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Title: Accident
Author: Bennett, Enoch Arnold (1867-1931)
Date of first publication: 1929
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London, Toronto, Melbourne & Sydney: Cassell, 1929
Date first posted: 11 March 2009
Date last updated: 11 March 2009
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #276

This ebook was produced by:
Jon Ingram, Don Perry, Christine P. Travers (HTML version)
& the Online Distributed Proofreaders Europe
at http://dp.rastko.net




ACCIDENT

By

ARNOLD BENNETT


CASSELL & COMPANY LTD.

LONDON, TORONTO, MELBOURNE & SYDNEY


_First Published_ ... 1929

_Printed in Great Britain_




CONTENTS

CHAP.


  1.  WORRY                         1

  2.  MISS OFFICE                   6

  3.  THE PULLMAN                  12

  4.  HALT                         18

  5.  THE CONFIDENCE               26

  6.  CUSTOMS                      31

  7.  THE TEA-CAR                  40

  8.  RUMOUR                       50

  9.  NEWS OF JACK                 63

  10. CATTLE                       79

  11. AFTER CLOSING-TIME           99

  12. THE RING                    105

  13. PEARL'S DECISION            112

  14. PEARL'S KISS                118

  15. THE ESCAPE                  124

  16. AIX-LES-BAINS               133

  17. THE EMBRACE                 143

  18. THE FEAT                    148

  19. CHAMBERY                    157

  20. ACCIDENT                    164

  21. ALIVE                       172

  22. SELF-SATISFACTION           184

  23. THE DRAMA                   196

  24. THE FRONTIER-RESTAURANT     205

  25. OLD LOVE                    219

  26. TEMPER                      228

  27. POLITICS                    240

  28. OTHER POLITICS              250

  29. LEAVING THE TRAIN           261

  30. ELAINE                      268

  31. JACK AND HIS MOTHER         276

  32. THE MOTHER                  285

  33. THE BALCONY                 294

  34. YOUNG LOVE                  302




ACCIDENT




CHAPTER I

WORRY


It was a fine sharp morning, midway between Christmas and the New
Year. Alan Frith-Walter drove down to Victoria in a smart, new,
orange-coloured taxi. He had in his hand a slim volume, Wordsworth's
_The Prelude_, at whose opening pages he had been glancing with
agreeable anticipation of sustained and lofty pleasure to come. He was
a business man of some culture, who, however, rarely meddled with
poetry. But of late he had encountered the work of Matthew Arnold, and
Arnold's solemn and convincing praise of Wordsworth had directed him
to the author of _The Prelude_. He felt at once that he had not been
misled. He felt that Wordsworth was his own destined poet. In the
first fifty lines were a dozen phrases that flicked his imagination.
"Escaped from the vast city" where he "long had pined." "The earth
lies all before me." "Dear Liberty." True, he had a rendezvous with
his wife at a certain hour on a certain day in a certain continental
resort. Nevertheless, somehow, the earth seemed all before him, and he
experienced the glorious sensation of freedom. The keen, slight breeze
through the half-open window of the cab was indeed "the sweet breath
of heaven" blowing on his body, and within him was "the correspondent
breeze that gently moved with quickening virtue." And he was aware
also of "a cheerful confidence in things to come."

A man with many responsibilities, he was accustomed to carry a weight
on his mind; the state of mental disquiet was almost continuous with
him. Worry, philosophically borne, had grown into a secret habit with
him. And now he made the discovery that he was not worrying! At the
moment he had nothing to worry about. Startling! Wonderful!
Incredible! Morbidly he rummaged in his head for things that ought to
trouble him; but he could find not one! He was uplifted.

"This," he thought, "is happiness. Work behind. Pleasure in front."

The taxi stopped in the courtyard of the station. He lowered the
window and looked out for his secretary, Miss Office, who ought to
have been waiting for him on the pavement. But Miss Office was not
there. His gaze searched the pavement in both directions, examining
the groups of travellers busy and preoccupied against the row of cabs
and motor-cars from which they had emerged. Not a sign of Miss Office.
Yet she had left the house with the luggage half an hour earlier than
himself. Instantly he was worried again. She might have been in an
accident. She might be injured. The luggage might be spread abroad on
some roadway, and Miss Office being driven unconscious to a hospital.
Frightful complications. He would miss the train. In which case he
would miss the boat. In which case he would miss the continental
train. In which case he would miss the rendezvous with his wife,--he
who was never late and never failed to keep an appointment. He had
nothing with him, not even his ticket. The services of the priceless
Miss Office were always comprehensive and complete.

