Chapter IV

IT was not until Marion was in the dark little pill-box of a carriage, on the second evening after her leaving Brae House, on her patient way from the Hertfordshire station of Standing to her country cottage, that she felt she could begin to reckon up her experiences.

She had reached London in the small hours, the night before, and had slept at the Campden Hill flat. Maggie Brent was away in Somersetshire, visiting an aunt. (This always seemed to Marion slightly humorous, just because Maggie was extremely aunt-like herself.) She had slept till late: she had then lunched with the von Giinthers, had received some very particular instructions frofn the Professor in his music-room afterwards; had done a little necessary shopping, and had then caught the six-five from Liverpool Street. It had been a whirl all the time, and she had not been able to reflect much. Now, however, she would have a couple of days alone, before Maggie came down to her; and would really be able to arrange her thoughts.

She was extremely tired; and the shaggy brown pony, hired in the village, with the trap he drew, seemed slower than ever. She closed her eyes soon after leaving the station; and, as soon as she did that, small vignettes of vision began to form themselves. At first they were snatches from her day in London: then of the train journey and the yellowing woods that wheeled and fled past; and, at last, of Brae House and her experiences there.

It was the river chiefly that presented itself before her — the laced and tangled skeins of water, snapped into froth by the boulders; the pools left by the drought among the bleached stones at the riverside; the pine plantations that sloped up towards the house. Then, by an act of memory she brought back the deer-stalking adventure; and, obediently, there began to defile before her the great rounded shoulders of the moor; the deep shadowed valleys beneath — (What were they called in Scotland? Corries, wasn't it?) — the far blue hills. At first it was of such scenes as these only that she thought — just plain Nature; but it was not long before a man's figure began to make its appearance before her — a figure, with a sunburnt face, in a tweed shooting-suit and heavy boots; a face with frank blue eyes puckered a little with staring against sun and wind.... Then she opened her own eyes suddenly, and saw the prosaic back of old Mr. Bentham who drove her, and the glimmer of the lamps on his ancient buttons.

She believed herself to be perfectly sensible; and she was, at any rate, so far sensible as to realise that her first introduction to the world — (for such those last few months had been to her) — was bound to seem more exciting than it deserved. After all, Max Merival really was the first male person of her own age who had ever approached her on her sympathetic side; and she recognised that a considerable discount must be allowed for this. Besides, obviously, the whole thing was the merest comradeship, exactly what she had always proclaimed to Maggie as her ideal of a relationship, a relationship usually impossible with a man for evident reasons, and to be sought for therefore with a woman only. What was it he had said to her, the night before last, in the mignonette-scented garden? — (the night before last! Was it so short a while ago as that?) — It was only that he wished she wasn't going. Well; and she had wished it too. What possible harm was there in this? Finally she reflected, with a curious sensation of hardening about her heart, that he was after all the only son of a peer, with large estates; and she, an opera singer who had not yet made her name. And at that reflection she brought down her will with a bang: and set herself to think about the Bechstein grand that Professor von Giinther had caused to be sent down to her cottage. That was her job now; and holidays were over.

After supper that evening, cooked with surprising adequateness by the small country girl who was the entire staff at Standing, except when Mrs. Grant, the housekeeper at Campden Hill, came down with Maggie Brent; she went into the big music-room, once a barn, but now floored and boarded to a state of satisfactory dryness, to see the piano. There it was in all its glory, of black wood that gave back a glimmer of the two candles in a way exceedingly like that in which a deep pool reflects light — say a salmon-river in Scot-land. She set down her third candle on the top, and then snatched it away again, and blew it out, for she was healthily superstitious about such things. Then she turned the key, all ready in its place, put back the lid, sat down and began to play arpeggi, letting her eyes roam round the shadowy room.

Yes: it was really nice to be home again, after all — among her own things. It was not that this room held a great many of them; she valued space in her music-room too much for that. There was but one rug on the stained floor, in front of the stove that Maggie had put in for her, with three arm-chairs ranged about. There was a big oak chest for music, rather inconvenient, as one had to lift the lid and very nearly dive within to get anything out; but it looked nice. There were half a dozen water-colours on the brown-papered walls; there were three or four screens to keep off draughts; there was a small gate-leg table in the middle of the room; there was a low set of book-shelves by the stove; and there was really nothing else at all, but empty air and the dark oak beams of walls and roof. Yes; it was a satisfactory room; and she was pleased to be home again.

Then, as she meditated, on a flash of thought, she modulated, came down to the key of E natural, and broke with full voice into the one song she had sung at Brae House. She sang it with vehemence, loving to hear the air ring with her own voice. It was an abrupt shock to her to hear the door open as she ended.

" If you please, miss, Father Denny is here, and says he's very sorry, but would you speak him one minute, please, miss."

She wheeled on her stool, and confronted the round and adoring face of Jenny, with her sleeves rolled up for washing.

"Father Denny? Oh, yes! Ask him to come in. And, Jenny, when you open the door, try to remember to roll down your sleeves."

" Yes, miss: but I didn't think that any one "

" that's all right. Show Father Denny in, my dear."

