you to-morrow) which the King of Naples had presented to grandfather
Marshalton. Walen starts to go through 'em. We wanted to know why our
friends had been so prejudiced against our society.

'"Wait a minute," says Lord Lundie. "Lend me a handkerchief."

'He pulls out his own, and Walen contributes his green-and-red bandanna,
and Lundie covers their faces. "Now," he says, "we'll go into the
evidence."

'There wasn't any flaw in that evidence. Walen read out their last
observations, and Mankeltow asked questions, and Lord Lundie sort o'
summarised, and I looked at the photos in the album. 'J'ever see a
bird's-eye telephoto-survey of England for military purposes? It's
interestin' but indecent--like turnin' a man upside down. None of those
close-range panoramas of forts could have been taken without my
Rush Silencer.

'"I wish _we_ was as thorough as they are," says Mankeltow, when Walen
stopped translatin'.

'"We've been thorough enough," says Lord Lundie. "The evidence against
both accused is conclusive. Any other country would give 'em seven years
in a fortress. We should probably give 'em eighteen months as
first-class misdemeanants. But their case," he says, "is out of our
hands. We must review our own. Mr. Zigler," he said, "will you tell us
what steps you took to bring about the death of the first accused?" I
told him. He wanted to know specially whether I'd stretched first
accused before or after he had fired at Mankeltow. Mankeltow testified
he'd been shot at, and exhibited his neck as evidence. It was scorched.

'"Now, Mr. Walen," says Lord Lundie. "Will you kindly tell us what steps
you took with regard to the second accused?"

'"The man ran directly at me, me lord," says Walen. "I said, 'Oh no, you
don't,' and hit him in the face."

'Lord Lundie lifts one hand and uncovers second accused's face. There
was a bruise on one cheek and the chin was all greened with grass. He
was a heavy-built man.

'"What happened after that?" says Lord Lundie.

'"To the best of my remembrance he turned from me towards your
lordship."

'Then Lundie goes ahead. "I stooped, and caught the man round the
ankles," he says. "The sudden check threw him partially over my left
shoulder. I jerked him off that shoulder, still holding his ankles, and
he fell heavily on, it would appear, the point of his chin, death being
instantaneous."

'"Death being instantaneous," says Walen.

'Lord Lundie takes off his gown and wig--you could see him do it--and
becomes our fellow-murderer. "That's our case," he says. "I know how _I_
should direct the jury, but it's an undignified business for a Lord of
Appeal to lift his hand to, and some of my learned brothers," he says,
"might be disposed to be facetious."

'I guess I can't be properly sensitised. Any one who steered me out of
that trouble might have had the laugh on me for generations. But I'm
only a millionaire. I said we'd better search second accused in case
he'd been carryin' concealed weapons.

'"That certainly is a point," says Lord Lundie. "But the question for
the jury would be whether I exercised more force than was necessary to
prevent him from usin' them." _I_ didn't say anything. He wasn't talkin'
my language. Second accused had his gun on him sure enough, but it had
jammed in his hip-pocket. He was too fleshy to reach behind for business
purposes, and he didn't look a gun-man anyway. Both of 'em carried wads
of private letters. By the time Walen had translated, we knew how many
children the fat one had at home and when the thin one reckoned to be
married. Too bad! Ya-as.

'Says Walen to me while we was rebuttonin' their jackets (they was not
in uniform): "Ever read a book called _The Wreckers_, Mr. Zigler?"

'"Not that I recall at the present moment," I says.

'"Well, do," he says. "You'd appreciate it. You'd appreciate it now, I
assure you."

'"I'll remember," I says. "But I don't see how this song and dance helps
us any. Here's our corpses, here's their machine, and daylight's
bound to come."

'"Heavens! That reminds me," says Lundie. "What time's dinner?"

'"Half-past eight," says Mankeltow. "It's half-past five now. We knocked
off golf at twenty to, and if they hadn't been such silly asses, firin'
pistols like civilians, we'd have had them to dinner. Why, they might be
sitting with us in the smoking-room this very minute," he says. Then he
said that no man had a right to take his profession so seriously as
these two mountebanks.

'"How interestin'!" says Lundie. "I've noticed this impatient attitude
toward their victim in a good many murderers. I never understood it
before. Of course, it's the disposal of the body that annoys 'em. Now, I
wonder," he says, "who our case will come up before? Let's run through
it again."

'Then Walen whirls in. He'd been bitin' his nails in a corner. We was
all nerved up by now.... Me? The worst of the bunch. I had to think for
Tommy as well.

'"We _can't_ be tried," says Walen. "We _mustn't_ be tried! It'll make
an infernal international stink. What did I tell you in the smoking-room
after lunch? The tension's at breaking-point already. This 'ud snap it.
Can't you see that?"

'"I was thinking of the legal aspect of the case," says Lundie. "With a
good jury we'd likely be acquitted."

'"Acquitted!" says Walen. "Who'd dare acquit us in the face of what 'ud
be demanded by--the other party? Did you ever hear of the War of
Jenkins' ear? 'Ever hear of Mason and Slidel? 'Ever hear of an
ultimatum? You know who _these_ two idiots are; you know who _we_ are--a
Lord of Appeal, a Viscount of the English peerage, and me--_me_ knowing
all I know, which the men who know dam' well know that I _do_ know! It's
our necks or Armageddon. Which do you think this Government would
choose? We _can't_ be tried!" he says.

'"Then I expect I'll have to resign me club," Lundie goes on. "I don't
think that's ever been done before by an _ex-officio_ member. I must ask
the secretary." I guess he was kinder bunkered for the minute, or maybe
'twas the lordship comin' out on him.

'"Rot!" says Mankeltow. "Walen's right. We can't afford to be tried.
We'll have to bury them; but my head-gardener locks up all the tools at
five o'clock."

'"Not on your life!" says Lundie. He was on deck again--as the
high-class lawyer. "Right or wrong, if we attempt concealment of the
bodies we're done for."

"'I'm glad of that," says Mankeltow, "because, after all, it ain't
cricket to bury 'em."

'Somehow--but I know I ain't English--that consideration didn't worry
me as it ought. An' besides, I was thinkin'--I had to--an' I'd begun to
see a light 'way off--a little glimmerin' light o' salvation.

'"Then what _are_ we to do?" says Walen. "Zigler, what do you advise?
Your neck's in it too."

'"Gentlemen," I says, "something Lord Lundie let fall a while back gives
me an idea. I move that this committee empowers Big Claus and Little
Claus, who have elected to commit suicide in our midst, to leave the
premises _as_ they came. I'm asking you to take big chances," I says,
"but they're all we've got," and then I broke for the bi-plane.

'Don't tell me the English can't think as quick as the next man when
it's up to them! They lifted 'em out o' Flora's Temple--reverent, but
not wastin' time--whilst I found out what had brought her down. One
cylinder was misfirin'. I didn't stop to fix it. My Renzalaer will hold
up on six. We've proved that. If her crew had relied on my guarantees,
they'd have been half-way home by then, instead of takin' their seats
with hangin' heads like they was ashamed. They ought to have been
ashamed too, playin' gun-men in a British peer's park! I took big
chances startin' her without controls, but 'twas a dead still night an'
a clear run--you saw it--across the Theatre into the park, and I prayed
she'd rise before she hit high timber. I set her all I dared for a quick
lift. I told Mankeltow that if I gave her too much nose she'd be liable
to up-end and flop. He didn't want another inquest on his estate. No,
sir! So I had to fix her up in the dark. Ya-as!

'I took big chances, too, while those other three held on to her and I
worked her up to full power. My Renzalaer's no ventilation-fan to pull
against. But I climbed out just in time. I'd hitched the signallin' lamp
to her tail so's we could track her. Otherwise, with my Rush Silencer,
we might's well have shooed an owl out of a barn. She left just that way
when we let her go. No sound except the propellers--_Whoo-oo-oo!
Whoo-oo-oo!_ There was a dip in the ground ahead. It hid her lamp for a
second--but there's no such thing as time in real life. Then that lamp
travelled up the far slope slow--too slow. Then it kinder lifted, we
judged. Then it sure was liftin'. Then it lifted good. D'you know why?
Our four naked perspirin' souls was out there underneath her, hikin' her
heavens high. Yes, sir. _We_ did it!... And that lamp kept liftin' and
liftin'. Then she side-slipped! My God, she side-slipped twice, which
was what I'd been afraid of all along! Then she straightened up, and
went away climbin' to glory, for that blessed star of our hope got
smaller and smaller till we couldn't track it any more. Then we
breathed. We hadn't breathed any since their arrival, but we didn't know
it till we breathed that time--all together. Then we dug our
finger-nails out of our palms an' came alive again--in instalments.

'Lundie spoke first. "We therefore commit their bodies to the air," he
says, an' puts his cap on.

'"The deep--the deep," says Walen. "It's just twenty-three miles to the
Channel."

'"Poor chaps! Poor chaps!" says Mankeltow. "We'd have had 'em to dinner
if they hadn't lost their heads. I can't tell you how this distresses
me, Laughton."

'"Well, look at here, Arthur," I says. "It's only God's Own Mercy you
an' me ain't lyin' in Flora's Temple now, and if that fat man had known
enough to fetch his gun around while he was runnin', Lord Lundie and
Walen would have been alongside us."

'"I see that," he says. "But we're alive and they're dead, don't ye
know."

'"I know it," I says. "That's where the dead are always so damned unfair
on the survivors."

'"I see that too," he says. "But I'd have given a good deal if it hadn't
happened, poor chaps!"

'"Amen!" says Lundie. Then? Oh, then we sorter walked back two an' two
to Flora's Temple an' lit matches to see we hadn't left anything behind.
Walen, he had confiscated the note-books before they left. There was the
first man's pistol which we'd forgot to return him, lyin' on the stone
bench. Mankeltow puts his hand on it--he never touched the trigger--an',
bein' an automatic, of course the blame thing jarred off--spiteful as
a rattler!

'"Look out! They'll have one of us yet," says Walen in the dark. But
they didn't--the Lord hadn't quit being our shepherd--and we heard the
bullet zip across the veldt--quite like old times. Ya-as!

'"Swine!" says Mankeltow.

'After that I didn't hear any more "Poor chap" talk.... Me? I never
worried about killing _my_ man. I was too busy figurin' how a British
jury might regard the proposition. I guess Lundie felt that way too.

'Oh, but say! We had an interestin' time at dinner. Folks was expected
whose auto had hung up on the road. They hadn't wired, and Peters had
laid two extra places. We noticed 'em as soon as we sat down. I'd hate
to say how noticeable they were. Mankeltow with his neck bandaged (he'd
caught a relaxed throat golfin') sent for Peters and told him to take
those empty places away--_if you please_. It takes something to rattle
Peters. He was rattled that time. Nobody else noticed anything.
And now...'

'Where did they come down?' I asked, as he rose.

'In the Channel, I guess. There was nothing in the papers about 'em.
Shall we go into the drawin'-room, and see what these boys and girls are
doin?' But say, ain't life in England inter_es_tin'?

     REBIRTH

       If any God should say
         "I will restore
       The world her yesterday
         Whole as before
     My Judgment blasted it"--who would not lift
     Heart, eye, and hand in passion o'er the gift?

       If any God should will
         To wipe from mind
       The memory of this ill
         Which is mankind
     In soul and substance now--who would not bless
     Even to tears His loving-tenderness?

       If any God should give
         Us leave to fly
       These present deaths we live,
         And safely die
     In those lost lives we lived ere we were born--
     What man but would not laugh the excuse to scorn?

       For we are what we are--
         So broke to blood
       And the strict works of war--
         So long subdued
     To sacrifice, that threadbare Death commands
     Hardly observance at our busier hands.

       Yet we were what we were,
         And, fashioned so,
       It pleases us to stare
         At the far show
     Of unbelievable years and shapes that flit,
     In our own likeness, on the edge of it.

The Horse Marines

(1911)

_The Rt. Hon. R.B. Haldane, Secretary of State for War[6], was
questioned in the House of Commons on April 8th about the rocking-horses
which the War Office is using for the purpose of teaching recruits to
ride. Lord Ronaldshay asked the War Secretary if rocking-horses were to
be supplied to all the cavalry regiments for teaching recruits to ride.
'The noble Lord,' replied Mr. Haldane, 'is doubtless alluding to certain
dummy horses on rockers which have been tested with very satisfactory
results.'... The mechanical steed is a wooden horse with an astonishing
tail. It is painted brown and mounted on swinging rails. The recruit
leaps into the saddle and pulls at the reins while the riding-instructor
rocks the animal to and fro with his foot. The rocking-horses are being
made at Woolwich. They are quite cheap_.

--Daily Paper.

[Footnote 6: Now Viscount Haldane of Cloan.]

My instructions to Mr. Leggatt, my engineer, had been accurately obeyed.
He was to bring my car on completion of annual overhaul, from Coventry
_via_ London, to Southampton Docks to await my arrival; and very pretty
she looked, under the steamer's side among the railway lines, at six in
the morning. Next to her new paint and varnish I was most impressed by
her four brand-new tyres.

'But I didn't order new tyres,' I said as we moved away. 'These are
Irresilients, too.'

'Treble-ribbed,' said Leggatt. 'Diamond-stud sheathing.'

'Then there has been a mistake.'

'Oh no, sir; they're gratis.'

The number of motor manufacturers who give away complete sets of
treble-ribbed Irresilient tyres is so limited that I believe I asked
Leggatt for an explanation.

'I don't know that I could very well explain, sir,' was the answer. 'It
'ud come better from Mr. Pyecroft. He's on leaf at Portsmouth--staying
with his uncle. His uncle 'ad the body all night. I'd defy you to find a
scratch on her even with a microscope.'

'Then we will go home by the Portsmouth road,' I said.

And we went at those speeds which are allowed before the working-day
begins or the police are thawed out. We were blocked near Portsmouth by
a battalion of Regulars on the move.

'Whitsuntide manoeuvres just ending,' said Leggatt. 'They've had a
fortnight in the Downs.'

He said no more until we were in a narrow street somewhere behind
Portsmouth Town Railway Station, where he slowed at a green-grocery
shop. The door was open, and a small old man sat on three potato-baskets
swinging his feet over a stooping blue back.

'You call that shinin' 'em?' he piped. 'Can you see your face in 'em
yet? No! Then shine 'em, or I'll give you a beltin' you'll remember!'

'If you stop kickin' me in the mouth perhaps I'd do better,' said
Pyecroft's voice meekly.

We blew the horn.

Pyecroft arose, put away the brushes, and received us not otherwise than
as a king in his own country.

'Are you going to leave me up here all day?' said the old man.

Pyecroft lifted him down and he hobbled into the back room.

'It's his corns,' Pyecroft explained. 'You can't shine corny feet--and
he hasn't had his breakfast.'

