Fraternity

CHAPTER XXV
MR. STONE IN WAITING

That same afternoon, while Mr. Stone was writing, he heard a voice saying:

“Dad, stop writing just a minute, and talk to me.”

Recognition came into his eyes. It was his younger daughter.

“My dear,” he said, “are you unwell?”

Keeping his hand, fragile and veined and chill, under her own warm grasp, Bianca answered: “Lonely.”

Mr. Stone looked straight before him.

“Loneliness,” he said, “is man’s chief fault”; and seeing his pen lying on the desk, he tried to lift his hand. Bianca held it down. At that hot clasp something seemed to stir in Mr. Stone. His cheeks grew pink.

“Kiss me, Dad.”

Mr. Stone hesitated. Then his lips resolutely touched her eye. “It is wet,” he said. He seemed for a moment struggling to grasp the meaning of moisture in connection with the human eye. Soon his face again became serene. “The heart,” he said, “is a dark well; its depth unknown. I have lived eighty years. I am still drawing water.”

“Draw a little for me, Dad.”

This time Mr. Stone looked at his daughter anxiously, and suddenly spoke, as if afraid that if he waited he might forget.

“You are unhappy!”

Bianca put her face down to his tweed sleeve. “How nice your coat smells!” she murmured.

“You are unhappy,” repeated Mr. Stone.

Bianca dropped his hand, and moved away.

Mr. Stone followed her. “Why?” he said. Then, grasping his brow, he added: “If it would do you any good, my dear, to hear a page or two, I could read to you.”

Bianca shook her head.

“No; talk to me!”

Mr. Stone answered simply: “I have forgotten.”

“You talk to that little girl,” murmured Bianca.

Mr. Stone seemed to lose himself in reverie.

“If that is true,” he said, following out his thoughts, “it must be due to the sex instinct not yet quite extinct. It is stated that the blackcock will dance before his females to a great age, though I have never seen it.”

“If you dance before her,” said Bianca, with her face averted, “can’t you even talk to me?”

“I do not dance, my dear,” said Mr. Stone; “I will do my best to talk to you.”

There was a silence, and he began to pace the room. Bianca, by the empty fireplace, watched a shower of rain driving past the open window.

“This is the time of year,” said Mr. Stone suddenly; “when lambs leap off the ground with all four legs at a time.” He paused as though for an answer; then, out of the silence, his voice rose again – it sounded different: “There is nothing in Nature more symptomatic of that principle which should underlie all life. Live in the future; regret nothing; leap! A lamb which has left earth with all four legs at once is the symbol of true life. That she must come down again is but an inevitable accident. ‘In those days men were living on their pasts. They leaped with one, or, at the most, two legs at a time; they never left the ground, or in leaving, they wished to know the reason why. It was this paralysis'” – Mr. Stone did not pause, but, finding himself close beside his desk, took up his pen – “'it was this paralysis of the leaping nerve which undermined their progress. Instead of millions of leaping lambs, ignorant of why they leaped, they were a flock of sheep lifting up one leg and asking whether it was or was not worth their while to lift another.'”

The words were followed by a silence, broken only by the scratching of the quill with which Mr. Stone was writing.

Having finished, he again began to pace the room, and coming suddenly on his daughter, stopped short. Touching her shoulder timidly, he said: “I was talking to you, I think, my dear; where were we?”

Bianca rubbed her cheek against his hand.

“In the air, I think.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Stone, “I remember. You must not let me wander from the point again.”

“No, dear.”

“Lambs,” said Mr. Stone, “remind me at times of that young girl who comes to copy for me. I make her skip to promote her circulation before tea. I myself do this exercise.” Leaning against the wall, with his feet twelve inches from it, he rose slowly on his toes. “Do you know that exercise? It is excellent for the calves of the legs, and for the lumbar regions.” So saying, Mr. Stone left the wall, and began again to pace the room; the whitewash had also left the wall, and clung in a large square patch on his shaggy coat. “I have seen sheep in Spring,” he said, “actually imitate their lambs in rising from the ground with all four legs at once.” He stood still. A thought had evidently struck him.