A deferential porter opened the door of the taxi. Remarkable how there
was always a porter, no matter what the stress of traffic, eager to
attend on a well-dressed single man!

"No, nothing. Nothing at all, thanks," said Alan with a kindly smile,
hiding as usual his anxieties.

"Thank ye, sir," said the porter, very pleasantly.

No trace of disappointment or resentment in the porter's manner. He
obligingly held the door for Alan to descend, and Alan nodded
appreciatively and turned to the driver. And, just as he seemed to be
conferring a favour on the porter, so he seemed to be conferring a
favour on the driver--by the mere contact with them. The driver was an
old man--rare to see an old driver with a new taxi: the old had
generally to be content with antique, feeble, grinding vehicles--fat,
and fattened still more by jerseys and coats against the frost. His
red, ruined face and white hair rose out of a thick muffler.

"What's it worth?" Alan asked brightly, in the lingo of the driver's
class.

The old man, short-sighted, peered at the dial.

"Two bob, sir," was the husky answer, which mingled respect with
dignity.

Alan bestowed half-a-crown.

"Thank ye, sir." A hoarse cough.

As the driver raised a little the whole of his right side in order to
get at his trouser-pocket, the two human beings looked at one another
with mutual understanding. The driver had the air of saying: "I've
seen a lot of life and I know my world, and I know you're a gentleman
and friendly, That's all right." And Alan's glance seemed to be
saying: "You're all right, and you do know your world, and I'm all
right."

Up went the little red flag. Off curved the taxi. The brief meeting
was naught; it was banality itself; yet it had given a human
satisfaction to both men, had confirmed in both of them their belief
in the decency and commonsense of mankind. Alan thought longer of the
cabman than the cabman thought of Alan. The cabman, Alan reflected,
was old and bronchitic, and fated to spend his last years in
affronting the sunless inclemency of the London climate; and for far
less money a week than Alan would squander on a fancy dressing-gown.
Whereas Alan, in excellent health, was away for a Continental resort.
Something wrong somewhere; something wrong! No! What a trite, futile
and specious comparison! Alan's admirable brain laughed at it
tolerantly. Still, the absurd comparison added itself to his worry. He
would miss the train, and society was sick. Yes, he was worried, and
he could not deny it, and he welcomed worry, as one always welcomes
the resumed sway of an old habit that has been overthrown for a space.
Wordsworth was only dope.

And there, in the luggage-hall, at the window for excess luggage,
talking rather excitedly to an unseen man caged within, pushed at by a
queue of persons who were impatiently wondering whether she meant to
stay at the damned window all day, stood Miss Office. Part of Alan's
worry fell from him. But society was still sick, and he was an ass. He
must take himself in hand. Wordsworth was not dope. The world was
before him. The Pullmans were at the platform, and seventy miles off
the steamer was straining at the quay. He tried to recall the
Wordsworthian mood.




CHAPTER II

MISS OFFICE


Miss Office came away from the window victorious as from a battle. She
was a woman of between thirty and thirty-five, with a kindly, capable,
and helpful expression. Not beautiful, not pretty, she nevertheless
looked attractive; her skin was smooth, her complexion agreeable; and
she was smartly dressed as an honest secretary ought to be. The
discerning would be inclined to say, after a mere sight of her: "I
could trust that woman." Alan thought quite simply: "If anything
happened to her, my life would be hell." He could never understand how
it was that no man had captured her. Of her private life he knew
little, except that she shared a flat with a woman-friend. She seemed
wiser and more charitable than a virgin, but he was convinced that she
had no commerce with men more intimate than a dance. A creature
mysterious and divine whom he had bought for six pounds a week and a
very sympathetic demeanour!

The bustling hall was crowded with travellers, porters, and loaded
trucks. A continuous stream of travellers and their belongings and
attendants entered from the courtyard; and one by one, slowly, the
trucks moved forth into the freedom of the platform, each watched over
by its group of nervous, suspicious, impatient luggage-owners. Miss
Office found her porter, and presented a document for the inspection
of an official who pasted on to Alan's enormous wardrobe-trunk a label
bearing the name of a distant and romantic place. All men moved. The
official alone in the universe was fixed and stable. A strange
thought, that the humble and yet influential fellow passed his working
life in thus franking other people's precious possessions for transit
to wondrous foreign cities which he never would see, and of which his
imaginative conception, if he had one, must be wildly distorted!