It was a quiet little figure that came in, rather nervous and doubtful as to whether it was quite proper to call upon a lonely lady at such an hour. He began to apologise.

" I heard you were home, Miss Tenterden; and I thought I might just look in. It's rather urgent; or I wouldn't have troubled you at such an hour."

"But I'm delighted, Father. Do sit down..Will you have some coffee? "

" You're very kind: but it's much too late."

" No: please sit down. Jenny, bring in a cup of coffee for Father Denny."

He was a most excellent priest, this, rather timid in feminine society, but entirely zealous and conscientious, and, oddly enough, extremely effective with his men and boys, who appeared to look on him with the greatest affection: Marion could never understand why. Yet, there it was.

It appeared that there was a difficulty about a server at mass to-morrow. (Marion's heart sank suddenly. She had proposed to herself to breakfast in bed.) Tim Gallagher was ill; and Tom Somebody Else had been taken to the seaside by his uncle; and the priest's own housekeeper had a bad cold. So would Miss Tenterden be so very good as to answer mass to-morrow? Really, he did not know whom else to ask: Jenny, he understood, was not yet proficient in her Latin pronunciation.

" Why, of course, Father," said Marion. " At eight o'clock, isn't it?"

The priest instantly rose.

"Well: that's most kind of you," he said. "I wouldn't have troubled you at such a time "

" No: but do sit down again, Father. You haven't drunk your coffee."

" My dear Miss Tenterden, I shouldn't sleep if I did."

She tried to tell him about Scotland; but he would have none of it. Obviously he felt he had already transgressed up to the very brink of propriety. He edged towards the door, even as she spoke.

(" Very well: if you won't, you won't," said Marion to herself.)

" Good night, Miss Tenterden: and thank you a thousand times. I'll see to all the vestments myself. It's simply to answer the mass, you understand; from your own seat will do perfectly well."

When he was gone again, Marion sat down before the stove. She had just made another discovery.

Six months ago such an invitation as this would have thrilled her. She remembered the first time, as a convent-girl, she had been asked to answer the mass of a strange priest who came to the school, and the extraordinary sense of romance it had given her, to minister there, in a sense, at the very altar of God. In last spring, again, she had answered Father Denny's mass on two or three occasions like this, and the romance had still been there. But now it was gone. Why?

Her religion had been a very ardent and individual matter indeed, and very far from superficial. The Personages of her Faith had been as real to her as any human beings — above all the Supreme Divine Personage Himself — even more real at times, since they were always present and others were not. The Tabernacle was to her the actual audience-chamber of the King.... There had been times when even the sight of a Catholic church in the countryside, or of its door in London streets, had been a distinct sensation*. Her first spontaneous emotion on hearing that she had an extraordinary gift in her voice had precipitated itself in a resolution to sing to the greater glory of God. She had had a short terror, from which, indeed, she did not recoil, that it might be she would have to be a nun and sing in the chapel. And, it must emphatically be remembered, this devotion was not essentially in the least a devotion to an artistic system or worship, or the mere result of association and teaching: it had a very definite Personal Object with whom she was on as romantic terms as a creature can be with an Incarnate Creator. Such phrases as: " Let Him kiss me with the kiss of His mouth "... ** As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood; so is my Beloved among the sons "..." The voice of my Beloved knocking: Open to me, my sister, my love, my undefiled " — phrases such as these, applied and consecrated through centuries to the love between Christ and the soul, had expressed with reality the passion that her religion awakened in her. The drama which the Catholic Church presents to her children at such times as Christmas and Lent and Easter had been far more than a drama to her. The Child in the Crib was her lover grown little again; with the daughters of Jerusalem she watched that same Lover go by in His blood and tears to Calvary: with those same daughters she waited in the dawn-lit garden to see Him come forth as a Giant.

Her religion then, a year or two ago, had truly been the passion of her life. As soon as she had seen this cottage in Standing village she had determined it must be hers, for the tiny apse of the little church actually abutted on to her garden at the back; and she had chosen her room upstairs and moved the bed in it, so that, as she lay there, she could see the glimmer of the sanctuary-lamp that marked His Presence. She had said little or nothing of all this to any one except, very rarely, to her confessor: her father, she knew, had thought her piety to be merely that of an emotional schoolgirl.

And now!

She stood up suddenly and went to the uncurtained, diamond-paned window of the music-room. There burned the light across the dusk — a patch of jewelled colour through the stained window of the apse. Yet it awakened no emotion at all. Her will still held to her old faith: there was not the faintest intellectual veil drawn between her and its apprehension. Yet her heart seemed blind.

Maggie Brent arrived on the Monday evening.

In appearance she was not at all striking; and even in her conversation she was not in the general sense distinguished, except by some peculiar characteristics of her own. Yet it was extraordinary how comforting was her presence.

