if they write 
 her up, the shops send her things to wear, and so get described. 
 
 I have always blamed Meg Twells for bringing this set 
 about her and inspiring in her the itch for new clothes. But 
 it has now become an institution, and it's no good cavilling 
 at it. 
 
 Luckily no exception can be taken to her other comrades, 
 who are — ^though poor subalterns, most of them, without 
 a bob — above reproach. I like them, for they neutralize 
 the frowsy appearance of some of the others. Ilsa laughingly 
 calls them her amants de cceur, and allows them to take her to 
 dinners at the Spitzbergen or the Carlton and the theatre 
 afterwards. It's a pity she is so good-natured and lets the 
 middle-aged ones with sparkling tie-pins " dine " her too. 
 Old Mr. Jehoshaphat drives a coach and "tools" her 
 down to Brighton now and again — ^with a party, mind you ! — 
 for the week end. There's propriety in numbers, and it's 
 always a party, even though it's a party I don't approve 
 of. I went once myself, to see if it was all right. That was 
 rather against the grain and I felt like a fish out of water 
 but if a mother elects to fling her mantle over her daughter 
 she has to include her daughter's associates as well. My 
 duty is to prevent Ilsa's heady actions from being mis- 
 construed, and I do what I can. 
 
 One thing I will not allow, and that is Venice to go about 
 with Ilsa. Though she dotes on her sister, she is fairly 
 reasonable about this fiat of mine ; she does not really care 
 for the people Ilsa has got about her. And though I per- 
 mitted her once to go to Paris with Ilsa and Meg I never 
 will again. Ilsa herself vetoes that, luckily ; she says Venice 
 was a dreadful bore, insisting on spending all their time in 
 the Morgue or the Musee Guimet, where she got a thorough 
 sickener of Thais and Serapion. Venice used to go and gloat 
 on those two mummies for hours ! What Ilsa and Meg go to 
 Paris for isn't mummies, but les grandes couturieres and the 
 Galerie Lafayette that Ilsa thinks nothing of spending the 
 day in. And really Ilsa's week's shopping is worth while — 
 the wonderful things she secures for next to nothing. Thank 
 Goodness I'm not tempted ; they are not the style I should 
 like for Venice, whom I dress very simply. 
 
22 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 I have no right to interfere with Ilsa. She is a major 
 and no expense, for she hands on most of the allowance her 
 father gives her to me for board and lodging. She is rather 
 proud, and says that it would be indecent to let me pay for 
 goings on I don't approve of. And these wonderful things are 
 given her in return for her allowing them to use her name 
 as an advertisement. 
 
 I refuse to let her pass these things on to Venice, even 
 if they suited her. Somehow my whole being rises up 
 against it. I cannot have the child associated in any way 
 with Ilsa's Clothes Trust, as I call it. She exchanges them 
 with her friends, quite extensively, buys theirs and they buy 
 hers. I don't know what my mother would have said. My 
 mother wouldn't have put on a pair of gloves some one else 
 had worn, much less an intimate garment like a dress-bodice. 
 Though I must tell you Ilsa compasses many a little act of 
 generosity out of it. Girl friends that can't for some reason 
 or another afford to scrap their failures at the time, she takes 
 them off them and pays the full price they gave, although 
 they've had some wear out of them even. She can wear 
 anything and make it look all right on her ; so different to 
 Venice, whose clothes never seem to belong to her at all. 
 
 Ilsa sometimes condescends to explain to me what is the 
 matter (?) with Venice, i.e. why she doesn't attract. She 
 says it's because Venice is utterly lacking in temperament. 
 That seems to me an over-rated quality ; I managed to get 
 a good husband without it. Ilsa, who boasts the tem- 
 perament of a cart-horse — what good has it done her ? Tem- 
 perament is, I believe, responsible for most of woman's 
 misery, and certainly for a good many of the scandals of the 
 world, from Helen of Troy downward. I should say it was 
 the last thing in Pandora's box that got out, and wrecked 
 everything. And yet, according to Ilsa, if you haven't got 
 your due share, you are left severely alone by the other sex. 
 It is true that Venice has never had an offer in her life except 
 one — from Herr Papoof, her last music master ; and that 
 when Ilsa came out, on the other hand, all the men went down 
 like ninepins. Her success was so immediate, that I don't 
 wonder she lost her head. But temperament doesn't many — • 
 it only has a good time. 
 
 Venice has been out eight seasons. I sometimes think it 
 is this wretched flavour of authorship about her which 
 puts people off. Certainly her poetry is a good deal warmer 
 
THE LAiST UlTCll '•i'A 
 
 than she is. People ask me how it is she knows so much. 
 I can't tell them, except that they say people who write 
 have a sixth sense — ^they apprehend things they don't really 
 know, just as people say rather indecent things under 
 chloroform. 
 
 I was very foolish not to put my foot down and stop it 
 from the very beginning. But our ancestress Corisande 
 Wheler started it in the family and got great credit for it in 
 her day. And lots of aristocrats write and have written 
 poetry. Look at Lord Lytton, and that other connexion 
 of ours, Lady Anne Douglas, who wrote " The flowers of the 
 forest are all weeded away ! " 
 
 I thought it would be an amusement for the child and let 
 her go on, and of course from the moment she published her ' 
 first poem in The Observer, the Press was all on to her like a 
 swarm of bees. And one hadn't the heart to damp her. 
 She was so excited and flattered. I could not refuse to let 
 her go to the dinners they gave to celebrate her " entry into 
 Literature." People paid their guineas cheerfully to go to 
 literary clubs to see my daughter eat her dinner. And she 
 once made a speech — my little Venice ! 
 
 A Mrs. Morton Leahy presided at the dinner, and was all 
 over Venice at once, to promise to go and see her. I was 
 dragged off there to call, and I confess I saw much to 
 interest and nothing to give me alarm in their menage. Mrs. 
 Leahy is perfectly quiet and civil, although mad, and holding 
 I believe quite unaccepted ideas about things in general. 
 And she knows which side her bread is buttered too, and is 
 always grasping social advantage and publicity, which of 
 course we can give her. She contrives to attack us always 
 on the score of charity. Venice is to write, she is to appear, 
 she is to give her signature for the benefit of Russians, or 
 authors, etc. ! I'd rather give a roll of flannel and a giU of soup 
 at once than lend my daughter to make the money to pay 
 for them, for that is what it amounts to ! 
 
 But Venice has made a friend of the daughter Ida, and now 
 they want her to be bridesmaid to Miss Leahy ! 
 
 Venice showed me the girl's letter. It was exceedingly 
 ingenuous, but one can see that what she wants is not so 
 much the " presence of her dearest friend at the most serious 
 moment of her life," but that of Lady Venice St. Remy at 
 the party afterwards. All those Fabian people are frightfully 
 worldly, really. I like the girl Ida, myself: she is most 
 
24 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 obliging and helpful. She assisted me, poor tyro that I am, 
 most materially with the proofs I was correcting of an article 
 I had rattled oft at the behest of the editor of The Casual 
 Review the other day. He pestered me so to give him my 
 views as to what we have agreed to call the Boudoir Educa- 
 tion of Infants. Prospective mothers can and ought to 
 begin training at the earliest possible moment. The word 
 Boudoir, suggested by Ilsa to describe it, is so delicate, I 
 think. 
 
 Out of sheer good nature I consented. I am no good at 
 punctuation; my ideas flow so rapidly, I have no time to 
 think of that sort of subsidiary thing. I did it however, and, 
 do you know, Laura, I who write to you, here, this day, 
 actually earned five pounds by literature, so I oughtn't to 
 abuse it. It shows that an ordinarily intelligent woman 
 can quite well do this that Venice makes such a fuss about, 
 if she gives her mind to it. And I can't say I even did that. 
 Just sat down and let it run off the end of my pen, one day 
 in the house ! 
 
 I think I must try to give you a literary account of my 
 dealings with Venice re the Leahy proposal, with speeches 
 and quotation marks and all ! It may amuse you. 
 
 I must first premise that I had already had a letter embody- 
 ing the same request, only more formally, on her daughter's 
 behalf from the mother. I had answered with the greatest 
 politeness. One can't be offhand except with one's equals. I 
 had said that nothing would give me greater pleasure than 
 to allow it in her case, but that under the circumstances, 
 I had to draw the line for Venice, not in the people at whose 
 weddings she took part, but in the number of times she per- 
 formed the ceremony. I took immense pains with that 
 sentence. I went on to add that she has done it so often 
 for her own friends and mine that I had had to issue a decree 
 that next time Lady Venice appeared before the altar, it 
 must be in the capacity of bride. Becoming more friendly 
 and colloquial, I said my daughter owed it to the race from 
 which she sprang to marry, and that it was no use defying 
 superstition—" Three times a bridesmaid, never a bride ! " 
 
 I got Effel to type me a copy of the letter, and showed 
 it to Venice. Venice caught at a minor point, that I had 
 written "Lady Venice." She said it was not right. I 
 begged to differ. One had somehow to mark one's sense 
 of Mrs. Leahy's mferior status, slight as it might be. Of 
 
THE LAST DITCH 25 
 
 course I should not think of designating her by her title 
 in a letter addressed to one of Us. I added coldly that I 
 considered it a great stretch on my part to write to that 
 sort of person at all, except in the third person. 
 
 " That, Mother," she retorted, " you know you never can 
 manage. And any way it's in the circumstances, not under 
 — I should think you might know that. How could you get 
 under what is supposed to be all round you ? For the sake 
 of the race I think you ought to be careful to write even 
 rude letters in good English." 
 
 That made me angry, and I retorted that she wouldn't have 
 been able to twit her mother with bad grammar if I hadn't 
 given her Latin lessons, and that that wasn't the way to 
 get me to do what she wanted. She saw that at once. 
 
 " Sorry 1 " she said like a schoolgirl, and then went on to 
 beg and pray that I would let her — this once — ^just this 
 once ! And she wouldn't ever ask me to let her be brides- 
 maid again. I was nearly on the point of yielding — I never 
 can resist Venice when she pleads, and I took temporary 
 refuge in the well-known proverb. She took me up : 
 
 " What about Ilsa, who has never been a bridesmaid at 
 all ? Being bridesmaid a thought too often isn't what has 
 stopped her marrying, has it ? And I am surprised at you, 
 Mother, giving way to superstition like this. And even if you 
 do choose to go by it, I am well over the three times by now. 
 It's your fault that I have been it so often ; you chose to 
 go uniting the two stocks of Dalruan and St. Remy. A 
 hundred and thirty-seven collaterals ! Of course we have to 
 help each other, turn and turn about, when it comes to our 
 time to get married. . . . Let me see " — she started counting 
 on her fingers, very elaborately, so as to irritate me — 
 " Elizabeth Reveley — ^two Darcies — Virginia Fairs — Lily 
 St. Just and Horace — Mary Chester— Cousin Sybil — 
 that's seven times. Though I suppose," she added, 
 taking a kick at me for poor Lily St. Just's trouble I helped 
 her through, " you wouldn't count a divorcie ? " 
 
 " I should not," I said. " It wasn't necessary, strictly 
 speaking, and I only consented to please poor Lily. I admit 
 I should not have allowed it. . . ." 
 
 " Well, six times — ^then. Pity, for there's luck in odd 
 numbers, especially seven ! " 
 
 I answered her patiently. " It's all very well — sixes and 
 sevens — what does it matter ? That's where we'll all be if 
 
26 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 you insist on going on like this. Do you want to be a sort 
 of perpetual bridesmaid, always dangling about on altar steps 
 and holding people's gloves for them, until you're too old 
 to be a bride yourself ? It's unnatural. . . ." 
 
 She interrupted me. " I shouldn't mind. I'd rather 
 stand and help other girls to make fools of themselves than 
 do it myself. I'd rather go into a nice quiet dignified 
 monastery like Lady Hester Stanhope — in the Levant, 
 wasn't it ? Do let me settle it and be bridesmaid for the 
 last time and then go into a monastery and shave my hair 
 and wear a pretty shirt with hair follicles to mortify me." 
 
 " You keep saying monastery — nunnery, I suppose you 
 mean ? " I rapped out, glad to have caught her out some- 
 where. " And I do wish you wouldn't go bringing up mad 
 women out of these wretched memoirs you read " 
 
 " Lady Hester was a relation, was she not ? " 
 
 " Your great-great-aunt," I said. " But that's beside 
 the point. Those days are over. You don't seem to have 
 the least idea where you stand." 
 
 It was time. She can't go on living in a fool's paradise 
 for ever. I told her then — exaggerating finely to make 
 some impression, and with Ilsa's initial mistake in my mind 
 all the time — ^that if that was the way she felt, it was sheer 
 waste her going out at all. That we, Aries and I, could not 
 afford the style it took to keep up the establishment on a 
 marrying basis, couldn't go on dressing her in the way she 
 copies from Ilsa, who is on a different footing altogether and 
 is clever enough to get half her clothes for nothing. . , . 
 
 I saw she was preparing to say she could write and praise 
 stays and soap and had a title that would be useful too, 
 but I pretended not to hear, and rubbed it in till I saw she 
 was getting upset and nearly crjring. God help me 1 Of 
 course I was only doing it to frighten her, for dear knows I 
 would personally take the very shift off my back to be able 
 to go on getting her the pretty things she has been used to, 
 and she knows it. But she stood mum, while I told her 
 brutally that she had had eight seasons, a house in town 
 taken for her every year, a country residence at Beard- 
 more with a staff of servants sufficient for unlimited 
 visitors, spas or smart seaside in the summer and German 
 baths and country-house visits in the autumn, and you 
 know what that costs 1 I said we had done it all willingly, 
 and pinched ourselves to afford it, but that it had now come 
 
THE LAST DITCH 27 
 
 to the point that neither Aries nor I were willing to go 
 on living beyond our means for ever or till she chose to give 
 it up and go into her convent. . , . 
 
 I am afraid I was very vulgar, but I did feel somehow, 
 as if I must, once for all, put the usual match-making mother's 
 point of view before her. I think it was the suggestion of the 
 convent in the Levant that did it. Aries had a rich aunt 
 who went like that, and did literally refuse all sorts of good 
 offers and ended in a nunnery, giving all her immense wealth 
 to the nuns ; and for her own sake Venice had to be made to 
 see that consorting with derelicts and detrimentals and 
 socialists leads straight to nowhere ; that it's all very 
 well as play, but that play ends, and she must begin to 
 think seriously of her future and not waste her time making 
 herself agreeable to men whom her father and myself could 
 not look at for her for a moment 
 
 "Yes," she said quietly; "I know all that. But what 
 am I to do ? You say it is time I thought ahead — had these 
 mean preoccupations about my own future. ... I simply 
 can't. . . . I'm not businesslike, or foreseeing at all. 
 You've never brought me up to be so. I am just the 
 ordinary, selfish, greedy sort of person who wants all the 
 good she can get out of life and wants it now ; I do desire 
 to go on leading the sort of life you kindly give me, but if 
 I've got to pay for it by attending to the main chance and 
 choosing my friends for propriety and usefulness, not pleasure, 
 I'd rather go without it all, and work in the fields — since you 
 object to my being a nun like my ancestress," she added 
 slyly, for she knows what I think about Aunt Corisande 
 Wheler and her terrific waste of money. 
 
 " You work in the fields 1 " I nearly choked. " You, 
 Lady Venice St. Remy 1 Thank Grod, no fanner in his senses 
 would employ you." 
 
 " I should have thought my title, that you're always 
 wanging into me, might have done the trick," said this 
 astounding child. " However, it's no good ! I am too old 
 to change now. You may just as well give it up, Mother, 
 and let me alone. Let me do anjrthing I can that will keep 
 me amused and out of mischief and convents. ... A Per- 
 petual Bridesmaid would be rather a funny profession. . . . 
 But I say, how silly we are 1 All this talk and fuss because 
 I want to give up a couple of hours on a certain day to 
 oblige a friend." 
 
28 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 " You want to make your mother, with all her traditions, 
 sit by in misery for a couple of hours while you are standing 
 among those people, associated with them in one of the most 
 intimate ceremonies of life." 
 
 " For your sins, dear ! " she said. " Think that you have 
 been put in a pillory for an hour or two — and that it will 
 soon be over ! " 
 
 " Oh, no," I said. " I know these people. They are like 
 an octopus. If I give way this time, they'll be sure to ask 
 you to be godmother to the first baby, and hold it at the font." 
 
 She sneered. 
 
 " That's a little far-fetched, isn't it ? Of course anything 
 may happen ? I might get engaged to one of the grooms- 
 men." 
 
 I almost shouted. " One of Miss Leahy's groomsmen ! 
 II ne manquait que (a ! You would insult your father and me 
 by an alliance with such a man as that, a dirty socialist, 
 like the bridegroom, if he wasn't worse." 
 
 " Not necessarily dirty," she returned patiently. " (Jerald 
 has some quite useful friends that even you would not disdain 
 — Blackleys and Gobies and so forth. People that give him 
 work. But I can meet that sort of person in my own 
 house. . . Dear Mother, can't we stop this silly discussion 
 about things that are never likely to happen, even if you do 
 give permission, which I can see you are dying to. . , ." 
 
 She actually said that, and I did not contradict her. She 
 appeared to ponder a moment and then resumed : 
 
 " Now look here. Mums (she very seldom calls me that), 
 can't I meet you somehow ? Supposing I told these 
 dangerous persons that I am actually engaged, so as to keep 
 them off ? Or — it is only July — I might happen to be really 
 engaged before September, if that would please you ? I'm 
 sure I take no interest in what happens to me in that respect. 
 But I could easily manage it, if I set myself to do it. There 
 are one or two men that I should only have to signify my 
 pleasure — ^just relax my well-known frigidity you complain 
 of a little. ... I don't mind Philip Wyandotte, and I 
 could easily sneak him from Ilsa if I wanted to ; he is nearer 
 my age. And there's another quite suitable victim. . . ." 
 She appeared to smile at the recollection of " passages." . . . 
 
 She went on : " Oh, I assure you, I'm not so hard up for 
 admirers as you all seem to think — I've seen you two and 
 Effel laying your silly old heads together. Now — I mean 
 
THE LAST DITCH 29 
 
 this, Mother ; honest Injun ! — if by the time Ida's wedding 
 is really due to come off I am able to give you the assurance 
 that I have got a really serious affair on hand — am engaged 
 if you like — ^will you let me tell Ida that I'm at her service 
 for the one morning — that's all it is ? " 
 
 She had mentioned Philip Wyandotte, and he is very well 
 off; I should say one of the most stable young fellows in 
 England as far as money goes, and not too nearly related. 
 It is true that he is far too young for Ilsa, who only runs him 
 for his father's sake, and he is even a year younger than 
 Venice, but that wouldn't matter much. He is also a terrible 
 flirt, but it would do Venice good to be worried a little 
 that way. . . . And the other man she spoke of . . . 
 
 I turned it all over in my poor mind during those few 
 nervous moments while she stood there like a statue — 
 Venice never fidgets or plays with things to give her a 
 countenance. Of course she was only talking in joke and 
 did not expect me to take her seriously. Still I knew that 
 she wouldn't have mentioned names unless there had been 
 some little idea in her mind of their possibilities as a flirta- 
 tion. Finally, I turned round — I had not wanted her to see 
 my play of countenance — and said, laughing, so as to as 
 nearly as possible carry on the conversation in the light vein 
 of chaff she had started : 
 
 " My dear girl, if, honestly, you could come and tell me 
 
 you had taken up with a really nice young fellow like any 
 
 of those you have mentioned " — I looked at her inquiringly, 
 with some slight idea of leading her on to give the other 
 name, but it was no good. She is never to be cajoled — 
 " any one, in fact, that your father and I could approve of — 
 why, if you could only just show us that you did take these 
 things a little into account and were able to inspire in men 
 a feeling of security — could meet them half way — took 
 some interest in the more serious things of life — ^for the love 
 of a good man is important, whatever you flighty girls may 
 think — I shouldn't have the least objection to your being 
 bridesmaid every single day of your life right up to the day 
 of your own wedding, which, oh dear 1 I shall be so glad to 
 see definitely on the tapis. . . ." 
 
 She interrupted me. 
 
 " So that's a promise, is it ? " 
 
 And pranced off to her own study, for all the world like 
 a child to whom you have given a sugar plum. 
 
80 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 I hope my concession re Ida Leahy's wedding will be like 
 a sugar plum and make the pill of my terrible lecture go 
 down. It must have been a rather bitter nut for a butterfly 
 like Venice to crack. And after all, as she says, it isn't such 
 an immense thing to let her stand just for half an hour in 
 church behind a great friend like Ida, and the wedding 
 won't be till we all come back from Nauheim or Scotland, if 
 we go there, and people won't notice the name in the papers 
 so much as they would in the season, that's one comfort. 
 And Philip Wyandotte can be asked to come to us in Scot- 
 land if we go. An argument for Scotland, which I suppose 
 it will just have to be now. He is a delightful young fellow, 
 and only a fifth cousin. Ilsa only likes him because he is 
 Paul Wyandotte's son who was killed in the Boer War, and 
 whom she had a penchant for. All the women want him, 
 and try to flirt with him, and I rather believe in what Venice 
 says, that if she relaxes her austerity, and lets herself go 
 with him a little, she can get him. Flirts like Philip always 
 in the end fall to the stiff, proud, cold girls. She spoke of 
 another one — I wonder who that is ? 
 
 Venice has revealed unexpected depths in her. I wonder, 
 Laura, if she is really not a bit of a minx ? 
 
Ill 
 
 From The Lady Venice St. Remy 
 
 Paek Cbescent. 
 You know what Mother is. How many daughters say that, 
 don't they ? But it is a difficult relation. They say that, 
 too. I suppose the relation is really impossible from the 
 moment one is born. But I do love Mother, and mean to 
 be a good daughter to her. Even if I didn't I should try to 
 get on with her for sesthetic reasons. I consider that people 
 who write poetry ought to be more careful than others in 
 their domestic relations, for if a genius behaves badly, it is 
 a reproach and slur on the whole brotherhood of art. 
 
 Shelley was an angel of light, but a domestic scourge. 
 Byron was vulgar. Robert Browning is the only poet I can 
 think of who succeeded in being a good husband and father ; 
 but then, some people think he wasn't a good poet. 
 
 But I'm not either a Shelley or a Browning, nor going 
 to be, in spite of Mother's pride in me. I'm not even a Mrs. 
 Browning. Mother would like me to be a Mrs. Hemans — 
 " Oh call my brother back to me I " The Mrs. Hemans sort 
 would get on with any amount of relations. 
 
 If Mother wouldn't be so proud of me, life would be easier. 
 But she never has a thought for any one else. She retails all 
 my lightest words and gestures since I was a child to people 
 whom it profoundly bores. It is the penalty of being born 
 at such a big interval after you and Ilsa. My Future, 
 my Future 1 It has got to be a Future of her choosing, 
 not mine. 
 
 I want it to be a literary one; Mamma, I verily believe, 
 would rather see me dead at her feet than living as a literary 
 woman, so-called. She doesn't say much for fear of rousing 
 the Aries obstinacy, but she intends my future to be 
 Marriage ! 
 
 We each consider our ideal compatible with the ideal of 
 
 31 
 
82 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 the other. She doesn't mind my playing at authorship, 
 if she could be sure it would stop there. I have no objection 
 to playing at marriage, if it wouldn't interfere with the 
 serious work of my life. Literature is to be treated as a 
 hobby. Now, marriage would more or less represent a 
 hobby to me, and not such an interesting one as the other. 
 In the very nature of things it can't be regarded as a busi- 
 ness ; it is, as yet, the only uncharted, unscheduled occupa- 
 tion in the world. Proficiency in it is a matter of accident ; 
 while proficiency in art can be attained by hard work and 
 " pegging away " at lines that won't come right. One can't 
 exactly peg away at marriage I 
 
 "Writing," to her, is a kind of by-path that you stroll 
 down when you are tired of the broad and dusty highway 
 of " Going out." How I hate the everlasting round, the 
 daily drive somewhere to see somebody ! It is a bad habit of 
 using other people's houses as neutral meeting grounds, 
 using other people's servants, eating other people's food, 
 dancing to other people's bands with other people's men — 
 until you succeed in wiling them away and making them 
 your own. Nearly every man you meet belongs, in the first 
 place, to somebody. . . . Rarely do you meet an un- 
 attached man. 
 
 But Mother thinks they are all waiting for me to throw 
 the handkerchief to them. I have given society a fair trial, 
 to please Mother, doing that brain-fagging task, two things 
 at once, leading a dreary double life. From the Marriage 
 Mart I come back to my aery in the top of our house and 
 write deep and long and far into the night. No wonder 
 Mother's cronies nod at her disapprovingly over the tops of 
 crowds at receptions, and whisper when they get near her, 
 and have exchanged the usual salutations : 
 
 " How bored and uninterested dear Venice does look I 
 Why, her eyes are half shut ! " 
 
 So they are. I am generally half asleep. 
 Then Mother says to Lady This or That (that doesn't 
 like her much and is longing to have a chip at her) : 
 
 " Well good-night, dear, we have to be going on." And 
 
 " Dear " raises her eyebrows and remarks sarcastically, 
 
 " To bed, I should hope ? " with a stare at the circles under 
 
 the eyes. 
 
 Mother doesn't turn a hair, but drags off her victim — 
 
 "To Norssex House, Danes!" or " The Embassy ! " . . . 
 
THE LAST DITCH _ 33 
 
 I make no fuss. Once my neck is in the collar it is as easy 
 to go on as to go out, and proceed to mount a succession of 
 stairs till dawn or thereabouts, when Mother "lets up" 
 out of sheer fatigue and we stumble into our own house and 
 up our own stairs. By that time I am past sleep, and just 
 get into a tea-gown and sit by the window and write my 
 very soul out. 
 
 Mother has come at last to admit that I am not a success 
 at it. She tells Audely Bar and Lily St. Just (to whom she 
 always pours out all her woes and my affairs ; I don't exactly 
 know why) that it is heart rending to take Venice about ; 
 that her beauty (?) doesn't make its hit because I put my 
 clothes on carelessly and take such care to give the impres- 
 sion that I am bored. So I am bored, but that explanation 
 does not occur to Mother. She remembers her ten years of 
 chaperonage of Ilsa, who simply loved, does love, going out. 
 
 Mother tells Lily that I always begin by attracting men, 
 but can't keep it up. The " White Snowdrop " — Mother's 
 name for me, and that is only anaemia — wins them and chills 
 them, and they go away to find some one with a worse com- 
 plexion, perhaps, but livelier. Bohemia doesn't find me 
 dull, but it is merely deplorable waste of time to fascinate 
 Rowley Deane, so that he asks if he may paint me in squares, 
 or Willie Wilmot, so that he writes and dedicates vers libres 
 to me. She regards it as an insult that he doesn't take the 
 trouble to make them rhyme I 
 
 And Bohemia isn't allowed to get me too cheap. Rowley 
 Deane is permitted to paint me because a portrait when 
 exhibited is an advertisement to both artist and sitter — ^more 
 to the artist of course. But Gareth Llewellyn and Willie 
 Wilmot, whose poems haven't found a publisher yet, but 
 are only handed round in the set, are asked now and again to 
 crushes. I am not allowed to go to parties at the Leahys', 
 ostensibly, but I do, and it is there I meet most of these 
 nice people. I am forced to take Effel — ^not that I mind — • 
 and so it is her duty to see I don't get into any messes. 
 She has to keep Them off me. Mother imagines them as a 
 kind of hairy, unwashed octopus, stretching out tentacles to 
 absorb me all the time. As a matter of fact they are not 
 so keen on me as Mother imagines. They think me a nice 
 clever little girl with possibilities of doing something some 
 day if my people don't stifle it. . . . 
 
 3 
 
34 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 So, you see, in spite of my moral emancipation, the greater 
 part of my existence is spent in wandering about in a re- 
 stricted area of souls, who are of Us, and All Right, meeting 
 their dull, boring, shooting, sporting men who never talk 
 of what is likely to interest me and whom I therefore can't 
 interest back, although I try. Indeed I do, to please Mother, 
 and it is very dispiriting, when we get back from three hours 
 or so spent in this dreary milieu, to see her fling her cloak 
 at Berrymore with a despairing gesture, and cry aloud: 
 
 " Who would be a Mother ? " 
 
 I feel inclined to say, " Why do you ? " for of course I 
 know she means taking me out. 
 
 If I do marry, and I suppose I shall some day, I hope 
 I shall profit by this object lesson and leave my daughters 
 to work out their life problems by themselves. 
 
 For Mother is " working it " for me exactly as she did 
 for Ilsa, and Ilsa is her failure. I wish she would be 
 like the general who learned from his failures, but I suppose 
 that is too much to expect from any one so old fashioned. 
 
 Not that Ilsa is a failure, from my point of view at all. 
 
 They think in the family that I know nothing of Ilsa 
 and her life and present position. As a matter of fact, in 
 my sister's interests, I have worked out her problem thor- 
 oughly and mastered every detail of her career. I don't 
 get the information from Mother or Ilsa or you : you are all 
 so very reticent about the family skeleton, as I think you call 
 poor Ilsa, don't you ? No ! I try to pick Lucy's brains 
 during the intervals of my Latin lessons, telling him that I 
 consider it a pious duty, now that I have attained unto years 
 of discretion, to know the worst that is said about my elder 
 sister. I learn from poor old Lucy's reticences more than 
 from anything else ; he is fearfully gentlemanly, and hasn't 
 the remotest idea that he is giving Ilsa away. And no more 
 he is. What he knows everybody does, you included. I 
 love Ilsa, and as her best friend I don't choose to be left out 
 of her affairs by you elders. I mean with regard to what 
 people say about her ; her feelings, and deeds even, are her 
 ov/n affair, and I wouldn't for anything pry into them. 
 
 But I gather that she is supposed to be a regular buccaneer, 
 and has just followed her instincts wherever they led her, 
 all over the place ; that she has made Europe into one vast 
 cabinet particulier, or flirtation paddock, let us say, using all 
 
THE LAST DITCH 85 
 
 her advantages — Papa's being accredited at three Foreign 
 Courts enabling her to meet anybody she set her heart on — 
 using people's vulgar servility to help her to cover up her 
 tracks, and even Mother's family esprit de corps to that end. 
 Whenever she thought she wanted a man, she just took him, 
 no matter what, wherever, and whoever he was. I am aware 
 that they call her Dolores, Our Lady of Pain, and "The Dashed 
 White Butterfly," and "The Venetian Bead " — the man you 
 sent over, Cyrus P. Something, started that quite mild nick- 
 name in comparison with some which have been fixed on 
 my wretched sister. 
 
 You mustn't blame Lucy ; all I get out of him is nolens 
 volens — by sheer persistence. I moither him till he lets 
 things out. He adores Ilsa, and so does Effel. Ilsa is her own 
 worst enemy. She abuses and nicknames herself. The 
 other day when I was reading aloud to her she said she was 
 like La Valliere, who retired to a convent and was made 
 abbess of it. Ilsa is a little lame like her. And another 
 day, looking at the portrait of Louise de la Querouaille, 
 created Duchess of Portsmouth, she said that in any state 
 that was properly run she would have produced an heir 
 and had a dukedom created for him. But that in this 
 benighted country she was only an anachronism and a 
 tragedy. 
 
 If you were to see our poor dear Messalina lying on her 
 bed, and smoking in a simple white rest-gown on hot after- 
 noons, while I read to her and make sherbet on the wash- 
 stand, stirring it up with a tooth-brush, you would realize 
 that half of the talk is lies and jealousy, and half her own 
 reckless self. Of course she is bitter — ^who wouldn't be, with 
 every woman's hand against her, though she never was 
 unkind in her flirtations ? She hardly ever took husbands 
 away from devoted wives. She made inquiries first, I 
 suppose. 
 
 Then they will have it that she is nearly always tipsy — 
 drunk as I prefer to call it. That is nonsense ; I've never 
 seen her. She is often depressed and can't sleep, and then she 
 takes drops which are lowering, and then I dare say she wants 
 stimulants to pick her up if she is going out. 
 
 One of the special charms of Ninon de L'Enclos (whom 
 by the way I have always considered one of the most 
 desirable personages in history, though she herself said that 
 if she had it to begin over again she had rather have been 
 
86 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 hung, and I dare say Ilsa would say the same),- was that she 
 was, as they said, ivre dis la soupe, not from wine, for she 
 never touched it, but from sheer drunkenness of company. 
 And — I suppose I hardly ought to write the word, yet I know 
 you know — ^they do say that Ilsa is venal, just like Ninon, 
 and Ninon, though she lived by it, took her lovers for love, 
 and nothing else sometimes. 
 
 In these days people don't really do these wild things, 
 and it is sheer nonsense to suppose that Ilsa isn't as modern 
 and decent as every one else when it comes to the point. 
 Still I wish she would not take presents, even from shops. 
 But she would go mad if she hadn't the reputation of being 
 the best dressed woman in London. She has to compass 
 that, somehow, and of course one knows that Mother couldn't 
 afford to dress her in the way she is turned out now. And 
 Mother swears that she cannot ask Papa to pay heavy bills 
 for Ilsa any more, now that she doesn't seem to intend to 
 marry. 
 
 I don't believe that. Mother rubbed that idea into me, 
 re myself the other day, just to make an impression. She 
 said Papa said — but I don't for one moment believe Papa's 
 mind works on such squalid lines. 
 
 And you must remember that most of Ilsa's things are the 
 reward of advertisement. 
 
 It is wonderful how clothes and soaps and scents and stays 
 and so on tumble like ripe plums into Ilsa's lap in response 
 to a letter written in her broad scrawling hand that attracts 
 the eye. Lady Ilsa St. Remy says that she uses such and 
 such a soap and no other, or finds such and such a make 
 of corset the most comfortable she has ever worn. She is 
 kept in cosmetics and groceries, but what of that ? Friends 
 complain of her carelessness sometimes. Ida says the gloves 
 Dsa recommended split all the way down the first time you 
 put them on, and that the soap she says in print is so excel- 
 lent for the complexion took all the skin off her and the 
 bath too. 
 
 She has so many friends that give her tips, and tell her 
 where to go for furs and jewellery, of which she has bought 
 some beautiful bits for herself. That last string of pearls — 
 she has three — is splendid. People in the iSiow can of 
 course help her to get these things cost-price, or tell her 
 where to pick them up, which comes much cheaper than if 
 
THE LAST DITCH 87 
 
 she attempted to get them through the ordinary channels. 
 And every one knows that pearls are an investment. 
 
 The concomitant of all this is a rather disagreeable one. 
 It means that so many of Ilsa's friends are in business, big 
 shopkeepers and manufacturers, and a good many of them — 
 the men who give her the money tips— Jews. And we have 
 to have them here a good deal, or Mother thinks so. Ilsa 
 never raises a finger to get them invited. But I fancy Mother's 
 idea of a valid and respectable quid pro quo is admitting 
 them to the hospitalities of Park Crescent and giving them 
 the chance of saying that they have been there, and that may 
 be some good to them ! She never will ask the wives if she 
 can help it, and most of them are the kind of people who 
 don't mind, seemingly. 
 
 So, when once Mother has invited Mr. Stanley Jehpshaphat 
 to one of our popular dinners, or given Mr. Blackley the run 
 of our crushes, she feels quite content, imagining she is 
 being a kind of tphigenia to Ilsa, saving her from the necessity 
 of fulfilling her obligations to these awful people. It leads 
 to pas mal of family discussion. Our own people, of the elder 
 generation, don't fancy meeting outsiders like this. Great 
 Aunt Witley-and-Stoke tells Aunt Minna that Beaty Aries 
 is betraying her order, and adds spitefully, re Ilsa, that she 
 knows quite well why she does it. Any way she, Mariquita 
 Witley-and-Stoke, the daughter of the Due de Medina- 
 del-Campo, won't countenance her sordid tricks by coming 
 to anything here but a dinner of which she has scrutinized 
 the list of guests. Lady Witley-and-Stoke is eighty-five, 
 so Mother can indulge her whim without seeming too servile. 
 
 I have nothing to do with the invitations. Effel and Mother 
 do them. But I always suppose it is this sort of tit-for-tat 
 which accounts for some of the faces and figures I see at our 
 big crushes, and is the reason my Mother and Ilsa permit 
 themselves to treat them like dirt. 
 
 I must tell you what happened to Ida Leahy at the wedding 
 of one of the Darcy cousins. Hector Mackenzie, that 
 Hermy married, has a place in Skye, and Mother wants us to 
 stay there often. So she let Hermy be married from our 
 house, and gave a breakfast for her and showed her presents. 
 Hermione Darcy is rather like Mother, you know : strictly 
 .utilitarian; and though she hates Mother's crowd, liked it 
 better than an hotel. Ida's story is that when she had 
 
88 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 arrived at the drawing-room, cross with fighting her way 
 upstairs and prepared to be jarred by everything she saw, 
 she had got hold of Ilsa and remarked loudly : 
 
 " Lady Ilsa, I've come upstairs behind a fat man that, if 
 it wasn't your house, I should have sworn was Blackley ! " 
 
 Dsa told her that it was Blackley, and that if she were to 
 look on the second table to the right of the drawing-room 
 door she'd see a set of coffee spoons he'd given Hermy, who, 
 as I have told you, is just like Mother, and doesn't look to 
 see where things come from if they're good. 
 
 Ida was much shocked. Really Mr. Blackley was the 
 thick end of the wedge. I think Mother should not have 
 allowed even Hermy Mackenzie to sell her soul for a 
 set of coffee spoons. My family guilt weighed on me, so 
 that when Mr. Blackley came up and beamed, I could not 
 find it in my heart to say a word to him before Ida, who 
 knew Mother was too busy that day ; Ilsa too much occupied 
 with a new millionaire, to speak to him, and fear he had 
 a dull afternoon. As for the bride, she was not even 
 introduced to him. I rather wished I had made an effort 
 for the honour of the family when I heard later that he 
 had provided the whole of the breakfast, which was re- 
 markably good, especially some foie gras pdtS that Ida and 
 I, wedged at one time in the crowd in front of a small 
 section of buffet, completely demolished between us. It was 
 a dream 1 So if poor Mr. Blackley's quid pro quo was merely 
 to be asked to the breakfast he had provided and not even 
 be introduced to the lady to whom he had given an expensive 
 wedding present out of his own shop, I do think he was 
 treated badly. 
 
 Mother's system of quid pro quo suits me well enough. I 
 invite the people I like, and Mother asks those she wants. 
 Unfortunately it is all for me both ways. We generally 
 invite Mrs. Lee-Gray, who makes all my clothes. Mother 
 concocts hers with a little dressmaker who works here for 
 half a crown a day, and who always makes skirts a couple of 
 inches too short in front. But Effel says that it's no matter 
 what she wears. Lady Aries looks every inch the countess. 
 
 I happen to know, through the Family Filter, as I call 
 Lucy, that Effel considers me selfish, greedy, and vain 
 Lucy adores Effel and Effel adores Mother, and they are 
 both agreed that since Mother exists only for me, I ought 
 
THE LAST DITCH 89 
 
 to exist only for her. I agree with them in the main, and 
 one can't be annoyed with either Effel or Lucy, they are such 
 institutions. I call them Swift and Stella: Swift was a 
 
 tutor 
 
 Lucy isn't so much against me as Effel ; he has a sneaking 
 respect for me because I am such a good pupil and he can 
 get me on far faster than he did poor dear Romanille ! I am 
 a poet, he tells Effel, and not an animal, as she tells him. 
 The two are commensurate if they only knew. I shouldn't 
 be so self-indulgent and even greedy if I weren't using up so 
 much force in producing. . . . They will have it that I am 
 incapable of giving love — ^too selfish — while Ilsa is not selfish 
 enough, and is capable of dying for love, so dear little Lucy 
 says 
 
 The pair are dreadfully concerned about Ilsa and her 
 future, which they consider, as I do, that she still has to play 
 with. They get her into Effel's little sanctum and implore 
 her to see her way to accept your invitation — a standing one, 
 isn't it ? — ^to go to you in America, and start a new life. 
 They suggest, that having exhausted the Old World — I 
 should rather think so — she should try the New. They 
 predict that she would take it by storm. Would she, dear 
 thing ? . . . I wonder ! . . . Still, though she loves you 
 and wants badly to see you again, she always jibs at making 
 the plunge. Sometimes I think it is just that lazy slay-at- 
 home, cat-like feeling she has so strongly — laisser-aller, 
 laisser-faire, the root of all her misfortunes. Or else it is love 
 of me. We do love each other very much indeed, and Mother 
 and Ilsa, though they never quarrel, don't really get on: 
 Ilsa is so scornful about her little pettifogging contrivances 
 for my benefit ; and even if she makes no remark, the affected 
 attitude of aloofness she puts on is equally galling to our 
 jolly pirate of a mother. It amuses me. Mother's system. I 
 am far more tolerant and indulgent of her little ways than 
 Ilsa, who refuses to treat Mrs. Lee-Gray, because she makes 
 my dresses cheaper for the privilege, as an old and valued 
 friend, or Mr. Sacristan the photographer, who does me for 
 nothing whenever I am " in face," as a smart man of her own 
 set. Mother has found out and adopted a condescending 
 bonhomie which keeps these sort of people in a good humour 
 without actually derogating from her supposed dignity. I 
 don't consider it worth while to make any official difference 
 
40 THJii liAST UiiUii 
 
 between one person or another, and I suppose I keep up my 
 end all right. So does Mother, though one might say she 
 hadn't much surface dignity left. She is all right at bottom, 
 and our people know that well enough and just survey her 
 goings on with good-humoured interest, as if she were a canker 
 blossom, say, on our family tree. And there is Mr. Biss (and 
 Boom) Mother's tame publisher, who comes here pretty often 
 to keep Mother up to the mark, i.e. writing saleable stuff for 
 him, which apparently she can do, for he is very eager. 
 
 Mother's "writing" is rather a joke. She does it for fun, 
 and because it gratifies her vanity to be even with me ; but 
 proclaims loudly that she does it, " frankly," for money. 
 Mr. Biss believes her ; he says he quite understands that a 
 woman of title would hardly care to write unless it was worth 
 her while. 
 
 Well, he certainly doesn't make it worth our while, Ida's 
 and mine, for it takes all my time and hers to pull Mother's 
 grammar into line, and send up a decently corrected proof, 
 and poor Eftel spends hours tjrping her articles for her, Mr. 
 Biss has a good deal of trouble in getting her to stick to her 
 province, which is undoubtedly the opinions and sayings and 
 doings of the British Aristocracy, and keep her off Theosophy. 
 Mother hankers so after expressing her views on the chances 
 of a future life, working up little smatterings of pseudo- 
 science she picks up from Audely. 
 
 I encourage her to get Ida's help, because, after accepting 
 it, she can hardly refuse to invite her to our parties. She does, 
 hardly concealing her notion that it is Ida who is profiting 
 by contact with a Countess. Ida, you see, is a thorough 
 woman of the world, and doesn't mind Mother a bit : she is 
 immensely amused by her arrogance and glad to be with me 
 on any terms. Besides, she happens to have a high opinion 
 of Mother ; admires her splendid and vital energy, her real 
 altruism, submerged under family feeling and racial pride 
 which she considers picturesque and comparatively harmless. 
 
 And Audely Bar looks over our contracts — mine and 
 Mother's— and won't let Mr. Biss (and Boom) cheat us, though 
 he is very fond of getting one or the other of us penned in 
 the back drawing-room, and then drawing a moving picture 
 of a publisher's difficulties, in order to make us see the 
 propriety of taking less for an article or guaranteeing so 
 many copies of a book. 
 
THE LAST DITCH 41 
 
 My volume of poems is coming out in the autumn, Mr. 
 Biss says it is a great risk, but he'll take it, and he hopes 
 that the title will sell a certain number of copies. ... I 
 smile in my beard, for I happen to know that after forbidding 
 me to guarantee fifty copies, as Mr. Biss wished me to do, 
 getting it out of my own slender allowance, Audely had gone 
 behind my back and promised Biss that he would agree to 
 take a hundred and fifty himself, which is really what 
 guaranteeing means. Mr. Biss doesn't think I know. I 
 know it through Ida, who swears it is a fact, though Audely 
 has not told her in so many words. 
 
 It is very nice of Audely, and as he can easily afford it 
 I shan't stop him. I shall get all his copies to give away to 
 my friends. 
 
 My forthcoming dibut as an authoress worries Mother a 
 good deal, as one knows it would. She looks upon it in the 
 light of opening the stable door wide and letting the mettled 
 steed — me — ^walk out, perhaps to stay out — in Bohemia. 
 I did once, to tease her, hint that I contemplated living in 
 a Ladies' Hostel, or becoming a paying guest of the Leahys 
 or even of Meg Twells. These idle threats now boomerang 
 back on my head. I had to get Effel to assure Mother that 
 I am not likely to do anything of the kind ; that I love my 
 comfort far too much to want to stay in a house where they 
 don't drink and have chairs without backs, or live in a 
 community where they turn out the lights at ten and don't 
 give you a chance to read in bed. Effel was rather a brick, 
 and advised Mother that she had better let me have this 
 literary outlet, to save me from worse. And Audely having 
 thrown his weight into the scale too, the matter of the 
 poems is more or less settled. 
 
IV 
 
 From The Lady Venice St. Remy 
 
 Park Crescent. 
 
 Oh, I am so angry! The system of quid pro quos I 
 described to you in my last has broken down, and I must say 
 Mother has surpassed herself in injustice and unfairness. 
 Too stupid of her to drive me to extremities like this ! It is 
 a very little thing, but one on which I feel I must make a 
 stand. 
 
 I told you I was willing to let Mother run me and take 
 me to dull houses and ask her sort of people to ours, on 
 condition that I was to do the same. And what makes it 
 mean is she doesn't, herself object to making use of Ida. 
 
 But when I want to perform a small service for Ida, Mother 
 flatly refuses to allow it. 
 
 Ida is marrying, quite soon, a perfectly nice clean and 
 well-bred man, Gerald Quain, and wants me to be her brides- 
 maid. There is not a word to be said against him, even by 
 Mother, except that he has the misfortune to be both an 
 architect and artist, and a Cubic artist to boot, and wears 
 a soft hat and a tan shirt. These things will pass ; they are 
 only the trimmings of greatness. Ida always looks nice 
 except for her hair, which she has never learned to "do." 
 Her rowdy locks, as Ilsa calls them, give Mother a handle 
 which she is not slow to take. They are going to have a 
 veil and orange blossoms and vergers, as well as going properly 
 through the ceremony, not leaving out, as refined pigs like 
 Hermy Mackenzie do. It is all a sign, surely, of respect- 
 ability and grace. And Ida hasn't got any sisters or near 
 relations, so I should control the dresses, which disposes of 
 one set of Mother's fake-objections. Then she started 
 superstition, about a girl who is bridesmaid three times not 
 being a bride. Ilsa has never been a bridesmaid once 1 
 
 Both Ida and her mother wrote nicely, Mrs. L, especi- 
 
THE LAST DITCH 43 
 
 ally. She chose her phrases so well, and her handwriting is 
 small and her e's Greek, not sprawling all over the page 
 like the fist of Mother and her friends. It did impress 
 Mother a little, and rather corrected her desire to be rude, 
 but she managed to be, all the same, and made a fool of 
 herself as well. 
 
 She answered at some length, and graciously let Mrs. 
 Leahy into the secret reason for her refusal, viz. her impression 
 that I ought to be the bride instead of Ida. 
 
 Fake, all fake ; the real reason is Ilsa's past, getting into 
 my way as usual. All Mother's tiresomeness comes from her 
 being so upset about my eldest sister, who is a very decent 
 member of society, although unmarried, if only they would 
 leave her alone. And, as Mother had chosen to give me a 
 fake-reason for not allowing me I gave her a fake-promise 
 to get her to allow me to, and I believe it has done the trick, 
 especially if I supplement it with another little swpercherie 
 which I now consider it quite fair to play off on Mother. 
 She has asked for it. 
 
 Ida is very patient about it ; says that Lady Aries' bark 
 is worse than her bite, and that there is plenty of time for 
 her to come round. The date of the marriage is not fixed, 
 and can't be just yet, though they say September, until 
 Gterald's picture which is to pay for the wedding tour is 
 finished. They are going to Munich, Ida's dream. Ida is 
 wild about German culture, and Gerald says the first home 
 of Futurism was in Germany. Imagine Grerald and Ida, 
 Ilsa says, stumping about the Pinakothek in sandals and 
 woollen sweaters and soft hats, the woman, as is usual 
 with this type of dress, looking like a bad copy of the man, 
 in clothes just a little softer and more formless. Ilsa is 
 nice, but she can't help jeering a little at my friends, and 
 Mother enjoys it, and it doesn't do Gerald>or Ida any harm. 
 
 If Mother and Ilsa even knew, they are as proud of their 
 own particular kind of chic as Mother and Ilsa are of theirs. 
 With them it is smart to have harmonious dun knitted 
 waistcoats and well-fitting sandals with digitated stockings 
 to match, and they hunt all over London to get the right 
 kind, just as Mother and Ilsa pursue their special makes of 
 stays and hats. Ida and Gerald, too, jeer at our ways, but 
 are perfectly polite and civil to us as to an equal, though 
 they wouldn't allow us to be rude to them for a moment. 
 
 I remember the occasion of Mother's visit to Mrs. Leahy, 
 
44 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 early in the stage of my acquaintance with Ida, when 
 Mother was not so afraid of the Leahy connection, and was 
 willing to call once to please me. We went together, and 
 Mrs. Leahy was not in the room. The maid — Mother was 
 surprised to see she kept a maid, who was actually dressed 
 in the afternoon and wore a cap 1 — the maid " went to 
 fetch her," and Mother sat down on the sofa. When Mrs. 
 Leahy came in Mother had the cheek to remain sitting 
 while I introduced them, but held out her hand — 
 
 I admired the way in which Mrs. Leahy dealt with the 
 situation. She first sat down on the sofa beside her guest 
 and then accepted her outstretched hand. She could not 
 have signified her disapproval, and subsequent condonation 
 for my sake, of Mother's rudeness better. 
 
 We, as a class, don't in the least grasp their point of view. 
 I do; but I am exceptional. People like Ida and Gerald, 
 who are in the very forefront of civilization, think of Us as a 
 fine picturesque institution bound to go soon, but to be kept 
 up as long as possible. They regard the remains of the 
 feudal system as the hugest joke, but wouldn't do away with 
 us for the world, so long as we stay where we are till wanted, 
 ready to come out at need and fight for our serfs and their 
 homesteads, according to contract. Gerald indeed always 
 says that the need will come ; that war must recur, and 
 that then the aristocracy will have to show that it has not 
 forgotten how to lead. 
 
 Meanwhile we exist on sufferance ; we have our movements 
 recorded in the papers, we contribute the scandals that the 
 busy people who have no time to run away to Paris with 
 other men's wives or money to lose in horse racing, read out 
 to each other in the evenings. 
 
 Mother has the idea that they live in a constant state of 
 struggling up to the Light, and that the only reason Ida 
 wants me to be her bridesmaid is that I may contribute 
 some of that light to the little parlour in Notting Hill ! 
 The other bridesmaids are to be three of Ida's fellow 
 workers in the Girls' Friendly where she lectures. I wish 
 Mother could realize that it is far less compromising to 
 stand behind Ida with this sort of girl than with second- 
 rate suburban relations ! 
 
 Mrs. Leahy's uncle was Herbert Spencer or Mr. Lecky, 
 or some savant whose name I forget. Gerald's father was 
 a rather famous engineer, whose name also I forget. One 
 
THE LAST DITCH 46 
 
 way and another, though, the Leahys, and the Quain family 
 too, have quite a good record, and consider themselves as good 
 as any one else. Their house is properly run, although they 
 don't drink wine and Mrs. Leahy answers the door herself 
 in the mornings. They have proper table napkins, and not 
 paper squares as Mother insists they must have. She said 
 to Ida once that she thought it a good idea, and Ida answered 
 pleasantly that she never could bring herself to eat anything 
 if, when she sat down, she found a wisp of coloured paper 
 stuck in her glass, but that if Lady Aries would give them the 
 pleasure of her company at luncheon one day, she would see 
 that for once her ladyship's suggestion should be carried out. 
 
 Our people always think that there's nothing between a 
 Prince and a pauper, for they never come in contact with 
 the rank immediately below them. Charity takes them at 
 once to the slums, and even there the window is dressed for 
 them. We see Life always from the best places ; we have a 
 seat as a matter of course in the front row of the Grand 
 Stand and extra facilities for seeing what is going on. The 
 People are willing to concede all sorts of privileges in return 
 for the vague quid pro of feudal service, which in the present 
 state of the world's civilization we are never likely to be 
 called upon to render. 
 
 We gain all along the line. Once from our high places 
 we bossed things, knowing well that we should have our 
 heads cut off if we did it badly, or if the capricious crowd 
 surging below altered its mind and decided that we weren't 
 fit to dominate them, or if we cheated them as Richard II did 
 poor Jack Cade. 
 
 Nowadays, if we muddle our jobs, there are no penalties 
 at all — a question asked in the House, and all is quiet again. 
 As for the poor wretches below, they have looked up to us 
 so long that their eyes turn up naturally. Even if we fall 
 and wallow in the gutter, they seem hypnotized into believing 
 that we are still up aloft, like the boy in the Indian juggler's 
 trick who goes up a ladder and is never seen to come down 
 again ! 
 
 And the convenience of it all I I have relations all over the 
 world, in every Embassy. I am always having packages 
 left me by King's messengers. I received a lovely Kaf- 
 Kas belt from that big shop in St. Petersburg the other day, 
 a present from Aunt Catherine, She is going to give me a 
 winter over there as soon as I care to leave London. But 
 
46 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 there's time enough to go to Russia when we've exhausted 
 Rome, which I mean to aim at for the winter. If we go 
 abroad, we slide straight into everything. The year I was 
 going to be eighteen, and hadn't been presented, we went 
 to Rome quite suddenly. It didn't matter, because Mother 
 was a peeress. If I had been the daughter of a commoner — 
 even of the Prime Minister — I shouldn't have been able to go 
 to parties at the Embassy. And we take precedence even 
 in rescue, like the Blois girls in the Grantham railway 
 accident. Hetty Blois told me how they were attended to 
 first, and escorted out of the upturned railway carriage 
 before every one else. 
 
 . The reverse of the medal for Mother is that a title makes 
 all your bills bigger and doesn't prevent your having to pay 
 them in the end, like any other commoner. And you ought, 
 but you don't, tip porters higher if you have your name 
 stamped on your boxes. But I should like to see Mother 
 hampered by her title ! She insists on all its privileges and 
 gets round most of its obligations if she can. She delights 
 in putting on clothes that Berrymore would not have at 
 a gift, and, leaving off her gold pince-nez and the diamond 
 and turquoise enamelled watch that belonged to Marie 
 Antoinette and was given her by the Due de Morny, goes 
 off in a taxi, which she dismisses at Aldgate Pump, to 
 the market at Middlesex Street on a Sunday morning. A 
 silver cross, made of old Bible clasps, that she sold to Mrs. 
 Levy in Sloane Street for three times what she gave for it, 
 and some excellent Lachs in a paper bag, was what she 
 brought back last time. 
 
 Our title gives us the right to insult people when it is con- 
 venient to us, not excepting our own friends. And it is in 
 my interests, too, that Mother abrogates the very laws of 
 hospitality. Did I ever tell you about the small and early 
 Mother gave once ? (N.B. Mother bases her excuse on the 
 word Early.) She declared after the event, and after she 
 had done what she wanted to do, and offended every single 
 one of our friends who didn't know what she was capable 
 of, that Early on a card means that the hostess reserves to 
 herself the right to keep a supper engagement, if she happens 
 to have already contracted one. The engagement to sup at 
 the Ritz was contracted afterwards ; not that that would stop 
 my Jesuitical mother from using the excuse, plus her notion 
 that the Aries can do as they like. 
 
THE LAST DITCH 47 
 
 I didn't realize until afterwards what Mother was up to, 
 though I had seen Mr. Van Pomp's letter, asking Mother and 
 me to supper at the Ritz to meet — some foreign title or 
 other, or was it the Russian Dancers ? Ilsa was away in 
 Paris with Miss Twells, the Fashions editor of The Beauty's 
 Friend that Mr. Johoshaphat subsidizes for Ilsa and Meg 
 Twells. And even if Ilsa had been there she wouldn't have 
 interfered, but just shrugged her shoulders and said that for 
 her part she was ready for bed, and that they must all come 
 again another day, as you say to^a party of children when 
 you break them up forcibly. Ilsa works colossal impertin- 
 ence better than Mother, when she once begins. 
 
 The invitation had come, I will swear, two or three hours 
 after Effel had got all our cards written and posted. I 
 rather wondered why Mother, having read the invitation, 
 took it so calmly and tucked away the card as if it didn't 
 concern her any more, for I knew her views for me with Mr. 
 Van Pomp, and I knew too that he was rather sour and 
 savage, and thinking himself too rich to be snubbed even by 
 a Countess, would probably not ask Mother again unless she 
 came at his first nod, i.e. the first time he invited her. 
 
 About ten o'clock that evening the drawing-room and 
 boudoir were full. We always ask too many people. I hate 
 it. I like having elbow room, and not people rubbing against 
 my sleeves. Every one was talking, with voices raised the 
 way people will do when the standard of screaming has been 
 set. Miss Takaresco was just going to sing again, one of 
 her Rumanian folk songs that take so long to sihg. No one 
 was thinking of going for another hour. I had heard Crookes 
 telling the first people to be set down that carriages were 
 ordered at ten-thirty, and I thought it very officious of him, 
 and meant to tell Mother next day if I could remember. 
 He is such a very old servant that he is apt to take the law 
 into his own hands and consult his own inclinations, and 
 Crookes is always ready for bed. 
 
 Audely Bar was there, interested in Miss Takaresco, 
 whom he had picked up in a cabaret in Jassy and advised 
 and assisted with money to come over and try her fortune 
 in London. She wanted to sing here for nothing, as he was 
 a friend of Mother's, but he wouldn't let her. He is paying 
 her fee, so I understood from Mother, who thought it quite 
 a nice arrangement that Audely Bar should pay the 
 expenses of our entertainments 1 But if he did it in order 
 
48 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 to make Mother feel bad — it didn't. He was playing host, 
 as he generally does at our parties, for Papa has to go to bed 
 at nine, because of his phlebitis. 
 
 Mother was, if anything, less restless than usual. 
 
 Suddenly she tilted up her chin, by which I knew that she 
 wanted to speak to me. I passed into the little narrow 
 passage leading into the morning-room. It was empty, al- 
 though the room through was full of people. Mother told me, 
 in there, speaking loudly, although she fancied she was whisper- 
 ing, that she had ordered the carriage at 10"45, and it was 
 now waiting for us. We were to slip away without anybody 
 noticing, under cover of the song which was just beginning. 
 I was utterly bewildered, just as I was on the night of the 
 fire in Portman Square and Effel couldn't persuade me to 
 move out of my little safe bedroom after the alarm had been 
 given because of the smoke that was puffing in, in dense 
 rolls and folds. My legs seemed paralysed then, but this 
 time it was my intelligence that was benumbed and my 
 manners in abeyance. But still, what could I do ? She 
 wouldn't have scrupled to pinch my arm to make me come, 
 or drag at me and make a scene. She murmured something 
 about a Royal command ... or was it that Mr. Van Pomp 
 had got Royalty coming ? . . . Any way we got downstairs 
 quietly, and Berrymore was waiting in an angle of the landing 
 with our wraps. . . . 
 
 As we went past him I heard Mother whisper something 
 to Audely. I understood her to say that she expected him 
 to see everybody out of the house without panic or disorder, 
 telling them if necessary where their hostess had gone — Royal 
 Command ! — ^but if they didn't happen to notice, letting them 
 just fade away naturally. 
 
 He nodded and said Yes, he would be very gentle with 
 the shorn lambs, or something of the sort. Irony is lost on 
 Mother when she has her mind set on anything, and down- 
 stairs we went. Audely didn't seem at all imotionni ; he is 
 used to my dear mother. Indeed every one is, more or less, 
 and people seemed — some of them — to realize that she was 
 shunting them for something better, and made a sort of 
 move even as we went downstairs. 
 
 I noticed people, our friends, pushing past us as if we were 
 only guests like themselves. That was the humour of it. I 
 fancy one or two of the intimates were anxious both to show 
 their sense of Mother's rudeness and get on early to the 
 
THE LAST DITCH 49 
 
 next party, as well. It was the height of the season. Some 
 of them even managed to get out of the house before we did. 
 The last thing I saw as we got into the carriage was Audely 
 Bar, looking very weird and nice with the electric light 
 shining on his yellow hair, as he stood at the top of our long 
 straight staircase that you can see the whole length of from 
 outside the door, speeding the departing guests. 
 
 " That's all right ! " Mother said, with a full sigh as 
 she subsided on to the cushions. 
 
 It was a hint that she had been a little concerned about 
 it, and considered she had carried through a difficult job. 
 We rolled along towards Piccadilly and I kept up a sturdy 
 silence, so as to mark my sense of reprobation. I wanted 
 her to understand, that for once, I did really think that we 
 had strained our aristocratic privilege too far. But it was 
 no good. Mother has the hide of a Spanish bull, and I don't 
 believe the cleverest toreador could plant a banderiUo in it 
 that would stick or hurt, except perhaps Audely. 
 
 You say in one of your letters that you would like to be 
 told something about Audely Bar, as he seems to be always 
 in the house. Quite true, he is here a good deal, except 
 when he isn't, and then he is very much away — in Bosnia, or 
 Madrid, where he has a house, or Burmah, where he shoots, 
 and so on. We don't hear of him for months, and then 
 suddenly he comes home and takes his place by our fire as 
 if he had never left it. Every one regards him as Mother's 
 property, though as a matter of fact Ilsa first brought him 
 to the house, got bored with him because she found he 
 couldn't flirt, and turned him over to Mother. 
 
 He isn't in love with Mother ; he isn't in love with any one. 
 He'd sooner have a place on a woman's hearthrug than in 
 her heart : Mother's hearthrug for choice. He is the tame 
 cat, though he's more like a fish : a nice cold scaly fish, that 
 steers about in a tank all day by the rudder of its tail, and 
 stares at you out of an abstracted eye, as it swims past. 
 The fish metaphor is helped by the fact that he wears his 
 mouth slightly open. Mother, who is out to kill Romance, 
 even with her own Audely, says it is because he suffered 
 from adenoids in his youth. 
 
 And yet, in his fishy way I do believe Audely loves Mother 
 more than anybody in the world. 
 
 What takes him is of course the contrast between her 
 
 4> 
 
60 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 energy and his supineness. He is too lazy to protest, at the 
 time, when she makes him perform all sorts of absurd tasks 
 for her, but when it is suddenly too much for him he gets up 
 and goes away — a very long way away. Once he stayed 
 abroad for a year, sometimes it is half a year, generally it is 
 a couple of months. Mother doesn't pine for him too 
 obviously, but when she wants somebody to write a lawyer's 
 letter for her, or draw up a new codicil to her will, or do a 
 bit of diplomacy — generally getting something cheap — or 
 even settle a tiresome bill, she sighs and says, " I wish to 
 goodness Audely Bar was here to deal with it ! " 
 
 He does not come to heel at once, even when he does 
 come back, but sometimes waits quite a long time before he 
 signifies that he is ready to resume his duties. Sometimes, 
 when I am out with Mother, I see Audely flash by in an open 
 taxi, and he waves to me as much as to say, " See you soon ! " 
 
 " Mother," I say, " there's Audely ! " and while she is 
 fumbling with her pince-nez he is out of sight. And if he 
 doesn't turn up within a day or two she will have it that I 
 am mistaken — I am not ; I have a royal memory for faces. 
 
 She is awfully fond of Audely, not only because he is 
 rich. She says he is so loyal and true to her. She need 
 never be jealous, except perhaps of some of the numerous 
 Committees he has put his name on, and that is because the 
 horrid impersonal things get so much money out of him, 
 and Mother naturally wants to be the only one to do that. 
 
 Once he gave her a lesson. I often laugh over it. I 
 heard it from Berrymore ; Mother never, of course, said a 
 word. When we had Beardmore, you know, we were eight 
 miles from the station, and had to send in for stores and to 
 meet people who were coming to stay. Mother was pleased 
 when they said they preferred to walk or come on a bicycle, 
 and let their luggage come by carrier. Audely sometimes 
 walked and sometimes not. 
 
 Once, then, when he was coming and had to be met as 
 he had hurt his foot. Mother chose not to send in the cart 
 as usual. She had got a scheme in which Audely was to 
 help her. She had a great case of stores down from the Army 
 and Navy, and it was at the station waiting for her to send 
 in for it. 
 
 The dog-cart would not be able to deal with anything 
 so large, and she was having a row with the man who had 
 the only lorry in Beardmore village, and was putting him in 
 
THE LAST DITCH 51 
 
 Coventry to make him more civil. So she sent Dawkin's 
 great landau to meet Audely and put it down to him. Dawkin 
 always takes the opportunity of charging a pound for the 
 landau, as it is so very seldom out. 
 
 The joke was, that Audely used the landau to come 
 on to Beardmore in, paid the driver, and left the case behind I 
 
 That was a lesson for Mother. 
 
 But he gives us anything we seem to hanker after and 
 cannot afford at the time. His presents are always just what 
 one likes. He gave Ilsa a gorgeous barbaric charm-thing 
 that he had had made especially for her. Ilsa always wears 
 it. She loves it. She says it is her only innocent trinket. 
 
 He is away just now — in Bosnia. Mother wants him over 
 the arrangements for taking the house in Scotland ; that is 
 where we shall finally settle, I believe. She has had to 
 manage all that herself, and when he comes back she is sure 
 to make it a grievance with him if anything has gone wrong 
 about it. On the whole, life is pleasanter when Audely 
 is here to give Mother lunches and dinners when there is a 
 domestic crisis, and lend us his man when we want him, and 
 buy Mother the thing she pretends she cannot afford to get 
 for herself. I've known Audely take up a servant's char- 
 acter for Mother and dismiss her when she wouldn't do. 
 Oh yes, he is her mainstay, but I am bound to say he 
 takes it out in insulting her. He does it in such a quiet, 
 affectionate way that she never resents it ; she can't, it is so 
 wrapped up ; but by that means he contrives to get off the 
 most awful speeches to her. 
 
 She just looks helpless for the moment and then returns 
 breezily to her point, whatever it is, showing plainly that his 
 criticisms haven't affected her in the least. The truth is, 
 she doesn't like to be made to think. Papa never did try, 
 and that is why they got on so well together, always. We 
 now and then try to make her look ahead a little, but we 
 only bore her, and Audely's clever generalizations are miles 
 over her golden head, as he says fondly. 
 
 I love them. Audely is most amusing, though he once 
 wrote a dull book, which is odd, considering he says des 
 choses d faire frSmir in a still small voice. He is much too 
 proud to say what he means, ever ; anybody can do that. 
 He never talks facts. But his theories are lovely and wild, 
 and light, as they say of cakes. I often tell him he is like 
 
52 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 Shelley's Cloud, an elemental, rather watery spirit who 
 floats in the empyrean and has chosen to shed facts to get 
 rid of ponderability. He can tell fortunes by your palm and 
 mend violins and compose songs, sing a little, and do con- 
 juring tricks. He knows astrology and has told our horo- 
 scopes. I am what he calls a Scorpio person — a degenerate, 
 and shall most likely die mad. 
 
 He makes all these wild statements with a perfectly grave 
 face, and Mother gets so angry. Me a crank I Ilsa the only 
 person in the house who isn't 1 
 
 Ida and Gerald know Audely, and like him. He is rather 
 fond of Mrs. Leahy, too, but we daren't tell Mother that, for 
 it would upset her. Or that he goes there often, and talks 
 philosophy with her. He can't with Mother. He is present 
 at every meeting in their house if he is in town, and goes 
 to supper there occasionally. I go too sometimes, but I 
 never say ; it is not worth while. It puts a nice new face on 
 Audely to meet him on neutral ground. Ida thinks he has 
 a great brain and would do something if he were put to it, 
 but that as it is, with a good income and no ties (what about 
 the lady in Madrid and the jointures he has to keep up ? 
 But Ida has never heard of a jointure), she says he will just 
 drift through life, attending scrupulously to his own comfort 
 and Mother's and mine and any one's who seems to expect 
 it of him. 
 
 In Germany, last year, Audely acted as courier. Anything 
 about travelling that Audely doesn't know, or any language 
 or even patois he doesn't speak ! In little places like Treves 
 he was excellent ; at Nauheim, of course, where everybody 
 speaks English, he got us into the inner ring of German 
 officers. If I had only not been a fool and attended to 
 Fraulein more I should have had much more fun out of them. 
 As it was, my bad German appears to have insulted these 
 people continually. 
 
 There was a Count Le Loffel whom I tolerated. One 
 must tolerate somebody in those sort of places or one is 
 bored to death. And he pursued me, being always at my 
 side, to Mother's satisfaction. He was a frivolous young 
 ass, though a German, and was at Nauheim for his heart. 
 He had strained that mighty organ at Potsdam, playing polo 
 before the Kaiser, whose favourite officer he was. Mother 
 really began to think that if she played her cards well, 
 
THE LAST DITCH 53 
 
 she might leave me behind in Germany, with the Kaiser to 
 pull my ears and shut me up in the house if I disobeyed my 
 husband, as I hear he does to the insubordinate wives of 
 men about the Court. She used to be very much annoyed 
 when Ilsa, to tease, told her that Le Loffel had his hand on 
 his sword hilt all the time I was talking to him, as we sat 
 around one of those little coggly tables in the Kur Haus. 
 I was trying to convey to Le Loffel that German officers had 
 no respect for women, and that one of them had actually 
 pushed me off the pavement at Wiesbaden because he wanted 
 me to walk in the gutter, and I wouldn't for him. 
 
 " Na, Na, gnadiges Fraiilein ! " and his blue eyes flashed. 
 
 I said that everybody knew that German officers thought 
 themselves the only thing that mattered in Germany, and 
 were brutal on principle to all women and civilians because 
 they would be of no use on Der Tag, I don't know how I got 
 hold of that catchword; I suppose I heard them saying it. 
 Audely explained me to Le Loffel, and explained Le Loffel 
 to me, that he himself didn't mind my saying that all German 
 officers had a contempt for women, but that a German officer 
 had been wanting in respect to me. 
 
 I dropped Le Loffel later on, when he was naive enough 
 to ask me to procure him an introduction to a girl who 
 was staying in our hotel. He said she had a neat face and 
 pretty feet. She wore shoes with black bows, and they 
 were always properly tied and never came undone. Mine do 
 occasionally. Ilsa says that I should by now have been Her 
 Excellency Hoch Wohl Geborene if I hadn't let the Count, 
 with his passion for tidiness, see me sitting for two hours at 
 Sticker Bakker Miihle's where we all went for tea, with my 
 blouse undone three buttons and a half at the back. I did 
 not know it was — ^I never feel draughts — ^until an old grand 
 duchess, who had developed a great schwdrm for me, came 
 quietly up behind me as I sat, and did it up with her own 
 fair fat fingers. 
 
 People over here always seem to me to imagine German 
 officers as beefy, good-humoured, and blonde, but I main- 
 tain that they are as a rule dour and sinister, and undersized ; 
 and though they have large ears, have horrid wasp waists. 
 I believe some of them wear stays. Nothing but stays 
 could give the little bite-in, in the grey paletots just over the 
 hip bone, which used to sicken me, I don't know why. It 
 looked so morbid and degenerate. Some of the older ones 
 
54 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 had big handsome cloaks, with high upstanding collars 
 trimmed with gold galloon, which they used to fling over their 
 shoulders as they made their way to their mess-table in 
 the inner room of the hotel at Treves. The cloaks seemed 
 to be going to flick us and the dishes off the table, but much 
 they cared ! . . . Their arrogance was beastly. Every 
 little humble soldier had to jump up and salute even when 
 half way through a drink, so that the beer ran out of the 
 corners of his mouth. Up on their feet in a minute — ^they 
 were 1 This hideous exaggerated discipline ! . . . Thank 
 God we don't have it here. 
 
 Once at Hildesheim, when the restaurant was full of 
 ofiicers, we walked up and down outside for an hour till 
 there was room for us. There was no question of our 
 getting a bite or even being let in till they were done. This 
 was their time. I peeped under the blind once or twice, 
 being hungry, to see how they were getting on, although 
 Audely reproved me for doing it, and all I could see was feet 
 and swords lying along the floor. The rest of them was cut 
 off by the blind-rod. You seem to be looking at an arsenal. 
 
 These men treated us all with the utmost contempt, in 
 spite of our titles. We used to go out to tea gardens, especi- 
 ally to a very charming one near Treves at the end of a 
 rather long walk. That was made up to one by the excellent 
 tea they provided, the Pfiaum kuchen and Sand torte, and all 
 the lovely cakes Germans have. 
 
 We sat at little deal tables on the green, and all the German 
 oflBcers and their wives and sweethearts used to drive out 
 there from Treves by the road we had trudged with the 
 other civilians, across the " Dead Councillor." That was 
 the name of the hill. We might have driven too, but Ilsa 
 made us walk because she is afraid of getting fat. They 
 sat there at their ease, talking very little to their Gemahlins, 
 abstracted or sulky, with their swords trailing on the grass. 
 It used to make me shiver. I always do at the thought 
 of knives. They most of them had brought their dogs — 
 nice dogs, especially Great Danes. I always talk to a dog, 
 and owners are generally flattered; these men were not, 
 but the reverse. They used to turn round surlily, or not at 
 all, and call their dogs to heel, as if my touch would have 
 corrupted the animals. It was odd and annoying, for one 
 isn't used to being snubbed like that. I believe the Germans 
 hate usl 
 
From The Lady Aries 
 
 LOOHROYAN HAIiL, BeBWIOKSHIBE. 
 
 We only got in here a few days ago, and I have had such a 
 shock ! I must tell you at once what has happened. 
 
 I had evidence before I left that Venice has been con- 
 ducting a clandestine correspondence. 
 
 At least one is only a flower in a letter, but goodness knows 
 how many more there are, or have been, and I thought 
 Venice was so above and away from that kind of thing ! 
 One has got used to Ilsa and her shifty arrangements, inter- 
 views, and whisperings, and messenger boys with notes on 
 the doorstep all day long, but the idea of Venice having an 
 intrigue of that kind never once entered my head. I was 
 always reproaching her for being so standoffish and keeping 
 men at a really indiscreet distance : enough to drive them 
 away altogether, I mean. Girls pretend they detest and 
 abhor the other sex and want to enter convents, and only go 
 out into Society because every one else of their age does, and 
 they've not much else to do to pass the time, but they don't 
 think of the fatigue to a mother involved in racketing about 
 day and night from roof to roof in the season with a bored- 
 looking creature, who all the time is getting involved and 
 keeping things back from her mother. 
 
 It was Effel (who has all along had rather a down on my 
 Venice, because of her partiality for Ilsa, whom she thinks, 
 but dares not say, that I neglect, and have done all along 
 for the sake of my younger child) who worked me up to 
 making a domiciliary visit. She came to me in the morning- 
 room, saying that she would never think of reading a letter 
 that was not intended for her, but that in tidying up Venice's 
 writing table she had come on an envelope with an obviously 
 male superscription, and a letter. Though it was only a 
 typewritten sheet, she was able from its appearance to be 
 sure that it was not a portion of manuscript. Besides, 
 
 65 
 
56 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 Venice has never so far tried her hand at prose ; it is always 
 poetry with her; and even vers litre looks like poetry. 
 
 Effel is so unused to thinking of Venice as a person who 
 could be receiving love letters that a few words in this one, 
 catching her eye, frightened her to death. The letter 
 went over the page, and she was too honest to turn it over 
 and look for the signature. So she came to me with a long, 
 long face and said she " only thought it right to tell me " — you 
 know the way they begin ! I hesitated long before infringing 
 my daughter's rights of privacy, and said I wouldn't touch a 
 paper of hers unless I consulted Ilsa first. If Audely had 
 been at home, I should certainly have consulted him, and 
 there would have been a pretty kettle of fish ! 
 
 Ilsa, when consulted, backed Effel, plus some spitefulness. 
 She wondered if her sister would not, after all, turn out not 
 to have been so different from other girls. Perhaps I should 
 find that the White Snowdrop had not stood out from the 
 fun any more than the roses and hollyhocks ! Venice once 
 called Ilsa a great bouncing hollyhock of a woman, and I 
 see it has rankled. 
 
 But all this sort of talk frightened me, I confess, and 
 made me give into her whim that I should just see what the 
 letter was, more or less, about. Ilsa is ten years older than 
 Venice, and has flirted from her cradle, and she seemed to 
 wish to imply that Venice, starting a bit later, might come to 
 the same thing in the end. Now Ilsa's flirtations are un- 
 doubtedly going to land her in old maidhood, and though 
 she makes light of her failure to marry, and pretends to be 
 content with her court of old fogies and young boys, I 
 shouldn't like my little Venice to forfeit marriage and children 
 — ^the only normal thing, whatever a fox without a taU 
 may say. Venice must marry, must have a child or two : 
 one a boy, for the sake of the race. Alas, that he could not 
 take the title Romanille, for we are the last of us ! The best 
 that can happen now is for the house of Aries to be carried 
 on in the female line. The blood will be there, though not 
 the pretty titles. . . . 
 
 Ilsa finished my opposition by adding that if I had seen 
 fit in the past to supervise her correspondence, been more 
 drastic with her generally, it would have been as well. Yov 
 know, Laura, it was never my way. Aunt Witley-and- 
 Stoke was always at me about it. I never looked over the 
 addresses of your letters, or your programmes even. And 
 
THE LAST DITCH 57 
 
 in your case it turned out all right ; you were plainer and 
 steadier, and never gave me any trouble, but Ilsa was out 
 of my control before she had been presented a month ! 
 Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth till then, and her little 
 mouth was as round as a button. Well, she has made up 
 for it since ! And her to turn round and abuse me for not 
 being particular with her! 
 
 Well, the long and the short of it was that I crept to the 
 poor child's room like a thief in the night, at a time when 
 it had been ascertained that she would be miles away, in 
 Theobald's Road, reading her poetry to the Poetry Bookshop. 
 
 Her poor queer room, that I think hideous ! It seemed 
 pathetic now in the light of what I was up to. Ilsa's room 
 is all flowery and bowery, with roses and paroquets perching 
 among them. Rather French, you know, like a picture by 
 Lancret. Venice's is most comfortless, by her own wish; 
 no servant would put up with it. It is copied from the room 
 of the Princess in a picture by Carpaccio ; hardly furnished at 
 all. There is just a narrow little bed you can't turn in, and 
 a little mirror you can't see yourself in, and a washstand 
 that I should say you couldn't wash in, though Venice 
 seems to manage. There's nothing else in the room but a 
 mediaeval escritoire bureau thing where there wouldn't be 
 room, Ilsa remarked, for the D. for Dear in one of my letters. 
 
 Well, it pleases her, for the present, but it strikes me as 
 a poor substitute for a husband. And on the escritoire I 
 found what they said I should find. I can't exactly say 
 that you could have knocked me down with a feather, for 
 I'm solid on my feet, but I suddenly felt as if my stays were 
 too tight for me. I left Le Loffel's — without remembering 
 to ascertain the date ; what did that matter ? — ^it was 
 only an envelope with a flower in it — addressed in his 
 handwriting which I had seen so often in replies to my 
 invitations for picnics at Nauheim — and took Audely's long 
 screed — ^typewritten, by the way, I forgot to tell you — and 
 got back to Ilsa's room more dead than alive. 
 
 For once I wished she had not got a wallpaper of paro- 
 quets ; they seemed to dart forth and peck at me. Ilsa 
 had to get her salts and chafe my hands before I could talk 
 sensibly and tell her the result of my domiciliary visit. 
 I — 2i woman who has defied a mad bull ! But it is spiritual 
 terrors that break me up. ... 
 
58 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 Usa took it laughing. 
 
 " Good for Venice ! " she said. " I didn't think she had 
 it in her." 
 
 Then she began to chaff me about Audely, whom, I had 
 begun now to realise, people have got into the way of con- 
 sidering as my property. 
 
 " If the lady in the letter is anybody at all, and not merely 
 a figment of Audely's imagination ? — it is you. Mother I 
 For the last five years he has had eyes for no other woman — 
 in this hemisphere at least I " 
 
 I admit Audely is fond of me. Why should I fatigue myself 
 denying it ? But as I keep telling them, I am only a respect- 
 able woman in a London suburb. Audely is what Aries 
 once called a gratis person in every European Court, and 
 these foreign women are fairly unscrupulous where their 
 hearts — or rather their bodies — are concerned. I pointed 
 out to Ilsa what he said in the letter about Her husband. 
 
 "But Papa apolitical," Ilsa said; "you cannot deny that; 
 and Audely says political. . . ." 
 
 Then I flamed up. " Ilsa, you shock me ! Everybody 
 knows that dear old Aries never struck a woman save in 
 the way of kindness in his life." I was remembering the way 
 he used to give me a gentle blow on the shoulder now and 
 then, and a " Go along wid you." It was his way of showing 
 affection — in the days when he could show it, poor dearl 
 
 And I was beginning to feel quite sentimental about your 
 father, and to fancy perhaps that I had allowed myself to 
 see rather a lot of Audely Bar, and made perhaps too much 
 fuss over him in the early days before he became such an 
 institution, and that Aries may have thought I gave him too 
 much of my time, to the exclusion of his own claims ? . . . 
 Well, it serves me right now, when he has gone and fallen in 
 love with my own daughter ! Or has he ? I have never 
 pretended to know. Audely's heart is a dark forest, indeed, 
 where wolves lurk, as he is always saying. But though 
 Venice is Venice — a pearl of great price — it is still rather 
 extraordinary that he should have been thinking in that 
 special way of a girl of whom he has never taken the slightest 
 notice beyond chaffing her for various childish peccadilloes, 
 such as untidiness and greediness ! He says she eats like 
 a pig, and can't put her clothes on properly. I have always 
 relied on Audely to administer salutary criticisms on this 
 sort of head. A girl, though offended with him, which 
 
THE LAST DITCH 59 
 
 doesn't matter, takes it so much more to heart from a man. 
 But the question arises, can a man love passionately, like 
 this letter, a girl to whom he has occasionally to point out 
 that she doesn't attend to her hands, or that she has left 
 the back of her skirt unfastened, or has dropped about a 
 quart of jam on the front of her blouse ? These things are 
 problems. . . . 
 
 But to business. Ilsa says that I must on no account let 
 Venice know that I have discovered her secret — or secrets. 
 Knowledge is power, but only if it is unshared. In the case 
 of Count Le Loffel it will be easy enough, as he is presumably 
 at home in Germany ; the postmark on the envelope is 
 Nauheim, which looks as if the poor boy's heart was not 
 cured, and that he is back again at Nauheim this summer. 
 And now, there again, men are queer ! Venice dropped him, 
 and was positively rude to him last year the moment he took 
 an interest in another girl, a little American who was staying 
 in the hotel, so that one wonders he should care to send 
 Venice a dried flower even. . . . 
 
 It won't be so easy for me not to catechise Audely if he 
 should come back 1 He has been away since January. I 
 shouldn't really quite know what line to take with him. You 
 will own that it is a little difficult for me, Laura. I don't 
 exactly want, but I could hardly refuse to give him my 
 daughter, if he came here full of desire, having found it 
 possible to smoothe away the difficulty he speaks of, and as 
 a regular prStendant for her hand. No mother could turn 
 him down for her daughter without being suspected of 
 arriere-pensie, which, God knows, I have not got, but people 
 would be sure to attribute it to me. They give him to me, 
 as you know, and certainly he never, to the naked eye, 
 appears to look twice at any other woman. 
 
 He is cold. But from the matrimonial point of view he 
 is a catch, and I don't know that any woman of my age has 
 the right to lock up so much marriageableness to her own 
 profit. Audely is well born, well off, well every thing ! . . . 
 
 Ilsa takes a line in this that is distinctly comforting to me. 
 She decrees that in Venice's interest I must not take this 
 letter seriously, but allow it to die down and pass into for- 
 getfulness, as Audely is sure to want it to do in a short 
 while. He doesn't, really, want to marry, and probably 
 prefers to keep the Spanish lady, and me too as paravents, 
 
60 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 to screen and safeguard his bachelorhood. And moreover 
 he is too old — ^forty-three — and too selfish and heartless to 
 make an earnest, romantic creature like Venice happy. 
 
 Ilsa entered into a long disquisition re Audely, whom I 
 never thought she had troubled to take in at all. 
 
 She will have it that his apparent unimpressionability 
 and trick of ignoring them all qua women that they complain 
 of, is just a blind for his vanity and laziness. In his heart 
 of hearts he feels perfectly sure of them — the moment he 
 wants them. Of course, being human, he does want them 
 now and then a little, nor wants that little long, like the man 
 in the hymn. He is a born philanderer. She says we don't 
 realize that, or the multiplicity of his amours, because he 
 is abroad so much. But it is a fact that Audely has affairs, 
 of a vague sort, aU over the world : hearthrugs he stands on, 
 perches all over Europe, and at least one — to which he 
 alludes in the letter — ^regular well-made nest in Madrid. The 
 letter — ^pooh ! she says it means nothing except that he is 
 amusing himself by playing on Venice's vanity, as great 
 as his own, and provoking a reaction from her. Of course, 
 in Venice's case, it is just possible that he does fancy himself 
 in love, but if that is so, it only means that one or two of his 
 other flames, or hearthrugs, have turned him down. For he 
 is so little altruistic that if one woman makes him suffer, he 
 immediately seeks out another female victim whom he can 
 excite, and upset and finally torment, and so revenge him- 
 self on the whole sex generally. 
 
 I told her to stop chipping at Audely, that I had had 
 about enough of it, though it was doubtless a very clever 
 piece of analysis. She is bitter. I suppose it is her own 
 bad luck in these matters. . . . 
 
 I asked her to quit generalizations and make some definite 
 suggestion as to the course of conduct she advised me to 
 pursue with regard to Venice. I may as well profit by her 
 ill-gained experience in the hearts of these modern men and 
 women, who manage things so differently — ^more coarsely, 
 if more easily — than their grandmothers did. She talked 
 away as if she and I were quite on the shelf, which was a 
 concession from Ilsa, to put herself in the same boat with 
 her old mother, though I have kept my hair. 
 
