The Sixth Sense

WAR à OUTRANCE

"Ridgeon: I have a curious aching; I dont know where; I cant localise it. Sometimes I think it's my heart; sometimes I suspect my spine. It doesn't exactly hurt me, but it unsettles me completely. I feel that something is going to happen....

Sir Patrick: You are sure there are no voices?

Ridgeon: Quite sure.

Sir Patrick: Then it's only foolishness.

Ridgeon: Have you ever met anything like it before in your practice?

Sir Patrick: Oh yes. Often. It's very common between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two. It sometimes comes on again at forty or thereabouts. You're a bachelor, you see. It's not serious-if you're careful.

Ridgeon: About my food?

Sir Patrick: No; about your behaviour.... Youre not going to die; but you may be going to make a fool of yourself."

Bernard Shaw: "The Doctor's Dilemma."

I was a few minutes late for dinner, as a guest should be. Aintree had quite properly arrived before me, and was standing in the lounge of the Ritz talking to two slim, fair-haired women, with very white skin and very blue eyes. I have spent so much of my time in the East and South that this light colouring has almost faded from my memory. I associated it exclusively with England, and in time began to fancy it must be an imagination of my boyhood. The English blondes you meet returning from India by P & O are usually so bleached and dried by the sun that you find yourself doubting whether the truly golden hair and forget-me-not eyes of your dreams are ever discoverable in real life. But the fascination endures even when you suspect you are cherishing an illusion.

I had been wondering, as I drove down, whether any trace survived of the two dare-devil, fearless, riotous children I had seen by flashlight glimpses, when an invitation from old Jasper Davenant brought me to participate in one of his amazing Cumberland shoots. I was twenty or twenty-one at the time; Elsie must have been seven, and Joyce five. Mrs. Davenant was alive in those days, and Dick still unborn. My memory of the two children is a misty confusion of cut hands, broken knees, torn clothes, and daily whippings. Jasper wanted to make fine animals of his children, and set them to swim as soon as they could walk, and to hunt as soon as their fingers were large enough to hold a rein.

When I was climbing with him in Trans-Caucasia, I asked how the young draft was shaping. That was ten years later, and I gathered that Elsie was beginning to be afraid of being described as a tomboy. On such a subject Joyce was quite indifferent. She attended her first hunt ball at twelve, against orders and under threat of castigation; half the hunt broke their backs in bending down to dance with her, as soon as they had got over the surprise of seeing a short-frocked, golden-haired fairy marching into the ball-room and defying her father to send her home. "You know the consequences?" he had said with pathetic endeavour to preserve parental authority. "I think it's worth it," was her answer. That night the Master interceded with old Jasper to save Joyce her whipping, and the next morning saw an attempt to establish order without recourse to the civil hand. "I'll let you off this time," Jasper had said, "if you'll promise not to disobey me again." "Not good enough," was Joyce's comment with grave deliberate shake of the head. "Then I shall have to flog you." "I think you'd better. You said you would, and you'd make me feel mean if you didn't. I've had my fun."

The words might be taken for the Davenant motto, in substitution of the present "Vita brevis." Gay and gallant, half savage, half moss-rider, lawless and light-hearted, they would stick at nothing to compass the whim of the moment, and come up for judgment with uncomplaining faces on the day of inevitable retribution. Joyce had run away from two schools because the Christmas term clashed with the hunting. I never heard the reason why she was expelled from a third; but I have no doubt it was adequate. She would ride anything that had a back, drive anything that had a bit or steering-wheel, thrash a poacher with her own hand, and take or offer a bet at any hour of the day or night. That was the character her father gave her. I had seen and heard little of the family since his death, Elsie's marriage and Joyce's abrupt, marauding descent on Oxford, where she worked twelve hours a day for three years, secured two firsts, and brought her name before the public as a writer of political pamphlets, and a pioneer in the suffrage agitation.

"We really oughtn't to need introduction," said Mrs. Wylton, as Aintree brought me up to be presented. "I remember you quite well. I shouldn't think you've altered a bit. How long is it?"

"Twenty years," I said. "You have-grown, rather."

She had grown staider and sadder, as well as older; but the bright golden hair, white skin, and blue eyes were the same as I remembered in Cumberland. A black dress clung closely to her slim, tall figure, and a rope of pearls was her only adornment.

I turned and shook hands with Joyce, marvelling at the likeness between the two sisters. There was no rope of pearls, only a thin band of black velvet round the neck. Joyce was dressed in white silk, and wore malmaisons at her waist. Those, you would say, were the only differences-until time granted you a closer scrutiny, and you saw that Elsie was a Joyce who had passed through the fire. Something of her courage had been scorched and withered in the ordeal; my pity went out to her as we met. Joyce demanded another quality than pity. I hardly know what to call it-homage, allegiance, devotion. She impressed me, as not half a dozen people have impressed me in this life-Rhodes, Chamberlain, and one or two more-with the feeling that I was under the dominion of one who had always had her way, and would always have it; one who came armed with a plan and a purpose among straying sheep who awaited her lead.... And with it all she was twenty-eight, and looked less; smiling, soft and childlike; so slim and fragile that you might snap her across your knee like a lath rod.

Aintree and Mrs. Wylton led the way into the dining-room.

"I can't honestly say I remember you," Joyce remarked as we prepared to follow. "I was too young when you went away. I suppose we did meet?"

"The last time I heard of you...." I began.

"Oh, don't!" she interrupted with a laugh. "You must have heard some pretty bad things. You know, people won't meet me now. I'm a.... Wait a bit-'A disgrace to my family,' 'a traitor to my class,' 'a reproach to my upbringing!' I've 'drilled incendiary lawlessness into a compact, organised force,' I'm 'an example of acute militant hysteria.' Heaven knows what else! D'you still feel equal to dining at the same table? It's brave of you; that boy in front-he's too good for this world-he's the only non-political friend I've got. I'm afraid you'll find me dreadfully changed-that is, if we ever did meet."

"As I was saying...."

"Yes, and I interrupted! I'm so sorry. You drop into the habit of interrupting if you're a militant. As you were saying, the last time we met...."

"The last time we met, strictly speaking we didn't meet at all. I came to say good-bye, but you'd just discovered that a pony was necessary to your happiness. It was an idée fixe, you were a fanatic, you broke half a Crown Derby dinner-service when you couldn't get it. When I came to say good-bye, you were locked in the nursery with an insufficient allowance of bread and water."

Joyce shook her head sadly.

"I was an awful child."

"Was?"

She looked up with reproach in her blue eyes.

"Haven't I improved?"

"You were a wonderfully pretty child."

"Oh, never mind looks!"

"But I do. They're the only things worth having."

"They're not enough."

"Leave that to be said by the women who haven't any."

"In any case they don't last."

"And while they do, you slight them."

"I? They're far too useful!" She paused at the door of the dining-room to survey her reflection in the mirror; then turned to me with a slow, childlike smile. "I think I'm looking rather nice to-night."

"You looked nice twenty years ago. Not content with that, you broke a dinner-service to get a pony."

"Fancy your remembering that all these years!"

"I was reminded of it the moment I saw you. Plus ?a change, plus c'est la même chose. You are still not content with looking extremely nice, you must break a dinner-service now and again."

Joyce raised her eyebrows, and patiently stated a self-evident proposition.

"I must have a thing if I think I've a right to it," she pouted.

"You were condemned to bread and water twenty years ago to convince you of your error."

"I get condemned to that now."

"Dull eating, isn't it?"

"I don't know. I've never tried."

"You did then?"

"I threw it out of the window, plate and all."

We threaded our way through to a table at the far side of the room.

"Indeed you've not changed," I said. "You might still be that wilful child of five that I remember so well."

"You've forgotten one thing about me," she answered.

"What's that?"

"I got the pony," she replied with a mischievous laugh.

How far the others enjoyed that dinner, I cannot say. Aintree was an admirable host, and made a point of seeing that every one had too much to eat and drink; to the conversation he contributed as little as Mrs. Wylton. I did not know then how near the date of the divorce was approaching. Both sat silent and reflective, one overshadowed by the Past, the other by the Future: on the opposite side of the table, living and absorbed in the Present, typifying it and luxuriating in its every moment, was Joyce Davenant. I, too, contrive to live in the present, if by that you mean squeezing the last drop of enjoyment out of each sunny day's pleasure and troubling my head as little about the future as the past....

I made Joyce tell me her version of the suffrage war; it was like dipping into the memoirs of a prescribed Girondist. She had written and spoken, debated and petitioned. When an obdurate Parliament told her there was no real demand for the vote among women themselves, she had organised great peaceful demonstrations and "marches past": when sceptics belittled her processions and said you could persuade any one to sign any petition in favour of anything, she had massed a determined army in Parliament Square, raided the House and broken into the Prime Minister's private room.

The raid was followed by short terms of imprisonment for the ringleaders. Joyce came out of Holloway, blithe and unrepentant, and hurried from a congratulatory luncheon to an afternoon meeting at the Albert Hall, and from that to the first round of the heckling campaign. For six months no Minister could address a meeting without the certainty of persistent interruption, and no sooner had it been decided first to admit only such women as were armed with tickets, and then no women at all, than the country was flung into the throes of a General Election, and the Militants sought out every uncertain Ministerial constituency and threw the weight of their influence into the scale of the Opposition candidate.

