In the Wilderness by Robert Hichens (page 9)

till the last. Tell her if she had been free I should have begged her to marry me.”

And he had added, after a pause:

“Not that she’d ever have done it. I’m pretty sure of that.”

When Dion had finished, still standing by the fire, Mrs. Clarke said:

“Thank you for remembering it all. It shows your good heart.”

“Oh–please!”

Why didn’t she think about Brayfield?

She turned round and fixed her distressed eyes on him.

“Which is best, to be charitable or to be truthful?” she said, without any vibration of excitement. “/De Mortuis/–it’s a kindly saying. A true Turk, one of the old Osmanlis, might have said it. If you hadn’t brought me that letter and the message I should probably never have mentioned Brayfield to you again. But as it is I am going to be truthful. I can say honestly peace to Brayfield’s ashes. His death was worthy. Courage he evidently had. But you mustn’t think that because he liked me I ever liked him. Don’t make a mistake. I’m not a nervous suspicious fool of a woman anxiously defending, or trying to defend, her honor–not attacked, by the way. If Lord Brayfield had ever been anything to me I should just be quiet, say nothing. But I didn’t like him. If I had liked him I shouldn’t have burnt his letter. And now”– to Dion’s great astonishment she made slowly the sign of the Cross– “/requiescat in pace/.”

After a long pause she added:

“Now come and see the other room. I’ll give you Turkish coffee there.”

CHAPTER VIII

It had been understood between Rosamund and Dion that he should spend that night in London. He had several things to see to after his long absence, had to visit his tailor, the dentist, the bootmaker, to look out some things in Little Market Street, to have an interview with his banker, et cetera. He would go back to Welsley on the following afternoon. In the evening of that day he dined in De Lorne Gardens with Beatrice and Guy Daventry and his mother, and again, as in Knightsbridge, something was said about the Welsley question. Dion gathered that Rosamund’s devotion to Welsley was no secret in “the family.” The speedy return to Little Market Street was assumed; nevertheless he was certain that his mother, his sister-in-law, and Guy were secretly wondering how Rosamund would be able to endure the departure from Welsley. Beatrice had welcomed him back very quietly, but he had felt more definitely than ever before the strong sympathy which existed between them.

“I quite love Beatrice,” he said to his mother in the jobbed brougham with the high stepping, but slow moving, horse which conveyed them to Queen Anne’s Mansions after the dinner.

“She is worth it,” said Mrs. Leith. “Beatrice says very little, but she means very much.”

“Yes. I wonder–I wonder how much of her meaning I thoroughly understand, mater.”

“Perhaps about five per cent of it, dee-ar,” observed Mrs. Leith in her sweetest voice.

And then she began to talk about Esme Darlington.

That night Dion stayed at Queen Anne’s Mansions, and slept in his old room.

In her room his mother lay awake because she wished to lie awake. In sleep she would have lost the precious sense of her boy’s nearness to her. So she counted the hours and she thanked God; and twice in the night she slipped out into the hall, with her ample dressing-gown folded about her, and she looked at her boy’s coat hanging on its hook, and she listened just outside his door. Once she felt certain she heard his quiet breathing, and then, shutting her eyes, for a moment she was again the girl mother with little Dion.

Little, little Dion! The soldier, burnt and hardened and made wholly a man by South Africa, was still that to his mother, more than ever that since he had been to the war.

That question of Welsley!

Going down in the train next day Dion thought about it a great deal. With his return the old longing, almost an old need it was, to give Rosamund whatever she wanted, or cared at all for, had come to him again. But something fought it, the new longing to dominate and the wish to give Rosamund chances. Besides, how could they possibly live on in Welsley? He could not spend from three to four hours every day in the train. He might get away from London on Fridays and stay at Welsley every week till Monday morning, but that would mean living alone in Little Market Street for four days in the week. If he seemed willing to do that, would Rosamund consent to it?

Another test! He remembered his test before the war.

Mrs. Clarke’s allusion to Welsley had left a rather strong impression upon him. He did not know whether he had a great respect for her, but he knew that he had a great respect for her mind. Like Beattie, but in a very different way, she meant a great deal. He no longer doubted that she liked him very much, though why he honestly did not know. When with her he felt strongly that he was not an interesting man. Dumeny was a beast, he felt sure, but he also felt sure that Dumeny was an interesting man.

Mrs. Clarke’s wild mind attracted something in him. Through her eyes he was able to see the tameness of Welsley, a dear tameness, safe, cozy, full of a very English charm and touched with ancient beauty, but still—-! Would the petals of Rosamund ever curl up and go brown at the edges from living at Welsley? No, he could not imagine that ever happening. A dried-up mind she could never have.

He would not see Welsley through the eyes of Mrs. Clarke.

Nevertheless when he got out of the train at Welsley Station, and saw Robin’s pal, the Archdeacon, getting out too, and a couple of minor canons, who had come up for the evening papers or something, greeting him with an ecclesiastical heartiness mingled with just a whiff of professional deference, Mrs. Clarke’s verdict of “stifling” recurred to his mind.

Stamboul and Welsley–Mrs. Clarke and Rosamund!

The dual comparison made him at once see the truth. Stamboul and Welsley were beautiful; each possessed an enticing quality; but the one enticed by its grandiose mystery, by its sharp contrasts of marble stability and matchboard frailty, by its melancholy silences and spaces, by its obscure peace and its dangerous passion; the other by its delightful simplicity, its noble homeliness, its dignity and charm of an old faith and a smiling unworldliness, its harmonies of gray and of green, of stone and verdure, its serenity lifted skywards by many bells.

But at the heart of Stamboul the dust lay thick, and there was dew at the heart of Welsley.

Perhaps green Elis, with its sheep-bells, the eternal voices of its pine trees, the celestial benignity of its Hermes, was more to be desired than either Stamboul or Welsley. But for the moment Welsley was very desirable.

Dion gave his bag to an “outside porter,” and walked to the Precincts with the Archdeacon.

He found Rosamund uplifted and triumphant; Mr. Thrush had finally captivated the Dean, and had been given the “situation” which Rosamund had desired for him. Her joy was almost ebullient. She could talk of nothing else. Mr. Thrush was to be installed on the following Sunday.

“Installed?” said Dion. “Is the Archbishop coming down to conduct the ceremony?”

“No, no! What I mean is that Mr. Thrush will walk in the procession for the first time. Oh, I shall be so nervous! If only he carries the wand as I’ve taught him! I don’t know what Mr. Thrush would do without me. He seems to depend on me for everything now, poor old gentleman.”

“I’m afraid he’ll miss you dreadfully,” said Dion.

“Miss me? When?”

Before he could answer she said quickly:

“Oh, by the way, Dion, while you’ve been away I’ve done something for you.”

“What is it, Rose?”

She was looking gaily mysterious, and almost cunning, but in a delightful way.

“I don’t want you to be bored during your holiday.”

“Bored! Don’t you realize that this is an earthly Paradise for me? You and Robin and peace after South Africa.”

She looked very shrewd.

“That’s all very well, but a man, especially a soldier man, wants sport.”

She laid a strong and happy emphasis on the last word, and then she disclosed the secret. A brother of “the cold douche,” a gentleman farmer who had land some four miles from Welsley, and who was “a great friend” of Rosamund’s–she had met him three times at the organist’s house–hearing of Dion’s arrival, had written to say that he had some partridges which needed “keeping down.” He himself was “laid by” with a bad leg, but he would be very glad if Mr. Leith would “take his chance among the birds” any day, or days, he liked while at Welsley. The gentleman farmer could not offer much, just the ground, most of it stubble, and a decent lot of birds.

“Dear Mrs. Dickinson knew through me how fond of shooting you are. We owe it all to her,” said Rosamund, in conclusion. “I’ve written to thank him, and to say how glad you’ll be.”

“But you must come too,” he said. “You shot in Greece, you must shoot again here.”

“I don’t think I will here,” said Rosamund, confidentially and rather mysteriously.

“Why not?”

“Well, I don’t think the Dean would approve of it. And he’s been so bricky about Mr. Thrush that I shouldn’t like to hurt him.”

“I can’t go alone. I shall take Robin then.”

He spoke half-laughingly.

“Robin?”

“Yes, why not? I’m sure he’d love to go.”

“Of course he would. But how could his little legs walk over stubble? He’s not four years old yet.”

“Robin’s got to be Doric. He can’t begin too soon.”

She smiled, then looked at him seriously.

“Dion, do you know that you’ve come back much more Doric than you were when you went out?”

“Have I, Rose?”

“Much more.”

“Do you like me less because of that?”

She blushed faintly.

“No,” she said.

That faint blush made Dion’s heart bound, he scarcely knew why. But he only said soberly:

“I’m glad of that. And now about Robin. You’re right. He can’t walk over stubble with me, but why shouldn’t I stick him on a pony?”

“Oh–a pony! How he would love it!”

“Can’t I get hold of one?”

“But Job Crickendon’s got one!”

“Job Crick– . . . ?”

“Mrs. Dickinson’s brother who’s lending you the partridges. Don’t say another word, Dion. I’ll arrange it all. Robin will be in the seventh heaven.”

“And you must come with us.”

Rosamund was about to speak quickly. Dion saw that. Her eyes shone; she opened her lips. But something, some sudden thought, stopped her. After a minute she said quietly:

“We’ll see.”

And she gave Dion a curious, tender look which he did not quite understand. Surely she was keeping some delicate secret from him, one of those dear secrets which perhaps will never be told, but which are sometimes happily guessed.