 She advises more liberty all roimd, and especially in the 
 Leahy case. She says that Ida is a nice girl, and her mother 
 mad, but quite a decent sort ; and that Gerald Something or 
 
THE LAST DITCH 61 
 
 other, whom Ida is going to marry, is all right, though he 
 does wear a soft collar — and one must realize that everybody 
 can't be a gentleman these days, or else the world would stop 
 and we British lose our place among the nations, 
 
 Ilsa was putting in a word for herself here, for no one 
 could say that every member of her court is up to our 
 standard, or anything like it. The useful ones certainly 
 are not, but, as she says, they help to make the world 
 go round and, incidentally, Ilsa to live on her allowance. 
 Why don't we run to money ? I often wonder. In the old 
 days the great feudal lords were able to run up a castle 
 like Bamburgh or Dunstanburgh in a week, putting on 
 thousands of workmen, as Thomas of Gloucester did for 
 Dunstanburgh. I suppose it comes to this, that he didn't 
 pay them, as they were his serfs. Forced labour ! there's the 
 whole problem in a nutshell. It's the wild wages demanded 
 on every haud that keeps us poor as a class, except for isolated 
 stars like your Uncle Henry and the Dalruan baby, who, 
 they say, could put us all in a pipe and smoke us and not 
 miss us ; and Bertie Corfe, if he wasn't so mortgaged — I dare 
 say Ilsa could get him if she liked — or the Master of Cramont, 
 quite penniless and always here. He never says anything, 
 never has, nor never will, either to propose or discuss the 
 weather, but he is so handsome and tall he quite trims 
 
 the drawing-room and neutralises the Well, I don't 
 
 know, I get so confused among them all and why they 
 come ? 
 
 The one thing I was always sure of was that they didn't 
 come for Venice, and now all that seems altered. If one man 
 can propose, then others can, and one wonders what will be 
 the next affair that Venice springs upon me ? It adds a zest 
 to life rather, and I really think our house party includes 
 all the most eligible men of London, and this little success 
 with Audely will hearten Venice and dispose her to take 
 up with some man who hasn't got an entanglement. 
 
 Though most of them have, when you come to business 
 details. There's always a tie — of sorts — something to be 
 smoothed away, when a man marries. 
 
 I fancy a man rather likes to admit shyly to some other 
 woman's previous claim on him when he proposes, so as to 
 increase his prestige in the eyes of the one he is going in for 
 seriously. It is, he implies, up to her to make him break 
 every tie, human and divine, to get her ; he will commit any 
 
62 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 crime for her sake, and walk to her, like a Juggernaut, over 
 a row of prostrate women's hearts 
 
 I am enclosing a copy of the Audely letter. I told Effel 
 to make me five copies. We have no secrets from Effel. 
 We simply couldn't get along if Effel wasn't au courant of 
 everything and if there were mysteries for her. One 
 would always be mixing the things she knew and the things 
 she didn't. And without infinite trust Effel would be a 
 danger, and no convenience. It would be like having to 
 lock up all your jewellery every time you go out. 
 
 {No addresB.) 
 " Dear Lady Venice, 
 
 " When you receive this I shall be very far away. 
 And I want you to know everything ; it is your right. Al- 
 though you have given me no encouragement, except kind- 
 ness at various times, you have not made me feel that I 
 have awakened your heart in any way. My fair snowdrop ! 
 I am a damned scoundrel, to dare to raise my eyes to you. 
 
 " For I am bound, though no one here knows it. A woman 
 looks to me for life. In the eyes of the law, of course I am 
 free, and always shall be, but in my own I am indissolubly 
 tied to her. 
 
 " Years ago I contracted this obligation towards a woman 
 some years my senior ; bound to a vulgar pedantic political 
 old brute who neglects her. One day he struck her in my 
 presence ! I beat his hand down and told him I could not 
 allow it. The craven cringed and cowered and knocked 
 under. That knit us together. I took her under my own 
 control until death. 
 
 " So, dearest, you understand that in all our happy inter- 
 course, so free, so untrammelled, under your dear mother's 
 auspices, I dared not let myself go, or even hint at how ador- 
 able I thought you. I forced myself to treat you always as a 
 child. I made up my mind to control my passion, and 
 your beauty and sweetness have been alike powerless to 
 break down the barrier of my honour. 
 
 " How often have I longed to take your hand in mine and 
 whisper to you the words that knit two souls together before 
 God — and your people ! I do not think, if all had been well, 
 that your mother would have put obstacles in the way. t 
 could, in the jargon of our world, have found opportunities 
 
THE LAST DITCH 63 
 
 for proposing to you scores of times at Beardmore or in 
 Nauheim. 
 
 "Would you have accepted me ? Even though renouncing, 
 the natural man longs to know. You have the cold, serious 
 noli me tangere manner which would frighten away any man 
 who was not bold enough and sure enough to break through 
 Brynhild's chaperoning curtain of fire. I don't imagine 
 many men have dared to tell you they loved you, or ask you 
 for le don de Vamoureuse merci, as they used to put it, in your 
 Courts of Love. Yes, your parents and guardians may trust 
 you anywhere. I should say that if they want to compass 
 for you the detestable thing called ' marrying you oft,' 
 their plan would be to give you your head and allow you to 
 walk alone through all the thickets of Bohemia till the icy 
 chill of your reserve was thawed by the warmth of the cheerful 
 irresponsible denizens of it. No man in your own set will 
 ever do it. We have the unfortunate habit of taking No for 
 an answer. We don't ask unless we know we have a chance. 
 Oh yes, you want the bloom rubbing off you, then you'll go 
 off, as they say vulgarly, like hot rolls ; you'll be so disgusted 
 with the procedure of Bohemia that you'll long to return to 
 our more dignified methods. 
 
 " Your people must learn to treat you scientifically, if 
 they want to get any yield out of you. 
 
 " I don't fancy you will care to answer this. Not if I 
 know you. So be it ! 
 
 " Try to forget me. That will come naturally enough. 
 I am absent. Nor am I one of those that women remember. 
 " Yours, 
 
 " G. J. M. A. Bab." 
 
VI 
 
 From The Lady Aries 
 
 LOOHBOYAIT. 
 
 It is the Fourth of July — the very anniversary of the day 
 we used to go to tea at your Embassy, dear. And instead 
 of Town, with the dear old season staggering to a close, and 
 people all trying to squeeze things in, and see all their 
 friends once more before the autumn break-up, here we are 
 living in comparative peace and quiet, seven miles from a 
 post town, fifteen from a railway station, out of it all, so 
 early, for the first time since Venice was introduced. I 
 feel quite strange, I can tell you. Venice is, of us all, 
 seemingly least affected by what she is missing. The child 
 has a social flair that doesn't go with her poetizing, and 
 is a good sign. She realized, even more than I did, that the 
 season was falling off so piteously, and that social events 
 and junketings as at present constituted were not worth a 
 single moonlight evening in the country, alone with the 
 nightingales — so she said. Not that we hear them here. 
 They are over. We none of us remembered that they leave 
 off singing finally in May, with the cuckoo ! But nightingales 
 are fearfully overrated birds, Venice says, and their cry is 
 not beautiful: more like a new-born babe than anything 
 else ! 
 
 This place is real country, not a suburban annexe like 
 even dear Beardmore. This is neither more nor less than 
 the Scottish Border, famed in song and history. I am full 
 of it, having had to get it all up so as to give Mr. Biss what 
 he has asked me for, an article on the dear old-fashioned 
 out-of-the-way lore, that I have looked up even in these few 
 days. I have covered a lot of ground in my search of old- 
 world data. Here, just across the border, we do get the best 
 of both countries. We can motor into England in a couple 
 of hours any time. We can lunch with the Warmintons at 
 
 64 
 
THE LAST DITCH 65 
 
 Bamburgh, and next day in Edinburgh with the Skenwigs. 
 The men can have their golf in England while the women can 
 go over and have tea at St. Abb's Head. Such a lot of gulls, 
 my dear, you can't see the rock for them ! That is going 
 into my article. The difficulty is that it isn't a, nice tea. 
 Scotland, the land o' cakes, and which has just missed, by 
 my being born at Newcastle, being my native country, 
 doesn't seem to shine in local entertaining. One hears 
 so much of scones and baps and girdle cakes, but it is 
 mostly stale currant bun, and very, very rocky cakes. 
 But Venice, bless her 1 is still pleased, even after the eleventh 
 day. 
 
 I believe I have succeeded for once in giving her a holiday 
 such as she likes. Lochroyan is, on the whole, up to the 
 agent's circular. We are able to put up our twenty guests 
 — ^thirty when it comes to girls, who like to sleep three in a 
 bed. Venice can curl up anywhere, she says, but when it 
 comes to the point she likes room to kick, like other people, 
 Venice has got her Meinie, as she calls it, here. Ellen Reveley 
 and Mary Scrymgeour, the De la Londe's girl, and the two 
 unmarried Darcie colts, as Bertie Corfe calls them. The 
 Darcies are a wild lot, but they all go off when the time 
 comes in the most orderly way. And that little witch Zog 
 Courtauld Venice took such a fancy to at the Cressys. Why 
 Bessy Cressy had her there I can't think, for she isn't quite 
 "it," you know, but amusing and obliging: plays rag time 
 tunes and fox trots and tells our fortunes by our hands or 
 the cards in the evenings after dinner. She is one of the 
 jongleurs in Venice's Court of Love, which is the great 
 excitement here. 
 
 My girl got the idea of being president of a Court of Love 
 like the Countess of Champagne, and having a meinie of 
 maidens whom she would train up to sew and embroider and 
 siag and dance, as the great feudal dames did, quite two 
 years ago. We went to Provence, all of us, to visit the 
 ancestral home of the race — the very town whence the St. 
 Remys sprang, named by our very name. It made a great 
 impression on her, and was a very successful holiday alto- 
 gether. There is that old ruined castle of Romanille that 
 the eldest son takes his title from, nestling still in the quiet 
 shade of the little Alpilles, though the guide books hardly 
 mention it, and the people round about don't know much 
 more except that it is stUl called Chateau d'Amour. Courts 
 
66 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 of Love, actually, Venice says, were held there, and she 
 furnished me with all sorts of tips for my article. I entitled 
 that Glanum, the old name of the town. My daughter is 
 excessively annoyed that we christened her Venice instead 
 of Mahaud, Maentz, or Maud even ; her name of Venice being 
 merely the result of hackneyed sentiment about the City of 
 the Lagoons where I spent my honeymoon. I suppose you 
 know that Barral Quenford is named after an ancestor of 
 ours from those parts, Barral des Baux, who sold the city of 
 Les Baux — such a quaint place ! — to Charles of Anjou, since 
 when it has been a ruin. Morality was different in those 
 days. Poor RomanUle, if he had lived, would never have 
 ceded property or privilege to any invader, qui que ce soit. 
 He would have died in the Last Ditch sooner than abrogate 
 his birthright. . . . But I suppose Barral des Baux was a 
 freebooter and had not those fine sentiments. We were all 
 absolutely non-altruistic — ^perfect beasts — in the old days, 
 Audely says — ^and even now, if we get right up against it. 
 
 There's a long poem by William Morris, too, that Venice 
 gets inspiration fromfor these dressings up and queer costumes 
 that were giving us a name in the countryside, till I put a 
 stop to it and forbade them to go beyond the confines of the 
 house and grounds. I don't mind in the evenings when we 
 are alone with ourselves. Rowley Deane is very clever at 
 designing them, and then the girls and Berrymore — chiefly 
 Berrymore — make them up out of coloured calicoes from the 
 village shop and whalebones that they pick my corsets to 
 pieces for. Those monstrous head-dresses called hennins 
 have to be propped up. The hateful things tickle Sir James' 
 bald crown and keep getting mixed up with the chandeliers. 
 And they cover all the hair. 
 
 I utterly refuse to wear a hennin and hide my one beauty. 
 But the boys are inclined to fall in with Venice's humour, for 
 the girls are all pretty and they get a lot of flirtation in, on 
 the excuse that it is mediaeval manners. Venice has assigned 
 to each maiden her special knight, who has to make it his 
 business to go with his lady to feed the swans and sit with her 
 in what they caU the " carven boat at noon " — a, rotten old 
 tub that lives on the swan's pond and wants a coat of paint 
 badly. I should like better to see the girls in honest service- 
 able coats and skirts instead of all this mediaeval flummery ; 
 but even comic clothes can't prevent the boys from looking 
 the fine young fellows they are, so full of life and go and so 
 
THE LAST DITCH 67 
 
 nice with the girls, and not taking advantage of all this 
 liberty to be horrid. They call young George Lysons " Big 
 Sir Gervaise " ; and so he is, most chivalrous ; and there is a 
 Miles and a Giles and a — well, I cannot remember all these 
 fancy names of Venice's choosing. 
 
 And Ilsa is taking a nice rest from her dreary necessary 
 millionaires, as she calls them, and is just simply having a 
 good time with the boys. She never in town has leisure to 
 attend to them ; they represent a waste of time, and she just 
 lets them be round her without giving them the slightest 
 attention. But we are here for pleasure, not business, and 
 the boys adore Ilsa. They always do admire a large pink 
 woman with yellow hair. Effel is happy too, messing about 
 the bedrooms, and generally supervising people's comfort. I 
 call her groom of the stole and still-room maid combined. I 
 have promised her that when once we have settled down a 
 little, she shall go and stay with her people at Perth for as long 
 as she cares to stop away. She won't care to stop long — 
 that is, unless I give Lucy a holiday at the same time, and I 
 shan't do that, for I am lost without Effel. I am able to 
 allow Venice far more freedom both here and in town, because 
 as long as Effel accompanies her I have no fear, though she 
 keeps starting new queer things to do and queer places she 
 wants to go to, one after another. 
 
 I remember once she was wild to make the acquaintance 
 of a certain lady authoress of whom one hears very little 
 good : a brilliant creature, as they all do pretend to be when 
 they are "wild"; it is the excuse their friends make for 
 them. People say : Oh, she is without the moral sense — a 
 law unto herself. No need to be good, for she is so clever ! 
 Well, Venice let herself be introduced, and accepted this 
 lady's urgent invitation to have tea with her. I had to 
 allow it, on condition Effel went too. Effel rather liked 
 poor Miss Wagg, who had a sweet manner and looked so 
 quiet. The worst ones do. Miss Wagg was especially 
 polite to Effel, but I'm sure she objected to her presence 
 there, for it effectually prevented her from grappling Venice 
 to herself, as she meant to do. And the friendship has lan- 
 guished. The Wagg has evidently realized that it was no 
 good. 
 
 It was another story with the Leahys. The first six 
 times Effel went with Venice to tea, and lunch, and to four 
 meetings. On these occasions Miss Leahy completely got 
 
68 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 over my henchwoman, making much of her, and seeming 
 quite as pleased to see the governess as the misiress. Effel 
 got quite on her side, and announced to me that though she 
 herself enjoyed going to the Leahys, I could let Venice go 
 alone, for they were perfectly all right and could do her no 
 harm, and possibly a great deal of good. She says they are 
 clever enough not to appear to kow-tow to her, but like her 
 for herself alone, and that is what pleases Venice, by way of 
 a change. You can't get away from the fact that with 
 people of that kind association with rank is an asset ; the 
 Leahys wouldn't be human if they didn't appreciate the 
 advantage of a connection, however slight, with the daughter 
 of one of the oldest reigning families in Great Britain : people 
 who have supplied wives to heirs-apparent and counted 
 kings among their ancestry. And to have her sitting at 
 their table just like one of themselves ! (I expect they all sit 
 round it in the dining-room, with a cottage loaf and a pat 
 of butter, like Socialists I) 
 
 And though Venice knows quite well what is due to her, 
 and brooks no infringements of her privileges, she is almost 
 too simple and modest in manner. Audely always says that 
 my two daughters' absence of " manner " is something 
 wonderful, and very beautiful. 
 
 I, of course, am a simple old off-hand thing, like a market- 
 woman, and say just what comes into my head, and act as 
 it occurs to me to act at the moment. That, he says, in its 
 way, is equally aristocratic. 
 
 LUy St. Just is coming, and bringing Horace. They 
 do say he married her for her money, and gave her his title 
 in exchange. He is a great dancer, but that's not much 
 good for Venice, who doesn't dance well, as you know ; it 
 is one of the griefs of my life. She is too tall and too long 
 in the back; and I have noticed, although I am afraid to 
 say it, that she turns in her feet in rather an ungraceful way. 
 
 Now Ilsa danced, and dances, like a fairy, all sorts of 
 steps, though she is lazy and absolutely refuses to perform, 
 unless you — or a man — go down on your knees to ask her. 
 My girls don't get their want of energy from me, who have 
 quicksilver in my veins, but from their father's side — the 
 lazy dolce far niente Provencal blood. Ilsa is a true mirir 
 dionale, Audely, who is good at making out these things, 
 says. There is, on the other hand, Roman blood in Venice. 
 She is distinctly of the Arlesienne type — clear-cut features, a 
 
THE LAST DITCH 69 
 
 soupqon of a moustache, and big eyes and a whiteness that 
 makes people call her " The White Snowdrop," but which 
 she says herself is anaemia. 
 
 And that's where she gets her faculty for stringing verses. 
 She insisted on Lucy's teaching her Latin to help her with 
 it, and knows quite a lot of Greek — another useless dead 
 language ! Lady Jane Grey was learned in the same way, I 
 hear. Much use it was to her, except to get her head cut off I 
 
 The only discontented person here is Anatole, who has 
 already asked for a week-end in town. He made all sorts 
 of difficulties about coming, and only seemed a little more 
 reconciled to the place when he heard that Lily St. Just was 
 coming after all, bringing her maid. Indeed, he spoke of 
 it before we left town — engineered it all, in fact. His passion 
 for Effrosyne is the talk of the servants' hall : they're 
 all a little jealous. Eftrosyne keeps him good-tempered. 
 If Lily had any idea that she is here as a pendant to Effro- 
 syne ! She isn't much of an acquisition just now, the girls 
 say, so languid and introspective. Horace is a failure, she 
 complains, and is so fidgety he makes her ill. Ill ! She is ill 
 of forty thousand a year, and too soft a bed, and a car too 
 well hung, and too much spoon-meat and ease generally. 
 And she has refused to bring her famous car, even though 
 we should have to supply the petrol ; but she is so hopelessly 
 stingy, and always makes me pay her taxis in town, when 
 the said car is out of order. I don't believe I should have 
 asked her at all except for Anatole's sake. 
 
 By the way, Laura, don't mention Anatole in any of 
 your letters, because Aries made me definitely dismiss him 
 before we came here. I've got him, but under the rose. 
 
 I don't feel a bit ashamed of deceiving Aries. I had to 
 think of Venice. I simply couldn't have the poor child's 
 summer spoilt for the sake of an old man's whim. 
 
 I was sitting at my escritoire in the morning-room at home, 
 and poor old Aries was standing near me, shaking all over 
 with the effort of putting his foot down, he so seldom does. 
 I fiddled with a piece of blotting-paper, and calmly told him, 
 without raising my eyes, that I had got a new cook already ; 
 that Anatole had only that morning told me of his wish to 
 leave me. I added with emphasis : " She is a good plain cook ; 
 I got her from the Lycean Club " — Aries still stood firm — 
 " and you will get your nice loin chop that you are always 
 asking for, but Venice will starve." 
 
70 THE LAST JUliUil 
 
 As Aries dines always in his room, and rarely lunches with 
 us, we have only got to keep the lunches simple. That will 
 be all right here, for Anatole lets the kitchenmaid help 
 a good deal, so as to get his freedom in the middle of the day, 
 He goes pretty regularly into Peebles and Berwick to 
 Cinema — ^Anatole adores cinemas — ^and brings back all the 
 latest news. The papers do come here so irregularly. I 
 don't believe Aries would recognize Anatole if he were to 
 meet him going out, with his billycock stuffed hard down 
 over his black curls, trying to look English as a compliment 
 to us. The dear man goes pretty far afield in search of 
 amusements ; he says the Peebles cinema palls after a time, 
 and I don't see why I should thwart such a good servant. 
 He asked me quite civilly the other day if I would mind his 
 going up to London for a day and a night on business. And 
 he was very good, thinking of us, even when away on his 
 pleasure ; he brought us back some really excellent fish. 
 We are quite close to numberless fishing villages, and yet we 
 are glad to get fish from London. Isn't it a joke? His temper 
 is much improved too ; I put that down to the presence of 
 Lily's maid. 
 
 So, as I said before, I think we shall have a merry time, if 
 only Aries will settle down. He goes about the house with 
 his hands behind his back, as he used to do when we were 
 at Sofia the year M. Stambuloff was murdered. He was 
 awfully shaken, I remember, when Mrs. S. called, bringing 
 the six fingers of her husband that were found in the gutter. 
 I never saw them. His fixed idea is the Balkan Imbroglio, 
 from which he says all the difficulties of Europe have risen 
 and will arise. To hear him one would think of the Balkans 
 as a kind of stock-pot kept on the fire, in which trouble is 
 continually brewing. 
 
 Yet it is more than a fortnight since the murder of the 
 Archduke, from which Aries expected so much, and nothing 
 so far has happened. There are pourparlers going on between 
 the Ministries of Austria and Servia, I believe; but what 
 does that come to ? As usual they will end in a compromise, 
 or nothing. The poor man was crueUy murdered, and there 
 it is ! The only result of it will be to distress his poor old 
 father, and may perhaps kill him, and then, as people say, 
 Europe may flare up. All this seething of the pot is sure to 
 bring on something, some day, but not in our time, I do hope. 
 I shall hope to get Venice's affairs settled first. 
 
THE LAST DITCH 71 
 
 I have been to her room again, but found no more letters. 
 Probably Audely only wrote the one letter. He will have 
 forgotten all about it before he comes home, from what 
 Venice calls his eighth incarnation ; that is, his eighth long 
 absence. He is in Bosnia, this time, so far as I can tell, and 
 that rather makes me think that something is really hap- 
 pening in those parts, for Audely always seems to be in the 
 thick of things. He always waits to see the storm-cone 
 hoisted before choosing his destination, and goes off auto- 
 matically there where the fun is fastest and most furious. 
 So when he comes home I shall expect to hear the rights 
 of it. 
 
 And re the Leahy wedding — ^Venice did have her way 
 after all. It was wisest. I let her oblige her dear Ida, and, 
 as well, grappled Ida to me through my complaisance. And 
 the marriage was hurried on, so as to be got in before Mrs. 
 Leahy left town to attend a Socialist Congress, somewhere 
 abroad. . . . My Venice waited Mrs. Leahy's convenience ! 
 And Gerald was in funds, for he got a wonderful commission 
 from — who do you think ? — ^your Aunt Minna, to entirely 
 rearrange the wild garden at Tinsack. She had set her heart 
 on a Futurist landscape garden. I don't know where she 
 picked up Gerald, but the fact is, she was at the wedding. 
 Extraordinary woman ! And the dress will not even have to 
 be scrapped. It was designed by Wyndham Lewis, and is 
 eccentric, of course, but quite wearable. I am beginning to 
 think that Futurism— or Vortieism — has come to stay now 
 the right people are beginning to take it up, and one may as 
 well receive the incoming tide cheerfully, and give it welcome. 
 
 I have put my pride in my pocket, and asked the young 
 Quains here. I cannot pretend any more that their influ- 
 ence is harmful to Venice. The contrary. She is much 
 improved lately — gayer, more ordinary, taking interest in 
 the sort of thing that belongs to her age, don't you know, 
 and flirts a little in quite a nice way. She is keeping her 
 promise to me to make no difference between the people 
 who amuse her, like Rowley Deane, and the " duUies," 
 meaning our own set, the Tremaines, Sir James Molendinar, 
 the Darcie boys, and so on. Every one likes her new manner. 
 Hermy puts it, in her coarse way, that her brothers say 
 Venice isn't half the silly kid she used to be. She says she 
 saw her popping strawberries into Mr. Tremaine's mouth 
 tbfi other day over the be4 — ^the strawberry bed — and it i^ 
 
72 TlUB liAST DITCH 
 
 a fact that last night she let Philip Wyandotte carry her 
 upstairs. Hermy considers that sitting for hours to Rowley 
 Deane is only an excuse for flirting. That's nonsense, for 
 what enjoyment can she get out of it ? And the strawberry 
 popping is harmless enough. It is only that poor Venice 
 never can do anything by halves. 
 
 You remember Jack Tremaine ? An awfully nice man, but 
 not quite the sort of person you could get up a flirtation with, 
 though he is now a widower, here with his sister. They are 
 due back in India within a month, though he is otherwise 
 quite eligible. 
 
 Venice is quite nice, too, with old Sir James Molendinar — 
 Aries' old pal in diplomacy. It is a great pull for Aries — 
 and incidentally me — getting him here. He keeps your 
 father amused, reminding each other of all their diplomatic 
 antics in the past, the shindies and close shaves. ... To 
 listen to them, you'd think that the fate of all the Governments 
 in the world hung on the point of a needle or the freak of 
 a careless youth in the Foreign Office 1 
 
 James indulges Aries in all his little whims; the last is 
 cards, all day in the morning-room. Directly after breakfast 
 they turn in there, draw down all the blinds so as to create 
 the illusion of a night club, turn on the electric, and play 
 Poker from dawn till dewy ^ve. I don't suppose the fad 
 will last, so one makes no objection ; Aries is an old man, 
 and Sir James wants a rest. But it is very unhealthy rest, 
 and it is rather hard on me to withdraw a man whose con- 
 versation is so interesting as Sir James' from general 
 circulation 1 
 
 Mr. Biss complains bitterly ; he was trying to persuade 
 his memoirs out of Sir James for publication, but he can't 
 get at him for this mad fit of card playing, so he says. I 
 don't care. I only asked Mr. Biss because of Venice's 
 poems. He is most uninteresting with his constant talk of 
 so much per thou and thirteen as twelve. It bored Venice 
 so, that although it's her own book he's going to bring out, 
 she flees from him, and leaves him to me or to Susan Dowlais, 
 who rather likes him. Susan will, and always would, take 
 on anybody that calls itself a man. She sits and looks into 
 his little eyes as if publishing talk were love-compliments. 
 Susan and Lily, I regret to say, don't get on ; they are such a 
 pair of them, and I ought not to have had them here together. 
 They are very disagreeable about, the Meinie, too, because 
 
THE LAST DITCH 73 
 
 they aren't equal to a mile's saunter to an old pond to feed 
 a swan, so they say, though they rather delight in the Love 
 discussions we have in the evenings after dinner, and take a 
 part in the speeches. Everybody is bored by their instances 
 of Early Victorian love — old fashioned, but not old fashioned 
 enough, Venice explains to me. I quite realize that the 
 young ones are anxious to get on, but all the same, I insist 
 on deference to the opinions of the old, otherwise I won't 
 have a Court of Love at all. 
 
 Poor Susan, she is a wreck ! When I think of her past, 
 and how handsome she was and could have had anybody 
 she liked, and did. But she never had an open scandal, 
 like poor Lily ; there was never any divorce or filthy servant's 
 evidence called in, which was what so coarsened Lily's affairs 
 of the heart — or body, whichever you like to call it. 
 
 And Susan, unlike Lily, always selected such good men to 
 be compromised with. One of them was a — well, we all 
 know, even you, who and what he was — and she kept him 
 six years. I remember once, when she was staying with us 
 at Beardmore, and all the children — her own house in Wilton 
 Place had been completely burnt out, and I had to take her 
 in — I complained to Masters, my old nurse, who had brought 
 Venice into the world — I was always in such a hurry, you 
 know, and never waited for the doctor — I complained to 
 Masters of the dreadful self-will and screaming of the second 
 boy. Old Masters said calmly to me, " Well, my lady, what 
 can you expect ? He is an Angernoune ! " And since 
 Admiral of the Fleet ; and, as everybody knows, got rid of in 
 spite of his great qualities, because his temper is so violent, 
 that nobody can work with or under him. 
 
 As I write, Venice is sitting out on the lawn, posing for 
 Rowley Deane, and eating fudge. It distorts her mouth 
 completely, but he doesn't seem to mind, and it proves that 
 she is not vain. He has put her under a maple tree, and 
 under the shade of the leaves she appears like a dappled 
 horse, and quite forty. Hermione Mackenzie remarks that 
 Rowley is really a Futurist and sees ahead, and that in 
 three years more Venice will have the moustache he is 
 painting her with. 
 
 I can't think why I have Hermy here, except that she's a 
 relation, and that her mother was my best — or my worst — 
 friend. It is all the same when you're girls, and have 
 
74 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 jealousies. Alice Darcie certainly tried to sneak Aries from 
 me, but didn't, I am happy to say, succeed. I kept him, 
 and that is perhaps why I stand Hermione and the others. 
 For those girls infest my house, and most of them have been 
 married from it. But when Hermy hints that if nobody else 
 comes forward, I may find it convenient to give Venice to 
 Deane, I feel as if I must tell her all about Audely. Hermy 
 would be awfully upset about that, thinking it such good 
 business, and a triumph of match-making ! But then, she 
 would take occasion to crow over my having to surrender 
 what she calls my " mash " to my own daughter. You know 
 the nonsense that is talked about me and a man fifteen 
 years younger than myself ? I would give him up to Venice 
 like a shot if I thought he'd stick to her. But she wants 
 something stable, kind, and strong, and Audely is only the 
 middle thing. He has no will at all. I can make him do 
 what I want all the time. Out of laziness he would give 
 in to Venice, just as I do, and that would be bad for her 
 as a permanent thing. But it was difficult to refrain, Laura, 
 for Hermy, as if she had known what I was thinking, began 
 to hint about Audely and the other woman — everybody has 
 got hold of that, it appears. The Spanish lady, Hermy 
 says, has threatened to commit suicide if Audely leaves 
 her. . . . 
 
 In spite of what Hermy said, and in spite of Audely's 
 letter, which in some sort bears her out, I cannot bring 
 myself to believe in the existence of another woman in 
 Audley's life — not like that, at least. If it is anybody, as 
 Ilsa says, it must be me ! That's ridiculous on the face 
 of it — and of me, though I have kept my hair. I said 
 calmly, getting as much finality into my speech as I could, 
 that had not she found — that was a nasty one, for I had 
 heard something of the kind re herself — ^that there was 
 nearly always another woman, by whom he had had three 
 or four children, who threatened suicide; but that if you 
 agree, through your solicitors, to give her a competence for 
 life and to bring up her children as carpenters, and so on, you 
 wUl never find it necessary to have the river dragged for her ? 
 So that was that ! 
 
 I wrote all this yesterday. Funny, for it was only to-day, 
 about one, that a messenger came up from Kirkmichael 
 to say Audely was home and arriving in time for lunch, an4 
 
THE LAST DITCH 75 
 
 he wanted it badly, for he'd had nothing to eat since he left 
 Bosnia. I couldn't guess how long ago that would be, but I 
 do know that Audely is apt to draw a long bow, and I 
 dare say he didn't think to order luncheon baskets in advance 
 at the different stages of his journey. He supposed we 
 should all be out. He would walk, because he knew we 
 wouldn't have enough petrol to send in for him. That was 
 true. Maggs couldn't get any in Kirkmichael for love or 
 much money. It needs Aries to make a strong protest 
 with the authorities. 
 
 I halloed to Venice and told her the news, and looked hard 
 at her to see how she would take it ? I could not discern 
 slight changes of countenance through the dapple of the 
 leaves, so I wish I had waited to go up to her and tell her 
 about Audely's arrival, for then I should have seen at close 
 quarters if she was at aU affected. Only one is always 
 careful of interrupting a sitting. The artist glares at one 
 so. So that opportunity was lost. 
 
 One wonders what the child will do. Effel and Ilsa both 
 think. Nothing ! That she is too much wrapped up in 
 Rowley Deane just now, and that if Audely says anything 
 about his feelings to her, will snub him and make a good 
 deal of the fact that he is supposed, popularly, to be mine. 
 
 Ilsa has rubbed in that absurd notion until she has almost 
 succeeded in making your poor old mother, Laura, feel quite 
 an improper woman of sorts. So now, in self-defence, I try 
 to make her take longer views and wider ones. 
 
 " We only know him here, dear," I tell her and Effel, 
 " How do we know what he is up to when he is away ? He 
 may have an affair in every capital in Europe, for all we 
 know 1 " 
 
 " It's business, then," Ilsa sneered. " I cannot imagine 
 Audely wanting a woman for any normal purpose, . . . 
 But of course they may be useful telling him things. . , ." 
 
 " What do you mean. Lady Ilsa ? " Effel asked, shocked. 
 And Ilsa, in a real naughty, teasing mood, answered that 
 she had sometimes wondered if Audely wasn't in the Secret 
 Service ! 
 
 I said, " In that case I should certainly expect him to 
 give me all the tips he can. And as a matter of fact he has 
 never told me anything." 
 
 " Perhaps," Ilsa drawled, " he is giving sonxe other 
 country's secret service tips off you \ " 
 
76 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 Effel quietly left the room, or I don't know that I shouldn't 
 have asked her to. I cannot bear insinuations against Audely, 
 and there is always something odious even about the superior 
 forms of spying. It means Audely would be shot if he was 
 caught, and there was a war on. And although I will not, 
 could not, suspect anything that isn't perfectly honourable 
 about Audely . . . there is his facility of languages and all. 
 . . . The spying jobs have to be done. . . . 
 
 And there is something a little bit sinister in the way 
 Audely keeps his countenance ; not only keeps it, but 
 succeeds, if he chooses, in throwing an expression of complete 
 frog-like vacuity over it : a veil of dense unnatural stupidity — 
 what you will — between you and him. He is a born diplomat, 
 that is true. Aries has often said so, and deplored the fact 
 that he is such a dilettante that he did not care to go into 
 anything useful. 
 
 After all, Audely was late for lunch, and I did not get 
 any chance at detective work, for Venice was punctual ; 
 she says sitting always makes her hungry. She came in 
 with Rowley Deane — the others were all away at Kelso for 
 golf, and Ilsa and Hermione and the Tremaines gone to 
 Edinburgh for the day — ^and what I did was just to sit and 
 watch them eating. Indeed, I who am not supposed to be 
 concerned, was so imotionnie about Audely's arrival as to be 
 unable to eat, though I made a show, not to let Venice think 
 there was anything wrong. It was awful sitting opposite 
 those two cheerful creatures. Rowley Deane, of course, 
 all unconscious of the wide issues that he has come to be 
 mixed up with through being a guest here, and Venice — 
 well, I can't make her out ? A girl who has had a letter like 
 that from a man, consuming chicken and cold curry at such 
 a normal rate, when he is coming back to ask her final 
 decision ! 
 
 And when the meal was over she ran off to her own room 
 to finish a piece of type-writing she had set herself to do. 
 And it was a quarter-past two, and even then there was no 
 sign of Audely 1 . . . 
 
 There was nobody but me at the lunch table when he did 
 come in, and he was all white dust off the roads and too 
 hungry to talk until he had got something into him. So 
 really all my day was spent in watching people eat. After 
 he had had enough, and in spite of his tale of starvation 
 it wasn't much, he settled down with me and a cigarette 
 
THE LAST DITCH 77 
 
 in the garden under the deodar. We saw a white skirt 
 pottering over croquet in the distance — ^which I recognized 
 to be my daughter's ; but he said : 
 
 " Is that Venice ? How is she ? " and went on talking 
 about Bosnia — the only source of romance left untapped 
 in the world ! 
 
 I could not get him off Bosnia. I talked about Hermione 
 and her coming baby. I talked of his friends Gerald and 
 Ida, and their projected wedding tour, just with the idea of 
 getting off indifferent matters on to something personal, 
 like marriage, but all he said, with some heat, was that the 
 Quains wouldn't be able to go to Munich this year ! 
 
 He was like a fortress with a glacis, don't you know. 
 I could not get past his cold blue stare. I discussed several 
 coming causes cSlebres, and various entanglements of men we 
 knew, and said what a lot of pain they cost the other person. 
 I abused those awfully wicked women who just for the sake 
 of their vanity, or keeping their husbands in order, take on 
 some poor boy, and keep him dangling without any hope of 
 reward. I trenched upon the indecent almost, in my desire 
 to get at his point of view about his own trouble. I even 
 admitted that on the whole I should have more respect for 
 a woman who, when she found she was hopelessly pledged, 
 paid her debts — of dishonour — ^if need be. 
 
 He just listened. He always does listen. It makes 
 people consider him sympathetic when he is only uninterested. 
 It costs him nothing to mark time, and he sits so still ; I never 
 knew a man practise immobility as an art, except Audely. 
 
 Venice is very quiet too. She would suit him in that 
 particular. But I am different, and sometimes feel it so 
 annoying that I long to cuff him or throw a book at him. 
 It is to insult a woman to remain calm when she has let her- 
 self get excited. I was more angry with Audely than I had 
 ever been in my life. I told him to go to his room and have 
 a good lie-down, and as soon as Ilsa got back from Edin- 
 burgh I went to her room, and poured my sorrows out 
 to her. Ilsa didn't console me much. She would go on 
 about my being the entanglement. 
 
 " Not the barbed-wire kind, but a nice comfy one," she 
 went on. " The kind a selfish man likes. A good, well- 
 managed house always open to him, and no questions asked 
 by some vain woman he's made mistress of it, and that's 
 trying to get herself adored. For you aren't vain. Mother ; 
 
78 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 no one could say so. And Audely is as selfish as they 
 make them." 
 
 " He is always doing kind things, Dsa," I argued. 
 
 " It pleases his vanity ; he is stupendously vain as well. 
 That doesn't trouble you, Mother; your eyes are only half 
 open where Audely is concerned. You just suit each other. 
 But younger eyes see clearer. I don't deny he's a dear, even 
 when you have seen through him. But if you are so deter- 
 mined to deny your conquest, I'll tell you what Hermy 
 is putting about, now — ^that it's really Papa Audely likes ! " 
 
 That was rather a new idea to me, for I've known Aries 
 all my life, and I made up my mind not to ask Hermy to 
 stay on for the Lysons' party. 
 
VII 
 
 From The Lady Aries 
 
 LocHEOYAN Hall. 
 It was like great shocks, one after the other — ^Austria 
 mobilizing, Russia mobilizing, Germany and France 
 mobilizing ! Boom ! Boom ! Just to look at the papers 
 any day now sets one's poor heart thumping — mobilizing is 
 such a big sort of word, and seems to roll about in one's 
 mouth like a cannon ball ! And of course the papers like to 
 make the most of it, as if it was a new murder discovery, 
 or an explosion in America, with their disgusting large 
 print head-lines. Heavily leaded type, Audely says, is cal- 
 culated to raise the circulation of both paper and reader. 
 
 And here we are, prisoners, mewed up in this big house in 
 Scotland, seven miles from a post-office and fifteen from a 
 railway station, and everything to fetch, including news. 
 We really needed our car — it wasn't for pleasure, but for 
 absolute use — but does the Government think of that for 
 a moment, when it goes and forbids the sale of petrol ? That 
 is really the thing I feel most, and which strikes me as most 
 unfair, when all the horses nearly are gone too I The servants 
 are naturally furious, especially the foreign ones, who have 
 to walk seven miles into Kirkmichael every other day to 
 register. All are as cross as two sticks, except Anatole, 
 who is a tower of strength in this trying time, and wins 
 golden opinions everywhere, except of course from Aries, 
 and that is because, luckily, Aries hasn't the slightest idea 
 that Anatole is under the same roof with him. I am glad I 
 practised this bit of deceit on my husband, for it has turned 
 out so well. The good man walks into Kirkmichael himself, 
 nearly every day, and brings the papers arid anything else 
 we require that he can carry. I call that very decent of him, 
 for he is stoutish, and foreigners as a rule don't care much 
 for walking. And above all he keeps up our spirits ; his 
 manner is perfect, nowadays ; not a trace of the old acerbity 
 
 79 
 
80 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 left ; he is just cheerful and comforting. He seems to think 
 sincerely that everything will soon be all right. He fancies 
 France will get a little taken down and punished for her 
 vaingloriousness and boasting. He will have it that she has 
 pursued a consistent policy of pin-pricks towards the German 
 Government ever since 1870 — has been trying to egg on 
 Germany into war. I always thought that Anatole was 
 French in sympathy, but now he says that Alsace and Lor- 
 raine don't want really to be given back to France; it is 
 only des intransigeants who foment discontent. I don't 
 agree with him, but I rather like a little political discussion 
 with Anatole now and then, in the middle of all the dreary 
 discussions about coals and transport, which all falls on me. 
 
 The Government are really taking things with too high a 
 hand. People's good carriage horses are being forcibly 
 bought from them every moment — hunters, too. Mrs. George 
 Lysons of Aldivalloch madly took the law into her own 
 hands, and gave her groom orders to have her favourite 
 horse shot half an hour after the commisioners had marched 
 into her stable yard, and bought him for quite a good price, 
 mind you ! Of course, when they found out what she had 
 done, she was most severely reprimanded, but what could 
 they do to her ? The horse was dead. 
 
 We were at tennis there the day after, and as she and I sat 
 side by side watching the young people at their play, she 
 told me, with tears in her eyes, that what drove her to do it, 
 was the thought of "The Jester" being in a battle and hit, and 
 neighing out his poor life in pain, and no vet near to see to 
 him. (Horses scream, I believe.) So the moment they 
 had left she rushed off to the stables, kissed "The Jester" 
 on the muzzle, and was led weeping away while they bandaged 
 his eyes and made preparations for his extinction. He 
 was buried by the knoll at the bottom of the garden. She 
 could talk of nothing else. Such cruel, useless nonsense, 
 she said, since England wasn't in it, wasn't going to be in 
 it ; and even if she was, we weren't a military nation, but 
 should rely on the Navy. What was the Navy there for ? 
 
 It was a Calmadyish thing to do, and I could not help 
 thinking that it was all rather excessive for a horse, however 
 well bred, when all the while there was her only son, sitting 
 at Venice's feet, and rising up to go in to deal his tremendous 
 services that make all give way before him. That is like all 
 people who are crazy about animals, She will deny her 
 
THE LAST DITCH 81 
 
 country the use of a good horse, while she'll cheerfully give 
 her only begotten son. He is gloating over the prospect of 
 seeing some service : he is in the Territorials already. I 
 heard him telling Venice that if England — ^he spoke of her as 
 a man might of a mistress whom he could whip for mis- 
 behaviour — if England doesn't behave herself, and come in 
 properly, he means to enlist in the French Army ; or, if they 
 won't have him, in the Foreign Legion. Venice told him 
 that he would have to commit a crime of sorts before he 
 could get into that ! Boy and girl talk, but I confess that 
 as I sat through that golden afternoon and listened to Mrs. 
 Lysons' lamentations and heard that beautiful boy dis- 
 cussing war as if it was only another form of football, saying 
 that however you might talk, it was " just a jolly good 
 scrum in the end," I felt a sort of boding feeling. , , . My 
 mother had second sight. But still : 
 
 "Wha looks to frelts, my master dear. 
 Then freits will follow him." 
 
 One mustn't take too much notice of forebodings; they 
 reduce one's vitality and one's stock of courage — for when it 
 does come. 
 
 The old French lady sitting next to me seemed to feel 
 something of the kind too. She shook her head sadly once 
 when George Lysons got off an extra splendid serve, and all 
 the muscles of his wonderful chest stood out; — 
 
 " Encore un autre que les Prussiens vont nous manger ! " 
 she muttered. She was an interesting personage — ^Duchesse 
 de Castiglione, the mother of Mrs. Lysons' French sister-in- 
 law — and had been in the Siege of Paris. She had seen the 
 Prussians enter through the Arc de Triomphe. The poor 
 old custodian had raked up the gravel under it, hoping to 
 make them stumble. She says Bernhardi, the man they are 
 reading so much now, was the first to ride down the Avenue 
 des Champs Elysees — alone ! 
 
 Altogether my sum of vitality was considerably lowered 
 by one thing after another, and at tea afterwards in the 
 house — for the golden afternoon turned to rain as usual in 
 Scotland — we still talked War, and oh, the ridiculous 
 travellers' tales some of the people got up ! 
 
 Some one had been — or seen a man who had been — up at 
 Rosyth Dock, and it was full of German spies walking about 
 as large as life ! Some one else said we had caught three 
 
82 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 German officers, one of whom was supposed to be Prince 
 Eitel Friedrich, that nice boy I used to entertain in town, 
 who got engaged to the American beauty, you remember, 
 with a doubtful mother who was always being photographed 
 with her dachshunds, and the then German Chancellor had 
 to come over and see her and force her to give back the en- 
 gagement ring and accept a pension — ^well, they were all 
 arrested poking about on the glacis in front of Edinburgh 
 Castle. Nearer us, at the little fishing village of Eyemouth, 
 last night, a German gunboat had been sighted, prowling 
 about, and why didn't our Fleet come at once and sink her ? 
 Our Fleet, never there when wanted ! 
 
 I know where our Fleet is ; I had tea on her a week ago ; 
 but I suppose I had better not tell you, even in a letter. 
 
 At all events our Fleet isn't going to bestir itself for a 
 paltry German gunboat 1 Let her ride there at anchor and 
 find out what she can, and stew in her own juice and eat her 
 soul out. I've no patience with people who want the Fleet 
 to do policeman's work. The Fleet is there to fight and 
 engage the enemy in battle. 
 
 When it came to a (Jerman concrete gun emplacement, 
 engineered so long ago as last year, under the gulls on the 
 Bass Rock, I got up to go, driving my little flock in front of 
 me 1 I felt these people would end by destroying one's nerve. 
 We had to walk all the way back, because Aries will insist on 
 our economising petrol, and Ellen Reveley got so done that 
 two of the boys had to carry her in a bandy chair, which 
 brought the situation home to us rather closely. 
 
 Aries is of course the only one of us who knows anything 
 of politics, and so can, to a certain extent, calculate proba- 
 bilities. And he is in his element, not condescending to tell 
 us anything much, in the good old diplomatic fashion. But 
 he and Audely both admit that though they were in Germany 
 for six weeks last autumn, they g:uessed nothing ; and yet 
 they made a point of going down into the Bier stuhe in the 
 different little provincial inns we stayed in every night, and 
 listening to the chimney-comer talk. 
 
 I believe, if war breaks out, it will be found to have been 
 engineered entirely by the Court and Military party, and 
 that the People will know nothing much about it, but obey 
 blindly, as always. 
 
 Aries is asked the same question in a different form about 
 fifty times a day. The elders say, " Shall we have to come 
 
THE LAST DITCH 83 
 
 in ? " The boys ask " if England is going to behave de- 
 cently." So you can imagine the cross-fire of question 
 and answer is fairly lively at breakfast. (Aries is so much 
 better in the country that he is able to give us the pleasure 
 of his company at that meal.) He does not give us much 
 satisfaction, and the poor Tremaines, who are beginning to 
 wonder if they will be able to get back to India this autumn 
 as planned, are so anxious for tips. But either it is the 
 diplomatic habit of making mysteries where none ought to 
 exist, or he has got out of bed the wrong way and wants 
 to be tiresome, or he perhaps frankly doesn't know ; he 
 
 mumbles something unsatisfactory : " My dear lady ! " 
 
 or " My dear chap ! " as the case may be. " How can I 
 tell ? " " How can any one tell ? This is entirely a novel 
 contingency." 
 
 Then — to show you how we go on — I say, with I think 
 ample justification, voicing the opinion of all the soberer 
 persons present : " Then, dear, what are the respective 
 Gtovernments about, not to keep some sort of order ? " 
 
 " There'll be plenty of order when it comes to killing," 
 Sir James Molendinar said in his beard. 
 
 " But that's absolutely mediaeval," Venice exclaimed ; " a 
 sheer return to barbarism, settling a set of commercial diffi- 
 culties — you can't call them dynastic — ^by the old-fashioned 
 medium of the sword ! " 
 
 I was pleased to hear her say this, for it showed she had 
 thought about it and used the lessons of history Lucy had 
 given her. I said, backing her up : 
 
 " It will be fearfully tiresome, to say the least of it, con- 
 sidering how interdependent we have grown to be on each 
 other — what with postal arrangements and tariffs and rail- 
 ways " 
 
 " Ah ! " Sir James Molendinar said. " If the German 
 higher command can be got to share your house-keeping 
 instincts. Lady Aries." I could not tell if he was laughing 
 at me or not, but he went on solemnly : " If a war does 
 come, it will not be so much a return to barbarism as a 
 trial of the world's brand-new resources in engineering and 
 chemistry and what not. It will be the beginning of a 
 new era in hostilities. The contest would be something 
 unparalleled in the history of the world," 
 
 I hastily interposed : " My dear James, there was Mara- 
 thon, and more recently Waterloo 1 " 
 
84 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 I thought I had scored, but he brushed me aside, saying 
 that Waterloo was fought round two farms, a mere affair of 
 outposts, compared with a European war of this century. . . . 
 
 It was becoming too depressing, these dreadful generalities 
 about a situation that may after all never occur. I tried 
 to get the conversation brought down to something more 
 concrete, such as the monetary situation, which would be 
 sure to be a good deal disturbed. I said, laughing : 
 
 " I say, Aries, what about money ? Shall we all be 
 ruined ? " 
 
 Aries happened to take it with seriousness, and the poor 
 Tremaines looked blue. 
 
 " One cannot tell," he answered. " One has no notion 
 how credit would have to be dealt with. It will be a question 
 for the big banks. I have myself no manner of doubt that 
 they will be equal to it; but individuals will be sure to 
 suffer. . ,. ." 
 
 I am shocked to think how little we have in the house and 
 how lavish Aries is with our own little hoard. He takes 
 everybody's cheques and gives cash for them. His desk is 
 snowed up with paper. For, as a result of this sort of talk, 
 everybody is filtering away. The Tremaines are going back, 
 en route for India, poor dears ! and Venice's Meinie of 
 maidens, naturally, has been broken up; their parents are 
 insisting on their return, sending maids for those that came 
 without. I don't blame them ; travelling is not nice for 
 women nowadays. And every girl's place in times like these 
 is by her own fireside, out of the way when hard knocks are 
 being given, as they used to say of the border forays. A man 
 will fight twice as well if he is sure his womenkind are well 
 looked after, and sheltered from the things they have to bear. 
 
 The boys are nearly all gone. They champed and piaffed, 
 as Venice said, like mettled horses straining to be off at a 
 gallop. One, however, the biggest — that young George 
 Lysons I mentioned to you in the earlier part of this letter — 
 was rather sorrowful, and nearly wept as he wrung my hand 
 in the hall. Venice had insisted on his coming to stay with 
 us after the tennis party, and he straightway went and 
 fell in love with Zoe Courtauld, and would have proposed 
 if he had had time. He was the one the girls called " Big 
 Sir Gervaise, that good knight," and Zoe was Constance 
 Fille-de-fay, I believe. She used to tell our hands every 
 
THE LAST DITCH 86 
 
 night, and when she came to his she was always very sad 
 about it. I can't believe she has powers — a mere girl like 
 that I But it worked some of them up so that I set my 
 face against all occultism. 
 
 Mr. Biss and Susan Dowlais and Belle-Belle went up to 
 town together. I suppose Susan wants to try her hand at 
 fascinating a publisher. She has also given Rowley Deane 
 a commission to paint her drawing-room with a frieze — or is 
 it a dado ? — of naked women and boiler engines. He wants 
 to rush up to town to get on with it, but I prefer him to stay 
 here and finish Venice's portrait, for I'm sure I don't want 
 to buy it, odious as it is, unfinished. Aries will give in to him ; 
 I feel it in my bones. Aries likes him, because he is pretty 
 and very respectful. Well, I like him too, and I must say he 
 has been very useful. 
 
 We almost live in the hall, these days, there is so much 
 coming and going into Kirkmichael, two or three times a day, 
 in search of stores ; and news is an event, and sends us all on 
 to the doorstep. And all these boys going, in batches, whoop- 
 ing for joy ! 
 
 I begin to feel a sense of depression. The horror grows. 
 It is like Booms — dull explosions, as I said — a sort of 
 frequent hollow reverberation such as we used to hear 
 down at Littlestone and at Folkestone, when we were 
 always told it was guns at Shoeburyness. The servants, 
 even in those days, used to be afraid of a German 
 invasion. The papers make me miserable. The word 
 mobilization has got on my nerves. And Gterald Quain's 
 telegrams which Venice has got him to send us from 
 London, to supplement the papers which we can never 
 get till limch time 1 They are like margarine, which I 
 have never tasted, but they say it is a very unpalatable 
 substitute for butter. 
 
 My house party seems to enjoy them and base the whole 
 day's conversation on them. I am not sure, but I think I'd 
 rather know nothing. The scrappiness of it only adds to the 
 uncertainty. As it is, one never knows as one ties the strings 
 of one's petticoat in the morning — you see what an old- 
 fashioned body I am, Laura — one never knows what the news 
 will be that greets one as one takes one's place behind the 
 tea-urn. But one realizes that the only thing to do is to tie 
 a good firm bow as usual, and not come to pieces, and do the 
 other usual things as far as possible, and keep up one's courage 
 
86 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 and try to amuse people: make bricks without straw — i.e. 
 motors and means of getting about, and you have no idea 
 how hard that is ! 
 
 It is no consolation to reflect that soon there will be nobody 
 left here to amuse. The party dwindles day by day ; only 
 twelve of us here now : we four Aries, Lucy and Effel, Sir 
 James Molendinar, Bertie Corfe, who has sprained his ankle, 
 the Master of Cramont (and he's going back to Paris to- 
 morrow), and Hermy Mackenzie whose company I'd rather 
 be without, and Philip Wyandotte and Freddy White, in a 
 blue rage because he's only sixteen and his father says he's 
 to go and finish his holidays in Ireland. Mr. Biss was rather 
 torn, but he finally went with Susan. He thinks he has got 
 me, and now he wants to acquire Susan and get his lady- 
 ghost to dish up her reminiscences, which will be wonderful, 
 doubtless, if she tells the truth. I don't suppose I shall 
 publish any more with Mr. Biss, I hear that Chick & 
 Chuck are such much better publishers. . . . 
 
 emerald's telegrams ought to comfort me ; they are full of 
 Sir Edward Grey's valiant attempts to keep the peace. He 
 does seem to realise that he has a great nation's destinies in 
 his hands and won't involve them in a suicidal policy of 
 intervention unless it is strictly necessary. I remember in 
 one telegram he says that " If Germany bombards French 
 ports we give all our help." Yes, with the Navy; that's 
 according to promise ; but the Navy isn't the Army, which 
 consoles me a little. We haven't much Army, and we were 
 so punished in the Boer War. Why, there was one week 
 when I scarcely dared to take up a paper for fear of seeing 
 the death of a connection, at least. The Spion Kop time, 
 when we got the news of the death of Kirkover, my cousin, 
 and Paul Wyandotte, this boy's father, I had to scold Ilsa 
 for buying a lot of coloured clothes, as she did at once, out 
 of a bitter sort of bravado. She objected that if one was to 
 wear mourning for all the men killed in the war, it would 
 have the effect of sending the whole world of aristocratic 
 women, at least, into black, and what would become of the 
 gaiety of the nations ? Usa was awfully heartless in those 
 days. I sometimes think she cared for Paul Wyandotte, 
 rather, and it took that form. . . . 
 
 Venice, of course, didn't realize the Boer War. She was 
 too young. But it is a fact that we have never been able 
 
THE LAST DITCH 87 
 
 yet to make good the blue blood spilt and wasted then, 
 and that the stock of marriageable young men of our rank 
 has sensibly decreased, with all sorts of attendant incon- 
 veniences : one of course that the scions of many secondary 
 families became great catches, which is immoral. . . . 
 
 This was the worst day. Somehow or other this morning's 
 telegram from Gerald puts the lid on. I shall not be able 
 to believe in Sir Edward Grey any more. He has shown that 
 he can't avert this — or anything else. . . . What is going to 
 become of England ? Poor, fool-hardy England 1 . . . 
 
 We all seemed to lose all hope, and we all took it differently, 
 according to character. I spent the day in my room with 
 my prie-Dieu (which is an immense comfort. It leads one 
 to pray more intently, having the means to stay on one's 
 knees longer). Sir James in the study alone, for Aries and 
 Bertie Corfe were both in bed. Rowley Deane said frivo- 
 lously at dinner, that he had done the best day's work of his 
 life at the portrait, for Venice's face had gained at least three 
 per cent, of animation. 
 
 Of course he, as an artist, has no sort of stake in it all. 
 But he made us laugh at least 1 As if it mattered for his 
 kind of work what expression was on his sitter's face ! He 
 never looks at her, so Venice complains. 
 
 Whatever she may have looked to him, I saw no change. 
 Very soon after breakfast she went back to the dining-room, 
 rang the bell rather violently, and ordered in the chafing- 
 dish arrangement and chocolate and butter and cream. She 
 said she felt like making some " Fudge." Cooking was, I 
 suppose, a relief from tension. I have heard since that she 
 didn't employ much art about it — poor child ! just, in her 
 despair, flung in the ingredients pell-mell and commenced 
 stirring them as if she were a mere automaton. It came out 
 quite good stuff, for a wonder, and she was sucking Fudge 
 and distending her mouth out of bravado all the time she was 
 sitting for Rowley Deane, and he never objected, because, as 
 she said bitterly, he never noticed what she was doing. 
 
 The servants were very good, poor things, all except the 
 German imder-kitchen maid — Anatole's find, who turned out 
 very badly. Anatole got her for me, just before we left 
 town. He said she was a woman he thought he could work 
 with and keep up the pretence that she was cook, if ever 
 Aries should think fit to make inquiries. Anatole laughed 
 
88 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 one of his rare laughs when he said she was our masked 
 battery, he being the real gun behind her. I laughed, rather 
 on the wrong side of my mouth. I don't really like cheating 
 Aries, but what can one do ? 
 
 To return to this girl who rather troubled what one used 
 to call one's peace. She suddenly took to having hysterics, 
 alternating with sulky fits. Possibly the other servants 
 have been making her feel herself a pariah — have rubbed her 
 unfortunate nationality into her. Anatole owned that if he 
 had known what was going to happen, politically, he would 
 have taken a calm Swiss who had offered herself to him for 
 the place. 
 
 As it was, Grethe's screeches penetrated through the 
 door that divides the servants' quarters from the big hall 
 where we have taken to sitting, nowadays that so much goes 
 on in it. Anatole — I can't think how he managed to do the 
 talking when engaging her — cannot speak a word of Ger- 
 man and stood there like a deaf-mute while she yelled out 
 incomprehensible abuse at the top of her voice. He owned 
 himself, with a shrug, quite unable to deal with her, and 
 when a woman, Effrosyne (Lily's Greek maid, you know), 
 laid her hand upon her shoulder to try and pacify her, the 
 girl actually turned on her like a cat and tried to bite her 
 arm. It was a deadlock, and I was so afraid that Aries, 
 deaf as he is, would hear I . . . 
 
 We have managed so well that he has not the slightest idea 
 that Anatole is still an inmate of the establishment. It was 
 however getting exceedingly awkward for me. At last 
 Audely — the useful creature, as I always say — offered to go 
 and tackle her. He speaks her beastly language. It trans- 
 pired that what she was afraid of was that if we went to war 
 with her country we should keep her a prisoner in this fortified 
 house, as she would have it that Lochroyan Hall is — ^because 
 of the old Crimean cannon all over the garden, with gera- 
 niums growing out of them ! — and that she would never get 
 back to Marburg in Hessen-Cassel, where she had a mother. 
 She told Audely that, but I can't help thinking that it was 
 jealousy of Effrosyne that upset her in the first instance, 
 apropos of the good graces of Anatole, who sends all the 
 women wUd. The attempt to bite looked like it, didn't it ? 
 And, not wishing to own it up to Anatole, she invented the 
 fright-excuse. Any way, she presently subsided into mild 
 sobbing and he, poor dear man, was very kind to her and lent 
 
THE LAST DITCH 89 
 
 her his own pocket-handkerchief to dry her eyes on. But 
 Audely thinks what really pacified her was his telling her 
 that in the event of our going to war with her blessed country 
 he would make himself personally responsible for her safe 
 conduct home. Audely enjoys the personal friendship of 
 the German Emperor, and stayed once in Unter den Linden. 
 If I had thought of it I might have tried the same dodge. 
 When you were a little girl, William Hohenzollern hired the 
 Isabel of your father for two seasons. It was a yacht built 
 only for two, really, but they crammed in far more. He 
 had the best stateroom and the Empress and her boys slept 
 on beds on the floor in the other. Aries was annoyed with 
 him as a tenant, for he demoralized the crew, talking to them 
 so familiarly. He seemed to have no idea of keeping in his 
 place, or of seaworthy rules. It is ruinous for discipline, 
 a man who comes up on deck before they are swabbed 
 down ready for him, and insists on washing his hands out 
 of the bucket the men use, out of condescension ! And I 
 bore him a grudge for stealing my cook, whose style he 
 liked. It is difficult to imagine that a man can forget those 
 things so entirely as to want to go to war with us. He 
 gave us his photograph, signed, in a shoddy silver frame, as 
 a peace-offering and wrote once a year. 
 
 Well, apparently he has forgotten all that. And I begin 
 to wish I had taken a little more notice of the Army as a 
 whole. I have never cultivated it ; Venice doesn't care for 
 soldiers. And it is no good for me to ask a man to dinner if 
 my daughter insists on turning a shoulder — however white, 
 as Bertie Corfe says — ^to him all the time ! But if the Army 
 is going to get some sort of show after all, she must mend 
 her ways. 
 
 But who would have thought it ? I remember at one of 
 the reviews at Aldershot thinking to myself, as I watched all 
 those poor dears drilled and dressed and smartened up to the 
 last sword buckle, how pathetic it was to think that they 
 would never see actual fighting. And now I have come to 
 hope they will. 
 
 Indeed, though I must more or less play for safety in the 
 Family Interest, I couldn't stand England's keeping out if 
 there was serious oppression going on anywhere in Europe. 
 St. George and the Dragon. . . . Princess Sabra, i.e. France, 
 whom we must rescue. . . . 
 
 But between ourselves, Laura, Alsace-Lorraine is a deal 
 
90 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 more than glory. Tell it not in Gath, but I haven't been a 
 diplomat's wife all these years for nothing. It is far more : 
 it is bread and butter to poor Princess Sabra and to us all ; 
 coal and iron — ^the very sinews of war, in fact. I believe, 
 secretly, we all know it while talking of. Honour and Pride 
 and Glory and the rest of it. 
 
 Otherwise I am a bit of a Red Republican. Quenford used 
 to tell me things. He was in Paris all through the Commune 
 and the reprisals afterwards, and I don't think he at all 
 approved of the severities of the man they used to call the 
 Butcher Gallifet — a handsome ladies' man, whom I met 
 afterwards, with his silver stomach. And I don't violently 
 care about Servia and the way she murdered her Queen 
 Draga, a common but harmless creature I would simply not 
 have called on, as punishment. And Poland is so soft, and 
 full of Art Students and musicians ; hardly a country one 
 would have our strong men die for ! Re Alsace-Lorraine, I 
 sometimes fancy France feels towards her lost provinces as 
 I should if some one wrenched my mother's old tiara off 
 my head violently, and wants them back as a decoration, 
 more than anything else. I never see those statues in 
 the Place de la Concorde and listen to the wind rushing 
 through those dusty immortelles they keep hanging up 
 there, without a shudder of premonition, as if it was the 
 danger-point — ^the angry sore. ... It is. I bet Germany 
 sometimes wishes she hadn't wrenched the tiara from the 
 forehead of La Belle France. It wasn't worth the row there 
 has been about it. 
 
 However, I must not grouse too much. Diplomacy will 
 get to work, and perhaps our bold statesmen will make 
 Germany see that we are too dangerous a nut to tackle. No 
 power in its senses can want three other powers all on her 
 back at once. That consideration may make her pause on 
 her mad career before more harm is done, and then we shall 
 only be a few motor rides and horses shot in temper to 
 the bad, and a lot of excellent drilling and waking-up to 
 the good I 
 
VIII 
 
 From The Lady Venice St. Bemy 
 
 LooHEOYAN Hall. 
 
 Ever since Gerald's telegrams began to come we have been 
 in such a state of ferment that to me life has for once seemed 
 worth living. Europe butchered to make a Venetian holiday 
 you will say-, but you must kindly remember that in these 
 letters I am only telling you exactly, more or less, how the 
 odious, irresponsible animal called Venice Mahaud St. Remy 
 really thinks and feels — ^without any of her moral inhibitions. 
 Altruism in my acts you will please take for granted. 
 
 So now I will confess that when I open those buff envelopes 
 at the breakfast table I feel the tense enjoyment of a Cabinet 
 Minister making an authoritative speech. All eyes are fixed 
 on me, waiting for me to read out the morning's bulletin, in 
 a stillness so deep that you could hear a crumb drop, as 
 Rowley Deane says ; and if any one is so unequal to the situa- 
 tion as to put down a fork on his plate, and it tinkles, he or 
 she apologises. 
 
 I am very grave. I am conscious of being concerned, 
 however indirectly, in a great happening, in comparison with 
 which my individual destiny and that of all those gathered 
 round the table with me counts for nothing. 
 
 But these people are only grateful to me for the intelli- 
 gence that I procure for them at nine a.m. instead of two p.m., 
 when we do sometimes get a London paper or two. Yes, 
 ... I alone am conscious of my relative unimportance. I 
 know I am like a worm in a cheese that is being rolled down 
 a quay for shipment, or some small wild animal caught in 
 the heavy machinery of civilisation that marches to time 
 whether the poor beast can be disentangled or not. The 
 usual absence of stops in the telegrams adds to their por- 
 tentousness. To-day it was : 
 
 "Germany — ^at — ^war — with — France — and — Belgium — 
 British — ^Navy — ^mobilizes — ^fifty — ^millions — ^voted." 
 
 91 
 
OU THE LAST DITCH 
 
 Of course the poor dears at the breakfast table, concerned 
 with their dividends, fastened at once upon the amount of 
 money voted, and discussed that to the exclusion of all else. 
 Except Sir James Molendinar, Papa's crony — ^who knows I 
 suppose as much, and more, than Gerald is able to tell us. 
 He ought to be in London, but he is here because he has 
 overworked lately. He never says anything, but goes on 
 with his bread and " Cooper." Rowley Deane only thinks 
 of the prospects of his profession, and whether the German 
 Futurists won't oust the British ones. . . . 
 
 Next day the telegram was more exciting : 
 
 " Germany — fighting — Russia — official — invasion — of — 
 France — defeat — of the — Germans — and — naval — fight — 
 reported." 
 
 They all began then to chatter about the gunboat at Eye- 
 mouth harbour, the spies taken at and from Rosyth (some 
 one had seen them handcuffed !), the shots some one else had 
 heard quite clearly in the night blown on the wind from 
 Berwick Law, where witches used to dance. 
 
 After that the talk turns to the problem of whether or no 
 we are to be "dragged in." That chatter stops at once, I 
 notice, when the boys come down. They will not hear of 
 its being a matter for discussion even. . . . 
 
 " Not come in ? Not help ? Be beastly skrimshankers ? 
 Not if we know it 1 Not if we are alive 1 " 
 
 And they sit down and stoke furiously to keep up their 
 muscle, and then troop off to tennis or badminton, which is 
 all they can do nowadays to keep fit, since we have not enough 
 petrol to send them in to golf at Kelso or Berwick. They 
 start, first thing after breakfast, comparing muscles and 
 pinching of biceps and slogging balls at the " beastly Ger- 
 mans." . . . The eldest of them, except Philip Wyandotte, 
 isn't more than nineteen. Freddy White, Lord Athmare's 
 son, the most swashbuckling and fire-eating of them all, is 
 still at Harrow, and he writes and tells his father — ^who is only 
 thirty-eight, that if he doesn't join up at once on the chance 
 of Germany's violating Belgium, he, Philip, will be ostracised 
 for having a skrimshanking Pater, and may as well resign his 
 place in the football team at once 1 Lord Athmare, who 
 it appears is indispensable to the management of his vast 
 estates, writes back querulously to know if Freddy wants 
 him killed in order to inherit them. They are an amusing 
 pair. . . . 
 
THE LAST DITCH 98 
 
 The mothers here are tolerably content to hear their boys 
 talk like this, since they are all under military age. Freddy 
 White, however, is a very tall boy, nearly six foot already, 
 and could easily pretend to be twenty, and he means to do it, 
 too. I sympathize with him. Any decent woman would. 
 If I had a brother alive, I would give him to England cheer- 
 fully, and so I am sure would Mother. It is lucky perhaps 
 that RomanUle died. 
 
 I once at Tinsack had to witness the disgusting sight of 
 my big nice dog Wallenstein fulfilling his beastly instincts 
 and downing a rabbit at my very feet. The little animal 
 lay prone under the paws of the big one, its eye glassy 
 with fright ... I called my animal off and got a man, who 
 was mending the hedge near by, to come and knock the 
 rabbit on the head and take it off for his dinner. ... I 
 feel now as if, should it come to the worst and Germany 
 invade France through Belgium, that Belgium will be that 
 rabbit. It will be quite helpless. It was fore-ordained that 
 it should be helpless. Yet we must help it, for the honour 
 of England ; not run away as I did from the rabbit and get 
 a man mending the hedge to come and finish it . . . which is 
 what I suspect these people in their desiccated hearts would 
 like to do ? 
 
 They are all, with the exception of Rowley Deane and Mr. 
 Biss the publisher, and perhaps the Indian Tremaines, people 
 with a stake in the country, as it is called, i.e. dividends or 
 landed property. And our rulers seem to be shepherds who 
 think rather more of their flocks' safety and the chances of 
 their getting through the hedge of a thorny time without 
 losing any of their wool, than of keeping their honour un- 
 tarnished. Dividends — with dishonour ! Has a flock of 
 sheep any honour ? That is why it is eaten up, and deserves 
 to be eaten up, in the end. 
 
 And what have personal impressions of Belgium and 
 individual Belgians to do with it — if Belgium is in peril ? . . . 
 " I hate Belgians ! " Lily St. Just says, pettishly. I sup- 
 pose she once happened to have a Belgian cook who robbed 
 her, or a parlourmaid who was dirty. I don't believe she 
 has ever met a Belgian of her own class. I know some 
 awfully nice ones. There is — or was, for perhaps he has 
 been killed already — the Count de Crawhez, who was so 
 anxious to let his chateau to us and go into rooms himself 
 so as to be near me. He cared for me, but I did not think 
 
94 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 it fair to encourage him. I forbade Mother to enter into any 
 contract with him, however advantageous. She'd sell her 
 soul to get anything for four guineas instead of five. But 
 although I could not have married him, he was rather a dear. 
 And the doctor at Spa — ^a perfect dear — with Alice, his French 
 wife, with whom we all used to motor, times out of number, 
 into Germany, to buy furniture — Mother's hobby — at Mont- 
 joie. We used to cross the frontier — always a fresh excite- 
 ment for me — ^at Stavelot or Malmedy, a place I always felt 
 fateful and intense about, because I confused it with Mont- 
 medy, where the French Monarchy died. Frontiers are 
 exciting, because they are so unexciting ! It doesn't mean 
 a wall, or even a fence : just a dip in the road, and a little 
 hut of sorts whence you expect a Moo ! to issue. But on its 
 plaster wall is the official plaque — the " squashed crow " of 
 Prussia. Instead of a cow, a smart Prussian officer puts his 
 head out and asks for all your names and addresses and 
 occupations, and looks under the seats of the car to see if 
 you have any contraband. 
 
 Going in, one had none, but coming back — trust Mother t 
 
 After that, it's Germany, but there's no difference : just 
 another section of dreary heath, for all the world the same 
 as that we have just traversed. But soon one begins to hear 
 what we never heard in Belgium nor yet in France, a per- 
 petual "Rub-a-Dub ! " and bugle calls now and then coming 
 out of the woods. We were told several times that there 
 was a review of troops going on. Plenty of reviews, but 
 we didn't see any, ever ! 
 
 But what did strike me as rather martial and significant 
 was the railway embankments stopping short of the frontier. 
 And the sight of a harmless necessary wheelbarrow tipped 
 over on the unfinished slope looking towards Belgium, as if 
 a workman had left it ready for work to-morrow, gave me an 
 uncomfortable feeling. 
 
 One always tells people these things after the event, so I 
 suppose you won't believe that I thought anything of it at 
 the time. But indeed I asked the Doctor about it, and he 
 mumbled something about their not having the right to 
 continue the railway beyond German territory, as if the 
 subject was sore. . . . 
 
 Remembering all these dear people, the breakfast table 
 discussion re " keeping out " is intolerable. I don't want 
 
THE LAST DITCH 93 
 
 Englishmen to be killed too freely, but honestly, I don't 
 think that a sharp, short brush with a civilised power would 
 hurt us. It might perhaps do us good, after our petty tussles 
 with naked savages at Isandlana and Tel-el -Kebir. And the 
 civilians at home wouldn't feel it any more than they did 
 then. In the Boer War I was too young to notice, but I am 
 told that everything went on at home much as usual. Ilsa 
 tells me that one week, indeed — the week of Spion Kop — 
 Mother was very much depressed ; but then she lost Lord 
 Philpot, who was a great ally of hers, and a Darcie cousin 
 went, and Papa's dearest friend, Colonel Foggarty, who liked 
 you so much, Ilsa says. And Ilsa lost Paul she liked so 
 much. But now, if it wasn't for reading the alarmist papers 
 and the want of petrol for tooling lazy people about the roads 
 that seems to worry Mother's hostess-mind so much — I use 
 my bicycle — she would hardly know there was anything out 
 of the way going on. We go about to parties in the day- 
 time as usual, teas and tennises, choosing, preferably, houses 
 that are within a walk. . , . 
 
 I am quite good now. I never talk of being a nurse or of 
 going into a convent or the wilderness, or anything mad or 
 philanthropic of that sort. Mother was becoming mono- 
 maniacal about me ; I had to take her peace of mind in 
 hand. The spectre of Ilsa, unwedded, rode her like a night- 
 mare. So to reassure Mother and show her I was fully 
 normal I took a leaf out of Ilsa's book and flirted a little, 
 which is not so hard, now the chance of war has made men 
 a little more interesting. 
 
 At the George Lysons' the other afternoon I felt suddenly 
 very moved. We were all sitting, like the fringed border of 
 a shawl, on our deck-chairs, round the smooth green tennis 
 lawn, where a serious game was being fought out. The sun 
 shone so softly and kindly that we did not need our parasols. 
 The men not playing lounged on the grass at our feet. Mother 
 and old Daddy Lysons were murmuring platitudes about 
 the " golden afternoon." It struck me then, how like we all 
 were to the men and women of the Decameron, who sat 
 chatting, devising in a garden at Fiesole while people were 
 dying of plague in Florence a mile away. One supposes that 
 if it did come to that with us, the sun would still be shining 
 on tennis courts and battle fields alike, and there would still 
 be the cleavage between the people "out of it " and people 
 " in it " — up to their necks. . . , 
 
96 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 Yes, while Mrs. George Lysons went whining on to Mother 
 about her hunter that the Gtovernment commandeered 
 recently, and which she had shot — ^ILke Lady Calmady, as 
 Mother was kindly telling her by way of consolation — I was 
 watching the players in their coloured blazers and thinking 
 that after all it would be a fairly simple transition from this 
 little lawn to another wider one, raked and swept by grape- 
 shot. Going through his paces in front of me, was young 
 George Lysons, looking like the usual Greek god, but per- 
 fectly null, who had just got up from my feet to play against 
 Belle-Belle, whom he was certain of beating. 
 
 We call young George " Big Sir Gervaise, that good 
 knight," in my little court at Lochroyan. There is a good 
 deal of him, and I am ashamed to say I was thinking what 
 an excellent target he would make for a bullet. The blue 
 and white stripes of his jersey — ^he is so large that, as Mother 
 says, he can wear the loudest patterns without looking vulgar 
 — kept shifting backwards and forwards over his muscles, 
 that changed their form every time he lunged for a ball. I 
 was talkiag to no one at the moment, and was bored by 
 Mother's conversation with Mrs. George Lysons, so I watched 
 the game and George's magnificent figure till I came actually 
 to see patches of blood oozing out between the stripes, show- 
 ing red on the white part and as a kind of sodden purple on 
 the blue. I had to look away at last. 
 
 I wonder if it means that we shall fight and that Big Sir 
 Gervaise is going to be kUled. 
 
 Even BeUe-Belle, whom he was beating, seemed to me a 
 tragic figure. There is not an inch of Belle-Belle- Smith 
 that hasn't been manicured, massaged, and cold creamed. 
 Every hair on his well-shaped head has been cared for indi- 
 vidually. But I hate to think even of that pink fondant of 
 a creature being battered — ^massaged — into a pulp by a 
 shell ! . . . 
 
 Of course you will say that these reflections are morbid. 
 1 am morbid. Every thinking person, in my class at least, 
 must be, or else the life we lead would stifle us. It is so 
 hopeless — has been, at least — ^to try and get any normal 
 sensation out of it. 
 
 But of course if war does come, every moment will be of 
 acute interest and high sensation, though I hope I am not 
 so selfish as to wish my country plunged into strife in order 
 to afford me momentary excitement. For there's the meao 
 
THE LAST DITCH 97 
 
 part of it ; that is all it would be for Us. We are too high 
 and dry in our superior entrenchments to feel the horrors of 
 war. So long as each knight banneret leads or supplies forty 
 men out to fight for the King we shall have done our duty as 
 a class. That, originally, was what we had to do in exchange 
 for our feudal privileges. I learnt this at school. And we 
 ladies, perched in our safe high castles, will lounge on arm- 
 chairs and make banners and sleaves for our knights to wear 
 in their heaulmes . . . and read novels from Mudie's, instead 
 of sitting in a row and having them recited to us by ragged 
 minstrels come in from the rain outside. Some one will 
 tinkle a harp . . . and poor Jehane Du Castel Beau will go out 
 into the garden and cut her throat with her father's sword 
 because Gold Wings does not come back. . . . 
 
 And those that do come back to Ladies' Gard, we shall 
 fuss over, and bind up their grievous wounds, and tend out 
 of the knowledge we have all got from our Ambulance classes. 
 Mary Scrymgeour was asked by the examiner what she 
 would do if a child, its chest all raw with burns, was brought 
 to her, and she said confidently, she would take a knotted 
 towel and flick it until consciousness was restored ! In the 
 Middle Ages, Mary's great-great-great-grandmother did 
 better; she took her knight's broken lance, anointed it and 
 put it to bed, like the Ladye of Branksome — a sort of primitive 
 faith-healing dodge which has always interested me. . . . 
 
 Audely says I am, like Juliet in the chamel house, playing 
 madly with my forefather's joints, toying with the Spectre of 
 War, and that I couldn't do it if I had the slightest idea 
 of what it will be, if it is to be. . . . 
 
 I forget to tell you that Audely has materialized again. 
 He came back from Bosnia yesterday, to Mother's intense 
 jubilation. Poor dear, he has his work cut out for him, so 
 many little things to ask him, so many jobs neglected during 
 his absence, and he must know all about the war, coming 
 straight from the Continent ! . . . 
 
 I have undertaken to police him, and I encourage his natural 
 taciturnity, which is rather a relief in the midst of so much 
 vague useless discussion. And I happen to know that my 
 mother is dying to pump him about a matter that concerns 
 him alone. He happens to have mentioned it confidentially 
 in a letter to me which I left about. I am careless, because 
 I have generally nothing to hide. If Mother chooses to 
 7 
 
98 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 exercise her maternal rights of domiciliary visiting she must 
 not be surprised if she is baflBed by partial or scrappy in- 
 formation. She can't of course question me about it, but 
 she could Audely, if she got him alone ! I am trying to spare 
 him that. Why should he be worried about a matter so 
 entirely between him and me ? 
 
 He and I are in that sort of sympathy that makes us like 
 to be together for long hours without talking. Mother, 
 when she is with him, and indeed with anybody, always seeks 
 to draw the best out of them, i.e. what they think about the 
 probabilities of war. 
 
 " Audely, dear, shall we really be forced to fight ? " or 
 " Audely, do you really think it necessary for us to take a 
 hand even if there is war between France and Germany ? 
 
 We didn't before " and so on, and so on. Sir James 
 
 Molendinar has shut her up for good on the score of secret 
 diplomacy. He may not tell. But Audely has no such 
 responsibility. What he observes he can pass on as far as 
 propriety is concerned. But he doesn't like to. When these 
 onslaughts are made on him in public he contrives to look 
 away, or look blank — of a blankness he knows how to make 
 perfectly paralysing — ^but in private even he would find 
 Mother impossible to evade. 
 
 We walked, Audely and I, to Kirkmichael yesterday in 
 the soft blinding Scotch sunlight. I hadn't even a hat on. 
 It took us two hours to go there and back. Half way there, 
 Audely said suddenly, without looking at me, 
 
 " You must be awfully strong." 
 
 And when I said, " Why ? " he wanted to know if I hadn't 
 a headache. 
 
 I answered with literal truth, " Jamais de la vie ! " 
 
 Silence. After another half-mile he observed : 
 
 "Well, if you can stand this without getting sunstroke 
 you had better join my band of Cadets. I'm getting one 
 up — ^though I'm afraid I shan't be able to see to them my- 
 self." 
 
 " I shan't join it if you aren't there to drill us 1 " I said, 
 supposing he meant he would have to go back to look after 
 the lady in Madrid. Then I asked him, just as Mother 
 would have, if we should have to " come in " ? 
 
 He turned a cold blue glare on me and said in his mild, 
 even, low voice, as if he were reciting something to rather 
 young children at a Village Reading : 
 
THE LAST DITCH 99 
 
 " If you put it so I shall decline to be drawn into a dis- 
 cussion. If you like to say, do I think that we shall behave 
 ousselves, collectively, as a nation, like gentlemen ? I answer 
 in the affirmative." 
 
 I then told him an amusing incident that had happened 
 the night of Lily St. Just's arrival. She had no maid, having 
 lost hers, somehow, at Whittrick Junction, We sent Anatole 
 for the creature, and he telegraphed to say she would be 
 forwarded on here as early as possible in the morning, and 
 he would see that she was all right. The sort of thing that 
 would happen to Lily, to lose a smart foreign maid at a Scotch 
 railway junction ! She and Anatole will have the time of 
 their lives; stopping at an hotel at Mother's expense ! 
 Perhaps they will be made to marry by Scotch law ? 
 
 Any way, I had to lend LUy Berrymore and put up with 
 the ministrations of the under housemaid— a girl we had 
 brought over from France last year. She made a frightful 
 muddle of the hooks at the back ; but although I hate stand- 
 ing more than anything, I forced myself to put up with it. 
 She was so long about it that I turned round and found it 
 was because she couldn't see for tears. The poor girl had 
 had a letter from home — Guingamp in Brittany — saying 
 that both her brother and her sweetheart had been called up. 
 I tried to comfort her, telling her it would soon be over, but 
 she got quite hysterical, and finally dropped on her knees 
 and sobbed out : 
 
 " Miladi, Miladi, vous nous aiderez, n'est-ce pas ? " 
 
 It showed how our ignoble preoccupation upstairs has 
 permeated even to the servants' hall, and loses us prestige 
 and honour there ! These foreigners think we are scheming 
 to leave them in the lurch ! So I told Audely, who heard 
 my little tale in silence. When I had finished he said, in the 
 slightly grudging tone he adopts when moved : 
 
 "Well, next time Leocadie (how on earth did he know 
 the girl's name ? It is Leocadie, I remember)— next time 
 Leocadie boggles at your dress fastenings, dry her eyes and 
 tell her we are not going to desert her 1 " 
 
 Mother might have worked for days to get a direct state- 
 ment like that from Audely, and would have been truly 
 delighted to have heard it. For though she is a properly 
 behaved hostess, and prefers not to go counter to the ex- 
 pressed feelings and wishes of her guests too obviously, in 
 her sound heart of hearts she agrees with us, Audely and me. 
 
100 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 We all three adore France and French people, for different 
 reasons maybe. Audely and I because we are more con- 
 cerned with matters of the spirit, and realize that every good 
 thing in Literature and Art, nearly, comes to us out of France, 
 and will be kept alive in France and only in France, if France 
 is allowed to survive. Not, certainly, if the Germans get hold 
 of her and impose their odious utilitarian civilization upon 
 her. Oh yes, I know they are great chemists and metallur- 
 gists and do wonderful tricks with coal-tar products, but 
 what is that to the Sainte Chapelle and Madame Bovary ? 
 What have the Germans really ever done for Art and Letters ? 
 The second part of Faust is the dreariest performance in the 
 world, and the first part has only lived because it is mostly 
 legend 1 And if they do get Paris, and the Sainte Chapelle 
 is set alight again, that will be the end of it. Audely here 
 mildly pointed out that it was French men and women who 
 did it the first time ; but I retorted that that was a mere 
 consequence of the Siege, and the heated state of people's 
 minds after a month's starvation. . . . 
 
 We had this little discussion at breakfast yesterday, and 
 the mention of the Sainte Chapelle inspired Hermione Mac- 
 kenzie to shriek out : 
 
 " That's in the Cii 6, where there are no shops, if I remem- 
 ber. But Suzanne's is in the Rue St. Honore, and she is 
 keeping three sets of my best ostrich plumes, until feathers 
 are worn again ! " 
 
 " Console yourself. Lady Mackenzie," Audely said (he 
 hates Hermy), " they won't be worn again. The proletariat 
 will put an embargo on them. And in any case your feathers 
 will be spared, because the Germans will naturally begin with 
 Belleville and the poorer quarters. By the time they get to 
 the West End of Paris the ladies of London and America will 
 have compelled us to cease hostilities 1 " 
 
 Papa, suddenly waking up, said, " Tcha ! Hermy and her 
 feathers 1 All is not lost even if Paris is taken. The Govern- 
 ment would remove." 
 
 I don't think, however, that the old-fashioned politicians 
 like Papa are in favour, ever, of giving unconditional support 
 to other nations. They think so much of the responsibilities 
 of Governments towards the mere material well-being of 
 their peoples. It is Socialists who always seem eagerly to 
 place their coimtry's honour, in a vague high-falutin' way, 
 before Everything ! And carefully avoid defining Every- 
 
THE LAST DITCH 101 
 
 thing ! Mother thinks that Governments are there to 
 manage things for people that people would be ashamed 
 individually to do for themselves. Lord Granville, in 1870, 
 was actually approached by the French Government, begging 
 us to intervene to prevent the Siege. To think that if we 
 had, the German Empire would perhaps not have got con- 
 solidated, and thus not have been in a position to threaten 
 this sort of thing ! 
 I don't believe that. Greed will out, all the world over I 
 I remember once sitting on the high golf links at Spa — 
 with the Belgian doctor I told you of, and his wife. We had 
 ordered a cramiqiie, the local cake, which I adore. The 
 prospect, miles and miles of it, was spread out below us, very 
 green and bosky, with red, little, rather pretentious villas 
 like the Bedford Park houses, spread out thin, like the cur- 
 rants in the cramique, but pretty evenly, all over the expanse. 
 They looked so riante, prosperous and smug. . . . My friend 
 said, very quietly and sadly : 
 
 " You look over the kingdoms of the earth and find it 
 good. But I tell you, moi qui vous parle, that will all be 
 fought over one of these days." 
 