Joyce told me of the papers they had founded and the bills they had promoted. The heckling of Ministers at unsuspected moments was reduced to a fine art: the whole sphere of their activities seemed governed by an almost diabolical ingenuity and resourcefulness. I heard of fresh terms of imprisonment, growing longer as the public temper warmed; the institution of the Hunger Strike, the counter move of Forcible Feeding, a short deadlock, and at last the promulgation of the "Cat and Mouse" Bill.

I was not surprised to hear some of the hardest fighting had been against over-zealous, misdirected allies. It cannot be said too often that Joyce herself would stick at nothing-fire, flood or dynamite-to secure what she conceived to be her rights. But if vitriol had to be thrown, she would see that it fell into the eyes of the right, responsible person: in her view it was worse than useless to attempt pressure on A by breaking B's windows. She had stood severely aloof from the latter developments of militancy, and refused to lend her countenance to the idly exasperating policy of injuring treasures of art, interrupting public races, breaking non-combatants' windows and burning down unique, priceless houses.

"Where do you stand now?" I asked as dinner drew to a close. "I renewed my acquaintance with Arthur Roden to-day, and he invited me down to the House to assist at the final obsequies of the Militant movement."

Joyce shook her head dispassionately over the ingrained stupidity of mankind.

"I think it's silly to talk like that before the battle's over. Don't you?"

"He seemed quite certain of the result."

"Napoleon was so certain that he was going to invade England that he had medals struck to commemorate the capture of London. I've got one at home. I'd rather like to send it him, only it 'ud look flippant."

I reminded her that she had not answered my question.

"Roden says that the 'Cat and Mouse' Act has killed the law-breakers," I told her, "and to-night's division is going to kill the constitutionalists. What are you going to do?"

Joyce turned to me with profound solemnity, sat for a moment with her head on one side, and then allowed a smile to press its way through the serious mask. As I watched the eyes softening and the cheeks breaking into dimples, I appreciated the hopelessness of trying to be serious with a fanatic who only made fun of her enemies.

"What would you do?" she asked.

"Give it up," I answered. "Yield to force majeure. I've lived long enough in the East to feel the beauty and usefulness of resignation."

"But if we won't give it up?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"What can you do?"

"I'm inviting suggestions. You're a man, so I thought you'd be sure to be helpful. Of course we've got our own plan, and when the Amendment's rejected to-night, you'll be able to buy a copy of the first number of a new paper to-morrow morning. It's called the New Militant, only a penny, and really worth reading. I've written most of it myself. And then we're going to start a fresh militant campaign, rather ingenious, and directed against the real obstructionists. No more window-breaking or house-burning, but real serious fighting, just where it will hurt them most. Something must come of it," she concluded. "I hope it may not be blood."

Aintree roused himself from his attitude of listless indifference.

"You'll gain nothing by militancy," he pronounced. "I've no axe to grind, you may have the vote or go without it. You may take mine away, or give me two. But your cause has gone back steadily, ever since you adopted militant tactics."

"The Weary Seraph cares for none of these things," Joyce remarked. I requested a moment's silence to ponder the exquisite fitness of the name. Had I thought for a year I could not have found a better description for the shy boy with the alert face and large frightened eyes. "Every one calls him that," Joyce went on. "And he doesn't like it. I should love to be called seraphic, but no one will; I'm too full of original sin. Well, Seraph, you may disapprove of militancy if you like, but you must suggest something to put in its place."

"I don't know that I can."

Joyce turned to her sister.

"These men-things aren't helpful, are they, Elsie?"

"I'm a good destructive critic," I said in self-justification.

"There are so many without you," Joyce answered, laying her hand on my arm. "Listen, Mr. Merivale. You've probably noticed there's very little argument about the suffrage; everything that can be said on either side has already been said a thousand times. You're going to refuse us the vote. Good. I should do the same in your place. There are more of us than there are of you, and we shall swamp you if we all get the vote. You can't give it to some of us and not others, because the brain is not yet born that can think of a perfect partial franchise. Will you give it to property and leave out the factory workers? Will you give it to spinsters and leave out the women who bear children to the nation? Will you give it to married women and leave out the unprotected spinsters? It's all or none: I say all, you say none. You say I'm not fit for a vote, I say I am. We reach an impasse, and might argue till daybreak without getting an inch further forward. We're fighting to swamp you, you're fighting to keep your head above water. We're reduced to a trial of strength."

She leant back in her chair, and I presented her with a dish of salted almonds, partly as a reward, partly because I never eat them myself.

"I admire your summary of the situation," I said. "You've only omitted one point. In a trial of strength between man and woman, man is still the stronger."

"And woman the more resourceful."

"Perhaps."

"She's certainly the more ruthless," Joyce answered, as she finished her coffee and drew on her gloves.

"War à outrance," I commented as we left the dining-room. "And what after the war?"

"When we've got the vote...." she began.

"Napoleon and the capture of London," I murmured.

"Oh well, you don't think I go in for a thing unless I'm going to win, do you? When we get the vote, we shall work to secure as large a share of public life as men enjoy, and we shall put women on an equality with men in things like divorce," she added between closed teeth.

"Suppose for the sake of argument you're beaten? I imagine even Joyce Davenant occasionally meets with little checks?"

"Oh yes. When Joyce was seven, she wanted to go skating, and her father said the ice wouldn't bear and she mustn't go. Joyce went, and fell in and nearly got drowned. And when she got home, her father was very angry and whipped her with a crop."

"Well?"

"That's all. Only-he said afterwards that she took it rather well, there was no crying."

I wondered then, as I have always wondered, whether she in any way appreciated the seriousness of the warfare she was waging on society.

"A month in the second division at Holloway is one thing...." I began.

"It'll be seven years' penal servitude if I'm beaten," she interrupted. Her tone was innocent alike of flippancy and bravado.

"Forty votes aren't worth that. I've got three, so I ought to know."

Joyce's eyes turned in the direction of her sister who was coming out of the dining-room with Aintree.

"She's worth some sacrifice."

"You couldn't make her lot easier if you had every vote in creation. She's up against the existing divorce law, and that's buttressed by every Church, and every dull married woman in the country. You're starting conversation at the wrong end, Joyce."

Her little arched eyebrows raised themselves at the name.

"Joyce?" she repeated.

"You were Joyce when last we met."

"That was twenty years ago."

"It seems less. I should like to blot out those years."

"And have me back in nursery frocks and long hair?"

"Better than long convict frocks and short hair," I answered with laborious antithesis.

"Then I haven't improved?"

"You're perfect-off duty, in private life."

"I have no private life."

"I've seen a glimpse of it to-night."

"An hour's holiday. I say good-bye to it for good this evening when I say good-bye to you."

"But not for good?"

"You'll not want the burden of my friendship when war's declared. If you like to come in as an ally...?"

"Do you think you could convert me?"

She looked at me closely.

"Yes."

I shook my head.

"What'd you bet?" she challenged me.

"It would be like robbing a child's money-box," I answered. "You're dealing with the laziest man in the northern hemisphere."

"How long will you be in England?"

"I've no idea."

"Six months? In six months I'll make you the Prince Rupert of the militant army. Then when we're sent to prison-Sir Arthur Roden's a friend of yours-you can arrange for our cells to be side by side, and we'll tap on the dividing wall."

I had an idea that our unsociable prison discipline insisted on segregating male and female offenders. It was not the moment, however, for captious criticism.

"If I stay six months," I said, "I'll undertake to divorce you from your militant army."

"The laziest man in the northern hemisphere?"

"I've never found anything worth doing before."

"It's a poor ambition. And the militants want me."

"They haven't the monopoly of that."

Joyce smiled in spite of herself, and under her breath I caught the word "Cheek!"

"I'm pledged to them," she said aloud. "Possession's nine points of the law."

"I don't expect to hear you calling the law and the prophets in aid."

"It's a woman's privilege to make the best of both worlds," she answered, as Elsie carried her off to fetch their cloaks.

"There is only one world," I called out as she left me. "This is it. I am going to make the best of it."

"How?"

"By appropriating to myself whatever's worth having in it."

"How?" she repeated.

"I'll tell you in six months' time."

Aintree sauntered up with his coat under his arm as Joyce and her sister vanished from sight.

"Rather wonderful, isn't she?" he remarked.

"Which?" I asked.

"Oh, really!" he exclaimed in disgusted protest.

"They are astonishingly alike," I said à propos of nothing.

"They're often mistaken for each other."

"I can well believe it."

"It's a mistake you're not likely to make," he answered significantly.

I took hold of his shoulders, and made him look me in the eyes.

"What do you mean by that, Seraph?" I asked.

"Nothing," he answered. "What did I say? I really forget; I was thinking what a wife Joyce would make for a man who likes having his mind made up for him, and feels that his youth is slipping imperceptibly away."

I made no answer, because I could not see what answer was possible. And, further, I was playing with a day-dream.... The Seraph interrupted with some remark about her effect on a public meeting, and my mind set itself to visualise the scene. I could imagine her easy directness and gay self-confidence capturing the heart of her audience; it mattered little how she spoke or what she ordered them to do; the fascination lay in her happy, untroubled voice, and the graceful movements of her slim, swaying body. Behind the careless front they knew of her resolute, unwhimpering courage; she tossed the laws of England in the air as a juggler tosses glass balls, and when one fell to the ground and shivered in a thousand pieces she was ready to pay the price with a smiling face, and a hand waving gay farewell. It was the lighthearted recklessness of Sydney Carton or Rupert of Hentzau, the one courage that touches the brutal, beef-fed English imagination....