She was aged about forty-five; she was stoutish; she had a large, pale face with a spot of colour composed of tiny red veins on either cheek-bone; she dressed in black or dove-grey, with a necklace of large blue stones over her dress, and wore a flat kind of hat that usually sagged on one side. She had become a Catholic suddenly and unexpectedly twenty years ago; and had pursued her religion like a vocation ever since. In London she was a member of a society that visited servant-maids in the afternoon; and she would appear at meetings of social guilds in a state of extreme enthusiasm and complete ignorance with regard to what it was all about, yet with a burning certitude that it was all very important and helpful and uplifting. No one except servants called her Miss Brent; and even some of them called her Miss Maggie.

" My dearest! " she cried, as she ran in from the door of the pill-box carriage, up the little paved path and into the cottage door, where Marion awaited her out of the rain. A long scarf streamed from one shoulder, and dragged in the wet behind.

"Yes: bring them all in, please, Mr. Bentham," she began from the shelter of the porch so soon as she had embraced Marion, pulled her into the tiny hall to embrace her once more, and then run back again, leaving her. " And please put the bandbox under your — oh! how clever of you to keep it from the rain like that. ^Thank you so much. And don't shake the parrot's cage more than you can help, because he doesn't like it; and he'll be swearing dreadfully all the evening, as it is.... Thank you so much, Mr. Bentham: yes, I think that's really all. Oh! no: there are two umbrellas still in the carriage. I'll get them "

" No, you shan't," said Marion, seizing her.

" Oh! well: perhaps — there! Mr. Bentham's got them after all. Thank you so much, Mr. Bentham. Good night. I hope you won't catch cold. Good night, Mr. Bentham. Thank you."

It was an entirely characteristic arrival, and Marion's heart warmed and danced within her. There were eleven separate articles spread about the hall and on the chest, so soon as the door was finally shut. They were as follows: — one large truck; three handbags; a parrot's cage; two umbrellas slipping from their confining strap; a bandbox; a case for golf-clubs, with one golf-club and a quantity of autumn branches sticking out of it; a jewel-case; a hold-all, bulging with repletion; and a brown-paper bag which Miss Brent had set down herself in order to embrace Marion.

" What in the world have you brought those branches for? " asked the girl delightedly.

" Well, you see, they looked so lovely in the hedge as I drove to the station this morning. Perhaps it was rather foolish of me, as I was coming to the country again, but I didn't think of that. And then I didn't like to throw them away. DC n't throw them away, Marion, will you? Poor things, they looked so unhappy in the train: I felt quite cruel. We must make it up to them now. Oh! there's Rhadamanthus beginning to swear. I knew he would, as soon as he saw the light again. Cover him up again, please; it'll be such a bad example for Jenny. And did Mrs. Grant come all right by the earlier train — the one I ought to have caught? "

Rhadamanthus grunted with annoyance as the green baize cover was pulled over his cage again. It was no use to swear in the dark: one couldn't be sure that there was any audience.

" Poor dear! " said Maggie, as she unwound her things. "You shall have the garden all to yourself to-morrow, and shall swear as much as ever you like. What a comfort that it isn't a mortal sin! I quite envied him to-day when I missed that train. I did want to see you so much. And how are you, my dearest? "

Certainly Maggie was not suffering from depression, thought Marion, as she got her into the room which they both insisted on calling the Parlour, much to Mrs. Grant's distress, who thought it rather common.

("But, my dear!" Maggie had remonstrated. "A Parlour means a place where you talk: and I'm sure I do enough of that, in all conscience! ")

She was radiant now; if that word can be applied to a middle-aged lady of Miss Brent's build and features, across whose face a wisp of black hair had fallen, whose boots were thick in London mud and whose clothes were dishevelled.

She did not, of course, wait for an answer; but gave it herself.

'* You look perfectly sweet, my dear, with your face all sunburnt. If only we women were more sensible, you know — they'd give us the vote and anything else we wanted — I mean more sensible not only about our complexions but in all kinds of ways. And did you really go deer-stalking? How perfectly delicious, except for the deer, poor thing! And salmon-fishing too! You must tell me all about it at supper. And your music! You must sing afterwards, if you don't feel too tired; and I shall have a stall all to myself like that mad king — I forget his name — who turned on real rain. Such a test of real genius, you know. And it really and truly is all fixed and settled, isn't it — in January — I think you said the fourth? And how extraordinarily enterprising of Mr. Harrison; and yet how obvious, when you come to think of it, like all real geniuses — I mean to have Wagner after Christmas — between Advent and Lent, so to speak —:like a sandwich, between two slices of Palestrina- — -the mustard and all that."

She was moving restlessly about the room as she talked; and yet, oddly enough, it had a restful effect. She opened a window and then shut it again as the rain swept in; she stooped to warm her stout, ringed hands at the little fire Marion had caused to be made: she put back the wisp of hair from her face about four times, without the faintest sign of impatience; and at last, when Marion really was beginning to tell her about Brae House she fled upstairs with a gesture of apology, and came down ten minutes later with her shoes and dress changed and begged Marion to begin all over again.

After supper they went together into the music-room, Maggie still leading the conversation with unflagging vigour.

First there was the whole history of her aunt in Somersetshire to relate over again. Maggie herself, it seemed, had taken the place of a trained nurse for her entire holiday.

