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Title: The Whirlpool

Author: George Gissing

Release Date: July, 2003 [Etext# 4299]
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Edited by Charles Aldarondo Aldarondo@yahoo.com




George Gissing

The Whirlpool



Part the First



CHAPTER 1


Harvey Rolfe was old enough to dine with deliberation, young and healthy
enough to sauce with appetite the dishes he thoughtfully selected. You
perceived in him the imperfect epicure. His club had no culinary fame;
the dinner was merely tolerable; but Rolfe's unfinished palate flattered
the second-rate cook. He knew nothing of vintages; it sufficed him to
distinguish between Bordeaux and Burgundy; yet one saw him raise his
glass and peer at the liquor with eye of connoisseur. All unaffectedly;
for he was conscious of his shortcoming in the art of delicate living,
and never vaunted his satisfactions. He had known the pasture of
poverty, and the table as it is set by London landladies; to look back
on these things was to congratulate himself that nowadays he dined.

Beyond the achievement of a vague personal distinction at the
Metropolitan Club, he had done nothing to make himself a man of note,
and it was doubtful whether more than two or three of the members really
liked him or regarded him with genuine interest. His introduction to
this circle he owed to an old friend, Hugh Carnaby, whose social
position was much more clearly defined: Hugh Carnaby, the rambler, the
sportsman, and now for a twelvemonth the son-in-law of Mrs. Ascott
Larkfield. Through Carnaby people learnt as much of his friend's history
as it concerned anyone to know: that Harvey Rolfe had begun with the
study of medicine, had given it up in disgust, subsequently was 'in
business', and withdrew from it on inheriting a competency. They were
natives of the same county, and learnt their Latin together at the
Grammar School of Greystone, the midland town which was missed by the
steam highroad, and so preserves much of the beauty and tranquillity of
days gone by. Rolfe seldom spoke of his own affairs, but in talking of
travel he had been heard to mention that his father had engineered
certain lines of foreign railway. It seemed that Harvey had no purpose
in life, save that of enjoying himself. Obviously he read a good deal,
and Carnaby credited him with profound historical knowledge; but he
neither wrote nor threatened to do so. Something of cynicism appeared in
his talk of public matters; politics amused him, and his social views
lacked consistency, tending, however, to an indolent conservatism.
Despite his convivial qualities, he had traits of the reserved, even of
the unsociable, man: a slight awkwardness in bearing, a mute shyness
with strangers, a hesitancy in ordinary talk, and occasional bluntness
of assertion or contradiction, suggesting a contempt which possibly he
did not intend. Hugh Carnaby declared that the true Rolfe only showed
himself after a bottle of wine; maintained, moreover, that Harvey had
vastly improved since he entered upon a substantial income. When Rolfe
was five and twenty, Hugh being two years younger, they met after a long
separation, and found each other intolerable; a decade later their
meeting led to hearty friendship. Rolfe had become independent, and was
tasting his freedom in a twelvemonth's travel. The men came face to face
one day on the deck of a steamer at Port Said. Physically, Rolfe had
changed so much that the other had a difficulty in recognising him;
morally, the change was not less marked, as Carnaby very soon became
aware. At thirty-seven this process of development was by no means
arrested, but its slow and subtle working escaped observation unless it
were that of Harvey Rolfe himself.

His guest this evening, in a quiet corner of the dining-room where he
generally sat, was a man, ten years his junior, named Morphew: slim,
narrow-shouldered, with sandy hair, and pale, delicate features of more
sensibility than intelligence; restless, vivacious, talking incessantly
in a low, rapid voice, with frequent nervous laughs which threw back his
drooping head. A difference of costume -- Rolfe wore morning dress,
Morphew the suit of ceremony -- accentuated the younger man's advantage
in natural and acquired graces; otherwise, they presented the contrast
of character and insignificance. Rolfe had a shaven chin, a weathered
complexion, thick brown hair; the penumbra of middle-age had touched his
countenance, softening here and there a line which told of temperament
in excess. At this moment his manner inclined to a bluff jocularity, due
in some measure to the bottle of wine before him, as also was the tinge
of colour upon his cheek; he spoke briefly, but listened with smiling
interest to his guest's continuous talk. This ran on the subject of the
money-market, with which the young man boasted some practical
acquaintance.

'You don't speculate at all?' Morphew asked.

'Shouldn't know how to go about it,' replied the other in his deeper
note.

'It seems to me to be the simplest thing in the world if one is content
with moderate profits. I'm going in for it seriously -- cautiously -- as
a matter of business. I've studied the thing -- got it up as I used to
work at something for an exam. And here, you see, I've made five pounds
at a stroke -- five pounds! Suppose I make that every now and then, it's
worth the trouble, you know -- it mounts up. And I shall never stand to
lose much. You see, it's Tripcony's interest that I should make
profits.'

'I'm not quite sure of that.'

'Oh, but it _is_! Let me explain --'

These two had come to know each other under peculiar circumstances a
year ago. Rolfe was at Brussels, staying -- his custom when abroad -- at
a hotel unfrequented by English folk. One evening on his return from the
theatre, he learnt that a young man of his own nationality lay seriously
ill in a room at the top of the house. Harvey, moved by compassion,
visited the unfortunate Englishman, listened to his ravings, and played
the part of Good Samaritan. On recovery, the stranger made full
disclosure of his position. Being at Brussels on a holiday, he had got
into the company of gamblers, and, after winning a large sum (ten
thousand francs, he declared), had lost not only that, but all else.
that he possessed, including his jewellery. He had gambled deliberately;
he wanted money, money, and saw no other way of obtaining it. In the
expansive mood of convalescence, Cecil Morphew left no detail of his
story unrevealed. He was of gentle birth, and had a private income of
three hundred pounds, charged upon the estate of a distant relative; his
profession (the bar) could not be remunerative for years, and other
prospects he had none. The misery of his situation lay in the fact that
he was desperately in love with the daughter of people who looked upon
him as little better than a pauper. The girl had pledged herself to him,
but would not marry without her parents' consent, of which there was no
hope till he had at least trebled his means. His choice of a profession
was absurd, dictated merely by social opinion; he should have been
working hard in a commercial office, or at some open-air pursuit.
Naturally he turned again to the thought of gambling, this time the
great legalised game of hazard, wherein he was as little likely to
prosper as among the blacklegs of Brussels. Rolfe liked him for his
ingenuousness, and for the vein of poetry in his nature. The love affair
still went on, but Morphew seldom alluded to it, and his seasoned friend
thought of it as a youthful ailment which would pass and be forgotten.

'I'm convinced,' said the young man presently, 'that any one who really
gives his mind to it can speculate with moderate success. Look at the
big men -- the brokers and the company promoters, and so on; I've met
some of them, and there's nothing in them -- nothing! Now, there's
Bennet Frothingham. You know him, I think?'

Rolfe nodded.

'Well, what do you think of him? Isn't he a very ordinary fellow? How
has he got such a position? I'm told he began just in a small way -- by
chance. No doubt _he_ found it so easy to make money he was surprised at
his success. Tripcony has told me a lot about him. Why, the "Britannia"
brings him fifteen thousand a year; and he must be in a score of other
things.'

'I know nothing about the figures,' said Rolfe, 'and I shouldn't put
much faith in Tripcony; but Frothingham, you may be sure, isn't quite an
ordinary man.'

'Ah, well, of course there's a certain knack -- and then, experience --'

Morphew emptied his glass, and refilled it. Nearly all the tables in the
room were now occupied, and the general hum of talk gave security to
intimate dialogue. Flushed and bright-eyed, the young man presently
leaned forward.

'If I could count upon five hundred, she would take the step.'

'Indeed?'

'Yes, that's settled. What do you think? Plenty of people live very well
on less.'

'You want my serious opinion?'

'If you _can_ be serious.'

'Then I think that the educated man who marries on less than a thousand
is either mad or a criminal.'

'Bosh! We won't talk about it.'

They rose, and walked towards the smoking-room, Rolfe giving a nod here
and there as he passed acquaintances. In the hall someone addressed him.

'How does Carnaby take this affair?'

'What affair?'

'Don't you know? Their house has been robbed -- stripped. It's in the
evening papers.'

Rolfe went on into the smoking-room, and read the report of his friend's
misfortune. The Carnabys occupied a house in Hamilton Terrace. During
their absence from home last night, there had been a clean sweep of all
such things of value as could easily be removed. The disappearance of
their housekeeper, and the fact that this woman had contrived the
absence of the servants from nine o'clock till midnight, left no mystery
in the matter. The clubmen talked of it with amusement. Hard lines, to
be sure, for Carnaby, and yet harder for his wife, who had lost no end
of jewellery; but the thing was so neatly and completely done, one must
needs laugh. One or two husbands who enjoyed the luxury of a housekeeper
betrayed their uneasiness. A discussion arose on the characteristics of
housekeepers in general, and spread over the vast subject of domestic
management, not often debated at the Metropolitan Club. In general talk
of this kind Rolfe never took part; smoking his pipe, he listened and
laughed, and was at moments thoughtful. Cecil Morphew, rapidly consuming
cigarettes as he lay back in a soft chair, pointed the moral of the
story in favour of humble domesticity.

In half an hour, his guest having taken leave, Rolfe put on his
overcoat, and stepped out into the cold, clammy November night. He was
overtaken by a fellow Metropolitan -- a grizzled, scraggy-throated,
hollow-eyed man, who laid a tremulous hand upon his arm.

'Excuse me, Mr. Rolfe, have you seen Frothingham recently?'

'Not for a month.'

'Ah! I thought perhaps -- I was wondering what he thought about the
Colebrook smash. To tell you the truth, I've heard unpleasant rumours.
Do you -- should you think the Colebrook affair would affect the
"Britannia" in any way?'

It was not the first time that this man had confided his doubts and
timidities to Harvey Rolfe; he had a small, but to him important,
interest in Bennet Frothingham's wide-reaching affairs, and seemed to
spend most of his time in eliciting opinion on the financier's
stability.

'Wouldn't you be much more comfortable,' said Rolfe, rather bluntly, 'if
you had your money in some other kind of security?'

'Ah, but, my dear sir, twelve and a half per cent -- twelve and a half!
I hold preference shares of the original issue.'

'Then I'm afraid you must take your chance.'

'But,' piped the other in alarm, 'you don't mean that --'

'I mean nothing, and know nothing. I'm the last man to consult about
such things.'

And Rolfe, with an abrupt 'Goodnight,' beckoned to a passing hansom. The
address he gave was Hugh Carnaby's, in Hamilton Terrace.

Twice already the horse had slipped at slimy crossings, when, near the
top of Regent Street, it fell full length, and the abrupt stoppage
caused a collision of wheels with another hansom which was just passing
at full speed in the same direction. Rolfe managed to alight in the
ordinary way, and at once heard himself greeted by a familiar voice from
the other cab. His acquaintance showed a pallid, drawn, all but
cadaverous visage, with eyes which concealed pain or weariness under
their friendly smile. Abbott was the man's name. Formerly a lecturer at
a provincial college, he had resigned his post on marrying, and taken to
journalism.

'I want to speak to you, Rolfe,' he said hurriedly, 'but I haven't a
moment to spare. Going to Euston -- could you come along for a few
minutes?'

The vehicles were not damaged; Abbott's driver got quickly out of the
crowd, and the two men continued their conversation.

'Do you know anything of Wager?' inquired the journalist, with a
troubled look.

'He came to see me a few evenings ago -- late.'

'Ha, he did! To borrow money, wasn't it?'

'Well, yes.'

'I thought so. He came to me for the same. Said he'd got a berth at
Southampton. Lie, of course. The fellow has disappeared, and left his
children -- left them in a lodging-house at Hammersmith. How's that for
cool brutality? The landlady found my wife's address, and came to see
her. Address left out on purpose, I dare say. There was nothing for it
but to take care of the poor little brats. -- Oh, damn!'

'What's the matter?'

'Neuralgia -- driving me mad. Teeth, I think. I'll have every one
wrenched out of my head if this goes on. Never mind. What do you think
of Wager?'

'I remember, when we were at Guy's, he used to advocate the
nationalisation of offspring. Probably he had some personal interest in
the matter, even then.'

'Hound! I don't know whether to set the police after him or not. It
wouldn't benefit the children. I suppose it's no use hunting for his
family?'

'Not much, I should say.'

