morning and afternoon of the twenty-seventh—tony,

maradick, janet, and miss minns have a ride

after the wedding

but mrs. lester had not the courage of her convictions. those convictions were based very largely on an audacious standing up against providence, although she herself would never have seen it in that light. in each of her “affairs” she went breathlessly forward, as it were on tiptoe, with eyes staring and heart beating; wondering what would be the dangers, gasping at possibly startling adventures.

but the real thing had never met her before. the two or three men who had been concerned in her other experiences had understood quite as well as she did that it was only a game, pour passer le temps, and a very pleasant way of passing it too. but this man was taking it very differently. it was no game at all to him; he did not look as though he could play a game if he wanted to. but it was not maradick who frightened her; it was herself. she had never gone so far as this before, and now as she undressed she was suddenly terribly frightened.

her face seemed white and ghostly in the mirror, and in a sudden panic, she turned on all the lights. then the blaze frightened her and she turned them all out again, all save the one over the mirror.

she sat gazing into it, and all the dark corners of the room seemed to gather round her like living things; only her white face stared out of the glass. if fred hadn’t been so horribly humdrum, if she hadn’t known so thoroughly every inch of him, every little trick that he had, every kind of point of view that he ever had about anything, then this never would have happened. because, really, he had been a very good husband to her, and she was really fond of him; when one came to think of it, he had been much better than a good many husbands she had known. she leaned back in her chair and looked at herself.

it had once been more than mere fondness, it had been quite exciting; she smiled, reminiscences crowded about her . . . dear old fred!

but she pulled herself up with a jerk. that, after all, wasn’t the point; the point, the thing that mattered, was thursday night. out there in the garden, when he had held her like that, a great lawlessness had come upon her. it was almost as though some new spirit had entered into her and was showing her things, was teaching her emotions that she had never been shown or learnt before. and, at that moment, it had seemed to her the one thing worth having.

she had never lived before. life was to be counted by moments, those few golden moments that the good gods gave to one, and if one didn’t take them, then and there, when they were offered, why then, one had never lived at all, one might as well never have been born.

but now, as she sat there alone in her room, she was realising another thing—that those moments had their consequences. what were they going to do afterwards? what would maradick do? what, above all, would her own attitude to fred be? she began, very slowly, to realise the truth, that the great laws are above creeds and all dogmas because they are made from man’s necessities, not from his superstitions. what was she going to do?

she knew quite well what she would do if she were left there alone on thursday night, and at the sudden thought of it she switched off the light and plunged the room into darkness. she lay in bed waiting for fred to come up. she felt suddenly very unprotected. she would ask him to take her with him on thursday, she would make some excuse; he would probably be glad.

she heard him undressing in the next room. he was whistling softly to himself; he stumbled over something and said “damn.” she heard him gargle as he brushed his teeth. he hummed a song of the moment, “i wouldn’t go home in the dark”; and then she heard him stepping across the carpet towards the bed, softly lest he should wake her. he got into bed and grunted with satisfaction as he curled up into the sheets; his toe touched her foot and she shivered suddenly because it was cold.

“hullo, old girl,” he said, “still awake?”

she didn’t answer. then she turned slowly round towards him.

“fred,” she said, “i think i’ll come away with you on thursday after all.” but, as she said it to him, she was suddenly afraid of his suspecting something. he would want to know the reason. “it’s not,” she added hurriedly, “that i’m not perfectly happy here. i’m enjoying it awfully, it’s delightful; but, after all, there isn’t very much point in my staying here. i don’t want to after you’re gone.”

but he was sleepy. he yawned.

“i’m awfully tired, dear. we’ll talk about it to-morrow. but anyhow, i don’t quite see the point. you won’t want to be pottering about london with me. i’m only up there for business—these beastly publishers,” he yawned again. “you’d be bored, you know; much better stay here with lady gale. besides, it’s all arranged.” his voice died off into a sleepy murmur.

but the terror seemed to gather about her in the darkness. she saw with amazing vision. she did not want to be left; she must not be left.

she put her hand on his arm.

“fred, please—it’s important; i don’t want to stay.”

and then she was suddenly frightened. she had said too much. he would want to know why she didn’t want to stay. but he lay there silently. she was afraid that he would go to sleep. she knew that when the morning came things would seem different. she knew that she would persuade herself that there was no immediate hurry. she would leave things to settle themselves; and then. oh! well! there would be no question as to how things would go! she saw, with absolute clearness that this was the moment that was granted her. if she could only persuade him to take her now, then she would have that at any rate afterwards to hold herself back. she would not want to go back on her word again. her only feeling now was that fred was so safe. the thought of the evening, the garden, maradick, filled her now with unreasoning terror; she was in a panic lest this minute, this opportunity, should leave her.

she turned towards him and shook his arm.

