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LEGEND

          THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
   NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
         ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

         MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
        LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
                MELBOURNE

    THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
                 TORONTO

LEGEND

by

CLEMENCE DANE

Author of “Regiment of Women” and “First the Blade”

New York
The Macmillan Company
1920
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1920
by the Macmillan Company

Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1920.

[Music: BEETHOVEN, Op. 57.]

                                 LEGEND

_Messrs. Mitchell and Bent will shortly issue ‘The Life of Madala Grey’
by Anita Serle: a critical biography based largely on private
correspondence and intimate personal knowledge._

That was in _The Times_ a fortnight ago. And now the reviews are
beginning—

_The Cult of Madala Grey_....

_The Problem of Madala Grey_....

_The Secret of Madala Grey_....

I wish they wouldn’t. Oh, I _wish_ they wouldn’t.

_No admirer of the late Madala Grey’s arresting art can fail to be
absorbed by these intimate and unexpected revelations_....

_Delicately, unerringly, Miss Serle traces to its source the inspiration
of that remarkable writer.... And—this will please Anita most of all_—

_We ourselves have never joined in the chorus of praise that, a decade
ago, greeted the appearance of ‘Eden Walls’ and its successors, and in
our opinion Miss Serle, in her biographical enthusiasm, uses the word
genius a little too often and too easily. Madala Grey has yet to be
tried by that subtlest of literary critics, the Man with the Scythe. But
whether or not we agree with Miss Serle’s estimate of her heroine, there
can be no_ _two questions as to the literary value of the ‘Life’ itself.
It definitely places Miss Serle among the Boswells, and as we close its
fascinating pages we find ourselves wondering whether our grandchildren
will remember Miss Serle as the biographer of Madala Grey, or Madala
Grey as the subject matter merely, of a chronicle that has become a
classic._

That is to say—_La reine est morte. Vive la reine!_ Anita will certainly
be pleased. Well, I suppose she’s got what she wants, what she’s always
wanted. She isn’t a woman to change. The new portrait in the _Bookman_
might have been taken when I knew her: the mouth’s a trifle harder, the
hair a trifle greyer; but no real change. But it amuses me that there
should be her portrait in all the papers, and none of Madala Grey; not
even in the _Life_ itself. I can hear Anita’s regretful explanations in
her soft, convincing voice. She will make a useful little paragraph out
of it—

_Miss Serle, whose ‘Life of Madala Grey’ is causing no small stir in
literary circles, tells us that the brilliant novelist had so great a
dislike of being photographed that there is no record of her features in
existence. An odd foible in one who, in our own recollection, was not
only a popular writer but a strikingly beautiful woman._

And yet, from her heavy, solitary frame (we have no other pictures in
our den) that ‘beautiful woman,’ with her flowered scarf and her handful
of cowslips, is looking down at this moment at me—at me, and the press
cuttings, and _The Times_, and Anita’s hateful book. And she says,
unmistakably—‘Does it matter? What does it matter?’ laughing a little as
she says it.

Then I laugh too, because Anita knows all about the portrait.

After all, does it matter? Does it matter what Anita says and does and
writes? And why should I of all people grudge Anita her success?
Honestly, I don’t. And I don’t doubt that the book is well written: not
that I shall read it. There’s no need: I know exactly what she will have
written: I know how convincing it will be. But it won’t be true. It
won’t be Madala Grey.

Of course Anita would say—‘My dear Jenny, what do you know about it? You
never even met her. You heard us, her friends, her intimates, talking
about her for—how long? An hour? Two hours? And on the strength of
that—that eaves-dropping five years ago’ (I can hear the nip in her
voice still) ‘you are so amusing as to challenge my personal knowledge
of my dearest friend. Possibly you contemplate writing the story of
Madala Grey yourself? If so, pray send me a copy.’ And then the swish of
her skirt. She always wore trains in those days, and she always glided
away before one could answer.

But I could answer. I remember that evening so well. I don’t believe
I’ve forgotten a word or a movement, and if I could only write it down,
those two hours would tell, as Anita’s book never will, the story of
Madala Grey.

I ought to be able to write; because Anita is my mother’s cousin; though
I never saw her till I was eighteen.

Mother died when I was eighteen.

If she had not been ill so long it would have been harder. As it was—but
there’s no use in writing down that black time. Afterwards I didn’t know
what to do. The pension had stopped, of course. I’d managed to teach
myself typing, though Mother couldn’t be left much; but I didn’t know
shorthand, and I couldn’t get work, and my money was dwindling, and I
was getting scared. I was ready to worship Anita when her letter came.
She was sorry about Mother and she wanted a secretary. If I could type I
could come.

I remember how excited I was. I’d always lived in such a tiny place and
we couldn’t afford Mudie’s. To go to London, and meet interesting
people, and live with a real writer, seemed too good to be true. And it
helped that Anita and her mother were relations. Mother used to stay
with Great-aunt Serle when she was little. Somehow that made things
easier to me when I was missing Mother more than usual.

In the end, after all those expectations, I was only three weeks with
Anita. They were a queer three weeks. I was afraid of her. She was one
of those people who make you feel guilty. But she was kind to me. I
typed most of the day, for she was a fluent worker and never spared
either of us; but she took me to the theatre once, and I used to pour
out when interesting people came to tea. In the first fortnight I met
nine novelists and a poet; but I never found out who they were, because
they all called each other by their Christian names and you couldn’t ask
Anita questions. She had such a way of asking you why you asked. She
used to glide about the room in a cloud of chiffon and cigarette
smoke—she had half-shut pale eyes just the colour of the smoke—and pour
out a stream of beautiful English in a pure cool voice; but if they
interrupted her she used to stiffen and stop dead and in a minute she
had glided away and begun to talk to someone else. Old Mrs. Serle used
to sit in a corner and knit. She never dropped a stitch; but she always
had her eyes on Anita. She was different from the rest of my people. She
had an accent, not cockney exactly, but odd. She had had a hard life, I
believe. Mother said of her once that her courage made up for
everything. But she never told me what the everything was. Great-aunt’s
memory was shaky. One day she would scarcely know you, and another day
she would be sensible and kind, very kind. She liked parties. People
used to come and talk to her because she made them laugh; but every now
and then, when Anita was being brilliant about something, she would put
up her long gnarled finger and say—‘Hush! Listen to my daughter!’ and
her eyes would twinkle. But I never knew if she were proud of her or
not.

Everybody said that Anita was brilliant. She could take a book to pieces
so that you saw every good bit and every bad bit separated away into
little compartments. But she spoiled things for you, books and people,
at least she did for me. She sneered. She said of the Baxter girl once,
for instance—‘She’s really too tactful. If you go to tea with her you
are sure to be introduced to your oldest friend.’ And again—‘She always
likes the right people for the wrong reasons.’

Of course one knows what she meant, but I liked the Baxter girl all the
same. Beryl Baxter—but everyone called her the Baxter girl. She was kind
to me because I was Anita’s cousin, and she used to talk to me when
Anita wasn’t in the mood for her. She asked me to call her ‘Beryl’
almost at once. Anita used to be awfully rude to her sometimes, and then
again she would have her to supper and spend an evening going through
her MSS. and I could tell that she was giving her valuable help. The
Baxter girl used to listen and agree so eagerly and take it away to
re-write. I thought she was dreadfully grateful. I hated to hear her.
And when she was gone Anita would lean back in her chair with a dead
look on her face and say—

“God help her readers! Jenny, open the window. That girl reeks of
patchouli.” And then—“Why do I waste my time?”

And Great-aunt Serle in her corner would chuckle and poke and mutter,
but not loud—

“Why does she waste her time? Listen to my daughter!”

The next time the Baxter girl came Anita would hardly speak to her.

The Baxter girl seemed to take it as a matter of course. But once she
said to me, with a look on her face as if she were defending herself—

“Ah—but you don’t write. You’re not keen. You don’t know what it means
to be in the set.”

“But such heaps of people come to see Anita,” I said, “people she hardly
knows.”

“They’re only the fringes,” said the Baxter girl complacently. “They’re
not in the Grey set. They don’t come to the Nights. At least, only a
few. Jasper Flood, of course—You’ve met him, haven’t you?—and Lila
Howe—_Masquerade_, you know, and _Sir Fortinbras_.” The Baxter girl
always ticketed everyone she mentioned. “And the Whitneys. She used to
stay with the Whitneys. And Roy Huth. And of course Kent Rehan.”

“Kent Rehan?”

“_The_ Kent Rehan,” said the Baxter girl.

Then I remembered. The vicar’s wife always sent Mother the Academy
catalogue after she had been up to town. I used to cut out the pictures
I liked, and I liked Kent Rehan’s. They had wind blowing through them,
and sunshine, and jolly blobs that I knew must be raw colour, and always
the same woman. But you could never see her face, only a cheek curve or
a shoulder line. They were in the catalogue every year, and so I told
the Baxter girl. She laughed.

“Yes, he’s always on the line. Anita says that’s the worst she knows of
him. And of course the veiled lady——” she laughed again, knowingly, “But
there is one full face, I believe. _The Spring Song_ he calls it. But
it’s never been shown. Anita’s seen it. She told me. He keeps it locked
away in his studio. They say he’s in love with her.”

“With whom?”

“Madala Grey, of course.”

I said—

“Who is Madala Grey?”

The Baxter girl had sunk into the cushions until she was prone. I had
been wondering with the bit of mind that wasn’t listening what the
people at home would have said to her, with her cobweb stockings (it was
November) and her coloured combs and her sprawl. It was a relief to see
her sit up suddenly.

“‘Who’s Madala Grey!’” Her mouth stayed open after she’d finished the
sentence.

“Yes,” I said. “Who is she?”

“You mean to say you’ve never heard of Madala Grey? You’ve never read
_Eden Walls_? Is there anyone in England who hasn’t read _Eden Walls_?”

“Heaps,” I said. She annoyed me. She—they—they all thought me a fool at
Anita’s.

The Baxter girl sighed luxuriously.

“My word, I envy you! I wish I was reading _Eden Walls_ for the first
time—or _Ploughed Fields_. I don’t care so much about _The
Resting-place_.” She laughed. “At least—one’s not supposed to care about
_The Resting-place_, you know. It’s as much as one’s life’s worth—one’s
literary life.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Sentimental. Anita says so. She says she doesn’t know what happened to
her over _The Resting-place_.”

“I like the title,” I said.

“Yes, so do I. And I love the opening where——Oh, but you haven’t read
it. And you’re Anita’s cousin! What a comedy! Just like Anita, though,
not to speak of her.”

“Why? Doesn’t Anita like her?”

The Baxter girl was flat on the cushions again. She looked at me with
those furtive eyes that always so strangely qualified her garrulity.

“Are you shrewd? Or was that chance?”

“What?”

“‘Doesn’t Anita like her?’”

“Doesn’t she then?”

“Ah, now you’re asking! Officially, very much. Too much, _I_ should say.
And too much is just the same as the other thing, I think. Would you
like Anita for your bosom friend?”

Naturally I said—

“Anita’s been very kind to me.” Anita’s my cousin, after all. I didn’t
like the Baxter girl’s tone.

“Oh, she’s been kind to me.” The Baxter girl caught me up quickly. She
was like a sensitive plant for all her crudity. “Oh, I admire Anita.
She’s the finest judge of style in England. Jasper Flood says so. You
mustn’t think I say a word against Anita. Very kind to me she’s been.”
Then, innocently, but her eyes were flickering again—“She was kind to
Madala too, till——”

“Well?” I demanded.

“Till Madala was kind to her. Madala’s one of those big people. She’ll
never forget what she owes Anita—what Anita told her she owed her. After
she made her own name she made Anita’s. Anita, being Anita, doesn’t
forget that.”

“How d’you mean—made Anita’s name?”

“Well, look at the people who come here—the people who count. What do
you think the draw was? Anita? Oh yes, _now_. But they came first for
Madala. Oh, those early days when _Eden Walls_ was just out! Of course
Anita had sense for ten. She ran Madala for all she was worth.”

“Then you do like Madala Grey?”

“I?” The Baxter girl looked at me oddly. “She read my book. She wrote to
me. That’s why Anita took me up. She let me come to the Nights. She
started them, you know. Somebody reads a story or a poem, and then it’s
talk till the milkman comes. Good times! But now Madala’s married she
doesn’t come often. Anita carries on like grim death, of course. But
it’s not the same. Last month it was dreary.”

“Is it every month?”

“Yes. It’s tomorrow again. Tomorrow’s Sunday, isn’t it? It’ll amuse you.
You’ll come, of course, as you’re in the house.”

“Will she? Herself?” I found myself reproducing the Baxter girl’s
eagerness.

“Not now.” The common voice had deepened queerly. “She’s very ill.” She
hesitated. “That’s why I came today. I thought Anita might have heard.
Not my business, of course, but——” She made an awkward, violent gesture
with her hands. “Oh, a genius oughtn’t to marry. It’s wicked waste.
Well, so long! See you tomorrow night!”

She left me abruptly.

I found myself marking time, as it were, all through that morrow, as if
the evening were of great importance. The Baxter girl was always
unsettling, or it may have been Anita’s restlessness that affected me.
Anita was on edge. She was writing, writing, all the morning. She was at
her desk when I came down. There was a mass of packets and papers in
front of her and an empty coffee cup. I believe she had been writing all
night. She had that white look round her eyes. But she didn’t need any
typing done. Early in the afternoon she went out and at once Great-aunt,
in her corner, put down her knitting with a little catch of her breath.
But she didn’t talk: she sat watching the door. I had been half the day
at the window, fascinated by the fog. I’d never seen a London fog
before. I found myself writing a letter in my head to Mother about it,
about the way it would change from black to yellow and then clear off to
let in daylight and sparrow-talk and the tramp-tramp of feet, and then
back again to silence, and the sun like a ball that you could reach up
to with your hand and hold. I was deep in my description—and then, of a
sudden, I remembered that she wasn’t there to write to any more. It was
so hard to remember always that she was dead. I got up quickly and went
to Anita’s shelves for a book. Great-aunt hadn’t noticed anything. She
was still watching the door.

The little back room that opened on to the staircase was lined to the
ceiling with books, all so tidy and alphabetical. Anita lived for books,
but I used to wonder why. She didn’t love them. Her books never opened
friendlily at special places, and they hadn’t the proper smell. I ran my
finger along the ‘G’s’ and pulled out _Eden Walls_.

I began in the middle of course. One always falls into the middle of a
real person’s life, and a book is a person. There’s always time to find
out their beginning afterwards when you’ve decided to be friends. It
isn’t always worth while. But it was with _Eden Walls_. I liked the
voice in which the story was being told. Soon I began to feel happier.
Then I began to feel excited. It said things I’d always thought, you
know. It was extraordinary that it knew how I felt about things. There’s
a bit where the heroine comes to town and the streets scare her, because
they go on, and on, and on, always in straight lines, like a corridor in
a dream. Now how did she know of that dream? I turned back to the first
page and began to read steadily.