'I haven't had mine either,' I said.

'Breakfast for two more, uncle,' Pyecroft sang out.

'Go out an' buy it then,' was the answer, 'or else it's half-rations.'

Pyecroft turned to Leggatt, gave him his marketing orders, and
despatched him with the coppers.

'I have got four new tyres on my car,' I began impressively.

'Yes,' said Mr. Pyecroft. 'You have, and I _will_ say'--he patted my
car's bonnet--'you earned 'em.'

'I want to know why--,' I went on.

'Quite justifiable. You haven't noticed anything in the papers, have
you?'

'I've only just landed. I haven't seen a paper for weeks.'

'Then you can lend me a virgin ear. There's been a scandal in the
Junior Service--the Army, I believe they call 'em.'

A bag of coffee-beans pitched on the counter. 'Roast that,' said the
uncle from within.

Pyecroft rigged a small coffee-roaster, while I took down the shutters,
and sold a young lady in curl-papers two bunches of mixed greens and one
soft orange.

'Sickly stuff to handle on an empty stomach, ain't it?' said Pyecroft.

'What about my new tyres?' I insisted.

'Oh, any amount. But the question is'--he looked at me steadily--'is
this what you might call a court-martial or a post-mortem inquiry?'

'Strictly a post-mortem,' said I.

'That being so,' said Pyecroft, 'we can rapidly arrive at facts. Last
Thursday--the shutters go behind those baskets--last Thursday at five
bells in the forenoon watch, otherwise ten-thirty A.M., your Mr. Leggatt
was discovered on Westminster Bridge laying his course for the Old
Kent Road.'

'But that doesn't lead to Southampton,' I interrupted.

'Then perhaps he was swinging the car for compasses. Be that as it may,
we found him in that latitude, simultaneous as Jules and me was _ong
route_ for Waterloo to rejoin our respective ships--or Navies I should
say. Jules was a _permissionaire_, which meant being on leaf, same as
me, from a French cassowary-cruiser at Portsmouth. A party of her trusty
and well-beloved petty officers 'ad been seeing London, chaperoned by
the R.C. Chaplain. Jules 'ad detached himself from the squadron and was
cruisin' on his own when I joined him, in company of copious
lady-friends. _But_, mark you, your Mr. Leggatt drew the line at the
girls. Loud and long he drew it.'

'I'm glad of that,' I said.

'You may be. He adopted the puristical formation from the first. "Yes,"
he said, when we was annealing him at--but you wouldn't know the pub--"I
_am_ going to Southampton," he says, "and I'll stretch a point to go
_via_ Portsmouth; _but_," says he, "seeing what sort of one hell of a
time invariably trarnspires when we cruise together, Mr. Pyecroft, I do
_not_ feel myself justified towards my generous and long-suffering
employer in takin' on that kind of ballast as well." I assure you he
considered your interests.'

'And the girls?' I asked.

'Oh, I left that to Jules. I'm a monogomite by nature. So we embarked
strictly _ong garçong_. But I should tell you, in case he didn't, that
your Mr. Leggatt's care for your interests 'ad extended to sheathing the
car in matting and gunny-bags to preserve her paint-work. She was all
swathed up like an I-talian baby.'

'He _is_ careful about his paint-work,' I said.

'For a man with no Service experience I should say he was fair homicidal
on the subject. If we'd been Marines he couldn't have been more pointed
in his allusions to our hob-nailed socks. However, we reduced him to a
malleable condition, and embarked for Portsmouth. I'd seldom rejoined
my _vaisseau ong automobile, avec_ a fur coat and goggles. Nor
'ad Jules.'

'Did Jules say much?' I asked, helplessly turning the handle of the
coffee-roaster.

'That's where I pitied the pore beggar. He 'adn't the language, so to
speak. He was confined to heavings and shruggin's and copious _Mong
Jews_! The French are very badly fitted with relief-valves. And then our
Mr. Leggatt drove. He drove.'

'Was he in a very malleable condition?'

'Not him! We recognised the value of his cargo from the outset. He
hadn't a chance to get more than moist at the edges. After which we went
to sleep; and now we'll go to breakfast.'

We entered the back room where everything was in order, and a screeching
canary made us welcome. The uncle had added sausages and piles of
buttered toast to the kippers. The coffee, cleared with a piece of
fish-skin, was a revelation.

Leggatt, who seemed to know the premises, had run the car into the tiny
backyard where her mirror-like back almost blocked up the windows. He
minded shop while we ate. Pyecroft passed him his rations through a flap
in the door. The uncle ordered him in, after breakfast, to wash up, and
he jumped in his gaiters at the old man's commands as he has never
jumped to mine.

'To resoom the post-mortem,' said Pyecroft, lighting his pipe. 'My
slumbers were broken by the propeller ceasing to revolve, and by vile
language from your Mr. Leggatt.'

'I--I--' Leggatt began, a blue-checked duster in one hand and a cup in
the other.

'When you're wanted aft you'll be sent for, Mr. Leggatt,' said Pyecroft
amiably. 'It's clean mess decks for you now. Resooming once more, we was
on a lonely and desolate ocean near Portsdown, surrounded by gorse
bushes, and a Boy Scout was stirring my stomach with his little
copper-stick.'

'"You count ten," he says.

'"Very good, Boy Jones," I says, "count 'em," and I hauled him in over
the gunnel, and ten I gave him with my large flat hand. The remarks he
passed, lying face down tryin' to bite my leg, would have reflected
credit on any Service. Having finished I dropped him overboard again,
which was my gross political error. I ought to 'ave killed him; because
he began signalling--rapid and accurate--in a sou'westerly direction.
Few equatorial calms are to be apprehended when B.P.'s little pets take
to signallin'. Make a note o' that! Three minutes later we were stopped
and boarded by Scouts--up our backs, down our necks, and in our boots!
The last I heard from your Mr. Leggatt as he went under, brushin' 'em
off his cap, was thanking Heaven he'd covered up the new paint-work with
mats. An 'eroic soul!'

'Not a scratch on her body,' said Leggatt, pouring out the
coffee-grounds.

'And Jules?' said I.

'Oh, Jules thought the much advertised Social Revolution had begun, but
his mackintosh hampered him.

'You told me to bring the mackintosh,' Leggatt whispered to me.

'And when I 'ad 'em half convinced he was a French vicomte coming down
to visit the Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, he tried to take it off.
Seeing his uniform underneath, some sucking Sherlock Holmes of the Pink
Eye Patrol (they called him Eddy) deduced that I wasn't speaking
the truth. Eddy said I was tryin' to sneak into Portsmouth
unobserved--unobserved mark you!--and join hands with the enemy. It
trarnspired that the Scouts was conducting a field-day against opposin'
forces, ably assisted by all branches of the Service, and they was so
afraid the car wouldn't count ten points to them in the fray, that
they'd have scalped us, but for the intervention of an umpire--also in
short under-drawers. A fleshy sight!'

Here Mr. Pyecroft shut his eyes and nodded. 'That umpire,' he said
suddenly, 'was our Mr. Morshed--a gentleman whose acquaintance you have
already made _and_ profited by, if I mistake not[7].'

[Footnote 7: 'Their Lawful Occasions,' _Traffics and Discoveries_.]

'Oh, was the Navy in it too?' I said; for I had read of wild doings
occasionally among the Boy Scouts on the Portsmouth Road, in which Navy,
Army, and the world at large seemed to have taken part.

'The Navy _was_ in it. I was the only one out of it--for several
seconds. Our Mr. Morshed failed to recognise me in my fur boa, and my
appealin' winks at 'im behind your goggles didn't arrive. But when Eddy
darling had told his story, I saluted, which is difficult in furs, and I
stated I was bringin' him dispatches from the North. My Mr. Morshed
cohered on the instant. I've never known his ethergram installations out
of order yet. "Go and guard your blessed road," he says to the Fratton
Orphan Asylum standing at attention all round him, and, when they was
removed--"Pyecroft," he says, still _sotte voce_, "what in Hong-Kong are
you doing with this dun-coloured _sampan_?"

'It was your Mr. Leggatt's paint-protective matting which caught his
eye. She _did_ resemble a _sampan_, especially about the stern-works. At
these remarks I naturally threw myself on 'is bosom, so far as Service
conditions permitted, and revealed him all, mentioning that the car was
yours. You know his way of working his lips like a rabbit? Yes, he was
quite pleased. "_His_ car!" he kept murmuring, working his lips like a
rabbit. "I owe 'im more than a trifle for things he wrote about me. I'll
keep the car."

'Your Mr. Leggatt now injected some semi-mutinous remarks to the effect
that he was your chauffeur in charge of your car, and, as such, capable
of so acting. Mr. Morshed threw him a glarnce. It sufficed. Didn't it
suffice, Mr. Leggatt?'

'I knew if something didn't happen, something worse would,' said
Leggatt. 'It never fails when you're aboard.'

'And Jules?' I demanded.

'Jules was, so to speak, panicking in a water-tight flat through his
unfortunate lack of language. I had to introduce him as part of the
_entente cordiale_, and he was put under arrest, too. Then we sat on the
grass and smoked, while Eddy and Co. violently annoyed the traffic on
the Portsmouth Road, till the umpires, all in short panties, conferred
on the valuable lessons of the field-day and added up points, same as at
target-practice. I didn't hear their conclusions, but our Mr. Morshed
delivered a farewell address to Eddy and Co., tellin' 'em they ought to
have deduced from a hundred signs about me, that I was a friendly
bringin' in dispatches from the North. We left 'em tryin' to find those
signs in the Scout book, and we reached Mr. Morshed's hotel at
Portsmouth at 6.27 P.M. _ong automobile_. Here endeth the
first chapter.'

'Begin the second,' I said.

The uncle and Leggatt had finished washing up and were seated, smoking,
while the damp duster dried at the fire.

'About what time was it,' said Pyecroft to Leggatt, 'when our Mr.
Morshed began to talk about uncles?'

'When he came back to the bar, after he'd changed into those rat-catcher
clothes,' said Leggatt.

'That's right. "Pye," said he, "have you an uncle?" "I have," I says.
"Here's santy to him," and I finished my sherry and bitters to
_you_, uncle.'

'That's right,' said Pyecroft's uncle sternly. 'If you hadn't I'd have
belted you worth rememberin', Emmanuel. I had the body all night.'

Pyecroft smiled affectionately. 'So you 'ad, uncle, an' beautifully you
looked after her. But as I was saying, "I have an uncle, too," says Mr.
Morshed, dark and lowering. "Yet somehow I can't love him. I want to
mortify the beggar. Volunteers to mortify my uncle, one pace to
the front."

'I took Jules with me the regulation distance. Jules was getting
interested. Your Mr. Leggatt preserved a strictly nootral attitude.

'"You're a pressed man," says our Mr. Morshed. "I owe your late employer
much, so to say. The car will manoeuvre all night, as requisite."

'Mr. Leggatt come out noble as your employee, and, by 'Eaven's divine
grace, instead of arguing, he pleaded his new paint and varnish which
was Mr. Morshed's one vital spot (he's lootenant on one of the new
catch-'em-alive-o's now). "True," says he, "paint's an 'oly thing. I'll
give you one hour to arrange a _modus vivendi_. Full bunkers and steam
ready by 9 P.M. to-night, _if_ you please."

'Even so, Mr. Leggatt was far from content. _I_ 'ad to arrange the
details. We run her into the yard here.' Pyecroft nodded through the
window at my car's glossy back-panels. 'We took off the body with its
mats and put it in the stable, substitooting (and that yard's a tight
fit for extensive repairs) the body of uncle's blue delivery cart. It
overhung a trifle, but after I'd lashed it I knew it wouldn't fetch
loose. Thus, in our composite cruiser, we repaired once more to the
hotel, and was immediately dispatched to the toy-shop in the High Street
where we took aboard one rocking-horse which was waiting for us.'

'Took aboard _what_?' I cried.

'One fourteen-hand dapple-grey rocking-horse, with pure green rockers
and detachable tail, pair gashly glass eyes, complete set 'orrible
grinnin' teeth, and two bloody-red nostrils which, protruding from the
brown papers, produced the _tout ensemble_ of a Ju-ju sacrifice in the
Benin campaign. Do I make myself comprehensible?'

'Perfectly. Did you say anything?' I asked.

'Only to Jules. To him, I says, wishing to try him. "_Allez à votre
bateau. Je say mon Lootenong. Eel voo donneray porkwor_." To me, says
he, "_Vous ong ate hurroo! Jamay de la vee_!" and I saw by his eye he'd
taken on for the full term of the war. Jules was a blue-eyed,
brindle-haired beggar of a useful make and inquirin' habits. Your Mr.
Leggatt he only groaned.'

Leggatt nodded. 'It was like nightmares,' he said. 'It was like
nightmares.'

'Once more, then,' Pyecroft swept on, 'we returned to the hotel and
partook of a sumptuous repast, under the able and genial chairmanship of
our Mr. Morshed, who laid his projecks unreservedly before us. "In the
first place," he says, opening out bicycle-maps, "my uncle, who, I
regret to say, is a brigadier-general, has sold his alleged soul to
Dicky Bridoon for a feathery hat and a pair o' gilt spurs. Jules,
_conspuez l'oncle_!" So Jules, you'll be glad to hear--'

'One minute, Pye,' I said. 'Who is Dicky Bridoon?'

'I don't usually mingle myself up with the bickerings of the Junior
Service, but it trarnspired that he was Secretary o' State for Civil
War, an' he'd been issuing mechanical leather-belly gee-gees which
doctors recommend for tumour--to the British cavalry in loo of real meat
horses, to learn to ride on. Don't you remember there was quite a stir
in the papers owing to the cavalry not appreciatin' 'em? But that's a
minor item. The main point was that our uncle, in his capacity of
brigadier-general, mark you, had wrote to the papers highly approvin' o'
Dicky Bridoon's mechanical substitutes an 'ad thus obtained
promotion--all same as a agnosticle stoker psalm-singin' 'imself up the
Service under a pious captain. At that point of the narrative we caught
a phosphorescent glimmer why the rocking-horse might have been issued;
but none the less the navigation was intricate. Omitting the fact it was
dark and cloudy, our brigadier-uncle lay somewhere in the South Downs
with his brigade, which was manoeuvrin' at Whitsum manoeuvres on a large
scale--Red Army _versus_ Blue, et cetera; an' all we 'ad to go by was
those flapping bicycle-maps and your Mr. Leggatt's groans.'

'I was thinking what the Downs mean after dark,' said Leggatt angrily.

'They was worth thinkin' of,' said Pyecroft. 'When we had studied the
map till it fair spun, we decided to sally forth and creep for uncle by
hand in the dark, dark night, an' present 'im with the rocking-horse. So
we embarked at 8.57 P.M.'

