“And are you happier for that?”
“I was; and I shall be again.”
A little smile curled Pierson’s lips. “Shall be?” he said. “I hope so. It’s just two ways of looking at things, Leila.”
“Oh, Edward! Don’t be so gentle! I suppose you don’t think a person like me can ever really love?”
He was standing before her with his head down, and a sense that, naive and bat-like as he was, there was something in him she could not reach or understand, made her cry out:
“I’ve not been nice to you. Forgive me, Edward! I’m so unhappy.”
“There was a Greek who used to say: ‘God is the helping of man by man.’ It isn’t true, but it’s beautiful. Good-bye, dear Leila, and don’t be sorrowful.”
She squeezed his hand, and turned to the window.
She stood there watching his black figure cross the road in the sunshine, and pass round the corner by the railings of the church. He walked quickly, very upright; there was something unseeing even about that back view of him; or was it that he saw-another world? She had never lost the mental habits of her orthodox girlhood, and in spite of all impatience, recognised his sanctity. When he had disappeared she went into her bedroom. What he had said, indeed, was no discovery. She had known. Oh! She had known. ‘Why didn’t I accept Jimmy’s offer? Why didn’t I marry him? Is it too late?’ she thought. ‘Could I? Would he – even now?’ But then she started away from her own thought. Marry him! knowing his heart was with this girl?
She looked long at her face in the mirror, studying with a fearful interest the little hard lines and markings there beneath their light coating of powder. She examined the cunning touches of colouring matter here and there in her front hair. Were they cunning enough? Did they deceive? They seemed to her suddenly to stare out. She fingered and smoothed the slight looseness and fulness of the skin below her chin. She stretched herself, and passed her hands down over her whole form, searching as it were for slackness, or thickness. And she had the bitter thought: ‘I’m all out. I’m doing all I can.’ The lines of a little poem Fort had showed her went thrumming through her head:
“Time, you old gipsy man
Will you not stay
Put up your caravan
Just for a day?”
What more could she do? He did not like to see her lips reddened. She had marked his disapprovals, watched him wipe his mouth after a kiss, when he thought she couldn’t see him. ‘I need’nt!’ she thought. ‘Noel’s lips are no redder, really. What has she better than I? Youth – dew on the grass!’ That didn’t last long! But long enough to “do her in” as her soldier-men would say. And, suddenly she revolted against herself, against Fort, against this chilled and foggy country; felt a fierce nostalgia for African sun, and the African flowers; the happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth existence of those five years before the war began. High Constantia at grape harvest! How many years ago – ten years, eleven years! Ah! To have before her those ten years, with him! Ten years in the sun! He would have loved her then, and gone on loving her! And she would not have tired of him, as she had tired of those others. ‘In half an hour,’ she thought, ‘he’ll be here, sit opposite me; I shall see him struggling forcing himself to seem affectionate! It’s too humbling! But I don’t care; I want him!’
She searched her wardrobe, for some garment or touch of colour, novelty of any sort, to help her. But she had tried them all – those little tricks – was bankrupt. And such a discouraged, heavy mood came on her, that she did not even “change,” but went back in her nurse’s dress and lay down on the divan, pretending to sleep, while the maid set out the supper. She lay there moody and motionless, trying to summon courage, feeling that if she showed herself beaten she was beaten; knowing that she only held him by pity. But when she heard his footstep on the stairs she swiftly passed her hands over her cheeks, as if to press the blood out of them, and lay absolutely still. She hoped that she was white, and indeed she was, with finger-marks under the eyes, for she had suffered greatly this last hour. Through her lashes she saw him halt, and look at her in surprise. Asleep, or-ill, which? She did not move. She wanted to watch him. He tiptoed across the room and stood looking down at her. There was a furrow between his eyes. ‘Ah!’ she thought, ‘it would suit you, if I were dead, my kind friend.’ He bent a little towards her; and she wondered suddenly whether she looked graceful lying there, sorry now that she had not changed her dress. She saw him shrug his shoulders ever so faintly with a puzzled little movement. He had not seen that she was shamming. How nice his face was – not mean, secret, callous! She opened her eyes, which against her will had in them the despair she was feeling. He went on his knees, and lifting her hand to his lips, hid them with it.