When Anita’s voice jerked me back to real life it was nearly dark. She
was speaking to Great-aunt as she took off her wraps—

“The fog’s confusing. I had to take a taxi to the tube. A trunk call is
an endless business.”

“Well?” said Great-aunt.

“Nothing fresh.”

“Did _he_ answer?”

Anita nodded.

“Was he——? Is she——? Did you ask——? What did he tell you, Anita?”

Anita stabbed at her hat with her long pins. She was flushing.

“The usual details. He spares you nothing. Have you had tea, Mother?”
She rang the bell.

Great-aunt beat her hand on the arm of her chair in a feeble, restless
way. When I brought her tea she said to me in her confidential whisper—

“Give it to my daughter. She’s tired. She’ll tell us when she’s not so
tired.”

She settled herself again to watch; but she watched Anita, not the door.

And in a few minutes Anita did say, as the Baxter girl had said—

“She’s very ill.” And then—“I always told you we ought to have a
telephone. I can’t be running out all the evening.”

“Do they come tonight?” said Great-aunt Serle.

Anita answered her coldly—

“They do. Why not?”

Great-aunt tittered.

“Why not? Why not? Listen, little Jenny!”

Anita, as usual, was quite patient.

“Mother, you mustn’t excite yourself. Jenny, give Mother some more tea.
What good would it do Madala to upset my arrangements? Besides, Kent
will have the latest news. I think you may trust him.” She gave that
little laugh that was Great-aunt’s titter grown musical. Then she turned
to me.

“By the way, Jenny, I expect friends tonight. You needn’t change, as
you’re in mourning. You’ll see to the coffee, please. We’ll have the
door open and the coffee in the little room. You might do it now while I
dress.”

The big drawing-room was divided from the little outer room by a
curtained door. It was closed in the day-time for cosiness’ sake, but
when it was flung back the room was a splendid one. The small room held
the books and a chair or two, and a chesterfield facing the door that
opened on to the passage and the narrow twisting stairs. They were so
dark that Anita kept a candle and matches in the hall; but one seldom
troubled to light it. It was quicker to fumble one’s way. Anita used to
long for electric light; but she would not install it. Anita had good
taste. The house was old, and old-fashioned it should stay.

I fastened back the door and re-arranged the furniture, and was sitting
down to _Eden Walls_ again when Great-aunt beckoned me.

“Go and dress, my dear!”

“But Anita said——” I began.

She held me by the wrist, all nods and smiles and hoarse whispers.

“The pretty dress—to show a pretty throat—isn’t there a pretty dress
somewhere? I know! Put it on. Put it on. What a white throat! I’ve a
necklace somewhere—but then Anita would know. Mustn’t tell Anita!”

She pulled me down to her with fumbling, shaky hands.

“Tell me, Jenny, where’s my daughter?”

“Upstairs, Auntie.”

“Tell me, Jenny—any news? Any news, Jenny?”

I didn’t know what to say to her. I was afraid of hurting her. She was
so shaking and pitiful.

“Is it about Miss Grey, Auntie?”

“Carey, Jenny—Carey. Mrs. John Carey. Good name. Good man. But Anita
don’t like him. Anita won’t tell me. You tell me, Jenny!”

“Auntie, it’s all right. It’s all right. She’ll tell you, of course,
when she hears again.” And I soothed her as well as I could, till she
let me loosen her hand from my wrist, and kiss her, and start her at her
knitting again, so that I could finish making ready the room. But as I
went to wash my hands she called to me once more.

“Yes, Auntie?”

“Put it on, Jenny. Don’t ask my daughter. Put it on.”

She was a queer old woman. She made me want to cry sometimes. She was so
frightened always, and yet so game.

But I went upstairs after supper and put on the frock she liked. Black,
of course, but with Mother’s lace fichu I liked myself in it too. I did
my hair high. I don’t know why I took so much trouble except that I
wanted to cheer myself up. It had been a depressing day in spite of
_Eden Walls_. I looked forward to the stir of visitors. And then I was
curious to see Kent Rehan.

When I came down the Baxter girl was already there, standing all by
herself at the fire. She was strikingly dressed; but she looked
stranded. I wondered if Anita had been snubbing her.

Anita was shaking hands with Mr. Flood and with a lady whom I had not
seen before. She was blonde, with greenish-golden hair and round eyes,
very black eyes that had no lights in them, not even when she smiled.
She often smiled. She had a drawling voice and hardly spoke at all,
except to Mr. Flood. If he talked to anyone else or walked away from
her, she would watch him for a minute, and then say—‘Jasper’ with a sort
of purr, not troubling to raise her voice. But he always heard and came.
She wore a wonderful Chinese shawl, white, with gold dragons worked on
it, and whenever she moved it set the dragons crawling. She was powdered
and red-lipped like a clown, and I didn’t really like her, but
nevertheless there was something about her that was queerly attractive.
When she smiled at me because I gave her coffee, I felt quite elated.
But I didn’t like her. Mr. Flood called her ‘Blanche.’ I never heard her
other name.

Anita seemed very pleased to see them. I caught scraps.

“Am so glad—one’s friends about one—such a strain waiting for news. I
phoned this afternoon. No, the usual phrases. Anxious, of course, but I
should certainly have heard if——Good of you to come! No chance of the
Whitneys, I’m afraid—too much fog. And what are you reading to us?”

The Baxter girl, as I greeted her, stripped and re-dressed me with one
swift look.

“My dear, it suits you! I wish I could look Victorian. But I’m vile in
black. Have you seen Lila? I met her on the step. They’ve turned down
_Sir Fortinbras_ in America. Isn’t it rotten luck? Anita said they
would. Anita’s always right. Any more news of Madala?”

Anita overheard her. She was suddenly gracious to the Baxter girl.

“You may be sure I should always let you know at once. And what is this
I hear about Lila? Poor Lila! It’s the last chapter, I’m afraid. I
advised her from the beginning that the American public will not
tolerate—but dear Lila is a law unto herself.” And then, as Miss Howe
came in—“Lila, my dear! How good of you to venture! A night like this
makes me wonder why I continue in London. Madala has urged me to move
out ever since——No. No news. But Jasper’s been energetic——” She circled
mazily about them while I brought the coffee.

“Kent coming?” said Mr. Flood, fumbling with his papers.

Anita shrugged her shoulders.

“Who can account for Kent? It may dawn on him that he’s due here—and
again, it may not. It depends as usual, I suppose, on the new picture.”

“Oh yes, there’s a new one,” recollected the Baxter girl carefully.

“There must be! He was literally flocculent yesterday.” Miss Howe
chuckled. “That can only mean one of two things. Art or——”

“—the lady! Who can doubt? Well, if Carey doesn’t object to his
brotherly love continuing, I’m sure I don’t. But I wish it need not
involve his missing his appointments.” Mr. Flood eyed his typescript
impatiently.

Anita was instantly all tact.

“Oh, we won’t wait. Certainly not. Pull in to the fire. Now, Jasper!”

But Miss Howe, as she swirled into Anita’s special chair, her skirts
overflowing either arm, abolished Mr. Flood and his typescript with a
movement of her soft dimply hands.

“Oh, I’m not in the mood even for Jasper’s efforts. I want to let myself
go. I want to damn publishers—and husbands! Damn them! Damn them! There!
Am I shocking you, Miss Summer?”

She smiled at me over their heads. She was always polite to me. I liked
her. She was like a fat, pink pæony.

“Well, if you take my advice——” began Anita.

“My darling, I love you, but I don’t want your advice. I only want one
person’s advice—ever—and she has got married and is doing her duty in
that state of life——Hence I say—Damn husbands! I tell you I want Madala
to soothe me, and storm at the injustice of publishers for me, and
then—no, not give me a brilliant idea for the last chapter, but make me
tell her one, and then applaud me for it. _You_ know, Anita!” She dug at
her openly.

I caught a movement in Great-aunt’s corner.

“Coffee, Auntie?”

She gave me a goblin glance.

“My daughter!” She had an air of introducing her triumphantly. “Listen!
She don’t like fat women.”

We listened. Anita’s voice was mellow with cordiality.

“Yes indeed. Madala has often said to me that she thought you well worth
encouraging.”

Miss Howe laughed jollily.

“I admire your articles, Nita. I wilt when you review me. But you’ll
never write novels, darling. You’ve not the ear. Madala may have said
that, but she didn’t say it in that way.”

“She certainly said it.”

“Some day I’ll ask her.”

“Some day! Oh, some day!” The Baxter girl was staring at the fire.
“Shall we ever get her back?”

“In a year! Let us give her a year!” Mr. Flood looked up at the lady
beside him with a thin smile. I couldn’t bear him. He sat on the floor,
and he called you ‘dear lady,’ and sometimes he would take hold of your
watch-chain and finger it as he talked to you. But he was awfully
clever, I believe. He wrote reviews and very difficult poetry that
didn’t rhyme. Anita was generally mellifluous to him and she quoted him
a good deal. She turned to him with just the same smile—

“Ah, of course! You’ve met John Carey too.”

“For my sins, dear lady—for my sins.”

“Not the same sins, surely,” breathed the blonde lady.

“As the virtuous Carey’s? Don’t be rude to me! It’s a fact—the man’s a
churchwarden. He carries a little tin plate on Sundays! Didn’t you tell
me so, Anita? No—we give her a year. Don’t we, Anita?”

“But what did she marry him for?” wailed the Baxter girl.

They all laughed.

“Copy, dear lady, copy!” Mr. Flood was enjoying himself. “Why will you
have ideals? Carey was a new type.”

“But she needn’t have married him!” insisted the Baxter girl. The
argument was evidently an old one.

“She, if I read her aright, could have dispensed with the ceremony, but
the churchwarden had his views. Obviously! Can’t you imagine him—all
whiskers and wedding-ring?”

“But I thought he was clean-shaven! I thought he was good-looking!” I
sympathized with the Baxter girl’s dismay.

“Ah—I speak in parables——”

“You do hate him, don’t you?” said Miss Howe with her wide, benevolent
smile. “Now, I wonder——”

Mr. Flood flushed into disclaimers, while the woman beside him looked at
Miss Howe with half-closed eyes.

“I? How could I? Our orbits don’t touch. _I_ approved, I assure you. An
invaluable experience for our Madala! A year of wedded love, another of
wedded boredom, and then—a master-piece, dear people! Madala Grey back
to us, a giantess refreshed. Gods! what a book it will be!”

“I wonder,” said Miss Howe vaguely.

Anita answered her with that queer movement of the head that always
reminded me of a pouncing lizard.

“No need! I’ve watched Madala Grey’s career from the beginning.”

“For this I maintain—” Mr. Flood ignored her—“_Eden Walls_ and _Ploughed
Fields_ may be amazing (_The Resting-place_ I cut out. It’s an
indiscretion. Madala caught napping) but they’re preliminaries, dear
people! mere preliminaries, believe me.”

“I sometimes wonder——” Miss Howe made me think of Saladin’s cushion in
_The Talisman_. She always went on so softly and imperviously with her
own thoughts—“Suppose now, that she’s written herself out, and knows
it?”

The Baxter girl gave a little gasp of horrified appreciation.

“So the marriage——”

“An emergency exit.”

But Anita pitied them aloud—

“It shows how little you know Madala, either of you.”

“Does anyone? Do you?”

Anita smiled securely.

“The type’s clear, at least.” Mr. Flood looked round the circle. His
eyes shone. “_Une grande amoureuse_—that I’ve always maintained. Carey
may be the first—but he won’t be the last.”

“Is he the first? How did she come to write _The Resting-place_ then?
Tell me that!” Anita thrust at him with her forefinger and behind her,
in the corner, I saw the gesture duplicated.

“So I will when I’ve read the new book, dear lady.”

“If ever it writes itself,” Miss Howe underlined him.

“As to that—I give her a year, as I say. Once this business is over—”
his voice mellowed into kindliness—“and good luck to her, dear woman——”

“Ah, good luck!” said Miss Howe and smiled at him.

“Once it’s over, I say——”

“But she _will_ be all right, won’t she?” said the Baxter girl.

“I should certainly have been told——” began Anita.

Miss Howe harangued them—

“Have you ever known Madala Grey fail yet? She’ll be all right. She’ll
pull it off—triumphantly. You see! But as for the book—if it comes——”

“When it comes,” corrected Mr. Flood.

“What’s that?” said Anita sharply.

There was a sound in the passage, a heavy sound of feet. It caught at my
heart. It was a sound that I knew. They had come tramping up the stairs
like that when they fetched away Mother. Thud—stumble—thud! I shivered.
But as the steps came nearer they belonged to but one man. The door
opened and the fog and the man entered together. Everyone turned to him
with a queer, long flash of faces.

“Kent!” cried Anita, welcoming him. Then her voice changed. “Kent!
What’s wrong? What is it?”

He shut the door behind him and stood, his back against it, staring at
us, like a man stupefied.

The Baxter girl broke in shrilly—

“He’s wired. He’s had a wire!” She pointed at his clenched hand.

Then he, too, looked down at his own hand. His fingers relaxed slowly
and a crush of red and grey paper slid to the floor.

“A son,” he said dully.

“Ah!” A cry from the corner by the fire eased the tension. Great-aunt
Serle was clapping her hands together. Her face was wrinkled all over
with delight. “The good girl! The pretty——And a son too! A little son!
Oh, the good girl!”

Anita turned on her, her voice like a scourge—

“Be quiet, Mother!” Then—“Well, Kent? Well?”

“Well?” he repeated after her.

“Madala? How’s Madala? What about Madala Grey?”

“Dead!” he said.

_Dead._ The word fell amongst the group of us in the circle of
lamp-light, like a plummet into a pool. _Dead._ For an instant one could
hear the blank drop of it. Then we broke up into gestures and little
cries, into a babel of dismay and concern and rather horrible
excitement.

