Chapter II

England has a wonderful central heart, but its circulation is not of the best, for all that. For, though the City leaves nothing to be desired, as a City, its suburbs leave a great deal to be desired as suburbs.

Now there lies one such suburb, about eight miles north of Liverpool Street, named Hanstead; and the parallel between Hanstead and a chilblained finger is quite a tolerable one. It is quite conscious of London; half its male population goes up to the City every morning and back in the evening, and its female population goes up at least once a week, especially at sale-times; and the notice-boards outside its news-shops announce editions of the evening papers scarcely half an hour behind Kensington itself. But the drawback of Hanstead lies in the fact that it has also a terrible individual life of its own: it has its own Society; its own debating-club; its lawn-tennis courts; its public opinion; its mayor; its church, and its self-consciousness. There is even a weekly Hanstead and Beeling Gazette, that publishes long accounts of flower-shows and church functions, and who decorated which stalls, and who presided at the organ or rendered the tenor solo on what occasion — for the Church looms very large indeed in the social functions of such districts. Sometimes it reports sermons in full, or speeches properly interpolated with applause or laughter or dissent; and refers in at least every number to one or other of Hanstead's respected citizens. The rest of the paper is chiefly occupied by advertisements, and the political complexion of the whole place is resolutely Tory.

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The difficulty of Hanstead, then, lies in its double nature. It is part of London, and, simultaneously, it is Hanstead. If it were frankly a town — good; a newcomer would plunge, no doubt, into its life and identify himself with its interests. But in Hanstead, as it is, the moment he would do this, he runs a danger of becoming suburban and provincial; he must be familiar with quotations from the City, and must pretend to disappear now and again for some social affair in Kensington or Bayswater. On the other hand, if he is frankly a Londoner and speaks too much of his friends in these high quarters, he falls under the suspicion of being a snob and of despising local society. It is an exceedingly delicate position for all except born diplomatists or unscrupulous liars.

Dr. Brandreth Smith (who had married his cousin Miss Amy Brandreth twenty-two years ago) had long since abandoned any pretensions to be anything but a citizen of Hanstead. For one thing, he had ceased to go up to the City except on special occasions; for another, his wife resolutely regarded herself as an exile.

He was a small, silent, harassed man, with a few hobbies on which he had learned to hold his tongue, such as the collection of certain families of dried herbs and the profession of Liheralism in politics. His house stood in the High Street — a little old Georgian building, with sections of two Corinthian columns supporting the roof of a little porch, with three white steps going up to the front door and wire blinds in the windows. There was no particular reason why he should look harassed; his practice was regular, if small; his wife had a little money of her own; and he had only a son and a daughter— Percy and Helen. Percy had quite a good place in the City, and sang tenor in St. James's choir; Helen was at present an art-student in Ken-

Digitized by Google sington, and would presently, it was hoped, teach drawing in Hanstead High School. Dr. Brandreth Smith had probably saved quite fifty pounds a year for the last ten or twelve years, and had no objective secret reasons for unhappiness. He was quite conscientious; he was a churchwarden and held the plate; the Vicar supped at his house about once a month. The only thing that was the matter with him was that he was bored.

Mrs. Brandreth Smith, too, was a little unhappy-looking, but she had better reasons for it. Twenty years ago she had thought herself something of a personage, and had not hesitated to say as much. For she was sprung, really and truly, from quite an important county family in Sussex. She had made this quite clear to everyone; she had a blotting-book in her drawing-room with Marston Park inscribed in faded gold and Gothic letters on its top cover. But somehow or another, the vague expectations she had both formed and disseminated, had faded into nothing. Her father had died, without a sign from Marston Park; and old Mr. Brandreth, her great-uncle, had still lived. The quarrel which all the world expected to be made up, grew more rigid as time went on: not even one dead pheasant reached Hanstead House as a symbol of peace; and it had been conveyed to her, firmly and unmistakably, by the mere lapse of years, as well as by rumours that floated down to her from time to time, that old Mr. Brandreth's adopted son would inherit every penny and every acre when the old man died.

So the poor lady had given up talking about Sussex county society at Hanstead garden-parties, and, really, she had little else to talk about. She had a repressed appearance, and was rather tightly dressed in black, always. Her house was perfectly proper in its appointments: her husband had his consulting-room (reached from outside

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IS through the old stableyard, disguised); Helen had her studio (in the ancient coach-house, also disguised); Percy had his big bed-sitting-room at the back; and she had her drawing-room, with stiff, but perfectly good furniture, and the wire blinds, of course, in the windows, to prevent people looking in. Mrs. Brandreth Smith ruled this household with the help of two maid-servants, adequately and completely, and her children were just a shade afraid of her.