“fred, just keep awake for a minute; really it’s important. really, i want to go away with you, on thursday, not to stay on. i don’t like the place. i shan’t a bit mind being in london, it will be rather fun; there are lots of people i want to see. besides, it’s only a day or two after all.”

but he laughed sleepily.

“what’s all the fuss, old girl? i’m simply damned tired; i am, really. we’ll talk about it to-morrow. but anyhow, you’d better stay; it’s all arranged, and lady gale will think it rather funny.”

his voice trailed off. for a moment there was silence and she heard his breathing. he was asleep.

she listened furiously. oh, well, if he didn’t care more than that! if he couldn’t keep awake longer than that! she dug her nails into her hand. there it was; he could go to sleep when she was in torture. he didn’t care; the other man! her mind flew back to the evening again. ah! he would not have gone off to sleep! he would have listened—listened.

but she lay for hours staring into the darkness, listening to the man’s even breathing.

but there had been another example of “any wife to any husband,” that must, for a moment, have its record.

maradick feared, on coming into his room, that his wife was not yet in bed. she was sitting in front of her glass brushing her hair. she must have seen him in the mirror, but she did not move. she looked very young, almost like a little doll; as she sat there he had again the curious feeling of pathos that he had known at breakfast. absurd! emmy maradick was the last person about whom anyone need be pathetic, but nevertheless the feeling was there. he got into bed without a word. she went on silently combing her hair. it got on his nerves; he couldn’t take his eyes off her. he turned his eyes away towards the wall, but slowly they turned back again, back to the silent white figure in the centre of the room by the shining glass.

he suddenly wanted to scream, to shout something at her like “speak, you devil!” or “don’t go on saying nothing, you mummy, sitting still like that.”

at last he did speak.

“you’re late, emmy,” he said, “i thought you’d have been in bed.” his voice was very gentle. if only she would stop moving that brush up and down with its almost mechanical precision! she put the brush slowly down on the table and turned towards him.

“yes,” she said, “i was waiting for you, really, until you came up.”

he was suddenly convinced that she knew; she had probably known all about it from the first. she was such a clever little woman, there were very few things that she didn’t know. he waited stupidly, dully. he wondered what she was going to say, what she was going to propose that they should do.

but having got so far, she seemed to have nothing more to say. she stared at the glass with wide, fixed eyes; her cheeks were flushed, and her fingers played nervously with the things on the dressing-table.

“well,” he said at last, “what is it?”

then, to his intense surprise, she got up and came slowly towards him; she sat on the edge of the bed whilst he watched her, wondering, amazed. he had never seen her like that before, and his intense curiosity at her condition killed, for a moment, the eagerness with which he would discover how much she knew. but her manner of taking it was surely very strange.

temper, fury, passion, even hate, that he could understand, and that, knowing her, he would have expected, but this strange dreamy quiet frightened him. he caught the bed-clothes in his hands and twisted them; then he asked again: “well, what is it?” but when she did at last speak she did not look at him, but stared in front of her. it was the strangest thing in the world to see her sitting there, speaking like that; and he had a feeling, not to be explained, that she wasn’t there at all really, that it was some one else, even, possibly, some strange thing that his actions of these last few days had suddenly called forth—called forth, that was, to punish him. he shrunk back on to his pillows.

“well,” her voice just went on, “it isn’t that i’ve really anything to say; you’ll think me silly, and i’m sure i don’t want to keep you when you want to go to sleep. but it isn’t often that we have anything very much to say to one another; it isn’t, at any rate, very often here. we’ve hardly, you know, talked at all since we’ve been here.

“but these last few days i’ve been thinking, realising perhaps, that it’s been my fault all these years that things haven’t been happier. . . . i don’t think i’d thought about anyone except myself. . . . in some sort of way i hadn’t considered you at all; i don’t quite know why.”

she paused as though she expected him to say something, but he made no sound.

then she went on: “i suppose you’ll think it foolish of me, but i feel as though everything has been different from the moment that we came here, from the moment that we came to treliss; you have been quite different, and i am sorry if i have been so disagreeable, and i’m going to try, going to try to be pleasanter.”

she brought it out with a jerk, as though she were speaking under impulse, as though something was making her speak.

and he didn’t know what to say; he could say nothing—his only emotion that he was angry with her, almost furious, because she had spoken like that. it was too bad of her, just then, after all these years. there had, at any rate, been some justification before, or, at least, he had tried to persuade himself that there was, in his relations with mrs. lester. he had been driven by neglect, lack of sympathy, and all the rest of it; and now, suddenly, that had been taken away from under his feet. oh! it was too bad.