'Well, lucky we have no children of our own. Worst of it is, I don't
like the poor little wretches, and my wife doesn't either. We must find
a home for them.'

'I say, Abbott, you must let me go halves at that.'

'Hang it, no! Why should you support Wager's children? They're relatives
of ours, unfortunately. But I wanted to tell you that I'm going down to
Waterbury.' He looked at his watch. 'Thirteen minutes -- shall I do it?
There's a good local paper, the _Free Press_, and I have the offer of
part-ownership. I shall buy, if possible, and live in the country for a
year or two, to pick up my health. Can't say I love London. Might get
into country journalism for good. Curse this torment!'

In Tottenham Court Road, Rolfe bade his friend goodbye, and the cab
rushed on.


CHAPTER 2


It was half past ten when Rolfe knocked at the door in Hamilton Terrace.
He learnt from the servant that Mr. Carnaby was at home, and had
company. In the room known as the library, four men sat smoking; their
voices pealed into the hall as the door opened, and a boisterous welcome
greeted the newcomer's appearance.

'Come to condole?' cried Hugh, striding forward with his
man-of-the-wide-world air, and holding out his big hand. 'No doubt
they're having a high old time at the club. Does it please them? Does it
tickle them?'

'Why, naturally. There's the compensation, my boy -- you contribute to
the gaiety of your friends.'

Carnaby was a fair example of the well-bred, well-fed Englishman --
tall, brawny, limber, not uncomely, with a red neck, a powerful jaw, and
a keen eye. Something more of repose, of self-possession, and a slightly
more intellectual brow, would have made him the best type of conquering,
civilising Briton. He came of good family, but had small inheritance;
his tongue told of age-long domination; his physique and carriage showed
the horseman, the game-stalker, the nomad. Hugh had never bent over
books since the day when he declined the university and got leave to
join Colonel Bosworth's exploring party in the Caucasus. After a boyhood
of straitened circumstances, he profited by a skilful stewardship which
allowed him to hope for some seven hundred a year; his elder brother,
Miles, a fine fellow, who went into the army, pinching himself to
benefit Hugh and their sister Ruth. Miles was now Major Carnaby, active
on the North-West Frontier. Ruth was wife of a missionary in some land
of swamps; doomed by climate, but of spirit indomitable. It seemed
strange that Hugh, at five and thirty, had done nothing particular.
Perhaps his income explained it -- too small for traditional purposes,
just large enough to foster indolence. For Hugh had not even followed up
his promise of becoming an explorer; he had merely rambled, mostly in
pursuit of fowl or quadruped. When he married, all hope for him was at
an end. The beautiful and brilliant daughter of a fashionable widow, her
income a trifle more than Carnaby's own; devoted to the life of cities,
wherein she shone; an enchantress whose spell would not easily be
broken, before whom her husband bowed in delighted subservience -- such
a woman might flatter Hugh's pride, but could scarce be expected to draw
out his latent energies and capabilities. This year, for the first time,
he had visited no wild country; his journeying led only to Paris, to
Vienna. In due season he shot his fifty brace on somebody's grouse-moor,
but the sport did not exhilarate him.

An odd and improbable alliance, that between Hugh Carnaby and Harvey
Rolfe. Yet in several ways they suited each other. Old-time memories had
a little, not much, to do with it; more of the essence of the matter was
their feeling of likeness in difference. Ten years ago Carnaby felt
inclined to call his old school-fellow a 'cad'; Harvey saw nothing in
Hugh but robust snobbishness. Nowadays they had the pleasant sense of
understanding each other on most points, and the result was a good deal
of honest mutual admiration. The one's physical vigour and adroitness,
the other's active mind, liberal thoughts, studious habits, proved
reciprocally attractive. Though in unlike ways, both were impressively
modern. Of late it had seemed as if the man of open air, checked in his
natural courses, thrown back upon his meditations, turned to the
student, with hope of guidance in new paths, of counsel amid unfamiliar
obstacles. To the observant Rolfe, his friend's position abounded in
speculative interest. With the course of years, each had lost many a
harsher characteristic, whilst the inner man matured. That their former
relations were gradually being reversed, neither perhaps had consciously
noted; but even in the jests which passed between them on Harvey's
arrival this evening, it appeared plainly enough that Hugh Carnaby no
longer felt the slightest inclination to regard his friend as an
inferior.

The room, called library, contained one small case of books, which dealt
with travel and sport. Furniture of the ordinary kind, still new, told
of easy circumstances and domestic comfort. Round about the walls hung a
few paintings and photographs, intermingled with the stuffed heads of
animals slain in the chase, notably that of a great ibex with
magnificent horns.

'Come, now, tell me all about it,' said Rolfe, as he mixed himself a
glass of whisky and water. 'I don't see that anything has gone from this
room.'

'Don't you?' cried his host, with a scornful laugh. 'Where are my
silver-mounted pistols? Where's the ibex-hoof made into a paperweight?
And' -- he raised his voice to a shout of comical despair -- 'where's my
cheque-book?'

'I see.'

'I wish _I_ did. It must break the record for a neat house-robbery,
don't you think? And they'll never be caught -- I'll bet you anything
you like they won't. The job was planned weeks ago; that woman came into
the house with no other purpose.'

'But didn't your wife know anything about her?'

'What can one know about such people? There were references, I believe
-- as valuable as references usually are. She must be an old hand. But
I'm sick of the subject; let's drop it. -- You were interrupted,
Hollings. What about that bustard?'

A very tall, spare man, who seemed to rouse himself from a nap, resumed
his story of bustard-stalking in Spain last spring. Carnaby, who knew
the country well, listened with lively interest, and followed with
reminiscences of his own. He told of a certain boar, shot in the
Sierras, which weighed something like four hundred pounds. He talked,
too, of flamingoes on the 'marismas' of the Guadalquivir; of punting day
after day across the tawny expanse of water; of cooking his meals on
sandy islets at a fire made of tamarisk and thistle; of lying wakeful in
the damp, chilly nights, listening to frogs and bitterns. Then again of
his ibex-hunting on the Cordilleras of Castile, when he brought down
that fine fellow whose head adorned his room, the horns just
thirty-eight inches long. And in the joy of these recollections there
seemed to sound a regretful note, as if he spoke of things gone by and
irrecoverable, no longer for him.

One of the men present had recently been in Cyprus, and mentioned it
with disgust. Rolfe also had visited the island, and remembered it much
more agreeably, his impressions seeming to be chiefly gastronomic; he
recalled the exquisite flavour of Cyprian hares, the fat francolin, the
delicious beccaficoes in commanderia wine; with merry banter from
Carnaby, professing to despise a man who knew nothing of game but its
taste. The conversation reverted to technicalities of sport, full of
terms and phrases unintelligible to Harvey; recounting feats with
'Empress' and 'Paradox', the deadly results of a 'treble A', or of
'treble-nesting slugs', and boasting of a 'right and left with No. 6'.
Hugh appeared to forget all about his domestic calamity; only when his
guests rose did he recur to it, and with an air of contemptuous
impatience. But he made a sign to Rolfe, requesting him to stay, and at
midnight the two friends sat alone together.

'Sibyl has gone to her mother's,' began Hugh in a changed voice. 'The
poor girl takes it pluckily. It's a damnable thing, you know, for a
woman to lose her rings and bracelets and so on -- even such a woman as
Sibyl. She tried to laugh it off, but I could see -- we must buy them
again, that's all. And that reminds me -- what's your real opinion of
Frothingham?'

Harvey laughed.

'When such a lot of people go about asking that question, it would make
_me_ rather uneasy if I had anything at stake.'

'They do? So it struck me. The fact is, we have a good deal at stake.
The dowager swears by Frothingham. I believe every penny she has is in
the "Britannia", one way or another.'

'It's a wide net,' said Rolfe musingly. 'The Britannia Loan, Assurance,
Investment, and Banking Company, Limited. Very good name, I've often
thought.'

'Yes; but, look here, you don't seriously doubt --'

'My opinion is worthless. I know no more of finance than of the Cabala.
Frothingham personally I rather like, and that's all I can say.'

'The fact is, I have been thinking of putting some of my own -- yet I
don't think I shall. We're going away for the winter. Sibyl wants to
give up the house, and I think she's right. For people like us, it's
mere foolery to worry with a house and a lot of servants. We're neither
of us cut out for that kind of thing. Sibyl hates housekeeping. Well,
you can't expect a woman like her to manage a pack of thieving, lying,
lazy servants. The housekeeper idea hasn't been a conspicuous success,
you see, and there's nothing for it but hotel or boarding-house.'

'If you remember,' said Rolfe, 'I hinted something of the kind a year
ago.'

'Yes; but -- well, you know, when people marry they generally look for a
certain natural consequence. If we have no children, it'll be all
right.'

Rolfe meditated for a moment.

'You remember that fellow Wager -- the man you met at Abbott's? His wife
died a year ago, and now he has bolted, leaving his two children in a
lodging-house.'

'What a damned scoundrel!' cried Hugh, with a note of honest
indignation.

'Well, yes; but there's something to be said for him. It's a natural
revolt against domestic bondage. Of course, as things are, someone else
has to bear the bother and expense; but that's only our state of
barbarism. A widower with two young children and no income -- imagine
the position. Of course, he ought to be able to get rid of them in some
legitimate way -- state institution -- anything you like that answers to
reason.'

'I don't know whether it would work.'

'Some day it will. People talk such sentimental rubbish about children.
I would have the parents know nothing about them till they're ten or
twelve years old. They're a burden, a hindrance, a perpetual source of
worry and misery. Most wives are sacrificed to the next generation -- an
outrageous absurdity. People snivel over the deaths of babies; I see
nothing to grieve about. If a child dies, why, the probabilities are it
_ought_ to die; if it lives, it lives, and you get survival of the
fittest. We don't want to choke the world with people, most of them
rickety and wheezing; let us be healthy, and have breathing space.'

'I believe in _that_,' said Carnaby.

'You're going away, then. Where to?'

'That's the point,' replied Hugh, moving uneasily. 'You see, with Sibyl
--. I have suggested Davos. Some people she knows are there -- girls who
go in for tobogganing, and have a good time. But Sibyl's afraid of the
cold. I can't convince her that it's nothing to what we endure here in
the beastliness of a London winter. She hates the thought of ice and
snow and mountains. A great pity; it would do her no end of good. I
suppose we must go to the Riviera.'

He shrugged his shoulders, and for a moment there was silence.

'By-the-bye,' he resumed, 'I have a letter from Miles, and you'd like to
see it.'

From a pile of letters on the table he selected one written on two
sheets of thin paper, and handed it to Rolfe. The writing was bold, the
style vigorous, the matter fresh and interesting. Major Carnaby had no
graces of expression; but all the more engrossing was his brief
narrative of mountain warfare, declaring its truthfulness in every
stroke of the pen.

'Fine fellow!' exclaimed Rolfe, when he had read to the end. 'Splendid
fellow!'

'Isn't he! And he's seeing life.'

'That's where you ought to be, my boy,' remarked Rolfe, between puffs of
tobacco.

'I dare say. No use thinking about it. Too late.'

'If I had a son,' pursued Harvey, smiling at the hypothesis, 'I think
I'd make a fighting man of him, or try to. At all events, he should go
out somewhere, and beat the big British drum, one way or another. I
believe it's our only hope. We're rotting at home -- some of us sunk in
barbarism, some coddling themselves in over-refinement. What's the use
of preaching peace and civilisation, when we know that England's just
beginning her big fight -- the fight that will put all history into the
shade! We have to lead the world; it's our destiny; and we must do it by
breaking heads. That's the nature of the human animal, and will be for
ages to come.'

Carnaby nodded assent.

'If we were all like your brother,' Rolfe went on. 'I'm glad he's
fighting in India, and not in Africa. I can't love the buccaneering
shopkeeper, the whisky-distiller with a rifle -- ugh!'

'I hate that kind of thing. The gold grubbers and diamond bagmen! But
it's part of the march onward. We must have money, you know.'

The speaker's forehead wrinkled, and again he moved uneasily. Rolfe
regarded him with a reflective air.

'That man you saw here tonight,' Carnaby went on, 'the short, thick
fellow -- his name is Dando -- he's just come back from Queensland. I
don't quite know what he's been doing, but he evidently knows a good
deal about mines. He says he has invented a new process for getting gold
out of ore -- I don't know anything about it. In the early days of
mining, he says, no end of valuable stuff was abandoned, because they
couldn't smelt it. Something about pyrites -- I have a vague
recollection of old chemistry lessons. Dando wants to start smelting
works for his new process, somewhere in North Queensland.'