“Jimmy,” she said gently, “I’m an awful bore to you. Poor Jimmy! No! Don’t pretend! I know what I know!” ‘Oh, God! What am I saying?’ she thought. ‘It’s fatal-fatal. I ought never!’ And drawing his head to her, she put it to her heart. Then, instinctively aware that this moment had been pressed to its uttermost, she scrambled up, kissed his forehead, stretched herself, and laughed.
“I was asleep, dreaming; dreaming you loved me. Wasn’t it funny? Come along. There are oysters, for the last time this season.”
All that evening, as if both knew they had been looking over a precipice, they seemed to be treading warily, desperately anxious not to rouse emotion in each other, or touch on things which must bring a scene. And Leila talked incessantly of Africa.
“Don’t you long for the sun, Jimmy? Couldn’t we – couldn’t you go? Oh! why doesn’t this wretched war end? All that we’ve got here at home every scrap of wealth, and comfort, and age, and art, and music, I’d give it all for the light and the sun out there. Wouldn’t you?”
And Fort said he would, knowing well of one thing which he would not give. And she knew that, as well as he.
They were both gayer than they had been for a long time; so that when he had gone, she fell back once more on to the divan, and burying her face in a cushion, wept bitterly.
V
1
It was not quite disillusionment that Pierson felt while he walked away. Perhaps he had not really believed in Leila’s regeneration. It was more an acute discomfort, an increasing loneliness. A soft and restful spot was now denied him; a certain warmth and allurement had gone out of his life. He had not even the feeling that it was his duty to try and save Leila by persuading her to marry Fort. He had always been too sensitive, too much as it were of a gentleman, for the robuster sorts of evangelism. Such delicacy had been a stumbling-block to him all through professional life. In the eight years when his wife was with him, all had been more certain, more direct and simple, with the help of her sympathy, judgment; and companionship. At her death a sort of mist had gathered in his soul. No one had ever spoken plainly to him. To a clergyman, who does? No one had told him in so many words that he should have married again – that to stay unmarried was bad for him, physically and spiritually, fogging and perverting life; not driving him, indeed, as it drove many, to intolerance and cruelty, but to that half-living dreaminess, and the vague unhappy yearnings which so constantly beset him. All these celibate years he had really only been happy in his music, or in far-away country places, taking strong exercise, and losing himself in the beauties of Nature; and since the war began he had only once, for those three days at Kestrel, been out of London.
He walked home, going over in his mind very anxiously all the evidence he had of Fort’s feeling for Noel. How many times had he been to them since she came back? Only three times – three evening visits! And he had not been alone with her a single minute! Before this calamity befell his daughter, he would never have observed anything in Fort’s demeanour; but, in his new watchfulness, he had seen the almost reverential way he looked at her, noticed the extra softness of his voice when he spoke to her, and once a look of sudden pain, a sort of dulling of his whole self, when Noel had got up and gone out of the room. And the girl herself? Twice he had surprised her gazing at Fort when he was not looking, with a sort of brooding interest. He remembered how, as a little girl, she would watch a grown-up, and then suddenly one day attach herself to him, and be quite devoted. Yes, he must warn her, before she could possibly become entangled. In his fastidious chastity, the opinion he had held of Fort was suddenly lowered. He, already a free-thinker, was now revealed as a free-liver. Poor little Nollie! Endangered again already! Every man a kind of wolf waiting to pounce on her!
He found Lavendie and Noel in the drawing-room, standing before the portrait which was nearing completion. He looked at it for a long minute, and turned away:
“Don’t you think it’s like me, Daddy?”
“It’s like you; but it hurts me. I can’t tell why.”
He saw the smile of a painter whose picture is being criticised come on Lavendie’s face.
“It is perhaps the colouring which does not please you, monsieur?”
“No, no; deeper. The expression; what is she waiting for?”
The defensive smile died on Lavendie’s lips.
“It is as I see her, monsieur le cure.”
Pierson turned again to the picture, and suddenly covered his eyes. “She looks ‘fey,’” he said, and went out of the room.
Lavendie and Noel remained staring at the picture. “Fey? What does that mean, mademoiselle?”
“Possessed, or something.”
And they continued to stare at the picture, till Lavendie said:
“I think there is still a little too much light on that ear.”
The same evening, at bedtime, Pierson called Noel back.
“Nollie, I want you to know something. In all but the name, Captain Fort is a married man.”
He saw her flush, and felt his own face darkening with colour.