 A sinister speech, wasn't it ? And I saw the green, for 
 the moment, with the red dots of villas redder than before, 
 like blood drops ... I really did. You will think I have 
 nothing but warlike visions, now that there is talk of it. And 
 I must say that he had been telling me beforehand about 
 les Grottes de Han, one of the guide-book sights of Belgium, 
 where there are in the catacombs heaps and stacks of 
 craniums of dead soldiers — ^French or German, I can't re- 
 member which he said. Doubtless this coloured my vision 
 . . . but still . . . 
 
 And now possibly he is being fought over. Perhaps he 
 is killed ? We can't hear of them. We wrote at once and 
 offered them a home here until the troubles were over. No 
 sign ! I have still got Alice's hair brush she lent me when 
 our luggage was all held up at Brussels and we arrived at the 
 Laeken without a thing. 
 
 I was always losing things abroad, and in Germany, I must 
 say, I generally got them back. Except in one case. I 
 regret very much that if we do go to war I have been instru- 
 mental in providing one Prussian officer at least with a pair 
 of excellent field glasses the better to kill us with. I left 
 them in a train at Miinster. 
 
102 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 Looking back on it all, our comings and goings in Germany, 
 I see that they always hated and suspected us. . . . Certainly, 
 going so much oft the beaten path as we did, we kept stum- 
 bling on military secrets, such as whole regiments quartered 
 in clearings in lonely forests. The faces of the sentries when 
 we walked up to them and asked them where we could get 
 tea, and how they promptly detached an officer to follow us 
 and see us safely off the premises ! Audely says that we 
 were " shadowed " the whole time last year. That is how he 
 accounts for the extraordinary delays we had in getting 
 carriages in any sort of time when one had ordered them — 
 always, he says, the detective had to be waited for, who got 
 on to the box beside the coachman and supervised our 
 movements. I remember at Gravelotte — the battle field — 
 how anxious they were that we should not cross the frontier, 
 which saggs about there like an eel. The Germans arranged 
 it, after the battles, to take in all the burial mounds of Ger- 
 mans, who must on no account lie in official French earth. . . . 
 
 Oh yes, they hated us. No one ever smiled at us. In- 
 deed, I never did see any one smile at all in Germany. They 
 are a sour, dour, glum, sulky nation. On the face of it they 
 are happy, at least well cared for. There are no abuses to 
 rectify. But they evidently have not — I should say they 
 were incapable of having — la joie de vivre. Perhaps now 
 they are having the joy to kill. 
 
IX 
 
 From The Lady Aries 
 
 LOCHROYAK. 
 
 You will have received the first wire about your father which 
 Audely sent off yesterday. Now that things have settled 
 themselves a little, I can fmd time to sit down to my desk and 
 give you some idea of what happened. To begin with, it 
 was entirely my fault. I accept full responsibility for my 
 action ; its motive was absolutely pure — Venice ! My error 
 was the result of my almost culpable fondness for that child 
 and her welfare. But certainly I made a mistake ; Anatole 
 was not, as it turns out, worthy. . . . 
 
 The doctor thinks that it is not nearly so serious as he at 
 first feared. The poor darling has recovered consciousness, 
 and the first person he asked for was his Wife. That was 
 most forgiving, considering ! He has had a very slight 
 stroke indeed, and it is the very first. It is only the third 
 that proves fatal, as everybody knows. Aries will not leave 
 us just yet. 
 
 AH has been excitement, worry, and fuss ever since, natur- 
 ally. But on the afternoon when the thing happened, we 
 were as quiet as quiet. Most of our young men gone, of 
 course, and Venice bored to death, and reduced to writing 
 poetry in the daytime instead of by gaslight for a change. 
 Rowley Deane had left us and the portrait unfinished, the 
 day before, and the Tremaines too. Aries had cashed a big 
 cheque for them from our already slender store, just before 
 he was disabled. 
 
 What with all this commandeering of cash, it has taken us 
 altogether, so far, eighteen pounds to get rid of seven guests. 
 Not one of them could have stirred farther than Berwick 
 without our assistance. Except Rowley Deane, who seemed 
 quite unaccountably to have plenty, and who was lending 
 money right and left. I hear he tipped the servants most 
 generously. Swagger, I suppose, but I rather like it, and I 
 
104 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 shall let him see more of Venice when we get home, and 
 perhaps finish the portrait in his own studio. Effel can go 
 with her. And his kind of art may come to the top — if the 
 war will let it. 
 
 I keep digressing to Venice, don't I ? and of course what 
 you want to know is how your father came to have a stroke. 
 I have told you, I think, the geography of this place : how 
 the lawn in front of the house commands everything — the 
 gates of the Park, the servants' entry and ours. It is the 
 key of the situation. Obviously Lochroyan was built for 
 purposes of defence, so that all the outside property, cattle, 
 etc., could be got into shelter, safe from the thieving Scots. 
 I am confusing ; in this case it would be the English who 
 would be the thieves. One forgets one is " Across the Border 
 and away," as the song says. There are some plane trees in 
 front, nearly as tall as the central tower, which was all there 
 was to Lochroyan in the moss-trooping days, and which has 
 got embedded in the modem additions. And we were all 
 sitting under these big trees waiting for our lunch. And 
 marvellous to relate, Aries was with us, he and Sir James 
 Molendinar having abandoned their cards for once. And a 
 regular pair of owls they looked, both of them, blinking their 
 eyes in the sun. But Aries has been advised by his doctor, 
 who has been staying here, to allow himself a little more 
 benefit of the fresh air and try being out a good deal, and I 
 have insisted on his obeying Sir Lauder ; so there he was, as 
 good as gold. It is pathetic, in view of what came after 1 
 
 He had borrowed the large green carriage umbrella from 
 the coachman, and sitting under that, with his golden-whitey 
 beard, I can assure you he looked fine. I am always so 
 pleased when your father comes out into the light of day 
 and shows people what a fine figure of a man he still is. 
 
 From where I sat, I saw three men enter the Park gates 
 nearly a quarter of a mile away. Even at that distance, they 
 had a sulky, reserved look, in their dowdy dark suits, that 
 made me at first think of undertakers. They were obviously 
 not gentlemen. Then it came to me in a flash that they were 
 policemen in plain clothes. I am proud to think that I 
 guessed at once, though there wasn't much to put me up to 
 it, except that they seemed to nose about a good deal, and 
 jjso were careful to close the gates behind them, which are 
 always kept open. 
 
 Audely was away at Edinburgh for the day 1 My heart 
 
THE LAST DITCH 105 
 
 was in my boots I For though we have of course, since the 
 war scare, had plenty of officials out here, one way and 
 another, they always come quite frankly and simply, don't 
 you know, as if we were sure to be all right and it wr.s a 
 mistake, and they knew they'd get a drink and a shilling in 
 the end. But these men were like people in a cinema film — 
 sinister, still, and sneaking. 
 
 They parted company, as if by system, when they got 
 nearer the house. One of them stopped and took up a posi- 
 tion in front of the very unpretending door which, however, 
 admits to the inner courtyard, and gives them the entire run 
 of the back premises. He evidently knew the lie of the 
 land 1 A little farther on another man broke away and 
 passed straight on to the front-door steps and stood there, 
 very stiff and still. The third man crossed the grass to where 
 we were sitting. I was the only one of our group who could 
 see him, for the moment. . . . 
 
 I could see that he was rather nervous, but full of pride 
 of power. I guessed it was something fairly serious, and a 
 hundred speculations passed through my mind, as at the 
 moment of death, about what we had been doing to bring 
 down on us the majesty of the law in this way. One idea I 
 had was that they had come for Audely, who might have 
 been getting into conflict with the authorities, in his irre- 
 sponsible fashion, out there in Bosnia. I really, to do me 
 justice, hadn't the least idea that I, personally, was going 
 to be in it. Of course I did realize, as every one must, that 
 be as careful as one may in these sort of times, one may have 
 unconsciously knocked up against the law. One remembers 
 De Maupassant's story of the two citizens of Paris who went 
 out during the progress of the Franco-Prussian war to fish 
 in the Seine, and got formally shot by the Germans for being 
 out of bounds. They didn't know they were doing anything 
 wrong. And it did just glance across my mind about the 
 German servant girl Anatole got for us— there might have 
 been something wrong with her registering, or so on. One 
 never knows with foreigners. . . . 
 
 I was just calculating the distance at which I would rise 
 from my chair and ask to what I owed the pleasure of this 
 —unwarrantable intrusion — ^when the person saved me the 
 trouble by going straight up to Aries, sitting a little apart 
 from us all under his large green umbrella. It almost hid 
 hun, so I think it was rather clever of the officer to single 
 
108 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 out the real master of the house at once and showed that ho 
 really did know his business. 
 
 He said something, low and quite civilly, to my husband, 
 and Aries got up at once like a lamb, and not so very stiffly, 
 after all. I never in my life so regretted the slight deafness 
 that is beginning to overtake me, for as it was I could not in 
 the least make out what was the force which made my de- 
 crepit old darling get up and precede the intruder into his 
 own house— without cordiality, naturally, but without ran- 
 cune. 
 
 I was addled. I said to Sir James, who was beside me, 
 " Just a moment ! " as if he was wanting to keep me or could 
 have stopped me, and made the best speed I could after the 
 pair. I suppose what I unconsciously used the expression 
 to imply was that I desired my guests to remain seated and 
 not make a scene, for I wasn't going to be put about. They 
 took the hint. Ilsa and Venice, whom you might suppose 
 would feel a little concerned, never budged — ^they were 
 arguing with Sir James about whether you should say blouse, 
 French fashion, or blowze. 
 
 Of course they hadn't seen the two men standing posted 
 at the doors of the house like mutes at a funeral. And if they 
 had I don't know that it would have made much difference. 
 My people have got, as it were, their war-legs now, and it 
 would take a good deal to scare them, or make them think 
 that it was anything but the dear old Amateurish Govern- 
 ment interfering with us for our good — ^and its own. 
 
 When I got to the house I saw that the man at the ser- 
 vants' entrance was out of sight — had gone right in — and 
 the man at the front door had wheeled round and followed 
 Aries and the first officer into the house, I couldn't catch 
 them up till they were well inside and established in the big 
 hall where we sit in the mornings, and where there is a swing 
 door communicating with the servants' quarters. The man 
 I had seen going in at the servants' entrance outside was 
 mounting guard, posted against it now. 
 
 So there were three oflBcers in the room with poor old 
 Aries and me, quite enough to overpower us if we had thought 
 of offering any resistance. We didn't think of it, of course. 
 Although I am of an essentially combative nature, Aries' 
 attitude of polite resignation gave me my cue, and I took it. 
 I was merely glad that, as a woman, they didn't order me 
 out of the room. 
 
THE LAST DITCH 107 
 
 The man was speaking to Aries most respectfully when 
 I sneaked into my own house, invaded thus by the hosts of 
 the law. 
 
 " All British 1 " he was saying. " I can give you my 
 assurance. I took care of that." 
 
 "Excuse me ! " I put in. It was necessary. Aries was 
 giving false information, and that is death in the eyes of the 
 law. " Excuse me, Aries. You have forgotten Effrosyne 1 " 
 
 He didn't know anything about the insignificant Gierman 
 kitchenmaid, and I thought it wiser to keep her back for 
 the present and not give them too much to think about at 
 once. And of one thing I was sure, the woman was registered 
 as an alien all right, and I even, in a flash, remembered her 
 name — ^Bamberger. 
 
 Aries, without turning, just held up his hand, and ad- 
 dressed the officer, 
 
 " Lady Aries reminds me — a Greek lady's maid belonging 
 to one of my guests," he said. " But there is no objection to 
 your summoning the whole staff; none whatever." 
 
 " Thank you, my lord," the man said, most politely, 
 " I need not say we accept your word, but we have had 
 information which makes it necessary for us to see for our- 
 selves. ..." 
 
 " Of course I Of course ! " Aries murmured, and became 
 abstracted. 
 
 His head drooped. He was tired. He is an old man. 
 He did not sit down, although he ought to have done so ; it 
 might perhaps have averted the catastrophe. He had not 
 stood so long without an arm for over three months. I 
 sidled up to him, ready to give him mine if he should need it, 
 but he motioned me away by a very feeble gesture. I am 
 so used to deciphering your father's moods that I at once 
 realised that his vanity had come into play and that he did 
 not want to seem in need of support before the eyes of all 
 those men. 
 
 For there were a lot of men about now. Somebody had 
 propped open the swing-door ready for the servants to 
 file in, and in the dark space over their heads beyond I 
 could see the faces of policemen in xmiform, who must have 
 come up the drive while I had been inside the house. I 
 could have wished to have taken the whole business off 
 his shoulders, but as it was I was glad, if he had to be dis- 
 turbed, that Aries had come into the house with me, for if 
 
108 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 he had been left outside there, he might have been upset 
 by this cohort of strangers and not knowing what it was 
 all about. Sir Lauder had warned me of shocks 1 . . . And 
 to think that when it came, it was all brought about by 
 me, who would have cut oft my hand sooner than injure a 
 hair of Aries' head ! However, che sard sard, and it is sard 
 indeed. . . . But that it's only the first stroke is my one com- 
 fort. 
 
 Well, to resume. The servants began to file in — all women. 
 Anyhow, Anatole was the only male indoor servant, and I 
 was truly glad to remember that, although an alien, he was 
 a friendly one, I had a sort of feeling, even then, that we 
 should come to be distinctly enemies with Germany, if only 
 because she has shown that she is bad-mannered among 
 nations and won't treat or listen to reason. . . . What worried 
 me then was that I realized how angry Aries woidd be with 
 me for disobeying him about Anatole. I really then thought 
 I was the person most to be pitied, and that even I should 
 get off with a good talking to. I would plead a woman's 
 age-long privilege of duplicity in household matters. Feed 
 the beast, you Imow ! In this case the poor little beast was 
 Venice, who was sitting calmly out there flirting, faute de 
 mieucD, with Sir James. 
 
 Effrosyne and the Bamberger woman happened to be 
 pushed in together, to Effrosyne's evident disgust, for I saw 
 her holding her skirt away, so that it should not graze the 
 kitchenmaid's. She couldn't avoid it, however ; policemen 
 are no respecters of the etiquette of the servants' hall, al- 
 though I noticed that she seemed on very good terms with 
 the officer, who asked her her name or names, of which she 
 had about a dozen. She stood free, while a policeman had 
 hold of the kitcheimiaid's arm all the time. That poor 
 body looked frightened to death, and kept her eyes fixed on 
 Effrosyne as if she was fascinated. She gave her name. It 
 was Bamberger, and she came from Marburg in Hessen Cassel. 
 The policeman still held her, while next came old Maggie 
 Hepburn, the one servant I had kept on at the Musters' re- 
 quest as cook-housekeeper, and to see that we didn't abuse 
 our privileges in any way. I must say that I had often 
 regretted it, for she has a vUe temper, and kept havmg the 
 most fearful rows with Anatole all the time. , . , , . 
 
 She was asked if she was the cook. They had had six 
 girls up already, and none of them had answered m the atfarma- 
 
THE LAST DITCH 109 
 
 tive, and I suppose they were beginaing to wonder who 
 provided for our poor insides. 
 Maggie it was who gave me away. 
 
 " Nay, Nay ! " she said in her broad North-country accent. 
 " Wor cook's a man ! " 
 
 Aries gave me a puzzled look, but said nothing. I saw 
 then it must all come out in about a minute, and braced 
 myself. Maggie evidently had a " down " on Anatole, for 
 she went on, in a loud, eager voice : 
 
 " And he's awa' — cut his sticks {i.e. run away) ower the 
 
 wall of the laundry-huse " 
 
 " Quite so 1" said the officer. " But we've got him. 
 Here he comes ! " 
 
 And sure enough, Anatole, in his blue serge suit, with his 
 knees all over whitening from the walls of thq.laimdry, was 
 shoved in, with two policemen holding up his arms. He 
 seemed dazed, except for his blue eyes that flashed. . . . 
 
 " This is the man we want," the officer said to Aries. 
 " Anatole Franz Bamberger. And this person will be his 
 wife Margarethe. ..." 
 
 He looked at a paper he had in his hand. The policeman 
 who was holding the kitchenmaid gave her a nip, to show 
 he had got her safe, I suppose. But she hadn't moved. 
 She was staring at Anatole, who never, I can swear, looked 
 at her again. His eyes were fixed on Effrosyne. I shouldn't 
 like a man to look at me like that, especially if he had eyes 
 like Anatole. It was as if he hated her, and yet wanted to 
 get to her. . . . 
 
 But my attention was soon taken oft these wretched people 
 by the sound of a deep groan close beside me. Aries had 
 fallen down on the carpet like a log. 
 
 It's only the first stroke, I hope you understand, Laura, 
 and that it isn't serious. But it was my fault that he had 
 even this, and I think you must forgive me if I don't write 
 much more to-day. Of course you realize that it was Effro- 
 syne who warned the police, out of jealousy. I can't imagine 
 why Anatole brought the wife on here, for he was already in 
 love with the Greek maid, and it was asking for trouble. I 
 suppose he wanted to make Effrosyne jealous, and the weapon 
 turned against himself. Clever men-r-Anatole is a clever 
 fellow, and I maintain it, though he might have put his 
 talents to better use — clever men are apt to spoil the best- 
 
110 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 laid plan by doing something foolish connected with their 
 private life. I have always noticed it. Look at the number 
 of public men who have lost name and fame and position 
 through an entanglement with some woman ! I don't my- 
 self think it ought to be taken into consideration. Why 
 should the nation lose their services because they've had 
 two wives or so at once ? Do you remember I told you how 
 Anatole's wife had that fit of hysterics, and Anatole could 
 not console her, because he had to pretend not to know a 
 word of German, and I had to get in Audely to hush her 
 up ? . . . Audely tells me now that he had his suspicions from 
 that day, and that it was he who put it into Sir James' head 
 to want to play bridge in a darkened room with the windows 
 and doors shut. He knew that the two old political dodgers 
 would get talking politics, and that the best way to prevent 
 casual eavesdropping would be to invent a fad for them 
 which would allow them to hermetically seal themselves up 
 for whole days. For of course they didn't play much bridge, 
 but talked all roimd and over things. Though when I asked 
 Sir James about it he laughed and said nonsense, every sensible 
 man did prefer bridge to golf, and artificial light to daylight 1 
 
 I am frightfully disappointed in Anatole. Not that that 
 will break his heart, for he will be shot. I am certain of it. 
 He has a doomed face. Audely tries, kind creature, to com- 
 fort me, saying that I need not take it so hardly either about 
 my husband or my servant. Aries' affair is quite slight, and 
 Anatole won't get more than twenty years at the most. I 
 am not to suppose, he says, Anatole was necessarily wanted 
 as a spy ; he was known to be a notorious thief and murderer. 
 All this is to make me regard Anatole as unworthy. Maybe ; 
 but if he is shot, his blood will be on my head as well as Aries' 
 stroke. . . . And any way, no one likes the idea of a murderer 
 being taken in one's own house. I should never have given 
 him up. The laws of hospitality would have precluded it, 
 so there, I said ; and he said no more. 
 
 Venice is in an awful temper, because she wasn't even in 
 the room when he was taken. That's all she thinks about 
 the poor man who has cooked for her faithfully for nearly a 
 year. She says that one way and another she is missing 
 all the good things of life. She tried hard to get speech of 
 Anatole, as I indeed did, but they denied it to both of us. 
 He was taken away handcuffed. 
 
From The Lady Venice St. Bemy 
 
 Pabk Ceescent. 
 [Note ly Mrs. P. Quinney.— This is the end of a long, dull 
 screed, dated from Park Crescent, August the fifteenth, in 
 which my poor Venice delivered her unquiet little soul, 
 disturbed and put out of its usual selfish rut by these world 
 happenings. It strikes me rather as the swan song of her 
 girlhood — her pedantic devitalized girlhood, full of unrealities 
 and carefully nursed half-lights and half-knowledges. And 
 the end of the letter, written after the Declaration of War 
 by her country on Germany, might be said to embody, ever 
 so slightly, the throes of her rebirth into a horrible real dull 
 world where people will have something else to think of than 
 Lady Venice St. Remy's mental development. I gather 
 they travelled back to town on the very day of the Declara- 
 tion. It seems to have stunned Venice a little, for she evi- 
 dently forgot to post this letter, which she had begim at 
 Lochroyan, in the excitement of it all. Mother's frantic 
 efforts to find a remplagant for Anatole merely amuse Venice, 
 but from the short notes which is all my Mother vouchsafed 
 me at this time I gathered that the loss of a good cook, though 
 it weighed with Mother, did not occupy her generous imagina- 
 tion so much as the tragic circumstances of his arrest and 
 Papa's stroke, for which she blames herself. She talks a 
 deal of nonsense about it and her own bad behaviour re the 
 concealment and harbouring of the fellow. Sir Audely Bar 
 had very kindly written to me, supposing that I should 
 probably like a more coherent account of the affair than I 
 have got from my mother and Venice. He seems a kind 
 man. He says they are all wrong about Anatole's being 
 arrested as a spy — how could he be, before any Declaration 
 of War ? — ^but he dare says Anatole is one all right. The 
 
 111 
 
112 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 police wanted him badly on another count ; and though he 
 won't be shot, and there is no need for them all to go seeing 
 him in their dreams, he will probably get twenty years. And 
 Papa is going on well. The doctors say he might have had 
 the stroke any day this last year or so, and was, according 
 to them, queer for a week before, if Mother had only thought 
 of it. So I must believe, no matter what she tells me, that 
 his seizure was indicated, and had nothing particular to do 
 with the shock of discovering Mother's little superchene.\ 
 
 ... It is really very sad to think how owlish we all were 
 these last days, not realizing how " the little fuss in the 
 Balkans," or the " tit-up at Sarajevo," as Mother used to put 
 it, would mature into this ! Papa predicted it. Yes, he 
 said several times over, shaking his head, " After Sarajevo 
 anything may happen ! " He was far too decent to remind 
 us of it, through those dreary days when we all lived on 
 the newspapers and on telegrams. Poor old darling, like 
 the prophetess Cassandra he foretold the ruin he could not 
 avert for himself. After all, he was one of the people who 
 built up the circumstances which led to it all — he was one 
 of the Diplomatic corps who made la pluie et le beau temps ! 
 And even when we were warned — ^we had our spies and news- 
 paper screech owls — what could be done ? The House would 
 not have liked voting enormous increases in the Army and 
 Navy Estimates, which was the obvious course to take, and 
 then be kicked out of office for it by an ungrateful nation of 
 taxpayers ! And it is so soon too late ! Even if you receive 
 hints of the coming of an earthquake, you can do nothing 
 to prevent your house falling ! 
 
 And now it has fallen with a vengeance. It has broken up 
 all our federations for comfort, ruined all the little comers 
 in prosperity engineered for themselves by cute people, 
 submerged in a roaring sea of discomfort and death all the 
 little islets on which the prudent souls who look ahead 
 built their house of happiness. ... 
 
 I can't say I did look ahead, or make any reservations 
 whatever. I expected all good to come to me — always. I 
 just lived aujour lejour of culture, and comfort, and all that 
 makes existence worth while — pleasant living, interesting 
 people, books. . . . Like Caliban, "so long as I sucked 
 from the filth my prog"— excuse the plainspokenness of 
 Browning : to the bourgeois at least, Futurism and decadent 
 
THE LAST DITCH 113 
 
 poetry and the Stage Society are filth — I was content. I 
 made Mother take this house. She didn't want to. Papa 
 didn't want her to. I got her to ask people she didn't par- 
 ticularly like. No matter ; I just thought of having the kind 
 of time that appealed to me — a silly, unreal, affected time, 
 swaying idle, worthless people to my own idle, worthless will. 
 Playing at mediaevalism was harmless enough, but — ^never 
 again 1 . . . 
 
 Why, fatuous as it all seems now, I had started a Court 
 of Love, where I was Queen. Trust me to take le beau role I 
 Mother was pleased, for it kept me quiet, though she was 
 a little afraid at first that the mediaeval business " might 
 lead to license." Only I was so very serious about it, and 
 the young men and maidens played up, and didn't lark too 
 much or do anything undignified. I had thought of it all 
 as soon as we took Lochroyan, a lonely house in a lonely 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 The ancestral chateau in Provence put it into my head — 
 Romanille, that the eldest son takes his title from. That 
 was about all we knew about it, till we went to stay 
 there. . . . 
 
 I saw it at sunset time, every day from St. Remy. It 
 looked like a sheet of water, wan and white, flowing down 
 on the shadowy sides of the Alpilles, on the road towards 
 Orgon. And one day I persuaded them all to walk out that 
 way and discover what the appearance could be. How I 
 wish people would be quiet when they are out on an ad- 
 venture of discovery ! My people talked and rattled alpen- 
 stocks. . . . And when we got near we found the grey surface 
 was the home of our race, the donjon wall of our castle of 
 Romanille pressed against the sides of the mountain, and that 
 the sun caught every afternoon. The people in the mas 
 below called it the Chateau d'Amour still. . . . 
 
 This Northern place has not the magic of the South, 
 but it has an old kernel in the heart of its modern Gothic. 
 The French tourelles and crow-stepped gables are good imita- 
 tions. I have elected to think of it as the " castle in the 
 walled garden " ; — 
 
 "... where no drop of blood 
 Drawn from men's bodies with sword blows 
 
 Came ever there, or any fear. 
 
 Most certainly, from year to year 
 'Twos pleasant as a Provence rose. 
 
114 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 There were five 8 wans that ne'er did eat 
 The water weed, for ladies came 
 Each day, and young knights did the same, 
 
 And gave them cakes and bread for meat." 
 
 We did that. I and my Meinie of maidens walked out 
 to the mere and fed them every day. As a matter of fact, 
 there were two swans instead of five. They are on a lonely 
 mere — I refuse to call it a loch — about a mile on the road to 
 Kirkmichael, just the right distance for " MUes, and Giles, 
 and Isabeau, and big Sir Gervaise, that good knight, and 
 many dames with footfall light," to stroll out to in the sum- 
 mer evenings that are so long and late in the North. 
 
 I took so much trouble to get it up properly I The boys 
 and girls were nearly all staying in the house; only when 
 I saw any one I thought would fit in I commandeered him, 
 as I did young George Lysons of Aldivalloch after I had seen 
 him play tennis at his mother's house, and heard the old 
 Duchess of Castiglione predicting an early death for him. 
 He exactly did for "Big Sir Gervaise," and all the girls 
 promptly fell in love with him and wanted him for their own 
 special knight. But I stood no nonsense of that kind, and 
 apportioned their lovers to them according to the poem 
 and picturesque propriety. 
 
 And now he is gone. Nearly everybody is gone. I could 
 kill myself. The girls were bustled away by their mothers 
 in the South, who sent telegrams saying that Fair Ellayne- 
 le- Violet and Mary Scrymgeour and Alice of the Golden 
 Hair — a very stupid girl I didn't miss — ^must come home at 
 once because travelling was going to be so difficult. ZoS 
 Courtauld had no mother to worry her, but she went all the 
 same. She is a restless being. 
 
 The maidens were nearly all pretty, in their own ways— 
 carefully chosen as a foil to me, Ilsa says, but really that 
 wasn't it. They happened to be all my own friends that I 
 had had for ages, and some of them relations that Mother 
 asked without consulting me. She had to ask them, or we 
 should never have heard the end of it from Aunt Minna. 
 When I got them down here I organized them and re- 
 christened them out of the poem. Ellen Reveley was Fair 
 Ellayne le Violet. I called her that because EUayne is the 
 old spelling of Ellen, and because of her violet Irish eyes. 
 " Mary " — ^my cousin Mary Scrymgeour — didn't need re- 
 christening at all ; her name is as old as the hills. There has 
 
THE LAST DITCH 115 
 
 always been a Mary Scrymgeour at Sockburn since Henry II, 
 and she was to the hennin born, as we found when we began 
 to dress up. Constance Fille-de-Fay was naturally Zoe 
 Courtauld, whom you saw two winters ago in America, where 
 I understand she made her name and a fortune telling for- 
 tunes. She does that here. She tells us that she is a 
 changeling — and dresses like a witch, with her black hair 
 in elf-locks — tidy elf-locks, or else Mother would be down 
 on her. Mother always tells girls quite frankly if their 
 hair is wrong or their nails want cutting, and so on. 
 
 But in spite of Mother's good-humoured dragooning and 
 occasional peevishnesses, when we were too mediaeval and 
 the Musters' agent might have objected, we were very happy, 
 all of us, talking about Love with buttons on our foils, don't 
 you know, lest we got pricked, and dressing up in the even- 
 ings to give it all vraisemblance, and sometimes even in the 
 daytime. We could not quite get the boys to play up in 
 that particular ; they were rather shy of the two legs of 
 different colours and the velvet shoon with points turning 
 up at the toes. Though Bertie Corfe, for a bet, went with 
 Ellen and Zee, in full mediaeval costume, as far as the swan's 
 pond, and sat in the boat, which first had to be baled out, 
 for a full hour, reading sevenpennies, as a protest, while the 
 people walked past to church and stared at them. AH 
 round here they thought us quite mad, till in self defence 
 Mother had to make us promise not to go beyond the lodge 
 gates in our hennins. 
 
 And when the boys all began to go away, it was just like 
 the scene in Gold Wings, when Ladies' Gard had to " meet the 
 war." Morris must have been a prophet. There was " O 
 poor Mary, weeping so," because she was afraid she wouldn't 
 get back in time to see her only brother who was going off 
 somewhere at a moment's notice. And " wretched Con- 
 stance Fille-de-Fay," who has got a wild, tmkempt sweet- 
 heart who is a professor of English literature somewhere in 
 Germany, and will, of course, be interned, or worse, the mo- 
 ment war does break out. Ellen Reveley hadn't any one 
 official to worry about, but she had grown very fond of Big 
 Sir Gervaise, and before he went that cruel little Zoe saw 
 things in his hand which Ellen guessed, from her manner, 
 were not pleasant, and it didn't make her any happier. But 
 she isn't passionate. Philip Wyandotte tried to substitute 
 himself after George left, and if anything happens to George, 
 
116 Tliifi LAST UITCH ~" 
 
 I expect Ellen will console herself with him, although she 
 roared like a baby when Zoe told her that she would be 
 married three times. 
 
 The week of departures has been rather heart-rending. 
 All these gay, reckless, imwitting boys caught up, as it were, 
 from their innocent games and lovemaking into the toils of 
 " Destiny " — the tune we used to waltz to. The big hall 
 is so empty now that one's footsteps, crossing the parquet, 
 set up a hollow reverberation ; it was once so full of noise 
 and clatter as to be almost joyous, though the occasion was 
 not so. There they were, these fine strapping young fellows, 
 shouldering their suit-cases — for they all had to walk to 
 Kirkmichael — waving their long arms full of luggage at us 
 women hanging over the banisters, shouting, " So long 1 
 So long ! " 
 
 They were off, they declared, to try to get a good slash at 
 the Huns — to be killed for us, perhaps ? They were so happy, 
 too much above themselves, some of them, even to say Good- 
 bye properly or thank their hostess. Dark, tall Archie 
 Dunkeron wrung Mother's hand till he drove all her rings 
 in and hurt her ; he was perfectly speechless with emotion, 
 though he always is, without emotion, and he is only going 
 back to Paris to my uncle's. 
 
 I made a bad break. I called out in the middle of the 
 row : 
 
 " I declare, you are all making a beano out of getting 
 killed." 
 
 Ilsa reproved me, and then went off to her own room and 
 cried. I suppose the word "beano" shocked them . . . 
 applied to a serious matter as this may prove to be. Ilsa is 
 really very soft-hearted, while Mother and I are more or less 
 philosophical. Mother just sticks their lunches into their 
 bags and the soda waters they don't want to have to carry, and 
 kisses — some of them — good-bye and goes about her business 
 as usual. She seems, these days, chiefly concerned with the 
 Lochroyan commissariat. She is collecting eggs to lay down 
 in water glass for the winter, from all round the neighbour- 
 hood. She is awfully afraid of a famine later on, or at 
 all events a scarcity. But she has installed a prie-Dieu 
 thing in her boudoir, and takes Prayer Exercise just as she 
 used to take her health exercise on the leather horse in the 
 dining-room at Beardmore for a quarter of an hour before 
 breakfast. 
 
THE LAST DITCH 117 
 
 I can't pray. I don't know how it is, but I feel numb, 
 and as if it wasn't Gtod's business to meddle, and rather 
 indecent of any one to ask Him to. He doesn't interfere 
 when animals fight, but lets stags buffet each other until 
 their horns interlock and they die in agony. Perhaps that 
 is what is going to happen ! 
 
 I have to go by myself to feed the swans now — or rather 
 the one swan, for its mate has died. Neglect, I suppose, 
 in these stirring times. Not my fault, for once 1 
 
 I go pretty often. The thought of the swan, lonely and 
 proud, dipping its yellow beak, preening its useless white 
 wings, swimming aimlessly hither and thither on the glassy 
 pool, gets on my nerves until I go and succour it. It once 
 was cherished by all the Meinie, and now there is only Poor 
 Jehane du Castel Beau who feeds it, and she will not do it 
 for long. , . . We shall leave this place .... 
 
 Meantime I wander out along the straight white road 
 until I see it looming like a ghost, a mile in front of me. 
 It is like a silvery eidolon on the brown background of 
 the mere. Its long neck sways spiritlessly as I approach. 
 Though it isn't like a dog, whom one is sure actually cares 
 to see one, still I fancy the creature knows me, and is gra- 
 ciously, morbidly, iaterested to survey me with its cold glassy 
 eye set in yellow. . . . 
 
 Sometimes on Sundays, when I am with the swan, the 
 hymn from the little conventicle near by pours out in a self- 
 satisfied drone, raucous and soothing, as if nothing mattered 
 any more in this topsy-turvy world except ancient custom 
 and habit. . . . And there is the boat too, that we used to sit 
 and read in. It wants a coat of paint to bring it up to the 
 standard of the poem, and I try to think that I am afraid 
 that if I look too closely I shall see " a slain man's stiffened 
 feet. . . ." 
 
 I suppose you will like me to turn from these sick fancies 
 to something more healthy and actual. The affair of Anatole 
 is as dramatic as a transpontine melodrama ! I take it for 
 granted Mother will have told you all the medical details of 
 Papa's seizure, which luckily does not turn out to be as 
 serious as we at first feared. It was, I believe, half of it 
 rage at discovering that Mother had been disobeying his 
 orders. Papa does insist, in the last resort, on being master 
 in his own house. Mother's way is not his way, though she 
 
118 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 is determined to get it, and is usually quite good at circum- 
 venting him. 
 
 But this time she was caught. She had not taken into 
 account the fact that the country can't afford to harbour 
 clever spies because they happen to be clever cooks as 
 well. I personally would rather have lived on bread and 
 water than keep a traitor about me, but I wasn't con- 
 sulted. I only knew that for reasons of her own Mother 
 was defying Papa's orders, as many a time before. I dare 
 say I profited, indirectly. I am greedy, and Anatole's 
 cuisine appealed to me, and I have no doubt Mother was all 
 the time thinking of that, for she doesn't care in the least 
 what she eats. But she is always so anxious to run with 
 the hare and hunt with the hounds that now and then she 
 comes to grief and gets no thanks either. Ainsi va le 
 tnonde ! 
 
 Apart from the damage to Papa, I don't suppose there 
 has been much harm done. Anatole wouldn't have been 
 able to do much with us. What could he glean from the read- 
 ing of the correspondence and listening at doors to the talk 
 of an old diplomatic man, long years out of his " shop," and 
 an indiscreet middle-aged lady who was never trusted with 
 state secrets, at the best of times ? 
 
 I sometimes wonder if the well-known fact that Sir James 
 Molendinar (Mother's great pal before Audely) is Usa's god- 
 father and Papa's crony, and has a house at Hayward's Heath 
 where all the Ministers come for golf as a relief from their 
 labours, was what influenced Anatole to try to enter our 
 service, for certainly he did try, although Mother imagines 
 that she simply sneaked a good cook from De Crawhez. 
 Perhaps Anatole engineered it all, practising on one of 
 Mother's well-known weaknesses. He certainly put himself 
 in our way and paid me compliments about my greediness 
 which he adored, and actually flirted with Mother, if you 
 can imagme it, in a subtle and properly humble way. He 
 made great friends with Berrymore, so she tells me now, and 
 created a pSdi de lievre with his own hands which he got her 
 to convey to la charmante Miladi Anglaise as a testimony of 
 his powers and his devotion. 
 
 It all comes back to me. . . . Also Mother's reputation, 
 which Berrymore doubtless spread abroad to give herself 
 consequence, of being easy with servants and allowing them 
 all their liberty so long as they were there when she wanted 
 
THE LAST DITCH 119 
 
 and did their service properly. And he made Mother get 
 rid of all the footmen ! 
 
 Papa and Sir James must have annoyed him with their 
 secret conclaves in the morning-room behind the hall, with 
 the blinds down and the lights turned up, while they os- 
 tensibly played bridge from morn till eve. Audely says he 
 gave Sir James the tip to do it. From the very beginning 
 Audely has had his suspicions, but like every one else regarded 
 the matter as of no importance so long as we were on friendly 
 terms with the Continental powers. 
 
 One used to speak loosely of any rather louche person as a 
 " German spy," and not really mean it. One of Audely's 
 vices is omniscience. He would have liked to get us all to 
 believe that it was he who had put the authorities on to 
 Anatole, but we all know it was Effrosyne, Lily St. Just's 
 Greek maid, who told on Anatole to pay him out for getting 
 his wife to join him here. I suppose it did not occur to 
 Effrosyne that Anatole might desire merely a confederate 
 for the furtherance of his political plans. I have no doubt 
 he was using Effrosyne as well ; a jealous woman can always 
 be worked through her passions, and a good servant of his 
 coimtry, as Anatole undoubtedly was, would sacrifice Love 
 to business any day. 
 
 I and Effel have been looking all over this house for a 
 wireless installation. Anatole might easily have managed 
 it. He was never interfered with, and was always going 
 into Edinburgh or Peebles for the day and night, and could 
 have secured the plant for it. But as to setting it up himself, 
 I don't fancy he is expert with his hands, which I have 
 noticed are small, rather fat, and boneless — ^the hands of 
 an artist. He was an artist, and I am sure was one to the 
 very end. 
 
 I regret immensely that I happened to be in the garden, 
 talking social inanities to Sir James — one would think he was 
 interested in keeping me there, for as a rule he never bothers 
 to talk to me, so that I detest him — ^while the tragedy of 
 Anatole was being played. I am dreadfully vexed, for all I 
 can get now is Mother's garbled account of the scene. She 
 could only think of the coming fuss with Papa, and was not 
 taking in the tableau at all. 
 
 But it was impressive : trust Anatole for that ! From what 
 I hear I can reconstruct it for myself, to a certain extent, 
 and I will set it down for you. 
 
120 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 I see OUT whilom cook standing, dark, dignified, and 
 sinister, like a black Christ, between two women, his wife 
 and the woman he loved. They say that his magnificent 
 eyes remained absolutely fixed in their stare ; never released 
 those of the impassive devil who had ruined him. And 
 I see on his other side the lumpish figure of the Grerman 
 woman he had married, laying on him, with equal intent- 
 ness, her faded blue ones, adoring him guand mime 1 And 
 Effrosyne, who has given him up to death, probably adores 
 him too in her own savage way. She would, as I do, 
 admire his bravery, even though he was caught trying to 
 run away in order to save himself and go on fighting for 
 his country. That is what I can't get any of them here 
 to realize, that a spy is a soldier, brave, and braver than 
 any other soldier, since in his case detection means certain 
 and ignominious death. 
 
 The wife-creature was quite stupidly resigned I hear, after 
 the first shock, and willing to stop on here if it could have 
 been arranged. . . . She is not interesting. Effrosyne is. I 
 meant to get a long talk with her before she went back to 
 town with Lily, who wouldn't be parted from her for the 
 world, no matter what crime she had committed. I hear, 
 if she had stayed, the other servants intended to put her 
 into Coventry for what she did do, although they now pre- 
 tend they detested Anatole ! The soul of a servant ! What 
 a welter ! 
 
 I did get hold of Effrosyne for a moment while she was 
 folding up one of Lily's nightgowns — ^what there was of it. 
 The poor girl seemed to be catching clouds, and trying to pin 
 them down. I asked her bluntly, as I fancied she would 
 like, if she thought Anatole would be shot ! She answered 
 curtly, " Ca m'est igal," and added in part English that he 
 had " behave like a sale cochon." I admired her concise 
 brutality. 
 
 The net outcome of all this tragedy is, that we have no 
 cook. Mother is half distracted. It is all nonsense, for 
 Papa can eat nothing but slops, and old Maggie can do what 
 he wants. The (Jeorge Lysons offer to take in Usa, and 
 she can walk in to Lochroyan every day and send us a bulle- 
 tin. For we are to go back to town on Tuesday, and return 
 on Friday with the cook Mother fondly hopes to procure. I 
 shall not come back, if I once get home again. I could go 
 to the Leahys. . . . 
 
THE LAST DITCH 121 
 
 We went up yesterday. Travelling, let me tell you, is 
 getting most inconvenient. We had to get to the little 
 station at Kirkmichael quite early, walking in, instead of, 
 as usual, motoring to Berwick. The alternative was to sit 
 on top of our luggage on the lorry. At Kirkmichael we had 
 to take a little slow drawling train that stopped at all the 
 stations and took up mild black women with bundles, and 
 discontented-looking farmers, as far as I could make out. 
 Nobody like ourselves. 
 
 At Berwick the papers had come in and the placards were 
 full of shrieks. The ultimatum to Germany was to expire 
 at midnight — eleven o'clock, to be precise. 
 
 There was the greatest excitement I 
 
 It made every hour of that day, winding to an end, the 
 minutes as it were ticked off to the grunt of the sleepers as 
 we ambled along to the heart of affairs, memorable — a piece 
 of existence one was proud to live through. At least that 
 is how I felt. Mother was fussy as usual, and insisted on 
 our eating sandwiches in the train as usual, a thing Audely 
 and I both hate, but have to give in to. Audely sat like a 
 self-satisfied sphinx all the way up except at the changes, 
 when Mother, as usual, made him useful. 
 
 Then he did his work, looking after the luggage, tipping 
 porters, getting us coffee, in the same dreamy way, with a 
 cigarette between his lips as if he didn't know it was there. 
 How Audely ever manages travelling, how he ever pulls 
 anything off or gets anything through, puzzles me, although 
 Mother, who knows her Audely au fond, reposes on his effi- 
 ciency like a bird on the breast of a halcyon calm, and says 
 that he has never, so far, failed her. 
 
 I was thankful that I didn't have to sit on a soldier's knee 
 and take another on mine, which is what had befallen Rowley 
 Deane on his journey South, the day before. (He was there 
 all through that row. We forgot him, and he took no notice 
 of it.) 
 
 One feels rather greedy sitting in comfort, so Mother ob- 
 served — she has such a kind heart — while the men who were 
 gomg to fight for us, and perhaps going to be killed, should 
 have to sit three deep on narrow seats, with nowhere to put 
 their legs. Audely remarked that they took it out in having 
 all the windows shut, which they adore. Then Mother said 
 they had to do that to prevent themselves from falling out 
 of the train. And they argued 1 . . . 
 
122 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 We got to King's Cross about five, and Audely put us into 
 a cab with an air of forwarding us to our destination, and 
 went to Arlington Street to get his letters. The lady in 
 Madrid must be writing every day. ... I suppose he will go 
 to her. And Mother will be hugely annoyed. . . . 
 
 In half an hour he came along to Park Crescent and asked 
 us for a bed, or at any rate a dinner. His valet, that he has 
 had for twenty years, has gone — enlisted, Audely charitably 
 supposes, though, as Mother remarked, there are other reasons 
 for servants running away ! Audely said that he hadn't 
 thought of looking to see if anything was missing, but he 
 was hungry, and there didn't seem to be a soul in the place 
 to boil him an egg, even, and that would have been absurd 
 anyhow, for he Imew we had supplies and he was quite equal 
 to cookhig and serving up a five-course dinner if put to it. 
 
 I knew by Mother's face, that Audely never looks at, that 
 she was disappointed. There wasn't any dinner here, either. 
 What Mother, knowing Audely was coming back for us, had 
 hoped, and intended all along, was that the useful creature 
 should take us to dinner at the Carlton Grill. She tried her 
 best to get Audely to do this, even at the last minute, saying 
 that what she wanted was a boiled custard. She knows that 
 that very English concoction is out of Audely's range. . . . 
 But Audely can be mulish if he likes, and with a charming 
 grace set his will against hers. 
 
 He sat down, stretched his legs, lit a cigarette, and said 
 that if there were eggs in the house, or eggs could be pro- 
 cured, he could make her her custard. She couldn't object 
 any more ; Audely hadn't got the restaurant itch to-night, 
 as she had. For me, I thought it would be far more fun to 
 stay at home and have a picnic dinner than go to the Carlton, 
 where one has been so often as to feel almost as if it were 
 home. And I believe there are people to whom a restaurant 
 dinner is an event and acts as a fillip 1 
 
 Our basement is a terra incognita for me. I don't believe 
 I have ever been in it. Nor, I fancy, has Mother, very often. 
 
 Down we went, Audely and I. We got hold of the care- 
 taker, one of Mother's charities, an old pensioner past her 
 work, but who has been about the place for years, and made 
 her tell us where things are kept. And while Audely was 
 chaffing her and listening to " her story "—he always does ; 
 it propitiates people and makes them look after him better; 
 in her case, produce clean saucepans — I wandered about in 
 
THE LAST DITCH 123 
 
 the catacombs, the Hades where I begin to perceive such 
 quantities of our fellow creatures are doomed to spend their 
 shapeless, dreary, inartistic lives. No wonder the women 
 clamour for " days out," and lots of them; no wonder Anatole 
 sandwiched spying into his day's work, that he might not die 
 of decay and inanition ! I noticed the pantry, where he slept 
 — in a little cell off it, of course — so as to take care of the 
 plate. Do you know I find I had always thought of " plate " 
 as china, cups and saucers, and so on, and wondered why 
 butlers needed to sleep on top of the dinner service so as to 
 guard it with their bodies against thieves. 
 
 Well, our plate was intact ; not a spoon missing ! Anatole 
 had higher matters to attend to. The German Government 
 didn't need our awful epergnes and wine-coolers and cake- 
 baskets. I don't wonder. And I insist on believing, what- 
 ever Audely may say, that Anatole, who served us with one 
 hand and betrayed us with another, is cold and stiff by now, 
 and that the Greek girl sees him in her dreams. Mrs. 
 Huggins — ^that is her interesting name 1 so Audely discovered 
 — said that there were a lot of locked boxes — ^what she 
 called " attash cases " — ^under his bed, of which the police 
 at once took possession when they searched the basement 
 the other day. She told Audely that " it come all over her 
 suddenly when the men come asking for Mr. Bamberger's 
 papers." 
 
 She knew that was his real name, and supposed we knew. 
 She did like him onst ; she didn't like him now — Ho, no 1 
 The echo of the servant crowd at Lochroyan ! 
 
 She is, as usual, wise after the event. She always thought 
 there was something wrong about 'im. He so often stayed 
 out all night ; and if not all night, all day, and came home, 
 bringing in queer sorts of men, and then they stayed shut up 
 for hours in his little study. He had a study, with an ex- 
 quisite little gas-stove in it on which he " finished " sauces. 
 Mother spoiled him, so that no one ever dared to speak of 
 his goings-on to her. She wouldn't have listened to a thing 
 against him. The other servants were all jealous, and said 
 that if we chose to trust a foreigner we must just take our 
 chances. 
 
 Audely sent her out for a couple of chickens, and he would 
 do them d la Magyar, if there was some Nepaul pepper in 
 the house, which there was. And the Huggins had to run 
 and get cream at the dairy round the comer. You should 
 
124 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 have seen her eyes when he talked of a gill of cream and a 
 teaspoonf ul of pepper to each chicken 1 And Mother was to 
 have her boiled custard. I banked on the Magyar Chicken. 
 Then he sent me to rummage for one of Papa's nightshirts 
 to put over him to keep his clothes clean. I found him one — 
 of mine ! 
 
 In it Audely looked extremely odd, but so serious and 
 intent on his work that one couldn't laugh at him. He had 
 completely subjugated the " char," who went about eyeing 
 him as if he was a good but jealous God who might strike 
 her dead with amazement at any moment if he were annoyed, 
 or if she handed him a dirty saucepan. Poor soul, in the 
 course of chaperoning us two she listened to des choses A 
 faire frimir, which passed over this poor slave of the gas-ring 
 as unheeded as if they had been pronounced in another 
 tongue. 
 
 Laura, you know the game of Analogies. One thing 
 suggests another and each person carries the idea on a stage 
 till at the end you come to something so different that you 
 wonder how you got there. From Boiling-over to Love 1 
 That is where Audely and I got to. Love is, more or less, 
 Audely's forbidden subject. I know why : because he is 
 incapable of it, in spite of the lady in Madrid. 
 
 " Love ! Love ! Love ! 0, withering might! " Do 
 you know those lines, so simple, stupid, and inartistic, fill 
 me with a kind of passionate awe. Poetry has, I believe, 
 nothing to do with the intellect ; it is the mere collocation of 
 words, accidental, associative, instinctive, that has power to 
 stimulate emotion in the hearer. 
 
 I was mesmerized by the recurrent whirr of the metal 
 spoon scraping on the floor of the saucepan, and Audely's 
 patience exhibited in the slow constant action. And perhaps 
 the gleam of the big brass surfaces of the copper vessels hung 
 on the wall over our heads. ... 
 
 We were alone in that vast cavernous kitchen. Ihe 
 " char " was clattering pots and pans fearfully in the back 
 kitchen, afraid for her life of disturbing Sir Audely and Lady 
 Venice at their mysterious incantations. 
 
 For every time Audely took the lid off his pan or shook 
 it there was a wild burst of frizzling, as if all the devils m 
 Hell, provoked by him, were shouting and their_ victims 
 protesting ! ... Yet he was only makmg Mother's innocent 
 
THE LAST DITCH 125 
 
 custard according to promise. Our eyes were fixed on the 
 yellow surface where, he explained to me, the first bubble 
 would signify " coming to the boil," and then curdling, 
 whatever that is. The oncoming of boiling is very subtle, 
 and he just had to look out and remove the pan before it 
 happened. Quite an amusing game ! 
 
 Several times he or I saw the danger coming and just 
 lifted the pan off in time. . . . 
 
 I thought it would be rather fun to spoil that custard, as 
 it certainly would be, if I began to talk about subjects that 
 bored him, such as Love 1 
 
 So presently I suggested quietly that the principle of 
 arrested culmination that he was illustrating by the with- 
 drawal of the pan might be applied to the support of a pas- 
 sion that it was sought to keep alive. By baulking it of its 
 "earthly close," hindering it of absolute fulfilment, one might, 
 so to speak, enable it to flourish indefinitely. In that case, 
 I suggested, Love might be persuaded not to "leave the well 
 built nest," but go on adding sticks and mud ad infinitum. 
 
 " Yes," said Audely, again baulking the custard of its 
 supreme moment ; " it there is such a thing, which I very 
 much doubt." He put the saucepan over the flame again. 
 " And there's only one person in this house who has a right 
 to talk of passion, and she isn't in it 1 " 
 
 " You don't mean Ilsa ? " I cried. 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 " She's the only one of you who comes within a hundred 
 miles of being capable of it." 
 
 I said — rather naughtily, I confess — "How about Mother? " 
 
 " Your dear mother," Audely said sturdily, " is capable 
 of any noble emotion." 
 
 " Passion included ! " said I. The custard had bubbles 
 on it ! " Passion, since she has had three children." 
 
 Audely removed his pan in good time with one hand, and 
 patted my shoulder kindly with the other, saying, " Let us 
 call it Love, if you don't mind. More decent. Look here, 
 do you really want to know what I think about the matter ? " 
 
 He didn't wait for me to say yes, but began quite the 
 longest speech I have heard from Audely. I have remem- 
 bered it, for it interested me. 
 
 " Because," he said, " I don't myself believe in any such 
 primitive element. There is a certain aggregate of moods, 
 emotions, and vital interests that people have agreed to call 
 
126 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 Passion with a capital P. . . . But I consider that the strange 
 vague leanings and yearnings of one set of cells for another 
 set of cells, bound up in a different epidermis, can't properly 
 be spoken of as a whole. The emotional commodity at any 
 one person's disposal is scattered, fluid, broken up into such 
 infinitely various expressions of the individual ego I . . . You 
 women will grasp at Love as a whole : you go Nap on it, 
 setting about to light a permanently environing, lapping, 
 licking flame, that if you go on long enough reaches out to 
 its objective and bums it up ! " 
 
 " The opposite of the Phoenix, then," I said, but Audely 
 didn't like being interrupted. I am sure that his next speech 
 was an attempt to punish me by reducing all poetry, all love, 
 to the very dreariest materialism. His voice that pleased 
 me so at first, got on my nerves. . . . 
 
 " You have been in a sculptor's studio ? " he asked. 
 " Have you observed that when they begin a statue they 
 bend a piece of wire into, roughly, the form of a backbone, 
 and then proceed to dab clay on in lumps, until it is covered, 
 like the vertebral column, with muscles ? Well, in my 
 opinion the reproductive instinct is the real backbone of 
 passion, that great unnecessary fetish of women 1 " . . . 
 
 I was silent. I hated the phrase " reproductive instinct," 
 as old Audely knew very well, for he said, shrugging his 
 shoulders : 
 
 " You would have it, my dear I You should not make 
 me talk seriously. Yes, there's not a doubt of it in my 
 mind. Emotion is only the jam that makes the pill of one 
 at least of Nature's most dreary processes go down." 
 
 " Sometimes," I said, " don't you get the jam without 
 the process?" and he answered, without interest: "Oh 
 yes. Nature isn't particular. There's a lot of mere camou- 
 flage — ^window-dressing about. ..." ■,„•.,. 
 
 He took off the custard, which had thickened all nght 
 without curdling, and busied himself with making the salad, 
 talking all the while : „. . , -^.u 
 
 " I fell in love— what you would call fallmg m love— with 
 a woman I had lived beside for a whole year, because I saw 
 her once standmg at a raUway station rather forlorn, with 
 her feet planted together, like a donkey's, set a little back 
 uSder an m-cut short skirt. She looked helpless and brave 
 at the same time, if you understand. She was somebody s 
 bard wo?ked secreta^. But I didn't take her. though I 
 
THE LAST DITCH 127 
 
 wrote her love letters of sorts. . . . That little affair, if I had 
 gone on, so as to make her and myself miserable, would have 
 been Love, as you understand it : just a drifting of emotional 
 excess in one particular direction ... an eddy ... a pool. ..." 
 I believe he had forgotten me. He went on talking, and 
 I let him. I had a feeling — ^nay, I knew — that he would never 
 talk to me in this particular way again. 
 
 " I'm not saying that in some instances an affair may 
 not represent the vortex, the swirl in a coffee cup, which once 
 set going, as some scientists say, may become perpetual 
 motion. And human cunning could give it practical dura- 
 tion. . . ." 
 
 He asked me if I remembered an Eastern trick he had 
 showed me when I was a child — the coin spinning in the 
 bowl. He said he had forgotten how to do it now. I did 
 remember the awe I had experienced in seeing him spin a 
 penny in one of the bedroom basins at Beardmore after he 
 had come back from the East. He had said it was merely 
 a matter of balance, and that if the right angle was found and 
 retained, the penny might go on careering round the edge 
 of the bowl for ever. He reminded me that I had exclaimed : 
 " Perhaps Glod the Father started us like that 1 " 
 Then he took off his nightgown-apron and went to the 
 sink and washed his hands like a lamb at Mrs. Huggins' in- 
 vitation. While he was doing it, he murmured apologetic- 
 ally to me : 
 
 " Still, I have an idea that the kingdoms of the Earth and 
 all the fruits thereofwill be to the man or woman who is able 
 to throw aside the present standard of hopeless impractica- 
 bility — ^that notion of raw, preposterous, elemental Love, that 
 rides most of us. I have. Well, run upstairs now " — (As 
 if I ever run !) — " and lay the cloth. I hear your Mother 
 shouting for her custard." 
 
 We were both on the kitchen stairs by the time when I 
 fovmd something to say, and said it pertly, for Audely had 
 managed to make me feel somehow that I should prefer 
 even the cold white morals of the Moon to the desiccated 
 reasonable emotions of the society he so amiably fore 
 shadowed for us all. 
 I turned my long neck back to him on the stairs. 
 " Just a business detail, Audely 1 " I said. " Don't you 
 suppose that some day we women will be able to evolve a 
 substitute for the raw stuff of passion we want, but can't get 
 
128 THJfi LAST DITCH 
 
 in your dreadftil world 1 Some neat, colourable imitation 
 that will do as well, but that you won't like 1 And we will 
 call it Synthetic Love, shall we ? " 
 
 " That's it 1 " Audely said, giving me a kind push as 
 we got on to the top step, and back into the full electric 
 light, " Don't let us leave all the useful discoveries to the 
 Germans 1 " 
 
 Mrs. Huggins had hobbled upstairs while we were arguing 
 about Love and laid the cloth in the morning room, where 
 Mother was waiting. The dining-room is all draped in cloths, 
 even the gilt candelabra, and looks very impressive, like an 
 engraving by Piranesi. Mother was amused at her protegee's 
 wit. For Mrs. Huggins set the chicken on the table, say- 
 ing, with intention, she hadn't troubled to bring the cruet, 
 for she expected it was 'ot enough already, by the smell, for 
 she had sneezed three times coming upstairs with it. 
 
 It was quite an adventure 1 Audely admitted, as soon as 
 we could speak and had cooled our mouths with water : 
 
 " I put too much, perhaps. Venice was confusing me. 
 Your daughter and I, Beaty, have been having a No-Heart 
 to No-Heart talk." 
 
 " AudeJy," I said, " is a Jesuit, inventing scientific excuses 
 to justify man's practice of taking short views, while woman 
 is more or less forced to take long ones." 
 
 " I don't know what you mean," Mother said, naturally 
 enough. " But I wonder why neither of you takes custard ? 
 It is very refreshing after the delicious chicken." 
 
 I tried to explain what I had meant, for Audely's benefit. 
 
 " That's the real point at issue between the sexes. The 
 difference between short views and long ones. She must 
 cling— fee need not stay. Isn't that it, Audely ? " 
 
 He could not answer. Mother enjoyed her custard, and 
 every one was content except Mrs. Huggins, who preferred 
 dry bread to making her supper off the remains of the Hell 
 Chicken. 
 
 To explain to you a little what follows, I must tell you 
 that Audely and I, with a farthing dip, made an excursion 
 to the cellar, to fetch up a couple of bottles of white wme 
 that came a year ago in a cask from Assmanshausen, and 
 that the man says isn't paid for. We bottled it ourselves— 
 at least Audely did, to please Mother, who stood over him. 
 
THE LAST DITCH 129 
 
 holding a wooden mallet to knock the corks in with. I never 
 take wine, but to-night Audely made me, to celebrate the 
 Declaration of War with Germany that was due within a 
 few hours, unless they got out of Belgium. 
 
 We had heard that it was to be announced from the various 
 Town Halls. I meant to go out to hear it at one of them, 
 but I was so sleepy with the wine and hanging over the hot 
 stove that I had to say Good-night to Mother and Audely and 
 go to bed. They had made me up a shakedown for the night 
 in Mother's room, which I hated. I was very cross with 
 Audely for insisting on stopping all night at Park Crescent 
 and taking the room that I was going to have. Papa's dressing- 
 room, just across the corridor from Mother's, which is in the 
 front of the house overlooking the Park. 
 
 I was awakened from my first sleep by shouting. I opened 
 my eyes and saw Mother imdressing on tip-toe not to wake 
 me, I am glad I woke in time to catch it — it was a sound 
 like wild beasts roaring. The British lion, thirstiag for his 
 meat ! ... It signified the People's satisfaction at the news 
 of the declaration of hostilities which had just been made 
 them in the good old mediaeval fashion, from the steps of 
 the Town Hall. 
 
 Audely, who had run out and seen the crowd, said they 
 seemed delighted at the idea of what they think is going to 
 be a " tidy scrap," but are confident won't last more than 
 a year at the most, possibly not more than a few months. 
 Audely himself, Mother says, doesn't think it will go on over 
 six. But he was very much down on the mob cheering, as 
 it were, the announcement of a lively programme made by a 
 man in evening dress, standing in front of the curtain at a 
 transpontine theatre. Later, he predicts, we shall demon- 
 strate our national inclination to bad form, as we did in the 
 Boer War, by startling headlines. It will be " Big New 
 
 Battle near the " near whatever river or sea or plain they 
 
 are fighting on. " Tragedy off the Thames I " " Thrilling 
 naval scrap at Rosyth ! " and so on. . . . 
 
 The noise died down, the Jingoes had all gone home to 
 bed, pleased with themselves and their Government. Mother 
 went on confiding to me her cheerful supposition that it 
 would only be a short brush and then over, a sort of letting 
 blood for the good of the country's stamina. She thinks it 
 will do Belle-Belle and his like a lot of good to be made to 
 
 9 
 
130 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 hustle, and test their physical powers, so impaired by a life 
 of ease, and generally look to the joints of their armour. 
 And then, thinks she, when they have all got themselves 
 up to the last pitch of efl&ciency, everything will be arranged, 
 the parties squared, and the order given to send them all 
 home again. She thinks she knows all about it, because she 
 is an ex-Ambassadress, and wars, to her thinking, are made 
 and fojught out in Chancelleries. 
 
 She continued giving me her views, i.e. Audely's, watered 
 down with her own fears and domesticities, even after she 
 had got into bed and turned out the light. I rather wanted 
 to know what Audely thought of the situation, and I listened, 
 lying in Anatole's little lowly cot beside her. What was 
 more or less disturbing her was the dread of invasion. The 
 whole of the littoral, she says — meaning the whole of the East 
 Coast — lies practically open to attack. If the Germans were 
 to boldly adventure their fleet of flat-bottomed boats — see 
 The Riddle of the Sands, by a friend of Papa's — ^there would 
 be a very fair chance of a successful landing and an absolutely 
 straight drive on London. . . . 
 
 We are a long way from the East End, which would of 
 course suffer the first brunt of the attack, but it was this sort 
 of talk, as Mother slowly drifted off to sleep with the words 
 still on her mouth, that seemed to me so sinister. I began 
 to picture the advance corps of a battalion of German 
 soldiers riding victoriously up the street, being sniped at 
 from the roofs of all the clubs in Pall Mall — except perhaps 
 the Athenseum ! — and magnanimously taking no notice. 
 There is really something fascinating in the idea of the Mailed 
 Fist in the "Velvet Glove, casqued, cuirassed, encased in 
 golden armour shining in the autumn sun, riding up one 
 of our calm grave main streets. It would be like that, I 
 imagine, if ever they did get here— a Progress, for all the 
 vulgar tussling would have been got over in the Eastern 
 approach to London. They would be victors by the time 
 they got to the Strand and Pall Mall. . . . 
 
 Mother stopped talking and dropped oft, but I got more 
 and more interested in the works of my own imagination, and 
 took to picturing the Kaiser— whom I have never seen, 
 though he has dined in this house, and his portrait framed 
 m silver hangs on the way upstairs, and probably inspired my 
 thoughts— riding at the head of his army, accompanied by 
 his favourite Count Le Loftel, the man I used to take pleasure 
 
THE LAST DITCH 181 
 
 in insulting at Nauheim. This time it would not be a ques- 
 tion of my little ladylike pin -pricks — ^I should have no more 
 heart to insult him. I should just have to bow my head 
 proudly, and acknowledge defeat. . . . 
 
 Or the Coimt might happen to be billeted on us. Should 
 I have to get up and poignard him in the night ? No ; I 
 should dissemble and use all my charms and prestige to 
 gain concessions for my country. I should appeal to his 
 sentimental recollections, the flower he sent me, that I have 
 still — if Mother hasn't sneaked it. For you know she makes 
 domicUiary visits. 
 
 She has put away the photograph signed " Willy Hohen- 
 zoUern." He gave it us the year after he had our yacht. I 
 rather wonder at her hiding the portrait, for from an ignoble 
 save-your-skin point of view it might be as well to leave it 
 out. To do Mother justice, she would never think of that, 
 but sink or swim with the rest of Park Crescent, if the Huns 
 ever occupy London and put us to fire and sword. 
 
 And while I was exonerating her from any base motives 
 of sauve qui peut, she was talking away in her sleep, exhibit- 
 ing a shocking practical want of civism, i.e. the intention of 
 collaring supplies. She was murmuring : 
 
 " I don't suppose a side of bacon will be too much to get ! " 
 
 I know what she is going to do. She did it, I am told, 
 during the Boer War, and during the Fashoda time when 
 there was a danger of war with France, and filled the whole 
 upper storey with tinned meats which the family had to eat 
 up and was grumbling over, long after peace was declared. 
 And the moment this " tiresome, unfair " moratorium is 
 over, she is going to realize her stocks and shares, hoard 
 sovereigns, and store sacks of gold in the basement. Mother 
 doesn't trust banks. And Ilsa is to bring back wine and 
 linen and oil and silk stockings from abroad, if she is mad 
 enough to go. . . . All my people are mad in their separate 
 ways. Ilsa comes South to-morrow, or next day, en route 
 for the Continent, which indeed it is her custom to visit for 
 a month in the autumn regularly. She swears she will go 
 naked rather than be clothed anywhere else than in Paris. 
 The Galerie Lafayette calls — " one last clear call " for Ilsa 
 — and she will obey her pilot. . . . 
 
 Lying there, in the dark stillness— Mother was snoring 
 very gently — I had a sort of wave of clarity: a blinding 
 intuition about Ilsa flashed on my mind. I wish to put it 
 
132 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 on record, and it is fairly safe and no betrayal of Ilsa to tell 
 it to you, who cannot put your oar in under a fortnight or a 
 month. I don't believe that my sister is going to run herself 
 into discomfort, and perhaps danger, for the sake of clothes. 
 It isn't the Galerie Lafayette that calls : it is a man 1 
 
 There is a man in Paris attached to Quenford's staff, who 
 was with us at Lochroyan this year. He and Ilsa never 
 spoke to each other ; but then, he was never known to speak 
 to any one, except presumably his valet. I dare say I never 
 mentioned him to you ; he was so utterly negligible. But 
 quite a good sort — ^Archie Dunkeron, the Master of Cramont. 
 . . . Now I come to think of it, he was always in the room 
 where Ilsa was, and his heavy handsome face always turned 
 her way. And Ilsa never presumed on it, never took liberties 
 with him, or asked him to fetch and carry for her ; never 
 chaffed him or teased him in any way. (That she couldn't 
 have done, for he is a very Scotch Scotchman 1) But she 
 made a difference, and when a lazy, arrogant person like 
 Ilsa makes even a difference, it may mean a great deal. I 
 know Archie Dunkeron is in Paris ; he is indispensable to 
 Cousin Alfred. I don't exactly know in what capacity; 
 nobody does ; but it is obvious that in delicate missions and 
 secret deals the Master's impenetrable cast of countenance 
 and badly hung tongue would be most useful. . , , 
 
 I switched off that set of ideas and tried to go to sleep, 
 but I could not. The thought of my dear Ilsa and the dan- 
 gers she was about to run for the sake of her love obsessed 
 me, and what Mother had been telling me about the vulnera- 
 bility of the East Coast bothered me too, although I was not 
 actually afraid. ... It was just excitement. Ilsa was going 
 out to seek Romance, and Romance was perhaps coming to 
 me . . . here ... in my Bower, where I had just made up my 
 mind to live on in a shameful smug safety. . . . 
 
 I got up and sat at the window, which I ventured to open 
 wide now that Mother had gone to sleep. 
 
 Regent's Park is rather a vulgar sort of place by daylight ; 
 not so romantic as Kensington Gardens near where we once 
 lived, up in what they call the Dukeries. Holland Park was 
 full of owls and they shouted all night. White ones. I 
 dare say there are owls in the Regent's Park too ; at any rate, 
 by night it is mysterious and beautiful enough. Those great 
 blue-black blots of sodden dust-drenched foliage, that merge 
 into the paler gloom of night at the edges 1 I imagine dirt 
 
THE LAST DITCH 188 
 
 makes them solid ; every leaf, by this time of year, coated 
 with grime. . . . 
 
 Our house is high, and I can see right over the tree tops 
 as far as Edgware Road and the chimneys of the Power 
 Station there, like a tall spire jutting out of the leaves. . . . 
 
 A strange thought came to me. Leaves, boughs, a sort of 
 panoply masking an advancing army ! Birnam Wood 
 coming to Dunsinane ! . . . You see how my sleepy mind 
 worked ! . . . 
 
 I assure you that presently those dusky clumps to me 
 were thick of men, that bore up the screen of foliage. . . . 
 And they moved 1 ... I was convinced I saw them move. . . . 
 It was only a fascinating play of thought, at first, that I 
 encouraged as hard as I could, for the fun of it — a sort of 
 voluptuous nightmare. . . . Then somehow I was caught in 
 my own springe : it became a menace, so impressively real 
 that I stiffened as I sat there at the window. I knew that 
 even if staying meant death, I could not have withdrawn. 
 I must see it out. . . . 
 
 The hard stone sill cut me through my nightgown, that 
 there was, as usual, a button oft. Berrymore is so careless. 
 I don't scold her enough. As a matter of fact I don't care 
 for smart "night rail." Ilsa and her cult of fascinating 
 " undies " had made me detest the sight of baby ribbon and 
 lace. As a protest, I have designed myself an ascetic sort 
 of nightgown of blue linen with no lace at all, only a wide 
 ribbon drawn through two large eyelet holes at the neck to 
 keep it together. . . . 
 
 I am telling you this to show that the pain and Berry- 
 more's lapse had taken my mind off Macbeth, and the wild 
 notion of a possible army of Germans concealed- under the 
 boskage and marching on Park Crescent. . . . But suddenly 
 — and now of course you will think I am only making copy, 
 and it may have been insects dying in their autumn milliards, 
 for though we had had a hot day it is cold of nights, and the 
 flies and daddy-long-legs lie about numb, and make some 
 sort of noise dying, perhaps. ... Or it was birds shifting on 
 the boughs of trees where they had gone to roost (I have seen 
 frightened pheasants crash right down off the branches in 
 Tinsack woods), or mice and rats and other rodents creeping 
 about in the undergrowth beneath the boughs — ^well, what- 
 ever it may have been, a distinct hum arose. It grew and 
 thickened into a low, dull, but quite perceptible roar, pierced 
 
184 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 by short sharp clear sounds like the noise pieces of china 
 make when they knock against each other in a cabinet. . . . 
 
 I believe it was the coupling and uncoupling of trains on 
 the District Railway which we sometimes hear very plainly 
 when the wind is in that direction. I forgot that now, and 
 any way, there didn't seem to be any wind at all. . . . And in 
 the growing swell there came another noise that I knew 
 quite well, connected with a certain urgency in my mind : 
 the sirens and hooters one hears and has to make good with 
 in London on New Year's Eve, instead of church bells, to 
 announce the stroke of midnight. It is all poor old London 
 can do to usher in the year of toil — using the same signal that 
 summons the workers from their few hours' sleep. Why 
 should it be used now — at half- past one in the morning ? . . . 
 
 Again and again it soimded ; closer and closer came the 
 warnings, now muffled, now sharp, now yearning, now im- 
 perative. . . . 
 
 All around me there began to be a dense wakefulness, a 
 sense of gloomy preparedness, that made me think of soldiers 
 that have been bivouacking, summoned by the call to arms, 
 stretching and yawning . . . blear-eyed, but alert. . . . 
 
 Do you know, my ears ached, as they used to do at the 
 telephone in the beginning, when one was too eager and 
 listened with too much attention. I was doing that now. 
 It was just like the poem of Childe Roland : 
 
 "And noise increasing like a bell. . . ." 
 
 For me all doubt was now at an end. Those sirens and 
 hooters were warnings. . . . The Germans were in London 1 
 
 I was as sure of it as if I had been personally warned. 
 
 I took my breast, with the thin red line all across it off 
 the bar, and left the window, holding my nightgown together 
 at the neck, for it had suddenly grown very cold. I felt 
 what hxmted animals feel : the need to choose whether I 
 would rush out into the open and take the chance of being 
 killed, or shelter in the depths of my cage which in the end 
 would be surrounded. . . . 
 
 I looked out again — ^and was more sure. . . . 
 
 Yes, the German hordes were even now hacking their way 
 through the devoted East End. A wave of obstinacy passed 
 over me that I wouldn't even wake Mother, sleeping away 
 so peacefully, to the knowledge of the horror a moment 
 sooner than she needed to be wakened, that I alone would 
 
THE LAST DITCH 185 
 
 watch and let come what would. Yes, I determined to be 
 killed at my post at the window looking out over the Regent's 
 Park ! 
 
 It was exactly like that the first time I was at Tinsack 
 after I was grown up — when my wretched Aunt Minna left 
 me alone m the Walled-up Drawing Room, just when the 
 December light was fading. That room in the lonely house 
 in the wolds of Yorkshire is haunted, you know, and it is 
 called the Walled-up Room because of it. Nobody could 
 sit in it, once ; and a hundred years ago they got the priest, 
 with bell, book, and candle, to lay the ghost in three of the 
 comers, which were forthwith bricked up with masonry. 
 And there the blunt corners are ! Aunt Minna had said, 
 coldly : 
 
 " I'll be back m ten minutes. Will you come with me 
 to see the puppy — or will you stay here ? " 
 
 She added maliciously : 
 
 " I warn you you'll hear noises. As soon as the sun goes 
 down they begin in this room ... the ghosts . . . stirring in 
 the comers. Jolly, isn't it ? It's what made me marry your 
 uncle, to have this house ! " 
 
 I said I would stop till she came back. I wasn't going 
 to be browbeaten by an American aimt. I sat down in the 
 middle of the room on a stool, embroidered, so the legend 
 says, in crewels, by Uncle Henry's great-great-great-grand- 
 mother, now a ghost in one of the corners, and repeated all 
 the battle cries I knew to give me courage. " Stand fast, 
 Craig Ellachie ! " and " Stick it, the Welsh ! " . . . 
 
 It was no use. The cracking began in one corner and 
 then broke out in the other, until all three were going at once. 
 My skin began to prickle. I sat on the middle of my stool 
 as if it was an island in a sea of terrors. Then I bolted. 
 And Aunt Minna was " real " mean about it. 
 
 I stood at the window now in Park Crescent, and the dark 
 room behind me was like a tomb. I left off holding back the 
 heavy curtains Mother insists on having in any room she 
 sleeps in. She says it is what keeps her young and vigorous, 
 and it is also the reason why I detest sleeping in the same 
 room with her. I let them go. They came to with a rush. 
 I ran helter-skelter past Mother. She seemed to me for the 
 moment like an old person whom I would have to nm back 
 for when the time came, and drag her to a place of safety. 
 And where I ran to in my bewilderment was Audely's room 
 
136 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 on the other side of the passage. He was the only man in 
 the house, and would have to be wakened I . . . 
 
 Audely's room was lighted up by the great electric stand- 
 ard in Albany Street. One could almost see to read by it. 
 Audely was stretched across, not along the bed in the or- 
 dinary manner. He was soimd asleep, with all his clothes on 
 except his coat. His shirt sleeve was rolled back right up 
 his forearm, which was very white. I noticed that. He had 
 evidently flung himself down on the bed as he was undressing, 
 and had been overcome with drowsiness. He is used to 
 sleeping casually, taking his rest where and while he can get 
 it. Half the time, he told me, when he is travelling, he hasn't 
 a bed at all, or hesitates to get into the one provided for him 
 in doubtful hotels and caravanserais. 
 
 I was possessed by the determination to awaken him, 
 for all our sakes — ^not mine especially. I pinched and cuffed 
 him. I took hold of him by the shoulder, getting my arm 
 round the curve as it it was a baby's. It wasn't the least 
 good. He would not wake, although I shouted in his ear a 
 hundred times : 
 
 " Audely, wake up J Audely, you must ! Audely, the 
 Germans are here ! " 
 
 When I found I couldn't make the slightest impression on 
 him, my zeal to do so, I can't understand why, died down. 
 
 I suppose because I got physically tired. One isn't used 
 to trying to pull six-foot-two out of bed. Mother used to 
 for fun, when he wouldn't get up for breakfast, pulling all 
 the clothes off him, but now he wasn't in the clothes to pull. 
 And at Beardmore she used to stick acid drops between his 
 sheets, and those of the other men visitors, too, so that they 
 couldn't manage to get into bed, even 1 What a long time 
 it seems since the days of apple-pie beds ! . . . 
 
 And I wasn't any more really frightened. I was coming 
 slowly out of the nightmare and seeing things the way one 
 does La the waking from a dream . . . bewildered. ... It was 
 Mother's war talk at dinner, worse than goose or lobster. I 
 knew in my heart of hearts that it was all mere hypothesis 
 about an invasion, but I still wanted Audely to wake, for 
 a few sensible words from him would clear my brain and 
 send me back to finish the night quietly in my own bed. 
 
 It maddened me to think that I coidd not get these few 
 words from this immovable Audely, sleeping away so arro- 
 gantly against my will I , , , 
 
THE LAST DITCH 137 
 
 The blind was drawn up and the windows open too, as 
 I should have had if I had been in this room. Then, I dare 
 say, I should have had a healthy sleep and not gone sleep- 
 walking. . . . But as it was I felt as if I couldn't simply go 
 back to that dull dark cavern again where Mother lay sleeping 
 in her adored stuffiness. It was so lovely and calm in 
 Audely's room. 
 
 The standard lamp outside lit it faintly, a still yellow 
 glare, less elfish and casual than moonlight. Peace de- 
 scended on me like balm. I have always had a notion that 
 the mere neighbourhood of a healthy creature asleep, even 
 a dog, is invigorating and bracing, in a queer physiological 
 way. I didn't want to leave Audely, my present mascot. . . • 
 
 I wandered all over the room, touching things, disturbing 
 them and altering their places, for no reason whatever, like 
 a magpie. I passed my hands over the papers spread all 
 over his dressing-table that he seemed to have no other use 
 for. Audely is always perfectly clean and well groomed, but 
 there is nothing dandified about him and his ways; and 
 though he has a valet he could do perfectly well without 
 him. . . . That dressing-table, treated like a writing-desk, 
 for instance ! ... It was simply covered with papers — 
 things, I suppose, he had turned out of his pocket pell-mell 
 before lying down, looking as if they had been carried about 
 for days. . . . 
 
 I was horrid. I leisurely looked at Audely's papers, and 
 my eye seemed to single out the one that mattered to me. 
 
 It was a typewritten sheet of paper, addressed to Sir 
 Audely Bar, Bart. 
 
 " You are requested to report to the Commanding Officer 
 Fifth Battalion, Norhamshire Regiment, on the 18th, 8.15, 
 at Fordingbridge." 
 
 I turned round and saw Audely was awake, and one could 
 not tell for how long he had been awake. His eyes were 
 wide open, and he was staring at me in a way that made me 
 feel how mean I was. His gaze was so humiliating, that to 
 justify myself for coming into his room and reading his 
 private papers I seized upon the old excuse of terror at the 
 German Invasion, which seemed so infinitely unimportant, 
 now. . . . 
 
 " Oh, Audely, I was so frightened ... and I simply could 
 not get you to wake I " 
 
188 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 Audely then was most awfuUy good to me. I quite loved 
 him for it. He would have had every right to turn me out 
 of his room as a low sort of spy, but he didn't scorn and abuse 
 me, but just pulled himself up and sat on the edge of the bed, 
 and held out his arms to me as if I were a little girl afraid of 
 the dark who wanted comforting. I had just hit upon his 
 role in life. . . . 
 
 He asked me no questions, only repeated, as you do to a 
 child, " Was it frightened, was it frightened, then, a poor 
 little thing ? " 
 
 To a great tall weedy grown-up woman like me it was 
 slightly ridiculous, but the best thing he could do. He 
 wouldn't admit to being upset by a girl walking into his 
 bedroom in the middle of the night and calmly reading his 
 private papers. There's one nice trait about Audely, and 
 I suppose he gets it from his wandering life : he is never 
 surprised at any human development, or if he is he never 
 shows it. I don't believe he has ever seen me, or even Mother, 
 cry. We Aries don't cry. 
 
 Presently, when I felt better, I got shy and left him, and 
 went to the window and looked out. He watched me. . . . 
 
 All was now intensely still. There was not a murmur. 
 Of course a room at the back of the house doesn't hear the 
 same noises as a room on the other side, and I explained to 
 him the row there had been in the front where I had been 
 sleeping. I said that some local chatter or other had got 
 on my nerves, and that I had magnified it into an enemy 
 landing. 
 
 " One is bound to get these panics in war time, old girl ! " 
 he said. " Now you run back to bed like a good child, and 
 don't worry about the Germans any more. They'll not get 
 here — or if they try, the best of us will get ourselves killed 
 iu stopping them. And it wUl be worked over there, not in 
 England to worry you." He nodded his head in the direc- 
 tion of, I suppose, France. 
 
 " You mean, that you personally are going to stop them ? " 
 
 I did not like to allude more clearly to the colonel's order. 
 
 " Going to have a try at it ! " Audely mumbled, pulling 
 oft his tie and collar with it. " What the thundering else ? " 
 
 I told him then how dreadfxilly upset Mother would be, 
 and that he really should not have sprung a commission on 
 her without consulting her, as I knew he must have. 
 
 He answered mildly ; 
 
THE LAST DITCH 189 
 
 " I couldn't have stayed at home, and let little frightened 
 guinea-pigs with half a skin like Belle-Belle go out and expose 
 their carefully manicured persons. It wouldn't have been 
 possible. No, let them take my old carcase instead. I give 
 it 'em freely." 
 
 " But still," I went on, making Mother the cover for my 
 own objections, " Mother has a right " 
 
 " Now look here ! " Audely said ; " I love and respect your 
 Mother more than any one else in the world. But I could not 
 allow her to dictate to me upon a point of honour. Why, 
 even Belle-Belle Smith didn't ask Susan Dowlais for her per- 
 mission ! . . . 
 
 " No, my dear " — he brushed aside Mother, and spoke 
 as if I were interceding with him not to go, for myself — " you 
 women must be content to be shunted in these days. What 
 does old Kipling say ? White arms cling to the bridle rein — 
 
 Bed lips tarnish the scabbarded steel The only way a woman 
 
 needs to mess with a man's trappings nowadays is to get 
 some Gesso and shine his buttons for him ! " 
 
 " Mother will do that for you all right," I said. 
 
 I wanted to go, but somehow I didn't know in the least 
 how to get out of the room. He tried to help me by ordering 
 me out, saying it wasn't decent, and that I'd get cold. 
 
 And then out of contrariness I wanted to stay. It wasn't 
 a bit cold, I said, and I sat down in the arm-chair and asked 
 him if he had got a cigarette about anywhere, though I don't 
 usually smoke. He said he hadn't. A lie ! We were fight- 
 ing, really. He walked about the room as if he were com- 
 posing. I said I knew what he was thinking about, and that 
 I didn't envy him his job — of telling Mother. I was sure he 
 hadn't told her, I said, for she wouldn't in that case be sleep- 
 ing away quietly in the next room. Nor would she have 
 arranged to go back to Lochroyan, if she had known. 
 Nothing, not even Papa, would have moved her ; she would 
 stay to see him off. , . . 
 
 " No, I haven't told her, you little fiend," he said, " and 
 there's going to be a fearful row." 
 
 He intimated that he could stand it all right if I would 
 go away and let him get a few hours' sleep. Poor Audely 1 
 He's such a very sleepy person, but he can't always have 
 everythmg the way he likes it. He wants standing up to 
 now and then. He doesn't treat women with enough respect 
 and consideration^ The more he seemed to want to be rid 
 
140 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 of me, the more I made up my mind to stay, till at last he 
 did get me out — ^with rudeness and Kipling combined I 
 
 The wretch got into bed just as he was, mumbling, for me 
 to take notice of : 
 
 " Take away your white arms and red lips, and let a poor 
 weary soldier wrap himself in his blanket and turn in before 
 it is quite daylight, can't you ? "... A pause. " Look here, 
 you cruel cat, clear out — and do you mind drawing the 
 curtains before you go, to keep out the dawn ? " 
 
 I went to the window, did what he asked, and came back 
 to him. He put out his hand and pinched a corner of my 
 nightgown as I passed : 
 
 " I can't say I think much of your dishabille, my dear. . . ." 
 
 His voice sounded half asleep ; he was pretending to be 
 irresponsible, so as to get off a good insult ; — 
 
 " I guess Belle-Belle could give you points." 
 
 I told him he was an insolent beast, and if he said any 
 more I would draw the curtains and let in the light fully. 
 For it was coming in like anything, and the birds were just 
 begiiming to shout. I looked at him — ^he was really asleep. 
 
 It was no use my going to bed again, for sleep had been 
 chased away. I sat up and wrote some poetry. . . . Audely 
 hadn't asked me to give him any promise about not telling 
 Mother, and I decided to leave them both alone and let them 
 fight it out themselves. 
 
 This was over a week ago. I lost this letter, but will post 
 it all to-day. Up to the time of writing — six o'clock — ^no 
 one has said anything about Audely and his commission, and 
 I don't think Mother could keep a thing like that to herself. 
 She is going to Lochroyan to-morrow by the ten o'clock. 
 King's Cross. There is this evening. Audely is coming to 
 dinner. I am going out to dine with the Leahys, and on to 
 a meeting of a Committee of some Welfare Project they are 
 trying to interest me in. There are so many. But one's 
 name does seem to be some good. After Mother goes I am, 
 I hear, to be planted out with various friends of Mother's 
 — Susan Dowlais and Lily St. Just among others. I have 
 bargained for a time at the Grerald Quains' country cottage — 
 just a sop in the wilderness of Family or Society women 
 Mother likes for me. 
 