Miss Office gave him sixpence for a single sweep of his brush. He took
the coin as a right, and Miss Office was for him as though she had
never been. The luggage, released, slid as it were furtively from
before his face. The next moment, out on the platform, the
wardrobe-trunk was rapt away from the rest of the luggage into the
careless, implacable custody of railway companies and steamship owners,
and the sole evidence of Alan's title to it was a flimsy bit of paper
in Miss Office's hand. Alan's suitcase and strapped rugs were to go
into the Pullman. Miss Office would not confide her own two suitcases
to any system of registration; for Miss Office seeing was possessing.

At the barrier which protected the unauthorised from that part of the
platform reserved for the departing, Miss Office came smiling up to
Alan, her hands still holding papers, paper-cases, and silver change.

"Everything in order?"

"Yes, Mr. Frith-Walter."

She was as tranquil and cheerful and grateful as though Alan had just
fought a campaign on her behalf instead of vice-versa. She gave him
his title to the trunk, his passport, his sleeping-car ticket, and the
journey-ticket, which last resembled the libretto of a French comic
opera with translation for the benefit of foreigners.

"We're in the first train," said she. "Car P.I.--Seat 16. I'll see
that your things are put in."

She left him rather ashamed of his assumed helplessness and
incompetence. He could have fended quite well for himself. What was
civilisation coming to? Well, it was all a convention. Had he not
trained the girl to treat him as an incapable? Doubtless Louis XIV
could have put his shirt on without the assistance of two nobles.

He passed through the barrier, carried forward on a spate of luxurious
travellers who, with twenty minutes to spare and their train-seats
strictly reserved, yet jostled and pushed one another as though, now,
they were escaping from a building on fire.

He stationed himself at the steps of one entrance to car P.I. and saw
Miss Office and the porter at the steps of the other entrance, and the
empty luggage-truck near by. The sacred enclosure within the barrier
was a confusion of somewhat distracted travellers rushing after
porters, or beckoning porters to rush after themselves, peering at the
numbers of cars, climbing up into cars or jumping down from cars,
buying papers, questioning officials, arguing, conversing anxiously,
settling hats on heads and cravats on necks, powdering faces,
examining tickets, counting money, taking exercise to and fro for the
hygienic sake of exercise, stamping their feet. The only nonchalant
and unworried persons were the porters, who never travelled, and the
car-attendants, who also never travelled because they were eternally
at home in their cars, and a minister of the Crown who posed with
complacent resignation for the eager cameras of two newspaper
photographers.

A slatternly greaser bearing a grease-tin passed close by Alan,
absorbed in his business and humble. For Alan he became a symbolic
figure representing all the humble who would be left behind when the
trains with their thousand tons of luxury rolled off towards the
south: the taxi-drivers, the porters, the minor-officials, the
newsboys, etc., etc.

"Why are we going, and why are they helping us to go?" thought Alan.
"And why do they not storm the trains and take our places by force?
All have their cares, and I have not a care in the world. These
contrasts on the platform at Victoria are really too spectacular....
How crudely I am thinking! Still, I have not a care in the world. But
the world is my care." He fingered the volume of Wordsworth in the
pocket of his new blue overcoat.

"Your seat _is_ facing the engine." Miss Office was standing
right by him, in the entrance to the car. "I've put the rugs on the
rack and your suitcase is here." She pointed behind her.

He nodded.

"You got your seat?"

"Oh yes!" she laughed, actually laughed with pleasure. "There's more
room in the ordinary first-class carriages than there is in the
Pullmans."

She too was bound for the rendezvous, but not accompanying him. She
would travel first-class only as far as Folkestone; thence second-class,
after the Channel crossing, by a slower train that had no
sleeping berths. She would sit up all night--in a corner if she had
luck. She was going partly for Alan's convenience, partly because his
wife had suggested it (not often that wife and woman-secretary got on
as smoothly as those two!), and partly because he had felt that she
well deserved a holiday--or the semblance of a holiday. Alan looked at
her.

Suddenly, her eye wandering across the scene as she mechanically
fingered the silver change still in her hand, she gave one of her
nervous starts; beneath her habitual calm slept the potentialities of
emotion. She controlled herself instantly. Alan's glance followed
hers, curiously. Into a car of the second train a young woman was just
disappearing.