It was to this house, then, that Percy came home a little before sunset, carrying his small black bag. It was not an inspiriting place to which to return from the City, though the High Street still retained, like a middle-aged woman who had once been pretty, faint traces of freshness. There still ran a real little stream of clean water through the gutters; there was a triangular space of grass left at the junction of the roads, surrounded by chains and posts. But St. James's Church of Bath-stone and brick struck a definitely town note; and the Mayor, a stout man, in his shirt-sleeves (for he was one of those people who have no nonsense about them), was talking to Mr. Barnes, the black-clad undertaker, opposite his own cast-iron railings. (It was the Mayor's supreme object to leave his domain more up-to-date than when he had first assumed responsibility for its government; and he had almost succeeded in pushing through his design of abolishing the triangle of grass, and of substituting for it a stone drinking-fountain with chains and cups complete, and a ravelled space about it, commemorative of Victoria the Good.)

It all irritated Percy; he did not know why. Again and again in the City he thought of Hanstead as a country re-

Digitized by Google treat — (there were, in fact, several walks that could be taken through fields and nursery-gardens) — and again and again, as he returned to it, he found it to be a suburb after all. Its reality failed to fit in, as did its imaginative picture, with its own dreams.

Above all, he was irritated to-day, since his summer holiday was but just ended, and an entire autumn, winter and spring intervened before the next. He was getting broken in nicely, but the process was not complete. Fifteen or twenty years hence, he no doubt would be comfortable; it would seem to him no longer a hardship to have to spend nearly all his daylight hours in an office; it would have become inevitable and familiar. But at present he still reared now and again at the touch of the bit and the grip of the lunging-rein.... A motor tore by as he fitted his newly-acquired key into the lock beneath the Georgian portico, and he looked with a kind of resentful hatred at the bound-up, nodding heads that vanished over the rim of the back in a cloud of dust.

Percy was, too, it must be remembered, in the purely sentimental phase of love — in love, that is to say, in such a manner, that he thought of the face of the girl at Yar-mouth whenever he was not thinking of anything else. Sunset, therefore, made him have a strange sort of yearning feeling towards nothing in particular; gave him visions of a boat sailing over pink seas with himself and another within it; made him want to go and sit by himself in church and listen to organ-playing. He had not got further than this: he did not really think of marrying this girl. In any case, how could he, on an income of eighty pounds a year, fifty of which he dutifully paid over to his mother?...

He fell, therefore, into a frenzy of irritation when, as

Digitized by Google be wad hanging up his coat behind the door in the inner hall, he f elt himself slapped sharply between the shoulders.

" Don't do that, Helen! " he snapped. " You know how I hate it."

She was a pleasant, smiling girl who faced him, dressed, of course, in art-green, with a neck cut much too low and crimped, apparently, round a piece of elastic. Her feet, too, looked needlessly flat in her low heel-less slippers, and her wrists were rather red. She was frankly and confessedly artistic, and said so continually.

" You needn't be shirty, old man," she said.

Helen's pose, at this particular time, was that of the Reckless Bohemian. Girls who live at home in Hanstead, with a Georgian portico over the door and wire blinds on the windows, must do something. She had tried being soulful and yearning, but, with uncommon good sense, had soon recognized that this was out of date. So she had shifted her attitude. She had continued to dress — well — as she dressed; because it was convenient and unmistakable and (she thought) rather attractive; and she had learned to talk slang, as a girl always does learn to talk it, of just the wrong kind, ceasing to present the deportment of a lady without acquiring that of a gentleman.

Percy liked Helen quite: he was bound to, in self -protection; but he had begun lately to understand that their ideals were quite different. Helen yearned for a studio in Chelsea and a female companion; Percy, for a country-house and a distinguished wife.

" You've got a choir-practice to-night," she said. " Mr. Main came in to tea to say so."

Percy grunted.

"What time?"

" Half -past eight. Sooner you than me."

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Helen, of course, had added to her pose just now — or, rather, had found to be an essential part of her pose — the attitude of the Independent Thinker. She went to church unwillingly, and talked desperately about Nature, and the Religion of the open-air, when her parents were not present. Percy had imbibed a little of it from her too, though he would have died sooner than confess it.

