Chapter III

(i)

ADY BRASTED was a very picturesque person, and was subconsciously aware of it. She did ot actually say to herself, " This is graceful: there-ore I will do it," but, practically, it came to that, he was still well under thirty and looked much less, d she found even her relation to her red-haired, toutish husband, who was a radiant fifty, picturesque that account. It had a suggestion of young ivy d middle-aged oak. As a child she had been delibe-,tely ingenue, encouraged to it by her mother, who also had an eye to suitability. She had had one incident which very nearly made her sincere — a short and violent love-story with an adventurer called Christopher Dell; but she had survived this, and managed to fit it all into the picture. A new incident was to her as an ornament that must find its place; she carried it about, looking round her, and finally placed it somewhere — occasionally on a high shelf; and this love incident was as a grim, slaughtered head frowning suggestively from a dark corner. It really looked well so long as the light did not fall full upon it.

Five years before she had suddenly discovered the extreme gracefulness of the Roman Catholic religion, and had, so to speak, furnished her rooms afresh with a prie-dieu or two, visible yet modest, inlaid with coloured woods, and a slender crucifix of ivory and pearl upon her writing-table. She was not exactly play-acting; she selected that religion deliberately as the theory by which in future she intended to live; she was seen on Saturday afternoons, in a veil, at Farm Street, and might be observed, after her confession, a graceful bowed figure, praying, really praying, before Our Lady's altar.

All this shed a new and very exquisite light upon the whole of her life. She began to think she was spiritually minded; she began to wonder whether it was not really perhaps true, as her friends told her, that her coming into a room brought with it, quite unconsciously to herself, a certain indefinable fragrance and purity. Her part began to be that of suggestive silence; she was aware that sometimes amid the most frivolous conversation her eyes had a far-away look without her intending it in the least. She began to think that even she, perhaps, might do a little to Help Others, particularly young men. As for her husband, " dear old George," of course he was very straight and sturdy; but he did not — did not quite understand. Oh, yes! he was all that was dear and good and honest; but he was a Protestant, you see, and so — well, of course, you understand.

She was perfectly right about George. He was indeed a Protestant, with a strong conviction of the mmon sense of the Establishment as interpreted »y confidential bishops in the arm-chairs of the thenaeum. He had even opened church bazaars; he ad been lured, with much delicate and flattering iplomacy, to appear at an Albert Hall Demonstraion, and he regarded the little that he understood of is wife's religion with good-humoured contempt. He ttended church on Sundays in the country; he ought himself the very type of the Sensible Layman, d regarded the next world as through the door of e Georgian mausoleum that rose gloomy among ypresses on his estate at Esher — a fact which was t treated with a discreet melancholy. And Jack, who had been brought up with Annie rasted, occupied an indefinable position between hem. Not his dearest friends had the faintest idea hether either this world or the next provided him with any theory. He was perfectly decorous, rather epressed in a gentlemanly sort of way; he dressed utif ully; he was in the Home Office from ten to unless he had some other engagement. And ere is very little more to say about him. Lady Brasted, after breakfast on Monday morning, k her rosary, her diary bound in orange morocco, d a small pious book in French, printed on rice- /per, and went out to the cedar. Again, subconsciously, she found a seat upon which the sun-flecks fell with peculiar grace, as in Mr. La Thangue's pic-res, and sat down upon it. She could just see from there, she told herself, that line of blue hills, framed between the pillars of the terrace, that was so suggestive.

Then she began, gravely and simply, looking out in her far-away manner at the hills, to consider whether there was any one in the house whom she could Help.

Three minutes later, as if guided by an angel, Algy appeared on the top of the garden steps, and, seeing no one, began to descend. She remained perfectly still till he came upon her; then she looked up at him sweetly. His face was badly bruised, she noticed,

" Aren't you going shooting, Mr. Algy? " she said.

Algy's heart sank — he had not seen her; and he had wished to run over his new ideas once more; they were not quite arranged yet.

" Not going till twelve," he said rather gruffly.