Dion could not help seeing that Rosamund eagerly wanted to attach him to Welsley. He felt that she had not honestly and fully faced the prospect of returning to live in London. Her plan–he saw it plainly; the partridge shooting was part of it–was to make Welsley so delightful to him that he would not want to give up the home at Little Cloisters. What was to be done? He disliked, he almost hated, the thought that his return would necessitate an unpleasant change in Rosamund’s life. Yet something within him told him that he ought to be firm. He was obliged to live in London, and therefore it was only natural and right that Rosamund and Robin should live in London too. After this long separation he ought not to have to face a semi- bachelor life; three days of the week at Little Cloisters and four days alone in Little Market Street. He must put Rosamund to the test. That faint blush, which he would not soon forget, made him hope that she would come out of the test triumphantly.

If she did, how splendid it would be. His heart yearned at the thought of a Rosamund submissive to his wish, unselfish out of the depth of– dared he think of it as a new growth of love within her, tending towards a great flowering which would bring a glory into two lives? But if she yielded at once to his wish, without a word of regret, if she took the speedy return to London quite simply as a matter of course, he would feel almost irresistibly inclined to take her in his arms and to say, “No, you shall stay on at Little Cloisters. We’ll manage somehow.” Perhaps he could stand three hours daily in the train. He could read the papers. A man must do that. As well do it in the train as in an arm-chair at home.

But at any rate he would put her to the test. On that he was resolved.

At dinner that night Rosamund told him she had already written to “dear, kind Job Crickendon” about the pony.

“You might shoot on Monday,” she said.

“Right you are. When we hear about the pony we’ll tell Robin.”

“Yes. Not till it’s all delightfully settled. Robin on horseback!”

Her eyes shone.

“I can see him already with a gun in his hand old enough to shoot with you,” she added. “We must bring him up to be a thorough little sportsman; like that Greek boy Dirmikis.”

They talked about Robin’s future till dinner was over. Dion loved their talk, but he could not help seeing that in Rosamund’s forecast town life held no place at all. In everything, or in almost everything, that she said the country held pride of place. There was not one word about Jenkins’s gymnasium, or the Open Air Club with its swimming facilities, or riding in the Park, or fencing at Bernardi’s. Rosamund seemed tacitly to assume that everything which was Doric was connected with country life.

On the following morning she hastened out “to buy riding gaiters for Robin.” She had his “size” with her.

Not a word had been said about Dion’s visit to Mrs. Clarke. Rosamund’s lack of all curiosity in regard to Mrs. Clarke and himself gave him the measure of her faith in him. Few women, he thought, would be able to trust a man so completely. And this trust was the more remarkable because he felt positive that Rosamund distrusted Mrs. Clarke. She had never said so, but he considered that by her conduct she had proved her distrust.

It was a great virtue in Rosamund, that power she had to trust where trust was deserved.

Dear, kind Job Crickendon wrote that Master Robin could ride his pony, Jane, and welcome. The letter arrived on Saturday. Rosamund read it aloud to Dion.

“The people about here are the dearest people I’ve ever come across,” she said. “So different from people in London.”

“Why, what’s the matter with people in London?” asked Dion.

“Oh, I don’t know; they’re more artificial. They think so much about clothes, and hats, and the way their hair’s done.”

“The men!”

“I was talking of the women.”

“But is Job Crickendon a woman?”

“Don’t be absurd, Dion. You know what I mean. The country brings out the best that is in people.”

“That’s a bad look out for me, who’ve lived nearly all my life in London.”

“You would be yourself anywhere. Now about Robin. I’ve got the gaiters. They’re not exactly riding gaiters–they don’t make them for such little boys–but they’ll do beautifully. But I don’t want to tell Robin till Monday morning. You see he’s got a very exciting day before him to-morrow, and I think to know about Monday on top of it might be almost too much for him.”

“But what excitement is there to-morrow?”

She looked at him reproachfully.

“Mr. Thrush!”

“Oh, of course. And is Robin coming to the Cathedral?”

“Yes, for once. It’s a terribly long service for a child, but Robin would break his heart if he didn’t see Mr. Thrush walk in the procession for the first time.”

“Then we won’t tell him till Monday morning. I’ll hire a dog-cart and we can all drive out together.”

Again she gave him the tender look, but she did not then explain what it meant.

That evening they dined with Canon Wilton, who had a surprise in store for them. Esme Darlington had come down to stay with him over Sunday, and to have a glimpse of his dear young friends in Little Cloisters.

The dinner was a delightful one. Mr. Darlington was benignly talkative and full of kindly gossip; Canon Wilton almost beamed upon his guests; after dinner Rosamund sang song after song while the three men listened and looked. She sang her very best for them, and when she was winding a lace shawl about her hair preparatory to the little walk home, Canon Wilton thanked her in a way that brought the blood to her cheeks.

“You’ve made me very happy to-night,” he said finally. And his strong bass voice was softer than usual.

“I’m glad.”

“Not only by your singing,” he added.

She looked at him inquiringly. His eyes had gone to Dion.

“Not only by that.”

And then he spoke almost in a murmur to her.

“He’s come back worth it,” he said. “Good night. God bless you both.”

The following day was made memorable by the “installation” of Mr. Thrush as a verger of Welsley Cathedral.

The Cathedral was not specially crowded for the occasion, but there was a very fair congregation when Rosamund, Dion and Robin (in a sailor suit with wide blue trousers) walked in together through the archway in the rood-screen. One of the old established vergers, a lordly person with a “presence” and the air of a high dignitary, met them as they stepped into the choir, and wanted to put them into stalls; but Rosamund begged for seats in a pew just beyond the lectern, facing the doorway by which the procession came into the choir.

“Robin would be swallowed up in a stall,” she whispered to Dion.

And they both looked down at the little chap tenderly, and met his blue eyes turned confidingly, yet almost anxiously too, up to them. He was wondering about all this whispering with the verger, and hoping that nothing had happened to Mr. Thrush.

They found perfect seats in a pew just beyond the deanery stalls. Far up in the distance above them one bell, the five minutes’ bell, was chiming. Its voice recalled to Rosamund the “ping-ping” of the bell of St. Mary’s Church which had welcomed her in the fog. How much had happened since then! Robin was nestling against her. He sat between her and his father, and was holding his father’s hand. By dividing Dion from her he united her with Dion. She thought of the mystery of the Trinity, and then of their mystery, the mystery of father, mother and child. To-day she felt very happy, and happy in an unusual way. In her happiness she know that, in a sort of under way, she had almost dreaded Dion’s return. She had been so peacefully content, so truly at rest and deeply serene in the life at Welsley with Robin. In her own heart she could not deny that she had loved having her Robin all to herself; and she had loved, too, the long hours of solitude during which, in day-dreams, she had lived the religious life. A great peace had enveloped those months at Welsley. In them she had mysteriously grown into a closer relation with her little son. She had often felt in those months that this mysterious nearness could never have become quite what it had become to her unless she had been left alone with Robin. It was their solitude which had enabled her to concentrate wholly on Robin, and it was surely this exclusive concentration on Robin which had drawn him so very close to her. All the springs of his love had flowed towards her.

She had been just a wee bit frightened about Dion’s return.

And that was why at this moment, when the five minutes’ bell was ringing, she felt so happy. For Dion’s return had not made any difference; or, if it had made a difference, she did not actively regret it. The child’s new adoration of his father had made her care more for Dion, and even more for Robin; for she felt that Robin was unconsciously loving in his father a strength and a nobility which were new in Dion, which had been born far away across the sea. War destroys, and all the time war is destroying it is creating. Robin was holding a little bit of what the South African War had created as he held his father’s hand. For are not the profound truths of the soul conveyed through all its temple?

“Happiness is a mystery,” thought Rosamund.

And then she silently thanked God that this mystery was within herself, and that she felt it in Robin and in Dion.

She looked down at her little son, and as she met his soft and yet ardent eyes,–full of innocent anxiety, and almost of awe, about Mr. Thrush,–she blessed the day when she had decided to marry Dion, when she had renounced certain dreams, when she had taken the advice of the man who was now her friend and had resolved to tread that path of life in which she could have a companion.

Her companion had given her another companion. In the old gray Cathedral, full of the silent voices of men who had prayed and been gathered to their rest long since, Rosamund looked down the way of happiness, and she could not see its end.

The five minutes’ bell stopped and Robin sat up very straight in the pew. The Bishop’s wife proceeded to her stall with a friend. Robin stared reverently, alert for the tribute to Mr. Thrush. Miss Piper glided in sideways, holding her head down as if she were searching for a dropped pin on the pavement. She, too, was an acquaintance of Robin’s, and he whispered to his mother:

“Miss Piper’s come to see Mr. Thrush.”

“Yes, darling.”

What a darling he was in his anxiety for his old friend! She looked at the freckles on the bridge of his little nose and longed to kiss them. This was without doubt the most wonderful day in Robin’s life so far. She looked ahead and saw how many wonderful days for Robin! And over his fair hair she glanced at Dion, and she felt Dion’s thought hand in hand with hers.

A long sigh came from the organ, and then Mr. Dickinson was at work preluding Mr. Thrush. Distant steps sounded on the pavement behind the choir screen coming from some hidden place at the east end of the Cathedral. The congregation stood up. All this, in Robin’s mind, was for Mr. Thrush. Still holding his father’s hand tightly he joined in the congregation’s movement. The solemnly pacing steps drew nearer. Robin felt very small, and the pew seemed very deep to him now that he was standing up. There was a fat red footstool by his left leg. He peeped at his father and whispered:

“May I, Fa?”

