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ANTHONY JOHN

BY

JEROME K. JEROME

Author of “Passing of the Third Floor Back,”
“All Roads Lead to Calvary,” etc.

[Illustration: Logo]

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1923




COPYRIGHT, 1923,
BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY, INC.

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK




ANTHONY JOHN




CHAPTER I


Anthony John Strong’nth’arm--to distinguish him from his father,
whose Christian names were John Anthony--was born in a mean street of
Millsborough some forty-five years before the date when this story
should of rights begin. For the first half-minute of his existence
he lay upon the outstretched hand of Mrs. Plumberry and neither
moved nor breathed. The very young doctor, nervous by reason of this
being his first maternity case since his setting up in practice for
himself, and divided between his duty to the child or to the mother,
had unconsciously decided on the latter. Instinctively he knew that
children in the poorer quarters of Millsborough were plentiful and
generally not wanted. The mother, a high-cheeked, thin-lipped woman,
lay with closed eyes, her long hands clawing convulsively at the
bed-clothes. The doctor was bending over her, fumbling with his
hypodermic syringe.

Suddenly from behind him he heard the sound of two resounding slaps,
the second being followed by a howl that, feeble though it was,
contained a decided note of indignation. The doctor turned his head.
The child was kicking vigorously.

“Do you always do that?” asked the young doctor. He had been glad when
he had been told that Mrs. Plumberry was to be the midwife, having
heard good repute of her as a woman of experience.

“It starts them,” explained Mrs. Plumberry. “I suppose they don’t like
it and want to say so; and before they can yell out they find they’ve
got to draw some air into their lungs.”

She was a stout motherly soul, the wife of a small farmer on the
outskirts of the town, and only took cases during the winter. At other
times, as she would explain, there were the pigs and the poultry to
occupy her mind. She was fond of animals of all kinds.

“It’s the fighting instinct,” suggested the young doctor. “Curious how
quickly it shows itself.”

“When it’s there,” commented Mrs. Plumberry, proceeding with her work.

“Isn’t it always there?” demanded the young doctor.

“Not always,” answered Mrs. Plumberry. “Some of them will just lie down
and let the others trample them to death. Four out of one litter of
eleven I lost last March. There they were when I came in the morning.
Seemed to have taken no interest in themselves. Had just let the others
push them away.”

The child, now comfortable on Mrs. Plumberry’s ample arm, was playing
with clenched fists, breathing peacefully. The doctor looked at him,
relieved.

“Seems to have made a fair start, anyhow,” thought the doctor.

Mrs. Plumberry with thumb and forefinger raised an eyelid and let it
fall again. The baby answered with a vicious kick.

“He’s come to stop all right,” was Mrs. Plumberry’s prophecy. “Hope
he’ll like it. Will it be safe for me to put him to the mother, say in
about half an hour?”

The woman with closed eyes upon the bed must have heard, for she tried
to raise her arms. The doctor bent over her once more.

“I think so,” he answered. “Use your own discretion. I’ll look back in
an hour or so.”

The doctor was struggling into his great coat. He glanced from the worn
creature on the bed to the poverty-stricken room, and then through the
window to the filthy street beyond.

“I wonder sometimes,” he growled, “why the women don’t strike--chuck
the whole thing. What can be the good of it from their point of view?”

The idea had more than once occurred to Mrs. Plumberry herself, so that
she was not as shocked as perhaps she should have been.

“Oh, some of them get on,” she answered philosophically. “Each woman
thinks it will be her brat who will climb upon the backs of the others
and that that’s all the others are wanted for.”

“Maybe,” agreed the young doctor. He closed the door softly behind him.

Mrs. Plumberry waited till the woman on the bed opened her large eyes,
then she put the child into her arms.

“Get all you can in case it don’t last long,” was Mrs. Plumberry’s
advice to him as she arranged the bed-clothes. The child gave a grunt
of acquiescence and settled himself to his work.

“I prayed it might be a boy,” whispered the woman. “He’ll be able to
help in the workshop.”

“It never does any harm,” agreed Mrs. Plumberry. “Sometimes you get
answered. And if you don’t, there’s always the feeling that you’ve
done your best. Don’t let him exhaust you. It don’t do to leave it to
their conscience.”

The woman drew the child tighter to her pallid bosom.

“I want him to be strong,” she whispered. “It’s a hard world for the
weak.”

Never a child in all Mrs. Plumberry’s experience had been more
difficult to wean. Had he merely had his mother to contend with it is
difficult to say how the matter might have ended. But Mrs. Plumberry
took an interest in her cases that was more than mercenary, keeping an
eye on them till she was satisfied that her help was no longer needed.
He put up a good fight, as Mrs. Plumberry herself admitted; but having
at last grasped the fact that he was up against something stronger
than himself, it was characteristic of him, as the future was to show,
that he gave way quite suddenly, and transferred without any further
fuss his energy to the bottle. Also it was characteristic of him that,
knowing himself defeated, he bore no ill-will to his conqueror.

“You’re a good loser,” commented Mrs. Plumberry, as the child,
accepting without protest the India rubber teat she had just put into
his mouth, looked up into her face and smiled. “Perhaps you’ll be a
good winner. They generally go together.” She bent down and gave him a
kiss, which for Mrs. Plumberry was an unusual display of emotion. He
had a knack of making his way with people, especially people who could
be useful to him.

It seemed a freak of Nature that, born of a narrow-chested father and a
flat-breasted, small-hipped mother, he should be so strong and healthy.
He never cried when he couldn’t get his own way--and he wanted his own
way in all things and wanted it quickly--but would howl at the top of
his voice. In the day-time it was possible to appease him swiftly; and
then he would gurgle and laugh and put out his little hands to pat any
cheek that might be near. But at night-time it was not so easy to keep
pace with him. His father would mutter sleepy curses. How could he do
his day’s work if he was to be kept awake night after night? The others
had merely whimpered. A man could sleep through it.

“The others” had been two girls. The first one had died when three
years old, and the second had lived only a few months.

“It’s because he’s strong,” explained the mother. “It does his lungs
good.”

“And what about my weak heart?” the man grumbled. “You don’t think
about me. It’s all him now.”

The woman did not answer. She knew it to be the truth.

He was a good man, hard-working, sober and kind in his fretful,
complaining way. Her people and she herself, had thought she had
done well when she had married him. She had been in service, looked
down upon by her girl acquaintances who were earning their living
in factories and shops; and he had been almost a gentleman, though
it was difficult to remember that now. The Strong’nth’arms had once
been prosperous yeomen and had hunted with the gentry. Rumour had it
that scattered members of the family were even now doing well in the
colonies, and both husband and wife still cherished the hope that some
far-flung relation would providentially die and leave them a fortune.
Otherwise the future promised little more than an everlasting struggle
against starvation. He had started as a mechanical engineer in his
own workshop. There were plenty of jobs for such in Millsborough, but
John Strong’nth’arm seemed to be one of those born unfortunates doomed
always to choose instinctively the wrong turning. An inventor of a
kind. Some of his ideas had prospered--other people.

“If only I had my rights. If only I’d had justice done me. If only I
hadn’t been cheated and robbed!”

Little Anthony John, as he grew to understanding, became familiar with
such phrases, repeated in a shrill, weak voice that generally ended
in a cough, with clenched hands raised in futile appeal to Somebody
his father seemed to be seeing through the roof of the dark, untidy
workshop, where the place for everything seemed to be on the floor, and
where his father seemed always to be looking for things he couldn’t
find.

A childish, kindly man! Assured of a satisfactory income, a woman
might have found him lovable, have been indulgent to his helplessness.
But the poor have no use for weakness. They cannot afford it. The
child instinctively knew that his mother despised this dreamy-eyed,
loose-lipped man always full of fear; but though it was to his mother
that he looked to answer his questions and supply his wants, it was his
father he first learnt to love. The littered workshop with its glowing
furnace became his nursery. Judging from his eyes, it amused him when
his father, having laid aside a tool, was quite unable the next minute
to remember where he had put it. The child would watch him for a time
while he cursed and spluttered, and then, jumping down from his perch,
would quietly hand it to him. The man came to rely upon him for help.

“You didn’t notice, by any chance, where I put a little brass wheel
yesterday--about so big?” would be the question. John, the man, would
go on with his job; and a minute later Anthony, the child, would return
with the lost wheel. Once the man had been out all the afternoon. On
entering the workshop in the evening he stood and stared. The bench had
been cleared and swept; and neatly arranged upon it were laid out all
his tools. He was still staring at them when he heard the door softly
opened and a little, grinning face was peering round the jar. The man
burst into tears, and then, ashamed of himself, searched in vain for a
handkerchief. The child slipped a piece of clean waste into his hand
and laughed.

For years the child did not know that the world was not all sordid
streets and reeking slums. There was a place called the Market Square
where men shouted and swore and women scolded and haggled, and calves
bellowed and pigs squealed. And farther still away a space of trampled
grass and sooty shrubs surrounded by chimneys belching smoke. But
sometimes, on days when in the morning his father had cursed fate more
than usual, had raised clenched hands towards the roof of the workshop
more often than wont, his mother would disappear for many hours,
returning with good things tied up in a brown-paper parcel. And in the
evening Somebody who dwelt far away would be praised and blessed.

The child was puzzled who this Somebody could be. He wondered if it
might be the Party the other side of the workshop roof to whom his
father made appeal for right and justice. But that could hardly be, for
the Dweller beyond the workshop roof was apparently stone-deaf; while
his mother never came back empty handed.

One evening there drew nearer the sound of singing and a tambourine.
Little Anthony opened the workshop door and peered out. Some half a
dozen men and women were gathered round the curb, and one was talking.

She spoke of a gentleman named God. He lived far off and very high up.
And all good things came from Him. There was more of it: about the
power and the glory of Him, and how everybody ought to be afraid of Him
and love Him. But little Anthony remembered he had left the door of the
workshop open and so hurried back. They moved on a little later. The
child heard them singing as they passed.


     “Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
     Praise Him all creatures here below.”


The rest of the verse was drowned by the tambourine.

So it was to God that his mother made these frequent excursions,
returning always laden with good things. Had she not explained to him,
as an excuse for not taking him with her, that it was a long way off
and up ever so high? Next year, perhaps, when his legs were sturdier.
He did not tell her of his discovery. Mrs. Plumberry divided children
into two classes: the children who talked and never listened and the
children who listened and kept their thoughts to themselves. But one
day, when his mother took her only bonnet from its wrappings and was
putting it on in front of the fly-blown glass, he plucked at her
sleeve. She turned. He had rolled down his stockings, displaying a pair
of sturdy legs. It was one of his characteristics, even as a child,
that he never wasted words. “Feel ’em,” was all he said.

His mother remembered. It happened to be a fine day, so far as one
could judge beneath the smoke of Millsborough. She sent him to change
into his best clothes, while she finished her own preparations, and
together they set forth. She wondered at his evident excitement. It
was beyond what she had expected.

It was certainly a long way; but the child seemed not to notice it.
They left the din and smoke of Millsborough behind them. They climbed
by slow degrees to a wonderful country. The child longed to take it in
his arms, it was so beautiful. The woman talked at intervals, but the
child did not hear her. At the journey’s end the gate stood open and
they passed in.

And suddenly they came across him, walking in the garden. His mother
was greatly flustered. She was full of apologies, stammering and
repeating herself. She snatched little Anthony’s cap off his head, and
all the while she kept on curtseying, sinking almost to her knees. He
was a very old gentleman dressed in gaiters and a Norfolk jacket. He
wore side whiskers and a big moustache and walked with the aid of a
stick. He patted Anthony on the head and gave him a shilling. He called
Mrs. Strong’nth’arm “Nelly”; and hoped her husband would soon get work.
And then remarking that she knew her way, he lifted his tweed cap and
disappeared.

The child waited in a large clean room. Ladies in white caps fluttered
in and out, and one brought him milk and wonderful things to eat; and
later his mother returned with a larger parcel than usual and they
left the place behind them. It was not until they were beyond the gates
that the child broke his silence, and then he looked round carefully
before speaking.

“He didn’t look so very glorious,” he said.

“Who didn’t?” demanded his mother.

“God.”

His mother dropped her bundle. Fortunately it was on a soft place.

“What maggot has the child got into his head?” she ejaculated. “What do
you mean by ‘God’?”

“Him,” persisted Anthony. “Isn’t it from him that we get all these good
things?” He pointed to the parcel.

His mother picked it up. “Who’s been talking to you?” she asked.

“I overheard her,” explained the child. “She said it was from God that
we got all our good things. Ain’t it?”

His mother took him by the hand and they trudged on. She did not answer
for a time.

“That wasn’t God,” she told him at last. “That was Sir William Coomber.
I used to be in service there.”

She lapsed into silence again. The bundle seemed heavy.

“Of course it is God that gives it us in a manner of speaking,”
she explained. “He puts it into Sir William’s heart to be kind and
generous.”

The child thought a while.

“But they’re his things, ain’t they?” he asked. “The other one’s. Sir
William’s?”

“Yes; but God gave them to him.”

It seemed a roundabout business.

“Why doesn’t God give us things?” he demanded. “Don’t He like us?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” answered the woman. “Don’t ask so many questions.”

It was longer, the way home. He offered no protest at being sent to bed
early. He dreamed he was wandering to and fro in a vast place, looking
for God. Over and over again he thought he saw Him in the distance, but
every time he got near to Him it turned out to be Sir William Coomber,
who patted him on the head and gave him a shilling.




CHAPTER II


There was an aunt and uncle. Mr. Joseph Newt, of Moor End Lane,
Millsborough, was Mrs. Strong’nth’arm’s only surviving brother. He was
married to a woman older than himself. She had been a barmaid, but
after her marriage had “got religion,” as they say up North.

They were not much to boast of. Mr. Newt was a dog-fancier; and
according to his own account an atheist, whether from conviction or
mere love of sport his friends had never been able to decide. Earnest
young ministers of all denominations generally commenced their career
in Millsborough by attempting his conversion, much encouraged during
the earlier stages of the contest by Mr. Newt’s predisposition in all
matters towards what he called a “waiting game.” The “knock-out” blow
had not yet been delivered. His wife had long since abandoned him to
Satan. The only thing, as far as she could see, was to let him enjoy
as much peace and comfort in this world as circumstances would permit.
In Anthony John’s eyes the inevitable doom awaiting him gave to his
uncle an interest and importance that Mr. Newt’s somewhat insignificant
personality might otherwise have failed to inspire. The child had heard
about hell. A most unpleasant place where wicked people went to when
they died. But his uncle, with his twinkling eyes and his merry laugh,
was not his idea of a bad man.

“Is uncle very, very wicked?” he once demanded of his aunt.

“No; he’s not wicked,” replied his aunt, assuming a judicial tone.
“Better than nine men out of ten that I’ve ever come across.”

“Then why has he got to go to hell?”

“He needn’t, if he didn’t want to,” replied his aunt. “That’s the awful
thing about it. If he’d only believe, he could be saved.”

“Believe what?” inquired Anthony John.

“Oh, I haven’t got time to go into all that now,” replied his aunt. She
was having trouble with the kitchen stove. “Believe what he’s told.”

“Who told him?”

“Everybody,” explained his aunt. “I’ve told him myself till I’m sick
and tired of it. Don’t ask so many questions. You’re getting as bad as
he is.”

It worried him, the thought of his uncle going to hell. Why couldn’t
he believe this thing, whatever it was, that everybody else believed?

It was an evening or two later. His aunt had gone to chapel. His uncle
was smoking his pipe beside the kitchen fire, old Simon, the bob-tailed
sheep-dog, looking up at him with adoring eyes. It seemed just the
opportunity for a heart-to-heart talk.

He insinuated his hand into his uncle’s grimy paw.

“Why don’t you believe?” he asked.

His uncle turned on him his little twinkling eyes.

“Believe what?” he counter-questioned.

“What everybody believes,” the child answered.

The little man shook his head.

“Don’t you believe them,” he answered. “They don’t believe any more
than I believe. They just say it because they think they’re going to
get something out of it.”

The little man reached forward for the poker and gently stirred the
fire.

“If they believed all they say that they believe,” he continued, “this
world would be a very different place to what it is. That’s what I
always tell them, and that’s what they’re never able to answer and
never will be.”

He laid down the poker and turned again to the child.

“You’ll hear it all in good time, my lad,” he said. “‘Love your
neighbour as yourself.’ ‘Do unto others as you would they should do
unto you.’ ‘Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor.’ That’s what
their God tells them. Do you see them doing it?”

The little man laughed a merry, good-tempered laugh.

“Why, old Simon has got more sense than they have.” He stooped and
patted the shaggy head resting upon his knee. “He knows it wouldn’t be
any good, just looking at me as though he loved me, and then not doing
what I told him.”

He refilled his pipe and lighted it.

“I’ll believe,” he added, “when I see them believing.”

Anthony John liked visiting the tumble-down cottage in Moor End Lane.
His mother was nervous of the consequences. But Mrs. Plumberry’s view
was that those who talked the loudest are not always the most dangerous.

“The little man’s got plenty of horse sense,” so Mrs. Plumberry argued,
“and what Emma Newt don’t know about heaven and how to get there, isn’t
worth trying to find out, so far as I can judge. Between the two of
them he isn’t likely to get any harm even if he doesn’t get much good.
Anyhow, he gets a square meal.”

The dogs were the chief attraction to Anthony John. He had never been
let to play in the street with the other children of the neighbourhood.
It was in the dismantled railway carriage at the bottom of his uncle’s
garden that he first tasted play. His uncle had taken him in and
introduced him. There was first and foremost old Simon, the bob-tailed
sheep-dog. The others came and went, but old Simon was not for sale.
The next oldest inhabitant of the railway carriage was a smooth-coated
retriever bitch. She had constituted herself old Simon’s chief
assistant, always prepared to help him on the many occasions when riot
had to be suppressed. It was wonderful how both dogs knew the exact
moment when fighting in play turned to fighting in anger. Then not a
moment was to be lost. Bess would stand ready, but she never interfered
unless Simon gave a peculiar low bark that meant he wanted her. He had
been instructed not to call her in if he could possibly do without her.

“Never invite a woman to take part in a row you can manage by
yourself,” his master had confided to him. “Once in, they never know
when to stop.”

On the day of Anthony John’s first visit Bess was in a good mood to
receive strangers. Her four puppies had just reached the fighting
stage. She was absurdly proud of them and welcomed an audience. They
fell upon Anthony John with one accord. His uncle was watching out of
a corner of his eye. But the child only laughed and hit back at them.
There were terriers of all sorts, bred rather for brain and muscle than
for points: their purchasers being generally the tenants of lonely
farms upon the moors who, wanting them as watchdogs and to keep down
the rats, preferred smartness to pedigree. Mr. Newt’s pride was in his
bull pups, for which he had a special _clientèle_ among neighbouring
miners. He kept these apart in a railed off corner of the carriage,
and once or twice a week, instead of feeding them separately, he would
throw a big meaty bone into their midst, and then, leaning over the
iron rail, watch the fight. The dog that most often secured the bone,
leaving the others hungry, would be specially marked out for favour.
His uncle, going in among them, would pat and praise him; and for him
henceforward would be reserved the choicest food and the chiefest care.

The dogs soon got to know him and would welcome him with a joyous rush.
The child would go down on all fours and would be one of them, and
together they would roll and tumble in the straw. It was jolly to feel
their soft paws pressing against his body, their cold damp noses pushed
against his hands and face. There were mimic fights when they would
tug his hair and bite his toes, and he would pull their silky ears and
grab them by their hair. And, oh! the shouting and the barking and the
growling and the laughing!

Life was fine in the long low railway carriage where one gave free play
to one’s limbs and lungs and none were afraid.

And sometimes for no reason the glorious gambol would suddenly blaze
up into anger. The bite would sting, and in the growl there would be
menace. The child would spring up with a savage cry and go for his
foe with clenched fists and snarling mouth, and the whole pack would
be fighting one another senselessly and in real earnest. Then in an
instant old Simon would be among them. He never talked. The shaggy head
would move so swiftly that none knew where to expect it, and old Simon
would be standing with a space around him faced by a circle of fierce
eyes. But, generally speaking, none cared to break into that space. The
child would hate old Simon for his interference and would punch at him
viciously, trying to get across his huge body to the dog he wanted to
tear and mangle. But feint and dodge as he might, it was always old
Simon’s rump that was towards him, and at that he could punch as hard
as he liked.

Five minutes later they would all be friends again, licking one
another’s wounds. Old Simon would lie blinking his wistful, dreamy eyes.

It had been a slack year. Many of the mills had had to close down.
Added to this there came a strike among the miners and distress grew
daily. Mrs. Newt took the opportunity to buy a secondhand tombstone.
It had been ordered by one of the pumpmen for his mother, but when the
strike came the stonemason suggested payment on account, and as this
was not forthcoming he had put the stone aside. Unfortunately for him
he had already carved as far as “Sacred to the Memory of Mildred,”
which was not a common name in Millsborough. It happened, however,
to be Mrs. Newt’s, though on her conversion she had dropped it as
savouring too much of worldliness, employing instead her second name,
which was Emily. Hearing of the incident, Mrs. Newt called upon the
stonemason and, taking full advantage of the man’s dilemma, had secured
the stone for about one-third of its value. She had had the rest of
the lettering completed, leaving to be filled in only the date of her
death. It was an imposing-looking stone and Mrs. Newt was proud of it.
She would often go and gaze at it where it stood in an out-of-the-way
corner of the stonemason’s yard; and one day she took Anthony to see
it. Her only anxiety now was about her grave. There was one particular
site near to a willow tree that she much desired. It belonged to a
baker who had secured it some years before on learning that he was
suffering from an intermittent heart. The unemployment among the
weavers, added to the strike of the miners, was making it difficult for
him to collect his money, and Mrs. Newt was hopeful that an offer of
ready cash at the right moment might induce him to sell.

“It’s a sad world,” she confided to Anthony John as she stood
affectionately regarding the stone on which the verse of a hymn had
been carved implying that Mildred Emily Newt had departed for realms of
endless bliss. “Can’t say as I shall be sorry to leave it.”

It promised to be a hard winter for the poor of Millsborough. The coal
strike had ended only to make way for trouble in the steel works.
Somewhere the other side of the world the crops had failed. Bread rose
in price each week; and there were pinched and savage faces in the
streets.

His uncle had gone up to the moors to try and sell a terrier. His aunt
sat knitting by the kitchen fire. Little Anthony had come in to warm
himself before returning home. It was cold in the railway carriage.
There were not enough of them there now to keep it warm. He was sitting
with his knee clasped in his hands.

“Why doesn’t God stop it?” he demanded suddenly. His knowledge had
advanced since the day he had thought Sir William Coomber was God.

“Stop what?” inquired his aunt continuing her knitting.

“The strike. Why doesn’t He put everything all right? Can’t He?”

“Of course He could,” explained his aunt. “If He wanted to.”

“Why don’t He want to? Doesn’t He want everybody to be happy?”

It appeared He did, but there were difficulties in the way. Men and
women were wicked--were born wicked: that was the trouble.

“But why were we born wicked?” persisted the child. “Didn’t God make
us?”

“Of course He made us. God made everything.”

“Why didn’t He make us good?”

It seemed He had made us good. Adam and Eve were both quite good, in
the beginning. If only they had remained good--hadn’t disobeyed God by
eating the forbidden fruit we might all of us have been good and happy
to this day.

“He was the first man, wasn’t he--Adam?” demanded the child.

“Yes. God made him out of the earth. And saw that he was good.”

“How long ago would that be?” he asked.

His aunt was not sure of the exact date. Along time ago.

“A hundred years?”

Longer than that. Thousands and thousands of years ago.

“Why couldn’t Adam have said he was sorry and God have forgiven him?”

“It was too late,” explained his aunt. “You see, he’d done it.”

“What made him eat it? If he was a good man and God had told him not
to?”

It was explained to him that the Devil had tempted Adam--or rather Eve.
It seemed unimportant so far as their unfortunate descendants were
concerned.

“But why did God let the Devil tempt him--or her, whichever it was.
Can’t God do everything? Why didn’t He kill the Devil?”

Mrs. Newt regarded her knitting with dismay. While talking to Anthony
John she had lost count of her stitches. Added to which it was time for
Anthony John to go home. His mother would be getting anxious.

His aunt, though visiting was not much in her line, dropped in on his
mother a day or two later. Mrs. Plumberry happened to have looked in
for a gossip and a cup of tea the same afternoon. His aunt felt sure
that Anthony John would be helpful to his father in the workshop.

In the evening his mother informed him that she and his father had
decided to give to him the opportunity of learning whatever there was
to be learnt about such things as God and sin and the everlasting soul
of man. She didn’t put it in these words, but that was the impression
she conveyed. On the very next Sunday that was he should go to chapel;
and there kind ladies and gentlemen who understood these matters,
perhaps even better than his aunt herself, would answer all his
questions and make all things plain to him.

They were most kind and sympathetic to him at the Sunday school. His
aunt had prepared them for him, and they welcomed him as promising
material. There was one young man in particular with an æsthetic face
and long black hair that he had a habit of combing with his hand; and
a plain young woman with wonderfully kind eyes, who in the middle of
a hymn suddenly caught him up and hugged him. But they didn’t really
help him. They assured him that God loved us and wanted us all to be
good and happy. But they didn’t explain to him why God had overlooked
the devil. He had never said a word to Adam about the devil--had never
so much as warned him. It seemed to Anthony John that the serpent
had taken God as much by surprise as he had Adam and Eve. It seemed
unfair to Anthony John that the whole consequences of the unforseen
catastrophe should have been visited on Adam and Eve; and even more
unfair that he himself, Anthony John, coming into the world thousands
of years later, and who, as far as he could see, had had nothing
whatever to do with the business, should be deemed, for all practical
purposes, as an accomplice before the act. It was not that he argued it
thus to himself. All he was conscious of was a vague resentful feeling
that it wasn’t fair. When his mother had sent him out on his first
errand she had warned him of bad boys who would try to take his money
away from him, as a result of which he had kept a sharp look-out and,
seeing a couple of boys who looked as though they might be bad, he had
taken the precaution of walking close behind a policeman. It seemed to
him that Adam hadn’t been given a dog’s chance.

They told him that, later on, God was sorry for us and had put things
right by letting His only Son die for us. It was a beautiful story
they told him about this Jesus, the Son of God. He wondered who had
suggested the idea, and had decided that it must have been the little
lad Jesus who had first thought of it and had persuaded God to let Him
do it. Somehow he convinced himself that he would have done just the
same. Looking down from heaven on the poor people below, and thinking
of their all going to hell, he would have felt so sorry for them.

But the more he thought about it all the more he couldn’t understand
why God instead of merely turning Satan out of heaven, hadn’t finished
him off then and there. He might have known he would be up to mischief.

At first his teachers had encouraged him to ask them questions, but
later on they changed their minds. They told him he would understand
all these things better as he grew up. Meanwhile he mustn’t think, but
listen and believe.




CHAPTER III


Mr. Strong’nth’arm lay ill. It was just his luck. For weeks he had been
kicking his heels about the workshop, cursing Fate for not sending
him a job. And Fate--the incorrigible joker that she is--had knocked
at his door ten days ago with an order that he reckoned would keep
him going for a month, and then a week later had struck him down with
pleurisy. They told him that if he kept quiet and didn’t rave and fling
his arms about, sending the bedclothes half a dozen times a day on to
the floor, he would soon get well. But what was the good of everybody
talking? What was to become of them? This job, satisfactorily completed
and sent home, would have led to others--would have started him on his
feet again. Now it would be taken away from him and sent elsewhere to
be finished. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm made pilgrimages to the great house,
returning with hot-house grapes. Mrs. Newt came with a basket. Both she
and her husband would like to have done more; but times were bad. Even
believers were in difficulty. Mrs. Newt suggested resignation.

It was the fourth morning after Mr. Strong’nth’arm’s seizure, Anthony,
putting on for warmth his father’s overcoat, had crept down in the
faint dawn to light the kitchen fire, his mother being busy in the
bedroom. He had just succeeded, and a little blaze leapt up and threw
fantastic shadows on the whitewashed walls. Looking round, he saw the
shape of a squat hobgoblin with a tiny head. He moved his arms, and
immediately the hobgoblin responded with a gigantic gesture of delight.
From the fireplace, now behind him, there came a cheerful crackling
sound; it was just the noise that a merry old witch would make when
laughing. The child, holding high the skirts of his long coat, began
to dance; and the hobgoblin’s legs were going like mad. Suddenly the
door opened and there stood the oddest of figures. He was short and
bowlegged and had a big beard. He wore a peaked cap, and over his
shoulder he carried a bundle hooked on to a stick. Without a doubt
’twas the King of the Gnomes. He flung down his bundle and stretched
out his hands. The child ran towards him. Lord how he danced! His
little bow legs moved like lightning and his arms were so strong he
could toss little Anthony up with one hand and catch him again with the
other. The little bright flame stretched up higher and higher as if
the better to see the fun. The merry old witch laughed louder. And the
shadows on the wall got so excited that they tumbled down flat on the
ceiling.

His mother called from above to know if the kettle was boiling; and at
that the little flame turned pale and disappeared. The merry old witch
was as quiet as a mouse. The shadows ran up the chimney and the light
came in at the door.

Anthony didn’t answer his mother. He was rubbing his eyes. He thought
he must still be in bed. It was the King of the Gnomes that called up
the stairs to say that the kettle would be boiling in five minutes.
Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, hearing a strange voice, came down as she was. She
found her son Anthony distraught and still rubbing his eyes. The King
of the Gnomes was pushing carefully selected pieces of wood through
the bars of the grate and blowing them with his mouth. He held one of
his enormous hands in front of his golden beard to save it from being
singed. He knew Mrs. Strong’nth’arm quite well and shook hands with
her. She looked at him as if she had seen him before--somewhere, some
time, or else had heard him described; she wasn’t sure which. She
seemed to be glad to see him without knowing why. At first she was a
bit afraid of him. But that was all gone before the tea was ready.
Anthony watched his mother with astonishment. She was one of those
bustling, restless women, constitutionally unable to keep still for a
minute. Something had bewitched her. She stood with her hands folded
and wasn’t even talking. She might have been a visitor. It was the King
of the Gnomes that made the tea and cut the bread and butter. He seemed
to know where everything was. The fire was burning brightly. As a rule
it was the devil to get going. This morning it had met its master. He
passed Mrs. Strong’nth’arm and went upstairs with the tray and still as
if in a dream she followed him.

Anthony crept to the bottom of the stairs and listened. The King of the
Gnomes was talking to his father. He had a tremendously deep voice.
Just the voice one would expect from a gentleman who lived always
underground. Anthony could feel the vibrations of it underneath his
feet. Compared with it, the voices of his father and his mother sounded
like the chorus of the little terriers when old Simon was giving tongue.

And suddenly there happened a great wonder. His mother laughed. Never
before that he could remember had he heard his mother laugh. Feeling
that strange things were in the wind, he crept out into the yard and
washed himself under the pump.

Three weeks the King of the Gnomes dwelt with them. Every morning he
and Anthony would go into the workshop. The furnace would be still
aglow with the embers of the night before. Of course the King of the
Gnomes would be at home with a forge and an anvil. But even so, Anthony
would marvel at his dexterity and strength. The great sinewy hands,
that to save time or to make a neater finish would often bend the metal
to its shape without the help of other tools, could coax to their
place the smallest screws, fix to a hair’s breadth the most delicate
adjustments. Of course he never let on that he was the King of the
Gnomes. Only the child knew that; and a warning hairy finger, or a wink
of his laughing blue eye would caution Anthony not to give away the
secret when third parties were around.

He never went out. When not in the workshop he was busy about the
house. Of course, when you come to think of it, there are no lady
gnomes, so that accounted for his being equally apt at woman’s work.
Mrs. Strong’nth’arm had little else to do but to nurse her husband;
and even at that he would take his turn when she went marketing; and
of evenings, while talking, he would help her with her darning. There
seemed to be nothing those great hands could not do.

Nobody knew of his coming. His mother had taken Anthony aside on the
first morning and had impressed upon him that he was not to say a word.
But he would not, even if she had not told him; for if you did the King
of the Gnomes at once vanished underground. It was not till days after
he was gone that Mrs. Strong’nth’arm mentioned his visit, and then only
to Mrs. Plumberry under oath of secrecy.

Mrs. Plumberry, being so often where there was sorrow, had met him once
herself. Wandering Peter the country folk called him. Mrs. Plumberry
marvelled at his having visited the Strong’nth’arms. It was rarely that
he came into towns. He must have heard of their trouble. He had ways of
his own of finding out where he was wanted. At lambing time, when the
snow lay deep upon the hills, they had learnt to listen for his cheery
whistling drawing nearer through the darkness. He might have been a
shepherd all his life. He would take the writhing ewes in his two big
hands, and at his touch they would cease their groaning. And when in
some lonely cottage man or child lay sick, and there was none to help,
the good wife would remember stories she had heard and, slipping out
beyond the hedge, would peer with straining eyes into the night. And
for sure and certain--so the legend ran--there would come to her the
sound of footsteps through the heather and Wandering Peter would emerge
out of the shadows and would greet her. There he would stay till there
was no longer need of him, doctoring and nursing, or taking the good
man’s place at the plough. He would take no wage beyond his food and
lodging. At his departure he would ask for a day’s rations to put into
his bundle, and from those who might have it to spare an old coat or a
pair of boots not altogether past the mending.