" I didn't get out much, my dearest; and that's the truth of it. You see Aunt Gwendolen wanted me to read to her all the morning, and then sit with her while she slept all the afternoon, because she didn't like waking up and finding no one there. She said it made her think of her grave. And then she wanted to be read to all the evening; and one had to go on all the time because she always woke up if one stopped: but that didn't matter to me much, because I did all my spiritual reading that way and said my rosary too. Poor dear Aunt Gwendolen! If only she'd known: she thought it was Blair's Sermons, I think; while it was Faber all the time; and I'm sure she thinks Faber is in hell. She can't bear Catholics: and she only puts up with me because she can't get any one else. Well, perhaps it all did her good unconsciously: we never know. There's a lot about the subconscious self that I read in a magazine going down there; and that's really what put it in my head. Now, my dear, you're going to sing to me, if you please; and I'm going to sit quiet. I've talked too much."

With a look of extraordinary determination Maggie sat down before the stove, with her rosary, that had appeared like a conjuring trick, in her hand; while Marion went and turned back the lid of the piano.

" What shall I sing? " she asked.

" Sing that lovely — one minute: there's a draught; and it'll be so bad for the piano." Maggie leapt up again, lifted a screen and dragged it across before a window.

"There! is that better?" she said. "And I'm ready."

Marion sounded a chord.

" Oh! my gracious! I've brought the wrong rosary. I always use the black one on Mondays in honour of the Holy Souls. Wait a minute, my dearest."

Marion smiled and continued to play softly, as Maggie fled out. Then she had an inspiration. She blew out the candles, shut the piano; and went swiftly across to the fire and sat down. She loved to catch out Maggie.

In about ten minutes Maggie reappeared, with the same rosary in one hand and Rhadamanthus' cage swinging from the other.

" I quite forgot what I went upstairs for," she explained. " But I saw Rhadamanthus looking so lonely on the landing that I thought I must just bring him down for a little company. How comfortable you look there, my dear! There you are, Rhadamanthus: and you've got to behave like a gentleman, or you'll go straight upstairs again. And I'm going to sit down too; and we'll have a good talk; and you're going to tell me all about Scotland and the Opera and everything else. And then we'll ring for Mrs. Grant and Jenny and have night-prayers in here at half-past nine, so that they can go to bed, and we can go on talking."

Again, it seems remarkable, but it is a fact that Marion really found this sort of thing restful, especially when she was rather harassed and uneasy. Maggie required really no answers at all, although she was extremely quick to interpret atmospheres; and, so long as Marion began a sentence now and again, it was never necessary to finish it. Yet Maggie also had the receptive faculty when it was required; and if Marion had something that really must be said, Maggie was not only perfectly reasonable in consenting to listen to it, but had an exceptional faculty of saying an illuminating thing. Up to night-prayers, however, she had nothing particular she wanted to say, and it was enough that Marion, about every five minutes or so, uttered some such sentence as:

" On Monday I went out with Mr. Merival "

For this was a suggestion to Maggie to describe exactly what she had done on Monday too, and how Aunt Gwendolen had awakened suddenly in the midst of a passage from " Growth in Holiness," and demanded what was being read; but had fortunately fallen asleep again before a suitable prevarication could be put into words.

Night Prayers was a very solemn function, when once it got under way.

Mrs. Grant and Jenny were rung for, and entered with severely devotional faces. No word was said, but Maggie lighted the two candles on the chimney-piece, dropping her rosary into the grate as she did so, and then stooping, with a burning spill in her hand to find it again. Then she forgot the spill, scorched her hair, and dropped the rosary again with a loud exclamation of dismay. Marion emitted a single squirt of laughter.

" No: it doesn't matter at all, Mrs. Grant, thank you; we won't have the rosary to-night, as it's rather late. Marion, you bad child, don't laugh at me like that. What did I do with that Garden of the Soul? Oh! there it is; thank you, Jenny. Let's see; it's Monday evening, isn't it? That's the one about 'dispositions of mortality,' isn't it? — or something like that. Yes, here it is."

Even at Night Prayers Marion was conscious that she had lost something which she had once had. It had been a very simple and moving ceremony to her a year ago; kneeling there in her place whence she could watch the patch of coloured light through the window of the apse, and feel that He Himself was there, in His very Human Nature, to whom those words were addressed. Even now, too, the ceremony was not altogether without its charm, but it was domestic rather than supernatural. Maggie knelt very upright and grave by the little table facing the stove, with the crucifix and the two candles on the mantelshelf above, and gave obedient utterance to the most uncompromising sentiments and phrases printed in her book.

" * Let us endeavour,' " she said, " * as much as possible to put ourselves in the dispositions in which we desire to be found at the hour of death.' "

(This, Marion supposed, must be the original of the phrase " dispositions of mortality," to which her friend had referred just now.)

" * I firmly believe,' " she stated, " * all the sacred truths which the Catholic Church believeth and teacheth, because Thou hast revealed them. And by the assistance of Thy holy grace I am resolved to live and die in the communion of this Thy Church.' "

She addressed presently her Guardian Angel: and Marion, remembering a fancy of somebody's that every guardian angel bore a personal resemblance to his ward, speculated gently as to what Maggie's guardian angel must look like. It would be quite certain that his halo wouldn't fit very well; and if, to extend the fancy, his habits also resembled those of his ward, his ward would have to look after herself a good deal, in the long periods of distraction under which the angel would be sure to labour.