He grunted again. Then he went upstairs. He must do some of his work, then, before dinner.

Ill

The church looked bleak and uninviting as he turned in at the west door a little after half -past eight. It is one of those churches that not only seem to be, but actually are, turned out complete by about three firms at a given sum. One firm built the fabric; one supplied the organ, of its number four specifications, and a third furnished it, down to the low ironwork screen with brass and copper flowers in the pattern. It had absolutely everything necessary for divine worship, and had nothing in it of any interest whatever. It was paved with shiny encaustic tiles, each of which bore a sacred monogram or an ecclesiastical device; the same devices were repeated in stencil upon the chancel walls; a shiny oak communion-table, with a shiny brass cross upon it, two shiny candlesticks (with shields) and two shiny vases, stood at the eastern end. Its pews were of shiny pitch-pine, and the choir-seats of pallid oak. It possessed, of course, a peal of tubular bells, and at given intervals a retired colonel protested in the Hanstead and Beeling Gazette against the ringing of these for more than ten minutes at a time, or at an earlier hour than half -past seven.

When Percy came in, a little late, the hanging gas-

Digitized by Google chandeliers in the chancel (resembling celestial crowns in enamel and brass) were lighted, but the rest of the church was dark, and the company of singers — boys in front and men behind — stood in the light, with their books before them, like the inhabitants of a rather shoddy heaven. From every quarter about them glimmered points of brass — from the retable of the altar behind, the candlesticks of the organ on the south, and the low screen to the west. In the midst stood the Vicar, with a high desk before him and a small baton in his hands.

" Now once again," he said. And Gadsby's Te Deum in C burst forth afresh as Percy slipped into his place, after a nod from the conductor, and opened his music.

The weekly choir-practice was always a vague pleasure to this young man. He had an excellent ear for music and a tolerable voice for a chorus; and it was a pleasing sensation to him to stand here at choir-practice in his ordinary clothes, and on Sundays in his surplice and cassock, and be off in full-cry in some such piece as Gadsby in C. It gave him a sense of unity and strength and melodiousness. The choir had lately been promoted from Anglican chants to " services "; they had acquired three already, and had even ventured on Stanford in B flat last Easter Day. But the result had been such that it was determined to wait another year before venturing on it again.

The Vicar was, of course, the director of the choir, as of everything else. In appearance he was a genial, rubicund man; in doctrine he was moderate; and in character he was the kind of man who honestly believes that, in virtue of his office, he ought to control everything with which he was connected. He controlled things quite well too, without genius, indeed, but with plenty of talent. He had quite a good taste in harvest decorations; he had been

Digitized by Google very particular with the church furnishers that nothing " tawdry " should be supplied; he sang a tolerable bass; he preached what he called " bright " sermons and conducted " hearty " services; he had plenty of conversation for social occasions, such as the choir-outing, the Band of Hope tea and the Mothers' Meetings. He was an Oxford man, and wore, therefore, a red hood that was very effective. He always, if grammar permitted it at all, said " one " instead of " I." His wife was as helpful as himself; she was of an unfailing brightness and perseverance; she managed to play the organ sufficiently well for week-day services and for a hymn or two at early celebrations; and she governed her household — including her single boy Clement (who in the holidays sang treble in the choir) — with tact and discretion. She even managed to keep on tolerably friendly terms with poor Mrs. Main.

For Mrs. Main was the difficulty of the parish, on its social side. She was the wife, as need hardly be said, of Mr. Main; and Mr. Main was the middle-aged curate with ritualistic tendencies, severely repressed. He stood now — the poor man — by the side of Mr. Tempest, the organist; for he had no voice and the least possible appreciation of music, and contented himself with turning over the music when Mr. Tempest violently bowed his head in that direction. He was a melancholy-faced man, with long, pointed jaws, heavy eyebrows and bald temples — all of a dusky complexion; and he was nearly everything which the Vicar was not. He had no small conversation; he had no taste; his sermons were the last word in dreariness; he could never take the lead anywhere at anything. It was, indeed, reported in the parish that it was only at the earnest solicitations of the bishop that Mr. Bennett kept him at all. Yet no one could deny Mr. Main's efforts; he was ruthlessly conscientious in visiting his district, and called upon the

Digitized by Google sick every day; he was always punctual, always patient (even when he was treated with scarcely disguised disdain by the less Christian members of the choir) and always dreary. Yet three or four queer people in the parish liked him particularly.