“If Life is not all Spring, it is of no value whatsoever; better to die, and to begin again. Life is a tree putting on a new green gown; it is a young moon rising – no, that is not so, we do not see the young moon rising – it is a young moon setting, never younger than when we are about to die – ”

Bianca cried out sharply: “Don’t, Father! Don’t talk like that; it’s so untrue! Life is all autumn, it seems to me!”

Mr. Stone’s eyes grew very blue.

“That is a foul heresy,” he stammered; “I cannot listen to it. Life is the cuckoo’s song; it is a hill-side bursting into leaf; it is the wind; I feel it in me every day!”

He was trembling like a leaf in the wind he spoke of, and Bianca moved hastily towards him, holding out her arms. Suddenly his lips began to move; she heard him mutter: “I have lost force; I will boil some milk. I must be ready when she comes.” And at those words her heart felt like a lump of ice.

Always that girl! And without again attracting his attention she went away. As she passed out through the garden she saw him at the window holding a cup of milk, from which the steam was rising.

CHAPTER XXVI
THIRD PILGRIMAGE TO HOUND STREET

Like water, human character will find its level; and Nature, with her way of fitting men to their environment, had made young Martin Stone what Stephen called a “Sanitist.” There had been nothing else for her to do with him.

This young man had come into the social scheme at a moment when the conception of existence as a present life corrected by a life to come, was tottering; and the conception of the world as an upper-class preserve somewhat seriously disturbed.

Losing his father and mother at an early age, and brought up till he was fourteen by Mr. Stone, he had formed the habit of thinking for himself. This had rendered him unpopular, and added force to the essential single-heartedness transmitted to him through his grandfather. A particular aversion to the sights and scenes of suffering, which had caused him as a child to object to killing flies, and to watching rabbits caught in traps, had been regulated by his training as a doctor. His fleshly horror of pain and ugliness was now disciplined, his spiritual dislike of them forced into a philosophy. The peculiar chaos surrounding all young men who live in large towns and think at all, had made him gradually reject all abstract speculation; but a certain fire of aspiration coming, we may suppose, through Mr. Stone, had nevertheless impelled him to embrace something with all his might. He had therefore embraced health. And living, as he did, in the Euston Road, to be in touch with things, he had every need of the health which he embraced.

Late in the afternoon of the day when Hughs had committed his assault, having three hours of respite from his hospital, Martin dipped his face and head into cold water, rubbed them with a corrugated towel, put on a hard bowler hat, took a thick stick in his hand, and went by Underground to Kensington.

With his usual cool, high-handed air he entered his aunt’s house, and asked for Thyme. Faithful to his definite, if somewhat crude theory, that Stephen and Cecilia and all their sort were amateurs, he never inquired for them, though not unfrequently he would, while waiting, stroll into Cecilia’s drawing-room, and let his sarcastic glance sweep over the pretty things she had collected, or, lounging in some luxurious chair, cross his long legs, and fix his eyes on the ceiling.

Thyme soon came down. She wore a blouse of some blue stuff bought by Cecilia for the relief of people in the Balkan States, a skirt of purplish tweed woven by Irish gentlewomen in distress, and held in her hand an open envelope addressed in Cecilia’s writing to Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace.

“Hallo!” she said.

Martin answered by a look that took her in from head to foot.

“Get on a hat! I haven’t got much time. That blue thing’s new.”

“It’s pure flax. Mother bought it.”

“It’s rather decent. Hurry up!”

Thyme raised her chin; that lazy movement showed her round, creamy neck in all its beauty.

“I feel rather slack,” she said; “besides, I must get back to dinner, Martin.”

“Dinner!”

Thyme turned quickly to the door. “Oh, well, I’ll come,” and ran upstairs.