Dion bent down, took him under the arms and lifted him gently on to the footstool just as the vergers appeared with their wands, walking nobly at the head of the procession.

At Welsley the ordinary vergers did not march up the choir to the return stalls, but divided and formed up in two lines at the entrance, making a dignified avenue down which the choristers and the clergy passed with calm insouciance into the full view of the waiting congregation. Only two picked men, with wands of silver, preceded the dignitaries to their massive stalls. Mr. Thrush was–though not in Robin’s eyes–an ordinary verger. He would not therefore penetrate into the choir. But, mercifully, he with one other had been placed in the forefront of the procession. He led the way, and Robin and his parents had a full and satisfying view of him as the procession curved round and made for the screen. In his dark and flowing robe he came on majestical, holding his wand quite perfectly, and looking not merely self-possessed but–as Rosamund afterwards put it–“almost uplifted.”

Robin began to breathe hard as he gazed. From Mr. Thrush’s shoulders the robe swung with his lordly movements. He reached the entrance. It seemed as if nothing could prevent him from floating on, in all the pride and dignity of his new office, to the very steps of the Dean’s stall. But discipline held him. He stood aside; he came to rest with his wand before him; he let the procession pass by, and then, almost mystically, he evaporated with his brother vergers.

Rosamund sent a quick look to Dion, a look of subdued and yet bright triumph. Then she glanced down at Robin. She had been scarcely less excited, less strung up, than he. But she had seen the fruit of her rehearsals and now she was satisfied. Robin, she saw, was more than satisfied. His eyes were round with the glory of it all.

That was the happiest Sunday Dion had ever spent, and it was fated to close in a happiness welling up out of the very deeps of the heart.

Canon Wilton and Esme Darlington came in to tea, and Mr. Thrush was entertained at a sumptuous repast in the nursery “between the services.” Robin presided at it with anxious rapture, being now just a little in awe of his faithful old friend. His nurse, who approved of Mr. Thrush, and was much impressed by the fact that after two interviews with the Dean he had been appointed to a post in the Cathedral, sat down to it too; and Rosamund and Dion looked in to congratulate Mr. Thrush, and to tell him how delighted they were with his bearing in the procession and his delicately adroit manipulation of his wand. Mr. Thrush received their earnest congratulations with the quiet dignity of one who felt that they did not spring from exaggeration of sentiment. Like all great artists he knew when he had done well. But when Rosamund and Dion were about to retire, and to leave him with Robin and the nurse to the tea and well-buttered toast, he suddenly emerged into an emotion which did him credit.

“Madame!” He said to Rosamund, in a rather hoarse and tremulous voice.

“Now don’t trouble to get up again, dear Mr. Thrush. Yes, what is it?”

Mr. Thrush looked down steadily at the “round” which glistened on his plate. Something fell upon it.

“Oh, Mr. Thrush—-!” began Robin, and paused in dismay, looking up at his mother.

“Madame,” said Mr. Thrush again, still looking at the “round,” “I haven’t felt as I do now since I stood behind my counter just off Hanover Square, respected. Yes,” he said, and his old voice quavered upwards, gaining in strength, “respected by all who knew me. /She/ was with me then, and now she isn’t. But I feel–I feel–I’m respected again.”

Something else fell upon the toast.

“And it’s all your doing, madam. I–all I can say is that I–all I can say—-” His voice failed.

Rosamund put her hand on his shoulder.

“There, Mr. Thrush, there! I know, I know just how it is.”

“Madame,” said Mr. Thrush, with quavering emphasis, “one can depend upon you, a man can depend upon you. What you undertake you carry through, even if it’s only the putting on his feet of–of–I never thought to be a verger, never. I never could have looked up to such a thing but for you. But Mr. Dean he said to me, ‘Mr. Thrush, when Mrs. Leith speaks up for a man, even an archbishop has to listen.'”

“Thank you, Mr. Thrush. Robin, give Mr. Thrush the brown sugar. He always likes brown sugar in his tea.”

“It’s more nourishing, madam,” said Mr. Thrush, with a sudden change from emotion to quiet self-confidence. “It does more work for the stomach. A chemist knows.”

“Dear old man!” said Rosamund, when she and Dion were outside in the passage. “To say all that before nurse–it was truly generous.”

And she frankly wiped her eyes. A moment later she added:

“I pray he doesn’t fall back into his little failing!”

She looked at Dion interrogatively. He looked at her, understanding, he believed, the inquiry in her eyes. Before he could say anything the kind and careful voice of Mr. Darlington was heard below, asking:

“Is Mrs. Dion Leith at home?”

Mr. Darlington was delighted with Little Cloisters. He said it had a “flavor which was quite unique,” and was so enthusiastic that Rosamund became almost excited. Dion saw that she counted Mr. Darlington as an ally. When Mr. Darlington’s praises sounded she could not refrain from glancing at her husband, and when at length their guests got up to go “with great reluctance,” she begged them to come and dine on the following night.

Mr. Darlington raised his ragged eyebrows and looked at Canon Wilton.

“I’m by way of going back to town to-morrow afternoon,” he began tentatively.

“Stay another night and let us accept,” said Canon Wilton heartily.

“But I’m dining with dear Lavinia Berkhamstead, one of my oldest friends. It’s not a set dinner, but I should hardly like–“

“For once!” pleaded Rosamund.

Mr. Darlington wavered. He looked round the room and then at Rosamund and Dion.

“It’s most attractive here,” he murmured, “and Lady Berkhamstead lives in the Cromwell Road, at the far end. I wonder–“

“It’s settled!” Rosamund exclaimed. “Dinner at half-past seven. We keep early hours here, and Dion goes shooting to-morrow with Robin and may get sleepy towards ten o’clock.”

After explanations about Robin, Mr. Darlington gracefully yielded. He would wire to dear Lavinia Berkhamstead and explain matters.

As he and Canon Wilton walked back to the Canon’s house he said;

“What dear people those are!”

“Yes, indeed,” said the Canon.

“Happiness has brought out the very best in them both. Leith is a fine young fellow, and she, of course, is unique, a piece of radiance, as her beautiful mother was. It does one good to see such a happy household.”

He gently glowed, and presently added:

“You and I, dear Canon, have missed something.”

After a moment the Canon’s strong voice came gravely out of the winter darkness:

“You think great happiness the noblest education?”

Mr. Darlington began to pull his beard.

“You mean, my dear Wilton—-?”

“Do you think the education of happiness is the education most likely to bring out the greatest possibilities of the soul?”

This was the sort of very definite question that Mr. Darlington preferred to get away from if possible, and he was just preparing to “hedge,” when, fortunately, they ran into the Dean, and the conversation deviated to a discussion concerning the effect the pursuit of scientific research was likely to have upon religious belief.

After supper that evening–supper instead of dinner on Sundays was the general rule in Welsley–Dion lit his pipe. It had been a very happy day. He wished the happiness to last till sleep came to Rosamund and to him; nevertheless he was resolved to take a risk, and to take it now before they went to bed, while they still had two quiet hours before them. He looked at Rosamund and reluctance surged up in him, but he beat it back. Something told him that he had been allowed to come back from South Africa in order that he might build firm foundations. The perfect family life must be set upon rock. He meant to get through to the rock if possible. Rosamund and he were beginning again. Now surely was the day of salvation if he played the man, the man instead of merely the lover.

“This has been one of the happiest days of my life,” he said.

He was standing by the fire. Rosamund was sitting on a low chair doing some embroidery. Gold thread gleamed against a rough cream-colored ground in her capable hands.

“I’m so thankful you like Welsley,” she said.

“Won’t you hate leaving Welsley?” he asked.

Rosamund went on quietly working for a moment. Perhaps she bent a little lower over the embroidery.

“I’ve made a great many friends here,” she said at length, “and—-“

She paused.

“Yes–do tell me, Rose.”

“There’s something here that I care for very much.”

“Is it the atmosphere of religion? There’s a great deal here that suggests the religious life.”

“Yes; it’s what I care for.”

“I was almost afraid of meeting you here when I came back, Rose. I remembered what you had once told me, that you had had a great longing to enter the religious life. I was half afraid that, living here all alone with Robin, you might have become–I don’t know exactly how to put it–become cloistral. I didn’t want to find you a sort of nun when I came back.”

He spoke with a gentle lightness.

“It might have been so, mightn’t it?”

She remembered her dreams in the walled-in garden almost guiltily.

“No,” she said steadily–and as she spoke she felt as if she were firmly putting those dreams behind her forever. “Motherhood changes a woman more than men can ever know.”

“I–I know it’s all right. Then you won’t hate me for taking you both back to Little Market Street in a few days?”

He saw the color deepen in her face. For an instant she went on working. Then she put the work down, sat back in the low chair, and looked up at him.

“No, of course we must go back. And I was very happy in Little Market Street.”

And then quickly, before he could say anything, she began to recall the pleasant details of their life in Westminster, dwelling upon every household joy, and everything that though “Londony” had been delightful. Having conquered, with an effort which had cost her more than even Dion knew, a terrible reluctance she gave herself to her own generous impulse with enthusiasm. Rosamund could not do things by halves. She might obstinately refrain from treading a path, but if once she had set her feet on it she hurried eagerly along it. Something to-night had made her decide on treading the path of unselfishness, of generosity. When Dion lit his pipe she had not known she was going to tread it. It seemed to her almost as if she had found herself upon the path without knowing how she had got there. Now without hesitation she went forward.