XI 
 
 From The Lady Aries 
 
 Pabk Cbbsoent. 
 Well, my dear, here we are again, back in town in the very 
 height of, as you might say, the Dead Season. It is a thing 
 that has never happened to me before : an entirely new sensa- 
 tion, and, at my age, not at all a pleasant one. One gets so 
 into a rut. It is the sense of inappropriateness, of matter 
 in the wrong place, as philosophers say, that, as it were, 
 gets one, and makes one wake up in the night and pinch 
 oneself to know if one is really here, with the stuffy feeling 
 there always is in town in the recess. A regular fish out of 
 water, I feel, or a Highland stag wandering in the Regent's 
 Park. Yet if it was any other month except August it would 
 be all right, and it is very nearly all fancy except the used-up 
 air, which is a fact. London is rather like a room that has 
 just been emptied of too many people in it. Still, Society 
 has imposed many a fetish on us, I begin to see, and told all 
 sorts of traveller's tales to back up its contention. I was 
 always told that in August and September the grass began 
 to grow between the paving stones of Lincoln's Inn. It 
 doesn't, actually, I can see for myself, for I often go there 
 to my solicitors. But there isn't much scavengering done 
 there or anywhere in poor old London nowadays, while in 
 the West End everything has a trick of looking wilted — in 
 the drapers' windows the dragging old-fashioned blouses, 
 and in the poulterers' shops, where the very droop of a- thin 
 trussed chicken suggests fin de saison. 
 
 All this frightful destruction of the old landmarks of So- 
 ciety does help one to realize the war. And though I have 
 no doubt there are other people in town, they are all shelter- 
 ing behind the blinds, like old Lady Kew in Thackeray. It 
 isn't really the thing to let people loiow one is up, so I am a 
 
 HI 
 
142 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 good deal alone. I only use the little moming-room ; it is 
 not worth while to undo the drawing-room for these few days, 
 and it looks so melancholy all done up in dust-sheets that I 
 dare not go in. I feel like a caretaker in my own house. 
 Venice is more or less out all day, and poor old Mrs. Huggins, 
 out of modesty, makes herself so scarce that one neither hears 
 nor sees her. She appears at breakfast, bringing in the 
 kippers or scrambled eggs that she has prepared quite nicely, 
 bumping against the furniture in her nervousness and trying 
 hard to be as quiet as the ghost she looks, poor old soul. All 
 skin and bone, but a very good servant all the same. I can 
 really, I find, do with much less than I have been accustomed 
 to. 
 
 If she only guessed the fellow feeling I, Beaty Aries, am 
 growing to have for her and her like, condemned to this sort 
 of thing for life, and tranquilly accepting it as her heaven- 
 given lot. While I am grousing at the taste I am getting 
 of the same thing, but which is only temporary, in my case 1 
 Just for the moment one is sharing the life of thousands like 
 her, chars and housekeepers and plumbers and painters and 
 even poor clerks, a cut above, but whose work keeps them 
 here with their wives and children, or waiting perhaps till 
 their head or boss has had his holiday and their turn comes. 
 They, like me, watch the leaves turn brown and fall and 
 swirl about the street through the dreary weeks, telling them 
 in every leaf that the summer is a-getting on, and wUl be 
 practically over before they are free to take their wretched 
 week or fortnight at the suburban sea, as I call that Essex 
 side of England where Southend and Clacton are. They 
 can't get themselves and their large families to the real seas 
 or moors ; fares with them are a consideration. I remember 
 it cost nearly a hundred pounds to move us — cars, linen, and 
 plate, and ten servants — from London to Lochroyan I 
 
 Lochroyan ! Oh, to be there now ! Now — and then I 
 I can tell, you, my dear, it was a slightly different thing to 
 watch the autimin tints maturiag from Marchmont Hill or 
 the Portmore Woods where that bored French wife of the 
 dull Scotch laird lived. I gave her a hectic week in town 
 once, and she made the most of it. Those woods ! Such a 
 glory of clean gold and red ! Here the autumn tints more 
 match the colour of Mrs. Huggins' gown — ^no colour at all 
 but mud colour, that is. 
 
 Past the windows they go now — ^the leaves fell very early 
 
THE LAST DITCH 148 
 
 this hot summer ; it is as if the wind was sweeping up count- 
 less thousands of Mrs. Hugginses, sending them flying, willy- 
 nilly, half over London, to end sticking in the spouts and 
 gutters. . . . 
 
 The poor People, so called, that one hacks out and uses 
 to bits one way and another in our service ! One is so glad 
 to get them in, commandeer them from their hovels, to 
 mind one's palace for one while one is away, gallivanting on 
 the best the world offers. And we don't even let them live 
 in our bigger airier rooms ; we consign them to the basement, 
 however dark, and are off, cheerfully careering over the 
 moors in a fresh wind or lounging on a golden sandy beach 
 that stretches far away beyond the eye to a blue, blue sea 
 like Bamborough, that year we took the Castle. Home- 
 beaches aren't golden, you have to go to Northumberland 
 for that ; and the sea itself, in Home Waters, is more like an 
 ostler's pailful of muddy water in the corner of a stable yard. 
 
 I often see Mrs. Huggins' grandchild, with its poor little 
 nose pressed against the window in the basement, watching 
 the leaves dance. The sight keeps it quiet, while her grand- 
 mother is busy working for us. It pains me to see child 
 misery, but what exactly can I do ? I am terrified that 
 Venice will notice the baby and want me to have it upstairs 
 and she will look after it ! The remedy would be worse than 
 the disease. , . , Poor Venice I 
 
 This time in London will end by making me a Socialist 
 in a way. Venice thinks she is one already. 
 
 We never dine at home. Audely takes us out for dinner 
 at a fresh place every evening. The food is rather chancy, 
 which neither he nor I mind, bub I am afraid Venice does. 
 
 The night we sampled the Servian restaurant in Canton 
 Street the poor child, in spite of chai^ming revolutionary 
 figures gathered in all the comers there and obviously con- 
 spiring up to the hilt, could not bring herself to partake of 
 sticky soup, on which the unclarified fat stood up in lumps, 
 served in enamel cups, and black veal disposed on a greasy 
 bed of rice that the whole personnel might have gone to bed 
 on the night before. I fancy Audely rather enjoyed her 
 distress ; he is always down upon her for being greedy ! 
 However, she played up and was polite and grateful to him 
 as host. And Audely wasn't so bad, for on the way home 
 he presented her with a guinea box of chocolates, which 
 she consumed half of before she went to bed that night. 
 
144 TUB L.AST DITCH 
 
 I must say that Audely is kinder than ever, strangely 
 tender and considerate : a new sort of Audely, more like a 
 son to me and a brother to Venice and Ilsa than the rather 
 carping and censorious friend he used to be. I suppose it 
 is the war. He and my Venice get on splendidly, better 
 than they ever did before, and it gives me great pleasure. 
 
 Of course I have come to the conclusion that even they 
 could not be quite so laissez-aUer if Audely had not utterly 
 put out of his mind that silly letter he wrote to her once, and 
 that I discovered under her blottmg pad. It was just a 
 mood, and he has thought better of it, as he has of many 
 another. I do believe that I am the only woman Audely has 
 really ever stuck to. I don't coimt foreign women — they 
 are out to appeal to the lower natures of men, and Audely is 
 human. 
 
 I have set down his queer sudden hanker after Venice as 
 a symptom of his love of experimentalizing on human beings. 
 In this game he has to give something of himself or he 
 wouldn't get anything in the way of a response from them. 
 You really can't get to know some women properly unless 
 you have an affair with them, he often says in his high-flown 
 way. . . . 
 
 Men like my dear Audely, poets and philosophizers to death 
 as they are, are really out of it in these days of strenuousness 
 in everything — Love and War, too. The War has made such 
 short work of all unreal feelings, masquerading as real, as 
 they can manage to do when one isn't " right up against it." 
 Nowadays, when there is so much dying about, people either 
 dismiss Love entirely, or they go for a person of the opposite 
 sex tooth and nail, in the face of the possibilities of mutila- 
 tion and perhaps death, dropping all the fair weather ties, 
 that don't seem capable of giving them the support they 
 want. Audely and Venice wouldn't help each other at all ; 
 he can't support, and she can't cling. They both love their 
 mental ease too much to put all their eggs in one basket, 
 which is what a great passion means, I think. Venice, with- 
 out giving much, would insist on taking all, and would never 
 put up with less than the whole of a man. Now, though 
 Audely is so quiet and secretive that scandals about him are 
 like summer clouds ; the liaison with the Spanish lady seems 
 about as notorious as anything about Audely could ever 
 be ! . . . 
 
 I often wonder how the poor Donna, or Senhora, who- 
 
THE LAST DITCH 143 
 
 ever she is, gets on without him these days ? She must be 
 wretched, and so alone. The letter seems to imply that she 
 depended on him for everything. That would bore him, if 
 it were all. She must be exceedingly fascinating in her weak- 
 ness to be able to bore him and hold him too. For though 
 Audely can do without her, or any woman, one knows weak- 
 ness, properly done, is the best way to hold him or any man. 
 Though he doesn't depend on any one else for his happiness, 
 he likes to faire la pluie et le beau temps for others. If I 
 didn't continually call upon Audely for this or that, he would 
 have shed me long ago. He admits it. He said to me once : 
 " You know, my dear, I am not really the sort of animal that 
 loves women. I am only sorry for them." And another 
 time : 
 
 " I believe I am incapable of caring for a person with any 
 constancy." 
 
 That is to say, he doesn't really care at all : he only feels, 
 as sometimes Venice says, a passionate interest in this one or 
 that . 
 
 Of course if he can't get her, or if she is suddenly reft away 
 from him by her principles or a more urgent suitor, he'll have 
 a longish fit of hysterics or get jaundice or something. For 
 with him it is only disappointment, not real, passionate, 
 importimate grief: that which in a woman lines her face 
 and turns her hair grey at the temples. . . . 
 
 He used to sit there and tell us that the mention of love 
 between lovers was actually indecent. That's silly. But 
 he does so love things taken for granted, does Audely 1 
 
 He likes sudden effects, anything imprivu, just as Venice 
 and I like a new play or camping out or picnicking. We 
 both enjoyed ourselves immensely the first night we arrived 
 here to an empty, shut -up house, with no one to do anything 
 for us but literally this old Mrs. Huggins, whom they were 
 all at me to sack, but whom I kept on — out of sheer pity, I 
 think — ^as caretaker, because she was perfectly trustworthy, 
 although nothing but skin and bone. I must say she came 
 up to the scratch wonderfully, and there were all sorts of 
 unexpected things to do. Audely insisted on stopping here 
 — some tale of his servant's levanting suddenly, which I 
 didn't believe a bit. He felt lonely in Arlington Street, 
 that's all. She had to get Aries' room, where Venice intended 
 to sleep, ready for him in a hurry, and put up a bed for Venice 
 in my room. I believe it was Anatole's — ^the one he used to 
 
 10 
 
146 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 sleep across the pantry door on. He was faithful in that 
 particular; we never missed a thing. And certainly the 
 country forfeited a good cook in him, and they are terribly 
 rare nowadays. Audely was sure he could do quite as well, 
 and I said, Prove it ! and made him imdertake the dinner 
 for us and himself that night. Audely's cooking was mas- 
 terly, but a little startling. His recipe for chicken was to put 
 two teaspoonfuls of pepper to one fowl. It burnt my mouth 
 out, but Audely and Venice were so happy over it that I 
 said nothing, and just cooled my mouth as well as I could 
 with the nice simple custard Audely made especially for me. 
 Venice made a great fuss about what she called discovering 
 our own basement. She said it was like being The Princess 
 wandering about with Curdie in the underground camp of 
 the Goblins. Rather discourteous to our poor basement, 
 which is only a half-one after all, and not so dark as some I 
 
 Of course next night Audely had got tired of cooking, and 
 we went out and sampled Soho. I don't know where we 
 went that night or the one after, but the next again, Ilsa had 
 come up en route for Paris, and Audely took us to a special 
 place he knew that would be immensely becoming to her I 
 
 The landlord told us he was a Russian, but looked German, 
 The place was full, though, of Russian emblems, as if to bear 
 out his contention : heads of bears stuck up that he tells us 
 he shot himself in his ancestral home, ikons that he prays 
 to after the place is shut up. Audely looks sarcastic, which 
 
 Ilsa says means that M is not so Russian as all that. The 
 
 Futurist room that we were brought to see, done by a friend 
 of Rowley Deane's, took my breath away. It is all in blues 
 and yellows and reds ; almost indecent, somehow, with men 
 like pit-props walking about — ^not a little bit like men in my 
 idea. But Audely says that in non-representational art you 
 must only indicate — get the vital representative — something 
 most complicated. . . . The other sort of painting has been 
 done — ^to death. Still, give me a Downman or a Raebum 
 when it is a question of a portrait of a member of my family, 
 at least, and that is what people will always say, when it 
 comes to paying for a likeness. 
 
 There were several pictures of the same kind about. One 
 represented, in this half-and-half way, "A Night Out." 
 There were some things like bottles in it, and an unmistak- 
 able pair of stays, and two men's faces. , . . 
 
THE LAST DITCH U7 
 
 Venice came out suddenly with the word "lewd." She 
 said it was the leading expression on the faces as far as she 
 could see. I didn't myself like such a Shakespearean word 
 on the lips of a young girl, but Audely said it was correct, 
 and that that was the intention of the artist. The room 
 appears to be used for private dinner parties and so on. 
 The landlord says he is forced by the authorities to keep 
 it strictly utilitarian and nearly unfurnished, except for 
 table and chairs. He isn't even allowed to have a sofa in it. 
 
 If I were a man taking a nice woman out I should not 
 care to bring her to a place like this ; it would take most 
 people's appetite away, either for eating or lovemaking, but 
 tastes differ, and it may be stimulating to some. 
 
 Ilsa, who has dined once in a cabinet parliculier, just to see 
 what it was like, declares that a room like that would make 
 you mora], because it would kill the lust of the eye. No, 
 Audely said, her blonde beauty, taken in conjunction with 
 the agagante quality of the apartment, would just burn the 
 topless towers of Ilion ! 
 
 I consider that the conversation in the room that night, 
 and before my unmarried daughter too, rather overstepped 
 the bounds. ... It is the war, I think, that loosens all our 
 tongues, and sets the young of iDoth sexes talking more wildly 
 than usual. Let us eat and drink and say what we like, for 
 to-morrow we die ! I have read that after the French Revo- 
 lution, too, people wore too little and said too much. Are 
 we coming to a time of licence like that ? One hopes not. 
 The dress is most unbecoming to the old — split up the sides, 
 and so vaporous ! 
 
 But at all events my young people are merry and cheerful, 
 and I console myself for the chance of evil communications 
 by reflecting that it would take a great deal to break down 
 Venice's innate purity. And realizing what's what, and 
 seeing things a little as they are and the school of adversity 
 generally, has its advantages. If she has grown more hard- 
 ened in some ways, she is certainly more feminine in others — 
 little personal ways that only a woman would understand, . . . 
 
 Ilsa called me to her the other day and invited me to look 
 through the open door of Venice's bedroom. Venice was 
 threading one of her own chemises with baby ribbon 1 
 
 Ilsa will have it that the child is in love ! With whom. 
 Good Heavens 1 Of course town is full of charming young 
 men in khaki, whom it immensely becomes. But one doesn't 
 
148 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 jump for her at an engagement to a soldier who may get 
 himself killed before he can come back and ratify it ! And 
 yet, the way things are going on, there doesn't seem to be 
 going to be a single fairly eligible parti who isn't in the Army 
 as a matter of course. Everybody who is anybody joins. 
 Needs must, when the Gennans drive. Our girls must get 
 engaged and take the risk. That is the new morality. So 
 that is why I have made up my mind not to take Venice back 
 with me to Lochroyan, where I go next week, and have 
 arranged to let her divide her time between Lily St. Just 
 and Susan Dowlais. They both keep open house — ^nearly as 
 good as a canteen, without the work of carrying heavy trays 
 about, from which Ellen Reveley has collapsed already. It 
 gave her appendicitis. Lily St. Just's new little house in 
 Kensington, " The Schack," is, as Venice says, a regular 
 Y.M.C.A. of the Upper Classes, and she has made no objection 
 to going there, and has consented to drop the Endell Street 
 Nursing Scheme, which she was fearfully keen on, just be- 
 cause, I believe, the imiform was so picturesque. . . . The girl 
 isn't really strong enough to do war work, and I hope that 
 Lily's and Susan's entourage will distract her from it. 
 
 Aunt Minna is down on my letting her go to Lily's, becalise 
 of Lily's errors in the past, which people haven't forgotten. 
 Certainly Lily has come through something, but it has left 
 her with forty thousand a year, and she looks Spanish ; and as 
 I said to Minna, surely there ought to be some sort of statute 
 of limitations, even in morals ? Lily is past fifty now, and 
 hates men. Even on the principle of set a thief to catch a 
 thief, she can be trusted to mount a good guard on Venice. 
 
 It is tiresome, but in the case of Susan Dowlais I shall 
 have to pay her a trifle for Venice's board. Susan is hard 
 up just now. She spends all her spare cash of what Dowlais 
 allows her in furnishing Belle-Belle, not so much with necessi- 
 ties — that's all thoroughly done already — but with luxuries : 
 safety helmets, and breastplates, and new inventions. He 
 will look like a dinner wagon when he gets into the trenches. 
 
 Venice has made no objection to my programme so long 
 as I consent to let her put in some time with the Gerald 
 Quains — ^Ida Leahy that was and her husband. They are 
 not too well off, one knows ; at least, less well off than old 
 Susan ; but they won't hear of my paying them board, as I 
 offered to do. There was almost a vulgar row about it. I 
 knew that Venice meant to go there, so could not stand out. 
 
THE LAST DITCH 149 
 
 Ida said flatly that they wouldn't have Venice at all if I even 
 so much as mentioned payment again. I just had to give in, 
 
 I have a queer sort of feeling that Venice may meet her 
 fate there. And now that Gerald is in the Naval Air Service, 
 she may perfectly well meet some one at his house whom I 
 shall not have to disapprove of. And I have Minna Norssex' 
 verdict that Ida's relations and his are all beyond reproach, 
 and some of them quite good people in the intellectual way, 
 which has its prestige too, even in the eyes of the wife of the 
 greatest landowner in the world. She admits that Ida's 
 face shows "race." Of course Minna was American, and 
 don't really know our trademark — or non-trademark, which 
 is more like it. And Ida works for the " Norssex " Ambu- 
 lance Corps, and goes and uses influence, of which they really 
 seem, she and Gerald between them, to have lots, to get 
 Minna's pet Stretcher Bearer invention taken on by, the 
 Government. There's a committee formed for it now. Ida 
 is on heaps of committees, too, and captures the Norssex in- 
 terest for her own schemes. Committees are all give and 
 take ! 
 
 Strange, isn't it, how one changes? It used to be the 
 object of my life to keep my daughter out of gangs like the 
 Leahy one, and now here is a Duchess, and the head of our 
 family, interceding for them ! Of course your Aunt Minna 
 is a little eccentric — ^but then she can 1 American, and one 
 of the biggest Duchesses, it gives you a good pull ! Her 
 doings are absolutely beyond cavil and comment, except 
 perhaps from Royalty. I hear however that the lodestar 
 is really Gerald, the man. Minna has in her senile way 
 taken an enormous fancy to him. His fortune is made, I 
 tell Ida, if he survives. For Minna has great notions of 
 " improving " Tinsack, making the old part look older — 
 modernizing it in fact. The fortune of any architect she 
 gives the job to is made, if he is without esprit de corps enough 
 to care to go pulling an old historic mansion about at the 
 behest of a rich, spoilt American heiress. And Minna always 
 pretends that she accepted Henry, in the first instance, for 
 the sake of his wonderful old family mansion — or mansions. 
 He has six, I counted the other day, besides Norssex House 
 in town and a cygnet farm in Dorset and the shooting at 
 Blairgowrie. Minna says openly that she loves Gerald be- 
 cause he is so terribly good looking, and Ida is sensible and 
 doesn't mind a bit. 
 
150 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 I have grown quite attached to Ida these war days, which 
 have brought us all out so as to character. So small and 
 fragile, and yet so reliable and worldly-wise ! Whatever 
 one permits oneself to say to her, she never repeats or 
 presumes on, but realizes our different positions and stand- 
 points so clearly that one can really get help from her in 
 one's own problems. Isn't it wonderful that a girl, fairly 
 well bom as they say, but certainly bred up in such a very 
 inferior atmosphere, can have been able to take in the 
 culture and ideas of a sect above her ? It just shows what 
 cleverness can do I She doesn't talk much, Ida, but is, as I 
 can see, constantly observing. 
 
 I get pretty sick of Minna's interference sometimes. Venice 
 is Henry's goddaughter, which allows Minna a certain latitude 
 for abuse of me in her case, but I do think in that of Ilsa it 
 is quite unjustifiable. Why am I to be badgered about 
 Ilsa's comings and goings and, through her, with the rest of 
 the relations, stirred up as one fussy person always does stir 
 up the non-interfering people ? Ilsa — alack I — is old enough 
 to manage her own affairs, however ill, and not according to 
 Minna's ideas, or indeed any respectable person's. Minna is 
 Writing every day about what she calls " this suicidal trip " 
 to Paris in mid-war, and says to me, with intention, that if 
 her father was well enough to be aware of what Ilsa proposed 
 to do he would forbid it. I have no doubt of it, but as Ilsa 
 is of age and not asking him to put up the money for the 
 journey, or being in the habit of receiving any allowance 
 from hun, I don't see what good his forbidding would do. 
 
 Does that woman suppose my heart isn't wnmg with all 
 sorts of apprehensions when I hear tales, as I do daily, of 
 the sufferings of the poor souls anxious to escape from the 
 Continent, where Hell reigns, while my own daughter is 
 moving Heaven and Earth to be allowed to get into it ? I 
 am receiving all the time heart-rendiog stories of privation of 
 poor invalids on their way back from health resorts in Switzer- 
 land, of hordes of frightened people fighting tooth and nail 
 for the last train everywhere, and having to make up their 
 minds to seeing their luggage with all they hold dear left 
 behind on the platform of the Gare Du Nord. They will 
 never see it again. And to think of a specially showy style 
 like Ilsa's exposed to all the insults possible to beauty maid- 
 less and unchaperoned ! She was always one of those un- 
 happy women who got spoken to, if unaccompanied. So 
 
THE LAST DITCH 131 
 
 weak and laissez-faire ! To save herself trouble, I see her 
 letting herself be carried off to the Fatherland as a prey of 
 some masterful Prussian officer or other, who would for the 
 moment spare her life for the sake of her pretty face, and 
 send her to prison to shred hemp when he was tired of her. 
 
 But there are certain discomforts as well as dangers attend- 
 ing the initial stages of the journey. It is my hope that 
 she will be put off by the apprehension of them. People say 
 the official tyranny is awful. Ilsa won't care, when it comes 
 to the point, to wait four or five hours in Bedford Row 
 waiting for her passport, though Goodness knows, both my 
 daughters are capable of any amount of endurance when it 
 is a case of doing what they have set their hearts on. It is 
 Clothes with a big C that moves my eldest daughter ; excite- 
 ment my younger. . . . 
 
 Venice goes nearly every night to Charing Cross to see 
 the Belgian refugees come in, drinking strong coffee on pur- 
 pose to keep her awake for it. She is a person that needs a 
 great deal of sleep, and takes it always. That means lying 
 in bed in the mornings. She has written several poems 
 about what she feels when she sees the refugees arrive. It 
 seems to me almost heartless for any one to go, night after 
 night, to the place of these poor creatures' agony, just to get 
 yourself a fresh sensation and material for a poem. But I 
 don't know. I am not a real authoress. She talks of nothing 
 else but the faces of the women who press to the barrier to 
 see if their dear ones have come. And when they turn away 
 — unsatisfied ! . . . 
 
 By day she rests, or goes out and does some necessary 
 shopping with me. I insist on that. I can't let her go all 
 to seed and poetry. And as I told you she is becoming 
 interested in clothes. She drags me all over the place after 
 this or that specialty as advertised. I find, on looking at 
 my account, that we spent last week over twenty pounds, 
 mostly on imderclothing. That is, she says, a course of 
 action dictated by the war, since we shall not need evening 
 dresses or smart afternoon gowns until after it is over, if then. 
 For then, she says, we shall all be Socialists, and live like the 
 people in Ibsen's plays. 
 
 Luckily, Venice isn't always right. She is more full of 
 theories than ever. She considers just now, that no hostess 
 ought to have the heart to invite people to parties or give 
 dinners of more than four, i,e. Lily St. Just is always giving 
 
162 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 dinners and doesn't always ask Venice 1 The Schack lighted 
 up, and hansoms and cars driving up to the door with idle 
 civilians while all the nice men are standing up to their knees 
 in mud and blood instead of having them comfortably tucked 
 under Lily's mahogany. If she doesn't take care, she will 
 have her windows broken by the angry populace, who would 
 like to be doing likewise and can't, and choose to put their 
 disappointment on to patriotism. 
 
 Audely said mildly that as far as money goes they could." 
 The wife of a working man nowadays can well afford truffles 
 and oysters and Liberty tea gowns — a fresh one every night 
 if she likes." 
 
 " But, Audely," I said, " they won't be put on properly, 
 and they'd be yellow satin with piak sleeves, like the dress 
 Lady Peterson received the Women's Federation in the other 
 day. And the oysters and truffles won't be properly cooked 
 or served, for they won't get Anatoles, or miss him, not 
 knowing a good cook when they see him 1 And that's what 
 annoys them too, knowing they don't know, and get done 
 all along the line with their old money." 
 
 " Even that will come," Audely said. 
 
 What he said about fresh tea gowns was certainly meant 
 for Venice. Hers never look fit to put on after she has worn 
 them once. Of course they are unsubstantial, papery, frou- 
 frouish things that " shab " easily and fasten in all sorts of 
 imexpected and untoward places, so that they go pretty 
 near to being indecent, and are certainly unsuitable for a 
 young girl living quietly at home with her parents. It is 
 all very well for Ilsa, but Venice is too young to dress like a 
 demi-mondaine ! 
 
 Ilsa is most sarcastic about the " nighties," of which 
 Venice made me get her a dozen, all different, at two-pounds- 
 five each. Ilsa wUl have it that they are intended to pro- 
 pitiate the Germans if they should come. It seems to me 
 that if it came to that, and they did raid us d domicile, the 
 right thing to do would be to be dressed as plainly as possible, 
 so as not to excite their attentions. . . . 
 
 Ilsa said, " Venice thinks that to be attractive might save 
 her life ! " 
 
 I don't blame the child. One does go thinking aU sorts 
 of things. Everything seems faintly possible now that the 
 Germans have really gone to war with us. The first night 
 we came to town Venice tells me she was frightened to death. 
 
THE LAST DITCH 168 
 
 almost. We had been talking, she and Audely and I, about 
 the possibilities of an invasion, and even occupation of Lon- 
 don, and Audely's conversation, picturesque and exaggerated 
 as it always is, must have excited her unduly, for when we 
 had all gone to bed and the house so quiet that one heard all 
 sorts of innocent noises that one never notices by day, she 
 contrived to get herself into a thorough panic. I was so 
 done by the journey that I had gone right off to sleep, and 
 the poor child was too unselfish to wake me. About mid- 
 night she imagined that she heard some unusual noises out 
 in the front of the house, and finally worked herself up into 
 thinking that that Count Le Loffel whom we used to meet 
 at Nauheim, and that she insulted so, was going to break 
 into her room, and with his drawn sword, that he used to 
 handle and snigger — I distinctly remember that atrocious 
 gesture of his at Nauheim ; it was only fun, but the savagery 
 of the man's face ! — ^saw oft her breasts. She had been 
 reading in some paper that they are doing that to the women 
 in Belgium, though everybody doubts it. . . . Ilsa made her 
 very cross by suggesting that in her case there wouldn't be 
 anythiag to cut into. 
 
 I haven't seen the sisters quarrel like that for ages. Venice 
 wouldn't tell Ilsa the end of the story, which was that she 
 went to Audely for comfort, still not liking, even in her be- 
 wilderment and fright, to awaken me. How she managed 
 to get herself into Audely's room in that sleep-walkiag con- 
 dition without knocking herself against the furniture and 
 waking him, I don't know, and the joke was that even when 
 she tried she couldn't do it, and it wasn't until she had fully 
 awakened herself and satisfied herself that it was nothing, 
 that Audely opened his eyes of himself and they had quite 
 an interesting conversation. 
 
 He says she doesn't a bit, but I think ^he undoubtedly 
 does, feel the War. I think this phase of fussing about her 
 clothes acts as an outlet, but it's expensive and inconvenient 
 for me, for it drives Berrymore to distraction. The girl 
 talks seriously of leaving ; she says that since Lady Venice 
 took to dressing up by night as well as by day and taking an 
 interest in her own clothes, instead of leaving it all to me as 
 usual, she finds it impossible to maid us both. Personally I 
 require very little attention. Berrjnnore used to make me, 
 in her spare time, most of my simple frocks. But that 
 spare time has long ago become a thing of the past, and 
 
154 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 all she has done foi me since June is to turn a brown 
 foulard. 
 
 I can't afford to lose her, grumbler as she is, so I have told 
 her that for the present she can devote herself entirely to 
 her young mistress and let me shift for myself. I am going 
 back alone to the wOds of Scotland, where almost any clothes 
 will do, and she is glad to be left ; she hates Scotland like 
 poison. 
 
 To-morrow I go. I have dawdled here too long. Of 
 course I should have liked to have had the company of Venice 
 and Ilsa in these times, but they nearly bit my head off, 
 both of them, when I hinted at it. . . . Venice says that times 
 are far too exciting for her to care to be mewed up in the 
 country, and Ilsa sticks to her project of getting to Paris, 
 coute que coute. 
 
 Perhaps if I had insisted on taking Berrymore to Scotland 
 with me Venice would have made up her mind to come too, 
 for she recognizes that she cannot well get on without a maid. 
 . . . But I cannot find it in my heart to play her that trick. 
 She is looking forward tremendously to her three vjsiti. . . . 
 
 So my only companion, besides dear old Aries, who isn't 
 well enough yet to be very exciting, will be Effel, who is no 
 good either just now. She is absolutely inconsolable, and as 
 snappy as they make them, because Lucy has gone and 
 enlisted as a private — at forty-two. He won't be put into 
 danger of course, one knows, but still he will be away doing 
 something or other, and possibly in France, which isn't 
 " healthy " for any one just now. 
 
 So he is obviously lost to me and Effel, to whom he has 
 engaged himself. Did you ever hear of anything so absurd ? 
 Such want of common sense and self-control on his part I 
 Of course one can hardly blame an old maid like Effel for 
 accepting a good offer when she gets one, at forty. I'm 
 patient with her, because in her normal state she is in- 
 valuable to me, and I can't help thinking that when the 
 War is over in six months or thereabouts, they will both 
 think better of it and forget that they were ever so silly as 
 to think of leaving their nice comfortable berths with me, 
 to set up housekeeping together on a reduced income, for 
 that is all marriage will come to in their case. They might 
 just as well live on here as usual and see each other as before, 
 while doing their bit for their country in the quiet, unob- 
 trusive way so many of us have to. I've done mine, I'm 
 
THE LAST DITCH 165 
 
 sure. I am looking after Venice and trying to marry her to 
 some one nice, and be the mother of heroes. And I've let 
 Audely sell his two cars and hire, and let his moor, and give 
 up his stud, and Beardmore — ^you know that was his, and 
 we kept it warm for him ! Well, it makes no end of a 
 difference to me, I can tell you ! One could always count 
 on him, and now he is bare as the rest, with no end of 
 jointures to keep up, and perhaps ties. ... I have no right 
 to suppose he is different from other men, and that letter 
 to Venice sounded very convincing. . . . 
 
 Altogether, Laura, I am at the nadir — or is it the zenith ? — 
 of depression. And because after all, since I'm no worse off 
 than any one else, I keep wondering if it is a premonition 
 that something really important is going to befall me. 
 
 Is Aries going to be worse ? 
 
 Is Venice going to make a mesalliance while I am away ? 
 
 Lily St. Just gets hold of me, and hints that Venice has a 
 hopeless passion for some one, and is trying to drown it in 
 lace and silk underclothes ? The child certainly mopes, 
 but I think it is only bcause her dear Ilsa is going to be in 
 danger. Those two adore each other. Venice loves Ilsa 
 far more than she does me. And of course Venice was 
 always anaemic. . . . 
 
 Then the break-up of the Lochroyan party was a great 
 disappointment to her, though she has been very good about 
 it, and agrees that war necessities come first and preclude 
 personal desires and likings. 
 
 Isn't it funny ? What Lily hints about Venice, Venice 
 hints about Ilsa. She talks of Ilsa's sinister visit to Paris, 
 and will have it that it means more than clothes. . . . 
 
 No. If I'm sure of any one, it is of solid old Ilsa, with her 
 love troubles and nonsense of that sort all behind her. She 
 has had enough of it. She is like a Vestal Virgin : abso- 
 lutely impervious to men nowadays, and treats them all as 
 footstools and messenger boys. She is indeed determined 
 on this journey ; but then, I know her so well and am up to 
 what Audely calls her " objectives." She is a good Catholic, 
 yet she would sooner change her priest than her dressmaker, 
 and would prefer chiffon to bread any day, if it was a ques- 
 tion of choosing between them, 
 
 God help us all ! 
 
 You have never heard me grouse like this in my life, have 
 you, my dear ? I am saying it all to you because it does 
 
166 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 me some good to get it oft my chest. It is so rague that one 
 could not confide it to a doctor, where I generally take all 
 my depressions, being so perfectly sure that they are stomach. 
 This isn't stomach, I know, and at my age one cannot talk of 
 heart ! I will say it is the War, as every one else does, and 
 hope that the rest at Lochroyan will set me up again and 
 make me able to be my old jiggity bobbity self again, as 
 my mother used to say. 
 
 I dare say some nice thing will happen to correct the horrid 
 ones. Ilsa may get home from Paris all right as usual, with 
 a fine trousseau of clothes ; and perhaps Venice may find a 
 nice millionaire for herself — ^I don't hold out for blood now ; 
 one cannot have everything nowadays. By the way, what 
 has become of Mr. Van Pomp ? I ought to look him up, 
 but somehow I can't bestir myself — ^I am what people call 
 " done." 
 
 Write to Lochroyan. I am off by the ten o'clock to- 
 morrow. Venice and Ilsa are dining out their several ways, 
 and I shall have, for once, what I like, a tSte-d-tSte dinner 
 with Audely, and get some things settled with him. 
 
XII 
 
 From The Lady Venice St. Eemy 
 
 Fabk Cbbsobnt. 
 
 I NEVER knew anything like Mother 1 She is so young ! I 
 think Audely is rather cruel, or perhaps, knowing Mother, he 
 meant to be kind ? But although I had known it since the 
 night of our return, and had kept it carefully to myself, for 
 fun more than for anything else, since no one enjoined secrecy 
 on me, he waited to tell Mother that he was going into the 
 Army — ^had gone into the Army — ^till the evening before she 
 was timed to leave for Scotland. And though Audely, who 
 never looks into anybody's face to see what they are feeling, 
 said, that as far as he saw, she took the news with perfect 
 calmness, she appears to have felt it so much that she nearly 
 missed her train next day. 
 
 She got up, dressed, and was out of the house by half-past 
 seven, just when the maid was going to her room to call her. 
 No one had an idea where she had gone ; they came and 
 asked me, and I suggested the Caledonian Market that she 
 goes to sometimes very early to pick up bargains, but never 
 so early as that. All our doubts were presently set at rest 
 by her telephoning from Ida's 1 — saying that she was put 
 late, and was going straight to the station and would Berry- 
 more go from here and take her luggage there at once ? So 
 that was that, and one only hoped she would get off. for she 
 hadn't left herself much time. I wondered why she had 
 been to Ida's, and didn't at all connect it with Audely's com- 
 mission ; but Ida, with whom I am now staying, has told me 
 what happened, and it explains it all. Poor Mother 1 
 
 Ida was in her bath, having left Gerald for another five 
 minutes in bed while she had hers first, as usual, when sud- 
 denly she heard voices outside the bathroom door. I must 
 tell you. Mother and Ida, for some reason or other, have grown 
 very intimate lately ; and if it wasn't for the poetic justice of 
 
 167 
 
158 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 it, I consider I have cause for jealousy. Ida thinks the 
 world of Mother now, though ; I ought to be glad of that. . . . 
 
 The voices were those of Mother and Ida's plucky little 
 slavey arguing with Mother, who was a few steps higher on 
 the stairs than the slavey, having majestically brushed past 
 her the moment she opened the front door and asked to see 
 Mrs. Quain. 
 
 " She's in her bath, my lady ! " the girl kept saying. . . . 
 As if a detail like that would stop Mother if she had a mind 
 to go up 1 Mother got to the door in a twinkling and spoke 
 through it, and said she must see Ida at all costs, and insisted 
 on Ida's getting out of her bath at once, and if she couldn't 
 let Mother come in, standing at the door and listening to her. 
 
 Mother always makes people do what she wants them to, 
 so the result was that Ida, dripping and shivering, had to 
 stand with a bath towel over her little loins while Mother 
 told her impassionedly through the keyhole that Audely 
 had got a commission. It wasn't news to Ida, but all drip- 
 ping as she was, she had the tact to pretend she didn't know. 
 I couldn't have done that. 
 
 That was what Mother had come about ; it appears she 
 • had no other business. From her voice Ida judged her on 
 the verge of hysterics. She couldn't be sent home in that 
 condition, so Ida told her to go straight into her bedroom 
 next door and wait there till she herself got some clothes on 
 and could come to her. She forgot, or hoped, that Gerald, 
 hearing the row, would have slithered out of bed, and 
 away. . . . 
 
 But he 'hadn't. By the time Ida had got herself into 
 a bath gown and joined Mother, she found her sitting 
 on Gerald's toes, making polite conversation. He wasn't 
 supposed to know what was the matter, but he did. He 
 has a pretty good jlair for people's psychology, and knows 
 Mother and Audely both. 
 
 Mother having now got the thing off her mind by talking 
 to (ierald and Ida, was quite calm and composed, and only 
 anxious to say a long Good-bye to Ida and Gerald and every- 
 body else in the house, including the slavey to whom she gave 
 a shUling, before she started for her long journey North. 
 Ida was in an awful state, of mind, for Mother seemed to 
 have no idea of time, and was missing her train worse every 
 minute. Besides, her face was a little messed up with tears. 
 So Ida made her powder it and 'phone to us, and then she 
 
THE LAST DITCH 159 
 
 hauled Gerald out of bed and got him to dress and call a tax 
 and put Mother in it and take her straight to the Great 
 Northern. Neither of them got any brealdast, by the way ; 
 and I do think it was selfish of Mother, though Ida declares 
 it wasn't, in the circumstances. She says she's the only one 
 with any heart amongst us, and that she was beside herself 
 with fears for her great friend, who was far too old to go into 
 a business like this, and that it was very plucky of him, and 
 that they are a noble pair, and she respects them both as 
 well as loves them. I thought all that rather cheeky of her, 
 and feel we are drifting apart. 
 
 But it was rather funny of Mother keeping up and seeming 
 so stoical with us and racing off to Ida, whom she would not 
 once hear of my knowing, in the early dawn, to give way to 
 her ! ... It was because Ida is sympathetic, and of course I 
 am not. It is odd how Mother always has a flair for the 
 people who can be useful to her. I don't believe she would 
 care so much about Audely's going into the Army if she 
 wasn't losing a useful prop as well I ... I am afraid I'm 
 cynical ! I go farther. I even think that Audely wouldn't 
 have gone into the Army if it hadn't been his anxiety to 
 display fe beau geste. . . . That you know is his constant pre- 
 occupation. 
 
 He had told Ida something of the motives that inspired 
 him. She says he came and had a long talk with her the 
 day after he got his commission. Ida was very emphatic 
 about the sacrifice being unnecessary in his case. She made 
 Audely very angry, for him, saying that he needn't bother, 
 for that this was going to be a boys' war. 
 
 " Precisely," he had replied ; " and that is a disgrace which 
 I want to stop — ^so far as I can. Let them take my old 
 blighted carcase for cannon fodder instead." 
 
 Cannon fodder — and young boys ! That was Audely's 
 obsession. It was the sight of all those young boys Mother 
 and I had collected up there in Scotland going oft to be killed 
 that had upset him so. He is soft-hearted, even altruistic, 
 under his selfishness. To see them go, eight from our house 
 in one week ! Some meant to join up for the first time, if 
 indeed Germany violated the neutrality of Belgium, and 
 three of them were in the militia already. The fact of their 
 immolation was patent, notorious, and seized the imagina- 
 tion. We used to watch them playing games, tennis and 
 badminton— parlour games, just to keep fit. . . . There were 
 
160 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 George Lysons and Paul Wyandotte's son Philip that used 
 to flirt with Ellen Reveley; and there was even that 
 wretched creature Belle-Belle Smith, spoilt but healthy, with 
 the physique of a cherub. Belle-Belle, too, caught the 
 martial contagion, and talked big about " smashing the 
 
 b y Hims." He was one of the first to say it. But 
 
 George L. was a real man, and when he talked of fighting 
 one faiew he would do it thoroughly. Audely liked George 
 so much, and he must have hated the thought of that fine 
 open chest being made a target for bullets, of those long 
 limbs blasted by shells, and that face battered out of sem- 
 blance of humanity 1 I remember he sprained his ankle 
 rather badly once, and the idea of the delicate instep twisted 
 and askew, as it was for the time, affected Audely extra- 
 ordinarily. He says he dislikes the idea of a rick or a sprain 
 far more than the sight of blood. I suppose it is that Audely 
 is such a great lover of physical beauty — the perfect form I 
 It goes with style in literature, which he thinks more of than 
 of matter. Perhaps that's one of the reasons he admires 
 Ilsa and is so tolerant of her little ways ? And Mother's 
 figure is not at all negligible either 1 I, alone, of the family, 
 stoop, and am ungraceful and ungracious. But then — I 
 write 1 
 
 He told Ida that after having pottered all his life he had 
 made up his mind never to potter again. 
 
 " By pottering I suppose you mean looking after Lady 
 Aries' affairs ? " Ida had chaffed him, and he had replied : 
 
 " Oh, as doctors say when they go out of practice, I shall 
 always be happy to run Lady Aries' errands — if I come back 
 alive, that is, which I feel I shall not." 
 
 Just like Audely ; because he is going into the Army, he 
 is killed already. The worst is always to happen to him ; 
 he is always strained to top notch 1 Ida and Gerald almost 
 weary me nowadays with singing the praises of Mother and 
 Audely. You would think they were Tristram and Iseult, or 
 Aucassin and Nicolete, at least. . . . Gerald even goes so far 
 as to say that because of Mother's aristocratic pluck and our 
 boys' carrying out their feudal obligations so adequately, he 
 is being converted to the acceptance of the monarchic and 
 aristocratic principle. 
 
 Meantime Ida and I go about with Audely to help him to 
 choose his things. It is rather fun. I am getting acquainted 
 
THE LAST DITCH 161 
 
 with all sorts of mysterious words and names of hitherto 
 unknown objects. A " tunic " I had so far always associated 
 with tight-rope dancing and obese gentlemen with torsos — 
 I find it is what I should call a glorified Norfolk jacket. Then 
 there are "slacks" and "puttees"; and, isn't it a majestic 
 compound of words ? — a " British warm." 
 
 It is a short-waisted garment like a little boy's first coat 
 after he has been put into trousers. I tried on Audely's, 
 just as I tried on Le Loffel's great military mantle at Nau- 
 heim a year ago. To think that I have been muffled up to 
 my chin and down to my knees in a garment that now covers 
 one of the enemies of my country 1 I might have married 
 Le Loffel 1 I almost wish I had from one point of view. 
 I should have been in Germany by now, and seeing theirs I 
 
 Then a " valise "1 I had certain preconceived ideas about 
 a valise, something small and distinguished that one carried 
 about with one, which one's servant stole and which was the 
 first thing to be searched for compromising documents. I 
 found it to be something much more woollen and domestic — 
 practically an entire sleeping compartment. Then there 
 were binoculars, patent prismatic water compasses, that were 
 difficult to get, but Ida and I clubbed together to get them 
 for him. He had lots of revolvers already — ^you can't travel 
 in the East without them — ^but he had to have a sword — ^f or 
 parade, not to fight with. Ida is going to keep Audely's 
 for him when he goes to the front. He has promised to 
 deposit it with her. I would have, if he had asked me, but 
 he didn't. It is the most hideous and vulgar thing you ever 
 saw, like a handle of a hired knife and fork from a caterer's ; 
 but still, it would have been gather romantic to cherish it 
 till he came back. I rather like the idea of living -in the 
 house with a sword. It might stir in the cupboard when 
 something exciting was happening to its master over there, 
 like the executioner's axe in the German legend. 
 
 Then we all went to the photographer and were photo- 
 graphed in groups. Audely of course in khaki. It doesn't 
 suit his fair hair at all, though it goes with his blue eyes 
 well enough. It is a pity they are so cold. It seems to 
 paralyse the rest of his face. . . . 
 
 It is all rather fun, these details that I get at first 
 
 hand. There was nobody to help and go about with him 
 
 but Ida and me. Mother away, Ilsa in Paris, and Gerald 
 
 frightfully busy with his invention. He is working in 
 
 11 
 
162 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 the Admiralty, and gets home in the evenings dog-tired, 
 and just wants to put his head on Ida's shoulder and be 
 petted. I really rather hate seeing people so fond of each 
 other — it seems to me so unpicturesque — so I go out aa 
 much as I can, and leave them to themselves. I get 
 Audely to take me out to restaurants as he used to take 
 us all. If Mother knew, she would worry, and bid me try 
 to raise a chaperon. But Lily won't stir out in the evenings 
 now, and Susan Dowlais sits in a dark room and cries over 
 Belle-Belle, and Ida is otherwise engaged. Even if I pro- 
 mised Mother I would, I shouldn't be able to keep my 
 promise. 
 
 I feel rather lonely, doing nothing, and should like to get 
 rid of the fetish that I am not strong enough, which is 
 sheer nonsense. But it is diflScult to find any job that 
 doesn't take up aU one's time. They don't like you to 
 agree for less than twelve hours a week at anything, and I 
 mitst keep a little time for my own life, don't you think ? 
 
 But Mother is really so attendrU with the war and Audely, 
 that she would stand almost anything that included him. 
 To be Audely and an ofi&ccr in His Majesty's Army covers 
 every sin possible, and certainly the minor one of giving 
 me my dinner at little respectable restaurants such as 
 Audely chooses in preference to the big disreputable ones. 
 To be caught at the Polly-oUy — short for Oi Polloi — ^for 
 instance, would not be half so bad as being seen alone at 
 the smart big evening-dress places where shady couples 
 show themselves on purpose to afficher a divorce, so Audely 
 tells me. It is funny how worldly Audely is under his 
 socialistic, romantic veneer 1 
 
 I fancy Mother, now, would forgive even a full-dress 
 dinner at the " Spitz," or an undress one in the Vorticist 
 room in Soho. She always goes Nap on any principle she 
 adopts, and her last pronouncement is that no English- 
 woman ought to refuse anything in the world to the man 
 who is fighting and giving his life for her and hers. I should 
 ■ay that this theory might land her — and me — in some 
 very strange predicaments ! And of course, even in these 
 hurried days, the useless people who are left, talk. They 
 have nothing else to do. The club gossips and Mrs. Grundy 
 — ^who, I am sure, never hides her eyes behind a steaming 
 eoftee-um— is always with us. She spies us two together, 
 I have no doubt. The poor little attenuated world, no 
 
THE LAST DITCH 168 
 
 longer with a big W, or a purr, has however all its claws 
 left sticking out, and is wondering already what the lady 
 in Madrid says to it all, and if I am going to snatch him 
 from her. It is rather fun. Nothing is more than rather, 
 now. 
 
 I'm sure Audely never thinks of it. If it wasn't for the 
 honour and glory of the thing I should have a very dull 
 time, eating my good dinners by the side of an unresponsive 
 man, who just pays for them, puts my cloak on for me, and 
 takes me home to Ida's without " coming in." That is 
 what Audely does. When he talks, it is all about the War. 
 He is deeply moved and excited about that, now that he 
 is in it. No more cynical talk about Germany's wonderful 
 cleverness and staying power, or diatribes against Our 
 Imbecile Government, and prophecies that every one of 
 us, including himself and the enemy, will be tired of it in 
 six months. He is now as deadly in earnest over it as a 
 boy over a game of cricket to the death, or a mortal football 
 match in which the players never come out of the " scrimi " 
 alive. One is amused and interested at first, but one 
 doesn't care for a grown man to be so very like a schoolboy — 
 or even a child, and I quite foresee that Audely will bore 
 me in a very short time. He will just have to fall back on 
 Mother, the tireless sympathizer, who will adore him in 
 every incarnation that he likes to imagine himself into. 
 
 There was a really exciting three quarters of an hour 
 when he finally left to join his regiment by the night train 
 at one o'clock! 
 
 The great lonely station was like one of those engravings 
 by Piranesi, representing vast spaces full of unnamable 
 machinery ; joists of devil cranes jutting out high over head 
 in the shattered roof ; dim shapes of the damned flitting in 
 and out of the dark shades, crossing the light spaces now 
 and again, to be swallowed up once more in the hollow shell 
 of blackness ; men stooping fearfully, as if afraid, or moving, 
 roped in chains. . . They were only porters I . . . 
 
 And Ida and I, two frail, useless women, walking each 
 side of our knight, whose armour we had buckled on, speeding 
 him into the Valley of the Shadow of Death to fight with 
 Apollyon. The great gaunt station seemed the portal of 
 Hell. ... 
 
 And yet, when one thought of it, one knew that Audely 
 wasn't, anyhow, going straight to the front; might never go. 
 
164 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 because of his age; might not stand the preliminary training? 
 Who knows ? Only one just didn't choose to think of it 
 from such an unpicturesque point of view, or put it to one- 
 self that he was for the present a grown-up schoolboy going 
 off to be a member of a military class and learn lessons 1 
 It really is part of the training : reading and writing and 
 acquiring a smattering of history and geography. 
 
 I don't pity Audely. He will have the greatest fim for 
 the next six weeks at all events : a grown man going back 
 to school, bathing and cycling and motoring about between 
 his lessons. It will be six months before he is ready to 
 go out, and by that time the war will be over. 
 
 By the way, when you write back, do impress this upon 
 Mother as much as you can. To judge from her letters, 
 she is in a morbid state of hyper-anxiety, praying at a prie- 
 Dieu, wearing a coarse chemise to mortify the flesh, leaving 
 off after-dinner coffee — she doesn't smoke so she can't 
 leave off that — ^but she honestly refuses to eat a chocolate. 
 She is worrying about Audely and his fate, which isn't a 
 fate at all, for he isn't a really romantic character; that is 
 his curse, for he likes to pose as one, and it leads him into 
 strange complexes and contradictions. 
 
 This new apotheosis of his is very well staged, and helps 
 him to that aspect which he desires to present. It's telling. 
 I found it really very queer, to stroll about the platform 
 for nearly half an hour with an absolute stranger. For 
 Audely looked different, and in spirit was quite aloof. He 
 was already gone mUes away from us, because of his own 
 special power of detachment, which irritates Mother beyond 
 endurance. She goes in for asking him questions, prodding 
 him up generally, getting him into the main stream of con- 
 versation by hook or by crook, and to have him not hear, or 
 turn round with a patient " What, dear ? " as of a seer dis- 
 turbed at his best vision, drives her mad. 
 
 His uniform changes him completely. I left him with 
 Ida once, and walked away to a little distance and had a good 
 look at him. I approved of him. He has very straight 
 legs, and wrapped in puttees they reminded me of a South 
 American hunter. I don't care for the affected cut of the 
 knickerbockers, bagging out at the sides like the panniers of 
 a woman's dress, though it's only what they used to wear out 
 shooting. And the square tabard-like coat suggested the 
 caricatures people draw to amuse children, in three lines, of 
 
THE LAST DITCH 163 
 
 Henry the Eighth, only Audely is not particularly stput. 
 And the cap, very stiff and fiat, with the hair shaved so 
 closely beneath it, would be like Henry the Eighth's bonnet, 
 only it is not worn on one side in the rakish manner indicated 
 in Holbein's pictures, which make even a Tudor king look 
 vulgar. 
 
 It was time. There was a suggestion of a whistle. . . . 
 It sounded secret and mysterious, but it is never more than 
 a suggestion at the best of times, is it ? . . . and a cry. . . . 
 " All in ! " 
 
 Audely stooped — to Ida ; he didn't need to stoop to me— 
 and gave us both a kiss (I didn't know till then he kissed 
 Ida !), and got into the carriage, where an obsequious guard 
 was stowing his nice new-looking green bags and pack- 
 ages. . . . 
 
 Audely tipped him royally, and then stood at the win- 
 dow, fearfully self-conscious — and saying inane things. . . . 
 
 Then the train slid out of the station, bearing away our 
 knight — to Fordingbridge only I Yet, bless me, I had tears 
 in my eyes t Audely had got his effect finely. 
 
 " He's a dear ! " Ida said, grateful, I suppose, for her 
 kiss. 
 
XII 
 
 From The Lady Arlet 
 
 LOOHROYAN. 
 
 Foe my sins, dear, here I am back at quiet old Lochroyan. 
 Like a house of the dead it is, and your father, the invalid I 
 have come to nurse, by far the liveliest and cheeriest person 
 in it. The nurse is a trial — they all are — and old Maggie 
 very depressing and portentous. She will have it that the 
 ghost of Anatole visits her every night, and she is sure he is 
 a "dead corp" by now. It is no use my telling her what 
 I know now, that he is only in prison. Maggie sees him in 
 her dreams, frowning at her, for she was the one to set the 
 " sodgers " on to him by telling them that he was away 
 over the roof of the laundry house. For all other company 
 I have Mrs. Lysons of Aldivalloch, who comes over here in 
 deep mourning for her son George, . . . 
 
 Here alone without Venice, or Eftel, or Audely, I have 
 a very poor time. I console myself only with thinking that 
 Aries needs me, though of course he is going on perfectly 
 well in the health line. He has a magnificent constitution. 
 I sit beside his couch and think over old days and what a 
 fine man he used to be, and what a magnificent chest for 
 orders ! I shall never forget my pride as we two walked up 
 the long vestibule leading to the top of the staircase in 
 Arlington Street to where Lady Salisbury stood to receive 
 us ! It was a long and trying exhibition, that few yards of 
 red baize, to those Hi-equipped with looks or presence, and 
 Aries and I, or so I flatter myself, came out of it well. 
 
 And it was I who laid my partner low 1 I pray to be 
 forgiven, and realize that though I have been let off easy 
 by Fate, Aries is now, and must remain, my first consideration. 
 
 If it wasn't for this conviction, do you know, dear, I 
 hardly think I should have been able to tear myself away 
 from town. I have to support my resolve by remembering 
 
 166 
 
THE LAST DITCH 167 
 
 my crime against AiJes and the country. I harboured a 
 spy and gave my husband a stroke. I keep rubbing this 
 into myself whenever the " urge " to get back to the centre 
 of events is too forcible. It is only now and then that it 
 comes with overwhelming strength that I can hardly resist. 
 Before I left here, I had instituted a neat little arrang^nent 
 for casual praying in my bedroom — in a comer, with curtaini 
 arranged, and hangings, so as to give the idea of a private 
 chapel. I now take my worries there. You'll say, if Papa 
 is well there are no worries, or ought not to be. But there 
 is the leaving of my darliag Venice to her own devices, and 
 the not seeing Audely off, and attending myself to all his 
 little comforts. Venice is supposed to be doing it, but 
 Venice has no idea of what a man wants : the little attentions 
 and pettings that I could have given, so as to make Audley 
 think that the people he leaves behind are caring for him ! . . . 
 And I have to trust to that careless child for all accoimts 
 of him and how it has gone. And she is not interested in 
 him ; and although she saw him off, with Ida, they only did 
 it to please me and because he timed his departure, so Ida 
 says, at one in the morning, which amused Venice and lent 
 interest for her to a rather commonplace proceeding. 
 
 The whole thing was rather culpably rushed on me ; and 
 perhaps, as a very old friend of Audely's, I ought to have 
 resented his abrupt way of telling me, a little more. For 
 really Audely carries casualness to a fault. Only the night 
 before I left for Scotland he told me, as if he had said he 
 was going to a race meeting or a shoot. . . . 
 
 " By the way, Beaty, I've got my commission to go and 
 fight the b y Huns." 
 
 Not one word more, and one a word that he ought hardly 
 to have used to me. But one couldn't be angry very long 
 with Audely ; besides, to borrow a word from his dictionary, 
 he is so b y brave to go in at all 1 
 
 It is Venice who has given him " beans." She writes to 
 him and says she is astonished at him, of all people, suddenly 
 developing the murder lust, and talking about bloody Huns 
 and mad dogs and so on. She says, once you begin to insult 
 a coimtry you can't do anything with it in the way of parle- 
 menting. But can one do anything with a mad dog except 
 pitchfork it ? 
 
 And when I tax her with the rumours of massacres of 
 Belgian civilians, which is beginning to get through to us, 
 
168 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 she denies the reports, or says they are greatly exaggerated. 
 There is that shocking story of the people being driven along 
 in front of the advancing armies of Germans, as a kind of 
 living screen, to prevent the soldiers on their own side from 
 firing at them 1 And the children without hands 1 Venice 
 utterly scouts the idea of such inconceivable cruelty as 
 that ! . . . 
 
 Well I can conceive it, of those people I I remember a 
 horrid German tale I heard often when a child. The people 
 who read it to me thought nothing of it, nor did I ; I didn't 
 understand it. I used to call it the Hanseless Maiden. 
 A girl has her hands cut off by her cruel relations and 
 is sent out into the forest to get what food she can by 
 grubbing up roots. Of course the tragedy of it is that she 
 has no hands to grub with. They grew again in the story, 
 of course. But that simple peasants could imagine such 
 a thing, and tell their children about it over the fireside, 
 suggests that it is one of their recognized methods of 
 punishing enemies ! 
 
 Well, even if things are exaggerated, and perhaps they are, 
 there are one or two absolutely authenticated incidents of 
 the raid into Belgium. It seems to me that the blood of 
 even one dead baby spitted on a bayonet cries aloud to 
 Heaven, and practically indicts a whole nation of those 
 that do it. And the revolting indecencies 1 The desecra- 
 tions 1 For God's sake, say I, let us get the whole disgusting 
 monkey-house bundled off the face of the good, clean earth 
 as soon as possible 1 I may be a fool . . . war is war, of 
 course. All I venture to think is that a people whose folk- 
 tales are brutal are coarser than others. They are like 
 butchers, to whom killing is part of the day's work and 
 no particular treat. Even if we look on them as drunken 
 soldiers who know not what they do ... or say that 
 people are not accountable for what they do in hot 
 blood, these crimes are done in cold ! They state that 
 the excesses are done by command — orders from on high, 
 given by people one has known, severities preached by 
 professors who have enjoyed one's hospitality. There was 
 that splendid creature Willamowitz Something or other- 
 dorf, who admired Venice, and paid her attention in his 
 spoilt, indifferent way. He came to roast goose at Park 
 Crescent, once— he and Professor Oncken that year they 
 were over here to the Literary Congress. And now these 
 
THE LAST DITCH 169 
 
 fvhilom guests are preaching the massacre of us all I And 
 in Rome once, Ilsa reminds me, Bernhardi came to lunch, 
 and how I took a strong dislike to him. Willamowitz 
 certainly was fascinating . . . but that doesn't excuse his 
 egging on his pupils to bloodshed. 
 
 The idea of my little girl palliating it 1 At least, that 
 is what her letters, which I read sitting by the father's 
 sick bed, sound like. She says educated women are bound 
 to take the philosophical view. Then I'm sorry I educated 
 her, that's all. 
 
 It's Mrs. Leahy, I am convinced. Ida herself is a dear, 
 but that mother of hers is mad, and ought to be shut up. 
 That kind of talk breeds Conscientious Objectors. These 
 irresponsible Higher-Thought people don't know the harm 
 they do with impressionable young people. If only Audely 
 wasn't away, or Ilsa back from Paris, or Aries well enough 
 to be moved I It is terrible to a woman of my stamp to 
 live inactive here, away from happenings. Everything 
 seems, according to the papers, to change each hour ; even 
 the laws of physical geography desert us. One has come 
 to feel as if the moon might even cease to control the tides. 
 We may all come to suffer famine, rapine, and sudden death 
 in spite of the valiancy of our young men who are devoting 
 themselves wholesale to saving England — covering their 
 vassals, whom they have sworn to protect. . . . Venice's 
 mediaeval talky-talky, half play, half earnest, comes back 
 to me now. She used to hope that those times would come 
 back, that the King of England would ride out in full armour 
 at the head of his knights as at Cressy and Poictiers, on 
 foreign soil and through foreign cities. Well, it will have 
 to be German soil, and German cities this time. How funny 
 it cannot help being ! All the new peers — ^for we must not 
 forget that we have admitted a lot of grocers and contractors 
 to share our ancient privileges — saddled, booted, and spurred, 
 riding out to war on their heavy battle-chargers, with slogans 
 and fierce cries of " Onwards 1 " 
 
 I fancy in some cases the King might deplore the Birthday 
 Honours List. It strikes me he has slightly lost sight of 
 the feudal idea, as Venice explains it to me ! 
 
 Still, so long as Our Order breeds men like Audely and 
 women like Venice to bind their favours on their heaulmes for 
 them, we shall get along all right. The Aristocracy will 
 make good, and save Old England yet. It is a great and 
 
170 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 proud thought. How I wbh we had an estate still worth 
 speaking of, and that Romanille was alive to do his part ! I 
 should prefer to see one's own men off one's own land, riding 
 out voluntarily under their feudal lord's leadership^so much 
 more picturesque than Conscription, which would do away 
 with all our standing. We hold it on that tenure originally, 
 so Venice says. But if so, we are sadly undermanned. 
 And there is a dearth of leaders in our family. Of all the 
 male relations, there is only Cousin Henry that I can think 
 of who could muster forty men bom and bred on his estate 
 that consider themselves bound to follow him to the wars. 
 He would go fast enough himseU, although he is over age and 
 has married an American parvenu. . . . 
 
 By the way, Audely's valet, who left him so suddenly, was, 
 it turns out, a German, and got away to join the army 
 over there. He was supposed to be a Swiss. What with 
 Anatole and the Bamberger woman, we haven't done badly 
 as a family in the way of spies, and it behoves us to be speci- 
 ally careful. I hear everywhere of spies being taken out of 
 this and that house all round about ; I suppose the tale of 
 our Anatole has got transferred, and now oomes back to us 
 as an independent incident. Some of my servants, although 
 they are not enemy aliens, have to walk seven miles every 
 other day to report themselves at Kirkmichael, and they 
 fill the rest of the day with grumbling. Yet we can't drive 
 them in ; there isn't an ounce of petrol left to us, or indeed 
 in the coimtry round. Every one of them is difficult to do 
 with except Ltocadie, the French under housemaid, who 
 follows me about with loving eyes. She has adored Les 
 Anglais ever since we " came in." She really thought there 
 was a doubt of it, and I dare say all of her nation did, which 
 doesn't sound very creditable for us ! She confided to me 
 that she had dreaded in the beginning whether " Sir Grey " 
 would permit us to do so ; but now : 
 
 " Puis gu", Miladi a hien voulu nous aider, ca sera hieniOt 
 fini .' " 
 
 I confess it is a pleasure nowadays to be au mieux with 
 any one, even if it be only a servant. One feels so lonely 
 and abandoned, even though one is doing one's best for 
 everybody, as far as one sees it. 
 
 It is, I gather, over a week since Audely left London to 
 join the Mfth Norhamshires. Fancy my having to gather 
 anything about Audely I He never was a good correspondent, 
 
THE LAST DITCH 171 
 
 but this might surely be considered rather a special occa- 
 sion for writing 1 He is going to treat it like any of his 
 other absences, I suppose — not worth dilating on. When 
 he is actually out it will be much more annoying ; but he 
 isn't there yet, and while he is still only a probationer there 
 is hope, and I shan't let myself worry too much. I do, 
 though. Pooh 1 I dare say no one is in better case than I 
 am, not even the lady in Madrid. Audely is so neglectful 
 of these sort of feelings in his friends. I dare say, poor thing, 
 she is crying her eyes out over there, because she can't get 
 to him. Though now I think of it, Spain, being neutral, she 
 could ! Perhaps he has forbidden her to try ? There seems 
 to be a husband who might object. So one gathered from 
 the letter Audely wrote to Venice. . . . 
 
 That's all very well, for her, but I should have been by 
 his side in two twos, husband or no husband, if Audely had 
 been my lover. 
 
 As for Venice, to whom he wrote that most beautiful 
 love letter, Venice must be as cold as a frog and as dry as 
 a mummy. She writes about his departure as calmly as if 
 he were a schoolboy going back to school. Why, even if 
 he is killed, she has the written assurance of his love, at any 
 rate, and will have it to read over and look at, for as long 
 as she lives. I have only got a carbon copy. I sent you 
 the best, and of course the original was put back carefully 
 in the blotter by Effel after her work was done. 
 
 Of course, speaking in Venice's defence, one cannot deny 
 that Audely is of a rather fickle disposition ; and Venice 
 would demand a man's whole heart or nothing. I dare say 
 she wrote and told him so ? . . . 
 
 Poor dear, brave boy ! I know what drove him into the 
 Army as well as if he had told me. It was the sight, rubbed 
 into him during that month at Lochroyan, of all the most 
 precious examples of the race — scions of all the best blood 
 in England — rushing to their doom, as you may say, and he, 
 perfectly strong and healthy, sheltering behind those odd 
 years of his, over forty, which " let him out," if he had 
 cared to think so. I think when Bertie Corfe joined up, 
 sacrificing his brilliant career at Oxford, and Lord Cartmel's 
 only son — ^neither of them a year over eighteen— Audely's 
 great heart cracked. And then there was that freak, Belle- 
 Belle Smith, who might have lived in luxury for all the 
 rest of his days (at Susan Dowlais' expense), leaving off all his 
 
172 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 cosmetics and champagne baths and putting himself at the 
 service of the nation that had after all let his father prac- 
 tically die of starvation. An unsuccessful paving-stone 
 artist. It was a sad story that I will tell you one day. 
 Susan Dowlais literally picked him off the streets, where he 
 was trying to help his mother by running errands for a 
 potato salesman. Recognizing the magnlQcent potentialities 
 of his physique, she sent him to school. . . , 
 
 I realize that all those weeks when war was on the tapis 
 merely, and Audely was enduring life with us in this roaring 
 milieu of youthfxil enthusiasm, the reason why he was so 
 taciturn was that he was maturing the wild idea of immo- 
 lating himself on the altar of sacrifice ! I alone, I believe, 
 am able to conceive the emotions of baffled manhood — of 
 suppressed patriotism that surged in his breast as he golfed 
 and badmintoned and bridged as if that was all he, as an 
 old crock, was good for 1 . . . 
 
 The truth is, I have such a dreadful lot of time to think 
 here. I used to long for it in the days of my busy mater- 
 familias career. It is like living in, not a tomb, for Aries 
 is better, but at least a backwater. ... I have continually 
 to remember that it is my own fault that I am here. If I 
 hadn't retained Anatole, Aries wouldn't have had a stroke 
 and I could have been in town with the girls. I must 
 accept my penance. Still, one can't help one's thoughts — 
 Audely's insouciance and neglect, and those two young 
 women caring to stop enjoying themselves in London and 
 leaving me here to mind the house that I took and the 
 invalid I made, solely on their account 1 I don't expect 
 Usa to put herself out to keep her old mother company. 
 She always did go her own way, but from Venice I did expect 
 a little natural affection. . . . 
 
 I have just had a telegram from Ilsa to say that she is 
 back from France and is coming on here after a couple of 
 nights in town. So cancel my grousings, which really were 
 unjustifiable, and in my next letter I will give you Ilsa's 
 news. It is funny that it is Dsa who is coming here to cheer 
 her mother in her loneliness, and not Venice. I suppose her 
 affairs have gone wrong and she hasn't been able to get any 
 clothes, and wants a bosom to lie upon. A mother's is the 
 best for that, not apoplectic old gentlemen or beardless boys. 
 
XIV 
 
 From The Lady Arlea 
 
 LOOHBOYAN. 
 
 Ilsa is not come to cry on my breast, that is the joke of 
 it ; and yet she hasn't brought a stitch from Paris. That 
 isn't what she went for. She says she has brought back 
 something I shall like far better — a husband ! 
 
 The child has engaged herself to Archie Dunkeron, the 
 Master of Cramont, who was here with us only a month 
 ago, and she is desperately, passionately, in love with him 
 and has been all the time. She looks rather altered — thinner, 
 and doesn't drawl so much. Her eyes, that used to be rather 
 blue, dead, and fishy-looking, somewhat spoiling the effect 
 of the tout ensemble of her face, so people said, are now very 
 bright. What Love does I Venice will never feel it like that. 
 It is the quiet ones that go so perfectly mad over and 
 absorbed in a love-affair. Ilsa thinks of Archie all day, and 
 screams at night over dreams of his danger. He is leaving 
 Paris and Barral Quenford, who doesn't at all like giving him 
 up to the air service. He has got a week before he definitely 
 joins, I gather, and is coming here. They intend to revisit 
 all the scenes of their meetings in those days before he had 
 " spoken." That is to say, the places where she spent a 
 portion of her time with him in silence. For if Archie didn't 
 tell her of his love, he certainly told her nothing else. He is 
 quite the most taciturn creature I ever came across — ^abso- 
 lutely no small talk. But his Ilsa likes it apparently, and 
 for its sake is enduring for the first time a tSte-d-tite with 
 her father and mother in patience until he is able to 
 come to her; and there will not be much babble even 
 then, for, I suppose, having got his proposal made, he 
 will now choose to wait until it is absolutely incumbent 
 on him to speak once more formally and say in church, 
 " I wm." 
 
 178 
 
174 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 Venice writes by this day's post. She seems awfully 
 pleased and excited by the news, although Usa says that in 
 town she took it very calmly, not to say grudgingly. 
 
 She is such a child. She seems to think that all Usa's 
 troubles are over instead of just beginning. For although 
 Archie Dimkeron is a charming fellow and Usa's complete 
 equal, and it is all most suitable in every way — ^but one, he 
 has not got a penny. And Ilsa, who has lived so expensively 
 (at other people's expense) for years 1 
 
 The Dunkerons are Jacobites, and were out, man and 
 boy, in the Forty-Five, and their lands attaindered, so that 
 there is hardly any money left, and jointures to pay to a 
 lively old mother and two sporting aunts out of it. Cramont 
 Brig is an old mouldering pele tower where pleasure parties 
 picnic in summer. It's not liveable in, as it is. It could 
 be restored, but where is the money to come from ? . . . 
 One conjectures that that may be the reason poor Archie 
 is so silent ? Having any sort of painful family history 
 behind you is apt to have that effect. 
 
 Yes, I am dreadfully afraid that, however much in love, 
 Ilsa, with her tastes, won't be able to stick to him. . . . 
 Indeed, from the monetary point of view, she would be 
 showing her sense to give him up. It would, however, in 
 my opinion be a very great mistake. Her case is special. 
 With her funny record she may never have another 
 chance of a man like that: her equal in rank, straight, 
 as far as she knows, and who is willing, nay eager, to 
 look over the past. It is a triumph for her golden hair, 
 which I suppose has brought him up to the point? Men 
 go so mad about gold that isn't fake, and Ilsa's is her 
 own, and not touched up at all. She inherits it from me, 
 and I attribute all my own successes in life to it. The zest 
 for it answers, I fancy, to the innate sense of contrast we 
 have, all of us, deep down. Audely had a theory which 
 I never quite understood — something about one of the 
 evidences for the duality of the world — Ormuzd and Ahri- 
 man. . . . Je n'en sals rien ; but certainly Archie is as dark 
 as the night and Ilsa fair as the morning. . . . 
 
 All the time that they were here together, I gather, he 
 made no sign. Bub she knew, she says, by a kind of lover's 
 prescience. She just kept quite quiet and bided her time, 
 and was much amused at the low opinion we all had of her 
 power of attracting, regarding her as quite on the shelf. 
 
THE LAST DITCH 173 
 
 Then when war had definitely broken out, she knew that 
 the moment had come, and dashed off to Paris, aware that 
 it only needed some sort of fortuitous meeting to bring 
 out the proposal that was awaiting her over there from 
 that leal heart and true. Reserved men you always have 
 to give some sort of lead to, and she did. Quietly meeting 
 him in due course at the Embassy, she told him that 
 she was over for clothes, and would literally live at the 
 Galcrie Lafayette. He took the hint, hung about there all 
 day, and sure enough met her quite by accident, and pro- 
 posed in the Mercerie among the reels of cotton and the 
 staylaces hanging from the counter. 
 
 And now, Laura, to be practical, what is she going to 
 admit to ? There has got to be some sort of admission or 
 confession. It is like " declaring " a small portion of any- 
 thing really glaring, and hard to smuggle at the Customs, 
 so as to get the lot through. He may have heard quite a lot 
 about her ; he may have heard very little ! Whatever it is, he 
 will not want to believe it, but, lover like, will go straight 
 to her for denial or confirmation, as he will put it. Denial 
 a lover hopes for, and nearly always gets. But it means 
 nothing, of course. How should it? It is absurd to ask 
 any one to incriminate themselves and not put as good a 
 face upon the matter as possible, especially in the case 
 of a woman. But the more a man cares for a girl, the 
 more he feels sure of getting the exact truth about her 
 from he^elf, expecting her thus to be the agent of her 
 own disaster. They will do it, however, and always 
 have, the best and most sensible of them, from Lohengrin 
 downwards. 
 
 So it seems to me that out of the mountain of scandal that 
 jealous people have probably filled that poor boy up with, 
 Ilsa may find it wiser to admit to a part. She ought to tell 
 him something ; it would strengthen his hand so. It is 
 better to get in first, tell your own story — as much of it as 
 you think they will be able to stand — ^watching their faces 
 and gestures as you go on. . . . Then when he is properly 
 primed, the world may just come along with its insinuations, 
 that are so much worse than the truth which he knows. The 
 scandalmongers find the impregnable armour of complete 
 knowledge arrayed against them as soon as they begin. 
 " Yes, yes," Archie will say, " I have listened to you quietly, 
 and now get out I " Or " I have made inquiries and satisfied 
 
176 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 myself that you are merely spreading base reports of a lady 
 without the slightest foimdation." 
 
 It will be a mother's business to show her daughter — 
 like the Mother in Rose Mary — how to be open without being 
 unpicturesque, how to take the grotesqueness out of things. 
 There's no doubt about it, a girl who is "standing" for 
 marriage must give her man something to go to the country 
 with, as it were. He has got to swagger, so as to carry it 
 off, and so must she. Swagger always daunts mean people, 
 and the people who want to avert a marriage out of sheer 
 mischief-making are always mean. The Aries swagger is 
 notorious — Barral des Baux began it when he sold his 
 town to Charles Quint. The idea is to be above suspicion, 
 and don't care if I did do it, whatever it was 1 
 
 What was it the Roman Emperor said ? I leamt it at 
 school. "Ego sum Rex Romanorum. ... I am an egotist, 
 and govern Rome as I like ! " That has always seemed to me 
 a safe position to take up, and what Sigismimd applied to 
 grammar can easily be applied to the rules of morality. It 
 is only a special sex morality after all, which Ilsa in her hey- 
 day, like Sigismund, walked through and over-rid when it 
 suited her. 
 
 She has gone to bed tired, and we have not had our first 
 serious talk yet. But I am sure I can help her. I haven't 
 lived all my life in diplomatic circles for nothing. And 
 besides, we are in a war, and there will be a war morality if it 
 goes on, if I am not mistaken. Usa can catch on to that, 
 and take all modem facilities as being retrospective. 
 
 There are the new Divorce Laws. What a lot of heart- 
 break, and relations' upsetting, would be saved if women 
 would stop jabbing each other, and be sensible enough to 
 avail themselves of the new prospective clauses. 
 
 But there, again. He is always the difficulty. Our fatal 
 fondness and desire for a man about, however brutal or 
 faithless, it is that stops the way and discounts every pre- 
 caution that our legislators take on our behalf. Women, 
 as a rule, don't care to avail themselves of the loopholes 
 of escape it is sought to provide for them. They don't 
 really want to escape when it comes to the point, and let 
 some other woman have their source of tribulation ! 
 
 One sees that, one way or another, it will go on the same — 
 the same woman door-mat for Him if he chooses to come 
 back and say a civil word or two, and presently, when He 
 
THE LAST DITCH 177 
 
 finds it irksome to be civil any longer, Him riding away on 
 the wings of the law, " to new and more voluptuous door- 
 mats," as Ilsa says. 
 
 The poor girl, through the circumstances of her own case, 
 has no illusions. 
 
 12 
 
XV 
 
 From The Lady Aries 
 
 LOCKEOYJIN. 
 
 Archie has come, and that makes it very difficult for me to 
 get any conversation with my daughter. They have got 
 a list of the places they went to together (not even alone) 
 the time he was here before, and they solemnly revisit one 
 or the other of them every day, duly ticking off the different 
 pilgrimages as they accomplish them. They are generally 
 late for lunch, if they come back for it at all. That is one 
 of the signs of how deeply in love Ilsa is, for I have never 
 known her miss a meal for anybody. When they do turn 
 up, in any sort of time, they seem fearfully exhausted 
 (though I am sure it isn't with talking), and just sit and 
 stoke in silence. If it wasn't for a moment or so at night, 
 when Ilsa comes into my room to brush her hair, I should 
 have a dreary time, boxed up with such an extra dull and 
 absorbed pair. But something of the sort one expects, or 
 ought to. I had to do it for you and Peter, but you weren't 
 nearly so bad as Ilsa and Archie. You were just out of the 
 schoolroom, and I suppose one doesn't take it so seriously 
 when one gets it young. 
 
 But with Ilsa it is the pent-up passion of a lifetime. It 
 represents her last chance of enjoying the sensation of being 
 all in all to some one. She knows, and I know, that if this 
 particular affair doesn't come off, she will have to give up 
 all hope of marrying. 
 
 For I suppose that is it, after all — ^the intense longing 
 for something stable that made even George Eliot rush 
 into marriage at fifty or so with a young man. Ilsa is 
 older than Archie, but not much. She plays up to him 
 very well, though I rather believe that she has frittered 
 away her power of loving to a certain extent, and finds it 
 difficult to produce enough emotion to quite fill the bill. 
 
 178 
 
THE LAST DITCH 179 
 
 He may be rather exigeant, this tall stick of a fellow who 
 hardly ever speaks, but just sits glowering at her with his 
 deep black sunken eyes as if he could eat her. There is no 
 doubt about his ability to give full measure of love and 
 overflowing. It must be very gratifying to Ilsa, and one 
 can't wonder that she is keen on it and him. 
 
 I do believe Archie, though Scotch, has Spanish blood 
 in him ; he couldn't be so passionate and dark, if not. Weren't 
 any of the Armada people wrecked on the coast of Scotland ? 
 Wasn't there a battle of Largs ? Could a Don have tampered 
 with his pedigree, as poor dear Lady Colin used to say, of 
 hers ? Any way, the contrast between her fairness and his 
 duskiness is so marked that even the village people here 
 notice it. They take a great deal of interest in " The 
 Lovers," and follow their movements and tell me about 
 them, quite civilly. One old Goody, about four miles from 
 here — I go long walks, by myself, alas ! — ^told me that she 
 often sees Xady Ilsa and her braw sweetheart down by the 
 brae together, very lover-like, him fishing in the bit burn 
 and she putting worms on the hook with her own white 
 hands. Shepherds tell me they see them sheltering in 
 some sheep stell or other, over the hills and far away, in 
 the pouring rain, laughing and behaving as if 'twas nowt 
 but a passing shower. 
 
 In bonnie Scotland, it never passes, but is permanent, 
 so it is obviously not so much a case of shelter as of getting 
 under the same plaidie I 
 
 Fimny what love will do I Ilsa, giving up all her lazy ways 
 and self-indulgent habits for a man I Time was she wouldn't 
 walk a step, and certainly not in the "rain 1 Even her absurd 
 flimsy fanciful clothes seem to have gone into the rag bag ; 
 she says she is going to make cushion covers and window 
 blinds of her Paquin dresses as soon as she gets a house, 
 and she now wears nothing but Harris tweeds and stout 
 ugly boots, because he likes her to. 
 
 She brought back no clothes from Paris. She says, 
 again, he didn't care for her to, and that, to me, is rather an 
 indication of how he is going to regard her past, so bound 
 up with Paris frou-frou and meretricious dressing. She 
 wears no jewels now, except her plain engagement ring, 
 with a single sapphire (I've heard that that's the stone that 
 stands for the virtue of chastity), and sometimes the great 
 fat jade fetish that Audely had set for her as a pendant. 
 
180 TIIE LAST DITCH 
 
 She certainly looks twice the woman she did, only thinner, 
 if you understand what I mean. She used to smother her 
 face with cream, and powder thickly on top. No need, 
 for she is naturally white as milk. But all that make-up has 
 been left off, and she shows a nice brown flush on her white 
 skin where the wind, more than the sun, tans her. However 
 tanned and wind-beaten she is, Ilsa will always be a start- 
 lingly fair woman. Breathe it not, but she looks rather 
 like Germania of the Denkmal on the Niederthal we all 
 climbed up to see last time we were on the Rhine. Ah me I 
 Those days of yore, when we went about, Ilsa, Audely, 
 Venice, and I, all talking and laughing and quizzing the 
 Germans, and here I am boxed up with Ilsa and this solemn 
 young owl ! And she used to be so amusing, letting off all 
 sorts of sayings that seemed simple and rather obscure, 
 but when you took them to bed and slept on them, you 
 saw the devilry in them. I suppose she is afraid of her 
 Archie's considering them carefully, in and out, and perhaps 
 getting upset. So now, instead of our Journal pour Rire, 
 as we used to call her, we have a thing more like Simplicia- 
 simus, which is never in the least funny or even risqui. , . . 
 N.B, — ^Audely used to say it was — pornographic, was his 
 word. 
 
 Aries gets steadily better and we shall be able to move 
 him soon. I leave the lovers to their own devices all day, 
 relying on my heart-to-heart talk over my bedroom fire in 
 the evenings with Ilsa. She is quite alive to the difficulties 
 ahead of her. Archie has literally only got his pay to count 
 on, and why on earth does he leave Quenford ? Quenford 
 is awfully fond of him, and trusted him, and sent him on all 
 sorts of secret missions. I don't wonder at that : a man you 
 can't get anything out of, even in peace time ! But he seems 
 to be wild to go into the air. Perhaps it appeals to him as 
 a silent profession ? 
 
 Ilsa is selling all her furs and jewels. When she came up 
 here she was exhausted, for during the two days she was in 
 town she ran about trying to dispose of things to the best 
 advantage. I am surprised to hear the sums some of the 
 jewellery was valued at. Though Archie knows that she 
 is getting rid of them at a price, he is not bound to know 
 the exact figure. She says he doesn't approve of her selling 
 anything. The silly enthusiastic boy thinks they can both 
 
THE LAST DITCH 181 
 
 live on the air, and wants to have her come to him in her 
 shift, as they say. 
 
 Ilsa's shift being usually composed of a whole piece of 
 lace, is more of an asset than most women's — mine or even 
 Venice's ; though Venice, as I told you, has lately, for some 
 reason or other, wakened up to the importance of being 
 dainty, and has been a serious drain on my purse in con- 
 sequence. 
 
 You will say I always get back to Venice. But I am 
 disposiag of Ilsa and her affairs first. An engagement always 
 carries all else before it, and puts the bride-elect in the fore- 
 front for the moment. ... I am afraid Venice has been 
 unequal to the position, merely temporary as it is, to judge 
 from Ilsa's rather bitter comment on her reception of the 
 news. 
 
 " Oh yes, of course, it was a bit of a shock to Venice — • 
 my suddenly, at the eleventh hour, becoming It. You have 
 brought her up so carefully to consider herself the only 
 person of any importance in the house ; my brief apotheosis 
 naturally upsets her." 
 
 I asked her what she meant by apotheosis. 
 
 " One of Venice's pet long words," she said. " It merely 
 means that I am having my little hour — every woman has 
 a right to that, and my sister grudges it me." 
 
 I had never heard her speak like that of Venice before. I 
 didn't like it. Ilsa is so sincere ; one knew she had been hurt 
 by some omission on Venice's part — lack of expressed 
 sympathy and congratulation. And of course it is Archie who 
 has put the idea into Ilsa's head that Venice doesn't make 
 enough of her and her great event. There is nothing like 
 a fianci for setting a girl to resent things from members of 
 her own family that she has never thought of objecting to 
 before, starting his beloved to worry about the little neglects 
 and rudenesses that sisters have been offering each other 
 ever since their nursery days, and they don't mean unkindly 
 a bit. 
 
 And it is upsetting, all this talk of marrying that is in the 
 air. That's War too ! Eat, drink, and be merry — alter the 
 " e " to " a " — ^for to-morrow we cross the Channel, where 
 we may die, and where, at any rate, there are no women to 
 flirt with ; and if there are, we mayn't. But a girl can get 
 along very well without thinking about such things, if other 
 girls don't blazen their happiness under her nose. 
 
182 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 This plethora of war marriages now, the fulsome announce- 
 ments and pictures of brides in the illustrated papers, and 
 the direct consequence — ^war-widows scuttling about with 
 their long limp veils flaunting from the backs of their 
 smart, quite unfairly becoming, hats I No wonder Venice 
 feels left, and tries to get up a little excitement for herself. 
 Ilsa for the moment speaks most uncharitably about her 
 little sister, whom I am unfeignedly glad to hear hasnH 
 mastered the alphabet of flirtation according to the elder. 
 I tell Ilsa that I prefer, on the whole, that Venice should 
 behave like a bull in a china shop, if it is a decent bull that 
 knows no better — or worse. 
 
 She says, in the delicate art of handling men Venice's 
 fingers are all thumbs and her eyes saucers. Well 1 I am 
 glad that, having good eyes, she does not faiow how to use 
 them. To see with is good enough. That she hasn't got 
 the trick of les yeux voilies, or any other tricks, and a good 
 thing too, seeing what it leads to, on the whole. But it is 
 certainly a pity, as Ilsa points out, that the family pout 
 that Aunt Corisande Wheler had, as one can see in the 
 portraits, is growing on Venice. . . . 
 
 It is all the Master's thunder, re his new sister-in-law to 
 be, that Ilsa is regaling me with. Archie, like all lovers 
 before him and after, tells hk girl that she is the best of 
 the bunch, and so on. 
 
 I asked Ilsa if she had ever told Archie about Sir Audely 
 Bar and the letter he had written Venice. No, she hadn't 
 troubled to tell him. She chose to pooh-pooh the whole 
 incident, suggesting that Venice probably wrote the letter 
 herself ! 
 
 " Why, why ? " I said, astounded, 
 
 " Just to get her own way about something," Ilsa re- 
 turned. " Perhaps to get you to let her be bridesmaid to 
 Ida Leahy ? " 
 
 She was bridesmaid to Ida Leahy, but I see no reason 
 to connect the two incidents. 
 