'One minute again, please. How much did Jules understand by that time?'
I asked.

'Sufficient unto the day--or night, perhaps I should say. He told our
Mr. Morshed he'd follow him _more sang frays_, which is French for dead,
drunk, or damned. Barrin' 'is paucity o' language, there wasn't a
blemish on Jules. But what I wished to imply was, when we climbed into
the back parts of the car, our Lootenant Morshed says to me, "I doubt if
I'd flick my cigar-ends about too lavish, Mr. Pyecroft. We ought to be
sitting on five pounds' worth of selected fireworks, and I think the
rockets are your end." Not being able to smoke with my 'ead over the
side I threw it away; and then your Mr. Leggatt, 'aving been as nearly
mutinous as it pays to be with my Mr. Morshed, arched his back
and drove.'

'Where did he drive to, please?' said I.

'Primerrily, in search of any or either or both armies; seconderrily, of
course, in search of our brigadier-uncle. Not finding him on the road,
we ran about the grass looking for him. This took us to a great many
places in a short time. Ow 'eavenly that lilac did smell on top of that
first Down--stinkin' its blossomin' little heart out!'

'I 'adn't leesure to notice,' said Mr. Leggatt. 'The Downs were full o'
chalk-pits, and we'd no lights.'

'We 'ad the bicycle-lamp to look at the map by. Didn't you notice the
old lady at the window where we saw the man in the night-gown? I thought
night-gowns as sleepin' rig was extinck, so to speak.'

'I tell you I 'adn't leesure to notice,' Leggatt repeated.

'That's odd. Then what might 'ave made you tell the sentry at the first
camp we found that you was the _Daily Express_ delivery-waggon?'

'You can't touch pitch without being defiled,' Leggatt answered. ''Oo
told the officer in the bath we were umpires?'

'Well, he asked us. That was when we found the Territorial battalion
undressin' in slow time. It lay on the left flank o' the Blue Army, and
it cackled as it lay, too. But it gave us our position as regards the
respective armies. We wandered a little more, and at 11.7 P.M., not
having had a road under us for twenty minutes, we scaled the heights of
something or other--which are about six hundred feet high. Here we
'alted to tighten the lashings of the superstructure, and we smelt
leather and horses three counties deep all round. We was, as you might
say, in the thick of it.'

'"Ah!" says my Mr. Morshed. "My 'orizon has indeed broadened. What a
little thing is an uncle, Mr. Pyecroft, in the presence o' these
glitterin' constellations! Simply ludicrous!" he says, "to waste a
rocking-horse on an individual. We must socialise it. But we must get
their 'eads up first. Touch off one rocket, if you please."

'I touched off a green three-pounder which rose several thousand metres,
and burst into gorgeous stars. "Reproduce the manoeuvre," he says, "at
the other end o' this ridge--if it don't end in another cliff." So we
steamed down the ridge a mile and a half east, and then I let Jules
touch off a pink rocket, or he'd ha' kissed me. That was his only way to
express his emotions, so to speak. Their heads come up then all around
us to the extent o' thousands. We hears bugles like cocks crowing below,
and on the top of it a most impressive sound which I'd never enjoyed
before because 'itherto I'd always been an inteegral part of it, so to
say--the noise of 'ole armies gettin' under arms. They must 'ave
anticipated a night attack, I imagine. Most impressive. Then we 'eard a
threshin'-machine. "Tutt! Tutt! This is childish!" says Lootenant
Morshed. "We can't wait till they've finished cutting chaff for their
horses. We must make 'em understand we're not to be trifled with.
Expedite 'em with another rocket, Mr. Pyecroft."

'"It's barely possible, sir," I remarks, "that that's a searchlight
churnin' up," and by the time we backed into a providential chalk
cutting (which was where our first tyre went pungo) she broke out to the
northward, and began searching the ridge. A smart bit o' work.'

''Twasn't a puncture. The inner tube had nipped because we skidded so,'
Leggatt interrupted.

'While your Mr. Leggatt was effectin' repairs, another searchlight broke
out to the southward, and the two of 'em swept our ridge on both sides.
Right at the west end of it they showed us the ground rising into a
hill, so to speak, crowned with what looked like a little fort. Morshed
saw it before the beams shut off. "That's the key of the position!" he
says. "Occupy it at all hazards."

'"I haven't half got occupation for the next twenty minutes," says your
Mr. Leggatt, rootin' and blasphemin' in the dark. Mark, now, 'ow
Morshed changed his tactics to suit 'is environment. "Right!" says he.
"I'll stand by the ship. Mr. Pyecroft and Jules, oblige me by doubling
along the ridge to the east with all the maroons and crackers you can
carry without spilling. Read the directions careful for the maroons, Mr.
Pyecroft, and touch them off at half-minute intervals. Jules represents
musketry an' maxim fire under your command. Remember, it's death or
Salisbury Gaol! Prob'ly both!"

'By these means and some moderately 'ard runnin', we distracted 'em to
the eastward. Maroons, you may not be aware, are same as bombs, with the
anarchism left out. In confined spots like chalk-pits, they knock a
four-point-seven silly. But you should read the directions before'and.
In the intervals of the slow but well-directed fire of my cow-guns,
Jules, who had found a sheep-pond in the dark a little lower down, gave
what you might call a cinematograph reproduction o' sporadic musketry.
They was large size crackers, and he concluded with the dull, sickenin'
thud o' blind shells burstin' on soft ground.'

'How did he manage that?' I said.

'You throw a lighted squib into water and you'll see,' said Pyecroft.
'Thus, then, we improvised till supplies was exhausted and the
surrounding landscapes fair 'owled and 'ummed at us. The Jun or Service
might 'ave 'ad their doubts about the rockets but they couldn't overlook
our gunfire. Both sides tumbled out full of initiative. I told Jules no
two flat-feet 'ad any right to be as happy as us, and we went back
along the ridge to the derelict, and there was our Mr. Morshed
apostrophin' his 'andiwork over fifty square mile o' country with
"Attend, all ye who list to hear!" out of the Fifth Reader. He'd got as
far as "And roused the shepherds o' Stonehenge, the rangers o' Beaulieu"
when we come up, and he drew our attention to its truth as well as its
beauty. That's rare in poetry, I'm told. He went right on to--"The red
glare on Skiddaw roused those beggars at Carlisle"--which he pointed out
was poetic license for Leith Hill. This allowed your Mr. Leggatt time to
finish pumpin' up his tyres. I 'eard the sweat 'op off his nose.'

'You know what it is, sir,' said poor Leggatt to me.

'It warfted across my mind, as I listened to what was trarnspirin', that
it might be easier to make the mess than to wipe it up, but such
considerations weighed not with our valiant leader.

'"Mr. Pyecroft," he says, "it can't have escaped your notice that we
'ave one angry and 'ighly intelligent army in front of us, an' another
'ighly angry and equally intelligent army in our rear. What 'ud you
recommend?"

'Most men would have besought 'im to do a lateral glide while there was
yet time, but all I said was: "The rocking-horse isn't expended
yet, sir."

'He laid his hand on my shoulder. "Pye," says he, "there's worse men
than you in loftier places. They shall 'ave it. None the less," he
remarks, "the ice is undeniably packing."

'I may 'ave omitted to point out that at this juncture two large
armies, both deprived of their night's sleep, was awake, as you might
say, and hurryin' into each other's arms. Here endeth the
second chapter.'

He filled his pipe slowly. The uncle had fallen asleep. Leggatt lit
another cigarette.

'We then proceeded _ong automobile_ along the ridge in a westerly
direction towards the miniature fort which had been so kindly revealed
by the searchlight, but which on inspection (your Mr. Leggatt bumped
into an outlyin' reef of it) proved to be a wurzel-clump;
_c'est-à-dire_, a parallelogrammatic pile of about three million
mangold-wurzels, brought up there for the sheep, I suppose. On all
sides, excep' the one we'd come by, the ground fell away moderately
quick, and down at the bottom there was a large camp lit up an' full of
harsh words of command.

'"I said it was the key to the position," Lootenant Morshed remarks.
"Trot out Persimmon!" which we rightly took to read, "Un-wrap the
rocking-horse."

'"Houp la!" says Jules in a insubordinate tone, an' slaps Persimmon on
the flank.

'"Silence!" says the Lootenant. "This is the Royal Navy, not Newmarket";
and we carried Persimmon to the top of the mangel-wurzel clump
as directed.

'Owing to the inequalities of the terrain (I _do_ think your Mr. Leggatt
might have had a spirit-level in his kit) he wouldn't rock free on the
bed-plate, and while adjustin' him, his detachable tail fetched adrift.
Our Lootenant was quick to seize the advantage.

'"Remove that transformation," he says. "Substitute one Roman candle.
Gas-power is superior to manual propulsion."

'So we substituted. He arranged the _pièce de resistarnce_ in the shape
of large drums--not saucers, mark you--drums of coloured fire, with
printed instructions, at proper distances round Persimmon. There was a
brief interregnum while we dug ourselves in among the wurzels by hand.
Then he touched off the fires, _not_ omitting the Roman candle, and, you
may take it from me, all was visible. Persimmon shone out in his naked
splendour, red to port, green to starboard, and one white light at his
bows, as per Board o' Trade regulations. Only he didn't so much rock,
you might say, as shrug himself, in a manner of speaking, every time the
candle went off. One can't have everything. But the rest surpassed our
highest expectations. I think Persimmon was noblest on the starboard or
green side--more like when a man thinks he's seeing mackerel in hell,
don't you know? And yet I'd be the last to deprecate the effect of the
port light on his teeth, or that blood-shot look in his left eye. He
knew there was something going on he didn't approve of. He
looked worried.'

'Did you laugh?' I said.

'I'm not much of a wag myself; nor it wasn't as if we 'ad time to allow
the spectacle to sink in. The coloured fires was supposed to burn ten
minutes, whereas it was obvious to the meanest capacity that the Junior
Service would arrive by forced marches in about two and a half. They
grarsped our topical allusion as soon as it was across the foot-lights,
so to speak. They were quite chafed at it. Of course, 'ad we reflected,
we might have known that exposin' illuminated rockin'-horses to an army
that was learnin' to ride on 'em partook of the nature of a _double
entender_, as the French say--same as waggling the tiller lines at a man
who's had a hanging in the family. I knew the cox of the
_Archimandrite's_ galley 'arf killed for a similar _plaisan-teree._ But
we never anticipated lobsters being so sensitive. That was why we
shifted. We could 'ardly tear our commandin' officer away. He put his
head on one side, and kept cooin'. The only thing he 'ad neglected to
provide was a line of retreat; but your Mr. Leggatt--an 'eroic soul in
the last stage of wet prostration--here took command of the van, or,
rather, the rear-guard. We walked downhill beside him, holding on to the
superstructure to prevent her capsizing. These technical details,
'owever, are beyond me.' He waved his pipe towards Leggatt.

'I saw there was two deepish ruts leadin' down 'ill somewhere,' said
Leggatt. 'That was when the soldiers stopped laughin', and begun to
run uphill.'

'Stroll, lovey, stroll!' Pyecroft corrected. 'The Dervish rush took
place later.'

'So I laid her in these ruts. That was where she must 'ave scraped her
silencer a bit. Then they turned sharp right--the ruts did--and then she
stopped bonnet-high in a manure-heap, sir; but I'll swear it was all of
a one in three gradient. I think it was a barnyard. We waited there,'
said Leggatt.

'But not for long,' said Pyecroft. 'The lights were towering out of the
drums on the position we 'ad so valiantly abandoned; and the Junior
Service was escaladin' it _en masse_. When numerous bodies of 'ighly
trained men arrive simultaneous in the same latitude from opposite
directions, each remarking briskly, "What the 'ell did you do _that_
for?" detonation, as you might say, is practically assured. They didn't
ask for extraneous aids. If we'd come out with sworn affidavits of what
we'd done they wouldn't 'ave believed us. They wanted each other's
company exclusive. Such was the effect of Persimmon on their clarss
feelings. Idol'try, _I_ call it! Events transpired with the utmost
velocity and rapidly increasing pressures. There was a few remarks about
Dicky Bridoon and mechanical horses, and then some one was smacked--hard
by the sound--in the middle of a remark.'

'That was the man who kept calling for the Forty-fifth Dragoons,' said
Leggatt. 'He got as far as Drag ...'

'Was it?' said Pyecroft dreamily. 'Well, he couldn't say they didn't
come. They all came, and they all fell to arguin' whether the Infantry
should 'ave Persimmon for a regimental pet or the Cavalry should keep
him for stud purposes. Hence the issue was soon clouded with
mangold-wurzels. Our commander said we 'ad sowed the good seed, and it
was bearing abundant fruit. (They weigh between four and seven pounds
apiece.) Seein' the children 'ad got over their shyness, and 'ad really
begun to play games, we backed out o' the pit and went down, by steps,
to the camp below, no man, as you might say, making us afraid. Here we
enjoyed a front view of the battle, which rolled with renewed impetus,
owing to both sides receiving strong reinforcements every minute. All
arms were freely represented; Cavalry, on this occasion only, acting in
concert with Artillery. They argued the relative merits of horses
_versus_ feet, so to say, but they didn't neglect Persimmon. The wounded
rolling downhill with the wurzels informed us that he had long ago been
socialised, and the smallest souvenirs were worth a man's life. Speaking
broadly, the Junior Service appeared to be a shade out of 'and, if I may
venture so far. They did _not_ pay prompt and unhesitating obedience to
the "Retires" or the "Cease Fires" or the "For 'Eaven's sake come to
bed, ducky" of their officers, who, I regret to say, were 'otly
embroiled at the heads of their respective units.'

'How did you find that out?' I asked.

'On account of Lootenant Morshed going to the Mess tent to call on his
uncle and raise a drink; but all hands had gone to the front. We thought
we 'eard somebody bathing behind the tent, and we found an oldish
gentleman tryin' to drown a boy in knickerbockers in a horse-trough. He
kept him under with a bicycle, so to speak. He 'ad nearly accomplished
his fell design, when we frustrated him. He was in a highly malleable
condition and full o' _juice de spree_. "Arsk not what I am," he says.
"My wife 'll tell me that quite soon enough. Arsk rather what I've
been," he says. "I've been dinin' here," he says. "I commanded 'em in
the Eighties," he says, "and, Gawd forgive me," he says, sobbin'
'eavily, "I've spent this holy evening telling their Colonel they was a
set of educated inefficients. Hark to 'em!" We could, without strainin'
ourselves; but how _he_ picked up the gentle murmur of his own corps in
that on-the-knee party up the hill I don't know. "They've marched and
fought thirty mile to-day," he shouts, "and now they're tearin' the
_intestines_ out of the Cavalry up yonder! They won't stop this side the
gates o' Delhi," he says. "I commanded their ancestors. There's nothing
wrong with the Service," he says, wringing out his trousers on his lap.
"'Eaven pardon me for doubtin' 'em! Same old game--same young beggars."