" Then will you take me round the gardens? " she said. " I long to see them all again."

There was nothing for it. She placed her diary, her pious book, and her pearl rosary in a neat heap on her chair, stood up, lifting her parasol, and, on second thoughts, languidly took up her rosary once more....

Oh! but it was dreary for Algy. He wanted nobody just now. He wanted to be let alone; and here was this woman, tactfully congratulating him on what he had done last night, making it perfectly clear that her thought was his, and that she too understood that intention was the thing that mattered.

She insinuated herself, by half-finished sentences and significant silences, even by sudden shadowy smiles, into that small and secret retreat that he had just succeeded in making for himself; and she brought with her her dangling rosary, her devout atmosphere, her genius for intimacy and her careful artlessness. By the summer-house, above the fish fountain, she id-

" It is a wonderful thing to learn our own solitude — learn that nobody, nobody can quite understand ur own point of view. Dear Father Badminton was he first who taught me that; it is a very hard lesson." As they walked on the grass beneath the avenue he poured out, if I may say so, a vibrating silence of sympathy that thrilled him as with a subtle gas which he could not exclude. The worst of all was that it as undeniable that she did understand exactly what was feeling; he tried to tell himself she did not, but it was useless: she nodded softly at his desperate half sentences; she said precisely the right thing; he knew all about him, as a scientist knows all about impaled beetle; she even correlated a few of his or ted thoughts, and gave him one or two new ones, undeniably beautiful and true; she fitted things on to Christian doctrines, and, supremely, she indicated him that she had not disclosed half her treasures, and that there lay behind all that she said a world of truth and confidence to which he had not as yet the right of entry.

He was both indignant and intoxicated as he came to back with her shortly before twelve — indignant at his own elementariness and banality, since it seemed that he was not in the least apart or original after all; and intoxicated, in spite of himself, by being understood so perfectly; and he did not yet recognise that his indignation was a sign that there were still parts of his soul to which she did not and never could penetrate.

She put her hand very gently for an instant on his arm as they approached the steps back again on to the upper lawn.

" Thank you," she said with soft emphasis — no more than that. And once more fury surged within him at the thought that there was an understanding between them.

" Dear, uncouth boy," she said to herself (for she had a habit of formulating a situation), " and not one here understands him." And she determined to see something of him in London — perhaps she would be able to introduce him to Father Badminton some day. He certainly was different from the rest of his family. He seemed to her more pliable.

kTHE CONVENTIONALISTS „ iry came out half an hour later, and found Lady Brasted still sitting under the cedar. Mary was rather

re again this morning, for Theo seemed really hope-She had expressly stood in the outer hall, with newspaper behind her back, to give him a chance of making way, and he had strode through twice, hardly looking at her, first without his gaiters and then with them.

Then she had gone to the billiard-room, leaving the door open, and knocked the balls rather noisily about. She knew that the guns were kept just outside. And all that he had done was to look in sharply and to demand whether that young fool Harold were any-here about. No, he was not, she said rather tartly.

'en minutes later, through the open door of the illiard-room, down the short passage and through

.e window, she had seen the party climb into the motor and go off, with Sybil looking at them. Then e threw her cue on to the table and went out into e garden.

Lady Brasted lifted her eyebrows questioningly, d smiled without parting her lips. It was a smile she bconsciously reserved for unemotional occasions. ' Yes, they're just gone," said Mary, and sat own.

These two knew one another pretty well; it was a case of Christian names and kissing; each, in public and in their correspondence, would have called the other her dearest friend; each, in private, attempted to assume a pedestal of slightly greater height than that on which the other stood. Annie Brasted knew that she had a reasonable, respectable, and romantic religion, and that Mary had not; Mary knew she had a purely intellectual interest greater than Annie's. Annie was married excellently, Mary wished to be; but Mary could stand with men on their own ground and be welcome there, and Annie could not, and did not wish to. Objectively considered, therefore, Lady Brasted could give points to Miss Maple; subjectively, Mary thought that she won them all back from Annie, and, at any rate, she was still her own mistress. Psychologically speaking, therefore, it was a complicated situation; neither was yet the victor, and each wished to be.