 So much for Venice's attractions, which, as they didn't 
 happen to attract Archie, are to be set down as non-existent. 
 But it doesn't make me like him any more. 
 
 I seriously intended, as I told you, for I consider it 
 8 mother's duty, to make her tell me how much she had 
 told or intended to tell Archie. But she has been here with 
 me a week, and unless I ask her the question plump, and 
 
THE LAST DITCH 188 
 
 somehow one does not like to do that, even to a daughter, 
 I don't believe she will ever tell me of her own accord. I 
 haven't the courage when it comes to the point. I don't 
 know my own daughter well enough. I never did know 
 her, I believe. I suppose it is a judgment on me for my 
 worship of Venice. For I let Ilsa and her affairs slide from 
 the very first ; I realize it now. What could I do, given her 
 peculiar character and inherited tendencies ? She was so 
 strong and pink and white and masterful. She simply 
 insisted, the moment she came out, on pursuing a course 
 of which both her father and myself disapproved. He did 
 not take it in at the time — not even as much as I did. And 
 the moment we talked to her seriously, she stuck out that 
 she didn't come down on us for money or her keep, and so 
 wasn't accountable to us for her behaviour. That if we 
 started worrying her about it, she would go and live by 
 herself, or with Miss Meggan Twells — the Editress of The 
 Beauty's Friend. 
 
 That would have been worse. For all through, luckily, 
 she never forfeited the shelter of her father's roof, and 
 committed all her errors, ostensibly, under it. . . . Other- 
 wise I doubt if she would have secured this present young 
 man. It has saved things a good deal, the cloak of a father 
 who was supposed to look after her — ^but didn't. He hadn't 
 time. 
 
 And that, Laura, you must understand, was why I was 
 always upset when Venice came to me and asked if she might 
 go to college, or slumming, or to the Holy Land, or room 
 with a girl, or an Art School 1 Anywhere out of the house 
 to sleep seemed to me the thin end of the wedge 1 And my 
 one idea has been to get her married before she got out 
 of hand like her sister. After all, they are sisters and share 
 the same wild blood in equal quantities. 
 
 And the blood itself — well, it is sans peur of course, but 
 it isn't altogether sans reproche in the conventional sense, 
 where our women are concerned. My own people, the 
 Dalruans, are as respectable as Gk)d makes them, but that 
 can hardly be said of the St. Remys. 
 
 They were wild people, those Provencal noblemen, fighting 
 and making love all over the place, from the very beginning. 
 There was that wicked but strong Barral des Baux, and the 
 lady of the Cabellodourod'oro (in the Museum at Aries), and 
 Macntz of Paradou, and the Duke of Aries' first wife, the 
 
184 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 half-sister of the terrible Blanche la Louve of Perigueux, who 
 had the affair with the poet Pierre Vidal and drove him into 
 the mountains to be destroyed by the dogs of shepherds. You 
 know it all, of course. 
 
 Later on there was Corisande Wheler, who ought, as far 
 as appearances went, to have been canonized. . . . But I 
 say, one never knows the obscure reason which made her 
 choose a conventual existence for the latter half of her life. 
 . . . And certainly she is, and remains, the only possible 
 saint in the family I 
 
 You know, of course, how the Norssex dukedom originated ? 
 Rather disgracefully, through Mary Knipp the actress, so 
 often mentioned in Pepys. I do not believe, although 
 Pepys tries hard in his memoirs to make us think it, that he 
 was dear Aunt Minna's ancestor! She wouldn't like that, 
 would she ? Authors are all very well, but not so far back 
 as that, when they were still nobodys and had to behave, 
 more or less. 
 
 All these facts are, worse luck, incorporated in the pedi- 
 gree ; they can't be kept out. And why should they ? 
 They are picturesque, and have been revirginated by the 
 hand and lapse of time, I should say. But one cannot, 
 in the end, get away from facts, and the lower orders will 
 be able to make use of it when the time comes and they 
 want to revise the Pension List and abolish all dukedoms 
 and emoluments that came by the right of kissing. . . . And 
 meantime, my poor Ilsa has managed to go and inherit the 
 riotous pleasure-seeking blood in a larger degree than some 
 of us — that's all. 
 
 So now, as regards her self-indulgence in these sort of 
 ways, I am, though on the best of terms with her, not in 
 her confidence. One is just left to make what one can of 
 such clues as have leaked out. . . . 
 
 The utter revolution in the style of dressing, the laying 
 aside of all doubtful gew-gaws . . . these facts are significant, 
 showing her attitude towards Archie, and his towards her, 
 or rather her past. One doesn't know if it is voluntary, 
 or done at his request ? She may, in certain aggravated 
 cases, have told him how she came by the trinkets, and he 
 may, in consequence, have specifically forbidden her to 
 wear these again ? . . . 
 
 But, anyhow, she has made a fairly clean sweep of all, 
 except the one Audely gave her, and to that she can proudly 
 
THE LAST DITCH 183 
 
 point as indubitably not the wages of sin ! Or, and I think 
 this more likely, the canny Scot has bidden her just sell 
 them and get as good a price for them as she could ! 
 
 Her pearls, of which she must have had several thousand 
 pounds' worth, never appear now. Once when she saw my 
 eye light upon her poor bare neck, she said, laughing, that 
 she had put her best string into a box for safety when 
 she went to Paris, and on her return found they had run 
 away to water. Pearls are supposed to do that, some- 
 times ; it is one of the queer things about them ; but I felt 
 sure, in this case, Ilsa was just putting me off. 
 
 I never did know who gave her them. She always puts 
 an atmosphere round her, even with her own mother, that 
 makes questions of that kind seem impertinent prying ! 
 I might as well have asked Wanda Esterhazy who gave her 
 the ropes she used to wear actually out shooting last year 
 at Glen Musk, and why she did it, although I guessed 
 pretty well at the time, being an exceedingly practical 
 woman and a Jew banker's daughter, that it meant she 
 didn't care to trust her valuables off her for so many hours 
 at a stretch, and preferred to incur the reproach of being 
 overdressed. . , . 
 
 Oh, Laura, those good old days ! Shall we ever have shoots 
 again with Austrian princesses wearing ten thousand poimds' 
 worth of pearls over a tweed coat, with all that hung down 
 stuffed into the breast pocket of it, for fear they caught in 
 something or other. She was a wonderful shot, and adored 
 me — almost indecently so. I suppose she is hating me, 
 poor Wanda, now ! Perhaps she is nursing now in Germany, 
 with the pearls shoved into the breast of her apron lest they 
 tickle her patients' noses ! 
 
 Day dreams do lead one into strange byways, don't they ? 
 How dare I think of Austrian Wanda or discuss a Hun's 
 pearls ? She has probably had to exchange them for an 
 Iron Cross. 
 
 To return to Ilsa. Really, though I am curious to know 
 what arrangements she has actually made, and how much 
 Archie has had to swallow, if any, I don't suppose I could 
 have been of any use to her in consultation. She knows her 
 Archie best by now, and what he is likely to be able to 
 stand. Perhaps, since it was necessary for her to get rid 
 of illicit gifts in order to start fair with him, he is not 
 sorry to think that the price of them will have run into 
 
186 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 three or four figures. A nest-egg for them to begin home 
 life upon 1 
 
 No, I don't seem to like him much, for I am in such a 
 hurry to attribute mean motives to him. And though I 
 felt flattered at the time by her choosing to come straight 
 to me with her new-found happiness, I dare say her choice 
 of me as a confidante was dictated, as far as he was concerned, 
 by self-interest. They would have gone to his people, 
 doubtless, if he had any available. 
 
 But his father died before he was born, and his mother 
 takes her jointure, but lives in a Catholic convent near 
 Hendon; while of his sisters, one is hunting and nursing 
 somewhere in Ireland and one is half a nun herself. We 
 should, if they were to the fore, see exactly how the Cramont 
 clan felt towards Ilsa, by their readiness to and the way 
 they received her, but, so far, I have only seen their rather 
 stiff letters of congratulation. He is a most dutiful son. 
 He almost rose from his knees in the Quenfords' salon, 
 Ilsa tells me, laughing herself — her sense of humour is so 
 strong — to telegraph to his mother the news that she had 
 accepted him. Lady Dunkeron, on her side, is perhaps a 
 dutiful mother — give and take ! 
 
 Or perhaps, huddled away from the world as the Dun- 
 kerons live, they have heard nothing of my Ilsa ? On the 
 other hand. Catholics have ways of getting intelligence, 
 so perhaps they have heard the whole bag of lies about 
 my poor girl ? 
 
 But they are well broken in ; the Master is head of the 
 house— say King of the Clan. He will have got his women 
 drilled into submission by means of their jointures. And 
 Ilsa is going to " vert " formally, and be received into his 
 Church. She has always pretended she was a Catholic to 
 us, but it wasn't serious, for she never went to Mass or 
 Confession. This may be one of the Dunkerons' conditions 
 of acceptance of her as a daughter. 
 
 For I am under no delusions as to her relative position 
 and theirs, as regards ancestry. Archie's house is as good 
 as ours ; not better, but as good. The Dunkerons have, 
 like us. Royal blood in their veins, and it is legitunate, 
 which ours isn't. I dare say antiquaries are able to claim 
 for that old frump Lady D. that she is the mother of a 
 titular king of Scotland— something to do with the three 
 daughters of Balliol— or Bruce, was it ? It is a claim set 
 
THE LAST DITCH 187 
 
 up by a good number of Scotch families — ^but theirs is as 
 good as any. 
 
 Yes, the advantages, heraldically speaking, of an alliance 
 with their House is distinctly to us. And morally — ^well ! — ■ 
 that is Ilsa's fault. And I don't quite forgive her for making 
 me have to be grateful to the Dimkerons and think our- 
 selves lucky to tack on to their family tree. 
 
 [note by mes. peter quinney] 
 
 My people are very odd. They ceased to send me what 
 I call chvmk letters from after the torpedoing of the Lusitania; 
 and for a long while after, such letters as I did receive from 
 them were of a purely domestic and formal character, giving 
 me no insight into the remoter workings of their funny 
 minds. I couldn't complain, for they did write, but I have 
 been very sore about it. I now imderstand from a letter I 
 received from that kind creature. Sir Audely Bar, that in 
 common with other Britishers they were taking upon 
 themselves to resent the so-called pusillanimity of the U.S.A. 
 Perhaps it was natural ; they did not imderstand. Though 
 from the rather unimaginative attitude revealed in the 
 letters written previously to that disaster by my mother 
 and Venice — especially Venice — I did not apprehend that 
 they would so fiercely take up the cudgels against us — ^be so 
 " mad " with America in my poor person ! For really I was 
 astounded, all through the correspondence that preceded 
 the actual outbreak of war, by what seemed to me to be the 
 most disgraceful torpidity and absence of merely decent 
 excitement in the face of such tremendous happenings. 
 Of course I shouldn't have liked them to be nervous or 
 frightened, but just to show that they were human, and 
 English at a pinch. ... Is The Last Ditch so remote from 
 our common humanity ? I asked, in my reply to Sir Audley 
 Bar. If so, I added, I shall begin to think that the sooner 
 they are, as a class, tidied off the earth, the better. I was 
 almost bitter. 
 
 And then — one began to hear wonderful things of them : 
 deeds that made one's eyes smart with pride of one's race ; 
 and Sir Audely wrote again and said that I must not be 
 hard on fundamentally uneducated people, that they were 
 doing their little best ... all that was possible. He told 
 
188 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 me about our boys, how they mustered before they were 
 called — simply rushed in to their feudal places in the van 
 of England's armies. These aren't his words, quite. . . . 
 But he did impress me with the sense that as a class they 
 have remarkably not failed in their duty — or their women 
 either as a whole. Venice has been improperly trained as a 
 citizen. He did not put himself forward as a shining example 
 of honourable readiness, but, as far as I can make out, he 
 was fully over military age when he joined up. Poor 
 Mother 1 
 
 It may have been that ; any way, something softened her 
 heart to me. That and my father's death ? . . . But the fact 
 is, that she gradually, very gradually, resumed her epistolary 
 outpourings. They both did. By the autumn, I was getting 
 the same long rambling letters from her and Venice which 
 amuse me so much, and touch me too. They are like children 
 playing on the edge of one of the cracks of an earthquake 1 
 
PART U 
 
 180 
 
XVI 
 
 From The Lady Aries 
 
 0/0 Ladt Dowlam, 
 
 BUOKINQHAM GaTK. 
 
 Deae, I have been a shocking correspondent lately * I 
 know. For the last year I have not had really the heart to 
 write the sort of long, gossiping letters I used to reel off to 
 you. The War has entered into my soul, dear. The world 
 outside all askew, and at home the tragedy of your father's 
 death. 
 
 For months I have felt like a murderess. Then for my 
 children's sake I felt it my duty to put away the thought 
 and try to buck up. Then came the practical difficulties, 
 money and so on, accelerated by the death of the head of 
 the family — ^loss of pension and the like. I had, I found, 
 gravely injured my children's material prospects. ... I 
 could curse Anatole, if he were not low in his grave ! To 
 think of all this sequence of events, the first link in the chaia 
 of which was the Chdteaubriand aux pommes Anatole made 
 for us at Spa and which decided me to get hold of him as 
 cook for Venice's sake. I dare say if one came to look 
 closer and could see more at a time, some such silly cause 
 as that was the first link in the catastrophe of the world- 
 war ? . . . 
 
 Well, we are in it now and we have got to go through 
 with it, for the honour, if it was nothing else, of the brave 
 boys who have been killed. I was counting up the other 
 day, and of the lads who were with us at Lochroyan — ^burnt 
 to the ground since, and heaps of people buried under the 
 d6bris, as in that poem Venice was always quoting — of all 
 those boys more than half have gone. " Big Sir Gervaise " 
 perished at Mons in the very beginning, and poor Zoe has 
 
 • Note by Mrs. Peter Quinney : Lately t 
 191 
 
192 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 been in a Nursing Home for ages. Philip Wyandotte married 
 little Ellen Reveley — another one of Venice's Meinie — and 
 is now back, blind of both eyes, and she is nursing him. He 
 is dying. Young Freddy White, Athmare's boy, ran away 
 from school and swore his age falsely, so as to join up ; he 
 was eventually killed in the air. As a matter of sad fact 
 nearly all Ilsa's " boys " have come to grief one way or 
 another : those who filled the hall with shouting and " So 
 longs I " at Lochroyan — a doomed place, as I think it was 
 now. 
 
 And what is really very pathetic, Ilsa doesn't miss them 
 or their admiration any more. She is so heart and soul 
 devoted to Archie. It was really beautiful in the beginning 
 before he went out. The way those two loved drove Venice 
 wild with envy, poor child ! Their little flat in Pimlico is 
 a mere pill-box, and her bedroom a garret with a skylight, 
 but they lived in said pill-box on a herring and a half, like two 
 turtle doves, until he had to go. He wasn't in the air long, but 
 went to the Dardanelles on Hugh Scrymgeour's staff. And 
 there according to the accounts she got from pals — ^Archie was 
 very reticent, not to worry her — he was rounding up spies, 
 rimning about among the islands on a little gunboat all day 
 long looking for them, being potted at continually, a marked 
 man, and having to scrape a thousand flies off every bit 
 of meat he put into his mouth I Ilsa insisted for a long time 
 on sitting at home alone, pining. She would hardly come 
 to us. The flesh came off her bones, as it were, and her 
 hips were like door handles. She used to make us feel 
 them, because one has always chaffed her for being fat. 
 Ilsa, thin, strikes one almost as a monstrosity. 
 
 She is doing war work now, but she won't even let us know 
 what her job is ; but at any rate it takes her away for the 
 whole day and tires her to death, so that all she does when 
 she gets home is to get herself a bit of supper at the kitchen 
 table and go straight off to bed in her lonely garret. 
 
 The Lady Ilsa Dunkeron 1 Isn't it epigrammatic ? 
 
 We have given our sons plenteously, and now we are 
 giving our daughters ! 
 
 For Venice, too, has been trying all sorts of war work; 
 but whatever she takes up somehow fails her. She always 
 proves not strong enough. She tried being " in the pantry," 
 but standing tired her, and she got so sick of dirty plates 
 that she longed to throw them at people's heads. She could 
 
THE LAST DITCH 198 
 
 not stand the monotony. Besides, it was so unfair ; she was 
 stuck down in a scullery, and never saw anything that was 
 going on. She offered to nurse, and said that though she 
 didn't know strict nursing she would be delighted to sit up 
 with people at night. She could have taken a book oi 
 composed poetry to keep herself awake. But they wouldn't 
 hear of it. Nurses are most conservative, and want to keep 
 all the important jobs for themselves. I took her away, 
 taking care to give the impertinent creatures a piece of my 
 mind, and then she went to a canteen at Victoria Station. 
 But the late hours and carrying of the heavy trays broke 
 her back ; she is too tall for that sort of thing, and it was 
 such a drag for me going every night to fetch her home. 
 I had sooner have done the work myself. I am very " stocky." 
 But that, too, they vetoed. They are vested interests, as I 
 said, and hate new people. Then she accepted the offer of a 
 secretaryship to some big man at Lake Village — I mean 
 Buildings — ^but her typewriting wasn't good enough, and she 
 doesn't, of course, Imow shorthand. She had got in there 
 through favour, and I never think that does well : the other 
 subordinates are so jealous, and wreak it on the new-comer 
 by pretending that she is no good. Then she volunteered for 
 an amateur farm colony at Richmond, run by Willie Wilmot 
 — an ex-publisher and poet — ^and worked there for three 
 weeks. I never could quite grasp what particular form 
 her work took, beyond walking about the streets of Eas* 
 Sheen, as Ilsa said, dressed like a Principal Boy in a panto- 
 mime, in high khaki gaiters and khaki smock, and a cap with 
 a long goosefeather stuck in it. Perhaps the feather was 
 not in the bond and was why her services were not retained, 
 so Ilsa, who met her by accident, says, and that she may as 
 well give it up, and confine herself to the usual self-indulgent 
 woman's pretence of work, giving soldiers back on leave 
 from France a good time, which means taking the poor dears 
 about to theatres and restaurants and motor drives and 
 dances at night-clubs, and incidentally having a thoroughly 
 good time yourself. 
 
 It does give her a chance of wearing evening dress, which 
 is a great consolation to Venice, with her well-developed 
 sense of beauty. I know that what upsets Ilsa a good deal 
 and inspires her to make spiteful remarks, is that she hasn't 
 had on an evening dress or shown her magnificent shoulders 
 for over two years. If she is all salt-cellars, as she com- 
 13 
 
194 THE LASr DITCH 
 
 plains, it is perhaps a good thing, but the poor girl does seem 
 to loathe her uniform. She is so secretive that I don't know 
 what it is like ; there are so many for women ; but some of 
 Venice's were exceedingly fetching, especially the " On The 
 Land " one. Indeed, all the outfits Venice has had, and 
 which have had to be scrapped because of her many changes 
 of work, would keep her in fancy dress to the end of her 
 days ; that is, if any one ever has the heart or the money 
 to give a fancy-dress ball again 1 
 
 I don't know. You aliens ! A young girl I met at Lily's, 
 an habituSe of Giro's, told me that she had never had such 
 a good season in her life as last winter's, and had spent the 
 whole of her allowance in dance frocks, and so on. . . . 
 
 She was American. You people don't much care 1 Why 
 should you, after all ? It's sport to boys, but death to the 
 frogs, though 1 
 
 However, it isn't only Americans, but what is infinitely 
 worse : some of Our own girls, whose mothers ought to have 
 more control over them, for the sake of England's good 
 name. I feel it very keenly. The stories I hear ! Female 
 Neros fiddling whUe Rome is burning and slashing oft the 
 poppy-heads of respectable people's prejudices 1 One set — 
 a set I have never countenanced for Venice, though the 
 mother of one girl was my childhood's friend, Millicent 
 Flint — is, man and girl, like the Mohocks used to be in 
 London, as Milton says, " daughters of Belial, flown with 
 insolence and wine." I am rather friends with the head 
 waiter at the Spitz — we leave off the " bergen " now, and 
 they have washed the two syllables off the door. Georges 
 gave me a list of the wines consumed there by twelve persons 
 the other night — three soldiers and nine young — ^mind you, 
 young women I — that made me shudder. If Lady Lavinia 
 respects nothing else she might think of her complexion 1 
 The poor Duchess would turn in her grave to realize what 
 her daughter's life is. And how do they all manage to get 
 away from their places of booze without scandal, especially 
 in the present dearth of taxis ? 
 
 My dear, I went out the other day — ^Audely was up on 
 leave and he took Susan Dowlais and me and Venice to 
 supper at Murray's, and he and Venice danced. Coming 
 away in the dark we lost Susan, although she was clinging to 
 Audely's arm like a crook-handled umbrella. We never 
 found her again, though we heard her shrieking in the night 
 
THE LAST DITCH 195 
 
 somewhere round Old Compton Street. Venice and I got 
 ourselves home by Tube, Audely having to be detached in 
 order to find Susan. He never did, although eventually she 
 found a cab and turned up first at the house. 
 
 But to return to business. The fact remains, that even if 
 the money pans out better than one expected, we are over- 
 housed, and the Park Crescent House will have to be given up. 
 Venice and I are looking for houses big enough to contain 
 me, two maids, and Venice and Venice's friends ! She says 
 we must keep two spare rooms at least. She is used to 
 having a girl friend always to stop with her. She talks a 
 great deal of nonsense about the housing problem which 
 I have to discount in her own interest, insistiag that she 
 will be quite content with a cottage in South Kensiugton, 
 with ivy growing up it and a porch and a flagged walk 
 up to the door and a fanlight over it, and a scraper and 
 a door-knocker, and I don't know what all ? But that 
 cottage has to have two entertaining rooms and a couple 
 of guest chambers, and I should like to see the agent's face 
 when one begins to talk of a cottage with ten rooms or so I 
 
 I incline to one of those houses in Clareville Grove, that 
 with a little good furniture and plenty of lace cushions one 
 can make perfectly habitable, and that it doesn't take more 
 than a couple of servants to keep clean, supposing the 
 mistress of the house does her silver-table herself. Of 
 course Venice would offer to do it at first, and has visions 
 of herself going round in an ornamental pockety apron, 
 dusting the china and " doing " the ferns. One knows all 
 about that ! The water spilled, and destroying the french 
 polish of the tables, and pounds of wet earth on the floor 
 left for some one else to take up. . . . 
 
 Effel Lucy, as we call her now, is very obliging, but 
 practically we have lost her. Last year she and Lucy took 
 the plunge (at their age !) and married. I gave Effel all her 
 linen as a wedding present. And he immediately went off 
 on national service. Her little house in Hereford Square is 
 one of my reasons for wanting to be settled in Clareville 
 Grove or thereabouts, for Effel is grateful, and exceedingly 
 anxious to have us as neighbours so that she can be all the 
 use she can. She isn't likely to have any family, that's 
 one comfort, to make her too busy to attend to us. She 
 knows all our ways and how we like things done and the 
 addresses of a our shops, where they know her and would 
 
196 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 do anything for her. If anybody can help me to keep 
 things going, and as far as possible as nice as they used to 
 be, it is Effel, and it is our best interest to avail ourselves 
 of her. 
 
 My dear, no one can tell how I miss Audely ! He is no 
 good to me at all now. He is heart and soul, as well as 
 body, in the war, by this time— soon goiag out ! He has 
 taken to militarism as a duck takes to water; he talks war, 
 eats war, and sleeps war, if that were possible. It bores 
 Venice, and I gather he and she have left oft correspondmg, 
 as I believe they did a little at first when she was interested 
 in the new things he had to tell her. Audely sends me a 
 good letter now and then, perfectly crammed with military 
 details and on dits ; not broad statements, you know, about 
 the war and its probable duration, which is really all we 
 women at home want to know ; but his own particular affairs 
 and gossip about camp matters and intrigues that only 
 interest the people like me that are interested in him, which 
 Venice, of course, isn't. . . . 
 
 I really can't tell you exactly how soon, if we do get 
 a house I have in my eye, we shall be settled. We can't 
 get possession of it until December, so there are two months 
 that we shall be homeless. But thank God, we have some 
 good friends, that between them will not see us reduced 
 to lodgings. I fancy we shall be able to make do with visits 
 and so on till all the bargainings are concluded re fixtures, 
 which people are always so stiff on, till you let time pass 
 and beat them down by not seeming in a hurry. Then, when 
 that is settled and the few necessary alterations are started, 
 it will be a great convenience to have Effel round the comer, 
 so that she can run in every now and again on her way 
 home and out of it, to see how things are getting on, keep 
 the workmen up to the mark, and get them out not more 
 than a himdred years after they have thoroughly finished. 
 
 We could put in any amount of time at Susan's, or at 
 Norssex House, or Tinsack, of course, but Susan is so grasping, 
 and the last are so excessively d contre cceur for Venice 1 
 Minna and she never will get on, and I myself do find 
 that lady needlessly aggressive and patronizing. I can 
 tell you, Henry isn't much there j he finds it fairly impossible. 
 She has so many schemes, and they are all tumbling over 
 each other and overlapping all over his house. All decent 
 
THE LAST DITCH 197 
 
 society is eliminated in London for the sake of committees 
 and homeless refugees in the country. The Corfes are in 
 mourning ; a daughter died, too, last week. Barral Quenford 
 would have us in Paris like a shot, but how to get there ? 
 And the (Jermans are rather too near Paris for comfort. 
 We took a little run to Bedford, where Audely's regiment is 
 stationed, and lived for a fortnight in very bad hotels. It 
 was at Audely's expense, so it saved my purse; but the 
 hotels — ^we were in all three that the place boasted — did us 
 so badly that poor Audely's hospitality proved rather a 
 white elephant. 
 
 I believe our best stand-by is Ida Quain. She and Gerald 
 have lately become very well off. One of Gerald's rich 
 literary imcles has died and left him quite a fortune. I 
 had no idea that literature could pay to that extent ? And 
 Gerald has dropped architecture and painting and put his 
 entire brains at the country's service. He invents air- 
 defence things. They have taken a place on the East Coast. 
 Shilliter Lane, I hear — so funny to call a place right on the 
 water, a lane 1 — is just a bungalow made up of old coast- 
 guards' huts, so that all the rooms open out of each other, 
 and have little separate front doors opening right on to the 
 beach. 
 
 These kind people suggest we make Shilliter our pied a 
 terre and pay our visits from it. That is distinctly what 
 might be called making use of them, but they seem to want 
 it. (I believe Ida is really fond of me. I have cut Venice 
 out, and, poor chUd, she rather feels it.) Of course it would 
 be convenient. After the furniture of Park Crescent is sold 
 and what we want to keep stored, there is certain to be some 
 sort of detritus left — personal belongings one wants to keep 
 in touch with ; clothes, winter and summer, that one can't 
 lug about to other people's houses, even when they are re- 
 lations; but the Quains say that it will not matter how 
 much we dump on them, as they have unlimited dry sheds. 
 
 Ida is so very pressing that I am going down next week to 
 see if Shilliter Lane is suitable. I go alone. Venice is full 
 up of visits, and occupied, fortunately, mind and body, for 
 some time. Private nursing suits her best ; she is helping 
 Susan Dowlais to nurse Belle-Belle, home, wounded, and 
 not yet out of danger. They let her cheer him up after 
 operations, and so on. 
 
 She wanted to enrol herself as Assistant Nurse in Lily 
 
198 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 St. Just's Hospital for Officers in her new-old house at 
 Shaftesbury in Dorset. It is run on quite a grand scale, as 
 all Lily's things are. But that came to nothing. I didn't 
 somehow think that Lily would be anxious to have a pretty 
 young nurse about in her own particular Home. She 
 enjoys it so far, so much ; and as she says herself, having 
 made such sacrifices and turned what she has grown to call 
 her " old ancestral home " (?) quite in and out, she is surely 
 entitled to all the fun she can get out of the less serious 
 cases. She is as good as her word, I hear, and treats herself 
 to what she likes. The good-looking officers, by all accounts, 
 are kept there for ages after they are fit, if not to go back 
 to the Front, at any rate for light duty. I don't think she 
 quite fancies Venice's long neck bending over her patients. 
 She herself is short, especially in the legs. 
 
 But Venice will find in the long run, Audely says, that 
 aristocratic privileges count as nil ; that there's no golden 
 road to being of use in this war. . . . She will begin to feel 
 left out, presently, when every one, without exception, 
 will be doing something. Why, even Sir James Molendinar, 
 the millionaire who was with us at Lochroyan when Aries 
 had his stroke, is now working three days a week at one of the 
 Red Cross places, making swabs. I think he is a darling 
 to do it, don't you ? and I have an immense respect for him. 
 He gave Ilsa a thumping sum for a wedding present, too ; 
 it bought all the furniture. 
 
 The Zeppelin business has been getting rather bad in the 
 North. They are great, big, unwieldy things, not easily 
 managed ; that's our salvation. Venice saw one when she 
 was staying at Elswick with the Gobies ; she said it looked just 
 a great pink pearl, so beautiful and ethereal and serene, it 
 seems almost a pity to shoot it down ! . . . She would talk 
 differently if they ever came to London ; but there isn't 
 much chance of that. All they have done is rather comic 
 as vet : dissolving prayer meetings and whisking Bibles out 
 of old ladies' hands. Still, the authorities have been issuing 
 leaflets and bid us all be prepared. We have got our gas 
 masks, Venice and I — Susan Dowlais insisted on it. There 
 they are in our bedrooms, with the stuff to impregnate them 
 with in a bottle, and some sand in a pail to throw over the 
 flames if a bomb should come and set the hangings alight. 
 I have my dressing-case— like Marie Antoinette's nicessaire, 
 
THE LAST DITCH 199 
 
 Audely says : about as much use and as cumbrous — packed 
 with my immediate valuables, (Our silver and best jewellery 
 is of course in the Bank.) I left out a clock or two, and 
 about twelve home comforts which I always say is the 
 irreducible minimum when one is moving about. A warm 
 coat thrown handy on a chair, and shoes if one should have 
 to rush out at a short notice — such a paraphernalia ! . . . 
 
 But I dare say, from all these advertised precautions, 
 it is worse than we know ; only one tries not to think of it. 
 Molendinar says if the papers published all the news none 
 of us would go to bed at all, so perhaps it is as well. 
 
 Venice positively knows not fear. She makes light of 
 everjrthing, mental and physical. I wonder if she has 
 made up her mind to let nothing put her out, because she 
 is so sure things will be as she wants them in the end. She 
 has no temper, and that is almost aggravating. A person 
 incapable of anger, even righteous, is difficult to live with. 
 And so lazy, dear thing ! She was very excited about the 
 house-hunting at first, but I feel it in my bones that she 
 means us to have a certain house in Edwardes Square 
 which will be vacant later on, and just lets me drag about 
 to agents because it amuses me and doesn't tie her, for later 
 on she can upset all my plans if she has a mind to. 
 
 I am always in the streets now, going after these people. 
 I made my first journey inside of a bus the other day, and 
 had all the trouble in the world not to take the occupants 
 into my confidence and tell them I didn't find it so bad. 
 But I thought they might resent that, being habituSs. 
 They were so nice to me, offering me their seats — ^for of course 
 I managed to get into a chock-full one — telling me where 
 to get out. . , , 
 
 One does get in this way into touch with what is called the 
 great heart of the people ; and I regret to say their great 
 coats too, which smell ! 
 
 I was brought up not to think it possible, except on top, 
 the year of illuminations, on the Accession of King Edward. 
 Then it was great fun. Isabella Wilton and I and old Lady 
 Dorothy used to make up parties to go down to the East 
 End and see the sights, and incidentally that dear Father 
 Jago. Of course one of the footmen always came to help 
 us up and carry the cushions and rugs. It was funny 
 to see our smart young John sitting behind us as usual, with 
 his arms folded and a sardonic stare on bis |ace, Thes^ 
 
200 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 jaunts went on until Isabella's doctor forbade it, she caught 
 such shocking colds, because she always insisted, being old 
 fashioned, on going in full evening dress, with her chest more 
 or less exposed. 
 
 How I do run on, remembering those days when one did 
 disagreeable things /or /wn and suffered privation for the joke 
 of it ! For after all, you do get awful knocks outside an 
 omnibus with the hard edges of the parapets, and inside 
 with the bruns of people's saUor hats lurching against you 
 and tearing your veil to shreds. 
 
 Venice doesn't mind it at all. Ida introduced her to 
 omnibuses, tops and insides, long ago, and many other queer 
 democratic things that I disapproved of at the time, but 
 which, as they are commonplaces now, it is as well to get 
 indurated to, unless you want to stop in the house all the 
 time. 
 
 I like Ida for herself, but nothing will ever make me 
 relish some of her friends. They may be clever, but they 
 don't begin to treat me as if I were any different from 
 themselves. Alas, one has to stand even that now ! Her 
 mother, who I believe is to be there next week when I go, 
 isn't exactly rude : she just looks right through one. She 
 poses as a spiritualist, and sees visions : very dowdy ones, 
 I should imagine, from the cast of her mind. I have seen 
 her at lunch beckon to the maid and ask for a bit of paper 
 to jot down a message she has just received from the Spirit 
 World. And she leans back in an attitude of listening, 
 somewhere up behind her head, scribbles agitatedly with 
 one hand and the other at her ear. We all go on eating. 
 That is what Ida likes us to do. Mrs. L. gets very good people 
 there — I mean celebrities, of the new kind of importance 
 that is coming to the fore. But she is breaking up. I don't 
 think she really knows what she is saying these days, or 
 whom she is speaking to. One tolerates it for Ida's sake 
 and for the sake of the people one meets there, who are 
 interesting, certainly, if one takes them as they are, and 
 don't expect preferential treatment. I went to a party 
 there — ^music and a famous Russian lady, a writer, Madame 
 Something-off I that some people say is a spy. . . . One 
 doesn't know or care: it is always interesting to meet 
 political people. Mrs. Leahy, I verily believe, got mixed, 
 and took me for the lady. I sat down, and she kept walking 
 pound apd round my chair, like a guest, although she was 
 
THE LAST DITCH 201 
 
 the hostess. Presently she said, in a low clear voice so 
 perfectly modulated that every one near could catch it : 
 " No, I don't believe you are a thoroughly bad woman 1 " 
 Poor Ida's trials are great, though she is proud of her 
 mother. Well, I shall have to meet her at Shilliter Lane on 
 Tuesday. I do really dread that even more than the position 
 of the Quaias' place — absolutely on the water line, prone 
 under a Zeppelin attack, if there was one. But Ida has 
 explained to me that there's no earthly reason for them to 
 waste bombs so early in the expedition, if they do come, and 
 that they would save them for higher game than a bungalow 
 and a public-house and a coastguard station. That's all 
 there is. And as Gerald says gaily ; " Nought's never in 
 Danger! " 
 
XVII 
 
 From The Lady Venice St. Remy 
 
 Shillitee Lake. 
 I HAVE never been on the East Coast before, and it is so 
 different from the South and the West that it has seemed 
 quite a new experience. All the way down in the train some 
 verses of Geoffrey Howard about England had been ringing in 
 my head : 
 
 " And she is very small and very green. 
 And full of little lanes all dense with flowers." . . . 
 
 It is like a lover describing a little mistress of whom he 
 is very fond, but hardly has a passion for. ... It touched 
 me, for it is of a piece with that other modified form of 
 adoration : 
 
 " England, with all thy faults, I love thee still." 
 
 Out of the great serious main-line train I was delivered 
 on to the little wayside platform and passed out of the 
 station into the motor of Gerald Quain, who drove me 
 through just such a green lane, bordered with hedges, stuffed 
 with flowers, grey-coated with the dust that the wheels of 
 cars had raised from the patient roadside, lying like a 
 crust on the soft sweet-smelling dampness within. It went 
 on for miles, till we wound out on to a flat, heathy common, 
 with a view of a flatter surface stUl, England's great sunk 
 fence, the sea. Of an innocent blue, like a baby's eyes upturned 
 to heaven, it lay. . . . But after what had happened just 
 before I came down, one could not help thinking of it as 
 merely a ditch spread between us and Cuxhaven, a ditch 
 crossed by strange sea monsters spilling death as they came. 
 I seemed to see, peeping over the other side, the shining tips 
 of bayonets and the glint of helmets. The thought added for 
 
 203 
 
THE LAST DITCH 203 
 
 me a tremendous spice to the drive and the escort of a pre- 
 occupied host. 
 
 Gerald thinks of nothing but Coast Defence, and sitting 
 there in his smart blue uniform, with the gold braid laid on 
 the sleeve in lines like live eels playing in the water, he 
 was, I dare say, studying revenge. 
 
 As we passed Bridgewood, he told me of what the Huns 
 had done there: of the frantic leaps out of bed, and the 
 child or so caught to the breast under the shawl as the 
 mother stumbled to the comparative safety of the mud 
 banks of the river. I could see it, and the bright brown 
 sails of the boats at anchorage. . . . 
 
 Of course Gerald knew exactly what I had come down 
 for. 
 
 " Oh yes, we shall give you a good time," he said. " There's 
 sure to be a Stand-by either to-night or to-morrow." 
 
 That means the wireless through from the Admiralty to 
 say the Zeppelins have been sighted on their way across 
 from Schermonickenkoog, or some other place with a lovely 
 corrugated name, and will be over here in the course of an 
 hour, so the defence has to stand-by, and be prepared. . . . 
 
 " We've had a lively time here," Gerald said. " Two or 
 three pitched battles already. We are getting on all right. 
 We'll cover the whole marsh with powdered Germans and 
 bits of gold-beaters'-skin presently. That's what they are 
 made of. I'll show you my model. . . . Oh yes," he went 
 on repeating nervously, " they'll come to-night ; it's ideal 
 weather for them. You know, we don't pass the time of 
 day here, we just nod to each other and say, ' Fine night 
 for the Zepps, eh ? ' My barber in Bridgewood, when he 
 takes the bib off, says cheerfully, ' See 'em to-night, sir, 
 eh ? ' I'm a bit of a seer to him, getting first intelligence 
 as I do. . . ." 
 
 He was rather jumpy, I thought, or he wouldn't have 
 bragged like that. . . . We were passing through a sort of 
 primeval forest that didn't interest him in his present 
 state, but filled me with delight. Hollies and oaks, three 
 or four hundred years old, made a dusk of daylight. Peering 
 sideways, as we drove slow, by my request, I could see the 
 gleam of sunset criss-crossed by the stretchings forth of lean 
 gnarled boughs and evilly disposed trunks that had warped 
 and bent and finally canted over and lay as they had fallen. 
 One could imagine Rackham fairies flitting about in swarms 
 
204 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 on the close paste of dead leaves that made the floor of the 
 wood. 
 
 Gerald remarked scornfully that this sort of thing would 
 never have been allowed in Germany. I retorted that the 
 owner of this wood was perhaps a poet who didn't care to 
 Prussianize it, and was proud of its hoary individuality. 
 Gerald said the owner was a spendthrift, who didn't care 
 for any sort of culture. 
 
 We passed the wood and the town and were down in the 
 wide bay of green whose edges merged in the sea, and which, 
 I suppose, before the sea retired, was not green but blue. 
 It was even in tone for miles, except for a little blot of red on 
 the edge, which Gerald said was his house. . . . There was a 
 blaze of flowers at its feet which one could see a mile away, . . , 
 
 And inside it, I pictured Ida sitting, sewing in her country's 
 service, like a mediaeval dame 'broidering banners for her 
 lord and his retainers. My mother would be there, too, 
 and I knew I should be made to help ; and I knew, too, I 
 would be no good. I have never learnt how to use a thimble ; 
 I just shove the needle in by the edge of the table when I 
 have to put an absolutely necessary stitch and I am without 
 BerrjTnore, as I am now. She has insisted on leaving us to 
 do war-work, curse her I My clothes are going to rack and 
 ruin, and Mother just has to buy me new ones, so the sooner 
 she gets hold of another maid the better. 
 
 Mother has been so very quiet about her fellow guests 
 that I gather there is some one else there that she doesn't 
 like, as well as Mrs. Leahy, with whom she is at silent daggers 
 drawn, if you know what that means. I shan't care who is 
 there or not. It is the place that interests me. It is in the 
 direct track of the Zeppelins crossing over from Germany, 
 and the suggestion of imminence possessed me till the whole 
 place — Shilliter Lane, that colony and outpost on the danger 
 front — to my eyes assumed a doomed look. The white of 
 the open flowers of the tobacco plant, the red of the stocks, 
 the mauve blobs of the scabious, formed a suggestive colour 
 scheme. They were like Union Jacks disposed all round 
 the cottage on the landward side. On the wastes of shingle, 
 yellow poppies blazed. The blue steely telegraph lines 
 radiating towards the inland cliffs, miles away across the 
 marsh, connected us, not too obviously, with civilization. 
 
 As the car drew up by the garden gate, I noticed a queer 
 sloppy figure with brown hair, matching a brown suit, worn 
 
THE LAST DITCH 205 
 
 by a man who didn't so much walk as loaf— he seemed 
 somehow to be sidling roiuid and peeling off the comers of the 
 house, with an air of timid furtiveness. . . . 
 
 " That's Percy," Gerald said. 
 
 " —Bysshe Shelley ? " I asked politely ; I was sure he 
 was a Socialist. 
 
 " Something of the sort," Gerald said. " How funny of 
 you to guess it I Yes, he is our leading light, our hope for 
 days to come ! . . . Your mother doesn't quite like him. 
 They're great fun together." 
 
 I made up my mind to leave him to Mother. 
 
 When we got in, there was Ida, as I had predicted, in a 
 blazing top-lighted work-room, with her mother and mine, 
 and some one else, stitching away at brown canvas which 
 appeared to have already made their fingers sore, the way 
 they were all shaking their paws humorously. So I got 
 let off sewing and Mother's embrace, too, which always 
 worries me before people. I know it's unkind to mind, 
 but I can't help it. Ida took me straight through two 
 of the cottages which have been nm into a good-sized 
 dining room, to mine, which comprised a bedroom and a 
 little lobby with a big door opening on to a microscopic 
 garden filled with red, yellow, and blue flowers, and then a 
 gate on to the shingle — and the sea — ^and (Jermany ! I felt 
 I was going to be happy here. 
 
 I asked Gerald, who looked in for a moment to find Ida, 
 if they would come to-night ? 
 
 " Hardly," he replied. " We ought to have heard by 
 now. How soon's dinner, Ida ? No, nothing to-night, I'm 
 afraid, my poor thirster after sensation ! " 
 
 But I can get my sensation out of almost everything. 
 I remembered the dining-room I had passed through, 
 furnished like a room in a palace, with pictures and damasks, 
 polished inlaid cabinets, Durer engravings, and Chippendale 
 chairs. And an old red-tiled roof — nothing more ! — between 
 it and the Foot of Destiny . . . that might be set down 
 upon it . . . this very night ! . . . 
 
 In the drawing-room where we collected, there were five 
 officers from the station, and their beautiful dark blue 
 uniforms went very well with my light blue Doeuillet tea- 
 gown Ida had on her red Futurist gown designed for her 
 by Rowley Deane, the colour, I always tell her, of newly spilt 
 blood. 
 
208 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 I reminded her now. " Oh, Venice ! " she said, appar- 
 ently rather annoyed. It showed me that things are be- 
 ginning to work on her. She never used to mind my grim 
 humour. 
 
 We sat down to the big mirror-like oak table, that was 
 like a brown pool with discs of napery on it. I was proud 
 to realize that this was the home of my Ida, and could hardly 
 hide a disposition to crow a little over Mother, who had 
 made such a fuss about my being her bridesmaid in the old 
 days. Mother, though inartistic, appreciates taste and 
 fine old furniture, vicariously, through the eyes of others. 
 It looked " good " as well as beautiful. The polished oak 
 of the cabinets reflected the gleam of the candles and the 
 sharp spear-like glints of light falling athwart glass. Behind 
 the glass doors of the cabinets more glass shone mysteriously, 
 its radiance dissipated in rich gloom. Two great china 
 Mangtze bowls held yellow, red, and blue war flowers out of 
 the garden. It was a beautiful scene. The wavy gold on 
 the men's cuffs twinkled as glasses were raised, full of 
 golden and purple wine. . . . Gerald and Ida have left off 
 being teetotalers ; the times are stiff, and need stiff drinks for 
 men who are to bear no one knows what, so Gerald, who is 
 no obstinate fool, says. The change in these people's outlook, 
 more than anythiug else, makes me feel the tremendous 
 significance and imminence of the time. . . . Fo r here we 
 are ; these men who are dining and being vejy gay with 
 us will spend the night, mostly standing up, out of doors, 
 cold, exposed, and perhaps shot at. While jor us inside, 
 sitting so smug in the pretty room, surrounded with all the 
 trappings of civilization — well, it was on the cards that we 
 might, in one moment, be abolished off the face of the earth, 
 pashed to atoms like the kings and princes in the Vision of 
 Piers Plowman. It was not particularly likefy, you under- 
 stand, but one half liked, half dreaded to think of it. After 
 dinner one of the officers sang— very badly, but he couldn't 
 spoil it — Nuit d' amour, and then, having bone their duty 
 by the women, the men, one after another, slunk out and 
 went about their business. 
 
 We five women — there was an inconsideradle Miss Taylor 
 there — ^were left alone in the stifling atmosphere ; the thick 
 curtains were drawn, remorselessly close, by decree. Ida 
 
THE LAST DITCH 207 
 
 played her harpsichord — ^wonderful Ida, she can do every- 
 thing now ! The tenuous sounds, sweet even to pain, like 
 taps on the tenderest, most responsive of drums, hardly 
 reached, no more than did the lights, turned down to pin- 
 points, as far as the comers of the room and the belt of 
 woollen folds that circumscribed it. . . . It was all ghostly, 
 unreal, even as the danger we were supposed to be 
 affronting. . . . 
 
 The men did not return. They had promised to let us 
 know if a warning came through. The sentry on his beat 
 along the sea path between us and the beach passed and re- 
 passed. We looked to see the heavy red brocade portidre, 
 which he could part with his hands without stopping, pushed 
 aside. . , . That would mean that the business of the night 
 had begun. . . . 
 
 About half -past nine there did come a knock at the door. 
 It was one of the coastguard men come to report a slight 
 wound incurred in the exercise of his duty the day before, 
 which Ida had dressed. Ida was very flushed. Mother 
 would have it that it was the heat, but I think Ida is very 
 sensitive — her playing of Purcell made me see that — and the 
 delicate intelligence that can interpret that sort of music is 
 bound to feel this sort of thing keenly. . . . 
 
 Then the chauffeur, back from Bridgewood eight miles 
 away, came round to relate the perils through which he had 
 passed. The sentries all along the road were as jumpy 
 as could be, and had tried to bayonet him because he was 
 slow in giving the word. ... He needed the cockles of his 
 heart wamiing in the usual way. Ida did it. When he had 
 gone the desolate thump of the sentry's feet in thek 
 crescendo and diminuendo came again. . . . Ida gave way 
 a little. ... 
 
 " What I hate is the steps that go past I " she exclaimed 
 fretfully. We begged her to play some more, but she refused, 
 saying that she didn't suppose she would ever play again 
 until the war was over. 
 
 " This time next year then," the brown man said. " The 
 People won't stand it longer than that." 
 
 I forgot to say that he was with us, having nothing to do 
 with the air defences. One hardly counts a man nowadays 
 who stays with the women ; he might as well have produced 
 his knitting or a spinning-wheel. But he looked nicer 
 m evening dress, and his eyes are extraordinarily bright. 
 
208 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 It is almost bad form to have them so bright. Though he 
 is supposed to be a Socialist, Mrs. Leahy doesn't like him, 
 and is always sparring -with him about elementary philosophy. 
 One forgives his want of manners, or rather manner — he has 
 too many manners. I rather like his urgent, boyish way 
 of talking, as if every question he discussed must be settled 
 there and then. And his brown eyes do match his hair, and 
 they flash ; not about anything that matters : he is only 
 interested in politics. I have tried him with poetry. He 
 looks at me when I talk of Futurism and Imagistes as if 1 
 were a brand to be plucked from the bumiug — ^title and all I 
 . . . Why isn't he in the army ? I can't even make out how 
 old he is ? 
 
 We had all got very slack about talking; it was half-past 
 ten. Mrs. Leahy, like a large tired child, was falling off her 
 high chair — she always will have one it seems, for some 
 spiritual reason or other — ^with sleep. Only Mother kept 
 the flag flying, partly because of me, and what she realized 
 was my evident disappointment. 
 
 Just as I was meditating an unselfish act — ^viz. a move, 
 the curtain was pushed aside and Gerald came in. He went 
 to the fireplace and stretched his legs. 
 
 " Better all go to bed ! " he said. " Nothmg doing to- 
 night. We must have had a warning before this. The 
 beggars are giving us a rest, and themselves too. Time 
 for them to sweep up the bolts and rivets that are lying 
 about the floors of their darned machines, like beetles 
 when the housemaid comes down in the morning. Go to 
 bed, girls, do." 
 
 I was disappointed and showed it. Mr. Gregson asked 
 abruptly, " Where is your room ? " 
 
 I told him it was at the end of the bungalow nearest 
 the coastguard station, and he said kindly that that would 
 be all right for me if they did come, for Quain would have 
 to be awakened, and generally, the officers hurrying to the 
 gun, were in such a hurry that they just banged at any 
 window of the bungalow as they passed. It had happened 
 so on one other occasion when there had been an alarm after 
 half-past eleven and he had been sleeping in that room. 
 Nice man 1 I gave him a sleepy smile as he handed me my 
 candle and escorted me along the narrow passage con- 
 necting the whole length of the dining-room and linen room. 
 . . . Then Mrs. Leahy, in a wonderful Chinese dressing-gown, 
 
THE LAST DITCH 209 
 
 with her grey hair done like a pagoda, for sleep, came ramb- 
 ling along to me, after all the noises of the house were still. 
 
 " You aren't afraid, are you ? " she said, " sleeping so 
 far away from us all ? " , .. , 
 
 I answered her quite truthfully. No. She looked as if she 
 didn't believe me, and raked up a time-honoured quotation 
 for my benefit, " that we were as near God by sea or by 
 land " ; adding so as to keep up her flag of unbelief : " near 
 the Eternal Principle, I should say." 
 
 Both she and Mr. Percy Gregson are waging war to the 
 death on all those traditional emotional shibboleths — ^as 
 they call them— that served our forefathers so well. 
 
 God is surely a much better figure-head — a stronger- 
 seeming mast to nail your flag to than a vague First Cause 
 or pedantic Eternal Principle ! If I have got to support with 
 my intelligence, cozened or dragooned, a Great Figure of 
 some sort, why should not it approximate to one's father, 
 who ought to be, if he isn't, the kindest person one re- 
 members ? Mine was. And he had the beard, too. Yes, I 
 believe I have a leaning to ancestor worship. I confess that 
 I do sometimes say a prayer, quite humbly, to the beautiful 
 half-savage, half-pathetic personage whom my forefathers 
 fought and went to the stake for ! You may say what you 
 like, but there really is a spice of devilry about the 
 mandate carried out so ruthlessly by Elijah — rather a 
 savage, too — on the poor priests of Baal ! It used to delight 
 me as a child to hear it read out in Beardmore Old Church. 
 I was all breathless attention, and they didn't believe I 
 was even listening, or perhaps they would have been 
 shocked at such strong meat for babes ? And " Abraman 
 Isaac "1 I didn't like that spirit in God at all 1 
 
 Listening to these people, Mrs. Leahy for one and Mr. 
 Percy Gregson for another, I get to feel as if I had been eat- 
 ing sawdust in a jerry-built building, sitting on American 
 bentwood furniture. A Cosmogony without a God in it is 
 like a world without sunsets. 
 
 As soon as Mrs. Leahy went I opened the door of the cottage 
 and, closing it behind me, stood in the tiny garden — as big 
 as a pocket-handkerchief — ^whose one border I could dis- 
 tinguish by the closed white eyes of the tobacco plants. . . . 
 I looked over the gate, towards the expanse of shingle. . . . 
 It was all ups and downs, like craters and hillocks of sand. 
 The sea and the sky were merged together in a dull, blue, 
 14 
 
210 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 moonless quiet, spreading away across to the alien lager, 
 Cuxhaven or Kiel, or whatever port it is. . . . The watery 
 exercising ground was free to the enemy as well as to us I . 
 Would the bolt be shot to-night ? 
 
 I hoped against hope. I had been told it would not, 
 and perhaps not even the next night, and I should go back 
 to town on Monday and see nothing. I was awfully dis- 
 appointed. I suppose I had got the Zeppelin fever rather 
 badly. My feeling was not unlike Goethe's at the cannonade 
 of Valmy, which he described dispassionately as poet and 
 citizen of the world. I quivered, as a cat's whole body 
 trembles when she first envisages her prey. My prey was 
 a strong emotion of a peculiar kind, and yet I wasn't going 
 to attain it t 
 
 " Lighten our darkness !..."! did not have the mean- 
 ness to proffer that time-honoured prayer, but I tried to 
 console myself with the reflection of the babies that would be 
 spared if I missed my sensation. . . . 
 
 I was awakened suddenly, A tap at my window and tht 
 rough voice of an A.A.C. : 
 
 " We've had a warning. Tell Quain, will you ? " 
 
 It has come. There was, after all, to be a Stand-by that 
 night. I must get up, strike a match, light a candle, and 
 run along the whole line of cottages to tell Gerald. 
 
 I didn't wait to light that candle or put on a dressing-gown 
 or shoes or anything, though there was, of course, plenty 
 of time — ^they would not be here for half an hour or more 
 perhaps — ^but I raced barefoot along the passage and 
 shouted my message. In a second the narrow gangway was 
 alive, we were all jostling each other ; but that was only 
 because the space between the walls was narrow, the people 
 who filled it were quite calm. Gerald, in pyjamas, could be 
 seen rummaging for clothes in one lighted doorway with Ida 
 shouldering into her kimono; Mrs. Leahy at another ap- 
 peared, pagoda hair and Chinese dress and all : she had never 
 been to bed, for the spirits had been speaking. A maid 
 was busily engaged in folding (Jerald his revolver, which he 
 thought he had left in the drawing-room loaded. Percy 
 Gregson, ina wonderful dressing-gown and the most wonder- 
 ful shock of hair, helped her. He went out with them just 
 so, dressing-gown and all. I shouldn't suppose they would 
 let him go near the gun for fear of frightening it 1 
 
THE LAST DITCH 211 
 
 In ten minutes there wasn't a man in the house, and Ida 
 and the maid and I were laying supper for the hungry men, 
 who would come in about four o'clock when their vigil, or 
 perhaps their spell of active service, was over and eat. 
 
 It was half-past twelve. 
 
 Pieces of information began to leak down. " They " were 
 at Brottingley, Ida said, laying a knife and fork carefully 
 in its place. " About three miles south of this. We aren't 
 on the way to London. They most likely won't come 
 over us. I'd go back to bed, if I were you, Venice. You'll 
 be certain to hear Them if They do come. It's not a noise 
 you can miss. Fearfully loud and horrible — ^the beat of the 
 engines. . . ." 
 
 She tried to describe what it was like. 
 
 " Imagine a motor-bicycle and the ' blop-blop ' ten times 
 louder, and going on as if it were muffled under water so 
 that the blops mix and run on — all the reports merged into 
 each other ! That's the nearest I can do for a description. 
 It's a coarse, strident, vulgar noise, like the cruelty it 
 brings with it. . . . You don't know, and though you will 
 be disappointed if you don't, I almost hope you never will 
 know, what it is to be under a Zeppelin and helpless as we 
 all are. . . ." 
 
 Ida's eyes were dilated. . . . She has evidently got Them 
 on her nerves considerably, and she is always more excitable 
 when her mother is there. I think she is rather afraid of the 
 good lady's going right out of her mind under strain. . . . 
 Mrs. Leahy began, now, to explain the Zeppelin agony to us 
 in her own painfully, popular-novelettish way. 
 
 " We are like animals ramping along the ground during 
 a thunderstorm. It is the crystallized malevolence of the 
 world. The father and mother of a Zeppelin are unspoken 
 curses ! " . . . 
 
 Ida said, pausing as she covered up the beef with a 
 napkin : " It's the feeling of impotent hate which it awakens 
 in one which is so dreadful. I declare, that if a Zeppelin 
 came over us now " — ^we all looked up ! — " and a German 
 fell out of it unhurt — which, thank God, isn't likely — ^I should 
 just snatch this knife off the table and kill him." 
 
 "Would you," asked Miss Taylor, who had obviously 
 been reading Kipling, " even if his back was broken, and he 
 only asked for a drink of water to ease his parched throat 
 and to die easy on ? " 
 
212 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 Ida answered savagely. Yes she would— let him die as 
 parched as a bone, thinking of the good beer of the Father- 
 land. I don't know what is going to become of my sensible 
 Ida if she lets things ride her like this ? 
 
 " But, Ida," I said, quite gently, " how would you feel 
 about, say, an honest German— Bavarian— soldier who had 
 landed here openly from a flat-bottomed boat, taking the risk 
 havmg a fair fight for it ? An attempted invasion on an 
 enemy shore is a perfectly legitimate act of warfare. That 
 would be what you call cricket, wouldn't it ? " 
 
 " I dare say," Ida answered sourly. She is just, when 
 you put a case before her. " I suppose I should have to leave 
 him to the men to deal with, and perhaps even bind up his 
 wounds after he had been vanquished. But this air business 
 is simply the meanest method of warfare ever conceived, 
 and you will feel exactly as I do after you have really been 
 through it once and heard that awful noise over your head 
 and realize that your men are helpless, however brave 
 and handy they are. It discounts bravery, don't you 
 see ? . . . Oh, I am sick and tired 1 " 
 
 She put her head in her hands over the table for a 
 moment. 
 
 "There was a little child I saw at Bridgewood," she 
 said. "You couldn't have borne to see it — you, Venice, 
 would have turned away your eyes. You clever people 
 always do if the experience is too painful. You give out 
 at once. And this was " She shuddered. 
 
 We made her tell us how it was. The baby she saw had 
 only been bom two hours, and its mother had died of her 
 wounds after giving birth to it. 
 
 I think it is no use deluding oneself and mistaking one's 
 values, even over a dead baby. I said that I thought we 
 made altogether too much of the innocent civilian business. 
 There are, as a matter of fact, no innocent civilians left in 
 England, except perhaps me and Mother, more shame for 
 us ! Even Ilsa, doing war work, isn't a civilian. That 
 Bridgewood child's father and brothers were no doubt 
 fighting : we need not take them in to account. But the 
 baby's mother, probably up to the very hour of its birth, 
 was making swabs or knitting comforters — doing something 
 to help the people at the front — whUe it's grown-up sisters, 
 if it had any, were making munitions, and so on. 
 This constitutes them all combatants and fair game to the 
 
THE LAST DITCH ai8 
 
 Germans. Even the baby itself, that wasn't bom at the 
 time its mother was injured, was a combatant too. 
 
 Ida simply screamed ; she is fearfully overwrought : 
 
 " Well, of all the cold-blooded things I ever heard ! " 
 and left the room. They didn't any of them like me 
 much for what I had said, though, indeed, I was only putting 
 the case to them honestly and fairly, stripped of sentiment. 
 . . . Just as I have stated it to you. 
 
 It was horrid, being out of sympathy with them all for 
 the rest of the evening, and I went early to bed as they 
 suggested, counting on being aroused if the Zeppelins did 
 come over the house. 
 
 As Mother will tell you — she was awfully sorry for me — 
 they did come over, and I was allowed to sleep through it. 
 As a punishment, I suppose ? 
 
 I send you my notes on as much as I was permitted to 
 see, hoping that it will interest you. 
 
XVIII 
 
 From The Lady Aries 
 
 Sehxiteb Lane. 
 I HAVE been in this charming place for over a fortnight. 
 Ida is so kind. And there seemed to be such tremendous 
 possibilities of amusement here that I wrote off and per- 
 suaded Venice to chuck Lily St. Just and her lively friends, 
 and come down here if only for a week-end, to see what she 
 could see and incidentally something of her mother. And 
 although we did have a Zepp show, so to speak, on purpose 
 for her, the poor child was so unlucky as to miss it. They 
 were actually over the house last night, or what looked 
 like it, but gave us no attention — reserving their bombs for 
 more noble quarry. 
 
 Venice, tired out with the London racket I suppose, slept 
 profoundly through it all. I myself am bored to death 
 with the Zeppelin stunt, but that makes it more ironic that 
 poor Venice, eager to experience the sensation for the 
 first time, should starve in the midst of plenty. 
 
 The evening she arrived she was tremendously excited. 
 She had heard such glowing accoimts from me and Gerald. 
 I think Gerald rather " stuffed " her, but as a matter of fact 
 last week it was frightful, and several people were killed at 
 Bridgewood nine miles away. One monster dropped its 
 cistern, or boiler — something essraitial — and it was all riddled 
 with holes, which shows our shots do reach them. And 
 one idiot of a Hun seems to have lost his cap — in his excite- 
 ment, I suppose, leaning over the side to drop his bomb — 
 and an old man, whose wife was killed, picked it up and 
 was more or less consoled, for he gained great prominence. 
 The poor things rushed out of their houses with their babies 
 and gramophones — they always try to save them — and 
 plunged into the swampy mud-banks, and got drowned that 
 way, too. There is a police cordon round Bridgewood ever 
 
 214 
 
THE LAST DITCH 215 
 
 since last week, or we could have motored Venice to see the 
 wrecked houses. 
 
 And that first night, after Venice had gone disappointed 
 to bed, because they hardly ever get a warning to stand 
 by from the Admiralty after half- past eleven or so, one came. 
 Venice's room, being nearest to the telephone station, the 
 officer charged to warn Gerald tapped at her window. 
 
 She was perfectly equal to the occasion ; got out of bed 
 and raced off to the other end of the bungalow in the dark, 
 without waiting even to light a candle or put on slippers. 
 She banged her cheek against a door and bruised it, but 
 she made no fuss at all, I am proud to say, and I don't think 
 it will mark. 
 
 The wretched things had crossed the coast at Brottingley, 
 three miles off, and we are in a fairly direct line for London. 
 Still, they might never come our way ? ... It is often a 
 miss like that, but as usual Ida prepared. After Gerald 
 had found his revolver — it took all the maids in the house 
 to do so ; men are all alike — and got fairly off, we women, 
 left behind, prepared and laid the table for supper. After 
 a Stand-by, whether the Zepps have given them trouble 
 or not, they are always as hungry as hunters, exhausted with 
 standing by out there in the cold for so many hours, 
 
 Venice was all there and of the greatest use, Ida said. 
 But her eyes were big with sleep, and if it had not been for 
 the excitement I don't believe she could have stood up at 
 all. We persuaded her to go back to bed when all was 
 ready, and lie down until they were actually sighted over- 
 head. Mrs. Leahy was rather helpful, persuading Venice 
 that even if she fell asleep and we forgot to waken her she 
 could not possibly sleep through it. Venice believed her — 
 girls never trust their own mothers — and I had only heard 
 them once, while Mrs. Leahy has been here through all, and 
 was at Hartlepool too. 
 
 Venice did sleep through it. And she would never forgive 
 me if she knew that it was my fault they didn't throw cold 
 water over her to wake her. I have had to say that I slept 
 through it, too, and that no one else remembered her in 
 the excitement. As a matter of fact, I did go to her room 
 with intent to rouse her, but when I saw her unconscious, 
 looking like a pure marble image with its mouth open) 
 through all the frightful racket, I simply had not the heart 
 to recall her to tbjs world of poise a»d crime. 
 
216 HUB lxA.ST DITCH 
 
 Once we had got the men off there was no excitement. 
 There never is. When they came back at three in the morning, 
 without having got in a single shot at a Zepp, I was not 
 there. I had fallen asleep again, and Ida and her mother and 
 Miss Taylor warmed up the hot soup and looked after them. 
 Venice missed that too, which seems to have finished up- 
 setting her. She never can bear losing any experience ; and, 
 as she said, she had helped to lay that cloth and cut her 
 thumb opening tins, so what with her bruised cheek and 
 damaged thumb I've no doubt she felt she had done her 
 bit and was entitled to preside over that supper like a virgin 
 martyr, with her hand done up in rags and a plaster on her 
 cheek. . . . 
 
 Mr. Gregson has been out with them too, I hear : the only 
 one not in uniform. I must say I rather wonder why he 
 isn't doing something, and rather dread definitely knowing 
 that he is what they call a Conscientious Objector, a horrid 
 sect that is growing up lately. 
 
 No, I can't think that of him. Perhaps he has a weak 
 heart ? I like him, as far as one can like any one so utterly 
 out of one's own class and ways of thinking. Poor dear, he 
 simply doesn't know half the things he ought to have in 
 him without knowing. He is very clever and sharp, and 
 just behaves by it and the light of reason, and that's fatal — 
 in crucial moments, when one can't think or judge, and 
 behaviour has got to be a matter of blind instinct. 
 
 I had a long conversation after the raid this morning with 
 Gerald, who got up to breakfast, in spite of his night 
 afoot, spruce, bathed, and fresh. Ida has really done 
 wonders with him. Not that Mr. Gregson isn't perfectly clean. 
 He is ; he looks it, if one can get beyond his badly groomed 
 hah". But it is the sad thing about people of his persuasion, 
 that one can't manage to get the correlated idea of frowsi- 
 ness out of one's mind. 
 
 I was praising him to Gerald, and I finished by saying 
 with a sigh, for I do like him : " Of course he isn't a 
 gentleman ; he never can be that." 
 
 Gerald took me up. " I dare say not. So few people are 
 nowadays — the people that matter. He hasn't time to 
 grouse over it, any way. He has better dreams." 
 
 " What's better than being a gentleman, to begin with?" 
 I said. " It is simply the foundation of everything." 
 
 "Well," Gerald said, "he'll manage to be Prime 
 
THE LAST DITCH 217 
 
 Minister without any foundation of that sort, one day, if 
 I'm not mistaken. He's unmarried. We must try and 
 secure him for our Venice." 
 
 I did not resent this from Gerald, for I know he is very 
 fond of Venice, and is only thinking of her ultimate welfare 
 in these troublous times. Things change so. What was 
 an impertinence three or four years ago is merely a piece 
 of shrewd far-sightedness nowadays. But when Gerald 
 sought to interest me in the creature, to discuss the points 
 of his rather repulsive personality, I confess I jibbed, and 
 would have shut Gerald up if he hadn't been my host and 
 Mr. Gregson a fellow guest. Autres temps, autres mceurs. 
 And after all, I have only to remove my daughter from the 
 pernicious contact if I feel it to be so. So I let Gerald go 
 on dilating about the man, whom he really seems to be very 
 keen on. He is sui generis, which, as I understand, means 
 that he is a law unto himself. An eager, passionate, vital 
 creature full of rampant promise — ^those were Gerald's 
 exact words. 
 
 "He's in love with life, and not afraid of death. He 
 did quite a sporting thing last night, before we noticed him 
 near the gun — in his preposterous dressing-gown ! " Gerald 
 laughed. When I asked him what, he said I'd never 
 understand. Something about a tap or valve which he 
 rushed up to and turned off because it was fizzling, under the 
 impression that it might explode and cost him his life. 
 
 " You understand. Mother " (he often calls me Mother and 
 I like it, he is so handsome), " the thing didn't matter a damn, 
 but it was all the same as far as pluck goes, and Venice shall 
 hear of it." 
 
 I admitted that Mr. Gregson might be brave, and was 
 apparently, but there seemed to me a touch of imper 
 tinence, something almost disgusting, in a man like that 
 venturing to be passionate ! 
 
 I can't say why. ... I feel it like that. 
 
 When we went in to breakfast we found that there were 
 no letters or papers, and one of the officers came and told 
 us that the telephone was disconnected. It all pointed 
 to trouble in town. Perhaps the Zepps had got there, and 
 m that case they might have put a cordon round London and 
 people have to walk, say, from Stratford or Bow. Gerald 
 strongly advised Venice to profit by the escort of Mr. Gregson 
 and go up in good time. She was not loath ; she hoped to 
 
218 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 see something in to^m as she had been denied it here. So 
 I had the pleasure of seeing my daughter tucked into a car 
 with a Socialist who wore a soft cap and long hair curling 
 out from underneath its brim. Times change ! I could do 
 nothing. And of course he'll take good care of her. This 
 is at least in the bond. . . . Una and the Lion I And that's 
 flattering him. 
 
 We were all very flat afterwards. I agreed to go down 
 and bathe with Mrs. Leahy, who rather amuses me. I 
 haven't bathed in the sea since I was a girl, but she is older 
 than I, and I wasn't going to be beaten by a Shaker or 
 Theosophist, or whatever she is — she changes her views so. 
 I had no bathing dress with me, so I had to borrow one of 
 Gerald's pink, half -silk, half-wool pyjamas which had shrunk, 
 and was therefore fairly near my size, and a sash of Venice's. 
 
 It was a wonderful morning. Like the sun rising on a 
 battlefield, deadly quiet after the racket of the fight. There 
 wasn't a bit of lift in the air, and a faint white mist lying 
 along the ground and the sea, not enough to keep the glow 
 of the sun out altogether. One had a queer feeling of hot 
 smother and imprisonedness — ^because one could not tell 
 what might not be going on beyond the veil. One heard 
 stupid noises — an occasional fog-horn, woolly in the heavi- 
 ness, like the grunt of a big creature penned up somewhere ; 
 or a sailor's cry, muffled, from some boat on the beach we 
 could not see. . . . Anybody could have landed. . . . After 
 we had come out of the water and the mist had cleared 
 away a little, I could distinguish a fussy little seaplane 
 ploughing backwards and forwards along the coast. . . . 
 And twice a sullen detonation that was surely a gun ? 
 
 I remarked upon it to Mrs. Leahy, looking like an Arab 
 slave driver in white linen, spreading herself and drying her- 
 self beside me in the sim, that had now burst out. 
 
 " No, not a gun," she said. " More like a mine." 
 
 " One of ours, eh ? " 
 
 The annoying creature shrugged her shoulders. She has 
 been at Shilliter Lane all the summer and is more up to the 
 common objects and sounds of the seashore than I. 
 
 " Who knows ? " she said rudely. 
 
 " Oh, well, I shall see it all in the papers," I countered 
 her. " If there has really been anything serious in the way 
 of an explosion — a vessel blown up, or so on ? " 
 
 " Indeed you will not. No one but the Government will 
 
THE LAST DITCH 219 
 
 ever know what goes on out there." She pointed to the 
 blue horizon. " Even we here know more than the papers 
 from which you get all your knowledge." She preened 
 herself. " It's no use keeping us ignorant, you see. For we 
 are in it, of it, fighting, standing-by all the time. Not even 
 in the dajrtime do we have any respite from Murder and 
 reprisal for Murder. But we will repay I " 
 
 She pointed in the direction of, I suppose, Kiel or Cux- 
 haven. 
 
 I was so cross with her for identifying herself with the 
 Government in such an absurd, impudent way that walking 
 home across the sand hillocks, with the loose sand silting 
 up into one's shoes, and blowing against one's poor bare 
 shins — Gerald's trousers are rather short for me, and tight — 
 I attempted, notwithstanding my discomfort, to instil some 
 ideas into her head. I said that the people in the more 
 martyrized parts were not excited about it ; that in Bridge- 
 wood, for instance, they were making capital out of their 
 woes, treasuring up relics to give themselves consequence, 
 even if they had lost a child or an eye. The day after the 
 bombing you couldn't, Gerald told me, get along the West 
 Road in a car; it was worse than herds of sheep. Every- 
 body for miles round had turned out to see the scene of the 
 raid. Donkey carts crammed with women, and perambu- 
 lators filled with the babies that the ferocious Germans had 
 spared and that they durst not leave at home. . . . 
 
 And when we got in I showed her a letter I had received 
 from one of the Darcie girls — the one that married a Pro- 
 yengal, you know, and is as happy, still, as the day is long 
 in that nice lazy country. They take everything so easily 
 there, even the war, that is eating away their life. Betty 
 Jauze's hard North-country nature cries out about it. She 
 was the eldest, and has been married long enough for her 
 English to have got Frenchified. This was the bit : 
 
 " This place is simply lovely now, and so peaceful. The 
 only thing one would complam of is the want of sympathy 
 for those that are less lucky and suffer from the war and its 
 horrors. Here life is happy-go-lucky as usual, and some- 
 tmies I could wish for a Taube to come and enliven the 
 people, and make them a little realize the sorrows of their 
 fellow-creatures. . . ." 
 
 Mrs. Leahy was impressed, but said that this didn't 
 prove anythmg except that what the eye didn't see the heart 
 
220 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 didn't sorrow over, and that in the West of England, where 
 she had been lately, she had often found herself echoing the 
 same wish. . . . She thought Avignon and Cardiff needed 
 reminding as well as Mannheim and Frankfort — People were 
 all selfish pigs together 1 
 
 I said she must be Pro-German, and that stopped her 
 mouth. 
 
XIX 
 
 Frwn The Lady Venice St. Bemy 
 
 0/0 Thi Lady St. JtrsT. 
 The Sohack, Campdbn Hill. 
 
 I MISSED the raid at Shilliter Lane that I had gone down 
 on purpose to see, but caught it up in town. The Zeppelins 
 that crossed over us the night before, had followed the 
 railway line all the way to London and chawed up the 
 station a good deal. We steamed in slowly ; part of the line 
 was under water. A bomb had fallen on the water-main. 
 That was all I saw. Of course the moment we got out of the 
 station everything seemed all right ; the police had drawn 
 cordons round everything there was to see, as usual. We 
 knew some houses were burning, for one whole street was 
 closed. There was an air of suppressed news about every- 
 body; even the porters, who knew nothing, looked fright- 
 fully portentous. 
 
 This was the event; the sweets of anticipation I had 
 enjoyed down at Shilliter Lane were far more moving. I 
 had gone right up to the top notch, letting go when the 
 missile was loosed, as it were, and getting all the best of it. 
 
 We left Liverpool Street at three o'clock and it took us 
 nearly two hours to drive to the Mansion House. Not 
 because of the damage and the fires, the way was clear 
 enough, except for the crowds of people out to see what 
 they could, and that was nothing. Never mind, they took 
 it as a holiday : walked about on the pavement as people 
 do on the Paris Boulevards, each man with his woman, or 
 two women. It was a wonderfully fine afternoon. 
 
 To me this justifies the sickening appeals on the hoardings 
 to " Come In ? " " It's your duty, my boy " and the grey- 
 haired mother " shooing " her son out of the house as if 
 he was a stray cat, which has taken the place of " Buy your 
 boy a box of tools 1 " It made me rather wild. All our men 
 
 221 
 
222 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 with hardly a single exception have gone, and these " smug 
 cits," as Bertie Corfe calls them, are hanging back and 
 loafing about to see what the Hun has done and that they 
 aren't trying to stop. They all seem tolerably healthy 
 specimens ; much stronger than poor Bertie, who can hardly 
 walk for varicose veins. Neither can they pretend that they 
 are occupied in useful trades, for whoever heard of a 
 worker, even a City clerk, having time to sun himself on the 
 pavements between the hours of three and four on a day 
 in the middle of the week ? 
 
 My companion was amused at what he called my strenuous 
 way of looking at it. When I said that I would not speak 
 to any one of our men who, being fit and healthy, hesitated 
 to take up his feudal obligation, he carelessly agreed with 
 me, saying that it is quite in order that we aristocrats should 
 work off the bill for the emoluments we have had during a 
 thousand years. These other people had been stunted 
 and maimed and forced to use up their manhood in pro- 
 viding luxuries for me and my like, and they were now, he 
 contended, doing quite enough for the civilization that had 
 exploited them. He added that they would go all right 
 when the country sent for them ; let the Corfes and Scrym- 
 geours and Darcies and Norssexes get taken off first, at all 
 events. Then Labour would see ! . . . 
 
 I dropped Mr. Gregson at his own request at the door 
 of the National Liberal Club. It was my cab, not his ; that 
 is the new way of it. Perhaps he considers this little 
 civility represents a way of working off my feudal obligation ? 
 
 I got out to Lily's, the dear little villa she has taken — 
 and renamed shoclangly — on Campden Hill, while Bensley is 
 a hospital — ^by tea-time, and found her sitting in a darkened 
 room, all the blinds down in the beautiful sunset, paralysed 
 with fear and remembrance. She had been out in the raid. 
 
 She is a bit of a craven. I am glad she is really not one 
 of us. Though she owes her position to my Cousin Horace, 
 all her money comes from some man before him. Lily — I have 
 seen it long ago — is one of those gross, insensitive women 
 who go in for a good whack of immoral living and then 
 settle down, marrying a penniless peer for love, as he marries 
 her for money. Horace is a thoroughly bad hat, and 
 doesn't really live with her. 
 
 That is Lily's history, which they think I don't know, 
 I didn't. I knew nothing much a year ago. I have grown 
 
THE LAST DITCH 228 
 
 up, which they said I should never do. What a child I was 
 in the days of The Meinie at Loohroyan and the arrest of 
 Anatole ! . . . I realized nothing. My letters then must 
 strike you as absurd. 
 
 I made her light up and give me some tea and tell me 
 about it all. I began by saying that the Zeppelins had 
 been over us at Shilliter Lane last night, and that I had not 
 even been disturbed, but had slept through it all. Of 
 course, as I knew before I spoke, she would not believe it ; 
 people never will believe the truth. . . . And I did not 
 believe her story either, though I give it you for what it is 
 worth. 
 
 She had allowed Bertie Corfe, home on leave, to persuade 
 her to go to a lecture with him, over at Finsbury Circus, 
 the very hottest place. Something about Oriental Research, 
 in which Bertie is, strangely enough, interested, and she is 
 interested in Bertie Corfe. 
 
 They had just got out of the lecture hall, and Lily was 
 just drawing her expensive ermine wrap over her splendid 
 dicoUetage, when there was an alarm and she and Bertie 
 dashed down and into an underground place under the very 
 middle of the Circus. I could not help laughing at the 
 frightful grotesqueness of it, and she was very angry. But 
 didn't even the Empress Theodora hide her lover in the 
 bathroom ? . . . 
 
 There was a man down there, a custodian, who must have 
 been deaf, for he was perfectly calm, doing some job with 
 a mop and a pail while the bombs were thundering down 
 on the glass roof, which they generally have in those places. 
 Then, when all was quiet again, the three ventured up and 
 saw a bus that had been struck all to pieces, and two dead 
 horses and a conductor and five pairs of arms and legs in 
 boots lying about at some distance from each other. These 
 are Lily's figures. The man was quite dazed and merely 
 said, quietly, looking round : " Well, I think I'll be getting 
 home now." 
 
 Poor devil I He lived at Clapham. If it was only one leg 
 mstead of five pairs, I said, it was enough to drive him mad. 
 
 Then, she says, Bertie sighted a young policeman standing 
 near and shouted to him to get them a cab. He did not 
 move, so they went up to him and Lily touched his arm, 
 which was quite stiff and cold. . . . Neither did he turn 
 his head or take any notice when they spoke to him. . . . 
 
224 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 Presently he did unfreeze and bestir himself ; but what could 
 he do for them ? 
 
 They had to walk most of the way home. Lily's car 
 had of course bolted long since. 
 
 The Greek maid, who is still with Lily, told me that there 
 wasn't much white left about Lily's priceless ermine cloak 
 when she got it back, and that there was even a spot of 
 blood on it. The tactful Effrosyne has not told Lily that. 
 She tried to get it out with salts before Lily saw. Effrosyne 
 hadn't heard a sound, but was sleeping soundly when the 
 bell pealed at three in the morning and Bertie Corfe assisted 
 a fainting Lily into the house and laid down himself on the 
 drawing-room sofa till morning. Lily's nerve is quite 
 destroyed. She says she is sure that They will come to- 
 night, and every night, now, and that she is going to sleep 
 imder the kitchen table with Marfise and Blucher — the new 
 bulldog Bertie has given her — ^with all the lace pillows and 
 silk cushions the house can muster on top of it, and never 
 means to leave the house again until the war stops. 
 
 I reminded her that she had given my mother a solemn 
 promise that she would go out with me, chaperon me, etc., 
 and how about that ? She said she didn't care, that she had 
 to take care of herself, but she will be glad if I will stay 
 with her. Why can't I resolve to spend a nice quiet winter 
 and get up my looks by going to bed early and not being out 
 after sundown ? But she simply must refuse to stir out in the 
 evenings — ^and I can go out by myself in the daytime. . . . 
 
 I saw that the moment had come for a coup d'itat. 
 
 I said I would stop with her, if she would take me on my 
 own terms. (I know she wants me badly. She is awfully 
 alone, and Horace is never there.) But that I was young 
 and could not think of losing sight of all my friends, which 
 her plan for me would entail. On the other hand, Mother 
 must not be worried, or let loose on Lily, for that I know is 
 what she is more afraid of than anything else in the world. 
 So an arrangement must be come to. I absolved her forth- 
 with from all the duties of chaperonage, and she must give 
 me a latchkey. 
 
 That was rather the crux. I had had my eye on a latch- 
 key for a long time. It is insensate that I should not have 
 one. Lily fought it. She said that there wasn't such a 
 thing in the house, that she didn't know where it was, and 
 that Effrosyne had got it. 
 
THE LAST DITCH 225 
 
 I said I would account for Eftrosyne and any objections 
 she might take. And that I would, as I said, go on livmg 
 with her on those terms and on no other. ^^ 
 
 We had in Eftrosyne, who produced a latchkey— ' The 
 Schack " is an oldish house— as large as the key of Kenil- 
 worth Castle which used to lie on our hall table at Beard- 
 more. I said that we must have a new Chubb lock fixed 
 at once, and that Eftrosyne could have a duplicate. 
 
 It was further arranged that Eftrosyne should nominally 
 sit up for me, so as to soothe Lily's scruples and Mother's ; 
 but we shall soon get over that between us, the Greek devil 
 
 and I. . , , 
 
 I knew I should love letting myself m at night, alone, 
 finding a still, dark house; no light, except the great 
 yellow eyes of Lily's Persian cat blinking at me. Rah 
 won't sleep under the kitchen table with her. And I have 
 always thought that it was nonsense, a maid's sitting up 
 for one. If one gets back to the house at all, then there is 
 nothing for her to do. I suppose the idea is that she will 
 raise the house if one doesn't come back, but one always 
 does come back, of course. 
 
 And another point strikes me : if there is a footman and 
 he keeps the maid company, why doesn't she want chaperon- - 
 ing ? Even Mr. Gregson says the way people leave a pretty 
 maid in an empty house as caretaker where they have men 
 in painting and plastering, is disgraceful. . . . 
 
 I told Lily I would always take a taxi or get some one to 
 see me home, but that I do not mean to do, on any account. 
 
 Men, the nicest of them, do turn such beasts, sometimes, 
 the moment they are between the four walls of a cab with 
 you. There are so very few men I would trust to keep my 
 respect in those circumstances, and I am not going to risk 
 it, especially with Mr. Gregson, with whom I may be going 
 out a good deal, as he has offered to show me some aspects 
 of life in this great city with which I am, so far, unacquainted. 
 I should hate to have that kind of dimSli with him, for not 
 being quite a gentleman he might fall — succumb to bar- 
 barism. I am not going to give him the chance ; he is too 
 useful to lose. . , . 
 
 I have settled it with him and others. I am never to be 
 seen home even if there are fifty raids at once. 
 
 The plan wotks beautifully. When it doesn't rain I walk 
 16 
 
226 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 all the way, or if it is too far — for instance, if I am dining in 
 Piccadilly — I take the Tube, and then walk up the hill. It 
 has come to be the honne-houche of the whole evening to me. 
 
 I think of what I am going to do while I am still moving 
 in the realms of light and song (comparatively speaking). 
 For now there is so little light. The portals of places of 
 amusement do keep up some slight pretence of it, but they 
 are closing, more and more of them every day. And be- 
 tween these oases there are lapses into black barbarism . . . 
 great caves of darkness where no picture-palace or restaurant 
 or music-hall lets light stream forth. In Oxford Street, 
 where the high houses shut off even the faint glare, there are 
 wide patches of indescribable gloom, as if there had been a 
 bombardment. . . . 
 
 And on my hill there are no arc-lights, no picture-palace 
 doors to glare ! Quite early in the afternoon even, if I am 
 out anywhere and not returning before dark, I can dream 
 in anticipation of the soft-featured gloom that will have 
 descended on my home like a layer of delicate dust. In 
 theatres, in restaurants among the tinkle and subdued 
 glitter, I gloat over the thought of it lying out there, 
 placid, beycind the radius of careering buses and cabs, my 
 hill of mysteries. . . . 
 
 At the Cafe Royal the other night a man leaned over the 
 noisy, beer-stained table, looked into my eyes, and said : 
 
 " A penny for your thoughts, Lady Venice 1 " 
 
 I gave him an evasive answer. I was thinking of 
 ,, y tame suburban home now lying prone imder enchant- 
 ment. . . . 
 
 And at the Cinderella-hour, I bid good-bye to my gay 
 companions at the porch of some Tube or Underground, 
 and look to come up again in another country, full of 
 surprises and dangers. Somewhere on the hill there is a 
 charcoal burner's hut that we used to read about in Grunm's 
 Tales ; there is the garden of the twelve lilies ; there is the 
 old Witch Wife (Lily St. J.) sitting with red eyes in her 
 
 chair by the fire. ... , . ,. x ,. 1.1, .. 
 
 I suppose it is the sense of danger created by the fact that 
 we are at war which breeds these fancies that please me and 
 add flavour to the dullest gathering. To be " seen home " 
 would spoU all. I use my aristocratic insolence to abso- 
 lutely forbid attempts to do so, and I dive complacently 
 amid gibes of "Unal" and "Little Red Riding Hood I" 
 
THE LAST DITCH 227 
 
 to emerge, free of them all, into a perfectly different world. 
 Giving up my ticket to the sleepy man, who wishes me 
 good-night as if he was wishing me "God speed," I am 
 swallowed up by the soft, dark suffusion of cloudy dark 
 spreading over and leaning down to the valley from the 
 hill. They suppose I shall hurry, eager for my nice cosy 
 bed. ... On the contrary, I very often on warm nights 
 find myself wandering outside the gates of safety for sheer 
 pleasure, every fibre of me averse from " turning in." 
 
 Rainy nights, of course non est. I don't much care for 
 moonlight nights — too boldly romantic. Old style. What 
 I like are those wild, moonless nights when the hill is lapped, 
 swathed, in a pall of obscurity, like the lightest of baby 
 blankets, or the soft triturated earth they fling over our 
 coflBns at the last. ... 
 
 I walk along delicately ; my heel taps on the pavement 
 seem a crime against the hour. . . . There are presences 
 about that one need not arouse. . . . 
 