But his wife was the difficulty. They had no children, and all the energies of the pale little fiery, bitter woman had poured themselves into the channel of social ambition. It appeared to her abominable that her husband should be a curate still at the age of thirty-eight, and that he should be able to furnish towards their joint income only one hundred and forty pounds a year. She fought gallantly and furiously; she was dressed at least as well as the Vicar's wife, and her drawing-room was amazingly correct — even down to the detail of a " silver-table," with articles under the glass worth at least thirty shillings all told. But her energies escaped now and again into unfortunate channels. •. there had been one or two scenes... she was not on speaking terms with at least six or eight of the wives of her husband's sheep. Once there had been a scene even in the Vicarage drawing-room itself. •.. But these things are best forgotten. It was eighteen months since the last scene, and they had been in the parish three years — ever since the church had been built and consecrated.

" Once more," said the Vicar. " And I think one should take that ' Make them to be numbered with Thy saints ' a little slower.... Like this."

He sang the phrase emphatically through, waving his baton mechanically.

" Like that," he said; " a little more solemnity."

He bent a severe eye on Tommie Mann, who was giggling.

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" Now, Mr. Tempest, please."

He rapped professionally with his baton on the desk, and once more the Bourdon boomed out under Mr. Tempest's left heel.

Percy was getting warmed up by now. Dinner had been as usual — rather a silent meal, with his father harassed-looking as usual, his mother severe and correct, and Helen rather tiresome. Percy had flamed up once at some piece of slang more outrageous than usual, and had been gravely rebuked by his mother.

" I can't think," he had said, " why it is that women try to be like men; they only succeed in being cads."

" That's not a nice thing to say," said his mother. And Helen had turned white with anger.

But now Gadsby in C was doing its genial work. It is not a profound composition, but it is hearty and optimistic and sufficiently melodious. It deals, in the Te Deum, for instance, with the deepest mysteries, and renders them innocuous. It includes heaven and earth and all that is in them in a pleasing and polished frame, about a foot square, so to speak.

So Percy cried his tenor part aloud, next young Mr. Barnes, the undertaker's son, who eyed him sideways to catch his note at doubtful moments; watched the Vicar's controlling hand and countenance; regarded Tommie Mann vindictively; glanced at Mr. Main's black silhouette and the fuzzy gleam of his eyebrows against the organ candles, and began to grow more content. Gadsby in C was going better every time: it would be almost ready for next Sunday.

It is strange how in a state of intense attention the background of thought becomes more active. So Percy,

Digitized by Google concentrated on his notes, taut on the high ones and relaxed on the low ones, followed, easily and interestedly, his own interior affairs. The gas-lit chancel, the white walls, the pallid oak book-rest, the encaustic tiles — all these things which he saw or felt or fingered served as a frame to his more engrossing business — the girl at Yarmouth and the friar of Kensington. Then he suddenly remembered that if he kept his promise to Reggie he would not be singing Gadsby in C here next Sunday morning, after all. Next he remembered that Rule IV. of the choir — in the little typewritten schedule that hung up in the choir-vestry — stated that in case of a foreseen absence from the choir at either of the Sunday services, notice should be given to the Vicar at least before the preceding Friday evening. And, thirdly, he wondered what the Vicar would say if he told him the reason....

" I think that'll do for to-night," said the Vicar presently. " I mean for that music. We've still got the Harvest Festival — Caleb Simper. Will you get out the music, please, Mr. Main? "

While the curate creaked across into the choir-vestry, the Vicar continued his comments, though in the subdued tone appropriate to the sanctuary.

" The basses, I think, were not quite sure of themselves in the fifth bar of the second page. One wants it a little more pounded out, as one said before — a strong, resolute lead — 'Lord God of Sab-a-oth.' It is very effective sung so.... (Thomas Mann, if I have to speak or look at you again, I shall send you away from the practice.). • • And, by the way, one wanted to say a word about the vesper-hymn last Sunday evening. It was not quite soft enough in the last bar or two; it ought to fade away, as one said last week, into silence, so that the congregation scarcely

Digitized by Google know.... Perhaps one might try it over, Mr. Tempest, if you have the music there.... Oh! here is Mr. Main with the music. Perhaps one had better get on with the Harvest music. There are not many more days before Thursday week, and we have the bishop this year, one must remember."