Where he had his dwelling none knew, but lost folk upon the moors,
when overtaken by the darkness, would call to him; and then, so it was
said, he would suddenly appear and put them on their way. They told of
an old curmudgeon who, but for a snarling cur as savage as himself,
lived alone in a shanty among the rocks. A venomous, blasphemous old
scoundrel. The country people feared and hated him. They said he had
the evil eye, and when a cow died in the calfing or a sow ate her
young, the curses would be deep and bitter against old Michael--old
Nick, as they termed him--of the quarry.

One night, poaching, old Michael stumbled and fell to the bottom of a
rocky chasm. He lay there with a broken leg and the blood flowing from
a wound in his head. His cries came back to him from the rocks, and his
only hope was in his dog. It had gone to seek help he knew, for they
cared for one another in their snarling way, these two. But what could
the brute do? His dog was known and hated as far as Mike himself. It
would be stoned from every door. None would follow it to rescue him. He
cursed it for a fool and his eyes closed.

When he opened them Wandering Peter was lifting him up in his strong
arms. The dog had not wasted his voice upon the neighbours. No cottage
or farm had been wakened by his barking. It was Wandering Peter he had
sought.

There was a girl who had “got herself into trouble,” as the saying is,
and had been turned out of her place. Not knowing where else to go she
had returned home, though she guessed her greeting would be cruel, for
her father was a hard, stern man and had always been proud of his good
name. She had climbed slowly the long road across the wolds, and the
short winter’s day was fading when she reached the farm. As she feared,
he had slammed the door in her face, and creeping away, she had lain
down in the woods thinking to die.

Her father had watched her from the house. Through the night he had
struggled with himself, and towards morning had lighted the lantern and
gone in search of her. But she had disappeared.

It was a strange story that she told when, weeks later, she reappeared
with her child at her breast. She said that Christ had come to her.
He had golden hair and a golden beard, but she knew him to be Christ
because of his kind eyes. He had lifted her up as though she had been
a child; and, warm against his breast, he had carried her through the
night till they came to a dwelling place among rocks. There he had laid
her down upon a bed of soft dry moss, and there the child had been
born, Christ tending her with hands so gentle she had felt no pain. She
did not know that she had been there for over a month. To her it had
seemed but a little time. All she could tell was that she had been very
happy and had wanted for nothing and that he had told her “beautiful
things.” One day he told her that all was well now with her and the
child and that her father longed for her. And that night he had carried
her and the child in his arms; and in the morning they came to the edge
of the wood from where she could see the farm. And there Christ had
blessed her and the child and left her. And her father had come across
the fields to meet her.

They explained to her it was not Christ who had found her. It must
have been Wandering Peter. But she never believed them. Later, when
Anthony had grown into boyhood, he met her one day on the moors. Her
son had gone abroad and for many years he had not written. But she was
sure that it was well with him. A white-haired, sweet-faced woman. Not
quite “all there” in many ways, it was hinted, and yet with a gift
for teaching. She had her daily round among the far-off cottages and
scattered hamlets. The children looked forward to her coming. She told
them wonderful stories, so they said.

She must have learnt the trick from Wandering Peter, Anthony thought.
He remembered how, seated cross-legged upon the bench, he had listened
while Peter, when not hammering or filing, had poured forth his endless
stories of birds and beasts, of little creeping things and their
strange ways, of the life of the deep waters, of far-off lands and
other worlds, of the brave things and the sad things that happened long
ago. It was from Peter that Anthony first heard the story of Saint
Aldys.

Once upon a time, where Millsborough stands today were woods and
pleasant pastures. The winding Wyndbeck, now flowing black and
sluggish through long dark echoing tunnels past slimy walls and
wharves, was then a silvery stream splashing and foaming among
tree-crowned rocks and mossy boulders. Where now tall chimneys belch
their smoke and the slag stands piled in endless heaps around the
filthy pits, sheep browsed and cattle grazed and little piebald pigs
nuzzled for truffles in the soft sweet-smelling earth. The valley of
the Wyndbeck then would have been a fair place to dwell in but for evil
greedy men who preyed upon the people, driving off their cattle and
stealing their crops, making sport of their tears and prayers. And of
all the wicked men who harassed and oppressed them none were so cruel
and grasping as Aldys of the yellow beard--the Red Badger they called
him.

One day the Badger was returning from a foray, and beside him, on
an old gaunt pony, secured by a stirrup-leather to the Badger’s
saddle-girth, rode a little lad. A trooper had found the boy wandering
among the blackened ruins, and the Badger, attracted by the lad’s
beauty, had taken him to be his page.

The Badger rode, singing, pleased with his day’s work; and there crept
up a white mist from the sea. He did not notice for a time that he and
the lad were riding alone. Then, drawing rein, he blew a long loud
blast upon his horn. But there came no answer.

The lad was looking at him with strange eyes; and Red Aldys, seized he
knew not why by a sudden frenzy of hate, drew his sword and struck at
the little lad with all his strength.

And the sword broke in his hand; and those strange gentle eyes still
looked upon Red Aldys. And around the little lad there shone a great
light.

And fear fell upon Red Aldys of the yellow beard, and flinging himself
upon the ground, he cried in a loud voice: “Christ have mercy upon me a
sinner.”

And the child Christ laid His hands upon Red Aldys and spoke words of
comfort to him and commanded him that he should follow Him and serve
Him.

And on the spot where Christ had laid His hands upon him Aldys made for
himself a dwelling-place among the rocks beside the winding Wyndbeck.
And there for many years he laboured to bring peace and healing to the
poor folk of the valley, learning their needs that he might help them.
And the fame of him spread far and wide, and many came to him to ask
his blessing, repenting of their evil lives. And he went about among
the people teaching the love of the Lord Jesus.

Little Anthony had often passed the great church of St. Aldys just
beyond the market square, an imposing building of grey stone with a
spire one hundred and eighty feet high. They say that, forming part of
its foundations, are the very rocks among which once Saint Aldys dwelt,
on the spot where Christ had appeared to him and had forgiven him his
sins.

Having heard the story, he felt a longing to see the inside of it,
and one afternoon, instead of going to his uncle’s, he wandered
there. It was surrounded by iron railings and the great iron gates
were padlocked. But in a corner, behind a massive buttress, he found
a little door that opened. It led into a stone passage and down some
steps into a vaulted room where he fell over a chair, and a bat flew
out and fluttered silently until it disappeared into the shadows. But
he found the church at last. It was vast and high and very, very cold,
and only a faint chill light came in through the screened windows. The
silence frightened him. He had forgotten to make a note of the way by
which he had entered, and all the doors that he tried were securely
fastened. A terror seized him that he would never be able to get out.
It seemed to him that he was in a grave.

By luck he blundered back into the little vaulted chamber, and from
there groped his way out. He closed the door behind him with a bang. He
had a feeling that something was following him and might drag him back.
He ran all the way home.




CHAPTER IV


There had been a period of prosperity following the strange visit
of Wandering Peter. John Strong’nth’arm came back to his workshop
another man, or so it seemed to little Anthony. A brisk, self-confident
person who often would whistle while he worked. The job on which he
had been engaged when taken ill had been well finished and further
orders had resulted. There were times when the temporary assistance
of an old jobbing tinker and his half-witted son was needful. Mrs.
Strong’nth’arm, discussing things in general with a neighbour, would
casually refer to “Our workpeople.” That uncle in Australia, or
elsewhere, who had been fading year by year almost to disappearing
point, reappeared out of the shadows. With the gambler’s belief that
when once the luck changes every venture is bound to come home, she
regarded his sudden demise as merely a question of time. She wondered
how much he would leave them. She hoped it would be sufficient to
enable them to become gentlefolks.

“What is a gentlefolk?” asked Anthony, to whom she had been talking.

It was explained to him that gentlefolk were people who did not have to
work for their living. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm had served them and knew.

There were others, who sat in offices and gave orders. To this lesser
rank it was possible to climb by industry and virtue. But first of all
you must go to school and learn.

His mother caught him up in her thin arms and pressed him passionately
to her narrow bosom.

“You will be a gentleman,” she prophesied. “I feel it. I’ve prayed God
every night since you were born.” She smothered him with kisses and
then put him down.

“Don’t say anything to your father,” she added. “He doesn’t understand.”

He rather hoped his uncle in Australia wouldn’t leave them too much
money. He liked work: fighting with things, conquering them; tidying
the workshop; combing the fleas out of his uncle’s dogs. Lighting the
kitchen fire was fun even when it was so cold that he wasn’t quite sure
he’d a nose on his face and could only tell what his hands were doing
by looking at them. You lit the paper and then coaxed and blew and
watched the little flame grow bigger, feeding it and guiding it. And
when you had won, you warmed your hands.

His father had taught him to read during the many hours when there
had been nothing else to do. They had sat side by side upon the bench,
their legs dangling, holding the open book between them. And writing
of a sort he had learnt for himself, having heard his mother regret
that she had not studied it herself when young. His mother felt he
was predestined to be a great scholar. She wanted to send him to a
certain “select preparatory school” kept by two elderly maiden sisters
of undoubted gentility. Their prospectus informed the gentry of the
neighbourhood that special attention was given by the Misses Warmington
to manners and the cultivation of correct behaviour.

His father had no use for the Misses Warmington--had done business
with them in connection with a boiler. He mimicked the elder
Miss Warmington’s high-pitched voice. They would teach the boy
monkey-tricks, give him ideas above his station. What was wrong with
the parish school, only two streets away, where he would mix with his
own class and not be looked down upon?

His mother did not agree that he would be with his own class among the
children of the neighbourhood. The Strong’nth’arms had once been almost
gentry. He would learn coarse ways, rude speech, acquire a vulgar
accent. She carried her way, as she always did in the end. Dressed
in her best clothes, and accompanied by Anthony in a new turn-out
from head to foot, she knocked at the door of the Misses Warmington’s
“select preparatory school.”

It was one of a square of small, old-fashioned houses that had
once been on the outskirts of Millsborough, but which now formed a
connecting link between the old town and the maze of new mean streets
that had crept towards it from the west. They were shown into the
drawing-room. The portrait of a military gentleman with a wooden face
and stars upon his breast hung above the marble mantelpiece. On the
opposite wall, above the green rep sofa, hung a frightened-looking lady
with ringlets and fingers that tapered almost to a point.

Mrs. Strong’nth’arm sat on the extreme edge of a horsehair-covered
chair and had difficulty in not sliding off it on to the floor. Anthony
John, perched on another precisely similar chair, had mastered the
problem by sitting well back and tucking one leg underneath him.

After a few minutes there entered the elder Miss Warmington. She was a
tall gaunt lady with a prominent arched nose. She apologized to Mrs.
Strong’nth’arm for having kept them waiting, but apparently did not see
Mrs. Strong’nth’arm’s outstretched hand. For a time his mother didn’t
seem to know what to do with it.

She explained her errand, becoming almost voluble on the importance
both she and his father attached to manners and a knowledge of the ways
of gentlefolks.

Miss Warmington was sympathetic; but, alas! the Miss Warmingtons’
select preparatory school for gentlefolks had already its full
complement of pupils. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, not understanding the
hint, referred to rumours that tended to refute this argument. It
seemed needful there should be plain speaking. The Misses Warmington
themselves were very sorry, but there were parents who had to be
considered. Particularly was it a preparatory school for young ladies
and gentlemen. A pupil from the neighbourhood of Platt Lane--the child
of a mechanic--no doubt a most excellent----

Mrs. Strong’nth’arm interrupted. An engineer, employing workmen of his
own.

The elder Miss Warmington was pleased to hear it. But there was no
getting over the neighbourhood of Platt Lane. And Mrs. Strong’nth’arm
herself, the child’s mother. Miss Warmington had not the slightest
intention of being offensive. Domestic service Miss Warmington had
always held to be a calling worthy of all esteem. It was the parents.

Miss Warmington rose to end the interview. And then by chance her eyes
fell upon Anthony John as he sat with one small leg tucked underneath
the other.

The tears were in Mrs. Strong’nth’arm’s eyes, and she did not notice.
But Anthony saw quite plainly the expression that came over the tired,
lined face of the elder Miss Warmington. He had seen it before on faces
that had suddenly caught sight of him.

“You say your husband employs work-people?” she said in a changed tone,
turning to Mrs. Strong’nth’arm.

“A man and a boy,” declared Mrs. Strong’nth’arm in a broken voice. She
dared not look up because of the tears in her eyes.

“Would you like to be one of our little pupils?” asked the elder Miss
Warmington of Anthony John.

“No, thank you,” he answered. He did not move, but he was still looking
at her, and he saw the flush upon her face and the quiver of her tall
gaunt frame.

“Good afternoon,” said Miss Warmington as she rang the bell. “I hope
you’ll find a school to suit you.”

Mrs. Strong’nth’arm would much have liked to make a cutting answer
and have swept out of the room. But correct behaviour once acquired
becomes a second nature. So, instead, Mrs. Strong’nth’arm curtsied and
apologised for her intrusion, and taking Anthony John by the hand,
departed with bowed head.

In the street primeval instinct reasserted itself. She denounced the
Misses Warmington as snobs. Not that it mattered. Anthony John should
be a gentleman in spite of them. And when he had got on and was rich
they would pass the Miss Warmingtons in the street and take no notice
of them, just as though they were dirt. She hoped they would live long
enough. And then suddenly her anger turned against Anthony John.

“What did you mean by saying ‘No, thank you’ when she asked you if
you’d like to come?” she demanded. “I believe she’d have taken you if
you’d said yes.”

“I didn’t want her to,” explained Anthony. “She isn’t clever. I’d
rather learn from someone clever.”

With improved financial outlook the Strong’nth’arms had entered the
Church of England. When you were poor it didn’t matter; nobody minded
what religion you belonged to; church or chapel, you crept into the
free seats at the back and no one turned their eyes to look. But
employers of labour who might even one day be gentlefolks! The question
had to be considered from more points of view than one.

Mr. Strong’nth’arm’s people had always been chapel folk; and as his
wife had often bitterly remarked, much good it had done him. Her
own inclination was towards the established church as being more
respectable; and arguing that the rent of a side pew was now within
their means, she had gained her point. For himself Mr. Strong’nth’arm
was indifferent. Hope had revived within him. He was busy on a new
invention and Sunday was the only day now on which he had leisure and
the workshop to himself. Anthony would have loved to have been there
helping, but his mother explained to him that one had to think of the
future. A little boy, spotlessly clean and neatly dressed, always to be
seen at church with his mother, was the sort of little boy that people
liked and, when the time came, were willing to help.

A case in point, proving the usefulness of the church, occurred over
this very problem of Anthony’s education. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm called on
the vicar and explained to him her trouble. The vicar saw a way out.
One of the senior pupils at the grammar school was seeking evening
employment. His mother, a widow, possessed of nothing but a small
pension, had lately died. Unless he could earn sufficient to keep him
he would have to discontinue his studies. A clever lad; the vicar could
recommend him. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm was gratitude personified. The vicar
was only too pleased. It was helping two birds with one stone. It
sounded wrong to the vicar even as he said it. But then so many things
the vicar said sounded wrong to him afterwards.

The business was concluded that same evening. Mr. Emanuel Tetteridge
became engaged for two hours a day to teach Anthony the rudiments of
learning, and by Mrs. Strong’nth’arm was generally referred to as “our
little Anthony’s tutor.” He was a nervous, silent youth. The walls of
his bed-sitting-room, to which when the din of hammers in the workshop
proved disturbing he would bear little Anthony away, was papered with
texts and mottoes, prominent among which one read: “Whatsoever thy hand
findeth to do, do it with thy might.” The preparatory education of
Anthony proceeded by leaps and bounds. The child was eager to learn.

Between the two an odd friendship grew up founded upon a mutual
respect and admiration. Young Tetteridge was clever. The vicar had
spoken more truly than he knew. He had a clever way of putting things
that made them at once plain and easy to be remembered. He could make
up poetry--quite clever poetry that sometimes made you laugh and at
other times stirred something within you which you didn’t understand
but which made you feel grand and all aglow. He drew pictures--clever
pictures of fascinating never-to-be-seen things that almost frightened
you, of funny faces, and things that made you cry. He made music out of
a thing that looked like a fiddle, but was better than a fiddle, that
he kept in a little black box; and when he played you wanted to dance
and sing and shout.

But it was not the cleverness that Anthony envied. That would have been
fatal to their friendship. He never could answer satisfactorily when
Anthony would question him as to what he was going to be--what he was
going to do with all his cleverness. He hadn’t made up his mind, he
wasn’t quite sure. Sometimes he thought he would be a poet, at other
times a musician or an artist, or go in for politics and be a statesman.

“Which are you going to begin with when you leave school?” demanded
Anthony. They had been studying in young Tetteridge’s bed-sitting-room
and the lesson was over. Anthony’s eyes were fixed upon a motto over
the washstand:


     “One thing at a time, and that done well,
     Is a very good rule, as many can tell.”


Young Tetteridge admitted that the time was approaching when the point
would have to be considered.

Anthony was sitting on his hands, swinging his legs. Young Tetteridge
was walking up and down; owing to the size of the room being ten by
twelve it was a walk with many turns.

“You see,” explained Anthony, “you’re not a gentlefolk.”

Mr. Tetteridge claimed that he was, though personally attaching no
importance to the fact. His father had been an Indian official. His
mother, had she wished, could have claimed descent from one of the most
renowned of Irish kings.

“What I mean,” explained Anthony, “is that you’ve got to work for your
living.”

Mr. Tetteridge argued that he could live on very little. He was living
just then on twelve shillings a week, picked up one way and another.

“But when you’re married and have children?” suggested Anthony.

Mr. Tetteridge flushed, and his eyes instinctively turned to a small
photograph on the mantelpiece. It featured a pretty dolly-faced girl,
the daughter of one of the masters at the grammar school.

“You haven’t got any friends, have you?” asked Anthony.

Mr. Tetteridge shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he answered.

“Couldn’t you keep a school?” suggested Anthony, “for little boys and
girls whose mothers don’t like them going to the parish school and who
ain’t good enough for the Miss Warmingtons? There’s heaps of new people
always coming here. And you’re so clever at teaching.”

Mr. Tetteridge, halting suddenly, stretched out his hand; and Anthony,
taking his from underneath him, they shook.

“Thanks awfully,” said Mr. Tetteridge. “Do you know I’d never thought
of that.”

“I shouldn’t say anything about it if I was you,” counselled Anthony,
“or somebody else might slip in and do it before you were ready.”

“We say, ‘if I were you’; not ‘if I was you,’” Mr. Tetteridge corrected
him. “We’ll take the subjunctive mood tomorrow. It’s quite easy to
remember.”

Again he stretched out his hand. “It’s awfully good of you,” he said.

“I’d like you not to go away from Millsborough,” answered Anthony.

The period of prosperity following the visit of Wandering Peter had
lasted all but two years. It came to an end with the death of his
father. It was while working on his new invention that the accident had
happened.

He was alone in the workshop one evening after supper; and while
hoisting a heavy iron bar the rope had broken and the bar had fallen
upon him and crushed his skull. He lingered for a day or two, mostly
unconscious. It was a few hours before the end that Anthony, who had
been sent upstairs by his mother to see if anything had happened, found
his father with his eyes wide open. The man made a sign to him to close
the door. The boy did so and then came and stood beside the bed.

“There won’t be anything left, sonny,” his father whispered. “I’ve been
a fool. Everything I could get or borrow I put into it. It would have
been all right, of course, if I had lived and could have finished it.
Your mother doesn’t know, as yet. Break it to her after I’m gone, d’you
mind. I haven’t the pluck.”

Anthony promised. There seemed to be more that his father wanted to
say. He lay staring at the child with a foolish smile about his loose,
weak mouth. Anthony sat on the edge of the bed and waited. He put his
hand on the boy’s thigh.

“I wish I could say something to you,” he whispered. “You know what I
mean: something that you could treasure up and that would be of help to
you. I’ve always wanted to. When you used to ask questions and I was
short with you, it was because I couldn’t answer them. I used to lie
awake at night and try to think them out. And then I thought that when
I came to die something might happen, that perhaps I’d have a vision or
something of that sort--they say that people do, you know--that would
make it all plain to me and that I’d be able to tell you. But it hasn’t
come. I suppose I ain’t the right sort. It all seems dark to me.”

His mind wandered, and after a few incoherent words he closed his eyes
again. He did not regain consciousness.

Anthony broke it to his mother--about everything having been sacrificed
to the latest new invention.

“Lord love the man!” she answered. “Did he think I didn’t know? We were
just a pair of us. I persuaded myself it was going to pan out all right
this time.”

They were standing by the bedside. His mother had been up to the great
house and had brought back with her a fine wreath of white flowers.
They lay upon the sheet just over his breast. Anthony hardly knew his
father; the weak, twitching lips were closed and formed a firm, strong
line. Apart from the mouth his face had always been beautiful; though,
lined with fret and worry and the fair hair grimy and uncombed, few had
ever noticed it. His mother stooped and kissed the high pale brow.

“He is like what I remember him at the beginning,” she said. “You can
see that he was a gentleman, every inch of him.”

His mother looked younger standing there beside her dead man. A
softness had come into her face.

“You did your best, my dear,” she said, “and I guess I wasn’t much help
to you.”


Everybody spoke well of the white, handsome man who lay with closed
eyes and folded hands as if saying his prayers. Anthony had no idea
that his father had been so universally liked and respected.

“Was father any relation to Mr. Selwyn?” he asked his mother the
evening of the funeral.

“Relation!” answered his mother. “Not that I ever heard of. Why, what
makes you ask?”

“He called him ‘brother,’” explained Anthony.

“Oh, that,” answered his mother. “Oh, that doesn’t mean that he really
was his brother. It’s just a way of speaking of the dead.”




CHAPTER V


They moved into a yet smaller house in a yet meaner street. His mother
had always been clever with her needle. A card in the front window gave
notice that Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, dressmaker and milliner, was willing
to make up ladies’ own materials and guaranteed both style and fit.
Mill hands and miners’ wives and daughters supplied her clientèle.
When things were going well orders were sufficient to keep Mrs.
Strong’nth’arm’s sewing machine buzzing and clacking from morn till
night.

There were periods, of course, when work was slack and bills remained
unpaid. But on the whole there was enough to just keep and clothe them.
It was the problem of Anthony’s education that troubled them both.

And here again it was the Church that came to their rescue. The
pious founder of St. Aldys’ Grammar School had decreed “Foundation
Scholarships” enabling twelve poor boys belonging to the faith to
be educated free, selection being in the hands of the governors.
Sir William Coomber happened to be one, the Vicar another. Young
Tetteridge, overcoming his shyness, canvassed the remainder, taking
Anthony with him. There was anxiety, alternation of hope and fear. In
the end victory. Anthony, subjected to preliminary examination, was
deemed sufficiently advanced for the third form. Sir William Coomber
wrote him a note, the handwriting somewhat shaky, telling him to serve
God and honour the Queen and be a blessing to his mother. And if ever
there was anything that Sir William could do for him to help him he
was to let Sir William know. The Vicar shook hands with him and wished
him godspeed, adding incidentally that heaven helps those that help
themselves. The headmaster received him in his study and was sure they
were going to be friends. Young Tetteridge gave a cold collation in
his honour, to which the head of the third form, the captain of the
second division of the football team and three gentlemen of the upper
sixth were invited. The captain of the second division of the football
team examined his legs and tested his wind and expressed satisfaction.
Jarvis, of the upper sixth, made a speech in his honour, quite a kindly
speech, though it did rather suggest God Almighty to a promising black
beetle; and Anthony was called upon to reply.

Excess of diffidence had never been his failing. It never was to be.
He said he was glad he was going to be in the third form, because he
did like Billy Saunders very much indeed. And he was glad that Mr.
Williamson thought he’d be all right in time for football, because
he thought it a jolly game and wanted to play it awfully, if Mr.
Williamson would help him and tell him what to do. And, he thought
it awfully kind of Mr. Jarvis and Mr. Harrocks and Mr. Andrews to
take notice of a little boy like he was; and he hoped that when he
got into the upper sixth he’d be like them. And he was awfully bucked
up at being one of the St. Aldys boys, because he thought it must be
the finest school in all the world, and it was awfully ripping of Mr.
Tetteridge to have got him into it. And then he sat down and everybody
said “Bravo!” and banged the table, and Mr. Jarvis said it wasn’t half
bad for a young ’un.

“Did I do all right?” he asked young Tetteridge after the others had
gone.

“Splendiferous,” answered young Tetteridge, putting an affectionate arm
around him. “You said something about all of them.”

“Yes; I thought they’d like that,” said Anthony.

He discovered that other sentiments than kindliness go to the
making of a school. It leaked out that he was a “cropped head.” The
founder--maybe for hygienic reasons--had stipulated that his twelve
free scholars should wear their hair cut close. The custom had fallen
into disuetude, but the name still clung to them. By the time they had
reached the upper division they had come to be tolerated. But the early
stages were made hard for them. Anthony was dubbed “Pauper,” “Charity
boy.” On the bench the boys right and left of him would draw away so
that they might not touch him. In the playground he was left severely
to himself. That he was quick and clever at his lessons and that the
masters liked him worked still further to his disadvantage. At first
young Saunders stuck up for him, but finding this made him a sharer
of Anthony’s unpopularity soon dropped him, throwing the blame upon
Anthony.

“You see it isn’t only your having come in on the ‘Foundation,’” he
explained one day to Anthony, having beckoned him aside to a quiet
corner behind a water-butt. “You ought to have told me your mother was
a dressmaker.”

“So is young Harringay’s mother,” argued Anthony.

“Yes; but she keeps a big shop and employs girls to do the sewing,”
explained Saunders. “Your mother lives in Snelling’s Row and works with
her own hands. You ought to have told me. It wasn’t fair.”

Ever since he could remember there had been cropping up things that
Anthony could not understand. In his earlier days he had worried about
these matters and had asked questions concerning them. But never had
he succeeded in getting a helpful answer. As a consequence he had
unconsciously become a philosopher. The wise traveller coming to an
unknown country accepts what he finds there and makes the best of it.

“Sorry,” replied Anthony, and left it at that.

One day in the playground a boy pointed at him. He was standing with a
little group watching the cricket.

“His mother goes out charing,” the boy shouted.

Anthony stole a glance at the boy without making any sign of
resentment. As a matter of fact his mother did occasionally go out
charing on days when there was no demand for her needle. He was a
lithe, muscular-looking lad some three inches taller than Anthony.

“Ain’t you going to fight him?” suggested a small boy near by with a
hopeful grin upon his face.

“Not yet,” answered Anthony, and resumed his interest in the game.

There was an old crony of his uncle’s, an ex-prize fighter. To this man
Anthony made appeal. Mr. Dobb was in a quandary. Moved by Mrs. Newt’s
warnings and exhortations, he had lately taken up religion and was
now running a small public-house in one of the many mining villages
adjoining Millsborough.

“It’s agin ‘the Book,’” he answered. “Fighting’s wrong. ‘Whosoever
shall smite thee on the right cheek turn to him the other also.’
Haven’t tried that, have you?”

“He hasn’t done it,” explained Anthony. “He called my mother a
charwoman. They’re always on to me, shouting after me ‘pauper’ and
‘charity boy.’”

“Damn shame,” murmured Mr. Dobb forgetfully.

“There’s something inside me,” explained Anthony, “that makes me want
to kill them and never mind what happens to me afterwards. It’s that
that I’m afraid of. If I could just give one or two of them a good
licking it would stop it.”

Mr. Dobb scratched his head. “Wish you’d come to me a year ago, my
lad,” he said, “before your aunt got me to promise to read a chapter
of the Bible every night before I went to sleep.” He looked down at
Anthony with an approving professional eye. “You’ve got the shoulders,
and your neck might have been made for it. Your reach couldn’t be
better for your height. And all you need is another inch round your
wind. In a couple of months I could have turned you out equal to
anything up to six stun seven.”

“But the Bible tells us to fight,” argued Anthony. “Yes, it does,” he
persisted in reply to Mr. Dobb’s stare of incredulity. “It was God who
told Saul to slay all the Amalekites. It was God who taught David to
fight, David says so himself. He helped him to fight Goliath.”

Mrs. Newt, having regard to Mr. Dobb’s age, had advised him to read the
New Testament first. He had just completed the Acts.

“Are you quite sure?” demanded Mr. Dobb.

Anthony found chapter and verse and read them to him.

“Well, this beats me into a cocked hat,” was Mr. Dobb’s comment. “Seems
to me to be a case of paying your money and taking your choice.”

Mr. Dobb’s scruples being thus laid at rest, he threw himself into the
training of Anthony with the enthusiasm of an artist. Anthony promised
not to fight till Mr. Dobb gave his consent, and for the rest of the
term bore his purgatory in silence. On the last day of the vacation
Mr. Dobb pronounced him fit; and on the next morning Anthony set off
hopeful of an early opportunity to teach his persecutors forbearance.
They were interfering with his work. He wanted to be done with them. To
his disappointment no chance occurred that day. A few of the customary
jibes were hurled at him; they came, unfortunately, from boys too small
to be of any use as an example.

But on his way home the next afternoon he saw, to his delight, young
Penlove and Mowbray, of the lower fourth, turn up a quiet road that
led through a little copse to the bathing place. Penlove was the boy
who had called his mother a charwoman. Young Mowbray belonged to the
swells; his father was the leading solicitor of Millsborough. He was a
quiet, amiable youth with soft eyes and a pink and white complexion.

Anthony followed them, and when they reached the edge of the copse he
ran and overtook them. It was not a good day for bathing, there being a
chill east wind, and nobody else was in sight.

They heard Anthony behind them and turned.

“Coming for a swim?” asked young Mowbray pleasantly.

“Not today, thank you,” answered Anthony. “It’s Penlove I wanted to
speak to. It won’t take very long.”

Penlove was looking at him with a puzzled expression. Anthony was an
inch taller than when Penlove had noticed him last.

“What is it?” he demanded.

“You called my mother a charwoman last term,” answered Anthony. “She
does go out cleaning when she can’t get anything else to do. I think it
fine of her. She wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t for me. But you meant it
as an insult, didn’t you?”

“Well,” answered young Penlove, “what if I did?” He guessed what was
coming, and somehow felt doubtful of the result notwithstanding the two
years difference between them.

“I want you to say that you’re sorry and promise never to do it again,”
answered Anthony.

It had to be gone through. Young Penlove girded his loins--to be exact,
shortened his belt by a couple of holes and determined to acquit
himself like an English schoolboy. Young Mowbray stepped to the end of
the copse for the purpose of keeping cave.

It was a short fight, for which young Mowbray, who always felt a little
sick on these occasions, was glad. Penlove was outclassed from the
beginning. After the third round he held up his hand and gave Anthony
best. Anthony helped him to rise, and seeing he was still groggy,
propped him up against a tree.

“Never mind saying you’re sorry,” he suggested. “Leave me and my mother
alone for the future, that’s all I want.” He held out his hand.

Young Mowbray had returned.

“Shake hands with him,” he advised Penlove. “You were in the wrong.
Show your pluck by acknowledging it.”

Penlove shook hands. “Sorry,” he said. “We have been beastly to you.
Take my tip and don’t stand any more of it.”

The story of the fight got about. Penlove had to account for his
changed appearance, and did so frankly. Genuine respect was the leading
sentiment he now entertained towards Anthony.

It was shared by almost the entire third class, the only criticism
directed against Anthony being for his selection of time and place. The
fight ought to have been arranged for a Friday afternoon behind the
pavilion, when all things might have been ordered according to ancient
custom. That error could and must be rectified. Penlove’s account of
Anthony’s prowess might have been exaggerated to excuse his own defeat.
Norcop, a hefty youngster and the pride of the lower fourth, might have
given a different account. Anthony, on his way home two days later,
was overtaken in a quiet street by young Mowbray.

“You’ll have to fight Norcop next Friday week,” he told Anthony. “If
you lick him there’s to be an end of it, and you’re to be left alone. I
thought I’d let you know in time.”

Mowbray lived at the Priory, an old Georgian house with a big garden
the other end of the town. He had come far out of his way.

“It’s awfully kind of you,” said Anthony.

“I hope you’ll win,” said Mowbray. “I’m a Socialist. I think it rubbish
all this difference between the classes. I think we’re all equal, and
so does my sister. She’s awfully well read.”

Anthony was not paying much attention. His mind was occupied with the
ordeal before him.

“He’s rather good, isn’t he, Harry Norcop?” he asked.

“That’s why they’re putting him up,” answered Mowbray. “It’s a rotten
silly idea. It’s the way that pack of wolves settle their differences.
And the wolf that goes down all the others turn away from and try to
make it worse for the poor begger. We’re just the same. If you get
licked on Friday you’ll be persecuted worse than ever. There’s no sense
in it.”