When they had purchased a postal order for ten shillings, placed it in the envelope addressed to Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace, and passed the hundred doors of Messrs. Rose and Thorn, Martin said: “I’m going to see what that precious amateur has done about the baby. If he hasn’t moved the girl, I expect to find things in a pretty mess.”

Thyme’s face changed at once.

“Just remember,” she said, “that I don’t want to go there. I don’t see the good, when there’s such a tremendous lot waiting to be done.”

“Every other case, except the one in hand!”

“It’s not my case. You’re so disgustingly unfair, Martin. I don’t like those people.”

“Oh, you amateur!”

Thyme flushed crimson. “Look here!” she said, speaking with dignity, “I don’t care what you call me, but I won’t have you call Uncle Hilary an amateur.”

“What is he, then?”

“I like him.”

“That’s conclusive.”

“Yes, it is.”

Martin did not reply, looking sideways at Thyme with his queer, protective smile. They were passing through a street superior to Hound Street in its pretensions to be called a slum.

“Look here!” he said suddenly; “a man like Hilary’s interest in all this sort of thing is simply sentimental. It’s on his nerves. He takes philanthropy just as he’d take sulphonal for sleeplessness.”

Thyme looked shrewdly up at him.

“Well,” she said, “it’s just as much on your nerves. You see it from the point of view of health; he sees it from the point of view of sentiment, that’s all.”

“Oh! you think so?”

“You just treat all these people as if they were in hospital.”

The young man’s nostrils quivered. “Well, and how should they be treated?”

“How would you like to be looked at as a ‘case’?” muttered Thyme.

Martin moved his hand in a slow half-circle.

“These houses and these people,” he said, “are in the way – in the way of you and me, and everyone.”

Thyme’s eyes followed that slow, sweeping movement of her cousin’s hand. It seemed to fascinate her.

“Yes, of course; I know,” she murmured. “Something must be done!”

And she reared her head up, looking from side to side, as if to show him that she, too, could sweep away things. Very straight, and solid, fair, and fresh, she looked just then.

Thus, in the hypnotic silence of high thoughts, the two young “Sanitists” arrived in Hound Street.

In the doorway of No. 1 the son of the lame woman, Mrs. Budgen – the thin, white youth as tall as Martin, but not so broad-stood, smoking a dubious-looking cigarette. He turned his lack-lustre, jeering gaze on the visitors.

“Who d’you want?” he said. “If it’s the girl, she’s gone away, and left no address.”

“I want Mrs. Hughs,” said Martin.

The young man coughed. “Right-o! You’ll find her; but for him, apply Wormwood Scrubs.”

“Prison! What for?”

“Stickin’ her through the wrist with his bayonet;” and the young man let a long, luxurious fume of smoke trickle through his nose.

“How horrible!” said Thyme.

Martin regarded the young man, unmoved. “That stuff’ you’re smoking’s rank,” he said. “Have some of mine; I’ll show you how to make them. It’ll save you one and three per pound of baccy, and won’t rot your lungs.”

Taking out his pouch, he rolled a cigarette. The white young man bent his dull wink on Thyme, who, wrinkling her nose, was pretending to be far away.

Mounting the narrow stairs that smelt of walls and washing and red herrings, Thyme spoke: “Now, you see, it wasn’t so simple as you thought. I don’t want to go up; I don’t want to see her. I shall wait for you here.” She took her stand in the open doorway of the little model’s empty room. Martin ascended to the second floor.

There, in the front room, Mrs. Hughs was seen standing with the baby in her arms beside the bed. She had a frightened and uncertain air. After examining her wrist, and pronouncing it a scratch, Martin looked long at the baby. The little creature’s toes were stiffened against its mother’s waist, its eyes closed, its tiny fingers crisped against her breast. While Mrs. Hughs poured forth her tale, Martin stood with his eyes still fixed on the baby. It could not be gathered from his face what he was thinking, but now and then he moved his jaw, as though he were suffering from toothache. In truth, by the look of Mrs. Hughs and her baby, his recipe did not seem to have achieved conspicuous success. He turned away at last from the trembling, nerveless figure of the seamstress, and went to the window. Two pale hyacinth plants stood on the inner edge; their perfume penetrated through the other savours of the room – and very strange they looked, those twin, starved children of the light and air.