She said calmly: “I know; to Leila.”
“Do you mean she has told you?”
Noel shook her head.
“Then how?”
“I guessed. Daddy, don’t treat me as a child any more. What’s the use, now?”
He sat down in the chair before the hearth, and covered his face with his hands. By the quivering of those hands, and the movement of his shoulders, she could tell that he was stifling emotion, perhaps even crying; and sinking down on his knees she pressed his hands and face to her, murmuring: “Oh, Daddy dear! Oh, Daddy dear!”
He put his arms round her, and they sat a long time with their cheeks pressed together, not speaking a word.
VI
1
The day after that silent outburst of emotion in the drawing-room was a Sunday. And, obeying the longing awakened overnight to be as good as she could to her father; Noel said to him:
“Would you like me to come to Church?”
“Of course, Nollie.”
How could he have answered otherwise? To him Church was the home of comfort and absolution, where people must bring their sins and troubles – a haven of sinners, the fount of charity, of forgiveness, and love. Not to have believed that, after all these years, would have been to deny all his usefulness in life, and to cast a slur on the House of God.
And so Noel walked there with him, for Gratian had gone down to George, for the week-end. She slipped quietly up the side aisle to their empty pew, under the pulpit. Never turning her eyes from the chancel, she remained unconscious of the stir her presence made, during that hour and twenty minutes. Behind her, the dumb currents of wonder, disapproval, and resentment ran a stealthy course. On her all eyes were fixed sooner or later, and every mind became the play ground of judgments. From every soul, kneeling, standing, or sitting, while the voice of the Service droned, sang, or spoke, a kind of glare radiated on to that one small devoted head, which seemed so ludicrously devout. She disturbed their devotions, this girl who had betrayed her father, her faith, her class. She ought to repent, of course, and Church was the right place; yet there was something brazen in her repenting there before their very eyes; she was too palpable a flaw in the crystal of the Church’s authority, too visible a rent in the raiment of their priest. Her figure focused all the uneasy amazement and heart searchings of these last weeks. Mothers quivered with the knowledge that their daughters could see her; wives with the idea that their husbands were seeing her. Men experienced sensations varying from condemnation to a sort of covetousness. Young folk wondered, and felt inclined to giggle. Old maids could hardly bear to look. Here and there a man or woman who had seen life face to face, was simply sorry! The consciousness of all who knew her personally was at stretch how to behave if they came within reach of her in going out. For, though only half a dozen would actually rub shoulders with her, all knew that they might be, and many felt it their duty to be, of that half-dozen, so as to establish their attitude once for all. It was, in fact, too severe a test for human nature and the feelings which Church ought to arouse. The stillness of that young figure, the impossibility of seeing her face and judging of her state of mind thereby; finally, a faint lurking shame that they should be so intrigued and disturbed by something which had to do with sex, in this House of Worship – all combined to produce in every mind that herd-feeling of defence, which so soon becomes, offensive. And, half unconscious, half aware of it all, Noel stood, and sat, and knelt. Once or twice she saw her father’s eyes fixed on her; and, still in the glow of last night’s pity and remorse, felt a kind of worship for his thin grave face. But for the most part, her own wore the expression Lavendie had translated to his canvas – the look of one ever waiting for the extreme moments of life, for those few and fleeting poignancies which existence holds for the human heart. A look neither hungry nor dissatisfied, but dreamy and expectant, which might blaze into warmth and depth at any moment, and then go back to its dream.
When the last notes of the organ died away she continued to sit very still, without looking round.
There was no second Service, and the congregation melted out behind her, and had dispersed into the streets and squares long before she came forth. After hesitating whether or no to go to the vestry door, she turned away and walked home alone.
It was this deliberate evasion of all contact which probably clinched the business. The absence of vent, of any escape-pipe for the feelings, is always dangerous. They felt cheated. If Noel had come out amongst all those whose devotions her presence had disturbed, if in that exit, some had shown and others had witnessed one knows not what of a manifested ostracism, the outraged sense of social decency might have been appeased and sleeping dogs allowed to lie, for we soon get used to things; and, after all, the war took precedence in every mind even over social decency. But none of this had occurred, and a sense that Sunday after Sunday the same little outrage would happen to them, moved more than a dozen quite unrelated persons, and caused the posting that evening of as many letters, signed and unsigned, to a certain quarter. London is no place for parish conspiracy, and a situation which in the country would have provoked meetings more or less public, and possibly a resolution, could perhaps only thus be dealt with. Besides, in certain folk there is ever a mysterious itch to write an unsigned letter – such missives satisfy some obscure sense of justice, some uncontrollable longing to get even with those who have hurt or disturbed them, without affording the offenders chance for further hurt or disturbance.