Anthony looked round at him. It was new sort of talk, this. Young
Mowbray flushed.

“I wonder if you could get to like me,” he said. “I liked you so for
what you said to Penlove about your thinking it fine of your mother to
go out cleaning. I haven’t got any friends among the boys; not real
ones. They think me a muff.”

“I don’t,” answered Anthony. “I think you talk awfully interestingly.
I’d like tremendously to be friends.”

Mowbray flushed again, with pleasure this time. “Won’t keep you now,”
he said. “I do hope you’ll win.”

Anthony never left more than he could help to chance. For the next week
all his spare time was passed in the company of Mr. Dobb, who took upon
himself the duties not only of instructor but of trainer.

On the following Friday afternoon Anthony stepped into the ring with
feelings of pleasurable anticipation.

“Don’t you go in feeling angry or savage,” had been Mr. Dobb’s parting
instruction. “Nothing interferes with a man’s wind more than getting
mad. Just walk into him as if you loved him and were doing it for the
glory of God.”

The chorus of opinion afterwards was that it had been a pretty
fight. That Norcop had done his best and that no disgrace attached
to him. And that Strong’nth’arm was quite the best man for his years
and weight that St. Aldys had produced so far back as the oldest boy
could remember. The monitors shook hands with him, and the smaller
fry crowded round him and contended for his notice. From ostracism he
passed in half an hour to the leadership of the third class. It seemed
a curious way of gaining honour and affection. Anthony made a note of
it.

This principle that if a thing had to be done no pains should be spared
towards the doing of it well he applied with equal thoroughness to the
playing of his games. For lessons in football and cricket he exchanged
lessons in boxing. Cricket he did not care for. With practice at the
nets it was easy enough to become a good batsman; but fielding was
tiresome. There was too much hanging about, too much depending upon
other people. Football appealed to him. It was swift and ceaseless. He
loved the manœuvring, the subterfuge, the seeming yielding, till the
moment came for the sudden rush. He loved the fierce scrimmage, when he
could let himself go, putting out all his strength.

But it was not for the sake of the game that he played. Through sport
lay the quickest road to popularity. Class distinctions did not count.
You made friends that might be useful. One never knew.

His mother found it more and more difficult to make both ends meet.
If she should fail before he was ready! Year by year Millsborough
increased in numbers and in wealth. On the slopes above the town new,
fine houses were being built. Her mill owners and her manufacturers,
her coal-masters and her traders, with all their followers and their
retainers, waxed richer and more prosperous. And along the low-lying
land, beside the foul, black Wyndbeck, spread year by year new miles of
mean, drab streets; and the life of her poor grew viler and more cursed.

St. Aldys’ Grammar School stood on the northern edge of the old town.
Anthony’s way home led him through Hill Terrace. From the highest point
one looks down on two worlds: old Millsborough, small and picturesque,
with its pleasant ways and its green spaces, and beyond its fine new
houses with their gardens and its tree-lined roads winding upward to
the moor; on the other hand, new Millsborough, vast, hideous, deathlike
in its awful monotony.

The boy would stop sometimes, and a wild terror would seize him lest
all his efforts should prove futile and in that living grave he should
be compelled to rot and die.

To escape from it, to “get on,” at any cost! Nothing else mattered.




CHAPTER VI


An idea occurred to Anthony. The more he turned it over in his mind the
more it promised. Young Tetteridge had entered upon his last term. The
time would soon come for the carrying out of Anthony’s suggestion that
in some mean street of Millsborough he should set up a school for the
sons of the ambitious poor.

Why should not one house do for them both? To Mr. Tetteridge for his
classroom and study the ground floor; to his mother for her dressmaking
and millinery the floor above; the three attics for bedrooms; in the
basement the common dining-room and kitchen. There were whole streets
of such houses, with steps up to the front door and a bow window. Mr.
Tetteridge would want someone to look after him, to “do for” him. Whom
more capable, more conscientious than Mrs. Strong’nth’arm? The gain
would be mutual. His mother would be working for better-off customers.
She could put up her prices. Mr. Tetteridge would save in rent and
board.

Mr. Tetteridge was quite carried away by the brilliance and simplicity
of the proposal.

“And there will be you and your dear mother always there,” he
concluded. “It is so long since I had a home.”

To his mother the rise from Snelling’s Row to Bridlington Street was
a great event. It brought tears of happiness to her eyes. Also she
approved of Mr. Tetteridge.

“It will be so good for you,” she said to Anthony, “living with a
gentleman.”

There was the furnishing. Mr. Tetteridge’s study, into which parents
would have to be shown, must breathe culture, dignified scholasticism.
Mr. Tetteridge’s account at Her Majesty’s savings bank was a little
over twenty pounds. That must not be touched. Sickness, the unexpected,
must be guarded against. Anthony went to see his aunt. That with
the Lord’s help she had laid by a fair-sized nest-egg she had in a
rash moment of spiritual exaltation confided to him. Loans of half a
sovereign, and even of a five-pound note, amply secured and bearing
interest at the rate of a shilling in the pound per week, she was
always prepared to entertain. Anthony wanted a hundred pounds at ten
per cent. per annum, to be repaid on the honour of a gentleman.

The principal required frightened her almost into a fit. Besides she
hadn’t got it. The rate of interest, which according to complicated
calculations of her own worked out at considerably less than halfpenny
a pound per week, did not tempt her. About the proposed security there
seemed to her a weakness.

In years to come the things without a chance that Anthony
Strong’nth’arm pulled off, the impracticable schemes that with a
wave of his hand became sound business propositions, the hopeless
enterprises into which he threw himself and carried through to victory,
grew to be the wonder and bewilderment of Millsborough. But never in
all his career was he called upon again to face such an absolutely
impossible stone waller as his aunt’s determination on that Friday
afternoon not to be bamboozled out of hard-won savings by any imp of
Satan, even if for her sins he happened to be her own nephew.

How he did it Mrs. Newt was never able to explain. It was not what
he said, though heaven knows there was no lack of that. Mrs. Newt’s
opinion was that by words alone he could have got it out of a stone. It
was some strange magic he seemed to possess that made her--to use her
own simile--as clay in the hands of the potter.

She gave him that one hundred pounds in twenty five-pound notes,
thanking God from the bottom of her heart that he hadn’t asked for
two. In exchange he drew from his pocket, and pressed into her hand a
piece of paper. What it was about and what she had done with it she
never knew. She remembered there was a stamp on it.

She also remembered, when she came to her senses, that he had put his
arms about her and had hugged her, and that she had kissed him good-bye
and had given him a message to his mother. At the end of the first
twelve months he brought her thirty pounds, explaining to her that that
left eighty still owing. And what astonished her most was that she
wasn’t surprised. It was just as if she had expected it.

The pupils came in. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, knowing many folk, was of much
help.

Mrs. Strong’nth’arm’s idea had been to call upon some half a dozen
likely parents, to appeal to them for their support of a most deserving
case: a young would-be schoolmaster of whose character and ability she
could not speak too highly.

“And they’ll tell you it’s very kind of you to try and assist the poor
young gentleman, but that as regards their own particular progeny
they’ve decided to send him somewhere else,” explained Anthony.

“How do you know?” argued his mother. “Why, Mrs. Glenny, the china
shop woman, was telling me only a month ago how worried she was about
her boy, not knowing where to send him.”

“You drop in on Mrs. Glenny,” counselled Anthony, “and talk about the
weather and how the price of everything is going up. And as you’re
coming away just mention casually how everybody is talking about this
new school that Mr. Tetteridge has just started; and how everybody is
trying to get their boys into it; and how they won’t be able to, seeing
that young Tetteridge has told you that he can only receive a limited
number; and how you’ve promised Mrs. Herring to use your influence with
Tetteridge in favour of her boy Tom. Leave Mrs. Glenny to do the rest.”

People had a habit of asking Anthony his age; and when he told them
they would look at him very hard and say: “Are you quite sure?”

His uncle was taken ill late in the year. He had caught rheumatic fever
getting himself wet through on the moors. He made a boast of never
wearing an overcoat. Anthony found him sitting up in bed. A carpenter
friend had fixed him up a pulley from the ceiling by which he could
raise himself with his hands. Old Simon was sitting watching him, his
chin upon the bed. Simon had been suffering himself from rheumatism
during the last two winters and seemed to understand.

“Don’t tell your aunt,” he said. “She’ll have them all praying round me
and I’ll get no peace. But I’ve got a feeling it’s the end. I’m hoping
to slip off on the quiet, like.”

Anthony asked if he could do anything. He had always liked his uncle;
they felt there was a secret bond between them.

“Look after the old chap,” his uncle answered; “that is if I go first.”

He stretched out a stiff arm and laid it on old Simon’s head. “Ninety
years old he’ll be on the fourteenth,” he said, “reckoning six years of
a dog’s life as equal to one of a man’s. And I’m sixty-five. We haven’t
done so badly, either of us.”

Anthony drew up a chair and sat down between the two.

“Nothing you want to talk about, is there?” he asked. The old man knew
what he meant. He shook his head.

“Been talking about it or listening to it, on and off, pretty well all
my life,” he answered. “Never got any further.”

He was silent a while, wrestling with his pain.

“Of course, I believe in a God,” he said. “There must be Somebody
bossing it all. It’s the things they tell you about Him that I’ve never
been able to swallow. Don’t fit in with common sense to my thinking.”

“You’re not afraid?” Anthony asked him after a silence.

“Why should I be?” answered the old man. “He knows me. He ain’t
expecting anything wonderful. If I’m any good maybe He’ll find me a
job. If not----”

Old Simon had crept closer. They were looking into each other’s eyes.

“Wonder if there’ll be any dogs?” he said. “Don’t see why there
shouldn’t. If love and faithfulness and self-forgetfulness are going to
be of any use to Him, what’s wrong with you, old chap?”

He laughed. “Don’t tell your aunt I said that,” he cautioned Anthony.
“She’s worried enough about me, poor old girl, as it is.”

His aunt had looked for a death-bed repentance, but the end came before
she expected it, in the night.

“He wasn’t really a bad man,” she said, crying. “That’s what made me
hope, right to the end, that the Truth would be revealed to him.”

Anthony sought to comfort her. “Perhaps it came to him when he was
alone,” he said.

She clung to that.

The burying of him was another trouble. She had secured the site she
had always wished for herself beneath the willow. She would have liked
him to be laid there beside her, but his views and opinions had been
too well known to her people. They did not want him among them. There
was a neglected corner of the big cemetery set apart for such as he;
but to lay him there would be to abandon hope. The Lord would never
venture there. Anthony suggested the Church. He undertook to interview
the vicar, a kindly old gentleman, who possibly would ask no questions.

He found the vicar in the vestry. There had been a meeting of the
churchwardens. The Reverend Mr. Sheepskin was a chubby, blue-eyed
gentleman. He had heard of Anthony’s uncle. “A very hard nut to crack,”
so the vicar had been given to understand.

“But was always willing to listen, I gathered,” added the vicar. “So
perhaps the fault was ours. We didn’t go about it the right way.”

Something moved Anthony to tell the vicar what his uncle had once said
to him when he was a child about the world being a very different place
if people really did believe all that they say they believe.

He wished he hadn’t said it, for the old gentleman sat silent for what
seemed quite a long time.

“What did they answer him?” he asked at length. “Did he tell you?”

“He said they never did answer him that,” replied Anthony.

The vicar looked at him across the green baize.

“There isn’t any answer,” he said. “Your uncle had us there.”

“I dreamed of it once.” The light was fading; maybe he forgot that
young Anthony was sitting there over against him in the shadows.
“Living for Christ, taking no thought of aught else. What ye shall eat,
or what ye shall drink or wherewithal ye shall be clothed. It’s a big
thing--Believing.”

He seemed to have become aware again of the boy sitting there half
hidden by the shadows.

“Most of us, Strong’nth’arm,” he said, “think that all we’ve got to
do is to sing about it, to repeat it in the proper places. It isn’t
enough. Take up thy cross and follow me. That’s where the trouble
begins. Easy enough to worship it with folded hands. It is taking it
up, carrying it with bowed head and aching shoulders, that’s the bother
of it.”

He rose, pushing back his chair with a grating sound upon the
uncarpeted floor.

“You see,” he said, “it isn’t only oneself. One might do it if one were
alone. The Roman Church is right on that point. And yet it doesn’t
work, even with them. The world gets hold of them. What’s the date?” he
said suddenly.

“December the fifth,” Anthony told him.

“Just three weeks to Christmas.” He was walking up and down the bare
cold room. He halted a few steps in front of the lad. “Do you know
what Christmas means to me? You will later on. Bills. Butcher’s bills,
baker’s bills, bootmaker’s bills--there’s something uncanny about the
number of boots that children seem to want. And then there’s their
school bills and their doctor’s bills and the Christmas boxes and the
presents. It’s funny when you come to think of it. Christ’s birthday.
And I’ve come to dread it. What were we all talking about this
afternoon here in the vestry? How to help Christ? How to spread His
gospel? No, pew rates, tithes, clergy relief funds, curates’ salaries,
gas bills, fund for central heating and general repairs!

“How can I preach Christ, the Outcast, the Beggar, the Wanderer in the
Wilderness, the Servant of the poor, the Carrier of the Cross? That’s
what I started out to preach. They’d only laugh at me. ‘He lives in a
big house,’ they would say; ‘keeps four servants’--when one can get
them--‘and his sons go to college.’ God knows it’s struggle enough to
do it. But I oughtn’t to be struggling to do it. I ought to be down
among the people, teaching Christ not only by my words but my life.”

It had grown dark. The vicar, stumbling against a small side table,
brought it down with a clatter. Anthony found the matches and lit the
gas. The vicar held out a plump hand.

“It’ll be all right about your uncle,” he said. “See Mr. Grant and
arrange things with him.”

Anthony thanked him and was leaving. The Reverend Mr. Sheepskin
drew him back. “Don’t judge me too hardly,” he said with a smile.
“Leastways, not till you’ve lived a bit longer. Something made me talk
without thinking. If anything I’ve said comes back to you at any time,
listen to it. It may have been a better sermon than I usually preach.”

His aunt was much comforted when he told her.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said, “if he got through after all.
Anyhow, we’ve done our best for him.”

Old Simon had returned to the railway carriage. He seemed to know that
all was over. He lingered for a little while, but there was no heart in
him. And one morning they found him dead.

A friendship had grown up between Anthony and young Mowbray. It
had been chiefly of Edward Mowbray’s seeking, but Anthony had been
attracted by Edward’s gentleness and kindness. Mowbray’s father had
also taken a liking to him and he came to be a frequent visitor at The
Priory.

Mr. Mowbray was a fine, handsome gentleman of about fifty, fonder of
pleasure than of business it was said. He rode to hounds and prided
himself on being one of the best shots in the county. He was a widower.
Gossip whispered of an unhappy marriage, for the lady--of neglect and
infidelities. But this may not have been true, for Mr. Mowbray always
spoke of his wife with enthusiasm, and often tears would come into
his eyes. Her portrait by Orchardson hung in the dining-room facing
Mr. Mowbray’s chair: an arresting face, though hardly beautiful,
the forehead being too high and narrow. It was in the eyes that the
attraction lay. They seemed almost to speak. Mr. Mowbray, during a
lull in the conversation, would sometimes raise his glass and drink to
her in silence. He was fond of his fine old port, and so were most of
his many friends. There were only two children, Edward and his sister
Elizabeth. She was the elder by a couple of years. She had her mother’s
haunting eyes, but the face as a whole was less striking. Anthony had
been rather afraid of her at first, and she had not taken much notice
of him. She was considered eccentric by reason of her not taking any
interest in games and amusements. In this both children were a strange
contrast to their father. She would have been dubbed a “high brow” in
later years; “blue stocking” was the name then.

It was by Edward and his sister that Anthony was introduced to
politics. They were ardent reformers. They dreamed of a world in which
there would be no more poor. They thought it might be brought about
in their time, at least so far as England was concerned. Edward was
the more impatient of the two. He thought it would have to come by
revolution. Elizabeth (or Betty as she was generally called for short)
had once been of the same opinion. But she was changing. She pointed
out the futility of the French Revolution. And even had there been
excuse for it the need no longer existed. All could be done now through
the ballot box. Leaders must arise, men wise and noble. The people
would vote for them. Laws must be passed. The evil and the selfish
compelled to amend their ways. The rotten houses must be pulled down;
pleasant, well-planned habitations take their place, so that the
poor might live decently and learn the meaning of “home.” Work must
be found for all; the haunting terror of unemployment be lifted from
their lives. It easily could be done. There was work waiting, more
than enough, if only the world were properly ordered. Fair wages must
be paid, carrying with them a margin for small comforts, recreation.
The children must be educated so that in time the poor would be lifted
up and the wall between the classes levelled down. Leaders were the
one thing needful: if rich and powerful so much the better: men who
would fight for the right and never sheathe the sword till they had won
justice for the people.

They were tramping the moors. The wind had compelled her to take off
her hat and carry it and had put colour into her cheeks. Anthony
thought she looked very handsome with her fine eyes flashing beneath
their level brows.

In their talk they had lost their tracks and were making a bee line
for the descent. A stream barred their way. It babbled over stones and
round the roots of trees. Edward picked her up to carry her across, but
at the margin hesitated, doubting his muscles.

“You’ll be safer with Anthony,” he said, putting her down.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t mind getting my feet wet.” But
Anthony had already lifted her in his arms.

“You’re sure I’m not too heavy?” she asked.

He laughed and stepped down with her into the stream.

He carried her some distance beyond the bank, explaining that the
ground was still marshy. He liked the pressure of her weight upon his
breast.




CHAPTER VII


It was the evening previous to young Mowbray’s departure for Oxford.
Betty was going with him to help him furnish his rooms. They would have
a few days together before term began, and she wanted to see Oxford.
Anthony had come to say good-bye. Mr. Mowbray was at a dinner given
by the mayor, and the three young people had been left to themselves.
Betty had gone into the servants’ quarters to give some orders. The
old housekeeper had died the year before and Betty had taken over the
entire charge. They were sitting in the library. The great drawing-room
was used only when there was company.

“Look in now and again when I am away,” said Edward. “Betty hasn’t many
friends and she likes talking to you.”

“And I like talking to her tremendously,” answered Anthony. “But, I
say, will it be proper?”

“Oh, what rot,” answered Edward. “You’re not that sort, either of you.
Besides, things are different to what they used to be. Why shouldn’t
there be just friendship between men and women?”

Betty entered as he finished speaking, and the case was put to her.

“Yes, I shall be sorry to miss our talks,” she said. She turned to
Anthony with a smile. “How old are you?” she asked.

“Sixteen,” he answered.

She was surprised. “I thought you were older,” she said.

“Sixteen last birthday,” he persisted. “People have always taken me
for older than I am. Mother used to have terrible fights with the tram
conductors; they would have I was nearer five than three. She thought
quite seriously of sewing a copy of my birth certificate inside my
cap.” He laughed.

“You’re only a boy,” said Betty. “I’m nearly nineteen. Yes, come and
see me sometimes.”

Edward expected to be at Oxford three years. After that he would return
to Millsborough and enter his father’s office. Mowbray and Cousins
was the name of the firm, but Cousins had long passed out of it, and
eventually the whole business would belong to Edward.

“Why don’t you go in for the Remingham Scholarship?” he said suddenly,
turning to Anthony, “and join me next year at Oxford. You could win it
hands down; and as for funds to help you out, my father would see to
that, I know, if I asked him. He thinks tremendously well of you. Do,
for my sake.”

Anthony shook his head. “I have thought about it,” he said. “I’m
afraid.”

Edward stared at him. “What on earth is there to be afraid of?” he
demanded.

“I’m afraid of myself,” answered Anthony. “Nobody thinks it of me, I
know; but I’d end by being a dreamer if I let myself go. My father had
it in him. That’s why he never got on. If I went to Oxford and got
wandering about all those old colleges and gardens I wouldn’t be able
to help myself. I’d end by being a mere student. I’ve had to fight
against it even here, as it is.”

Edward and Betty were both listening to him, suddenly interested. The
girl was leaning forward with her chin upon her hand. Anthony rose and
walked to the window. The curtains had not been drawn. He looked down
upon the glare of Millsborough fading into darkness where the mean
streets mingled with the sodden fields.

“You don’t understand what it means,” he said. “Poverty, fear--all your
life one long struggle for bare existence.”

He turned and faced the softly-lighted room with its carved ceiling and
fine Adams mantelpiece, its Chippendale furniture, its choice pictures
and old Persian rugs.

“Everything about you mean and ugly,” he continued. “Everybody looking
down upon you, patronizing you. I want to get out of it. Learning isn’t
going to help me. At best, what would I be without money or influence
to start me? A schoolmaster--a curate, perhaps, on eighty pounds a
year. Business is my only chance. I’m good at that. I feel I could be.
Planning, organizing, getting people to see things your way, making
them do things. It’s just like fighting, only you use your brains
instead of your hands. I’m always thinking about things that could be
done that would be good for every one. I mean to do them one day. My
father used to invent machines and other people stole them from him,
and kept all the profit for themselves. They’re not going to do that
with me. They shall have their share, but I----” He stopped and flushed
scarlet.

“I’m awfully sorry,” he said. “I’ve got into a way of talking to
myself. I forgot I was here.”

Betty had risen. “I think you are quite right,” she said. “And when
you’ve got on you’ll think of those who live always in poverty and
fear. You’ll know all about them and the way to help them. You will
help them, won’t you?”

She spoke gravely. She might have been presenting a petition to the
Prime Minister.

“Of course I will,” he said. “I mean to.”

She rang the bell and ordered coffee and cakes.

While they were munching she sprung it upon them that she was going to
buy a bicycle. A new design had just been invented with two low wheels
of equal size. It could be made so that a lady could ride it.

Edward was just a little shocked. Betty had the reputation as it was of
being a bit eccentric. She went long walks by herself in thick boots
and rarely wore gloves. This would make her still more talked about.
Betty thought she would be doing good. As the daughter of one of the
leading men in Millsborough she could afford to defy the conventions
and open the way for others. Girls employed in the mills, who now only
saw their people twice a year, would be able to run home for weekends,
would be able to enjoy rides into the country on half-holidays.
Revolutions always came from the top. The girls would call after her at
first, she fully expected. Later they would be heartened to follow her
example.

Her difficulty was learning. She proposed to go up to the moors early
in the morning where she could struggle with the thing unseen. But at
first one wanted assistance and support. There was the gardener’s boy.
But she feared he was weak about the knees.

“I wish you’d let me come,” said Anthony. “I like a walk in the early
morning. It freshens my brain for the day.”

“Thank you,” she answered. “I was really thinking of you, but I didn’t
like to ask in case it might interfere with your work.”

She promised to let him know when the bicycle arrived. He might like to
come round and have a look at it.

It was with something of a pang that he said good-bye to Edward, though
it would be less than three months before they would meet again. He had
not made many friends at the school; he was too self-centered. Young
Mowbray was the only boy for whom he felt any real affection.

Tetteridge’s “Preparatory and Commercial School” had prospered
beyond expectation. In the language of the advertisement it supplied
a long-felt want. “The gentry” of Millsborough--to be exact, its
better-off shopkeepers, its higher-salaried clerks and minor
professionals--were catered for to excess. But among its skilled
workmen and mechanics, earning good wages, were many ambitious for
their children. Education was in the air; feared by most of the
upper classes as likely to be the beginning of red ruin and the
breaking up of laws; regarded by the more thoughtful of the workers,
with extravagant hopes, as being the sure road to the Promised Land.
Tetteridge had a natural genius for teaching; he had a way of making
the work interesting. The boys liked him and talked about him and the
things he told them. It became clear that the house in Bridlington
Street would soon be too small for his needs.

“It sounds nonsensical, I know,” said Mr. Tetteridge; “but there are
times when I wish that I hadn’t been so sensible.”

“What have you been doing sensible?” laughed Anthony.

“When I followed your most excellent and youthful advice, Tony, and
started this confounded school,” explained Mr. Tetteridge.

“What’s wrong with it?” asked Anthony.

“Success,” replied Mr. Tetteridge. “It’s going to grow. I shall end
in a big square house with boarders and assistant masters and prayers
at eight o’clock. I shall dress in a black frock-coat and wear a
chimney-pot hat. I shall have to. The parents will expect it.”

“There’ll be holidays,” suggested Anthony, “when you’ll be able to go
walking tours in knickerbockers and a tweed cap.”

“No, I sha’n’t,” said Mr. Tetteridge. “I shall be a married man.
There’ll be children, most likely. We shall go for a month to the
seaside and listen to niggers. The children will clamour for it. I
shall never escape from children all my life, and I’ll never get away
from Millsborough. I shall die here, an honoured and respected citizen
of Millsborough. Do you know what my plan was? I’d worked it all out?
Wandering about the world like Oliver Goldsmith, with my fiddle.
Earning my living while I tramped, sleeping under the stars or in some
village inn, listening to the talk and stories; making sketches of odd
characters, quaint scenes and places; sitting by the wayside making
poetry. Do you know, Tony, I believe I could have been a poet--could
have left a name behind me.”

“You’ll have your evenings,” argued Anthony. “They’ll all go at four
o’clock. You can write your poetry between tea and supper.”

“‘To Irene of the Ringlets,’” suggested Tetteridge. “‘God and the
Grasshopper,’ ‘Ode to Idleness.’ What do you think the parents would
say? Besides, they don’t come between tea and supper. They come in the
mental arithmetic hour. I kick ’em out and slam the door. They never
come again.”

Anthony’s face expressed trouble. Something within him enabled him to
understand. Tetteridge laughed.

“It’s all right,” he said. He took the photograph of the science
master’s daughter from the mantelpiece and kissed it. “I’m going to
marry the dearest little girl in all the world, and we’re going to get
on and be very happy. Who knows? Perhaps we may keep our carriage.”

He replaced the latest photograph of Miss Seaton on the mantelpiece.
She wasn’t as dolly-faced as she had been. The mouth had grown firmer,
and the look of wonder in the eyes had gone. She suggested rather a
capable young woman.

He had left to Anthony the search for new premises. Anthony was
still undecided when something unexpected happened. The younger Miss
Warmington, after a brief illness, died. Mrs. Plumberry had nursed
her, and at Anthony’s request consented to call at 15 Bruton Square
and find out how the land lay. It would be the very thing. It had two
large class-rooms built out into the garden. Mrs. Plumberry was a born
diplomatist. She reported that Miss Warmington, now absolutely alone
in the world, had cried a little on Mrs. Plumberry’s motherly shoulder;
had confided to Mrs. Plumberry that the school had been going down
for some time past; that she had neither the heart nor the means to
continue it. Mrs. Plumberry’s advice to her had been that she should
get rid of the remainder of her lease, if possible, and thus avoid
liability regarding covenants for reparation. Miss Warmington had
expressed the thankfulness with which she would do this, that is if a
purchaser could be found; and Mrs. Plumberry, though not holding out
much hope, had promised to look about her.

Thus it came to pass that once again Mrs. Strong’nth’arm and Anthony
were ushered into the drawing-room of 15 Bruton Square and rested on
its horse-hair-covered chairs. But this time Mrs. Strong’nth’arm sat
well back; and it was Miss Warmington who, on entering, held out her
hand. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, imagining beforehand, had intended not to
see, but second nature again was too strong. Miss Warmington, though
old and feeble, was still impressive, and Mrs. Strong’nth’arm curtsied
and apologized for intrusion.

Miss Warmington smiled as she shook hands with Anthony.

“You were a little boy when I saw you last,” she said, “and you sat
with your leg tucked under you.”

“And he wouldn’t come to your school when you asked him to,” interposed
Mrs. Strong’nth’arm. She had made up her mind to get that out.

Miss Warmington flushed. “I think he was very wise,” she said. “I hear
quite wonderful accounts of him.” Anthony had closed the door and
placed a chair for her. “And I see he has learned manners,” she added
with another smile.

Anthony laughed. “I was very rude,” he admitted, “and you are a very
kind lady to forgive me.”

The business, so far as Miss Warmington was concerned, was soon
finished. She wondered afterwards why she had accepted Anthony’s offer
without even putting up a fight. It was considerably less than the
sum she had determined to stand out for. But on all points, save the
main issue, he had yielded to her; and it had seemed to her at the
time that she was getting her own way. They had kept up the fiction of
the business being between Mrs. Strong’nth’arm and Miss Warmington,
Anthony explaining always that it was his mother who was prepared to
do so and so--his mother, alas! who was unable to do the other, Mrs.
Strong’nth’arm confirming with a nod or a murmur.

Over a friendly cup of tea letters were exchanged then and there, thus
enabling Mrs. Strong’nth’arm to dismiss all thought of other houses
that had been offered her. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm undertook to pay Miss
Warmington three hundred pounds and to take over Miss Warmington’s
lease with all its covenants, together with all fixtures and such
furniture as Miss Warmington would not require for her own small needs.

“And where the money’s to come from I suppose you know,” commented Mrs.
Strong’nth’arm, as the door of 15 Bruton Square closed behind them.
“Blessed if I do!”

Anthony laughed. “That’ll be all right, mother,” he said. “Don’t you
worry.”

“To hear him!” murmured his mother, addressing the darkening sky above
her. “Talking about three hundred pounds to be paid next Tuesday week
and laughing about it! Ah! if your poor father had only had your head.”

He explained to his aunt that this time there would be good security
and that in consequence she was going to get only five per cent. She
tried to make him say seven, more from general principle than with any
hope of success. But he only laughed. By degrees he had constituted
himself her man of business; and under his guidance her savings had
rapidly increased. To Mrs. Newt a successful speculation proved that
God was behind you. She had come to regard her nephew with reverence,
as being evidently in the Lord’s counsels.

He had a further proposition to put before her. The dogs had long ago
been sold, and the old railway carriage had fallen into ruin. The
tumble-down cottage, in which his aunt now lived alone, was threatening
to follow its example; but the land on which it stood had grown in
value. The price he felt sure he could get for it made her open her
eyes. The cottage disposed of, she could come and live with them at
Bruton Square, paying, of course, for her board and lodging. The sum he
suggested per week made her open her eyes still wider. But he promised
she should be comfortable and well looked after. Again she made a
feeble effort to touch his heart, but he only kissed her and told her
that he would see to everything and that she wasn’t to worry. Forty
years--all but--she had dwelt in Prospect Cottage, Moor End Lane. She
had been married from the Jolly Cricketers, and after a day’s honeymoon
by the sea Joe had brought her there and never a night since then had
she slept away from it. There had been fields about it in those days.
She dratted the boy more than once or twice as she poked about the tiny
rooms, selecting the few articles she intended to keep. But she was
ready on the appointed day. She had purchased gloves and a new bonnet.
One must needs be dressy for Bruton Square.

Anthony had two rooms at the top of the house, one for his bedroom
and the other for his study. He had always been fond of reading. His
favourite books were histories and memoirs. Emerson and Montaigne
he had chosen for himself as prizes. His fiction was confined to
“Gulliver’s Travels.” There were also Smiles’ “Self-Help,” “From
Log-Cabin to White House,” Franklin’s “Autobiography,” and the “Life of
Abraham Lincoln.”

His mother had given up the dressmaking business. Young Tetteridge had
brought home his bride, and keeping house for five people, even with
help, took up all her time. Often of an evening she would bring her
sewing and sit with Anthony while he worked.

It was towards the end of the Michaelmas term; Anthony was in the lower
sixth. He had determined to leave at Christmas. The upper sixth spent
all its time on the classics which would be useless to him.

“What do you think of doing when you do leave?” asked his mother. “Have
you made up your mind?”

“Go into old Mowbray’s office if he’ll have me,” answered Anthony.

“Edward will put in a word for you there, won’t he?” suggested his
mother.

“Yes. I’m reckoning on that,” he answered.

Anthony turned again to his book, but his mother’s needle lay idle.

“The girl’s friendly too, isn’t she?” she asked. “They say she can’t
express a wish that he doesn’t grant her.”

Anthony did not answer. He seemed not to have heard. His mother’s
thimble rolled to the floor. Anthony recovered it and gave it to her.

“What’s she like?” his mother asked him.

“Oh, all right,” he answered, “a nice enough girl.”

“She’s older than you, isn’t she?” said his mother.

“Yes; I think she is,” said Anthony. “Not much.”

“Tom Cripps was up on the moor the other morning.” His mother had
resumed her sewing. “Poaching, I expect. He saw you both there. He’s a
rare one to gossip. Will it matter?”

Anthony laid down his book. “Was father in love with you when he
married you?” he asked.

His mother looked up astonished. “What an odd question to ask,” she
said. “Of course he was. Madly in love. Some said I was the prettiest
girl in Millsborough--not counting, of course, the gentry. What makes
you ask?”

Instead of answering he asked her another.

“What do you mean by madly in love?”

His mother was smiling to herself. The little grey head was at a higher
angle than usual.