The Harvest Festival was, of course, the supreme feast of the year. As early as Monday morning the more solid decorations began to come in — a couple of loaves of bread, for instance, six feet in length, gigantic vegetable-marrows and boxes of apples. These were all sent religiously on the following Monday — the bread a little stale, of course; but, as Mr. Bennett said, " One cannot have everything" — to the local hospital; and, after all, the First Great Commandment comes before the Second. Special music was always rendered on this festival, all about corn and wine — although the Vicar was very nearly a teetotaller — and oil; and there was always a special preacher, usually an Oxford friend of the Vicar's. But on this occasion a suffragan bishop was to be present and to preach; and Mr. Bennett was, of course, more anxious than ever that all should be as it should.

It was nearly ten o'clock before Mr. Simper's anthem was perfect, the music collected again by Mr. Main, and one of the gas-chandeliers turned out. The choir dispersed in twos and threes, the boys, of course, running before they reached the door, scuffling as they went out, and interrupting the Vicar in his conversation with Mr. Tempest. He turned sharply, but too late.

" I shall have to speak to Mrs. Mann," he said. " I am sure that was Tommie again."

The boys were his one trouble connected with the church.

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One by one they approached the troublesome age, and one by one justified its name; only the very meekest of them survived confirmation and remained in the service of the sanctuary: the rest lapsed into brightly-coloured ties, and might be observed by their pastor on Sunday evenings talking to female acquaintances of their own age in Hanstead High Street instead of coming to church. Mr. Bennett had even ventured to wonder whether, if confirmation were not administered to them a year or two earlier than fourteen, more might not be retained.

However, he dismissed the thought of Tommie for the present, bade Mr. Tempest good-night, and came down from the chancel to find Percy waiting for him.

" May I speak to you a moment? "

" Certainly, my boy, certainly." He turned.

"You'll put out the lights, Mr. Main, won't you, and lock up. Please put the new music out of the boys' reach."

" Come along to the Vicarage," said Mr. Bennett genially. " I haven't seen you since your holiday."

The Vicar, as has been said, was an absolutely conscientious man. Honestly he cared more about his church and the conduct of the services, and the music, and the behaviour of his flock, than about anything else in the world. Further, the suburbs seemed to him the key of the situation: hold them, he was accustomed to say, and you hold the whole country. He was especially careful, too, for an analogous kind of reason, to be very cordial and hearty with all his young men; they, too, seemed to him another key of the situation; and he had been deeply disappointed when, after advertising for a curate who should be "good with men and boys," Mr. Main only had been forthcoming. But he did his best; he had a club with real billiard-tables and smoking permitted, for all church-youths over seventeen; and he was careful, too, for his own part,

Digitized by Google to be sympathetic and friendly with every young man who would permit such advances. Finally, he was meditating a guild of St. George, but, so far, had taken no action, from a faint suspicion that such a society might become more high-church than he liked; the very word " guild " had a suggestive tone about it. But he had determined to speak to the bishop next week....

He put his arm through Percy's as they walked together down the little gravelled path, and began inquiries as to Yarmouth.

" You found a good church there, I hope," he said, " and plenty of bathing? "

Percy reassured him on these points. (He was becoming a little doubtful as to how much he would reveal as to his plans for next Sunday morning.)

" So important, my dear fellow," continued the Vicar, latching the gate behind him with one hand and still retaining Percy with the other, "so important not to take a holiday from religion too.... You went alone, I think? "

" I met one of our chaps there," said Percy.

"That's right; that's right. (Ah! Good-night, Mr. Mayor, good-night to you!... And you made other friends too, I daresay."

Percy literally could not get one word in on the very small matter on which he wished to speak. The Vicar made sympathetic and helpful observations so continuously that interruption was impossible; and it was not until they had gone up the dark garden-path of the Vicarage, and the key was being produced at the end of the Vicar's watch-chain, that any mention was made of it at all.

" You wanted to see me, my boy.... Come in, come in; and you shall have a cigarette in the study."

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Mrs. Bennett was waiting for them there, and a jug of cocoa steamed by the study-fire. She was an almost perfect vicar's wife, in character, manner and appearance; her own father had been an excellent clergyman in the north, and her training was complete. She was a kindly woman, fresh-coloured, bright-eyed and quiet; she had been slim, but was growing mature; she was always quietly and nicely dressed; she reverenced her husband as a "priest" and loved him as a man: she did her duty perfectly and contentedly; and had not an enemy in the world, except, perhaps, poor Mrs. Main.