"That's rather like Pearl," thought Alan.

Pearl was his daughter-in-law, married to his only son less than a
year ago. Pearl was with her husband in the north of England.
Therefore she could not be in the boat-train for Folkestone. Moreover
there were thousands of other Pearls with just the beautiful blonde
face and hair and the figure and the mien of Jack's Pearl.

"I think I'd better be getting in," said Alan.

"Certainly, Mr. Frith-Walter," Miss Office concurred, and leapt down
with the light alacrity of a young girl, and scurried away along the
platform to her own compartment. Something self-conscious, he fancied,
in her comforting voice, some concern in her kindly, sensible face.




CHAPTER III

THE PULLMAN


The train rolled smoothly and grandiosely across the sunlit river and
began its perambulation of endless Surrey suburbs. Alan had a solitary
armchair near the service door of the Pullman P.I. No sooner had the
flight towards the south begun than the orgy began. In the taking and
execution of orders for food and drink the attendants were continually
opening the service-door, which banged itself to in the close vicinity
of Alan's head. They allowed the door to bang, but otherwise their
demeanour was shop-finished, like the polished grained woods and the
upholstery and the brass and the advertisements of the gaudy car. They
inclined respectfully to receive commands, showing no consternation or
indignation at being asked to supply fish and fowl and tea and coffee
and sweets and whiskey and cocktails and even beer so early in the
morning.

What a cargo of opulent beings, of whom it might be said that for them
the sensual world did indeed exist! What a cargo of fleshly ideals and
aspirings! Thus Alan criticised.

The glib young couple in the far corner lapping a drink apiece and
feverishly smoking cigarettes--the youth slim and elegant, the girl's
vapid, pretty, initiated face made up in rose and white and black to
the last degree of artificiality! The gross middle-aged couple sunk in
dailiness and in a hebetude so deep that they were unconscious even of
the boredom inflicted upon them by the everlasting society of their
partners! The lone, chic lady, intensely self-conscious and alert for
the gaze of interest!

And there was a pair who lived in a state of acute emotion. The plain
woman of fifty, not smartly dressed but glinting and jingling with
precious jewels, had the assured gestures of a spoilt and discontented
beauty at whose feet knelt worshipping crowds. Every time the door
banged she struck the defenceless wood with the lightning glance of
her resentful eye. The same glance followed homicidally the backs of
the innocent attendants. She would have tea and she would not. Orders
were countermanded and reinstated. The man gave her a letter to read:
she took it as though it stank of polecats and read it with sniffing
disdain and dropped it and grunted. And she knitted savagely the
while. She was incensed against the whole of God's universe, from some
cause which only the man knew. She ruthlessly outraged the social
amenities of the car, and poised herself, with intent to alarm, on the
very edge of hysteria. The man evidently knew his task. He had to keep
her from toppling over. He grimly held himself in, watching her
warily.

As Alan observed the woman's thin, dyed hair at the top of her
forehead, and her wild eyes set too closely together, he thought:

"I can understand murder: the poor fellow is bound for the scaffold."

There were some nice, innocuous, seemly people here and there in the
car, but they were considerably less vitalised than the spoilt and
discontented beauty. Like the rest of the travellers they were fleeing
from themselves, and did not know it. Alan opened his Wordsworth, and
at once felt self-conscious. He read the lines, he even articulated
them, moving his lips silently to his soul. But the words conveyed
nothing to his soul. Baffled by the sensual atmosphere of the car, he
could not use for his own uplifting the philosophical instrument of
_The Prelude_.

His soul would not listen. His mind was out of control. Instead of
dwelling calmly and beneficently upon the marvels of the sensations of
man amid the divine phenomena of nature, his intractable mind summoned
and clung to the image of Pearl. Was she in the following train? If
she was not, why had Miss Office given that nervous start? And by what
trick of the brain had he imagined that he had seen Pearl? If she
indeed was in the following train, why was she there? Why, on her way
from the North, where she was staying, or supposed to be staying, with
Jack, had she not called at her father-in-law's house? Or, in default,
why had no word been sent to him? He knew little of Pearl, had seen
little of her. He had accepted her at Jack's valuation.