“Oh, you know,” she said. “Walked six miles there and back every
evening just to get five minutes’ talk with me. Said he’d drown himself
if I didn’t marry him. And was that jealous--why, I daren’t so much
as speak to anything else in trousers. Wrote poetry to me. Only silly
like, one day when I was mad with him, I burnt it.”

He did not answer. She stole a glance at him. And suddenly it came to
her what was in his mind.

“It never lasts,” she said. “I’ve often thought as folks would be
better without it.” She chatted on, keeping a corner of her eye upon
him. “Young Tetteridge was in love up to his ears when he first came
to us. That marriage isn’t going to turn out trumps. So was Ted
Mowbray--the old man, I mean---- Worshipped the very ground she trod
on. Everybody talked about it. Didn’t prevent his gallivanting off
wherever his fancy took him before they’d been married three years.
Guess she wished he’d been less hot at first. Might have kept warm a
little longer.” She laughed. “Some one you like and feel you can get on
with, and that you know is fond of you; that’s the thing that wears and
makes for the most happiness. And if she’s got a bit of money or can
help you in other ways--well, there ain’t no harm in that.” She stopped
to thread a needle. “Ain’t ever had a fancy, have you?” she asked.

“No,” he answered. “That’s what’s troubling me. I suppose I’m too
young.”

His mother shook her head. “You’re too level-headed, lad,” she said.
“You’ll never make a fool of yourself; for that’s what it means,
generally speaking. You’ll marry with your eyes open; and she’ll be a
lucky woman, because you ain’t the sort to blow hot and cold and repent
of a thing after you’ve done it. That’s what breaks a woman’s heart.”

She gathered together her work and rose.

“Don’t get sitting up too late,” she said. “Don’t do to burn the candle
at both ends.”

She was bending down over him. She paused a moment with his head
between her hands.

“I suppose you know how handsome you are,” she said.

She kissed him and went out.




CHAPTER VIII


They were walking on the moor. It was a Wednesday afternoon. Betty was
on the way to one of her numerous pensioners, a bed-ridden old labourer
who lived in what had once been a gamekeeper’s cottage on the edge
of a wood, with a granddaughter to keep house for him, a handsome,
wild-looking girl of about sixteen.

“What are you going to do when you leave school?” Betty asked suddenly.
Since the discovery that she was two years older than Anthony she had
adopted towards him a motherly attitude. She had laid it aside while
she was learning to ride the bicycle. Anthony’s early mechanical
training had given him a general knowledge of adjustments and repairs.
He had assumed the position of instructor, and had spoken in tones of
authority. Feeling her safety dependent upon his strength and agility,
compelled so often to call to him for help, to cling to him for
support, she had been docile and apologetic. But the interlude ended,
she had resumed her airs of superiority.

“Oughtn’t you to be thinking about it?” she added.

“I have been thinking about it,” he explained. “My difficulty is that
I’ve no one to advise me, not now Sir William Coomber’s dead.”

“Why don’t you have a talk with father?” she suggested.

“I did think of that too,” he said with a laugh. “But it seems so
cheeky.”

“How would you like to go into his office?” she asked after a silence.

“Do you think he would?” he answered eagerly.

“I’ll sound him about it,” she said.

They had reached the path leading to the gamekeeper’s cottage. Anthony
had vaulted over the stile. He had turned and was facing her.

“You are a brick,” he said.

He was looking up at her; she was standing on the cross-bar of the
stile. She smiled and held out her hand for him to help her. She had
beautiful hands. They were cool and firm, though in consequence of her
habit of not wearing gloves, less white and smooth than those of other
girls in her position.

He took it, and bending over it kissed it. Neither spoke again till
they reached the old man’s cottage.

It was a week later that he received a note from Mr. Mowbray asking
him to come to dinner. He found Mr. Mowbray alone. Betty had gone to
a party at one of the neighbours. Mr. Mowbray put him next to him on
his right, and they talked during the meal. Mowbray asked him questions
about his school career and then about his father.

“Funny,” he said, “we were turning out some old papers the other day.
Came across your grandfather’s marriage settlement. I suppose you know
that the Strong’nth’arms were quite important folk a hundred years ago.”

Anthony had heard about them chiefly from his mother. His father had
had no use for them.

Mr. Mowbray was sipping his port.

“My grandfather was a tailor in Sheffield,” he volunteered. He could
afford to remember his grandfather. His father had entertained George
IV, and his mother had been a personal friend of Queen Caroline. He
himself might have been an aristocrat of the first water if manners and
appearances stood for lineage.

“I shouldn’t have suspected it, sir,” said Anthony. He was looking at
Mr. Mowbray with genuine admiration. Their eyes met and Mr. Mowbray
laughed, well pleased.

“Don’t you mention that to Betty,” he said. “She hates to be reminded
of it. I tease her about it sometimes when she gets on her high horse
and starts riding roughshod over all the social conventions. I tell her
it’s her bourgeois blood coming out in her. He was an awful Radical. It
always stops her.”

He lit a cigar and pushed back his chair. Anthony did not smoke.

“And now to come to business,” he said. “What are you going to do when
you leave school?”

“I thought of trying to get into an office,” answered Anthony.

“Any particular sort of an office?” demanded Mr. Mowbray.

“Yes, sir,” answered Anthony. “Yours, if you’ll have me.”

Mr. Mowbray was regarding him through half-closed eyes.

“You want to be a business-man? You feel that’s your _métier_? So Betty
tells me.”

Anthony flushed. “I hope she didn’t tell you all I said,” he laughed.
“It was the night I came in to say good-bye to Edward. I got excited
and talked without thinking. But I do think it’s my best chance,” he
continued. “I like business. It seems to me like a fine game of skill
that calls for all your wits, and there is enough danger in it to make
it absorbing.”

Mr. Mowbray nodded. “You’ve got the right idea,” he said. “You’ve
almost repeated word for word a speech I once heard my father make. It
was he who first thought of coal in the valley and took the risk of
getting all the land between Donniston and Copley into his own hands
before a sod was turned. He’d have died a pauper if his instinct had
proved wrong.

“We could do with a few more like him in Millsborough,” he went on.
“Lord! The big things that are waiting to be done. I used to think
about them. If it wasn’t for the croaking old fools that get in your
way and haven’t eyes to see the sun at midday! It would take the
patience of Job and the labours of Hercules to move them.” He poured
himself out another glass of port and sipped it for a while in silence.

“What’s your idea of a salary?” he suddenly asked. “Supposing I did
find an opening for you.”

Anthony looked at him. He was still sipping his port. Anthony had
the conviction that Mr. Mowbray would, if the figure were left to
him, suggest a hundred a year. He could not explain why. Maybe some
forgotten talk with Edward had left this impression on his mind, or
maybe it was pure guess work.

“Eighty pounds a year, sir, I was thinking of, to begin with,” he
answered.

The firm of Mowbray and Cousins acted for most of the older inhabitants
of Millsborough, and Mrs. Newt was amongst them. Mr. Mowbray had had
one or two interviews with Anthony in connection with his aunt’s
affairs and had formed a high opinion of his acumen and shrewdness. The
price he had just got his aunt for her bit of land in Moor End Lane,
and the way he had played one would-be purchaser against another had,
in particular, suggested to Mr. Mowbray’s thinking a touch of genius.

“We’ll say a hundred,” said Mr. Mowbray, “to begin with. What happens
afterwards will depend upon yourself.”

“It’s awfully kind of you, sir,” said Anthony. “I won’t try to thank
you--in words.”

He had been sure that Mr. Mowbray would insist upon his own figure. Mr.
Mowbray liked doing fine, generous things that commanded admiration.
But he was really grateful.

Mr. Mowbray had risen. He laid a kindly hand on Anthony’s shoulder.

“I should like you to get on and be helpful to me,” he said. “Edward’s
a dreamer, as you know. I should like to think there would be always
someone capable and reliable to give him a hand.”

Edward had not returned home for the midsummer vacation. Betty had met
him in London and they had made an extended tour on the Continent.
Anthony had not seen him for over a year when they met a few days
before Christmas. He looked ill. Oxford did not agree with him; he
found it enervating, but he thought he would get acclimatized. He had
been surprised at Anthony’s having been eager to enter his father’s
office. From their talks he had gathered that Anthony was bent upon
becoming a business man. He had expected him to try for a place in one
of the great steel works or a manufacturer’s office.

“Your grandfather didn’t make his money out of being a solicitor,”
explained Anthony. “Your father was telling me only the other day;
it was he who set going all the new schemes; they were his idea. He
got together the money for them and controlled them. You see, being
the leading solicitor of Millsborough, he was in touch with the right
people and knew all that was going on behind the scenes. Millsborough
was only a little place then, compared to what it is now. If your
father”--he checked himself and changed the words that had been upon
his lips--“cared to take the trouble he could be a millionaire before
he died.”

“I’m glad he doesn’t,” laughed Edward. “I hate millionaires.”

Betty was with them. They were returning home from a walk upon the
moors. Edward had clamoured for wind. According to him you wouldn’t get
it in Oxford. It was twilight, and they had reached the point where
Millsborough lay stretched out before them.

“It depends upon what use you make of it,” Betty chimed in. “Money is
a weapon. You can use it for conquering, winning more and more for
yourself; or you can use it for freeing the chained, protecting the
weak, fighting for the oppressed.”

“Oh, yes; I know the theory,” replied Edward. “Robin Hood. You take
it from the rich and give it to the poor. But Robin Hood must first
feast with his followers; that’s only fair. And must put by a bit for
a rainy day; that’s only common prudence. And then Little John puts in
his claims, and dear old Friar Tuck. Mustn’t forget Friar Tuck or the
blessing of God won’t be with us next time. And Maid Marion must have
a new kirtle and a ribbon or two to tie up her bonny brown hair. And
one or two things Robin wants for himself. By the time it’s all over
there’s nothing left for the poor.”

Anthony laughed. But Betty took it seriously.

“You dream of the future,” she said to her brother. “I want to help
the people now. A rich man--especially if he were a good business
man--could lay the foundations of a new world here in Millsborough
tomorrow. He wouldn’t have to wait for other people. He could build
healthy pleasant houses for the workers. I’m not thinking of charity.
That’s why I want the business man who would go to work sensibly and
economically; turn them out at rents that the people could afford. I
know it can be done. I’ve gone into it. He could build them clubs to
take the place of the public-houses where they could meet each other,
read and talk, play games, have concerts and dances. Why shouldn’t
there be a theatre? Look at the money they spend on drink. It’s just
to get away from their wretched homes. Offer them something worth
having--something they’d really like and enjoy, and they’d spend their
money on that. I wouldn’t have anything started that couldn’t be made
to pay its own way in the long run. If it can’t do that it isn’t real.
It isn’t going to last. He could open shops, sell food and clothes to
the people at fair prices; could start factories that would pay decent
wages and where the hands would share in the profits. It’s no use kind,
well-meaning people attempting these things that don’t understand
business. They make a muddle of it; and then everybody points to it
and says, ‘See what a failure it was!’ It isn’t the dreamers--the
theorists--that will change the world. Life’s a business; it wants the
business man to put it right. He hasn’t got to wait for revolutions,
nor even for Parliaments. He can take the world as it is, shape it to
fine ends with the tools that are already in his hands. One day one of
them will rise up and show the way. It just wants a big man to set it
going, that’s all.”

They had reached the outskirts of the town, where their ways parted.
Anthony had promised his mother to be home to tea. The Tetteridges were
away; and she was giving a party in the drawing-room to some poor folks
who had been her neighbours in Snelling’s Row. Edward was a few steps
ahead. Betty held out her hand. She was trembling and seemed as if she
would fall. Anthony put an arm round her and held her up.

“How strong you are,” she said.

The office of Mowbray and Cousins occupied a high, square, red brick
house in the centre of the town facing the church. Anthony was given
a desk in the vestibule leading to Mr. Mowbray’s private room on the
first floor, with its three high, dome-topped windows. It seemed that
Mr. Mowbray intended to employ him rather as a private secretary
than a clerk. He kept Mr. Mowbray’s papers in order, reminded him of
his appointments, wrote such letters as Mr. Mowbray chose to answer
himself. Mr. Mowbray had never taken kindly to dictating; he was too
impatient. Anthony, with the help of the letter book, soon learned the
trick of elaborating his brief instructions into proper form. It was
always Anthony that Mr. Mowbray selected to accompany him on outside
business; to see that the bag contained all necessary documents;
to look up trains; arrange things generally. Mr. Mowbray himself
had a distaste for detail. It was plain to Anthony, notwithstanding
his inexperience, that his position was unique. He was prepared for
jealousy; but for some reason that at first he did not grasp Mr.
Mowbray’s favouritism was regarded throughout the office as in the
natural order of things. Even old Abraham Johnson, the head clerk, who
had the reputation of being somewhat of a tyrant, was friendly to him
from the beginning. It was assumed as a matter of course that he was
studying for the law and would later on take out his articles.

“I meant to do so when I first entered the office,” old Mr. Johnson
said to him one day. They were walking home together. Mr. Johnson also
resided in Bruton Square. He was a bachelor and lived with an unmarried
sister. “Forty-three years ago that was, in the first Mr. Mowbray’s
time. But office hours were longer then; and when I got home I was
pretty tired. And what with one thing and another---- Besides, I hadn’t
your incentive.”

He laughed, and seemed to expect Anthony to understand the joke.

“Come to me,” he added, “if you get tied up at any time. I expect I’ll
be able to help you.”

They were all quite right. He was studying for the law. But it
surprised him they should all assume it as a matter of course.

He had intended telling Edward himself and asking his help. But Edward
anticipated him.

“I’m glad you’re with the Gov’nor,” he said. It was a day or two before
his return to Oxford. He had come to the office with messages from
his father, who was in bed with a headache. “I should have suggested
it myself if I’d known you were looking at it that way. And Betty’s
pleased,” he added. “She thinks it is good for the dad, that you will
steady him.” He laughed. “And now that you have begun I want you to peg
away and take out your articles. I’ll write out all you’ve got to do
and leave it with Betty if I don’t see you again. And if there are any
books you want that you can’t find in the office, let me know, and I’ll
send them to you.”

“Right you are,” said Anthony. “I’ll go ahead. The only thing that
worries me is that you’re all of you making it so easy for me. It’s
spoiling my character.” He looked up with a smile. Edward was sitting
on a corner of his father’s desk swinging his legs. “You’ve been a
ripping friend to me ever since you first spoke to me in Bull Lane, the
day I fought young Penlove.” He spoke with an emotion unusual to him.

Edward flushed. “There are only two people I really care for,” he said,
“you and Betty. But it isn’t only of you I’m thinking. If I come into
the business it’ll be jolly our being together. And if not----” He
paused.

“What do you mean?” asked Anthony. “You’re not thinking of chucking it?
Your father’s reckoning on you. That’s why he’s never taken a partner;
he told me so.”

“Of course I shall come into it,” Edward answered, “bar accidents.”

He was looking out of the window. Anthony followed his gaze, but the
cold grey square was empty save for a couple of cabs that stood there
on the rank.

“But what could happen?” persisted Anthony.

“Oh, nothing,” Edward answered. “It’s only another way of saying ‘_Deo
volente_.’ It used to be added to all public proclamations once upon a
time. We’re not as pious as we were.” He took up his hat and stick and
held out his hand. “Don’t forget about the books,” he said. “They’re
expensive to buy, and I’ve done with most of them.”

Anthony thanked him and they shook hands. They never met again.




CHAPTER IX


It was just before Easter that Edward wrote his father and Betty that
he had developed diabetes and was going for a few weeks to a nursing
home at Malvern. The doctor hoped that with care he would soon be much
better. In any case he should return to Oxford sometime during the
summer term. He expected to be done with it by Christmas.

To Anthony he wrote a different letter. The doctor had, of course,
talked cheerfully; it was the business of a doctor to hold out hope;
but he had the feeling himself that his chance was a poor one. He
should return to Oxford, if the doctor did not absolutely forbid it,
for Betty’s sake. He did not want to alarm her. And, of course, he
might pull through. If not, his idea was that Anthony should push on
with his studies at high speed and become as soon as possible a junior
partner in the firm. It was evident from his letter that he and Betty
were in agreement on this matter and that she was preparing the way
with her father. Mr. Mowbray’s appetite for old port was increasing. He
was paying less and less attention to the business. It would soon need
some one to pull it together again.

“Betty likes you, I know,” he wrote, “and thinks no end of you. I used
to dream of you and she marrying; and when the doctor told me, my first
idea was to write to you both and urge it; it seemed to me you were so
fitted for one another. But then it came to me that we are strangers
to one another, even to our nearest and dearest; we do not know what
is in one another’s hearts. I feared you might think it your duty and
might do it out of mere gratitude or even from some lesser motive. I
know that in any case you would be true and good and kind; and a little
while ago I should have deemed that sufficient. But now I am not sure.
It may be that love is the only thing of importance, and that to think
we can do without it is to imagine that we can do without God. You will
be surprised at my writing in this strain, but ever since I began to
think I seem to have been trying to discover a meaning in life; and it
seems to me that without God it is all meaningless and stupid. But by
feeling that we are part of God and knowing we shall always be with
Him, working for Him, that then it all becomes interesting and quite
exciting. And the thing we’ve got to keep on learning is to love,
because that is the great secret. Forgive me for being prosy, but I
have nothing else to do just now but walk about the hills and think.
If you and Betty should get to care for one another, and I should come
to hear of it, I shall be tremendously delighted. But in any case I
know you will take my place and look after her. People think her the
embodiment of capability and common sense. And so she is where others
are concerned. But when it comes to managing for herself she’s a
duffer.”

He added that he would write again and keep Anthony informed, so that
before the end they could have some talk together.

Anthony read the letter again. His friendship with Edward meant more
to him than he had thought. It was as if a part of himself were being
torn away from him, and the pain that he felt surprised him. Evidently
he was less self-centred, less independent of others than he had deemed
himself. Outwardly his life would go on as before. He would scheme,
manœuvre, fight and conquer. But there was that other Anthony, known
only to himself, of whom even he himself had been aware only dimly
and at intervals: Anthony the dreamer. It seemed that he too had been
growing up, that he too had hopes, desires. He it was who had lost his
friend and would not be comforted. And almost it seemed as if from his
sorrow he had gained strength. For as time went by this Anthony, the
dreamer, came more often, even interfering sometimes with business.

He would have liked to have gone over to Malvern and have seen Edward.
Betty was there. But he was wanted in the office. So often Mr. Mowbray
had one of his headaches and did not care to leave the house, and
then it was always Anthony he would send for, and they would work
in the library. And of late he had taken to absenting himself for
days at a time, being called away, as he would explain, upon private
affairs. And to Anthony alone he would confide his address, in case
it was “absolutely necessary” for him to be recalled. Anthony had
his suspicions where these journeys ended. He was worried. Betty had
returned from Malvern, Edward having assured her that he was much
better. Anthony, looking at the matter from all sides, came to the
conclusion that he ought to tell her. It was bound to come out sooner
or later.

Betty was not surprised.

“It’s what I’ve been fearing,” she said. “It was Ted that kept him
straight. He’s always been a good father to both of us. He wanted Ted
to succeed to a sound business; but now this blow has come he doesn’t
seem to care.”

“But Ted is going to succeed to it,” replied Anthony without looking up.

“I wish you could persuade him of that,” she said. “I’ve tried; but I
only make him excited. He says it’s God’s punishment on him for his
sins and apparently argues from that that he may just as well go on
sinning. If Ted could get well enough to come home, if only for a few
days, it might make all the difference.”

“Don’t you think he could?” suggested Anthony.

“Not to Millsborough,” she answered. She glanced out of the window at
the everlasting smoke that was rolling slowly up the valley towards the
sea. “I wanted him to take The Abbey--Sir William Coomber’s old place
up on the moor--it is still to let. But this woman seems to have got
firmly hold of him at last. My fear is that she’ll marry him. Poor dad!
He’s such a kid.”

“Has he known her long?” asked Anthony.

“She was our governess when Ted and I were children,” Betty answered.
“She was a pretty woman, but I always hated her. It was instinct, I
suppose. She married soon after she left us, and went back to France,
but returned to London when her husband died about six years ago. I’d
rather anything than that he should marry her. To see her sleeping in
mother’s room! I couldn’t stand that. I should----”

She stopped abruptly. She was trembling.

“I don’t think there’s any fear of that,” said Anthony. “He still loves
your mother. I’m not talking merely to please you. It’s the best thing
about him. And he loves you. He’d think of all that.”

“He didn’t think of it when she lived,” Betty answered.

They were in the long dining-room and had just finished dinner. Mr.
Mowbray had telegraphed that he was coming home that evening and would
want to see Anthony. But he had not yet arrived. She was looking at the
portrait of her mother over the great mantel-piece.

“If ever I marry,” she said, “I shall pray God to send me a man who
will like me and think of me as a good friend and comrade.”

They neither spoke for a while.

“It was a love-match on both sides, between your father and your
mother, wasn’t it?” asked Anthony.

“No woman ever had a more perfect lover, so my mother told me,” she
answered with a curious laugh. “For the first five years. I remember
waking in the night. My mother was kneeling by my bed with her head
buried in her arms. I didn’t understand. I supposed it was something
grown up people did. I went to sleep again; and when I opened my eyes
again it was dawn. She was still there. I called to her, and she raised
her head and looked at me. It was such a strange face. I didn’t know it
was my mother.”

Anthony looked at the picture. Betty was growing more like her every
day.

“I wonder if we would be better without it,” he said. “All the great
love stories of the world: they’ve all been tragedies. Even the people
round about us whom we know; it always seems to end in a muddle. Is
every man bound to go through it?” he added with a laugh. “Or could a
man keep out of it, do you think?”

“I think a strong man might,” she answered. “It’s weak men that make
the best lovers.”

“There have been strong men who have loved,” suggested Anthony.

“Yes,” she admitted. “Those are the great love stories that end in
tragedy.”

There came the sound of carriage wheels.

“I expect that’s dad,” she said.

She had risen. Passing, she lightly laid her hand on him.

“Don’t ever fall in love,” she said. “It would spoil you.”

Mr. Mowbray had aged of late, but with his white, waving hair and fine
features was still a handsome man. Old-fashioned clients, shaking
their heads, had gone elsewhere. But new business had come to the
firm. Anthony had taken his employer for a walk one summer’s evening
along the river’s bank, and had talked him into the idea of turning
Millsborough into a seaport town. “It could be done, with money.” The
river could be widened, deepened; locks could be built. The traffic
from the valley that now went north or south could be retained for
Millsborough. The marvel was that nobody had ever thought of it before.

“We’ve all been asleep here for the last quarter of a century,” Mr.
Mowbray said, laying his arm affectionately on Anthony’s shoulder.
“You’ll wake us up.”

Engineers had been consulted and had sent in their reports. The scheme
was practicable; Mowbray and Cousins was still a name to conjure with
in business circles. The enterprise had been launched, had forced its
way by its sheer merit. Not only could a handsome dividend be safely
reckoned on; it would be of enormous benefit to Millsborough as a whole.

“Mowbray’s coming back,” they said in Millsborough.

Anthony’s share was to be a junior partnership. It was Mr. Mowbray who
was the more impatient. Anthony promised to be through before the long
vacation.

“If dear Ted comes back,” said Mr. Mowbray, “he’ll be glad to find you
here. If God is hard on me for my sins we must make our fortune for
Betty’s sake.”

Edward had gone to Switzerland for the summer. Anthony had hoped to see
him before he went, but examinations had interfered; and Edward himself
had been more hopeful. He had written that in spite of all he felt he
was going to live. His mind was getting lighter. He was forming plans
for the future. And then suddenly there had come a three-word telegram:

“I want Betty.”

Mr. Mowbray was away when it came. He had gone, without saying a word
to any one, the day before, and had not as usual left Anthony any
address. He did not return until the end of the week, and then it was
all over. Betty had wired that she was bringing the body back with
her. Mr. Mowbray broke down completely when Anthony told him, throwing
himself upon his knees and sobbing like a child.

“Betty will hate me,” he moaned through his tears, “and it will serve
me right. I seem to do nothing but hurt those I love. I loved my wife
and I broke her heart. There is no health in me.”

Edward was buried in St. Aldys’ Churchyard beside his mother. Anthony
had seen the ex-governess and made all things clear to her. Mr. Mowbray
seemed inclined to settle down to business a reformed character.
Anthony had taken out his articles and had been admitted into
partnership, though the firm would still remain Mowbray and Cousins.

It was an evening in late September. Mr. Mowbray and Betty had gone
abroad. Anthony, leaving the office earlier than usual, climbed the
hill to the moors. He took the road he had climbed with his mother
when he was a child and had thought he was going to see God. He could
see the vision of his own stout little legs pounding away in front of
him and his mother’s stooping back and her short silk jacket, remnant
of better days, that she had always worn on these occasions. If his
aunt’s theories were correct, then surely the Lord must have approved
of him and of all his ways from his youth upwards. At school, in the
beginning, he had put himself out to make a friend of Edward Mowbray,
foreseeing the possible advantages. So also with Betty. He had tried to
make her like him. It had not been easy at first, but he had studied
her. The love for Edward that had come to him had been an aftergrowth.
It belonged to Anthony the dreamer rather than to the real Anthony.

With Betty also he had succeeded. She liked him, cared for him. That
she did not love him he was glad. If she had loved him he would have
hesitated, deeming it an unfair bargain. As it was, he could with a
clear conscience ask her to be his wife. And she would consent; he
had no doubt of that. Old Mr. Mowbray would welcome the match. He was
reckoning on it as assuring Betty’s future. Anthony would succeed to
the business, and behind him there would be the old man’s money to help
forward the plans with which his brain was teeming for the benefit of
Millsborough and himself. The memory of what Edward had written him
about love came back to him. But Edward had always been a dreamer.
Life was a business. One got on better by keeping love and religion
out of it. He and Betty liked each other. They would get on together.
Her political enthusiasms did not frighten him. All that would be in
his own hands. When success had arrived--when his schemes had matured
and had brought him wealth and power--then it would be time enough to
venture on experiments. Prudently planned, they need not involve much
risk. They would bring him fame, honour. To the successful business man
all prizes were within reach.

His walk had brought him to The Abbey, now untenanted. The fancy that
one day it might be his home had often come to him. His mother had been
a parlourmaid there. He pictured the perfect joy that it would give her
to sit in its yellow drawing-room and reach out her hand to ring the
bell.

He passed through the rose garden. Betty would love the rose garden.
Roses she had made her hobby. But the air of Millsborough did not
suit them. Here they were still wonderful in spite of neglect. He
made a mental note to speak about it to Hobbs, the gardener. He
knew what the answer would be. Twice that summer Hobbs had walked
down to Millsborough with a tale of despair; and twice Anthony had
written to Sir Harry Coomber. But what was a penurious baronet to
do? Would Mowbray and Cousins never succeed in finding him a tenant?
And so on. Anthony determined to provided Hobbs with help on his own
responsibility. The rose garden, even if everything else had to go,
must be preserved.

He passed on to the flower garden. It had always been Hobbs’ special
pride. It had been well cared for and was now a blaze of colour. It lay
between two old grey walls that had once enclosed the cloisters; and
beyond one saw the great cedars that had been brought and planted there
by Herbert de Combles on his return from the Crusades.

A yew hedge in which there was a wicket gate separated the two gardens.
He paused by the gate with his arms resting upon it and watched the
lengthening of the shadows.

And as he looked a girl came slowly up the path towards him.

He knew her quite well, but could not for the moment recollect where he
had first seen her.

And then he remembered. It had been an afternoon back in the early
spring. Sir Harry, pleading that he was too much of an invalid to
venture out, had written asking Mr. Mowbray to come up to The Abbey to
see him on business, and Mr. Mowbray, pleading engagements, had sent
Anthony.

It had merely been to talk about the letting of the house. Sir Harry
and his family had decided to live abroad for the present and were
leaving almost immediately. Anthony had sat by the window making notes,
and Sir Harry, giving unnecessary instructions, had been walking up
and down the room with his hands behind him. The door had sprung open
and a girl had burst into the room. Anthony had hardly had time to
notice her. She had not expected a stranger and was evidently in doubt
whether she was to be introduced or not. Her father had solved the
problem for her by telling her to run away and not come back. And if
she did to come in more quietly next time and not like a whirlwind. And
she had made a grimace and had gone out again.

He had only seen her for those few seconds, and it rather surprised him
that he recollected her so minutely, even to the dimple in her chin.

She came nearer and nearer. He was wondering whether to speak to her
when for the first time she looked up and their eyes met. She was
beside a great group of delphiniums. He noticed that their deep blue
was almost the same colour as the dress she was wearing. She must have
taken a swift step behind them during some instant when he had taken
his eyes off her. He waited a while, expecting her to emerge, but she
did not do so, and for him to linger there might seem impertinence.

On his way back, past the side entrance to the house, he came upon old
Wilkins, the caretaker; he had once been the coachman.

“When did the family come back?” Anthony asked him. It was odd that Sir
Harry had not written. It might be that they had returned to England
only for a short visit and had not thought it worth while.

The man stared at him. “What do you mean?” he said. “There’s nobody
here.”

“But I’ve just seen her,” said Anthony. “Miss Coomber.” He wished the
next moment that he had not said it, for the old man’s face clearly
showed that he thought Anthony mad.

“It must be her spirit, Mr. Anthony,” he said, “that you’ve seen. Her
body ain’t here.”

Anthony felt himself flushing. He laughed.

“I must have been dreaming,” he said.

“That’s the only explanation I can see,” said Mr. Wilkins. He wished
Anthony good afternoon and turned into the house. Anthony heard him
calling to his wife.

It was dark before Anthony reached home.




CHAPTER X


Mrs. Tetteridge was a pretty piquante lady. Her grey eyes no longer
looked out upon the world with childish wonder. On the contrary
they suggested that she now knew all about it, had found on closer
inspection that there really was nothing to wonder about. A commonplace
world with well-defined high-roads that one did well to follow, keeping
one’s eyes in front of one, suppressing all inclination towards
alluring byways leading to waste lands and barren spaces.

Tetteridge’s Preparatory and Commercial School had outgrown its
beginnings. Mrs. Tetteridge had no objection to the “ambitious poor,”
provided they were willing and able to pay increased school fees and to
dress their sons in conformity with the standards of respectability.
But they no longer formed the chief support of the Rev. Doctor
Tetteridge’s Academy. The professional and commercial classes of
Millsborough and its neighbourhood had discovered Mr. Tetteridge and
were in the process of annexing him. Naturally they would prefer that
he should get rid of the ragtail and the bobtail that had flocked
round him on his first coming. The Rev. Dr. Tetteridge, interviewing
parents, found himself in face of the problem that had troubled the
elder Miss Warmington when, years ago, in the very same room, she had
sat over against Mrs. Strong’nth’arm, while stealing side glances at
a self-possessed young imp perched on a horsehair chair with one leg
tucked underneath him.

The Rev. Dr. Tetteridge was sorry--had known himself the difficulty of
meeting tailors’ bills. But corduroys, patched coats and paper collars!
There were parents to be considered. A certain tone of appearance and
behaviour must be maintained. The difficulty was not always confined
to clothes. The children of agitators--of fathers who spoke openly and
often against the existing order of society! In Millsborough there
were many such. Unfortunate that the opinions of the fathers should
be visited on the children. But so it was. Middle-class youth must
be protected from possible contamination. The Rev. Dr. Tetteridge,
remembering youthful speeches of his own at local debating societies,
would flush and stammer. Mr. Tetteridge himself was not altogether
averse to freedom of speech. But again the parents! The ambitious
poor would give coarse expression to contemptuous anger and depart,
dragging their puzzled offspring with them. Some of the things they
said would hurt the Rev. Dr. Tetteridge by reason of their truth,
especially things said by those among the poor who had known him when
he was Mr. Emanuel Tetteridge, to whom success had not yet come.

Mr. Emanuel Tetteridge had thought to help the poor. In what way better
than by educating their sons? For which purpose, it would seem, he
had been granted special gifts. It was the thing that compensated him
for giving up his dreams. Maybe the poor, not knowing the etiquette
of these matters, might have overlooked his playing of the fiddle;
perhaps, lacking sense of propriety, might have tolerated even odes to
“Irene.”

An eccentric schoolmaster, an oddity of a schoolmaster, content with
what the world called poverty so that he might live his own life, dream
out his dreams, might have done this. If only he hadn’t got on. If
only success--a strong-minded lady--was not gripping him so firmly by
the arm, talking incessantly, without giving him a moment to think of
the wonderful place to which she was leading him: a big house of many
rooms, strongly built and solidly furnished, surrounded by a high brick
wall pierced by a great iron gate; with men and women in uniform to
see to his feeding and his clothing and his sleeping. At the proper
times he would go to church. There would be a certain number of hours
apportioned to him for exercise and even for recreation of an approved
nature. And there would be times when his friends could come to see
him. It had sounded to Emanuel Tetteridge as the description of a
prison; but Mrs. Tetteridge had assured him it was a palace.