Instinctively I separated myself from them. It was neither bad news nor
good news to me, but it recalled to me certain hours, and they—it was as
if they enjoyed the importance of bereavement. Anita talked. Miss Howe
was gulping, and dabbing at her eyes. The Baxter girl kept on
saying—‘Dead?’ ‘Dead?’ under her breath, and with that wide nervous
smile that you sometimes see on people’s faces when they are far enough
away from laughter. Great-aunt had shrunk into her corner. I could
barely see her. The blonde lady had her hand on her heart and was
panting a little, as if she had been running, and yet, as always, she
watched Mr. Flood. He had pulled out a note-book and a fountain-pen and
was shaking at it furiously, while his little eyes flickered from one to
another—even to me. I felt his observance pursue me to the very edge of
the ring of light, and drop again, baulked by the dazzle, as I slipped
past him into the swinging shadows beyond. It’s odd how lamp-light cuts
a room in two: I could see every corner of the light and shadow alike,
and even the outer room was not too dim for me to move about it easily;
but to those directly under the lamp I knew I had become all but
invisible, a blur among the other blurs that were curtains and pictures
and chairs. They remembered me as little as, absorbed and clamorous,
they remembered the man who had brought them their news, and then had
brushed his way through question and comment to the deep alcove of the
window in the outer room and there stood, rigid and withdrawn, staring
out through the uncurtained pane at the solid night beyond. I could not
see his face, only the outline of a big and clumsy body, and a hand that
twitched and fumbled at the tassel of the blind.

And all the while Anita, white as paper, was talking, talking, talking,
saying how great the shock was, and how much Miss Grey had been to her—a
stream of sorrow and self-assertion. It was just as if she said—‘Don’t
forget that this is far worse for me than for any of you. Don’t
forget——’

But the others went on with their own thoughts.

“Dead? Gone? It’s not possible.” Miss Howe was all blubbered and
deplorable. “What shall we do without her?”

“Yes—that’s it!” The Baxter girl edged-in her chair to her like a young
dog asking for comfort.

“For that matter, from the point of view of literature,” Anita’s voice
grated, “she died a year ago.”

“It’s not possible! That’s what I say—it’s not possible!” It was strange
how even the Baxter girl ignored Anita. “Dead! I can’t grasp it.
It’s—it’s too awful. She was so vivid.”

“Awful?” Mr. Flood was biting his fingers. “Awful? Nothing of the kind.
You know that Holbein cut—no, it’s earlier stuff—‘Death and the Lady,’
crude, preposterous. And _that’s_ what it is. Old Bones and Madala Grey?
That’s not tragedy, that’s farce! Farce, dear people, farce!” Then his
high tripping voice broke suddenly. “Dead? Why, she wasn’t thirty!”

“She was twenty-six last June,” said Anita finally. “Midsummer Day. I
know.”

“June!” He caught it up. “Just so—June! Isn’t that characteristic? Isn’t
that Madala all over? Of course she was born in June. She would be. She
_was_ June. June——

                   “Her lips and her roses yet maiden
                    A summer of storm in her eyes——”

Miss Howe winced.

“For God’s sake don’t Swinburnize, Jasper! She’s not your meat. Oh, I
want to cry—I want to cry! Dead—at twenty-six——”

“In child-bed,” finished Anita bitterly, and her voice made it an
unclean and shameful end.

Mr. Flood’s glance felt its way over her, hatefully. It never lifted to
her face.

“Of course from your point of view, dear lady——” he began, and smiled as
he made his little bow of attention.

I thought him insolent, and so, I believe, did Miss Howe. She lifted her
head sharply and I thought she would have spoken; but Anita gave her no
time. There was always a sort of thick-skinned valiance about Anita.

“Oh, but you all know my point of view. She knew it herself. I never
concealed it. You know how I devoted myself——”

“A bye-word, a bye-word!” said Miss Howe under her breath.

“—but not so much to her as to her gift. I should never allow a personal
sentiment to overpower me. I haven’t the time for it. But she had the
call, she had the gift, and because she had it I say, as I have always
said, that for Madala Grey, marriage——”

“And all it implies——” Mr. Flood was still smiling.

She accepted it.

“Marriage and all that it implies was apostasy. I stand for Literature.”

“And Literature,” with a glance at the others, “is honoured.”

They wearied me. It seemed to me that they sparked and fizzled and
whirred with the sham life of machinery: and like machinery they
affected me. For at first I could not hear anything but them, and then
they confused and tired me, and last of all they faded into a mere
wall-paper of sound, and I forgot that they were there, save that I
wondered now and then, as stray sentences shrilled out of the buzz, that
they were not yet oppressed into silence.

For there was grief abroad—a grief without shape, without sound, without
expression—a quality, a pulsing essence, a distillation of pure pain.
From some centre it rayed out, it spread, it settled upon the room,
imperceptibly, like the fall of dust. It reached me. I felt it. It
soaked into me. I ached with it. I could not sit quiet. I was not drawn,
I was impelled. _Dead_—the dull, bewildered voice was still in my ears.
_That_ I heard. But it was statement, not appeal. It was not his
suffering that demanded relief, but some responding capacity for pain in
me that awoke and cried out restlessly that such anguish was unlawful,
beyond endurance, that still it I must, I must!

I rose. I looked round me. Then I went very softly into the outer room.

He was still standing at the window. The street lamp, level with the
sill, was quenched to a yellow gloom. It lit up the wet striped branches
and dead bobbins of the plane-tree beside it, and the sickly undersides
of its shrivelled last leaves. I never thought a tree could look so
ghastly. Against that unnatural glitter and the luminous thick air the
man and the half-drawn curtain stood out in solid, unfamiliar bulk of
black.

I came and stood just behind him. He was so big that I only reached his
shoulder. He may have heard me: I think he did; but he did not turn. I
was not frightened of him. That was so queer, because as a rule I can’t
talk to strangers. I get nervous and red, and foolish-tongued,
especially with men. Of course I knew all the usual men, the doctor at
home, and the church people, and husbands that came back by the
five-thirty, and now all Anita’s friends, and Mr. Flood; but I never had
anything to say to them or they to me. But with Kent Rehan, somehow, it
was different. He was different. I never thought—‘This is a strange
man.’ I never thought—‘He doesn’t know me: it’s impertinent to break in
upon him: what will he think?’ I never thought of all that. I never
thought about myself at all. I was just passionately desiring to help
him and I didn’t know how to do it.

I think I stood there for four or five minutes, trying to find words,
opening my lips, and then catching back the phrase before a sound came,
because it seemed so poor and meaningless. And all the while the Baxter
girl’s words were running in my head—‘They say he was in love with her.’

With her—with Madala Grey. She was the key. I had the strangest pang of
interest in this unknown woman. Who was she? What was she? What had she
been? What had she done so to centre herself in so many, in such alien
lives? What had she in common for them all? Books, books, books—_I’d_
never heard of her books! And she was married. Yet the loss of her,
unpossessed, could bring such a look (as he turned restlessly from the
window at last) such a look to Kent Rehan’s face. I was filled with a
sort of anger against that dead woman, and I envied her. I never saw a
man look so—as if his very soul had been bruised. It was not, it was
never, a weak face, and it was not a young one; yet in that instant I
saw in it, and clearly, its own forgotten childhood, bewildered by its
first encounter with pain. It was that fleeting look that touched me so
and gave me courage, so that I found myself saying to him, very low and
quickly, and with a queer authority—

“It won’t always hurt so much. It will get easier. I promise you it
will. It does. Truly it does. In six months—I _do_ know.”

He looked down at me strangely.

I went on because I had to, but it was difficult. It was desperately
difficult. I could hear myself blundering and stammering, and using
hateful slangy phrases that I never used as a rule.

“I had to tell you. It isn’t cheek. I know—it hurts like fun. It’ll be
worst out of doors. You see them coming, you see them just ahead of you,
and then it isn’t them. But it won’t always hurt so horribly. I promise
you. One manages. One gets used to living with it. I know.”

He looked at my black dress.

“Your husband?”

“No. Mother.”

He said no more. But he did not go away from me. We stood side by side
at the window.

The voices in the other room insisted themselves into my mind again,
against my will, like the ticking of a clock in the night. I was
thinking about him, not them. But Anita called to me to put coal on the
fire and, once among them, I did not like to go back to him again.

They had re-grouped themselves at the hearth. Miss Howe was in the chair
with the chintz cover that was as pink and white and blue-ribboned as
she herself. The Baxter girl crouched on the pouf and the fire-light
danced over her by fits and starts till, what with her violet dress and
her black boy’s head with the green band in it and that orange glow upon
her, she looked like one of the posters in the Tube. The blonde lady had
pushed back her chair to the edge of the lamp-light, so that her face
was a blur and her white dress yellow-grey. Her knees made a back for
Mr. Flood sitting cross-legged at her feet, and watching the Baxter girl
as if he admired her. Once the blonde lady put her hand on his shoulder,
and he caught it and played with the rings on it while he listened to
her, and yet still watched the Baxter girl. She went on whispering, her
hand in his, till at last he put back his head and caught her eye and
laughed. Then she leaned back again as if she were satisfied. But I
thought—‘How I should hate to have that dank hair rubbing against my
skirt.’ Beside Mr. Flood lay the MS. he had brought, but I think Anita
had forgotten it. She, sitting at the table in her high-backed chair
(she never lolled), was still talking, indeed they were all talking
about this Madala Grey. Anita’s voice was as pinched as her face.

“Oh, I knew from the first what it would be! She could never do anything
by halves. She had no moderation. The writing, the work, all that made
her what she was, tossed aside, for a whim, for a madness, for a man. I
can’t help it—it makes me bitter.”

“Do you grudge it her so?” The Baxter girl looked at her wonderingly. “I
kicked at it too, of course. We all did, didn’t we? But now, I like to
think how happy she looked the last time she came here. Do you remember?
I liked that blue frock. And the scarf with the roses—I gave her that.
Liberty. She was thin though. She always worked too hard. Poor Madala!
Heigh-ho, the gods are jealous gods.”

Anita stared in front of her.

“Just gods. She served two masters. She was bound to pay.”

“You are hard,” said the Baxter girl in a low voice.

Miss Howe rocked herself.

“But don’t you know how she feels? I do. It’s the helplessness——”

Anita’s pale eye met and held her glance as if she resented that
sympathy. Then, as if indeed she were suddenly grown weak, she
acquiesced.

“I suppose so. Yes, it’s the helplessness. ‘If this didn’t happen’—‘If
that weren’t so’—Little things, little things—and they govern one. A
broken doll—a cowslip ball—stronger than all my strength. And she
needn’t have met Carey. It was just a chance. If I’d known—that day! I
used to ask her questions, just to make her talk. I remember asking her
about her old home—more to set her off than anything. I said I’d like to
see it some day. It was true. I was interested. But it was only to make
her talk. But she—oh, you know how she foamed up about a thing. ‘My old
home! Would you, Anita? Would you like to come? Wouldn’t it bore you,
Anita? It’s all spoiled, you know. But I go down now and then. Nobody
remembers me. It’s like being a ghost. Oh, I _feel_ for ghosts. Would
you really like to come? Shall we go soon? Shall we go today?’ And then,
of course, down we go. And then we meet Carey. And then the play
begins.”

Miss Howe shook her head.

“Ends.”

Anita accepted it.

“Ends. Then the play ends.” And then, frowning—“If I’d known that day—if
I’d known! I was warned, too. That’s strange. I’ve never thought of it
from that day to this. If I were an old wife now——” She shivered.

“What happened?” said the Baxter girl curiously.

“Oh, well, off we went! We had a carriage to ourselves. I was glad. I
thought she might talk.”

“And you always tried to make her talk,” said Miss Howe softly.

Anita went on without answering her.

“She grew quite excited as we travelled down, talking about her ‘youth.’
She always spoke as if she were a hundred.”

“She put something into that youth of hers, I shouldn’t wonder,” said
Miss Howe.

“She did. The things she told me that day. I knew she had been in
America, but I never dreamed——She landed there, if you please, without a
penny in her pocket, without a friend in the world.”

“I never understood why she went to America,” said Miss Howe. “I asked
her once.”

“What did she say?” said Anita curiously.

“To make her fortune. But I never got any details out of her.”

“Didn’t you know?” said Anita. “Her people emigrated. The father failed.
It happened when Madala was eighteen, and she and her mother persuaded
him, expecting him, literally, to make their fortunes. The mother seems
to have been an erratic person. Irish, I believe. Beautiful.
Extravagant. I have always imagined that it was her extravagance—but
Madala and the husband seem to have adored her. I remember Madala saying
once that her father had been born unlucky, ‘except when he married
Mother!’ I suspect, myself, that that was the beginning of his ill-luck.
Anyhow, when the crash came, they gathered together what they had and
started off on some romantic notion of the mother’s to make their
fortune farming. America. Steerage. The _Sylvania_.”

“_Sylvania?_ That’s familiar. What was it? A collision, wasn’t it?”

“No, that was the _Empress of Peru_. The _Sylvania_ caught fire in
mid-ocean—a ghastly business. There were only about fifty survivors.
Both her people were drowned.”

“Oh, that’s what she meant,” began Miss Howe, “that time at the Academy.
We were looking at a storm-scape, and she said—‘People don’t know. It’s
not like that. They wouldn’t try to paint it if they knew.’ She was
quite white. Of course I never dreamed——Poor old Madala! Well, what
happened?”

“Oh, she reached America in what she stood up in. There was a survivors’
fund, of course, but money melts in a city when you’re strange to it.”

“Couldn’t she have come back to England?”

“I believe she had relations over here, but her mother had quarrelled
with them all in turn. They didn’t appreciate her mother and that was
the unforgivable sin for Madala. She’d have starved sooner than ask them
to help her. I shouldn’t wonder if she did, too!—half starve anyway. I
shouldn’t wonder if those first bare months haven’t revenged themselves
at last.”

“Oh, if one had known!” began the Baxter girl. “How is it that no one
ever knows—or cares?”

“You? You were a schoolgirl. Who had heard of her in those days? But she
made friends. There was a girl, a journalist, who had been sent to
interview the survivors. She seems to have helped her in the beginning.
She found her a lodging—oh, can’t you see how she uses that lodging in
_Eden Walls_?—and gave her occasional hack jobs, typing, and now and
then proof-reading. Then she got some work taken, advertisement work,
little articles on soaps and scents and face-creams that she used to
illustrate herself. She was comically proud of them. She kept them all.”

“I suppose in her spare time she was already working at _Eden Walls_?”

“No. I asked her. And she said—‘Oh, no, I was too miserable. Oh, Anita,
I _was_ miserable.’ And then she began again telling funny stories about
her experiences. No, she was back in England before she began _Eden
Walls_. However, she seems to have made quite a little income at last,
even to have saved. And then, just when she began to see her way before
her to a sort of security, then she threw it all up and came home.”

“Just like Madala! But why?”

“Heaven knows! Homesick, she said.”

“But she hadn’t got a home!”

“It was England—the English country—the south country—the Westering Hill
country. She used to talk about it like—like a lover.”

“Isn’t that more probable?” said Mr. Flood.

“What?”

“A lover.”

“Carey?”

“Not necessarily Carey.”

Anita looked at him with a certain approval.

“Ah—so you’ve thought of that, too? Now what exactly do you base it on?”

He shrugged and smiled.

“Delightfullest—my thoughts are thistle-down.”