..." * that we may watch with Christ and rest in peace,' " ended Maggie as she closed the book: and the congregation said, " Amen."

Then, suddenly, five minutes later, as Maggie, with a tilted bed-candle was pouring melted wax upon the cover of the new Bechstein, Marion's tongue was loosed.

" Maggie, sit down again for two minutes.... No, it doesn't matter in the least about the piano; the wax will do it good, I expect. I must just say one thing."

" But it'll leave a dreadful mark," murmured Maggie, distributing the wax with her handkerchief over a still larger area of polished wood.

" I prefer it marked," said Marion. " Maggie, I shall be quite angry if you don't listen to me."

Then she told her quite simply that she was not quite happy about her religion. It was not that she was intellectually troubled at all — (Maggie drew a sigh of relief when she heard that, for she was great on Intellectual Pride) — but simply that the sweet sting was gone. from it; that it no longer interested her.

" I felt awful yesterday morning," she said, " when I served the eight o'clock mass. I said the words all right; but it was dreadfully perfunctory. And I didn't go to mass this morning at all. What do you think is the matter? Is it just what they call 'dryness'? I used to have dryness sometimes; but I used to mind it dreadfully, and I don't really mind this at all. That's the awful thing. And it's gone on for at least six months."

Then Maggie, after a pause, made a series of brilliant shots, with that kind of strange shrewdness which she always would show if she was given time. Her method was not at all sententious; she did not, that is to say, enunciate her views so much as evolve them from a weltering chaos. They gleamed out, and were gone again.

She began with comments on Marion's appearance, remarking that in spite of the sunburn there had been a look of anxiety in Marion's eyes which she had noticed at once. She made an excursus from this point on her own Aunt Gwendolen, and paralleled it by the illustration of Mrs. Grant on a famous day when the jelly wouldn't set. Then she delivered a series of little generalities on the subject of Interest in general, observing that no one could be really interested in a Cause, but only in a Person. This was a little confused in statement, but a rather profound truth did glimmer somewhere behind its surface. Then she arrived.

" It isn't desolation or dryness or anything like that at all, my dearest; and you mustn't flatter yourself into thinking so. I expect it's somebody you've met who's turned your head a little; for you're only a child as yet, you know, and know nothing whatever of the world. Or else it's all this excitement about the Opera — and that reminds me. You've never sung a single song tonight, after all. How did you come to forget it? And no wonder it's turned your head a little. You see Munich isn't the world at all — at least not as you saw it: it's just a big school all over again. But this summer you really have seen something of the world, and what with Scotland and everything. And I know how those things get into the imagination. (Rhadamanthus, if you interrupt me again, I shall put you out in the passage!) Of course, I'm as pleased as I can be about the Opera and all your success; but you must remember that all that is very much the world indeed, and there's nothing so distracting and intoxicating. Don't you remember how we all renounced it to-night, all over again, with its pomps and vanities? You'd better just go to confession to-morrow and begin again." (She moved across to where Marion sat stiff and disconcerted, and began to caress her hair.) " But you're a good child, my dear; I know that well enough; and our Lord won't let you go too far. And you're looking tired to death, and ought to be in bed. Professor von Giinther expressly told me that you were to take great care of your health, and above all to avoid colds." (She stooped and gave a great poke at the fire as she spoke.) " There! Now I've practically put it out I "

Marion jumped up. Resentment was ridiculous.

" Oh, you darling! " she said: and kissed her. " But you don't understand a bit," she added.

MAGGIE was sitting in the little church, a few weeks later, doing " her hour " as she called it, waiting for the mid-day Angelus which would close it, and secretly hoping it was not very far off the time, yet resolute on not looking at her watch, when she heard the door open, and rapid steps come up the aisle.

" I've had a letter," whispered Marion's voice in her ear. (It was another of Maggie's resolutions not to look round in church and see who was coming in.) " You must come at once. I can't wait."

Maggie rose with extraordinary promptitude. Here at any rate was a solid cause for breaking off her devotions. Did not all spiritual books allow for the demands of charity? Besides, she could finish " her hour " in the evening.

" When did it come? " she said, when they got outside. " Is the second post here already? Who is it from? "

Marion led the way, talking.