What could be wrong? Was a conjugal catastrophe imminent? Absurd!
Absurd! He had no grounds whatever for such a distressing supposition.
Yet his mind made the supposition. He was miserable, and for
absolutely no adequate cause. A little earlier he had been
ridiculously supposing a disaster to Miss Office which might have
marred his holiday. Had he profited by the lesson? Not a whit. He was
merely repeating his foolishness. What kind of a fool was he?

He had been born well, adored by very sensible parents, well educated
in a modern manner under the direction of a wise father. He had
succeeded to an ample share in a vast manufacturing business. He had
married satisfactorily. Nothing in his wife of the spoilt, faded
beauty making hell around her by the antics of over-indulged nerves!
His son, though differing sharply from him in opinions, was a fine lad
with an intellect as keen as God made 'em.

He himself was healthy and personable; young for his age. He had done
excellently in the business, which, without positive enthusiasm for
it, he liked. And he had interests wider than the business. He bought
rare books, and a French picture occasionally. He had preferences
among pianists, violinists, and orchestral conductors. He could go to
a new play and despise it and yet enjoy bits of it. He understood food
and wines and loved them. He could talk to his wife about her clothes
with more knowledge and appreciation than she could talk to him about
his. Surely he had wit and humour and kindliness and generosity.
Unquestionably he owned masses of money. If ever there was a darling
of destiny, he was one.

And what was the grand result? What were his life's greatest
satisfactions? Well, he enjoyed having breakfast by himself, and
reading his private correspondence and thinking of neat replies to it.
Well, he enjoyed wandering about hosiers' shops attended by several
deferential, smooth-spoken males and being tempted to buy lovely
shirts, handkerchiefs, neckties, socks--and yielding to the
temptation. Well, he enjoyed getting into bed of a night, and
savouring with all his body the perfection of the bed, and drawing the
eiderdown over his shoulder, and realising afresh nightly that the
bed-lamp was in precisely the right place above his head, and opening
a book that was a masterpiece, and reading it, and feeling drowsy and
drowsier, and moving his right hand two inches to switch off the
light.... And he enjoyed the routine of doing the same things at the
same time every day, day after day.

All these matters he enjoyed, and little else. That was the grand
result of his career. He thought angrily:

"I have been breathing for fifty years. I have passed the climacteric.
I have been educated; I have educated myself. I have worked, and I am
setting out for pleasure which I have earned. And here I am miserable
in this priceless contraption of a Pullman. I have learned everything
except how to live."

Then the train stopped, surprisingly, in the midst of a wide, Kentish
landscape.




CHAPTER IV

HALT


Shock. The stop was very sudden, and, despite the resilience of
Pullman springs, liquids spilled out of glasses and cups; something
fell from a rack, and a fork slid off a table on to the thick-carpeted
floor. An inspector traversing the car with his hands full of tickets
and documents, could only maintain stability by clutching the back of
the chair of the spoilt and discontented old beauty.

"Really!" exclaimed the hag, low and savagely, "I wonder they dare
stop a train like this like that!"

The whole railway system was thereby indicted. Her husband with
histrionic sangfroid restored to the inspector a yellow paper that had
escaped from him. All vibration and shaking ceased; glass no longer
tintinnabulated against glass. The silence and the stillness were
intense. The passengers realised by force of contrast the fantastic
din and racket and oscillation in which they had been travelling. A
formidable peace! The passengers instinctively began a competition as
to who should display the most natural and unconcerned demeanour; for
they were all British; not a mercurial New Yorker among them. Even the
hag-beauty kept still while considering what future antics would best
irritate her husband and keep the attention of an annoyed car on her
arrogant self.

Five hours elapsed, which the Pullman clock naughtily measured as five
minutes. Then time ceased and eternity set in. A few remarks here and
there in an undertone. Encouraged by these, the young couple resumed
their giggling duologue, but in whispers, for now everybody listened
to everybody else. And in the horrid stillness the deadly work of the
fraying of nerves was proceeding. The youth rang a bell, having been
requested to order a further supply of drinks. The bell was faintly
heard in the car. No answer. No attendant appeared. Even the traffic
manager of the railway in his silk hat did not arrive to apologise for
and explain the monstrous delay. The young man rang again. No answer.
Others rang. The passengers seemed to join in a concerted game of
ringing the bell.

At length an attendant did arrive, respectful surprise on his
ingenuous face. Was it possible that anybody had rung? It could not be
possible. The youth called loud his order.

"What is the matter?" snapped the hag-beauty.