'The boy in the knickerbockers, languishing on a chair, puts in a claim
for one drink. "Let him go dry," says our friend in shirt-tails. "He's a
reporter. He run into me on his filthy bicycle and he asked me if I
could furnish 'im with particulars about the mutiny in the Army. You
false-'earted proletarian publicist," he says, shakin' his finger at
'im--for he was reelly annoyed--"I'll teach you to defile what you can't
comprebend! When my regiment's in a state o' mutiny, I'll do myself the
honour of informing you personally. You particularly ignorant and very
narsty little man," he says, "you're no better than a dhobi's donkey! If
there wasn't dirty linen to wash, you'd starve," he says, "and why I
haven't drowned you will be the lastin' regret of my life."

'Well, we sat with 'em and 'ad drinks for about half-an-hour in front
of the Mess tent. He'd ha' killed the reporter if there hadn't been
witnesses, and the reporter might have taken notes of the battle; so we
acted as two-way buffers, in a sense. I don't hold with the Press
mingling up with Service matters. They draw false conclusions. Now, mark
you, at a moderate estimate, there were seven thousand men in the
fighting line, half of 'em hurt in their professional feelings, an' the
other half rubbin' in the liniment, as you might say. All due to
Persimmon! If you 'adn't seen it you wouldn't 'ave believed it. And yet,
mark you, not one single unit of 'em even resorted to his belt. They
confined themselves to natural producks--hands and the wurzels. I
thought Jules was havin' fits, till it trarnspired the same thought had
impressed him in the French language. He called it _incroyable_, I
believe. Seven thousand men, with seven thousand rifles, belts, and
bayonets, in a violently agitated condition, and not a ungenteel blow
struck from first to last. The old gentleman drew our attention to it as
well. It was quite noticeable.

'Lack of ammunition was the primerry cause of the battle ceasin'. A
Brigade-Major came in, wipin' his nose on both cuffs, and sayin' he 'ad
'ad snuff. The brigadier-uncle followed. He was, so to speak, sneezin'.
We thought it best to shift our moorings without attractin' attention;
so we shifted. They 'ad called the cows 'ome by then. The Junior Service
was going to bye-bye all round us, as happy as the ship's monkey when
he's been playin' with the paints, and Lootenant Morshed and Jules kept
bowin' to port and starboard of the superstructure, acknowledgin' the
unstinted applause which the multitude would 'ave given 'em if they'd
known the facts. On the other 'and, as your Mr. Leggatt observed, they
might 'ave killed us.

'That would have been about five bells in the middle watch, say
half-past two. A well-spent evening. There was but little to be gained
by entering Portsmouth at that hour, so we turned off on the grass (this
was after we had found a road under us), and we cast anchors out at the
stern and prayed for the day.

'But your Mr. Leggatt he had to make and mend tyres all our watch below.
It trarnspired she had been running on the rim o' two or three wheels,
which, very properly, he hadn't reported till the close of the action.
And that's the reason of your four new tyres. Mr. Morshed was of opinion
you'd earned 'em. Do you dissent?'

I stretched out my hand, which Pyecroft crushed to pulp. 'No, Pye,' I
said, deeply moved, 'I agree entirely. But what happened to Jules?'

'We returned him to his own Navy after breakfast. He wouldn't have kept
much longer without some one in his own language to tell it to. I don't
know any man I ever took more compassion on than Jules. 'Is sufferings
swelled him up centimetres, and all he could do on the Hard was to kiss
Lootenant Morshed and me, _and_ your Mr. Leggatt. He deserved that much.
A cordial beggar.'

Pyecroft looked at the washed cups on the table, and the low sunshine
on my car's back in the yard.

'Too early to drink to him,' he said. 'But I feel it just the same.'

The uncle, sunk in his chair, snored a little; the canary answered with
a shrill lullaby. Pyecroft picked up the duster, threw it over the cage,
put his finger to his lips, and we tiptoed out into the shop, while
Leggatt brought the car round.

'I'll look out for the news in the papers,' I said, as I got in.

'Oh, we short-circuited that! Nothing trarnspired excep' a statement to
the effect that some Territorial battalions had played about with
turnips at the conclusion of the manoeuvres The taxpayer don't know all
he gets for his money. Farewell!'

We moved off just in time to be blocked by a regiment coming towards the
station to entrain for London.

'Beg your pardon, sir,' said a sergeant in charge of the baggage, 'but
would you mind backin' a bit till we get the waggons past?'

'Certainly,' I said. 'You don't happen to have a rocking-horse among
your kit, do you?'

The rattle of our reverse drowned his answer, but I saw his eyes. One of
them was blackish-green, about four days old.

THE LEGEND OF MIRTH

     The Four Archangels, so the legends tell,
     Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, Azrael,
     Being first of those to whom the Power was shown,
     Stood first of all the Host before The Throne,
     And when the Charges were allotted burst
     Tumultuous-winged from out the assembly first.
     Zeal was their spur that bade them strictly heed
     Their own high judgment on their lightest deed.
     Zeal was their spur that, when relief was given,
     Urged them unwearied to fresh toil in Heaven;
     For Honour's sake perfecting every task
     Beyond what e'en Perfection's self could ask....
     And Allah, Who created Zeal and Pride,
     Knows how the twain are perilous-near allied.

     It chanced on one of Heaven's long-lighted days,
     The Four and all the Host having gone their ways
     Each to his Charge, the shining Courts were void
     Save for one Seraph whom no charge employed,
     With folden wings and slumber-threatened brow.
     To whom The Word: 'Beloved, what dost thou?'
     'By the Permission,' came the answer soft,
     'Little I do nor do that little oft.
     As is The Will in Heaven so on Earth
     Where by The Will I strive to make men mirth.'
     He ceased and sped, hearing The Word once more:
     'Beloved, go thy way and greet the Four.'

     Systems and Universes overpast,
     The Seraph came upon the Four, at last,
     Guiding and guarding with devoted mind
     The tedious generations of mankind
     Who lent at most unwilling ear and eye
     When they could not escape the ministry....
     Yet, patient, faithful, firm, persistent, just
     Toward all that gross, indifferent, facile dust,
     The Archangels laboured to discharge their trust
     By precept and example, prayer and law,
     Advice, reproof, and rule, but, labouring, saw
     Each in his fellow's countenance confessed,
     The Doubt that sickens: 'Have I done my best?'

     Even as they sighed and turned to toil anew,
     The Seraph hailed them with observance due;
     And after some fit talk of higher things
     Touched tentative on mundane happenings.
     This they permitting, he, emboldened thus,
     Prolused of humankind promiscuous.
     And, since the large contention less avails
     Than instances observed, he told them tales--Tales
     of the shop, the bed, the court, the street,
     Intimate, elemental, indiscreet:
     Occasions where Confusion smiting swift
     Piles jest on jest as snow-slides pile the drift.

     Whence, one by one, beneath derisive skies,
     The victims bare, bewildered heads arise:
     Tales of the passing of the spirit, graced
     With humour blinding as the doom it faced:
     Stark tales of ribaldry that broke aside
     To tears, by laughter swallowed ere they dried:
     Tales to which neither grace nor gain accrue,
     But only (Allah be exalted!) true,
     And only, as the Seraph showed that night,
     Delighting to the limits of delight.

     These he rehearsed with artful pause and halt,
     And such pretence of memory at fault,
     That soon the Four--so well the bait was thrown--
     Came to his aid with memories of their own--
     Matters dismissed long since as small or vain,
     Whereof the high significance had lain
     Hid, till the ungirt glosses made it plain.
     Then as enlightenment came broad and fast,
     Each marvelled at his own oblivious past
     Until--the Gates of Laughter opened wide--
     The Four, with that bland Seraph at their side,
     While they recalled, compared, and amplified,
     In utter mirth forgot both zeal and pride.

     High over Heaven the lamps of midnight burned
     Ere, weak with merriment, the Four returned,
     Not in that order they were wont to keep--
     Pinion to pinion answering, sweep for sweep,
     In awful diapason heard afar,
     But shoutingly adrift 'twixt star and star.
     Reeling a planet's orbit left or right
     As laughter took them in the abysmal Night;
     Or, by the point of some remembered jest,
     Winged and brought helpless down through gulfs unguessed,
     Where the blank worlds that gather to the birth
     Leaped in the womb of Darkness at their mirth,
     And e'en Gehenna's bondsmen understood.
     They were not damned from human brotherhood.

     Not first nor last of Heaven's high Host, the Four
     That night took place beneath The Throne once more.
     O lovelier than their morning majesty,
     The understanding light behind the eye!
     O more compelling than their old command,
     The new-learned friendly gesture of the hand!
     O sweeter than their zealous fellowship,
     The wise half-smile that passed from lip to lip!
     O well and roundly, when Command was given,
     They told their tale against themselves to Heaven,
     And in the silence, waiting on The Word,
     Received the Peace and Pardon of The Lord!

'My Son's Wife'

(1913)

He had suffered from the disease of the century since his early youth,
and before he was thirty he was heavily marked with it. He and a few
friends had rearranged Heaven very comfortably, but the reorganisation
of Earth, which they called Society, was even greater fun. It demanded
Work in the shape of many taxi-rides daily; hours of brilliant talk with
brilliant talkers; some sparkling correspondence; a few silences (but on
the understanding that their own turn should come soon) while other
people expounded philosophies; and a fair number of picture-galleries,
tea-fights, concerts, theatres, music-halls, and cinema shows; the whole
trimmed with love-making to women whose hair smelt of cigarette-smoke.
Such strong days sent Frankwell Midmore back to his flat assured that he
and his friends had helped the World a step nearer the Truth, the Dawn,
and the New Order.

His temperament, he said, led him more towards concrete data than
abstract ideas. People who investigate detail are apt to be tired at the
day's end. The same temperament, or it may have been a woman, made him
early attach himself to the Immoderate Left of his Cause in the capacity
of an experimenter in Social Relations. And since the Immoderate Left
contains plenty of women anxious to help earnest inquirers with large
independent incomes to arrive at evaluations of essentials, Frankwell
Midmore's lot was far from contemptible.

At that hour Fate chose to play with him. A widowed aunt, widely
separated by nature, and more widely by marriage, from all that
Midmore's mother had ever been or desired to be, died and left him
possessions. Mrs. Midmore, having that summer embraced a creed which
denied the existence of death, naturally could not stoop to burial; but
Midmore had to leave London for the dank country at a season when Social
Regeneration works best through long, cushioned conferences, two by two,
after tea. There he faced the bracing ritual of the British funeral, and
was wept at across the raw grave by an elderly coffin-shaped female with
a long nose, who called him 'Master Frankie'; and there he was
congratulated behind an echoing top-hat by a man he mistook for a mute,
who turned out to be his aunt's lawyer. He wrote his mother next day,
after a bright account of the funeral:

'So far as I can understand, she has left me between four and five
hundred a year. It all comes from Ther Land, as they call it down here.
The unspeakable attorney, Sperrit, and a green-eyed daughter, who hums
to herself as she tramps but is silent on all subjects except "huntin',"
insisted on taking me to see it. Ther Land is brown and green in
alternate slabs like chocolate and pistachio cakes, speckled with
occasional peasants who do not utter. In case it should not be wet
enough there is a wet brook in the middle of it. Ther House is by the
brook. I shall look into it later. If there should be any little memento
of Jenny that you care for, let me know. Didn't you tell me that
mid-Victorian furniture is coming into the market again? Jenny's old
maid--it is called Rhoda Dolbie--tells me that Jenny promised it thirty
pounds a year. The will does not. Hence, I suppose, the tears at the
funeral. But that is close on ten per cent of the income. I fancy Jenny
has destroyed all her private papers and records of her _vie intime_,
if, indeed, life be possible in such a place. The Sperrit man told me
that if I had means of my own I might come and live on Ther Land. I
didn't tell him how much I would pay not to! I cannot think it right
that any human being should exercise mastery over others in the
merciless fashion our tom-fool social system permits; so, as it is all
mine, I intend to sell it whenever the unholy Sperrit can find a
purchaser.'

And he went to Mr. Sperrit with the idea next day, just before returning
to town.

'Quite so,' said the lawyer. 'I see your point, of course. But the house
itself is rather old-fashioned--hardly the type purchasers demand
nowadays. There's no park, of course, and the bulk of the land is let to
a life-tenant, a Mr. Sidney. As long as he pays his rent, he can't be
turned out, and even if he didn't'--Mr. Sperrit's face relaxed a
shade--'you might have a difficulty.'

'The property brings four hundred a year, I understand,' said Midmore.

'Well, hardly--ha-ardly. Deducting land and income tax, tithes, fire
insurance, cost of collection and repairs of course, it returned two
hundred and eighty-four pounds last year. The repairs are rather a large
item--owing to the brook. I call it Liris--out of Horace, you know.'

Midmore looked at his watch impatiently.

'I suppose you can find somebody to buy it?' he repeated.

'We will do our best, of course, if those are your instructions. Then,
that is all except'--here Midmore half rose, but Mr. Sperrit's little
grey eyes held his large brown ones firmly--'except about Rhoda Dolbie,
Mrs. Werf's maid. I may tell you that we did not draw up your aunt's
last will. She grew secretive towards the last--elderly people often
do--and had it done in London. I expect her memory failed her, or she
mislaid her notes. She used to put them in her spectacle-case.... My
motor only takes eight minutes to get to the station, Mr. Midmore ...
but, as I was saying, whenever she made her will with _us_, Mrs. Werf
always left Rhoda thirty pounds per annum. Charlie, the wills!' A clerk
with a baldish head and a long nose dealt documents on to the table like
cards, and breathed heavily behind Midmore. 'It's in no sense a legal
obligation, of course,' said Mr. Sperrit. 'Ah, that one is dated January
the 11th, eighteen eighty-nine.'

Midmore looked at his watch again and found himself saying with no good
grace: 'Well, I suppose she'd better have it--for the present at
any rate.'

He escaped with an uneasy feeling that two hundred and fifty-four pounds
a year was not exactly four hundred, and that Charlie's long nose
annoyed him. Then he returned, first-class, to his own affairs.