What further impressed him with the idea that it was to prison he was
going was the information broken to him by Mrs. Tetteridge that before
he could enter there he would have to take off his tweed suit and put
on a black coat that buttoned close up to the neck, with a collar that
fastened behind. Such, until his term of service was ended, would be
his distinctive garb. He had put up opposition. But Mrs. Tetteridge
had cried, and when she cried the hardness went out of her eyes and
she looked very pretty and pathetic; and Tetteridge had felt himself
a brute and a traitor to love. So the day had come when he had taken
off his old tweed suit forever and had put on the long black coat that
buttoned round the neck. And Mrs. Tetteridge had come to his assistance
with the collar and had laughed and clapped her pretty hands and kissed
him.

But when she had left him and the door was closed he had gone down on
his knees and had asked God to forgive him for his hypocrisy. He had
knelt long and the tears had come; and when he rose it seemed to him
that God, looking in, had smiled at him a little sadly and had laid a
hand on him, calling him “poor lad.” So that it remained with him that
God understood what a difficult thing is life, and would, perhaps, give
him another chance.

The time had come, so Mrs. Tetteridge had decided, for a move onward.
The final destination, that country mansion standing in its own
grounds, that she had determined upon, was still not yet in sight.
Something half-way was her present idea, a large, odd-shaped house
to the south of St. Aldys Church. It had once been a convent, but
had been adapted to domestic purposes by an eccentric old East India
trader who had married three wives. All his numerous progeny lived with
him, and he had needed a roomy place. It was too big and too ugly for
most people and had been empty for years. It belonged to a client of
Mowbray’s and it occurred to Mrs. Tetteridge that he might consider
even an inadequate rent better than nothing at all. At her request
Anthony met her there one afternoon with the key. The rusty iron gate
squeaked when Anthony pushed it open. They crossed a paved yard
and mounted a flight of stone steps. The lock of the great oak door
growled and grated when Anthony tried to turn the key. But it yielded
at last, and a cold chill air crept up from the cellars and wrapped
them round. Mrs. Tetteridge had difficulty in hiding her enthusiasm.
The long tunnel-like rooms on the ground floor might have been built
for class rooms. On the first floor was the great drawing-room. It
would serve for receptions and speech-making. There were bedrooms for
a dozen boarders if they had luck. The high-walled garden behind was
bare save for decrepit trees and overgrown bushes that could easily be
removed. A few cartloads of gravel would transform it into an ideal
playground. They returned to the ground floor. At the end of the stone
corridor Mrs. Tetteridge found a door she had not previously noticed.
It led to a high vaulted room with a huge black marble mantelpiece
representing two elephants supporting a small-sized temple. Opposite
was a high-arched window overlooking the churchyard.

Mrs. Tetteridge surveyed it approvingly.

“This will be Emy’s study,” she said in a tone of decision. She was
speaking to herself. She had forgotten Anthony.

Anthony was leaning against one of the elephants.

“Poor devil!” he said.

Mrs. Tetteridge looked up. There was a curious little smile about her
pretty mouth.

“You don’t like me,” she said to Anthony.

“I should,” answered Anthony, “quite well, if I didn’t like Emy.”

She came to the other end of the mantelpiece, resting her hand upon it.

“I’ve got you here alone,” she said with a laugh, “and I’m going to
have it out with you. I’m sorry you don’t like me because I like you
very much. But that isn’t the important thing. I don’t want you taking
Emy’s side against me. You’ve got great influence over him, and I’m
afraid of you.”

Anthony was about to answer. She made a gesture.

“Let me finish,” she said, “then we shall both know what we’re up
against. You think I’m spoiling his life, robbing him of his dreams.
What were they, put into plain language? To compose a little music;
to write a little poetry. He’d never have earned enough to live on.
Perhaps before he died he might have composed something out of which a
music publisher might have pocketed thousands. He might have written
poems that would have brought him fame when it was too late. He’d
never have made any real solid success. At that kind of work I couldn’t
help him; and, left to himself, he isn’t the sort that ever does
get on. At this work of schoolmastering I can help him. He has the
talent and I have the business capacity. I’ve no use for dreamers. My
father was a dreamer. He discovered things in chemistry that, if he
had followed them up, would have made his fortune. They bored him. He
was out for discovering a means of changing the atmosphere. I don’t
remember the details. You released a gas, or you eliminated a gas, or
you introduced a gas. It was all about gases. That’s the only thing I
do remember. People instead of breathing in depression and weariness
breathed in light-heartedness and strength. It sounds like a fairy
story, but if you’d listened to him you’d have been persuaded it was
coming, that it was only a question of time, and that when the secret
was discovered the whole human race would be feeling like a prisoner
who had escaped from a dungeon. That was his dream. And to him it was
possible. It was for the sake of that dream that he took the position
of science master at St. Aldys at a hundred and sixty a year. It gave
him leisure for research. And we children paid the price for it. Both
my brothers were clever boys. Given the opportunity, they could have
won their way in the world. One of them is a commercial traveller, and
the other, as you know, a clerk in your office at eighty pounds a year.
If he behaves himself and works hard he may, when he’s fifty, be your
managing clerk at three hundred.”

She came closer to him and looked straight into his eyes.

“He’s there,” she said, “inside you--the dreamer. You know it and so do
I,” she laughed. “I’ve looked at him too often. You’ve had sense enough
to chain him up and throw away the key. Take care he doesn’t escape.
If he does he’ll take possession of you, and all your strength and
cleverness will be at his service. He’ll ride you without pity. He’ll
ride you to death.”

She put her hands upon his shoulders and gave him a little shake.

“I’m talking to you for your good,” she said. “I like you. Don’t ever
let him get the mastery over you. If he does, God help you.”

She looked at her watch.

“I must be off,” she said.

Anthony laughed.

“So like a woman,” he said; “thinks that when she has said all that
she’s got to say that there’s nothing more to be said.”

“You shall have your say another time,” she promised him.

Anthony kept on the house in Bruton Square. It was larger than they
wanted now the Tetteridges were gone, but he liked the old-fashioned
square with its ancient rookery among the tall elms. He let the big
classroom for an office to a young architect who had lately come to
Millsborough. His aunt was delighted with the change. She had hated
Mrs. Tetteridge, who had disapproved of her sitting on sunny afternoons
on a Windsor chair outside the front door. It had always been her
habit. And why what was harmless in Moor End Lane should be sinful in
Bruton Square she could not understand. She was growing feeble. It was
want of work according to her own idea, which was probably correct. As
a consequence she was looking forward to heaven with less eagerness.

“I used to think it would be just lovely,” she confessed to Anthony
one day, “sitting about and doing nothing for ever and ever. It sounds
ungrateful, but upon my word I’m not so sure that I’ll enjoy it.”

“Uncle did believe in God,” said Anthony. “I had a talk with him
before he died. ‘There must be somebody bossing it all,’ he said. His
hope was that God might think him of some use and find him a job.”

“He was a good man, your uncle,” answered his aunt. “I used to
worry myself about him. But perhaps, after all, the Lord ain’t as
unreasonable as He’s made out to be.”

Mr. Mowbray was leaving the business more and more to Anthony. As a
compensation for denial in other directions he was allowing himself
too much old port and the gout was getting hold of him. Betty took him
abroad as much as possible. Travelling interested him, and, away from
his old cronies, he was easier to manage. He had always adored his
children, and Betty, in spite of his failings, could not help being
fond of him. Anthony knew that so long as her father lived she would
never marry. Neither was he in any hurry. The relationship between
them was that of a restful comradeship; and marriage could have made
but little difference. Meanwhile the firm of Mowbray and Cousins was
prospering. The private business was almost entirely in the hands of
old Johnson, the head clerk. It was to his numerous schemes for the
building up of Millsborough that Anthony devoted himself. The port of
Millsborough was already an accomplished fact and its success assured.
A syndicate for the construction of an electric tramway running from
the docks to the farthest end of the densely populated valley had
already got to work. A yet more important project was now in Anthony’s
mind. Hitherto Millsborough had been served by a branch line from a
junction fifteen miles away. Anthony wanted a new track that should
cross the river to the west of the new lock and, skirting the coast,
rejoin the main line beyond the moor. It would bring Millsborough on
to the main line and shorten the distance between London and the north
by over an hour. It was the name of Mowbray that figured upon all
documents, but Millsborough knew that the brain behind was Mowbray’s
junior partner, young Strong’nth’arm. Millsborough, believing in luck,
put its money on him.

The Coomber family had returned to The Abbey somewhat unexpectedly. No
tenant for the house had come forward. Also Sir Harry had come into
unexpected legacy. It was not much, but with economy it would enable
them to keep up the old place. It had been the home of the Coomber
family for many generations, and Sir Harry, not expecting to live long,
was wishful to die there.

Mr. Mowbray was away, and old Johnson, the head clerk, had gone up to
The Abbey to welcome them home and talk a little business.

“I doubt if they’ll be able to pull through,” he said to Anthony on his
return to the office. “The grounds are all going to rack and ruin, to
say nothing about the outbuildings and the farm. Even to keep it up as
it is will take two thousand a year; and it doesn’t seem to me that,
after paying the interest on the mortgage, he’ll have as much as that
left altogether.”

“What does he say himself?” asked Anthony. “Does he grasp it?”

“‘Oh, after me the deluge!’ seems to be his idea,” answered old
Johnson. “Reckons he isn’t going to live for more than two years, and
may just as well live there. Talks of shutting up most of the rooms and
eking out existence on the produce of the kitchen garden,” he laughed.

“And Lady Coomber?” asked Anthony.

“Oh, well, he’s fortunate there,” answered Johnson. “Give her a
blackbird to sing to her and a few flowers to look after and you
haven’t got to worry about her. Don’t see how they’re going to manage
about the boy.”

“He’s in the army, isn’t he?” said Anthony.

“In the Guards,” answered Johnson. “They must be mad. Of course they’ve
any amount of rich connections. But I don’t see their coming forward
to that extent.”

“He’ll have to exchange,” suggested Anthony. “Get out to India.”

“Or else they’ll starve themselves to try and keep it up,” answered
Johnson. “Funny thing, you can never get any sense into these old
families. It’s the inter-breeding, I suppose. Of course, there’s the
girl. She may perhaps put them on their legs again.”

“By marrying some rich old bug?” said Anthony.

“Or rich young one,” answered Johnson. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen
anything more lovely. I expect that’s why they’ve come back, if the
truth were told. If her aunt took her up and ran her for a season in
London there oughtn’t to be much difficulty.”

“Except perhaps the girl,” suggested Anthony.

“Oh! they look at things differently in that class,” answered old
Johnson. “They’ve got to.”

The house and shop in Platts Lane where Anthony had been born had been
taken over by the old jobbing tinker and his half-witted son. The old
man had never been of much use, but the boy had developed into a clever
mechanic. Bicycles were numerous now in Millsborough, and he had
gained the reputation of being the best man in the town for repairing
them and generally putting them to rights. A question of repairs to the
workshop had arisen. The property belonged to a client of Mowbray’s,
and Mr. Johnson was giving instructions to a clerk to call at the place
on his way back from lunch and see what was wanted when Anthony entered
the room.

“I’m going that way,” he said. “I’ll call myself.”

Anthony stopped his cab a few streets off. He had carefully avoided
this neighbourhood of sordid streets since the day he and his mother
had finally left it behind them. The spirit of hopelessness seemed
brooding there. The narrow grimy house where he was born was unchanged.
The broken window in the room where his father had died had never yet
been mended. The square of brown paper that he himself had cut out and
pasted over the hole had worn well.

Anthony knocked at the door. It was opened by a slatternly woman, the
wife of a neighbour. Old Joe Witlock was in bed with a cold. It was his
son’s fault, he explained. Matthew would insist on the workshop door
being always left open. He would give no reason, but as it was he who
practically earned the living his father thought it best to humour
him. The old man was pleased to see Anthony, and they talked for a
while about old days. Anthony explained his visit. It was the roof of
the workshop that wanted repairing. Anthony went out again and round by
the front way. The door was wide open, so that passing along the street
one could see into the workshop. Matthew was repairing a bicycle. He
had grown into a well-built good-looking young man. It was only about
the eyes that one noticed anything peculiar. He recognized Anthony at
once and they shook hands. Anthony was looking up at the roof when he
heard a movement and turned round. A girl was sitting on a stool behind
the open door. It was the very stool that Anthony himself had been used
to sit upon as a child watching his father at his work. It was Miss
Coomber. She held out her hand with a laugh.

“Father sent me out of the room last time I saw you,” she said,
“without introducing us. I am Eleanor Coomber. You are Mr. Anthony
Strong’nth’arm, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” answered Anthony. “I heard you had returned to The Abbey.”

“I was coming to see you--or rather Mr. Johnson,” she said, “with a
letter from father; but I ran into a cart at the bottom of the hill.
I’m really only a beginner,” she added by way of excuse.

“Then you ought not to ride down steep hills,” said Anthony,
“especially not in a town.”

“I’ll get off at The Three Carpenters next time,” she said, “if you
promise not to tell.”

Anthony took the letter and promised to deliver it. “You’ve come back
for good, haven’t you?” he asked.

“Tell me,” she said. “You do know all about it, don’t you? Do you think
we shall be able to? I do love it.”

Anthony was silent for a moment. She was evidently hanging on his
answer.

“It’s possible,” he said, “with strict economy.”

She laughed as though relieved.

“Oh, that!” she said. “We’re used enough to that.”

Matthew was blowing the furnace. The light from the glowing embers
flickered round them.

“You were born here, weren’t you?” she asked.

“In the house adjoining, to be exact,” he answered with a laugh. “But
this was my nursery. I used to sit on that very stool with my leg
tucked underneath me watching my father work. I loved it when he blew
the bellows and made the shadows dance. At least I expect it’s the
same stool,” he added. “There was the figure of a gnome that a strange
old fellow I once knew carved upon it.”

She sprang to the ground and examined it.

“Yes,” she said. “It is the same. He must have been quite clever.”

She reseated herself upon it. Her feet just touched the ground.

“I was born in Brazil,” she said. “Father had a ranch near Rio. But we
left there before I was three. The first thing I can really remember
is The Abbey. We must have come on a visit, I suppose, to Sir William.
It was the long garden between the cloister walls that was my first
nursery. I used to play there with the flowers and make them talk to
me.”

“I saw you there,” he said, “one afternoon.”

She looked up at him. “When was that?” she asked.

“Oh, one evening in September,” he said. “About two years ago.” He had
spoken without premeditation and now felt himself flushing. He hoped
she might think it only the glow from the furnace fire.

“But we were in Florence,” she said.

“I know,” he answered, flushing still deeper. “I asked old Wilkins
when you had come back, and he thought I was mad.”

“It is curious,” she answered gravely. “I dreamed one day that I was
walking there and met your namesake, Anthony the Monk. He was standing
by the wicket gate on the very spot where he was slain. He called to
me, but I was frightened and hid myself among the flowers.”

Anthony was interested.

“Who was the Monk Anthony?” he asked.

“Don’t you know the story?” she said. “He was the son of one Giles
Strong’nth’arm and Martha his wife, according to the records of the
monastery. It seems to have been a common name in the neighbourhood,
but I expect you were all one family. The abbot had died suddenly of a
broken heart. It was the time of the confiscation of the monasteries by
Henry VIII, and the monks had chosen Anthony to act for them although
he was the youngest of them all. He spent all night upon his knees, and
when our ancestor arrived in the morning with his men-at-arms he met
them at the great door of the chapel--it was where the rose garden is
now--and refused to let them pass. The soldiers murmured and hesitated,
for he had made of his outstretched arms a Cross, and a light, it was
said, shone round about him. They would have turned and fled. But it
was to our ancestor, Percival de Combler--as it was then spelt--that
The Abbey and its lands had been granted, and he was not the man to let
it slip from his hands. He spurred his horse forward and struck down
the Monk Anthony with one blow of his sword. And they rode their horses
over his body and into the chapel.”

“No,” said Anthony. “I never heard the story. It always troubled my
father, any talk about what his people had once been.”

“You’re so like him,” she said. “It struck me the first time I saw you.
You were sitting by the window writing. One of Sir Percival’s young
squires, who had been a student in Holland, made a picture of him from
memory as he stood with his arms outstretched in the form of a Cross.
Remind me next time you come to The Abbey and I’ll show it you. It
hangs in the library.”

Matthew had finished. Anthony would not let her mount in the town. He
insisted that she should wait until they got to The Three Carpenters,
and walked beside her wheeling the bicycle. Her desire was to become an
expert rider. A horse of her own was, of course, out of the question,
and she had never cared for walking. They talked about The Abbey and
the lonely moorland round about it. One of the misfortunes of being
poor was that you could do so little to help people. The moor folk had
been used to look to The Abbey as a sort of permanent Lady Bountiful.
The late Sir William had always been open-handed. She did what she
could. There was an old bed-ridden labourer who lived in a lonely
cottage with his granddaughter. The girl had suddenly left him and
there was no one to look after him. He could just crawl about and feed
himself, but that was all. Anthony’s conscience smote him. Betty was
away. The old man was one of her pensioners and he had promised to keep
an eye on them till she came back. They arranged to meet there. He
would see about getting some help.




CHAPTER XI


It came so suddenly that neither of them at first knew what had
happened. A few meetings among the lonely by-ways of the moor that
they had honestly persuaded themselves were by mere chance. A little
walking side by side where the young leaves brushed their faces and the
young ferns hid their feet. A little laughing, when the April showers
would catch them lost in talk, and hand in hand they would race for the
shelter of some over-hanging bank and crouch close pressed against each
other among the twisted roots of the stunted firs. A little lingering
on the homeward way, watching the horned moon climb up above the woods,
while the song of some late lark filled all the world around them.
Until one evening, having said good-bye though standing with their
hands still clasped, she had raised her face to his and he had drawn
her to him and their lips had met.

Neither had foreseen it nor intended it. It had been so spontaneous,
so natural, that it seemed but the signing of a pact, the inevitable
fulfilling of the law. Nothing had changed except that, now, they knew.

He turned his footsteps away from the town. A deep endless peace
seemed to be around him. So this was what Edward had meant when he
had written, so short a while before the end, that love was the great
secret leading to God, that without it life was meaningless and void.

It was for this that he had waited, like some blind chrysalis not
knowing of the day when it should be born into the sunlight.

He laughed, remembering what his dream had been: wealth, power, fame:
the senseless dream of the miser starving beside his hoarded gold.
These things he would strive for now with greater strength than
ever--would win them, not for themselves, but for Love’s sake, as
service, as sacrifice.

He had no fear. Others had failed. It was not love, but passion that
burns itself out. There was no alloy in his desire for her. She was
beautiful he knew. But he was drawn by it as one is moved by the
beauty of a summer’s night, the tenderness of spring, the mystery of
flowers. There was no part of her that whispered to him. The thought
of her hands, her feet, the little dimple in her chin; it brought no
stirring of his blood. It was she herself, with all about her that was
imperceptible, unexplainable, that he yearned for; not to possess, but
to worship, to abide with.

For a period he went about his work as in a dream, his brain guiding
him as a man’s brain guides him crossing the road while his mind is
far away. The thought of her was all around him. It was for that brief
evening hour when they would meet and look into one another’s eyes that
he lived.

As the days wore by there came to him the suggestion of difficulties,
of obstacles. One by one he examined them and dismissed them. Would her
people consent? If not, they must take the law into their own hands.
About Eleanor herself he had no misgivings. He knew, without asking
her, that she would brave all things. God had joined them together. No
power of man should put them asunder.

Betty--a dim shadowy Betty like some thin wraith--moved beside him as
he walked. He was not bound to her. Even if there had been a pledge
between them he would have had to break it. If need be, if God willed
it, and Eleanor were to die--for it seemed impossible that any lesser
thing could part them--he could live his life alone; or rather with the
memory of her that would give him strength and courage. But to marry
any other woman was unthinkable. It would be a degradation to both.

Besides, Betty had never loved him. There had been no talk of love
between them. It would have been a mere marriage of convenience, the
very thing that Edward had foreseen and had warned him against. To live
without love was to flout God. Love was God. He understood now. It was
through love that God spoke to us, called to us. It was through the
Beloved One that God manifested Himself to us. One built a tabernacle
and abided with her. It was good to be there.

Would it interfere with his career? Old Mr. Mowbray had been reckoning
on his marrying Betty. He might, to use a common expression, cut up
rough. He would have to risk that. As things were now it would be
difficult for the firm of Mowbray and Cousins to go on without him.
But anger does not act reasonably. Mr. Mowbray, indignant, resentful,
could do much to hamper him, delay him. But that would be the worst. He
felt his own power. He had made others believe in him. They would have
to wait a few years longer while he was recovering his lost ground. As
to the ultimate result he had no doubt. The determination to win was
stronger in him than ever before. Love would sharpen his wits, make
clearer his vision. With Love one could compel Fate.

Betty and her father were abroad. They had gone to Italy for the
winter, meaning to return about the end of March. But Mr. Mowbray had
taken an illness which had altered their plans. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm
had taken to indulge herself each day in a short evening walk. Anthony
did not usually return home till between seven and eight; and as she
explained to Mrs. Newt, she found this twilight time a little sad for
sitting about and doing nothing. She always took the same direction.
It led her through the open space surrounding the church of St. Aldys,
where stood the great square house of Mowbray and Cousins. Glancing at
it as she passed, she would notice that the door was closed, that no
light shone from any of its windows. A little farther on she would pass
The Priory, and glancing through the iron gates, would notice that, so
far as the front of the house was concerned, it showed no sign of life.
Then she would turn and walk back to Bruton Square, and putting off
her outdoor things, watch by the window till Anthony came in; and they
would sit down to supper and she would talk to him about the business
of the day, his schemes and projects. She never tired of hearing about
them.

One evening she had glanced as usual in passing at the office of
Mowbray and Cousins. The house was dark and silent. But from the
windows of The Priory lights were shining. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm looked
about her with somewhat the air of a conspirator. The twilight was
deepening into darkness and no one was about. She pushed open the iron
gate and closed it softly behind her. She knocked at the door so gently
that it was not till the third time that she was heard. The maidservant
who answered it seemed flustered and bustled. Mr. and Miss Mowbray
had only returned an hour ago. She did not think that either of them
would see anybody. Mrs. Strong’nth’arm took from her pocket a soiled
and crumpled envelope. She smoothed it out and begged the maid to take
it at once to Miss Mowbray. The maid, reluctant and grumbling, took it
and disappeared. She returned a minute later, and Mrs. Strong’nth’arm
followed her upstairs to the small room over the hall that was Betty’s
sanctum. Betty was still in her travelling dress. She was tired, but
made Mrs. Strong’nth’arm comfortable in an armchair beside the fire and
closed the door.

“There’s nothing wrong, is there?” she asked. “Anthony isn’t ill?”

“He’s quite all right,” Mrs. Strong’nth’arm assured her. “How’s your
father?”

“Oh, not very well,” answered Betty. “I’ve just sent him to bed,” she
laughed. “You’re sure there’s nothing wrong?” she asked again.

Mrs. Strong’nth’arm was sitting bolt upright on the edge of the chair,
holding her hands out to the fire.

“Well, I shouldn’t be here, an hour after your arrival, just for the
sake of a gossip,” she answered without looking up.

“That’s just what I was thinking,” said Betty.

“Perhaps I’d better get on to it,” answered Mrs. Strong’nth’arm. “Then
it will be the sooner over. I want to be back before he comes in, if I
can.”

Betty took a chair beside her, facing the fire.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I’ve got an inkling of it.”

The other looked at her in surprise.

“How could you?” she asked. “He’s never said a word, even to me.”

Betty smiled.

“Then how is it you know?” she answered. “Of course I knew they were
back. He wrote and told me.”

“Yes,” said the other. “It’s wonderful how love sharpens a woman’s
instincts.” Suddenly she leant forward and gripped the girl’s hand.
“Don’t let him,” she said. “Stop him before it’s too late.” She felt
the girl’s hand tremble in hers. “I’m not thinking of you,” she said.
“Do it for his sake--save him.”

“How can I?” the girl answered. “What would you have me do? Go down on
my knees to him. Cry to him for pity?”

“Not pity,” answered the other, “for common honesty. Put it to his
honour. He thinks no end of that. That’s his religion--the only
religion he’s got. He’s yours, not hers. Hasn’t he been dangling about
after you for years? Doesn’t he owe everything to you? His first
start that gave him his chance! How can he get over that? Hasn’t he
compromised you? Doesn’t everybody know of it and take it as a settled
thing? What are you going to do if you let him throw you over now? If
you let this brainless doll, just because of her white skin----”

“Don’t, don’t,” cried the girl. She had risen. “What’s the good?
Besides, what right have I?”

“What right?” answered the other. “You love him; that’s what gives you
the right. You were made for him, to be his helpmeet, as the Bible
says. Do you think I don’t know him? What could she do for him except
waste his money on her luxuries and extravagancies? What does her class
know about money but how to fling it about and then laugh at the man
when it’s all spent? What do they know of the aching and sweating that
goes to the making of it? What will be his share of the bargain but to
keep the whole pauper family of them in idle ease while he wears out
his heart slaving for them, and they look down upon him and despise
him. What right----”

Her voice had risen to a scream. The girl held up a warning hand. She
checked herself and went on in a low, swift tone.

“What right has she to come forcing her way at the last moment into
other people’s lives, spoiling them just for a passing whim? Love! That
sort of love! We know how long that lasts and what comes afterwards.
Only in this case it will be she that will first tire of him. His very
faithfulness will bore her. He hasn’t the monkey tricks that attract
these women. Upstart! Charity boy! That’s what she’ll fling at him when
some fawning popinjay has caught her fancy. I tell you I know her and
her sort. I’ve lived among them. They don’t act before their servants.”

She came closer. “Get him away from her. It’s only a boy’s infatuation
for something new and strange. Tell him how it will spoil his career.
You’ve only got to speak to your father for all his plans to come
tumbling to the ground. He’ll listen to that. He hasn’t lost all his
senses--not yet. Besides, she wouldn’t want him then. She isn’t out to
marry a struggling young solicitor without capital. You can take that
from me.” She laughed.

Betty looked at her. “You would have me injure him?” she said.

“Yes; to save him from her,” answered the other, “she has changed him
already. There are times when I don’t seem to know him. She will ruin
him if she has her way. Save him. You can.”

The woman’s vehemence had exhausted her. She dropped back into her
chair.

“Listen,” said the girl. “I do love your son. I love him so well that
if he and this girl really loved one another and I was sure of it, I
would do all I could to help him to marry her. It all depends upon
that: if they really love one another.”

The woman made to speak, but the girl silenced her with a gesture.

“Let me try and explain myself to you,” she said, “because after
tonight we must never talk about this thing again. I should have been
very happy married to Anthony. I knew he did not love me. There is a
saying that in most love affairs one loves and the other consents to be
loved. That was all I asked of him. I did not think he was capable of
love--not in the big sense of the word. I thought him too self-centred,
too wrapped up in his ambition. I thought that I could make him happy
and that he would never know, that he would come to look upon me as a
helper and a comrade. That perhaps with children he would come to feel
affection for me, to have a need of me. I could have been content with
that.”

She had been standing with her elbow resting on the mantelpiece, gazing
into the fire. Now she straightened herself and looked the other in the
eyes.

“But I am glad I was wrong,” she went on. “I’d be glad to think that he
could love--madly, foolishly, if you will--forgetting himself and his
ambition, forgetting all things, feeling that nothing else mattered. Of
course, if it could have been for me”--she gave a little smile--“that
would have been heaven. But I would rather--honestly rather that he
loved this girl than that he never loved any one--was incapable of
love. It sounds odd, but I love him the better for it. He is greater
than I thought him.”

The other was staring at her. The girl moved over to her and laid a
hand upon her shoulder.

“I know what you are thinking,” she said. “It doesn’t last. A few years
at most and the glory has departed. I’m not so sure of that.”

She had moved away. Mechanically she was arranging books and papers on
her desk. “I was going over an old bureau in my mother’s room a while
ago,” she said. “And in a little secret drawer I found a packet of
letters written to her by my father. I suppose I ought not to have read
them, but I don’t regret it. I thought they were the letters he had
written her in their courting days. They were quite beautiful letters.
No one but a lover could have written them. But there were passages
in them that puzzled me. There was a postscript to one, telling her
of a new underclothing made from pine wood that the doctors were
recommending for rheumatism, and asking her if she would like to try
it. And in another there was talk about children. And then it occurred
to me to look at the date marks on the outside of the envelopes. They
were letters he had written her at intervals during the last few years
of her life; and I remembered then how happy they had been together
just before the end. Our lives are like gardens, I always think.
Perhaps we can’t help the weeds coming, but that doesn’t make the
flowers less beautiful.”

She turned her face again to the woman.

“And even if so,” she said, “even if sooner or later the glory does
fade, at least we have seen it--have seen God’s face.

“I remember a blind boy,” she continued, “that dad took an interest
in. He had been born blind. Nobody thought he could be cured except
a famous oculist in Lausanne that dad wrote to about him. He thought
there was just a chance. My mother and I were going to Switzerland for
a holiday and we took him with us. He was a dear, merry little chap in
spite of it. The specialist examined him and then shook his head. ‘I
can cure him,’ he said, ‘but it will come again very soon.’ He thought
it would be kinder to leave him to his blindness. But my mother urged
him and he yielded.

“It was wonderful to look into his eyes when he could see. We had
warned him that it might be only for a time, and he understood. One
night I heard a sound in his room and went in. He had crept out of bed
and was sitting on the dressing-table in front of the window with his
hands clasped round his knees. ‘I want to remember it,’ he whispered.

“You may be right,” she said. “It may bring him sorrow, this love. But,
even so, I would not save him from it if I could.”

She knelt and took the older woman’s hands in hers.

“We must not stand in his way, you and I,” she said. “If it were only
his happiness and prosperity we had to think of we might be justified.
But it might be his soul we were hurting.”

The woman had grown calm. “And you,” she asked, “what will you do?”

Betty smiled. “Oh, nothing very heroic!” she answered. “I shall have
dad to look after for years to come. We shall travel. I’m fond of
travelling. And afterwards--oh! there are heaps of things I want to do
that will interest me and keep me busy.”

The woman glanced at the clock. The time had slipped by; it was nearly
eight. “He’ll guess where I’ve been,” she said.

“What will you tell him?” the girl asked.

“Seems to me,” answered the woman, “I may as well tell him the truth:
that I’ve had a bit of a clack with you. That you will do all you can
to help him. That’s right, isn’t it?”

The girl nodded.

The woman took the girl’s face in her two hands.

“Not sure you’re not getting the best of it,” she said. “I often used
to lie awake beside my man, and wish I could always think of him as he
was when I first met him: brave and handsome, with his loving ways and
his kind heart. I saw him again when he lay dead, and all my love came
back to me. A girl thinks, when she marries, that she’s won a lover.
More often she finds that she’s lost him. It seems to me sometimes that
it’s only dreams that last.

“Don’t bother to come down,” she said. “I’ll let myself out.”

She closed the door softly behind her. The girl was still kneeling.




CHAPTER XII


Mrs. Strong’nth’arm had not spoken figuratively when she had told
Betty that there were times when she did not know her own son. As a
child, there had always been, to her, something mysterious about him; a
gravity, a wisdom beyond his years. There had been, with him, no period
of fun and frolic that she might have shared in; no mischievousness
for her to scold while loving him the more for it; no helplessness to
make appeal to her. From the day when he could crawl his self-reliance
had caused her secret tears. He never came to her for comfort or
protection. Beyond providing for his bodily wants she was no use to him.

She had thought his father’s death would draw him to her, making him
more dependent on her. But instead there had grown up around him a
strange aloofness that hid him still further from her eyes. For her
labour and sacrifice, she knew that he was grateful; that he would
never rest satisfied till he had rewarded her. He respected her, was
always kind and thoughtful--even loved her in a way; she felt that.
In the serving world, where she had passed her girlhood, it was not
uncommon for good and faithful servants to be regarded in the same way:
with honour and affection.

At first the difference between him and all other boys she had ever
known or heard of had been her daily cross. She recalled how eagerly
he had welcomed his father’s offer to teach him to read--how it was he
who had kept his father up to the mark. At six years old he had taught
himself to write. He had never cared for play. He was going to be a
scholar, a dreamer--some sort of crank or another. She had no use for
cranks. They earned but poverty and the world’s contempt. Why couldn’t
he be like other lads, differing from them only by being cleverer and
stronger? It was that had been her prayer.

In time she came to understand, and then her hope revived and grew. God
intended him for great things. That was why he had been fashioned in
another mould. He was going to be rich, powerful. Her dream would come
true. He would be among the masters--would sit in the high places.

That he had never fallen in love--had never even had a “fancy”--was
further proof of his high destiny. Heaven itself, eager for his
success, had chosen the wise Betty to be his helpmeet. She, loving him,
would cherish him--help him to climb. But on his side there would be
no foolish fondness to weaken or distract him. Youth with its crazy
lure of love had passed him by. It was the one danger she had feared;
and he had escaped it. Nothing stood between him and his goal. The
mother saw all things shaping themselves to the greatness and glory of
her son. What mattered her secret tears, her starved love.