“But you have your theory?” She pinned him down. “I see that you too
have your theory.”

“Our theory.” He bowed.

“You’ve got wits, Jasper.”

“What are you two driving at?” Miss Howe fidgeted.

“We’re evolving a theory—a theory of Madala Grey. Who lived in the south
country, Anita?”

“Carey, for that matter.”

“Matters not. She didn’t come home for Carey. You can’t make books
without copy. Not her sort of book. Any more than you can make bricks
without straw. But she didn’t make her bricks from his straw, that I’ll
swear.”

“No, she didn’t come home for Carey,” said Anita. “I tell you, that was
the day she met him. It’s barely a year ago. She had made her name twice
over by then. She was already casting about for her third plot. I think
it was that that made her so restless. She’d grown very restless. But
she certainly didn’t come home for Carey.”

“Then why?”

“Homesick.”

“That’s absurd.”

“I’m telling you what she said. She insisted on it. She used a queer
phrase. She said—‘I longed for home till my lips ached.’”

The lady with Mr. Flood stirred in her shadows.

“She didn’t imagine that. That happens. That is how one longs——” She
broke off.

“For home?” he said, with that smile of his that ended at his mouth and
left his eyes like chips of quartz.

She answered him slowly, him only—

“I suppose, with some women, it could be for home. If she says so——That
is what confounds one in her. She knows—she proves that she knows, in a
phrase like that, things that (when one thinks of her personality) she
_can’t_ know—couldn’t know. It’s inexplicable. ‘Till one’s lips
ache’——Oh, Lord!” She laughed harshly.

Anita looked at them uncertainly.

“Well, that’s what she said. And to judge from her description Westering
was something to be homesick for. I expected a paradise.”

“Westering? That’s quite a town.”

“Yes, I know. There’s a summer colony. Madala mourned over it. She was
absurd. She raced me out of the station and up the hill, and would
scarcely let me look about me till we were at the top, because the lower
end of the village had been built over. It might have been the sack of
Rome to hear her—‘Asphalt paths! Disgraceful! The grocer used to have
_blue_ blinds. They’ve spoiled the village green.’ And so it went on
until we reached Upper Westering.”

“Oh, where they live now?”

“Yes. And then she turned to me and beamed—‘_This is_ my _country_.’
It certainly is a pretty place. There’s a fine view over the downs;
but too hilly for me. We climbed up and down lanes and picked
ridiculous bits of twig and green stuff till I protested. Then she
took me into the churchyard. We wandered about: very pleasant it was:
such a hot spring day, and pretty pinkish flowers—what did she call
the stuff?—cuckoo-pint, springing from the graves—and daffodils. Then
we sat down in the shadow of the church to eat our lunch. We began to
discuss architecture and I was growing interested, really beginning to
enjoy myself—some of it was pre-Norman—when a man climbed over the
stile from the field behind the church, and came down the path towards
us. As he passed, Madala looked up and he looked down, and up she
jumped in a moment. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘I do believe—I _do_ believe—’
You know that little chuckly rise in her voice when she’s pleased—‘I
do believe it’s you!’ ‘Oh, Madala,’ I said, ‘the sandwiches!’ They
were in a paper on her lap, you know. She had scattered them right and
left. But I might have talked to the wind. I must say he had perfectly
respectable manners. He turned back at once, and smiled at her, and
hesitated, and began to pick up the sandwiches, though he evidently
didn’t know her. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘don’t you remember? Aren’t you Dr.
Carey? You mended my camel when I was little. I’m Madala!’ She was
literally brimming over with pleasure. But, you know, such a silly way
to put it! If she had said ‘Madala Grey’ he would have known in a
moment. There were a couple of _Eden Walls_ on the bookstall as we
went through. I saw them. However, he remembered her then. He
certainly seemed pleased to see her, in his awkward way. He stood
looking down at her, amused and interested. People always got so
interested in Madala. Haven’t you noticed it? Even people in trams.
Though I thought to myself at the time—‘How absurd Madala is! What can
they have in common?’ Yes, I thought it even then.”

“Well, what had they in common?”

“Heaven knew! She was ten and he was twenty-five when they last met. He
knew her grand-people: he had mended her dolls for her: he lived in her
old home: that, according to her, was all that mattered. She said to me
afterwards, I remember, ‘Just imagine seeing him! I _was_ pleased to see
him. He belongs in, you know.’ ‘No, Madala,’ I said, ‘I don’t know. Such
a fuss about a man you haven’t seen since you were a child! I call it
affectation. It’s a slight on your real friends.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘but
he belongs in.’ She looked quite chastened. She said—‘Nita, it wasn’t
affectation. I believe he was pleased too—honestly!’ He was. Who
wouldn’t be? You know the effect she used to make.”

“What did he say?” asked the Baxter girl.

“Oh, he looked down at her as if he were shy. Then he said—‘You’ve a
long memory, Madala!’ Yes, he called her Madala from the first. It
annoyed me. She said—‘Oh, do you remember when Mother was so ill once?
You were very kind to me then.’ Then she said something which amazed me.
I’d known her for two years before she told me anything about that
_Sylvania_ tragedy, but to him she spoke at once. ‘They’re dead,’ she
said, ‘Mother and Father. They’re drowned. There isn’t anyone.’ But her
voice! It made me quite nervous. I thought she was going to break down.
He said, with a stiff sort of effort—‘Yes. I heard.’ That was all.
Nothing sympathetic. He just stood and looked at her.”

“Well?” said Miss Howe impatiently.

“Oh—nothing else. I finished picking up the sandwiches. She introduced
me, but I don’t think he realized who I was. It annoyed me very much
that she insisted on his eating lunch with us. As I said to her
afterwards, it wasn’t suitable. Buns in a bag! But there he sat on a
damp stone (he gave Madala his overcoat to sit upon) perfectly
contented. I confess I wasn’t cordial. But he noticed nothing. Obtuse!
That was how I summed him up from the first—obtuse! And no conversation
whatever. Madala did the talking. I believe she asked after every cat
and dog for twenty miles round. And her lack of reticence to a
comparative stranger was amazing. She told him more about herself in
half an hour than she had told me in four years. But she was an
unaccountable creature.”

“Yes, that’s just it. One never knew what Madala would do next, and yet
when she’d done it, one said—‘Of course! Just what Madala _would_ do!’
But it wasn’t like her to neglect you, Nita!”

“Oh, she noticed after a time. She began to be uncomfortable. I—withdrew
myself, as it were. You know my way. She didn’t like that. She tried—I
will say that for her—she did try to direct the conversation towards my
subjects. Useless, of course. He was, not illiterate—no, you can’t say
illiterate—but curiously unintellectual. Socialism now—somehow we got on
to socialism. That roused him. I must say, though he expressed himself
clumsily, that he had ideas. But so limited. He had never heard of Marx.
Bernard Shaw was barely a name to him. Socialism—his socialism—when we
disentangled it, was only another word for the proper feeding of the
local infants—drains—measles—the village schools. Beyond that he was
mute. But Madala chimed in with details of American slum life, and
roused him at once. They grew quite eloquent. But not one word, if you
please, of her own work. Anything and everything but her work. He did
ask her what she was doing. ‘Oh,’ said she in an offhand way, ‘I
scribble. Stories.’ And then—‘It earns money, and it kills time.’ Yes,
that’s exactly how she put it. ‘Madala!’ I said, ‘that’s not the
spirit—’ I’d never heard her use such a tone before. She had such high
ideals of art. It jarred me. I thought that she ought to have known
better. But she looked at me in such a curious way—defiant almost. She
said—‘It’s my own spirit, Nita. Oh, let me have a holiday!’ And at that
up she jumped and left us sitting there, and wandered off to the stile
and was over it in a second. We sat still. The hedge hid her. Then we
heard her call—‘Cowslips! Oh, cowslips!’ I thought he would go when she
called, but he sat where he was, listening. It was one of those hot,
still days, you know. There was a sort of spell on things. There were
bees about. We heard a cart roll up the road. I wanted to get up and
talk, make some kind of diversion, and yet I couldn’t. We heard her call
again—‘Hundreds of cowslips! I’m going to make a cowslip ball.’ Her
voice sounded far away, but very clear. And there was a scent of may in
the air, and dust—an intoxicating smell. It made me quite sleepy. It was
just as if time stood still. Three o’clock’s a drowsy time, I suppose.
And he never stirred—just sat there stupidly. But I was too sleepy to be
bored with him. Presently back she came. She had picked up her skirt and
her petticoat showed—it was that lavender silk you gave her, Lila. So
unsuitable, you know, on those dirty roads. And her skirt was full of
cowslips. She was just a dark figure against the sky until she was close
to us; but then, I thought that she looked pretty, extremely pretty.
Bright cheeks, you know, and her eyes so blue——”

“Grey—” said Mr. Flood, “the grey eyes of a goddess.”

“They looked blue, and she didn’t look like a goddess. She looked like a
little girl. Well, there she stood, with her grey skirt and her lavender
silk, and her cowslips—you know they have a sweet smell, cowslips, a
very sweet smell—and tumbled them all down on the tombstone. Then she
wanted string. Carey seemed to wake up at that. He’d been looking at her
as if he had dreamed her. He produced string. He was that sort of man.
Then she made her cowslip ball. I held one end of the string and he held
the other, and she nipped the stalks off the flowers and strung them
athwart it. That is the way to make a cowslip ball.”

“Nita, I love you!” cried Miss Howe for the second time, and the others
laughed.

She stopped. She stiffened.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Ne’ mind! Go on!”

She said offendedly—

“There’s nothing more to tell. We got up and came away.”

But as we sat silently by, still waiting, the storyteller crept back
into her face.

“Oh, yes—” up went her forefinger. “It was then that it happened. We
went stumbling over the graves, round to the east end, to see the
lepers’ window, a particularly interesting one. Ruskin mentions it. Yes,
Carey came with us. There’s a little bit of bare lawn under the window
before the stones begin again, and as we crossed it Madala gave a kind
of shuddering start. He said—‘Cold?’ smiling at her. She shivered again,
in spite of herself as it were, for she’d been joking and laughing, and
said—‘Someone must be walking over my grave.’ And at that he gave her
such a look, and said loudly in a great rough voice—‘Rubbish! don’t talk
such rubbish!’ Really, you know, the tone! And I thought to myself then
as I’ve thought many times since—‘At heart the man’s a bully—that’s what
the man is.’ But Madala laughed. We didn’t stay long after that. The
window was a disappointment—restored. There was nothing further to see
and Madala was quite right—it was chilly. The sky had clouded over and
there was a wind. I thought it time to go. Madala made no objection. She
had grown curiously quiet. She tired easily, you know. And he didn’t say
another word. Quite time to go. I thought we might try for the earlier
train, so we went off at last in a hurry. No, he didn’t come with us: we
shook hands at the gate. And when I looked back a minute later he had
turned away. We caught our train.”

There was a little pause that Miss Howe ended.

“Queer!” she said.

Anita stared at them. Her hands twitched.

“Oh, I’m a practical person, but—‘You’re walking on my grave,’ she said.
And there or thereabouts, I suppose, she’ll lie.”

“Coincidence,” said Mr. Flood quickly.

“Of course. I never thought of it again. Nor did Madala for that matter,
though she was quiet enough in the train. There she sat, looking out of
the window and smiling to herself. But then she was always like that
after any little excitement, very quiet for an hour, re-living
it—literally. I think, you know,” she hesitated, “that that was the
secret of her genius. Her genius was her memory. _She liked whate’er she
looked on_——”

“And her looks were certainly everywhere,” said the blonde lady in her
drawling voice.

“Just so. But it didn’t end there. She remembered. She remembered
uncannily. She was like a child picking up pebbles from the beach every
holiday, and spending all the rest of its year polishing. She turned
them into jewels. The process used to fascinate me—professionally, you
know. You could see her mind at work on some trifling incident,
fidgeting with it, twisting it, dropping it, picking it up again, till
one wearied. And then a year later, or two years, or three years, or ten
years maybe, you’ll pick up a novel or a story, and there you’ll find
it, cut, graved, polished, set in diamonds, but—the same pebble, if one
has the wit to see.”

“Well, what did she say?” Miss Howe cut through the theory impatiently.

Anita frowned. She disliked being hurried.

“Oh, that day? Very little. I was surprised. She usually enjoyed pouring
herself out to me. But no, she just sat and smiled. It irritated me.
‘What is it, Madala?’ I said at last. She stared at me as if she had
never seen me before. ‘I don’t know,’ she said in her vague way. And
then—‘Wasn’t it a lovely day?’ I waited. I knew she would go on sooner
or later. Presently she said—‘That stone we sat on _was_ damp. He was
quite right.’ Then she said, thinking aloud as it were—‘You know, if a
man has a really pleasant voice, I like it better than women’s voices.
It’s so steady.’ And then—‘What did you think of him, Anita?’”

Miss Howe chuckled.

“And you said?”

“Oh, I said what I could. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. It was so
obvious that the place and everyone in it was beglamoured for her. I
said that he seemed a worthy, harmless person, or something to that
effect. I forget exactly how I phrased it—I was tactful, of course. Oh,
I remember, I said that she ought to put him into a book—that the old
country doctors were disappearing, like the farmers and the parsons. I’m
sure I appeared interested. But all she said was—‘Old? He’s not old.
Would you call him old?’ ‘That was a figure of speech,’ I said. ‘I was
thinking of the type. But all the same you can’t describe him as young,
Madala.’ ‘Oh, he’s not a boy,’ she said. ‘No one ever said he was a
_boy_.’ She didn’t say any more. But just as we were getting out at
Victoria she cried—‘My cowslips! Anita, my cowslips! I’ve forgotten my
cowslip ball.’ I told her that it wouldn’t have lasted anyway, with the
stalks nipped off so short. But she looked as if she had lost a
kingdom.”

“I believe I know that cowslip ball.” Miss Howe looked amused. “_A_
cowslip ball, anyway. She had one sent to her once when I was there. I
thought it was from her slum children.”

“Yes, he sent it on.” My cousin went on quickly with her own story. “How
he knew the address puzzled me. Her publishers wouldn’t have given it
and I know she didn’t.”

“Telephone book,” said the Baxter girl, as one experienced.

“Ah, possibly. I went round to her that morning, and—yes, you were
there, Lila,” she conceded, “for I remember I wondered how Madala could
compose herself to work with anyone else in the room. I always left her
to herself when she stayed with me.”

“She didn’t mind me,” said Miss Howe firmly.

“She always said that she didn’t, I know. And of course I know that it
is possible to withdraw oneself as it were, but I confess I disapproved.
Her room was a regular clearing-house in those days. Oh, not you
particularly, Lila, but——”

“You came in yourself that morning, didn’t you?” said Miss Howe very
softly and sweetly.