Of the two, perhaps three, experiments in Social Relations which he had
then in hand, one interested him acutely. It had run for some months and
promised most variegated and interesting developments, on which he dwelt
luxuriously all the way to town. When he reached his flat he was not
well prepared for a twelve-page letter explaining, in the diction of the
Immoderate Left which rubricates its I's and illuminates its T's, that
the lady had realised greater attractions in another Soul. She
re-stated, rather than pleaded, the gospel of the Immoderate Left as her
justification, and ended in an impassioned demand for her right to
express herself in and on her own life, through which, she pointed out,
she could pass but once. She added that if, later, she should discover
Midmore was 'essentially complementary to her needs,' she would tell him
so. That Midmore had himself written much the same sort of
epistle--barring the hint of return--to a woman of whom his needs for
self-expression had caused him to weary three years before, did not
assist him in the least. He expressed himself to the gas-fire in terms
essential but not complimentary. Then he reflected on the detached
criticism of his best friends and her best friends, male and female,
with whom he and she and others had talked so openly while their gay
adventure was in flower. He recalled, too--this must have been about
midnight--her analysis from every angle, remote and most intimate, of
the mate to whom she had been adjudged under the base convention which
is styled marriage. Later, at that bad hour when the cattle wake for a
little, he remembered her in other aspects and went down into the hell
appointed; desolate, desiring, with no God to call upon. About eleven
o'clock next morning Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and
Zophar the Naamathite called upon him 'for they had made appointment
together' to see how he took it; but the janitor told them that Job had
gone--into the country, he believed.

Midmore's relief when he found his story was not written across his
aching temples for Mr. Sperrit to read--the defeated lover, like the
successful one, believes all earth privy to his soul--was put down by
Mr. Sperrit to quite different causes. He led him into a morning-room.
The rest of the house seemed to be full of people, singing to a loud
piano idiotic songs about cows, and the hall smelt of damp cloaks.

'It's our evening to take the winter cantata,' Mr. Sperrit explained.
'It's "High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire." I hoped you'd come back.
There are scores of little things to settle. As for the house, of
course, it stands ready for you at any time. I couldn't get Rhoda out of
it--nor could Charlie for that matter. She's the sister, isn't she, of
the nurse who brought you down here when you were four, she says, to
recover from measles?'

'Is she? Was I?' said Midmore through the bad tastes in his mouth.
'D'you suppose I could stay there the night?'

Thirty joyous young voices shouted appeal to some one to leave their
'pipes of parsley 'ollow--'ollow--'ollow!' Mr. Sperrit had to raise his
voice above the din.

'Well, if I asked you to stay _here_, I should never hear the last of it
from Rhoda. She's a little cracked, of course, but the soul of devotion
and capable of anything. _Ne sit ancillae_, you know.'

'Thank you. Then I'll go. I'll walk.' He stumbled out dazed and sick
into the winter twilight, and sought the square house by the brook.

It was not a dignified entry, because when the door was unchained and
Rhoda exclaimed, he took two valiant steps into the hall and then
fainted--as men sometimes will after twenty-two hours of strong emotion
and little food.

'I'm sorry,' he said when he could speak. He was lying at the foot of
the stairs, his head on Rhoda's lap.

'Your 'ome is your castle, sir,' was the reply in his hair. 'I smelt it
wasn't drink. You lay on the sofa till I get your supper.'

She settled him in a drawing-room hung with yellow silk, heavy with the
smell of dead leaves and oil lamp. Something murmured soothingly in the
background and overcame the noises in his head. He thought he heard
horses' feet on wet gravel and a voice singing about ships and flocks
and grass. It passed close to the shuttered bay-window.

     But each will mourn his own, she saith,
     And sweeter woman ne'er drew breath
     Than my son's wife, Elizabeth ...
     Cusha--cusha--cusha--calling.

The hoofs broke into a canter as Rhoda entered with the tray. 'And then
I'll put you to bed,' she said. 'Sidney's coming in the morning.'
Midmore asked no questions. He dragged his poor bruised soul to bed and
would have pitied it all over again, but the food and warm sherry and
water drugged him to instant sleep.

Rhoda's voice wakened him, asking whether he would have ''ip, foot, or
sitz,' which he understood were the baths of the establishment. 'Suppose
you try all three,' she suggested. 'They're all yours, you know, sir.'

He would have renewed his sorrows with the daylight, but her words
struck him pleasantly. Everything his eyes opened upon was his very own
to keep for ever. The carved four-post Chippendale bed, obviously worth
hundreds; the wavy walnut William and Mary chairs--he had seen worse
ones labelled twenty guineas apiece; the oval medallion mirror; the
delicate eighteenth-century wire fireguard; the heavy brocaded curtains
were his--all his. So, too, a great garden full of birds that faced him
when he shaved; a mulberry tree, a sun-dial, and a dull, steel-coloured
brook that murmured level with the edge of a lawn a hundred yards away.
Peculiarly and privately his own was the smell of sausages and coffee
that he sniffed at the head of the wide square landing, all set round
with mysterious doors and Bartolozzi prints. He spent two hours after
breakfast in exploring his new possessions. His heart leaped up at such
things as sewing-machines, a rubber-tyred bath-chair in a tiled passage,
a malachite-headed Malacca cane, boxes and boxes of unopened stationery,
seal-rings, bunches of keys, and at the bottom of a steel-net reticule a
little leather purse with seven pounds ten shillings in gold and eleven
shillings in silver.

'You used to play with that when my sister brought you down here after
your measles,' said Rhoda as he slipped the money into his pocket. 'Now,
this was your pore dear auntie's business-room.' She opened a low door.
'Oh, I forgot about Mr. Sidney! There he is.' An enormous old man with
rheumy red eyes that blinked under downy white eyebrows sat in an Empire
chair, his cap in his hands. Rhoda withdrew sniffing. The man looked
Midmore over in silence, then jerked a thumb towards the door. 'I reckon
she told you who I be,' he began. 'I'm the only farmer you've got.
Nothin' goes off my place 'thout it walks on its own feet. What about my
pig-pound?'

'Well, what about it?' said Midmore.

'That's just what I be come about. The County Councils are getting more
particular. Did ye know there was swine fever at Pashell's? There _be_.
It'll 'ave to be in brick.'

'Yes,' said Midmore politely.

'I've bin at your aunt that was, plenty times about it. I don't say she
wasn't a just woman, but she didn't read the lease same way I did. I be
used to bein' put upon, but there's no doing any longer 'thout that
pig-pound.'

'When would you like it?' Midmore asked. It seemed the easiest road to
take.

'Any time or other suits me, I reckon. He ain't thrivin' where he is,
an' I paid eighteen shillin' for him.' He crossed his hands on his stick
and gave no further sign of life.

'Is that all?' Midmore stammered.

'All now--excep''--he glanced fretfully at the table beside him--'excep'
my usuals. Where's that Rhoda?'

Midmore rang the bell. Rhoda came in with a bottle and a glass. The old
man helped himself to four stiff fingers, rose in one piece, and stumped
out. At the door he cried ferociously: 'Don't suppose it's any odds to
you whether I'm drowned or not, but them floodgates want a wheel and
winch, they do. I be too old for liftin' 'em with the bar--my time
o' life.'

'Good riddance if 'e was drowned,' said Rhoda. 'But don't you mind him.
He's only amusin' himself. Your pore dear auntie used to give 'im 'is
usual--'tisn't the whisky _you_ drink--an' send 'im about 'is business.'

'I see. Now, is a pig-pound the same thing as a pig-sty?'

Rhoda nodded. ''E needs one, too, but 'e ain't entitled to it. You look
at 'is lease--third drawer on the left in that Bombay cab'net--an' next
time 'e comes you ask 'im to read it. That'll choke 'im off, because
'e can't!'

There was nothing in Midmore's past to teach him the message and
significance of a hand-written lease of the late 'eighties, but Rhoda
interpreted.

'It don't mean anything reelly,' was her cheerful conclusion, 'excep'
you mustn't get rid of him anyhow, an' 'e can do what 'e likes always.
Lucky for us 'e _do_ farm; and if it wasn't for 'is woman--'

'Oh, there's a Mrs. Sidney, is there?'

'Lor, _no_!' The Sidneys don't marry. They keep. That's his fourth
since--to my knowledge. He was a takin' man from the first.'

'Any families?'

'They'd be grown up by now if there was, wouldn't they? But you can't
spend all your days considerin' 'is interests. That's what gave your
pore aunt 'er indigestion. 'Ave you seen the gun-room?'

Midmore held strong views on the immorality of taking life for pleasure.
But there was no denying that the late Colonel Werf's seventy-guinea
breechloaders were good at their filthy job. He loaded one, took it out
and pointed--merely pointed--it at a cock-pheasant which rose out of a
shrubbery behind the kitchen, and the flaming bird came down in a long
slant on the lawn, stone dead. Rhoda from the scullery said it was a
lovely shot, and told him lunch was ready.

He spent the afternoon gun in one hand, a map in the other, beating the
bounds of his lands. They lay altogether in a shallow, uninteresting
valley, flanked with woods and bisected by a brook. Up stream was his
own house; down stream, less than half a mile, a low red farm-house
squatted in an old orchard, beside what looked like small lock-gates on
the Thames. There was no doubt as to ownership. Mr. Sidney saw him while
yet far off, and bellowed at him about pig-pounds and floodgates. These
last were two great sliding shutters of weedy oak across the brook,
which were prised up inch by inch with a crowbar along a notched strip
of iron, and when Sidney opened them they at once let out half the
water. Midmore watched it shrink between its aldered banks like some
conjuring trick. This, too, was his very own.

'I see,' he said. 'How interesting! Now, what's that bell for?' he went
on, pointing to an old ship's bell in a rude belfry at the end of an
outhouse. 'Was that a chapel once?' The red-eyed giant seemed to have
difficulty in expressing himself for the moment and blinked savagely.

'Yes,' he said at last. 'My chapel. When you 'ear that bell ring you'll
'ear something. Nobody but me 'ud put up with it--but I reckon it don't
make any odds to you.' He slammed the gates down again, and the brook
rose behind them with a suck and a grunt.

Midmore moved off, conscious that he might be safer with Rhoda to hold
his conversational hand. As he passed the front of the farm-house a
smooth fat woman, with neatly parted grey hair under a widow's cap,
curtsied to him deferentially through the window. By every teaching of
the Immoderate Left she had a perfect right to express herself in any
way she pleased, but the curtsey revolted him. And on his way home he
was hailed from behind a hedge by a manifest idiot with no roof to his
mouth, who hallooed and danced round him.

'What did that beast want?' he demanded of Rhoda at tea.

'Jimmy? He only wanted to know if you 'ad any telegrams to send. 'E'll
go anywhere so long as 'tisn't across running water. That gives 'im 'is
seizures. Even talkin' about it for fun like makes 'im shake.'

'But why isn't he where he can be properly looked after?'

'What 'arm's 'e doing? E's a love-child, but 'is family can pay for 'im.
If 'e was locked up 'e'd die all off at once, like a wild rabbit. Won't
you, please, look at the drive, sir?'

Midmore looked in the fading light. The neat gravel was pitted with
large roundish holes, and there was a punch or two of the same sort
on the lawn.

'That's the 'unt comin' 'ome,' Rhoda explained. 'Your pore dear auntie
always let 'em use our drive for a short cut after the Colonel died. The
Colonel wouldn't so much because he preserved; but your auntie was
always an 'orsewoman till 'er sciatica.'

'Isn't there some one who can rake it over or--or something?' said
Midmore vaguely.

'Oh yes. You'll never see it in the morning, but--you was out when they
came 'ome an' Mister Fisher--he's the Master--told me to tell you with
'is compliments that if you wasn't preservin' and cared to 'old to the
old understanding', is gravel-pit is at your service same as before. 'E
thought, perhaps, you mightn't know, and it 'ad slipped my mind to tell
you. It's good gravel, Mister Fisher's, and it binds beautiful on the
drive. We 'ave to draw it, o' course, from the pit, but--'

Midmore looked at her helplessly.

'Rhoda,' said he, 'what am I supposed to do?'

'Oh, let 'em come through,' she replied. 'You never know. You may want
to 'unt yourself some day.'

That evening it rained and his misery returned on him, the worse for
having been diverted. At last he was driven to paw over a few score
books in a panelled room called the library, and realised with horror
what the late Colonel Werf's mind must have been in its prime. The
volumes smelt of a dead world as strongly as they did of mildew. He
opened and thrust them back, one after another, till crude coloured
illustrations of men on horses held his eye. He began at random and read
a little, moved into the drawing-room with the volume, and settled down
by the fire still reading. It was a foul world into which he peeped for
the first time--a heavy-eating, hard-drinking hell of horse-copers,
swindlers, matchmaking mothers, economically dependent virgins selling
themselves blushingly for cash and lands: Jews, tradesmen, and an
ill-considered spawn of Dickens-and-horsedung characters (I give
Midmore's own criticism), but he read on, fascinated, and behold, from
the pages leaped, as it were, the brother to the red-eyed man of the
brook, bellowing at a landlord (here Midmore realised that _he_ was that
very animal) for new barns; and another man who, like himself again,
objected to hoof-marks on gravel. Outrageous as thought and conception
were, the stuff seemed to have the rudiments of observation. He dug out
other volumes by the same author, till Rhoda came in with a silver
candlestick.

'Rhoda,' said he, 'did you ever hear about a character called James
Pigg--and Batsey?'

'Why, o' course,' said she. 'The Colonel used to come into the kitchen
in 'is dressin'-gown an' read us all those Jorrockses.'

'Oh, Lord!' said Midmore, and went to bed with a book called _Handley
Cross_ under his arm, and a lonelier Columbus into a stranger world the
wet-ringed moon never looked upon.

Here we omit much. But Midmore never denied that for the epicure in
sensation the urgent needs of an ancient house, as interpreted by Rhoda
pointing to daylight through attic-tiles held in place by moss, gives an
edge to the pleasure of Social Research elsewhere. Equally he found that
the reaction following prolonged research loses much of its grey terror
if one knows one can at will bathe the soul in the society of plumbers
(all the water-pipes had chronic appendicitis), village idiots (Jimmy
had taken Midmore under his weak wing and camped daily at the
drive-gates), and a giant with red eyelids whose every action is an
unpredictable outrage.

Towards spring Midmore filled his house with a few friends of the
Immoderate Left. It happened to be the day when, all things and Rhoda
working together, a cartload of bricks, another of sand, and some bags
of lime had been despatched to build Sidney his almost daily-demanded
pig-pound. Midmore took his friends across the flat fields with some
idea of showing them Sidney as a type of 'the peasantry.' They hit the
minute when Sidney, hoarse with rage, was ordering bricklayer, mate,
carts and all off his premises. The visitors disposed themselves
to listen.

'You never give me no notice about changin' the pig,' Sidney shouted.
The pig--at least eighteen inches long--reared on end in the old sty and
smiled at the company.

'But, my good man--' Midmore opened.

'I ain't! For aught you know I be a dam' sight worse than you be. You
can't come and be'ave arbit'ry with me. You _are_ be'avin' arbit'ry! All
you men go clean away an' don't set foot on my land till I bid ye.'