And now, in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, all was changed. She
saw him shorn of his strength, stripped of his self-reliance, uncertain
of his purpose. She would try to draw him into talk about his schemes
and projects. It had been their one topic of common interest. He had
always valued her shrewd practicability. Now he would answer her
indifferently: would lapse into long silences. The steadfast far-off
look had gone out of his eyes. They had become the eyes of a boy,
tender and shy: the eyes of a dreamer. The firm strong lines about
the mouth had been smoothed away as if by some magic touch. She would
watch, unknown to him, the smile that came and went about his parted
lips. One evening, for no reason, he put his arm about her, smoothed
back her thin grey hair, and kissed her. It was the first time he had
ever shown her any sign of love, spontaneous and unasked for. Had it
come at an earlier date she would have cried for joy. But knowing
what she did it angered her, though she spoke no word. It was but an
overflowing of his love for this stranger--a few drops spilled from the
cup he had poured out for another. Part of her desire that he should
marry Betty had been her knowledge that he had no love for the girl.
Betty would have taken nothing from her. But a mad jealousy had come
to her at the thought that this stranger should have been the first to
awaken love in him. What had she done for him, this passerby, but throw
him a glance from her shameless eyes? What could she ever do for him
but take from him: ever crying give, give, give.

She told him of her talk with Betty, so far as it had been agreed upon
between them. She had a feeling of comradeship with Betty.

“It might have been a bit awkward for you,” she said, “if she had cared
for you. I wanted to see how the land lay.”

“How did you find it all out?” he asked. “I’m glad you have. I’ve been
wanting to tell you. But I was so afraid you wouldn’t understand.”

“Why shouldn’t I understand?” she asked dryly.

“Because I don’t myself,” he answered. “It is as if another Anthony
had been growing up inside me, unknown to me, until he had become
stronger than myself and had taken possession of me. He was there when
I was quite little. I used to catch a glimpse of him now and then. An
odd little dreamy sort of a chap that used to wonder and ask questions.
Don’t you remember? I thought he was dead: that I had killed him so
that he wouldn’t worry me any more. Instead of which he was just biding
his time. And now he is I, and I don’t seem to know what’s become of
myself.”

He laughed.

“I do love Betty,” he went on, “and always shall. But it isn’t with the
love that makes a man and woman one: that opens the gates of life.”

“It’s come to you hot and strong, lad,” she said; “as I always expected
it would, if it ever did come. But it isn’t the fiercest flame that
burns the longest.”

He flung himself on his knees in front of her, and putting his arms
around her hid his face in her lap. She winced and her little meagre
figure stiffened. But he did not notice. If she could but have
forgotten: if only for that moment!

“Oh, mother,” he whispered, “it’s so beautiful; it does last. It must
be always there. It is only that our mean thoughts rise up like mists
and hide it from our eyes.”

He looked up. There were tears in his eyes. He drew her face down to
his and kissed it.

“I never knew how much I loved you till now,” he said. “Your dear tired
hands that have worked and suffered for me. But for you I should never
have met and talked with her. It is you have given her to me. And,
oh, mother, she is wonderful. There must be some mystery about it. Of
course, to others, she is only beautiful and sweet; but to me there is
something more than that. I feel frightened sometimes as though I were
looking upon something not of this world.

“What did Betty say,” he asked suddenly; “was she surprised?”

“She said she was glad,” his mother answered him, “that you had it in
you. She said she liked you all the better for it.”

He laughed. “Dear Betty,” he said, “I knew she’d understand.”

His self-confidence, for the first time in his life, deserted him,
when he thought of his necessary interview with Sir Harry Coomber.
He himself was anxious to get it over in order to put an end to his
suspense. It was Eleanor who held him back.

“You don’t know dad,” she said. “He’s quite capable of carrying me off
to China or Peru if he thought there was no other way of stopping it.
Remember, I’m only seventeen. Besides,” she added, “he may not live
very long and I don’t want to hurt him. Leave it until I’ve had a
talk with Jim. I’ll write him to come down. I haven’t seen him in his
uniform yet. He’ll be wanting to show himself.” She laughed.

Jim was her brother, her senior by some five or six years. There was
a strong bond of affection between them, and she hoped to enlist
him on her side. She did not tell Anthony, but she saw in front of
her quite a big fight. It was not only the matter of money, though
she knew that with her lay the chief hope of retrieving the family
fortunes. It was the family pride that would be her great obstacle. An
exceptionally ancient and umbrageous plant, the Coomber genealogical
tree. An illustration of it hung in the library. Adam and Eve were
pictured tending its roots. Adam, loosening the earth around it, while
Eve watered it out of a goat skin. The artist had chosen the fig-leaf
period. It was with Charlemagne that it began to take shape. From
William the Conqueror sprang the branch that bore the Coomber family.
At first they did not know how to spell their own name. It was not
till the reign of James I that its present form had got itself finally
accepted.

Under this tree Eleanor and her brother sat one evening after dinner
beside a fire of blazing logs. Sir Harry and Lady Coomber had gone
to bed: they generally did about ten o’clock. Jim had brought his
uniform down with him and had put it on: though shy of doing so before
the servants. Fortunately there were not many of them. Neither had
spoken for some few minutes. Jim had been feeling instinctively all
the evening that Eleanor had had a purpose in sending for him. He was
smoking a briar wood pipe.

“I like you in your uniform, Jim,” she said suddenly; “you do look
handsome in it.”

He laughed. “Guess I’ll have to change into something less showy,” he
answered.

“Must you?” she asked.

“Don’t see who is going to allow me fifteen hundred a year,” he
answered; “and it can’t be done on less. There’s Aunt Mary, of course,
she may and she mayn’t. Can’t think of any one else.”

“It was rather a mistake, wasn’t it?” she suggested.

“It’s always been the family tradition,” he answered. “Of course, it
was absurd in our case. But then it’s just like the dear old guv’nor:
buy the thing first and think about paying for it afterwards.”

She was tapping the fender with her foot. “It’s putting it coarsely,”
she said with a laugh, “but I’m afraid he was banking on me.”

“You mean a rich marriage?”

She nodded.

He was leaning back in his chair, puffing rings of smoke into the air.

“Any chance of it?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not now,” she said. “I’m in love.”

It brought him up straight.

“In love?” he repeated. “Why, you’re only a kid.”

“That’s what I thought,” she answered, “up to a month ago.”

“Who is it?” he asked.

“A young local solicitor,” she answered, “the son of a blacksmith. They
say his mother used to go out charring. But that may be only servants’
gossip.”

“Good God,” he exclaimed. “Are you mad?”

She laughed. “I thought I would tell you the worst about him first,”
she said, “and so get it over. Against all that, is the fact that
he’s something quite out of the common. He’s the type from which the
world’s conquerors are drawn. Napoleon was only the son of a provincial
attorney. He’s the most talked about man in Millsborough already; and
everything he puts his hand to succeeds. He’s pretty sure to end as a
millionaire with a seat in the House of Lords. Not that I’m marrying
him for that. I’m only telling you that to make it easier for you to
help me. I’d love him just the same if he were a cripple on a pound a
week. I’d go out charring, if need be, like his mother did. It’s no
good reasoning with me, Jim,” she added after a pause. “When did a man
or woman of our blood ever put reason above love? It’s part of our
inheritance. Your time will come one day; and then you will understand,
if you don’t now.”

She had risen. She came behind him and put her arms about his neck.

“We’ve always stood by each other, Jim,” she said. “Be a chum.”

“What’s he like?” he growled.

She laughed. “Oh, you needn’t worry about that,” she said. “There he
is. Look at him.”

She took his face between her two hands and turned it towards the
picture of the monk Anthony standing with crossed arms, a strange light
round about him.

“It’s like some beautiful old legend,” she continued. “Sir Percival
couldn’t have killed him. You know his body was never found. It was
said that as he lay there, bleeding from his wounds, Saint Aldys
had suddenly appeared and had lifted him up in his arms as if he
had been a child and had borne him away. He has been asleep all
these years in the bosom of Saint Aldys; and now he is come back.
It must be he. The likeness is so wonderful and it is his very
name, Anthony Strong’nth’arm. They were here before we came--the
Strong’nth’arms--yeomen and squires. He is come to lift them up again.
And I am going to right the old wrong by helping him and loving him.”

“Have you told all that to the guv’nor?” he asked with a grin.

“I’m not sure that I won’t,” she answered. “It’s all in Dugdale. Except
about his coming to life again.”

“It’s his turning up again as a solicitor that will be your
difficulty,” Jim suggested. “If he’d come back as a curate----”

“It wouldn’t have been true,” she interrupted. “It was the church that
ruled the land in those days. Now it is the men of business. He’s going
to make the valley into one great town and do away with slums and
poverty. It was he who made the docks and brought the sea, and linked
up the railway. He comes back to rule and guide--to make the land
fruitful, in the new way; and the people prosperous.”

“And himself a millionaire, with a seat in the House of Lords,” quoted
her brother.

“So did the old churchmen,” she answered. “As Anthony, the monk, he
would have become a cardinal with his palaces and revenues. A great man
is entitled to his just wages.”

Jim had risen, he was pacing the room.

“There’ll be the devil to pay,” he said. “The poor old guv’nor will go
off his head. Aunt Mary will go off her head. They’ll all go off their
heads. I shall have to exchange and go out to India.”

The colour had gone out of her cheeks.

“Why should they punish you for me?” she asked.

“Because it’s the law of the world,” he explained. “They’ve got to kick
somebody. When he’s a millionaire with his seat in the House of Lords
they’ll forgive us.”

“You’re making me feel pretty mean and selfish,” she said.

“Love is selfish,” he answered. “Don’t see how you can help that.” He
halted suddenly in front of her. “You do love him?” he demanded. “You
are not afraid to be selfish? You are going to let me down. You are
going to hurt the guv’nor, very seriously. He hasn’t had much luck in
life. This is going to be the last blow. You are willing to inflict
it.”

The tears were in her eyes.

“I must,” she answered.

He took her by the shoulders.

“If you had hesitated,” he said, “I should have known it wasn’t the
real thing. You are under orders, kid, and can’t help yourself.

“You needn’t worry about me,” he said. “I’d have hated taking their
confounded charity in any case. We must let the dad down as gently
as possible. Leave it to me to break it to him. He must be used to
disappointments, poor old buffer. Thank the Lord we haven’t got to
worry about the mater. Tell her all that about Monk Anthony. She will
love all that. Never mind the millionaire business and the House of
Lords.”

Lady Coomber was a curiously shy, gentlelady, somewhat of an enigma to
those who did not know her history; they included her two children.
Her name had been Edith Trent. She came of old Virginia stock. Harry
Coomber, then a clerk in the British Embassy, had met her in Washington
where she was living with friends, both her parents being dead. They
had fallen in love with one another, and the marriage was within a day
or two of taking place when the girl suddenly disappeared.

Young Harry, making use of all the influence he could obtain, succeeded
in tracing her. She was living in the negro quarter of New Orleans,
earning her living as a school teacher. She had discovered on evidence
that had seemed to her to admit of no doubt that her grandmother
had been a slave. It was difficult to believe. She was a beautiful,
olive-skinned girl with wavy, dark brown hair and finely chiselled
features. Young Harry Coomber, madly in love with her, had tried to
persuade her that even if true it need not separate them. Outside
America it would not matter. He would take her abroad or return with
her to England. His entreaties were unavailing. She regarded herself
as unclean. She had been bred to all the Southern American’s hatred
and horror of the negro race. Among her people the slightest taint of
the “tar brush” was sufficient to condemn man or woman to life-long
ostracism. She would have inflicted the same fate upon another, and a
sense of justice compelled her not to shirk the punishment in her own
case.

Five years later a circumstance came to light that proved the story
false, and the long-delayed marriage took place quietly at the
Sheriff’s office of a small town in Pennsylvania.

But the memory of those five years of her life, passed in what to her
had been a living grave, had changed her whole character. An outcast
among outcasts, she had drunk to the dregs their cup of terror and
humiliation. In that city of shame, out of which for five years she had
never once emerged, she had met men and women like herself: refined,
cultured, educated. She had shared their long-drawn martyrdom. For her,
the veil had been lifted from their tortured souls.

As a girl, she had been proud, haughty, exacting. It had been part of
her charm. She came back to life a timid, gentle, sorrowful woman with
a pity that would remain with her to the end for all creatures that
suffered.

Left to herself, she would have joined some band of workers, as
missionary, nurse or teacher--as servant in any capacity. It would
not have mattered to her what so that she could have felt she was
doing something towards lessening the world’s pain. She had yielded to
her lover’s insistence from a sense of duty, persuaded that she owed
herself to him for his faithfulness and patience. The marriage had
brought disappointment to them both. She had hoped some opportunity
would be afforded her of satisfying her craving to be of help if only
to some few in some small corner of the earth. But her husband’s
straitened means had always kept her confined to the bare struggle for
existence. Another, in her place, might have been able to give at least
sympathy and kindliness. But she was a woman broken in spirit. All her
strength went out in her endeavours to be a good wife and mother. And
even here she failed. She was of no assistance to her husband, as she
knew. For business she had neither heart nor head. In society she was
silent and colourless. On her husband’s accession to the baronetcy
and what was left of the estate, she had made a last effort to play
her part. But the solitary years on the ranch had tended to increase
her shyness, and secretly she was glad of the need for economy that
compelled them to live abroad more or less in seclusion. The one joy
she had was in her love of birds. To gather them about her, feed them,
protect them by cunning means against their host of enemies, had become
the business of her life. Even in the days of poverty she had been
able to do that. She had come to love The Abbey even in the short time
they had occupied it. She had made of its neglected gardens a bird
sanctuary. Rare species, hunted and persecuted elsewhere, had found
there a shelter. At early morning and late evening her little grey-clad
figure could be seen stealing softly among the deep yew hedges and
the tangled shrubberies that she would not have disturbed. One could
always tell her whereabouts by the fluttering of wings above her in the
air--the babel of sweet voices that heralded her coming.

Her children had never been told her story. She had exacted that as
a promise. Though her reason had been satisfied that the rumour told
against her had been false, the haunting fear that it yet might be
true remained with her. She would not have it passed on to them lest
it should shadow their lives as it had darkened hers. Rather than that
she was content that they should grow up wondering at the difference
between her and other mothers, at her lack of interest in their
youthful successes and ambitions; at her strange aloofness from the
things that excited their fears and hopes.

As Jim had said, Eleanor’s marrying a blacksmith’s son would not
trouble her. The story of Monk Anthony she would love. The wrong done
to him would probably bring tears into the still childish eyes. The
prophecy of his millions and his seat in the House of Lords would not
interest her.




CHAPTER XIII


They were married abroad as it happened. Jim had exchanged; but his
regiment, before going on to India, had been appointed to the garrison
at Malta. There the family had joined him for the winter.

Fate had spared Sir Harry his last disappointment in life. Jim had not
told him about Eleanor. There was no hurry. It could be done at any
time. And he had died, after a few days illness, early in the spring.
He had been busy, unknown to the others, fixing up with his sister Mary
for Eleanor to come out in London during the season, and had built
great hopes upon the result. Thus, so far as that matter was concerned,
the poor old gentleman had died happy. Eleanor and her mother stopped
on at a little place up in the hills. Anthony came out at the end of
the summer; and they had been married in the English church. It was
arranged that Lady Coomber should remain at Malta till Jim left for
India; it might be the next year or the year after. Then she would
come back to England and live with them at The Abbey. Anthony had not
hoped to be able to take Eleanor back to The Abbey, but the summer
had brought him unusual good fortune. As a matter of fact, everything
seemed to be prospering with him just now. He was getting nervous about
it, wondering how long it would last. He was glad that he had been able
to pay Jim a good price for the place; beyond that, when everything was
cleared up and Lady Coomber’s annuity provided for, there would not be
much left.

Mrs. Strong’nth’arm would not come to live at The Abbey, though Eleanor
was anxious that she should and tried to persuade her. Whether she
thought Eleanor did not really want her or whether the reasons she gave
him were genuine Anthony could not be sure.

“I should be wandering, without knowing it, into the kitchen,” she
explained; “or be jumping up suddenly to answer a bell. Or maybe,”
she added with a smile, “I’d be slipping out of the back door of an
evening to the little gate behind the stables, and thinking I saw
your father under the shadow of the elms, where he used to be always
waiting for me. I’ll be happier in the old square. There are no ghosts
there--leastways, not for my eyes to see.”

Besides, there was his aunt to be considered. He had thought that she
might find a home with one or another of her chapel friends. But Mrs.
Newt had fallen away from grace, as it was termed, and was no longer
in touch with her former circle. She had given back her fine tombstone
to old Batson the stonemason who, not knowing what else to do with it,
had used it to replace a broken doorstep leading to his office. She had
come to picture her safe arrival at the gates of Endless Bliss with
less complacency. She no longer felt sure of her welcome.

“Don’t see what I’ve done to deserve it,” she said. “All that I’ve ever
tried to do has been to make myself comfortable in this world and to
take good care, as I thought, to be on the right road for the next. I
used to think it all depended upon faith: that all you had to do was to
believe. But your poor uncle used to say it sounded a bit too cheap to
be true. And if he was right and the Lord demands works, guess I’ll cut
a poor figure.”

The idea had come to her to replace the optimism of her discarded
tombstone by a simple statement of facts with underneath: “Lord be
merciful to me, a sinner.” But the head sexton, on being consulted as a
friend, had objected to the quotation as one calculated to let down the
tone of the cemetery, and had urged something less committal.

So the two old ladies remained at Bruton Square, keeping for themselves
the basement and the three small rooms at the top. Anthony added an
extra kitchen and let the rest of the house to a Mr. Arnold Landripp,
an architect. He had for some years been occupying the two large
schoolrooms as an office. He was a widower. His daughter, who had been
at school in the south of England and afterwards at University College,
had now joined him. She was aged about twenty, and was said to be a
“high-brow.” The term was just coming into use. She was a tall, pale
girl with coal black eyes. She wore her hair brushed back from her
forehead and, in secret, smoked cigarettes, it was rumoured.

Betty and her father lived practically abroad. They had taken a flat in
Florence and had let The Priory furnished to a cousin of Mr. Mowbray
who owned the big steel works at Shawley, half-way up the valley.

Anthony had been generous over the sharing of profits; and Mr. Mowbray
had expressed himself as more than satisfied.

“I was running the business on to the rocks,” he confessed. “There
wouldn’t have been much left for Betty. As it is, I shall die with an
easy mind, thanks to you.”

He held out his hand. He and Anthony had been having a general talk
in the great room with its three domed windows that had been Mr.
Mowbray’s private office and was now Anthony’s. He and Betty would be
leaving early the next morning on their return to Italy. He hesitated a
moment, still holding Anthony’s hand, and then spoke again.

“I thought at one time,” he said, “that it might have been a closer
relationship than that of mere partners. But she’s a strange girl. I
don’t expect she ever will marry. I fancy I frightened her off it.” He
laughed. “She knew that I loved her mother with as great a love as any
woman could hope for. But it didn’t save me from making her life one of
sorrow.

“Do you know what’s wrong with the Apostles Creed?” he said. “They’ve
left out the devil. Don’t you make the mistake, my lad, of not
believing in him. He doesn’t want us to believe in him. He wants us to
believe that he is dead, that he never lived, that he’s just an old
wives’ tale. We talk about the still small voice of God. Yes, if we
listen very hard and if it’s all quiet about us, we can hear it. What
about the insistent tireless voice of the other one who whispers to
us day and night, sits beside us at table, creeps with us into bed?
David made a mistake; he should have said, ‘The fear of the devil is
the beginning of wisdom.’ It began in the Garden of Eden. If the Lord
only hadn’t forgot the serpent! It has been the trouble of all the
reformers. They might have accomplished something: if they hadn’t
forgotten the devil. It’s the trouble of every youngster, thinking he
sees his life before him; they all forget the devil.”

Anthony laughed.

“What line of tactics do you suggest for overcoming him?” he asked.

“Haven’t myself had sufficient success to justify my giving advice,”
answered Mr. Mowbray. “All I can warn you is that he takes many shapes.
Sometimes he dresses himself up as a dear old lady and calls himself
Mother Nature. Sometimes he wears a shiny hat and claims to be nothing
more than a plain man of business. Sometimes he comes clothed in glory
and calls himself Love.”

The old gentleman reached for his hat.

“Didn’t expect to find me among the prophets, did you?” he added with a
smile.

He was growing feeble, and Anthony walked back with him to The Priory.
They passed St. Aldys churchyard on their way.

“I’ll just look in,” said Mr. Mowbray, “and say good-bye. I always like
to before I go away.”

Mr. Mowbray had bought many years ago the last three vacant graves in
the churchyard. His wife lay in the centre one and Edward to the right
of her.

They stood there for a while in silence.

“I suppose it’s only my fancy,” said Mr. Mowbray, “but you seem to me
to grow more like Ted every year. I don’t mean in appearance, though
even there I often see a look in your eyes that reminds me of him. But
in other ways. Sometimes I could almost think it was he speaking.”

“I have changed,” said Anthony. “I feel it myself. His death made a
great void in my life. I felt that I had been left with a wound that
would never heal. And then one day the thought came to me--it can
hardly be called a thought. I heard his very voice speaking to me,
with just that little note of irritation in it that always came to him
when he was arguing and got excited. ‘I am not dead,’ he said. ‘How
foolishly you are talking. How can I be dead while you are thinking of
me--while you still love me and are wanting me. Who wants the dead? It
is because you know I live, and that I love you, and always shall, that
you want me. I am not dead. I am with you.’”

“Yes,” said Mowbray after a little pause, “he loved you very dearly. I
was puzzled at first because I thought you so opposite to one another.
But now I know that it was my mistake.”

They did not talk during the short remainder of their walk. At the gate
of The Priory the old gentleman stopped and turned.

“Kiss me, Anthony,” he said, “there’s nobody about.”

Anthony did so. It seemed quite natural somehow. He watched Mr. Mowbray
pass up the flagged causeway to the door and then went back to his work.

Betty had been quite frank with him, or so he had thought.

“It’s fortunate we didn’t marry,” she said. “What a muddle it would
have ended in--or else a tragedy. Do you remember that talk we had one
evening?”

“Yes,” he answered. “You said that if you ever married it would be a
man who would ‘like’ you--think of you as a friend, a comrade.”

“I know,” she laughed. “To be candid, I had you in my mind at the
moment. I thought that you would always be so sane--the sort of husband
one could rely upon never to kick over the traces. Curious how little
we know one another.”

“Would you really have been satisfied?” he asked, “when it came to the
point. Would not you have demanded love as your right?”

“I don’t think so,” she answered, musing. “I suppose the explanation
is that a woman’s love is maternal rather than sexual. It is the home
she is thinking of more than the lover. Of course, I don’t mean in
every case. There are women for whom their exists one particular He, or
no other. But I fancy they are rare.”

“I wonder sometimes,” he said, “what would have happened to me if I’d
never met her. I suppose I should have gone on being quite happy and
contented.”

“There are finer things than happiness,” she answered.

A child was born to them late in the year. Anthony had never seen
a baby before, not at close quarters. In his secret heart, he was
disappointed that it was not more beautiful. But as the days went by it
seemed to him that this defect was passing away. He judged it to be a
very serious baby. It had large round serious eyes. Even its smile was
thoughtful. They called it John Anthony.

The elder Mrs. Strong’nth’arm resented the carriage being sent down
for her. She said she wasn’t so old that she could not walk a few
miles to see her own grandson. Both she and Eleanor agreed that he
was going to be like Anthony. His odd ways, it was, that so strongly
reminded the elder Mrs. Strong’nth’arm of his father at the same age.
They came together over John Anthony, the elder and the younger Mrs.
Strong’nth’arm.

“It’s her artfulness,” had argued the elder Mrs. Strong’nth’arm to
herself at first; “pretending to want my advice and hanging upon my
words; while all the time, I reckon, she’s laughing at me.”

But the next day or the day after she would come again to answer
delightedly the hundred questions put to her--to advise, discuss, to
gossip and to laugh--to remember on her way home that she had kissed
the girl, promising to come again soon.

Returning late one afternoon she met Anthony on the moor.

“I’ve left her going to sleep,” she said. “Don’t disturb her. She
doesn’t rest herself sufficiently. I’ve been talking to her about it.

“I’m getting to like her,” she confessed shamefacedly. “She isn’t as
bad as I thought her.”

He laughed, putting an arm about her.

“You’ll end by loving her,” he said. “You won’t be able to help it.”

“It’ll depend upon you, lad,” she answered. “So long as your good is
her good I shall be content.”

She kissed him good night for it was growing dusk. Neither he nor
Eleanor had ever been able to persuade her to stay the night. With the
nursery, which had been the former Lady Coomber’s dressing-room, she
was familiar, having been one of the housemaids. But the big rooms on
the ground floor overawed her. She never would enter by the great door,
but always by a small side entrance leading to the house-keeper’s room.
Eleanor had given instructions that it should always be left open.

He walked on slowly after he had left his mother. There, where the sun
was sinking behind the distant elms, she lay sleeping. At the bend
of the road was the old white thorn that had witnessed their first
kiss. Reaching it he looked round stealthily and, seeing no one, flung
himself upon the ground and, stretching out his arms, pressed his lips
to the sweet-smelling earth.

He laughed as he rose to his feet. These lovers’ rhapsodies he had
once thought idle nonsense! They were true. Going through fire and
water--dying for her, worshipping the ground she trod on. This dear
moorland with its lonely farmsteads and its scattered cots; its old
folks with their furrowed faces, its little children with shy wondering
eyes; its sandy hollows where the coneys frisked at twilight; its
hidden dells of fern and bracken where the primroses first blossomed;
its high banks beneath the birches where the red fox had his dwelling;
its deep woods, bird-haunted: always he would love it, for her sake.

He turned and looked back and down the winding road. The noisome town
half-hidden by its pall of smoke lay stretched beneath him, a few faint
lights twinkling from out the gloom. There too her feet had trod.
Its long sad streets with their weary white-faced people; its foul,
neglected places where the children played with dirt. This city of
maimed souls and stunted bodies! It must be cleansed, purified--made
worthy for her feet to pass. It should be his life’s work, his gift to
his beloved.




CHAPTER XIV


Lady Coomber joined them in the spring. Jim’s regiment had been
detained at Malta longer than had been anticipated. Her presence passed
hardly noticed in the house. Anthony had seen to it that her little
pensioners, the birds, had been well cared for, they began to gather
round her the first moment that they saw her, as if they had been
waiting for her, hoping for her return. She herself could not explain
her secret. She had only to stretch out her hand for them to come to
her. She took more interest in the child than Eleanor had expected. She
stole him away one morning, and was laughing when she brought him back.
She had shown him to her birds and they had welcomed him with much
chirruping and fluttering; and after that, whenever he saw her with her
basket on her arm, he would stretch out his arms to her for her to take
him with her.

Another child was born to them in the winter. They called him after
Eleanor’s brother Jim; and later came a girl. They called her Norah.
And then Eleanor fell ill. Anthony was terror-stricken. He had never
been able to accept the popular idea of God as a sort of kindly
magician to whom appeal might be made for miraculous benefits in
exchange for praise and adulation--who would turn aside sickness,
stay death’s hand in response for importunity. His common sense had
revolted against it. But suddenly his reasoning faculties seemed to
have deserted him. Had he been living in the Middle Ages he would
have offered God a pilgrimage or a church. As it was, he undertook to
start without further delay his various schemes to benefit the poor of
Millsborough. He would set to work at once upon those model-dwellings.
It was always easy for him now to find financial backing for his plans.
He remembered Betty’s argument: “I wouldn’t have anything started that
couldn’t be made to pay its own way in the long run. If it can’t do
that it isn’t real. It isn’t going to last.” She was right. As a sound
business proposition, the thing would live and grow. It was justice not
charity that the world stood most in need of. He worked it out. For
the rent these slum landlords were exacting for insanitary hovels the
workers could be housed in decent flats. Eleanor’s illness had been
pronounced dangerous. No time was to be lost. The ground was bought and
cleared. Landripp, the architect, threw himself into his labours with
enthusiasm.

Landripp belonged to the new school of materialists. His religion
was the happiness of humanity. Man to him was a mere chance product
of the earth’s crust, evolved in common with all other living
things by chemical process. With the cooling of the earth--or may
be its over-heating, it really did not matter which--the race would
disappear--be buried, together with the history of its transient
passing, beneath the eternal silences. Its grave might still roll
on--to shape itself anew, to form out of its changed gases another race
that in some future æon might be interested in examining the excavated
evidences of a former zoological period.

Meanwhile the thing to do was to make man as happy as possible for so
long as he lasted. This could best be accomplished by developing his
sense of brotherhood out of which would be born justice and good will.
Man was a gregarious animal. For his happiness he depended as much
upon his fellows as upon his own exertions. The misery and suffering
of any always, sooner or later, resulted in evil to the whole body. In
society, as it had come to be constituted, the happiness of all was
as much a practical necessity as was the health of all. For its own
sake, a civilized community could no more disregard equity than it dare
tolerate an imperfect drainage system. If the city was to be healthy
and happy it must be seen to that each individual citizen was healthy
and happy. The pursuit of happiness for ourselves depended upon our
making others happy. It was for this purpose that the moral law had
developed itself within us. So soon as the moral law within us came
to be acknowledged as the only safe guide to all our actions, so soon
would Man’s road to happiness lie clear before him.

That something not material, that something impossible to be defined
in material terms had somehow entered into the scheme, Mr. Landripp
was forced to admit. In discussion, he dismissed it--this unknown
quantity--as “superfluous energy.” But to himself the answer was
not satisfactory. By this reasoning the superfluous became the
indispensible, which was absurd. There was his own favourite phrase:
The preservation of the species; the moral law within, compelling
all creatures to sacrifice themselves for the good of their progeny.
To Mr. Arnold S. Landripp, aware of his indebtedness for his own
existence to the uninterrupted working of this law; aware that his own
paternal affections had for their object the decoying of Mr. Arnold S.
Landripp into guarding and cherishing and providing for the future of
Miss Emily Landripp; who in her turn would rejoice in labour for her
children, and so ad infinitum, the phrase might have significance. His
reason, perceiving the necessity of the law, justified its obligations.

But those others? Unpleasant-looking insects--myriads of them--who
wear themselves out for no other purpose than to leave behind them
an egg, the hatching of which they will not live to see. Why toil in
darkness? Why not spend their few brief hours of existence basking in
their beloved sunshine? What to them the future of the Hymenoptera? The
mother bird with outstretched wings above the burning nest, content to
die herself if only she may hope to save her young. Natural affection,
necessary for the preservation of the species. Whence comes it? Whence
the origin of this blind love--this blind embracing of pain that an
unknown cause may triumph.

Or take the case of Mr. Arnold S. Landripp’s own particular family.
That hairy ancestor, fear-haunted, hunger-driven, fighting against
monstrous odds to win a scanty living for himself. Why burden himself
still further with a squalling brood that Mr. Arnold S. Landripp may
eventually evolve? Why not knock them all on the head and eat the pig
himself? Who whispered to him of the men of thought and knowledge who
should one day come, among whom Mr. Arnold S. Landripp, flesh of his
flesh and bone of his bone, should mingle and have his being?

Why does the present Mr. Landripp impair his digestion by working
long into the night that Millsborough slums may be the sooner swept
away and room be made in Millsborough town for the building of decent
dwellings for Mr. Landripp’s poorer brethren? The benefiting of future
generations! The preservation and improvement of the species? To what
end? What sensible man can wax enthusiastic concerning the progress of
a race whose final goal is a forgotten grave beneath the debris of a
derelict planet.

To Mr. Landripp came also the reflection that a happiness that is not
and cannot by its nature be confined to the individual, but is a part
of the happiness of all; that can be marred by a withered flower and
deepened by contemplation of the stars must, of necessity, have kinship
with the Universal. That a happiness, the seeds of which must have been
coeval with creation, that is not bounded by death must, of necessity,
be linked with the Eternal.

Working together of an evening upon the plans for the new dwellings,
Anthony and he would often break off to pursue the argument. Landripp
would admit that his own religion failed to answer all his questions.
But Anthony’s religion contented him still less. Why should a just
God, to whom all things were possible, have made man a creature of
“low intelligence and evil instincts,” leaving him to welter through
the ages amid cruelty, blood and lust, instead of fashioning him from
the beginning a fit and proper heir for the kingdom of eternity? That
he might work out his own salvation! That a few scattered fortunates,
less predisposed to evil than their fellows or possessed of greater
powers of resistance, might struggle out of the mire--enter into their
inheritance: the great bulk cursed from their birth, be left to sink
into destruction. The Christ legend he found himself unable to accept.
If true, then God was fallible, His omniscience a myth--a God who made
mistakes and sought to rectify them. Even so, He had not succeeded.
The number of true Christians--the number of those who sought to live
according to Christ’s teaching were fewer today than under the reign
of the Cæsars. During the Middle Ages the dying embers of Christianity
had burnt up anew. Saint Francis had insisted upon the necessity of
poverty, of love--had preached the brotherhood of all things living.
Men and women in increasing numbers had for a brief period accepted
Christ not as their scapegoat but as their leader. There had been men
like Millsborough’s own Saint Aldys--a successful business man, as
business was understood in his day--who on his conversion had offered
to the service of God not ten per cent. of his booty but his whole
life. Any successful business man of today who attempted to follow his
example would be certified by the family doctor as fit candidate for
the lunatic asylum. Two thousand years after Christ’s death one man,
so far as knowledge went, the Russian writer Tolstoy, had made serious
attempt to live the life commanded by Christ. And all Christendom stood
staring at him in stupefied amazement. If Christ had been God’s scheme
for the reformation of a race that He Himself had created prone to
evil then it had tragically failed. Christianity, a feeble flame from
the beginning, had died out, leaving the world darker, its last hope
extinguished.