and then his suspicions were aroused again. it was so unlike her to behave like that. perhaps she was only behaving like this in order to find out, to sound him, as it were. oh, yes! it was a clever move; but he couldn’t say anything to her, the words refused to come.

she waited, a little pathetically, there on the bed, for him to speak; and then as nothing came, still without looking at him, she said quietly “good-night,” and stepped softly across the room.

he heard her switch the light off, the bed-clothes rustled for a moment, and then there was silence.

and these next two days were torture to him, the most horrible days that he had ever known. partly they were horrible because of the general consciousness that something was going to happen. lady gale, in obedience to tony, had arranged a picnic for thursday, but “for ladies only. you see, mr. lester is leaving in the afternoon, and my husband and rupert talk of going with him as far as truro; my husband has some relations there. and really, i know you and tony would rather go off on your own, mr. maradick. it would be too boring for you. we’re only going to sit in the sun, you know, and talk!”

it was understood that mr. maradick had, as a matter of fact, fixed up something. yes, he had promised his day to tony, it being one of the last that they would have together. they would probably go for a sail. he would like to have come. he enjoyed the last, &c., &c.

but this was quite enough to “do” the trick. what a picnic! imagine! with everyone acutely conscious that there was something “going on” just over the hill, something that, for lady gale, at any rate, meant almost life and death. thursday began to loom very large indeed. what would everyone be doing and thinking on friday? still more vital a question, where would everyone be on friday?

but at any rate he could picture them: the ladies—lady gale, alice du cane, mrs. lester, his wife, even poor mrs. lawrence—sitting there, on the edge of the hill, silent, alert, listening.

what a picnic!

but their alertness, or rather their terrible eagerness to avoid seeming alert, horrified him. they seemed to pursue him, all five of them, during those two dreadful days with questioning glances; only his wife, by her curious patient intentness, as though she were waiting for the crisis to come, frightened him most of all. the more he thought of her strange behaviour the less he understood her. it was all so utterly unlike her. and it was not as though she had altered at all in other ways. he had heard her talking to other people, he had watched her scolding the girls, and it was the same sharp, shrill voice, the same fierce assumption that the person she was with must necessarily be trying to “get” at her; no, she was the same emmy maradick as far as the rest of the world was concerned. but, with him, she was some one altogether new, some one he had never seen before; and always, through it all, that strange look of wonder and surprise. he often knew that her eyes were upon him when he was talking to some one else; when he talked to her himself her eyes avoided him.

and then mrs. lester, too, was so strange. during the whole of tuesday she avoided him altogether. he had a few minutes with her at teatime, but there were other people there, and she seemed anxious to get away from him, to put the room between them. and seeing her like this, his passion grew. he felt that whatever happened, whatever the disaster, he must have her, once at least, in his arms again. the memories of their other meetings lashed him like whips. he pictured it again, the darkness, the movement of the trees, the touch of her cheek against his hand; and then he would feel that his wife was looking at him from somewhere across the room. he could feel her eyes, like little gimlets, twisting, turning into his back. and then other moods would come, and the blackest despair. he was this kind of man, this sort of scoundrel; he remembered once that there had been a man at epsom who had run away with a married woman, a man who had been rather a friend of his. he remembered what he had said to him, the kind of way that he had looked at him, poor, rotten creature; and now what was he?

but he could not go; he could not move. he was under a spell. when he thought of mrs. lester his blood would begin to race again. he told himself that it was the sign of his freedom, the natural consequences of the new life that had come to him; and then suddenly he would see that moment when his wife, sitting forlornly on his bed, had spoken to him.

and then on wednesday there was a moment when mrs. lester was herself again. it was only a moment, an instant after dinner. their lips met; he spoke of thursday and she smiled at him, then the others had come upon them. for an hour or two he was on fire, then he crept miserably, like a thief, to the room of the minstrels and sat wretchedly, hour after hour, looking at the stars.

the day would soon dawn! thursday! the crisis, as it seemed to him, of the whole of his life. he saw the morn draw faint shadows across the earth, he saw all the black trees move like a falling wall against the stars, he felt the wind with the odour of earth and sea brush his cheek, as he waited for the day to come.

he knew now that it was to be no light thing; it was to be a battle, the fiercest that he had ever waged. two forces were fighting over him, and one of them, before the next night had passed, would win the day. no good and evil? no god and devil? no heaven and hell? why, there they were before his very eyes; the two camps and the field between! and so thursday dawned!