“I was telling you so. And what did I find? Her desk littered over with
string and paper and moss and damp cardboard, and that story Hooper
published (it had been freshly typed only the day before) watering into
purple under my eyes, while she sat and gloated over those wretched
flowers. ‘Madala!’ I said, ‘your manuscript! Really, Madala!’”

“And Madala—” Miss Howe began to laugh—“Oh, I remember now.”

“What did Madala say?” demanded the Baxter girl.

“It wasn’t like her.” Anita fidgeted. “She knew how I disliked the
modern manner.”

“But she said,” Miss Howe caught it up—

“I don’t know what possessed her,” said my cousin with a rush. “She
actually stamped her foot at me. Yes, she did, and then held out her
wretched posy and said—‘Oh, damn the manuscript, Nita! Smell!’”

“What did Nita do?” enquired the blonde lady softly of Miss Howe.

“Sniffed,” Mr. Flood struck in. “Obviously! Satisfied Madala and
relieved her own feelings. That is called tact.”

“And just then, you know,” Miss Howe glanced over her shoulder and
lowered her voice, “_he_ came in.”

“Kent?” The lady with Mr. Flood did not lower her voice. I believe she
wanted him to hear. She was like a curious child poking at a hurt
beastie. Her smile was infantine as she looked across at him. But the
man at the window never stirred.

“Sh!” Miss Howe frowned at her. And then, still whispering—“Yes, don’t
you remember? he had his studio in the same block all that year. He
always came across to Madala when he wanted a sardine tin opened, or
change for his gas, or someone to sit to him.”

“Someone was saying that he couldn’t keep a model.” Mr. Flood glanced at
them in turn.

Miss Howe flushed surprisingly.

“It’s not that. You ought to know better, Jasper. It’s only that he’s
exigeant—never knows how the time goes, and” (she lowered her voice
still more), “and Madala spoilt him. She could sit by the hour looking
like a Madonna, and getting all her own head-work done, and never
stirring a hair. Of course he doesn’t like the shilling an hour type
after her.”

“I know, I know! The explanation is quite unnecessary.” He smiled and
waved his hand.

“Then why——?” She was still flushed and annoyed.

“One gets at other people’s views. I merely wondered how
the—er—partnership appeared to your—er—intelligence. Now I know.”

“She did spoil him.” Anita disregarded them. “The time she wasted on
him! In he came, you know, that day, and she went to meet him with the
cowslips still in her hand, and shielding her eyes from the sun. That
room of hers got all the morning sun.”

“What did she wear—the blue dress?” The Baxter girl was like a child
being told a story.

“I forget. Anyway he stood looking her up and down till she reddened and
began to laugh at him. And then he said—‘And cowslips too! What luck!
Come along! Come _along_!’ ‘Oh, my good man!’ I said, ‘she’s in the
middle of her writing!’ But it was useless to expostulate. He wanted her
and so she went. I heard him as he dragged her off. ‘Madala, I’ve got
such a notion!’ No, it was the great fault of her character, I consider,
that she could never deny anyone, not even for her work’s sake. Still, I
suppose one had to forgive it in that case, for that was the beginning,
you know, of _The Spring Song_. She is painted just as she stood there
that morning, literally gilded over with sunshine, and the flowers in
her hands.”

“It’s the best thing he’s ever done, isn’t it?” said the Baxter girl.

“Best thing? It’s a master-piece. It’s Madala Grey.”

“When is he going to show it?” asked Mr. Flood.

Anita shrugged.

“Heaven knows! He insists that it isn’t finished. I believe he sits and
prays over it. He was annoyed that Madala took me there one day. You
know how touchy he is.”

“He won’t show it now,” said the blonde lady.

“Why not? Why not?” Anita hovered, on the pounce, like a cat over a bowl
of goldfish, and like a fish the blonde lady glided out of reach.

“And _she_ asks!” she appealed to the others.

Anita frowned.

“You’re cryptic.”

“Well, wasn’t there a certain—rivalry? You should have a
fellow-feeling.”

“Oh—” she resented quickly, “Kent always wanted to keep her to himself,
if you mean that.”

The blonde lady smiled.

“And now he keeps her to himself. I mean just that. I go by your
account, of course. _I_ haven’t glimpsed _The Spring Song_.”

“So that started it.” The Baxter girl mused aloud. “I think that’s
romantic now—to make a famous picture and to pick up one’s husband, all
in twenty-four hours.”

“‘Pick up!’”

“You know what I mean—fall in love.”

“‘Fall in love!’”

“Nita, don’t trample.” Miss Howe threw the Baxter girl a cigarette.

“I only mean—it was romantic, meeting like that so long ago and nobody
knowing a word until just before they were married, except you, Miss
Serle. And I don’t believe you guessed?” She questioned her with defiant
eyebrows.

“How could I guess what never happened? ‘In love!’ I suppose it deceived
some good folks.”

“It wasn’t so long ago,” Miss Howe soothered them. She had a funny
little way of slipping people into another subject if she thought that
they sounded quarrelsome. ‘Let’s be comfortable!’ was written all over
her. And yet she could scratch. I think that a great many women are like
Miss Howe.

“Long ago? Of course not!” Anita picked it up at once. “How long is it?
A year? Eighteen months? April, wasn’t it? She wrote _The Resting-place_
in the next three months. Scamped. I shall always say so. She was three
years over _Ploughed Fields_. Yes, April began it. _The Resting-place_
was out for the Christmas sales. She married him at Easter. And now it’s
November. The year’s not gone. But Madala Grey is gone.”

“Where?” said the Baxter girl intensely.

“Don’t!” said Miss Howe.

But the Baxter girl looked as if she couldn’t stop herself.

“We—we put her into the past tense—d’you notice how easily we’re doing
it already?—but—is she less alive to you, less lovable, less Madala Grey
to you, because of a telegram and a funeral service? is she?”

“No,” said Miss Howe. “If you put it like that—no.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Flood. “When you put it like that—yes.”

“She must be somewhere,” argued the Baxter girl. “She can’t just stop.”

“Why not?” said Mr. Flood, with his bored smile.

“She can’t. I feel it,” she said with her hand at her heart and her
large eyes on him.

“I don’t,” he said to her, and he lost his smile. “‘Dust to dust——’”

The woman behind him moved restlessly.

“Jasper, _dear_! How trite!”

“But the spirit?” said the Baxter girl, “the spirit?”

Nobody answered. The little blue flames on the hearth capered and said
‘Chik-chik!’ Anita shivered.

“The room’s getting cold,” she said sharply. And then—“Jenny, is that
door open? There’s such a draught.”

I got up and went to see. But the door was shut. When I came back they
were talking again. Anita was answering the Baxter girl.

“Yes, I stayed there once. A pretty place. The sort of place she would
choose. All roses. No conveniences. And what with the surgery and the
socialism, the poor seemed to be always with us. Only one servant——”

“She _ought_ to have made money,” said Miss Howe.

“Oh, the first two books were a _succès d’estime_, I wept over her
contract. She did make a considerable amount of money on _The
Resting-place_. But it was all put by for the child. She told me so. He,
you know, a poor man’s doctor! She told me that too—flung it at me. She
had an extravagant way of talking, manner more than anything, of course,
but to hear her you would almost think she was proud of the life they
led. She was always unpractical.”

“I’d like to have gone down there once,” said Miss Howe. “If I’d
known—heigh-ho!”

“I—I wished I hadn’t gone,” said Anita slowly. “It wasn’t a success.”

“The husband, I suppose,” the Baxter girl hinted delicately.

“No, I hardly saw him. It was Madala herself. Changed. Affectionate—she
was always that to me but——I remember sitting with her once. We had been
talking, about Aphra Behn I believe, and she had grown flushed and had
begun to stammer a little. You know her way?”

“I know.” The Baxter girl leaned forward eagerly.

“And she was tracing a parallel between the development of the novel and
the growth of the woman’s movement—her old vein. Brilliant, she was. And
all at once she stopped and began staring in front of her. You know that
trick she had of frowning out her thoughts. I was careful not to
interrupt. I knew something big was coming. She could be—prophetic,
sometimes. At last she said in a worried sort of way—‘I’ve a dreadful
feeling that we’re out of coffee and it’s early closing.’ No, I’m not
exaggerating—her very words. And then some long rigmarole about Carey’s
appetite, and that if she made the coffee black strong she could
persuade him to take more milk with it. Oh—pitiful! And in a moment
she’d dashed off on a three mile walk to the next village where there
was a grocer that did open on Wednesdays. Oh, it was most pathetic. It
made me realize the effect that he was having on her—stultifying! I
always did dislike him.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Miss Howe.

“Just so—you don’t know. Naturally, you were not so intimate with
Madala. Well, that very afternoon, I remember, he came in at tea-time.
That was unusual: he was generally late for seven-thirty dinner, and
then he didn’t change. I used to wonder how Madala allowed it. Well, as
I was telling you, he came in, stamping through the hall, calling to
her, and when he opened the drawing-room door and found that she was
out, you should have seen his look! Sour! No other word! And off he went
at once to meet her, on his bicycle, though I was prepared to give him
tea. They didn’t come back for hours. In fact I had gone up to change. I
saw them from the window, coming up the drive. And there was Madala
Grey, perched on _his_ bicycle, with a great bunch of that white parsley
that grows in the hedges, and a string bag dangling down, while he
steadied her, and both of them _talking_! and as he helped her off, she
kissed him—in front of the kitchen windows. And, if you please, not a
word of apology to me. All she said was—why hadn’t I seen that he had
some tea before he went after her? I think it’s the only time I’ve ever
seen Madala annoyed. No, you can’t say the marriage improved her.” She
paused. “It was so unlike her,” she meditated, “as if I could help it!
You know, I’d always thought her so considerate. Carey’s influence, of
course. Oh,” she cried out suddenly and angrily, “I’ve got nothing
against Carey. I’m not prejudiced. But if he’d been the sort of man one
could approve—someone——” Her eye wandered from Kent Rehan to Mr.
Flood—“but he was dragging her down——”

Miss Howe shook her head.

“Anita, you’re wrong. I’ve only met him a couple of times but I liked
what I saw of him. An honest, straightforward sort of person. Oh, not
clever, of course. He’d have bored me in a week——”

“Ah?” said the woman behind Mr. Flood.

“Oh, yes, dull—distinctly. But I had the impression that if I’d been one
of his patients I should have done everything he told me to do.”

Anita shrugged.

“Oh, I’ve no doubt he had every virtue, but it’s idle to pretend that he
made any attempt to appreciate Madala Grey.”

“You don’t suggest that the man didn’t love his wife, do you?” said Miss
Howe in her downright way.

“I suggest nothing. But the fact remains—I give it for what it is
worth—but the fact does remain that John Carey has never read one of her
books—not one!”

“What?” The Baxter girl’s mouth opened and stayed so.

“You don’t intend to say——” began Mr. Flood.

“I don’t believe it,” said Miss Howe contemptuously.

“Why not? I’ve known a man jealous of his wife before now. I suppose he
knew enough to know that she had the brains.” The blonde lady was
smiling.

Anita shook her head reluctantly.

“Jealousy? H’m—it might have been, of course. But I didn’t get that
impression. I believe that it was a perfectly genuine lack of interest.”

“Yes, but I don’t believe it. How d’you know he didn’t? It’s not a thing
he’d own to. Who told you?”

“Madala. Madala herself. She used to make a joke of it.”

“She never showed when she was hurt,” said the Baxter girl emotionally.

“Yes, but it almost seemed as if she were not hurt, as if her—her
sensitiveness, her better feelings, had been blunted. I’ve known her use
it as a _weapon_ almost,” said Anita conscientiously recollecting.
“He—that annoyed me so—he was very peremptory with her sometimes, most
rude in his manner. Of course, you know, she _was_ dreamy. Not that that
excused him for a moment. I remember a regular scene——”

“Before you?” Miss Howe cast instant doubt upon it.

“My room was next to theirs. I could hear them through the wall. I can
assure you that he stormed at her in a most ungentlemanly way——”

“What about?” said the Baxter girl breathlessly.

“Something about his razors. A parcel had come by the early post, and
just because she had cut the string—but I couldn’t follow it all. He was
a man who was easily irritated by trifles. Well, as I say, after he had
raged at her for five minutes or more, till I could have gone in and
spoken to him myself, all that that patient woman said, was—‘Darling,
have you begun _Eden Walls_ yet?’ I tell you the man never said another
word.”

“He didn’t prevent her writing, did he?” said Miss Howe.

“There’s no doubt that he discouraged her. He was selfish. It was his
wretched doctoring all day long—and you know how sensitive Madala was. I
did persuade her to do some work while I was staying with them, but I
soon saw that it was labour thrown away. Her heart wasn’t in it. When it
wasn’t Carey it was the baby clothes. For the sake of her reputation,”
her voice hardened, “it’s as well that she has died when she has.”

“Anita!”

“I mean it.” She was quick and fierce. “Do you think it was a little
thing for me to see that pearl of great price—oh, not Madala Grey! I
grew to hate her almost, that new Madala Grey—but the gift within her,
her great, blazing genius—flung away, trampled on——”

Miss Howe turned her head in slow denial.

“No, Anita! Not genius. Charm, if you like. Talent, as much as you
please. But Madala Grey wasn’t a genius, and she knew it.”

Anita flung up her head.

“She will be when I’ve done with her. She will be when I’ve written the
_Life_.”

“Ah, the poor child!” said Great-aunt startlingly.

Anita never heeded. She was wrapt away in some cold passion of her own,
a passion that amazed me. I had always thought of her as what she
looked, an ordered, steely woman, all brain and will; yet now of a
sudden she revealed herself, a creature convulsed, writhing in flames.
But they were cold flames. Cold fire, is there such a thing? Ice burns.
There is phosphorus. There is the light of stars. I know what I mean if
only I had the words. Star-fire—that’s it. She was like a dead star. She
warmed no one, she only burned herself up.

It was the impression of a moment. When I looked again it was as if I
had been withdrawn from a telescope. She was herself once more. The
volcano had shrunk to a diamond twinkle, to a tiny, gesticulating
creature with a needle tongue. It was bewildering: while I listened to
her I was still thinking—‘Yes, but which is Anita? Diamond or star? What
makes the glitter? Frost or flame?’

But that blonde woman in the shadows went off into noiseless laughter
that woke the dragons and stirred Mr. Flood to an upward glance. Then he
hunched himself closer against her knees, his chin low on his chest, so
that his tiny beard and mouth and eyes were like triangles standing on
their points. The pose gave him a glinting air of mockery and yet,
somehow, you did not feel that he was amused. You only felt—‘Oh, he’s
practised that at a looking-glass.’