Now, Lady Brasted this morning was flushed with confidence; she knew quite well that she had rung the bell, so to speak, in her conversation with Algy, and she was in a Helpful mood; so she closed forces without delay.

" You look tired, my dear."

" I am tired," said Mary abruptly. She, on the other hand, was disjointed and relaxed, and did not understand that the first shot had been fired.

There was a long silence.

Lady Brasted began to review the situation, for she felt like a ministering angel this morning. This i oor girl! she said to herself, feeling very old and experienced.

She had kept her eyes open since Saturday, and, her intuitions were really rather delicate, she had what was going forward. Here was Mary, wenty-nine years old, a year over her own age, still t a loose end; and she was pretty and charming and sensible. And here was Theo, a perfectly respectable Idest son;... and here was Algy also.... She had bserved these three, especially at breakfast this orning, and two of them in the motor yesterday.

.. Surely, here was enough to venture upon.

" I have been for a nice walk with Mr. Algy," cooed Lady Bras ted presently. " The poor boy! How well he behaved last night; and how difficult for him! "

" Difficult? " said Mary, knowing perfectly what she meant.

" So difficult to be at his ease! And he is not at all that kind."

" I don't understand."

" My dear, I am sure you do. He is just a straightforward, unsubtle boy with... with a very tender soul; he was terribly distressed at being beaten by that young man. Now Mr. Theo "

' Theo wouldn't have been beaten," observed Mary. ' That is just it. There are no problems of that sort for Mr. Theo."

Mary knew this mood of Annie's, and did not find it congenial just now. Suddenly she was startled by a white hand upon her knee.

" My dear," said the other. " You don't wish to talk? "

This was a direct challenge, and Mary was rather taken aback. She did not exactly know what it meant.

" I am only a little tired," she said uneasily.

Lady Brasted rose sweepingly, gathered her objects of piety, looked smilingly and intently into Mary's eyes, swooped delicately and kissed her. Then she was rustling towards the house, very slender and youthful, and Mary stared after her.

Mary was really startled as she sat alone in the speckled shadow. She had been taken completely by surprise, and began to wonder violently what in the world Annie Brasted meant by this sudden sympathy. She knew Annie's Tact when she saw it — in fact, it was difficult for any one not to see it; and it was a weapon which she did not know how to meet. She had seen it before, and it always meant something. Yet Annie could not have detected anything, because there was nothing to detect!

Psychological self-analysis was like a floating atmosphere of disease, it seems, during these days at Crowston; for in five minutes after Lady Brasted's departure, Mary, like Algy, was at it too.

She ran over her previous meditations first — concerning her need of this kind of life, the presentableness of Theo, his obvious good-fellowship with her, and her distinct liking of him, and, to her astonishment, perceived that this latter element must have made some progress even during the last two days. Her peevishness of this morning in the billiard-room had a personal touch in it of which she had not been previously aware. Her desire to see that square, brown figure, with its ruddy face and flat cap, come into the room had certainly not been wholly mercenary....

At dinner, too, last night, she remembered now certain faint emotions that could hardly be accounted for by sheer calculation of the rent-roll of Crowston.

Back and back her mind went, circling inwards. The motor on the previous day had had one of those spasms of bad temper that by idealistic materialists might almost be attributed to a possession of something resembling animal life; and she remembered watching with a curious intentness the goggle-eyed figure which, with hands on knees, peered doubtfully, behind the energetic Lord Brasted, into the maze of handles and coils which seemed responsible. He had said a word to the two ladies, and she, she remembered, had nodded, still looking, but without understanding.

Then there had been church. She was astonished to remember how much of her meditations had been centred on the solid worshipper at her side, and, even more significant, her sense of irritation at Algy's black coat in front, of which the collar^was not perfectly in place.

And so on....