but it came with grey mists and driving rain. the sea was hidden; only the tops of the trees in the garden stood disconsolately dripping above the fog.

everyone came down shivering to breakfast, and disappointments that seemed unjust on ordinary days were now perfectly unbearable. if there were no letters, one was left out in the cold, if there were a lot, they were sure to be bills. it was certain to be smoked haddock when that was the one thing above all others that you loathed; and, of course, there were numbers of little draughts that crept like mice about your feet and wandered like spiders about your hair.

but one thing was perfectly obvious, and that was, that of course there could be no picnic. to have five ladies sitting desolately alone on the top of the hill, bursting with curiosity, was melancholy enough; but to have them sitting there in driving rain was utterly impossible.

nevertheless some people intended to venture out. sir richard and rupert—mainly, it seemed, to show their contempt of so plebeian a thing as rain—were still determined on truro.

tony also was going to tramp it with maradick.

“where are you going?” this from sir richard, who had just decided that his third egg was as bad as the two that he had already eaten.

“oh! i don’t know!” said tony lazily, “over the hills and far away, i expect. that’s the whole fun of the thing—not knowing. isn’t it, maradick?”

“it is,” said maradick.

he showed no signs of a bad night. he was eating a very hearty breakfast.

“but you must have some idea where you are going,” persisted sir richard, gloomily sniffing at his egg.

“well, i expect we’ll start out towards that old church,” said tony. “you know, the one on the cliff; then we’ll strike inland, i expect. don’t you think so, maradick?”

“yes,” said maradick.

there was no doubt at all that the five ladies were extremely glad that there was to be no picnic. mrs. lawrence meant to have a really cosy day reading by the fire one of those most delightful stories of miss braddon. she was enormously interested in the literature of the early eighties; anything later than that rather frightened her.

“we can have a really cosy day,” said mrs. lester.

“yes, we shall have quite a comfortable time,” said mrs. lawrence.

“it is so nice having an excuse for a fire,” said lady gale.

“i do love it when one can have a fire without being ashamed, don’t you?” said mrs. lawrence.

mrs. maradick gathered her two girls about her and they disappeared.

slowly the clock stole towards half-past eleven, when the first move was to be made. mr. lester had left quite early. he said good-bye to maradick with great cordiality.

“mind you come and see us, often. it’s been delightful meeting you. there’s still plenty to talk about.”

he said good-bye to his wife with his usual rather casual geniality.

“good-bye, old girl. send me a line. hope this weather clears off”—and he was gone.

she had been standing by the hall door. as the trap moved down the drive she suddenly made a step forward as though she would go out into the rain after him and call him back. then she stopped. she was standing on the first step in front of the door; the mist swept about her.

lady gale called from the hall: “come in, dear, you’ll get soaking wet.”

she turned and came back.

to tony, as he watched the hands of the clock creep round, it seemed perfectly incredible that the whole adventure should simply consist in quietly walking out of the door. it ought to begin, at any rate, with something finer than that, with an escape, something that needed secrecy and mystery. it was so strange that he was simply going to walk down and take janet; it was, after all, a very ordinary affair.

at quarter-past eleven he found his mother alone in her room.

he came up to her and kissed her. “i’m going off with maradick now,” he said.

“yes,” she answered, looking him in the eyes.

“you know i’m in for an adventure, mother?”

“yes, dear.”

“you trust me, don’t you?”

“of course, dear, perfectly.”

“you shall know all about it to-morrow.”

“when you like, dear,” she answered. she placed her arms on his shoulders, and held him back and looked him in the face. then she touched his head with her hands and said softly—

“you mustn’t let anything or anyone come between us, tony?”

“never, mother,” he answered. then suddenly he came very close to her, put his arms round her and kissed her again and again.

“god bless you, old boy,” she said, and let him go.

when he had closed the door behind him she began to cry, but when mrs. lester found her quarter of an hour later there were no signs of tears.

maradick and tony, as half-past eleven struck from the clock at the top of the stairs, went down the steps of the hotel.

as they came out into the garden the mists and rain swam all about them and closed them in. the wind beat their faces, caught their coats and lashed them against their legs, and went scrambling away round the corners of the hill.