Letters which are posted often reach their destination.
On Wednesday morning Pierson was sitting in his study at the hour devoted to the calls of his parishioners, when the maid announced, “Canon Rushbourne, sir,” and he saw before him an old College friend whom he had met but seldom in recent years. His visitor was a short, grey-haired man of rather portly figure, whose round, rosy, good-humoured face had a look of sober goodness, and whose light-blue eyes shone a little. He grasped Pierson’s hand, and said in a voice to whose natural heavy resonance professional duty had added a certain unction:
“My dear Edward, how many years it is since we met! Do you remember dear old Blakeway? I saw him only yesterday. He’s just the same. I’m delighted to see you again,” and he laughed a little soft nervous laugh. Then for a few moments he talked of the war and old College days, and Pierson looked at him and thought: ‘What has he come for?’
“You’ve something to say to me, Alec,” he said, at last.
Canon Rushbourne leaned forward in his chair, and answered with evident effort: “Yes; I wanted to have a little talk with you, Edward. I hope you won’t mind. I do hope you won’t.”
“Why should I mind?”
Canon Rushbourne’s eyes shone more than ever, there was real friendliness in his face.
“I know you’ve every right to say to me: ‘Mind your own business.’ But I made up my mind to come as a friend, hoping to save you from – er” he stammered, and began again: “I think you ought to know of the feeling in your parish that – er – that – er – your position is very delicate. Without breach of confidence I may tell you that letters have been sent to headquarters; you can imagine perhaps what I mean. Do believe, my dear friend, that I’m actuated by my old affection for you; nothing else, I do assure you.”
In the silence, his breathing could be heard, as of a man a little touched with asthma, while he continually smoothed his thick black knees, his whole face radiating an anxious kindliness. The sun shone brightly on those two black figures, so very different, and drew out of their well-worn garments the faint latent green mossiness which. underlies the clothes of clergymen.
At last Pierson said: “Thank you, Alec; I understand.”
The Canon uttered a resounding sigh. “You didn’t realise how very easily people misinterpret her being here with you; it seems to them a kind – a kind of challenge. They were bound, I think, to feel that; and I’m afraid, in consequence – ” He stopped, moved by the fact that Pierson had closed his eyes.
“I am to choose, you mean, between my daughter and my parish?”
The Canon seemed, with a stammer of words, to try and blunt the edge of that clear question.
“My visit is quite informal, my dear fellow; I can’t say at all. But there is evidently much feeling; that is what I wanted you to know. You haven’t quite seen, I think, that – ”
Pierson raised his hand. “I can’t talk of this.”
The Canon rose. “Believe me, Edward, I sympathise deeply. I felt I had to warn you.” He held out his hand. “Good-bye, my dear friend, do forgive me”; and he went out. In the hall an adventure befell him so plump, and awkward, that he could barely recite it to Mrs. Rushbourne that night.
“Coming out from my poor friend,” he said, “I ran into a baby’s perambulator and that young mother, whom I remember as a little thing” – he held his hand at the level of his thigh – “arranging it for going out. It startled me; and I fear I asked quite foolishly: ‘Is it a boy?’ The poor young thing looked up at me. She has very large eyes, quite beautiful, strange eyes. ‘Have you been speaking to Daddy about me?’ ‘My dear young lady,’ I said, ‘I’m such an old friend, you see. You must forgive me.’ And then she said: ‘Are they going to ask him to resign?’ ‘That depends on you,’ I said. Why do I say these things, Charlotte? I ought simply to have held my tongue. Poor young thing; so very young! And the little baby!” “She has brought it on herself, Alec,” Mrs. Rushbourne replied.