Mary got up presently, and began to walk softly up and down in the shadow.... And it was Annie's Tact that had called out all this energy of thought— not, perhaps, exactly maidenly, for Mary was not at all ingenue. It was that Tact that had driven her inwards, in a sudden doubt of self-questioning as to whether she understood herself.

She grew even more restless presently, and wandered out on to the sunny terrace between the pedestals, and up and down the grass path between the flower-beds and the railings that held out the urgent grasses of the meadow-land.

Was it possible, she asked herself, that she was really in love after all? She imagined Theo as dead, and felt no very lacerating agony. She imagined him married to somebody else — Sybil Markham, for instance— and immediately found herself disliking Sybil Markham with an extraordinary vehemence. That would be intolerable.... Why?...

(She began to finger the limp, evil-smelling leaves of a great scarlet poppy.) Why? Was it solely because Sybil had no business to be mistress of such estates? Was it that only? No; it was not that only. Then what was it?

She began to visualise Theo once more — his face, his gaiters, his solid, pounding walk. Then she broke off, and asked herself yet another question.

Supposing Algy was eldest son and Theo second, what then? Algy could be hers at the lifting of a finger, though several years her junior. The question was, Would that finger be lifted if Theo was about?

Here she stuck, tearing off the thin leaf and rolling it into a ball as she moved on. She did not know. She thought not. She was not quite sure.... Oh! yes she was, quite sure that nothing, not all wide Crowston, could induce her to marry Algy. That was certain; he was too clumsy and self-conscious. Besides, she did not care for him. Well, then, what about Theo? That did not settle Theo. Or rather did it not rather seem as if it did settle Theo?

She quickened her pace, a little flushed; and, to relieve the tension, began to be extremely vindictive towards Annie Bras ted. What business had Annie to be so disagreeably tactful, and patronising? Marriage was not everything, not even marriage to a fat nobleman who knew all about motors that was to be known.

No; but marriage was a good deal. And once more Theo appeared before her.

She was distinctly cross at lunch. There was no other word for it; and Annie's discreet murmurings about this and that subject, not even remotely connected with any male creature under Crowston roof, made her even more annoyed.

The men were all out shooting; for some topographical reason it had been thought better not to join them at lunch; and somehow their absence gave an air of desolation to the dining-room. She heard a suggestion that she should go out again in the motor, which had returned, under the care of Lord Brasted's own chauffeur, and whom he trusted, said Mrs. Banister, as he trusted himself; but she hardly paid any attention to it, beyond announcing that she would sooner sit out in the garden. Sybil, it seemed, was of another opinion, and observed that Harold had told her that they would begin on the Bovey acres after lunch, and that if she was in the dip beyond the keeper's cottage at half-past two it might be possible to see a very pretty bit of sport. As there was no very startling demand to see this pretty bit of sport, Mrs. Banister volunteered to take Sybil herself, if dear Annie and dear Mary were quite sure they could amuse themselves.

It seemed that they could, and ten minutes later Mary was watching Annie from the morning-room window once more drifting across to the cedar.

She waited five minutes more to avoid any appearance of haste; and then, with all her doubts resolved into one clear question, she too went out.

Annie saw her coming and discerned its significance. She had not spoken at random this morning; and she took her courage resolutely in both hands, reminding herself of her mission to Help others.

" I want you to tell me something," said Mary, sitting down without ado and looking straight at her friend. " Why did you think I was tired this morning? "

" My dear, I thought you looked so."

" Did you mean anything else? "

Lady Brasted hoisted, so to speak, sympathy into her eyes and a particular kind of smile on to her lips, putting out a hand gently towards the other's arm.

" Mary, dear, are you sure you want to talk about it?"

Mary's head jerked a little.

" I want you to tell me what you meant."

" My dear, you must allow an old married woman a little insight. Need I say any more? "

Mary's face grew quite white.

" I think that's very impertinent," she said. " Yes, I know I asked you; but you had no business to think such things. That kind of thing might do a lot of harm; besides, there isn't, as it happens, the very least truth "

She stopped suddenly. But it was too late.