“my word! what a day!” shouted tony. “here’s a day for a wedding!” he was tremendously excited. he even thought that he liked this wind and rain, it helped on the adventure; and then, too, there would be less people about, but it would be a stormy drive to the church.

they secured a cab in the market-place. but such a cab; was there ever another like it? it stood, for no especial reason it seemed, there in front of the tower, with the rain whirling round it, the wind beating at the horse’s legs and playing fantastic tricks with the driver’s cape, which flew about his head up and down like an angry bird. he was the very oldest aged man time had ever seen; his beard, a speckly grey, fell raggedly down on to his chest, his eyes were bleared and nearly closed, his nose, swollen to double its natural size, was purple in colour, and when he opened his mouth there was visible an enormous tooth, but one only.

his hands trembled with ague as he clutched the reins and addressed his miserable beast. the horse was a pitiful scarecrow; its ribs, like a bent towel-rack, almost pierced the skin; its eye was melancholy but patient. the cab itself moved as though at any moment it would fall to pieces. the sides of the carriage were dusty, and the wheels were thick with mud; at every movement the windows screamed and rattled and shook with age—the cabman, the four-wheeler and the horse lurched together from side to side.

however, there was really nothing else. time was precious, and it certainly couldn’t be wasted in going round to the cab-stand at the other end of the town. on a fine day there would have been a whole row of them in the market-place, but in weather like this they sought better shelter.

the wind whistled across the cobbles; the rain fell with such force that it hit the stones and leaped up again. the aged man was murmuring to himself the same words again and again. “eh! lor! how the rain comes down; it’s terrible bad for the beasts.” the tower frowned down on them all.

tony jumped in, there was nothing else to be done; it rattled across the square.

tony was laughing. it all seemed to him to add to the excitement. “do you know,” he said, “james stephens’s poem? it hits it off exactly;” and he quoted:

“the driver rubbed at his nettly chin,

??with a huge, loose forefinger, crooked and black,

and his wobbly violent lips sucked in,

??and puffed out again and hung down slack:

????one fang shone through his lop-sided smile,

????in his little pouched eye flickered years of guile.

and the horse, poor beast, it was ribbed and forked,

??and its ears hung down, and its eyes were old,

and its knees were knuckly, and as we talked

??it swung the stiff neck that could scarcely hold

????its big, skinny head up—then i stepped in

????and the driver climbed to his seat with a grin.

only this old boy couldn’t climb if he were paid for it. i wonder how he gets up to his box in the morning. i expect they lift him, you know; his old wife and the children and the grandchildren—a kind of ceremony.”

they were being flung about all this time like peas in a bladder, and tony had to talk at the top of his voice to make himself heard. “anyhow he’ll get us there all right, i expect. my word, what rain! i say, you know, i can’t in the very least realise it. it seems most frightfully exciting, but it’s all so easy, in a kind of way. you see i haven’t even had to have a bag or anything, because there’ll be heaps of time to stop in town and get things. and to-morrow morning to see the sun rise over paris, with janet!”

his eyes were on fire with excitement. but to maradick this weather, this cab, seemed horrible, almost ominous. he was flung against the side of the window, then against tony, then back again. he had lost his breath.

but he had realised something else suddenly; he wondered how he could have been so foolish as not to have seen it before, and that was, that this would be probably, indeed almost certainly, the last time that he would have tony to himself. the things that the boy had been to him during these weeks beat in his head like bells, reminding him. why, the boy had been everything to him! and now he saw suddenly that he had, in reality, been nothing at all to the boy. tony’s eyes were set on the adventure—the great adventure of life. maradick, and others like him, might be amusing on the way; were of course, “good sorts,” but they could be left, they must be left if one were to get on, and there were others, plenty of others.

and so, in that bumping cab, maradick suddenly realised his age. to be “at forty” as the years go was nothing, years did not count, but to be “at forty” in the way that he now saw it was the great dividing line in life. he now saw that it wasn’t for him any more to join with those who were “making life,” that was for the young, and they would have neither time nor patience to wait for his slower steps; he must be content to play his part in other people’s adventures, to act the observer, the onlooker. those young people might tell him that they cared, that they wanted him, but they would soon forget, they would soon pass on until they too were “at forty,” and, reluctantly, unwillingly, must move over to the other camp.

he turned to tony.

“i say, boy,” he said almost roughly, “this is the last bit that we shall have together; alone, i mean. i say, don’t forget me altogether afterwards. i want to come and see you.”

“forget you!” tony laughed. “why never! i!”

but then suddenly the aged man and his coach bumped them together and then flung them apart and then bumped them again so that no more words were possible. the cab had turned the corner. the house, with its crooked door, was before them.

in the hall there were lights; underneath the stairs there was a lamp and against the wall opposite the door there were candles. in the middle of the hall janet was standing waiting; she was dressed in some dark blue stuff and a little round dark blue hat, beneath it her hair shone gloriously. she held a bag in her hand and a small cloak over her arm. tony came forward with a stride and she stepped a little way to meet him. then he caught her in his arms, and her head went back a little so that the light of the lamp caught her hair and flung a halo around it. miss minns was in the background in a state of quite natural agitation. it was all very quiet and restrained. there seemed to maradick to fall a very beautiful silence for a moment about them. the light, the colour, everything centred round those two, and the world stood still. then tony let go and she came forward to maradick.

she held out her hand and he took it in his, and he, suddenly, moved by some strange impulse, bent down and kissed it. she let it lie there for a moment and then drew it back, smiling.