"Why the hell does she do it, Seraph?" I exclaimed.

"Why don't you stop her, if you don't like it?"

"What influence have I got over her?"

"Some-not much. You can develop it. I? Good heavens, I've no control. You've got the seeds.... No, you must just believe me when I say it is so. You wouldn't understand if I told you the reason."

"It seems to me the more I see of you the less I do understand you," I objected.

"Quite likely," he answered. "It isn't even worth trying."

The play which the Seraph was taking us to see was The Heir-at-Law, and though we went on the first night, it was running throughout my residence in England, and for anything I know to the contrary may still be playing to crowded houses. It was the biggest dramatic success of recent years, and for technical construction, subtlety of characterization, and brilliance of dialogue, ranks deservedly as a masterpiece. As a young man I used to do a good deal of theatre-going, and attended most of the important first nights. Why, I hardly know; possibly because there was a good deal of difficulty in getting seats, possibly because at that age it amused us to pose as virtuosi, and say we liked to form our own opinion of a play before the critics had had time to tell us what to think of it. I remember the acting usually had an appearance of being insufficiently rehearsed, the players were often nervous and inaudible, and most of the plays themselves wanted substantial cutting.

"The last things I saw in England," I told Mrs. Wylton, "were The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, and A Woman of No Importance."

Dramatic history has developed apace since those days. I recollect we thought Pinero the most daring dramatist since Ibsen; we talked sagely of a revolution in the English theatre. There must have been many revolutions since then! Even the wit of Wilde has grown a little out-moded since '93. As we drove down to the Cornmarket I was given to understand that the dramatic firmament had been many times disturbed in twenty years; Shaw had followed a meteoric path, Barker burned with fitful brilliance, while aloft in splendid isolation shone the inexorable cold light of Galsworthy....

"Who's the new man you're taking us to see?" Joyce asked the Seraph.

"Gordon Tremayne," he answered.

"The man who wrote 'The Child of Misery'? I didn't know he wrote plays."

"I believe this is his first. Do you know his books?"

"Forward and backward and upside down," I answered. "He's one of the coming men."

I am not a great novel reader, and have no idea how I came across Tremayne's first book, "The Marriage of Gretchen," but when once I had read it, I watched the publisher's announcements for other books from the same pen. The second one belonged still to the experimental stage: then the whole literary world was convulsed by the first volume of his "Child of Misery."

I suppose by now it is as well-known as that other strange masterpiece of self-revelation-"Jean Christophe"-which in many ways it so closely resembles. In one respect it shared the same immortality, and "Jean Christophe's" future was not more eagerly watched in France than "Rupert Chevasse's" in England. The hero-for want of a better name-was torn from the pages of the book and invested by his readers with flesh and blood reality. We all wanted to know how the theme would develop, and none of us could guess. The first volume gave you the childhood and upbringing of Rupert-and incidentally revealed to my unimaginative mind what a hell life must be for an over-sensitive boy at an English public school. The second opened with his marriage to Kathleen, went on to her death and ended with the appalling mental prostration of Rupert. I suppose every one had a different theory how the third volume would shape....

"What sort of a fellow is this Tremayne?" I asked the Seraph.

"I've never met him," he answered, and closured my next question by jumping up and helping Mrs. Wylton out of the taxi.

From our box we had an admirable view of both stage and house. One or two critics and a sprinkling of confirmed first-nighters had survived from the audiences I knew twenty years before, but the newcomers were in the ascendant. It was a good house, and I recognised more than one quondam acquaintance. Mrs. Rawnsley, the Prime Minister's wife, was pointed out to me by Joyce: she was there with her daughter, and for a moment I thought I ought to go and speak. When I recollected that we had not met since her marriage, and thought of the voluminous explanations that would be necessitated, I decided to sit on in the box and talk to Joyce. Indeed, I only mention the fact of my seeing mother and daughter there, because it sometimes strikes me as curious that so large a part should have been played in my life by a girl of nineteen with sandy hair and over-freckled face whom I saw on that occasion for the first, last and only time.

The Heir-at-Law went with a fine swing. There were calls at the end of each act, and the lights were kept low after the final curtain while the whole house rang from pit to gallery with a chorus of "Author! Author!" The Seraph began looking for his coat as soon as the curtain fell, but I wanted to see the great Gordon Tremayne.

"He won't appear," I was told when I refused to move.

"How do you know?"

Aintree hesitated, and then pointed to the stage, where the manager had advanced to the footlights and was explaining that the author was not in the house.

We struggled out into the passage and made our way into the hall.

"Where does one sup these times?" I asked the Seraph.

He suggested the Carlton and I handed on the suggestion to Mrs. Wylton, not in any way as a reflection on his admirable dinner, but as a precautionary measure against hunger in the night. Mrs. Wylton in turn consulted her sister, who appeared by common consent to be credited with the dominant mind of the party.

"I should love...." Joyce was beginning when something made her stop short. I followed the direction of her eyes, and caught sight of a wretched newspaper boy approaching with the last edition of an evening paper. Against his legs flapped a flimsy newsbill, and on the bill were four gigantic words:-

Defeat of Suffrage Amendment.

Joyce met my eyes with a determined little smile.

"Not to-night, thanks," she said. "I've a lot of work to do before I go to bed."

"When shall I see you again?" I asked.

She held out a small gloved hand.

"You won't. It's good-bye."

"But why?"

"It's war à outrance."

"That's no concern of mine."

"Exactly. Those that are not with me are against me."

I offered a bribe in the form of matches and a cigarette.

"Don't you have an armistice even for tea?" I asked.

She shook her head provokingly.

"Joyce," I said, "when you were five, I had every reason, justification and opportunity for slapping you. I refrained. Now when I think of my wasted chances...."

"You can come to tea any time. Seraph'll give you the address."

"That's a better frame of mind," I said, as I hailed a taxi and put the two women inside it.

"It won't be an armistice," she called back over her shoulder.

"It'll have to be. I bring peace wherever I go."

"I shall convert you."

"If there's any conversion...."

"When are you coming?" she interrupted.

"Not for a day or two," I answered regretfully. "I'm spending Whitsun with the Rodens."

Joyce shook my hand in silence through the window of the taxi, and then abruptly congratulated me.

"What on?" I asked.

"Your week-end party. How perfectly glorious!"

"Why?"

"You're going to be in at the death," she answered, as the taxi jerked itself epileptically away from the kerb.

* * *

SUPPER WITH A MYSTIC

"I can look into your soul. D'you know what I see...? ... I see your soul."-John Masefield, "The Tragedy of Nan."

I stood absent-mindedly staring at the back of the taxi till it disappeared down Pall Mall and the Seraph brought me to earth with an invitation to supper.

"...if it won't be too much of an anti-climax to have supper with me alone," I heard him murmuring.

At that moment I wanted to stride away to the Park, tramp up and down by myself, and think-think calmly, think savagely, try every fashion of thinking.

"To be quite candid," I said, as I linked arms and turned in the direction of the Club, "if you nailed me down like a Strasburg goose, I don't believe you could fill me fuller than you've already done at dinner."

"Let me bear you company, then. It'll keep you from thinking. Wait a minute; I want to have this prescription made up."

I followed him into a chemist's shop and waited patiently while a powerful soporific was compounded. I have myself subsisted too many years on heroic remedies to retain the average Englishman's horror of what he calls "drugs." At the same time I do not like to see boys of six and twenty playing with toys as dangerous as the Seraph's little grey-white powders; nor do I like to see them so much as feeling the need.

"Under advice?" I asked, as we came out into the street.

"Originally. I don't need it often, but I'm rather unsettled to-night."

He had been restless throughout the play, and the hand that paid for the powders had trembled more than was necessary.

"You were all right at dinner," I said.

"That was some time ago," he answered.

"Everything went off admirably; there's been nothing to worry you."

"Reaction," he muttered abruptly, as we mounted the steps of the Club.

Supper was a gloomy meal, as we ate in silence and had the whole huge dining-room to ourselves. I ought not to complain or be surprised, as silence was the Seraph's normal state, and my mind was far too full of other things to discuss the ordinary banalities of the day. With the arrival of the cigars, however, I began to feel unsociable, and told him to talk to me.

"What about?" he asked.

"Anything."

"There's only one thing you're thinking about at the moment."

"Oh?"

"You're thinking of the past three months generally, and the past three hours in particular."

"That doesn't carry me very far," I said.

He switched off the table lights and lay back in his chair with legs crossed.

"Don't you think it strange and-unsettling? Three months ago life was rounded and complete; you were all-sufficient to yourself. One day was just like another, till the morning when you woke up and felt lonely-lonely and wasted, gradually growing old. Till three, four hours ago you tried to define your new hunger.... Now you've forgotten it, now you're wondering why you can't drive out of your mind the vision of a girl you've not seen for twenty years. Shall I go on? You've just had a new thought; you were thinking I was impertinent, that I oughtn't to talk like this, that you ought to be angry.... Then you decided you couldn't be, because I was right." He paused, and then exclaimed quickly, "Now, now there's another new thought! You're not going to be angry, you know it's true, you're interested, you want to find out how I know it's true, but you want to seem sceptical so as to save your face." He hesitated a second time, and added quietly, "Now you've made up your mind, you're going to say nothing, you think that's non-committal, you're going to wait in the hope that I shall tell you how I know."