'And wants money, I dare say,' remarked the listener, with a twinkle of
the eye.

'I suppose so. It was Carton that brought him here for the first time, a
week ago. _Might_ be worth thinking about, you know.'

'I have no opinion. My profound ignorance of everything keeps me in a
state of perpetual scepticism. It has its advantages, I dare say.'

'You're very conservative, Rolfe, in your finance.'

'Very.'

'Quite right, no doubt. Could you join us at Nice or some such place?'

'Why, I rather thought of sticking to my books. But if the fogs are very
bad --'

'And you would seriously advise us to give up the house?'

'My dear fellow, how can you hesitate? Your wife is quite right; there's
not one good word to be said for the ordinary life of an English
household. Flee from it! Live anywhere and anyhow, but don't keep house
in England. Wherever I go, it's the same cry: domestic life is played
out. There isn't a servant to be had -- unless you're a Duke and breed
them on your own estate. All ordinary housekeepers are at the mercy of
the filth and insolence of a draggle-tailed, novelette-reading feminine
democracy. Before very long we shall train an army of menservants, and
send the women to the devil.'

'Queer thing, Rolfe,' put in his friend, with a laugh; 'I've noticed it
of late, you're getting to be a regular woman-hater.'

'Not a bit of it. I hate a dirty, lying, incapable creature, that's all,
whether man or woman. No doubt they're more common in petticoats.'

'Been to the Frothinghams' lately?'

'No.'

'I used to think you were there rather often.'

Rolfe gave a sort of grunt, and kept silence.

'To my mind,' pursued the other, 'the best thing about Alma is that she
appreciates my wife. She has really a great admiration for Sibyl; no
sham about it, I'm sure. I don't pretend to know much about women, but I
fancy that kind of thing isn't common -- real friendship and admiration
between them. People always say so, at all events.'

'I take refuge once more,' said Rolfe, 'in my fathomless ignorance.'

He rose from his chair, and sat down again on a corner of the table.
Carnaby stood up, threw his arms above his head, and yawned with animal
vehemence, the expression of an intolerable ennui.

'There's something damnably wrong with us all -- that's the one thing
certain.'

'Idleness, for one thing,' said Rolfe.

'Yes. And I'm too old to do anything. Why didn't I follow Miles into the
army? I think I was more cut out for that than for anything else. I
often feel I should like to go to South Africa and get up a little war
of my own.'

Rolfe shouted with laughter.

'Not half a bad idea, and the easiest thing in the world, no doubt.'

'Nigger-hunting; a superior big game.'

'There's more than that to do in South Africa,' said Harvey. 'I was
looking at a map in Stanford's window the other day, and it amused me.
Who believes for a moment that England will remain satisfied with bits
here and there? We have to swallow the whole, of course. We shall go on
fighting and annexing, until -- until the decline and fall of the
British Empire. That hasn't begun yet. Some of us are so over-civilised
that it makes a reaction of wholesome barbarism in the rest. We shall
fight like blazes in the twentieth century. It's the only thing that
keeps Englishmen sound; commercialism is their curse. Happily, no sooner
do they get fat than they kick, and somebody's shin suffers; then they
fight off the excessive flesh. War is England's Banting.'

'You'd better not talk like that to Sibyl.'

'Why, frankly, old man, I think that's your mistake. But you'll tell me,
and rightly enough, to mind my own business.'

'Nonsense. What do you mean exactly? You think I ought to --'

Hugh hesitated, with an air of uneasiness.

'Well,' pursued his friend cautiously, 'do you think it's right to
suppress your natural instincts? Mightn't it give her a new interest in
life if she came round a little to your point of view?'

'Queer thing, how unlike we are, isn't it?' said Carnaby, with a sudden
drop of his tone to amiable ingenuousness. 'But, you know; we get along
together very well.'

'To be sure. Yet you are going to rust in the Riviera when you want to
be on the Himalayas. Wouldn't it do your wife good to give up her books
and her music for a while and taste fresh air?'

'I doubt if she's strong enough for it.'

'It would make her stronger. And here's a good opportunity. If you give
up housekeeping (and housekeepers), why not reform your life altogether?
Go and have a look at Australia.'

'Sibyl hates the sea.'

'She'd soon get over that. Seriously, you ought to think of it.'

Carnaby set his lips and for a moment hung his head.

'You're quite right. But --'

'A little pluck, old fellow.'

'I'll see what can be done. Have another whisky?'

They went out into the hall, where a dim light through coloured glass
illumined a statue in terracotta, some huge engravings, the massive
antlers of an elk, and furniture in carved oak.

'Queer feeling of emptiness,' said Carnaby, subduing his voice. 'I feel
as if they'd carried off everything, and left bare walls. Sibyl couldn't
stay in the place. Shall I whistle for a cab? By Jove! that reminds me,
the whistle has gone; it happened to be silver. A wedding present from
that fool Benson, who broke his neck in a steeplechase three weeks
after.' Harvey laughed, and stepped out into the watery fog.


CHAPTER 3


A cab crawling at the upper end of the terrace took him quickly home. He
entered with his latch-key as a church clock tolled one.

It was a large house, within a few minutes' walk of Royal Oak Station.
Having struck a match, and lit a candle which stood upon the hall table
(indicating that he was the last who would enter tonight), Harvey put up
the door-chain and turned the great key, then went quietly upstairs. His
rooms were on the first floor. A tenancy of five years, with long
absences, enabled him to regard this niche in a characterless suburb as
in some sort his home; a familiar smell of books and tobacco welcomed
him as he opened the door; remnants of a good fire kept the air warm,
and dispersed a pleasant glow. On shelves which almost concealed the
walls, stood a respectable collection of volumes, the lowest tier
consisting largely of what secondhand booksellers, when invited to
purchase, are wont to call 'tomb-stones' that is to say, old folios, of
no great market value, though good brains and infinite labour went to
the making of them. A great table, at one end of which was a tray with
glasses and a water-bottle, occupied the middle of the floor; nearer the
fireplace was a small writing-desk. For pictures little space could be
found; but over the mantelpiece hung a fine water-colour, the flood of
Tigris and the roofs of Bagdad burning in golden sunset. Harvey had
bought it at the gallery in Pall Mall not long ago; the work of a man of
whom he knew nothing; it represented the farthest point of his own
travels, and touched profoundly his vague historico-poetic
sensibilities.

Three letters lay on the desk. As soon as he had lit his lamp, and
exchanged his boots for slippers, he looked at the envelopes, and chose
one addressed in a woman's hand. The writer was Mrs. Bennet Frothingham.

'We have only just heard, from Mrs. Carnaby, that you are back in town.
_Could_ you spare us tomorrow evening? It would be so nice of you. The
quartet will give Beethoven's F minor, and Alma says it will be well
done -- the conceit of the child! We hope to have some interesting
people What a shocking affair of poor Mrs. Carnaby's! I never knew
anything _quite_ so bad. -- Our united kind regards.'

Harvey thrust out his lips, in an ambiguous expression, as he threw the
sheet aside. He mused before opening the next letter. This proved to be
of startling contents: a few lines scribbled informally, undated,
without signature. A glance at the postmark discovered 'Liverpool'.

'The children are at my last address, -- you know it. I can do no more
for them. If the shabby Abbotts refuse -- as I dare say they will -- it
wouldn't hurt you to keep them from the workhouse. But it's a devilish
hard world, and they must take their chance.'

After a stare and a frown, Harvey woke the echoes with boisterous
laughter. It was long since any passage in writing had so irresistibly
tickled his sense of humour. Well, he must let Abbott know of this. It
might be as well, perhaps, if he called on Mrs. Abbott tomorrow, to
remove any doubt that might remain in her mind. The fellow Wager being
an old acquaintance of his, he could not get rid of a sense of far-off
responsibility in this matter; though, happily, Wager's meeting with Mrs
Abbott's cousin, which led to marriage and misery, came about quite
independently of him.

The last letter he opened without curiosity, but with quiet interest and
pleasure. It was dated from Greystone; the writer, Basil Morton, had a
place in his earliest memories, for, as neighbours' children, they had
played together long before the grammar-school days which allied him
with Hugh Carnaby.

'For aught I know,' began Morton, 'you may at this moment be drifting on
the Euphrates, or pondering on the site of Alexandreia Eschate. It is
you who owe me an account of yourself; nevertheless, I am prompted to
write, if only to tell you that I have just got the complete set of the
Byzantine Historians. A catalogue tempted me, and I did buy.'

And so on in the same strain, until, in speaking of nearer matters, his
style grew simpler.

'Our elder boy begins to put me in a difficulty. As I told you, he has
been brought up on the most orthodox lines of Anglicanism; his mother --
best of mothers and best of wives, but in this respect atavistic -- has
had a free hand, and I don't see how it could have been otherwise. But
now the lad begins to ask awkward questions, and to put me in a corner;
the young rascal is a vigorous dialectician and rationalist -- odd
result of such training. It becomes a serious question how I am to
behave. I cannot bear to distress his mother, yet how can I tell him
that I literally believe those quaint old fables? _Solvetur vivendo_, of
course, like everything else, but just now it worries me a little.
Generally I can see a pretty clear line of duty; here the duty is
divided, with a vengeance. Have you any counsel?'

Harvey Rolfe mumbled impatiently; all domestic matters were a trial to
his nerves. It seemed to him an act of unaccountable folly to marry a
woman from whom one differed diametrically on subjects that lay at the
root of life; and of children he could hardly bring himself to think at
all, so exasperating the complication they introduced into social
problems which defied common-sense. He disliked children; fled the sight
and the sound of them in most cases, and, when this was not possible,
regarded them with apprehension, anxiety, weariness, anything but
interest. In the perplexity that had come upon him, Basil Morton seemed
to have nothing more than his deserts. 'Best of mothers and of wives',
forsooth! An excellent housekeeper, no doubt, but what shadow of
qualification for wifehood and motherhood in this year 1886? The whole
question was disgusting to a rational man -- especially to that vigorous
example of the class, by name Harvey Rolfe.

Late as it was, he did not care to go to bed. This morning he had
brought home a batch of books from the London Library, and he began to
turn them over, with the pleasure of anticipation. Not seldom of late
had Harvey flattered himself on the growth of intellectual gusto which
proceeded in him together with a perceptible decline of baser appetites,
so long his torment and his hindrance. His age was now seven and thirty;
at forty he might hope to have utterly trodden under foot the instincts
at war with mental calm. He saw before him long years of congenial
fellowship, of bracing travel, of well-directed studiousness. Let
problems of sex and society go hang! He had found a better way.

On looking back over his life, how improbable it seemed, this happy
issue out of crudity, turbulence, lack of purpose, weakness,
insincerity, ignorance. First and foremost he had to thank good old Dr
Harvey, of Greystone; then, his sister, sleeping in her grave under the
old chimes she loved; then, surely himself, that seed of good within him
which had survived all adverse influences -- watched, surely, by his
unconscious self, guarded long, and now deliberately nurtured. Might he
not think well of himself.

His library, though for the most part the purchase of late years,
contained books which reminded him of every period of his life. Up
yonder, on the top shelf, were two score volumes which had belonged to
his father, the share that fell to him when he and his sister made the
ordained division: scientific treatises out of date, an old magazine,
old books of travel. Strange that, in his times of folly, he had not
sold these as burdensome rubbish; he was very glad now, when love and
reverence for things gone by began to take hold upon him. There, at the
same height, stood a rank of school-books preserved for him by his
sister till she died; beside them, medical works, relics of his abortive
study when he was neither boy nor man. Descending, the eye fell upon
yellow and green covers, dozens of French novels, acquired at any time
from the year of his majority up to the other day; in the mass, they
reminded him of a frothy season, when he boasted a cheap Gallicism, and
sneered at all things English. A sprinkling of miscellaneous literature
accounted for ten years or more when he cared little to collect books,
when the senses raged in him, and only by miracle failed to hurl him
down many a steep place. Last came the serious acquisitions, the bulk of
his library: solid and expensive works --historians, archaeologists,
travellers, with noble volumes of engravings, and unwieldy tomes of
antique lore. Little enough of all this had Rolfe digested, but more and
more he loved to have erudition within his reach. He began to lack room
for comely storage; already a large bookcase had intruded into his
bedroom. If he continued to purchase, he must needs house himself more
amply; yet he dreaded the thought of a removal.