He drawled out—

“The _Life_, dear lady? Enlighten our darkness.”

“That,” came the murmur behind him, “is precisely what she is going to
do. How dense you are, Jasper!”

And at the same moment from Miss Howe—

“Be quiet, you two! Tell us, Anita! A life of her? Is that it? Ah, well,
I always suspected your note-book. Did she know you Boswellized?”

“She?” There was the strangest mixture of scorn and admiration in the
voice. “As if one could let her know! That was the difficulty with
Madala Grey: she wouldn’t take herself seriously. She had—” a pause and
a search for the correct word—“what I can only call a _perverted_ sense
of humour. If she’d known that I—noted things, she’d have been quite
capable of falsifying all her opinions, misrepresenting herself
completely, just to—throw me out, as it were. Not maliciously, I don’t
mean that. But she teases,” finished Anita petulantly. “She will do it.
She laughs at the wrong things. Of course she’s young still.”

“Yes, she’s young—now. She stays young now. She gains that at least,”
said the woman in the shadows.

Anita made a quick little sound, half titter and half gasp.

“Oh!” she cried—and her voice was as grey as her face—“I forgot. Do you
know—I forgot! It’s going to be ghastly. I believe I shall always be
forgetting.”

I glanced up at Kent Rehan. It made me realize that I had been listening
with anxiety, that I was afraid of their expressive sentences. They had
words, those writing people. They knew what they thought: they could say
what they thought: and what they thought could hurt. I didn’t want him
to be hurt. I said, under my breath—

“Oh, why do you stay here? They aren’t your sort.”

But he had heard nothing. He was poring over the long tassel of the
blind, weaving it into a six-strand plait. I couldn’t help watching his
fingers. He had the most beautiful hands that I’ve ever seen on a man.
They looked like two alive and independent creatures. They looked as if
they could do anything they chose, whether he were there to superintend
or not. And he was miles away. I was glad. Anita’s voice was rising like
a dreary wind.

“Just that is so strange. All the time I’ve known her I’ve thought of
her in the past tense. Her moods, her ways, her actions, were finished
things to me—chapters of the _Life_. I _wrote_ her all the time. But
now, when she _is_ mine, as it were, now that she exists only in my
notes and papers and remembrance of her, now it comes that I’m shaken. I
can’t think of her as a subject any more. I shall be wanting
her—herself. I can’t think clearly. It’s frightening me, the work there
is ahead of me. Because I’ve got to do it without her. She’s lying dead
down there in Surrey—now—at this minute. And there’s that man—and a
child. One’s overwhelmed. It’s so cruel. The only creature who ever
cared for me. Think of Madala, quite still, not answering, not lighting
up when you speak to her, staring at the ceiling, staring at her own
coffin-lid. In two days she’ll be under the ground. Do you ever think
what that means—burial—the corruption—the——”

“Stop it, Nita!” Miss Howe’s movement blotted out my cousin’s face. “Do
you hear? I can’t stand it. Here—drink some coffee. Jasper! Say
something!” I heard the coffee-cup dance in its saucer.

There came Aunt Serle’s anxious quaver—

“Anita! Nita! What’s the matter, my dear? What’s the matter with my
daughter?”

Nobody answered. She was like a tortoise as she poked her head from the
hood of her chair.

“Jenny!” she called cautiously. “Jenny!”

I slipped across the room to her.

“What’s it about, Jenny? Eh? Speak up, my dear! Not crying, is she?
Temper, that’s it. Don’t say I said so.”

“It’s all right, Auntie. She—they—it’s the bad news. It’s upset them
all.”

“Bad news? Fiddlesticks! Temper, I call it. Why shouldn’t the girl get
married? Not much money, but a pleasant fellow. Time for her to settle.
I said to her—‘My dear, you follow your heart.’ But Nita tried to stop
it. Nita couldn’t get over it. Cried. Temper. That’s it. Look at her
now. ’Sh! Don’t let her see you.”

But Anita wasn’t looking at me and she wasn’t crying. I suppose
Great-aunt must have known what she was talking about; but it wasn’t
easy to imagine my cousin soft and red-eyed like that great,
good-natured Miss Howe. Her little sharp face looked as controlled as if
it were carved. Yet, as she said herself, she was shaken. That showed in
the jerkiness of her movements, the sharpening of her voice, in the
break-up of her accustomed flow of words into staccato, like a river
that has come to some rocks: and her hands had a clock-work, incessant
movement, clutch-clutch, fingers on palm, that her eyes repeated. They
were everywhere at once, resting, flitting, settling again, yet seeing
nothing, I think, while she listened to Mr. Flood and grew more
irritated with every word.

“Why bad news?” said Great-aunt in my ear. “It’s a son, isn’t it?”

I hesitated.

“Oh, Auntie, didn’t you hear?” (She had heard, you know. I had seen her
shrinking back when Anita screamed at her, with that dreadful shrinking
that you see in an animal threatened by a head-blow. She had been
leaning forward, and eager. She must have heard.)

“Hear? They all talk,” she quavered. “‘Be quiet,’ says Anita. Ah, I’ve
spoilt her. Now Madala——What’s the time, my dear? Why don’t she come?”

“Auntie—Auntie——”

“Eh?” she said. “Why don’t Madala come?”

“Auntie—you’ve forgotten. She’s been ill.”

“Ah—and she’ll be worse before she’s better,” said Great-aunt briskly.
“’Sh! Listen to my daughter.”

We listened: at least, I listened. Great-aunt cocked her head on one
side, still as a bird, for a minute; then, like a bird, she was
re-assured and fell to her knitting again.

Anita and Mr. Flood were quarrelling.

“Why shouldn’t I? Tell me that! Is anyone better fitted? Who knows as
much about her as I do? Didn’t I discover her, hacking on two pounds a
week? Didn’t I recognize what she was? Who sent her to Mitchell and
Bent? Who introduced her everywhere? Who bullied her into writing
_Ploughed Fields_? Who was the best friend she ever had—even if I didn’t
make the parade of being fond of her that——Oh, I’ve no patience! What
would the world know of Madala Grey if it weren’t for me?”

“But—oh, of course we all know how good you were to her, Miss Serle,
indeed I can guess by what you’ve done for me——” began the Baxter girl.

Mr. Flood’s tongue tip showed between his red lips. I think he would
have made some comment but for the hand pressing on his shoulder.

“But——?” said the woman behind the hand.

“I only mean—‘genius will out,’ won’t it?”

“Genius? Big word!” said Miss Howe.

“Not too big.” The Baxter girl reddened enthusiastically.

“‘Genius will out?’ Not Madala Grey’s. She didn’t know she had any. I
don’t believe she ever fully realized——Why, it was the merest chance
that _Eden Walls_ didn’t go into the fire. If it hadn’t been for me—if
it hadn’t been for me——”

“Ah—_you_!” Miss Howe squared up to her. “Now just what (among friends)
have you stood to gain? Fond of her? Oh yes, you were, Anita! Don’t tell
me! But in spite of yourself, eh? But that wasn’t what you were after.
You didn’t get the pleasure out of her that—I did, for instance. You
used to exhaust Madala. I’ve seen you do it. You—you drained her.”

“Yes, I did. I meant to,” said Anita with her laugh. “Pleasure!”

“And she thought you were fond of her. She used to flare if anyone
attacked you. Poor Madala!”

“Poor? Why? I shall give it all back.” Anita gave her a long cool look.
“I—I hate debts,” said Anita.

Miss Howe flushed brightly.

“If you were cursed with the artistic temperament——” She broke off and
began again. “If I were a poor devil of a Bohemian in a hole, it’s not
to you I’d go——”

“—twice!” said Anita.

Again they eyed each other. Miss Howe, still flushing, chose her words.

“Madala never lent. That wasn’t in her. She gave. Time, money, love—she
gave. You took, it was understood, rather than hurt her feelings by
refusing. But it was always free gift.”

“Not to me.” Anita held her head high. “I shall pay. And interest too.”

“Oh, the _Life_! Are you really going to attempt a _Life_?” Miss Howe
recovered herself with a laugh, while Mr. Flood repeated curiously—

“Yes, but then what were you after, Anita? What do you stand to gain?”

“Reflected glory,” came from behind him.

She turned as if she had been stung.

“Reflected? Let her keep it! Reflected? Am I never to have anything of
my own? Oh, wait!”

“You can’t get much of yourself into a life of Madala Grey though.
You’ve too much sense of style for that,” Mr. Flood insisted. “We both
hate a biographer who ‘I says, says I.’”

“Oh, it shall be all Madala Grey. I promise you that,” she said with her
thin smile.

“Humph! It’s a notion.” Miss Howe was really interested, I could see—yet
with a flush on her cheek still. “It’s your sort of work too, Anita!
You’re—happier—in critical work.”

“Oh, don’t hedge. Don’t be delicate with me. I can’t create, that’s what
you mean. Do you think that’s news to me? Is there a critic who has
failed to make it clear to me? I can record—but I can’t create. Good! I
can’t create. I can’t do what she did—what you do, Jasper—what even
Beryl here does. But——” she paused an instant, “you should be afraid of
me for all that. I can pry. Little, nasty, mean word, isn’t it? It’s
me!”

The Baxter girl laughed uncertainly and then stopped because Anita’s
eyes were on her.

“I’ve eyes. I”—she opened and shut her tiny hands before them—“I’ve
claws. I can pry you open, any of you—if I choose. I haven’t chosen.
You’ve not been worth while. But—Madala!” and here she released the
uneasy Baxter girl—“Madala’s my chance—my chance—my chance! Madala
Grey—look at her—coming into her kingdom at twenty—that babe! And me!
Look at me! Do you know what my life has been, any of you? Oh, you come
to my house to meet my lionets, and we’re very good friends, and you’re
afraid of my reviews, and so I have my position, I suppose. But what do
you know about me? When I was fifteen—and it’s thirty years ago—I said
to myself, ‘Now what shall I do with my life?’ Mother—” she shot her a
glance: she didn’t even trouble to lower her voice, “she’d have drudged
me and dressed me and married me, I suppose, to three hundred a year and
the city—oh, with the best of motives. I fought. I fought. That’s why
I’m an ungrateful daughter. I’m supposed to be, I think. My people were
so sorry for my mother. My people thought me a fool. I saw through them.
Yes, and I saw through myself. That’s the kind of a fool I was. Didn’t I
reckon it out? I hadn’t a charm. I hadn’t a talent. I had my _will_.
That’s all I had. I taught myself. Work? You don’t know what work means,
you ten and five-talented. There’s not a book worth reading that I
haven’t read. There’s not the style of a master that I haven’t studied,
that I couldn’t reproduce at a pinch. There’s not a man or a woman in
London today, worth knowing—from my point of view—that I haven’t
contrived to know. The people who’ve arrived—how I’ve studied them, the
ways of them, the methods of them. And what’s the end of it all? That”
—she jerked her head to the row of her own books on the shelf behind
her—“and my column in the _Matins_, and some comforting hundreds a year,
and—my knowledge of myself. Oh, I’ve turned out good work. I know that.
I have judgment. That’s why I judge myself. I’ve always been rigid with
myself. And so I know when I look at my books—though I can say that they
are sounder, better work, in better English, that they have more
knowledge behind them, than the books of a dozen of you people who
arrive—yet I know that they have failed. People don’t read me. People
don’t want me. Why? I have my name. I’ve the name of a well-known
critic, but—I’m only a name. I’m not alive. The public doesn’t touch
hands with me. Now why? Oh, how I’ve tormented myself. Nearly thirty
years I’ve given, of unremitting labour, to my art, to my career.
There’s not a thought or a wish that I haven’t sacrificed to it. And
then that child of twenty comes along, without knowledge, without
training, without experience, and gets at one leap, mark you all, at one
leap, more than I’ve achieved in thirty years. Some people, I suppose,
would submit. Well, I won’t. I wouldn’t. Does my will go for nothing? I
_will_ have my share. ‘Reflected glory,’ yes, I’ve stooped to that. I’ve
exploited her, if you like to call it that. When I think of the day I
discovered her——” She paused an instant, dragging her hand wearily over
her eyes—“I was at my zero that day. The _Famous Women_ had been out a
week. The reviews—oh, the reviews! Respectful, courteous, lukewarm. If
they’d attacked me, if they’d slated, I’d have rejoiced. But they
respect me and they’re bored. They know it’s sound work and they’re
bored. I bore people. I bore you—all of you. Do you think I’m blind?
That night I read the manuscript of _Eden Walls_. (Wasn’t it kind of
me—it wasn’t even typed!) And then I saw my chance. I saw how far she’d
got at twenty, and I thought—‘I’ll take my chance. I’ll take this
genius. I’ll make her fond of me. I’ll help her. I’ll worm myself into
her. I’ll abase myself. I’ll toady. I’ll do anything. But I will find
out how she does it. I will find out the secret. I’ll find it and I’ll
make it my own. I’ll serve for her as Jacob served for Rachel; but she
shall serve me in the end.’ I have watched. I have studied. I have
puzzled. I believe I’ve grasped it at last. I know myself and I know
her. If genius is life—the power to give life—is it that?—then I’m
barren. I can’t make life as Madala can. But—listen to me! Listen to me,
all of you! I can take a living thing—I can cut it open alive. That’s
what I shall do with this life-maker—this easy genius. I’ve taken her to
pieces, flesh and blood, bone and ligament and muscle, every secret of
her mind and her heart and her soul. The life, the _real_ life of Madala
Grey, the rise and fall of a genius, that’s what I’m going to make
plain. She’s been a puzzle to you all, with her gifts and her ways and
her crazy marriage—she’s not a mystery to me. I tell you I’ve got her,
naked, pinned down, and now I shall make her again. Isn’t it fair? She
ought to thank me. ‘Dead,’ he says. Who’s to blame? She chose to kill
herself. What right had she to take risks? I—I’ve refrained. She
couldn’t. She threw away her lamp. But I—I take it. I light it again.
Finding’s keeping. It’s mine.”

Her voice ripped on the high note like a rag on a nail, and she checked,
panting. Her hand went up to her throat as the fumy air rasped it.

“Mine!” she cried again, coughing. There was wild-fire in her eyes as
she challenged them.

The little space between her solitariness and their grouped attention
was filled with fog and silence and lamp-light, woven as it were into a
fifth element. It was like a pool to be crossed. And across it, in
answer, a laugh rippled out.

I don’t know who it was that laughed. I did not recognize the voice.
Sometimes, looking back, I think it was the laugh of their collective
soul.

“Oh!” cried Anita, and stopped as if she had been awakened suddenly by a
blow—as if the little wondering, wincing cry had been struck out of her
by a blow on the face. She stood thus a moment, uncertain. Then she,
too, laughed, nervously, apologetically.