I made no answer, and he sat silent for a while, tracing his initials with the end of a match in the little mound of cigar ash on his plate.

"I can't tell you how I know," he said at last. "But it was true, wasn't it?"

"Suppose it was?"

His shoulders gave a slight shrug.

"Oh, I don't know. I just wanted to see if I was right."

I turned up the table lamp again so that I could see his face.

"Just as a matter of personal interest," I said, "do you suggest that I always show the world what I'm thinking about?"

"Not the world."

"You?"

"As a rule. Not more than other people."

"Can you tell what everybody's thinking of?"

"I can with a good many men."

"Not women?"

He shook his head.

"They often don't know themselves. They think in fits and starts-jerkily; it's hard to follow them."

"How do you do it?"

"I don't know. You must watch people's eyes; then you'll find the expression is always changing, never the same for two minutes in succession-you just see."

"I'm hanged if I do."

"Your eyes must be quick. Look here, you're walking along in evening dress, and I throw a lump of mud on to your shirt front. In a fraction of a second you hit me over the head with your cane. That's all, isn't it? But you know it isn't all; there are a dozen mental processes between the mud-throwing and the head-hitting. You're horror-stricken at the mess I've made of your shirt, you wonder if you'll have time to go back and change into a clean one, and if so, how late you'll be. You're annoyed that any one should throw mud at you, you're flabbergasted that I should be the person. You're impotently angry. Gradually a desire for revenge overcomes every other feeling; you're going to hurt me. A little thought springs up, and you wonder whether I shall summon you for assault; you decide to risk it Another little thought-will you hit me on the body or the head? You decide the head because it'll hurt more. Still another thought-how hard to hit? You don't want to kill me and you don't want to make me blind. You decide to be on the safe side and hit rather gently. Then-then at last you're ready with the cane. Is that right?"

I thought it over very carefully.

"I suppose so. But no one can see those thoughts succeeding each other. There isn't time."

The Seraph shook his head in polite contradiction.

"The same sort of thing was said when instantaneous photography was introduced. You got pictures of horses galloping, and people solemnly assured you it was physically impossible for horses' legs to get into such attitudes."

"How do you account for it?" I asked.

"Don't know. Eyes different from other people's, I suppose."

I could see he preferred to discuss the power in the abstract rather than in relation to himself, but my curiosity was piqued.

"Anything else?" I asked.

He listened for a moment; the Club was sunk in profound silence. Then I heard him imitating a familiar deep voice: "Oh-er-porter, taxi, please."

"Why d'you do that?" I asked, not quite certain of his meaning.

"Don't you know whose voice that was supposed to be?"

"It was Arthur Roden's," I said.

He nodded. "Just leaving the Club."

I jumped up and ran into the hall.

"Is Sir Arthur Roden in the Club?" I asked the porter.

"Just left this moment, sir," he answered.

I came back and sat down opposite the Seraph.

"I want to hear more about this," I said. "I'm beginning to get interested."

He shook his head.

"Why not?" I persisted.

"I don't like talking about it. I don't understand it, there's a lot more that I haven't told you about. I only--"

"Well?"

"I only told you this much because you didn't like to see me taking drugs. I wanted to show you my nerves were rather-abnormal."

"As if I didn't know that! Why don't you do something for them?"

"Such as?"

"Occupy your mind more."

"My mind's about as fully occupied as it will stand," he answered as we left the dining-room and went in search of our coats.

As I was staying at the Savoy and he was living in Adelphi Terrace, our homeward roads were the same. We started in silence, and before we had gone five yards I knew the grey-white powder would be called in aid that night. He was in a state of acute nervous excitement; the arm that linked itself in mine trembled appreciably through two thicknesses of coat, and I could feel him pressing against my side like a frightened woman. Once he begged me not to repeat our recent conversation.

As we entered the Strand, the sight of the theatres gave me a fresh train of thought.

"You ought to write a book, Seraph," I said with the easy abruptness one employs in advancing these general propositions.

"What about?"

"Anything. Novel, play, psychological study. Look here, my young friend, psychology in literature is the power of knowing what's going on in people's minds, and being able to communicate that knowledge to paper. How many writers possess the power? If you look at the rot that gets published, the rot that gets produced at the theatres, my question answers itself. At the present day there aren't six psychologists above the mediocre in all England; barring Henry James there's been no great psychologist since Dostoievski. And this power that other people attain by years of heart-breaking labour and observation, comes to you-by some freak of nature-ready made. You could write a good book, Seraph; why don't you?"

"I might try."

"I know what that means."

"I don't think you do," he answered. "I pay a lot of attention to your advice."

"Thank you," I said with an ironical bow.

"I do. Five years ago, in Morocco, you gave me the same advice."

"I'm still waiting to see the result."

"You've seen it."

"What do you mean?"

"You told me to write a book, I wrote it. You've read it."

"In my sleep?"

"I hope not."

"Name, please? I've never so much as seen the outside of it."

"I didn't write in my own name."

"Name of book and pseudonym?" I persisted.

His lips opened, and then shut in silence.

"I shan't tell you," he murmured after a pause.

"It won't go any further," I promised.

"I don't want even you to know."

"Seraph, we've got no secrets. At least I hope not."

We had come alongside the entrance to the Savoy, but neither of us thought of turning in.

"Name, please?" I repeated after we had walked in silence to the Wellington Street crossing and were waiting for a stream of traffic to pass on towards Waterloo Bridge.

"'The Marriage of Gretchen,'" he answered.

"'The History of David Copperfield,'" I suggested.

"You see, you won't believe me," he complained.

"Try something a little less well-known: get hold of a book that's been published anonymously."

"'Gretchen' was published over a nom de plume."

"By 'Gordon Tremayne,'" I said, "whoever he may be."

"You don't know him?"

"Do you? No, I remember as we drove down to the theatre you said you didn't."

"I said I'd never met him," he corrected me.

"A mere quibble," I protested.

"It's an important distinction. Do you know anybody who has met him?"

I turned half round to give him the benefit of what was intended for a smile of incredulity. He met my gaze unfalteringly. Suddenly it was borne in upon me that he was speaking the truth.

"Will you kindly explain the whole mystery?" I begged.

"Now you can understand why I was jumpy at the theatre to-night," he answered in parenthesis.

He told me the story as we walked along Fleet Street, and we had reached Ludgate Circus and turned down New Bridge Street before the fantastic tangle was straightened out.

Acting on the advice I had given him when he stayed with me in Morocco, he had sought mental distraction in the composition of "Gretchen," and had offered it to the publishers under an assumed name through the medium of a solicitor. We three alone were acquainted with the carefully guarded secret. His subsequent books appeared in the same way: even the Heir-at-Law I had just witnessed came to a similar cumbrous birth, and was rehearsed and produced without criticism or suggestion from the author.

I could see no reason for a nom de plume in the case of "Gretchen" or the other novel of nonage; with the "Child of Misery" it was different. I suspect the first volume of being autobiographical; the second, to my certain knowledge, embodies a slice torn ruthlessly out of the Seraph's own life. An altered setting, the marriage of Rupert and Kathleen, were two out of a dozen variations from the actual; but the touching, idyllic boy and girl romance, with its shattering termination, had taken place a few months-a few weeks, I might say-before our first meeting in Morocco. I imagine it was because I was the only man who had seen him in those dark days, that he broke through his normal reserve and admitted me to his confidence.

"When do you propose to avow your own children?" I asked.

He shook his head without answering. I suppose it is what I ought to have expected, but in the swaggering, self-advertising twentieth century it seemed incredible that I had found a man content for all time to bind his laurels round the brow of a lay figure.

"In time...." I began, but he shook his head again.

"You can stop me with a single sentence. I'm in your hands. 'Gordon Tremayne' dies as soon as his identity's discovered."

Years ago I remember William Sharp using the same threat with "'Fiona Macleod.'"

"You think it's just self-consciousness," he went on in self-defence. "You think after what's passed...."

"It's getting farther away each day, Seraph," I suggested gently as he hesitated.

"I know. 'Tisn't that-altogether. It's the future."

"What's going to happen?"

"If 'Gordon Tremayne' knew that," he answered, "you wouldn't find him writing plays."

Arm-in-arm we walked the length of the Embankment. As I grew to know the Seraph better, I learnt not to interrupt his long silences. It was trying for the patience, I admit, but his natural shyness even with friends was so great that you could see him balancing an idea for minutes at a time before he found courage to put it into words. I was always reminded of the way a tortoise projects its head cautiously from the shell, looks all round, starts, stops, starts again, before mustering resolution to take a step forward....

"D'you believe in premonitions, Toby?" he asked as we passed Cleopatra's Needle on our second journey eastward.

"Yes," I answered. I should have said it in any case, to draw him out; as a matter of fact, I have the greatest difficulty in knowing what I do or do not believe. On the rare occasions when I do make up my mind on any point I generally have to reconsider my decision.

"I had a curious premonition lately," he went on. "One of these days you may see it in the third volume of 'The Child of Misery.'"....