VII
1
The moment his visitor had vanished, Pierson paced up and down the study, with anger rising in his, heart. His daughter or his parish! The old saw, “An Englishman’s house is his castle!” was being attacked within him. Must he not then harbour his own daughter, and help her by candid atonement to regain her inward strength and peace? Was he not thereby acting as a true Christian, in by far the hardest course he and she could pursue? To go back on that decision and imperil his daughter’s spirit, or else resign his parish – the alternatives were brutal! This was the centre of his world, the only spot where so lonely a man could hope to feel even the semblance of home; a thousand little threads tethered him to his church, his parishioners, and this house – for, to live on here if he gave up his church was out of the question. But his chief feeling was a bewildered anger that for doing what seemed to him his duty, he should be attacked by his parishioners.
A passion of desire to know what they really thought and felt – these parishioners of his, whom he had befriended, and for whom he had worked so long – beset him now, and he went out. But the absurdity of his quest struck him before he had gone the length of the Square. One could not go to people and say: “Stand and deliver me your inmost judgments.” And suddenly he was aware of how far away he really was from them. Through all his ministrations had he ever come to know their hearts? And now, in this dire necessity for knowledge, there seemed no way of getting it. He went at random into a stationer’s shop; the shopman sang bass in his choir. They had met Sunday after Sunday for the last seven years. But when, with this itch for intimate knowledge on him, he saw the man behind the counter, it was as if he were looking on him for the first time. The Russian proverb, “The heart of another is a dark forest,” gashed into his mind, while he said:
“Well, Hodson, what news of your son?”
“Nothing more, Mr. Pierson, thank you, sir, nothing more at present.”
And it seemed to Pierson, gazing at the man’s face clothed in a short, grizzling beard cut rather like his own, that he must be thinking: ‘Ah! sir, but what news of your daughter?’ No one would ever tell him to his face what he was thinking. And buying two pencils, he went out. On the other side of the road was a bird-fancier’s shop, kept by a woman whose husband had been taken for the Army. She was not friendly towards him, for it was known to her that he had expostulated with her husband for keeping larks, and other wild birds. And quite deliberately he crossed the road, and stood looking in at the window, with the morbid hope that from this unfriendly one he might hear truth. She was in her shop, and came to the door.
“Have you any news of your husband, Mrs. Cherry?”
“No, Mr. Pierson, I ‘ave not; not this week.”
“He hasn’t gone out yet?”
“No, Mr. Pierson; ‘e ‘as not.”
There was no expression on her face, perfectly blank it was – Pierson had a mad longing to say ‘For God’s sake, woman, speak out what’s in your mind; tell me what you think of me and my daughter. Never mind my cloth!’ But he could no more say it than the woman could tell him what was in her mind. And with a “Good morning” he passed on. No man or woman would tell him anything, unless, perhaps, they were drunk. He came to a public house, and for a moment even hesitated before it, but the thought of insult aimed at Noel stopped him, and he passed that too. And then reality made itself known to him. Though he had come out to hear what they were thinking, he did not really want to hear it, could not endure it if he did. He had been too long immune from criticism, too long in the position of one who may tell others what he thinks of them. And standing there in the crowded street, he was attacked by that longing for the country which had always come on him when he was hard pressed. He looked at his memoranda. By stupendous luck it was almost a blank day. An omnibus passed close by which would take him far out. He climbed on to it, and travelled as far as Hendon; then getting down, set forth on foot. It was bright and hot, and the May blossom in full foam. He walked fast along the perfectly straight road till he came to the top of Elstree Hill. There for a few moments he stood gazing at the school chapel, the cricket-field, the wide land beyond. All was very quiet, for it was lunch-time. A horse was tethered there, and a strolling cat, as though struck by the tall black incongruity of his figure, paused in her progress, then, slithering under the wicket gate, arched her back and rubbed herself against his leg, crinkling and waving the tip of her tail. Pierson bent down and stroked the creature’s head; but uttering a faint miaou, the cat stepped daintily across the road, Pierson too stepped on, past the village, and down over the stile, into a field path. At the edge of the young clover, under a bank of hawthorn, he lay down on his back, with his hat beside him and his arms crossed over his chest, like the effigy of some crusader one may see carved on an old tomb. Though he lay quiet as that old knight, his eyes were not closed, but fixed on the blue, where a lark was singing. Its song refreshed his spirit; its passionate light-heartedness stirred all the love of beauty in