 I don't mean the people in the houses, lying awake, 
 perhaps in apprehension, staring at the testers of their beds 
 (all Lily's beds have old-fashioned testers), thinking of 
 Zeppelins and their masks and their pails of sand. To Hell 
 with precautions on a night like this, against an ememy 
 like that 1 
 
 No ; I think I am afraid of awakening the wild beasts, the 
 robbers, the bugbears of childhood, to which this region is 
 given up. As of old, a lonely wayfarer is at their mercy. 
 Yes, there is danger — ^fascinating, passionately alluring 
 danger. It is unique, and we have to thank the Hims 
 for it. 
 
 I don't always think in terms of Grimm's tales, however; 
 sometimes it is the eighteenth century that supplies romance. 
 The shaded lamps are like long-necked, masked ladies, 
 peeping under their satin face-guards, sitately— and malicious 
 too. I pass the lamps quickly, . and back into the dark 
 which they are not, really, trying to irradiate with their 
 mawkish gleam. ... 
 
 I hardly ever meet any one. Once I saw a policeman 
 nestling under the shadow of a porch with its overhanging 
 tree. He was so still, he too had become a portion of the 
 ghostliness of things. Perhaps if I touched him he would 
 be cold and stiff like the Finsbury Circus policeman. But 
 this one, as I passed, languidly flashed his lantern on his 
 
228 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 buttons — eight of them — ^and they shone up to the Zeppelins 
 lurking in the clouds. And he was not speechless ; he 
 offered to see me to my door. I refused. This materializa- 
 tion would have spoiled all. 
 
 But it is not so very easy to find one's way. There b a 
 bit of road going up to Lily's where I have actually to feel 
 along the wall for the turning I know is there. 
 
 And then comes her door, admitting me into the garden 
 with the bust in it that a friend of Rowley Deane's once 
 did of me. It is slightly over life-size. I had nowhere to 
 put it, so Lily gave it a temporary home in the middle of 
 her garden-plot. 
 
 I like it. It makes me look very majestic — a kind of 
 Earth-Mother. I am enshrined in a grove of tall stalks of 
 last year's hollyhocks, asters and sunflowers. I attend to 
 its exterior sometimes. I don't like it to disgrace me. I 
 wash its face now and then ; I pick the snaUs out of its 
 eyes. . . . Lily says I am disgusting. . . . 
 
 When I turn into that lone garden at night, I think with 
 a sort of romantic joy that I shall see the bust again, gleaming 
 like a big mushroom in the light of the neighbouring gas- 
 lamp. I have to go quite near, to discern features. I 
 always wonder if the trolls will have moved it away ? For 
 Gilbert Daru is killed. ... 
 
 One does not know ever if anything will be as I left it ? 
 Shall I put my key in the lock as usual, and enter, and 
 presently see the cheerful light in the hall bounce out 
 in answer to the timid pressure on the electric button 
 that might not have responded because it was enchanted ? 
 In order to give myself just this frisson I have insisted on 
 the light being turned oft, and Lily never objects to senti- 
 ment that leads to economy. 
 
 Yes, I like my life on the whole. I have never had my 
 liberty. The war has given it me. But I only use liberty to 
 afford myself these inane, non-vital sensations— the ghostly, 
 the macabre. . . . Mother was so afraid that I should go 
 the way of Ilsa: bring people in with me; compromise 
 myself, somehow. And there are plenty of men about me 
 nowadays to whom I deny the privilege of bringmg me 
 home, in order to enjoy the pleasures of the imagination 
 I really exist for. It is so good in this cruel life not to 
 have a personal heart— I think I have the heart of all the 
 world. . . 
 
THE LAST DITCH 229 
 
 No, not all. I am incomplete. One sensation I miss, a 
 sensation popularly supposed to depend on a man, but I 
 find that that is a mere fallacy. I mean the divine furore 
 of the dance, which is independent of sex, whatever sex- 
 maniacs may say. That is denied me. That fibre is left 
 out of me. Yet I feel it vicariously, with the touch of 
 bitterness that comes from not being my own protagonist. 
 I think I must be like Swinburne. . , . 
 
 I just can't dance. 
 
 I can remember the German waltz. I was hardly out 
 then. I used to slouch about the ballroom at Beardmore 
 on sufferance — very pretty, in a short frock, with a pigtail 
 and a large bow — while Bsa was having her triumphs, 
 dancing like a fairy, as people said ; but I realize now that 
 she was dancing like a courtesan of old Corinth. I used 
 to rim away upstairs and hide myself in my own quiet 
 room with my pictures, and my sleeping dog, and the moon- 
 like gas-globe hanging over the pillow — ^the bedclothes 
 turned down for the night in a strict V, the white coverlet 
 folded and put on one side, according to Mother's tidy 
 Scotch habits. . . . 
 
 And below, sardonic jigging, the smell of the candles that 
 want snufiing, or the dust that the dancers' feet raises, the 
 light on white wet necks, and the red stuff drying on the 
 parted, parched lips. . . . Every one knows, I suppose, the 
 longing to bolt from the noise and glitter of a party into 
 the everyday; but I was too young, surely, to feel it so 
 keenly ? 
 
 I don't think that these sensations, or indeed any 
 sensation at all, would be evoked by the new, complicated, 
 stupid way of dancing that has come in since the war. I 
 suppose it is that there are no more big ballrooms open, 
 or good floors, or sonorous full-stringed bands, so the silly 
 Fox-trot that can be danced on a carpet to the music 
 of a gramophone has come in. The Tango, though of 
 course I never could even begin to do it, filled every need 
 of my being. And it was too bad, after every one, man, 
 woman, and boy, had started to master its complications, as 
 difficult as a proposition in Algebra worked out by the feet, 
 that the war came, took the men, and it died ! 
 
 Oh, the fascinating lilt of it ! though I loved, too, the 
 simple emotional quality of the old Victorian waltz music. 
 I think into the vulgarity of Emil Waldteufel and Coote 
 
280 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 there had crept something strident, acid, raucous, resemb- 
 ling nothing so much as the cry of the nightingales as we 
 used to hear them in the thickets round ^ardmore. Who 
 calls it beautiful, unless Baudelaire is beautifxd; or melo- 
 dious, unless Wagner is ? It b a hoarse wail, an inartistic, 
 unmodulated shout of pain, the tale of one of those woes 
 that are physical in their expression. Even Mother used 
 to say that it was as if a beggar-woman had left her baby 
 imder a hedge and it was crying for her. The old dance 
 music has for me that same quality of savage grief ; even 
 in its melody the same ground bass of profound misery. , . . 
 
 I know now why it was so sad. It was prophetic. It 
 held in it the promise of the war, the seeds of partings. . . . 
 All these men and women turning and swaying in each 
 other's arms, sad and desirous, prosecuting their passionate 
 loves — ^for what? That they might come together and 
 make the bones that were to whiten the fields of Flanders ! 
 Why, if Ilsa, whom Audely says is so passionate, had had 
 a child of any one of her amours, tlmt son would have 
 been out fighting by now ! There was a man, at the time, 
 that she adored, I remember — Paul Wyandotte ; he would be 
 fifty by now — that they would not let her have because he was 
 rather a bad lot. Well, he was killed in the Boer War, 
 with a book she had given him in his pocket that hadn't, 
 alas ! been stout enough to stop the bullet. 
 
 I have come to think she had better have had him and 
 even been bullied and left 1 It is better to be miserable 
 with some one than prosperous alone. . . . 
 
 I watch them dancing at Giro's most evenings now, young 
 men on leave— say Ilsa's sons she might have had— their 
 poor necks smothered in those low khaki collars that seem 
 to choke them even more than the high masher ones they 
 used to have to wear, hot m their thick suits, and deeply 
 oppressed by Sam Browne belts. I watch them, carefully 
 padding round, first on one leg and then the other, in that 
 absurd dance that seems all " waiting to be off," and I 
 realize they are taking as much pains with their steps as if 
 they had conned them out of a dnll-book. 
 
 And then I think of the other dance, over there, that 
 they may be called off to join in the next morning, where the 
 floor is slippery enough, but not with beeswax, and the 
 Master of the Ceremonies is a grim-lipped general who sends 
 them prancing " over the top." 
 
THE LAST DITCH 281 
 
 " Oh, what is this, that knows the road I came, 
 The lifted, shifted steeps and all the way ? " 
 
 Music I I want to hear much music now, and I have sub- 
 Bcribed to Sir Henry Wood's concerts. Mother comforts 
 herself in her own way ; she has at least two library sub- 
 scriptions. And so we try to welter through the indes- 
 cribable misery and boredom of these times. 
 
XX 
 
 From The Lady Aries 
 
 LoNOBiDE Boas. 
 I HAVE had to clinch the matter of the house suddenly, 
 give up Clareville Grove that hung fire, and settle on one in 
 Edwardes Square. Anything to get Venice out of the 
 hands of Lily St, Justl I had hoped that arrangement 
 would go on for another month and enable me to work off 
 the rest of my visit to the dear Quains, but I have had 
 accounts of Venice that disturbed me beyond everything 
 and sent me rattling up to town to demand an account of 
 her stewardship from LUy, to whom I had confided my ewe- 
 lamb. 
 
 Good Effel wrote and said that she had met Venice in 
 the Hampstead Tube one night, lately, at half-past eleven, 
 alone, in evening dress with white embroidered slippers, and 
 her cloak, unfastened as usual, over a gold tinsel evening 
 dress. She never will cover up her neck, which doesn't 
 matter so much when she is with me, but in the Tube it 
 produced an effect which she appeared to be thoroughly 
 enjoying, Effel said, though I set that down to the fact that 
 dear Effel never appreciated Venice. Venice, at all events, 
 was quite nice to Effel and very pleased to see her, but was 
 careful not to say where she had been. 
 
 It was horrid news to get down here. I took my troubles 
 to Gerald, the only man in the house, and he was sympa- 
 thetic in a way, but so utterly ignorant of the delicacy 
 of the issues involved I ... He can't know exactly how it 
 hurts me that my daughter should be stravaguing about, 
 unshielded and imcared for at those hours, in a public 
 carriage. ... He says there are no more taxis to speak 
 of, and also that Venice is all right, whatever she does: 
 perfectly well able to take care of herself. I said, Yes ; any 
 daughter of mine would have that power in the ultimate 
 
 232 
 
THE LAST DITCH 238 
 
 resort, but that I didn't care to have her doing " the Una 
 touch," as he called it, when I had placed her carefully with 
 a chaperon of my own choosing. He said the remedy was 
 worse than the disease. Didn't I suppose that Venice was 
 safer going about alone, or with a decent Grod-fearing man 
 of the new order, like Percy Gregson, for instance, than 
 
 under the control of a notorious 1 No, I can't set down 
 
 the word he used. It was too hard on poor Lily. He said 
 she was making Venice a sort of Yvette. 
 
 I was on to him like a knife about Mr. Gregson, and what 
 he meant about Venice's going about with him. Did she ? 
 I insisted on being told, and why hadn't he told me before ? 
 He retorted that he wasn't out to spoil the poor kid's fun, 
 and that, anyway, she was perfectly safe with old Gregson, 
 It came out that he had seen her dining alone, or with Percy 
 Gregson, in restaurants several times, and once with him 
 and the other leader of the Labour Party at the National 
 Liberal Club. And one night he happened to be up in town 
 during a raid; he met them at a rotten little Italian 
 restaurant that was all built of matchwood, and not 
 thinking it safe, he had taken them both to his club near 
 Piccadilly Circus, where they had stayed together in the 
 cellar for four mortal hours. There was another woman 
 there, but she was fainting all the time, . . . 
 
 Autres temps, autres mceurs ! One can't look a raid- 
 shelter in the mouth, so to speak, and I exonerate Gerald. 
 But still, one felt that Lily was interpreting her duties with 
 great laxity. The truth is, I hear, she is so occupied in 
 ruining Bertie Corfe that she has no thought for anything else. 
 I went to her straight and rescued my daughter. " Venice," 
 (just) "Preserved " as Audely calls it. Oh, how I wish he 
 wasn't in the army, then all this wouldn't have happened 1 
 
 I had to listen to a frightful amount of talk from Lily, 
 bent on asserting her innocence and her superior knowledge 
 of the world. She protested that if I were more in the 
 movement I would realize that there is no such thing as 
 chaperonage nowadays. That it came to a natural end the 
 moment Lady Evangeline — ^the first woman of title — crossed 
 the Channel to be a hospital orderly I 
 
 I said she and her sister the Duchess were only sporadic. 
 I don't choose to admit any relaxation — for our class, at any 
 rate — of the rules that have held good for so long and pro- 
 duced so many specimens of decent womanhood. As a 
 
234 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 matter of fact, one knows very well that, speaking physio- 
 logically, chaperonage is a necessary restriction on the high 
 spirits of properly housed and fed and groomed people. I 
 came to see that in the case of Ilsa, though with my Venice 
 it is not coarseness, but delicacy that needs protecting. 
 And the r61e of Una means a certain strain. It is all very 
 well for middle-class girls to stand the racket, but it vitiates 
 the nerves of maidens of finer clay. I do positively believe 
 it is different clay, and nothing will convince me that it is 
 good for Venice to be exposed to coarse contacts of this 
 kind. 
 
 Of course my vulnerable point is still my eldest daughter. 
 Lily got on to her, and asked me what about her contacts ? 
 Did I know what she was doing with herself these days ? 
 
 Unfortimately, I don't. I tried to brazen it out, saying : 
 " Whatever Ilsa's job is, it is a Government job, and may 
 be dangerous to health or complexion or even life, but not 
 reputation. Ah 1 — and she prefers not to risk upsetting me 
 by telling me." 
 
 "And does she object to upsetting Archie, too ? " 
 
 She was trying to imply that Ilsa was at her old tricks 
 again. ... I changed the subject, and came down on her 
 for letting Venice have a latchkey. I said Venice would 
 be the first Aries woman to have such a thing, and did she, 
 Lily, know that her charge had been using it to stroll about 
 the streets at night in the company of Labour Members, 
 and such people ? 
 
 She interrupted me : 
 
 "Oh, I know all about Percy Gregson. My advice to 
 you, Beaty, is let him make an honest woman of her at 
 once ! He's a very good match, as things go, nowadays I " 
 
 She proceeded to waste on me some of her fresh copy 
 for the fashion paper she writes for. She calls her stuff 
 " Sparklets "—without much sparkle, I imagine ? I never 
 read her. 
 
 " Whether you like it or not, Beaty, she will have him 
 it she wants him. Mothers have nothing to do with their 
 daughters' matrimonial deals now, nor ever will again." 
 
 She proceeded to explain that I must make up my mind 
 to the fact that Matchmaking, as a fine art, had gone out; 
 that if the thing was to be done at all, girls had to do it for 
 themselves. Any way, their chance is small and they have 
 to hustle for it, like a place in a bus. She says she has 
 
THE LAST DITCH 285 
 
 watched the bus fights from her car, at the corner by the 
 Spitz, and nptices that the strong, common, ill-bred women 
 always manage to get a seat, while the pale, distinguished 
 ones scorn to besiege the footboard, but turn away proudly 
 and prepare to walk it. And so it follows that if girls want 
 a place in a bus, or a husband, or what not, they must be 
 prepared to struggle for it. Their best chance is to catch 
 him in the course of their war work, where in the nature of 
 things they are unchaperoned — except by numbers. She 
 instanced Lady Ellen Reveley — the girl Venice always 
 called Fair Ellayne le Violet because of her eyes, who is a 
 widow and working now in the fields — and that funny little 
 foreign-looking Zoe Courtauld, whom Venice made me ask 
 to Lochroyan to please Lord Bertie Corfe, who is Lily's at 
 present. She doesn't know I tried to help on the Courtauld 
 alliance, and need not know it. We used to call Zo6, 
 Constance Fille de Fay. (Oh, how it all comes back to 
 me !) 
 
 It appears that ZoE is now secretary to Sir Bullace Schack, 
 and he is a rich bachelor and ZoS rules his department 
 absolutely, and will him. Mary Scrymgeour, another of 
 Venice's Meinie, whose brother was killed in Gallipoli and 
 her lover at Mons, is the life and soul of a jam factory. 
 
 Well, all she can get hold of there presumably is a jam 
 boiler or refiner at best, and I detest this sort of backstairs 
 matchmaking. 
 
 " Lily, who do you expect is going to come riding up 
 like a faiight of old and see Ellen Reveley in her furrow and 
 her smudgy mud-coloured leggings, unless it is perhaps a man 
 in khaki ; and even if he does notice her, what can she make 
 of it ? She can't toss her curly locks at him — she has lovely 
 hair, or had — ^because they are all tucked away under her 
 cap, and her nose red with stooping over her mangel- 
 wurzels ! And Mary, in the jam factory, what chance has 
 she ? The visitors to that sort of place are generally old 
 maids whose business it is to see, together with the girls' 
 physical welfare, that nothing of that kind occurs 1 " 
 
 " Somebody's got to do the dirty work," Lily said, begg ng 
 the question. 
 
 " But not my daughter necessarily. What good, I ask 
 you, would Venice be in a jam factory or on the land or in 
 making explosives ? I shouldn't like to eat her jam or 
 trust her to milk my cow, and if they put her to hand! j 
 
236 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 T.N.T. she would certainly blow herself up and the rest of 
 them too." 
 
 But Lily has got the right end of the stick in a way. The 
 outlook is bad. Men, to speak from a business point of 
 view, are at a shockingly high rate of premium, and they 
 are, moreover, a kind of stock that is not unlikely to depre- 
 ciate in value. The only men Venice can meet are mostly 
 soldiers — on leave — ^and going back to hourly exposure to 
 danger. I hope I am not a selfish beast, and I know that it 
 would be got — or lost — in the coimtry's service, but I can't 
 say I want a son-in-law with permanent lung trouble, or a 
 wooden leg 1 Yes, I agree with Lily, there are no gilt-edged 
 securities in the matrimonial market just now, and that 
 is nothing to complain of in these days, I suppose ; but what 
 is to become of the race if the world becomes so very like 
 Heaven in this particular ? 
 
 Again I found myself thinking about Audely and his 
 letter to Venice. She has obviously let the feeling that 
 provoked it die down for want of sustenance. Yet one 
 would like to keep Audely in the family, somehow, in the 
 killing off of good men that is going on and the prospective 
 dearth of them. , , . 
 
 He hasn't gone out yet, but is still training, up in the 
 North. I miss him dreadfully. It was so nice to have a 
 man about the house. . . . The problem of Venice is be- 
 coming too much for me. . . . One thing I have done. I 
 acted, and I acted quickly. I have taken her away from 
 Lily's, as gently as I could, for I detest outstanding quarrels 
 between two women who have to meet, and we have to put 
 up here at Effel's, crowding her a bit, I fear, but it is only 
 till I can get the lease signed of the Edwardes Square house, 
 where I do hope we shall be happy at last. 
 
XXI 
 
 From The Lady Aries 
 
 Felsham House, Edwabdbs Sqttabb. 
 
 Well, here we are in the little house of dreams, as Venice is 
 pleased to call it, I am glad to say that she is for the 
 moment content with everything about it, and quite sees 
 her way to the kind of life she likes. She says she is sick of 
 staying in other people's houses, giving way to their whims 
 and behaving " pretty." It is poor Venice's handicap, her 
 strong theory of good manners. She accepts with exquisite 
 politeness speeches and things that literally set her teeth 
 on edge when she is under some one else's roof. Any out- 
 sider — ^host or hostess — can put upon her in matters of 
 material discomfort, and she will bear it without a sign, 
 allowing no one to guess from her manner that she is upset 
 by them. She takes it out, I must say, by being a pretty 
 good tartar at home, where, as she conceives it, manners 
 don't apply. At home she will have her own way, and com- 
 plains loudly if she doesn't get it, and even sulks. I shall never 
 forget how she kept it up over the Leahy bridesmaidship. 
 She reduced me a stone. Abroad, she contrives to keep 
 even the famous pout in leash, though at home it is like a 
 storm-cone hoisted, and we know what to expect. 
 
 Everything, including the house, is now couleur de rose. 
 But the house is really grey, and small and low, and not too 
 convenient, with its tiny windows looking on to the road 
 over a tiny square patch of garden, which was lawn, but 
 which Venice has forced me to flag all over. The poor dis- 
 possessed blades of grass insist on coming up between the 
 slabs of stone, like the fringe on a d'oyley. In the middle 
 Venice has had placed a green-bay tree we got from 
 Harrod's. There is a fanlight, as desired by her, over the 
 door which ought to show the hall lamp, out as we are forced 
 to obscure it, and as there isn't a path, we are apt, on entering 
 
 237 
 
288 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 at night, to lose our bearings and stumble over the green- 
 bay tree, which is perhaps better than falling down the area 
 steps. . . . 
 
 There is a back garden, too, with an old coachhouse at 
 the bottom of it which a former tenant used as a studio. I 
 have made this over to Venice for her sole use. She has 
 turned it into a study with a door she can lock and put in a 
 bell. We have all promised to ring whenever we want to 
 see her and her door happens to be closed. We sit there in the 
 evenings, and anybody who may happen to be dining with 
 us— Ilsa or Effel or Ida, that is— when Venice has signified her 
 willingness to have us there. The drawing-room is rather 
 poky. Venice makes us coffee, very badly, it must be owned, 
 and it takes everybody all their time to keep her sleeves 
 out of the flame. But if there is a man there, Effel and 
 Ilsa sit by with a scornful little smile on their faces and leave 
 the care of Venice to him. 
 
 She has furnished it all herself — I mean her own taste — 
 and Effel has machined her window curtains, etc. She 
 used to be mad on William Morris furniture, now it is Post- 
 Impressionism — Futurism — Vorticism — I wonder if I have 
 got the sequence of movements right ? They change like 
 dressmakers' fashions ; but plus ca change, they are still the 
 same ugly sort of thing. 
 
 Rowley Deane is in France now, but while he was up on 
 leave he did it all for her. Venice herself and Effel painted 
 the wood work under his direction, and the doors too, of a 
 good strong colour, but since they have blistered, and present 
 great dun patches where all ought to be Prussian blue. 
 Sh-h ! Effel says. But that is the colour, so what's the use 
 of saying it isn't ? 
 
 Mr. Gregson tells me that the blistering is because the 
 paint hadn't been properly mixed in the first place ; he is 
 jealous of Rowley Deane's prestige with us all. He knows 
 plenty about painting and papering, too, from the circum- 
 stances of his early career, and isn't ashamed of it. Oh, no 1 
 I should say myself, that even then it is silly to talk about 
 it so much, for that's going to the other extreme. Socialists 
 always make the mistake of rubbing in their origin too 
 much before the people who just want to be able to forget 
 it and take them on their merits. It's just as vulgar as if 
 fee were to brag about our upbringing. • . . 
 Rowley Deane's father is a vicar— poor man, for I don't 
 
THE LAST DITCH 239 
 
 see how the most devoted son could take his father round 
 one of his exhibitions 1 It would be an insult to Papa's 
 cloth, unless he used that to cover his face 1 Still, in spite 
 of his being so mistaken, I like Rowley. I like his inde- 
 pendence. He maintains to my face, and I really believe 
 he means it, that he wouldn't take Venice as a gift. Allowing 
 for swank, I believe he detests her as a woman ; she never 
 tuill treat him as a man. He decorated her room for her out 
 of pure good-nature, and has given her her own portrait, done 
 at Lochroyan, I hated so. Although a bit of a white elephant, 
 it does represent a certain amount of labour which he has 
 cheerfully given away. And he has lent her an altar-piece 
 — I hardly know what else to call it — though there is no 
 Madonna in it. It is just lines, ruled apparently with a 
 ruler, and circles and zig-zags galore, just where it occurred 
 to him he would make them, like the scribblings of Planchette, 
 or what the French call pattes d'araignie all over it. It 
 takes up the whole of one wall from the ceiling to the skirting 
 board — solid art all the way. She is strictly forbidden to put 
 even a chair against it, and when I stuck a large jar of bul- 
 rushes and green stuff in one corner, just to take off the raw- 
 ness, he threatened to take the picture away altogether. I 
 don't want that, for it isn't distempered behind it, and in 
 war time it takes so long and is so difficult to get work 
 done. 
 
 I am now used to it, and can sit in the studio with equani- 
 mity and even pleasure. At first I had to place myself so 
 that my back was turned to the canvas, letting Ilsa and 
 Effel sit facing it, Effel looking very sick, like a maid forced 
 to ride back in a railway carriage. 
 
 The real drawback to Venice's study is that there is no 
 covered way to it, and one has to walk across the open 
 garden, however wet the day, to get there. And as the room 
 is a new toy and she is running backwards and forwards to 
 it all the time, there is a fearful lot of mud brought in on 
 her feet and the tail of her gowns. And with these two 
 haughty maids, we have to be so very careful. One must 
 not irritate them, and unnecessary cleaning up is the most 
 provocative of causes for these creatures throwing up their 
 places and leaving you in the lurch. . . . 
 
 That is another of the reasons why I have set my face 
 against pets of any kind— that and the way Venice has killed 
 BO many nice beasts, by neglecting them. Modem servants 
 
240 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 won't look after animals, and she forgets. Henry was very 
 anxious to give her one of his Great Danes, but I said frankly, 
 if it was only to get it a home and he cared about it, he had 
 much better shoot it. He is getting rid of most of his horses 
 and the dogs, especially the Duchess' famous breed of 
 Pekingese, as I dare say you have read in the papers. Minna 
 having become head of the ''PtU Down Your Pets " League, 
 can't possibly keep them; and as she says in one of her 
 leaflets, has to set an example by beginning at home. 
 
 Henry has been very kind and all 1 He was so pleased 
 with me for my determination to draw in and reduce ex- 
 penditure by taking a smaller house that he has helped me 
 where the shoe pinched most — i.e. Venice's comfort — ^break- 
 ing the shock as gradually as possible to her, sending us fish 
 and game and venison and giving Venice useful presents of 
 things that used to come to her naturally, but that are 
 beyond our present scale. He always did make her an 
 allowance, but it wasn't so very much, as he said himself, 
 for the richest peer in England to give his favourite niece. 
 She has not been such a favourite since she became a Vorticist, 
 in more ways than painting. . . . And then her Aunt 
 Minna, being one of your husband's compatriots and an 
 extremely moneyed person herself — ^takes exception to 
 Henry's open-handedness and generosity to Venice ; that is 
 to say, the allowance, ratified before his marriage, to her. 
 She has never made her niece a present in her life ; she 
 doesn't care to waste any more money on the expenses of her 
 title, now that she has got it. 
 
 Excuse me, I do hate that woman, who has nearly suc- 
 ceeded in taking my own brother away from me. I see very 
 little of her, and as Henry is more or less imder her thumb 
 it entails my seeing much less of him than I should like. 
 
 The less, however, for Venice's sake he is here, the better. 
 When he does pay us a visit I can see that he isn't very well 
 pleased with the use she has been putting his money to, re 
 the garden-room. I notice his frightened glance around 
 as he raises his head — he is very tall — after going through 
 the door, and is faced by something that looks for all the 
 world like a bursting bomb of many colours spreading all 
 over the west end of the room. 
 
 Venice generally receives people standing right back up 
 against it ; she has been told, I believe, that this extra- 
 vanganza in colours suits her style of beauty. Henry said, 
 
THE LAST DITCH 241 
 
 sullenly, that she looked like a snowdrop sprouting out of a 
 red brick flower-pot. That was his polite way of saying he 
 didn't admire the flower-pot. 
 
 Flower-pot reminds me of another grievance of Tinkler, 
 the house-parlourmaid I have succeeded in getting, and 
 whom I have all the trouble in the world to keep. She is 
 most particular about her own work ; she keeps all the silver 
 we use — the bulk is in the bank — ^most nice, and her per- 
 sonal appointments, cap and apron and so on, are a dream. 
 But she objects intensely to what she calls " cleaning up 
 after Lady Venice," so that many a time I have to go and 
 get the dustpan out of her cupboard under the stairs and 
 go down on my knees on the floor to make good, say, after 
 Venice has been "doing" the flowers, arranging and re- 
 arranging them in colour schemes ... or making tea with 
 the electric kettle, or bringing in stray animals to feed, as 
 she is very fond of doing. She is too soft-hearted to stand 
 a cat or dog crying outside for shelter in the night — it isn't 
 always for shelter, but one can't expect her to distinguish 
 that — ^and it annoys the girl to find a cat ramping about 
 the drawing-room when she comes in of a morning. 
 
 Venice won't realize the necessity of humouring these 
 creatures, or that if you say much to them they are off to 
 munition works in a trice, where they get more wages than 
 I can afford to give them, and all their Sundays. 
 
 Government Money 1 They are simply rolling in it. And 
 they have only dress and chocolate drops to spend it on, 
 mostly. I remember the time when I thought it cheek of 
 Effel — ^and she was a very superior servant : more of a friend 
 — ^to sport a white petticoat, except, perhaps, on Sundays 
 for church. But I couldn't go on a bus all last summer, 
 in my plain foulard with white spots and my darned gloves, 
 without meeting all the little girls of the Effel class, and 
 much lower, wearing white. Their skirts certainly are mere 
 vallances resting on their black-leaded boots, like pinked- 
 out frills on a cofiBn, and generally topped by a woollen 
 Tammy and no gloves at all, but the accessories will come. 
 They will learn to attend to their extremities in time, as 
 Frenchwomen are supposed to do. None of us dared to 
 wear white this summer, except Venice now and then, and 
 that was only because Effel very kindly got up some of her 
 old ones for her, as a favour to me, and because a White 
 Snowdrop ought to dress in white. But on my word, the 
 16 
 
242 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 lower classes seemed to positively riot in white linen and 
 muslin. It used to enrage me, walking through the slums 
 to my Old Women's Friendly, to see all the little gutter 
 children playing in the middle of the street, rigged up in 
 what might have been sections of Ilsa's best "nighties," 
 ethereal blobs of white squatting complacently in the mud. 
 ... I used to think on a fine day, in the sun, they looked 
 like your Uncle Henry's cygnet farm at Cottingley Manor, 
 and mused as I watched the little pampered brats 
 making mud pies in muslin, plajring hop-scotch — I think 
 it is called ? — in white shoes and stockings, on the way 
 things change. And their frowsy mothers sitting on stone 
 doorsteps, with a heap of Swiss embroideries across their 
 knees, smacking it in the good old fashion I As for baby 
 ribbon, it is positively run through everything runnable. 
 Ilsa says she has long since left off attempting to keep pace 
 with the luxurious underclothes of her " general," who 
 wears silk stockings and doesn't even bother to steal hers, 
 which are, she admits, only Lisle thread. 
 
 I am afraid Ilsa's excursion into respectability hasn't 
 profited her wardrobe much. She says that the white 
 robe of innocence doesn't depend on conduct in these days, 
 but on the laimdry tariff, and that its hem gets soiled now — 
 not so much with evil communications as street mud. . . . 
 
 Mr. Gregson tells her and Venice, that it is the rising of 
 the tide that even King Canute could not bid retire. It 
 signified the Uplifting of the People, the Decline and Fall of 
 the Middle Class. " Middle Class " seems to leave Us 
 politely out. But it doesn't really: there are only two 
 classes now. Us and the Others. The Others are going to 
 eat Us up. 
 
 Unless we choose to think better of it, sink ancient pre- 
 judices and ally ourselves with them ? That is what Venice 
 says. She is pretty nearly converted to Socialism by now. 
 
 I don't know who first mooted the idea, he, she, or I, but 
 certainly there is a plan on foot that Mr. Gregson should 
 come and take up his abode with us, just to see how we all 
 like it. I have not mentioned it to Henry yet, but he rather 
 suggested himself that I should take a paying guest to eke 
 out the money a little, and to keep me company while 
 Venice was away at work. She was thinking of war work 
 then. . . . 
 
 I am considering the plan. It represents a very sudden 
 
THE LAST DITCH 243 
 
 jump for me, doesn't it 7 I shall call myself the new Quintia 
 Curtia. 
 
 For, as Percy Gregson says, it is no use ever to try to control 
 the rising tide of anything, and it may be left for me to be 
 the first to leap into the yawning gulf of democracy. It 
 may be just possible to stem the tide if the two opposing 
 forces join hands ! 
 
 Venice is against the notion. She thinks she may get 
 too much of Percy's company, deeply as she enjoys it. She 
 wants to preserve her clarity of vision, and he is rather a 
 domineering personality. As a matter of fact, I think he 
 bores her by lecturing her instead of paying her compliments, 
 which she would like, even from a man she is not thinking 
 of from that point of view. I should be able to make 
 him pay at least his equitable share of the household 
 expenses — rather more perhaps, as we should be stretching 
 a point in having him. On the other hand, it might 
 estrange your uncle, from whom great regular blessings 
 flow. It isn't likely we could persuade him to want to 
 see much of Percy, whom he knows, of course, well enough 
 by reputation. But as it is he comes here so seldom ! 
 I have my club to take him to ; it is nearer for him than 
 coming all the way out to Kensington. And of course, 
 per se, he cannot object to Mr. Gregson, who has gained by 
 his talents quite a fair social position of a kind. People 
 think very highly of his prospects, and Gerald's prophecy 
 to me anent his future has been endorsed by impartial 
 people several times. It is quite on the cards that he may 
 come to rule us all. 
 
 He has a tremendous following. Even Henry admits that 
 the fellow has the gift of eloquence — the gab, he put it — • 
 and the Quains simply go Nap on him ; but that's friendship. 
 Venice and I have been to one or two of his meetings and 
 we come back carried away. No one coughs when he speaks, 
 and the silence is so tense that you can hear the hairpins 
 and collar studs dropping. It seems to be a fully accepted 
 proposition now that he " will do something," and all say 
 that he is a perfect demon for work and gets through the 
 job of ten men in half an hour. 
 
 And — ^alas, that it should be so I — the class that he stands 
 for has come now to hold all the trump cards. That is why 
 I fancy the Government never interfere with any of his 
 meetings, and yet seditious enough things are said there in all 
 
244 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 conscience. But when he gets up to speak, he says worse, 
 and he has " such a way wid him " that he is left alone 
 while others are put in jail. 
 
 The Ancien Bigime must shake hands with the Mammon 
 of Labour. I will hold out mine, I believe. 
 
 One thing, he doesn't flirt with Venice the least little 
 bit in the world, so far as I can see, so that it would be safe 
 enough to allow a greater juxtaposition. Unless indeed, 
 girl-like, that appeals to her. But I know her make 
 thoroughly. She likes devotion, of a romantic, troubadourish, 
 sort, but would run a thousand miles from any one who 
 didn't approach her physically in the most spiritual way 
 possible. Even when he looks at her, as he often does, 
 without meaning to, with his deep, dark, glowing eyes 
 that his mother gave him and so he can't help, I fancy it 
 makes her slightly uncomfortable. He is good looking, but 
 in a sort of furry, unkempt way, like a harmless wild 
 beast strayed out of the wood. There is far too much hair 
 lying about and clouding his magnificent forehead. He 
 has a bad figure: no presence at all until he is seen on 
 a platform, and then it seems transfigured, in some way, 
 with enthusiasm. 
 
 I foresee that if I can get over the Duke^s objections, 
 and if Venice can be persuaded to tolerate a P.G. actually 
 In the house, I shall take him in for a bit and see how it 
 works. It may. There is no reason I can see that it 
 shouldn't. He certainly keeps Venice amused, and takes 
 her about and educates her mind, and the distance in rank 
 makes it a sheer impossibility to consider any alliance 
 between them, if that is what you are thinking of. A 
 flirtation, of course, is still more impossible ; you can marry 
 where you can't flirt, so I always think. 
 
 There is another factor in my affairs which has come up, 
 and upsets me very much, for it adds so to my difiiculties 
 in running the house. Effel Lucy is, after all her promises, 
 going to have a baby, and will be of no manner of use to me 
 by and by. 
 
XXII 
 
 From The Lady Aries 
 
 Bdwardbs Square. 
 My dear, I ought not to repine, I took this house of my 
 own free will, but oh, the difference of being in one postal 
 district or another I It is enormous. I have always thought 
 it was a letting stunt of the agent's. I never thought much 
 of Park Crescent when I was in it; there was too much 
 basement and area space, and one never knew what the 
 servants were up to. But here we have no back door at all. 
 Imagine what that means 1 The wrong sort of publicity. 
 The butcher boy brings the joint, another little devil brings 
 the fish, another the vegetables, and they all three yaup 
 down the little area in front of the dining-room windows to 
 summon the cook. Then twice a week the dustman calls 
 to fetch the remains of all this plenty, and the dust of our 
 ancient meals blows down our nostrils. All the processes 
 of life, in fact, are carried on under our eyes and noses. 
 Anatole, if he had been still alive and our cook, couldn't have 
 carried on either of his professions, but would have left us 
 in a week. . . . We have a square opposite, but it is a poor 
 exchange for a majestic park like the Regent's. And it is 
 cat-ridden and full of stray dirty dogs and noisy chirping 
 sparrows that break one's rest. . . , 
 
 Although the little house is beginning to look very 
 pretty inside, very few people see it. One has not the face 
 to invite people to come so far to get so little. If Audely 
 was here now, to bring nice men around I Percy does intro- 
 duce a certain number of his pals, and no doubt they do talk 
 very interestingly, and Venice can answer them in their own 
 style. Her own old artistic friends keep on coming for what 
 they can get, but for me there is not much social distraction. 
 Effel is always good for a gossip, but she is not able to walk 
 so far, now. Henry is very kind in coming ; he walks out 
 
 245 
 
246 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 from Belgrave Square; but Minna says she can't get here 
 without a car, and she has put that down, so we must do 
 without her till things are better. . . , We do do. To see 
 Minna isn't the only reason one wants the war to end. 
 
 I seem to be in for a horribly dreary winter; but then, I 
 suppose everybody else of my age is. And History in my 
 case is repeating itself. When I was a girl, you know, your 
 grandfather had to retrench a good deal, and he chose to take 
 his family to live at a village a few miles out of Edinburgh. 
 Of course he rode in and out easily, but for the women of the 
 family there was only the family chaise, and going was very 
 bad, what with mud and ruts, and it was as likely to get 
 stuck in a ditch as not. So we women, as usual, practised 
 patience and hoped for better times. I was the youngest, 
 and my head was nearly turned when Aries came along, 
 literally riding by from the Abercorns' where he was staying, 
 and rescued me like a knight of old from dullness and despair. 
 I was awfully in love with him ; but even if I hadn't been 
 I should have taken him, for he represented the only way 
 out. And thus I was married at eighteen, and pitchforked 
 into diplomatic lite. . . . 
 
 Well, one result of this dreadful war is that I seem to 
 myself to be living through those times again. I often feel 
 incliaed to head my letters " Our Village," after the name 
 of a book we used to like when I was a girl. London, except 
 the bit near Pall Mall and Piccadilly, is just an over- 
 grown village like the one Miss Mitford described. All the 
 penalties of being gregarious and loving your kind, such 
 as she describes, are there. Even if one is asked out 
 for a game of Auction in some one else's house, one's 
 going depends on the weather and a host of other little 
 things. The dark is as full of dangers for an improtected 
 female as ever it used to be at Lammachie. In the old 
 days, if a woman trusted herself out alone in the dark, she 
 was supposed to be mad or anxious to be bad. Venice goes 
 everywhere alone, now, \mder protest from me ; but what 
 can I do ? Percy Gregson volunteers to escort her, some- 
 times, and does ; but I don't know which is worse, going about 
 alone or alone with a man — and a Socialist at that ? . . . 
 
 I myself, although there is no question of chaperonage 
 for me at my age, prefer to stay at home as much as possible. 
 There are hardly any cabs, and when you do get one the 
 driver is raw and new to his work, and drives recklessly. 
 
THE LAST DITCH 247 
 
 That affects one, whether one is inside or out, for they 
 absolutely ignore the claims of pedestrians. 
 
 There is nothing — even if we are quite sober, which of 
 course we all are ; the spirits are diluted past bearing and 
 one would as soon drink ginger^beer 1 — ^nothing to keep us on 
 the pavement except a wavy white line of chalk that the first 
 rain shower washes out and that the authorities are in no 
 particular hurry to replace, since it is only for the convenience 
 of us poor civilians. Everything now is for soldiers. . . . 
 
 Theatres are of course out of the question, though we 
 need not be, as Miss Mitford was, afraid of footpads between 
 here and Kensington Gore. The burglars and such like, 
 they say, have gone to the front, as hospital orderlies. 
 It's the dark that is so trying. It's what Venice calls 
 Cimmerian gloom. The street lamps are all blotted out 
 with lamp-black, and as for the arc-lights they are gone, 
 wholly. You remember that splendid one in Belgrave 
 Square, just opposite your aunt's ballroom window, that 
 shone with such a cruel glare that it made the balcony 
 absolutely impossible as a sitting-out place, and which 
 spoilt many a proposal, I dare say ? 
 
 My mother, I suppose, never having known the elaborate 
 system of street lighting we have set up, would have done 
 without it, and have been fairly at home in the old country 
 road of Oxford Street, or threading her way through the 
 woods of South Kensington and Holland Park. But of 
 course she would have had a John with a lantern ? and 
 a calash over her head made of stiff whaleboned silk. We 
 haven't even got a John to hang on to, and Venice, far 
 from wearing anything like a calash, now insists on going 
 out without any head-covering at all, which annoys me 
 very much. Because the times are out of joint, you needn't 
 accentuate the licence and disorganization unnecessarily. 
 
 She chose to walk to a dinner at Giro's, given by an American 
 authoress and her literary crowd last Friday, bareheaded, 
 in a thin opera cloak, for a bet she had with Miss Twells, of 
 The Beauty's Friend (which still goes on, though you can 
 hardly get grease for food, now, let alone for cosmetics). I 
 did not oppose the scheme when I was laughingly told of 
 it ; what was the good ? I only said it was a long way to 
 walk to furnish Meg Twells with a spicy paragraph, but 
 that I expected it was safe enough, for all the lions had left 
 the patjj a{id gone to France. 
 
248 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 Ilsa retorted that one never knew if a lion-on-leave 
 wouldn't come — to protect, and remain — to be a beast, 
 which was she supposed, what Venice wanted ? 
 
 Still, Venice insisted on carrying out the plan, and was 
 rather disappointed to have to tell us that no lion, or any 
 man at all spoke to her, except a policeman, who requested 
 her to move on, because she sat down on the steps of the 
 Albert Hall to rest, in her red cloak. I dare not interfere 
 with Venice's efforts to keep herself amused, but I must 
 say I am always anxious till I hear her latchkey turning 
 in the lock and her step on the stairs. If Percy is out 
 with her, as he sometimes is, I go to sleep. He is quite 
 safe. 
 
 I attempt to amuse myself as much as possible at home. 
 I get up some Auction, or even cut-throat Bridge. Ilsa and 
 Archie, on Saturdays and Sundays when he is at home, come 
 in, and there is Effel ; and Molendinar stirs his old stumps, 
 and comes to me, trying to take the place of Audely as far 
 as possible. No one ever could, though. And there is Ida 
 the brave, who will go anywhere for a game. Gerald is 
 away at his office till nine nowadays, and too tired to do 
 anything but go to bed. Sometimes I go out, as far as 
 possible keeping within a radius of a few hundred yards. I 
 put on goloshes in case it has come on to rain before I get 
 back, and a torch which isn't allowed, but which I can just 
 flash on for a moment when I have lost the kerb. I am 
 timorous, and not what I was. I had rather stay at home, 
 when all is said and done, than affront the perils of the night. 
 
 There was a famous great-great aunt of mine who used 
 to say, very proudly, " Well, well, sooner than be idle I'd 
 take a book ! " I never did read much, but now I try to make 
 up for lost time. The nicest time I have is when Venice has 
 nowhere to go, which happens sometimes. Then she and 
 I, after curfew time, as I call it, get round the fire and toast 
 our toes — Venice her legs. The front of her legs is quite 
 raw with constant exposure to the fire. We draw the 
 curtains close. One has to keep out every scrap of light, 
 which makes the room horribly stuffy, but that's better 
 than bombs— and read, read. ... I have taken out a 
 double subscription with a nice obliging little man near 
 here who keeps all the newest books back for me, and 
 Venice has her London Library subscription, which comes 
 in very handy for her " war-work " ! 
 
THE LAST DITCH 249 
 
 Percy, being a man, has managed to get Venice to work. 
 She makes indexes or something. . . . Historical digests. . . . 
 She is good at history, you know. . , . 
 
 I used to tax her with using her Library subscription 
 merely to procure Improper Memoirs, but really I am quite 
 glad of anything, proper or improper, that enables her to 
 stand a few quiet evenings with her mother. Percy is 
 hardly ever in in the evenings, his work is so arduous. 
 And poor Venice gets asked out less and less — a regular 
 tragedy for her. Nobody cares to ask her to Giro's, for 
 she doesn't dance the new dance, and one can't sit out 
 there, it appears. And Lily St. Just, who used to take 
 her to places, never stirs out of her own house after dark ; 
 and, as she is an intrinsically dull woman, she finds her 
 society falling oft very much, now that she has ceased to 
 entertain them at the Spitz or the Berkeley. So now she 
 goes to bed at nine, she says, to save the expense of lights, 
 although she has fifty thousand a year. Too thin 1 
 
 So it is books, books, all the time ; never had authors 
 such a vogue ! I -hope they appreciate it, and how we read 
 them and keep pace with modern thought, now that the 
 more pressing claims on our time and intelligence have 
 ceased to exist. As a matter of fact, a popular hostess, 
 such as I flatter myself I used to be, never finds time for 
 useless or fancy reading. I found, on thinking it over, 
 that I had not opened a book for over twenty years, except, 
 perhaps, a light novel or so, travelling, or when I had a bit 
 of a headache and was disinclined for any exertion. But 
 now there is no travelling, and, thank God, one seldom has 
 a headache, and yet one has taken quite seriously to readmg. 
 
 My books never last me long enough, and I take to 
 dipping into some of Venice's, though the moment one 
 gets interested they begin to turn it into Latin, which I 
 can't make out. It's an odd thing. . . . 
 
 Percy says that soon we shan't even have any new books 
 at all ; that paper is getting scarcer and scarcer, and all luxury 
 trades will have to go. Well, & la guerre comme d la guerre, 
 and we must not cavil at this. But I get armoyed and 
 rather suspect insincerity when little Mr. Biss, who is often 
 here — a faithful friend who hasn't dropped us because 
 we live in a small house — ^when he starts grousing about 
 his trade prospects, trying to make us realize (?) that he 
 really is a good friend, because he cheerfully dropped three 
 
250 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 hundred pounds on Venice's poems. I don't believe that. 
 If Venice's name, before the war, couldn't sell a hundred 
 copies, he is a bad publisher, and I tell him so. Then I 
 turn to comforting him, for he is so depressed, and admit 
 that we cannot do without him and his like : that books 
 won't be allowed to go ; that they are an anodyne — a sleeping 
 draught, the kind of drug we used to leave it to the Germans 
 to make, but that we are now bucking up and making for 
 ourselves. We have surely, I say, a few authors left, not in 
 khaki, or returned, slightly wounded and not in the head. 
 Those that do come back have bucketsful of experiences 
 and things they have observed out there, while those that 
 stayed at home can write about home matters and create 
 an atmosphere, and persuade us, while we are reading at 
 any rate, that we are not at war I 
 
 " Oh," Mr. Biss exclaims, brightening, " if they would 
 only be content to do that ! I could sell a thousand copies 
 of a new Miss Austen or Miss Mitford that you were speaking 
 about the other day 1 " 
 
 Then Venice suggests languidly that if he couldn't manage 
 to publish, we should have to do without him and go back 
 to the Minnesinger or jongleur. She quoted that lovely : 
 
 " The way was long, the wind was cold .... The minstrel 
 was infirm and old. . . ." 
 
 Teasing poor little Biss, she proposed that he should 
 engage a number of authors to agree not to print their books 
 on any condition whatsoever, but learn elocution, so as to 
 be able to recite their own work at people's houses. . . . 
 Then the young untried authors might go round on spec, like 
 the infirm and old minstrel, but young and dashing, with 
 their first books. ... 
 
 Mr. Biss rose to it ; he said, with his mouth all awry and 
 tears in his voice 
 
 "All very fine. Lady Venice, but where do I and my 
 profits come in— in your scheme ? " . , tt • 
 
 " That's a merely ignoble preoccupation, Mr. Biss,' Venice 
 said cruelly. " Unworthy of you, which I must just brush 
 aside." I said, if it was Wells or Bennett, or one of the 
 popular ones, he would have to stick very tight to his manu- 
 script, and be sure, before he began to read, that there wasn t 
 any clever person about, or there would be a syndicate 
 fornied for a band of " Repeaters," and the public would 
 have to put up with twice-told tales more likely than not. 
 
THE LAST DITCH 251 
 
 Venice suggested that the author would have to counter 
 that by giving " gag " — something fresh supplied by himself 
 on the spur of the moment. I rather agreed with her : gag 
 is often the best part of a Revue. The clever actors manage 
 to edge in all the things that the censor would cut out, and 
 thus make the piece run for a long time. . . . 
 
 All this didn't interest Mr. Biss much, and he took up 
 his hat and went, la mort dans Vdme, Percy said. Venice 
 carried on the conversation with Percy, saying that what we 
 consider the best of Shakespeare is, as often as not, just 
 " §^S>" t^^t "^^s got incorporated in the acting version, 
 supplied to make up for failure of memory or an im- 
 properly rehearsed part by the actor. In some cases it 
 would be Shakespeare himself. But not necessarily ; all the 
 Elizabethans, she thinks, were of a piece with Shakespeare, 
 and she herself prefers Webster. 
 
 Venice is growing rather strong in her judgments, I 
 consider, and it is a pity. Shakespeare is Shakespeare, and 
 you can't go behind that 1 . . . 
 
 Of course this theory would account for the fact that 
 Shakespeare didn't care to publish his own plays in his 
 lifetime t 
 
XXIII 
 
 From The Lady Aries 
 
 Edwabdes Squabb, 
 You say, dear Laura, that there is a plethora of Percy 
 Gregson in my last two letters, and that you fancy he is 
 installed here. He is, as P. G. Don't be too down on me ; 
 you ought not, being a democratic American. 
 
 I really don't exactly know how it happened. I didn't 
 want it at all ; Venice not very much. He did, very much 
 indeed, and he swayed us to his will, just as he does his 
 meetings, I suppose. And it is, after all, only temporary, 
 just to see how we like ib. He is extraordinarily good com- 
 pany : has something original to say about everything. 
 
 There are advantages on both sides. Of course they lean 
 very much over his, although, strange to say, some of his 
 ancient pals and supporters think otherwise. Mrs. Leahy 
 doesn't approve of his domestication with a Countess at 
 all, and goes about saying loudly that it will injure his 
 prestige with his own side, and that it is the beginning of 
 the end — ^for him.. 
 
 She calls herself his political foster-mother, because she 
 discovered him. She loves him like a son, and hates to see 
 him playing ducks and drakes with his reputation. 
 
 It is an odd view to take of what most people would call 
 a social rise for a man like that, due entirely to his great 
 talents that drive people of light and leading to take him 
 up. And she is politically wrong. Socialists love a title, 
 albeit under the rose of spoken disapproval. To my mind 
 it shows the purity of Percy's intentions, that he goes straight 
 from my house to his meetings and spouts democratic 
 views, kicking oft as it were for the Great Popular Football 
 Match of the World, from The Last Ditch. So Ilsa re- 
 marked, on one of the rare occasions she spent an evening 
 with us. She b always rather humorous about Percy, 
 
 252 
 
THE LAST DITCH 253 
 
 though I notice she never addresses him directly. I believe, 
 with her curled nostril, she scents the enemy of her order, 
 the destroyer of her people ? 
 
 But if it has to be, it has to be. Coriolanus went over 
 to the camp of the enemy, and he was a real Last Ditcher — 
 proud, stiff, and unprogressive. So they say. I don't 
 grudge this little Jack the Giant Killer — another of Ilsa's 
 sobriquets for him — ^the advantage of association with us. 
 There is something fine and tragic about it all, which Ilsa, 
 occupied with getting her shot in and being funny about 
 Percy, doesn't see. There is nothing really funny about it ; 
 I consider it rather tragic that Percy, the traitor in the gate, 
 should, as it were, go forth, primed by us, for our own 
 destruction. He will bring his forces against the hand that 
 has fed him with social knowledge, given him some tips to 
 supplement the excellent board-school education we are 
 taxed for, bringing up these young vipers that will sting us 
 later on. Board-school education isn't everything, though 
 admittedly the best in the world. 
 
 I talk, don't I ? as it Percy was one of Dr. Barnardo's 
 boys setting out with a box of squibs to wreck the Home 1 
 It's sheer romancing of course, and would make an article 
 for Mr. Biss. But even if it were to come true, and we are 
 doomed to be swept away by the hordes of barbarism, I 
 prefer that we should die by our own hand, as it were. For 
 the atmosphere will have become too caked with grime 
 for people like us to live in it, and the Last Ditch untenant- 
 able by people who can't stand fetidity. I verily believe 
 the whole idea of even first-class travelling originated by 
 people who are sensitive to smells trying to put a barrage 
 between themselves and the irritating of the olfactory nerve. 
 
 Of course we don't talk like this before poor Percy — it 
 is mostly Ilsa and I when we get alone. And Percy is not 
 bad — ^he does improve. He has the sense to allow nice 
 women to help him and sermonize him. He comes to me 
 and says, rumpling his rumpled hair : 
 
 " My lady, do you know the reason I hate tea parties is 
 that I never know when to take a lady's cup away." 
 
 I told him to leave out " my lady " ; and as for the teacup 
 not to take it away at all; never think of it. It is his 
 business to make her forget it. 
 
 Percy is excessively concerned about this sort of thing, 
 You wouldn't believe how people of that kind worry about 
 
254 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 minor points of behaviour, and make themselves miserable 
 about the trifles that we never think of, because, which- 
 ever way we do it, that makes it right. He is bothered over 
 the eating of asparagus, wondering if he shall cut off the 
 ends or hang the whole stalk over his mouth, or use the silver 
 tongs they sometimes give you. All I can say is, I never 
 will use the absurd things. I've seen Venice put her hand 
 in the dish and scrabble the blades out. It looks all right 
 when she does it, but I should not recommend that course 
 to him. 
 
 He might very nearly almost be a law unto himself, he 
 is so good-looking 1 I have never seen such bright eyes as 
 his. Venice thinks them indecently so ; she says it marks 
 the plebeian in him, I can't agree with her. There is 
 Owen Meredith the poet — one of Us — with eyes that go 
 through your head, so piercing they are 1 
 
 Percy's weak point is, of course, his hair, which shows 
 lack of breeding, somehow. It always looks dusty, and has 
 generally a little wisp standing straight up about the back 
 of his head where the parting starts from, you know. I've 
 noticed this symptom in board-school children. Perhaps 
 it signifies lack of attention in youth. And his ears stick 
 out. I suppose his mother didn't go to his cot and turn 
 them down as he slept when he was a baby. 
 
 In the dark evenings, when he isn't speaking anywhere, 
 he sits with us in Venice's studio and talks to us — ^lets off 
 things that are, I suppose, too strong for meetings. 
 ^ Venice fights him : partly from conviction and partly for 
 the sake of argiunent, for I see he is rapidly converting her to 
 agree with him on most points. It is as good a craze as 
 another 1 Venice always must have a craze. 
 
 I let him criticize Our Class, occasionally correcting him 
 when he goes too far and talks nonsense through ignorance. 
 I believe I am protecting our interests, instilling the truth 
 into the mind of a conductor of the emotional current to 
 those below. He is astonishingly ignorant about Us, but 
 willing enough to be instructed. He thinks of Us as of an 
 old Persian vase— very rare, old, unique, and soon to be 
 broken. England's decorative asset ! Or like the flowers that 
 used to be set all round the cottage vegetable bed merely for 
 " pretty." That's what we have come to, in the eyes of 
 these exceedingly modern men whom this exceedingly 
 modem war has brought forth. 
 
THE LAST DITCH 255 
 
 Both Venice and he agree that we have, as a class, done 
 well, come forward nobly ; but both are agreed that it is no 
 more than our duty: we were bound to fulfil our feudal 
 obligation. And so we have. (I say the Socialists will have 
 another advantage — that of numbers, for there are hardly 
 enough of us left to breed from.) Percy admits too, but 
 rather grudgingly, that we aren't so terribly plutocratic as 
 some of his mates maintain. And as for incomes, well, 
 except for your Uncle Henry and the Duke of Dalruan and 
 the Corfes, the Aristocracy and the landed gentry both are 
 getting as poor as church mice, whatever that amount is ? 
 
 Of course the rich Jews who have taken our old places 
 that we have had to yield up to them under stress of poverty, 
 are " rolling " ; but then, as Audely says, they represent a 
 very small minority — ^just the fine fleur of the financial parterre, 
 and don't matter for purposes of argimient, I should have 
 got on badly in these discussions if I hadn't a good memory 
 and had not got Audely's speeches to draw on, for the dis- 
 comfiture of Venice and Percy. 
 
 But truly, Laura, I can count on my fingers all my own 
 relations who are to be called well off, in the usual acceptance 
 of the term ; and as for the others, who are living on their 
 lands in comparative penury, their name is legion. There 
 are the Scrymgeours — ^you won't call that a mushroom- 
 growth family I Well, I never accept an invitation to 
 Marmond now. I don't think it fair to strain their resources 
 to the extent of entertaining us. Simon Scrymgeour has 
 six thousand a year, but such a lot to do with it. It all 
 goes, pretty nearly, to keeping up Marmond as it should 
 be kept up, and it isn't even that. Yet he won't sell an acre 
 of it, and Constance and the girls suffer. There are three 
 of them at home now, Georgie, Alice, and Margaret. The 
 others have managed to get ladylike non-paying work 
 somewhere. Mary is the only one who is earning good 
 money. Constance Scrymgeour can hardly bear to think 
 of it, yet I tell her that it is only by going out into the arena 
 and fighting with wild beasts that you get a living wage, for 
 women. The three left at home have to help their mother 
 to keep up appearances, and do as much work as they can 
 without seeming to be drudges or soiling their lily hands. 
 They see hardly any one at Marmond Abbey; it is ten 
 miles from Raby, and no one has any horses ; so it isn't 
 difficult to put a good face on their poverty, Constance 
 
256 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 herself looks after the poultry, and Georgia plants and 
 gardens, and scrapes up enough vegetables for the table. 
 They get nothing in from outside except a few groceries. 
 They don't go in for new clothes, poor dears ! but just 
 potter about the home paddocks and the yard in goloshes 
 and waterproofs. I did hear that Simon Scrymgeour once 
 condescended to kill a pig himself, but made such a mess 
 of it that he never did it again. Did you ever hear that 
 he is imder statutory obligation to hang a criminal in the 
 last resort, and once, when Berry didn't arrive at the jail in 
 time, Simon performed the office for him, and enjoyed it ? 
 I hope it was a greater success than the pig. He is rather 
 an old-fashioned brute, Simon. 
 
 And the furniture ! There hasn't been an upholsterer in 
 for years, or anything bought since 1861. I remember it 
 last time I was there — leather-seated chairs in the dining- 
 room, all eaten away as it were, with the stuffing bursting 
 out of them at the comers, and the faded rep curtains at the 
 immense windows, and poor Simon standing, looking out at 
 his vista — ^that he pulled a whole village down to make clear 
 — swinging the blind tassel and whistling the time the old 
 cow died of, as Mary said in her imfeeling way. . . , 
 
 Percy makes fun of my instances. These poor derelicts 
 of an obsolete industry, he says, are not worth powder and 
 shot, and would probably be given a grant to reinstate them- 
 selves a bit by the People's Government. What he is really 
 down on are the rich manufacturers and iron masters and 
 soda and coal magnates, who are making money hand over 
 fist, and always were, before the war. 
 
 Audely said something one night here, and I really thought 
 Percy's eyes would bum him up. What Audely said, in his 
 rather offending drawling way, was that he would soon 
 be out in France " fighting for my dividends." 
 
 I saw what Audely meant, and that if England didn't come 
 out on top, my shares in Elswick and Northwich wouldn't 
 be worth much. But the speech upset Percy, and he began 
 to abuse the class no one there belonged to ; so it was not 
 exactly rude, but rather wearing. 
 
 I have had a good deal of hospitality from these sort ol 
 people in the past, so I stood up for them. I must not forget 
 that dear Sir James Molendinar comes in for some of his 
 diatribes, and Mr. Manville in Newcastle, where Venice and 
 I used to go and stay and be quite comfortable in a tasteless 
 
THE LAST DITCH 257 
 
 sort of way, but they meant exceedingly well. Only the 
 very air was dirty — coal-dust over everything — and we lived 
 under a pall of smoke and had to wash our faces every five 
 minutes. 
 
 But the result of my observations is that capitalists, a & a 
 rule, are not bloated. I have seen a great many more lean 
 captains of industry than fat ones in my day. Poor crea- 
 tures, to keep all they have gained they have to work so 
 hard and have so much anxiety ! I knew one who, unt :.he 
 took the helm of affairs after his father's death, was a 
 charming artist and prominent feature of the walls of the 
 Royal Academy. Well, a short while after his succession, 
 he was obliged, by the sheer weight of the management 
 of the huge property his father left him — ^he didn't even 
 interfere with the conduct of the business, he was too 
 sensible for that — ^the duties of his own private fortune 
 alone forced him to abandon his art, and he died at forty, 
 of heart disease. 
 
 And there is Grordon Montagu — everybody knows Gordon 
 and the other two brothers — ^he is bald at thirty, and wears 
 spectacles. Venice says he looks like an intelligent gnome, 
 imused to the light of day. 
 
 Well, no wonder, for he hardly ever gets any sleep, but 
 spends the nights careering over Britain and Wales in a 
 car, chasing contracts for his firm, which, as it supplies one 
 of the most useful things of all, we could not well do 
 without. His dear little wife hardly sees anything of him. 
 But suddenly, at breakfast in Yorkshire, he appears, when 
 she is thinking he is over in Ireland. 
 
 " I caught him at Fishguard — or Pljrmouth 1 " he will 
 say triumphantly, wolfing into his sausage. That would be 
 Messrs. So and So's foreign agent. He had pulled off a big 
 deal. But surely it is the dividend holders, not he, or she, 
 poor child, who profit by his red eyes and ruined health ? 
 
 The strain must be awful. I hear Rockefeller can't get to 
 sleep for it. Percy snorts when I tell him about Rockefeller, 
 and says it's the luxurious surroundings keep him awake. I 
 say, people who don't work actually with their hands are 
 paid for strain. They positively need an entourage of 
 delicacy — otherwise called luxury — ^which would only tease 
 a man who wasn't used to it. People whose physical 
 powers have been impaired by the strenuousness of their 
 job, to a degree inconceivable by the working population, 
 
 17 
 
258 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 have to have their minds as well as their muscles relaxed. 
 It requires more energy, I tell Percy, to sit in an ofifice all 
 day and sign papers, than to wield a pickaxe or to extract 
 coal, lying conveniently on one's side in a quiet coal-seam 
 all day. . . . 
 
 They all hooted when I said that, but I went on, for I 
 wanted to make them understand. When a big business 
 man at last knocks off work and goes home, what he needs is 
 a quick car to take him there and let him plimge quick into 
 a hot bath in a tiled, sympathetically tinted bathroom, 
 with a change of linen after it, instead of a tub in front 
 of the kitchen fire and a rough cotton shirt. You might, 
 it seems to me, as well treat brain-fag and shell-shock as 
 if they were a broken arm or leg. 
 
 Venice has got hold of a wild book by Upton Sinclair, 
 which she uses to smite me. I glanced into it one day ; it 
 is not nice reading, I must say : all about poor children with 
 " fishes' lips and bleary faces, lined with their own dirt." 
 Well, that is better than some one else's ; and why can't their 
 mothers wash the sand out of their eyes ? Water is always 
 procurable. 
 
 Ida, who was here one night when we were arguing, put 
 in something I must say I have never thought of, and that is 
 the fact that in the poorer homes the water and the towel 
 are never near together, or the soap either. If you wash in 
 the back yard, you can't hang a dry towel and a cake of 
 soap on to the pump handle. There is something in that ! 
 
 " The fishes' lips " story worked on me so that the other 
 day I thought I would go and put my name down for a couple 
 of hours a week at Social Service, thus taking away only 
 two hours from Venice. Lily St. Just told me that there 
 was a woman in Kensington who comes to her for sub- 
 scriptions, and always says they have not enough helpers 
 even to apply the money properly. I went to Netting Hill 
 Gate Station — farther than I meant — and started to 
 walk back towards Campden Hill. I hit on some bad 
 slums. ..." Goodness me ! " I said to myself, " I hope 
 Lily St. Just's friend won't set me to go and minister in any 
 of these houses, even if they are starving inside. The smell 
 will be awful. But I shall have to go where I am sent." 
 
 And just as I was thinking of that, a nice clean slice of 
 white bread was thrown out of an upper window at my feet, 
 and when I had walked a yard farther, looking up to find 
 
THE LAST DITCH 259 
 
 out what window they came out of, two more. I stooped 
 as if to pick them up, and another slice hit me and broke into 
 smithereens upon my back. 
 
 I was disgusted by this awful waste and extravagance, 
 and went straight home without troubling Lily and her 
 friend. 
 
 When I told Ida this, she said it was probably an isolated 
 case of waste. These people were ignorant even of their 
 own misery. ... Or it might have been small children 
 left alone in an upstairs room while their mother was out 
 working, who had got at the perambulator where the bread 
 was kept ? The last baby, perhaps ? I dare say she was 
 right, and I vowed to make the Kensington pilgrimage 
 again. 
 
 It is a funny, but rather pleasant thing ; but Audely de- 
 clares he likes Percy. I was always so afraid he wouldn't. 
 He says Percy is sincere. Of course he is sincere. It 
 appears to be a shibboleth with one party to always say the 
 other isn't sincere. I don't fancy Audely himself is sincere 
 in saying that Percy is. I think Audely is confounding 
 politics with personalities. Audely wouldn't be himian 
 if he didn't feel a little rancune. He did write that letter, 
 though I have no doubt he has by now quite got over his 
 feeling for Venice. Still, no man enjoys seeing the girl he 
 once wanted taken up, though ever so slightly, with 
 another man. 
 
 The war has so altered values, as Audely says, that I must 
 admit that even Percy has at least a millionth of a chance. 
 I should never say even this except to you. The Family — 
 the older members of it, at least, who have not thought 
 to keep pace with modern thought and conditions — ^would 
 half kill me if they imagined that I was not exerting all my 
 powers to nip such a thing in the bud. And instead I 
 have got him here ! Henry would remove his support 
 from Venice and take back her allowance, which certainly 
 does come in most handy. . . . 
 
 But there is no need for him to hear of it. Percy may not 
 offer : Venice may refuse him. If she doesn't — well, the 
 deluge ! Percy's prestige against Henry's beggarly allow- 
 ance. And Venice's marriage : certainly a desideratum ! 
 
 I cannot imagine a worse fate than for a woman not to 
 marry. And Venice is not so young as she was. And 
 Percy is well off in a way and has prospects, and isn't likely 
 
260 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 to carry socialistic precepts into practice to the extent of 
 not profiting by them. 
 
 We should, I expect, live together, and I should attend 
 to the house as I do now. Percy and Venice would have 
 all their time to devote to the good work, looking to the 
 welfare of the people 1 Venice is incapable of housekeeping, 
 and yet there is no one like her for detecting an unswept 
 room or a carelessly cooked dinner. To see the face she 
 makes when cook has not blanched her onions, and watch 
 her draw her finger scornfully across a dusty table or 
 bureau ! She is the hammer of the housemaid. 
 
 The late slight difficulty in getting sugar has been a 
 worry to me. I go all over the neighbourhood trying to 
 scrape up a respectable quantity for her tea. She and 
 Audely, too, are such sybarites, and like to see their sugar 
 mount up over the top of the coffee-cup, and then eat it 
 afterwards with a spoon. 
 
 I manage so well that I have a wretched feeling that 
 as long as I am spared to make a home for her, and there 
 are plenty of men or even one man at her feet, she wUl not 
 want to go through the grind of marrying. 
 
 Percy would ask her in a moment if he were given the 
 slightest encouragement and if he could be sure that I 
 would throw my influence into the scale on his behalf, 
 but I daren't let him think so, for even if I had made 
 up my mind to give her to him, the pyschological moment 
 might not have arrived and he might propose and the 
 silly child refuse him. These children at heart, who are 
 given the power of life and death over themselves by 
 being twenty-one, and who sometimes wreck their lives to 
 show that they are old enough to know their own minds 1 
 Girls ought to be forced to bring every reasonable proposal 
 before a conseil de famille, as they do in France when a son 
 wants to bring a woman into the family. He has to ask 
 leave, so why should not she ? And Venice, though twenty- 
 eight, is still a child. In some ways I do think she is even 
 a case of arrested development : certainly she is, re passions. 
 She simply hasn't got any. I believe she will be The White 
 Snowdrop to the end — a pure flame, like a frosted gas-globe, 
 that attracts the moths and burns them up and goes on 
 shining ! She is of the stuff of which vestal virgins that 
 prophesy were made, and hasn't got an ounce of marrying 
 fibre in her 
 
THE LAST DITCH 261 
 
 I believe it is all the poetising that has done it. Constant 
 dwelling on the emotions. She has been at it since her 
 tenth year. I ought not to have allowed it. And if she 
 marries, it will have to be a man without passions, like 
 herself. 
 
 Unfortunately I am not sure that Percy is a man like that 
 at all. I used once to get cross with Ida when she said 
 Glerald said he was a fearfully passionate make. It seemed 
 presuming, somehow, in a man of his class to be passionate, 
 like a Minnesinger or a knight of old. But I am less arrogant 
 since then, my dear, and I have come to admit that we can't 
 have the monopoly of any characteristic, except perhaps 
 that of breeding. 
 
 Thank God, they can't take that away from us ! 
 
 Percy is bound to be made unhappy by Venice. Heartless 
 people can always hurt heartf ul ones, I think. Even Audely 
 hurts me, as I dare say you have guessed. He is always 
 rubbing it in to me that he may be killed — wants to be 
 killed in some moods ; feels it in his bones in others ; and so 
 on I Just talk, but it positively rends me. . . . 
 
 I have grown fond of Percy, too, but in quite a different 
 way. I do not want to see him suffer either. But of 
 course my first duty is to Venice, and if I thought that she 
 could find a heart's home in his love, a something to lean 
 on, a semblance of the ardent spiritual union she covets 
 for herself and that no man will ever give her, I believe it 
 would be my duty to foster the affair and bring it to accom- 
 plishment. 
 
 Marriage does wonders. There's Ilsa, my whilom failure. 
 She is as happy in it as she can be, with him out fighting. 
 He threw over the air, goodness knows why ! She has got 
 a man of her own set and rank and position and fairly 
 decent pay, and he is abjectly devoted to her. Truly, I think 
 that text in the Bible has a great deal of truth in it : " There 
 is more joy in heaven over the one that repenteth , . ." 
 I had always considered it a most immoral pronouncement : 
 rather like that other dreary one about " The last shall be 
 first," which to my mind puts a premium on indolence and 
 want of endeavour. 
 
 The dear old lazybones that was, is doing, with her 
 husband's full permission, some war work that keeps her 
 on her feet and out for twelve hours or so a day. She won't 
 tell any of us what form the work takes, except that Archie 
 
262 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 knows what she has gone in for and is all right about it. 
 She says we may take it that it is neither derogatory nor 
 degrading to the wife of a Dunkeron — ^that's all. 
 
 I rather suspect she is at a canteen for women-workers 
 at Enfield, where they wanted help badly, so few women 
 care to work for women only. It can't be T.N.T., for her 
 complexion is as glorious as ever, if a little fresher, so one 
 imagines it is some sort of out-o'-doors job. And she gets 
 two pounds ten a week, and a uniform. She says we should 
 not know her in it if we met her in the street. I said, Is 
 it a job Venice could undertake ? and she said. No, certainly 
 not ! 
 
XXIV 
 
 From The Lady Venice St. Remy 
 
 Edwabdes Squabb. 
 I HAVE engaged myself to be married ; you have heard this 
 from Mother, of course. But Mother knows nothing of the 
 terms, and isn't to. They are rather singular, and I want 
 them, somehow or other, put on record. You, dear, out 
 in America, seem so safe and distant. It would take you 
 nearly a month from to-day for your protest to reach us. 
 And anyway I know I can trust you not to butt in and make 
 trouble with Mother and the relations, who would all be 
 shocked to death if they realized the sort of arrangement 
 I have made with Percy. 
 
 And if, which is unthinkable, Percy should begin to jib 
 at them or any part of them, you will be able to support me 
 by saying that I informed you of our pact and called you to 
 witness of it beforehand. 
 
 It will be unnecessary. Percy is very good, and subject 
 to my wUl, and sensible enough to see things as I see them 
 with regard to our common life. I have brought him to agree 
 with my theory — my knowledge indeed — that myown peculiar 
 mentality does not fit me to be the conventional wife of the 
 conventionally demanding man, which he is not. He is so 
 untrained in any form of amorous commerce that he is 
 tabula rasa for me to inscribe my laws on. 
 
 You must not be shocked when I say I am not fit to be 
 the wife of any man. I don't mean that I want to reserve 
 the right to run away, or get into mischief. Mr. Gregson 
 and I haven't signed a paper with our blood, in the way 
 boys and girls do now, pledging themselves not to be jealous 
 or take each other into the divorce court. This sort of 
 thing, although they think they are being strong and cynical, 
 is merely a form of romance, and neither of us is romantic 
 enough to indulge in whimsical blood-letting. 
 
 263 
 
264 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 What I mean is, that I have come to see that I am incapable 
 of falling in love. I shall always want to take more than 
 I can give, and it is only a very exceptional man like Percy 
 who could stand that — a man who feels that I am something 
 more to him in other ways, as he does. Thank God my 
 title is coming to be of some use at last. It is all I can bring 
 my husband. He knows it. The prestige of it will mean a 
 good deal to him in his work. I am sure he does not care 
 for it from the ordinary snobbish point of view of a self- 
 made man. 
 
 Re being in love, you will say, as people do to a stiff-necked 
 generation of a girl like me : " Wait till you've been it 1 " 
 Though I have never been and never shall be in love, I know 
 what it is. I am not a poet for nothing. We poets have 
 intuitions that stand us in lieii of experience. We can 
 evolve for ourselves the whole paraphernalia, call up the 
 whole gamut of passion from a chance turn of an eyebrow 
 and a twist of a lip. . . . We can isolate the notion of Love 
 so gained in our brains and see it clearly, in a vacuum. We 
 need not let it ever go beyond our brains or form the delirious 
 quantity in us that overthrows the reason and ruins us women 
 through the self-decreed destruction of personal identity. I 
 am sure I will not let it. But it might have happened so. 
 The curse of Love might have descended on me. It is 
 either my blessing or my curse that it didn't. It depends 
 how you look at it. 
 
 I don't think many poets have both succumbed and. been 
 able to describe their madness. There is Tennyson and 
 Sappho. I don't know about Tennyson, but Sappho made 
 a bad business of love. They both can describe it better 
 than any one, I think. 
 
 Now Eros shakes my soul, a wind on the mountain, shivering the oaks. 
 
 And Tennyson's Fatima : 
 
 Oh Love, Love, Love I Oh withering might 1 . . . 
 
 Last night, when some one spoke his name. 
 From my swift blood that went and came 
 A thousand little shafts of flame 
 Were shivered in my narrow frame. . . . 
 
 That can never happen to me. My nerve channels are not 
 constructed to carry messages of that kind. I know it. 
 ^nd yet I sbajl describe it all from end to end. I aqj 
 
THE LAST DITCH 265 
 
 going to make a name in poetry. Percy doesn't care for 
 poetry : he thinks it an overrated mode of expression of a 
 mood that is less important than people suppose, but he 
 thinks I shall pull it off, having set my heart on it. He is 
 sympathetic in the only real way, giving value to sensation 
 in another, that he does not share. It is not two hearts 
 beating as one, but two intelligences seeing fair, and giving 
 each other room. ... 
 
 I have never even been kissed. Not once in my life. 
 Most girls of my age and my limited facilities have been — 
 brief birdlike pecks behind doors, clumsy ill-adjusted hugs 
 in sitting-out places at balls. I expect my long neck as 
 well as my coldness has saved me from that. Girls are 
 bustled into submitting to that sort of thing very often, I 
 suspect, from shyness and shock; but I cannot imagine 
 bending down to receive a kiss except with premeditation. 
 
 And the other kiss — ^the grave deep kiss of passion. . . . 
 Percy might give me that if I wished I suppose ; but I 
 don't wish it, even as an experience. I shouldn't like him 
 so well if I was not quite sure that there was no chance of it. 
 The truth is, I cannot imagine myself wanting it from any 
 one, not even Audely, and from him it would not outrage me 
 so much. I am not quite immune from Audely, I do believe. 
 It hurt me somehow all down my spine when I saw him kiss 
 Ida on the platform that night when we saw him off for 
 Fordingbridge. Jealousy — of Mother's Audely ! Impossible I 
 Yet I sometimes think if I were going to have a child, going 
 through all that awful struggle, I should like Audely to be 
 there holding my hand. . . . 
 
 I shall never have a child by the one man, so I can never 
 make that outrageous demand on the other ! ... To kiss 
 Percy would be like kissing a popular edition or a packet of 
 grocery. 
 
 Laura, you can see by the way I am writing, that although 
 I am sure that Percy is of my way of thinking in these 
 matters, more or less — it is the " less " I am afraid of. I 
 want to lay the whole notion of our alliance, its object, 
 its motive, before you, so as to ensure your moral support 
 supposing Percy should ever try to go back on it in ever so 
 little. But he won't. I will not say he is a man of honour, 
 but he is at least a man of his word. 
 
 He has a certain standing in romance for me, or I should 
 not do this. LUce Enjolras, my ideal hero in Les Misirahlet^ 
 
266 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 he puts Ambition before Love. Don't you lemember, 
 Enjolras was loved by Eponine, and when he is shot on the 
 Paris barricade, he is murmuring the name of his mistress, 
 " Patne I " 
 
 The mistress of Percy is his Country. My lover, I suppose, 
 is my Art. 
 
 You will say that it is a dreary look-out for us both. I 
 don't think I shall find it so. Nature is enough for me, with 
 the big window on life, which I command through my 
 mundane sympathies. 
 
 I believe I am a prig. I know Mother's friends say so. 
 There is something to be said for a prig who knows she is 
 one. 
 
 Percy and I will do some good work together. He will 
 supply the solid algebraic formulas, the theories which I 
 shall popularize to the weaker vessels by my facile pen, 
 presenting the romantic aspects of his propaganda. And 
 perhaps, by thus giving myself, loveless, to the weal of my 
 country, I shall be doing my bit as well as the " boys." My 
 inadequacy in this respect has always hurt me. I have had 
 to watch all the other girls, the clever ones as well as the 
 able-bodied, working hard and good in the service of the 
 nation ; and in these days Milton's panacea for lazy people, 
 the " standing and waiting," seems singularly ineffective. . . . 
 
 I have found that I cannot sew bandages, hoe turnips, 
 milk cows, or act scullerjrmaid in hospitals. I have searched 
 and found a new medium, and I am willing to surrender all 
 the chances of my emotional life, so as to stand and serve 
 at Percy's side. 
 
 Now I will stop being serious and begin to tell you 
 about the things that donH matter. I suppose you realize 
 that Mother has consented to my engagement with less 
 fuss than I expected, at any rate with no positive opposi- 
 tion. Percy has a curiously effective cajoling way with 
 him, and Mother is such a bom flirt, and misses Audely 
 so much in that capacity, that she can't resist any man 
 who ti^es the trouble to put his head on one side in speaking 
 to her. She has always all her life made the running, even 
 with my lovers, and been more accessible to them than I 
 could manage to be. And she is going to do my spade- 
 work for me, as regards Percy's personal appearance and 
 manners. She is going to persuade him to wear his hair 
 shorter. s\ud give him numberless little hints about how 
 
THE LAST DITCH 267 
 
 not to behave in drawing-rooms. Percy has so much sense 
 that he gives way in trifles always, and is polite enough 
 to let Mother think that he is profusely grateful to her for 
 taking an interest in him, his manners, and his appearance. 
 I like this about him : it is strong. 
 
 So she cultivates a pleasant mirage that I may yet end 
 as the wife of a People's Ambassador, or President of Labour. 
 She has now got it well into her head that the Future of the 
 world is with Democracy, and yet in her own procedure she is 
 as reactionary as ever. She wUl go down on her knees to 
 clear up any mess I may have made on the floor with papers 
 or flower stalks or what not, to spare the perfectly indis- 
 pensable servant, but she sent away that very servant the 
 other day because the girl forgot to address her as My Lady. 
 Percy was amused. He said she was cutting off her own 
 nose to spite her own face, that she would get no better, 
 only worse, as time went on, for Rudeness, not Terror, was the 
 order of the day. It was surely preferable for aristocrats 
 to be " cheeked " than to have their heads cut off, as in the 
 recent Revolution in France. . . . 
 
 Percy in his relations with Mother amuses me. He is so 
 nice to her, and so rude to her — just like Audely. It is the 
 curse of all Mother's men. You see I am so used to Mother's 
 monopolizing that I even call my Percy Mother's out of 
 habit. Another time he told her she was a remarkable 
 instance of the staying power of the old order which had 
 enabled them to remain so long in the saddle and would still 
 if we would only be careful. Then — Plus ga changera, plus 
 ca sera la mime chose he promised her in beautiful French 
 with an English accent. He wUl have it that it is not 
 incumbent on an Englishman to seek to acquire a French 
 accent. A Frenchman doesn't pay us that compliment ; he 
 thinks it enough for us if he makes himself understood. 
 Percy is perfectly acquainted with idiomatic French and 
 slang, although he has only been on the Continent once, for a 
 month. It is a sign of his intense adaptability. Mother 
 swaggers on his praise. I don't know if he means it as 
 praise altogether. He says that she — ^that we are all ex- 
 traordinary — ^we Last Ditchers ; that we haven't altered 
 a gesture or a phrase or a convention. We have stuck 
 to our elevated platform even though it is hollow under- 
 neath, with the proletariat crouching below working at 
 their plots and mine-laying. Perhaps, he says, the plat- 
 
268 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 form will never go ; it is of old and seasoned wood, and may 
 prove strong enough to bear us up, supreme, on top of the 
 welter. We are light, and our numbers so inconsiderable 1 
 Our boys going out so bravely have saved us ; they gave the 
 lead, as of old, and it will be counted unto us for righteousness. 
 Mother wept when he said that, and presently, recovering 
 herself, remarked with her usual naive frankness, as if she 
 expected Percy to say. Thank You ! — 
 " And I am giving you my daughter." 
 " With your permission," he replied, bowing, " she 
 descends from the platform, craning her long neck to this 
 fellow in the cellarage." 
 
 " Perhaps it will be the other way ? " Mother answered 
 with spirit. " Venice may succeed in pulling you up, and 
 making you Prime Minister 1 " 
 
 But I don't myself think that Percy will ever be Prime 
 Minister of England, though he is nearly clever enough to 
 be anything he likes. He lives too fast, in the respectable 
 sense ; he will be worn out long before he is thirty. He 
 travels incessantly, doing the work of six men and thinking 
 nothing of covering the British Isles in the course of a week. 
 And even if he lives, he hasn't got the presence ; he can't 
 acquire it in the time. I'm not blind to that. Mother is. 
 She doesn't know a gentleman when she sees him — out of 
 her own class. She never did. She ought to have a cado- 
 meter fixed to her belt, Ida used to say in the old days, when 
 she filled the house with modistes and photographers and 
 Blackleys and so on, without an eye to their status in their 
 own world. For there are shades. 
 
 Sometimes I think it is a pity she isn't going to marry 
 Percy instead of me. I can see so plainly that his imdeniable 
 good looks are not the right sort of good looks ; there is too 
 much of them, for one thing. They are too riotous, too 
 popular. His opulent chevelure gives him away. There's 
 a bit that sticks up in the middle. He doesn't brush it 
 enough, poor dear ; he never has time, and doesn't care to 
 make it. His face is too expressive for good form, not like 
 Audely's blankness, which he wears habitually like a 
 garment. 
 
 Audely accepts Percy and the engagement, too, in a 
 wholesale way that irritates me. He came up on leave the 
 other day and shook hands with my fianci. Mother was 
 eyeing hun the while to see how he took it ! As if be 
 
THE LAST DITCH 269 
 
 would let her or anybody see ! Before he left that night 
 he had offered Percy Brightsome Glen for the honeymoon. 
 I was cross. 
 
 If Audely knew — and I would tell him if he asked me, 
 only I never have a word with him alone — ^Percy and I are 
 not going to have a honeymoon at all, though Percy was too 
 flustered at the time to refuse the offer of one of his houses. 
 We are going straight into our two flats in the same block, 
 with opposite doors, so that we can close them to each other 
 and live apart altogether the moment we feel the slightest 
 desire to do so : which will be all the time, really, only I. 
 must not spring that on Percy, all at once. The canteen 
 arrangements — dining-room and kitchen — will be on my side 
 and the smoking-room and study will be on Percy's. He 
 can ask his political friends — he has no others, poor dear 1 
 — in without reference to me and my likes and dislikes. 
 Some of his friends that I have met are a little too — ^Pacifist 
 for me ! Two of them are conscientious objectors, of nine- 
 teen. One of them, Philip Champion, was a nice laoy. He 
 sat at my feet and imbibed corrector principles there. He 
 enlisted, and got killed. It was a pity, as it has turned out, 
 that I didn't leave him where he was, safe in Dartmoor. 
 
 With these people, it is just a case of Mary and Martha, 
 Percy says, whether a man chooses to be one or the other. 
 The Marys are the romanticists who seek to gratify man's 
 imiversal desire, next to Love, of going out with a weapon 
 and downing something or other. The Marthas stay at 
 home and look after the house, clear up the morals and 
 wash the feet and heads of the next generation. Percy 
 doesn't object to either choice ; but what he does think 
 wrong is Jimmy Fairs, on the Dover Patrol, keeping Mother 
 in whisky, for which she pays no duty, and other sly little 
 services which she is always getting people to perform for 
 her. 
 