I cannot give the story in his own words, because I was merely a credulous, polite listener. He believed in his premonition, and the belief gave a vigour and richness to the recital which I cannot hope or attempt to reproduce. Here is a prosaic record of the facts. At the close of the previous winter he had found himself in attendance at a costume ball, muffled to the eyes in the cerements of an Egyptian mummy. The dress was too hot for dancing, and he was wandering through the ball-room inspecting the costumes, when an unreasoning impulse drove him out into the entrance hall. Even as he went, the impulse seemed more than a caprice; in his own words, had his feet been manacled, he would have gone there crawling on his knees.

The hall was almost deserted when he arrived. A tall Crusader in coat armour stood smoking a cigarette and talking to a Savoyard peasant-girl. Their conversation was desultory, but the words spoken by the girl fixed a careless, frank, self-confident voice in his memory. Then the Crusader was despatched on an errand, and the peasant-girl strolled up and down the hall.

In a mirror over the fireplace the Seraph watched her movements. She was slight and of medium height, with small features and fine black hair falling to the waist in two long plaits. The brown eyes, set far apart and deep in their sockets, were never still, and the face wore an expression of restless, rebellious energy.... Once their eyes met, but the mummy wrappings were discouraging. The girl continued her walk, and the Seraph returned to his mirror. Whatever his mission, the Crusader was unduly long away; his partner grew visibly impatient, and once, for no ostensible reason, the expression reflected in the mirror changed from impatience to disquiet; the brown eyes lost their fire and self-confidence, the mouth grew wistful, the whole face lonely and frightened.

It was this expression that came to haunt the Seraph's dreams. In a fantastic succession of visions he found himself talking frankly and intimately with the Savoyard peasant; their conversation was always interrupted, suddenly and brutally, as though she had been snatched away. Gradually-like sunlight breaking waterily through a mist-the outline of her features become visible again, then the eyes wide open with fear, then the mouth with lips imploringly parted.

The Seraph had quickened his pace till we were striding along at almost five miles an hour. Opposite the south end of Middle Temple Lane he dragged his arm abruptly out of mine, planted his elbows on the parapet of the Embankment, and stared out over the muddy waters, with knuckles pressed crushingly to either side of his forehead.

"I don't know what to make of it!" he exclaimed. "What does it mean? Who is she? Why does she keep coming to me like this? I don't know her, I've caught that one glimpse of her. Yet night after night. And it's so real, I often don't know whether I'm awake or asleep. I've never felt so ... so conscious of anybody in my life. I saw her for those few minutes, but I'm as sure as I'm sure of death that I shall meet her again--"

"Don't you want to?"

He passed a hand wearily in front of his eyes, and linked an arm once more in mine.

"I don't know," he answered as we turned slowly back and walked up Norfolk Street into the Strand. "Yes, if it's just to satisfy curiosity and find out who she is. But there's something more, there's some big catastrophe brewing. I'd sooner be out of it. At least ... she may want help. I don't know. I honestly don't know."

When we got back to the Savoy I invited him up to my room for a drink. He refused on the score of lateness, though I could see he was reluctant to be left to his own company.

"Don't think me sceptical," I said, "because I can't interpret your dreams. And don't think I imagine it's all fancy if I tell you to change your ideas, change your work, change your surroundings. The Rodens have invited you down to their place, why don't you come?"

He shivered at the abrupt contact with reality.

"I do hate meeting people," he protested.

"Seraph," I said, "I'm an unworthy vessel, but on your own showing I shall be submerged in politics if there isn't some one to create a diversion. Come to oblige me."

He hesitated for several moments, alternately crushing his opera hat and jerking it out straight.

"All right," he said at last.

"You will be my salvation."

"You deserve it, for what it's worth."

"God forbid!" I cried in modest disclaimer.

"You're the only one that isn't quite sure I'm mad," he answered, turning away in the direction of Adelphi Terrace.

For the next two days I had little time to spare for the Seraph's premonitions or Joyce Davenant's conspiracies. My brother sailed from Tilbury on the Friday, I was due the following day at the Rodens, and in the interval there were incredibly numerous formalities to be concluded before Gladys was finally entrusted to my care. The scene of reconciliation between her father and myself was most affecting. In the old days when Brian toiled at his briefs and I sauntered away the careless happy years of my youth, there is little doubt that I was held out as an example not to be followed. We need not go into the question which of us made the better bargain with life, but I know my brother largely supported himself in the early days of struggle by reflecting that a more than ordinarily hideous retribution was in store for me. Do I wrong him in fancying he must have suffered occasional pangs of disappointment?

Perhaps I do; there was really no time for him to be disappointed. Almost before retribution could be expected to have her slings and arrows in readiness, my ramblings in the diamond fields of South Africa had made me richer than he could ever hope to become by playing the Industrious Apprentice at the English Common Law Bar. More charitable than the Psalmist-from whom indeed he differs in all material respects-Brian could not bring himself to believe that any one who flourished like the green bay tree was fundamentally wicked. At our meeting he was almost cordial. Any slight reserve may be attributed to reasonable vexation that he had grown old and scarred in the battle of life while time with me had apparently stood still.

For all our cordiality, Gladys was not given away without substantial good advice. He was glad to see me settling down, home again from my curious ... well, home again from my wanderings; steadying with age. I was face to face with a great responsibility.... I suppose it was inevitable, and I did my best to appear patient, but in common fairness a judge has no more right than a shopwalker to import a trade manner into private life. The homily to which I was subjected should have been reserved for the Bench; there it is expected of a judge; indeed he is paid five thousand a year to live up to the expectation.

When Brian had ended I was turned over to the attention of my sister-in-law. Like a wise woman she did not attempt competition with her husband, and I was dismissed with the statement that Gladys would cause me no trouble, and an inconsistent exhortation that I was not to let her get into mischief. Finally, in case of illness or other mishap, I was to telegraph immediately by means of a code contrived for the occasion. I remember a great many birds figured among the code-words: "Penguin" meant "She has taken a slight chill, but I have had the doctor in, and she is in bed with a hot water-bottle"; "Linnet" meant "Scarlatina"; "Bustard" "Appendicitis, operation successfully performed, going on well." Being neither ornithologist nor physician, I had no idea there were so many possible diseases, or even so that there were enough birds to go round. It is perhaps needless to add that I lost my copy of the code the day after they sailed, and only discovered it by chance a fortnight ago when Brian and his wife had been many months restored to their only child, and I had passed out of the life of all three-presumably for ever.

In case no better opportunity offer, I hasten to put it on record that my sister-in-law spoke no more than the truth in saying her daughter would cause me no trouble. I do not wish for a better ward. During the weeks that I was her foster father, circumstances brought me in contact with some two or three hundred girls of similar age and position. They were all a little more emancipated, rational, and independent than the girls of my boyhood, but of all that I came to know intimately, Gladys was the least abnormal and most tractable.

I grew to be very fond of her before we parted, and my chief present regret is that I see so little likelihood of meeting her again. She was affectionate, obedient, high-spirited-tasting life for the first time, finding the savour wonderfully sweet on her lips, knowing it could not last, determined to drain the last drop of enjoyment before wedlock called her to the responsibilities of the drab, workaday world. She had none of Joyce Davenant's personality, her reckless courage and obstinate, fearless devilry; none of Sylvia Roden's passionate fire, her icy reserve and imperious temper. Side by side with either, Gladys would seem indeterminate, characterless; but she was the only one of the three I would have welcomed as a ward in those thunderous summer days before the storm burst in its fury and scorched Joyce and Sylvia alike. There were giants in those days, but England has only limited accommodation for supermen. Had I my time and choice over again, my handkerchief would still fall on the shoulder of my happy, careless, laughing, slangy, disrespectful niece.

I accompanied Gladys to Tilbury and saw her parents safely on board the Bessarabia. On our return to Pont Street I found a letter of instructions to guide us in our forthcoming visit to Hampshire. My niece had half opened it before she noticed the address.

"It was Phil's writing, so I thought it must be for me," was her ingenious explanation.

As I completed the opening and began to read the letter, my mind went abruptly back to some enigmatic words of Seraph's: "Is Phil going to be there?". I remembered him asking. "Oh then it certainly won't be a bachelor party."

* * *

BRANDON COURT

"I remember waiting for you when the steamer came in. Do you?"

"At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong Kong and Java?"

"Do you call it that too?" ...

... "You're the Boy, my Brushwood Boy, and I've known you all my life!"-Rudyard Kipling, "The Brushwood Boy."

The following morning I took up my new duties in earnest, and conveyed myself and my luggage from the Savoy to Pont Street.

"I'm allowing plenty of time for the train," I told Gladys when she had finished keeping me waiting. "Apparently we've got to meet the rest of the party at Waterloo, and Phil isn't certain if he'll be there."

As we drove down to the station I refreshed my memory with a second reading of his admirably lucid instructions.

"Eleven fifteen is the train," he wrote. "If I'm not there, make the Seraph introduce you: he knows everybody. If he cries off at the last minute (it's just like him), you'll have to manage on your own account, with occasional help from Gladys. She doesn't know Rawnsley or Culling, but she'll point out Gartside if you don't recognize him...."

"Do you know him?" Gladys asked me in surprise.

"I used to, many years ago. In fact I did him a small service when he had for the moment forgotten that he was in the East and that the Orient does not always see eye to eye with the West."