He knew enough and to spare of life in lodgings. His experience began
when he came up as a lad to Guy's Hospital, when all lodgings in London
shone with the glorious light of liberty. It took a wider scope when,
having grasped his little patrimony, he threw physic to the dogs, and
lived as a gentleman at large. In those days he grew familiar with many
kinds of 'apartments' and their nomadic denizens. Having wasted his
substance, he found refuge in the office of an emigration agent, where,
by slow degrees, he proved himself worth a couple of hundred pounds per
annum. This was the 'business' to which Hugh Carnaby vaguely referred
when people questioned him concerning his friend's history.

Had he possessed the commercial spirit, Harvey might have made his
position in this office much more lucrative. Entering nominally as a
clerk, he undertook from the first a variety of duties which could only
be discharged by a man of special abilities; for instance, the literary
revision of seductive pamphlets and broadsheets issued by his employer
to the public contemplating emigration. These advertisements he
presently composed, and, from the point of view of effectiveness, did it
remarkably well. How far such work might be worthy of an honest man, was
another question, which for several years scarcely troubled his
conscience. Before long a use was found for his slender medical
attainments; it became one of his functions to answer persons who
visited the office for information as to the climatic features of this
or that new country, and their physical fitness for going out as
colonists. Of course, there was demanded of him a radical
unscrupulousness, and often enough he proved equal to the occasion; but
as time went on, bringing slow development of brain and character, he
found these personal interviews anything but agreeable. He had
constantly before him the spectacle of human misery and defeat, now and
then in such dread forms that his heart sank and his tongue refused to
lie. When disgust made him contemplate the possibility of finding more
honourable employment, the manifest difficulties deterred him.

He held the place for nearly ten years, living in the end so soberly and
frugally that his two hundred pounds seemed a considerable income; it
enabled him to spend his annual month of holiday in continental travel,
which now had a significance very different from that of his truancies
in France or Belgium before he began to earn a livelihood. Two deaths, a
year's interval between them, released him from his office. Upon these
events and their issue he had not counted; independence came to him as a
great surprise, and on the path of self-knowledge he had far to travel
before the significance of that and many another turning-point grew
clear to his backward gaze.

Seeking for a comfortable abode, he discovered these rooms in Bayswater.
They were to let furnished, the house being occupied by a widow not
quite of the ordinary type of landlady, who entertained only bachelors,
and was fairly conscientious in the discharge of her obligations. Six
months later, during Harvey's absence abroad, this woman died, and on
his return the house had already been stripped of furniture. For a
moment he inclined to take a house of his own, but from this perilous
experiment he was saved by an intimation that, if he were willing to
supply himself with furniture and service, an incoming tenant would let
him occupy his old quarters. Harvey grasped at the offer. His landlord
was a man named Buncombe, a truss manufacturer, who had two children,
and seemingly no wife. The topmost storey Buncombe assigned to relatives
of his own -- a middle-aged woman, Mrs. Handover, with a sickly grownup
son, who took some part in the truss business. For a few weeks Rolfe was
waited upon by a charwoman, whom he paid extravagantly for a maximum of
dirt and discomfort; then the unsatisfactory person fell ill, and,
whilst cursing his difficulties, Harvey was surprised by a visit from
Mrs. Handover, who made an unexpected suggestion -- would Mr. Rolfe accept
her services in lieu of the charwoman's, paying her whatever he had been
accustomed to give? The proposal startled him. Mrs. Handover seemed to
belong pretty much to his own rank of life; he was appalled at the
thought of bidding her scrub floors and wash plates; and indeed it had
begun to dawn upon him that, for a man with more than nine hundred a
year, he was living in a needlessly uncomfortable way. On his reply that
he thought of removing, Mrs. Handover fell into profound depression, and
began to disclose her history. Very early in life she had married a man
much beneath her in station, with the natural result. After some years
of quarrelling, which culminated in personal violence on her husband's
part, she obtained a judicial separation. For a long time the man had
ceased to send her money, and indeed he was become a vagabond pauper,
from whom nothing could be obtained; she depended upon her son, and on
the kindness of Buncombe, who asked no rent. If she could earn a little
money by work, she would be much happier, and with tremulous hope she
had taken this step of appealing to her neighbour in the house.

Harvey could not resist these representations. When the new arrangement
had been in operation for a week or so, Harvey began to reflect upon Mrs
Handover's personal narrative, and in some respects to modify his first
impulsive judgment thereon. It seemed to him not impossible that Mr
Handover's present condition of vagabond pauper might be traceable to
his marriage with a woman who had never learnt the elements of domestic
duty. Thoroughly well-meaning, Mrs. Handover was the most incompetent of
housewives. Yet such was Harvey Rolfe's delicacy, and so intense his
moral cowardice, that year after year he bore with Mrs. Handover's
defects, and paid her with a smile the wages of two first-rate servants.
Dust lay thick about him; he had grown accustomed to it, as to many
another form of sluttishness. After all, he possessed a quiet retreat
for studious hours, and a tolerable sleeping-place, with the advantage
of having his correspondence forwarded to him when he chose to wander.
To be sure, it was not final; one would not wish to grow old and die
amid such surroundings; sooner or later, circumstance would prompt the
desirable change. Circumstance, at this stage of his career, was
Harvey's god; he waited upon its direction with an air of wisdom, of
mature philosophy.

Of his landlord, Buncombe, he gradually learnt all that he cared to
know. The moment came when Buncombe grew confidential, and he, too, had
a matrimonial history to disclose. Poverty played no part in it; his
business flourished, and Mrs. Buncombe, throughout a cohabitation of five
years, made no complaint of her lot. All at once -- so asserted Buncombe
-- the lady began to talk of dullness; for a few months she moped, then
of a sudden left home, and in a day or two announced by letter that she
had taken a place as barmaid at a music-hall. There followed an
interview between husband and wife, with the result, said Buncombe, that
they parted the best of friends, but with an understanding that Mrs
Buncombe should be free to follow her own walk in life, with a moderate
allowance to supplement what she could earn. That was five years ago.
Mrs. Buncombe now sang at second-rate halls, and enjoyed a certain
popularity, which seemed to her an ample justification of the
independence she had claimed. She was just thirty, tolerably
good-looking, and full of the enjoyment of life. Her children,
originally left in the care of her mother, whom Buncombe supported, were
now looked after by the two servants of the house, and Buncombe seemed
to have no conscientious troubles on that score; to Harvey Rolfe's eye
it was plain that the brother and sister were growing up as vicious
little savages, but he permitted himself no remark on the subject.

After a few conversations, he gained an inkling of Buncombe's motive in
taking a house so much larger than he needed. This magnificence was
meant as an attraction to the roaming wife, whom, it was clear, Buncombe
both wished and hoped to welcome back before very long. She did
occasionally visit the house, though only for an hour or two; just to
show, said Buncombe, that there was no ill-feeling. On his part,
evidently, there was none whatever. An easy-going, simple-minded fellow,
aged about forty, with a boyish good temper and no will to speak of, he
seemed never to entertain a doubt of his wife's honesty, and in any case
would probably have agreed, on the least persuasion, to let bygones be
bygones. He spoke rather proudly than otherwise of Mrs. Buncombe's
artistic success.

'It isn't every woman could have done it, you know, Mr. Rolfe.'

'It is not,' Harvey assented.

Only those rooms were furnished which the little family used, five or
six in all; two or three stood vacant, and served as playgrounds for the
children in bad weather. Of his relatives at the top, Buncombe never
spoke; he either did not know, or viewed with indifference, the fact
that Mrs. Handover served his lodger in a menial capacity. About once a
month he invited three or four male friends to a set dinner, and
hilarity could be heard until long after midnight. Altogether it was a
strange household, and, as he walked about the streets of the
neighbourhood, Harvey often wondered what abnormalities even more
striking might be concealed behind the meaningless uniformity of these
heavily respectable housefronts. As a lodger he was content to dwell
here; but sometimes by a freak of imagination he pictured himself a
married man, imprisoned with wife and children amid these leagues of
dreary, inhospitable brickwork, and a great horror fell upon him.

No. In his time he had run through follies innumerable, but from the
supreme folly of hampering himself by marriage, a merciful fate had
guarded him. It was probably the most remarkable fact of his life; it
heightened his self-esteem, and appeared to warrant him in the assurance
that a destiny so protective would round the close of his days with
tranquillity and content.

Upon this thought he lay down to rest. For half an hour Basil Morton's
letter had occupied his mind: he had tried to think out the problem it
set forth, not to leave his friend quite unanswered; but weariness
prevailed, and with it the old mood of self-congratulation.

Next morning the weather was fine; that is to say, one could read
without artificial light, and no rain fell, and far above the house-tops
appeared a bluish glimmer, shot now and then with pale yellowness.
Harvey decided to carry out his intention of calling upon Mrs. Abbott.
She lived at Kilburn, and thither he drove shortly before twelve
o'clock. He was admitted to a very cosy room, where, amid books and
pictures, and by a large fire, the lady of the house sat reading.
Whatever the cause, it seemed to him that his welcome fell short of
cordiality, and he hastened to excuse himself for intruding at so early
an hour.

'I received a letter last night which I thought you had better know of
without delay.'

'From that man -- Mr. Wager?' said Mrs. Abbott quickly and hopefully, her
face brightening.

'Yes. But there's nothing satisfactory in it. He writes from Liverpool,
and merely says that the children are at his lodgings, and he can do no
more for them.'

Mrs. Abbott set her lips in an expression almost of sullenness. Rolfe had
never seen her look thus, but it confirmed a suspicion which he had
harboured concerning her. Why, he hardly knew -- for she always
presented a face of amiability, and talked in gentle, womanly tones --
doubt as to Abbott's domestic felicity haunted his mind. Perhaps he now
saw her, for the first time, as she commonly appeared to her husband --
slightly peevish, unwilling to be disturbed, impatient when things did
not run smoothly.

'You saw my husband yesterday?' was her next remark, not very graciously
uttered.

'We met in the street last night -- before I got Wager's letter. He was
suffering horribly from neuralgia.'

Harvey could not forbear to add this detail, but he softened his voice
and smiled.

'I don't wonder at it,' returned the lady; 'he takes no care of
himself.'

Harvey glanced about the room. Its furnishing might be called luxurious,
and the same standard of comfort prevailed through the house.
Considering that Edgar Abbott, as Rolfe knew, married on small means,
and that he had toiled unremittingly to support a home in which he could
seldom enjoy an hour's leisure, there seemed no difficulty in explaining
this neglect of his own health. It struck the visitor that Mrs. Abbott
might have taken such considerations into account, and have spoken of
the good fellow more sympathetically. In truth, Harvey did not quite
like Mrs. Abbott. Her age was about seven and twenty. She came of poor
folk, and had been a high-school teacher; very clever and successful, it
was said, and Harvey could believe it. Her features were regular, and
did not lack sweetness; yet, unless an observer were mistaken, the last
year or two had emphasised a certain air of conscious superiority,
perchance originating in the schoolroom. She had had one child; it
struggled through a few months of sickly life, and died of convulsions
during its mother's absence at a garden-party. To all appearances, her
grief at the loss betokened tenderest feeling. When, in half a year's
time, she again came forth into the world, a change was noted; her
character seemed to have developed a new energy, she exhibited wider
interests, and stepped from the background to become a leader in the
little circle of her acquaintances.

'Have you read this?' asked his hostess abruptly, holding up to him a
French volume, Ribot's _L'Heredite Psychologique_.

'No. That kind of thing doesn't interest me much.'

'Indeed! I find it _intensely_ interesting.'

Harvey rose; he was in no mood for this kind of small-talk. But no
sooner had he quitted his chair, than Mrs. Abbott threw her book aside,
and spoke in another tone, seriously, though still with a perceptible
accent of annoyance.

'Of course that man's children are here, and I suppose it is our duty to
provide for them till some other arrangement is made. But I think we
ought to put the matter in the hands of the police. Don't you, Mr
Rolfe?'

'I'm afraid there's small chance of making their father support them. He
is certainly out of England by now, and won't easily be caught.'