'But you asked'--Midmore felt his voice jump up--'to have the pig-pound
built.'

''Spose I did. That's no reason you shouldn't send me notice to change
the pig. 'Comin' down on me like this 'thout warnin'! That pig's got to
be got into the cowshed an' all.'

'Then open the door and let him run in,' said Midmore.

'Don't you be'ave arbit'ry with _me_! Take all your dam' men 'ome off my
land. I won't be treated arbit'ry.'

The carts moved off without a word, and Sidney went into the house and
slammed the door.

'Now, I hold that is enormously significant,' said a visitor. 'Here you
have the logical outcome of centuries of feudal oppression--the frenzy
of fear.' The company looked at Midmore with grave pain.

'But he _did_ worry my life out about his pig-sty,' was all Midmore
found to say.

Others took up the parable and proved to him if he only held true to the
gospels of the Immoderate Left the earth would soon be covered with
'jolly little' pig-sties, built in the intervals of morris-dancing by
'the peasant' himself.

Midmore felt grateful when the door opened again and Mr. Sidney invited
them all to retire to the road which, he pointed out, was public. As
they turned the corner of the house, a smooth-faced woman in a widow's
cap curtsied to each of them through the window.

Instantly they drew pictures of that woman's lot, deprived of all
vehicle for self-expression--'the set grey life and apathetic end,' one
quoted--and they discussed the tremendous significance of village
theatricals. Even a month ago Midmore would have told them all that he
knew and Rhoda had dropped about Sidney's forms of self-expression. Now,
for some strange reason, he was content to let the talk run on from
village to metropolitan and world drama.

Rhoda advised him after the visitors left that 'if he wanted to do that
again' he had better go up to town.

'But we only sat on cushions on the floor,' said her master.

'They're too old for romps,' she retorted, 'an' it's only the beginning
of things. I've seen what _I've_ seen. Besides, they talked and laughed
in the passage going to their baths--such as took 'em.'

'Don't be a fool, Rhoda,' said Midmore. No man--unless he has loved
her--will casually dismiss a woman on whose lap he has laid his head.

'Very good,' she snorted, 'but that cuts both ways. An' now, you go down
to Sidney's this evenin' and put him where he ought to be. He was in his
right about you givin' 'im notice about changin' the pig, but he 'adn't
any right to turn it up before your company. No manners, no pig-pound.
He'll understand.'

Midmore did his best to make him. He found himself reviling the old man
in speech and with a joy quite new in all his experience. He wound
up--it was a plagiarism from a plumber--by telling Mr. Sidney that he
looked like a turkey-cock, had the morals of a parish bull, and need
never hope for a new pig-pound as long as he or Midmore lived.

'Very good,' said the giant. 'I reckon you thought you 'ad something
against me, and now you've come down an' told it me like man to man.
Quite right. I don't bear malice. Now, you send along those bricks an'
sand, an' I'll make a do to build the pig-pound myself. If you look at
my lease you'll find out you're bound to provide me materials for the
repairs. Only--only I thought there'd be no 'arm in my askin' you to do
it throughout like.'

Midmore fairly gasped. 'Then, why the devil did you turn my carts back
when--when I sent them up here to do it throughout for you?'

Mr. Sidney sat down on the floodgates, his eyebrows knitted in thought.

'I'll tell you,' he said slowly. ''Twas too dam' like cheatin' a suckin'
baby. My woman, she said so too.'

For a few seconds the teachings of the Immoderate Left, whose humour is
all their own, wrestled with those of Mother Earth, who has her own
humours. Then Midmore laughed till he could scarcely stand. In due time
Mr. Sidney laughed too--crowing and wheezing crescendo till it broke
from him in roars. They shook hands, and Midmore went home grateful that
he had held his tongue among his companions.

When he reached his house he met three or four men and women on
horse-back, very muddy indeed, coming down the drive. Feeling hungry
himself, he asked them if they were hungry. They said they were, and he
bade them enter. Jimmy took their horses, who seemed to know him. Rhoda
took their battered hats, led the women upstairs for hairpins, and
presently fed them all with tea-cakes, poached eggs, anchovy toast, and
drinks from a coromandel-wood liqueur case which Midmore had never known
that he possessed.

'And I _will_ say,' said Miss Connie Sperrit, her spurred foot on the
fender and a smoking muffin in her whip hand, 'Rhoda does one top-hole.
She always did since I was eight.'

'Seven, Miss, was when you began to 'unt,' said Rhoda, setting down more
buttered toast.

'And so,' the M.F.H. was saying to Midmore, 'when he got to your brute
Sidney's land, we had to whip 'em off. It's a regular Alsatia for 'em.
They know it. Why'--he dropped his voice--'I don't want to say anything
against Sidney as your tenant, of course, but I do believe the old
scoundrel's perfectly capable of putting down poison.'

'Sidney's capable of anything,' said Midmore with immense feeling; but
once again he held his tongue. They were a queer community; yet when
they had stamped and jingled out to their horses again, the house felt
hugely big and disconcerting.

This may be reckoned the conscious beginning of his double life. It ran
in odd channels that summer--a riding school, for instance, near Hayes
Common and a shooting ground near Wormwood Scrubs. A man who has been
saddle-galled or shoulder-bruised for half the day is not at his London
best of evenings; and when the bills for his amusements come in he
curtails his expenses in other directions. So a cloud settled on
Midmore's name. His London world talked of a hardening of heart and a
tightening of purse-strings which signified disloyalty to the Cause. One
man, a confidant of the old expressive days, attacked him robustiously
and demanded account of his soul's progress. It was not furnished, for
Midmore was calculating how much it would cost to repave stables so
dilapidated that even the village idiot apologised for putting visitors'
horses into them. The man went away, and served up what he had heard of
the pig-pound episode as a little newspaper sketch, calculated to annoy.
Midmore read it with an eye as practical as a woman's, and since most of
his experiences had been among women, at once sought out a woman to whom
he might tell his sorrow at the disloyalty of his own familiar friend.
She was so sympathetic that he went on to confide how his bruised
heart--she knew all about it--had found so-lace, with a long O, in
another quarter which he indicated rather carefully in case it might be
betrayed to other loyal friends. As his hints pointed directly towards
facile Hampstead, and as his urgent business was the purchase of a horse
from a dealer, Beckenham way, he felt he had done good work. Later, when
his friend, the scribe, talked to him alluringly of 'secret gardens' and
those so-laces to which every man who follows the Wider Morality is
entitled, Midmore lent him a five-pound note which he had got back on
the price of a ninety-guinea bay gelding. So true it is, as he read in
one of the late Colonel Werf's books, that 'the young man of the present
day would sooner lie under an imputation against his morals than against
his knowledge of horse-flesh.'

Midmore desired more than he desired anything else at that moment to
ride and, above all, to jump on a ninety-guinea bay gelding with black
points and a slovenly habit of hitting his fences. He did not wish many
people except Mr. Sidney, who very kindly lent his soft meadow behind
the floodgates, to be privy to the matter, which he rightly foresaw
would take him to the autumn. So he told such friends as hinted at
country week-end visits that he had practically let his newly inherited
house. The rent, he said, was an object to him, for he had lately lost
large sums through ill-considered benevolences. He would name no names,
but they could guess. And they guessed loyally all round the circle of
his acquaintance as they spread the news that explained so much.

There remained only one couple of his once intimate associates to
pacify. They were deeply sympathetic and utterly loyal, of course, but
as curious as any of the apes whose diet they had adopted. Midmore met
them in a suburban train, coming up to town, not twenty minutes after he
had come off two hours' advanced tuition (one guinea an hour) over
hurdles in a hall. He had, of course, changed his kit, but his too heavy
bridle-hand shook a little among the newspapers. On the inspiration of
the moment, which is your natural liar's best hold, he told them that he
was condemned to a rest-cure. He would lie in semi-darkness drinking
milk, for weeks and weeks, cut off even from letters. He was astonished
and delighted at the ease with which the usual lie confounds the unusual
intellect. They swallowed it as swiftly as they recommended him to live
on nuts and fruit; but he saw in the woman's eyes the exact reason she
would set forth for his retirement. After all, she had as much right to
express herself as he purposed to take for himself; and Midmore believed
strongly in the fullest equality of the sexes.

That retirement made one small ripple in the strenuous world. The lady
who had written the twelve-page letter ten months before sent him
another of eight pages, analysing all the motives that were leading her
back to him--should she come?--now that he was ill and alone. Much might
yet be retrieved, she said, out of the waste of jarring lives and
piteous misunderstandings. It needed only a hand.

But Midmore needed two, next morning very early, for a devil's
diversion, among wet coppices, called 'cubbing.'

'You haven't a bad seat,' said Miss Sperrit through the morning-mists.
'But you're worrying him.'

'He pulls so,' Midmore grunted.

'Let him alone, then. Look out for the branches,' she shouted, as they
whirled up a splashy ride. Cubs were plentiful. Most of the hounds
attached themselves to a straight-necked youngster of education who
scuttled out of the woods into the open fields below.

'Hold on!' some one shouted. 'Turn 'em, Midmore. That's your brute
Sidney's land. It's all wire.'

'Oh, Connie, stop!' Mrs. Sperrit shrieked as her daughter charged at a
boundary-hedge.

'Wire be damned! I had it all out a fortnight ago. Come on!' This was
Midmore, buffeting into it a little lower down.

'_I_ knew that!' Connie cried over her shoulder, and she flitted across
the open pasture, humming to herself.

'Oh, of course! If some people have private information, they can afford
to thrust.' This was a snuff-coloured habit into which Miss Sperrit had
cannoned down the ride.

'What! 'Midmore got Sidney to heel? _You_ never did that, Sperrit.' This
was Mr. Fisher, M.F.H., enlarging the breach Midmore had made.

'No, confound him!' said the father testily. 'Go on, sir! _Injecto ter
pulvere_--you've kicked half the ditch into my eye already.'

They killed that cub a little short of the haven his mother had told him
to make for--a two-acre Alsatia of a gorse-patch to which the M.F.H. had
been denied access for the last fifteen seasons. He expressed his
gratitude before all the field and Mr. Sidney, at Mr. Sidney's
farm-house door.

'And if there should be any poultry claims--' he went on.

'There won't be,' said Midmore. 'It's too like cheating a sucking child,
isn't it, Mr. Sidney?'

'You've got me!' was all the reply. 'I be used to bein' put upon, but
you've got me, Mus' Midmore.'

Midmore pointed to a new brick pig-pound built in strict disregard of
the terms of the life-tenant's lease. The gesture told the tale to the
few who did not know, and they shouted.

Such pagan delights as these were followed by pagan sloth of evenings
when men and women elsewhere are at their brightest. But Midmore
preferred to lie out on a yellow silk couch, reading works of a debasing
vulgarity; or, by invitation, to dine with the Sperrits and savages of
their kidney. These did not expect flights of fancy or phrasing. They
lied, except about horses, grudgingly and of necessity, not for art's
sake; and, men and women alike, they expressed themselves along their
chosen lines with the serene indifference of the larger animals. Then
Midmore would go home and identify them, one by one, out of the
natural-history books by Mr. Surtees, on the table beside the sofa. At
first they looked upon him coolly, but when the tale of the removed wire
and the recaptured gorse had gone the rounds, they accepted him for a
person willing to play their games. True, a faction suspended judgment
for a while, because they shot, and hoped that Midmore would serve the
glorious mammon of pheasant-raising rather than the unkempt god of
fox-hunting. But after he had shown his choice, they did not ask by what
intellectual process he had arrived at it. He hunted three, sometimes
four, times a week, which necessitated not only one bay gelding (£94:
10s.), but a mannerly white-stockinged chestnut (£114), and a black
mare, rather long in the back but with a mouth of silk (£150), who so
evidently preferred to carry a lady that it would have been cruel to
have baulked her. Besides, with that handling she could be sold at a
profit. And besides, the hunt was a quiet, intimate, kindly little hunt,
not anxious for strangers, of good report in the _Field_, the servant of
one M.F.H., given to hospitality, riding well its own horses, and, with
the exception of Midmore, not novices. But as Miss Sperrit observed,
after the M.F.H. had said some things to him at a gate: 'It _is_ a pity
you don't know as much as your horse, but you will in time. It takes
years and yee-ars. I've been at it for fifteen and I'm only just
learning. But you've made a decent kick-off.'

So he kicked off in wind and wet and mud, wondering quite sincerely why
the bubbling ditches and sucking pastures held him from day to day, or
what so-lace he could find on off days in chasing grooms and
brick-layers round outhouses.

To make sure he up-rooted himself one week-end of heavy mid-winter rain,
and re-entered his lost world in the character of Galahad fresh from a
rest-cure. They all agreed, with an eye over his shoulder for the next
comer, that he was a different man; but when they asked him for the
symptoms of nervous strain, and led him all through their own, he
realised he had lost much of his old skill in lying. His three months'
absence, too, had put him hopelessly behind the London field. The
movements, the allusions, the slang of the game had changed. The couples
had rearranged themselves or were re-crystallizing in fresh triangles,
whereby he put his foot in it badly. Only one great soul (he who had
written the account of the pig-pound episode) stood untouched by the
vast flux of time, and Midmore lent him another fiver for his integrity.
A woman took him, in the wet forenoon, to a pronouncement on the Oneness
of Impulse in Humanity, which struck him as a polysyllabic _résumé_ of
Mr. Sidney's domestic arrangements, plus a clarion call to 'shock
civilisation into common-sense.'

'And you'll come to tea with me to-morrow?' she asked, after lunch,
nibbling cashew nuts from a saucer. Midmore replied that there were
great arrears of work to overtake when a man had been put away for
so long.

'But you've come back like a giant refreshed.... I hope that
Daphne'--this was the lady of the twelve and the eight-page
letter--'will be with us too. She has misunderstood herself, like so
many of us,' the woman murmured, 'but I think eventually ...' she flung
out her thin little hands. 'However, these are things that each lonely
soul must adjust for itself.'

'Indeed, yes,' said Midmore with a deep sigh. The old tricks were
sprouting in the old atmosphere like mushrooms in a dung-pit. He passed
into an abrupt reverie, shook his head, as though stung by tumultuous
memories, and departed without any ceremony of farewell to--catch a
mid-afternoon express where a man meets associates who talk horse, and
weather as it affects the horse, all the way down. What worried him most
was that he had missed a day with the hounds.