They had been working long into the short June night. Landripp had
drawn back the curtains and thrown open the window. There came from the
east a faint pale dawn.

“There is a God I could believe in, worship and work for,” he said.
“Not the builder of the heaven and of the earth, who made the stars
also. Such there may be. The watch presupposes the watchmaker. I grant
all that. But such is outside my conception--a force, a law, whatever
it may be, existing before the beginning of Time, having its abiding
place beyond Space. The thing is too unhuman ever to be understood by
man. The God I could love and serve is something lesser and yet perhaps
greater than such.”

He turned from the window and leaning against the mantelpiece continued:

“There is a story by Jean Paul Richter, I think. I read the book when I
was a student in Germany. There was rather a fine idea in it: at least
so it seemed to me. The man in the story dies and beyond the grave he
meets Christ. And the Christ is still sad and troubled. The man asks
why, and Christ confesses to him. He has been looking for God and
cannot find Him. And the man comforts Him. Together they will seek God,
and will yet find Him. I think it was a dream, I am not sure. It is the
dream of the world, I suppose. Personally I have given up the search,
thinking it hopeless. But I am not sure. Christ’s God I could believe
in, could accept. He is the God--the genius, if you prefer the word,
of the human race. He is seeking--still seeking to make man in His own
image. He has given man thought, consciousness, a soul. It has been
slow work and He is still only at the beginning of His labours. He is
the spirit of love. It is by love, working for its kind, working for
its species, that man has evolved. It is only by love of his kind, of
his species, that man can hope to raise himself still further. He is no
God of lightnings and of thunders. The moral law within us, the voice
of pity, of justice is His only means of helping us. The Manichæans
believed that Mankind was devil created. The evidence is certainly in
their favour. The God that I am seeking is not the Omnipotent Master of
the universe who could in the twinkling of an eye reshape man to His
will. But a spirit, fighting against powerful foes, whom I can help or
hinder--the spirit of love, knocking softly without ceasing at the door
of a deaf world. The wonder of Christ is that He was the first man to
perceive the nature of God. The gods that the world had worshipped up
till then--that the world still worships--are the gods man has made in
his own image: gods glorying in their strength and power, clamouring
for worship, insisting on their ‘rights’; gods armed with punishments
and rewards. Christ was the first man who conceived of God as the
spirit of love, of service, a fellow labourer with man for the saving
of the world.”

Anthony was still seated at the long table, facing the light.

“May it not be that you have found Him?” he said. “May He not be the
God we are all seeking?”

Landripp gave a short laugh.

“He wouldn’t be popular,” he answered. “Not from Him would Job have
obtained those fourteen thousand sheep and six thousand camels, and
a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand she asses as a reward for his
patience. ‘The God from whom all blessings flow,’ that is the God man
will praise and worship. The God I am seeking asks, not gives.”

The plans were finished; the builders got to work. On the very day
of the laying of the foundation-stone the doctors pronounced Eleanor
out of danger. Anthony forgot his talks with Landripp. God had heard
his prayer and had accepted his offering. He would continue to love
and serve Him, and surely goodness and mercy would follow him all
the days of his life. One of the minor steel foundries happened to
be on the market. He obtained control and re-established it on a new
profit-sharing principle that he had carefully worked out. His system
would win through by reason of its practicability; the long warfare
between capital and labour end in peace. His business genius should
not be only for himself. God also should be benefited. He got together
a small company for the opening of co-operative shops, where the poor
should be able to purchase at fair prices. There should be no end of
his activities for God.

Eleanor came back to him more beautiful, it seemed to him, than she had
ever been. They walked together, hand in hand, on the moor. She wanted
to show him how strong she was. And coming to the old white thorn at
the parting of the ways, she had raised her face to his; and he had
drawn her to him and their lips had met, as if it had been for the
first time.

She would be unable to bear more children, but that did not trouble
them. Little Jim and Norah grew and waxed strong and healthy. Norah
promised to be the living image of her mother. She had her mother’s
faults and failings that Anthony so loved: her mother’s wilfulness with
just that look of regal displeasure when any one offended or opposed
her. But also with suggestion of her mother’s graciousness and kindness.

Jim, likewise, took after the Coomber family. He had his uncle’s
laughing eyes and all his obstinacy, so Eleanor declared. He was full
of mischief, but had coaxing ways and was the idol of the servants’
hall.

John was more of the dreamer. Lady Coomber had taught him to read. She
had grown strangely fond of the child. In summertime they would take
their books into the garden. They had green hiding-places known only to
themselves. And in winter they had their “cave” behind the great carved
screen in the library.

As time went by, Eleanor inclined more towards the two younger
children. They were full of life and frolic, and were always wanting
to do things. But Anthony’s heart yearned more towards John, his
first-born.




CHAPTER XV


A God needing man’s help, unable without it to accomplish His purpose.
A God calling to man as Christ beckoned to His disciples to follow
him, forsaking all, to suffer and to labour with Him. The thought had
taken hold of him from the beginning: that summer’s night when he and
Landripp had talked together, until the dawn had drawn a long thin line
of light between the window curtains.

And then had come Eleanor’s sudden recovery, when he had almost given
up hope, on the very day of the laying of the foundation-stone of the
new model dwellings; and it had seemed to him that God had chosen this
means of revealing Himself. The God he had been taught. The God of his
fathers. Who answered prayers, accepted the burnt offering, rewarded
the faithful and believing. What need to seek further? The world was
right. Its wise men and its prophets had discovered the true God. A
God who made covenants and bargains with man. Why not? Why should
not God take advantage of Anthony’s love for Eleanor to make a fair
businesslike contract with him? “Help me with these schemes of yours
for the happiness of my people and I will give you back your wife.” But
the reflection would come: Why should an omnipotent God trouble Himself
to bargain with His creatures, take round-about ways for accomplishing
what could be done at once by a movement of His will? A God who could
have made all things perfect from the beginning, beyond the need of
either growth or change. Who had chosen instead to write the history of
the human race in blood and tears. Surely such a God would need man’s
forgiveness, not his worship. The unknown God was yet to seek.

Landripp had been killed during the building of the model dwellings.
It had been his own fault. For a stout, elderly gentleman to run
up and down swaying ladders, to scramble round chimney stacks, and
balance himself on bending planks a hundred feet above the ground was
absurd. There were younger men who could have done all that, who warned
Mr. Landripp of the risks that he was running. He had insisted on
supervising everything himself. The work from its commencement had been
to him a labour of love. He was fearful lest a brick should be ill-laid.

Anthony had a curious feeling of annoyance as he looked upon the
bruised and broken heap of rubbish that had once been his friend.
Landripp had been dead when they picked him up. They had put him on a
stretcher and carried him round to his office. Anthony had heard the
news almost immediately, and had reached Bruton Square as the men were
coming out. The body lay on the big table in the room where he and
Anthony had had their last long talk. The face had not suffered and the
eyes were open. There may have been a lingering consciousness still
behind them for it seemed to Anthony that for an instant they smiled at
him. And then suddenly the light went out of them.

It was tremendously vexing. He had been looking forward to renewal
of their talks. There was so much he wanted to have said to him:
questions he had meant to put to him; thoughts of his own, that he had
intended to discuss with him. Where was he? Where had he got to? It
was ridiculous to argue that Landripp himself--the mind and thought
of him--had been annihilated by coming into contact with a steel
girder. Not even a cabbage dies. All that can happen to it is for it
to be resolved into its primary elements to be reborn again. This poor
bruised body lying where the busy brain had been at work only an hour
before, even that would live as long as the solar system continued.
Its decay would only mean its transformation. Landripp himself--the
spirit that came and went--could not even have been hurt. The machinery
through which it worked was shattered. Anthony could not even feel
sorry for him. He was angry with him that he had not been more careful
of the machinery.

Landripp had been the first person with whom he had ever discussed
religion. As a young man he had once or twice ventured the theme.
But the result had only reminded him of his childish experiments
in the same direction. At once, most people shrivelled up as if he
had suggested an indelicate topic, not to be countenanced in polite
society. Especially were his inquiries discouraged by the clergy of
all denominations. At the first mention of the subject they had always
shown signs of distress--had always given to him the impression that
they were seeking to guard a trade secret. Landripp had opened his
mind to the conception of a religion he could understand and accept.
God all-powerful and glorious; the great omnipotent Being who had made
and ordered all things! What could man do for such? As well might the
clay ask how it could show its gratitude to the potter. To praise
God, to adore Him, to fall down before Him, to worship Him, what
use could that be to Him? That the creatures He had made should be
everlastingly grovelling before Him, proclaiming their own nothingness
and His magnificence: it was to imagine God on a par with an Oriental
despot. To obey Him? He had no need of our obedience. All things had
been ordered. Our obedience or disobedience could make no difference
to Him. It had been foreseen--fore-ordained from the beginning. Even
forgetting this--persuading ourselves that some measure of freewill had
been conferred upon us, it was only for our own benefit. Obey and be
rewarded, disobey and be punished. We were but creatures of His breath,
our souls the puppets of His will. What was left to man but to endure?
Even his endurance bestowed upon him for that purpose. It was death not
life that God--if such were God--had breathed into man’s nostrils.

But God the champion, the saviour of man. God the tireless lover of
man, seeking to woo him into ever nobler ways. God the great dreamer,
who out of death and chaos in the beginning had seen love; who beyond
life’s hate and strife still saw the far-off hope, and called to men
to follow Him. God the dear comrade, the everlasting friend, God the
helper, the King. If one could find Him?

Landripp had left his daughter a few thousands; and she had decided to
open a school again at Bruton Square, in the rooms that her father had
used for his offices. Inheriting his conscientiousness she had entered
a training college to qualify herself as a teacher. Towards the end,
quite a friendship had existed between Mrs. Strong’nth’arm and the
Landripps. With leisure and freedom from everlasting worry her native
peasant wit had blossomed forth and grown; and Landripp had found her
a wise talker. She had become too feeble for the long walk up to The
Abbey, but was frightened of the carriage with its prancing horses.
So often Eleanor would send little John down to spend the afternoon
with her. Old Mrs. Newt was dead; and, save for a little maid, she was
alone in the house. She made no claim with regard to the two younger
children. It was only about John she was jealous.

One day she took the child to see the house in Platt’s Lane where
his father had been born. Old Witlock had finished his tinkering.
His half-witted son Matthew lived there by himself. No one else ever
entered it. Matthew cooked his own meals and kept it scrupulously
clean. Most of the twenty-four hours he spent in the workshop. His
skill and honesty brought him more jobs than he needed, but he
preferred to remain single-handed. The workshop door was never closed.
All day, summer and winter, so long as Matthew was there working it
remained wide open. At night Matthew slept there in a corner sheltered
from the wind, and then it would be kept half-closed but so that any
one who wished could enter. He would never answer questions as to this
odd whim of his, and his neighbours had ceased thinking about it. They
took a great fancy to one another, Matthew and the child. Old Mrs.
Strong’nth’arm would sometimes leave him there, and his father would
call for him on the way home. He had taken for his own the stool on
which wandering Peter had many years ago carved the King of the Gnomes.
And there he would sit by the hour swinging his little legs, discussing
things in general with Matthew while he worked. At the child’s request
Anthony had bought the house and workshop so that Matthew might never
fear being turned out.

There grew up in the child a strange liking for this dismal quarter,
or rather three-quarters of the town of Millsborough that lay around
Platt’s Lane. Often, when his father called for him of an afternoon at
Bruton Square he would plead for a walk in their direction before going
home. He liked the moorland, too, with its bird life and its little
creeping things in brake and cover that crouched so still while one
passed by. There he would shout and scamper; and when he was tired his
father would carry him on his shoulder. But in the long sad streets he
was less talkative.

One day, walking through them, Anthony told him how, long ago, before
the mean streets came, there had been green fields and flowers with a
little river winding its way among the rocks and through deep woods.

“What made the streets come?” the child asked.

Riches had been discovered under the earth, so Anthony explained to
him. Before this great discovery the people of the valley had lived
in little cottages--just peasants, tilling their small farms, tending
their flocks. A few hundred pounds would have bought them all up. Now
it was calculated that the winding Wyndbeck flowed through the richest
valley in all England.

“What are riches?” asked the child. “What do they do?”

Riches, his father explained to him, were what made people well off and
happy.

“I see,” said John. But he evidently did not, as his next question
proved conclusively.

“Then are all the people happy who live here now?” he asked. They had
passed about a score of them during the short time they had walked in
silence. “Why don’t they look it?”

It had to be further explained to John that the riches of the valley
did not belong to the people who lived and died in the valley, who dug
the coal and iron or otherwise handled it. To be quite frank, these
sad-eyed men and women who now dwelt beside the foul black Wyndbeck
were perhaps worse off than their forbears who had dwelt here when the
Wyndbeck flowed through sunlit fields and shady woods, undreaming of
the hidden wealth that lay beneath their careless feet. But to a few
who lived in fine houses, more or less far away, in distant cities, in
pleasant country places. It was these few who had been made well off
and happy by the riches of the valley. The workers of the valley did
not even know the names of these scattered masters of theirs.

He had not meant to put it this way. But little John had continually
chipped in with those direct questions that a child will persist in
asking. And, after all, it was the truth.

Besides, as he went on to explain still further to little John, they
were not all unhappy, these dirty, grimy, dull-eyed men and women in
their ugly clothes living in ugly houses in long ugly streets under a
sky that rained soot. Some of them earned high wages--had, considering
their needs, money to burn, as the saying was.

“I see,” said John again. It was an irritating habit of his, to preface
awkward questions with, I see. “Then does having money make everybody
happy?”

It was on the tip of Anthony’s tongue. He was just about to snap it
out. Little John mustn’t worry his little head about things little
Jacks can’t be expected to understand. Little boys must wait till
they are grown-up, when the answer to all these seemingly difficult
questions will be plain to them. But as he opened his lips to speak
there sprang from the muddy pavement in front of him a little impish
lad dressed in an old pair of his father’s trousers, cut down to fit
him, so that the baggy part instead of being about the knee was round
his ankles--a little puzzled lad who in his day had likewise plagued
poor grown-up folk with questions it might have been the better for
them had they tried to answer.

“No, John,” he answered. “It doesn’t make them happy. I wonder myself
sometimes what’s the good of it. How can they be happy even if they do
earn big money, a few of them. The hideousness, the vileness that is
all around them. What else can it breed but a sordid joyless race.
They spend their money on things stupid and gross. What else can you
expect of them. You bring a child up in the gutter and he learns to
play with mud, and likes it.”

They were walking where the streets crept up the hillside. Over a waste
space where dust and ashes lay they could see far east and west. The
man halted and flung out his arms.

“The Valley of the Wyndbeck. So they call it on the map. It ought to be
the gutter of the Wyndbeck. One long, foul, reeking gutter where men
and women walk in darkness and the children play with dirt.”

He had forgotten John. The child slipped a hand into his.

“Won’t the fields ever come back?” he asked.

Anthony shook his head. “They’ll never come back,” he said. “Nothing
to do for it, John, but to make the best of things as they are. It
will always be a gutter with mud underneath and smoke overhead, and
poison in its air. We must make it as comfortable a gutter as the laws
of supply and demand will permit. At least we can give them rainproof
roofs and sound floors and scientific drainage, and baths where they
can wash the everlasting dirt out of their pores before it becomes a
part of their skin.”

From where they were they could see the new model dwellings towering
high above the maze of roofs around them.

“We’ll build them a theatre, John. They shall have poetry and music.
We’ll plan them recreation grounds where the children can run and play.
We’ll have a picture gallery and a big bright hall where they can
dance.”

He broke off suddenly. “Oh, Lord, as if it hadn’t all been tried,” he
groaned. “Two thousand years ago, they thought it might save Rome.
Bread and circuses, that is not going to save the world.”

They had reached, by chance, Platt’s Lane. The door of the workshop
stood open as ever. They could hear the sound of Matthew’s hammer
and see the red glow of the furnace fire. John slipped away from his
father’s side, and going to the open door called to Matthew.

Matthew turned. There was a strange look in his eyes. The child
laughed, and Matthew coming nearer saw who it was.

It was late, so after exchanging just a greeting with Matthew they
walked on. Suddenly John caught his father by the sleeve.

“Do you think he is still alive,” he said, “Christ Jesus?”

Anthony was in a hurry. He had ordered the carriage to wait for them in
Bruton Square.

“What makes you ask?” he said.

“Matthew thinks he is,” explained the child, “and that He still goes
about. That is why he always leaves the door open, so that if Christ
passes by He may see him and call to him.”

Anthony was still worried about the time. He had to see a man on
business before going home. He promised little John they would discuss
the question some other time. But, as it happened, the opportunity
never came.




CHAPTER XVI


There came a day when Betty returned to take up her residence at The
Priory. Since her father’s death she had been travelling. At first she
and Anthony had corresponded regularly. They had discussed religion,
politics, the science of things in general; he telling her of changes
and happenings at home, and she telling him of her discoveries abroad.
She wanted to see everything there was to be seen for herself, and then
seek to make use of her knowledge; she would, of course, write a book.
But after his eldest son’s death, which had happened when the child was
about eight years old, Anthony for a time had not cared to write. Added
to which there were long periods during which Betty had disappeared
into ways untrodden of the postman. Letters had passed between them at
ever-lengthening intervals, dealing so far as Anthony was concerned
chiefly with business matters. It seemed idle writing about himself:
his monotonous prosperity and unclouded domestic happiness. There were
times when he would have been glad of a friend to whom he could have
trusted secrets, but the thread had been broken. Conscious of strange
differences in himself, he could not be sure that Betty likewise had
not altered. Her letters remained friendly, often affectionate, but he
no longer felt he knew her. Indeed there came to him the doubt that he
ever had.

It was on a winter’s afternoon that Anthony, leaving his office, walked
across to The Priory to see her. She had been back about a week, but
Anthony had been away up north on business. She had received him in the
little room above the hall that had always been her particular sanctum.
Mr. Mowbray, when he had let the house furnished to his cousin, had
stipulated that this one room should remain locked. Nothing in it had
been altered. A wood fire was burning in the grate. Betty was standing
in the centre of the room. She came forward to meet him with both hands:

“It’s good to see you again,” she said. “But what have you done to
your hair, lad?” She touched it lightly with her fingers. She pushed
him into the easy chair beside the blazing fire and remained herself
standing.

He laughed. “Oh, we grow grey early in Millsborough,” he said.

He was looking up at her puzzled. “I’ve got it,” he said suddenly.

“Got what?” she laughed.

“The difference in you,” he answered. “You were the elder of us when
I saw you last, and now you are the younger. I don’t mean merely in
appearance.”

“It’s a shame,” she answered gravely. “You’ve been making money for
me to spend. It’s that has made you old. They’re all so old, the
moneymakers. I’ve met so many of them. Haven’t you made enough?”

“Oh, it isn’t that,” he answered. “It gets to be a habit. I shouldn’t
know what else to do with myself now.”

She made him talk about himself. It was difficult at first, there
seemed so little to tell. Jim was at Rugby and was going into the
Guards. His uncle, Sir James, had married, and had three children,
a boy and two girls. But the boy had been thrown from his pony
while learning to ride and was a cripple. So it was up to young
Strong’nth’arm to take over the Coomber tradition. As he would have
plenty of money all would be easy. His uncle was still in India, but
was coming back in the spring. He had been appointed to Aldershot.

Norah was at Cheltenham. The Coomber girls had always gone to
Cheltenham. She had ideas of her own and was anxious herself to cut
school life short and finish her education abroad in Vienna. One of
the disadvantages of being rich was that it separated you from your
children. But for that the boy could have gone to his old friend
Tetteridge. So far as education was concerned, he would have done
better. The girl could have gone to Miss Landripp’s at Bruton Square.
They would have been all together and it would have been jolly.

Eleanor was wonderful. Betty would find her looking hardly a day older
than when she had last seen her.

Betty laughed. “Good for you, lad,” she said. “It means you are still
seeing her through lover’s eyes. It’s seventeen years ago, the date you
are speaking of.”

Anthony could hardly believe it at first, but had to yield to facts.
He still maintained that Eleanor was marvellous. Most women in her
position would have clamoured for fashion and society--would have
filled The Abbey with her swell friends and acquaintances, among whom
Anthony would always have felt himself an outsider--would have insisted
on a town house and a London season, Homburg and the Riviera--all
that sort of thing: leaving Anthony to grind away at the money mill
in Millsborough. That was what his mother had always feared. His
mother had changed her opinion about Eleanor long ago. She had come
to love her. Of course, when Norah came home there would have to be
changes. But by that time it would all fit in. He would be done with
money-making. He had discovered--or, rather, Eleanor had discovered
it for him--that he was a good speaker. She had had to bully him, at
first, into making the attempt; and the result had surprised even her.
He might go into Parliament. Not with any idea of a political career,
but to advocate reforms that he had in his mind. Parliament gave one a
platform. One spoke to the whole country.

Tea had been brought. They were sitting opposite to one another at a
small table near the fire.

“It reminds one of old times,” said Betty. “Do you remember our long
walks and talks together up on the moor, we three. We had to shout to
drown the wind.”

He did not answer immediately. He was looking at a reflection of
himself in a small Venetian mirror on the opposite wall. It came back
to him what old Mr. Mowbray had once said to him, as to his growing
likeness to Ted. There was a suggestion, he could see it himself,
especially about the eyes.

“Yes,” he answered. “I remember. Ted was the dreamer. He dreamed of a
new world. You were for the practical. You wanted improvements made in
the old.”

“Yes,” she answered. “I thought it could be done.”

He shook his head.

“You were wrong,” he said. “We were the dreamers. It was Ted had all
the common sense.”

“Oh, yes, I go on,” he said in answer to her look. “What else is to be
done. There used to be hope in the world. Now one has to pretend to
hope. I hoped model dwellings were going to do away with the slums.
There are miles more slums in Millsborough today than there were ten
years ago; and myself, if I had to choose now I’d prefer the slums. I’d
feel less like being in prison. But we did all we could. We put them in
baths. It was a new idea in Millsborough. The local Press was shocked.
‘Pampering the Proletariat,’ was one of their headlines. They could
have saved their ink. Our bath was used to keep the coals in. If they
didn’t do that, they emptied their slops into it. It saved them the
trouble of walking to the sink. We gave them all the latest sanitary
improvements, and they block the drains by turning the places into
dustbins. And those that don’t, throw their muck out the window. They
don’t want cleanliness and decency. They were born and bred in mud and
the dirt sticks to them; and they bring up their children not to mind
it. And so it will go on. Of course, there are the few. You will find a
few neat homes in the filthiest of streets. But they are lost among the
mass, just as they were before. It has made no permanent difference.
Millsborough is blacker, fouler, viler than it was when we started in
to clean it. Garden suburbs. We began one of those five years ago on
the slopes above Leeford, and already it has its Alsatia where its
disreputables gather together for mutual aid and comfort. What is it
all, but clearing a small space and planting a garden in the middle of
a jungle. Sooner or later the jungle closes in again. Every wind blows
in seeds.

“This profit-sharing. I can see the end of that. They quarrel among
themselves over the sharing. Who shall have the most. Who shall be
forced to accept least. And the strong gather together: it is for them
to dictate the division; and the weaker snarl and curse, but have to
yield. And brother is against brother, and father is against son. And
so the old game of greed and grab begins anew. Co-operative shops. And
the staff is for ever insisting on the prices being raised to their own
kith and kin, so that their wages may be increased out of the profits.
And when I expostulate they talk to me about my own companies and the
fine dividends we earn by charging high prices to our neighbours.” He
laughed.

“You remember Sheepskin,” he went on, “the old vicar? The
Reverend Horace Pendergast has got the job now. He’s a cousin of
Eleanor’s--rattling good preacher. We’re hoping to make him a bishop. I
went to see the old man once, when I was a youngster, to arrange about
my uncle’s funeral, and he threw me in a sermon. I don’t know why--I
wasn’t worrying much about religion in those days--but I can still see
his round, pink, puzzled face and his little fat hands that trembled as
he talked. It was near Christmas time--Christ’s birthday; and all that
he could think about, he told me, were the Christmas bills and how to
meet them. It wasn’t his fault. How can a respectable married man be a
Christian? ‘How can I preach Christ?’--there were tears in his eyes.
‘Christ the outcast, the beggar, the servant of the poor, the bearer of
the Cross.’ That’s what he had started out to preach. The people would
only have laughed at him. He lives in a big house, they would have
said, and keeps four servants and a gig. His sons go to college, and
his wife and daughters wear rich garments. ‘Struggle enough I find it,
Strong’nth’arm,’ he confessed to me. ‘But I ought not to be struggling
to do it. I ought to be down among the people, preaching Christ, not
only with my lips but with my life.’ It isn’t talkers for God, it is
fighters for God that are wanted. Men who are not afraid of the world!”

The daylight had faded. Betty had pushed the table into a corner. They
sat beside the blazing logs.

“Some years ago,” said Betty, “I travelled from San Francisco to Hong
Kong in company with a Chinese gentleman. It was during the off-season,
and half a dozen of us had the saloon to ourselves. There were two
commercial travellers and a young missionary and his wife. By process
of natural selection--at least so I like to believe--Mr. Cheng and
myself chummed on. He was one of the most interesting men I have met,
and I think he liked talking to me. I remember one brilliantly clear
night we were alone together on the deck. I was leaning back in my
chair looking up at the Southern Cross. Suddenly I heard him say that
the great stumbling block in the way of man’s progress was God. Coming
from anybody else the remark would have irritated me; but I knew he
wasn’t trying to be clever; and as he went on to explain himself I
found myself in agreement with him. Man’s idea of God is of some
all-powerful Being who is going to do everything for him. Man has no
need to exert himself; God, moving in mysterious ways, is labouring to
make the world a paradise where man may dwell in peace and happiness.
All man has to do is to trust in God and practise patience. Man if he
took the task in hand for himself could turn this world into a paradise
tomorrow without waiting for God. But it would mean man giving up his
greeds and passions. It is easier to watch and pray. God has promised
man the millenium, in the dim and distant future. Men by agreeing
together could have the millenium ready in time for their own children.
When man at last grasps the fact that there is no God--no God, that is,
in the sense that he imagines--that whatever is going to be done for
him has got to be done by himself, there will be born in man the will
to accomplish his own salvation. It is this idea of man as the mere
creature--the mere puppet of God--powerless to save himself, helpless
to avert his own fate, that through the ages has paralysed man’s
spiritual energies.

“God is within us. We are God. Man’s free will is boundless. His future
is in his own hands. Man has only to control his evil instincts and
heaven is here; Man can conquer himself. Of his own will, he does
so every day. For the purposes of business, of pleasure, of social
intercourse, he puts a curb upon his lusts and passions. It is only
the savage, the criminal that lets them master him. Man is capable of
putting greed and selfishness out of his life. History, a record of
man’s sin and folly, is also a record of man’s power to overcome within
himself the obstacles that stand in the way of his own progress.

“Garibaldi called upon his volunteers to disregard all worldly
allurements, to embrace suffering, wounds and death for the cause of
Italian unity. And the young men flocked to his banners. Let the young
men once grasp that not God but they themselves can win for all mankind
freedom and joy, and an ever-increasing number of them will be willing
to make the necessary sacrifice.

“One man showed them the way. There have, at various times, been born
exceptional men through whom the spirit we call God has been able to
manifest itself, to speak aloud to men. Of all these, your Christ was
perhaps more than any of the others imbued with this spirit of God.
In Christ’s voice we recognize the voice of God. It is the voice we
hear within us, speaking to each of us individually. Christ’s one
commandment: ‘Love one another,’ is the commandment that God has
been whispering to us from the beginning of creation. Out of that
Commandment life sprang. Through that commandment alone can life be
made perfect. Love one another. It would solve every problem that has
plagued mankind since the dawn of the Eocene epoch. It would recall
man’s energies from the barren fields of strife to mutual labour for
the husbandry of all the earth. In the words of your prophet: ‘The
Wilderness be made glad, the desert rejoice and blossom as the rose.’
Why has man persisted in turning a deaf ear to this one supreme
commandment? Why does man persistently refuse to follow the one guide
who would lead him out of all his sorrows? To love is as easy as to
hate. Why does he set himself deliberately to cultivate the one and not
the other? There is no more reason for a French peasant hating a German
farm labourer, for a white man hating a brown man, for a Protestant
hating a Catholic, than for loving him. But our hate we take pains to
nourish, it is a part of our education. We teach it to our children.
At the altar of hate man is willing to make sacrifice; he will give to
his last penny. On the altar of hate the mother will consent to the
slaying of her own first-born. All things that are good come to man
through love. No man denies this. No man but seeks, within the circle
of his own home, to surround himself with love. Life without love is
every man’s fear. To gain and keep love man sacrifices his own ease and
comfort. To love is sweeter than to hate. Man watches himself, lest
by sloth or indifference he should let love die; plans and labours to
strengthen and increase love. If he would, he could love all men. If
man took the same pains to cultivate his will to love that he takes to
cultivate his will to hate, he could change the world.

“Man excuses himself for disregarding Christ’s express commandment by
telling himself that the salvation of the world is God’s affair, not
his. God’s love will make for man’s benefit a new heaven and a new
earth. There is no need for man to bestir himself. While man pursues
his greeds and hatreds God is busy preparing the miracle. One day, man
is to wake up and find, to his joy, that he loves his fellow man; and
the tears of the world will be wiped away. It is not God, it is man
that must accomplish the miracle. It is by man’s own endeavour that he
will be saved; by cleansing himself of hate, by setting himself in all
seriousness to this great business of loving. Until he obeys Christ’s
commandment he shall not enter the promised land.

“I have put it more or less into my own words,” she explained,
“but I have given you the sense of it. He thought the time would
come--perhaps soon--when the thinkers of the world would agree
that civilization had been progressing upon a wrong line--that if
destruction was to be avoided, man must retrace his steps. He thought
that, apart from all else, the mere instinct of self-preservation would
compel the race to turn aside from the pursuit of material welfare
to the more important work of its spiritual development. He did not
expect any conscious or concerted movement. Rather he believed that
men and women in increasing numbers would withdraw themselves from the
world, that they might live lives in conformity with God’s laws. He
was a curious mixture of the religious and the scientific. He often
employed the word God, but could not explain what he meant beyond that
he ‘felt’ him. He held that the only altar at which a reasonable man
could worship was the altar erected by the Greeks: ‘To the Unknown
God.’ Christ he regarded as a Promethean figure who had received the
fire from heaven and brought it down to men. That fire would never be
extinguished. The spirit of Christ still moved about the world. It was
the life force behind what little love still glowed and flickered among
men. One day the smouldering embers would burst into flame.”

Betty put in two or three years at The Priory on and off, occupying
herself chiefly with writing. But the wanderlust had got into her
blood, and her book finished she grew restless.

One day Anthony and Eleanor had dined with her at The Priory. Eleanor
had run away immediately after dinner to attend a committee meeting of
the Children’s Holiday Society of which she was the president. Betty,
she was sure, sympathized sufficiently with the movement to forgive
her. She would be back soon after nine. Betty and Anthony took their
coffee in the library.

“I wanted you both to come tonight,” she explained. “I’ve got into a
habit of acting suddenly when an impulse seizes me. I may wake up any
morning and feel I’ve got to go.”

“Whither?” he asked.

“How much money can I put my hands on within the next few months?” she
asked.

She had warned him that she might be talking business. He mentioned a
pretty considerable sum.

“All earned by the sweat of other people’s brows,” she commented with a
smile.

“You give away a pretty good deal of it,” he reminded her consolingly.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “I am very good. I take from them with one hand
and give them back thirty per cent. of it with the other; that’s
what our charity means. And it doesn’t really help, that’s the
irritating part of it. It’s just the pouring out of a libation to the
God-of-Things-as-they-are. ‘The poor always ye have with you.’”

“I sometimes think,” he said, “that Christ, when he told the young man
to sell all he had and give it to the poor, was thinking rather of the
young man than of the poor. It would have done them but such fleeting
good. But to the young man it meant the difference between slavery
and freedom. To be quit of it all. His horses and his chariots. His
fine houses and his countless herds. His army of cringing servants.
His horde of fawning clients. How could he win life, bound hand and
foot to earth? Not even his soul was his own. It belonged to his great
possessions.”