“These are new,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” murmured Mrs. Hughs. “I brought them upstairs. I didn’t like to see the poor things left to die.”

From the bitter accent of these words Martin understood that they had been the little model’s.

“Put them outside,” he said; “they’ll never live in here. They want watering, too. Where are your saucers?”

Mrs. Hughs laid the baby down, and, going to the cupboard where all the household gods were kept, brought out two old, dirty saucers. Martin raised the plants, and as he held them, from one close, yellow petal there rose up a tiny caterpillar. It reared a green, transparent body, feeling its way to a new resting-place. The little writhing shape seemed, like the wonder and the mystery of life, to mock the young doctor, who watched it with eyebrows raised, having no hand at liberty to remove it from the plant.

“She came from the country. There’s plenty of men there for her!”

Martin put the plants down, and turned round to the seamstress.

“Look here!” he said, “it’s no good crying over spilt milk. What you’ve got to do is to set to and get some work.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t say it in that sort of way,” said Martin; “you must rise to the occasion.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You want a tonic. Take this half-crown, and get in a dozen pints of stout, and drink one every day.”

And again Mrs. Hughs said, “Yes, sir.”

“And about that baby.”

Motionless, where it had been placed against the footrail of the bed, the baby sat with its black eyes closed. The small grey face was curled down on the bundle of its garments.

“It’s a silent gentleman,” Martin muttered.

“It never was a one to cry,” said Mrs. Hughs.

“That’s lucky, anyway. When did you feed it last?”

Mrs. Hughs did not reply at first. “About half-past six last evening, sir.”

“What?”

“It slept all night; but to-day, of course, I’ve been all torn to pieces; my milk’s gone. I’ve tried it with the bottle, but it wouldn’t take it.”

Martin bent down to the baby’s face, and put his finger on its chin; bending lower yet, he raised the eyelid of the tiny eye…

“It’s dead,” he said.

At the word “dead” Mrs. Hughs, stooping behind him, snatched the baby to her throat. With its drooping head close to her she, she clutched and rocked it without sound. Full five minutes this desperate mute struggle with eternal silence lasted – the feeling, and warming, and breathing on the little limbs. Then, sitting down, bent almost double over her baby, she moaned. That single sound was followed by utter silence. The tread of footsteps on the creaking stairs broke it. Martin, rising from his crouching posture by the bed, went towards the door.

His grandfather was standing there, with Thyme behind him.

“She has left her room,” said Mr. Stone. “Where has she gone?”

Martin, understanding that he meant the little model, put his finger to his lips, and, pointing to Mrs. Hughs, whispered:

“This woman’s baby has just died.”

Mr. Stone’s face underwent the queer discoloration which marked the sudden summoning of his far thoughts. He stepped past Martin, and went up to Mrs. Hughs.

He stood there a long time gazing at the baby, and at the dark head bending over it with such despair. At last he spoke:

“Poor woman! He is at peace.”

Mrs. Hughs looked up, and, seeing that old face, with its hollows and thin silver hair, she spoke:

“He’s dead, sir.”

Mr. Stone put out his veined and fragile hand, and touched the baby’s toes. “He is flying; he is everywhere; he is close to the sun – Little brother!” And turning on his heel, he went out.

Thyme followed him as he walked on tiptoe down stairs which seemed to creak the louder for his caution. Tears were rolling down her cheeks.

Martin sat on, with the mother and her baby, in the close, still room, where, like strange visiting spirits, came stealing whiffs of the perfume of hyacinths.