"The matter, madam?"

"Yes, why have we stopped?"

"I really couldn't say, madam."

The serf was suave but firm. The authority of all railway systems was
behind the expression of his features, which said: "Have the goodness
not to meddle with what does not concern you, and what is beyond you.
If we stop, we stop. That is our affair. You are only parcels, and the
convenience of parcels is not entitled to attention."

The attendant vanished and did not return. The bell-game was at an
end.

As for Alan, he was perturbed and indignant because, though the boat
at Folkestone would certainly await the train, and the boat-train at
Boulogne would certainly await the boat, there was a probability that
if the delay extended much more, his through-coach would not be
attached to the impatient express at Paris and would be put on to a
slower train. In which case he would fail at the rendezvous with his
wife. The rendezvous had no importance; at worst, his holiday in the
South would be shortened by a dozen hours. But he hated to fail at a
rendezvous. He never failed at a rendezvous. And to fail at this
rendezvous would be a _contretemps_ which presented itself to him
as the worst conceivable misfortune in life.

On the other hand, the thought comforted him that a train misfortune
in England would somehow render less likely an accident in France--that
country of frightful railway accidents. Since two mishaps could
never occur to one passenger on one journey, the present trouble must
in some mysterious manner favourably affect the chances of safety on
the continent. Ridiculous! He knew it was ridiculous. But so ran, and
persisted in running, the ratiocination of an educated and experienced
man who had been nurtured in logic and was past the climacteric.

Then voices were heard on the track outside. The hag-beauty was
ripening for a critical scenic display with her husband. But the
husband, resourceful, had one of his inspirations. He got up and left
the car; and the lady, basely deprived of an adversary, was reduced to
inactivity. After a few moments Alan rose too and followed the coward
to the doors of the car.

The door on the near side was open. Alan opened the other one. The air
stung his skin. The sun was clouded over. He was chilled in a moment,
for he had removed his overcoat in the heated car. He might catch a
cold, but he argued that the grave crisis in which he found himself
would save him from a cold. There was no sense in this argument
either.

He stood on the high threshold of the car and looked at the lovely
soft, bare, variegated landscape, and the tender sky above it, and
wondered for the tenth of a second what Wordsworth would have thought
about them. "Lines written in a train halted in the midst of a Kentish
landscape." Would Wordsworth have ignored the big placard established
in a meadow opposite naming the name of a magic medicine and the
number of miles from London?

The train was arrested and lay moveless as though under an
enchantment. By leaning forth Alan could see the curve succession of
coaches on the curved track, and the engine so nonchalantly smoking.
He saw the bright steel up-line in a corresponding curve, wedged in
fish-plates that were nailed to sleeper after sleeper; thousands of
sleepers, millions of serried sleepers stretching all the way to
London and all the way to Folkestone and Dover; and the tens of
millions of road-metal pebbles, smoothed out, raked flat, combed! And
in the misty distance a tall, frail signal--at danger. No luxury here.
Nothing but the naked bones and backbone and bottom foundation of a
system. Here a train de luxe was no better than a common goods-train
or a third-class excursion-train. All luxury seemed forlorn, pathetic,
comic, fragile as a bride-cake: for ever under threat of destruction.
The through-coach would miss the connection at Paris. Disaster! God
was not in his heaven.

Passengers were now growing bolder in wrong-doing. One after another
they jumped down from the cars, until there were fifteen or twenty in
the six-foot way. And, while at first they dared not stir more than a
few feet from the close proximity of the doors whence they had
descended, little by little they walked further and further, at last
even taking "constitutionals" along the line in order to keep warm,
and beating their arms.

"Twenty-seven minutes," said a man looking at his watch, as he passed
under Alan. Alan wanted to ask him if he knew the cause of the delay,
but he refrained--from pride. He was too proud to enquire. Nobody knew
the cause of the delay. Why had the train stopped so suddenly? Why had
it stopped so far short of the warning signal? No answers to such
enigmas. Not an official on the track. The railway company was
maintaining its traditional, god-like, majestic, indifferent
reticence; and every employee was obeying the secret injunction: Give
nothing away.

"It's to be hoped the train behind won't run into us."

The voice of the dastard old husband, who had moved across the
platform of the car and was now immediately behind Alan and peeping
over his shoulder. What an alarming notion!

"Yes," said Alan vaguely.

"But of course it can't now. It was only five minutes behind us. It
must have stopped too, somewhere up the line."