She was going into central Russia. She had passed through there some
years ago and had happened upon one of its ever recurring famines.
There was talk of another in the coming winter.

“The granary of Europe,” she continued. “I believe we import one-third
of our grain from Russia. And every year the peasants die there of
starvation by the thousands. That year I was there they reckoned a
hundred thousand perished in one valley. They were eating the corpses
of the children. And on my way to St. Petersburg I passed stations
where the corn was rotting by the roadside. The price had fallen and
it wasn’t worth transporting. The devil must get some fun looking down
upon the world.”

He had been standing by the window with his hands in his pockets. It
was still twilight. He swung round suddenly.

“I believe in the Devil,” he said. “I don’t mean the devil that
we sing about--the discontented angel that God has let out at the
end of a chain, that is finally to be destroyed when he has served
God’s purpose. But the eternal spirit of evil that is a part of all
things--that brooded over chaos before God came. He also must be our
father. Hate, cruelty, lust, greed: how else were we born with them?
Would they have come to us from God. Evil also claims us for his
children--is fighting for possession of us, is calling to us to labour
with him, to turn the world into hell. Hate one another. Do ill to one
another. That is his commandment. Which does the world obey: God or the
Devil? Does hate or love rule the world? Whom does the world honour?
The greedy man, the selfish man, the man who ‘gets on’ by trampling
on his fellows. Who are the world’s leaders? The makers of war, the
preachers of hate. Who dares to follow Christ--to fight for God. How
many? That’s the trouble of it. ‘If any man will come after me, let him
deny himself and take up his cross.’ Poverty, self-denial, contempt,
loneliness. We are afraid.”

He took a cigar from his case.

“It could be done,” he said. “That’s the tragedy of it. The victory
won for God: if only a few of us had the courage. There are thousands
of men and women in this England of ours alone who believe--who are
convinced that the only hope of the world lies in our following the
teaching of Christ. If these thousands of men and women were to say,
each to himself, ‘I will no longer sin against the light that is
within me. Whatever others may do--whatever the difficulties, the
privations to myself may be, I will lead Christ’s life, I will obey his
commandments.’ If here in Millsborough there were, say, only a handful
of men and women known to be trying to lead Christ’s life, some of them
rich men who had given up their possessions, feeling that so long as
there is poverty in the world no man who loves his neighbour as himself
can afford to be rich. Others, poor men and women content to remain
poor, knowing that to gain riches one must serve Mammon and not God. A
handful of men and women, scattered, silent, putting themselves forward
only when some work for Christ was to be done. A handful of men and
women labouring in quietness and in confidence to prepare the way for
God: teaching their children new desires, new ambitions.

“Some would fail. But others would succeed. More would follow. It
needs only a few to set the example. It would appeal to all generous
men and women, to the young. Fighting for God. Fighting with God to
save the world. Not to save oneself--not to get one’s own sweet self
into heaven. That is the mistake that has been made: Appealing to
the self that is in man, instead of to the Christ that is in man.
‘Believe and thou shalt be saved.’ It is an appeal to man’s greed, to
his self-interest. It is heroes God wants, not mercenaries. Never mind
yourself. Forget the wages. Help God to save the world. This little
land of England, this poor, sad, grimy town of Millsborough, where each
man hates his neighbour and the children play with dirt. Help God to
make it clean and sweet. Help God to wipe away the tears of the world.
Help God to save all men.

“We talk about the Spirits of Good and Evil, as if Evil were of its
own nature subordinate to the Good--as if God’s victory were certain;
a mere matter of time. How do we know? Evil was the first-born. All
things that do not fight against it revert to it. How do we know it
will not triumph in the end. God is not winning. God is being driven
back. Man will not help. Once His followers were willing to suffer--to
die for Him. Today we are afraid of a little ridicule--of a few
privations. We think it can be done by preaching--by the giving of
alms. There is but one way to fight for God: the way of Christ. Let the
young man deny himself, take up his cross.”

There had followed a silence. How long it lasted neither could have
told. The door opened and Eleanor entered.

She was full of her meeting. The committee had settled to send two
hundred children for a fortnight to the seaside. She had let Anthony in
for a hundred guineas. She laughed.

Betty explained that they might not be meeting again for some time. She
was off to Russia. Eleanor was curious and Betty explained her plans.

Eleanor was seated on the arm of Anthony’s chair. She had noticed he
was not smoking, and had lighted his cigar for him.

“It was poor mother’s sorrow,” she said. “‘I have never done anything,’
she confided to me once towards the end. I have given away a little
money, but it was never mine to give. It never cost me anything. I want
to give myself. It is the only gift that heals.”

Eleanor jumped down from her perch, and taking Betty’s face in her
hands kissed her.

“How fine of you,” she said. “I rather envy you.”




CHAPTER XVII


How to tell her? The door was not quite closed. He could hear her voice
giving directions to the maid, the rustling of garments, the opening
and shutting of drawers. Later, he would hear her wish the maid good
night; and then the door would open and she would come in for their
customary talk before going to bed. It was the hour when she had always
seemed to him most beautiful, clad in loose shimmering robes, veiling
her wonderful whiteness. Tonight she would clasp her soft arms round
his neck and, laughing, tell him how proud she was of him. All the
evening he had read the promise of it in her eyes. And they would kiss,
perhaps for the last time.

Could he not put it off--again, for the hundredth time? Was it not
cruel to choose this night? It had been a day of roses, and she had
been so happy. In the morning there had been the unveiling of the war
memorial, the great granite cross with the four bronze guns at its
base. It stood high up on the crest of the moor, for all the town to
see, the sky for its background; and carved in golden letters round
its pedestal, so that the cold grey cross seemed, as it were, to have
grown out of their blood, the names of the young men who had given
their lives that England might rejoice. His speech had been a supreme
success. It had moved the people as such speeches rarely do, for with
every word he uttered he had been thinking of himself.

Even his two children, occasionally critical of him, had congratulated
him. The boy had had tears in his eyes. He had looked very handsome
in his weather-stained uniform, in spite of the angry scar across
his cheek. He had taken things into his own hands at the beginning
of the war, had enlisted as a private, and had won his commission on
the field. For Norah, the war had happened at a providential moment.
During the suffrage movement she had caused Eleanor many a sleepless
night. The war had caught her up and directed her passions into
orthodox channels. It had done even better for her. It had thrown her
into the company of quite a nice boy, with only a consumptive cousin
between him and an ancient peerage. To Anthony himself, the war had
brought, without any effort of his own, increasing wealth and power.
Millsborough had become a shining centre for the output of munitions.
Anthony’s genius for organization had been the motive force behind. At
the luncheon that had followed the unveiling of the memorial a Cabinet
Minister had dropped hints. Eleanor’s prophecy of long ago that Anthony
would become a millionaire with a seat in the House of Lords would all
come true.

In the evening the great new dining-room, fashioned out of the ruins
of what had once been the monk’s refectory, had been thrown open for
the first time. All their world and his wife had dined there; his
fellow-townsmen who had grown up with him, who had watched, admired and
envied his marvellous career; county folk from far and near; famous
folk, humble folk. The Reverend Horace Pendergast, most eloquent of
divines, and soon to be a bishop, had proposed the toast of “The
uncrowned king of Millsborough,” his dear and well-beloved cousin
Anthony Strong’nth’arm--had quoted scripture appropriate in speaking
of one so evidently singled out for favour by the Lord. General Sir
James Coomber, in a short, blunt speech, had seconded the toast,
claiming merit for himself as having from the first, and against family
opposition, encouraged his sister to stick to her guns and marry the
man of her choice. Not that she had needed much encouragement, Jim had
added amid laughter. She would have done it, was Jim’s opinion, if all
the King’s horses, and all the King’s men had tried to prevent her.
And from Eleanor, seated at the other end of the long table, had come
a distinct “Hear, hear,” followed by more laughter. Others, one after
another, had risen spontaneously to add their testimony to the honour
and affection with which he was regarded throughout Millsborough, and
all round about.

And then an odd thing had happened. As he rose to respond there came
into his mind the sudden thought that here within the space of these
same walls must often have supped his namesake, the monk Anthony. And
with the thought there came the face and form of the young monk plainly
before him. It entered by a small serving door that stood ajar, and
slipped into a vacant seat left empty by a guest who had been called
away. He knew the whole thing was an hallucination, a fancy that his
sudden thought had conjured up. But the curious part of it was that
the face of the young monk, who with elbows resting on the table was
looking at him with such earnestness, was not the face of the monk in
the picture with which he was familiar, the hero, the martyr, but the
face of a timid youth. The hands were clasped, and the eyes that were
fixed on Anthony seemed to be pleading with him.

He could not remember what he had said. He did not think it was
the speech he had intended. He had the feeling he was answering the
questioning eyes of the young monk still fixed upon him. But it seemed
to have gone all right, though there had been no applause when he
had sat down. Instead, a little silence had followed; and when the
conversation round the table was renewed it had been in a subdued tone,
as though some new note had been struck.

Foolish though it seemed, it was this slight episode that had finally
decided him that he must speak with her this very night. Too long he
had put it off, whispering to himself now one excuse, now another.
It had come to him while he had been preparing his speech for the
unveiling of the war memorial: How long was he going to play the
coward? When was he going to answer the call of his King, his country?

When had that call first come to him? What voice--what vision had first
spoken to him? He tried to think. There had been no trumpet call. No
pillar of light had flashed before his eyes. It had come to him in
little whispers of the wind, in little pluckings at his sleeve. Some
small wild creature’s cry of pain. The sorrow of a passing face. The
story of a wrong done, when or where it did not matter. Always the
darkness was full of reproachful eyes accusing him of delay.

It seemed to him that he was standing beside God in some vast doorless
chamber, listening to the falling of the tears of the world--the tears
of all the ages that were past, the tears of the ages yet to come; and
God’s sad eyes were watching him.

If he could take her with him. If only she would come with him. There
had been a moment at the beginning of the war when it might have been:
those days of terror when the boy lay wounded unto death; and he had
heard her cry out in the night: “Oh, God, take all I have but that.”
Had he urged her then? Honours, riches! In that moment she would
have known their true value. But the child had lived, and all her
desires were now for him. She would resent whatever might make to his
detriment. No, he would have to go alone.

How was he going to put it into words? How could he hurt her least,
while at the same time leaving no opening for false hope? He had
purposely avoided thinking it out. It would be useless coming to her
with cut and dried phrases. He would not be laying down the law. He
would be pleading for forgiveness, for understanding. He could picture
the bewilderment that would come into her eyes as slowly his meaning
dawned upon her: giving place to anger, despair. It would seem to her
that she had never known him, that she had been living with a strange
man. Why had he not taken her into his confidence years ago, made her
the sharer of his dreams--his visions? How did he know she would not
have sympathized with him? It was his love for her that had made him
false--or rather his love for himself. He had wanted to come to her
always with gifts, so that she might be grateful to him, proud of him.
Now it was too late. It would seem to her that all these years he had
been living apart, her husband only in body. She would feel herself a
woman scorned.

He smiled to himself, recalling how at the beginning of the Great War,
as they had named it, the hope had come to him that after all he might
not have to drink this cup. God was going to do without man’s help.
Out of one stupendous sacrifice of blood and tears the world was to be
born anew. Sin was to destroy her own children; man’s greed and hate
was to be burned up in the fire man’s evil passions had kindled. It was
a strange delusion. Others had shared it. With the bitter awakening a
dumb apathy had seized him, paralysing his soul. Of what use was the
struggle. The gibe was true: “Mankind would always remain a race of
low intelligence and evil instincts.” Let it perish, the sooner the
better.

And then, gradually, out of his despair, had arisen in him a great pity
for God. It startled him at first. It was so grotesque an idea. And
yet it grew upon him. The mysterious warfare between Good and Evil. It
shaped itself in his brain, a thing concrete, visible. The loneliness
of God. He saw Him as a Leader betrayed, deserted; his followers
fleeing from him, hastening to make their peace with evil. He must find
his way to God’s side. God wanted him.

It was no passing mood. The thought took possession of him. All other
voices sounded to him faint and trivial.

His sorrow was for her. If he could but have spared her. For himself
he felt joy that the struggle was over, that he had conquered, that
nothing now could turn him from his purpose. He would get rid of all
his affairs--of everything, literally. Not for the sake of the poor.
If all the riches of the world were gathered together and given to the
poor it would be but a stirring of the waters, a moment’s shifting of
the social landmarks. Greed and selfishness would shape themselves
anew. From time immemorial the rich had flung money to the poor, and
the poor had ever increased in numbers, had sunk ever poorer. Money
was a dead thing. It carried with it the seeds of destruction. Love,
service, were the only living gifts. It was for his own sake--to
escape, in the words of Timothy, from many hurtful lusts, which drown
men in destruction and perdiction, that he must flee from his great
possessions. No man could possess money without loving money. Only in
common poverty--in common contentment with having food and raiment
could there be brotherhood, love.

He had made his plans. He would rent a small house, next door to where
his mother still lived in Bruton Square, and practise there as a
solicitor. The old lady was still active and capable. If need be--if he
had to go alone--she could keep house for him. He was keen on Bruton
Square. It was where the mean part of the town began. It would not be
too far for the poor to come to him. The little modest house would
not frighten them with suggestion of charges beyond their means, of
contemptuous indifference to their unprofitable bits of business. He
would be able to help them, to keep them from falling into the hands of
charlatans. They would come to trust him in their troubles. He might
often be able to serve as mediator, as peacemaker between them. It
would be a legitimate way of earning his living.

It was essential that he should earn his living. That seemed to him of
tremendous importance. If the world were to be saved it must be saved
by all men working together for God. That must be the dream, the goal.
He wanted to tell men that the Christ-life could be lived not by the
few but by all; not alone by celibates and mendicants--of what use
would that be--but by men with wives and children. It must come to be
the life of the street, the market-place, the home.

If she would come with him, join her voice with his, tell the people
that man and woman could live happily together without this luxury and
ostentation for which Youth daily sold its birthright of love and joy,
condemned itself to frenzied toil and haunting fear; that life was not
a thing of furniture and clothes, of many servants, of fine houses
and rich foods; that a man and woman who had known these things could
choose to give them up, find comfort and content without them; that
having food and raiment there was no need of this savage struggling
for more--this greed and covetousness that for so long had pierced the
world with many sorrows. If only she would come with him. Together they
might light a lamp.

How could he ask her? The mere physical discomforts and privations, it
would not be the fear of these that would hold her back. Demand the
heroic of her--call upon her, in the name of any cause worth fighting
for, to face suffering, death itself, and she would put her hand in his
and go with him gladly. She had envied Betty, going out alone to fight
starvation and disease amid the terrors of a winter in the Russian
steppes.

“I’d have loved to be going with her,” she had told him. “It must be
from my mother that it comes to me. Some strange thing happened to her
when she was a girl. She would never tell me what, though I knew it had
been her trouble all her life. And when she lay dying she drew me down
to her, and whispered to me that in her youth God had called to her and
she had not obeyed. It was dad and we children that had hindered her.
She had married a husband so she could not come.”

She had laughed and kissed him. He remembered the tears in her eyes and
the little catch in her voice.

But there was nothing heroic about this thing that he wanted to do.
It was the littleness, the meanness of it that would freeze her
sympathies. Her sense of humour would rise up against it. Was there
no better way of serving Christ than by setting up as a pettifogging
solicitor in a little square of faded gentility. And a solicitor of
all professions! A calling so eminently suggestive of the Scribe and
Pharisee. Was there not danger of the whole thing being smothered under
laughter?

And why here in Millsborough where everybody knew him? Where they
would be stared at, called after in the street, snapshotted and
paragraphed in the local Press; where they would be the laughing stock
of the whole town, a nuisance round the neck of all their friends and
acquaintances. The boy’s career: he would be the butt of the messroom.
Norah’s engagement: it would have to be broken off. What man wants to
marry into a family of cranks? Could it serve Christ for His would-be
followers to cover themselves with ridicule.

It was just because his going on with his own business had seemed to
him the simplest, plainest path before him that he had chosen it. He
had thought at one time of asking Matthew Witlock to let him come as
his assistant in the workshop. He had retained much of his old skill as
a mechanic. With a little practice it would come back to him. He would
have enjoyed the work: the swinging of the hammer, the flashing of the
sparks, the harmony of hand and brain. His desk had always bored him.
The idea had grown upon him. It would have been like going home. He
would have met there the little impish lad who had once been himself.
Old Wandering Peter would have sat cross-legged upon the bench and
talked to him. He would have come across his father, pottering about
among the shadows; would have joked with him. Strong kindly Matthew of
the dreamy eyes would have been sweet, helpful company. Together they
would have listened to the passing footsteps. There, if anywhere, might
have come the Master.

It had cost him an effort to dismiss the desire. He so wanted to preach
the practical, the rational. We could not all be blacksmiths. We could
not all do big things, heroic things. But we could all work for God,
wherever and whatever we happened to be; that was the idea he wanted to
set going.

He wanted to preach to men that the Christ-life was possible for all:
for the shop-keeper, for the artisan, for the doctor, for the lawyer,
for the labourer, for the business man. He wanted to tell the people
that Christ had not to be sought for in any particular place, that he
was here; that we had only to open the door and He would come to us
just where we were. One went on with one’s work, whatever it was, the
thing that lay nearest to one, the thing one could do best. We changed
the Master not the work, took other wages.

He wanted to tell it in Millsborough for the reason that it was the
only place where he could be sure of being listened to. Nowhere else
could he hope to attract the same attention. He wanted to attract
attention--to advertise, if any cared to put it that way. It was
the business man in him that had insisted upon Millsborough. In
Millsborough, for a time--for quite a long time--this thing would be
the chief topic of conversation. Men would discuss it, argue around it,
think about it when alone.

In Millsborough he had influence. In Millsborough, if anywhere, he
might hope to find followers. For twenty years he had been held
up to the youth of Millsborough as a shining example: the man who
had climbed, the man who had “got on,” the man who had won all the
rewards the devil promises to those who will fall down and worship
him, wealth, honour, power--the kingdoms of the earth. He stood for
the type of Millsborough’s hero: the clever man, the knowing man, the
successful man; the man who always got the best of the bargain; the
man who always came out on top; the man who whatever might happen to
others always managed to fall on his feet. “Keep your eye on Anthony
Strong’nth’arm.” In Millsborough it had become a saying. The man to be
in with, the man to put your money on, the man God always prospered.

He could hear them--see their round, staring eyes. He could not
help but grin as he thought of it. Anthony Strong’nth’arm declines
a peerage. Anthony Strong’nth’arm resigns his chairmanship of this,
that and the other most prosperous concern; his directorship in half
a dozen high dividend-paying companies; gets rid of his vast holdings
in twenty sound profitable enterprises; gives up his great office in
St. Aldys Close, furniture, fittings and goodwill all included; writes
a courteous letter of farewell to all his wealthy clients; takes a
seven-roomed house in Bruton Square, rent thirty-two pounds a year;
puts up his plate on the door: “Anthony John Strong’nth’arm, Solicitor.
Also Commissioner for Oaths. Office hours, ten to four.” What’s the
meaning of it? The man is not a fool. Has never, at any time, shown
indications of insanity. What’s he up to? What’s come into his head? If
it’s God he is thinking of, what’s wrong with the church or the chapel,
or even the Pope, if he must have a change? Does he want a religion all
to himself? Is it the poor that are troubling him? He’d do better for
them, going on with his money-making, giving them ten--twenty, fifty
per cent., if he liked, of his profits. What is the explanation? What
does he say about it--Anthony Strong’nth’arm himself?

They would have to listen to him. If only from curiosity they would
hear him out to the end. It might be but a nine days’ wonder; the talk
grow tiresome, the laughter die away. That was not his affair. He
wanted to help. He was sure this was the best thing he could do.

He had not noticed the door open. She was standing before him. She drew
his face down to her and kissed him.

“Thank you,” she whispered, “for one of the happiest days of my life.”

He held her to him for a while without speaking. He could feel the
beating of her heart.

“There is something I want to tell you,” he said.

She put a hand upon his lips. “I know,” she answered. “In three minutes
time. Then you shall tell me.”

They stood with their arms round one another till the old French clock
upon the mantelpiece had softly chimed the twelve hours. Then she
released him, and seating herself in her usual chair, looked at him and
waited.




CHAPTER XVIII


He had not asked her for an answer. She had promised to think it out.
She might wish to talk it over with Jim. She and Jim had always been
very near to one another. And there were the children to be consulted.
She was to be quite free to choose. Everything would be arranged
according to her decision. He had said nothing to persuade her--unless
he had hoped that by explaining to her his own reasons he might
influence her,--and beyond a few questions she had remained a silent
listener. It was shamefacedly, as one confessing a guilty secret, that
he had told her. From the tones of his voice, the look in his eyes, she
had read his unconscious pleading to her to come with him. But whether
she went with him or stayed behind would make no difference to his
going. It was that had hardened her.

To a certain extent she had been prepared. Ever since the child John’s
death she had felt the change that was taking place in him. There was
an Anthony she did not know, dimly associated in her mind with that
lover of her dream who standing by the latchet gate had beckoned to
her, and from whom she had hidden herself, afraid. She had set herself
to turn his thoughts aside towards social reform, philanthropy. It was
with this idea she had urged him to throw himself into public affairs,
to prepare for Parliament. She had hoped for that. There she could
have helped him. It would have satisfied her own craving to be doing
something herself.

And then the war had engulfed them, obliterating all other horizons:
it had left her nothing but her animal emotions. Her boy’s life! She
could think of nothing else. Norah was in France: and she also was
in the danger zone. The need of work obsessed her. She had found a
rambling old house, far away upon the moors, and had converted it into
a convalescent hospital.

Labour was scarce and the entire management had fallen upon her own
shoulders. Anthony’s duties had confined him to Millsborough. For years
they had seen one another only for a few hours at a time. There had
been no opportunity for intimate talk. It was not until her return home
to The Abbey that her fear had come back to her. There was no definable
reason. It was as if it had always been there--a presence, waiting its
time. One evening, walking in the garden, she had seen him standing
there by the latchet gate, and had crept back into the house. She had
the feeling that it would be there, by the latchet gate, that he would
tell her. So long as she could avoid meeting him there she could put
it off, indefinitely. The surer she felt of it, the more important it
seemed to her to put it off--for a little while longer: she could not
explain to herself why. It was when, without speaking, he had pressed
her to him so close that she had felt the pain in his body, that she
knew the time had come for her to face it.

What answer was she to make him? It seemed such a crazy idea. To give
up The Abbey. To think of strangers living there. It had been the home
of her people for five centuries. Their children had been born there.
For twenty years they had worked there lovingly together to make it
more beautiful. It would be like tearing oneself up by the roots. To
turn one’s back upon the glorious moors--to go down into the grimy
sordid town, to live in a little poky house with one servant; presuming
the Higher Christianity permitted of even that. Yes, they would get
themselves talked about: no doubt of that.

To do her own shopping. She had noticed them--passing them by swiftly
in her shining car--tired women, carrying large network bags bulging
with parcels. Some of them rode bicycles. She found herself wondering
abstractedly whether she would be able to afford a bicycle. She had
learnt to ride a bicycle when a girl. But that was long ago. She
wondered whether she would be able to pick it up again. She pictured
herself bargaining outside the butchers’ shops, examining doubtful
looking chickens--when chickens were cheap. There was a particular
test you had to apply. She would have to make enquiries. She could see
the grinning faces of the tradesmen, hear their oily tongues of mock
politeness.

Her former friends and acquaintances--county folk who had motored in
for a day’s shopping, the stout be-jewelled wives of the rich magnates
and manufacturers of Millsborough. Poor ladies! how worried they would
be, not knowing what to do, meeting her by chance in the street. She
with her umbrella and her parcels. And their red-faced husbands who
would squeeze her hand and try to say the right thing. There would be
plenty of comedy--at first, anyhow. That was the trouble. Tragedy she
could have faced. This was going to be farce.

The dulness--the appalling dulness of it. The long evenings in the
one small living room. She would have to learn sewing--make her own
dresses, while Anthony read aloud to her. He read rather well.
Perhaps, by help of great economy in the housekeeping, they might be
able to purchase a piano, on the hire system--or would it have to be a
harmonium?

She had risen. From the window, she could see the cloud of smoke
beneath which the people of Millsborough moved and had their being.

Why should it seem so impossible. Her present ordered existence,
mapped out from year to year, calling for neither thought nor effort,
admitting of neither hope nor fear, the sheltered life of a pampered
child--had not that also its dulness, its monotony? Why did rich people
rent saeters in Norway, live there for months at a time on hunter’s
fare, doing their own cooking and cleaning--welcome the perils and
hardships of mountain climbing; of big game shooting; of travels
into unknown lands; choose danger, privation and toil, and call it a
“holiday”? Had not she herself found the simple living and hard work of
the hospital a welcome change from everlasting luxuriousness? Would the
Garden of Eden have been the ideal home for men and women with brains
and hands? Might not earning one’s living by the sweat of one’s brow be
better sport?

Need those evenings after the day’s work was done be of necessity so
deadly? Her great dinners at The Abbey, with all their lights and
lackeys, had they always been such feasts of intellectuality? Surely
she had had social experience enough to teach her that brains were a
thing apart from birth and breeding, that wit and wisdom were not the
monopoly of the well-to-do. It came back to her, the memory of her
girlhood’s days when they had lived in third-rate boarding-houses in
Rome and Florence; rented small furnished _appartements_ in French
provincial towns; cheap lodgings in Dresden and Hanover. There had been
no lack of fun and laughter in those days. Those musical evenings to
which each student brought his own beer, and was mightily careful to
take back with him the empty bottles, for which otherwise ten pfennigs
would be charged. How busy she and her mother had been beforehand,
cutting the sandwiches, and how sparing of the butter! Some of the
players had made world-famous names; and others had died or maybe still
lived--unknown. One of them she had heard just recently, paying ten
guineas for her box; but his music had sounded no sweeter than when
she had listened to it sitting beside Jim on the uncarpeted floor,
there not being chairs enough to go round. Where had she heard better
talk than from the men with shiny coat sleeves and frayed trousers
who had come to sup with her father off maccaroni and chianti at two
lire the flask. There might be clever brilliant men and women even in
Millsborough. So far as she could judge she had never succeeded in
securing any of them for her great receptions at The Abbey. They might
be less shy of dropping in at Bruton Square.

It was what one felt, not what one had, that was the source of our
pleasure. It was the school boy’s appetite, not a Rockefeller’s wealth
that purchased the good dinner. The nursery filled with expensive
toys: the healthy child had no need of them. It was the old rag doll,
clutched tight to our bosom that made the attic into heaven. It was
astride on the wooden horse without a head that we shouted our loudest.
We over-burdened life with empty show, turned man into a mannikin.
We sacrificed the play to the scenery and dresses. Four walls and a
passion were all that the poet demanded.

Whence had come this idea that wealth brought happiness? Not from the
rich. Surely they must have learnt better, by this time.

It was not the enjoyable things of life that cost money. These acres
of gardens where one never got away from one’s own gardeners! What
better were they than a public park? It was in the hidden corner we
had planted and tended ourselves--where we knew and loved each flower,
where each whispering tree was a comrade that we met God in the
evening. It was the pleasant living room, where each familiar piece
of furniture smiled a welcome to us when we entered, that was home.
Through half-a-dozen “reception rooms,” we wandered, a stranger. The
millionaire, who, reckoning interest at five per cent., paid ten
thousand a year to possess an old master--how often really did he look
at it? What greater artistic enjoyment did he get out of it than from
looking at it in a public gallery? The joy of possession, it was the
joy of the miser, of the dog in the manger. Were the silver birches in
the moonlight more beautiful because we owned the freehold of the hill?

She remembered her walking tours with Jim. Their packs upon their
backs, and the open road before them. The evening meal at the wayside
Inn, and the sweet sleep between coarse sheets. She had never cared for
travel since then. It had always been such a business: the luggage and
the crowd, and the general hullaballoo.

What would the children say? Well, they could not preach, either of
them: there was that consolation. The boy, at the beginning of the war,
and without saying a word to either of them, had thrown up everything,
had gone out as a common soldier--he had been so fearful they might try
to stop him--facing death for an ideal. She certainly was not going to
be afraid of anything he could say, after that.

Norah’s armour would prove even yet more vulnerable. Norah, a young
lady brought up amid all the traditions of respectability, had dared
even ridicule; had committed worse than crimes--vulgarities. A militant
suffragette reproving fanaticism need not be listened to attentively.

But this case she was thinking of was exceptional. Whatever Anthony
and she might choose to do with the remainder of their lives need
not affect their children. Norah and Jim would be free to choose
for themselves. But the young mother faced with the problem of her
children’s future? Ten years ago, what answer would she herself have
made?

The argument took hold of her. She found herself working it out not as
a personal concern, but in terms of the community. Was it necessary to
be rich that one’s children should be happy? Childhood would answer
“no.” It is not little Lord Fauntleroy who clamours for the velvet suit
and the lace collar. It is not Princess Goldenlocks who would keep
close barred the ivory gate that leads into the wood. Childhood has no
use for riches. Childhood’s joys are cheap enough. Youth’s pleasures
can be purchased for little more than health and comradeship. The
cricket bat, the tennis racket, the push bike, the leaky boat that one
bought for a song and had the fun of patching up and making good; even
that crown of the young world’s desire, the motor-cycle itself--these
and their kindred were not the things for which one need to sell one’s
soul. Education depended upon the scholar not the school. Was the
future welfare of our children helped by our being rich? or hindered?

Suppose we brought up our children not to believe in riches, not to be
afraid of poverty: not to be afraid of love in a six-roomed house, not
to believe that they were bound to be just twice as happy in a house
containing twelve, and thereby save themselves the fret and frenzy of
trying to get there: the bitterness and heart break of those who never
reached it. The love of money, the belief in money, was it not the root
of nine-tenths of the world’s sorrow? Suppose one taught one’s children
not to fall down and worship it, not to sacrifice to it their youth and
health and joy. Might they not be better off--in a quite material way?

It occurred to her suddenly that she had not as yet thought about it
from the religious point of view. She laughed. It had always been said
that it was woman who was the practical. It was man, was the dreamer.

But was she not right? Had that not been the whole trouble: that we
had drawn a dividing line between our religion and our life, rendering
our actions unto Caesar, and only our lips unto God? Christianity was
Common Sense in the highest--was sheer Worldly Wisdom. The proof was
staring her in the face. From the bay of the deep window, looking
eastward, she could see it standing out against the flame-lit sky, the
great grey Cross with round its base the young men’s names in golden
letters.

The one thing man did well--make war. Man’s one success--the fighting
machine. The one institution man had built up that had stood the test
of time. The one thing man had made perfect--War.

The one thing to which man had applied the principles of Christianity.
Above all things required of the soldier was self-forgetfulness,
self-sacrifice. The place of suffering became the place of honour. The
forlorn hope a privilege to be contended for. To the soldier, alone
among men, love thy neighbour as thyself--nay, better than thyself--was
inculcated not as a meaningless formula, but as a sacred duty necessary
to the very existence of the Regiment. When war broke out in a land,
the teachings of Christ were immediately recognized to be the only
sensible guide to conduct. At the time, Anthony’s suggestion had seemed
monstrous to her; that he should ask her to give up riches, accept
poverty, that he should put a vague impersonal love of humanity above
his natural affection for her children and herself! But if it had been
England and not God that he had been thinking of--if, at any moment
during the war, it had seemed to him that the welfare of England
demanded this, or even greater sacrifice, she would have approved. The
very people whose ridicule she was now dreading would have applauded.
Who had suggested to the young recruit that he should think of his wife
and children before his country, that his first duty was to provide
for them, to see to it that they had their comforts, their luxuries:
and then--and not till then--to think of England? She had regarded his
determination to go down into the smoky dismal town, to live his life
there among common people, as foolish, fantastic. He could have helped
the poor of Millsborough better by keeping his possessions, showering
down upon them benefits and blessings. He could have been of more
help to God, powerful and rich, a leader among men. As a struggling
solicitor in Bruton Square of what use could he be?

Had she thought like that, during the war, of the men who had given
money but who had shirked the mud and blood of the trenches--of the
shouters who had pointed out to others the gate of service?

Neither rich nor poor, neither great nor simple--only comrades. Would
it ever be won, the war to end war--man’s victory over himself.

The pall of smoke above the distant town had merged into the night. In
its place there gleamed a dull red glow, as of a pillar of fire.

She turned and faced herself in the great Cheval glass with its frame
of gilded cupids. She was still young--in the fulness of her life
and beauty; the years with their promise of power and pleasure still
opening out before her.

And suddenly it came to her that this was the Great Adventure of the
World, calling to the brave and hopeful to follow, heedless, where
God’s trumpet led. Somewhere--perhaps near, perhaps far--there lay the
Promised Land. It might be theirs’ to find it--at least to see it from
afar. If not--! Their feet should help to mark the road.

Yes, she too would give up her possessions; put fear behind her.
Together, hand in hand, they would go forward, joyously.


THE END