Gladys' feminine curiosity was instantly aroused, but I refused to gratify it. After all it was ancient history now, Gartside was several years younger at the time, and in the parlance of the day, "it was the sort of thing that might have happened to any one." He is now a highly respected member of the House of Lords, occupying an important public position. I should long ago have forgotten the whole episode but for his promise that if ever he had a chance of repaying me he would do so. I have every reason now to remember that the bread I cast on the waters returned to me after not many days.

"What's he like now?" I asked Gladys.

"Oh, a topper!"

I find the rising generation defines with a minimum of words.

"I mean he's a real white man," she proceeded, per obscurans ad obscurantius; I was left to find out for myself how much remained of the old Gartside. I found him little changed, and still a magnificent specimen of humanity, six feet four in height, fifteen stone in weight, as strong as a giant, and as gentle as a woman. He was the kindest, most courteous, largest-hearted man I have ever met: slow of speech, slow of thought, slow of perception. I am afraid you might starve at his side without his noticing it; when once he had seen your plight he would give you his last crust and go hungry himself. He was brave and just as few men have the courage to be; you trusted and followed him implicitly; with greater quickness and more imagination he would have been a great man, but with his weak initiative and unready sympathy he might lead you to irreparable disaster. I suppose he was five and thirty at this time, balder than when I last met him, and stouter than in the days when he backed himself to stroke a Leander four half-way over the Putney course against the 'Varsity Eight.

I went on with Philip's letter of explanation.

"Nigel Rawnsley you will find majestic, Olympian, and omniscient. He is tall, sandy-haired, and lantern-jawed like his father; do not comment on the likeness, as he cherishes the belief that the Prime Minister's son is of somewhat greater importance than the Prime Minister. If you hear him speak before you see him, you will recognise him by his exquisite taste in recondite epithets. He will hail you with a Greek quotation, convict you of inaccuracy and ignorance on five different matters of common knowledge in as many minutes, and finally give you up as hopeless. This is just his manner. It is also his manner to wear a conspicuous gold cross to mark his religious enthusiasms, and to travel third as an earnest of democratic instincts. He is not a bad fellow if you don't take him too seriously; he is making a mark in the House."

"Prig," murmured Gladys with conviction, as I came to the end of the Rawnsley dossier. She did not know him, but was giving expression to a very general feeling.

I crossed swords more than once with Nigel Rawnsley in the course of the following few months, and in our duelling caught sight of more than one unamiable side to his character. While my mood is charitable, I may perhaps say a word in his favour. It is just possible that I have met more types of men than Philip Roden; it takes me longer to size them up; perhaps also I see a little deeper than he did. Nigel went through life handicapped by an insatiable ambition and an abnormal self-consciousness. Without charm of manner or strength of personality, he must have been from earliest schooldays one of those who-like the Jews-trample that they be not trampled on. He became overbearing for fear of being insignificant, corrected your facts for fear of being squeezed out of the conversation, and sharpened his tongue to secure your respect if not your love. Some one in the House christened him "Whitaker's Almanack," but in fact his knowledge was not exceptionally wide. He was always right because he had the wisdom to keep silent when out of his depth, and intervene effectively when he was sure of his ground.

I never heard him in Court, but his defect as a statesman must have been apparent as a barrister; he would take no risks, try no bluff, make no attack till horse, foot, and gun were marshalled in readiness. Given time he would win by dogged perseverance, but, as in my own case, he must know to his cost that a slippery opponent will give him no time for his ponderous grappling. Nigel's great natural gifts will carry him to the front when he has learnt a little more humanity; and humanity will come as he loses his dread of ridicule. At present the youngest parliamentary hand can brush aside his weighty facts and figures by a simple ill-natured witticism; and the fact that I am not now languishing in one of His Majesty's gaols is due to my discovery of the weak spot in his armour. Though my heart beat fast, I was still able to laugh at him in my moment of crisis; and so long as I laughed-though he had all the trumps in his hand-he must needs think I had reason for my laughter.

"The last of the party," Philip's letter concluded, "will be Pat Culling. He is an irrepressible Irishman of some thirty summers, with a brogue that becomes unintelligible whenever he remembers to employ it. You will find him thin and short, with a lean, expressionless face, grey eyes, and black hair. He can play any musical instrument from a sackbut to a Jew's harp, and speak any language from Czech to Choctaw. Incidentally he is the idlest and most sociable man in Europe, and gets (and gives) more amusement out of life than any one I know.

"You should look for him first at the front of the train, where he will be bribing the driver to let him travel on the engine; failing that, try the station-master's office, where he will be ordering a special in broken Polish; or the collector's gate, where he will be losing his ticket and discovering it in the inspector's back hair. He is a skilled conjuror, and may produce a bowl of gold fish from your hat at any moment. On second thoughts, you will more probably find him gently baiting the incorruptible Rawnsley, who makes an admirable foil. Don't be lured into playing poker on the way down; Paddy will deal himself five aces with the utmost sang froid."

"Now we know exactly where we are," I remarked replacing the letter in my pocket, as our taxi mounted the sloping approach to Waterloo.

"And it's all wasted labour," said Gladys as I began to assemble her belongings from different corners of the cab. "Phil's here the whole time."

I reminded myself that I stood in loco parentis, shook hands with Philip and plunged incontinently into a sea of introductions.

The journey down was unexpectedly tranquil. Gladys and Philip conversed in a discreet undertone, paying no more attention to my presence than if I had been the other side of the world. Gartside told me how life had treated him since our parting in Asia Minor; while Culling produced a drawing block and embarked on an illustrated history of Rawnsley's early years. It was entitled "L'Avénement de Nigel," and the series began with the first cabinet council hastily summoned to be informed of the birth-I noticed that the ministers were arrayed in the conventional robes of the Magi-it concluded with the first meeting of electors addressed by the budding statesman. For reasons best known to the artist, his victim was throughout deprived of the consolation of clothing, though he seldom appeared without the badge of the C.E.M.S. Rawnsley grew progressively more uncomfortable as the series proceeded, and in the interests of peace I was not sorry when we arrived at Brandon Junction.

We strolled out into the station yard while our luggage was being collected. A car was awaiting us, with a girl in the driving-seat, and from the glimpse gained a few days earlier in Pont Street, I recognized her as Sylvia Roden. I should have liked to enjoy a long rude stare, but my attention was distracted by the changed demeanour of my fellow travellers. Gartside advanced with the air Mark Antony must have assumed in bartering away a world for a smile from Cleopatra; Rawnsley struggled to produce a Sir Walter Raleigh effect without the cloak; even Culling was momentarily sobered.

When I turned from her admirers to Sylvia herself, it was to marvel at the dominion and assurance of an English girl in her beauty and proud youth. She sat in a long white dust-coat, her fingers toying with the ends of a long motor veil. The small oval face, surmounted by rippling black hair, was a singularly perfect setting for two lustrous, soft, unfathomable brown eyes. As she held her court, a smile of challenge hovered round her small, straight mouth, as though she were conscious of the homage paid her, and claimed it as a right; behind the smile there lurked-or so I fancied-a suggestion of weariness as with one whom mere adoration leaves disillusioned. Her manner was a baffling blend of frankness and reserve. The camaraderie of her greeting reminded me she was one girl brought up in a circle of brothers; fearless and unaffected, she met us on equal terms and was hailed by her Christian name. But the frankness was skin deep, and I pitied the man who should presume on her manner to attempt unwelcome intimacy. It was a fascinating blend, and she knew its fascination; her friends were distantly addressed as "Mr. Rawnsley," "Lord Gartside," "Mr. Culling."

Gladys and I had lingered behind the others, but at our approach Sylvia jumped down from the car and ran towards us. Her movements were astonishingly light and quick, and when I amused an idle moment in trying to fit her with a formula I decided that her veins must be filled with radium. Possibly the description conveys nothing to other people; it exactly expresses the feeling that her mobile face, quick movements of body and passionate nature inspired in me. Later on I remember the Seraph pointed to the tremendous mental and physical energy of her father and brothers, asking how a slight girl's frame could contain such fire without eruption.

Eruptions there certainly were, devastating and cataclysmic....

"How are you, my child?" she exclaimed, catching Gladys by the hands. "And where's the wicked uncle?"

My niece indicated my presence, and I bowed.

"You?" Sylvia took me in with one rapid glance, and then held out a hand. "But you look hardly older than Phil."

"I feel even younger," I began.

"Face massage," Culling murmured.

"A good conscience," I protested.

"Why did you have to leave England?" he retorted.

It was the first time I had heard it suggested that my exile was other than voluntary. I attempted no explanation as I knew Culling would outbid me. Instead, we gathered silently round the car and watched Philip attempting with much seriousness to allot seats among an excessive population that spent its time criticising and rejecting his arrangements.

"It's the fault of the Roden family!" he exclaimed at last in desperation. "Why did I come down by this train, and why did you come to meet us, Sylvia? We're two too many. Look here, climb in, everybody, and Bob and I'll go in the other car."

"You can't ask a Baron of the United Kingdom to go as luggage," objected Culling who had vetoed twice as many suggestions as any one else.

"Well, you come, Pat," said Phil.

"We Cullings aren't to be put off with something that's not good enough for Lord Gartside," was the dignified rejoinder.

Philip was seized with inspiration.