CHAPTER XXVII
STEPHEN’S PRIVATE LIFE

Mr. Stone and Thyme, going out, again passed the tall, white young man. He had thrown away the hand-made cigarette, finding that it had not enough saltpetre to make it draw, and was smoking one more suited to the action of his lungs. He directed towards them the same lack-lustre, jeering stare.

Unconscious, seemingly, of where he went, Mr. Stone walked with his eyes fixed on space. His head jerked now and then, as a dried flower will shiver in a draught.

Scared at these movements, Thyme took his arm. The touch of that soft young arm squeezing his own brought speech back to Mr. Stone.

“In those places…” he said, “in those streets! …I shall not see the flowering of the aloe – I shall not see the living peace! ‘As with dogs, each couched over his proper bone, so men were living then!'” Thyme, watching him askance, pressed still closer to his side, as though to try and warm him back to every day.

‘Oh!’ went her guttered thoughts. ‘I do wish grandfather would say something one could understand. I wish he would lose that dreadful stare.’

Mr. Stone spoke in answer to his granddaughter’s thoughts.

“I have seen a vision of fraternity. A barren hillside in the sun, and on it a man of stone talking to the wind. I have heard an owl hooting in the daytime; a cuckoo singing in the night.”

“Grandfather, grandfather!”

To that appeal Mr. Stone responded: “Yes, what is it?”

But Thyme, thus challenged, knew not what to say, having spoken out of terror.

“If the poor baby had lived,” she stammered out, “it would have grown up… It’s all for the best, isn’t it?”

“Everything is for the best,” said Mr. Stone. “‘In those days men, possessed by thoughts of individual life, made moan at death, careless of the great truth that the world was one unending song.'”

Thyme thought: ‘I have never seen him as bad as this!’ She drew him on more quickly. With deep relief she saw her father, latchkey in hand, turning into the Old Square.

Stephen, who was still walking with his springy step, though he had come on foot the whole way from the Temple, hailed them with his hat. It was tall and black, and very shiny, neither quite oval nor positively round, and had a little curly brim. In this and his black coat, cut so as to show the front of him and cover the behind, he looked his best. The costume suited his long, rather narrow face, corrugated by two short parallel lines slanting downwards from his eyes and nostrils on either cheek; suited his neat, thin figure and the close-lipped corners of his mouth. His permanent appointment in the world of Law had ousted from his life (together with all uncertainty of income) the need for putting on a wig and taking his moustache off; but he still preferred to go clean-shaved.

“Where have you two sprung from?” he inquired, admitting them into the hall.

Mr. Stone gave him no answer, but passed into the drawing-room, and sat down on the verge of the first chair he came across, leaning forward with his hands between his knees.

Stephen, after one dry glance at him, turned to his daughter.

“My child,” he said softly, “what have you brought the old boy here for? If there happens to be anything of the high mammalian order for dinner, your mother will have a fit.”

Thyme answered: “Don’t chaff, Father!”

Stephen, who was very fond of her, saw that for some reason she was not herself. He examined her with unwonted gravity. Thyme turned away from him. He heard, to his alarm, a little gulping sound.

“My dear!” he said.

Conscious of her sentimental weakness, Thyme made a violent effort.

“I’ve seen a baby dead,” she cried in a quick, hard voice; and, without another word, she ran upstairs.

In Stephen there was a horror of emotion amounting almost to disease. It would have been difficult to say when he had last shown emotion; perhaps not since Thyme was born, and even then not to anyone except himself, having first locked the door, and then walked up and down, with his teeth almost meeting in the mouthpiece of his favourite pipe. He was unaccustomed, too, to witness this weakness on the part of other people. His looks and speech unconsciously discouraged it, so that if Cecilia had been at all that way inclined, she must long ago have been healed. Fortunately, she never had been, having too much distrust of her own feelings to give way to them completely. And Thyme, that healthy product of them both, at once younger for her age, and older, than they had ever been, with her incapacity for nonsense, her love for open air and facts – that fresh, rising plant, so elastic and so sane – she had never given them a single moment of uneasiness.