He met Rhoda's keen old eyes without flinching; and the drawing-room
looked very comfortable that wet evening at tea. After all, his visit to
town had not been wholly a failure. He had burned quite a bushel of
letters at his flat. A flat--here he reached mechanically towards the
worn volumes near the sofa--a flat was a consuming animal. As for
Daphne ... he opened at random on the words: 'His lordship then did as
desired and disclosed a _tableau_ of considerable strength and variety.'
Midmore reflected: 'And I used to think.... But she wasn't.... We were
all babblers and skirters together.... I didn't babble much--thank
goodness--but I skirted.' He turned the pages backward for more _Sortes
Surteesianae_, and read: 'When at length they rose to go to bed it
struck each man as he followed his neighbour upstairs, that the man
before him walked very crookedly.' He laughed aloud at the fire.

'What about to-morrow?' Rhoda asked, entering with garments over her
shoulder. 'It's never stopped raining since you left. You'll be
plastered out of sight an' all in five minutes. You'd better wear your
next best, 'adn't you? I'm afraid they've shrank. 'Adn't you best
try 'em on?'

'Here?' said Midmore.

''Suit yourself. I bathed you when you wasn't larger than a leg o'
lamb,' said the ex-ladies'-maid.

'Rhoda, one of these days I shall get a valet, and a married butler.'

'There's many a true word spoke in jest. But nobody's huntin'
to-morrow.'

'Why? Have they cancelled the meet?'

'They say it only means slipping and over-reaching in the mud, and they
all 'ad enough of that to-day. Charlie told me so just now.'

'Oh!' It seemed that the word of Mr. Sperrit's confidential clerk had
weight.

'Charlie came down to help Mr. Sidney lift the gates,' Rhoda continued.

'The floodgates? They are perfectly easy to handle now. I've put in a
wheel and a winch.'

'When the brook's really up they must be took clean out on account of
the rubbish blockin' 'em. That's why Charlie came down.'

Midmore grunted impatiently. 'Everybody has talked to me about that
brook ever since I came here. It's never done anything yet.'

'This 'as been a dry summer. If you care to look now, sir, I'll get you
a lantern.'

She paddled out with him into a large wet night. Half-way down the lawn
her light was reflected on shallow brown water, pricked through with
grass blades at the edges. Beyond that light, the brook was strangling
and kicking among hedges and tree-trunks.

'What on earth will happen to the big rose-bed?' was Midmore's first
word.

'It generally 'as to be restocked after a flood. Ah!' she raised her
lantern. 'There's two garden-seats knockin' against the sun-dial. Now,
that won't do the roses any good.'

'This is too absurd. There ought to be some decently thought-out
system--for--for dealing with this sort of thing.' He peered into the
rushing gloom. There seemed to be no end to the moisture and the racket.
In town he had noticed nothing.

'It can't be 'elped,' said Rhoda. 'It's just what it does do once in
just so often. We'd better go back.'

All earth under foot was sliding in a thousand liquid noises towards
the hoarse brook. Somebody wailed from the house: ''Fraid o' the water!
Come 'ere! 'Fraid o' the water!'

'That's Jimmy. Wet always takes 'im that way,' she explained. The idiot
charged into them, shaking with terror.

'Brave Jimmy! How brave of Jimmy! Come into the hall. What Jimmy got
now?' she crooned. It was a sodden note which ran: 'Dear Rhoda--Mr.
Lotten, with whom I rode home this afternoon, told me that if this wet
keeps up, he's afraid the fish-pond he built last year, where Coxen's
old mill-dam was, will go, as the dam did once before, he says. If it
does it's bound to come down the brook. It may be all right, but perhaps
you had better look out. C.S.'

'If Coxen's dam goes, that means.... I'll 'ave the drawing-room carpet
up at once to be on the safe side. The claw-'ammer is in the libery.'

'Wait a minute. Sidney's gates are out, you said?'

'Both. He'll need it if Coxen's pond goes.... I've seen it once.'

'I'll just slip down and have a look at Sidney. Light the lantern again,
please, Rhoda.'

'You won't get _him_ to stir. He's been there since he was born. But
_she_ don't know anything. I'll fetch your waterproof and some
top-boots.'

''Fraid o' the water! 'Fraid o' the water!' Jimmy sobbed, pressed
against a corner of the hall, his hands to his eyes.

'All right, Jimmy. Jimmy can help play with the carpet,' Rhoda
answered, as Midmore went forth into the darkness and the roarings all
round. He had never seen such an utterly unregulated state of affairs.
There was another lantern reflected on the streaming drive.

'Hi! Rhoda! Did you get my note? I came down to make sure. I thought,
afterwards, Jimmy might funk the water!'

'It's me--Miss Sperrit,' Midmore cried. 'Yes, we got it, thanks.'

'You're back, then. Oh, good!... Is it bad down with you?'

'I'm going to Sidney's to have a look.'

'You won't get _him_ out. 'Lucky I met Bob Lotten. I told him he hadn't
any business impounding water for his idiotic trout without
rebuilding the dam.'

'How far up is it? I've only been there once.'

'Not more than four miles as the water will come. He says he's opened
all the sluices.'

She had turned and fallen into step beside him, her hooded head bowed
against the thinning rain. As usual she was humming to herself.

'Why on earth did you come out in this weather?' Midmore asked.

'It was worse when you were in town. The rain's taking off now. If it
wasn't for that pond, I wouldn't worry so much. There's Sidney's bell.
Come on!' She broke into a run. A cracked bell was jangling feebly down
the valley.

'Keep on the road!' Midmore shouted. The ditches were snorting
bank-full on either side, and towards the brook-side the fields were
afloat and beginning to move in the darkness.

'Catch me going off it! There's his light burning all right.' She halted
undistressed at a little rise. 'But the flood's in the orchard. Look!'
She swung her lantern to show a front rank of old apple-trees reflected
in still, out-lying waters beyond the half-drowned hedge. They could
hear above the thud-thud of the gorged floodgates, shrieks in two keys
as monotonous as a steam-organ.

'The high one's the pig.' Miss Sperrit laughed.

'All right! I'll get _her_ out. You stay where you are, and I'll see you
home afterwards.'

'But the water's only just over the road,' she objected.

'Never mind. Don't you move. Promise?'

'All right. You take my stick, then, and feel for holes in case
anything's washed out anywhere. This _is_ a lark!'

Midmore took it, and stepped into the water that moved sluggishly as yet
across the farm road which ran to Sidney's front door from the raised
and metalled public road. It was half way up to his knees when he
knocked. As he looked back Miss Sperrit's lantern seemed to float in
mid-ocean.

'You can't come in or the water'll come with you. I've bunged up all the
cracks,' Mr. Sidney shouted from within. 'Who be ye?'

'Take me out! Take me out!' the woman shrieked, and the pig from his
sty behind the house urgently seconded the motion.

'I'm Midmore! Coxen's old mill-dam is likely to go, they say. Come out!'

'I told 'em it would when they made a fish-pond of it. 'Twasn't ever
puddled proper. But it's a middlin' wide valley. She's got room to
spread.... Keep still, or I'll take and duck you in the cellar!... You
go 'ome, Mus' Midmore, an' take the law o' Mus' Lotten soon's you've
changed your socks.'

'Confound you, aren't you coming out?'

'To catch my death o' cold? I'm all right where I be. I've seen it
before. But you can take _her_. She's no sort o' use or sense.... Climb
out through the window. Didn't I tell you I'd plugged the door-cracks,
you fool's daughter?' The parlour window opened, and the woman flung
herself into Midmore's arms, nearly knocking him down. Mr. Sidney leaned
out of the window, pipe in mouth.

'Take her 'ome,' he said, and added oracularly:

     'Two women in one house,
     Two cats an' one mouse,
     Two dogs an' one bone--
     Which I will leave alone.

I've seen it before.' Then he shut and fastened the window.

'A trap! A trap! You had ought to have brought a trap for me. I'll be
drowned in this wet,' the woman cried.

'Hold up! You can't be any wetter than you are. Come along!' Midmore
did not at all like the feel of the water over his boot-tops.

'Hooray! Come along!' Miss Sperrit's lantern, not fifty yards away,
waved cheerily.

The woman threshed towards it like a panic-stricken goose, fell on her
knees, was jerked up again by Midmore, and pushed on till she collapsed
at Miss Sperrit's feet.

'But you won't get bronchitis if you go straight to Mr. Midmore's
house,' said the unsympathetic maiden.

'O Gawd! O Gawd! I wish our 'eavenly Father 'ud forgive me my sins an'
call me 'ome,' the woman sobbed. 'But I won't go to _'is_ 'ouse!
I won't.'

'All right, then. Stay here. Now, if we run,' Miss Sperrit whispered to
Midmore, 'she'll follow us. Not too fast!'

They set off at a considerable trot, and the woman lumbered behind them,
bellowing, till they met a third lantern--Rhoda holding Jimmy's hand.
She had got the carpet up, she said, and was escorting Jimmy past the
water that he dreaded.

'That's all right,' Miss Sperrit pronounced. 'Take Mrs. Sidney back with
you, Rhoda, and put her to bed. I'll take Jimmy with me. You aren't
afraid of the water now, are you, Jimmy?'

'Not afraid of anything now.' Jimmy reached for her hand. 'But get away
from the water quick.'

'I'm coming with you,' Midmore interrupted.

'You most certainly are not. You're drenched. She threw you twice. Go
home and change. You may have to be out again all night. It's only
half-past seven now. I'm perfectly safe.' She flung herself lightly over
a stile, and hurried uphill by the foot-path, out of reach of all but
the boasts of the flood below.

Rhoda, dead silent, herded Mrs. Sidney to the house.

'You'll find your things laid out on the bed,' she said to Midmore as he
came up. I'll attend to--to this. _She's_ got nothing to cry for.'

Midmore raced into dry kit, and raced uphill to be rewarded by the sight
of the lantern just turning into the Sperrits' gate. He came back by way
of Sidney's farm, where he saw the light twinkling across three acres of
shining water, for the rain had ceased and the clouds were stripping
overhead, though the brook was noisier than ever. Now there was only
that doubtful mill-pond to look after--that and his swirling world
abandoned to himself alone.

'We shall have to sit up for it,' said Rhoda after dinner. And as the
drawing-room commanded the best view of the rising flood, they watched
it from there for a long time, while all the clocks of the house bore
them company.

''Tisn't the water, it's the mud on the skirting-board after it goes
down that I mind,' Rhoda whispered. 'The last time Coxen's mill broke, I
remember it came up to the second--no, third--step o' Mr.
Sidney's stairs.'

'What did Sidney do about it?'

'He made a notch on the step. 'E said it was a record. Just like 'im.'

'It's up to the drive now,' said Midmore after another long wait. 'And
the rain stopped before eight, you know.'

'Then Coxen's dam _'as_ broke, and that's the first of the flood-water.'
She stared out beside him. The water was rising in sudden pulses--an
inch or two at a time, with great sweeps and lagoons and a sudden
increase of the brook's proper thunder.

'You can't stand all the time. Take a chair,' Midmore said presently.

Rhoda looked back into the bare room. 'The carpet bein' up _does_ make a
difference. Thank you, sir, I _will_ 'ave a set-down.'

''Right over the drive now,' said Midmore. He opened the window and
leaned out. 'Is that wind up the valley, Rhoda?'

'No, that's _it_! But I've seen it before.'

There was not so much a roar as the purposeful drive of a tide across a
jagged reef, which put down every other sound for twenty minutes. A wide
sheet of water hurried up to the little terrace on which the house
stood, pushed round either corner, rose again and stretched, as it were,
yawning beneath the moonlight, joined other sheets waiting for them in
unsuspected hollows, and lay out all in one. A puff of wind followed.

'It's right up to the wall now. I can touch it with my finger.' Midmore
bent over the window-sill.

'I can 'ear it in the cellars,' said Rhoda dolefully. 'Well, we've done
what we can! I think I'll 'ave a look.' She left the room and was absent
half an hour or more, during which time he saw a full-grown tree
hauling itself across the lawn by its naked roots. Then a hurdle knocked
against the wall, caught on an iron foot-scraper just outside, and made
a square-headed ripple. The cascade through the cellar-windows
diminished.

'It's dropping,' Rhoda cried, as she returned. 'It's only tricklin' into
my cellars now.'

'Wait a minute. I believe--I believe I can see the scraper on the edge
of the drive just showing!'

In another ten minutes the drive itself roughened and became gravel
again, tilting all its water towards the shrubbery.

'The pond's gone past,' Rhoda announced. 'We shall only 'ave the common
flood to contend with now. You'd better go to bed.'

'I ought to go down and have another look at Sidney before daylight.'

'No need. You can see 'is light burnin' from all the upstairs windows.'

'By the way. I forgot about _her_. Where've you put her?'

'In my bed.' Rhoda's tone was ice. 'I wasn't going to undo a room for
_that_ stuff.'

'But it--it couldn't be helped,' said Midmore. 'She was half drowned.
One mustn't be narrow-minded, Rhoda, even if her position isn't
quite--er--regular.'

'Pfff! I wasn't worryin' about that.' She leaned forward to the window.
'There's the edge of the lawn showin' now. It falls as fast as it rises.
Dearie'--the change of tone made Midmore jump--'didn't you know that I
was 'is first? _That's_ what makes it so hard to bear.' Midmore looked
at the long lizard-like back and had no words.

She went on, still talking through the black window-pane:

'Your pore dear auntie was very kind about it. She said she'd make all
allowances for one, but no more. Never any more.... Then, you didn't
know 'oo Charlie was all this time?'

'Your nephew, I always thought.'

'Well, well,' she spoke pityingly. 'Everybody's business being nobody's
business, I suppose no one thought to tell you. But Charlie made 'is own
way for 'imself from the beginnin'!... But _her_ upstairs, she never
produced anything. Just an 'ousekeeper, as you might say. 'Turned over
an' went to sleep straight off. She 'ad the impudence to ask me for 'ot
sherry-gruel.'

'Did you give it to her,' said Midmore.

'Me? Your sherry? No!'

The memory of Sidney's outrageous rhyme at the window, and Charlie's
long nose (he thought it looked interested at the time) as he passed the
copies of Mrs. Werf's last four wills, overcame Midmore without warning.

'This damp is givin' you a cold,' said Rhoda, rising. 'There you go
again! Sneezin's a sure sign of it. Better go to bed. You can't do any
thin' excep''--she stood rigid, with crossed arms--'about me.'

'Well. What about you?' Midmore stuffed the handkerchief into his
pocket.

'Now you know about it, what are you goin' to do--sir?'

She had the answer on her lean cheek before the sentence was finished.

'Go and see if you can get us something to eat, Rhoda. And beer.'

'I expec' the larder'll be in a swim,' she replied, 'but old bottled
stuff don't take any harm from wet.' She returned with a tray, all in
order, and they ate and drank together, and took observations of the
falling flood till dawn opened its bleared eyes on the wreck of what had
been a fair garden. Midmore, cold and annoyed, found himself humming:

     'That flood strewed wrecks upon the grass,
     That ebb swept out the flocks to sea.