" Here's Mr. Percy," said the Vicar, " come in for a cup of cocoa and the cigarette.... Yes, my dear, the practice went off beautifully. I think we shall do very well. Where's Clement?"

" My dear, you forget what time it is. It's after ten. I sent Clemmie straight off to bed."

" That reminds me," said the Vicar. ("Sit down, my boy, and make yourself at home.) That reminds me I must speak to Mrs. Mann about Tommie. That boy's getting very troublesome. One can't have that sort of thing in the choir. And he's in Mr. Main's confirmation class, too."

While the gentle, harmless gossip went on, Percy nursed his cup of cocoa, which he did not want, and fingered an unlit cigarette, which he did. It was a regular Vicarage study in which he sat. There were the books, behind brass lattice-work, the writing-table with a couple of books open upon it, the three or four Arundel prints, the side-table littered with account-books and parish magazines, the worn carpet, the bright wall-paper. The very room was a symbol of its owner, and the wife made it complete. It stood

Digitized by Google for a harmless and quite useful life— -beyond reproach, active, philanthropic, and fairly studious. It was quite conventional, of course; but the world would soon explode unless there were conventions to hold it together.... It was like Gadsby in C.

" And there was something you wanted to say? " said the Vicar suddenly, setting his cocoa down, and glancing almost imperceptibly at his wife.

Percy made haste to get it out. He understood what the glance meant.

" Oh, yes: but it was nothing important," he said. " It was only that I've promised to go to church with one of our chaps in Kensington next Sunday, and shan't be able to be here."

"Ah! yes," said Mr. Bennett indulgently, "you'll be missed in our new music; but there! we can't expect

What church are you going to? "

" I... I forget its name," said Percy — speaking the truth, however, at that moment.

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Mrs. Smith was one of those people who are always entirely occupied with occupations which to a very large extent they invent for themselves, and believe that Providence has laid upon them. In her case it was the superintendence of her household which took her time.

Now the care of a smallish house resembles a telescope. It may be reduced to a very small compass and yet remain intact; or it may be prolonged to an almost incredible extent. In the case of Mrs. Smith it was prolonged through practically the entire day.

She was down always at least a quarter of an hour before breakfast, for a general survey, and that she might reprove Alice if the staircase wasn't " done." Then she made the tea and lifted the metal dish-covers to see what lay beneath them. Then she dispensed the tea when her family appeared, and took her own food.

But it was after breakfast that the real business began. There was a fixed hour for interviewing the cook and sending, through her, reproving messages to the tradesmen. There were then accounts to be done, and a thousand other small affairs, of which she could have given no very clear description afterwards, and yet affairs which undoubtedly did occupy her till noon. It was then time to begin the extras, so to speak: it was then that she wrote letters, if there were any to be written, and glanced at the paper, if anything was happening in the world in which she took any interest: if not, she scanned the Ladies' Page. After lunch there was a pause, in which she supposed herself to

Digitized by Google rest; as a matter of fact, she spent the time till three in small mysteries of dress of which I am not competent to treat. At three she issued forth — usually alone, sometimes with Helen — again on household business, with an occasional call upon a lady as resolutely conventional as herself. She returned to tea; and immediately afterwards went about her business once more, connected, usually, with household stuffs in some manner — curtains were to be inspected and drawers opened — at any rate, she was busy, either upstairs, where she might be heard opening cupboards, or downstairs with her sewing. Then came dinner; then the nightly visit to the kitchen again; and then a short social repose with her husband and children. Exceptions to this daily course were made on Tuesdays, when it was known that she was "At Home" from four to six.

Such a day was blameless, if not actually meritorious — at least, from the point of view of its subjective strenuousness. She certainly did not injure anyone else — there was no time — neither did she sit with her hands before her. But it never even occurred to her that to live entirely in order to live was open to question on any grounds at all. She was a good and a just mistress, even if a little strict. Brasswork was well polished in her house; the varnished boards in her floors shone; the food was adequately cooked. She complained a little, but not excessively, of the time her duties took; she said there were so many things she would like to do, if only she could fit them in; but she could not probably have named any of them more precisely, nor did she ever show any inclination towards any pursuit or interest beyond that involved in household cares. She was an excellent housekeeper; the one pity was that she had not a wider sphere.