" It's from Mr. Harrison. He wants me to come up to town at the end of November after all — I mean, to live there. He... wants me to be well up in Isolde as well as in Elsa! "

Life had been a distracting thing, during the last fortnight, ever since the more formal rehearsals had begun. At least twice a week she had seen Marion drive off in the pill-box carriage to catch the nine-five, when she did not actually accompany her in person; and did not get her back until just in time for supper. Marion seemed rather a moody person, too, those days. Sometimes she would come back radiant with excitement, sometimes very nearly in tears. Her reports, too, of her labours in town, seemed very disconcerting. It seemed a Bohemian sort of existence in the theatre. It was not that Maggie disliked Bohemianism in itself; but it must be of the egg-f or-tea type, and shabby dressing; she did not at all like the caviare and cocktail kind, of which Marion occasionally spoke. Once, too, Professor von Giinther himself had come down for three days, and, though Maggie liked and trusted him, she did not much like him about the house. It meant Jenny going out to the public-house to fetch a pint of beer, at unusual hours such as eleven in the morning; it meant a large flat hat being put, absent-mindedly, on the top of Rhadamanthus' cage, just when that bird had been set in the window to catch the sunlight; it meant, worst of all, that Maggie herself was excluded from the music-room practically all day, and the sounds of exceedingly dull and unmelodic phrases sounding from it, over and over again, now with Marion's voice, now without it. It had meant, even, on one awful occasion, on the second day, the sound of voices in dispute, with the German waxing louder and louder, until the door opened and the Professor stamped out, saying frightful and unintelligible things, with a vision of Marion herself in the middle of the room, tearful but furiously angry and defiant. (They were all very polite at lunch, however; and the Professor refused his beer for once, which was a comfort.)

'* You see," said Marion, " it's the acting as well. If it was the music alone it wouldn't matter so much. But there's van Roth to be considered too, Mr. Harrison says; and van Roth gets fearfully annoyed if his Elsa isn't there when he wants her. You see, he's getting on now, and wants his own way. Here's the letter."

Maggie took it and read it through. It was quite polite, and quite firm. It made the statements quoted by Marion. The writer regretted that the original idea of Miss Tenterden's staying in the country till the middle of December must be abandoned; but there it was. He wrote, it seemed, with the concurrence of Professor von Giinther. He would be obliged if Miss Tenterden would kindly make arrangements to be in London by the last day of November, at the latest. He would even prefer a week sooner, if that were practicable. He was hers, " very truly, James P. Harrison."

" Oh, well, my dear! There's nothing to be done then. It must be as he says," began Maggie. " That's the week after next, isn't it? "

" Yes; but I think we'd better go up next week, even. You see, he asks for that; though he doesn't actually order it."

Maggie glanced at the girl; she seemed oddly excited, and very far from depressed, as might have been expected from this upset of her plans. Marion had been so particularly anxious to be in the country as long as possible; and it had been with that distinct object that the piano had been sent down and that Maggie herself had deserted her maid-servants and her social guilds. Maggie wondered what the reason was for the girl's evident pleasure.

" What's that other letter? " she asked suddenly, nodding at a paper in Marion's hand, as she sat down. Marion remained standing with her back to the light.

" Oh! that's nothing. That's only from a friend of mine. It's no connection with this."

Now Maggie was very far indeed from being stupid. Her intuitions sometimes were uncannily shrewd; and her intuition at this instant, dealing with Marion's manner and the fact that she did not say who her correspondent was, amounted to an absolute certitude that this other letter had some very close connection indeed with the girl's pleasure in going back to town. But she had an accompanying intuition that she had better not say so.

" Well, my dear, I suppose there's no more to be said. But I'm very sorry. You'll lose three weeks of country air; and you know the doctor said it really was important, if you're to stand all the strain later on."

" Oh! that's all right," said Marion. " I'm as strong as a horse. You're a dear to take it so nicely. What a bother I am to you, to be sure! "

Maggie submitted to be kissed, rather thoughtfully. Then her mind switched off again.

"What about that riding we thought of? Perhaps that would do instead of your gardening down here. We could easily hire a horse again, and you could get into the Park for an hour at least every day. You liked it, in the holidays, you know."

Marion's face suddenly became pensive. Then it be-came, as suddenly, alight. " Why, that's absolutely perfect. Of course I could ride; why not? I wonder who'd go with me, though? "

Her eyes strayed for one fractional instant to the letter she still held; but it was not so fractional but that Maggie saw it.

" Perhaps — perhaps, your friend would ride with you. Now who is it, my dear? "

Marion looked at her in consternation at her quickness. Then she suddenly burst out laughing and threw her arms round her.

" I think you're the cleverest woman in the world. You're a witch. You really are! Yes; I've no doubt my friend will ride with me if I ask him. It's Mr. Merival. Would that be all right, do you think? "

Even Maggie was taken aback. The absolute naturalness of the other, her frankness, and yet her odd secretiveness of a minute ago, formed a complication which she could not for the moment unravel. Marion had spoken quite freely to her of Mr. Merival during these past weeks, with a comrade's air, so simple and direct, that any idea of romance seemed absurd. Obviously these two had made friends; and, equally obviously, she had thought, there was nothing but friendship in the air. Besides, the only son of a peer does not, as a rule, make love to a prima donna — at least not to the kind of prima donna that Marion was making, and not the kind of love that Marion would tolerate for one instant.

Maggie took refuge in conversation, retreating under it like a rabbit through a thick undergrowth.

" My dear, why not? You've been deer-stalking with him, after all; and if he and his sister ride too, it'll be delightful for you all. But what a bother it is, having to go up, anyhow! Well: I shall get back to my poor little servants; that's one comfort: and there's a meeting of the Guild on Saturday week, in Caxton Hall, with Mr. Blenkinsop as a speaker. I forget what it's about this moment; but I know it's very important. I had thought of going up to town for it, anyhow — but this is much more convenient. Why! there's the Angelus! " She stopped abruptly and knelt down. After a moment Marion knelt too.