'The worst of it is, they are anything but _nice_ children. What could
one expect with such a father? Since their poor mother died, they have
been in the hands of horrible people -- low-class landladies, no doubt;
their talk shocks me. The last amusement they had, was to be taken by
somebody to Tussaud's, and now they can talk of nothing but "the hunted
murderer" -- one sees it on the walls, you know; and they play at being
murderer and policeman, one trying to escape the other. Pretty play for
children of five and seven, isn't it?'

Rolfe made a gesture of disgust.

'I know the poor things can't help it,' pursued Mrs. Abbott, with softer
feeling, 'but it turns me against them. From seeing so little of their
father, they have even come to talk with a vulgar pronunciation, like
children out of the streets almost. It's dreadful! When I think of my
cousin -- such a sweet, good girl, and _these_ her children -- oh, it's
horrible!'

'They are very young,' said Harvey, in a low voice, perturbed in spite
of himself. 'With good training ----'

'Yes, of course we must put them in good hands somewhere.'

Plainly it had never occurred to Mrs. Abbott that such a task as this
might, even temporarily, be undertaken by herself; her one desire was to
get rid of the luckless brats, that their vulgarity might not pain her,
and the care of them encumber her polite leisure.

After again excusing himself for this call, and hearing his apology this
time more graciously received, Harvey withdrew from the cosy study, and
left Mrs, Abbott to her _Heredite Psychologique_. On his way to lunch in
town, he thought of the overworn journalist groaning with neuralgia, and
wondered how Mrs. Abbott would relish a removal to the town of Waterbury.


CHAPTER 4


Uncertain to the last moment, Harvey did at length hurry into his dress
clothes, and start for Fitzjohn Avenue. He had little mind for the
semi-fashionable crowd and the amateur music, but he could not answer
Mrs. Bennet Frothingham with any valid excuse, and, after all, she meant
kindly towards him. Why he enjoyed so much of this lady's favour it was
not easy to understand; intellectual sympathy there could be none
between them, and as for personal liking, on his side it did not go
beyond that naturally excited by a good-natured, feather-brained, rather
pretty woman, whose sprightliness never passed the limits of decorum,
and who seemed to have better qualities than found scope in her
butterfly existence. Perhaps he amused her, being so unlike the kind of
man she was accustomed to see. His acquaintance with the family dated
from their social palingenesis, when, after obscure prosperity in a
southern suburb, they fluttered to the northern heights, and were
observed of the paragraphists. Long before that, Bennet Frothingham had
been known in the money-market; it was the 'Britannia' -- Loan,
Assurance, Investment, and Banking Company, Limited -- that made him
nationally prominent, and gave an opportunity to his wife (in second
marriage) and his daughter (by the first). Three years ago, when Carnaby
(already lured by the charms of Sibyl Larkfield) presented his friend
Rolfe as 'the man who had been to Bagdad', Alma Frothingham, not quite
twenty-one, was studying at the Royal Academy of Music, and, according
to her friends, promised to excel alike on the piano and the violin,
having at the same time a 'really remarkable' contralto voice. Of late
the young lady had abandoned singing, rarely used the pianoforte, and
seemed satisfied to achieve distinction as a violinist. She had founded
an Amateur Quartet Society, whose performances were frequently to be
heard at the house in Fitzjohn Avenue.

Last winter Harvey had chanced to meet Alma and her stepmother at
Leipzig, at a Gewandhaus concert. He was invited to go with them to hear
the boys' motet at the Thomaskirche; and with this intercourse began the
change in their relations from mere acquaintance to something like
friendship. Through the following spring Rolfe was a familiar figure at
the Frothinghams'; but this form of pleasure soon wearied him, and he
was glad to escape from London in June. He knew the shadowy and
intermittent temptation which beckoned him to that house; music had
power over him, and he grew conscious of watching Alma Frothingham, her
white little chin on the brown fiddle, with too exclusive an interest.
When 'that fellow' Cyrus Redgrave, a millionaire, or something of the
sort, began to attend these gatherings with a like assiduity, and to win
more than his share of Miss Frothingham's conversation, Harvey felt a
disquietude which happily took the form of disgust, and it was easy
enough to pack his portmanteau.

Through the babble of many voices in many keys, talk mingling with
laughter more or less melodiously subdued, he made his way up the great
staircase. As he neared the landing, there sounded the shrill squeak of
a violin and a 'cello's deep harmonic growl. His hostess, small,
slender, fair, and not yet forty, a jewel-flash upon her throat and in
the tiara above her smooth low forehead, took a step forward to greet
him.

'Really? How delightful! I shot at a venture, and it was a hit after
all!'

'They are just beginning?'

'The quartet -- yes. Herr Wilenski has promised to play afterwards.'

He moved on, crossed a small drawing-room, entered the larger room
sacred to music, and reached a seat in the nick of time. Miss
Frothingham, the violin against her shoulder, was casting a final glance
at the assembly, the glance which could convey a noble severity when it
did not forthwith impose silence. A moment's perfect stillness, and the
quartet began. There were two ladies, two men. Miss Frothingham played
the first violin, Mr. AEneas Piper the second; the 'cello was in the
hands of Herr Gassner, and the viola yielded its tones to Miss Dora
Leach. Harvey knew them all, but had eyes only for one; in truth, only
one rewarded observation. Miss Leach was a meagre blonde, whose form,
face, and attitude enhanced by contrast the graces of the First Violin.
Alma's countenance shone -- possibly with the joy of the artist, perhaps
only with gratified vanity. As she grew warm, the rosy blood mantled in
her cheeks and flushed her neck. Every muscle and nerve tense as the
strings from which she struck music, she presently swayed forward on the
points of her feet, and seemed to gain in stature, to become a more
commanding type. Her features suggested neither force of intellect or
originality of character: but they had beauty, and something more. She
stood a fascination, an allurement, to the masculine sense. Harvey Rolfe
had never so responded to this quality in the girl; the smile died from
his face as he regarded her. Of her skill as a musician, he could form
no judgment; but it seemed to him that she played very well, and he had
heard her praised by people who understood the matter; for instance,
Herr Wilenski, the virtuoso, from whom -- in itself a great compliment
-- Alma was having lessons.

He averted his eyes, and began to seek for known faces among the
audience. His host he could not discover; Mr. Frothingham must be away
from home this evening; it was seldom he failed to attend Alma's
concerts. But near the front sat Mrs. Ascott Larkfield, a dazzling
figure, and, at some distance, her daughter Mrs. Carnaby, no shadow of
gloom upon her handsome features. Hugh was not in sight; probably he
felt in no mood for parties. Next to Mrs. Carnaby sat 'that fellow',
Cyrus Redgrave, smiling as always, and surveying the people near him
from under drooping brows, his head slightly bent. Mr. Redgrave had thin
hair, but a robust moustache and a short peaked beard; his complexion
was a rifle sallow; he lolled upon the chair, so that, at moments, his
head all but brushed Mrs. Carnaby's shoulder.

Long before the close of the piece, Rolfe had ceased to listen, his
thoughts drifting hither and hither on a turbid flood of emotion. During
the last passage -- _Allegro molto leggieramente_ -- he felt a movement
round about him as a general relief, and when, on the last note, there
broke forth (familiar ambiguity) sounds of pleasure and of applause, he
at once stood up. But he had no intention of pressing into the throng
that rapidly surrounded the musicians. Seeing that Mr. Redgrave had
vacated his place, whilst Mrs. Carnaby remained seated, he stepped
forward to speak with his friend's wife. She smiled up at him, and
lifted a gloved finger.

'No! Please don't!'

'Not sit down by you?'

'Oh, certainly. But I saw condolence in your face, and I'm tired of it.
Besides, it would be mere hypocrisy in you.'

Harvey gave a silent laugh. He had tried to understand Sibyl Carnaby,
and at different times had come to very different conclusions regarding
her. All women puzzled, and often disconcerted, him; with Sibyl he could
never talk freely, knowing not whether to dislike or to admire her. He
was not made on the pattern of Cyrus Redgrave, who probably viewed
womankind with instinctive contempt, yet pleased all with the flattery
of his homage.

'Well, then, we won't talk of it,' he said, noticing, in the same
moment, that her person did not lack the adornment of jewels. Perhaps
she had happened to be wearing these things on the evening of the
robbery; but Rolfe felt a conviction that, under any circumstances,
Sibyl would not be without rings and bracelets.

'They certainly improve,' she remarked, indicating the quartet with the
tip of her fan.

Her opinions were uttered with calm assurance, whatever the subject. An
infinite self-esteem, so placid that it never suggested the vulgarity of
conceit, shone in her large eyes and dwelt upon the beautiful curve of
her lips. No face could be of purer outline, of less sensual
suggestiveness; it wore at times an air of cold abstraction which was
all but austerity. Rolfe imagined her the most selfish of women, thought
her incapable of sentiment; yet how was her marriage to be accounted
for, save by supposing that she fell in love with Hugh Carnaby? Such a
woman might surely have sold herself to great advantage; and yet -- odd
incongruity -- she did not impress one as socially ambitious. Her
mother, the ever-youthful widow, sped from assembly to assembly, unable
to live save in the whirl of fashion; not so Sibyl. Was she too proud,
too self-centred? And what ambition did she nourish?

Or was it all an illusion of the senses? Suppose her a mere graven
image, hollow, void. Call her merely a handsome woman, with the face of
some remarkable ancestress, with just enough of warmth to be subdued by
the vigorous passion of such a fine fellow as Carnaby. On the whole,
Rolfe preferred this hypothesis. He had never heard her say anything
really bright, or witty, or significant. But Hugh spoke of her fine
qualities of head and heart; Alma Frothingham made her an exemplar, and
would not one woman see through the vacuous pretentiousness of another?

Involuntarily, he was gazing at her, trying to read her face.

'So you think we ought to go to Australia,' said Sibyl quietly,
returning his look.

Hugh had repeated the conversation of last night; indiscreet, but
natural. One could not suppose that Hugh kept many secrets from his
wife.

'I?' He was confused. 'Oh, we were talking about the miseries of
housekeeping ----'

'I hate the name of those new countries.'

It was said smilingly, but with what expression in the word 'hate'!

'Vigorous cuttings from the old tree,' said Rolfe. 'There is England's
future.'

'Perhaps so. At present they are barbarous, and I have a decided
preference for civilisation. So have you, I am quite sure.'

Rolfe murmured his assent; whereupon Sibyl rose, just bent her head to
him, and moved with graceful indolence away.

'Now she hates _me_,' Harvey said in his mind; 'and much I care!'

As a matter of courtesy, he thought it well to move in Miss
Frothingham's direction. The crowd was thinning; without difficulty he
approached to within a few yards of her, and there exchanged a word or
two with the player of the viola, Miss Leach -- a good, ingenuous
creature, he had always thought; dangerous to no man's peace, but rather
sentimental, and on that account to be avoided. Whilst talking, he heard
a man's voice behind him, pretentious, coarse, laying down the law in a
musical discussion.

'No, no; Beethoven is not _Klaviermaszig_. His thoughts ate symphonic --
they need the orchestra. . . . A string quartet is to a symphony what a
delicate water-colour is to an oil-painting. . . . Oh, I don't care for
his playing at all! he has not -- what shall I call it? -- _Sehnsucht_.'

Rolfe turned at length to look. A glance showed him a tall, bony young
man, with a great deal of disorderly hair, and shaven face;
harsh-featured, sensual, utterly lacking refinement. He inquired of Miss
Leach who this might be, and learnt that the man's name was Felix Dymes.

'Isn't he a humbug?'

The young lady was pained and shocked.

'Oh, he is very clever,' she whispered. 'He has composed a most
beautiful song -- don't you know it? -- "Margot". It's very likely that
Topham may sing it at one of the Ballad Concerts.'

'Now I've offended _her_,' said Rolfe to himself. 'No matter.'

Seeing his opportunity, he took a few steps, and stood before Alma
Frothingham. She received him very graciously, looking him straight in
the face, with that amused smile which he could never interpret. Did it
mean that she thought him 'good fun'? Had she discussed him with Sibyl
Carnaby, and heard things of him that moved her mirth? Or was it pure
good nature, the overflowing spirits of a vivacious girl?

'So good of you to come, Mr. Rolfe. And what did you think of us?'

This was characteristic. Alma delighted in praise, and never hesitated
to ask for it. She hung eagerly upon his unready words.

'I only show my ignorance when I talk of music. Of course, I liked it.'

'Ah! then you didn't think it very good. I see ----'

'But I _did_! Only my opinion is worthless.'