“it’s splendid of you, mr. maradick,” she said; “without you i don’t know what we’d have done, tony and i.”

and then she turned round to tony and kissed him again. there was another pause, and indeed the two children seemed perfectly ready to stand like that for the rest of the day. something practical must be done.

“i think we ought to be making a move,” said maradick. “the cab’s waiting outside and the train has to be caught, you know.”

“why, of course.” janet broke away from tony. “how silly we are! i’m so sorry, miss minns, have you got the bag with the toothbrush? it’s all we’ve got, you know, because we can buy things in paris. oh! paris!”

she drew a breath and stood there, her eyes staring, her hands on her hips, her head flung back. it really was amazing the way that she was taking it. there was no doubt or alarm at the possible consequences of so daring a step. it must be, maradick thought, her ignorance of all that life must mean to her now, all the difference that it would have once this day was over, that saved her from fear.

and yet there was knowledge as well as courage in her eyes, she was not altogether ignorant.

miss minns came forward, miss minns in an amazing bonnet. it was such an amazing bonnet that miss minns must positively have made it herself; it was shaped like a square loaf and little jet beads rang little bells on it as she moved. she was in a perfect tremble of excitement, and the whole affair sent her mind back to the one other romantic incident in her life—the one and only love affair. but the really amazing discovery was that romance wasn’t over for her yet, that she was permitted to take part in a real “affair,” to see it through from start to finish. she was quivering with excitement.

they all got into the cab.

it was a very silent drive to the church. the rain had almost stopped. it only beat every now and again, a little doubtfully, against the window and then went, with a little whirl of wind, streaming away.

the cab went slowly, and, although it lurched from side to side and every now and again pitched forward, as though it would fall on its head, they were not shaken about very badly. janet leaned back against tony, and he had his arm round her. they neither of them spoke at all, but his fingers moved very lightly over her hand and then to her cheek, and then back to her hand again.

as they got on to the top of the hill and started along the white road to the church the wind from the sea met them and swept about them. great dark clouds, humped like camels, raced across the sky; the trees by the roadside, gnarled and knotted, waved scraggy arms like so many witches.

miss minns’s only remark as they neared the church was, “i must say i should have liked a little bit of orange-blossom.”

“we’ll get that in paris,” said tony.

the aged man was told to wait with his coach until they all came out of church again. he seemed to be quite prepared to wait until the day of doom if necessary. he stared drearily in front of him at the sea. to his mind, it was all a very bad business.

soon they were all in the church, the clergyman with the flowing beard, his elderly boy, acting as a kind of verger and general factotum, miss minns, maradick, and there, by the altar rails, tony and janet.

it was a very tiny church indeed, and most of the room was taken up by an enormous box-like pew that had once been used by “the family”; now it was a mass of cobwebs. two candles had been lighted by the altar and they flung a fitful, uncertain glow about the place and long twisting shadows on the wall. on the altar itself was a large bowl of white chrysanthemums, and always for the rest of his life the sight of chrysanthemums brought back that scene to maradick’s memory: the blazing candles, the priest with his great white beard, the tiny, dusty church, miss minns and her bonnet, tony splendidly erect, a smile in his eyes, and janet with her hair and her blue serge dress and her glance every now and again at tony to see whether he were still there.

and so, there, and in a few minutes, they were married.

for an instant some little wind blew along the floor, stirred the dust and caught the candles. they flared into a blaze, and out of the shadows there leapt the dazzling white of the chrysanthemums, the gold of janet’s hair, and the blue of the little stained-glass windows. the rain had begun again and was beating furiously at the panes; they could hear it running in little streams and rivers down the hill past the church.

maradick hid his head in his hands for an instant before he turned away. he did not exactly want to pray, he had not got anyone to pray to, but he felt again now, as he had felt before in the room of the minstrels, that there was something there, with him in the place—touching him, good and evil? god and the devil? yes, they were there, and he did not dare to raise his eyes.

then at last he looked up again and in the shock of the sudden light the candles seemed to swing like golden lamps before him and the altar was a throne, and, before it, the boy and girl.

and then, again, they were all in the old man’s study, amongst his fishing-rods and dogs and books.