To tell the truth Marion was fully as puzzled with her own case as was her friend, and as innocent of any guile.

During the weeks that had passed since her return from Scotland, a process had been taking place which she would in utter sincerity have thought to mean the gradual extinction of Max from the romantic plane. She did not actually forget him: her experience of him had been too vivid and too new for that: and certainly she looked back on her adventures with him with a great deal of pleasurable sensation. But her music had come to the front again; even the interminably repeated phrases and scales and exercises had a grip on her soul, for they all shone with the glamour of her approaching debut at Covent Garden; this had saturated and enveloped her, and, she thought, absorbed her. She had one note from Norah, saying that they would not be back in London till Christmas, and she had accepted that as a fact. Then, suddenly a letter had come from Max himself, beginning: " My dear Miss Tenterden," ending: " Yours ever sincerely, Max Merival," and relating in between that the weather was getting so miserable that they were coming south at once, and asking whether by any chance she was to be in town. That was absolutely all. It was a note that an anxious parent on either side could have read with equanimity.

Yet it had thrown Marion into a curious state of excitement. It appeared to recall Max with extreme vividness, or, rather, to bring the memory of Max, even of such details as the tone of his voice, up from a realm of consciousness which she was not aware existed in her. It seemed now that music had not expelled, but only overlaid his image, even if it had not fructified it in some odd manner, for the Max that emerged was not quite the same Max as had been disappearing into her memory.

Her first impulse to be silent as to her letter from him had been simply instinctive and not calculated, and even that fact now disturbed her. Why in the world had she not told Maggie instantly, and explained that part of her pleasure at the prospect of going to town was that the Merivals would be there again?

Her frankness, too, had been no less instinctive; it was not in the least an attempt to blind. She had been as natural in intention as in expression. Since he was there, could not she ride with him? — and renew, perhaps, some of the delightful memories of Scotland? So she had said so, simply.

But she was puzzled with her own psychology, and when Maggie had gone back to church, suddenly virtuous, to finish " her hour," she herself went into the music-room, where there was room to move, to think things out.

Music is certainly the most imaginative of the arts, since it is emphatically the most creative. It is not an earthly element raised to the artistic plane, as are the others; it is far more a spiritual element brought down to earth. Therefore it is by far the most exciting of all, and becomes, if the artist is not careful, a kind of forcing-house for the emotions; and a forcing-house, it must be remembered, develops equally all the seeds that happen to be in the soil under treatment. Something of this kind, Marion dimly perceived, was happening to herself. She now remembered, as she went up and down the long floor of the music-room with her quick active steps, that a distinct feature in her vision of her own debut was the presence of Max watching her from a box; that a thought, at least subconsciously present to her, in hours of exercise-drudgery, was that she was perfecting herself in order to show Max what Elsa really was like. Yet the thing had not been deliberate or designed in any way. Now that she attempted to analyse it, she found nothing more than a natural desire, as of one comrade towards another, to show that if he knew all about deer-stalking and salmon-fishing, she knew all about singing. And what harm was there in that? But, on to the top of all this situation, or rather penetrating and saturating every fibre of it, was the actual passion of music itself, revealing, and at the same time, colouring all these relationships, as level sunlight reveals and colours, let us say, the purple sides of heather-covered mountains, or the pools of a peaty salmon-river, giving every detail a significance which, honestly, left to itself, it did not possess. Some of this she dimly saw: other parts of it she did not see at all.

Well, it was puzzling work, thinking. (Didn't Mr. Tulliver say something like this?) The point was that she must arrange for the piano to precede her, and it would take at least two days from door to door.

Ill

Father Denny called the day before they left to take his leave in a proper and formal manner.

" I'm so sorry to hear you're going," he said. " I had hoped you would have been here for the midnight mass, Miss Tenterden. We are going to attempt the Missa de Angelis this year."

The music down here was a subject of extreme pleasure and amusement to Marion. Father Denny always deferred to her when she was present at a choir-practice, but it was in the manner of one maestro gracefully yielding to another. Marion was always ready to sing a motet if it was wished; it was a remnant of her resolution to sing to the Greater Glory of God.

" I am afraid that would have been impossible, anyhow," she said. " I always knew I should have to go before Christmas. You'll write and tell me how you get on, won't you, Father? "

The priest stirred his tea thoughtfully.

" Do you think we could manage Novello's Adeste Fideles, Miss Tenterden? Mr. Jenkinson has been practising the bass solo, he tells me. But we shall miss you sadly," he hastened to add, for fear her feelings should be hurt.

" I suppose you really can't come to hear me? " she said. " It's on the fourth of January. I could get you a seat right at the back of a box, you know."

He shook his head indulgently.

4*uite impossible, I am afraid. The Westminster rees are quite explicit. They leave no loophole at But you haven't said what you think of Mr. lenkinson's powers."