Alma looked at him, seemed to hesitate, laughed; and Harvey felt the
conviction that, by absurd sincerity, he had damaged himself in the
girl's eyes. What did it matter?

'I've been practising five hours a day,' said Alma, in rapid, ardent
tones. Her voice was as pleasant to the ear as her face to look upon;
richly feminine, a call to the emotions. 'That isn't bad, is it?'

'Tremendous energy!'

'Oh, music is my religion, you know. I often feel sorry I haven't to get
my living by it; it's rather wretched to be only an amateur, don't you
think?'

'Religion shouldn't be marketable,' joked Harvey.

'Oh, but you know what I mean. You are so critical, Mr. Rolfe. I've a
good mind to ask Father to turn me out of house and home, with just
half-a-crown. Then I might really do something. It would be splendid! --
Oh, what do you think of that shameful affair in Hamilton Terrace? Mrs
Carnaby takes it like an angel. They're going to give up housekeeping.
Very sensible, I say. Everybody will do it before long. Why should we be
plagued with private houses?'

'There are difficulties ----'

'Of course there are, and men seem to enjoy pointing them out. They
think it a crime if women hate the bother and misery of housekeeping.'

'I am not so conservative.'

He tried to meet her eyes, which were gleaming fixedly upon him; but his
look fell, and turned as quickly from the wonderful white shoulders, the
throbbing throat, the neck that showed its colour against swan's-down.
To his profound annoyance, someone intervened -- a lady bringing someone
else to be introduced. Rolfe turned on his heel, and was face to face
with Cyrus Redgrave. Nothing could be suaver or more civil than Mr
Redgrave's accost; he spoke like a polished gentleman, and, for aught
Harvey knew, did not misrepresent himself. But Rolfe had a prejudice; he
said as little as possible, and moved on.

In the smaller drawing-room he presently conversed with his hostess. Mrs
Frothingham's sanguine and buoyant temper seemed proof against fatigue;
at home or as a guest she wore the same look of enjoyment; vexations,
rivalries, responsibilities, left no trace upon her beaming countenance.
Her affections were numberless; her ignorance, as an observer easily
discovered, was vast and profound; but the desire to please, the tact of
a 'gentlewoman, and thorough goodness of heart, appeared in all her
sayings and doings; she was never offensive, never wholly ridiculous.
Small-talk flowed from her with astonishing volubility, tone and subject
dictated by the characteristics of the person with whom she gossiped;
yet her preference was for talk on homely topics, reminiscences of a
time when she knew not luxury. 'You may not believe it,' she said to him
in a moment of confidence, 'but I assure you I am a very good cook.'
Rolfe did not quite credit the assurance, but he felt it not improbable
that Mrs. Frothingham would accept a reverse of fortune with much
practical philosophy; he could imagine her brightening a small house
with the sweetness of her disposition, and falling to humble duties with
sprightly goodwill. In this point she was a noteworthy exception among
the prosperous women of his acquaintance.

'And what have you been doing?' she asked, not as a mere phrase of
civility, but in a voice and which a look of genuine interest.

'Wasting my time, for the most part.'

'So you always say; but it can't be true. I know the kind of man who
wastes his time, and you're not a bit like him. Nothing would gratify my
curiosity more than to be able to watch you through a whole day. What
did you think of the quartet?'

'Capital!'

'I'm sure they would make wonderful progress, and Alma does work so
hard! I'm only afraid she may injure her health.'

'I see no sign of it yet.'

'She's certainly looking very well,' said Mrs. Frothingham, with manifest
pride and affection. Of Alma she always spoke thus; nothing of the
step-mother was ever observable.

'Mr. Frothingham is not here this evening!'

'I really don't know why,' replied the hostess, casting her eyes round
the room. 'I quite expected him. But he has been dreadfully busy the
last few weeks. And people do worry him so. Somebody called whilst we
were at dinner, and refused to believe that Mr. Frothingham was not at
home, and made quite a disturbance at the door -- so they told me
afterwards. I'm really quite nervous sometimes; crazy people are always
wanting to see him -- people who really ought not to be at large. No
doubt they have had their troubles, poor things; and everybody thinks my
husband can make them rich if only he chooses.'

A stout, important-looking man paused before Mrs. Frothingham, and spoke
familiarly.

'I'm looking for B. F. Hasn't he put in an appearance yet?'

'I really hope he's enjoying himself somewhere else,' replied the
hostess, rising, with a laugh. 'You leave him no peace.'

The stout man did not smile, but looked gravely for a moment at Rolfe, a
stranger to him, and turned away.

Herr Wilenski, the virtuoso, was about to play something; the guests
moved to seat themselves. Rolfe, however, preferred to remain in this
room, where he could hear the music sufficiently well. He had not quite
recovered from his chagrin at the interruption of his talk with Alma --
a foolishness which made him impatient with himself. At the same time,
he kept thinking of the 'crazy people' of whom Mrs. Frothingham spoke so
lightly. A man such as Bennet Frothingham must become familiar with many
forms of 'craziness', must himself be responsible for a good deal of
folly such as leads to downright aberration. Recalling Mrs. Frothingham's
innocent curiosity concerning his own life, Harvey wished, in turn, that
it were possible for him to watch and comprehend the business of a great
finance-gambler through one whole day. What monstrous cruelties and
mendacities might underlie the surface of this gay and melodious
existence! Why was the stout man looking for 'B. F.'? Why did he turn
away with such a set countenance? Why was that old bore at the club in
such a fidget about the 'Britannia'?

Ha! There indeed sounded the violin! It needed no technical intelligence
to distinguish between the playing of Wilenski and that of Alma
Frothingham. Her religion, forsooth! Herr Wilenski, one might be sure,
talked little enough about his 'religion'. What did Alma think as she
listened? Was she overcome by the despair of the artist-soul struggling
in its immaturity? Or did she smile, as ever, and congratulate herself
on the five hours a day, and tell herself how soon she would reach
perfection if there were real necessity for it? Hopeless to comprehend a
woman. The senses warred upon the wit; seized by calenture, one saw
through radiant mists.

He did not like the name 'Alma'. It had a theatrical sound, a suggestion
of unreality.

The _maestro_ knew his audience; he played but for a quarter of an hour,
and the babble of tongues began again. Rolfe, sauntering before the
admirable pictures which hung here as a mere symbol of wealth, heard a
voice at his shoulder.

'I'm very thirsty. Will you take me down?'

His heart leapt with pleasure; Alma must have seen it in his eyes as he
turned.

'What did Wilenski play?' he asked confusedly, as they moved towards the
staircase.

'Something of Grieg's Mr. Wilbraham is going to sing "Wie bist du, meine
Koniginn" -- Brahms, you know. But you don't really care for music.'

'What an astounding accusation!'

'You don't really care for it. I've known that since we were at
Leipzig.'

'I have never pretended to appreciate music as you do. That needs
education, and something more. Some music wearies me, there's no denying
it.'

'You like the Melody in F?'

'Yes, I do.'

Alma laughed, with superiority, but not ill-naturedly.

'And I think it detestable -- but of course that doesn't matter. When I
talk about books you think me a nincompoop. -- That word used to amuse
me so when I was a child. I remember laughing wildly whenever I saw or
heard it. It _is_ a funny word, isn't it?'

'The last I should apply to you,' said Rolfe in an absent undertone, as
he caught a glimpse of the white teeth between her laughing lips.

They entered the supper-room, where as yet only a few people were
refreshing themselves. Provisions for a regiment spread before the gaze;
delicacies innumerable invited the palate: this house was famed for its
hospitable abundance. Alma, having asked her companion to get her some
lemonade, talked awhile with two ladies who had begun to eat and drink
in a serious spirit; waiting for her, Rolfe swallowed two glasses of
wine to counteract a certain dullness and literalness which were wont to
possess him in such company.

'I won't sit down,' she said. 'No, thanks, nothing to eat. I wonder
where Papa is? Now, _he_ enjoys music, though he is no musician. I think
Papa a wonderful man. For years he has never had more than six hours
sleep; and the work he does! He _can't_ take a holiday; idleness makes
him ill. We were down in Hampshire in July with some relatives of
Mamma's -- the quietest, sleepiest village -- and Papa tried to spend a
few days with us, but he had to take to flight; he would have perished
of ennui.'

'Life at high pressure,' remarked Rolfe, as the least offensive comment
he could make.

'Yes; and isn't it better than life at low?' exclaimed the girl, with
animation. 'Most people go through existence without once exerting all
the powers that are in them. I should hate to die with the thought that
I hadn't really lived myself _out_. A year ago Papa took me into the
City to see the offices of _Stock and Share_, just after the paper
started. It didn't interest me very much; but I pretended it did,
because Papa always takes an interest in _my_ affairs. But I found there
was something else. After we had seen the printing machinery, and so on,
he took me up to the top of the building into a small room, where there
was just a table and a chair and a bookshelf; and he told me it was his
first office, the room in which he had begun business thirty years ago.
He has always kept it for his own, and just as it was -- a fancy of his.
There's no harm in my telling you; he's very proud of it, and so am I.
That's energy!'

'Very interesting indeed.'

'I must go up again,' she added quickly. 'Oh, there's miss Beaufoy; do
let me introduce you to Miss Beaufoy.'

She did so, unaware of Rolfe's groaning reluctance, and at once
disappeared.

The supper-room began to fill. As soon as he could escape from Miss
Beaufoy, who had a cavalier of her own, Harvey ascended the stairs
again, and found a quiet corner, where he sat for a quarter of an hour
undisturbed. Couples and groups paused to talk near him, and whenever he
caught a sentence it was the merest chatter, meaningless repetition of
commonplaces which, but for habit, must have been an unutterable
weariness to the least intelligent of mortals. He was resolved never to
come here again; never again to upset his peace of mind and sully his
self-respect by grimacing amid such a crowd. He enjoyed human
fellowship, timely merry-making; but to throng one's house with people
for whom, with one or two exceptions, one cared not a snap of the
fingers, what was this but sheer vulgarism? As for Alma Frothingham,
long ago he had made up his mind about her. Naturally, inevitably, she
absorbed the vulgarity of her atmosphere. All she did was for effect: it
was her cue to pose as the artist; she would keep it up through life,
and breathe her last, amid perfumes, declaring that she had 'lived
herself out'.

In his peevishness he noticed that women came up from supper with
flushed cheeks and eyes unnaturally lustrous. What a grossly sensual
life was masked by their airs and graces! He had half a mind to start
tomorrow for the Syrian deserts.

'Do let us see you again soon,' said his hostess, as he took leave of
her. 'Come in at five o'clock on Wednesday, that's our quiet day; only a
few of our _real_ friends. We shall be in town till Christmas, for
certain.'

On the stairs he passed Mr. Felix Dymes, the composer of 'Margot'.

'Oh, it's the easiest thing in the world,' Mr. Dymes was saying, 'to
compose a song that will be popular. I'll give you the recipe, and
charge nothing You must have a sudden change to the minor, and a waltz
refrain -- that's all. Oh yes, there's money in it. I know a man who
----'

Rolfe had never left the house in such a bad temper.


CHAPTER 5


When he awoke next morning, the weather was so gloomy that he seriously
resumed his thought of getting away from London. Why, indeed, did he
make London his home, when it would be easy to live in places vastly
more interesting, and under a pure sky? He was a citizen of no city at
all, and had less desire than ever to bind himself to a permanent
habitation. All very well so long as he kept among his male friends, at
the club and elsewhere; but this 'society' played the deuce with him,
and he had not the common-sense, the force of resolve, to keep out of it
altogether.

Well, he must go to his bank this morning, to draw cash.

It was about twelve o'clock when he stood at the counter, waiting with
his cheque. The man before him talked with the teller.

'Do you know that the "Britannia" has shut up?'

'The bank? No!'

'But it has. I passed just now, and there were a lot of people standing
about. Closed at half-past eleven, they say.

Harvey had a singular sensation, a tremor at his heart, a flutter of the
pulses, a turning cold and hot; then he was quite calm again, and said
to himself, 'Of course.' For a minute or two the quiet routine of the
bank was suspended; the news passed from mouth to mouth; newcomers
swelled a gossiping group in front of the counter, and Harvey listened.
The general tone was cynical; there sounded scarcely a note of
indignation; no one present seemed to be personally affected by the
disaster. The name of Bennet Frothingham was frequently pronounced, with
unflattering comments.