 It is no use Percy fulminating ; he won't cure my Mother 
 of her ruling passion for acquiring, at a slight reduction, 
 no matter what article, or how little. And she is great at 
 using influence. She visits the War Office very often. 
 She is trying, I believe, to tamper with Audely 's future as 
 a soldier. Her object is to keep him from " Going out," 
 On the other hand, he uses influence to be dispatched 
 quickly, and renders her efforts, such as they are, null. 
 Poor Mother I He will be going soon. . . , 
 
270 THE LAST DITUH 
 
 We have been twice to see him at Hart-le-Pool — Mother, 
 Ilsa, and I. There was a dance given for the officers. To 
 see Audely solemnly dancing the fox-trot was almost too 
 much for me ! Yet I realized that my Percy could not have 
 done it ; he could never have carried it off. Audely dances 
 just because it is the thing for an officer to do; he forces 
 himself to perform tasks and go to places that would have 
 bored him to death in the old days ! He attends stock- 
 company performances at the local theatres, sees stale 
 musical revues with pleasure, and hums the tunes all day, 
 and gives suppers to the little underpaid roving actresses. 
 He does everything soldiers do but flirt, so far as I could 
 see, and perhaps he does that too ? 
 
 He gave Mother a lucky bean some girl had sent him 
 for a Christmas present, and one day Mother picked a 
 grey handkerchief, embroidered " Daisy " in pink, out of 
 the pocket of his British warm, and a couple of left-hand 
 gloves. How Ilsa teased him ! 
 
 " She was crying her heart out on your shoulder, I sup- 
 pose ! " she said. 
 
 " No, I borrowed it from Daisy Dear because I had a 
 cold," Audely said. " I always have a cold and I never 
 have a handkerchief. Look, here is another gage." 
 
 The handkerchief he took out of the pocket of his tunic 
 had a coronet on it. Mother suggested that she should 
 collect them and have them washed and sent to the re- 
 spective owners. Audely said she could do as she liked, 
 but what was she going to do with the two left-hand gloves ? 
 and as for the lucky bean he begged her to stick to it. 
 
XXV 
 
 From The Lady Aries 
 
 Edwardes Square. 
 
 My dear, dear Laura, — Excuse incoherence ; events have 
 moved with such frightful rapidity that I scarcely know if 
 I am standing on my head or my heels. Minor bombs have 
 fallen quite enough to excite one ordinarily, but Venice's 
 affairs make all others seem negligible. I can hardly 
 spell. Is that word right ? 
 
 She broke off her engagement with Percy Gregson yester- 
 day morning after a frightful scene in the studio, and married 
 Audely that night at nine o'clock. And Audely has gone 
 
 to the Front. And Ilsa But I will try to tell you events in 
 
 their sequence, and more or less how they happened, but I 
 find it difficult, for it was all in a sort of lightning flash, 
 like thunder out of a clear sky, or a bomb at the new moon, 
 to take an illustration from the prevailing time. It was 
 certainly as dramatic as even Venice could have wished, 
 but a little hard on the elders, as you will see when I have 
 arranged my recollections a little. . . . 
 
 All the actors in the drama were here overnight. Percy 
 as usual, and Audely, on last leave. Bomb No. one. He 
 was very solemn and self-contained about it, so as not to 
 upset me, I supposed; but I think he might have let me 
 know he was in town before the very last day or so. Just 
 like him, the darling 1 We were all discussing Venice's 
 article on War Babies, She had been asked by the Daily 
 Error to give her views on the subject, and had accepted. 
 She undertakes to write on such queer things nowadays — 
 subjects that I personally don't quite consider even an engaged 
 girl ought to take up. But Percy permits — nay, he encour- 
 ages her. She had written the article and was rather proud 
 of it, and had given it to Audely to read over before it went 
 in. He was chaffing her for the view she took. That was 
 
 271 
 
272 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 left, to me, rather obscure, but it would seem that, instead 
 of condemning the mothers, she considers it their bounden 
 duty to go on doing it for the good of the nation. So, 
 while Percy said it was a remarkable article for a young 
 girl to write, I thought it was rather a remarkable view for a 
 young girl to take. Though I suppose if it is really her 
 conviction, it was plucky of her to write it and trust to her 
 title, as well as her eloquence, to give it vogue among the 
 common herd. But I disliked the idea myself of her being 
 mixed up with that problem very much. I don't see that 
 it is a young girl's place to take these sort of bulls by the 
 horns in the public press. However, she was in Percy's 
 charge, then ! . . . 
 
 What she advocated was that no brave soldier should go 
 from these shores without leaving a child to take his place 
 when he is killed. It possibly touched Audely a bit on the 
 raw, for at that time he certainly didn't seem to be arranging 
 for anything of the kind. . . . 
 
 I wondered if that was why he took such pains to impress 
 the fact on her, and incidentally on us all, that there were 
 no war babies, and that it was only a mare's nest of some 
 politician trying to get up a sensation in the House ? 
 
 Though he said this for effect, he was, I do believe, in his 
 heart of hearts, rather struck with Venice's notion. . . . 
 Audely is always to be reached on his altruistic side. He 
 has the soul of a reformer. . . . 
 
 He handed her back the article, said it was very well 
 written, and that it was as good a shriek as another for the 
 Error. Then he changed the subject, delivering bomb the 
 second. 
 
 He remarked, and when pressed he swore, that he had 
 just met Ilsa on the footboard of a " London General," and 
 that she had taken twopence-halfpenny " off him " that 
 very day. He will have it that my daughter — looking more 
 like a " Venetian Bead " than ever — ^was standing on the 
 footboard as conductor, saying, " Pass along the car, please 1 " 
 with her old drawl that used to be so effective in drawing- 
 rooms and now had the power of making all the people do 
 as she said and not all crowd near the door. And that 
 though she had most of her yellow hair tucked away under 
 a hideous cap, she wore his pendant thing dangling over the 
 front of her dark blue coat and skirt, piped with white. 
 
 He described her uniform to me carefully. I've hardly 
 
THE LAST DITCH 278 
 
 ever seen these girls ; I can't stand a bus nowadays — so full 1 
 and would rather walk, any day — so that accounts for my 
 never coming across her and being so long kept in ignorance 
 of her goings on — as usual ! Her present profession, though 
 perhaps more respectable than the last, constitutes an 
 extremely unpleasant problem for her relations. She is 
 relying on the fact that we don't frequent her low haunts, 
 and shall not find her out any more than we did before. It 
 has been going on a long time. She was good enough to 
 communicate this item of news to Audely once when she 
 passed him, in the course of the business of collecting dirty 
 pennies from all and sundry. Thank God, Henry doesn't 
 go in omnibuses 1 
 
 Audely thought it splendid of her, and so did Percy. Of 
 course Percy would, but Audely was only saying it to annoy 
 me. And I firmly believe it was the hearing of how Ilsa 
 had let herself down that made Percy think he had the 
 right to presume with Ilsa's sister, and attempt to break 
 through what she calls " The BrynhUd's curtain of fire." 
 
 That's all she will tell me, dragging in some mythological 
 tag out of the Edda, which I have never read, and don't see 
 the relevance of. 
 
 But the bald fact is she suddenly felt she could not go 
 through with it. She admits as much as that in plain 
 English. I can't in the least imagine what Percy did to 
 offend her; but there it is. 
 
 I have an idea — take it for what it is worth — ^that it was 
 the reality of all Audely's self-sacrifice, the result of his 
 self-imposed task, the culmination of his endeavour pre- 
 sented to her, face to face, when he came in announcing 
 that he was actually " going out," which worked in her. 
 Never tell me I The girl has married him ; she must have 
 some feeling for him, and surely had, even before that night ! 
 His news upset me dreadfully, only I have never time or 
 licence now to think of myself. But the news seemed to me 
 to shut out the sun. . . . 
 
 I know I never slept a wink that night. Venice did ; I 
 heard her. But she always could sleep, even from a child, 
 however much she was upset. ... I kept her a baby so 
 long, and she is it still . . . absolutely untouched by Life. 
 
 Audely had left us that night, saying that he could not 
 make any appointment with us for the next day, that he had 
 to get a telescope and a revolver and be photo graphed and 
 
 18 
 
274 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 a prismatic something or other, whose name I wrote down 
 on a card, so forgot. He said he would probably have to 
 tear all over London for it, they were getting so scarce. 
 As a matter of fact, he had two of them in the end, for I 
 managed to pick one up in the course of the morning, 
 running about on Audely's business, while he and Venice 
 were getting themselves engaged at the London Library. 
 He asked us if we would see him off at Waterloo on the 
 Friday morning at twelve, if he didn't manage to get out 
 to us on the Thursday night, to say good-bye 1 Venice 
 agreed with rapture ; she said she loved seeing soldiers off. 
 I, knowing I should blubber, told Audely it was possible 
 I might have to let her go alone to Waterloo. 
 
 He said : " You're the one I want, Beaty ! " 
 
 I remember this speech in the light of what happened 
 afterwards. It seems strange, and yet so like Audely, with 
 his old grudging dole of affection. And then later, when 
 he said, looking embarrassed — ^for Audely — ^that he had 
 an appointment at the York Hotel — some one he must see — 
 it came all over me that this person he was so awfully keen 
 on bidding good-bye to must be a woman: the lady from 
 Madrid, come over, on purpose, at the risk of her life ! 
 
 His strange new tenderness towards me, his keenness to 
 see the Spanish lady, even his marriage with Venice, are all 
 compatible with straightness, in Audely, though it would 
 not be in any other man. It has to be taken in conjunction 
 with the fact that he is capable of any sort of supercherie — 
 tactlessness, shall we call it ? — where women are con- 
 cerned. He seems to forget that he is a man, and though he 
 majm't take love relationships seriously, they are apt to do 
 so. He himself values friendship and communion so much 
 more highly than Love, while finding their tenderness, 
 and lots of it, an indispensable extra. Passion is incon- 
 venient and devastating, but he gives it half an hour at the 
 York Hotel . . . and posts off to marry Venice, who won't, 
 can't give it him, though he thinks she will, as well as the 
 other things that she is quite good for. So he is all the time 
 riding for a fall, poor Audely 1 This is how I read him — a 
 simple, not a complex character, that I love. And though 
 I say it who shouldn't, it is merely the average selfish man's 
 ideal, boldly expressed by a man who has sufficient prestige 
 to carry it off — ^temporarily, at least. 
 
 It explains his letter to Venice and his whiff of paision 
 
THE LAST urnj±l 275 
 
 for her. It makes him able to give up anything— like the 
 love of Venice — which he did then, to come on again later. 
 I dare say, just when he wrote to Venice, circumstances 
 were parting him unavoidably from the lady in Madrid, 
 and he was uncertain whether he should ever see her again. 
 So he took up something else. 
 
 Audely's is quite a different nature from Percy's, and 
 one, I fancy, a good deal more suitable to my daughter. 
 Things are, perhaps, for the best. Audely as usual will fall 
 soft. ... He will have a mother-in-law that he is able to 
 get on with, and even like. . . . And I dare say, later on, 
 when the war is over and if he comes back, he will pick up 
 the lady in Madrid again too. There is no impropriety in 
 that, the way Audely conducts love affairs. So we shall 
 all be back where we were. . . . 
 
 Audely kissed me that night in the porch as he went away. 
 I suppose, being literal, he took it that I meant what I said, 
 and should not be on the platform on Friday. I felt it was 
 Gk)od-bye, even if I did take my courage in both hands when 
 the time came and go and see him off in a crowd. I took 
 off my little medallion I always wear, next my skin, and 
 gave it him for a fetish. I knew he was sure to lose it, 
 which made the gift of it still more of a sacrifice. But I 
 thought it was dear of him to grant me some sort of senti- 
 mental leave-taking, in the dark, under the fanlight . . . 
 where my age didn't show. . . . One knows he doesn't, 
 himself, care for occasions of any kind, so the concession on 
 his part was the more valuable. 
 
 And so ended the romance of half a lifetime ! 
 
 Next morning Percy and I breakfasted together as usual. 
 Venice had a tray ia her room, which she sent down untasted, 
 but at ten she had three pennyworth of cream and a glass of 
 port. She often has no more than that. Then she got up 
 and sauntered down to the studio. Percy, who was just oft 
 to address a meeting at Bermondsey, watched her go out 
 and folded up his papers and went down the garden after 
 her^ bareheaded, though it was raining. 
 
 The next thing I heard was the clatter in the hall of him 
 taking his umbrella out of the stand and reaching down his 
 bowler so that it tumbled down among a lot of other things 
 upon the floor, and then the door banged. ... I looked 
 into the hall the moment after he had gone and saw that 
 he hadn't taken his umbrella after all, nor his hat. I didn't 
 
276 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 think much of that. Percy is erratic, and I have known 
 him go out without a hat often enough, especially in the 
 early days of his stay with us when he knew no better, only 
 I didn't see why he should have been at the trouble to take 
 the things down if he wasn't going to use them. So I walked 
 straight down to the studio to see how Venice was getting 
 on. It could only have been a minute or so after Percy 
 had left the house. 
 
 Venice was standing against the Rowley-Deane — she 
 often does ; people have told her that it forms an ideal back- 
 ground for her — and for once she didn't look in the least 
 like a white snowdrop. All the blood in her body seemed 
 to have got up into her cheeks. 
 
 She gave a jump when she saw me come in and said, 
 quickly : 
 
 " Mother, don't make a scene. I'm not going to marry 
 Percy." 
 
 I said indignantly that I shouldn't think of making a 
 scene, but that she might as well collect herself and tell me 
 what had happened. Not that she was excited, except her 
 looks. My dear Laura, the child might have had lockjaw 
 for all she would open her mouth and tell me a thing. She 
 annoyed me greatly ; she somehow or other gave me to un- 
 derstand that this was her room, and that I had better get 
 out of it and leave her alone. I kept on saying helplessly : 
 
 " But if it is true, it alters all sorts of household arrange- 
 ments. He won't want to ... It is very awkward, not 
 knowing — ^Tinkler. ' ' 
 
 Then she did say, in an off-hand uncivil sort of way : 
 
 " Tinkler needn't trouble to make his bed, if that is what 
 you mean." 
 
 I couldn't stand it, and left her. It was what she wanted. 
 Not another word of explanation did I get from her. By 
 and by I heard her wander upstairs, and presently she went 
 past the dining-room windows and out of the gate, swearing 
 under her breath when the latch stuck, as it often does. 
 She was in her coat and hat,, but she had, as far as I could 
 see, no gloves. . . 
 
 A peer's daughter — rambling about London streets like 
 that ! . . . Something very serious had happened. 
 
 She never even turned up for luncheon. I was wild with 
 apprehension. I think without comparison it was the most 
 miserable day I had ever spent. And towards evening I 
 
THE LAST DITCH 277 
 
 remembered my social duties. I had people coming to 
 dinner. The Quains were dining with us and Rowley 
 Deane. I telephoned and tried to put him off, but did not 
 succeed in finding him at any of his addresses. I had to 
 let that go. As for (Jerald and Ida, I did not seek to put them 
 oft coming, they are always so helpful. I thought that if 
 anything they might ease the situation. 
 
 They are all telling me now what an owl I was ; that they 
 telephoned the news, so as to spare me the shock. . . . But 
 I got all of the shock, if shock there was, for though I do 
 remember Venice getting me up and saying something and 
 even answering her — All right ! — I swear I didn't take in 
 what she said. People often mumble when they are saying 
 something that they are not exactly ashamed of, but which 
 they know will be a bomb. 
 
 So I looked every sort of fool when at about six o'clock 
 Venice and Audely turned up together, both as cool as 
 cucumbers, and told me their news. I seemed suddenly to 
 go a little deaf, but Audely was most kind and patient and 
 patted my shoulder as if I had hiccough, to make my hearing 
 come back. He said he had got a special licence, and that 
 they'd been round to Mr. Anstruther, our Vicar here whom 
 we have never troubled before, and got him to promise to 
 marry them that evening at nine o'clock. That was what 
 had taken the time. I can't understand, though, how 
 Audely can have got the licence signed and endorsed and 
 filled in by the different people in the rest of the time, 
 but he is a wonderful fellow. They had met in the course 
 of that morning, quite by accident, Venice told me; had 
 lunched together and gone about all the afternoon seeing 
 to things, even sandwiching a visit to a picture gallery and 
 a tailor in between. 
 
 She would tell me no more, but I have no right to say 
 she was sulky. Just her own usual, simple, childish manner 
 as if nothing had happened, and if it had, it wouldn't 
 matter. The manner I have always held up to people as 
 perfect — ^the grand manner, as one might say, that rebuts 
 impertinence and permits of no liberties to be taken while 
 remaining absolutely polite. But turned against her own 
 mother it is rather irritating. She has so much character 
 that it is paralysing. . . . Well, she is Venice Magdalen 
 Bar now, and more -posie than ever. My occupation is gone, 
 Laura. . . . 
 
278 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 Audely slept here. I had to get Percy's bed ready 
 for him at a moment's notice. Luckily, Percy had sent a 
 man for his things in the early part of the afternoon, and 
 later a female clerk with a little note saying he would so 
 much like to see me, and would I lunch with him at the 
 National Liberal Club to-morrow — ^the day Audely was 
 to go — and he would tell me what had happened. He had 
 no quarrel with my daughter, who had behaved exceedingly 
 well all through a difficult situation, but he would be glad 
 if I would get the engagement ring from her and bring it 
 with me when I came, as he hoped I should. I had always 
 been so jcind to him . . . and so on. . . . 
 
 I accepted. I was glad of an excuse not to go to Waterloo 
 to see Audely off to France. 
 
XXVI 
 
 From The Lady Venice Bar 
 
 Bdwaedes Sqctabb. 
 
 You were right, my Laura, he broke the compact. I won't 
 say broke it badly, but enough to show me where I stood 
 and the way we were going ... I am glad. And Audely 
 is for something in it, too, . . . 
 
 Poor Mother is puzzled and worried, in the nature of 
 things. She didn't know of the compact, so there seems 
 to her no valid reason for my throwing Percy over except 
 caprice, and she would have liked me to have a better 
 reason than that, for the honour of the family, and also 
 because she had come to like Percy, and now considers that 
 he has been, in her North-country lingo, " ill done to." 
 
 Yet for many reasons I don't mean to tell her the rights 
 of it all, and I have forbidden Audely to do so, though indeed 
 there is not much chance of his being indiscreet ; he would 
 hardly think of writing such trivialities from France, where 
 he is now for the first time as a soldier, and isn't he pleased ? 
 He sees war, for the present, all couleur de rose. Let us 
 hope it will never get any redder — ^for him — although he 
 desperately hopes it wUl. Fancy a man wanting earnestly 
 to be damaged I He says he doesn't in the least object to 
 losing a leg or an arm, or even an eye-: he is extraordinarily 
 patient of physical ills. It is his make. I, on the other 
 hand, am quite sure that he will not be killed, and it is 
 lovely having a husband in France that you are certain 
 won't come to grief, and who doesn't expect to be written 
 to every day, or even every week. If he did, you would be 
 cut oft, Laura, for I mean to be a good wife in that particular, 
 and I am not equal to more than one long screed like this per 
 week. 
 
 The sending off of Audely, therefore, was quite an occa- 
 sion. It was rather like a public reception, but not nearly 
 
 279 
 
280 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 so dull, and no red baize. Me, still, serene, and dignified, 
 a tall, proper figure de cir Constance. Audely, gay and 
 debonair, introducing me to all his friends and the nicest 
 officers, rushing about the platform in a way he never did 
 in his life before, here, there, and everywhere, like an active 
 host at a tea-party. It was slightly dSplaci, but then, 
 Audely is Audely, and would distort the course of the 
 seasons to fit in with his own arrangements. I'm not sure 
 the more serious officers liked it — ^those with women, wives 
 and mothers, that they hadn't liked to bring on to the 
 platform lest they cried and made the other officers inclined 
 to grouse about going. And Mother did certainly object 
 to Audely's attitude ; she said that she would have pre- 
 ferred to see him a little more serious, and spending his last 
 moments on English soil quietly by the side of his wife 
 and his mother-in-law, and not bother about a lot of men we 
 might never see again, but that he would see plenty of on 
 the other side. . . . She even wished she hadn't broken her 
 appointment with my " ex," to come. . . . 
 
 However, when it came to the last few minutes she wept 
 right enough, but very quietly under her veil, which Ilsa had 
 persuaded her to wear for once. Dsa couldn't get away 
 from her work to join Audeley's farewell beano, she said. . , . 
 
 I had been very wary, and had got Audely to make me 
 promise not to show feeling, in case, when it came to the 
 point, I had none to show. I did have, more than I expected, 
 but found no difficulty in concealing it. And though Audely 
 found time to whisper to me, dramatically, " Danton, no 
 weakness 1 " I believe he would have liked it, perhaps, 
 better, or as well, as the tears of a mother-in-law, although 
 to my thinking they constitute a far greater compliment. . . . 
 
 One must not forget that up to now Audely has been 
 Mother's property, not mine. I believe she loves him 
 better than any one — ^more than I do, and I think him rather 
 a dear ! And when he kissed me, just before he got in, he 
 was in such a hurry, and so excited, that his farewell kiss 
 lighted on my ear ! 
 
 The previous getting rid of Percy was rather awful. I 
 felt so mean, so childishly in the wrong. That is what 
 happens when a calculated attitude, foimded on some 
 purely physical prejudice, is upset by the attitude of the 
 other party, which one hasn't taken sufficiently into account. 
 
THE LAST DITCH 281 
 
 The natural man is bound to react against unnatural re- 
 pressions some time or other. I don't believe Percy ever 
 took any stock in my theory of our union. It never would 
 have been a union. Talk of the Unmarried Mother in my 
 article, I meant, I suppose, to be the Unmother Married ! I 
 made the mistake of thinking that Percy was as quixotic 
 and singular as myself. He is just an homme moyen sensuel, 
 after all, and I dare say if Audely had not been whisked 
 away from me by the war, I should have found him out 
 too ! But the Germans have settled that and smoothed my 
 path for me. Percy, a forced civilian with his work cut 
 out for him here, would have been on my bones, right from 
 that very minute 1 It was lucky for him we found each 
 other out in time, for he is the kind of fool that suffers. . . 
 
 It was a near thing. The day of the break with Percy was 
 also the day of my marriage with Audely. It all " came " 
 pretty well, if one was out for romance. It might really 
 have been engineered, from beginning to end, for a sensa- 
 tional series in a novel or film. But I didn't arrange it. 
 It was all pure accident, though the chain of events that 
 ended in Kensington Church was certainly laid from the 
 moment I walked into the London Library, in a half-dazed 
 condition after the scene with Percy, to steady myself by 
 reading the lighter magazines. Isn't it funny, the moment 
 you consciously try to dramatize your effects, they are sure 
 to fall out prosaically, whereas, if you let them alone, 
 the great coups of Life are brought about by a power not 
 ourselves which works histrionically or prosaically, in 
 patches. Look at Mother and her tragedy I Ida dripping 
 in the bathroom, the slavey. Mother's hat all awry, and 
 Audely to go into the Army ! For you may say what you 
 like, that was Mother's supreme moment, and she was fairly 
 ridiculous. And Audely, her passion, married me without 
 one. 
 
 He took me by my romantic side. The catch about the 
 licence — ^ready in his pocket. ... I believe I had a sort 
 of subconscious idea that I was sneaking him from the 
 Spanish lady, for whom he had really obtained it. . . . He 
 will never tell me. I shall never ask him. That is really 
 why he has married me. ... I am restful . , . and 
 perplexing . . , that is where my dramatic tastes have taken 
 refuge. . . , 
 
282 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 That cold, rainy morning, at nine of the clock, Percy 
 broke his solemn covenant, after being as good as gold, 
 poor little man, for three months — the time our engagement 
 lasted. Well, he gave me a very good time, of a sort; 
 introduced me to ideas to which without him I should ever 
 have remained a stranger. He was an illuminating per- 
 sonality, a genius almost in his way, and my association with 
 him wDl be of immense use to me in my career. Audely, 
 who doesn't condescend to be jealous of a mere civilian, 
 agrees with me. I want you to understand that I am not 
 blaming Percy. One must not expect men of that stamp 
 to uphold an intrinsically futile contract, to keep an 
 engagement to do something absurd. 
 
 But I wonder, often, what determined his action ? Why 
 for some reason or other suddenly did his promise begin to 
 irk him, so that he turned its inception over in his mind, 
 brought his common sense to bear on it, and found it vain T 
 I believe it was jealousy — unconscious ; but still jealousy. 
 We had been making a tremendous fuss about Audely the 
 evening before, hanging — ^all of us, including Mother, Percy's 
 stand-by and chief rampart — on his very words, watching 
 him, the way people always do when it is a case of Last 
 Leave and a man is going out, perhaps to be kUled ! . . . 
 
 Even Ilsa was soft and tremidous about him, and she has 
 lately grown as hard as nails. Ida frankly adores him. I 
 felt it nearly as much as the others, and I never hide my 
 feelings, either of dislike or interest. So I was awfully nice 
 to Audely, quite " soppy " as they say — aecaparante, which 
 soimds better. Audely lapped up the adulation as if it was 
 his due. He looked so happy and boyish and shy. People 
 stripped off baubles and gave them to him as fetishes. . . . 
 
 Percy was left out, and he does not like that, because he 
 is an egotist too. 
 
 As for Mother, she sat there nearly ail the time with 
 tears in her eyes. That must have added to "Percy's irrita- 
 tion. All my men get so keen on my mother, they cherish 
 her like a mistress and go to her for the tenderness they don't 
 get from me. I suppose her type, motherly, sentimental, 
 and rather overblown, appeals to them, while the possession 
 of the poor pale snowdrop merely flatters their vanity. 
 Then, Percy's weak heart, which forces him, whether he likes 
 it or not, to remain a civilian, makes him touchy. Audely 
 gasses about the Army a good deal, and has a supreme 
 
THE LAST DITCH 288 
 
 eontempt for the civilian he was himself a year ago, which 
 makes civilians hate him. 
 
 So I suppose, sitting there, a mere listener, absolutely left 
 out, it came across the poor man's mind that Audely was 
 monopolizing more than his share of attention, and that I 
 was, at least technically, his property. 
 
 I gather that he went to bed and slept on it, and woke 
 up to realize that he wasn't done with Audely: that the 
 gallant Second Lieutenant was coming again to say Good- 
 bye, and that the family would be all over him, and that I 
 should probably give him a last kiss to speed him on thai 
 trail. . . . 
 
 Some little naughty maggot of reprisal gnawed away in 
 his brain and prompted him to follow me into my study, 
 where I always go after breakfast. 
 
 You see, as I do, it was partly my fault. I was consider- 
 ably taken by surprise, but I thought it all out while he had 
 me in his arms, hugging me and stifling me with the smell 
 of his rough, home-made Harris tweeds, just as if I had 
 been the barmaid who is his proper complement. . , . 
 
 He has it against me now that I didn't stop him or make 
 any fuss of pushing him away or struggling. I knew, 
 you see, that it was to be his first and last kiss, and I let him 
 fulfil the measure of his iniquity, and take the embrace in 
 fuU. . . . 
 
 You will say, I suppose, that I wanted to see what even a 
 Socialist's kiss was like ? 
 
 If he had more tact and had wanted me as much as his 
 embrace seemed to mean, he should have seen that a little 
 resistance on my part would have been far more propitious 
 for him. And, too, if he had only been gentle, had not 
 thumped and bumped his mouth against mine till I began 
 to think he would end by wearing the skin off, down to the 
 bone, I might not have cut him oft so short: I should 
 have let him down easier. 
 
 But it was the kiss of passion, so called. . . . His passion, 
 Laura ! 
 
 When he had done he would have been vexed to know 
 that I felt just like a rat who has been set upon by a dog 
 and nipped in the back. I said : 
 
 " Percy, I can never be married to you in this world." 
 
 I don't think I put it forcibly enough, for him ; he didn't 
 believe I meant it, at first. He said all the usual things, and 
 
284 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 I let him say them ; asked all the usual questions, and I 
 didn't answer them. Then he asked me more gently, if his 
 kiss had revolted me ? 
 
 I thought a bit, and then said No to that, for it hadn't, 
 exactly : it had merely hurt and instructed me. Also I 
 didn't want to say something that would sting him when 
 he remembered it his whole life long. That was because 
 he isn't of my class ; I shouldn't have bothered about telling 
 Audely what happened to be true, or any one who was 
 my equal. 
 
 He couldn't see that. And one couldn't expect him to. 
 
 " Well, then, why ? . . ." he kept on saying, pathetic- 
 ally. . . . Because I had managed to be patient under his 
 embrace, he at once set it down to complaisance ; as a sign 
 of my ultimate yielding ; that I rather liked it, in fact. He 
 very nearly said so. Then in despair, and rather tired of 
 sparing his coarse feelings, I got to big words, and pointed 
 out that he had broken his promise. . . . 
 
 " Pooh 1 " he said. " Hundreds of girls make that 
 stipulation, and would be awfully annoyed if you didn't brush 
 it aside ! " 
 
 I still kept my temper, and he began to have the glimmer- 
 ing of an idea that I meant it. His face changed, he pouted, 
 he got cross, he began to show the cloven hoof — several 
 cloven hoofs. He walked away from me to the picture 
 and shook his fist at it. . . . 
 
 "That beastly daub has infected you — got right into 
 your system. That damnable art quackery is to blame for 
 this and many other things. ..." 
 
 I said, " The war, perhaps ? " 
 
 " Yes," he agreed, falling into my trap. " Certainly it 
 has, the spirit of it. Mad, grotesque, a symptom of the 
 unrest, the morbidity and imhealthiness which has brought 
 these things to pass. ..." 
 
 He was beginning to talk like a leading article, and I 
 left him, going towards the end of the room nearest the 
 door, in the hope that I might slip out presently and end 
 these futilities. But he saw my move, and thought I 
 thought he was going to try to kiss me again — perhaps that 
 I was not averse to a renewed experience of his ardour ? . . . 
 
 " Oh, you needn't be afraid, I'm not going to," the cad 
 said. " I haven't the slightest intention of wasting any 
 more time on any one so silly and offensive. I have too 
 
THE LAST DITCH 285 
 
 much to do, to go spending the nation's time dancing attend- 
 ance on a saucy aristocrat like you, and I'm going to quit — 
 d'you hear, my dear ? I shall be obliged if you will send me 
 back the engagement ring in a parcel, registered — no ; please 
 don't give it me now. I prefer that there should be some 
 record in your handwriting of our recent viva-voce con- 
 versation." 
 
 Adding: " And I feace kissed you, you know ! " He walked 
 out of the studio with some dignity, and I stood still, rather 
 shaken by the impact of so much popular rhetoric. 
 
 Mother came in, all eyes, before I could get really calm. 
 
 I told her in a few words what had happened, and handed 
 her the gimcrack ring Percy had bought me in the Strand, 
 and asked her to send it on to him for me. A letter from 
 her will do for the Minute he mentioned, and I am incapable 
 of doing up parcels so that they do not come untied in the 
 post. Then, to avoid more talk, I put on my hat and coat 
 and went out of the house. 
 
 I had nowhere particular to go and I didn't much want 
 to see anybody. I wandered about the streets looking into 
 shop windows and talking to dogs. I got vaguely into a 
 bus, and out again just as vaguely without paying my fare. 
 I stood in the road and waved a penny, but the girl was 
 on top and couldn't stop. These lady conductors must lose 
 a lot in fines. About midday I was very footsore, and 
 strolled into the London Library to read the papers and 
 rest. 
 
 There I ran into Audely, pince-nez-ing about by the row 
 of foreign books. It just occurred to me how cross Mother 
 would be if she knew that he had had time for that and was 
 not perhaps going to see her again. But it was just like 
 him. . . . 
 
 It was an immense relief to see him and find that he 
 hadn't time to sit down with me on the long padded seat 
 thing in the middle, between the two book counters, but 
 made it. There we sat, amid the coming and going of sub- 
 scribers and footmen with books. Have you ever noticed, 
 if a seat is very low, how removed you become from the 
 people standing up ? We seemed alone on a submerged 
 island. 
 
 After the vulgar noisy scene I had gone through that 
 morning it was like Manna dropping from Heaven to listen 
 to Audely's gentle balanced voice. I was rather proud 
 
286 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 that he should saunter through his last day in England 
 with me, letting everything, seemingly, go by the board ; so 
 I just half shut my eyes and didn't talk much, and enjoyed 
 myself as I have never done in my life, except once when 
 we were on the yacht and had had a fearful tossing just 
 outside Dieppe, waiting to get the pilot on board, who 
 then took us quickly into harbour. Then the smoothness, 
 the calm swish into port ! . . . 
 
 Audely was as quietly mad as ever, and that seemed to 
 suit me so well after Percy's damned prosaicness and fussy 
 attention to other people's convenience, which being punctual 
 is. Audely, though the heavens might fall, would calmly 
 approach the central conflagration and light his cigarette 
 at it. It was a divine contrast to Percy's Early Victorian 
 fireworks coming down like a stick, i.e. a demand for the 
 return of a cheap engagement ring. . . . 
 
 Presently, when we had talked over that new book of 
 James's, I told Audely what had happened. He said simply : 
 
 " I knew that you would never be able to stick him," and 
 became thoughtful. 
 
 Presently, when I supposed he had had time to think it 
 out, I said, 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 He said, " Well, for one thing he cares for you, too much ; 
 and what you want is some one who admires you, rather 1 " 
 
 I pretended to demur at that, although I am beginning 
 to think it is true. And Audely went on : 
 
 " You would have made the poor beggar very miserable, 
 just as Donne's mistress made him. So he dbsected her. 
 
 "Yet I found something like a heart, 
 It was not good, it was not bad, 
 But colours it, and comers, had." . 
 
 While he quoted I remembered that conversation we had 
 over the cookery in Park Crescent, which Audely had surely 
 forgotten. He told me then that I did not possess a heart 
 at all. Now it is " something like a heart." That's better. 
 And yet the wildest longing came over me to drive him to 
 say something tender to me : the kind of thing people say 
 to women who are supposed to have the usual feelings. It 
 couldn't hurt him, for he was going, and it would please 
 me and give me something to think about. I said as 
 archly as I could— I'm never arch except for a purpose : 
 
THE LAST DITCH 287 
 
 " You haven't much of one either, my dear." 
 
 " So we are a pair of us," he answered, so off-handedly 
 that I felt pushed miles away. . . . There was no more to 
 be done, this time . . . and there would be no more times, 
 as he was going ! . . . 
 
 I waited a few minutes till I could command my voice, 
 and then asked him to take me somewhere for luncheon. 
 He refused, saying that he was far too busy ; that he'd been 
 all over the place that morning and done very little to show 
 for it. They had kept him waiting at Doctors' Commons a 
 good hour and a half. . . . 
 
 I couldn't quite remember what they do for you at Doctors' 
 Commons, and I said, " What on earth took you there ? " 
 Audely looked really disturbed and puzzled for a moment 
 
 "Well . . ." — he always begins a sentence in that way 
 when he wants to gain time — " Well. . . . Your article, 
 the one we were discussing last night, has worked a good 
 deal in my mind. ... I suppose . . . going out for the first 
 time and all that. . . . And I came to the conclusion that 
 it would perhaps be a pity ... I might conceivably be 
 killed and leave no heir. ..." 
 
 I began faintly to see where Doctors' Commons came in, 
 but I chose, still, to say that I didn't. Then he drawled : 
 
 " I suppose I am quite mad . . , but 1 thought if I could 
 come across some nice girl who'd consent to marry me on the 
 spur of the moment, like this, I'd ask her. It would be 
 Fate. ... I owe it to my country to try, anyway. Any 
 fit man, you said. . . . And a special licence only costs fifty 
 pounds, so that if I'm killed your mother will have just that 
 much less." 
 
 I said it was very nice of him to be going to leave his 
 money to Mother, and she'd be glad ; but I pointed out to 
 him that if he did find a nice girl and married her, his previous 
 will wouldn't stand — I do ^ow that — and Mother not get 
 a penny. 
 
 He said : 
 
 " Not if she was you ? " 
 
 Then, Laura, he began a long sleepy persuasive perora- 
 tion, a sort of endless chain of argument, from which 
 I seemed to gather that he didn't really want anything 
 much, except perhaps the good of his country. . . . But if I 
 looked at it clearly I woiSd see that I might as well help 
 . . . that we were what is called a good match . . . that 
 
288 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 what I wanted surely was a husband who would go away 
 at once after the ceremony — church door business — sans 
 rancune ! That he might get killed out in France ; and any- 
 how he would not bother me with love making when he did 
 come back. . . . 
 
 Now he had come to think of it, it was the most sensible 
 thing we could do, and would make up to Mother for the 
 loss of my chance of being the wife of the Prime Minister of 
 England. And growing still more urgent, because I wasn't 
 saying anything, he admitted that he himself had really 
 come to want it, for all sorts of reasons that were now 
 crowding into his mind; that he wouldn't insult me by 
 saying he loved me after the contemptuous way he had 
 spoken of the tender passion, but that he really did care 
 for me quite an enormous amount . . . and that the licence 
 was burning his pocket ... it was a pity it should be 
 wasted. . . . 
 
 Audely invents emotions as he goes along and then firmly 
 believes that he is moved by them. I didn't believe in the 
 licence for one thing, Audely is such a liar 1 
 
 I said — and I believe I got quite red with nervousness, 
 which is the one thing I need to make me a little attractive, 
 so he told me afterwards : 
 
 " Look here, I don't believe you have got any licence 
 in your pocket ; but if you really have, and produce it this 
 minute, I'll marry you." 
 
 My heart was in my mouth the moment I had said it and 
 saw his hand slipped into the brown flap pocket in his tunic. 
 I don't know even now if then I wanted the licence to be 
 there ? But it was, and I couldn't go back on my word. . . 
 
 We were still sitting in the middle of the library. . . . _ 
 
 " Now let's go and buy you a nice ring," Audely said, as if 
 to a child. " I saw a gorgeous Alexandrite— green by day, 
 red by night — in a shop as I came along here." 
 
 So we got up off that old seat an engaged couple, trying 
 to feel the same as before and look it, which we weren't. 
 At least I wasn't. As we went out I pushed the door that 
 said "Pull!" and Audely chaffed me, saying that that 
 was what women always did all through life. It was typical. 
 Going along St. James's Street, he chucMed, and I so far 
 forgot myself as to ask him why— one never should ask 
 Audely to give a reason for anything he does — and he replied, 
 like the sincere beast he is : 
 
THE LAST DITCH 289 
 
 " I was laughing at the idea of your turning down poor 
 Percy just for making love to you, and then taking me on 
 the wave of the War Babies Scare." 
 
 Rather cryptic, luckily, but I saw what he meant. I 
 let that question be. And — ^well, circumstances alter 
 cases. . . . 
 
 We lunched together at his club, and it was there that I 
 asked him my first favour. It is a matter of some import- 
 ance to me that my people — especially Mother — shouldn't 
 be able to say that I simply gave in the moment he men- 
 tioned marriage, like the flapper brides who marry for the 
 allowance ; or out of war fever, because he is going out ; or 
 out of intemperate desires, like the beautiful Miss Gunning, 
 who was married with a ring of the bed-curtain at mid- 
 night. 
 
 I said he was to let Mother think that he had cared for 
 me for some time ; that all this wasn't quite sudden ; that 
 once he had written about his feelings to me, confessing, 
 however, to an entanglement with some other woman with 
 whom he had got mixed up. 
 
 He jibbed a good deal, saying, " But I wasn't, I didn't, 
 I never wrote to you 1 " Audely denies everything nearly 
 on the face of it at first, so that doesn't upset me, only I 
 was so keen on his attending to me and carrying out my 
 plan that I had to work the Spanish lady Ilsa always told 
 us about, and pretend to be jealous of her, taxing him with 
 having her here with him in London, at the York Hotel — of 
 having actually bought the licence for her ! 
 
 " Nonsense," Audely said, speaking clearly and loudly 
 for once, " There is no woman in London at this moment 
 that I care for except you." 
 
 This was explicit enough for him. But I, knowing that 
 it was the only way to drive it into his head that he was to 
 make Mother understand that this was no new thing, kept 
 on repeating : " Oh, but there was a lady in Madrid." . . . 
 And he kept on repeating : 
 
 "There was not." He finally added: "And if there 
 was, I wasn't in love with her, or you, or anybody, not even 
 your mother, this time last year," 
 
 I said, very quietly : 
 
 " You have got to pretend you were, then, or I won't 
 marry you." 
 
 I think, though Audely blusters, he will give in, because 
 
 19 
 
290 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 he realizes how it will hurt my pride to have people think 
 me such an easy conquest. 
 
 We had almost forgotten that he was still going to-morrow 
 and that it behoved us to get ourselves married some time 
 in the course of the day that was already half spent. We 
 'phoned Mother and parted, for the time, arranging to meet 
 again about five at Edwardes Square, after he had been 
 to call on the Vicar of our parish and make an appointment 
 for him to marry us some time that evening. I said, Did he 
 really think he could pull it off ? and he said Yes, he thought 
 so, sometime that evening ; but if it was like Miss Gunning's 
 wedding, an hour or so after midnight, I must not complain in 
 war time. Audely's optimism is infectious. I left him, 
 
 feeling that he would constrain the Reverend Mr. I 
 
 don't know his name, even — ^to perform his wUl. 
 
 Audely was right. The Vicar appointed us to meet him in 
 Kensington Church at nine o'clock. 
 
 Rowley Deane and the Quains were dining with us, and 
 Mother was in an awful state because she couldn't get at 
 any of them by 'phone to put them off. I didn't see why, 
 and it was lucky she didn't, after all. Ilsa couldn't get 
 off duty; and though Mother telephoned wildly for Uncle 
 Henry to come and give me away — -as it was Audely, he 
 would surely have stretched a point and come, Aunt Minna 
 or no Aunt Minna — but she could not get on to him at all. 
 So Ida had to be my bridesmaid and Gerald had to give 
 me away. Mother ought to have, but at the last minute 
 she did a little faint, and we had to leave her to Tinkler. 
 It was only excitement, whether at the notion of my 
 being married, or Audely, I never could discover. A little 
 of both, I suspect. 
 
 It was a wonderful scene. I wouldn't have missed it for 
 anything. It was worth marrying for, even if there was 
 nothing else. The church, economically lit, and the shock- 
 ing bad architecture dignified by the dimness, and furtive 
 figures lurking behind the round, solemn pillars. There 
 were four or five people besides our little group. I have 
 always suspected they were reporters, for the papers had a 
 full account of it all. Mother may have convened them. 
 She had a full hour at the telephone, after Audely and 
 I 'phoned her that we were engaged and coming back at 
 five to get married. I don't believe, as a matter of fact, 
 though she took our message herself, that she had quite 
 
THE LAST DITCH 291 
 
 grasped it. She certainly nearly jumped out of her skin 
 when we walked in, casually assuming she knew all about 
 it. Mother is not so spry as she was ; I fear she is breaking 
 up a little. She has still her hair. 
 
 Rowley Deane had brought a friend of his on to dinner : 
 a poet, an interesting person whom I shall cultivate. He 
 had reddish hair, brushed up like a faun, with a pointed 
 beard. He stood there, through the ceremony, in the 
 shadows of the aisle and watched us with a heavenly sneer, 
 not a worldly one. Oh, and another person, who just nodded 
 at Audely and sat down in a back pew. Her eyes fell on 
 me as I passed her and seemed to fill me suddenly with a 
 sense of responsibility that I had lacked till then. It stayed 
 with me through the ceremony, and it forced me to think 
 of Audely a little and not so much of the scene. She was all 
 in black — a real, honest war-widow, perhaps, or even the 
 Spanish lady of whom I have always been more jealous 
 than I knew? But her hair was quite grey; she might 
 have been called beautiful, only dans le temps ? . . . She 
 seemed to know the poet. . . . 
 
 Well, we got married all right. C'tiait la moindre des 
 choses, Audely said. 
 
XXVII 
 
 From The Lady Arlet 
 
 12, BOLSOTEB TeBBAOB, 
 
 Habt-lb-pool. 
 
 Yes, luckily, Audely's agony was soon over. He was in 
 hospital, though, over three months, so I make out, and he 
 was certainly let out rather too soon ; only, we are glad — I 
 cannot tell you how glad — to have him back with us again. 
 He is in a very weak state, I consider, and is marked P.B., 
 whatever that is — " set aside for light duty." 
 
 His regiment having been moved here in the meantime, 
 I thought it best to move too : give up the Edwardes Square 
 house and take a little one here, where Audely could be, as 
 it were, billeted on us. I was quite determined to manage 
 it, though Venice wasn't very keen on coming away from 
 London. She hates military society. But I was urgent 
 with her. I told her that her place was with her husband, 
 and that if she didn't see it, then it was his mother-in-law's 1 
 I think she was afraid that she would be called upon to 
 nurse him, and she knows she is no good at that. 
 
 But it is not a case of that. He says himself that his is 
 a nice cooshy wound that will give him the rest he needed 
 after two years' strenuous labour, but I am afraid it means 
 masterly inactivity for life. He has got a permanent stiff 
 neck, or something wrong there, and all sorts of foreign 
 elements fitted into his leg — half-way up — pieces of imita- 
 tion or synthetic bone. They do these things so well, 
 nowadays. He can walk all right — or with the very slightest 
 of limps — and that, they tell me, will be better soon, and he 
 has been allowed to take up golf again, and plays as good 
 a game as ever, which pleases him very much. 
 
 Venice hates golf and all that appertains to it. That is 
 as it may be, but she must not abnegate all her duties as a 
 wife for one reason or another I I told her she really must 
 
 298 
 
THE LAST DITCH 293 
 
 put some constraint on herself, and accept some of his frequent 
 invitations to go round with him. She can take an interest 
 and applaud his strokes, and to do that she ought to master 
 some of the technicalities of the game. 
 
 She was unexpectedly good about it, but said that if she 
 was to be on the ground at all she had better play. What 
 she couldn't stand was hanging round doing nothing in the 
 cold, with all the beastly blacks from the collieries settling 
 on her face and making her hideous. Ilsa, who is with us 
 just now, suggested that she should get " Bibby," as we call 
 one of the nice subalterns, to give her a few lessons, and she 
 consented — partly because Bibby is devoted to her and she 
 likes his ardent gaze. She didn't get it over golf. Golf is 
 too serious. But he is not a very good teacher, he is so 
 sincere. And for a deprecating learner like Venice, who 
 wants to be told she is getting on all right even if she isn't, 
 quite, just to keep up her spirits, it's hopeless. Poor Bibby 
 puts his head on one side after every stroke she gets off — or 
 doesn't get off — ^and says sadly : 
 
 " I'm afraid. Lady Venice, you'll never make a player 1 " 
 
 He says to me she is too uninterested, too easily put off, 
 to have any sense of the game. She is giving it up in disgust 
 and hardly ever goes out now, so I have asked Bibby to 
 take me on. I wouldn't let Audely teach me, though he 
 offered : he would have made me so nervous. So I immo- 
 lated poor Bibby, who manfully drills the old woman for 
 love of Audely. He agrees with me that until Audely is 
 stronger there ought to be some one near him lest his leg 
 gives suddenly, and he could just clutch at a woman's arm 
 and not feel degraded, as he would if a man went with him 
 on purpose to take care of him. And I am not so bad, now 
 that I have got over the first gawkiness of a beginner, and 
 Audely likes me to go round with him, or says he does. I 
 don't go very often, for fear of his men laughing at his 
 playing golf with his mother-in-law ! 
 
 I can keep him company better at Bridge. I always did 
 play a fairly decent game. We have parties here, about 
 three times a week. Venice hangs about in lovely tea- 
 gowns which make people think the thing that isn't, alas 1 
 and looks over our hands and brings us drinks. 
 
 Audely's fellow ofi&cers like her; their wives adore her; 
 that's the way of it. It is her title and the unassuming 
 way she wears it. Her modest, simple manners put them 
 
294 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 at ease, while the rather indifferent attitude of their men- 
 folk prevents them being jealous of her. Altogether, she 
 is a great success. I used to think she treated everybody 
 too much alike, but one has to march with the times, and her 
 manner is perfect for these ones. I think her association 
 with Percy did a little democratize her, although she used 
 to stand up against him in argument. They used to have 
 violent arguments about travelling third class, which he 
 made her do, as a socialist's wife would have to. She declared 
 that the lower classes, even if they weren't lower, smelt. 
 They do. Percy couldn't deny it. She said she hated 
 people who ate sweets and biscuits and oranges in trains, 
 and had parcels of fish wrapped up in newspaper that bulged. 
 Audely told her that the eating of peppermint-drops was a 
 survival, and that, in the mediaeval times she used to gas 
 about and liked so much, she could not have gone without 
 a pomander — ^the equivalent of the peppermint-drop — and 
 that Theroigne de Mirecourt, when she led the women to 
 Versailles, riding on a cannon, had a scent-bottle enclosed in 
 the handle of her cane. Percy said he didn't know any- 
 thing about th^t, but we ought to realize what a potent 
 weapon of estrangement between the classes the sense of 
 smell had proved in the past, and that one of the uses of 
 money up to now had been the power to set up a barrage 
 between ourselves and assaults on the olfactory nerve. 
 
 How long ago all those discussions in the Edwardes 
 Square house seem ! Percy is in the Army, now, out in the 
 East, and Audely home, invalided. . . . 
 
 He is awfully proud of Venice, I can see. They seem to 
 suit each other to a T. Though they are very quiet, very 
 aloof, the best form, all round, in a married couple I ever 
 saw. Venice would die if he called her " Little Woman " 
 or " The Wife " as I have heard the other officers here do 
 to their spouses, and she would never think of alluding to 
 him as her " boy," or even her " man." They seem to have 
 a strict code of style between themselves, and live up to it. 
 Rather Spitzbergian I call it ; but then, I am different — or 
 was. 
 
 I think Venice is happy. Ilsa says she is, because she 
 always was. Why should she not be ? She doesn't know 
 the agony of fear, of unassuaged desires, like my poor Ilsa, 
 and has never lain awake and heard the clock strike all the 
 hours, as Ilsa does most nights now. That is the curse of 
 
THE LAST DITCH 295 
 
 caring. It has come to Ilsa very late, but very practically. 
 Her Archie is in a very unhealthy spot, we know, and some- 
 times she doesn't hear from him for days ! Once it was 
 over a week — ten days. Ilsa never said anything about it, 
 but she chose never to open a single letter from any one 
 else until she heard from Archie. By the time it did come, 
 there was a pile that high which needed answering. And 
 when he did get leave — it was only once in nine months — 
 he wrote one sentence in a letter after he went back that 
 struck me. He said Leave was like a drop of water poured 
 on to a parched throat in Hell. Made him burn worse, I 
 suppose he meant. . . . 
 
 Ilsa seems to live in church — ^you know she has become 
 a Cartholic — that is how she pronounces it, and to add 
 " Roman " would offend her mortally. There is a very nice 
 priest here — a Belgian refugee from Termonde — and she finds 
 him a great comfort. I am glad. . . . 
 
 It is strange that, of the two sisters, Ilsa has got more 
 misery out of her marriage than Venice, but also, I think, 
 some drops of pure joy that Venice will never have. For, 
 you know, when Archie and she are together, she looks 
 transfigured ! 
 
 Venice wasn't much distressed while Audely was out in 
 France imtil she heard he was hurt, and then she didn't 
 worry much, since the surgeon wrote it wasn't very bad, 
 and he was being properly looked after. She just went 
 on writing war poetry and slept like a top. She said 
 it was because she had an utter confidence in his star, 
 an inward prescience that he wouldn't be killed, or 
 even woxmded seriously. Well, I don't know about that 
 last. . . . 
 
 No, it was I who worried about him and wrote every day 
 and kept him supplied with cakes and cigarettes and news- 
 papers and silly creature comforts men like out there. 
 Venice said she knew that it pleased and amused me to fuss 
 about her husband, and that I should be jealous if she pre- 
 sumed to write to him more than once a week. I didn't 
 tell her that I wrote every day, lest it kept her from writing 
 at all ! She might have taken it that way ? And Audely 
 would have missed her weekly letter more than all mine put 
 together ! And when he came back she greeted him as if 
 he'd been away for the week-end. He said he liked it. 
 Perhaps he did. He remarked that it was quite in the 
 
29(5 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 picture, and that people must be allowed to proceed along 
 their own lines. 
 
 It was the first time they had met since the wedding ! 
 
 I suppose you have never been properly told about it, 
 have you ? Certainly not by me. It was indeed such 
 maimed rites, as they say in Shakespeare. I confess I did 
 not think that the picturesqueness of it, which Venice 
 bravely insisted on, justified the end. After all the fuss and 
 preparation there had been for the event, when it came, 
 to have her turned off like that 1 I hated it. The church 
 so badly lit ; no wedding gown or veil ; no red baize ; no 
 triimiphal arch ; no promenade up the central aisle on her 
 father's arm I She couldn't have that, of course — that was 
 my fault; my conduct about Anatole weighs on me even 
 now — ^but she could at least have had her uncle, the Duke 
 of Norssex, and ought to have had. It turns out now that 
 Henry was quite au fait of the Gregson entanglement, and 
 would have been much more savage and actively annoyed 
 — cutting off her allowance — if he hadn't been convinced 
 that it would never come oft. He felt sure that the moment 
 there came to be any real approach to intimacy between 
 them, the girl's natural feelings of decency would revolt. I 
 strive to put it politely, but Henry never minces his words. 
 He was sure the moment the fellow attempted familiarities, 
 she would kick him to Hell — or send him to the Devil ! I 
 forget which he said. Of course Minna was at him to withhold 
 money, but he refused, saying that it would be hard on me, 
 as they would be sure to come down on me for everything 
 if he did, and I was too fond of the child to refuse and keep 
 my money for my own use. . . . 
 
 Henry did not behave so very badly, you see. But I 
 impressed upon him, in Percy's interest when he was a little 
 calmer, that Percy was not personally revolting ; far from it. 
 He always had a bath every day — sometimes two — as I 
 knew, of knowledge, and kept his hands cleaner even than 
 Venice, whom I often had to scold when she belonged to me, 
 for things like that. She often needed the help of a little 
 pumice-stone. No, I don't think that was the reason of 
 the breaking off of the engagement; I have never quite 
 fathomed it. 
 
 Percy said, when I saw him later on, that the break 
 came from her, absolutely, for that he loved her still. He 
 took it that she had suddenly discovered that she did not 
 
THE LAST DITCH 297 
 
 eare for him enough to marry him, and loyally telling him 
 so begged him to give her back her troth. In all that he 
 behaved exactly like one of us, although I couldn't get 
 Henry to admit that that was within the bounds of possi- 
 bility. 
 
 I firmly believed that if Audely had not appeared sud- 
 denly, invested with all the glamour of Last Leave, she would 
 have gone through with the Percy business. But you 
 remember that letter — I sent you a type-written copy of 
 it — ^that letter proved that she had had some sort of love 
 relation with Audely. Though, you know, Ilsa firmly be- 
 lieves that Venice wrote the letter herself to force me to 
 let her do some sUly little thing I had forbidden her. I 
 cannot think my rule over the child was so iron that she 
 needed to resort to a subterfuge like that, involving, too, a 
 man who at that time was more my friend than hers. 
 
 Of course young girls at that age do minxish things, and 
 she knew Audely was away, and if he came back was safe 
 not to talk. He never does discuss things that matter, but 
 leaves them mostly to settle themselves, as they do do. . . . 
 
 No, I believe he wrote that letter. It is of a piece with 
 his character, the way he settled down to forego my Venice 
 because of the Spanish embroglio to which he alluded in 
 the letter, and which we now know for certain existed. She 
 was at the wedding, though she made no scene, just to see 
 the last of Audely. I heard it all from Rowley Deane, who 
 nosed it out for me. She is the wife of a Spanish grandee, 
 and Audely knew it was no good, that she would stick to 
 her social position and advantages, or would give him a great 
 deal of trouble to break down her resistance. 
 
 Audely always reminds me of Prometheus on his rock. 
 He would lie there and let the vulture tear away merrily at 
 his vitals, sooner than reach out his arm for a knife to cut 
 away his bonds — and hers, perhaps, poor thing ! She may 
 have wanted to be divorced ? 
 
 That is all so long ago now, but I have always felt I was 
 wrong to leave an important matter like that for ever 
 hanging in the air, and, trying to put it delicately, I asked 
 Audely, after he had been home about a month, if he had 
 thought of Venice at all before the war ? 
 
 He answered, Yes, certainly ; he had always thought her a 
 thundering nice little kid — ^Audely will talk like the Tommies 
 now, it is so funny 1 
 
298 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 I retorted, Tes ; but the attraction of a child and of a 
 grown-up woman were very different. He asked me when 
 exactly did Venice change from one to the other ? — did she 
 ever change at all ? And I said I supposed he meant by 
 that, that she had been a grown-up child and was a babyish 
 woman. He said, " Something like that " ; and I answered : 
 But wasn't that her charm ? And he agreed. 
 
 After a pause I asked him to tell me, just for fun, since 
 he had married her, and presumably loved her in the usual 
 way, when it was he did first begin to find her attractive as 
 a woman ? I said he owed me an answer. He agreed, and 
 said it must have been once when he had come back from 
 Odessa, straight on to Beardmore, and found her behaving 
 like a faun to put off an American millionaire you had sent 
 on to us with a letter of introduction. I remember. She 
 was eating ripe figs and squashing them against her mouth, 
 so that the juice ran down her cheeks. That was the way 
 she generally ate figs or bananas — it wasn't of malice pre- 
 pense. And Cyrus P. wasn't there then; it was Rowley 
 Deane, no millionaire. But it is just like Audely to think 
 so and love her for it. 
 
 I was no forrader with my perquisitions. One never is 
 with the dear man. 
 
 I tried another tack. I told him that right up to the 
 date of the war, Venice had been such a babe that I had 
 considered it a duty to surveiller her correspondence , He 
 raised his eyebrows a little, to mark disapproval of my 
 method. I boldly risked his condemnation, and went on to 
 tell him that, once, looking over the child's papers, I had 
 come across a letter from Count le Loffel — did he remem- 
 ber him at Nauheim, six months before the war ? 
 
 "Oh, yes," Audely said cheerfully. "He's killed. I 
 killed him. It was he who gave me this nasty cut on my 
 shoulder." 
 
 As if any one knows who does what in a milSe ! I con- 
 tinued, laughing ; but I was nervous, Laura : 
 
 " I had quite a good bag that day up at Lochroyan — or 
 was it in Park Crescent ? I actually found two love letters 
 the poor child had left about. . . . Le Loffel's was one. I 
 won't tell you who wrote the other. . . ." 
 
 I stopped. I hung upon his next words. 
 
 " I can guess," he said wearily, and got up to go out. 
 
 I have seldom been so angry with Audely, for I realized 
 
THE LAST DITCH 299 
 
 then that the subject was closed, and that the letter would 
 remain a sealed book to me for ever. I know as well as I 
 sit here that I shall never dare put that question again to 
 Audely or Venice either. I dare not. 
 
 And here we are at the last — ^the war going on full-tilt, 
 as if it would never stop for momentum, and so far bringing 
 nothing but prosperity to the masses. There is less misery 
 now than at any time before the war. I suppose one ought 
 to feel glad that there are no more half-starved children 
 going about. And so I am, but it rather enrages me, these 
 people flattering themselves that it is not so much We, who 
 set it going with our blood — 'Audely will never be the same 
 man again, Archie has lost an arm, and Bertie Corfe died of 
 dysentery — as they who are keeping it going with their work. 
 And don't they take it out of Us in insolence I A title is 
 worth nothing at all there, as I find to my cost. The 
 Countess at the counter, Audely calls me when I go out with 
 my string bag and stand in a queue with the rest, for a bit 
 of fish or a half-pound of butter. 
 
 And yet, after all, we four — Venice, Audely, Ilsa, and I — 
 are a pure bit of the veritable aristocracy of England, 
 stuck — ^like the bullets I have heard of, in the fleshy part of 
 a man's leg that he doesn't feel a bit ! — into the solid mass 
 of the people, who don't bother about us any more than the 
 soldier does about his nicely encysted piece of lead. He 
 eats just the same, and don't these the people eat ? In one of 
 those shops full of rude people — on both sides of the counter 
 — I stood beside a coal man as black as a sweep, and 
 heard him ask the price of a salmon, which ought to have 
 staggered him as it staggered me. I could not have offered 
 it to myself, as the French say. Not a bit ; he took the whole, 
 at five shillings a pound. He would have it for his dinner, 
 he said. 
 
 And when one has secured a few things at the risk of 
 one's life and soiling one's sleeves over the dirty marble 
 counter, they refuse to send them for you, and you have to 
 toil home with them ; or, if they do condescend some time 
 later in the day, the little horrid errand boy insists on leaving 
 the beef or the fish or the milk at the front, and cheeks you 
 if you ask him politely to go round to the proper door at 
 the back. That no one ever uses except Audely and Venice : 
 for Audely it is a short cut to his messroom. The gorgeous 
 
800 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 slavey I am supposed to control never thinks of using it, 
 and I sometimes have to go out of my way not to meet her 
 dressed up to the nines, going out to have tea with her 
 friends when she thinks she has done enough to the house 
 and put a bit of meat between two plates in the oven to 
 stew itself away. Oh for Anatole, the spy ! She wears silk 
 stockings, and doesn't trouble to steal mine, which are of 
 Lisle thread. When I was a girl I had two pairs of silk, 
 darned and darned again. Poor Venice hasn't had a new 
 dress on for a month. It rubs it in to see, as we do, 
 when we go out, proud Munition mothers, wives of coal- 
 trimmers — ^the best-paid trade in the works — wheeling a 
 baby in a smart silk-lined perambulator with a couple of 
 small toddlers running at the side, dressed in pink satin 
 pelisses, sitting down now and then, as small children will, 
 in the middle of the dirty pavement that is like one long 
 spittoon 1 The mother doesn't care ; she doesn't object to 
 matter in the wrong place ; and if she did, she would soon get 
 new pink pelisses nm up. They'll go home to tea, and eat 
 the salmon that " Father " bought, on a table without a 
 cloth, and the children won't have l3ibs on, and the butter 
 will be scooped out of the paper it was brought home in, if 
 any. I saw a pound of butter without any paper at all 
 dropped in the street the other day, and the wretched child 
 who was carrying it picked it up and gave it a rub with her 
 filthy apron ! I hoped it wasn't my butter ; but I couldn't 
 be sure. One never is sure. What one is sure of is that 
 these people, and others like them, will be perfectly pleased 
 with their dirty butter and their children and themselves. 
 They are It now 1 
 
 I was complaining about it to Audely — ^I didn't tell him 
 about the butter, but the pink pelisses and the salmon. 
 He said that these facts ought to console me, that the end 
 is not yet, the nice old arrangements will probably last my 
 time. But, he declares, and I believe him, when once the 
 masses begin to look to the outside of the platter ; when the 
 sort of education we are giving them to-day opens their 
 eyes and they refuse to eat salmon in squalor, but insist on a 
 tablecloth ; when butter is not eaten out of the paper it was 
 bought in, but neatly made into pats ; when the children 
 have bibs to prevent them wiping their mouths on their pink 
 pelisses — ^then, he says, then I may begin to tremble ! For 
 then every one without exception will be a great deal bigger 
 
THE LAST DITCH 801 
 
 than their old boots, the world will not be large enough to 
 contain the ambitions and aspirations of the hitherto hide- 
 bound populations. There may be wheat enough, but 
 there certainly will not be enough culture to go round I 
 
 Well, there : La Garde Meurt. . . . 
 
 And any way, you've come in. We are shoulder to 
 shoulder against the powers of darkness. 
 
 It's nice, now, to be able to blame nobody but the people 
 who have wrought this woe. 
 
 Sometimes, when I go out with Audely, and get rather 
 tired after I have done eight holes with him, I sit down on 
 the sandhills half way while he finishes the rest of the round, 
 and think of what one must think of, nothing else. I think 
 of the damping down of our excessive hopes, and the entire 
 suppression of the note of joy that has made Life such a grey 
 thing. . . . 
 
 This is a queer, ugly place, nearly as dull and dour as 
 Scotland. I never thought I should come to end my days 
 here. ... I may; I have serious thoughts of Sir BuUace 
 Schack's house on the Links : it is nice and near for Audely's 
 golf. It is conveniently built, and is the only thing approxi- 
 mating to a gentleman's house in the place. And now 
 that we have no home and a diminished income, we might 
 settle down here, at any rate till after the war, which may 
 go on for thirty years more, and would not surprise me if it 
 did. It all depends on Audely's wishes, and Venice's. But 
 she sings very small nowadays. I never knew a girl so altered 
 or thought she could contrive to look forlorn with so much 
 dignity. 
 
 I can see a very wide view here as I sit — ^the yellow sands 
 of Durham that persist in spite of so much blackness, and 
 the white line of surf that shows the great curve of the bay. 
 The German ships, not so long ago, rode, out to the right, 
 at Saltergate Nab and bombarded poor Hart-le-Pool. There 
 are machine-gun emplacements all about, that do to shelter 
 against if there comes a shower, and keep the wind off us. 
 Some day they will do better work than keeping civilians dry 
 and warm. . . . 
 
 Looking inland I can see the dull green of the links 
 blocked at the north end by the beginnings of the vast 
 plot of works, after which there is no more green, even 
 
802 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 of this parched and muddy sort. All is industry. The 
 factories have all their tall spiky chimneys, terminated at 
 the point with fat blobs of grey smoke that looks solid, and 
 streels out to sea in a long, faint trail. Sometimes when 
 " they are practising " — ^the phrase one hears oftenest — ^we 
 think that, taken in conjunction with these puffs of smoke, 
 a naval engagement may be going on ; I even have seen 
 Audely's orderly quite taken in, and running to a point on 
 the sands to see better, and collecting a little crowd of 
 mothers and babies — ^for this is a seaside health resort for 
 all the huddled populations, the nearest breathing place in 
 Yorkshire and Durham, and we have come to share it with 
 them. . . . Imagine our coming here for health in the old 
 days ! Why, the north wind brings up all the noxious gases 
 imaginable from the Munition Works, and our food always 
 seems to taste of copper and verdigris and our mouths are 
 full of grit and our faces dirty the moment we put them out 
 of the front door. It isn't wholesome for us. But then, 
 Venice reminds me, it isn't wholesome for them — ^the people 
 who are working actually in it and the soldiers who must be 
 here and breathe it in all day long. We are only the camp 
 followers, she says, and must not complain. . . . 
 
 Poor child, when she knows I am sitting out here she 
 often puts on her hat and drifts along this way and sits down 
 beside me without speaking — at first. . . . By and by she 
 unbends a little and tells me things — about the war — little 
 pathetic ideas she has. . . . She always had lots of ideas, 
 Venice I 
 
 She sits oddly, her knees drawn up to her chin like a fish 
 wife looking down at her ugly sensible shoes she wears now, 
 to please Audely, and her white dress that is not very white 
 — everything here is dirty as soon as you put it on, with 
 the smoke from the great kitchens where we are cooking, 
 night and day, death for millions of enemies, or so we hope. 
 Venice isn't socialist now or Pacifist ; she isn't anything, she 
 says, except the quiet resigned wife of a man in the army — 
 she who wanted once to be a power in Art and Letters, a 
 social arbitress, a Queen of Courts of Love. She says some- 
 times, bitterly, her chin on her knees, so that her voice 
 sounds muffled and old : 
 
 " Love, who thinks of Love ? We have just to beat the 
 Hun first, and then lie down and die of weariness — ^this lot 
 of us, anyhow." 
 
THE LAST DITCH 808 
 
 Then: 
 
 " Poetry 1 Don't let us talk of it. There isn't any atmo- 
 sphere for poetry now — ^not my sort, at all events. . . . 
 Books ! They have to be handbooks to the trenches, pppular 
 sermons on the truths by which we — die, these days ! " 
 
 She daren't talk like this to Audely, he would whop her. 
 He simply won't have grousing. And she tries to please 
 Audely. I fancy she loves him now, very much as any 
 other wife loves her husband. Sentimentalizes over real 
 things ; she always did. She said the other day that she 
 and he were like two souls wandering along that golf course — 
 in Hades, in the half-light of day that fades all the sooner 
 here because the sky is so darkened — hand in hand, their 
 eyes bent, not on each other, but on the smoke-stacks, the 
 group of ironwork in front, the ultimate joyless goal. " And 
 when we've attained it, it is but killing, at the best ? Le 
 beau geste, eh ? Spitting Germans on bayonets, en attendant 
 the pitchforks of Hell ! " 
 
 This doesn't mean in the least that she is a Pacifist, 
 Laura, only that she thinks it hard that valour should have 
 come to consist in superiority in methods of butchery. 
 
 That's morbid, of course, but the poor child's mentality, 
 it has been explained to me, has 'been completely altered 
 by this new orientation — ^though what the Orient has to 
 do with us, and Venice in particular ? I dare say, as 
 Audely says, a form of selfish apprehension plays some part 
 in her depression. What sort of d world is this for her to 
 live in now, and after ? She is only twenty-eight. Audely 
 sometimes says kindly, " My poor Venice, if you could only 
 realize that this is a thing so immeasurably bigger than the 
 accidents of our individual destiny ! " But Venice will never 
 learn, I fear, to put her destiny into the common stock, 
 which is, I suppose, what Audely means. 
 
 He himself is much altered. I suppose it had to be. It 
 is the toll that England has exacted of her sons, all and 
 sundry, grave and gay, clever or stupid. But it is the toll 
 England has taken of their bodies which affects, and always 
 will affect, us women most. Venice feels it ; not so much as 
 me, perhaps. ... I miss his conversation — ^and his helpful- 
 ness of mind more than of body. . . . He has changed his 
 objectives, that's it ; we used to be them. And he got 
 Venice, on the strength of it. Now he is not much good to 
 her. 
 
804 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 His Colonel says that he is the most helpful officer — 
 barring his invalidedness — ^thathe has, next to — and here 
 comes the rub — an unspeakable little cad called (Jorbudoc 
 Evans, who was once a draper's assistant in Chester and is now 
 assistant-adjutant, 
 
 I will tell you all about it, Laura, as I gather it bit by bit 
 from a ridiculously reticent Audely. That means he resents 
 it. I must say I do resent it too. 
 
 For you would have said that blood would tell, wouldn't 
 you ? if anjrwhere, in what should be our own aristocratic 
 preserves, or always have been — ^Head-quarters of a Special 
 Reserve Regiment. See, I've got their jargon ! . . . Well, 
 it seems to me blood tells upwards — as far as the second 
 place. But the first place is that disreputable old cache, 
 as Venice calls it, full of dusty papers, files, and plans (Audely 
 took me in once — rather smuggled me — in my old dark wrap 
 cloak and " hushed " me when I spoke above a whisper, as 
 if I had been a lady of questionable position invading a hive 
 of bachelors !). And the draper's assistant seems to reign 
 there. It is annoying and humiliating, rather, that Blue 
 Blood should have come second to a Gorbudoc Evans. No 
 manners — I was introduced to him once. Audely has 
 manners and manner. Perhaps it is his manner that docs it. 
 For Audely 's colonel doesn't trust him jusqu' au bout. I 
 could see. How ? I'll tell you. One evening, when the 
 Colonel was with us for Auction and Mr. Gorbudoc Evans 
 came in. 
 
 I noticed that when it came to the discussion of some 
 form to be signed — ^Audely said it was an A.F.W. 8634 — • 
 Mr. Evans said A.F.W. 48a, and the Colonel just took his 
 number for granted. I understand that it turned out after- 
 wards that Audely's was the right figure, but that didn't 
 change the Colonel's attitude much. 
 
 That is, of course, the paper side of the Army ; Audely's 
 note is the regimentally decorative note, his wife says rather 
 bitterly. What does she want ? They put him up to make 
 speeches after concerts, and smarten up companies that have 
 got slack, and soothe restive drafts. . . . And she is peevish, 
 because apparently they won't give him a place in the 
 Orderly Room. Though I cannot believe he is any good 
 at making a return of the amount of jam consumed by a 
 given company in a given time. . . . 
 
 She says she is annoyed because it grieves him. Sh« 
 
THE LAST DITCH 305 
 
 hates his caring. It is not his vocation, obviously ; and how 
 should it be ? So he might be glad to be let off that sort 
 of thing. But he is always thinking about it and these 
 sordid figures and numbers. 
 
 Yesterday, after he had sat for a solid twenty minutes 
 after dinner, she asked him, just to taquiner him, I fear, for 
 she knew quite well, what he was thinking about. And he 
 answered, equally to tease her, for he no longer bothers 
 to respect her little moods — he is too weary of things in 
 general to be aux petit soins with his own wife — he answered, 
 and these are his exact words : 
 
 " I was wondering how the officer commanding A Coy. 
 could show fourteen pounds ten shillings worth of surplus 
 braces in his pay-and mess-book ? "^ 
 
 Poor Venice took her answer, and subsided — she hasn't 
 got the go now even to exclaim, but I did. I said : 
 
 " Good Heavens, Audely, how can you sit and moon over 
 such a thing as that, you who used to be " 
 
 Venice cut in with a little of her old spirit : 
 
 " An articulate human being." 
 
 " Call me an agreeable rattle at once ! " he said, stretching 
 himself and lookiag at her with puzzled, pained eyes of no 
 interest — ^that is what hurts her. . . . 
 
 "Well, what is there to think about? The O.C.A.Coy. 
 asked me to fix it for him. He's eight pounds eleven 
 down on right and left pouches, and four pound ten upon 
 braces ! " 
 
 Venice had left the room. She had no expression at all — 
 her armour. I sighed, and he said — deprecating a little, 
 perhaps ? — 
 
 " Oh, well, we don't know where we stand till we've finished 
 with it." 
 
 And I was thinking of this that had happened last evening 
 as I sat on the hill-side and fingered bits of bent grass that 
 slid through my fingers. I take work out, biit I can't gel 
 on with it much out of doors. 
 
 Where we stand ! We — ^We, who have got the blood and 
 the manners and who have done the service. For we have, 
 though the others have too, and they will it seems, on the 
 strength of that, climb over our heads to the first places. I 
 dare say people will still think we are still in the first place — 
 we shall be round the throne all looking as nice as we can, 
 
 20 
 
806 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 though not really supporting it, when the war is over and they 
 don't want our sons any more, bless them I We shall still 
 be loyal, although we know that the business part of it — like 
 the paper-work Gorboduc Evans does better than Audely — 
 will be in their hands. Perhaps it always has 7 One thinks 
 of Percy Gregson and his undeniable efficiency at governing 
 and directing. He is doing what we are all doing now. He 
 has got a medal. He is a captain. And one remembers 
 that James Molendinar, whom one was glad enough to have 
 about in the old days, was the son of a self-made man and 
 got in to the Political Orderly Room, i.e. to the working 
 of the machine, through his great administrative talents. 
 We liked him because we liked him, and quite forgot that 
 he was not one of us. We were in front of the Throne — 
 he was behind it ! The Power. , . . 
 
 I suppose it has always been like that, only the war 
 has brought it out. And even that very night Audely and 
 Venice were friends again, in their funny, quiet way, and 
 Audely was saying half apologetically, " What wat a 
 fellow to be interested in except right and left pouches ? " 
 She didn't say Her, but I thought it. He went on amplifying, 
 vaguely grousing at things in general, and she seconded him, 
 until I nearly cried of despair. There was nothing left that 
 was real — ^no feudalism, no Europe even to have either 
 Feudalism or Democracy in. And the lessons of history, 
 pooh 1 not a single relevant example that will compare with 
 what is going on now. . . . 
 
 " And no Imowing," I added in their vein, " if one will have 
 any income, or be expected to eat grass, as somebody or 
 other said the People ought." , . . 
 
 And Venice came in mirthlessly with : 
 
 "Only a world covered — covered with Orderly Rooms 
 where men are filling in A.F.W. 8634a's for dear life ! " 
 
 Poor sick Audely got disgusted with us and went out t . . . 
 
 I was thinking this day as I sat, trying to piece it all out, 
 wondering when the change that is now all over him began ? 
 I believe it was during that awful week-end in September, 
 until the Germans first turned and ran. 
 
 I can feel with him there ; it was ghastly ; like waiting by 
 a death bed. . . . 
 
 Audely had been sent for down to Hayward's Heath, at 
 James Molendiiiar's bungalow, where he had two or three 
 
THE LAST DITCH 807 
 
 of the Ministers down for golf. They wanted information 
 from Audely about railways in the Sandjak of Novibazar. 
 And after their conversation — it was on a Thursday after- 
 noon — ^they went into the garden, in the beautiful still 
 weather, and by way of a reldche the poor dears were all 
 discussing whether Grod was trying to be good to His crea- 
 tures, letting the sun shine on them as they died. , . , 
 
 And just then a maid came and told one of them that he 
 was wanted on the 'phone. ... He came back crying. 
 
 " Every officer of the Second Coldstreams wiped out 1 " 
 he managed to tell them presently. " Dead t Every officer 
 but one of the forty-second, and all but two of the sixty- 
 ninth." . . . 
 
 Audely says the three of them stood in front of him like 
 dumb wooden blocks. . , . 
 
 And I say, if it could matter like that to those three — ^for 
 they were, after all, only the Gorbudoc Evans' and draper's 
 assistant-adjutants of the State — ^what do you suppose it 
 meant to him, to me, to you, to Us ? Just as if the whole 
 side wall of a house had fallen out ! . . . 
 
 My dear, when one came to think it over, there wasn't a 
 man child left that you and Ilsa used to play in the gardens 
 with at Ambassador's Gate. , , , Audely hadn't a man left 
 standing whom he could call cousin or even nephew ! . . . 
 Not, at least, a whole man and on his feet. . . , 
 
 Of course one knows the oldish men are left, and there 
 are young boys coming on. But so few, so few ! And they 
 are all, as it were, branded for the slaughter-house 1 Audely 
 says that when drafts go out — ^when he sees them off, he 
 thinks of sheep with that red-browny mark on their hocks, 
 . . . And these are men — men he loves. . . . For, you know, 
 he does love his men and they love him. . . . 
 
 So when I look at Venice, all this is in my look — ^the 
 mother-look, which honestly I believe she is at last beginning 
 to appreciate. She is beginning to crave for love, for de- 
 monstrations of it from anybody that will give them. And 
 like all people who have pushed love away, and waited to 
 welcome it till they felt the need of it, as she has done, she 
 is a little inclined to complain of coldness. 
 
 Audely is cold to her, but not colder than she has been to 
 him. Now that she is pining for a little tenderness she 
 cannot put forth the tendrils, the little feelers that would 
 invite it and provoke it in him. 
 
808 THE LAST DITCH 
 
 They can neither of them help it. She knows that. 
 She Imows what he has to bear. He has been violently 
 shoved out of the game he loved so to play. The very 
 fibres and springs of his existence are left ragged and jagged. 
 He had put all the soul of his life into this, and his soul has 
 been knocked out ! . . . 
 
 Venice says softly, without imkindness — she is incapable 
 of being unkind to any one — ^that he is still Undine, for the 
 new soul he had got through excitement, his war soul, died 
 in his body when he came back here to the dreary prose of 
 war. 
 
 Venice will never be any man's soul, she knows. 
 
 And the dark gets darker, and Venice's white frock looks 
 greyer than ever, and flutters across her thin legs that show 
 through the stocking. She won't wear thick ones. Her 
 hat ceases to worry her by attempting to blow off ; the 
 wind always dies down here in the evenings. She loses that 
 little set look of endurance she always has out of doors from 
 one thing or another — chiefly wind, which she hates. And 
 Audely is seen over the hill, coming nearer and nearer, and 
 we both get up and wave. . . . And he finishes his game 
 with a sedulous putt and comes to pick us up and take 
 us home to supper. Perhaps it is very late — about a 
 quarter to eight — and he has kept us sitting there in the cold, 
 and he is only rather sorry. He is still the old Audely 
 who makes times and seasons, meals and women, all wait 
 on him. Luckily, neither of his women cares a bit what 
 they eat, or if it is cold or overdone or what not, so long as 
 he is happy. It is all we can do for him, who has done so 
 much for us. 
 
 Yes ; Audely tried to give his whole life. God has not 
 accepted it all ; but He has taken a good piece of it. 
 
 Sometimes I go up to my room and open the box where 
 I keep my precious documents, and among others Audely's 
 Commission, which he has given over to me to hold for him. 
 I pore over it, yet I know every word it contains. . . . 
 
 " GEORGE, by the grace of God of the United Kingdom 
 of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions 
 beyond the Seas, King . . . Defender of the Faith, Emperor 
 of India. ..." 
 
THE LAST DITCH 809 
 
 remember nearly every word of it, as if it were the 
 sampler I worked when I was a child. 
 
 " To our trusty and well beloved James Audely Mildmay 
 Bar, Greeting." And then it goes on about the special 
 trust and confidence he reposes in him, till the end: 
 
 " Given at Our Court of St. James, in the fourth year of our 
 reign." 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed in Qreal Britain by Bazell, Watson i Viniy, Li„ 
 London and Aylesburj/. 
 
Novels you Must not Miss 
 
 Crown 8vo, Cloth. 7s. 6i. net. 
 
 At all Libraries 
 Jacob's Well Pierre Benoit. 
 
 Considered by the French critics as the most virile book 
 yet written by the author of " The Queen of Atlantis," 
 this novel has sold in France to the tune of eighty-five 
 thousand copies. 
 
 Eros J. A. T. Lloyd. 
 
 A powerful novel by the author of " Prestige," which 
 was described by The Times as " a ' New Grub Street ' 
 up-to-date, written with a greater vivacity than George 
 Gissing." 
 
 The Shooting Party Anton Chekhov. 
 
 This is the only long story that Chekhov wrote, and it is 
 now given to English readers for the first time. To those 
 who have seen " The Cherry Orchard," and read his short 
 stories, the publication of this book will be a literary event. 
 It is translated and has an Introduction by A. E. Chamot, 
 
 According to Jill Nora K. Strange. 
 
 The fourth novel by the author of " An Outpost Wooing," 
 and " A Wife in Kenya." It is in a somewhat different 
 vein to her previous work, and will certainly be pronounced 
 her best book. 
 
 The Goat Without Horns Beale Davis. 
 
 This story, by the author of " One Way Street," deals 
 with the Voodoo worshippers of Haiti, and unfolds a 
 passionate romance to the barbaric rhythm of native 
 tom-toms. 
 
 Summer Widowers Warner Fabian. 
 
 Another daring book by the author of " Flaming Youth " 
 (240th thousand) and " Sailors' Wives." The naked truth 
 about the American " smart set." 
 
 A Riff Bride L, Noel. 
 
 A romance of the Riffs, by the author of " The Caid." 
 
 Owing to the great interest focussed on Morocco at the 
 
 moment, this story of love and adventure is going to be 
 
 very popular. 
 
The Back Number E. Everett-Green. 
 
 A new novel by this long-established author is always 
 eagerly awaited by her vast army of admirers. 
 
 A Cry in the Night Pedro Mata. 
 
 This vivid story of Madrid society life has been a best- 
 seller in Spain, The theme is similar to that of " Fata 
 Morgana." 
 
 The New Adam Noelle Roger. 
 
 A remarkably original tale reminding one of Mr. H. G. 
 Wells' early scientific stories. 
 
 Among Privileged People Marie Linde. 
 
 A Translation of the first novel ever written in the 
 Afrikaans language. An unusual book, a pioneer book, 
 giving a striking picture of South African farm life from 
 the point of view of the native. 
 
 Fiske The Lame Mendele Mocker Seforim. 
 
 Full of humour and pathos and particularly fine in its 
 setting, " Fiske the Lame " is claimed as a masterpiece. 
 
 Moonlight Madness Edith Nepean. 
 
 The author of " Welsh Love " and " A Bundle of Myrrh " 
 has written another tensely human story of the Welsh 
 HiUs with lively interludes in Mayfair. 
 
 Dreamland and Dawn Cecil Adair. 
 
 Cecil Adair, author of " Gabriel's Garden " and many 
 other " Joy of Life " stories, has written here a romance 
 of exceptional charm. More than 500,000 copies of her 
 previous books have been sold. 
 
 The Mohicans of Paris Alexandre Dumas. 
 
 The first English version of a tale that should have been 
 translated long ago, if only on account of its wonderfully 
 sustained excitement. It has an Introduction by R. S. 
 Garnett. 
 
The International Library 
 
 Edited by F. L. LAWSON-JOHNSTON, B.A. 
 
 The Decameron Giovanni Boccaccio, 
 
 The Angel of the Chimes Fortune Du Boisgobey. 
 
 The Convict Colonel Fortune Du Boisgobey. 
 
 The Prussian Terror Alexandre Dumas. 
 
 Translated, and with an Introduction, by R. S. Garnett. 
 
 The Neapolitan Lovers Alexandre Dumas. 
 
 Translated, and with an Introduction, by R. S. Garnett. 
 
 Love and Liberty Alexandre Dumas. 
 
 Translated, and with an Introduction, by R. S. Garnett. 
 
 Paul and Virginia Bernardin de St. Pierre. 
 
 With a Memoir of the Author, by Sarah Jones. 
 
 The Mysteries of Paris Eugene Sue. 
 
 By the Author of " The Wandering Jew." 
 
 Adolphe Benjamin Constant. 
 
 Translated, and with an Introduction, by J. Lewis May. 
 
 The Betrothed Alessandro Manzoni. 
 
 With an Introduction by Rafael Sabatini. 
 
 Selected Stories Guy de Maupassant. 
 
 Translated by J . Lewis May. Introduction by Holbrook Jackson . 
 
 The Fishermen Dimitry Gregorovitch. 
 
 Translated, and with an Introduction, by Dr. A. S. Rappoport. 
 
 The Spider and the Fly Alfred de Vigny. 
 
 Translated by Madge Pemberton. 
 
 The Grasshopper, and Other Stories 
 
 Anton Chekhov. 
 
 Translated, and with an Introduction, by A. E. Chamot. 
 
 The Undying Race RenIi Milan. 
 
 Translated by Henry Havelock, with a preface by the Author. 
 
STANLEY PAUL & CO/S 
 Announcements 
 
 1925-1926 
 
 Ttlephone : 
 MUSEUM 7299 
 
 " 8 ENDSLEIGH GARDENS 
 
 Tcktram : ^ " ■-' UPPER WOBURN PLACE 
 
 GUCIEN. EUSROAD, LONDON LONDON 
 
 ttf^ (^^ t^l t!?n (.tf»» c.^1 ttfPi ttf») (^?l (^»i (^^ tisr^ t,^i (.£71 Itff^ (.tf^ Vi?) l.^»l l^?j ;i;»i tiS^ U!^ t^^ C«^ t<!?^ t!^ 
 
 Mrs. Delany, at Court and 
 
 Among the Wits 
 
 Edited and with an Introduction by R. BRIMLEY JOHN- 
 SON. Demy 8vo. Cloth, gilt, with sixteen full-page illus- 
 trations and a coloured frontispiece. i6s. net. 
 