" I think he'll do it splendidly," she said hastily. " He's got a very... a very full voice, hasn't he? "

" Yes: I think it's a very full voice, as you say," observed the priest. " But his duties as postmaster don't give him much opportunity for practising, particularly with this new Insurance Act, too."

Ah! how incredibly small all these things seemed to her now! A year ago she had loved them all, without any tinge of sarcasm. Every one of them had had a kind of minute sacredness of its own — a microcosm of importance — since all was to the Greater Glory. She had even had Mr. Jenkinson in to sing duets with her, and had scarcely missed one choir-practice during the whole of her holiday. And now it seemed so amazingly and even portentously insignificant. What in the world did it matter whether or no Mr. Jenkinson could sing the bass solo in the Adeste?

Meanwhile Maggie was discoursing, and Marion presently began to listen again.

" We're taking Rhadamanthus with us, you see. That's the second label he's had on his cage to-day. I like to get all those things ready in time, you know. The first he tore all to bits, in a passion: so I am sure he knows that he's going back to London; and he can't bear London, poor dear! He's always nervous about the cats. As a matter of fact I think the danger's on the other leg, so to speak. He pecked a strange dog's nose most dreadfully the other day, who only came into the garden, after all, from outside, to see who was calling for Mabel so loudly. Mabel was the last maid we had, you know, Father. You remember Mabel, don't you? She had red hair, and sang alto — at least she thought it was alto, poor thing; and I never thought it would be quite kind to undeceive her. Oh! there go my poor beads again, for the second time this afternoon. No, don't trouble to pick them up, Father, please. They're quite accustomed to it now, poor things. They're from Lourdes, you know- What are you laughing at, my dearest? "

Yes, it was all very charming and simple and pleasant, but oh! she was in a passion to get up to London. There was room to breathe there; there were the great, clean rooms to sing in there; there was the Professor to call up on the telephone at any instant if there was even a scrap of phrasing that was difficult: there were intelligent people to talk to there, and polite people who ran to open a door, to hand her her wraps. By the way, she must not forget those furs that Maggie had promised her for a Christmas present. A prima donna without furs was very nearly a contradiction in terms. She thought silver fox would be the best. And there was a new riding-habit, too: she must sjee about that at once. The old blue one had never looked the same since Maggie had upset an entire pot of glue all over it, on a certain wet afternoon when they were mending picture frames together.

Ah! the world was a happy place. At least it was going to be.

The flat on Campden Hill had been originally designed for an artist, and it was obvious that the studio was a heaven-sent music-room, even though it had only a north aspect. But it looked delicious and home-like as Marion came into it, just before lunch next day, carrying her letters. There was the great white bear-skin rug before the fire; there were the lovely engravings on the walls; and there, above all, was the Bechstein, stripped of its vast case that very morning, with the other poor old piano with its face turned to the wall as if in disgrace.

She had opened one letter in the hall and read it through as she stood there, while Maggie ran upstairs to see if her velvet coat was really there, or had been forgotten, as most things were, at Standing. It was just a note from Max, saying that his people were away, but would Miss Tenterden keep an evening open to dine with them next week? An invitation would follow, if she would indicate the day.

The rest of the letters did not look interesting, and she tossed them on to the piano, retaining an illustrated paper in its wrap, as demanding less intellect. Then she tore it open: it had a purple star printed on its front page, which consisted of illustrations, and the inscription " Marked Copy " also in purple. She turned the pages quickly, and then she stopped.

When Maggie came down five minutes later, carrying the velvet coat on her arm as if to reassure herself by another's evidence that its reality was not a dream, she found Marion still looking at the paper.

" Look here, my dear," said the girl, without looking up, " we're getting on, aren't we? Oh! the coat is there, then. I'm so glad."

Maggie took the paper as well as she could with her burdened hands.

" But how nice! " she cried. " And it's really quite a good picture of you, for once. It's the one you had taken in Baker Street, isn't it, in the spring? And there's the cottage, too. What's it called? — Oh! I see. ' Miss Tenterden's country home.' I'm so glad you've decided to sing under your own name, you know: it always sounds so underhand, somehow, for somebody to be Miss Virginia Fortescue, or something like that, on the stage, when she's really Mrs. Tompkins with a husband and eleven children who all live together in Sydenham, or somewhere. Yes: it's quite a charming picture, my dear; and if you're so famous as all this before you've sung, what will it be like afterwards, I wonder."

" Ah! that's the question," remarked Marion. " Perhaps the kindest thing to do will be not to publish a picture at all. Or perhaps it'll be the County Lunatic Asylum, with * The late Miss Tenterden's present residence' printed underneath." (She jumped up.) " Maggie, dear, if I fail now, I shall go perfectly raving mad. I really mean it. Tell me — do you think I shall fail? "

" Dearest, I'm perfectly certain you will not. But how can I tell? I'm going to make the Thirty Days' Prayer for you, beginning on the third of December, to make quite sure. My dearest, you're looking charming to-day. Give me a kiss."

" I must go and see about the riding-habit this afternoon," said the girl absently, as she lifted her cheek. " You said Dawson's in Bond Street was the best, didn't you? "