Now and then her old dreams visited her. She felt,

Digitized by Google and with perfect justice, that her faculties had not fair play in a small suburban house; and she was quite aware that if things had fallen out ever so little differently, she might have had two houses, one in Wilton Crescent and the other in Sussex, in which to exercise her powers. It seemed to her extraordinarily perverse that these kingdoms were to fall one day into the possession of a single young man — not of the best reputation — whom her wealthy old relative had adopted and made his heir — a young man who had not, as she said to herself in moments of ancestral bitterness, a " drop of Brandreth blood in him " — at least it was to be hoped not.

But she was quiet and self -repressed — except with the servants, whom she ruled like a despot — she said little or nothing of these things to others; at least, she had not said them for several years. But the blotting-book inscribed " Marston Park " was still a symbol to her of ideals that once had been more vivid.

" The bacon was not crisp enough this morning," she remarked in the kitchen at ten o'clock on the day after the choir-practice.

" No'm?"

" It was cut a little too thick. You will find it a good plan to dry it well in the oven before frying it." "Yes'm."

"About the beef we had yesterday.... That will make into rissoles for Sunday breakfast. The doctor likes them. Will you remember that? He likes it better than mince."

" YesW

There was quite a quantity of things to mention this morning. She held a little written list of them in her hand,

Digitized by Google with the shiny red-covered account-books; and she went through them promptly and decisively. There were so many, in fact, that she thought it better at the end to leave it for the cook's guidance. Then a long disputation had to be held about Wingate's bill. Wingate's mutton was certainly tenderer than Johnson's; but a half -penny a pound extra charge-*— well, was a half-penny a pound extra. It must be laid before Johnson, then, that his prices were satisfactory, but the quality of his meat not so satisfactory. And, simultaneously, it must be laid before Wingate that the reverse proposition was true in his own case.

Then there was the matter of the servant's laundry that must be ventilated. She had been quite clear, she said, on the amount allowed weekly for this item; yet, continually that amount was exceeded. Neither must there be any diminution in smartness in their public appearances. She allowed ample, she said — ample — for all that was required. Would Mrs. Martin kindly see to it that these reforms were made; she must simply decline in future to pay for more than the stipulated total.

It was ten minutes to eleven this morning before she re-entered the drawing-room, where a little pile of household books had to be looked through; and she sat down at them immediately, opening as she did so the famous blotting-book in order to get out the pen she used for red ink. And it was at this moment that once more the train of thought came up of which the faded Gothic letters on the cover of the book was the outward symbol.

There were so many things whose difficulties would be solved, if she only had what was hers by right of blood, if not of inheritance.

There was first Percy.

Now she was content with Percy up to a certain point.

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He was a steady sort of boy who never gave her any real anxiety; he was decently educated; he never did anything outrageous: his behaviour in the City seemed satisfactory; and so on. But she was perfectly aware that he would not quite have passed muster, say, in a Pali-Mall Club, or at Marston Park. He smoked a certain kind of cigarettes, for instance, of which the little paper case, containing five, displeased her; and he would leave these little paper cases about. He brought home with him occasionally certain types of comic papers which might be all very well for mere clerks — papers which, indeed, anyone might read without harm — but which were not the kind of literature one would expect to find lying on the table of a highly refined drawing-room.

Again, there was Helen. Now Helen was a Suburbanite pure and simple. Her very eccentricities — her loose frocks cut square at the throat, her passion for Art, her slang — were all part of the great Suburban System; that is to say, when Suburbanites were eccentric they were always eccentric in this sort of way: there was no more real originality about such unconventionalities than about the most conventional of conventions.

Yet what was the use of finding fault, when she had no positive alternative to offer? It is true that she had succeeded in abolishing Comic Cuts from the drawing-room table, and in forbidding Helen to wear sandals; but she found herself unable to suggest anything else to take their place. Yet she knew at the very bottom of her soul, with a passionate though repressed conviction, that this kind of thing would simply die of inanition in such a place as Mars-ton; she would simply not have to speak; other things would substitute themselves.

For. she knew, by a kind of traditional instinct, that these things marked a certain social station — that stratum

Digitized by Google in which she lived — like a man up to his knees in a quicksand, hating and resenting it, yet unable to extricate himself. She knew that the blotting-book came from simply another realm altogether — a realm from which she was wrongfully excluded.

Lastly, there was her husband.