"Does any one care to walk?" he asked. "Gladys?"

"You're not going to take this child over wet fields in thin shoes," his sister interposed. "She's got a cold as it is."

My eyes strayed casually to the ground and taught me that Sylvia was shod with neat, serviceable brogues.

"I'll walk," I volunteered in an aside to her, "if you'll show me the way."

Within two minutes the car had been despatched on its road, and Sylvia and I set out at an easy, swinging pace through the town and across the four miles of low meadow land that separated us from Brandon Court.

"Rather good, that," I remarked as we got clear of the town.

"What was?" she asked.

"Abana, Pharpar and yet a third river of Damascus flowed near at hand, but it was the sluggish old waters of Jordan that were found worthy."

We were walking single-file along a footpath, and a stile imposed a temporary check. Sylvia mounted it and sat on the top bar, looking down on me.

"Are we going to be friends?" she asked abruptly.

"I sincerely hope so."

"It rests with you. And you must decide now, while there's still time to go back and get a cab at the station."

"We were starting rather well," I pointed out.

"That's just what you weren't doing," she said with a determined shake of the head. "If we're going to be friends, you must promise never to make remarks like that. You don't mean them, and I don't like them. Will you promise?"

"The flesh is weak," I protested.

"Am I worth a little promise like that?"

"Lord! yes," I said. "But I always break my promises."

"You mustn't break this one. It's bad enough with Abana and Pharpar, as you call them. You know you're really-you won't mind my saying it?-you're old enough...."

"Age only makes me more susceptible," I lamented. The statement was perfectly true and I have suffered much mental disquiet on the subject. So far as I can see, my declining years will be one long riot of senile infidelity.

"I don't mind that," said Sylvia with a close-lipped smile; "but I don't want pretty speeches." She jumped down from the stile and stood facing me, with her clear brown eyes looking straight into mine. "You're not in love with me, are you?"

I hesitated for a fraction of time, as any man would; but her foot tapped the ground with impatience.

"Don't be absurd!" she exclaimed, "you know you're not; you've known me five minutes. Well,"-her voice suddenly lost any asperity it may have contained, and she laid her hand almost humbly on my arm-"please don't behave as if you were. I hate it, and hate it, and hate it, till I can hardly contain myself. But I should like you as a friend. You've knocked about the world, you're seasoned--"

I held out my hand to seal the bargain.

"I was horribly rude just now!" she exclaimed with sudden penitence. "I was afraid you were going to be like all the rest."

"Tell me what's expected of me," I begged.

"Nothing. I just want to be friends. You'll find I'm worth it," she added with a flash of pride.

"I think I saw that the moment we met."

"I wonder."

It was some time before I did full justice to Sylvia, some time before I appreciated the pathetic loneliness of her existence. For twenty years she and Philip had been staunch allies. His triumphs and troubles had been carried home from school to be discussed and shared with his sister; on the first night of every holiday the pair of them had religiously taken themselves out to dinner and a theatre, and Sylvia had been in attendance at every important match in which he was taking part, and every speech day at which he was presented with a prize. The tradition was carried on at Oxford, and had only come to an end when Philip entered public life and won his way into the House of Commons. Their confidences had then grown gradually less frequent, and Sylvia, whose one cry-like Kundry's-had ever been, "Let me serve," found herself without the opportunity of service. The Roden household, when I first entered it, was curiously unsympathetic; she was without an ally; there was much affection and woefully little understanding. Her father never took counsel with the women of his family, Philip had slipped away, and neither Robin nor Michael was old enough to take his place. With her vague, ill-defined craving to be of account in the world, it was small wonder if she felt herself unfriended and her devotional overtures rejected. Had her father been any one else, I am convinced that Sylvia would have joined Joyce Davenant and sought an outlet for her activities in militancy.

"You're remarkably refreshing, Sylvia," I said. She raised her eyebrows at the name. "Oh, well," I went on, "if we're going to be friends.... Besides, it's a very pretty name."

"I hate it!" she exclaimed. "Sylvia Forstead Mornington Roden. I hate them all!"

"Were you called after Lady Forstead?" I asked.

"Yes. Did you know her?"

I shook my head. Of course I had heard of her and the money left by her husband, who had chanced to own the land on which Renton came afterwards to be built. Most of that money, I learned later, was reposing in trust till Sylvia was twenty-five.

"Your taste in godmothers is commendable," I remarked.

"You think so?" she asked without conviction.

It is not good for a young girl to be burdened with great possessions; they distort her outlook on life. I wondered to what extent Sylvia was being troubled in anticipation, but the wonder was idle: nature had troubled her with sufficient good looks to make mercenary admirers superfluous.

"Most people...." I began, but stopped as she came to a sudden standstill.

"I say, we forgot all about Mr. Aintree!" she exclaimed.

"He didn't come," I reassured her.

"Oh, Phil said perhaps he mightn't. I gather he usually does accept invitations and not turn up. I hate people who can't be reasonably polite."

"He usually refuses the invitation," I said in the Seraph's defence.

"Why?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Shyness, I suppose."

"I hate shy people."

"You must ask him."

"I don't know him. What's he like?"

"Oh, I thought you did. He...." I paused and tried to think how the Seraph should be described; it was not easy. "Medium height," I ventured at last, "fair hair, rather a white face; curious, rather haunting dark eyes. Middle twenties, but usually looks younger. Very nervous and overwrought, frightfully shy...."

"Sounds like a degenerate poet."

"He's had a good deal of trouble," I added. "Be kind to him, Sylvia. Life's a long agony to him when he's with strangers."

"I hate shy people," she repeated. "It's so silly to be awkward."

"He's not awkward. Incidentally, what a number of things you find time to hate!"

"I know. I'm composed entirely of hates and bad tempers. And I hate myself more than anybody else."

"Why?"

"Because I don't understand myself," she answered, "and I can't control myself."

On arriving at the house I was introduced to my hostess. Lady Roden was a colourless woman who had sunk to a secondary position in the household. This was perhaps not surprising in a family that contained Arthur as the nominal head, and Philip, Sylvia, Robin, and Michael as Mayors of the Palace. What she lacked in authority was made up in prestige. On no single day of her life of fifty years did she forget that she was a Rutlandshire Mornington. I fear I have little respect for Morningtons-or any other pre-Conquest families-whether they come from Rutlandshire or any other part of the globe. Such inborn reverence as I in common with all other Englishmen may ever have possessed has been starved by many years absence abroad. At Brandon Court I found the sentiment flourishing hardily: Lady Roden dug for pedigrees as a dog scratches for a bone. "You are a brother of the Judge?" she said when we met. "Then-let me see-your sister-in-law was a Hylton."

I had expected to find the atmosphere oppressive with Front Bench politics, but the influence of Pat Culling was salutary. Discussion quailed before his powers of illustration, and the study of "The Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur Roden Mixing his Metaphors in the Cause of Empire"-it now hangs in the library of Cadogan Square-rescued the conversation from controversial destruction. In lieu of politics we had to arrange for the arrival of our last two guests; Aintree had wired that he was coming by a later train, and Rawnsley's sister Mavis had to be brought over some twenty miles from Hanningfold on the Sussex borders. Sylvia volunteered for the longer journey in her own little runabout, while the Seraph was to be fetched in the car that went nightly to Brandon Junction for Arthur's official, cabinet-minister's despatch case.

"What's come over our Seraph the last few years?" Culling asked me, when the two cars had gone their respective ways and we were smoking a cheroot in the Dutch Garden. "I've known him from a bit of a boy that high, and now-God knows-it's in a decline you'd say he was taken. You can't please him and you can't even anger him. He's like a man has his heart broken."

I did not know what answer to give.

"Just a passing mood," I suggested.

"It's a mood will have him destroyed," said Culling, gloomily.

He was a kind-hearted, pleasant, superficial fellow, one of those feckless, humorous Irishmen who laugh at the absurdities of the world and themselves, and go on laughing till life comes to hold no other business-a splendid engine for work or fighting, but too idle almost to make a start, too little concentrated ever to keep the wheel moving, a man of short cuts and golden roads.... He talked with easy kindness of the Seraph till a horn sounded far away down the drive and the Brandon car swept tortuously through the elm avenue to the house.

"A common drunk and disorderly!" Culling shouted as the Seraph came towards us with his right arm in a sling. He had that morning shut his thumb in the front door of his flat, and while we dragged the depths of Waterloo for his body, he had been sitting with his doctor, sick and faint, having the wound dressed. His face was whiter than usual, and his manner restless.

"I've kept my promise," he remarked to me.

"I was giving up hope."

"I had to come," he answered in vague perplexity, and relapsed into one of his longest silences.

We wandered for an hour through the grand old-world gardens, reverently worshipping their many-coloured spring splendour. Flaming masses of azaleas blazed forth from a background of white and mauve rhododendrons; white, grey, and purple lilac squandered their wealth in riotous display, while the Golden Rain flashed in the evening sun, and a scented breeze spread the grass walks with a yellow carpet. We drew a last luxurious deep breath, and turned to watch the nymph?as closing their eyes for the night.

Beyond the water garden, in an orchard deep with fallen apple-blossom, Rawnsley and Gartside were stretched in wicker chairs watching an old spaniel race across the grass in sheer exhilaration of spirit.

"Come and study the Sixth Sense," Gartside called out as we approached.