Stephen, close to his hat-rack, felt soreness in his heart. Such blows as Fortune had dealt, and meant to deal him, he had borne, and he could bear, so long as there was nothing in his own manner, or in that of others, to show him they were blows.

Hurriedly depositing his hat, he ran to Cecilia. He still preserved the habit of knocking on her door before he entered, though she had never, so far, answered, “Don’t come in!” because she knew his knock. The custom gave, in fact, the measure of his idealism. What he feared, or what he thought he feared, after nineteen years of unchecked entrance, could never have been ascertained; but there it was, that flower of something formal and precise, of something reticent, within his soul.

This time, for once, he did not knock, and found Cecilia hooking up her tea-gown and looking very sweet. She glanced at him with mild surprise.

“What’s this, Cis,” he said, “about a baby dead? Thyme’s quite upset about it; and your dad’s in the drawing-room!”

With the quick instinct that was woven into all her gentle treading, Cecilia’s thoughts flew – she could not have told why – first to the little model, then to Mrs. Hughs.

“Dead?” she said. “Oh, poor woman!”

“What woman?” Stephen asked.

“It must be Mrs. Hughs.”

The thought passed darkly through Stephen’s mind: ‘Those people again! What now?’ He did not express it, being neither brutal nor lacking in good taste.

A short silence followed, then Cecilia said suddenly: “Did you say that father was in the drawing-room? There’s fillet of beef, Stephen!”

Stephen turned away. “Go and see Thyme!” he said.

Outside Thyme’s door Cecilia paused, and, hearing no sound, tapped gently. Her knock not being answered, she slipped in. On the bed of that white room, with her face pressed into the pillow, her little daughter lay. Cecilia stood aghast. Thyme’s whole body was quivering with suppressed sobs.

“My darling!” said Cecilia, “what is it?”

Thyme’s answer was inarticulate.

Cecilia sat down on the bed and waited, drawing her fingers through the girl’s hair, which had fallen loose; and while she sat there she experienced all that sore, strange feeling – as of being skinned – which comes to one who watches the emotion of someone near and dear without knowing the exact cause.

‘This is dreadful,’ she thought. ‘What am I to do?’

To see one’s child cry was bad enough, but to see her cry when that child’s whole creed of honour and conduct for years past had precluded this relief as unfeminine, was worse than disconcerting.

Thyme raised herself on her elbow, turning her face carefully away.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” she said, choking. “It’s – it’s purely physical.”

“Yes, darling,” murmured Cecilia; “I know.”

“Oh, Mother!” said Thyme suddenly, “it looked so tiny.”

“Yes, yes, my sweet.”

Thyme faced round; there was a sort of passion in her darkened eyes, rimmed pink with grief, and in all her gushed, wet face.

“Why should it have been choked out like that? It’s – it’s so brutal!”

Cecilia slid an arm round her.

“I’m so distressed you saw it, dear,” she said.

“And grandfather was so – ” A long sobbing quiver choked her utterance.

“Yes, yes,” said Cecilia; “I’m sure he was.”

Clasping her hands together in her lap, Thyme muttered: “He called him ‘Little brother.'”

A tear trickled down Cecilia’s cheek, and dropped on her daughter’s wrist. Feeling that it was not her own tear, Thyme started up.

“It’s weak and ridiculous,” she said. “I won’t!”

“Oh, go away, Mother, please. I’m only making you feel bad, too. You’d better go and see to grandfather.”

Cecilia saw that she would cry no more, and since it was the sight of tears which had so disturbed her, she gave the girl a little hesitating stroke, and went away. Outside she thought: ‘How dreadfully unlucky and pathetic; and there’s father in the drawing-room!’ Then she hurried down to Mr. Stone.