“It was delightful in Westminster,” she concluded, “and it will be delightful there again.”

“And all your friends here? And Mr. Thrush?”

“I don’t know what Mr. Thrush will do,” she said, with a change to deep gravity.

The two lines showed in her pure forehead.

“I’m so afraid that without me he will fall back. But perhaps I can run down now and then just for the day to keep him up to his promise, poor dear old man.”

“And your friends?”

“Oh, well–of course I shall miss them. But I suppose there is always something to miss. There must be a crumpled rose leaf. I am far more fortunate than almost any woman I know.”

Dion put down his pipe.

“I simply can’t do it,” he said.

“What?”

“Take you away from here. It seems your right place. You love it; Robin loves it. What’s to be done? Shall I run up and down?”

“You can’t. It’s too far.”

“I have to read the papers somewhere. Why not in the train?”

“Three hours or more! It’s impossible. If only Welsley were nearer London! But, then, it wouldn’t be Welsley.”

“Now I know you’ll go I can’t take you away.”

“Did you–what did you think I should do?”

“How could I tell?”

He sat down and took her hands.

“Rose, you’ve made this the happiest day of my life.”

“Do you mean because—-?”

She stopped. Her face became very grave, almost severe. She looked at him, but he felt that she was really looking inward upon herself. When at last he let go her hands she said:

“Dion, you are very different from what you were when you went to the war. If I seem different, too, it’s because of that, I think.”

“War changes women, perhaps, as well as men,” he said tenderly.

They sat by the fire in the quiet old room and talked of the future and of all the stages of Robin: as schoolboy, as youth, as budding undergraduate, as man.

“Perhaps he’ll be a soldier-man as his father has been,” said Rosamund.

“Do you wish it?”

She looked at him steadily for a moment. Then she said:

“Yes, if it helps him as I think it has helped you. I expect when men go to fight for their country they go, perhaps without knowing it, to fight just for themselves.”

“I believe everything we do for others, without any thought of ourselves, we do for ourselves,” he said, very seriously.

“Altruism! But then I ought to live in London for you, and you in Welsley for me.”

They both laughed. Nothing had been absolutely decided; and yet it seemed as if through that laughter a decision had been reached about everything really important.

CHAPTER IX

A dogcart from Harrington’s had been ordered to be “round” the next day at noon. Dion had decided against a long day’s shooting on Robin’s account. He must not tire the little chap. In truth it would be impossible to take the shooting seriously, with Robin there all the time, clinging on to Jane and having to be looked after.

“It’s going to be Robin’s day,” Dion said the next morning. “When are you going to tell him?”

“Directly after breakfast. By the way, Dion,”–she spoke carelessly, and was opening a letter while she spoke,–“I’m not coming.”

“Oh, but you must!”

“No; I’ll stay quietly here. I have lots of things to do.”

“But Robin’s first day as a sportsman!”

“He isn’t going to shoot,” she said with a mother’s smile.

“Why won’t you come? You’ve got some very special reason.”

“Perhaps I have, but I’m not going to tell it. Women aren’t wanted everywhere. Sometimes a couple of men like to be alone.”

“Robin’s a man now?”

“Yes, a little man. I do hope the gaiters will fit him. I haven’t dared to try them on yet. And I’ve got him the dearest little whip you ever saw.”

“Jane will have to look to her paces. I’m sorry you’re not coming, Rose.”

But he did not try to persuade her. He believed that she had a very sweet reason behind her abstention. She had had Robin all to herself for many months; perhaps she thought the father ought to have his turn now, perhaps to-day she was handing over her little son to his father for the education which always comes from a man. Her sudden unselfishness–Dion believed it was that–touched him to the heart. But it made him long to do something, many things, for her.

“I’m determined that you and Welsley shan’t part from each other forever,” he said. “We’ll hit on some compromise. This house is on our hands, anyhow, till the spring.”

“Perhaps we could sublet it,” said Rosamund, trying to speak with brisk cheerfulness.

“We’ll talk it over again to-night.”

“And now for Robin’s gaiters!”

They fitted perfectly; “miraculously” was Rosamund’s word for the way they fitted.

“His legs might a-been poured into them almost, a-dear,” was nurse’s admirably descriptive comment on the general effect produced.

Robin looked at his legs with deep solemnity. When the great project for this day of days had been broken to him he had fallen upon awe. His prattling ardors had subsided, stilled by a greater joy than any that had called them forth in his complex past of a child. Now he gazed at his legs, which were stretched out at right angles to his body on a nursery chair, as if they were not his. Then he looked up at his mother, his father, nurse; then once more down at his legs. His eyes were inquiring. They seemed to say, “Can it be?”

“Bless him! He can’t hardly believe in it!” muttered nurse. “And no wonder.”

A small sigh came from Robin. To his father and mother it came like the whisper of happiness, that good fairy which men cannot quite get rid of, try as they may. Two small hands went down to the little gaiters and felt them carefully. Then Robin looked up again, this time at his father, and smiled. Instinctively he connected his father with these wonderful appurtenances, although his mother had bought them and put them on him. With that smile he gave the day to his father, and Dion took it with just a glance at Rosamund–a glance which deprecated and which accepted.

When the dogcart was announced by Annie, with beaming eyes, Dion got his gun, Robin received his whip,–a miniature hunting-crop with a horn handle,–his cap was pulled down firmly on his head by Rosamund, and they set forth to the Green Court. Here they found Harrington’s most fiery horse harnessed to quite a sporting dogcart and doing his very best to champ his bit. From the ground Robin looked up at him with solemn eyes. The occasion was almost too great. His father with a gun, his own legs in gaiters, the whip which he felt in his hand, the packet of sandwiches thrust tenderly by nurse into the pocket of his little covert coat, and now this glorious animal and this high and unusual carriage gleaming with light-colored wood between its immense wheels! There was almost too much of meaning, too much of suggestion in it all. No words came to him. He could only feel and gaze.

A stableman with hard lips stood sentinel in front of the fiery horse, and put up a red forefinger on the right side of his temple to give them greeting.

“I’ll get in first,” said Dion to Rosamund, “and then you can hand me up Robin.”

He put in his gun and took the reins, while Robin instinctively extended his arms so that his mother could take hold of him under them.

“Up we go!” cried Dion.

And he mounted lightly to the high seat.

“Now, Robin!”

Rosamund took hold of Robin, whose short arms were still solemnly outstretched. She was about to lift him into the cart, but, overcome by an irresistible impulse, she paused, put one arm under the little legs in the gaiters, drew him to her and pressed her lips on the freckled bridge of his tiny nose.

“You darling!” she whispered, so that only he could hear. “I love you in your gaiters better than I ever loved you before.” Then she handed him up to his father as if he were a dear little parcel.

“That’s it,” said Dion. “Put your arm round here, boy. Hold on tight! Let him go!”

The hard-lipped man stood to one side and the horse–well, moved. Robin gazed down at his mother with the faint hint of an almost shy smile, Dion saluted her with his whip, and the glorious day was fairly begun. Traveling with a sort of rakish deliberation the dogcart skirted the velvet lawn of the Green Court and disappeared from sight beneath the ancient archway.

Rosamund sighed as she turned to walk back to Little Cloisters. She had made a real sacrifice that day in giving up Robin to his father and staying at home. Secretly she had longed to go with her “men-folk” upon the great expedition, to be present at Robin’s initiation into the Doric life. But something very dear in Dion had prompted her to be unselfish. Dion was certainly much more impressive to her since his return from the war. Even the dear things in him meant more. There seemed to be more muscle in them than there had been when he went away.

“Even our virtues can be weak or strong, I suppose,” Rosamund thought, as she turned into the walled garden which she loved so much, and there followed the thought:

“I wonder which mine are.”

She meant to spend that day in saying good-by to Welsley. Dion had said they would talk things over again that night; probably he would be ready to fall in with any desire of hers, but she felt almost sure that she would not tell him how much she wished to stay on at Little Cloisters.

An obscure feeling had come to her that perhaps it was not quite safe for her to remain any longer here in the arms of the Precincts. Looking backward to that which has been deliberately renounced is surely an act of weakness.

Even the imaginative effort to live a life that has been put aside is a feeble concession to an inclination at least partially morbid. Rosamund was in fact a mother, and yet here in Welsley, she had, as it were, sometimes played at being one of those “Sisters” who are content to be brides of heaven and mothers of the poor. For her own sake it was doubtless best to renounce Welsley at once. The new meaning of Dion would help her to do that bravely. He had often been unselfish for her; she would try to counter his unselfishness with hers.

When she was in the house again she had a colloquy with the cook about the dinner for that evening. As Esme Darlington had given up an engagement in London to come to Little Cloisters, her dinner must be something special. She told the cook so in her cordial, almost confidential, way, and they “put their heads together” and devised a menu full of attractions. That done she had the day to herself. Dion and Robin would come home some time in the afternoon, and they were all going to have tea together up in the nursery. It might be at half- past four, it might be at half-past five. Till then she was free.

For a moment she thought of going to see some of her friends, of telling Mrs. Dickinson and other adherents of hers that her days in Welsley were numbered. But a reluctance seized her. She felt a desire to be alone. What if instead of saying good-by to Welsley, she said good-by to her dreams in Welsley? She summoned Annie and told her not to let any one in.

“I’m going to spend a quiet day, Annie,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Annie, with an air of intelligent comprehension.

“Though what else any one ever does in old Welsley I’m sure I couldn’t say,” she afterwards remarked to the cook.