“One talks,” she said, “among friends.”

Miss Howe made a wry face.

“Lord, we’re a queer set of friends! How we love one another!”

“You’ve all of you been awfully good to me,” said the Baxter girl. But
her gratitude was too general to be acceptable. Even I could have told
her that.

“Oh, we do our best for you,” said Mr. Flood.

She looked at him from under her lashes.

“Yes, and she’s thinking this minute what a nice little scene this would
make for her new book—touched up, of course,” said the woman behind him.

“Art—selection—Jimmy Whistler——” Mr. Flood was one indistinct murmur.

“With herself her own heroine again, eh?” Miss Howe baited her.

“I didn’t. I wasn’t.”

“Better folk than you do it, child! Anita says so. Don’t they, Anita?”

“Oh,” said Anita heavily, “I wish Madala Grey were here. I wish she
hadn’t died. If she were here she wouldn’t—you’d never—she wouldn’t let
you laugh at me.”

Miss Howe looked at her intently. There was a quick little run of
expression across her large handsome face, like a hand playing a scale.
It showed, that easily moved, easily read face, surprise, interest,
concern, and, in the end, the sentimental impulse of your kind fur-clad
woman to the beggar on the curb. ‘Why! I believe she’s cold! I don’t
like it! Give her tuppence, quick!’ She was out of her chair,
overwhelming Anita, in one impetuous heave of drapery.

“You’re right, Nita! We’re pigs! Something’s wrong with us. ’Pologize.
You know we don’t mean it.”

Anita endured her right-and-left kisses.

“You do mean it,” was all she said.

She was shrunk to such a small grey creature again. I thought to
myself—‘Fire? It’s not even diamond-sparkle. She’s as dull as stone.’

Miss Howe was eagerly remorseful.

“We don’t. I don’t know what’s got into us tonight. It’s the fog.
There’s something evil about a fog. Distorting. It yellows over one’s
soul.”

“It isn’t only tonight,” said the Baxter girl, with her sidelong,
‘can-I-risk-it?’ look at them. “The fog’s been coming on for months.”

“And you mean——?” The blonde lady never snubbed the Baxter girl. It
struck me suddenly, as their eyes met, that there was the beginning of a
likeness between them. The Baxter girl at fifty—with dyed hair——? But it
was only an idea of mine. I’m always seeing imaginary likenesses. I
remember that those Academy pictures of Kent Rehan’s always set me to
work wondering—‘That woman with the face turned away—I’ve seen her
somewhere—of whom does she remind me?—where have I seen her?’ And yet,
of course, in those days I knew nothing of Madala Grey.

But the Baxter girl was answering—

“It—it’s cheek, I know, but it’s true. When I first came—” then, with a
swift propitiatory glance at Anita—“when you first let me come—the
Nights weren’t like this. You weren’t like this, any of you——”

“Upon—my—word!” said Miss Howe with her benevolent chuckle. “Nita!
Listen to the infant!”

“Like what?” Mr. Flood moved uneasily.

The Baxter girl turned to him enthusiastically.

“Oh, I used to think you such wonderful people——”

“Did you now?” Miss Howe teased her.

“Let be! let be!” said Mr. Flood impatiently. “Well, dear lady?”

“Oh, I did! I’d read all your stuff. I believe I could write out _The
Orchid House_ from memory still.”

His eyes lit up as he challenged her—

             “‘Sour!’ said the fox at her feet,
              ‘How can she ripen windy-high?
              Sour!’ said the fox with his nose to the sky—”

He was as pleased as a child with a toy when she capped it—

             “Then a grape dropped off. It was rotten sweet.

There!” she flushed at him triumphantly. And then—“Now did you mean——?
Who was in your mind? Were they anyone we know? I’ve always wanted to
ask you.”

But before he could answer her the blonde lady leaned forward and
whispered in his ear. He turned to her with a glance of interest and
amusement, but with his lips still moving and his mind still running on
an answer to the Baxter girl. The blonde lady whispered again, and then
he turned right round to answer her, shelving his arms on her knees. I
couldn’t hear what they said, but it was just as if she had beckoned him
into another room. He was withdrawn from the conversation and from the
Baxter girl for as long as that blonde lady chose.

Miss Howe looked at them with her broad smile.

“Tell us, Beryl! We’re listening, anyhow!” she said invitingly.

But the Baxter girl’s chin went up. The touch of annoyance in her voice
made it twang, made her commonness suddenly noticeable. She was bearable
when she was in awe of them, but now she was asserting herself, and that
meant that she was inclined to be noisy.

“Oh, my opinion doesn’t count, of course! But”—she swung like a
pendulum between her two manners—“oh, I _did_ enjoy myself at first. It
was the way you all talked. You knew everyone. You’d read everything.
You frothed adventures. Like champagne it was, meeting all the people. I
used to write my head off, the week after. And you were all kind to me
from the first. I suppose it was Madala. She never let one feel out of
it. But I thought it was all of you. I had the feeling—‘the gods
_aren’t_ jealous gods.’ But now it’s” —she looked at them pertly—“it’s
fog on Olympus.”

“You needn’t—honour us, you know, Beryl,” said Anita sharply.

She answered with her furtive look.

“I know. And I don’t think—I don’t want to come as much as I did.”

“In that case——” Anita ruffled up.

“Fog! Fog!” cried Miss Howe clapping her hands. And then—“All the same,
Nita, people are dropping off. The Whitneys haven’t been for weeks. When
did Roy Huth come last? And the Golding crowd? I marvel that _he_ turns
up still.” She nodded towards Kent Rehan. “Oh, you know, we’re like a
row of beads when the string’s been pulled out. We lie in a line for a
time, but a touch will send us rolling in all directions.”

“Yes,” said the Baxter girl vehemently, “the heart’s out of it somehow.
I’m not ungrateful. It’s just because I used to love coming so.”

Miss Howe looked down at Anita, not unkindly.

“Give it up, Nita! The Nights have served their turn. It sounds
ungracious, but things have to end sometime or other. Hasn’t the time
come? Hasn’t it come tonight?”

“But you’ve been coming all this year just the same,” said Anita
stubbornly.

Miss Howe shrugged her shoulders. It was the Baxter girl who answered—

“Ah, but there was always just a chance of seeing Madala.”

At that Anita, who had been sitting as steely stiff as a needle in a
pin-cushion, got up, shaking off Miss Howe’s persuasive, detaining hand
and the overflow of her skirts. The cushions tumbled after her on to the
floor.

“As to that,” she said, “and don’t imagine that I haven’t known what you
came for, all of you——”

“Eh?”

Her voice was sharp enough to have recalled anyone and it recalled Mr.
Flood. He returned to the conversation with the air of dragging the
blonde lady after him. She had the manner of one hanging back and
protesting, and laughing still over some secret understanding. “Eh?”
said he. “What’s that about Madala?”

Anita looked from one to another.

“I’m telling you,” she said. “I’ve told you already, I can give you
Madala Grey. Come here and I’ll give you Madala Grey still. That’s what
you want, isn’t it, to be amused? She amused you.”

“She did, bless her!” said Miss Howe.

“It was her brains,” said the Baxter girl.

“A beautiful creature,” said Mr. Flood slowly.

“Not she!” The lady behind him was smiling. “She made you think so. She
made men think so. But how? That intrigued me. Oh, she was prettyish:
but that was all. I used to watch her——”

“Envy?” said he.

“No, not envy,” said that woman slowly. “She was too—innocent—how could
one envy? She didn’t know her own strength. She said—‘Don’t hurt me,’
with a sword at her side.”

“Excalibur.” It came from Mr. Flood. “Magic.”

“No, Madala—just Madala.” Miss Howe sighed. “It’s no good, Anita, you
can’t give us back Madala.”

But my cousin, looking at them, laughed in her turn.

“Madala? You fools! You’ve never had her. But you shall! Oh, wait! My
books are dull, aren’t they? Yet you’ll be here, you know, every month,
thick as bees, to listen to me. A chapter a month, that’s all I’ll give
to you. _I_ don’t write three novels a year. But you’ll come, you’ll
come. Proof? There’s plenty of proof. See here.”

She went swiftly across to the outer room. There was a large carved desk
standing on the little table by the window. She picked it up. It was too
big for her. It filled her arms so that she staggered under the weight.

“Oh, Kent!” she called.

He came back to the foggy room with a visible wrench.

“Here, that’s too heavy for you. Let me.” He took it from her.

“The table—here. Thank you, oh, thank you, Kent.” She veiled her voice
as she spoke to him. “It’s heavy—it’s so full—books—papers——”

He put it down for her and nodded, and was straying away again when she
stopped him.

“Kent! Don’t sit by yourself. We”—her voice was for him alone—“we’re
talking about—her. I was going to show them—Kent, stay here with us.”

He waited while she talked to him. And she talked very sweetly and
kindly. She was the quiet, chiffony little creature again with the
pretty, pure voice. _I_ couldn’t make her out. She looked up at him and
said something too low for me to catch, and then—

“There’s your chair. Isn’t that always your chair?” And so left him and
turned to the table and the box and the others.

But he did not take the saddle-bag near Anita’s own seat. He looked
irresolutely from one to another of the group that watched Anita
fumbling with her keys. He looked, and his face softened, at Great-aunt,
muttering over her needles. He looked at the empty chair beside me. He
looked at me and found me watching him. Then, as I smiled at him just a
little, he came to me and sat down. But he said nothing to me, and so I
was quiet too.

But Anita was busy, hands and eyes and tongue all busy.

“When she married, you know, in that hole-and-corner fashion——” Then, as
if in answer, though nobody had spoken—“Well, what else was it, when
nobody knew?—when even I didn’t know——”

There was a movement in the chair beside me, and turning, I caught the
ending of a glance towards my cousin. A new look, I found it, on that
passive face, a roused and wondering and scornful look that transformed
it. But, even as I caught it, it faded again to that other look of bleak
indifference, a look to know and dread on any creature’s face, a look
that must not stay on any fellow-creature’s face. I knew that well
enough. So I said the first words that came, in my lowest voice, lest
they should hear.

But they were talking. They did not hear.

“I’m sure that Great-aunt knew.” Indeed I thought so. I think that
Great-aunt would always be kind and guessing with a girl. Then I
wondered at myself for daring it and thought nervously—‘He’ll snub me.
He’ll be right to snub me——’

But he looked across at Great-aunt kindly and said, in just such a
withdrawn voice as mine—

“Yes, of course, if ever there was a time when——” Then he half smiled.
“Poor old lady! But she’s changed. She used to be so brisk and managing,
more like fifty than seventy. But this year’s aged her. She wanted, you
know, to give some pearls—her own pearls. But pearls spell sorrow. And
Anita would have objected. She told me all about it.”

“She was speaking of them tonight.” We both turned again and looked at
her. She had dropped her knitting, or it had slipped from her knee, and
she sat in her chair staring down at it with a terrible, comical air of
helplessness. Then she caught his eye and forgot the knitting and nodded
at him.

“I think—” I said, “I don’t think she understands. She asked me—she
forgets I’m a stranger. She asked me——” I broke off. I couldn’t say to
him—‘She asked me about Miss Grey and she doesn’t realize that she’s
dead.’ One’s afraid of the brutality of words. But he understood. There
was a simplicity about him that re-assured one. And he never said—‘It’s
Anita’s business. It’s not your business,’ as anyone else might have
done. He just said, once again—

“Poor old lady!” and hesitated a minute. Then he got up and went across
to her and picked up her wools. I don’t think the others noticed him go.
Anita didn’t. She was talking too fast.

“—left a trunk-full of papers and so on. I’d often stored boxes for her.
Somehow it never got sent down. I came across it only yesterday. I
thought to myself that there was no harm in putting things straight. You
know I’m literary executor? Oh yes. She said to me soon after her
marriage, half in joke, that she supposed she had got to make a will—and
what about her MSS.? ‘I can’t have _him_ worried.’ I offered at once.
You see I know so exactly her attitude in literature. There’s a good
deal of unpublished stuff—early stuff. But all in hopeless confusion.
Tumbled up with bills and programmes and one or two drafts of letters—or
so I imagine. She had that annoying habit—that ugly modern habit—of
beginning without any invocation, and never a date. But there’s one
letter—there’s the draft of a letter that’s important from my point of
view.” She broke off with a half laugh. “It sounds a ridiculous
statement to make about Madala Grey of all people, but do you know that
she couldn’t express herself at all easily on paper?”

Miss Howe nodded.

“Do I know? I’ve known her re-write a letter half a dozen times before
she got it to her liking—no, not business letters, letters to her
intimates. A most comical trick. Scribble, scribble, scribble—slash! and
then crunch goes the sheet into a ball, into the grate, or near it, till
it looked as if she were playing snow-balls, and then Madala begins
again—and again—and again. Yet she talked well. She talked easily.”

“Isn’t that in keeping?” Mr. Flood struck in. “She didn’t express so
much herself in her speech as the mood of the moment.”

“As the mood of the companion of the moment more likely,” the blonde
lady corrected.

He nodded agreement.

“But for herself—go to her books.”

“Or her letters—her careful, conscientious letters. But she was careless
about her drafts,” said Anita significantly.

Mr. Flood looked at her curiously.

“What’s up that sleeve of yours, Anita?”

She was quick.

“You shall read it, in its place. But the trouble is——” She hesitated.
She gave the little nervous cough that always ushered in her public
lectures. “We’ve all written books,” she said, “all except you,
Blanche——”

The blonde lady blinked her sleepy eyes.

“You’re all so strenuous,” she purred. “I love to watch you being
strenuous. So soothing.”

“Well, I was going to say, it’s easy enough to end a book, but have you
ever got to the beginning? I never have. One steps backward, and
backward again——”

“I know,” cried the Baxter girl. “Till you get tired of it at last and
begin writing from where you are, but you never really get your foot on
the starting-point, on the spring-board, as you might say.”

“That’s it. Yes, Jasper, I’ve got material up my sleeve, but frankly, I
don’t know how to place it. I don’t know where to begin. The facts of
her life, her conversation, her literary work, her letters—I go on
adding to my material till I am overwhelmed with all that I have got to
say about her. But I don’t want to begin with facts. Facts are well
enough, but think how one can twist them! I want the woman behind the
facts. I want the answer to the question that is the cause of a
biography such as mine is to be—the question—‘What was Madala Grey?’ Not
who, mark you, but further back, deeper into herself—‘_What_ was Madala
Grey?’”

“Why, a genius,” said the Baxter girl glibly.

Anita neither assented nor dissented.

“Ah—” she said, frowning, “but that’s not the beginning either. At once
we take our step backward again—‘What is genius?’”

“Isn’t talent good enough?” said Mr. Flood acidly.