he laid both his hands on tony’s shoulders before he said good-bye. tony looked up into his face and smiled.

and the old man said: “i think that you will be very happy, both of you. but take one word of advice from some one who has lived in the world a very long time and knows something of it, even though he has dwelt in only an obscure corner of it. my dear, keep your charity. that is all that i would say to you. you have it now; keep it as your dearest possession. judge no one; you do not know what trouble has been theirs, what temptation, and there will be flowers even in the dreariest piece of ground if only we sow the seed. and remember that there are many very lonely people in the world. give them some of your vitality and happiness and you will do well.”

miss minns, who had been sniffing through the most of the service, very nearly broke down altogether at this point. and then suddenly some one remembered the time.

it was tony. “my word, it’s half-past two. and the train’s quarter-past three. everything’s up if we miss it. we must be off; we’ll only just do it as it is.”

they found the aged man sitting in a pool of water on the box. water dripped from the legs of the trembling horse. the raindrops, as though possessed of a devil, leaped off the roof of the cab like peas from a catapult.

tony tried to impress the driver with the fact that there was no time to lose, but he only shook his head dolefully. they moved slowly round the corner.

then there began the most wonderful drive that man or horse had ever known.

at first they moved slowly. the road was, by this time, thick with mud, and there were little trenches of water on both sides. they bumped along this for a little way. and then suddenly the aged man became seized, as it were, by a devil. they were on the top of the hill; the wind blew right across him, the rain lashed him to the skin. suddenly he lifted up his voice and sang. it was the sailor’s chanty that maradick had heard on the first day of his coming to treliss; but now, through the closed windows of the cab, it seemed to reach them in a shrill scream, like some gull above their heads in the storm.

wild exultation entered into the heart of the ancient man. he seemed to be seized by the furies. he lashed his horse wildly, the beast with all its cranky legs and heaving ribs, darted madly forward, and the rain came down in torrents.

the ancient man might have seemed, had there been a watcher to note, the very spirit of the moor. his eyes were staring, his arms were raised aloft; and so they went, bumping, jolting, tumbling along the white road.

inside the cab there was confusion. at the first movement miss minns had been flung violently into maradick’s lap. at first he clutched her wildly. the bugles on her bonnet hit him sharply in the eyes, the nose, the chin. she pinched his arm in the excitement of the moment. then she recovered herself.

“oh! mr. maradick!” she began, “i——” but, in a second, she was seized again and hurled against the door, so that tony had to clutch her by the skirt lest the boards should give and she should be hurled out into the road. but the pace of the cab grew faster and faster. they were now all four of them hurled violently from one side of the vehicle to the other. first forward, then backwards, then on both sides at once, then all in a tangled heap together in the middle; and the ancient man on the top of the box, the water dripping from his hat in a torrent, screamed his song.

then terror suddenly entered into them all. it seemed to strike them all at the same moment that there was danger. maradick suddenly was afraid. he was bruised, his collar was torn, he ached in every limb. he had a curious impulse to seize miss minns and tear her to pieces, he was wild with rage that she should be allowed to hit and strike him like that. he began to mutter furiously. and the others felt it too. janet was nearly in tears; she clung to tony and murmured, “oh! stop him! stop him!”

and tony, too. he cried, “we must get out of this! we must get out of this!” and he dragged furiously at the windows, but they would not move; and then his hand broke through the pane, and it began to bleed, there was blood on the floor of the carriage.

and they did not know that it was the place that was casting them out. they were going back to their cities, to their disciplined places, to their streets and solemn houses, their inventions, their rails and lines and ordered lives; and so the place would cast them out. it would have its last wild game with them. the ancient man gave a last shrill scream and was silent. the horse relapsed into a shamble; they were in the dark, solemn streets. they climbed the hill to the station.

they began to straighten themselves, and already to forget that it had been, in the least, terrible.

“after all,” said tony, “it was probably a good thing that we came at that pace. we might have missed the train.”

he helped janet to tidy herself. miss minns was profuse in her apologies: “really, mr. maradick, i don’t know what you can have thought of me. really, it was most immodest; and i am afraid that i bumped you rather awkwardly. it was most——”

but he stopped her and assured her that it was all right. he was thinking, as they climbed the hill, that in another quarter of an hour they would both be gone, gone out of his life altogether probably. there would be nothing left for him beyond his explanations; his clearing up of the bits, as it were, and mrs. lester. but he would not think of her now; he put her resolutely from him for the moment. the thought of her seemed desecration when these two children were with him—something as pure and beautiful as anything that the world could show. he would think of her afterwards, when they had gone.

but as he looked at them a great pang of envy cut him like a knife. ah! that was what life meant! to have some one to whom you were the chief thing in the world, some one who was also the chief thing to you!

and he? here, at forty, he had got nothing but a cheque book and a decent tailor.

they got out of the cab.

it was ten minutes before the train left. it was there, waiting. tony went to get the tickets.

janet suddenly put her hand on maradick’s arm and looked up into his face:

“mr. maradick,” she said, “i haven’t been able, i haven’t had a chance to say very much to you about all that tony and i owe you. but i feel it; indeed, indeed i do. and i will never, never forget it. wherever tony and i are there will always be a place for you if you want one. you won’t forget that, will you?”