“You’re a cockney at ‘eart, Annie,” repeated that functionary. “The country says nothing to you. You want the parks, that’s what you want.”

“Well, I was brought up in ’em, as you may say,” said Annie, whose father had been a park-keeper, and whose mother and grandmother were natives of Westbourne Grove.

By a quiet day Rosamund meant a day lived through in absolute solitude, a day of meditation in the cloistered garden. She would not have any lunch. Then she would have a better appetite for the nursery tea at which Robin would relate to her all the doings of the greatest day of his life. Precious, precious Robin!

She went down into the garden.

It was a mistily bright day of November. The sun shone through a delicate veil. The air was cold but not sharp. Neither autumn nor winter ruled. It seemed like a day which had slipped into an interstice between two seasons, a day that was somehow rare and exceptional, holding a faint stillness that was strange. There was in it something of the far away. If a fairy day can be cold, it was like a fairy day. On such a day one treads lightly and softly and at moments feels almost as if out of the body.

Lightly and softly Rosamund went to and fro between the high and mossy walls of the garden, keeping to the straight paths. When the bells chimed in the tower of the Cathedral they sounded much farther away than usual; the song of the thrush somewhere in the elder bush near the garden door was curiously remote; the caw-caw of the rooks dropped down as if from an immeasurable distance. Through the mist the sunshine filtered, lightly pale and pure, a sensitive sunshine which would surely not stay very long in Rosamund’s garden.

A sort of thin stillness had fallen upon the world.

And so another chapter of life was closing, the happy chapter of Welsley!

Something of sadness accompanied Rosamund along the straight paths, the delicate melancholy which attends the farewells of one who has regret but who has hope.

With the new Dion and with the old Robin, the Robin blessedly unchanged, she could not be really unhappy. Yet it was sad to give up the dear garden and all the dreams which belonged to it. Far down in her–she knew it–there was certainly a recluse. She could see the black figure, the sheltered face, the eyes looking down, the praying hands. It would have been very natural to her long ago to seek God in the way of the recluse. But not now!

Hermes and the child came before her. In the stillness of Welsley it was as if she heard the green stillness of Elis. She was quite alone in that inner room where stood the messenger with the wings on his sandals. Dion had stayed outside. He had been unselfish that day as to-day she had been unselfish. For she had wanted to go with the little gaiters. She could see the smiling look of eternity upon the face of the messenger. He had no fear for the child. He had mounted on winged feet to the region where no fear is. How his benign and eternal calm had sunk into Rosamund’s soul that day in Elis. Far off she had seen through the frame of the Museum doorway a bit of the valley in which the Hermes had dwelt, and stretching across it a branch of wild olive. She had looked at it and had thought of the victor’s Crown, a crown which had even been won by a boy at the games.

Already then a fore-knowledge of Robin had been in her.

She had gazed at the branch and loved it. Certainly she had been dreaming, as she had afterwards told Dion, and in her dream had been Hermes and the child, and surely another child for whose future the messenger would not fear. The branch of wild olive had, perhaps, entered into the dream. Into a crown she had wound it to set upon the little fair head. And that was why she had suffered, had really suffered, when a cruel hand had come into Elis and had torn down the wild olive branch. Dion’s hand!

That action had been like a murder. She remembered even now her feeling of anger and distress. She had been startled. She had been ruthlessly torn away from the exquisite calm in which, with the Hermes, she had been celestially dreaming. Dion had torn her away, Dion who loved her so much.

Why had he done it? Even now she did not know.

He had taken her out of that dream, and now he was going to take her away from Welsley.

The misty brightness was already fading from the garden; the song of the thrush was no longer audible: he had flown away from the elder bush and from Rosamund. The coldness and silence of the day seemed to deepen about her. Welsley was fading out of her life. She felt that. She was going to begin again. But as she had carried Elis with her when she left it, and the dear tombs and temples of Greece, when she had bidden good-by to the bare and beautiful land whose winds and whose waters are not as the winds and the waters of any other region, so she would carry away with her Welsley, this garden with its seclusion, its old religious atmosphere, the music of the chimes, even the thrush’s song from the elder bush. “Farewell!” She must say that. But she had her precious possession. Another page of the book of life would be turned. That was all.

That was all? She sighed. A painful sense of the impermanence of the things of this world came suddenly upon her. Like running water life was slipping by; its joys, the shining bubbles poised upon the surface, drifted into the distance and–how quickly!–were out of reach.

Perhaps the great attraction, the lure of the religious life, was the sense felt by those who led it of having a close grip upon that which was permanent. The joys of the world–even the natural, healthy, allowed joys–were shut out, but there was the great compensation, companionship with that to which no “farewell” would ever have to be said, with that to which death only brought the human being nearer.

Rosamund stopped in her walk, and looked up at the great Cathedral which towered above the wall of the garden. She had been pacing to and fro for a long time. She did not feel tired, but she was beset by an unaccustomed sensation of weariness, mental and spiritual rather than physical.

After a minute she went into the house, found a rug and a book, came back into the garden, and sat down on a bench in a corner hidden from observation. This bench was close to the wall which divided the garden from the “Dark Entry.” It was separated from the lawn and the view of the house by a belt of shrubs. Rosamund was fond of this nook and had very often sat in it, sometimes alone, sometimes with Robin. She had told the maids never to look for her there; if any visitor came and she was not seen in that part of the garden which was commanded by the windows of the house, they were to conclude that she was “out.” Here, then, she was quite safe, and could turn the last page of the chapter of Welsley in her book of life.

She wrapped herself up in the big and heavy rug. The sun was gone, the mist had become slightly more dense, the air was colder.

Presently Dion and Robin would come back; there would be tea in the warm old-fashioned nursery, gay talk, the telling of wonderful deeds.

If only Robin did not fall off Jane! But Dion would take care of that. Dion certainly loved Robin very much. The bond between father and son had evidently been strengthened by the intervention of the war, which had broken off their intercourse for a time, and given Robin a father changed by contact with hard realities.

For a few minutes in imagination Rosamund followed the two figures over the stubble, the thin strong walking figure, and the little darling figure on pony back. Would Robin quite forget her in the midst of his proud and triumphant joy? She wondered. Even if he did, she would not really mind. She wanted him to be very happy indeed without her–just for a short time: that he could not be happy without her for long she knew very well.

Oddly, her sensation of weariness persisted. She recognized it now as wholly unphysical. She was certainly feeling what people call “depressed.” No doubt this unusual depression–for she had been born with a singularly cheerful spirit–was caused by the resolution she had taken to give up Welsley. Perhaps Welsley meant more to her even than she had supposed. But it was absurd–wasn’t it?–to be so dominated by places. People, certain people, might mean everything in the life of a woman; many women lived, really lived, only in and through their lovers, their husbands, their children; but what woman lived in and through the life of the place? She had only to compare mentally the loss of Welsley with–say–the loss of Dion, the new Dion, to realize how little Welsley really meant to her. Certainly she loved it as a place, but probably a woman can only love a place with a bit of her.

And yet to-day, she certainly felt depressed. Even the thought of the nursery tea did not drive the depression from her.

She opened the book she had brought from the house. It was a volume of Browning’s poems. She had opened it at hap-hazard, and now her eyes rested on these words, words loved almost above all others by one of the greatest souls that ever spent itself for England:

“I go to prove my soul!
I see my way as birds their trackless way I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first I ask not; but unless God send His Hail Or blinding fire-balls, sleet, or stifling snow, In some time, His good time!–I shall arrive: He guides me and the bird. In His good time!”

She read the lines three–four times. Then she laid the book down on her knees and sat very still. Consciously she tried to withdraw herself, to pass into meditation carrying the poem with her.

“I see my way as birds their trackless way– I shall arrive!”

Rosmund was gazing downward at a coping of worn brick on which she had set her feet, but she did not see it now. She saw migratory birds traveling steadily through a vast expanse of gray sky; birds that were going, at the appointed time, to some far-distant place, in search of a golden climate, in search of the sun. Inevitably they would come into the golden climate, inevitably they would find the sun which they needed. Like them she was traveling through a vast gray expanse, the life of the world. Robin and Dion were with her. They were seeking the sun which they needed. Surely, like the birds, they would find the sun at last. She had thought to seek her way deliberately. When she was quite a girl it had seemed to her that the human being had the power, and was therefore almost under the obligation, to find the way to God for herself. When she had contemplated entering the religious life the thought at the back of her mind had perhaps been something like this: “I’ll conquer the love and the mercy of God by my own exertions; I’ll find the way to God by my own ingenuity and determination in searching it out.” Possibly she had never quite simply and humbly said in her soul, with Newman, “Be Thou my Guide.” Now, as she sat in the garden, with the image of the migratory birds in her mind, she thought, “The birds do that. They give themselves to the sky, and God does the rest. He knows the way by which each human soul can best go back to that from which once it issued forth.” Perhaps as a Sister, leading the hidden secluded life, she could not have found the way; perhaps she had to find it in the world, through Dion with whom she had united herself, or through Robin to whom she had given birth.

Through Robin! Yes, surely that was her way to God. “A little child shall lead them.” The words started up in her mind without their context, and she realized that, though people believe it is the mother who teaches the child, nevertheless the mother learns the greatest truths from the child. Who living on the earth could keep her from sin as surely as her Robin? How could she be evil when Robin looked to her as the embodiment of goodness. What would she not do, what would she not give up, to increase Robin’s love for her, to give him more reason for regarding her with innocent confidence and simple reverence?

Yes, Robin was surely her way to God.