There isn't a rose left, Rhoda!

     An awesome ebb and flow it was
     To many more than mine and me.
     But each will mourn his ...

It'll cost me a hundred.'

'Now we know the worst,' said Rhoda, 'we can go to bed. I'll lay on the
kitchen sofa. His light's burnin' still.'

'And _she_?'

'Dirty old cat! You ought to 'ear 'er snore!'

At ten o'clock in the morning, after a maddening hour in his own garden
on the edge of the retreating brook, Midmore went off to confront more
damage at Sidney's. The first thing that met him was the pig, snowy
white, for the water had washed him out of his new sty, calling on high
heaven for breakfast. The front door had been forced open, and the flood
had registered its own height in a brown dado on the walls. Midmore
chased the pig out and called up the stairs.

'I be abed o' course. Which step 'as she rose to?' Sidney cried from
above. 'The fourth? Then it's beat all records. Come up.'

'Are you ill?' Midmore asked as he entered the room. The red eyelids
blinked cheerfully. Mr. Sidney, beneath a sumptuous patch-work quilt,
was smoking.

'Nah! I'm only thankin' God I ain't my own landlord. Take that cheer.
What's she done?'

'It hasn't gone down enough for me to make sure.'

'Them floodgates o' yourn'll be middlin' far down the brook by now; an'
your rose-garden have gone after 'em. I saved my chickens, though. You'd
better get Mus' Sperrit to take the law o' Lotten an' 'is fish-pond.'

'No, thanks. I've trouble enough without that.'

'Hev ye?' Mr. Sidney grinned. 'How did ye make out with those two women
o' mine last night? I lay they fought.'

'You infernal old scoundrel!' Midmore laughed.

'I be--an' then again I bain't,' was the placid answer. 'But, Rhoda,
_she_ wouldn't ha' left me last night. Fire or flood, she wouldn't.'

'Why didn't you ever marry her?' Midmore asked.

'Waste of good money. She was willin' without.'

There was a step on the gritty mud below, and a voice humming. Midmore
rose quickly saying: 'Well, I suppose you're all right now.'

'I be. I ain't a landlord, nor I ain't young--nor anxious. Oh, Mus'
Midmore! Would it make any odds about her thirty pounds comin' regular
if I married her? Charlie said maybe 'twould.'

'Did he?' Midmore turned at the door. 'And what did Jimmy say about it?'

'Jimmy?' Mr. Sidney chuckled as the joke took him. 'Oh, _he's_ none o'
mine. He's Charlie's look-out.'

Midmore slammed the door and ran downstairs.

'Well, this is a--sweet--mess,' said Miss Sperrit in shortest skirts and
heaviest riding-boots. 'I had to come down and have a look at it. "The
old mayor climbed the belfry tower." 'Been up all night nursing
your family?'

'Nearly that! Isn't it cheerful?' He pointed through the door to the
stairs with small twig-drift on the last three treads.

'It's a record, though,' said she, and hummed to herself:

     'That flood strewed wrecks upon the grass,
     That ebb swept out the flocks to sea.'

'You're always singing that, aren't you?' Midmore said suddenly as she
passed into the parlour where slimy chairs had been stranded at
all angles.

'Am I? Now I come to think of it I believe I do. They say I always hum
when I ride. Have you noticed it?'

'Of course I have. I notice every--'

'Oh,' she went on hurriedly. 'We had it for the village cantata last
winter--"The Brides of Enderby."'

'No! "High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire."' For some reason Midmore
spoke sharply.

'Just like that.' She pointed to the befouled walls. 'I say.... Let's
get this furniture a little straight.... You know it too?'

'Every word, since you sang it of course.'

'When?'

'The first night I ever came down. You rode past the drawing-room window
in the dark singing it--"And sweeter woman--"'

'I thought the house was empty then. Your aunt always let us use that
short cut. Ha-hadn't we better get this out into the passage? It'll all
have to come out anyhow. You take the other side.' They began to lift a
heavyish table. Their words came jerkily between gasps and their faces
were as white as--a newly washed and very hungry pig.

'Look out!' Midmore shouted. His legs were whirled from under him, as
the table, grunting madly, careened and knocked the girl out of sight.

The wild boar of Asia could not have cut down a couple more
scientifically, but this little pig lacked his ancestor's nerve and fled
shrieking over their bodies.

'Are you hurt, darling?' was Midmore's first word, and 'No--I'm only
winded--dear,' was Miss Sperrit's, as he lifted her out of her corner,
her hat over one eye and her right cheek a smear of mud.

They fed him a little later on some chicken-feed that they found in
Sidney's quiet barn, a pail of buttermilk out of the dairy, and a
quantity of onions from a shelf in the back-kitchen.

'Seed-onions, most likely,' said Connie. 'You'll hear about this.'

'What does it matter? They ought to have been gilded. We must buy him.'

'And keep him as long as he lives,' she agreed. 'But I think I ought to
go home now. You see, when I came out I didn't expect ... Did you?'

'No! Yes.... It had to come.... But if any one had told me an hour
ago!... Sidney's unspeakable parlour--and the mud on the carpet.'

'Oh, I say! Is my cheek clean now?'

'Not quite. Lend me your hanky again a minute, darling.... What a purler
you came!'

'You can't talk. 'Remember when your chin hit that table and you said
"blast"! I was just going to laugh.'

'You didn't laugh when I picked you up. You were going "oo-oo-oo" like a
little owl.'

'My dear child--'

'Say that again!'

'My dear child. (Do you really like it? I keep it for my best friends.)
My _dee-ar_ child, I thought I was going to be sick there and then. He
knocked every ounce of wind out of me--the angel! But I must really go.'

They set off together, very careful not to join hands or take arms.

'Not across the fields,' said Midmore at the stile. 'Come round by--by
your own place.'

She flushed indignantly.

'It will be yours in a little time,' he went on, shaken with his own
audacity.

'Not so much of your little times, if you please!' She shied like a colt
across the road; then instantly, like a colt, her eyes lit with new
curiosity as she came in sight of the drive-gates.

'And not quite so much of your airs and graces, Madam,' Midmore
returned, 'or I won't let you use our drive as a short cut any more.'

'Oh, I'll be good. I'll be good.' Her voice changed suddenly. 'I swear
I'll try to be good, dear. I'm not much of a thing at the best. What
made _you_....'

'I'm worse--worse! Miles and oceans worse. But what does it matter now?'

They halted beside the gate-pillars.

'I see!' she said, looking up the sodden carriage sweep to the front
door porch where Rhoda was slapping a wet mat to and fro. '_I_ see....
Now, I really must go home. No! Don't you come. I must speak to Mother
first all by myself.'

He watched her up the hill till she was out of sight.

     THE FLOODS

     The rain it rains without a stay
       In the hills above us, in the hills;
     And presently the floods break way
       Whose strength is in the hills.
     The trees they suck from every cloud,
     The valley brooks they roar aloud--
     Bank-high for the lowlands, lowlands,
       Lowlands under the hills!

     The first wood down is sere and small,
       From the hills, the brishings off the hills;
     And then come by the bats and all
       We cut last year in the hills;
     And then the roots we tried to cleave
     But found too tough and had to leave--
     Polting through the lowlands, lowlands,
       Lowlands under the hills!

     The eye shall look, the ear shall hark
       To the hills, the doings in the hills,
     And rivers mating in the dark
       With tokens from the hills.
     Now what is weak will surely go,
     And what is strong must prove it so.
     Stand fast in the lowlands, lowlands,
       Lowlands under the hills!

     The floods they shall not be afraid--
       Nor the hills above 'em, nor the hills--
     Of any fence which man has made
       Betwixt him and the hills.
     The waters shall not reckon twice
     For any work of man's device,
     But bid it down to the lowlands, lowlands,
       Lowlands under the hills!

     The floods shall sweep corruption clean--
       By the hills, the blessing of the hills--
     That more the meadows may be green
       New-amended from the hills.
     The crops and cattle shall increase,
     Nor little children shall not cease--
     Go--plough the lowlands, lowlands,
       Lowlands under the hills!

     THE FABULISTS

     When all the world would have a matter hid,
       Since Truth is seldom friend to any crowd,
     Men write in fable, as old Æsop did,
       Jesting at that which none will name aloud.
     And this they needs must do, or it will fall
     Unless they please they are not heard at all.

     When desperate Folly daily laboureth
       To work confusion upon all we have,
     When diligent Sloth demandeth Freedom's death,
       And banded Fear commandeth Honour's grave--
     Even in that certain hour before the fall
     Unless men please they are not heard at all.

     Needs must all please, yet some not all for need
       Needs must all toil, yet some not all for gain,
     But that men taking pleasure may take heed,
       Whom present toil shall snatch from later pain.
     Thus some have toiled but their reward was small
     Since, though they pleased, they were not heard at all.

     This was the lock that lay upon our lips,
       This was the yoke that we have undergone,
     Denying us all pleasant fellowships
       As in our time and generation.
     Our pleasures unpursued age past recall.
     And for our pains--we are not heard at all.

     What man hears aught except the groaning guns?
       What man heeds aught save what each instant brings?
     When each man's life all imaged life outruns,
       What man shall pleasure in imaginings?
     So it hath fallen, as it was bound to fall,
       We are not, nor we were not, heard at all.

The Vortex

(August 1914)

     'Thy Lord spoke by inspiration to the Bee.'

     AL KORAN.

I have, to my grief and loss, suppressed several notable stories of my
friend, the Hon. A.M. Penfentenyou[8], once Minister of Woods and
Waysides in De Thouar's first administration; later, Premier in all but
name of one of Our great and growing Dominions; and now, as always, the
idol of his own Province, which is two and one-half the size of England.

[Footnote 8: See 'The Puzzler,' _Actions and Reactions_.]

For this reason I hold myself at liberty to deal with some portion of
the truth concerning Penfentenyou's latest visit to Our shores. He
arrived at my house by car, on a hot summer day, in a white waistcoat
and spats, sweeping black frock-coat and glistening top-hat--a little
rounded, perhaps, at the edges, but agile as ever in mind and body.

'What is the trouble now?' I asked, for the last time we had met,
Penfentenyou was floating a three-million pound loan for his beloved but
unscrupulous Province, and I did not wish to entertain any more of his
financial friends.

'We,' Penfentenyou replied ambassadorially, 'have come to have a Voice
in Your Councils. By the way, the Voice is coming down on the evening
train with my Agent-General. I thought you wouldn't mind if I invited
'em. You know We're going to share Your burdens henceforward. You'd
better get into training.'

'Certainly,' I replied. 'What's the Voice like?'

'He's in earnest,' said Penfentenyou. 'He's got It, and he's got It bad.
He'll give It to you,' he said.

'What's his name?'

'We call him all sorts of names, but I think you'd better call him Mr.
Lingnam. You won't have to do it more than once.'

'What's he suffering from?'

'The Empire. He's pretty nearly cured us all of Imperialism at home.
P'raps he'll cure you.'

'Very good. What am I to do with him?'

'Don't you worry,' said Penfentenyou. 'He'll do it.'

And when Mr. Lingnam appeared half-an-hour later with the Agent-General
for Penfentenyou's Dominion, he did just that.

He advanced across the lawn eloquent as all the tides. He said he had
been observing to the Agent-General that it was both politically immoral
and strategically unsound that forty-four million people should bear the
entire weight of the defences of Our mighty Empire, but, as he had
observed (here the Agent-General evaporated), we stood now upon the
threshold of a new era in which the self-governing _and_ self-respecting
(bis) Dominions would rightly and righteously, as co-partners in Empery,
shoulder their share of any burden which the Pan-Imperial Council of
the Future should allot. The Agent-General was already arranging for
drinks with Penfentenyou at the other end of the garden. Mr. Lingnam
swept me on to the most remote bench and settled to his theme.

We dined at eight. At nine Mr. Lingnam was only drawing abreast of
things Imperial. At ten the Agent-General, who earns his salary, was
shamelessly dozing on the sofa. At eleven he and Penfentenyou went to
bed. At midnight Mr. Lingnam brought down his big-bellied despatch box
with the newspaper clippings and set to federating the Empire in
earnest. I remember that he had three alternative plans. As a dealer in
words, I plumped for the resonant third--'Reciprocally co-ordinated
Senatorial Hegemony'--which he then elaborated in detail for
three-quarters of an hour. At half-past one he urged me to have faith
and to remember that nothing mattered except the Idea. Then he retired
to his room, accompanied by one glass of cold water, and I went into the
dawn-lit garden and prayed to any Power that might be off duty for the
blood of Mr. Lingnam, Penfentenyou, and the Agent-General.

To me, as I have often observed elsewhere, the hour of earliest dawn is
fortunate, and the wind that runs before it has ever been my most
comfortable counsellor.

'Wait!' it said, all among the night's expectant rosebuds. 'To-morrow is
also a day. Wait upon the Event!'

I went to bed so at peace with God and Man and Guest that when I waked I
visited Mr. Lingnam in pyjamas, and he talked to me Pan-Imperially for
half-an-hour before his bath. Later, the Agent-General said he had
letters to write, and Penfentenyou invented a Cabinet crisis in his
adored Dominion which would keep him busy with codes and cables all the
forenoon. But I said firmly, 'Mr. Lingnam wishes to see a little of the
country round here. You are coming with us in your own car.'

'It's a hired one,' Penfentenyou objected.

'Yes. Paid for by me as a taxpayer,' I replied.

'And yours has a top, and the weather looks thundery,' said the
Agent-General. 'Ours hasn't a wind-screen. Even our goggles were hired.'

'I'll lend you goggles,' I said. 'My car is under repairs.'

The hireling who had looked to be returned to London spat and growled on
the drive. She was an open car, capable of some eighteen miles on the
flat, with tetanic gears and a perpetual palsy.

'It won't make the least difference,' sighed the Agent-General. 'He'll
only raise his voice. He did it all the way coming down.'

'I say,' said Penfentenyou suspiciously, 'what are you doing all this
_for_?'

'Love of the Empire,' I answered, as Mr. Lingnam tripped up in dust-coat
and binoculars. 'Now, Mr. Lingnam will tell us exactly what he wants to
see. He probably knows more about England than the rest of us put
together.'

'I read it up yesterday,' said Mr. Lingnam simply. While we stowed the
lunch-basket (one can never make too sure with a hired car) he outlined
a very pretty and instructive little day's run.

'You'll drive, of course?' said Penfentenyou to him. 'It's the only
thing you know anything about.'

This astonished me, for your greater Federationists are rarely
mechanicians, but Mr. Lingnam said he would prefer to be inside for the
present and enjoy our conversation.

Well settled on the back seat, he did not once lift his eyes to the
mellow landscape around him, or throw a word at the life of the English
road which to me is one renewed and unreasoned orgy of delight. The