'Somebody'll get it hot,' remarked one of the speakers; and the others
laughed.

Rolfe, having transacted his business, walked away. It struck him that
he would go and look at the closed bank, but he did not remember the
address; a policeman directed him, and he walked on, the distance not
being very great. At the end of the street in which the building stood,
signs of the unusual became observable -- the outskirts of a crowd,
hanging loose in animated talk, as after some exciting occurrence; and
before the bank itself was gathered a throng of men, respectability's
silk hats mingling with the felts and caps of lower strata. Here and
there a voice could be heard raised in anger, but the prevailing emotion
seemed to be mere curiosity. The people who would suffer most from the
collapse of this high-sounding enterprise could not reach the scene of
calamity at half an hour's notice; they were dwellers in many parts of
the British Isles, strangers most of them to London city, with but a
vague mental picture of the local habitation of the Britannia Loan,
Assurance, Investment, and Banking Company, Limited.

His arm was seized, and a voice said hoarsely in his ear --

'By God! too late.'

Hugh Carnaby had tumbled out of a cab, and saw his friend in the same
moment that he got near enough to perceive that the doors of the bank
were shut.

'The thieves have lost no time,' he added, pale with fury.

'You had warning of it?'

Hugh pulled him a few yards away, and whispered ----

'Bennet Frothingham shot himself last night.'

Again Harvey experienced that disagreeable heart-shock, with the
alternation of hot and cold.

'Where? At home?'

'At the office of _Stock and Share_. Come farther away. It'll be in the
evening papers directly, but I don't want those blackguards to hear me.
I got up late this morning, and as I was having breakfast, Sibyl rushed
in. She brought the news; had it from some friend of her mother's, a man
connected somehow with _Stock and Share_. I thought they would shut up
shop, and came to try and save Sibyl's balance -- a couple of hundred,
that's all -- but they've swallowed it with the rest.'

'With the rest?'

Hugh laughed mockingly.

'Of hers. Devilish bad luck Sibyl has. It was just a toss-up that a good
deal of my own wasn't in, one way or another.'

'Do you know any more about Frothingham?'

'No. Only the fact. Don't know when it was, or when it got known. We
shall have it from the papers presently. I think every penny Mrs
Larkfield had was in.'

'But it may not mean absolute ruin,' urged Harvey.

'I know what to think when B. F. commits suicide. We shall hear that
some of the others have bolted. It'll be as clean a sweep as our
housekeeper's little job.'

'I've had queer presentiments,' Harvey murmured.

'Why, damn it, so have I! So had lots of people. But nobody ever does
anything till it's too late. I must get home again with my agreeable
news. You'll be going to the club, I dare say? They'll have plenty to
talk about for the next month or two.'

'Try to come round tonight to my place.'

'Perhaps. It depends on fifty chances. There's only one thing I know for
certain -- that I shall get out of this cursed country as soon as
possible.'

They parted, and Harvey walked westward. He had no reason for hurry; as
usual, the tumult of the world's business passed him by; he was merely a
looker-on. It occurred to him that it might be a refreshing and a
salutary change if for once he found himself involved in the anxieties
to which other men were subject; this long exemption and security
fostered a too exclusive regard of self, an inaptitude for sympathetic
emotion, which he recognised as the defect of his character. This
morning's events had startled him, and given a shock to his imagination;
but already he viewed them and their consequences with a self-possession
which differed little from unconcern. Bennet Frothingham, no doubt, had
played a rascally game, foreseeing all along the issues of defeat. As to
his wife and daughter, it would be strange if they were not provided
for; suffer who might, they would probably live on in material comfort,
and nowadays that was the first consideration. He was surprised that
their calamity left him so unmoved; it showed conclusively how
artificial were his relations with these persons; in no sense did he
belong to their world; for all his foolish flutterings, Alma Frothingham
remained a stranger to him, alien from every point of view, personal,
intellectual, social. And how many of the people who crowded to her
concert last night would hear the news this morning with genuine
distress on her account? Gratified envy would be the prevailing mood,
with rancorous hostility in the minds of those who were losers by Bennet
Frothingham's knavery or ill-fortune. Hugh Carnaby's position called for
no lament; he had a sufficient income of his own, and would now easily
overcome his wife's pernicious influence; with or without her, he would
break away from a life of corrupting indolence, and somewhere beyond
seas 'beat the British drum' -- use his superabundant vitality as nature
prompted.

After all, it promised to clear the air. These explosions were periodic,
inevitable, wholesome. The Britannia Loan, &c, &c, &c, had run its
pestilent course; exciting avarice, perturbing quiet industry with the
passion of the gamester, inflating vulgar ambition, now at length
scattering wreck and ruin. This is how mankind progresses. Harvey Rolfe
felt glad that no theological or scientific dogma constrained him to a
justification of the laws of life.

At lunchtime, newspaper boys began to yell. The earliest placards roared
in immense typography. In the Metropolitan Club, sheets moist from the
press suddenly descended like a fall of snow. Rolfe stood by a window
and read quietly. This first report told him little that he had not
already learnt, but there were a few details of the suicide.
Frothingham, it appeared, always visited the office of _Stock and Share_
on the day before publication. Yesterday, as usual, he had looked in for
half an hour at three o'clock; but unexpectedly he came again at seven
in the evening, and for a third time at about eleven, when the printing
of the paper was in full swing. 'It was supposed by the persons whom he
then saw that Mr. Frothingham finally quitted the office; whether he
actually left the building or not seems to remain uncertain. If so, he
re-entered without being observed, which does not seem likely. Between
two and three o'clock this morning, when _Stock and Share_ was
practically ready for distribution, a man employed on the premises is
said, for some unexplained reason, to have ascended to the top floor of
the building, and to have entered a room ordinarily unused. A gas-jet
was burning, and the man was horrified to discover the dead body of Mr
Frothingham, at full length on the floor, in his hand a pistol. On the
alarm being given, medical aid was at once summoned, and it became
evident that death had taken place more than an hour previously. That no
one heard the report of a pistol can be easily explained by the noise of
the machinery below. The dead man's face was placid. Very little blood
had issued from the wound, and the shot must have been fired with a
remarkably steady hand.'

'A room on the top floor of the building, ordinarily unused ----' What
story was it that Alma Frothingham told last night, of her visit to the
office of _Stock and Share_? Rolfe had not paid much attention to it at
the time; now he recalled the anecdote, and was more impressed by its
significance. That room, his first place of business, the scene of poor
beginnings, Bennet Frothingham had chosen for his place of death.
Perhaps he had long foreseen this possibility, had mused upon the
dramatic fitness of such an end; for there was a strain of melancholy in
the man, legible on his countenance, perceptible in his private
conversation. Just about the time when Alma laughingly told the story,
her father must have been sitting in that upper room, thinking his last
thoughts; or it might be that he lay already dead.

Later issues contained much fuller reports. The man who found the body
had explained his behaviour in going up to the unused room, and it
relieved the dark affair with a touch of comedy. Before coming to work,
he had quarrelled with his wife, and, rather than go home in the early
hours of the morning, he hit upon the idea of finding a sleeping-place
here on the premises, to which he could slink unnoticed. 'It's little
enough sleep I get in my own house,' was his remark to the reporter who
won his confidence. Clubmen were hilarious over this incident,
speculating as to the result of its publication on the indiscreet man's
domestic troubles.

It was not unremarked that a long time elapsed between the discovery of
the suicide and its being heard of by anyone who had an interest in
making it generally known. With the exception of two persons, all who
were engaged upon the production of the newspaper went home in complete
ignorance of what had happened, so cautiously and successfully was the
situation dealt with by the sub-editor and his informant. When, after an
examination by the doctor, who had been summoned in all secrecy, it
became necessary to communicate with the police, the employees had all
gone away, and the printed sheets had been conveyed to the distributing
agents. Naturally, the subeditor of _Stock and Share_' preserved a
certain reticence in the matter; but one could hardly be mistaken in
assuming that the directors of the Britannia Company -- two or three of
them, at all events -- had an opportunity of surveying their position
long before the hour when this momentous news got abroad.

With regard to the company's affairs, only conjecture could be as yet
indulged in. In view of the immediate stoppage of business, it was
pretty safe to surmise that alarming disclosures awaited the public. No
one, of course, would be justified in prejudging the case against the
unhappy man who, amid seemingly brilliant circumstances, had been driven
to so desperate an act.

And so on, and so on, in one journal after another, in edition upon
edition. Harvey Rolfe read them till he was weary, listened to the
gossip of the club till he was nauseated. He went home at length with a
headache, and, having carefully avoided contact with Buncombe or Mrs
Handover, made an effort to absorb himself in a volume of Gregorovius,
which was at present his study. The attempt was futile. Talk still
seemed to buzz about him; his temples throbbed; his thoughts wandered
far and wide. Driven to bed long before his accustomed hour, he heard
raucous voices rending the night, bellowing in hideous antiphony from
this side of the street and the other, as the vendors of a halfpenny
paper made the most of what Providence had sent them.

The first thing after breakfast next morning, he posted a line to Hugh
Carnaby. 'Is there any way in which I can be of use to you? If you think
not, I shall be off tomorrow to Greystone for a few days. I feel as if
we were all being swept into a ghastly whirlpool which roars over the
bottomless pit. Of course, I will stay if I can do anything, no matter
what. Otherwise, address for a week to Basil Morton's.'

This he dropped into the nearest pillar-box, and, as the sun was
endeavouring to shine, he walked the length of the street, a pretence of
exercise. On his way back he was preceded by a telegraph boy, who
stopped at Buncombe's front door, and awoke the echoes with a twofold
double knock. Before the servant could open, Harvey was on the steps.

'What name?'

'Rolfe.'

'For me, then.'

He tore open the envelope.

'Could you come at once? Something has happened. -- Abbott.'

The boy wished to know if there would be a reply. Harvey shook his head,
and stepped into the hall, where he stood reflecting. What could have
happened that Edgar Abbott should summon him? Had his wife run away? --
Ah, to be sure, it must have something to do with Wager's children -- an
accident, a death. But why send for _him_?

He made a little change in his dress, and drove forthwith to Kilburn. As
his cab stopped, he saw that all the blinds in the front of the Abbotts'
house were drawn down. Death, then, obviously. It was with a painful
shaking of the nerves that he knocked for admission.

'Mr. Abbott ----?'

The servant girl, who had a long-drawn face, said nothing, but left him
where he stood, returning in a moment with a mumbled 'Will you please to
come in, sir?' He followed her to the room in which he had talked with
Mrs. Abbott two days ago; and she it was who again received him. Her back
to the light, she stood motionless.

'Your husband has telegraphed for me ----'

A voice that struggled with a sob made thick reply ----

'No -- I -- he is dead!'

The accent of that last monosyllable was heart-piercing. It seemed to
Harvey as though the word were new-minted, so full it sounded of
dreadful meaning.

'Dead?'

Mrs. Abbott moved, and he could see her face better. She must have wept
for hours.

'He has been taking morphia -- he couldn't sleep well -- and then his
neuralgia. The girl found him this morning, at seven o'clock -- there.'

She pointed to the couch.

'You mean that he had taken an overdose -- by accident ----'

'It _must_ have been so. He had to work late -- and then be must have
lain down to sleep.'

'Why here?'

'A flood of anguish whelmed her. She uttered a long moan, all the more
terrible for its subdual to a sound that could not pass beyond the room.
Her struggle for self-command made her suffering only the more
impressive, the more grievous to behold.'

'Mr. Rolfe, I sent for you because you are his old friend. I meant to
tell you all the truth, as I know it. I _can't_ tell it before strangers
-- in public! I _can't_ let them know -- the shame -- the shame!'

Harvey's sympathy gave way to astonishment and strange surmise.
Hurriedly he besought her not to reveal anything in her present
distress; to wait till she could reflect calmly, see things in truer
proportion. His embarrassment was heightened by an inability to identify
this woman with the Mrs. Abbott he had known; the change in her
self-presentment seemed as great and sudden as that in her
circumstances. Face and voice, though scarce recognisable, had changed
less than the soul of her -- as Harvey imaged it. This entreaty she
replied to with a steadiness, a resolve, which left him no choice but to
listen.