And now, withdrawn into the very depths of meditation, and hearing no longer the distant voices of the rooks as they wheeled about the elm- tops near Canon Wilton’s house, she went onwards down the way chosen for her by God, the “Robin-way.”

Now Robin was a young child, and naturally looked up to her as a kind of Providence. Presently he would be a lad; inevitably he would reach the age when the growing mind becomes critical. Young animals gnaw hard things to test the strength of their teeth; so do young growing minds gnaw the bones that come in their way. Even the mother comes in for much secret criticism from the son who loves her. Rosamund’s time for being criticized by Robin would come in the course of the years. She must try to get ready against that time; she must try to be worthy of Robin’s love when he was able to be critical. And so onwards down the way across the gray expanse, guided, like the birds!

Rosamund saw herself now as the mother of a tall son, hardened a little by public-school life, a cricketer, a rower, a swimmer; perhaps intellectual too, the winner of a scholarship. There were so many hearts and minds that the mother of a son must learn to keep, to companion, to influence, to go forward with: the heart and the mind of the child, the schoolboy, the undergraduate, the young man out in the world taking up his life-task–a soldier perhaps, or a man of learning, a pioneer, a carver of new ways for the crowd following behind.

It was a tremendous thing to be a mother; it was a difficult way to God. But it was the most beautiful way of all the ways, and Rosamund was very thankful that she had been guided to take it. Robin, she knew, had taught her already very much, but how little compared with all that he was destined to teach her in the future! Even when her hair was white no doubt she would still be learning from him, would still be trying to lift herself a little higher lest he should ever have to look downward to see her.

For a long time she meditated on these things, for a very long while. The sun never came back to the garden as she dreamed of the sun which the birds were seeking, of the sun which she and Dion and Robin were seeking; the afternoon hours passed on in a gray procession; the chimes sounded many times, but she did not hear them. She had forgotten Welsley in remembering how small a part Welsley must play in her mother-life, in remembering how very small were the birds in the immense expanse of the sky.

In Meditation she had entered into Vastness.

The sound of the organ in the Cathedral recalled her. It was four o’clock. The afternoon service was just beginning. She sat still and listened. It was growing dark now, but she had no wish to move. Probably in half an hour Robin and Dion would come back from the shooting. From to-day she would think of Robin in a different way. He would be even dearer to her, even more sacred, her little teacher. What did it matter where she lived if her little teacher was with her. The sting had gone out of her unselfishness; she was glad she had been able to be unselfish, to put Dion before herself.

The organ ceased. They were praying now in the Cathedral. Presently she heard them singing the psalms faintly. The voices of the boys came to her with a sort of vague sweetness through the gathering darkness and the mist. They died away; the Magnificat followed, then silence, then the Nunc Dimittis, then another silence, presently the anthem. Finally she heard the organ alone in a Fugue of Bach.

The quarter to five chimed in the tower. Dion and Robin were a little late.

She got up, and carried the rug into the house.

“Annie!” she called.

Annie came.

“When Mr. Leith and Robin come back,–they’ll be here directly,–will you ask them to give me a call? I shall be in the garden.”

“Very well, ma’am.”

Again Rosamund paced up and down the paths. Now she was very conscious of herself and of her surroundings. The long night of early winter was falling upon Welsley. Five o’clock struck, a quarter-past five, then the half-hour. She stood still on the path, beginning to wonder. How late they were! Robin would surely be very tired. It would be too much for him. Directly he had had his tea he must be put to bed. Or perhaps it would be best to put him to bed at once. He would be disappointed, but they could easily have tea in the night nursery. She smiled, conjuring up a picture of Robin under the bedclothes being fed pieces of cake. He would enjoy that. And she would hold his cup for him while he drank, so that the bed might be safe. Meals in bed are often dangerous to the bed. How delightful were all the little absurd things she did for Robin!

When the chimes told her that it was a quarter to six she began to feel puzzled, and just the least little bit anxious. It had been quite dark for a little while now. Job Crickendon’s farm was only about four miles from Welsley. Harrington’s horse might not be an exceptionally fast-goer, but surely he could cover six miles in an hour. Dion and Robin could get back in forty minutes at the most. They must have stayed on at Job Crickendon’s till past five o’clock. Could they have had tea there? No, she was sure they would not have done that, when they knew she was waiting for them, was looking forward eagerly to tea in the nursery.

When six o’clock struck and they had not returned she felt really uneasy, although she was not at all a nervous mother, and seldom, or never, worried about her little son. She could not doubt any longer that something unexpected had occurred. They were dining at half-past seven that night. In an hour’s time at the latest she and Dion would have to dress. The hopes she had set on the family tea were vanishing. In her uneasiness she began to feel almost absurdly disappointed about the tea. She was hungry, too; she had had no lunch just because of the tea. It was to be a sort of family revel, and she had wished to enjoy it in every way, to make of it a real meal. Her abstention from lunch now seemed to her almost pitiful. Disappointment became acute in her. Yet even now her uneasiness, though definite, was not strong. If it had been she would not have been able to feel so disappointed, even so sorry for herself. She had given up the day to Dion. The nursery tea was to have been her little reward. Now she would be deprived of it. For a moment she felt hurt, almost the least bit angry.

As the words formed themselves in her mind she heard the quarter-past six chime out in the tower. She stood still on the path. What had happened? Perhaps Robin had fallen off Jane and hurt himself, or perhaps there had been an accident when they were driving home. Harrington’s horse was probably a crock. He might have fallen down. The dogcart was a high one—-

She pulled herself up. She had always secretly rather despised the typical “anxious mother,” had always thought that the love which shows itself in perpetual fear was a silly, poor sort of affection. Even when Robin, as a baby, had once been seriously ill, at the time of the Clarke divorce case, she had been calm, had shown complete self- control. She had even surprised people by her fearlessness and quiet determination.

They did not know how she had prayed, and almost agonized in secret. She had drawn the calm at which they had wondered from prayer. She had asked God to let Robin get well, and she had felt that her prayer had been heard, and that God would grant her the life of her child.

Perhaps she had exaggerated to herself the danger he was in. But he was ill–for a short time he was very ill, and a baby’s hold on life is but frail.

Now she remembered her self-control during Robin’s illness, and resolutely she banished her anxiety. There was no doubt some perfectly simple explanation which presently would account to her for their not coming at the tea hour.

“Ma’am!” cried a respectable voice. “Ma-a-am!”

“What is it, Nurse. They haven’t come back?”

Nurse was coming down the path gingerly, with a shawl over her cap.

“No, ma’am. Whatever can have happened? /Something’s/ a-happened, that’s certain.”

“Nonsense, Nurse!”

“But whatever should keep them out till late into the night, ma’am?”

“It’s only a little after six. It isn’t night at all.”

“But the tea, ma’am! And Master Robin’s so regular in his habits. He’ll be fair famished, ma’am, that he will. I—- Well, ma’am, if I may say it, I really don’t hold with all this shooting, and sport, and what not for such young children.”

“It’s only just for once, Nurse. Go in now. You’ll catch cold.”

“But yourself, ma’am?”

“I’m quite warm. I’d rather stay out.”

Nurse stared anxiously for a moment, then turned away and went gingerly back to the house. Her white shawl faded against the background of darkness. With its fading Rosamund entered into–not exactly darkness, but into deep shadows. She supposed that nurse’s fear had communicated itself to her; she had caught the infection of fear from nurse. But when was nurse not afraid? She was an excellent woman and absolutely devoted to Robin, but she was not a Spartan. She leaped at sight of a mouse, and imagined diseases to be for ever floating Robinwards on all the breezes. Rosamund had strictly forbidden her ever to talk nonsense about illness to Robin, and she had obeyed. But that was her one fault; she had a timorous nature.

Rosamund wished nurse had not come out into the garden to infect her with foolish fear.

Nurse’s invitation to her to come into the house had made her suddenly know that to be shut in would be intolerable to her. Why was that? She now knew that lately, while she had been walking in the garden, she had been straining her ears to hear the sound of wheels in the Green Court. She knew she would be able to hear them in the garden. In the house that would be impossible. Therefore she could not go into the house till Robin came back.

All her fear was for Robin. He was so young, so tiny. Perhaps she ought not to have allowed him to go. Perhaps nurse was right, and such an expedition ought to have been ruled out as soon as it was suggested. Perhaps Dion and she had been altogether too Doric. She began to think so. But then she thought: “Robin’s with his father. What harm could come to him with his father, and such a competent father too?” That thought of Dion’s strength, coolness, competency reassured her; she dwelt on it. Of course with Dion Robin must be all right.

Presently, leaving the path in front of the house, she went again to the seat hidden away behind the shrubs against the wall which separated the garden from the Dark Entry. This dark entry was an arched corridor of stone which led directly from the Green Court to the passage-way on which the main door of the garden opened. It was paved with worn slabs of stone upon which the feet of any one passing rang with a mournful and hollow sound. A tiny path skirted the garden wall, running between the hidden seat and the small belt of shrubs which shut out a view of the house. Just before she turned into this path Rosamund looked back at the old house, and saw a lamp gleaming in the lattice window of the nursery. She did not sit down on the seat. She had thought to do that and to listen. But the mist had made the wood very wet, and she had left the rug in the house. If she walked softly up and down the little path she would be sure to hear the hoofs of Harrington’s horse, the wheels of the dogcart directly the wanderers drove into the Green Court. There they would get down, and would walk home through the Dark Entry. She intended to call out to them when she heard their footsteps ringing on the old stones. That would surprise them. She tried to enjoy the thought of their surprise when they heard her voice coming out of the darkness. How Robin would jump at the sound of mummy!