He was sitting where he had first placed himself, motionless. It struck her suddenly how frail and white he looked. In the shadowy light of her drawing-room, he was almost like a spirit sitting there in his grey tweed – silvery from head to foot. Her conscience smote her. It is written of the very old that they shall pass, by virtue of their long travel, out of the country of the understanding of the young, till the natural affections are blurred by creeping mists such as steal across the moors when the sun is going down.

Cecilia’s heart ached with a little ache for all the times she had thought: ‘If father were only not quite so – ’; for all the times she had shunned asking him to come to them, because he was so – ; for all the silences she and Stephen had maintained after he had spoken; for all the little smiles she had smiled. She longed to go and kiss his brow, and make him feel that she was aching. But she did not dare; he seemed so far away; it would be ridiculous.

Coming down the room, and putting her slim foot on the fender with a noise, so that if possible he might both see and hear her, she turned her anxious face towards him, and said: “Father!”

Mr. Stone looked up, and seeing somebody who seemed to be his elder daughter, answered “Yes, my dear?”

“Are you sure you’re feeling quite the thing? Thyme said she thought seeing that poor baby had upset you.”

Mr. Stone felt his body with his hand.

“I am not conscious of any pain,” he said.

“Then you’ll stay to dinner, dear, won’t you?”

Mr. Stone’s brow contracted as though he were trying to recall his past.

“I have had no tea,” he said. Then, with a sudden, anxious look at his daughter: “The little girl has not come to me. I miss her. Where is she?”

The ache within Cecilia became more poignant.

“It is now two days,” said Mr. Stone, “and she has left her room in that house – in that street.”

Cecilia, at her wits’ end, answered: “Do you really miss her, Father?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Stone. “She is like – ” His eyes wandered round the room as though seeking something which would help him to express himself. They fixed themselves on the far wall. Cecilia, following their gaze, saw a little solitary patch of sunlight dancing and trembling there. It had escaped the screen of trees and houses, and, creeping through some chink, had quivered in. “She is like that,” said Mr. Stone, pointing with his finger. “It is gone!” His finger dropped; he uttered a deep sigh.

‘How dreadful this is!’ Cecilia thought. ‘I never expected him to feel it, and yet I can do nothing!’ Hastily she asked: “Would it do if you had Thyme to copy for you? I’m sure she’d love to come.”

“She is my grand-daughter,” Mr. Stone said simply. “It would not be the same.”

Cecilia could think of nothing now to say but: “Would you like to wash your hands, dear?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Stone.

“Then will you go up to Stephen’s dressing-room for hot water, or will you wash them in the lavatory?”

“In the lavatory,” said Mr. Stone. “I shall be freer there.”

When he had gone Cecilia thought: ‘Oh dear, how shall I get through the evening? Poor darling, he is so single-minded!’

At the sounding of the dinner-gong they all assembled – Thyme from her bedroom with cheeks and eyes still pink, Stephen with veiled inquiry in his glance, Mr. Stone from freedom in the lavatory – and sat down, screened, but so very little, from each other by sprays of white lilac. Looking round her table, Cecilia felt rather like one watching a dew-belled cobweb, most delicate of all things in the world, menaced by the tongue of a browsing cow.

Both soup and fish had been achieved, however, before a word was spoken. It was Stephen who, after taking a mouthful of dry sherry, broke the silence.

“How are you getting on with your book, sir?”

Cecilia heard that question with something like dismay. It was so bald; for, however inconvenient Mr. Stone’s absorption in his manuscript might be, her delicacy told her how precious beyond life itself that book was to him. To her relief, however, her father was eating spinach.

“You must be getting near the end, I should think,” proceeded Stephen.

Cecilia spoke hastily: “Isn’t this white lilac lovely, Dad?”

Mr. Stone looked up.

“It is not white; it is really pink. The test is simple.” He paused with his eyes fixed on the lilac.

‘Ah!’ thought Cecilia, ‘now, if I can only keep him on natural science he used to be so interesting.’

“All flowers are one!” said Mr. Stone. His voice had changed.

‘Oh!’ thought Cecilia, ‘he is gone!’