“But does one mean talent?” She was still frowning. “Everyone’s got
talent. I’m sick of talent. But she—she mayn’t be a great one—how she’d
have laughed at being called a great one!—but she makes her dolls live.
And isn’t that the blood-link between the greatest gods and the littlest
gods? Life-givers? Life-makers? Oh, I only speak for myself; but she
made her book-world real to me, therefore for me she had genius. Whether
or not I convince you is the test of whether my life-work, my _Life_ of
her—fails or succeeds.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t trust it to Madala?” said Miss Howe softly.

“Trust what?”

“To convince us.”

She answered, suspicious rather than comprehending, for indeed Miss
Howe’s tone was very smooth—

“What do you mean? _I_’m writing her life.”

Miss Howe was inscrutable.

“Of course you are. Fire ahead. Genius, wasn’t it?”

Anita shrugged her shoulders.

“What’s in a name? It’s the quality itself that fascinates me. I want to
account for it. I want to trace it to its source. Worth doing, isn’t it?
But do you realize the difficulties? Sometimes I feel hopeless. I’ve
known her five years, and her books I know by heart, and I’m only just
beginning to decide whether to call her a romantic or a realist.”

“A realist. Look at _Eden Walls_,” said the Baxter girl.

“A romantic. Look at _The Resting-place_,” said Miss Howe.

Mr. Flood over-rode them.

“Dear ladies, you confuse the terms. It amazes me how people always
confuse the terms. Your so-called realist, your writer who depicts what
we call reality, the outward life, that is, of flesh and dirt and
misery—don’t you see that he is in truth a romantic—a man (or woman) who
lives in a fair world of his own, a paradise of the imagination? Out of
that secure world of his he peers curiously at ours, and writes of it as
we dare not write, writes down every sordid, garish, tragic-comic
detail. Your so-called realist can afford the humour of Rabelais, the
horror of Dostoevsky, the cheerful flesh and blood of Fielding. Why
shouldn’t he be truthful? It’s not his world. Don’t you see? But your
so-called romantic, he lives in this real world. He knows it so well
that he has to shut his eyes or he would die of its reality. So he
escapes into the world of romance, the world of beauty within his own
mind—nowhere but in his own mind. Who is our dreamer of dreams? Shelley,
the realist! Blake jogged elbows with poverty and squalor all his life,
and he was the prophet and the king of all spirits. Don’t you see? And
Goethe—the biographers will tell you that Goethe began as a realist and
ended as a romantic. I say it was the other way round. What did he know
of reality in the twenties? Its discovery was the romantic adventure of
his young genius. But when he was old and worldly and wise—then he wrote
his romances, to escape from his own knowledge. Oh, I tell you, you
should turn the words round. Now take Shakespeare——”

“It’s not fair to take Shakespeare,” said Miss Howe. “It’s the Elephant
and the Crawfishes over again. Let’s keep to the crawfishes! Let’s keep
to our own generation!”

“Well, if I were Anita I should begin by showing Madala as a romantic—as
the young romantic producing the most startlingly realistic book we’ve
had for a decade. Indeed to me, you know, her development is marked by
her books in the sharpest way. It’s the young, the curious, the
observant Madala in _Eden Walls_. The whole book is a shout of
discovery, of young, horrified discovery, of the ugliness of life. It’s
as if she said—‘Listen! Listen! These things actually happen to some
people. Isn’t it awful?’ She dwells on it. She insists on every detail.
She can’t get away from it. And yet she can hardly believe it, that
young Madala. But in _Ploughed Fields_ already the tone’s changing. It’s
a pleasanter book, a more sophisticated book. It interests profoundly,
but it’s careful not to upset one—an advance, of course. Yet I, you
know, hear our Madala’s voice in it still, an uneasy voice—‘Hush! Hush!
These things happen to most people. Pretend not to notice.’ And in the
last book, in the pretty, impossible romance, there you have your
realist full-fledged—‘Shut your eyes! Come away quickly! These things
are happening to _me_!’” He leant back again, folding his arms and
dropping his chin. And then, because Miss Howe was looking at him as if
she were amused—“I tell you I know. I recognize the symptoms. I’m a
realist myself. That’s why I write romantic poetry. Have to. It’s that
or drugs. How else shall one get through life?”

“Jasper!” said the blonde lady. But for once he didn’t turn to her. He
shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t worry. Who’ll believe me?”

The Baxter girl was breathless.

“Oh, but I do. It’s a new Madala, of course. But I believe it explains
her.”

“But the facts of her life don’t agree,” began Miss Howe.

“Ah, Anita’s got to make ’em,” said Mr. Flood languidly. “Isn’t that the
art of biography?”

But Anita was deadly serious.

“You don’t begin far enough back. My spring-board is not—what is Madala?
but—what is genius? How does it happen? Is it immaculate birth? or is it
begotten of accident upon environment? That is to say—is it inspiration
or is it experience? I speak of the divine fire, you understand, not of
the capacity for resolving it into words or paint or stone. That’s
craft, a very different thing. You say that Madala was not a genius in
the big sense—yes, I’ll admit that even, for the argument’s sake—but
even you will concede her the beginnings of it. So my difficulty is just
the same. I’ve never believed in instinctive genius. Yet how can she, at
twenty, have had the experience (that she had the craft is amazing
enough) to cope with _Eden Walls_? Romantic curiosity isn’t enough
explanation, Jasper! Look at her certainty of touch. Look at her detail.
Look how she gets inside that woman’s mind. That’s the fascination of
it. It’s such a document. Now how does she know it? That’s what
intrigues me. Madala and a street woman! Where’s the connection? How
does she get inside her? Because she does get inside her.”

“Oh, it’s real enough,” said the blonde lady.

“It must be. You should have seen the letters she received! Amazing,
some of them.”

“Anita, they amazed _her_. I remember her getting one while she was
staying with us. She looked thoroughly frightened. She said—‘But, Lila,
I didn’t realize—it was just a story. But this poor thing, she says it’s
true! She says it’s happened to her! What are we to do?’ You know, she
was nearly crying. It was some hysterical woman who had read the book.
But Madala always believed in people. I know she wrote to her. I believe
she helped her. But she never told you much about her doings.”

“Oh, her sentimental side doesn’t interest me. What I ask myself is—how
does she know, as she obviously does know, all that her wretched drab of
a heroine thought and felt and suffered?”

“Instinct! Imagination!” said the Baxter girl. “It must be the
explanation.”

“It isn’t. It isn’t. Oh, I’ve puzzled it out. I’m convinced that from
the beginning it’s experience. Don’t flare, Lila, I don’t mean literal
experience. Not in _Eden Walls_, anyhow. Later, of course—but we’re
discussing _Eden Walls_. Imagination, do you say, Beryl? But the
imagination must have a fact for its root. I’ll grant you that
imagination is so essentially a quality of youth that the merest rootlet
of a reality is enough to set a young artist beanstalk climbing. But the
older he grows, the wiser, the more versed in reality, the less he
trusts his imagination, the more, in consequence, his imagination flags
and withers; till he ends—one sees it happen again and again—as the
recorder merely of his own actual experiences and emotions. It’s only
the greatest who escape that decay of the imagination. Do you think that
Madala did? Look at _Eden Walls_. Remember what we know about her. Can’t
you see that the skeleton of _Eden Walls_ is Madala’s own life? Consider
her history. She leaves what seems to have been a happy childhood behind
her and sets out on adventure—very young. So does the woman in _Eden
Walls_. The parallel’s exact. Madala’s Westering Hill and the
_Breckonridge_ of the novel are the same place. The house, the lane, the
country-side, she doesn’t trouble to disguise them. Again—Madala’s
adventure is ushered in by calamity: and tragedy—(you can see the artist
transmuting the mere physical calamity into tragedy) tragedy happens to
the woman in _Eden Walls_. Remember how much more Madala dwelt on the
sense of loneliness and lovelessness, on the anguish of the loss of
something to love her, than on what one might call the—er—official
emotions of a betrayed woman. Didn’t it strike you? Doesn’t that show
that she was depending on her experience rather than on her imagination,
fitting her own private grief to an imaginary case? Then, in America,
she has the struggle for meat and drink, for mere existence. So does the
woman in _Eden Walls_. Madala does not go under. The woman in _Eden
Walls_ does. It’s the first real difference. But I maintain that in
reality the parallel still continues, that, in imagination, Madala did
go under over and over again: that she had ever in front of her the
‘suppose, suppose,’ that, in drawing the woman in _Eden Walls_, she is
saying to herself—‘Here, but for the grace of God, go I.’ And then, you
know, when you think of her, hating that big city, saving up her
pennies, and coming home at last in a passion of homesickness (if it was
homesickness—sickness anyhow), can’t you see how it makes her write of
that other woman? It’s the gift, the genius, stirring in her: born, not
immaculately, but of her own literal experience. Jasper’s right—you can
always make facts fit if you think them out: and because I possess that
underlying shadow-work (I admit it’s no more) of fact to guide me in
deciphering her method in the first book, therefore, in the second book
and the third book, I find it safe to _deduce_ facts to cover the
stories, even when I don’t possess them. I consider that I’m justified,
that _Eden Walls_ justifies me. Don’t you?”

“It’s plausible,” said Mr. Flood thoughtfully.

“Oh, it’s convincing,” said the Baxter girl reverently. “I feel I’ve
never known Madala Grey before. What it will be when you get it into
shape, Miss Serle——”

“In fact,” said Miss Howe, “there’s only one drawback——”

“And that?” said Anita swiftly.

“Only Madala’s own account.”

“She never discussed her methods,” said Anita sharply.

“Just so! You’re not the only person who’s—pumped. I remember seeing her
once surrounded, in her lion days. I remember her ingenuous
explanations. She did her best to oblige them—‘Honestly, I don’t know.
One just sits down and imagines.’ And then—‘That’s quite easy. But it’s
awfully difficult writing it down.’ That’s the explanation, Nita. A
deliberate, even unconscious self-exploitation is all nonsense. Madala’s
not clever enough.”

“Not clever enough!”

“No. You’re much cleverer than she was. You have twice her brains. You
can’t think, Anita, what brains you’ve got. You’ve got far too many to
understand a simple person. I don’t agree, you know, with ‘genius.’ I
can’t throw a word like that about so lightly. But as far as it went
with Madala, it was the same sort of genius that makes a crocus push in
the spring. Your theory—oh, it’s plausible, as Jasper says, but don’t
you see that it destroys all the charm of her work? It’s the innocence
of her knowledge, the simplicity of her attitude to her own insight that
to me is moving. She touches pitch, yet her fingers are clean. It’s her
view of her story that arrests one, not her story, not her facts, not
her mere plot.”

“No, the plot is conventional, I’ll grant you that. She was always
content with old bottles.”

“Yes, and when the new wine burst them and made a mess on the carpet,
Madala was always so surprised and indignant.”

Mr. Flood giggled.

“Pained is the word, dear lady—surprised and pained. Do you remember
when _Eden Walls_ was banned?”

“I don’t suppose she talked to you about it, Jasper,” said Miss Howe
sharply.

“I? I was never of her counsels. But I got my amusement out of the
affair. Dear, delightful woman? She behaved like a schoolgirl sent to
Coventry. I remember congratulating her on the advertisement, and she
would hardly speak to me. But it suited her, the blush.”

“_Wasn’t_ it an advertisement!” said the Baxter girl longingly.

“If one could have got her to see it,” said Anita. “But no, she insisted
on being ashamed of herself. She said to me once that the critics had
‘read in’ things that she had never dreamed of—that it made her doubt
her own motives—that she felt dirtied and miserable. And yet she
wouldn’t alter one of those scenes. Obstinate! She could be very
obstinate.”

“Oh, which scenes?” The Baxter girl stuck her elbows on the table and
her chin in her fists. Her eyes sparkled. “Oh, then, Miss Serle, did
you—? did she come to you in the early days? Did you help her too?”

“My daughter—very kind to young people!”

It was a mere mutter, but I recognized the swing of the phrase. Anita
didn’t. She was busy with the Baxter girl.

“I don’t say that there would be no Madala Grey today if I——”

“_But_——” said Mr. Flood.

“_But_—” said Miss Howe, “she’s Anita’s discovery. We’re never to forget
that, are we, darling?”

“Oh, I knew that,” said the Baxter girl, trying to be tactful. “But
_Eden Walls_ was written before you knew her, wasn’t it? I understood—I
didn’t know, I mean,” she explained to them, “that Miss Serle
had—blue-pencilled——”

“I did and I didn’t.” Anita laughed, as if in spite of herself. “I
confess I thought at the time that it needed revision. Mind you, I never
questioned the quality, but I knew what the public would stand and what
it wouldn’t. Of course, I didn’t want the essentials altered. But there
were certain cuts——However, nothing would move her.”

“That’s funny. She never gave me the impression that she believed in
herself so strongly.”

“Oh, her _pose_ was diffidence,” said the blonde lady.

“But she didn’t believe in herself. It was obvious. When I went through
her MS. and blue-pencilled, she was most grateful. She agreed to
everything and took the MS. away to remodel.”

“And then?”

“I heard nothing more of her—for weeks. Finally I wrote and asked her to
come and see me. She came. She was delightful. I had told her, you know,
about the _Anthology_ the first time I met her. I remember that I was
annoyed with myself afterwards. I’m not often indiscreet. But she had
a—a knack—a way with her. I hardly know how to describe it.”

“One told her things,” said the Baxter girl.

“Just so. One told her things. And she had brought me a mass of
material—some charming American verse (you remember? in the last section
but one) that I had never come across. She had been reading for me at
the British Museum in her spare time. I confess I was touched. We
talked, I remember——” She sighed reminiscently. “It was not until she
made a move to go that I recollected myself. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘and how
about _Eden Walls_?’ She fidgeted. She looked thoroughly guilty. At last
it came out. She hadn’t altered a line. She had tried her utmost. She
had drafted and re-drafted. She had finally given it up in despair and
just got work in some obscure newspaper office—‘a most absorbing
office!’ But there—you know Madala when she’s interested—was
interested——”

“Don’t,” said Miss Howe softly.

But Anita went on—

“‘Well but—’ I said to her—‘that’s all very well. But you’re not going
to abandon _Eden Walls_, are you?’ Then it all came out. Yes, she was.
She knew I was right. She wasn’t conceited. She quite saw that the book
was useless. It just meant that she couldn’t write novels and that she
mustn’t waste any more time. ‘But, my dear Miss Grey,’ I said, ‘you mean
to say that you’d rather leave the book unpublished than alter a couple
of chapters, remodel a couple of characters?’ ‘But I can’t,’ she said,
‘I can’t. They happened that way.’ ‘Then make them happen differently,’
I said. But no, she couldn’t. ‘Oh well,’ I said at last—‘if you’re so