She stood just in front of the seat for two or three minutes, listening intently in the misty darkness. She heard nothing except for a moment a rustling which sounded like a bird moving in ivy. Then she began to walk softly up and down passing and repassing the seat. When she came up to the seat for the fourth time in her walk, an ugly memory–she knew not why–rose in her mind like a weed in a pool; it was the memory of a story which she had long ago read and disliked. She had read it, she remembered, in a railway train on a long journey. She had had a book, something interesting and beautiful, with her, but she had finished it. A passenger, who had got out of the carriage, had left behind him a paper-covered volume of short stories. She had taken it up and had read the first story, which now, after an interval of years, recurred to her mind.

There was in the story a very commonplace business man, middle-aged, quite unromantic and heavy, the sort of man who does not know what “nerves” means, who thinks suggestion “damned nonsense,” and psychical research, occultism, and so forth, absurdities fit only to take up the time of “a pack of silly women.” This worthy person lived in the suburbs of London in a semi-detached villa with a long piece of garden at the back. On the other side of the fairly high garden wall was the garden of his next-door neighbor, another business man of the usual suburban type. Both men were busy gardeners in their spare time. Number one had conceived the happy idea of putting up a tea-house in the angle of the wall at the bottom of his lawn. Number two, having heard of this achievement, and not wishing to be outdone, put up a very similar tea-house in the corresponding angle on his side of the wall. The two tea-houses stood therefore back to back with nothing but the wall between them. Now, one warm summer evening Mr. Jenkins-Smith –Rosamund could remember his name, though she had not thought of him for years–had been busy watering his flowers and mowing his lawn. He had worked really hard, and when the evening began to close in he thought he would go into the tea-house and have a rest. On each side of the curly-legged tea-table of unpolished wood stood a wicker arm- chair. Into one of these chairs Mr. Jenkins-Smith sank with a sigh of content. Then he lighted his pipe, stretched out his short legs, and, gazing at his beautifully trimmed garden, prepared to enjoy a delicious hour of well-earned repose. Things were going well with him; money was easy; his health was good; when he sat down in the wicker chair and put his pipe into his mouth he was, perhaps, as happy a man as you could find in all Surbiton.

But presently, in fact very soon, he became conscious of a disagreeable feeling. A curious depression began to come upon him. He smoked steadily, he gazed out at his garden green with turf and gay with flowers, but his interest and pleasure in it were gone from him. He wondered why. Presently he turned his head and looked over his shoulder. What he was looking for he did not know; simply he felt obliged to do what he did. He saw, of course, nothing but the curved wooden back of the tea-house. He listened, he strained his ears, but he heard nothing except the faint “ting-ting” of a tram-bell, and voices of some children playing in a distant garden. His pipe had gone out. As he lit a match and held it to his pipe bowl he saw that his hand was shaking. Whatever had come to him? He was no drinker; he had always been a temperate man, proud of his clear eyes and steady limbs, yet now he was shaking like a drunkard. Perspiration burst out upon his forehead. He was seized by an intense desire to get away from the tea-house, to get out into the open, and he half rose from his chair, holding on to the arms and dropping his pipe on the wooden floor. The tiny noise it made set his nerves in a turmoil. He was afraid. But of what? He took his hands from the chair and sat back, angry with himself, almost ashamed. That he should feel afraid, here in his own garden, in his own cozy tea-house! It was absurd, monstrous; it was like a sort of madness come upon him. But he was determined not to give way to such nonsense. Just because he was longing to go out of the tea-house he would remain in it. Let the darkness come; he did not mind it; he was going to smoke his pipe.

Again he stared over his shoulder, and the sweat ran down his face. Had not he heard something in the tea-house of his neighbor on the other side of the wall? It seemed to him that he had rather felt a sound than actually heard it. Nausea came upon him. He got up trembling. But still he was ashamed of himself, and he would not go out of the tea-house. Instead he went behind the table, stood close to the wooden wall, put his ear to it and listened intently. He heard nothing; but when he was standing against the wall his horror and fear increased until he could no longer combat them. He turned sharply, knocked over a chair, and hurried out into the garden. There for a moment he stood still. Under the sky he felt better, but not himself; he did not feel himself at all. After a pause for consideration he put on his jacket,–he had been gardening in his shirt-sleeves,–went into his house, out into the road, and then up to the door of his neighbor. There he rang the bell and knocked. A maid came. “Is your master in?” he asked. “Yes, sir, he’s sitting in the summer-house at the end of the garden.” “How long’s he been there?” “About half an hour, sir, as near as I can reckon.” “Could I see him?” “Certainly, sir.” “Perhaps you’d–perhaps you’d show me to the summer-house.” “Yes, sir.”

Mr. Jenkins-Smith and the maid went to the end of the garden, and there, in the summer-house, they found the corpse of a suicide hanging from a beam in the roof.

This was the ugly story which had come into Rosamund’s mind as she stood by the seat close to the garden wall. On the other side of Mr. Jenkins-Smith’s wall had been the summer-house of his neighbor; on the other side of her wall there was the Dark Entry. She stood considering this fact and thinking of the man’s terror in his garden. He had been subject surely to an emanation. A mysterious message had been sent to him by the corpse which dangled from the beam on the other side of the wall.

She went nearer to the wall of the garden and listened attentively. Had she not heard a sound in the Dark Entry? It seemed to her that some one had come into the stone corridor while she had been walking up and down on the path, and was now standing there motionless. But how very unlikely it was that any one would do such a thing! It must be quite black there now, and very cold on the stone pavement, between the stone walls, under the roof of stone. Of course no one was there.

Nevertheless she went on listening with a sort of painful attention. And distress came upon her. It began in a sort of physical malaise out of which a mental dread, such as she had never yet experienced, was born. She felt now quite certain that some one was standing still in the Dark Entry, very close to her, but separated from her by two walls of brick and stone; and something of this unseen person, of his attention, or his anger, or his terror, or his criminal intent, in any case something tremendously powerful, pierced the walls and came upon her and enveloped her. She opened her lips, not knowing what she was going to say, and from them came the cry:

“Dion!”

Silence followed her cry.

“Dion! Dion!” she called again.

Immediately after the third cry she heard a slow step on the stones of the Dark Entry, passing close to her but muffled by the intervening walls. It went on very slowly indeed; it was a dragging footfall; the sound of it presently died away.

Then she sat down on the bench close to the wall. She still felt distressed, even afraid. Whoever it was–that loiterer in the Dark Entry–he had left the corridor by the archway near Little Cloisters; he had not gone into the Green Court.

She sat waiting in the darkness.

* * * * *

That afternoon, while Rosamund was in the garden, Mr. Esme Darlington was paying a little visit to his old friend and crony, the Dean of Welsley. He had known the Dean–well, almost ever since he could remember, and the Dean’s wife ever since she had married the Dean. His delay in returning to town, caused by Rosamund’s attractive invitation, enabled him to spend an hour at the Deanery, where he had tea in the great drawing-room on the first floor, which looked out on the Green Court. So pleasant were the Dean and his wife, so serenely flowed the conversation, that the hour lengthened out into two hours, and the Cathedral chimes announced that it was a quarter to seven before Mr. Darlington uncrumpled his length to go. Even then Mrs. Dean begged him to stay on a little longer.

“It’s such a treat to hear all the interesting gossip of London,” she said, almost wistfully. “When Dickie”–Dickie was the Dean,–“when Dickie was at St. Peter’s, Eaton Square, we knew everything that was going on, but here in Welsley–well, I often feel rather rusty.”

Mr. Darlington paid the appropriate compliment, not in a banal way, and then mentioned that at half-past seven he was dining in Little Cloisters.

“That delightful creature Mrs. Dion Leith!” exclaimed Mrs. Dean. “Dickie’s hopelessly in her toils.”

“My dear!” began the Dean, in pleased protestation.

But she interrupted him.

“I assure you,” she went on to Mr. Darlington, “he is always making excuses to see her. She has even influenced him to appoint a new verger, a most extraordinary old person, called Thrush, with a nose!”

Mr. Darlington cocked an interrogative eyebrow.

“My darling!” said the Dean. “He’s a good old man, very deserving, and has recently taken the pledge.”

“He’s a modified teetotaler!” said his wife to Mr. Darlington, patting her husband’s arm. “You see what Dickie’s coming to. If it goes on he will soon be a modified Dean.”

It was past seven when they finished talking about Rosamund and Dion, when Mr. Darlington at length tore himself delicately away from their delightful company, and, warmly wrapped in an overcoat lined with unostentatious sable, set out on the short walk to Canon Wilton’s house. To reach the Canon’s house he had to pass through the Dark Entry and skirt the garden wall of Little Cloisters.

Now, as he came out of the Dark Entry and stepped into the passage- way, which led by the wall and the old house into the great open space of green lawns and elm trees round which the dwellings of the canons showed their lighted windows to the darkness of the November evening, he was stopped by a terrible sound. It came to him from the garden of Little Cloisters. It was short, sharp and piercing, so piercing that for an instant he felt as if literally it had torn the flesh of his body. He had never before heard any sound at all like it; but, when he was able to think, he thought, he felt almost certain, that it had come from an animal. He shuddered. Always temperamentally averse from any fierce demonstrations of feeling, always instinctively restrained, careful and intelligently conventional, he was painfully startled and moved by this terrible outcry which could only have been caused by intense agony. As he believed that the cry had come from an animal, he naturally supposed that the agony which had caused it was physical. He was a very humane man, and as soon as he had mastered the feeling of cold horror which had for a moment held him rigid, he hastened on to the door of Little Cloisters and pulled the bell. After a pause which seemed to him long the door was opened by Annie, Rosamund’s parlor- maid. She presented to Mr. Darlington’s peering gaze a face full of ignorance and fear.