him, awoke revolt against a world so murderous and uncharitable. Oh! to pass up with that song into a land of bright spirits, where was nothing ugly, hard, merciless, and the gentle face of the Saviour radiated everlasting love! The scent of the mayflowers, borne down by the sun shine, drenched his senses; he closed his eyes, and, at once, as if resenting that momentary escape, his mind resumed debate with startling intensity. This matter went to the very well-springs, had a terrible and secret significance. If to act as conscience bade him rendered him unfit to keep his parish, all was built on sand, had no deep reality, was but rooted in convention. Charity, and the forgiveness of sins honestly atoned for – what became of them? Either he was wrong to have espoused straightforward confession and atonement for her, or they were wrong in chasing him from that espousal. There could be no making those extremes to meet. But if he were wrong, having done the hardest thing already – where could he turn? His Church stood bankrupt of ideals. He felt as if pushed over the edge of the world, with feet on space, and head in some blinding cloud. ‘I cannot have been wrong,’ he thought; ‘any other course was so much easier. I sacrificed my pride, and my poor girl’s pride; I would have loved to let her run away. If for this we are to be stoned and cast forth, what living force is there in the religion I have loved; what does it all come to? Have I served a sham? I cannot and will not believe it. Something is wrong with me, something is wrong – but where – what?’ He rolled over, lay on his face, and prayed. He prayed for guidance and deliverance from the gusts of anger which kept sweeping over him; even more for relief from the feeling of personal outrage, and the unfairness of this thing. He had striven to be loyal to what he thought the right, had sacrificed all his sensitiveness, all his secret fastidious pride in his child and himself. For that he was to be thrown out! Whether through prayer, or in the scent and feel of the clover, he found presently a certain rest. Away in the distance he could see the spire of Harrow Church.
The Church! No! She was not, could not be, at fault. The fault was in himself. ‘I am unpractical,’ he thought. ‘It is so, I know. Agnes used to say so, Bob and Thirza think so. They all think me unpractical and dreamy. Is it a sin – I wonder?’ There were lambs in the next field; he watched their gambollings and his heart relaxed; brushing the clover dust off his black clothes, he began to retrace his steps. The boys were playing cricket now, and he stood a few minutes watching them. He had not seen cricket played since the war began; it seemed almost otherworldly, with the click of the bats, and the shrill young ‘voices, under the distant drone of that sky-hornet threshing along to Hendon. A boy made a good leg hit. “Well played!” he called. Then, suddenly conscious of his own incongruity and strangeness in that green spot, he turned away on the road back to London. To resign; to await events; to send Noel away – of those three courses, the last alone seemed impossible. ‘Am I really so far from them,’ he thought, ‘that they can wish me to go, for this? If so, I had better go. It will be just another failure. But I won’t believe it yet; I can’t believe it.’
The heat was sweltering, and he became very tired before at last he reached his omnibus, and could sit with the breeze cooling his hot face. He did not reach home till six, having eaten nothing since breakfast. Intending to have a bath and lie down till dinner, he went upstairs.
Unwonted silence reigned. He tapped on the nursery door. It was deserted; he passed through to Noel’s room; but that too was empty. The wardrobe stood open as if it had been hastily ransacked, and her dressing-table was bare. In alarm he went to the bell and pulled it sharply. The old-fashioned ring of it jingled out far below. The parlour-maid came up.
“Where are Miss Noel and Nurse, Susan?”
“I didn’t know you were in, sir. Miss Noel left me this note to give you. They – I – ”
Pierson stopped her with his hand. “Thank you, Susan; get me some tea, please.” With the note unopened in his hand, he waited till she was gone. His head was going round, and he sat down on the side of Noel’s bed to read:
“DARLING DADDY,
“The man who came this morning told me of what is going to happen. I simply won’t have it. I’m sending Nurse and baby down to Kestrel at once, and going to Leila’s for the night, until I’ve made up my mind what to do. I knew it was a mistake my coming back. I don’t care what happens to me, but I won’t have you hurt. I think it’s hateful of people to try and injure you for my fault. I’ve had to borrow money from Susan – six pounds. Oh! Daddy dear, forgive me.
“Your loving
“NOLLIE.”
He read it with unutterable relief; at all events he knew where she was – poor, wilful, rushing, loving-hearted child; knew where she was, and could get at her. After his bath and some tea, he would go to Leila’s and bring her back. Poor little Nollie, thinking that by just leaving his house she could settle this deep matter! He did not hurry, feeling decidedly exhausted, and it was nearly eight before he set out, leaving a message for Gratian, who did not as a rule come in from her hospital till past nine.