And here again she had no kind of right to complain; and she knew it. He was a kindly, peace-loving man, who attended to his profession with sufficient care and competence to be able to provide her with an income adequate to the scale on which they lived; he was very moral indeed, and religious enough to be a churchwarden. Yet there were tiny habits into which he had long been drifting, which she disliked intensely, yet could not remedy. After all there was no final reason why he should not breakfast on Sunday in his dressing-gown, nor why he should not put on comfortable carpet-slippers in the evening, instead of tight and shiny shoes; there was no actual crime committed by a man who did not seven days in the week shave before breakfast. Yet she knew it was all wrong; she knew that men of the social caste to which she desired to belong, to which, in fact, she did belong by right of blood, simply do not do these things. They might perhaps drink rather too many whiskies-and-soda in the evening, and so forth; but these things do not stamp you. But carpet-slippers and dressing-gowns do... •

Well; the whole thing would be cured automatically by the possession of a place like Marston. Helen would develop the right kind of eccentricities, and Percy the right kind of conventions. And she knew her husband well enough, too, to be certain that he also would take his ease and seek his comforts along higher lines than those of Hanstead. Or, if he did not of himself, she knew very well that she could make him.

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But she wanted leverage, so to say. She needed big surroundings to which she could appeal, a household whose standard would be self-supporting. She was confident — not out of arrogance, but simple self-knowledge — that she would be adequate to such circumstances; and that the same perseverance and fidelity which caused her to dominate the cook and rebuke tradesmen would be equal to ruling a butler and seeing that even gamekeepers did their work.

Such was her course of thought this morning, as she added up household books, and wrote the totals, at her Davenport, with a firm and unerring hand.

Ill

Mrs. Bennett, the Vicar's wife, looked in that afternoon, just as Mrs. Smith was preparing to issue forth, no other visitors having appeared. And here again the hostess was aware of hardship. For Mrs. Bennett, described (and with sufficient justice) as the "kindest woman in the world," took, of course, her proper place in Hanstead, and therefore in her husband's churchwarden's wife's drawing-room.

She took occasion to explain, for example, with the kindest motives in the world, certain little points about the imminent visit of the bishop.

" We shall be so very glad to see you at tea, Mrs. Smith, if you can come, and the doctor too, of course, if he can get away. My husband is most anxious that as many of his parishioners as possible should meet the bishop."

Mrs. Smith said that she would be delighted.

" I am terribly afraid that some may not care to come. People seem very frightened of a bishop somehow."

Mrs. Smith hastened to express her surprise at such timidity. She at least would not be frightened; and it would be as well for Mrs. Bennett to recognize that.

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" Then about tea/' said Mrs. Bennett. " We shall have a stand-up tea, of course. The bishop won't have much time. It won't be a regular parochial tea-party, you know; otherwise, of course, I shouldn't ask you."

Now this was tactless from its very tactfulness. A " parochial tea-party " meant a festivity hardly removed from a Mothers' Meeting. It was surely unnecessary then to say that Mrs. Smith would not be asked to such an entertainment: the very highest social figure among the guests at such a function would only be on the level of, say, an ironmonger's wife. Persons of distinction would mark that distinction by waiting upon the guests, instead of sitting down with them. So the iron touched once more the little raw spot on Mrs. Smith's soul.

And so it went on. Mrs. Bennett, good woman, desired nothing better than that all her guests should be completely at their ease when they came; so she took the greatest possible care, again with so much tact that you could not help seeing it, to inform them without, as she thought, appearing to do so, of the little things that would be expected. For instance, as the bishop would have so little time, it was important that everyone should be punctual, or else they might miss him; and, for the same reason she hoped that no one would have to leave before half -past five. This was her way of conveying that the bishop must not be treated like an ordinary guest; his company must be there both to greet him and to speed him when he retired upstairs. And all this, in exact proportion to the amount of information conveyed, was so much gall to Mrs. Smith, who really did, as a matter of fact, know quite well how to behave to a bishop.

Finally, still with the same overflowing kindness, Mrs. Bennett commended Percy's singing in church.

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" My husband says he would hardly know what to do without him. It's so difficult to get young men to come to church regularly."

And again Mrs. Smith perceived, as in a vision, how Percy to Mrs. Bennett's mind was just a young man who might be expected to stand about, if he were not in church, at street corners in heavy creaking boots and a buttonhole.

But she repressed herself nobly. She had been learning to do it, poor lady! for many years past; and she purred and she nodded and she assented; and her heart burned dully within her. Marston was but a dream, after all; like a fairy-tale to a child.

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