Lady Brasted was conscious of a nervous commotion within her; but she did not flinch from her thrust.

" No truth in what, Mary dear? "

" In — in — in what you thought."

" But I did not say a word, my darling."

For a moment or two there was a complete silence. For Mary, in her fury, it was impossible to reckon up the situation, nor to calculate precisely what her friend's words did or did not count for.

Then she stood up suddenly, seeing that explanation was impossible. Her lips shook violently; once or twice they opened to speak. Then, with a kind of quick wrench, she had turned towards the house again.

A minute later Lady Bras ted was rustling after her. It was all very feminine.

(m)

Theo was shooting quite extraordinarily badly this afternoon; but he was conscious of no other pressing problem except this. It was curious, he told himself, how a man's shooting went up and down. On Saturday he had killed three rights and lefts, and had not missed more than one single bird flying alone; to-day he had killed no rights and lefts at all, and had further distinguished himself immediately after lunch by solemnly missing a lolloping rabbit clean with both barrels.

He had a headache, he told himself; and it must have been because he had been foolish enough, this hot September day, to drink beer instead of whisky at lunch. This was all the more stupid, he thought, because he distinctly remembered now feeling not quite well during the last three or four days. It must be his liver again. He resolved to drink whisky at dinner, and no port.

When Sybil came out with her hostess in the motor, the chauffeur, for some perverse reason of his own, chose to halt at a point in the dip where Harold was just exactly hidden by a thornbush, and where Theo h was fully visible over the hedge against the sky-line. Yet it seemed so obviously the place from which to have the best view of the pretty bit of sport that she did not dare to make any suggestion.

The dip where they had halted, drawn up by the ide of the high road that crossed the Bovey acres, seemed to have been specially created by an indulgent Providence to afford a view of partridge shooting, the right, it is true, there was not much to see, ince the boundary hedge was hardly thirty yards way, and there needed but one gun, represented today by Theo, to slay all that came that way, either straight down the stubbles or swerving across the road* But on the left a low hedge gave a full view of a long, owly rising sweep of ground, across which, at right angles to the road, ran an excellent hedge where the other guns were posted. Harold alone was invisible, or rather all of him xcept his legs; but Lord Bras ted, Algy, Mr. Banister, Jack Hamilton, and a far-away stranger were full in view, dwindling into the distance.

seemed that the motor was just in time. The fifty yards ahead curved sharply away to the right, and straight in front the broad stubbles appeared in perspective, crossed by a broad strip of dark green, denoting the roots where the mass of the birds would surely be gathered; and beyond this strip, even ow entering it as Sybil looked eagerly out under her hand, were tiny moving figures, that bobbed and vanished like specks across feverish eyes.

It was a breathlessly silent afternoon, as clear and as Sundayish as yesterday, Sybil told herself. Slaughter seemed almost irreverent to-day, she thought, though she reassured herself by the memory of the excellent cold partridge at breakfast that morning. After all, men must do something, she said; and women, as well as men, must eat; then why not partridges? Besides, Harold liked it so much.

How tiresome that that boy would stand behind that bush! She turned resolutely on the leather cushions and stared at Theo; and, as she did so, came a distinct and sudden crack from the stranger on the far left; and, as she turned once more, another and another, and then, as she thought them, two stupendous bangs from beyond the thorn-bush. A brown thing came in a tumbled heap suddenly over the hedge in front, thumped, slid, and lay still. That was Harold's; and she smiled all over her face with pleasure.

A hand was laid silently on her arm.

" Look, my dear."

Across the roadside hedge fifty yards straight ahead sailed suddenly a group of flying specks; another dropping volley rang out on the left, but it was not at these. On and on they came, crossing slightly and rising, to the accompaniment of the death shots of their friends, straight up and on still to the right, with an incredible swift steadiness; and, as Sybil stared, nearer even than Harold's hangings, came two reports from the crouching brown figure against the sky on er right. There was the sound of a long hush and silence; and she saw Theo jerking his gun open with kind of savage impatience.