“no, indeed,” said maradick, and he took her hand for a moment and pressed it. then suddenly his heart stopped beating. the station seemed for a moment to be pressed together, so that the platform and the roof met and the bookstall and the people dotted about disappeared altogether.

sir richard and rupert were walking slowly towards them down the platform. there was no question about it at all. they had obviously just arrived from truro and rupert was staring in his usual aimless fashion in front of him. there was simply no time to lose. they were threatened with disaster, for tony had not come back from the ticket-office and might tumble upon his father at any moment.

maradick seized janet by the arm and dragged her back into the refreshment room. “quick,” he said, “there isn’t a moment to lose—tony’s father. you and miss minns must get in by yourselves; trust to luck!” in a moment she had grasped the situation. her cheeks were a little flushed, but she gave him a hurried smile and then joined miss minns. together they walked quietly down the platform and took their seats in a first-class carriage at the other end of the train. janet was perfectly self-possessed as she passed sir richard. there was no question that this distinguished-looking gentleman must be tony’s father, and she must have felt a very natural curiosity to see what he looked like; she gave him one sharp glance and then bent down in what was apparently an earnest conversation with miss minns.

then rupert saw maradick. “hullo! there’s maradick!” he came forward slowly; but he smiled a little in a rather weary manner. he liked maradick. “what a day! yes, truro had been awful! all sorts of dreadful people dripping wet!”

yes, maradick had been a tramp in the rain with tony. tony was just asking for a parcel that he was expecting; yes, they’d got very wet and were quite ready for tea! ah! there was tony.

maradick gazed at him in agony as he came out of the ticket office. would he give a start and flush with surprise when he saw them? would he look round vaguely and wildly for janet? would he turn tail and flee?

but he did none of these things. he walked towards them as though the one thing that he had really expected to see, there on the platform, was his father. there was a little smile at the corners of his mouth and his eyes were shining especially brightly, but he sauntered quite casually down the platform, as though he hadn’t the least idea that the train was going off in another five minutes, and that janet was close at hand somewhere and might appear at any moment.

“hullo, governor! rupert! who’d have thought of seeing you here? i suppose the weather sent you back. maradick and i have been getting pretty soaked out there on the hill. but one thing is that it sends you in to a fire with some relish. i’m after a rotten old parcel that briggs was sending me—some books. he says it ought to have come, but i can’t get any news of it here. we’ll follow you up to the hotel to tea in a minute.”

but rupert seemed inclined to stay and chat. “oh! we’ll come on with you; we’re in no particular hurry, are we, governor? i say, that was a damned pretty girl that passed just now; girl in blue. did you see her, maradick?”

no, maradick hadn’t seen her. in blue? no, he hadn’t noticed. the situation was beginning to get on his nerves. he was far more agitated than tony. what were they to do? the guard was passing down the platform looking at tickets. doors were beginning to be banged. a great many people were hurriedly giving a great many messages that had already been given a great many times before. what was to be done? to his excited fancy it almost seemed as though sir richard was perfectly aware of the whole business. he thought his silence saturnine; surely there was a malicious twinkle.

“yes,” rupert was saying, “there she was walking down lemon street, dontcher know, with her waterproof thing flapping behind her in the most absurd——” the doors were all banged; the guard looked down the line.

suddenly sir richard moved. “i’m damned cold; wet things.” he nodded curtly to maradick. “see you later, mr. maradick.”

they moved slowly away; they turned the corner and at the same instant the train began to move. tony snatched at maradick’s hand and then made a wild leap across the platform. the train was moving quite fast now; he made a clutch at one of the carriages. two porters rushed forward shouting, but he had the handle of the door. he flung it open; for a sickening instant he stood swaying on the board; it seemed as though he would be swept back. then some one pulled him in. he lurched forward and disappeared; the door was closed.

a lot of little papers rose in a little cloud of dust into the air. they whirled to and fro. a little wind passed along the platform.

maradick turned round and walked slowly away.