"There isn't such a thing, but there's no harm in your studying it," said Rawnsley, in a tone that indicated it mattered little what any of us did to improve or debase our minds.

"Martel!" The dog bounded up at Gartside's call, and he showed us two glazed, sightless eyes. "Good dog!" He patted the animal's neck, and Martel raced away to the far end of the orchard. "That dog's as blind as my boot, but he steers himself as though he'd eyes all over his head. By Jove! I thought he'd brained himself that time!"

Martel had raced at top speed to the foot of a gnarled apple tree. At two yards' distance he swerved as though a whip had struck him, and passed into safety. The same thing happened half a dozen times in as many minutes.

"He knows it's there," said Gartside. "He's got a sense of distance. If that isn't a sixth sense, what is it?"

"Intensified smell-sense," Rawnsley pronounced. "If you were blind, you'd find your smelling and hearing intensified."

"Not enough," said Gartside.

"It's all you'll get. A sense is the perceptiveness of an organ. You've eyes, ears, a nose, a palate, and a number of sensitive surfaces. If you want a sixth sense, you must have a sixth perceive organ. You haven't. Therefore you must be content with seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching."

Gartside was not satisfied with the narrow category.

"I know a man who can always tell when there's a cat in the room."

"Before or after seeing it?" Rawnsley inquired politely.

"Oh, before. Genuine case. I tested him by locking a cat in the sideboard once when he was coming to dine with me. He complained the moment he got into the room."

"Acute smell-sense," Rawnsley decided.

"You hear of people who can foretell a change in the weather," Gartside went on.

"Usually wrong," said Rawnsley. "When they're right, and it isn't coincidence, you can trace it to the influence of a changed atmosphere on a sensitive part of their body. An old wound, for instance. Acute touch sense."

I happened to catch sight of the Seraph lying on his face piling the fallen apple-blossoms into little heaps.

"What about a sense of futurity?" I asked.

"Did you ever meet the man could spot a Derby winner?" asked Culling, infected by Rawnsley's scepticism.

"Futurity in respect of yourself," I defined. "What's called 'premonition.'"

Rawnsley demolished me with patient weightiness.

"You come down to breakfast with a headache...."

"Owin' to the unwisdom of mixin' your drinks," Culling interposed.

"...Everything's black. In the course of the day you hear a friend's dead. 'Ah!' you say, 'I knew something was going to happen.' What about all those other mornings...."

"Terribly plentiful!" said Culling.

"...When everything's black and nothing happens? It's pure coincidence."

I defined my meaning yet more narrowly.

"I have in mind the premonition of something quite definite."

"For instance?"

I told him of a phenomenon that has frequently come under my observation in the East-the power possessed by many natives of foretelling the exact hour of their death. Quite recently I came across a case in the Troad where I fell in with a young Greek who had been wasting for months with some permanent, indefinable fever. One morning I found him sitting dressed in his library, the temperature was normal and the pulse regular; he seemed in perfect health. I congratulated him on his recovery, and was informed that he would die punctually at eight that evening.

In the course of the day his will was drawn up and signed, the relatives took their farewells, and a priest administered supreme unction. I called again at seven o'clock. He seemed still in perfect health and full possession of his faculties, but repeated his assertion that he would pass away at eight. I told him not to be morbid. At ten minutes to eight he warned me that his time was at hand; after another three minutes he undressed and lay motionless on his bed. At two minutes past eight the heart had ceased to beat.

"Auto-hypnosis," said Rawnsley when I had done. "A long debilitating illness in which the mind became more and more abnormal and subject to fancies. An idea-from a dream, perhaps-that death will take place at a certain hour. The mind becomes obsessed by that idea until the body is literally done to death. It's no more premonition than if I say I'm going to dine to-night between eight and nine. I've an idea I shall, I shall do my best to make that idea fruitful, and nothing but an unforeseen eventuality will prevent my premonition coming true. Stick to the five senses and three dimensions, Merivale. And now come and dress, or I may not get my dinner after all."

"I think Rawnsley's disposed of premonitions," said the Seraph from the grass. Possibly I was the only one who detected a note of irony in his voice.

We had been given adjoining rooms, and in the course of dressing I had a visit from him with the request that I should tie his tie.

"Choose the other hand next time," I advised him, when I had done my bad best. "Authors and pianists, you know-it's your livelihood."

"It'll be well enough by the time I've anything to write."

"Is your Miserable Child causing trouble?"

Never at that time having been myself guilty of a line of prose or verse, I could only judge of composition by the light of pure reason. To write an entirely imaginative work would be-as the poet said of love-"the devil." An autobiographical novel, I thought, would be like keeping a diary and chopping it into chapters of approximately equal length.

"Have you ever kept a diary a week in advance?" the Seraph asked when I put this view before him.

"Why not wait a week?" I suggested, again in the light of pure reason.

"You'd lose the psychology of expectation-uncertainty."

"I suppose you would," I assented hazily.

"I want to dispose of my premonition on the Rawnsley lines."

"What form does it take?"

His lips parted, and closed again quickly.

"I'll let you know in a week's time," he answered.

Sylvia had not returned when we assembled in the drawing-room, and after waiting long enough to chill the soup and burn the entrée, it was decided to start without her. Nothing of that dinner survives in my memory, from which I infer that cooking and conversation were unrelievedly mediocre. With the appearance of the cigars I moved away from Lady Roden's empty chair to the place vacated by Gladys between Philip and the Seraph.

"Thumb hurting you?" I asked.

He looked so white that I thought he must be in pain.

"I'm all right, thanks," he answered. Immediately to belie his words the sudden opening of the door made him jump almost out of his chair. I saw the footman who was handing round the coffee bend down and whisper something to Arthur.

"Sylvia's turned up at last," we were told.

"Did the car break down?" I asked; but Arthur could only say that she had returned twenty minutes before and was changing her dress.

"Has she brought Mavis?" asked Rawnsley.

"The man only said...."

Arthur left the sentence unfinished and turned his head to find Sylvia framed in the open doorway. She had changed into a white silk dress, and was wearing a string of pearls round her slender throat. Posed with one hand to the necklace and the other still holding the handle of the door, she made a picture I shall not easily forget. A study in black and white it was, with the dark hair and eyes thrown into relief by her pale face and light dress.... I must have stared unceremoniously, but my stare was distracted by a numbing grip on my forearm. I found the Seraph making his fingers almost meet through bone and muscle; he had half risen and was gazing at her with parted lips and shining eyes. Then we all rose to our feet as she came into the room.

"The car went all right," she explained, slipping into an empty chair by her father's side. "Please sit down, all of you, or I shall be sorry I came. I'm only here for a minute. Mavis hasn't come, Mr. Rawnsley. Your mother didn't know why she was staying on in town; she ought to have been down last night or first thing this morning. She hadn't wired or anything, so I waited till the six-forty got in, and as she wasn't on that, I came back alone. No, no dinner, thanks. Mrs. Rawnsley gave me some sandwiches."

"I hope there's nothing wrong," I said in the tone that tries to be sympathetic and only succeeds in arousing general misgiving.

Sylvia turned her eyes in my direction, catching sight of the Seraph as she did so.

"I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, jumping up and walking round to him with that wonderful flashing smile that I once in poetical mood likened to a white rose bursting into flower. "I didn't see you when I came in. Oh, poor child, what have you done to your hand?"

I watched their faces as the Seraph explained; strong emotion on the one, polite conventional sympathy on the other.

"Move up one place, Phil," she commanded when the explanation was ended. "I want to talk to our invalid."

Sylvia's presence kept us lingering long over our cigars, and when at last we reached the drawing-room, it was to find that Gladys had already been packed off to bed with mustard plasters and black currant tea. Life abruptly ceased to have any interest for Philip. I stood about till my host and hostess were established at the bridge table with Culling and Gartside, and then accepted the Seraph's invitation for a stroll on the terrace.

He executed one of the most masterly silences of my experience. Time and again we paced that terrace till the others had retired to bed and a single light in the library shone like a Polyphemus eye out of the face of the darkened house. I pressed for no confidences, knowing that at the fitting season he would feel the need of a confidant and unburden himself to me. That was the most feminine of the Seraph's many feminine characteristics.

It was a wonderfully still, moonlight evening. You would have said he and I were the two last men in the world, and Brandon Court the only house in England-till you rounded the corner of the terrace and found two detectives from Scotland Yard screened by the angle of the house. Since the beginning of the militant outrages, no cabinet minister had been allowed to stir without a bodyguard; through the mists of thirty years I recalled the dynamiter days of my boyhood. In one form or other the militants, like the poor, were always with us.

It was after one when the Seraph stalked moodily through the open library window on his way to bed. Had he been less pre-occupied, he would have seen something that interested me, though I suppose it would have enlightened neither of us.

On a table by the door stood a photograph of Sylvia. I noticed the frame first, then the face, and finally the dress. She had arrayed herself as a Savoyard peasant with short skirt, bare arms and hair braided in two long plaits. It was not a good likeness, because no portrait could do justice to a face that owed its fascination to the fact of never being seen in repose; but it was good enough for me to judge the effect of such a face on a man of impressionable temperament....

I had an admirable night's rest, as I always do. I awoke once or twice, it is true, but dropped off again immediately-almost before I had time to appreciate that the Seraph was pacing to and fro in the adjoining room.

* * *