There were cries from in front, thin high voices, as e beaters came to the middle of the roots, and again d again the hangings near and far from the line guns on the left.

Then again a covey crossed to Theo, and again two gs and silence; then, glorious in his pride, like a tastic toy, straight out of the hedge ten yards way rose, with loud crying, a bird looking positively igantic, so near it was and so unexpected. Sybil knew well enough that this was a pheasant, d that his time was not yet; all that she perceived a moment; and the next, to her astonishment, came couple of shots close at hand, and the great bird 11, leaving a cloud of feathers behind him, smashed to the road, hustled a yard or two, and lay still. Why, what in the world was Mr. Theo doing?

But there was no time to ask. She heard an exclamation, and then a cheerful voice from Harold. " My dear chap-

And then again came the bang on the left, and Sybil •w a living speck float over Harold's head in an xquisite parabola and fall.

Then up the road, mad with fright, came a hare, appearing suddenly from nowhere, as their manner is. e cried out something, then bit her lip in self-pression, and glanced up. That brown figure on right was hurrying to the hedge with a gun up,

—JEM

Sb rei the ]

and as the hare, after passing the motor, emerged again from it and sped up the road, even now scarcely fifteen yards away from Theo, she saw the gun go up to the shoulder.

There followed a deafening bang; a cloud of white dust sprang up behind the hare, another bang, another cloud; and beyond it, running like a streak, appeared the hare, dwindling every instant.

" Damn! "

She heard it, and again bit her lip.

When she turned again the brown figure was gone.

About three minutes later a beater emerged into the road, then another and another.

Then Harold appeared, walking with a swing, climbed down the hedge, and came up to the motor.

" I say, that was ripping," he said. " Didn't I tell you just right? "

" What did you get? "

" Three brace and a hare and two rabbits," remarked Harold in an aloof manner;." and they got more up the other end. I say, where's Theo? "

Sybil indicated with her head. She was leaning over the side.

" I say," she whispered, " I thought pheasants weren't "

"I know; won't we rag him! I say, mother, did you see that? "

" I thought it a very nice shot," observed Mrs. Banister.

" Oh! an excellent shot; not more than five yards off the end of his gun, and exactly three weeks too soon.... Theo."

Before there was any answer, Algy and his father appeared above the hedge. Harold turned to them genially.

" I say, Theo's shot a pheasant."

It seemed to Sybil as if Mr. Banister was looking ross the road rather intently at something. He paid no attention whatever to his younger son. Then he suddenly called —

" Theo, my son, what's the matter? "

It was very odd that there was no answer; nor was the brown figure visible. Mr. Banister scrambled straight down the bank, handing first his gun to Algy, and then, without waiting to take it again and without ven looking at the motor, crossed the road, an imposing figure in grey jacket and knickerbockers, and clambered up the opposite bank.

Sybil did not quite know what was happening.

ere seemed a curious hush. Harold still stood, look-blankly after his father who was through the hedge by now; and a moment later Lord Brasted, Jack Hamilton, and Mr. Mortimer, the curate, the latter in a sombre grey, very neat and ecclesiastical, with minute gold cross hanging from a button-hole, appeared above the left-hand bank and stood, also looking across to the other side. Mrs. Banister seemed to notice nothing; and a group of beaters was engaged in laying out the game.

"^What's up? "

It was Algy's voice; and it seemed even more tactless than usual. Then Harold put down his gun suddenly on the grass by the side of the road and was up the bank too.

" Where's your father? " observed Mrs. Banister generally to the company.

Then there was an odd sound from over the hedge; and the next instant Harold's voice saying something in a quick undertone. But before the shooters on the left-hand bank were half-way down, a little group of three appeared on the right, clear against the sky, where five minutes before Theo had stood — the tall old man on one side with Harold on the other, and the third in the middle, with a curiously twitching face.

" Just come and help," said Mr. Banister sharply. " Here, you men! Mr. Theo's not well."