 " The ' deax Mrs. Delany ' of George III and Queen Charlotte 
 whom Burke once described as the finest example of a grande 
 dame he had ever met, and whose name is so familiar to readers 
 of Fanny Burney's diary, has become something of a legendary 
 figure," says Mr. E. Beresford Chancellor in a recent article. So 
 familiar is Mrs. Delany's name, and so little is known of her 
 intimate life by the average reader, that we feel justified in saying 
 that the appearance of a book both comprehensive in nature and 
 convenient in size devoted to her life and letters has long been 
 overdue. Mr. R. Brimley Johnson, the well-known editor and 
 essa5ast, who has made a special study of Mrs. Delany and her 
 circle, has compiled a representative selection from Lady Llanover's 
 six-volume edition of Mrs. Delany's Autobiography and Corre- 
 spondence published in i86i. The result is a delightfully intimate 
 volume giving a clear-cut picture of a charming woman who was 
 the honoured friend to several generations of those whose names 
 stand amongst the highest in the history of literature and society. 
 
 The unique illustrations from the collection of Lord Treowen, 
 never before reproduced, add both charm and interest to the 
 book. 
 
 I 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 Labour, Social Reform, and Democracy 
 
 By DK A. S. RAPPOPORT, author of " A History of 
 European Nations," etc. Two volumes. Demy 8vo. Cloth, 
 gilt. Illustrated. 15s. net each volume. 
 
 Ib this, the most comprehensive work of its kind, the author outlines 
 the history of labour ill China, Persia, and Judaea, ancient Greece and 
 Rome. He gives a sketch of the democratic ideals embodied ia the 
 writings of the Hebrew prophets and the Stoic philosophers. One 
 chapter is devoted to the labour legislation contained in the Mosaic 
 code, and two chapters deal with the social message of Christianity, 
 The value of Dr. Rappoport's work lies not so much in its plea for 
 the working classes as in the bird's-eye view it affords of the whole 
 history of social-democratic ideals and plans for social reform. The 
 present volume brings up the sketch to the first centuries of the 
 Christian era. The next volume is to be devoted to the liliddle Ages, 
 the Reformation, the Renaissance, the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries, the French Revolution, and the first half of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 In Darkest London 
 
 A study of the Outcast Woman. By MRS. CECIL CHES- 
 TERTON. Crovra 8vo. Cloth. 5s. net. 
 
 What is the life of the woman in London, who, homeless and penniless, 
 tries to make a living 7 Where does she sleep 7 How does she keep 
 body and soul together day by da^ 7 Mrs. Cecil Chesterton, the 
 well-known writer and journalist, decided to go down int« the depths 
 and find out what happens in the City of Dreadful Night For this 
 purpose she left her home, cut herself o9 from her friends, and, under 
 an assumed name, started afresh in London, without money, change 
 of clothes, or references. She had many adventures. She sold 
 matches, cleaned steps, begged in the street, slept in doss-bouses, 
 shelters, and in the casual ward. Her Odyssey of the lonely woman 
 in the fight for existence not only makes an absorbing book, but is 
 a human document of sociological and psychological importance. 
 
 Uncle Sam Needs a Wife 
 
 By IDA CLYDE CLARKE. With an introduction by 
 
 REBECCA WEST. Large Crown 8vo. Cloth. FuUy iUus- 
 
 trated. 7s. 6d. net. 
 
 A happy treatment of the need of a better understanding and co- 
 operation between men and women in political and civic activities. 
 The preparation of this book was stimulated by thousands of letters 
 from men and women representing many shades of opinion on 
 social and political issues who read the author's editorials or who 
 were among the countless number that heard her lectures in America 
 and in ten countries of Europe. 
 
 " Uncle Sam Needs a Wife '' is a lively book— feminist, but full oJ 
 common sense. There is mnch advice in it to the modem woman 
 that well merits her serious attention^ 
 
HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY 
 
 (^ 1^1 (.fn t<^^ C<^ ti^^ l.^:^ Cc:^ t^^ (<f^t^t tt^ t^k (^^ t^)(<::9%U^ t.^) (<:^ U^ Cc^ C.:^ 
 
 Home Life under the Stuarts 
 
 By ELIZABETH GODFREY, author of " English Children 
 in the Olden Time," " The Cradle of a Poet," etc. Demy 8vo. 
 Cloth. Fully illustrated. 12s. 6i. net. 
 
 In this charming volume of gossip of a bygone age the author describes, 
 fiom contemporary materials, the inner life of the home (luring the 
 reigns of James I and Charles I. The chapters are crowded with 
 intimate details. The first tells of the nursery, the second and third 
 deal with " Children's Games " and " Some Lesson Books." From 
 the child in the nursery we pass to the school, the private tutor, and 
 the university, and to what, in the meantime, the girls were doing at 
 home. There follow chapters on courtship and m^riage, the cares of 
 housekeeping, dress, needlework, and the delights of gardening. 
 The author steps aside from the beaten path to tell the romantic stories 
 of several young ladies who defied the conventions of their time and 
 decided to choose their own husbands. Altogether this is a delightful 
 book, and even students of the period will find that there is a great deal 
 of pleasant knowledge to be gleaned from its pages. 
 
 The Life of Cesare Borgia 
 
 By RAFAEL SABATINI, author of "The Justice of the 
 Duke," " The Strolling Saint," etc. Demy 8vo. Cloth, with 
 a coloured frontispiece and other illustrations. Eighth edition. 
 I2S. 6i. net. 
 
 " Mr. Sabatini has a great gift for seizing the picturesque features 
 in dramatic episodes in European history, and this book is as readable 
 as any novel."— C. K. S. in The Sphere. 
 
 Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition 
 
 By RAFAEL SABATINI, author of "The Life of Cesare 
 Borgia," "The Lion's Skin," etc. Demy 8vo. Fully 
 illustrated. Fourth edition. 12s. 6d. net. 
 
 " This most able and interesting book." — The Sunday Times. 
 
 "Admirably detached and unprejudiced." — The Nation and Athenieum. 
 
 The Life and Times of Rodrigo Borgia 
 
 By the Most Rev. ARNOLD H. MATHEW, D.D. Demy 
 8vo. Cloth. Fully illustrated. Third edition. 12s. 6d. net. 
 " The book (generously and excellently illustrated) has been compiled 
 with great skill and fairness from a host of Borgian authorities." 
 
 GzoROB Sampson in The Daily Chronicle. 
 
 Love Stories of English Queens 
 
 By ELIZABETH VILLIERS. Large Crown 8vo. Cloth. 
 
 Fully illustrated. 7s. 6i. net. 
 
 " For young readers these will be almost fairy tales with a background 
 of history ; but the careful index, the well-chosen illustrations, give 
 the book an interest for readers of maturer years as well." — The Daily 
 Sketch. 
 
 i 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 Romances of Mayfair 
 
 By AN ANONYMOUS AUTHOR. Demy 8vo. Cloth. 
 I2S. ^d. net. 
 
 This volume, written by one who is " behind the scenes," relates for 
 the first time the inner history of many startling evente in Society. 
 Those who remember their newspapers will be able to recall certaiq 
 of the episodes, but as the papers could not tell everything at the 
 time, it has been left to the anonymous author of " Romances of 
 Mayfair " to fill in the blanks. And there is sufficient romance in 
 these real life stories to satisfy the most ardent lover of the sensational. 
 Here are related what happened to the missing bride ; the bride who 
 was kidnapped immediately after the ceremony in a fashionable 
 Mayfair church, and the story of the jilted girl who impersonated her 
 successful rival at the altar rail. A dozen other chapters, equally 
 absorbing, complete one of the most interesting books of recent years. 
 
 Love Letters of Great Men and Women 
 
 From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day. Collected, 
 
 translated, and edited hy C. H. CHARLES, Ph.D. FuUy 
 
 illustrated. Demy 8vo. Cloth gilt. 12s. 6i. net. 
 
 " Mr. Charles has provided a rich and varied feast — from the unsenti- 
 mental Dickens to the effusive Keats, and Beethoven and Laurence 
 Steme." — The Westminster Gazette. 
 
 " A delightful budget."— T/w Daily Mail. 
 
 The Story of the Savoy Opera 
 
 A record of Events and Productions. By S. J. ADAIR 
 
 FITZ-GERALD. With an Introduction by the Right Hon. 
 
 T. P. O'CONNOR, M.P. FuUy illustrated. Crown 8vo. 
 
 Cloth. Fourth edition. 5s. net. 
 
 " A book that all good Savoyards will want, attractively produced 
 and at a price that brings it within everybody's reach." — Tke Bookman. 
 
 " It is difficult to imagine that anyone could be better fitted to write 
 about the Gilbert and Sullivan operas than Mr. Adair Fitz-Gerald." — 
 The Sporting and Dramatic News. 
 
 Sims Reeves 
 
 Fifty Years of Music in England. By CHARLES E. PEARCE, 
 
 author of " Madame Vestris and Her Times," etc. Illustrated. 
 
 Demy 8vo. Cloth. i6s. net. 
 
 " As a study of the musical history of England during the period of 
 Reeves's long and transcendent career, it is a book of the very highest 
 value, destined to take an honoured place on the shelves of all 
 interested in the subject." — The Sunday Times. 
 
 " A fine record of a great man, and one that will stand for all time." 
 —The Sketch, 
 
BOOKS ON TRAVEL 
 By the Waters of Carthage 
 
 By NORMA LORIMER. Author of "By the Waters of 
 
 Sicily," etc. Revised edition. Demy 8vo. Cloth, with a 
 
 coloured frontispiece and 32 full-page plates. 12s. 6d. net. 
 
 A delightful series of letters from an Englishwoman in Tunis to her 
 husband in England. Through them runs the thread of a romance, 
 but the chief charm of the book lies in the descriptions of Carthage 
 and Tunis, and the wealth of interesting detail it ^ves us as to the 
 people and their customs and mode of life. Few writers are so easily 
 " atmospheric " as Miss Lorimer, who has the gift of making her 
 readers see through her eyes the things and scenes she is describing. 
 All those who are interested in the Near East — and those who want 
 the truth about the dangers of intermarriage between East and West 
 — should read " By the Waters of Carthage." 
 
 The Cornish Coast and Moors 
 
 By A. G. FOLLIOT-STOKES. Author of "From Devon 
 to St. Ives," etc. Demy 8vo. Cloth, with 100 half-tone 
 illustrations and a coloured map. Fourth edition. los. 6d. net. 
 
 " One of the most delightful books about Cornwall that I have ever 
 read. If you have ever been to Cornwall you should read this book ; 
 or if you have never been, but possibly may go, then I know no finer 
 introduction. The illustrations alone, and there are very many, 
 should prove a kind of compelling invitation. For me, they gave the 
 finishing touches to a book which I thoroughly enjoyed from beginning 
 to end." — Richard King in The Tatler. 
 
 Bermuda, Past and Present 
 
 By WALTER B. HAYWARD. Crown 8vo. Cloth, with 
 
 illustrations and a map. 8s. 6d. net. 
 
 " In his systematic and skflfully elaborated work he has produced 
 what cannot fail to be the standard guide to Bermuda."— TAe Glasgow 
 Herald- 
 
 A Visit to South America 
 
 By WILLIAM J. McKENZIE. Crown 8vo. Cloth, with 
 
 10 half-tone illustrations. Second edition. 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 " A bright little illustrated book. Being a farmer as well as a journalist, 
 his practical notes indicating the almost limitless agricultural resources 
 of South America are especially acceptable."— T/ie Daily Telegraph. 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 THE SATIRICAL WORKS OF T. W. H. 
 CROSLAND 
 
 Grown 8vo. Cloth Gilt. Ss. net each. 
 
 I. The Lord of Creation 
 
 With an Appreciation of T. W. H. Crosland by HENRY 
 SAVAGE. 
 
 " We are disposed to think it quite the cleverest thing its author 
 has done. It is a piece of genuine satire." — The Daily Mail. 
 
 II. The Unspeakable Scot 
 
 " A masterpiece of invective." — The Daily Express. 
 
 " I feel grateful to Mr. Crosland for roaring out at the top of his voice 
 
 what I dared not have whispered to my dearest friend." — Truth. 
 
 III. The Egregious English 
 
 A brilliant reply to " The Unspeakable Soot," by the same author, 
 but originally published imder the pseudonym of " Angus McNeill." 
 
 FURTHER VOLUMES TO BE ANNOUNCED LATER. 
 
 TWO DELIGHTFUL BOOKS FOR THE 
 EPICURE 
 
 By EDWARD SPENCER. 
 
 Crown 8vo. Cloth. 2s. 6d. net each. 
 
 " Mr. Spencer's books are the two jolliest cookery books I have read. Yes, 
 ' Jolly ' is the right word. So really they are not for the cook to read at all. 
 She would not appreciate wit and humour as applied to the possibilities latent 
 in a cauliflower. But Mr. Spencer rattles on most amusingly all about food 
 and how it ought to be cooked ; and drinks, and how to mix them. Even 
 going so far as to offer some admirable recipes for robbing the morrow of 
 the aftermath of the Night Before. His books are really two volumes of chatty 
 essays with food and drink as their subjects." — Ricuakd King in The Taller- 
 
 The Flowing Bowl 
 
 A Treatise on Drinks of all Kinds and of all Periods, with 
 Sufidry Anecdotes and Reminiscences. (Sixth edition.) 
 
 " Here we have a new edition of a book which has long been a favourite 
 
 with the bon viveur." — The Sunday Times. 
 
 Cakes and Ale 
 
 A Dissertation on Banquets, interspersed with Various Recipes 
 more or less original, and Anecdotes, mainly veracious. 
 (Sixth edition.) 
 
 " On almost every page there is something to make the mouth water 
 and the lips smile. Our advice to everyone is, laugh over it yourself, 
 and make your wife study it afterwards." 
 
 « 
 
BOOKS ON ART 
 
 THE COLLECTORS' SERIES 
 
 Written by experts, tastefully produced, plentifully illustrated, 
 and strongly bound. Demy 8vo. Cloth. 8s. 6i. net. 
 
 The ABC of Indian Art j. f. blackbp 
 
 The ABC of Collecting Old English China 
 
 J. F. Blacker. Third edition. 
 
 The ABC of Collecting Old English Pottery 
 
 J. F. Blacker. Fourth edition. 
 
 More About Collecting 
 
 Sir James Yoxall. Third editiou. 
 
 The ABC of English Salt-Glaze Stoneware 
 
 J. F. Blackei 
 
 The ABC of XIX Century English 
 Ceramic Art j. f. blackes 
 
 Large Crown 8vo. 10s, 6d. net each. 
 
 The ABC of Heraldry guy cadogan RoTHSBt 
 
 The ABC of War Medals and Decorations 
 
 W. Augustus Stewak* 
 
 The ABC Guide to Mythology 
 
 Helen A. Clarke. Third Edition 
 
 The ABC of Collecting Old Continental 
 Pottery J- f. blackw 
 
 Demy 8vo. 15s. net each. 
 
 The ABC About Collecting 
 
 Sir James Yoxall. Fourth Edition 
 
 The ABC of Japanese Art 
 
 J. F. Blacker. Second Editu^s 
 7 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 The Memoirs of the Duke 
 de Saint Simon 
 
 Newly translated and edited by FRANCIS ARKWRIGHT. 
 In six volumes. Demy 8vo. Cloth gilt, gilt top, with 24 
 illustrations in photogravure. 21s. net each. 
 
 " There have been two or three translations of Saint Simon's ' Memoirs,' 
 
 but I count this one by Francis Arkwright the best of all, and its 
 
 publication indicates great courage, great enterprise, and mudb good 
 
 taste. Saint Simon's ' Memoirs ' contain more anecdotes than almost 
 
 any book known to me." — Clement Shorter in Tilt Sphere. 
 
 " Well printed, tastefully bound, and illustrated with good portraits 
 
 and reproductions of old engravings. A monument of publishing 
 
 pluck." — Th Evening Standard. 
 
 " The complete work constitutes what will probably ever remain for 
 
 English libraries, private or public, the standard edition of a universally 
 
 known work." — The Daily Telegraph. 
 
 A History of Italian Painting 
 
 By FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jun., Professor of Art and 
 Archffiology in Princetown University. With 325 illustrations 
 in half-tone. Demy 8vo. Cloth gilt. los. 6i. net. 
 
 " A most useful guide to Italian art by a very competent critic. More 
 than 300 illustrations in the text add to its value and make it serviceable 
 to the student and traveller." — The Daily Mail. 
 
 Success 
 
 By THE RIGHT HON. LORD BEAVERBROOK. Crown 
 8vo. Cloth. 2s. 6d. net. Tenth Edition. 
 Sixteen inspiring chapters on Success, Happiness, Luck, 
 Moderation, Money, Education, Arrogance, Courage, Panic, 
 Depression, Failure, Consistency, Prejudice, Calm, Salesman- 
 ship, Saving. 
 
 Who's Who in America 
 
 Vol. XIV, 1926-1927. Edited by ALBERT NELSON 
 MARQUIS. Large Crown Svo. Cloth. Nearly 4,000 pages. 
 37s. 6d. net. 
 
 A biographical dictionary of over 25,000 notable living Americans 
 — men and women — in all parts of the world. The American " Who's 
 Who," a bieimial publication in its fourteenth volume, should have its 
 place on the reference shelves of all business offices, clubs, hotels, 
 newspaper offices, public libraries, and similar institutions. 
 
BOOKS ON CRIME AND CRIMINALS 
 The Bench and the Dock 
 
 By CHARLES KINGSTON, author of " Dramatic Days at 
 the Old Bailey," etc. Demy 8vo. Cloth, illustrated. I2s. M. net. 
 
 Mr. Kingston's latest work deals with crime and criminals the world 
 over. There are several chapters about the Old Bailey packed with 
 interesting and amusing stories ; then follows an account of the 
 extraordinary activities of the American " secret " society, the Ku 
 Kluz Klan, the author incidentally showing how nearly every secret 
 society has degenerated into a crime organization. " The Molly 
 Maguires," another American produce, is dealt with, as are the Paris 
 anarchists and the Black Hand. Mr. Kingston gives a very full 
 account of that famous hunter of criminals, A. F. Williamson, the 
 Perthshire man, who did more than anyone else to establish the 
 prestige of Scotland Yard. By way of contrast the career of a typical 
 French detective, M. Canler, is related, and there is a chapter on 
 Vidocq, the criminal who became a detective. 
 
 Celebrated Crimes 
 
 By GEORGE DILNOT, author of "The Secret Service 
 Man." Demy 8vo. Cloth, with a frontispiece. I2s. tA. net. 
 
 Here are studies of some of the most notable crimes and criminals of 
 modem times, ranging from the colourful careers of adventuresses 
 such as Chicago May and Sophie Lyons, and of great burglars such as 
 Max Shinbom, to the rooking of Goudre the bank forger, and the 
 dramatic stories of such murderers as Deeming and Steinie Morrison. 
 There are about half a dozen chapters in the book of special interest to 
 American readers. The author has acted as special correspondent to 
 important periodicals at many modem trials, hence his intimate know- 
 ledge of criminal matters. 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF CRIME 
 
 Large Crown 8vo. Cloth. 5s. net each. 
 
 Famous Crimes and Criminals 
 
 By C. L. McCLUER STEVENS. Second edition. 
 
 " A well-selected compilation of startling crime stories in the last 
 hundred years." — Ralph Straus in Tht Bystander. 
 
 Dramatic Days at the Old Bailey 
 
 By CHARLES KINGSTON. Second edition. 
 
 " A remarkably rich collection of true stories of crime ... a treasure- 
 store for students of criminology." — Tiie Times. 
 
 Famous Judges and Famous Trials 
 
 By CHARLES KINGSTON. Third edition. 
 
 " Mr. Kingston manages to pack a considerable proportion of the 
 notorious crimes of the nineteenth century into his dozen chapters." 
 — The Observer. 
 
 Unsolved Murder Mysteries 
 
 By CHARLES E. PEARCE. 
 
 " One of the most engrossing books that has been published for a 
 long while." — The Bookman. 
 
 9 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 BOOKS FOR CHILDREN 
 The 'Normous Sunday Story Book 
 
 By MARJORY ROYCE, MOIRA MEIGHN, BARBARA 
 TODD, and MARION ST. JOHN WEBB. With a coloured 
 frontispiece and other illustrations by MARY STELLA 
 EDWARDS, E. B. MACKINNON, and DORIS E. BURTON. 
 Size 8^ X 6| inches. Cloth. 5s. net. 
 
 This is a sister volume to " The 'Normous Saturday Fairy Book." 
 Mothers often search about for just the right Sunday reading for 
 the nursery, and children, too, are often at a loss during pauses in 
 the day. Here is the very volume. It is made up of stories entirely 
 suitable for Sunday, including tales of New Year's resolves, Hower 
 stories, adventures, romances about animals, stories of Easter and 
 Merry Christmastide. There are also some delightful verses. 
 
 The 'Normous Saturday Fairy Book 
 
 By MARJORY ROYCE, MOIRA MEIGHN, BARBARA 
 TODD, and MARION ST. JOHN WEBB. With a coloured 
 frontispiece and other illustrations by MARY STELLA 
 EDWARDS and G. L. STAMPA of Funch. Size 8Jx6i. 
 Cloth. 5s. net. 
 
 A collection of new fairy stories written by lovers of children. Saturday 
 is the joyous holiday of the week, so there are tales here ready for 
 every single Saturday morning and evening of the year. 
 
 Lost in the Jungle. A Story for Girls 
 
 By MAY WYNNE, author of "The Heroine of Chelton 
 School." Illustrated. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 3s. 6i. net. 
 
 A tale of the thrilling adventures that befell Nita and Muriel Gasford 
 
 on a journey to join their parents in Bombay. 
 
 Stirring Deeds in the Great War 
 
 By CHARLES E. PEARCE. With a coloured frontispiece 
 and 16 full-page illustrations. Large Crown Svo. Cloth. 6s. net. 
 " A first-class book for boys." — The late Major-General Sir Charles 
 V. F. TowNSHEND (The Hero of Kut). 
 
 "... read with great interest." — Lieut. -General Sir Robert Baden- 
 Powell. 
 
 THE ENDSLEIGH REWARDS 
 
 Small Crown Svo. Cloth. Illustrated. Picture Wrappers, as. net each. 
 
 QUEEN'S MANOR SCHOOL 
 E. EVERETT GREEN. 
 
 MURRAY FINDS A CHUM 
 
 MAY WYNNE. 
 CRYSTAL'S VICTORY 
 
 CECIL ADAIR. 
 NIPPER AND CO. 
 
 MAY WYNNE. 
 
 THE HEROINE OF CHELTON 
 SCHOOL. MAY WYNNE. 
 
 A YOUNG AUTOCRAT 
 
 CECIL ADAIR. 
 
BOOKS FOR CHILDREN 
 A Gallery of Children 
 
 By A. A. MILNE, author of " When We Were Very Young." 
 lUustrated in colour by H. WILLEBEEK LE MAIR. Royal 
 Quarto. Cloth gilt. 12s. 6^. net. 
 
 To say that this is likely to become one of the most popular gift- 
 books of all time is no wild prophecy. It is a common-sense deduction 
 from the very great success that " When We Were Very Young " 
 enjoyed last year. " A Gallery of Children " consists of twelve delight- 
 ful stories, now published for the first time, which represent Mr. Milne 
 at his very best, naive, lovable, deliciously humorous. They will 
 appeal not only to children, but to all " grown-ups " who love children, 
 or, alternatively, love Mr. Milne's delicate art. 
 
 Moreover, " A GaUery of Children " has the advantage of being 
 illustrated by Miss Willebeek Le Mair, a Dutch artist of extraordinary 
 talent, the most outstanding feature of whose work is, to quote an 
 article in The Studio : " The rare grace with which she captures the 
 beauty and fragrance of that tender blossom we call childhood." 
 
 Mr. Papingay's Ship 
 
 By MARION ST. JOHN WEBB, author of " The Littlest 
 One." With a coloured frontispiece and other illustrations 
 by " ROBIN " of Pm«cA. Size 8^ X 6} inches. Cloth. 5s.net. 
 
 Every imaginative girl and boy will enjoy accompanjdng Robin on 
 Mr. Papingay's Home-made Ship in search of the Secret Island. The 
 ship's company consists of a surprising collection of people, including 
 Mr. Papingay's niece Penny, Aunt Muffin, the Lodger, the Fat Boy, 
 and the Baker's Grandmother, who have a habit of breaking into song 
 on every possible occasion. Their unusual adventures keep Robin 
 enthralled from the moment he steps on board. The story is full of 
 humour, and is delightfully and profusely illustrated. 
 
 The Little Round House 
 
 By MARION ST. JOHN WEBB. With a coloured frontis- 
 piece and other illustrations by " ROBIN " of Punch. Size 
 8J X 6| inches. Cloth. 5s. net. 
 
 " Full of joyous adventures." — The Times. 
 
 " One of the best of its kind to be published since Lewis Carroll's 
 
 masterpieces." — The Connoisseur. 
 
 " A book Charles Lamb would have liked." — Children's Newspaper. 
 
 A Garland of Verse for Young People 
 
 Edited byALFREDH. MILES. DemySvo. Cloth gilt. 5s.net. 
 
 " The best collection of poetry for children we have yet seen." — 
 Western Daily Press. 
 
 Marionettes and How to Make Them 
 
 Illustrated by TONY SARG, text by F. J. McISAAC, with 
 two plays for Home-made Marionettes by ANNE STOD- 
 DARD. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 11 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 THE INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY 
 
 Crown 8vo. Attractively bound in embossed cloth. 
 With Frontispieces and Coloured Jackets. 
 
 2s. 6d. net each. 
 
 Edited by F. LAWSON-JOHNSTON, B.A. 
 
 1 . The Decameron giovanni boccaccio 
 
 Written in the year 1343, this book, £rom which both Chaucer 
 and Shakespeare derived several of their plots, will never lose 
 its charm for those who delight in love stories. 
 
 2. The Angel of the Chimes fortune du 
 
 BOISGOBEY. 
 Considered one of the finest of French mystery stories. " The 
 Angel of the Chimes " is written in that crisp style and with a 
 dramatic power typical of du Boisgobey's best work. 
 
 3. The Convict Colonel fortune du boisgobey 
 
 The story of a French soldier at the close of the Revolution. 
 It opens with a batch of victims for Madame Guillotine, and 
 contains many vivid pen pictures of the period. 
 
 4. The Prussian Terror Alexandre dumas 
 
 Translated, and with an Introduction, by R. S. GARNETT. No 
 other translation has appeared of this novel, which has for its 
 background the occupation of Frankfort during the Prusso- 
 Austrian War. 
 
 5. The Neapolitan Lovers Alexandre dumas 
 
 Translated, and with an Introduction, by R. S. GARNETT. 
 When writing this book, Dumas had access to the secret archives 
 of Naples. This is the first translation into EngUsh. 
 
 6. Paul and Virginia bernardin de st. pierre 
 
 With a memoir of the author by SARAH JONES. A very 
 beautiful and widely read love story. Strangely enough, it was 
 Napoleon Bonaparte's favourite book. 
 
 7. Love and Liberty Alexandre dumas 
 
 Translated, and with an Introduction, by R. S. GARNETT. 
 This tale of the Neapolitan Revolution was the only one of his 
 romances for which Dumas craved immortality. The first 
 translation. 
 
 12 
 
THE INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY 
 
 8. The Mysteries of Paris eugene sue 
 
 A masterpiece of picaresque dealing with the underworld of 
 Paris as it was in 1840. Melodrama of the first water, by the 
 author of ■' The Wandering Jew." 
 
 9. Adolphe benjamin constant 
 
 Newly translated, with an Introduction by J. LEWIS MAY. 
 This novel describes, under elaborate disguises, the poignant 
 story of Benjamin Constant's liaison with Madame de Stael. 
 
 10. Selected Stories guy de maupassant 
 
 Translated by J. LEWIS MAY. Introduction by HOLBROOK 
 JACKSON. Some of the greatest short stories ever written, 
 selected by a distinguished essayist and translated by the editor 
 and translator of many of Anatole France's works. 
 
 11. The Betrothed alessandro manzoni 
 
 With an Introduction by RAFAEL SABATINI. This year is 
 the first centenary of this famous romance by the best loved of 
 Italian writers. Scott and Goethe were among its greatest 
 admirers. 
 
 12. The Fishermen dimitry gregorovitsh 
 
 Translated, and with an Introduction, by DR. A. S. RAPPOPORT. 
 Gregorovitsh has been called " The Russian Dickens," and his 
 work differs from that of other great Russian novelists in being 
 at once reaUstic and sympathetic. 
 
 13. The Spider and the Fly alfred de vigny 
 
 Translated by MADGE PEMBERTON from the famous French 
 novel, " Cinq Mars." The scene is laid at the Court of Louis 
 XIII and his evil genius, the Cardinal Duke. 
 
 14. The Grasshopper and other Stories 
 
 ANTON TCHEKOV 
 
 Translated, and with an Introduction, by A. E. CHAMOT. An 
 excellent selection of Tchekov's best stories, edited and translated 
 by a well-known authority on Russian literature, 
 
 OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATlONi 
 2» 13 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 THE VADE-MECUM SERIES 
 
 Royal 24mo. Cloth, round corners, and Coloured Jackets. 
 2s. 6d. net each. 
 
 Auction Bridge for Everybody 
 
 Including the New Laws, and a Complete Glossary of Bridge 
 Terms. By " A. C. B.," of the Daily Telegraph. Second 
 edition. 
 
 " A. C. B." has begun at the beginning, and explained everything 
 that the novice will want to know. The jargon and slang of the gam« 
 is interpreted whenever it is used. The book will also be of interest 
 to the more advanced player, as it contains many hints and suggestions 
 for improving the play. First published under the title, "Auction 
 Bridge for Beginners." 
 
 Drinks 
 
 How to Mix and How to Serve. By PAUL E. LOWE. 
 
 The latest Vest-Pocket Guide for quick reference, containing over 
 350 formulas for mixing and serving individual drinks, and drinks in 
 quantities for receptions and parties, together with a choice selection 
 of toasts for all occasions. 
 
 Who Told You That ?— First Series 
 
 The Story-Teller's Vade-Mecum. Compiled by " QUEX," 
 
 of the Evening News. Third edition. 
 
 " A guinea's worth of laughter for half a crown." — The Weekly Dispatch, 
 
 Who Told You That ? — Second Series 
 
 A further collection of Before and After-Dinner Stories. 
 
 Compiled by "QUEX," of the Evening News. Second 
 
 edition. 
 
 Sunbeams 
 
 A Book of Laughter. 400 stories, the cream of the world's 
 best jokes and anecdotes, from the pages of the Sunday 
 Express. 
 
 More Sunbeams 
 
 Jokes, Stories, and Anecdotes for all occasions. 
 
 Further Sunbeams 
 
 Yet another mirth-provoker sifted from the pages of the 
 Sunday Express. 
 
 11 
 
THE VADE-MECUM SERIES 
 The Diner's -Out Vade-Mecum 
 
 By ALFRED H. MILES. Second edition. 
 
 A pocket handbook on the manners and customs of Society Functions, 
 Dinners, Breakfasts, Limcheons, Teas, At Homes, Receptions, Balls, 
 Suppers, with hints on Etiquette, Dress, Health, Courtship and 
 Marriage, After-Dinner Speaking, Toasts, Indoor Amusements, etc. 
 
 The Conjurer's Vade-Mecum 
 
 By J. F. Orrin (Associate of the Inner Magic Circle, St, 
 George's Hall, W.). With 80 diagrams and illustrations by 
 the author, with a Foreword by WILL GOLDSTON (ist 
 Vice-President of the Magicians' Club, London). 
 
 This volume includes Card Tricks, Handkerchief Tricks, Pretty Tricks 
 
 for Ladies, Thought Reading, etc. 
 
 The Laughter Lover's Vade-Mecum 
 
 Good Stories, Epigrams, Witty Sayings, Jokes, and Rhjmies. 
 Second edition. 
 
 The Poultry -Keeper's Vade-Mecum 
 
 By EDWARD BROWN, F.L.S. (President of the Inter- 
 national Association of Poultry Instructors and Investigators). 
 Fully illustrated. 
 
 " No one engaged in poultry-keeping, either on a large or small scale, 
 would fail to profit by a study of this work." — The Dairy World. 
 
 The Bee-Keeper's Vade-Mecum 
 
 By HENRY GEARY (Certificated Expert British Bee- 
 Keepers' Association). Fully illustrated. Third edition. 
 
 " The whole subject of bee-keeping is dealt with exhaustively Id 
 thirty well-written and admirably illustrated chapters." — The Farmer 
 and Stock-breeder. 
 
 The Typists' Vade-Mecum 
 
 By MARGARET B. OWEN (the World's Champion Typist), 
 with Special Chapters on Setting Out in all branches of 
 Typewriting, by MRS. SMITH CLOUGH (winner of first 
 place in three National Shorthand-Typewriting Contests). 
 
 " Packed full from cover to cover with useful practical hints." — 
 
 The Aberdeen Free Press. 
 
 15 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 THE EVERYDAY SERIES 
 
 Edited by GERTRUDE PAUL 
 
 Each volume gives 366 recipes ; one for every day in the year, including 
 February zgth. Crown 8vo. is. net each. 
 
 The Everyday Cake Book 
 
 By G. P. Containing original recipes by DAME LLOYD 
 GEORGE, Miss NORMA LORIMER, and others. Second 
 edition. 
 
 Coming Fashions Says : " Only to glance through the pages is to make 
 the average woman long to try her hand at some of the 366 tempting 
 recipes set out in the sunplest and most straightforward manner. It 
 also contains useful hints and valuable advice on cake making. It 
 should be included amongst the wedding presents of every young bride." 
 
 The Everyday Pudding Book 
 
 By F. K. One of the most valuable cookery books in exist- 
 ence. Fourth edition. 
 
 The Everyday Soup Book ByG.P. Second edition. 
 
 " Arranged on a most admirable plan. A more useful and well- 
 worked-out manual it would be difficult to find." — Our Home. 
 
 Everyday Meals for Invalids 
 
 By MAY TREMEL. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 These recipes will enable the uninitiated to cook and serve the daintiest, 
 most suitable, and most nourishing little meals for an invalid, without 
 waste, as each recipe is only sufficient for one portion. It is a book 
 which should find a place in every household. 
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS SERIES 
 
 Foolscap 8vo. Cloth. 28. net each. 
 
 " To say that Miss Piatt's ' Practical Hints on Training for the Stage ' is as 
 good as her previous works on ' Playwriting ' and ' Training for the Cinema ' 
 IS to pronounce it a model of its kind." — The Connoisseur. 
 
 " Miss Agnes Piatt's name is a household word in all theatre-land for her 
 power of practical guidance." — The Morning Post. 
 
 Practical Hints on Play-Writing By agnes platt 
 Practical Hints on Training for the Stage 
 
 By AGNES PLATT 
 
 Practical Hints on Acting for the Cinema 
 
 By AGNES PLATT 
 
 Cinema Plays : How to write Them ; How to Sell Them. 
 By EUSTACE HALE BALL, late Scenario Editor and Producer 
 of Solax, Eclair, and other FUm Companies. Third edition. 
 
 16 
 
FICTION 
 
 UnUorm Edition of Historical Romances by 
 
 RAFAEL SABATINI 
 
 Grown 8vo. Cloth. 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 The Lion's Skin 82nd thousand 
 
 A tale of brave deeds and narrow escapes in the days of George I. 
 
 Bardelys the Magnificent 56th thousand 
 
 A romance of the Marquis of Bardelys — favourite at the Court of 
 Louis XIII. 
 
 The Justice of the Duke 43rd thousand 
 
 Episodes in the life of Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois. 
 
 The Gates of Doom 68th thousand 
 
 The adventures of Captain Gaynor, Jacobite agent, in the year of the 
 Rebellion. 
 
 The Strolling Saint 67th thousand 
 
 A picturesque story of love and intrigue in medisBval Italy. 
 
 FANTOMAS DETECTIVE NOVELS 
 
 By PIERRE SOUVESTRE and MARCEL ALLAIN 
 Crown 8vo. Wrappers. 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 A Limb of Satan 
 
 or, the Long Arm of Fantomas. Second edition 
 
 " It is wildly exciting." — The Referee. 
 
 Fantomas Eighth edition 
 
 " By far the best detective novel that I have read for a very long 
 time."— C. K. S., in The Sphere. 
 
 The Exploits of Juve Fourth edition 
 
 " It kept me up an hour and a half after my appointed bedtime." 
 — Punch. 
 
 Messengers of Evil Fifth edition 
 
 " Packed fuU of dramatic surprises, desperate situations, and hair- 
 breadth escapes." — The Aberdeen Journal. 
 
 A Nest of Spies Third edition 
 
 " A book breathless with excitement, and packed with sensation 
 from beginning to end." — The Scotsman. 
 
 A Royal Prisoner Fifth edition 
 
 " Exciting from start to finish." — The Lady's Pictorial. 
 
 Slippery as Sin Third edition 
 
 " Skintight with movement, mystery, and excitement." — Country Life. 
 17 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 Uniform Edition of the ** Joy of Life " Novels by 
 
 CECIL ADAIR 
 
 {Nearly half a million copies in circulation) 
 Grown Svo. Cloth. 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 WHERE RAINBOWS REST 
 
 THE DEAN'S DAUGHTER 
 
 GABRIEL'S GARDEN 
 
 THE SAILS OF LIFE 
 
 MAID OF THE MOONFLOWER 
 
 UNDER THE INCENSE TREES 
 
 sir William Robertson NicoU, in the British Weekly : " Cecil 
 Adair's romances are full of an unforced gaiety. We get a straight- 
 forward story, plenty of love-making, a variety of human interests, 
 with a clean tone and an invigorating belief in goodness. The characters 
 live and move in the world of to-day. The author has a healthy 
 beUef in the power of happiness." 
 
 Small Crown Svo. Cloth. 2s. net. 
 
 HAPPY CHANCE 
 
 GREEN DUSK FOR 
 DREAMS 
 
 THE AZURE LAKE 
 
 THE CACTUS HEDGE 
 
 MONKS -LYONNESS 
 
 A YOUNG AUTOCRAT 
 
 (A Story for Girls) 
 
 QUADRILLE COURT 
 
 FRANCESCA 
 
 CANTACUTE TOWERS 
 
 THE SAILS OF LIFE 
 
 THE QUALITIES OF 
 MERCY 
 
 CRYSTAL'S VICTORY 
 
 (A Story for Girls) 
 
 The Schoolmistress : "... fascinating works ; there is the same 
 bright, wholesome, inspiriting outlook in all of them, from beginning 
 to end." 
 
 18 
 
FICTION 
 
 W0>^ US^ ;d?^(<?^ ;<£7> t<^^ t<^^ C^) L£9^ US^ (cS^ t.:?>l t^f:^ C^iS^t^:^ ^ 
 
 Uniform Edition of Novels by 
 
 NORMA LORIMER 
 
 Grown 8vo. Cloth. 28. net. 
 
 A Wife Out of Egypt Twentieth edition 
 
 " A strong, well-wrought, and human story." — The Daily Telegraph 
 " Fresh and original." — The Evening Standard. 
 
 There Was a King in Egypt Fifth edition 
 
 " A good glamorous romance of the Desert." — The Sketch. 
 
 " A beautiful and thrilUng romance." — The Yorkshire Observer. 
 
 On Desert Altars Sixth edition 
 
 " A stirring and picturesque novel, full of fine descriptive passages 
 . . . engrossing from first to last." — The Morning Post. 
 
 On Etna Fourth edition 
 
 "... our obligements are with the author for a spirited story, 
 pleasantly ornamented with sketches of Sicilian life and landscape." 
 — The Morning Post. 
 
 Mirry-Ann Fourth edition 
 
 " Mirry-Ann is an unusual type of heroine, whose charm is such 
 that she will attract her readers in the same way as she did the 
 inhabitants of the village — of whatever class." — The Lady. 
 
 Josiah's Wife Fourth edition 
 
 " ' Josiah's Wife ' is a very attractive story." — The Sheffield Daily 
 Telegraph. 
 
 The Gods' Carnival Fourth edition 
 
 " This novel is full of the rich, warm colouring of Italian life, 
 with skies at times thunder-black, slashed across with the red of 
 strong tragedy, but toned throughout with the heart-throb of 
 passionate romance and poetry." — The Sheffield Daily Telegraph. 
 
 Catherine Sterling Third edition 
 
 " Norma Lorimer's stories are always well done and entertaining ; . . 
 a thoroughly attractive and realistic story. The Japanese scenes 
 are especially well described." — The Lady's Pictorial. 
 
 19 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 NOVELS BY J. A. T. LLOYD 
 
 " There is behind Mr. Lloyd's work the ' fundamental brain matter ' 
 of the real novelist. He is a skilled and conscientious craftsman of 
 keen observation and real imaginative force." — The Times. 
 
 Crown 8vo. Cloth. 7s. 6d. net. 
 
 THE SKEIN 
 
 PRESTIGE 
 
 THE ATHEIST 
 
 LEILA BRADDOCK 
 
 OUIS ? 
 
 NOVELS OF THE WELSH HILLS 
 
 By EDITH NEPEAN 
 
 " At times an almost Biblical intensity of spiritual poetry is felt in 
 the characters and events. Writing of equal force of exalted vision 
 and emotion is, perhaps, found only in the best work of Sir Hall Caine."- 
 
 A BUNDLE OF MYRRH 7s. 6d. net. 
 
 THE VALLEY OF DESIRE 
 
 CAMBRIA'S FAIR DAUGHTER as. 6d. net. 
 
 PETALS IN THE WIND 
 
 JEWELS IN THE DUST 
 
 GWYNETH OF THE WELSH HILLS 
 
 WELSH LOVE 2S. net. 
 
 t*5^ t<i5^ ^£5^ t£5^ ^iS^ t«:5^C<£^ 
 
 NOVELS OF LIFE IN KENYA 
 
 By NORA K. STRANGE 
 
 " Nora K. Strange is likely to gain considerable popularity for her 
 stories with Kenya as a background." — The Glasgow News. 
 
 Crown 8yo. Cloth. 7s. 6d. net. 
 
 A WIFE IN KENYA 
 
 AN OUTPOST WOOING 
 
 LATTICED WINDOWS 
 
 " We hope it will not be long before Miss Strange again brings us under 
 tbe wonderful spell of Kenya." — The Western Mail. 
 
 20 
 
IMPORTANT REPRINTS 
 
 Grown 8to. Cloth. 38. 6d. net. 
 
 When It Was Dark 
 
 By GUY THORNE. With a frontispiece. 580th thousand 
 
 This famous book has been praised and recommended by the 
 Dean of Durham, the Bishop of Exeter, and the Rev. R. J. 
 Campbell ; while the Bishop of London, preaching at Westminster 
 Abbey, said : " I wonder whether any of you have read that 
 remarkable work of fiction entitled ' When It Was Dark ' ? It 
 paints in wonderful colours what the world would be if for six 
 months the Resurrection might be supposed never to have 
 occurred." 
 
 Henry of Navarre 
 
 By MAY WYNNE. With a frontispiece by H. M. BROCK. 
 
 Twelfth edition. 
 
 " In all French history there is no more romantic character than 
 Henry of Navarre, and here he is most admirably portrayed. 
 We are plunged almost at once into that tense atmosphere which 
 must have hung over Paris while the massacre of St. Bartholomew 
 was being planned, and become thrilled by the stem purpose of 
 Catherine de Medici working to deadly efEect on the mind of the 
 besotted Charles." — The Referee. 
 
 The Hour of Conflict 
 
 By A. HAMILTON GIBBS. Author of " Soundings." 
 
 " A strong, clear-cut plot. The characters of the enormously fat 
 
 ' httle papa ' of the caf 6, and his brother, the six-foot Abb6, 
 
 and of Ruddy, the old Oxford friend, a rank Bohemian, are all 
 
 admirable." — The Times Literary Supplement. 
 
 " It has the elements of a great novel. Well done, Mr. Gibbs." — 
 
 The Morning Post. 
 
 " The London interlude is specially well done." — The Evening News. 
 
 " It is admirably written." — The Sunday Times. 
 
 The Persistent Lovers 
 
 By A. HAMILTON GIBBS. Author of " Soundings." 
 
 " It is bright, cheery, full of dash, and the feel of youth." — 
 The Sunday Times. 
 
 " We have read this story with a sense of enjoyment. The 
 dialogue is unfailingly bright." — The Nation and Athenceum. 
 " Dick is an entirely delightful hero." — The Evening Standard. 
 " There is style and sparkle, and some quite delightful people are 
 introduced." — The Yorkshire Post. 
 
 21 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 Grown 8to. Cloth. 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 Edward and I and Mrs. Honeybun 
 
 By KATE HORN. Author of "The Chrysalis." Fifth 
 
 edition. 
 
 A really humorous story about the minor misfortunes of a young 
 married couple. Anyone who has not met Mrs. Honeybun, the 
 " char," has missed a very great pleasure, which, however, can 
 easily be remedied. 
 
 Damned 
 
 By AN ANONYMOUS AUTHOR. Third edition. 
 
 The strange story, in life and death, of Dolores Trent, young, 
 beautiful, the plaything of fate. Part of the action of this imagina- 
 tive, vivid book takes place in New York. The rest of it takes 
 place in Hell. 
 
 Flaming Youth 
 
 By WARNER FABIAN. Author of "Sailors' Wives." 
 
 225th thousand. 
 
 This book was an instantaneous success and has become a best- 
 seller in America, Australia, and England. It is one of the most 
 entertainingly absorbing novels of recent years, giving an absolutely 
 new point of view on the younger generation. 
 
 NOVELS BY DOLF WYLLARDE 
 
 Crown 8yo. Cloth. 2s. 6(1. net. 
 
 " Always an interesting writer, Miss Wyllarde's style is now crystallizing 
 into something quite admirable. A world which has grown satiated 
 with the doings of 'smart' women will not be weary of Miss Wyllarde's 
 studies in the same direction, since she brings to the work not only 
 insight but understanding. In clear, almost masculine, simplicity of 
 style she, and she alone in the school where she has so many copyists, 
 brings out the humanity of such women." — The Outlook in a review 
 of " Youth will be Served." 
 
 THE CAREER OF BEAUTY DARLING Eighteenth edition 
 
 THE RIDING MASTER Eleventh edition 
 
 TROPICAL TALES Seventh edition 
 
 TEMPERAMENT Fourth edition 
 
 YOUTH WILL BE SERVED Eighth edition 
 
 22 
 
NEW NOVELS 
 
 *<5^ t^» t^5^ (<S^ t*S^(^i (i^«^^ *<tf^t<!^ (*^ t<i!^ ts:^ »<S?^ ««£5^ US?^ 
 
 STANLEY PAUL'S LATEST 
 NOVELS 
 
 Grown 8vo. Cloth. 7s. 6d. net. 
 
 Jacob's Well 
 
 By PIERRE BENOIT. Author of " The Queen of Atlantis," 
 etc. 
 
 Pierre Benoit is one of the comparatively small group of French 
 novelists who have a large and faithful following among English 
 readers. " The Queen of Atlantis," the most recent of his trans- 
 lated works, enjoyed a remarkable success in this country, and 
 now comes " Jacob's Well," which has been recognized by the 
 French critics as the best novel that Benoit has yet written. It 
 has become almost a cult in Paris, and has sold to the tune of 
 eighty-five thousand copies. " Jacob's Well " is the story of a 
 beautiful Jewish dancer who fights her way through life between 
 two instinctive forces : her love for the glamour and sparkle of 
 Paris Ufe and the call of her blood. She is alternately the brilliant 
 cocote and the fiery ideahst. The Paris scenes, as one would 
 expect, are vividly drawn, and the glimpses of Ufe in Palestine 
 will remain a haunting memory. 
 
 A film version of " Jacob's Well " will shortly be shown in this 
 country. 
 
 Corinna 
 
 By " RITA." Author of " Peg the Rake," etc. 
 
 No one can write a straightforward love story with quite so 
 m.uch verve and charm as " Rita." She has a sweetness of style, 
 a freshness, a power of conjuring up, without apparent effort, 
 an atmosphere of clean vitality and joyousness that have endeared 
 her to a, million readers. Add to these qualities the sure touch 
 of a practised hand, and you have a very good reason why this 
 revised edition of " Corinna " is likely to meet with a warm 
 welcome. " Corinna " is the story of a girl who is so wholly in 
 love with her art that she is afraid of life. The fortunate possessor 
 of a sparkling wit and peerless beauty, she is very far from being 
 happy. Praise and fame have been showered upon her, but 
 something is amiss, and when that something comes her way, 
 she is overwhelmed and tries to fight it. We witness all the 
 stress and turmoil in Corinna's soul as she slowly yields to the 
 force of love, and finally learns the meaning of complete happiness. 
 
 23 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 U:?^ (<£^ C(if^ C:£^ t^:?) C^:?^ t^!^ U£?^ C:^ (^S^ (<:?) t^ 
 
 The Severed Hand 
 
 By MATILDE SERAO. author of " Souls Divided," etc. 
 
 English readers would do well to become acquainted with the works 
 of some of the great contemporary writers of other countries, 
 and among these Matilde Serao, the famous Italian novelist, 
 commands attention. Her unquestioned genius, and her popu- 
 larity in her own land, justify this translation of " The Severed 
 Hand," a story of mystery, of love, of hate, and triumphant 
 devotion. It is a remarkable tale, original in conception, written 
 in a crisp though engaging style, and full of vivid descriptions and 
 unexpected developments. The author's portrait of Marcus 
 Henner, the hypnotist doctor, will remain a haunting memory 
 long after the reader has placed " The Severed Hand " upon the 
 shelf that he devotes to good novels. 
 
 Windows Facing West 
 
 By VIRGINIA MACFADYEN 
 
 This is Miss MacFadyen's first novel. She has succeeded in 
 handling a delicate and a rather ambitious theme with courage 
 and considerable originality. It is a sympathetic study of a 
 very lovely girl who is caught in the drift of circumstance and 
 dragged to a level on which her more fortunate, and mostly less 
 beautiful, sisters look down with contempt. Their lack of under- 
 standing and the sting of their scorn force her to seek refuge in 
 pride. Thenceforward she lives her own life, not entirely a 
 wanton one, but strictly in conformity with her new ambitions 
 and her own code of morals. The story is told so swiftly, and is 
 so fascinating in its variety of scenes and emotions that the 
 reader will scarcely realize at the end that he has been present 
 at the dissection of a woman's soul. 
 
 The Tragedy of Trifles 
 
 By E. EVERETT-GREEN, author of "The Revolt of 
 VVaydolyn," etc. 
 
 Miss Everett-Green never forgets that the chief function of a 
 novelist is to tell a tale, and it may be truthfully recorded that 
 very few of her contemporaries have so many excellent stories to 
 their credit. " The Tragedy of Trifles " is no exception. It 
 relates how Alaric, Lord Castleton, a man of great wealth blessed 
 with children, and an angel of a wife, through his constant nagging, 
 absurd prejudices, and blind selfishness made a hell of his heaven. 
 Such is the bare theme, true to life, but wholly attractive in its 
 realism ; and it is played against the exquisitely lovely background 
 of an old-time English manor house. 
 
 24 
 
NEW NOVELS 
 
 Ci5^ <**^ t,:^ t«£!»l t*^ tiSS^ (tff»J (<i^ tis5»l t<!S^ (<!S?^ t«^^ (^ 
 
 The Mohicans of Paris 
 
 By ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 
 
 Dumas' numerous admirers have long sought a readable version 
 of this extraordinary romance which, appearing day by day in 
 the pages of a popular journal, thrilled and entertained Paris 
 for four years. Encouraged by the success which has attended 
 our publication of the only English editions of " The Prussian 
 Terror," " The Neapolitan Lovers," " A Life's Ambition," and 
 others, we have arranged to issue this great work in two parts, 
 each complete in itself, of which this is the first. It is a book 
 that wiU never grow old, for the reason that the counterparts of 
 its characters are as easily discoverable in Paris to-day as in 
 1827, in which year the story opens. This is the first EngUsh 
 version of a tale that should have been translated long ago, if 
 only on account of its wonderfully sustained excitement. It is 
 well edited, and has an Introduction by Mr. R. S. Gamett. 
 
 The Red Mill Mystery 
 
 By DETECTIVE DUNN, author of "The Beautiful DevU," 
 etc. 
 
 Detective Dunn, whose thrilling stories, " The Beautiful Devil " 
 and " A Queen of Crooks," were based on his experience of the 
 underworld, has again turned his knowledge to excellent account. 
 This time the narrative centres round a daring and resourceful 
 criminal — Alfred Blackstock — whose abnormal mind coolly 
 regards murder as the shortest way out of a difficulty. Women 
 figure largely in his exploits, and he is never long without some 
 amorous adventure. The plot is unfolded in a series of surprises, 
 and from the mystery of the murder in the Red Mill at the com- 
 mencement of the story to its tragic elucidation the interest 
 never ceases. 
 
 The Lord of Terror 
 
 By MARCEL ALLAIN, part author of " Fantomas." etc. 
 
 Fant6mas is alive again I That amazing hero of sensational 
 crimes and cruelties never really died, and here, in this first 
 volume of a new series of the famous " Fant6mas " detective 
 stories we have the " Lord of Terror " at work again, as ruthless, 
 as ingenious, and as elusive as ever. Again the arch-criminal 
 is faced by Juve, the police-of&cer, and the journalist, Jerome 
 Fandor. The plot turns on the theft of diamonds valued at 
 ten miUion francs, and entrusted by impoverished Russian 
 refugees for sale to the Compte de Vautreuil, the father of the 
 fair Josette, and from cover to cover the book hums with thrilling 
 episodes and baffling mysteries. 
 
 25 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 A Bundle of Myrrh 
 
 By EDITH NEPEAN, author of " The VaUey of Desire," etc 
 
 Mrs. Edith Nepean, who has made a special niche for hersell 
 among novelists by her vivid and accurate pictures of Wales 
 and the Welsh, has never written a more engaging book than 
 this, her eighth novel. It is a tale of the deathless love of Estyn 
 Morgan for a maid of the Welsh hills — Nan Vaughan, wilful, 
 bewitching, passionately loyal, certainly the most attractive 
 figure in all Mrs. Nepean's gallery of heroines. Set among the 
 rolling plains and precipitous crags of rural Wales, and for a 
 while by way of contrast in the boudoirs of Mayfair, " A Bundle 
 of Myrrh " has all the freshness, the charm of description, and 
 the genuine love of animals that we have leamt to associate with 
 this author's books. A well-known critic recently wrote of her 
 novels that " writing of equal force is perhaps found only in 
 the best work of Sir Hall Caine." 
 
 A Wife in Kenya 
 
 By NORA K. STRANGE, author of " An Outpost Wooing," 
 etc. 
 
 In this, her latest novel. Miss Strange has given us a brilliant 
 study of a seemingly ill-matched couple who, in the sunshine 
 and grandeur of Kenya Colony, find the flower of love. Those 
 who read " An Outpost Wooing " will be eager to fall once more 
 under the spell of the author's fragrant descriptions ; and everyone 
 wiU foresee in the mating of a boy-man, a splendid athlete who 
 has more pluck than tact, with a super-sensitive girl a fascinating 
 and eventful story. When first we meet these two they are 
 bewildered, almost on the point of separation ; but Ufe in Kenya 
 teaches them how, amongst other things, hearts may be lost in 
 the jungle. 
 
 The Waddington Cipher 
 
 By WILLIAM JOHNSTON, author of "The Apartment 
 Next Door." 
 
 Waddington Hurd was interrupted in the middle of a Bohemian 
 party by the delivery of a startling telegram : " If you would 
 prevent murder being done come at once to Ortonville." From 
 the moment he sets foot in that out-of-the-way little town, Waddy 
 finds himself involved in a battle-royal between two old men, hi 
 uncles, who are independently and feverishly searching for some 
 famous family jewels. The story moves swiftly to its climax. 
 A girl is kidnapped, murder is attempted ; a hunckback and a 
 queer old caretaker play their part — to be brief, this is a rattling 
 good mystery story, with frequent flashes of humour and a power 
 of characterization too rarely found in fiction of its kind. 
 
NEW NOVELS 
 Joanna Sets to Work 
 
 By THOMAS COBB, author of "The Late Mr. Beverley," etc. 
 
 An author who has at least fifty novels to his credit can safely 
 be counted upon to satisfy the public taste, and Mr. Cobb in 
 his latest book ably maintains his reputation. It is a charming 
 story, giving a deHghtfuUy humorous picture of Joanna Netley, 
 whose mission in life is to put right the affairs — love affairs, of 
 course — of other people. Her attempt to solve the matrimonial 
 troubles of a certain very modem woman friend fails miserably, 
 and causes a tangle of droll complications from which Joanna 
 extricates herself with difficulty — but also with a husband who 
 will protect her from the dangers of future philanthropic activities. 
 This light-hearted domestic comedy is sure of a welcome from 
 all who appreciate Mr. Cobb in his gayest of moods. 
 
 Slag and Gold 
 
 By PHIL H. MOORE, author of " With Gun and Rod In 
 Canada." 
 
 A vivid story of the gold camps of northern Ontario. The hero 
 is a product of the picturesque underworld of the old-time West. 
 He struggles between two tendencies, those of his sire, who was 
 a notorious card-sharper and trained him accordingly, and those 
 of his mother, who was an idealist. He falls in love with an 
 alluring girl who possesses a taste for adventure, but is above him 
 in social standing. An oily mining stockbroker, the rival of the 
 hero, interferes with the course of true love, and many adventures 
 follow. The author knows his subject. The atmosphere of the 
 mining camp and the picture of the forest fire are authentic. 
 Interwoven is a splendid dog story. 
 
 The Portland Place Mystery 
 
 By CHARLES KINGSTON, author of "A Miscarriage of 
 Justice," etc. 
 
 Dorcas Heritage, revolting against village life, comes to London 
 with the intention of making a name for herself without any man's 
 aid. Employed as secretary by the wife of an M.P., she becomes 
 involved in a series of events which brings her into contact with a 
 night club, sends her on to the stage, where she scores a great 
 success, and when everything is going well threatens to ruin her 
 because of the murder of her employer. Mr. Kingston's novel is 
 full of swift action and mystery, and the reader is kept on the 
 }ut vivt until the last line. 
 
 27 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 Wine of Death 
 
 By ANTHONY ARMSTRONG, author of " The Lure of the 
 Past," etc. 
 
 A stirring tale of adventure in the ancient land of Rutu, in which 
 some may trace a likeness to the lost continent of Atlantis. The 
 story tells of how the war-like Children of the Wave, led by 
 Amenes, captain of the bodyguard, rose against the tyranny of 
 The Voice, their cruel but invisible ruler. It tells of Amenes' 
 capture and imprisonment beneath the City of the Golden Gates, 
 of thrilling escapes by way of an underground river and whirlpool, 
 of tortures and poisonings, of the love of a princess — and another. 
 The last battle is fought far down in the bowels of the earth, and 
 Amenes wins through to destroy the evil power of The Voice 
 and the horrible sacrifice of the Wine of Deathi 
 
 Iridescence 
 
 By CECIL ADAIR, author of " Dawn Island," etc. 
 
 Charm is undoubtedly the quality that has made the name of 
 Cecil Adair a beloved one among a host of readers, both young and 
 old. In her new novel. " Iridescence," she takes us back to her 
 favourite setting — Italy, with its fair gardens and translucent 
 lakes which she knows so well and can describe so admirably. 
 In such surroundings lives her heroine, a girl artist whose life is 
 a lonely one until she meets a strange old man around whom 
 there Imgers a mystery. She becomes involved in the old man's 
 afiairs, and incidentally those of his son, who is believed to be a 
 monster of wickedness. Many lively incidents follow, and the 
 tale closes with an unexpected cUmax in which black is turned 
 to white by the magic of love. 
 
 The Rose of Beam 
 
 By E. G. EVERSLEIGH 
 
 This romance of Hortense de la Vyne, the lovely " Rose of B4am," 
 and an adventurous young nobleman, Gaston de Corisante, whom 
 she meets on a journey to her uncle's cha.teau in the year 1788, 
 has an originality of plot and a charm in the telUng that mark 
 it as an historical novel beyond the ordinary run. Hortense is 
 forced into an unwelcome marriage. Then comes the rising of 
 the maddened peasantry, and her cowardly husband flees in 
 terror, leaving her to the mercy of the mob. Events move swiftly. 
 There are grim pictures, bright with the blood-red colouring of 
 the horror that devastated France ; there are breathless escapes 
 and pursuits, and there is a denouement that will leave the reader 
 both surprised and satisfied. 
 
 28 
 
NEW NOVELS 
 
 ttfl^ti^ t^lt^l C^lt^ t^lC^l C^lC^l Cf^lC^ t^) t^lt^lC^) C^lt^l c^i ;^i c^i t^i t<^>i:<^ («^ ta^=^ 
 
 Ghost Hall 
 
 By E. EVERETT-GREEN, author of "The Tragedy of 
 Trifles," etc. 
 
 Captain Dunston Guest suddenly fiijds himself master of Guest 
 (or Ghost) Hall, left him by an unknown kinsman. There had 
 been a long feud between his family and their nearest neighbours 
 at Quest Hall, for which neither he nor the girl lately come into 
 the property have any use. Her sole interest at the moment is 
 in searching for an unknown man who saved her father's life. 
 An impostor appears on the scene and causes complications, 
 which are brought to a climax by the activities of the ghost 
 which has won such a grim name for an otherwise very beautiful 
 and peaceful manor house. As prophesied in an ancient saw, 
 Quest and Guest at last join hands and lands, but not before 
 the reader has had his meed of thrills in an absorbing story well 
 up to Miss Everett-Green's high standard. 
 
 A Miscarriage of Justice 
 
 By CHARLES KINGSTON, author of " The Portland Place 
 Mystery," etc. 
 
 WiUiam Cheddle, optimist and tramp, is falsely accused of the 
 murder of Sir Henry Ditton. He has been outwitted and victimized 
 by a chance acquaintance on the road who happens to have a 
 special reason for " removing " the baronet. 'VVheh the crime is 
 discovered, one tramp goes into penal servitude, and the other 
 goes into society, his position complicated by the fact that the 
 girl he wishes to marry is doing her best to prove the innocence 
 of the convicted man. Cheddle's daughter also plays a very 
 prominent part in a story which moves round a very original 
 plot and is as full of character as it is of surprises. 
 
 Juve in the Dock 
 
 By MARCEL ALLAIN. author of " The Lord of Terror," etc. 
 
 Another Fantdmas book — and one of the best of the fascinating 
 series. Disguised as a " Receiver of Stolen Goods," the inde- 
 fatigable Juve plans to get in touch with the " Lord of Terror " 
 in connection with a mysterious document purporting to reveal 
 the place of concealment of a hidden treasure, and so effect the 
 malefactor's arrest. But once more the Arch-Criminal proves too 
 much for the famous detective and his staunch ally, the journaUst, 
 Jerome Fandor. Again and again Fant6mas, by some master 
 stroke of audacity, turns the tables and escapes to plot fresh 
 villainies. 
 
 29 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 (^^ (e:?^b£^ C^^ Cttf^ C^^(<^) (^IC^^ b^^ttf^^ t^^t^l (^}t^^ (^1 C^^ t^^C^}C^)^?>)t^)^^ t^lt^lt^t 
 
 Fiske the Lame 
 
 By MENDELE MOCKER SEFORIM 
 
 Tliis is a simple story, full of humour and pathos, by a very great 
 writer whose work has not before been made accessible to the 
 English reader. Mendele Mocker Seforim was bom in 1836 and 
 died in 1915. He is known among those conversant with Yiddish 
 literature as the Jewish Cervantes, and " Fiske the Lame " is 
 usually considered his masterpiece. It deals poignantly with 
 Jewish life in Russia, with which Seforim was thoroughly 
 acquainted, and has for its dramatis persones the members, and 
 particularly the leader, of a notorious gang of vagabonds. The 
 characterization is masterly. Moreover, the scenic descriptions 
 and appreciations of nature throughout the book are done with 
 the sure and exquisite touch of a poet, and do much to enhance 
 the magic of Seforim's gifts as a teller of tales. 
 
 One Way Street 
 
 By BEALE DAVIS 
 
 " One Way Street " is the story of a youthful member of the 
 American Diplomatic Service and his unfortunate entanglement 
 with London's gayest, ultra-smart social set. The scene shifts 
 about fashionable Europe, from Ix)ndon to Madrid, from 
 Monte Carlo back to London, and then to a thrilling dinovement 
 in Paris. TTie author is a diplomat, and has Uved the lite he 
 describes, hence the note of authenticity in his pictures of society 
 in several capitals of Europe. He has served at many embassies, 
 notably London, Copenhagen, and Madrid. Now, returned to 
 private Ufe, he has written this vivid story with his cosmopolitan 
 experience as a background. " One Way Street " will appear 
 shortly as a film play. 
 
 Whispering Trees 
 
 By CECIL ADAIR, author of " Iridescence," etc. 
 
 Close to the shores of the C6te du Sol, a semi-tropical French 
 Colony, where the climate is ever suave and tender and the flowers 
 are more lovely than anywhere else in the world, stood a lonely 
 house called Casuarina or Whispering Trees. It was here that 
 Barbara St. Maur came into contact with a grim tragedy and here 
 also she first met romance. Her story is one of sunshine and 
 swift shadow, of love and youth and the open air. It sparkles 
 with the poetry of nature, and the story itself is invested with that 
 power to intensify each incident and to pile up the suspense which 
 distinguishes Cecil Adair in everything she writes. 
 
 30 
 
NEW NOVELS 
 
 The Caid 
 
 A Love Story of Morocco. By L. NOEL 
 
 Evelyn Fletton, the heroine of this romance, has been brought 
 on her honeymoon to the ancient Moorish city o£ Marrakesh. 
 Refined, sensitive, very feminine, she has married without knowing 
 what love is, or can be. Her husband, she discovers too late, is 
 coarse and brutal, and intends to obtain business concessions 
 from the Caid Abdul el Ramara by means of her alluring beauty. 
 She is persuaded to accompany these two men to the latter's 
 fortress home amongst the Atlas mountains. Evel3m has developed 
 a passion for the Caid, who seems to her all that a man should 
 be : brave, chivalrous, handsome, fierce in the face of his enemies, 
 courteous and gentle to those he loves. Their love, while it lasts, 
 is beautiful — ^built of flaming sunshine and desert winds and the 
 ghnt of distant snow, the sensuous call of Moorish pipes and the 
 throb of Moorish drums. 
 
 The Spider and the Fly 
 
 By ALFRED DE VIGNY. Translated from the French by 
 Madge Pemberton. 
 
 A book that transplants us to the Court of Louis XIII and his 
 evil genius, the Cardinal Duke, in the city where D'Artagnan 
 duelled, and gallant Cyrano loved and rhymed ; when France was 
 ruled by priestcraft, and her monarch served by musketeers more 
 loyal than their master. Those whom the Gods love die young, 
 and so we follow the footsteps of Cinq-Mars to the scaffold through 
 tortuous ways of gallantry, rebellion, and political intrigue, a prey 
 to the vaulting ambition that o'erleaps itself. A story full of 
 the stuff of adventure and the spirit of the age when war was 
 chivalry and love romance. 
 
 Adventurers at Rye Town 
 
 By MAUD STEPNEY RAWSON. Author of "A Lady of 
 the Regency," "Tales of Rye Town." 
 
 In her new novel Mrs. Stepney Rawson has gone back to her old 
 love, the Romney Marsh country, unstaleable in beauty and 
 suggestion throughout the ages. Though her Adventurers this 
 time are people of to-day, she has infused into them and their 
 doings that rare quality of the unexpected which reflects the 
 marsh-land, that spirit of gay discovery which enfolds all who 
 approach the old red town and its people. Here is a story of April 
 moods, in which the sunshine predominates, an open-air story that 
 takes the reader far from cities and their toil and sorrow, and 
 brings " a truce from cares." 
 
 31 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 Messrs. Stanley Paul are publishing the two following new novels 
 
 at popular prices, believing that they will appeal to a very large 
 
 public and thereby justify the experiment. 
 
 The Rule of the Beasts 
 
 By V. T. MURRAY. Crown 8vo. 5s. net. 
 
 Imagine a woiid catastrophe in which all mankind, save a small 
 group of friends, is exterminated. Upon that little coterie depends 
 the future of the world, and the problem is further complicated by 
 the fact that the beasts of the field, immune from the cataclysm, 
 outnumber this remnant of humanity by their millions and, 
 gaining confidence at their sudden freedom from slavery, take up 
 the reins of government. As their leader they elect Dux, a 
 magnificent thoroughbred, who both loves and understands his 
 former masters. 
 
 This is the striking theme of " The Rule of the Beasts." It is a 
 witty book, tackling with a light but philosophic touch many 
 fundamental problems, forcing the reader to smile and think at 
 the same time, and keeping him interested in the story all the 
 while. Some will call it a prophecy, others a parable, but every- 
 one will agree that it is a powerful and imaginative tale, a book 
 that discriminating readers will take to their hearts. 
 
 The Shadow Wife 
 
 By E. MARIA ALBANESI. Author of " SaUy in Her AUey." 
 
 Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 Novelists and poets have praised blue eyes since time began. Now 
 Nora Temple's eyes were so blue that they were like big sapphires : 
 the kind of eyes that make a man's blood rush to bis head and his 
 heart beat furiously. So it was only natural that when Justin 
 Durham, a young American engineer on his way from New York 
 to Arizona, met Nora Temple, he should fall head over heels in 
 love with her and promise to protect her from the rough life to 
 which she was going. Their adventures both in New York and in 
 the mining town are thrilling in the extreme, and Justin's passionate 
 devotion for the lonely English girl is described with all the 
 emotional power of which the author of " Sally in Her Alley " — 
 one of the most successful novels of last year — is mistress. 
 It is an enchanting book, worthy to stand beside Madame 
 Albanesi's very best work. 
 
STOP PRESS ! ! ! 
 
 The following books were added 
 
 to oar list while this Catalogue 
 
 was at press. 
 
 THE ROGUE 
 
 By T. W. H. CROSLAND 
 The only novel that the author 
 of "The Unspeakable Scot" 
 ever wrote. Now published for 
 the first time. 5s. net. 
 
 EROS By J. A. T. LLOYD 
 
 A powerful novel by the author 
 of " Prestige," which was des- 
 cribed by The Times as " A 
 'New Grub Street' up-to-date, 
 written with a greater vivacity 
 than George Gissing." 
 
 7s. 6d. net. 
 
 A CRY IN THE NIGHT 
 
 By PEDRO MATA 
 
 Translated by H. V. Hamilton. 
 
 A vivid story of Madrid society 
 
 life. The best-seller in Spain. 
 
 7s. 6d. net. 
 
 MOURNE FOLK 
 
 By LOUISE McKAY 
 Author of "The Irish at Home," 
 " The Mountains of Moume." 
 With illustrations by J. W, Cassy. 
 Sketches of Irish life and 
 character in the beautiful 
 Moume country, County Down. 
 ss. 6d. net. 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 RECENT FICTION 
 Grown 8to. Cloth. 7s. 6d. net. 
 
 ADAIR, CECIL 
 
 Silver Star-Dust 
 Dawn Island 
 Happy Chancb 
 Hbristal's Wifb 
 Angel's Tzars 
 
 ARMSTRONG, ANTHONY 
 
 Thb Heart of a Slave Girl 
 The Lure of tke Past 
 The Love of Prince 
 Raamesss 
 
 BALMER, EDWIN 
 
 Her Great Moment 
 The Indian Drum 
 
 BOYLESVE, RENE 
 
 A Gentlewoman of France 
 
 CARPENTER, GRANT 
 
 Long Sweetening 
 
 COBB, THOMAS 
 
 The Late Mr. Beverly 
 One Who Passed By 
 The Deception of Ursula 
 
 d'anethan, baroness 
 
 ALBERT 
 
 The Twin-Soul of O'Take 
 San 
 
 dimitrieva, v. I. 
 
 Love's Anvil 
 
 DRUMMOND, HAMILTON 
 
 Chattels 
 
 The Betrayers 
 
 DUMAS, ALEXANDRE 
 
 A Life's Ambition 
 
 DUNN, DETECTIVE 
 
 The Beautiful Devil 
 A Queen of Crooks 
 
 EVERETT-GREEN, E, 
 
 The Tyrant of Tylecouri 
 The Revolt of Waydolym 
 LossiB of the Mill 
 
 FABIAN, WARNER 
 
 Sailors' Wives 
 
 GILLMAN, GURNER 
 
 There is a Tide 
 
 GRACE, ARMINE 
 
 The Cloak of St. Martin 
 
 GRANT, MARY GEARY 
 
 Invisible Wings 
 
 HOLLAND, RUPERT SAR- 
 GENT 
 
 The Mystery of the " Opal " 
 The Man in the Moonlight 
 
 HORN, KATE 
 
 The Chrysalis 
 Who's That a'Calling 
 
 HUNT, VIOLET 
 
 Their Hearts 
 
 KAYE, MICHAEL W. 
 
 The King's Indiscretiob 
 
 KENNEDY, WILLIAM A. 
 
 The Invader's Son 
 
 KINGSTON, CHARLES 
 
 Stolen Virtue 
 
 KUPRIN, A. I, 
 
 Sasha 
 
 LE OUEUX, WILLIAM 
 
 FiNB Feathers 
 Tracked by Wireless 
 Thb Fifth Finger 
 
 34 
 
RECENT FICTION 
 
 LIVINGSTON, ARMSTRONG 
 
 The Juju-Man 
 The Mystery of the Twin 
 Rubies 
 
 LLOYD, J. A. T. 
 
 The Skein 
 Prestige 
 The Atheist 
 Leila Braddock 
 Quis ? 
 
 MARSHALL, IRIS 
 
 Souls of Fire 
 
 The Pitcher of Fate 
 
 MILAN, RENE 
 
 The Undying Race 
 
 MORGAN-DE-GROOT, Dr. J. 
 
 Gladys 
 Wynningford 
 Ousting Louise 
 Passionate Owen 
 
 MOSELEY, SYDNEY A. 
 
 A Singular People 
 Love's Ordeal 
 
 MOTTA, LUIGI 
 
 The Princess of the Roses 
 
 MURRAY, V. TORLESSE 
 
 The Call of Life 
 Surplus Goods 
 
 NELSON, J. J. 
 
 A Man of Parts 
 
 NEPEAN, EDITH 
 
 The Valley of Desire 
 
 PARRISH, RANDALL 
 
 The Case and the Girl 
 
 REID, CAPTAIN ERIC 
 
 Spears of Deliverance 
 
 RAYMOND, A., and A. 
 BUNIN 
 
 Amongst the Aristocracy 
 
 of the Ghetto 
 Film-Struck 
 
 SERAO, MATILDE 
 
 Souls Divided 
 
 SHAW, BARTON 
 
 A Strong Man Armed 
 
 SLADEN, DOUGLAS 
 
 The Crystal and the 
 Sphinx 
 
 STIRLING, ELIZABETH 
 
 (Lady Stirling of Glorat) 
 
 Barbara Mary 
 
 A Daughter of Martha 
 
 Sweet Aloes 
 
 STRANGE, NORA K. 
 
 An Outpost Wooing 
 Latticed Windows 
 
 ST. JOHN, THEA 
 
 The Bride of the Revolu- 
 tion 
 
 UPRIGHT, BLANCHE 
 
 The Valley of Content 
 
 WASSERMANN, J. 
 
 The Goose Man 
 
 WENTWORTH-JAMES, 
 
 GERTIE DE S. 
 
 Secret Places 
 
 WILLIAMS, H. NOEL 
 
 The Moneylender Inter. 
 
 VENES 
 
 WYNNE, MAY 
 
 A King in the Lists 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 CHEAP EDITIONS 
 Grown Sto. Cloth. 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 RAFAEL SABATINI 
 
 The Strolling Saint 
 The Lion's Skin 
 The Justice of the Duke 
 Bardelys the Magnifi- 
 cent 
 Gates of Doom 
 
 A. HAMILTON GIBBS 
 
 The Hour of Conflict 
 The Persistent Lovers 
 
 GUY THORNE 
 
 When It Was Dark 
 
 FANTOMAS DETECTIVE 
 STORIES 
 
 Fantomas 
 A Limb of Satan 
 The Exploits of Juve 
 Messengers of Evil 
 A Royal Prisoner 
 A Nest of Spies 
 Slippery as Sin 
 
 MAY WYNNE 
 
 Henry of Navarre 
 
 Crown 8vo. Cloth. 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 CECIL ADAIR 
 
 Gabriel's Garden 
 The Sails of Life 
 Where Rainbows Rest 
 The Dean's Daughter 
 Under the Incense Trees 
 Maid of the Moonflower 
 
 EDITH NEPEAN 
 
 Cambria's Fair Daughter 
 Petals in the Wind 
 Jewels in the Dust 
 Gwyneth of the Welsh 
 
 Hills 
 
 DOLF WYLLARDE 
 
 Temperament 
 
 The Riding Master 
 
 The Career of Beauty 
 
 Darling 
 Tropical Tales 
 Youth Will Be Served 
 
 KATE HORN 
 
 Edward and I and Mrs. 
 
 HONEYBUN 
 
 WARNER FABIAN 
 
 Flaming Youth 
 
 ANONYMOUS 
 
 Damned 
 
 36 
 
CHEAP EDITIONS 
 
 Picture Wrapper. Cloth. 2s. net. 
 
 NORMA LORIMER 
 
 On Etna 
 Mirry-Ann 
 Josiah's Wife 
 On Desert Altars 
 The Gods' Carnival 
 Catherine Sterling 
 A Wife Out of Egypt 
 There Was a King in 
 Egypt 
 
 CECIL ADAIR 
 
 Happy Chance 
 
 Green Dusk for Dreams 
 
 The Azure Lake 
 
 The Cactus Hedge 
 
 Monks-Lyonness 
 
 Quadrille Court 
 
 Francesca 
 
 Maid of the Moonflower 
 
 Cantacute Towers 
 
 The Sails of Life 
 
 The Qualities of Mercy 
 
 EFFIE A. ROWLANDS 
 
 A Splendid Destiny 
 Little Lady Charles 
 The Man She Married 
 Beneath a Spell 
 The House of Sunshine 
 Love's Mask 
 
 EDITH NEPEAN 
 
 Welsh Love 
 
 H. NOEL WILLIAMS 
 
 The Grasshampton Stable 
 
 KEBLE HOWARD 
 
 The Cheerful-JCnave 
 
 CHARLES E. PEARCE 
 
 Corinthian Jack 
 
 t^tt^H^H^Hia^^.i^i^<^i 
 
 87 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 C^> L^^ C^^«^) t<:9^ t^) 1^) t^^ «<^t t^^ %^^U^ t(«nt<^)t^^ (<^ t^l (^^ Ce^ t^t t<^ (^)(^>) C<^^(«^ «,tf^ 
 
 RECENT BOOKS 
 Napoleon in Exile at Elba 
 
 (1814-1815). By NORWOOD YOUNG. With a chapter on the 
 iconography of Napoleon at Elba, by A. M. BROADLBY. With 50 
 illustrations. Demy 8 vo. Cloth gilt 31s. net. 
 
 Bolshevist Russia 
 
 By ETIENNE ANTONELLI (Charrf de Conference \ la FacultA du 
 Droit d« Paris ; Professeur au College Livres et Science Sociale). 
 Demy 8vo. Cloth gilt. 12s. 6d. net. 
 
 The German Secret Service 
 
 By COLONEL W. NICOLAI, Chief of the German Intelligence Depart- 
 ment dviring the War. Translated by GEORGE RENWICK (the 
 Daily Chronicle Special Correspondent). Demy Svo. Cloth, los. 6d. 
 net. 
 
 Speaking of the Turks 
 
 By MUFTY-ZADE K. ZIA BEY. Large Crown Svo. Cloth. 81. 6d. 
 net. 
 
 A History of Penal Methods 
 
 Criminals, Witches, Lunatics. By GEORGE IVES, M.A. Demy 8vd. 
 los. 6d. net. 
 
 Famous Judges and Famous Trials 
 
 By CHARLES KINGSTON. Demy 8vo. Cloth, illustrated. izs.6d. 
 net. 
 
 The Origin of Life 
 
 By DR. HOLLICK. Including all the author's former books, "The 
 Marriage Guide," etc. Fully illustrated. Demy Svo. Cloth. 15s. net. 
 
 A Gallery of Rogues 
 
 By CHARLES KINGSTON. Demy Svo. Qoth, Illustrated, izs.6ii.net. 
 
 The Psychology of Behaviour 
 
 By DR. ELIZABETH SEVERN, author of " Psycho-Therapy." 
 Large Crown Svo. Cloth. Si. 6d. net. 
 
 Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo 
 
 Edited with a Biography of Juliette Drouet, by LOUIS GUIMBAUD. 
 Translated by LADY THEODORA DAVIDSON. lUustrated. 
 Large Crown Svo. 7s. S**- net. 
 
 Madame Vestris and Her Times 
 
 By CHARLES E. PEARCE, author of " Polly Peachum : The Story 
 of the Beggar's Opera and Polly," etc. Demy Svo. Cloth, 
 illustrated. i6s. net. 
 
 Polly Peachum 
 
 The Story of " The Beggar's Opera " and " Polly." By CHARLES 
 E. PEARCE, author ef " The Amazing Duchess," etc Crown Svo. 
 Cloth, is. 6d. net. (Tenth thousand.) 
 W 
 
RECENT BOOKS 
 
 Scoops 
 
 By HARRY J. GRBENWALL, avithor of " The DnderwoiM of Paris," 
 etc Demy Svo. los. 64. net. 
 
 Society Sensations 
 
 By CHARLES KINGSTON. Demy Svo. Cloth. 12s. 6<i. net 
 
 Cupid's Carnival 
 
 By JOHN SUMMERS. An original Comic Opera In Two Acts. 
 Crown Svo. Paper. i». net. 
 
 Green Room Gossip 
 
 By ARCHIBALD HADDON. Crown Svo. Cloth. «s. net. 
 
 The Much Chosen Race 
 
 By SYDNEY A. MOSELEY, author of " Haunts of the Gay East," 
 etc. Crown 8v». 5s. net. 
 
 The Mysterious Medium 
 
 By SYDNEY A. MOSELEY. A striking indictment of Spiritualism. 
 Crown Svo. Cloth. %s. net. 
 
 Radio Simplified . 
 
 What it is. How t« Build and Operate the Apparatus. By LEWIS 
 F. KENDALL and ROBERT PHILIP KOEHLER. Crown Svo. 
 Cloth, illustrated, s*- i>et 
 
 Training for the Track, Field and Road 
 
 By HARRY ANDREWS, Official Trainer to the A.A.A., etc. Crowo 
 Svo. Cloth, with illustratioBS. is. 64. net. 
 
 Croquet 
 
 By THE RIGHT HON. LORD TOLLEMACHE. Demy Svo. Cloth 
 gilt, with 1 09 photographs, and a large coloured plan of the court. 
 tos. 6d. net. 
 
 Short Cuts to First Aid 
 
 By a METROPOLITAN POLICE SURGEON OF THE R.A.M.C. 
 6i X 3i- grf- aet. 
 
 Five Years' Hell in a Country Parish 
 
 By «je REV. EDWARD FITZGERALD SYNNOTT, M.A. (the 
 RectOT of Rusper). Crown Svo. 55. net. 
 
 The Night Haunts of London 
 
 By SYDNEY A. MOSELEY. 
 edition. Also in Paper Covers, 2s. net. 
 
 By SYDNEY A. MOSELEY. Crown Svo. 35. 6d. net. Sixth 
 iditioi 
 
 The Underworld of Paris 
 
 By HARRY J. GREENWALL (Paris Correspondent of the Daily 
 Express). Crown Svo, Paper Covers. 2S. net. Third edition. 
 
 Haunts of the Gay East 
 
 By SYDNEY A. MOSELEY. Crown Svo. Cloth. 3s. 6d. net 
 Seeond edttiem. Paper edition, as. net. 
 39 
 
STANLEY PAUL'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 
 
 «^^ 1^ (^^ (^7) C^^ 1^^ 1^^ (£71 Ci^T; (^>)(«^ C«^ t^^ t^^ C^^ (^^ Cs^ (£?^ UE^ b^ U:^ C^s^ t(^ C^^ tf^ (iS?^ 
 
 Recent Books — continued 
 Practical Basketry 
 
 By ANNA A. GILL. FuUy lUustrated. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 
 6s. net. 
 
 With Love from Daddy 
 
 By R. H. LINDO. With lUustraUons by JOHN HASSALL. Crown 
 8vo. Cloth gilt. ss. net. 
 
 Marionettes and How to Make Them 
 
 A Book for Boys and Girls. lUustrated by TONY SARG. Text by 
 F. J. McISAAC, with two plays for Home-made Marionettes by ANNE 
 STODDARD. Crown 8vo. as. 6d. net. 
 
 Drawing -Room Entertainments 
 
 New and Original Monologues, Duologues, Dialogues, and Playlets 
 for Home and Platform use. By CATHERINE EVELYN, CLARE 
 SHIRLEY, ROBERT OVERTON, and other writers. In Crown 8vo, 
 with a three-coloured jacket. 2$. net. Third edition. 
 
 Brightest Spots In Brighter London 
 
 Edited by SYDNEY A. MOSELEY. A mlsceUany of articles on 
 London life. Demy 8vo. Paper, is. net. 
 
 This Funny World 
 
 By F. RAYMOND COULSON (" DEMOCRITUS "). A volume of 
 humorous and satirical verse. Crown 8vo. Cloth, zs. 6i. net. 
 
 Ballads of Brave Women 
 
 Edited by ALFRED H. MILES. Large Crown 8vo. Red limp, 
 IS. 6d. net ; cloth gilt, as. net A collection of Poems suitable for 
 Recitations. 
 
 The Magdalene and other Verses 
 
 By DOLF WYLLARDE. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net 
 
 VcrsGS 
 
 By DOLF WYLLARDE. Cloth, as. 6d. net. 
 
 A Girl's Garland : Poems and Thoughts 
 
 By ANNETTE BRYCE-WILSON, the Fourteen-year-old Poetess. 
 With a Preface by CLEMENT SHORTER, and 4 illustrations by 
 EDWIN MORROW, as. 6d. net. {Tenth thousand.) 
 
 A Garland of Verse for Young People 
 
 Edited by ALFRED H. MILES. Demy 8vo. Handsome cloth. 
 is. net. 
 
 The First Favourite Reciter 
 
 Edited by ALFRED H. MILES. 96 pp. Large 4to, double 
 columns, clear type on good paper, handsome cover design in three 
 colours. IS. net. 
 
 Valuable copyright and other Pieces by celebrated Authors, Poets, 
 Wits, and Humorists. 
 
 The Up-to-Date Reciter 
 
 Edited by ALFRED H. MILES. Uniform with above. IJ. net. 
 
 Printed in Grtat Britain by Eaiett, Watson & Vinty, Ld., 
 Umden and AyUsbnry,