'I cannot, dare not, think that he did this knowingly. No! He was too
brave for that. He would never have left me in that way -- to my
despair. But it was my fault that made him angry -- no, not angry; he
was never that with me, or never showed it. But I had behaved with such
utter selfishness ----'

Her misery refused to word itself. She sank down upon a chair and sobbed
and moaned.

'Your grief exaggerates every little fault,' said Harvey.

'No -- you must hear it all -- then perhaps I can hide my shame from
strangers. What use would it be if they knew? It alters nothing -- it's
only in my own heart. I have no right to pain you like this. I will tell
you quietly. You know that he went to Waterbury, on business. Did he
tell you? -- it was to buy a share in a local newspaper. I, in my
blindness and selfishness, disliked that. I wanted to live here; the
thought of going to live in the country seemed unbearable. That Edgar
was overworked and ill, seemed to me a trifle. Don't you remember how I
spoke of it when you came here the other morning? -- I can't understand
myself. How could I think so, speak so!'

The listener said nothing.

'He did what he purposed -- made a bargain, and came back to conclude
the purchase by correspondence. But his money -- the small capital he
counted upon -- was in "Britannia" shares; and you know what happened
yesterday -- yesterday, the very day when he went to sell the shares,
thinking to do so without the least difficulty.'

Harvey gave a grim nod.

'He came home, and I showed that I was glad ----'

'No! You accuse yourself unreasonably.'

'I tell you the truth, as my miserable conscience knows it. I was crazy
with selfishness and conceit. Rightly, he left me to my cowardly temper,
and went out again, and was away for a long time. He came back to
dinner, and then the suffering in his face all but taught me what I was
doing. I wanted to ask him to forgive me -- to comfort him for his loss;
but pride kept me from it. I couldn't speak -- I couldn't! After dinner
he said he had a lot of work to do, and came into this room. At ten
o'clock I sent him coffee. I wished to take it myself -- O God! if only
I had done so! I _wished_ to take it, and speak to him, but still I
couldn't. And I knew he was in torture; I saw at dinner that pain was
racking him. But I kept away, and went to my own bed, and slept --
whilst he was lying here.'

A rush of tears relieved her. Harvey felt his own eyes grow moist.

'It was only that he felt so worn out,' she pursued. 'I know how it was.
The pain grew intolerable, and he went upstairs for his draught, and
then -- not having finished his work -- he thought he would lie down on
the sofa for a little; and so sleep overcame him. He never meant _this_.
If I thought it, I couldn't live!'

'Undoubtedly you are right,' said Harvey, summoning an accent of
conviction. 'I knew him very well, and he was not the man to do that.'

'No? You are sure of it? You feel it impossible, Mr. Rolfe?'

'Quite impossible. There are men -- oh, you may assure yourself that it
was pure accident. Unfortunately, it happens so often.'

She hung on his words, leaning towards him, her eyes wide and lips
parted.

'So often! I have seen so many cases, in the papers. And he was
absent-minded. But what right have I to seek comfort for myself? Was I
any less the cause of his death? But must I tell all this in public? Do
you think I ought to?'

With comfortable sincerity Rolfe was able to maintain the needlessness
of divulging anything beyond the state of Abbott's health and his
pecuniary troubles.

'It isn't as if we had lived on ill terms with each other,' said the
widow, with a sigh of gratitude. 'Anything but that. Until of late we
never knew a difference, and the change that came was wholly my fault. I
hadn't the honesty to speak out and say what was in my mind. I never
openly opposed his wish to leave London. I pretended to agree to
everything, pretended. He showed me all his reasons, put everything
simply and plainly and kindly before me, and if I had said what I
thought, I feel sure he would have given it up at once. It was in my own
hands to decide one way or the other.'

'Why should you reproach yourself so with mere thoughts, of which he
never became aware?'

'Oh, it was yesterday, when he came back from the City. He knew then
that I was glad he couldn't carry out his purpose. He looked at me as he
never had done before -- a look of surprise and estrangement. I shall
always see that look on his face.'

Harvey talked in the strain of solace, feeling how extraordinary was his
position, and that of all men he had least fitness for such an office.
It relieved him when, without undue abruptness, he could pass to the
practical urgencies of the case. Were Wager's children still in the
house? Alas! they were, and Mrs. Abbott knew not what to do about them.

'You can't think of anyone who would take them -- for a day or two,
even?'

Among her acquaintances there was not one of whom she could venture to
ask such a service. 'People have such a dread of children.' Her sister
was a governess in Ireland; other near relatives she had none. Edgar
Abbott's mother, old and in feeble health, lived near Waterbury; how was
the dreadful news to be conveyed to her?

Harvey bestirred himself. Here, at all events, was a call to active
usefulness; he felt the privilege of money and leisure.

'Can you give me the name of any one at Waterbury who would be a fit
person to break the news to Mrs. Abbott?'

Two names were mentioned, and he noted them.

'I will send telegrams at once to both.'

'You will say it was an accident ----'

'That shall be made clear. As for the children, I think I can have them
taken away this morning. In the house where I live there is a decent
woman who I dare say would be willing to look after them for the
present. Will you leave this entirely in my hands?'

'I am ashamed -- I don't know how to thank you.'

'No time shall be lost.' He rose. 'If Mrs. Handover will help us, I will
bring her here; then I shall see you again. In any case, of course, I
will come back -- there will be other business. But you ought to have
some friend -- some lady.'

'There's _no_ one I can ask.'

'Oh, but of all the people you know in London -- surely!'

'They are not friends in that sense. I understand it now -- fifty
acquaintances; no friend.'

'But let me think -- let me think. What was the name of that lady I met
here, whose children you used to teach?'

'Mrs. Langland. She is very kind and friendly, but she lives at
Gunnersbury -- so far -- and I couldn't trouble her.'

Upon one meeting and a short conversation, with subsequent remarks from
Edgar Abbott, Rolfe had grounded a very favourable opinion of Mrs
Langland. She dwelt clearly in his mind as 'a woman with no nonsense
about her', likely to be of much helpfulness at a crisis such as the
present. With difficulty he persuaded Mrs. Abbott to sit down and write a
few lines, to be posted at once to Gunnersbury.

'I haven't dared to ask her to come. But I have said that I am alone.'

'Quite enough, I think, if she is at home.'

He took his leave, and drove back to Bayswater, posting the letter and
despatching two telegrams on the way.

Of course, his visit to Greystone was given up.


CHAPTER 6


Hugh Carnaby was gratified by the verdict of _felo de se_. He applauded
the jury for their most unexpected honesty. One had taken for granted
the foolish tag about temporary madness, which would have been an insult
to everybody's common-sense.

'It's a pity they no longer bury at four cross-roads, with a stake in
his inside. (Where's that from? I remember it somehow.) The example
wouldn't be bad.'

'You're rather early-Victorian,' replied Sibyl, who by this term was
wont to signify barbarism or crudity in art, letters, morality, or
social feeling. 'Besides, there's no merit in the verdict. It only means
that the City jury is in a rage. Yet every one of them would be
dishonest on as great a scale if they dared, or had the chance.'

'Something in that, I dare say,' conceded Hugh.

He admired his wife more than ever. Calm when she lost her trinkets,
Sibyl exhibited no less self-command now that she was suddenly deprived
of her whole fortune, about eight hundred a year. She had once remarked
on the pleasantness and fitness of a wife's possessing in her own name
an income equal to that of her husband; yet she resigned it without
fuss. Indeed, Sibyl never made a fuss about anything. She intimated her
wishes, and, as they were always possible of gratification, obtained
them as a matter of course. Naturally, since their marriage, she and
Hugh had lived to the full extent of their means. Carnaby had reduced
his capital by a couple of thousand pounds in preliminary expenses, and
debt to the amount of two or three hundred was outstanding at the end of
the first twelvemonth; but Sibyl manifested no alarm.

'We have been great fools,' she said, alluding to their faith in Bennet
Frothingham.

'It's certain that _I_ have,' replied her husband. 'I oughtn't to have
let your mother have her way about that money. If there had been a
proper settlement, you would have run no risk. Trustees couldn't have
allowed such an investment.'

The same day Sibyl bought a fur for her neck which cost fifteen guineas.
The weather was turning cold, and she had an account at the shop.

That afternoon, too, she went to see her mother, and on returning at six
o'clock looked into the library, where Hugh sat by the fire, a book in
his hand. Carnaby found the days very long just now. He shunned his
clubs, the Metropolitan and the Ramblers', because of a fear that his
connection with the 'Britannia' was generally known; to hear talk on the
subject would make him savage. He was grievously perturbed in mind by
his position and prospects; and want of exercise had begun to affect his
health. As always, he greeted his wife's entrance with a smile, and rose
to place a chair for her.

'Thanks, I won't sit down,' said Sibyl. 'You look comfortable.'

'Well?'

She looked at him reflectively, and said in balanced tones ----

'I really think I can boast of having the most selfish mother in
England.'

Hugh had his own opinion concerning Mrs. Ascott Larkfield, but would not
have ventured to phrase it.

'How's that?'

'I never knew anyone who succeeded so well in thinking steadily and
exclusively of herself. It irritates me to see her since this affair; I
shan't go again. I really didn't know what a detestable temper she has.
Her talk is outrageous. She doesn't behave like a lady. Could you
believe that she has written a violent letter to Mrs. Frothingham --
"speaking her mind", as she says? It's disgraceful!'

'I'm sorry she has done that. But it isn't every one that can bear
injury as you do, Sibyl.'

'I supposed she could behave herself. She raises her voice, and uses
outrageous words, and shows temper with the servants. I wouldn't spend a
day in that house now on any account. And, after all, I find she hasn't
lost much more than I have. She will be able to count on six hundred a
year at least.'

Carnaby received the news with a brightened visage.

'Oh come! That's something.'

'She took very good care, you see, not to risk everything herself.'

'It's possible,' said Hugh, 'that she hadn't control of all her money.'

'Oh yes, she had. She let that fact escape in her fury -- congratulated
herself on being so far prudent. Really, I never knew a more hateful
woman.'

It was said without vehemence, with none of that raising of the voice
which so offended her: a deliberate judgment, in carefully chosen words.
Hugh tried to smile, but could not quite command his features; they
expressed an uneasy thoughtfulness.

'Do you go out this evening?' he asked, after a pause.

'No; I'm rather tired and out of sorts. Dinner is at seven. I shall go
to bed early.'

The police had as yet failed to get upon the track of the felonious
housekeeper, known as Mrs. Maskell. Mrs. Carnaby's other servants still
kept their places, protesting innocence, and doubtless afraid to leave
lest they should incur suspicion. Domestic management was now In the
hands of the cook. Sibyl always declared that she could not eat a dinner
she had had the trouble of ordering, and she seemed unaffectedly to
shrink from persons of the menial class, as though with physical
repulsion. Perforce she submitted to having her hair done by her maid,
but she found the necessity disagreeable.

The dinner was simple, but well cooked. Sibyl never ate with hearty
appetite, and declined everything not of excellent quality; unlike women
in general, she was fastidious about wine, yet took of it sparingly;
liqueurs, too, she enjoyed, and very strong coffee. To a cigarette in
the mouth of a woman she utterly objected; it offended her sense of the
becoming, her delicate perception of propriety. When dining alone or
with Hugh, she dressed as carefully as for a ceremonious occasion. Any
approach to personal disorder or neglect was inconceivable in Sibyl. Her
husband had, by accident, heard her called 'the best-groomed woman in
London'; he thought the praise well merited, and it flattered him.

At table they talked of things as remote as possible from their
immediate concerns, and with the usual good humour. When he rose to open
the door, Hugh said ----

'Drawing-room or library?'

'Library. You would like to smoke.'

For ten minutes he sat with his arms on the table, his great well-shapen
hands loosely clenched before him. He drank nothing. His gaze was fixed
on a dish of fruit, and widened as if in a growing perplexity. Then he
recovered himself, gave a snort, and went to join his wife.

Sibyl was reading a newspaper. Hugh lit his pipe in silence, and sat
down opposite to her. Presently the newspaper dropped, and Sibyl's eyes
were turned upon her husband with a smile.

'Well?'

'Well?'

They smiled at each other amiably.

'What do you suggest, Birdie?'

The fondling name was not very appropriate, and had not been used of
late; Carnaby hit upon it in the honeymoon days, when he said that his
wife was like some little lovely bird, which he, great coarse fellow,
had captured and almost feared to touch lest he should hurt it. Hugh had
not much originality of thought, and less of expression.

'There are places, you know, where one live