“What is the matter?” he asked, in a hesitating voice.

“Sir?” said Annie.

“What has happened in the garden?”

“Nothing, sir, that I know of. I have been in the house.” She paused, then added, with a sort of timorous defiance: “I’m not one as would listen, sir.”

“Then you didn’t hear it?”

“Hear what, sir?”

Her question struck upon Mr. Darlington’s native conventionality, and made him conscious of the fact that, perhaps almost indiscreetly, he was bandying words with a maid-servant. He put up one hand to his beard, pulled at it, and then said, almost in his usual voice:

“Is Mrs. Leith in?”

“She’s in the garden, sir.”

“In the garden?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is–is Mr. Leith at home?”

“He’s just come home, sir, and gone to Mrs. Leith in the garden.”

Mr. Darlington stood for a moment pulling his beard and raising and lowering his eyebrows. Then he said doubtfully:

“Thank you. I won’t disturb them now. I shall be here with Canon Wilton at half-past seven.”

Annie stood staring at him in silence.

“They–Mr. and Mrs. Leith expect us, I believe?” added Mr. Darlington.

“They haven’t said anything to the contrary, sir.”

“No?”

Slowly Mr. Darlington turned away, slowly he disappeared into the darkness; his head was bent, and he looked older than usual. Annie gazed after him. Once she opened her lips as if she were going to call him back, but no sound came from them.

“Annie! Annie!” cried a voice in the house behind her.

She turned sharply and confronted Robin’s nurse.

“Where’s Master Robin?” said the nurse, almost fiercely.

“I don’t know. He hasn’t come back with master.”

“I’m going into the garden,” said the nurse.

“For God’s sake, don’t!” said Annie.

“Why not?” asked the nurse.

Suddenly Annie began to cry. The nurse pulled her in and shut the door of the house.

CHAPTER X

Rosamund did not know how long she sat in the garden after she had heard the footfall in the Dark Entry. Perhaps five minutes, perhaps many more had slipped by before she was aware of feeling cold. A chill had gone through her mind when she heard the footfall; now her body was chilled. She shivered and got up. She must go into the house.

It was now very dark. The path was a pale grayish blur at her feet. On her left the shrubs which concealed the house from her showed as a heavy morose blackness against the softer and more mysterious blackness of the night. The dampness which rose in the garden was like the dreary whispering of sad earth voices.

She shivered again.

Then she heard a faltering step on the path beyond the shrubs. It was certainly Dion’s step. At last they had come back!

With a movement of her shoulders she tried to throw off her depression, as if it were something heavy resting upon her, something which a physical effort could get rid of. Then she called out in a brisk and cheerful voice:

“Dion, I’m here. How late you are! What have you shot?”

It was too late now for the nursery tea, but they had come back and all was well.

“Dion!”

The step had stopped on the path and no voice answered her. Nevertheless she was certain that it was Dion who had come into the garden. Perhaps Robin was with him, perhaps they were going to give her a surprise. She waited for an instant. Something within her was hesitating. She conquered it, not without an effort, and went round the angle of the path. Beyond the shrubs, but not far from them, a man was standing. It was Dion. He was alone. It was so dark that Rosamund could not see him clearly, but she noticed at once that the outline of his figure looked strange. His body seemed to be all awry as if he were standing in an unnatural position. She stopped and stared at this body.

“Is anything wrong, Dion?” she asked. “What’s the matter? Why do you stand like that?”

After her last quick question she heard a long-drawn quivering breath.

“Where’s Robin?” she said sharply.

He did not answer. She meant to go up to him; but she did not move.

“Why are you so late? Where’s Robin?” he repeated.

“Rosamund–“

“Don’t move! Stand there, and tell me what it is.”

“Haven’t I–always tried to make you happy?”

The words came from the body before her, but she did not know the voice. It was Dion’s voice, of course. It must be that. But she had never heard it before.

“Don’t come nearer to me. What have you done?”

“Robin–I have–I have–Robin–my gun—-“

The voice failed in the darkness. Rosamund shut her eyes. She had seen an angry hand tear down a branch of wild olive. Suddenly she knew. It seemed to her that ever since that day long ago in Elis some part of her had always prophetically known that Dion was fated to bring terror and ruin into her life. This was not true, but now she felt it to be true.

“You’ve killed Robin,” she said, quietly and coldly.

Her brain and heart seemed to stand still, like things staring into an immense voice. They had come to the end of their road.

“You’ve killed Robin,” she said again.

“Rosamund—-“

The body in front of her moved to come towards her. Then she uttered the fearful cry which was heard by Mr. Darlington on his way home from the Deanery, and she fled from the body which had slain Robin.

That purely instinctive action was the beginning of Dion’s punishment. A cry, the movement of a body, and everything which meant life to him, everything for which he had lived, was gone. But he followed Rosamund with a sort of blind obstinacy, driven as she was by instinct. Dimly he knew that he was a man who only merited compassion, all the compassion of the world. He had no horror of himself, but only a horror of that Fate to which mortals have to submit and which had overtaken him in a shining moment of happiness. The gun accident of which his little son had been the victim presented itself to his erring mind as a terrific stroke from above, or from beyond, falling equally upon father and child. He was not responsible for it. The start of a frightened pony, its sudden attempt to bolt, the pulling of a rein which had brought the animal against him just as he was lifting his gun to fire at a rising bird–what were those things? Only the clumsy machinery used by implacable Fate to bring about that which had been willed somewhere, far off in the dark and the distance.

He must tell Rosamund, he must tell Rosamund.

* * * * *

Annie and the nurse came out to the edge of the broad path which ran along the front of the house and peered into the darkness. Annie was crying and holding on to the nurse, whose almost fierce determination faded as she confronted the mystery of the night which hid her master and mistress.

“H’sh, Annie,” she whispered. “Where can they be? Listen, I tell you!”

Annie strove to choke down her sobs.

“I can hear–some one,” whispered the nurse, after a moment. “Don’t you. Listen, I tell you! Right over by the wall near the Bishop’s!”

The sound of steps indeed came to them through the darkness. Annie broke away from the nurse.

“I’m frightened! I’m frightened! I don’t know what’s come to them,” she whispered through her teeth, resisting the impulse to cry out. “Come in, Nurse, for God’s sake!”

She shrank into the house. The nurse stood where she was for a moment, but when she heard the steps a little nearer to her she, too, was overcome by fear and followed Annie trembling, shutting the door behind her.

Exactly at half-past seven Mr. Darlington and Canon Wilton were outside the door of Little Cloisters and Mr. Darlington pulled the bell. Always the most discreet of men, he had not mentioned to his host the terrible cry he had heard in the Leiths’ garden, or his short colloquy with Annie. He was seriously disturbed in mind, but, being a trained man of the world and one who prided himself upon his powers of self-control, he had concealed this unpleasant fact from the Canon, and had talked quite agreeably during their little walk between the two houses. The sound of that dreadful cry still seemed to shudder through his flesh, but it was not for him to pry into the private lives of others, even of those whom he knew intimately, and had a great regard for. He hoped all was well with his dear young friends, There might be some quite simple explanation of that cry. He fervently hoped there was. In any case it was not for him to ask questions, or to–

“They’re a long while answering the bell,” said Canon Wilton, in his strong, earnest voice. “Hadn’t you better give it another tug, Darlington?”

Mr. Darlington started.

“H’m–ha!”

He raised his hand and pulled the bell a second time.

“That’s better,” said the Canon, as he heard inside the house a long tinkle. “Annie’s bound to come now. As a rule she’s very quick in answering the door. Among her many virtues, Mrs. Leith counts that of being a first-rate housewife. She trains her maids well.”

“Does she?” murmured Mr. Darlington abstractedly, bending forward till he seemed almost to be listening at the door. “Does she? I hear some one coming. H’m!”

He straightened himself. The door opened and Annie appeared. When she saw the two men she drew back quickly to let them pass in. Canon Wilton said kindly: “Good evening, Annie.”

“Oh, sir,” said Annie, and began to cry audibly.

“What’s the matter?” asked the Canon, surprised.

They were now in the little oak paneled hall, and by the light of the lamp they could see the tears running down the flushed face of the maid. “Is anything wrong?” said the Canon.

“Oh, sir, I’m so glad you’ve come! Oh, we don’t know what it is!”

At this moment Robin’s nurse showed herself on the staircase.

“For God’s sake, sir,” she said, with trembling lips, “do go into the garden!”

“Why?” said Canon Wilton, in a loud, firm voice.

“Mr. and Mrs. Leith are both there, sir. They’ve been there this long time. Mr. Leith he’s come back from the shooting without Master Robin. Oh, there’s something wrong, sir, there’s something wrong!”

“Stay here for a moment, Darlington,” said the Canon, with a sudden, almost fiery, decision. “I’ll go at once and see what’s the matter.”

But Mr. Darlington laid a bony hand on his friend’s arm.

“I’ll come with you, Wilton. I’m–I’m afraid it’s something very bad.”

He lowered his voice almost to a whisper in saying the last words.

The Canon formed “Why?” with his lips.

“Just now, as I was passing the garden here coming back from the Deanery, I heard a most dreadful cry. I thought at the time that it came from an animal, but–now—-“