"Yes," said Alan again.

The man spoke quite pleasantly, as if desirous but not over-anxious to
be sociable. No trace of the grim in his tone now. Indeed he showed an
agreeable personality. His nerves had rapidly recovered from the
nerves of his wife. Like Alan he would disclose no curiosity
concerning the cause of the delay. He accepted it stoically, as a
decree of God. They talked. Then "Excuse me," said the husband, and
passed in front of Alan, and dropped down on to the line. Perhaps he
feared that the hag-beauty was after him.

A woman appeared from the head of the train. It was Miss Office. She
had her hands in the pockets of her cloak, like a man, and by means of
them drew the cloak tight about her. As she approached Alan saw that
she was smiling--to herself. She waved to him, not as a secretary but
as a woman sharing with him an adventure.

"This is a nice business," she called, and laughed. Then added: "But
I'm sorry for the old people in the train. This sort of thing always
upsets them."

Alan thought:

"Why was I thinking so unkindly of those people in the car? Can they
help being themselves?" And he began to think kindly of them, to find
excuses for them, and his heart lightened.

"You don't happen to know what's wrong?" he quizzed Miss Office.

"It's something to a train in front," she said simply.

"Who told you?"

"The guard. Well, he didn't exactly tell me; but he sort of hinted."

"Oh! So the guard talks to you, does he?"

"Well, he was frightfully nice to me at Victoria about my seat. So I
just asked him."

Strange how the faithful Irene always chummed up with officials and
those who actually did things! A sort of free-masonry, helped no doubt
by her frank, friendly expression.

"I say," Alan asked her, quite unpremeditatedly. "That wasn't Mrs.
Jack that got into the other train at Victoria, was it?"

She did not say "When? Where? What do you mean, Mr. Frith-Walter!" Her
face admitted that she knew what he meant. And her face, he imagined,
grew a rosier pink. Instantly he was apprehensive.

"Oh _no_!" said Miss Office. "It couldn't be, could it? She's in
the North, isn't she? And she'd have let you know if she was coming
through, I'm sure. It couldn't have been Mrs. Jack."

"No, of course it couldn't."

But he now more seriously than ever suspected that Pearl was in the
train behind.

After a while an official inexplicably appeared, running along the
length of the train and motioning with his arms. "All aboard." The
bold passengers became frightened sheep and ran to and fro to find
their pens, and in a trice the track was empty. The engine whistled.
The train started. And why it had started people knew no more surely
than why it had stopped. The sinister secret was sternly kept.




CHAPTER V

THE CONFIDENCE


The ship was in mid-Channel, moving swiftly and smoothly over the
smooth, rippled water, which caused her neither to pitch nor to
roll,--the ship rode with triumphant urgency. Astern of her the high
cliffs of England were obscured in a tenuous white mist; ahead, the
lower coasts of France rose more inviting and absolutely clear. The
winter sun warmed; the tonic air wooed the cheeks and the sun put
exquisite colour into the sea. Alan leaned on his fore-arms over the
starboard rail, and watched the slow, sure progression of
cargo-steamers, a Thames barge in full sail, and some fishing-smacks
that seemed with plaintive perseverance to be soliciting alms from the
deep.

He had not encountered Miss Office. He had not caught sight of
Pearl--but then he had not cared nor dared to look for her systematically
in the crowded, complex organism of the vessel littered with luggage and
chairs and passengers somnolent or briskly alert; she might be hidden
away in the inviolable ladies' cabin. He preferred the uncertainty to
the assurance of trouble.

A man came and leaned by his side against the rail. It was the husband
of the hag-beauty. A shortish, stout old man of perhaps seventy odd,
with a pink face set off by white hair and moustache, protruding lips
reminiscent of an American, small, steely blue eyes, a firm chin, and
a very firm, half-defiant expression. His features relaxed into a
smile as Alan turned, Alan nodded and smiled amicably. They were like
old acquaintances.

"Nothing to worry about after all," said Alan lightly, divining that
the other wanted the distraction of a talk.

"No!" the old man agreed.

As a fact, the train had arrived only a little more than twenty
minutes late at Dover; the luggage had been whisked on board at speed,
and the sea-passage promised to be rapid. One of the ship's
ticket-collectors had prophesied that the French train would leave
Boulogne within five minutes of time. How absurd, now, all the expense
of spirit during the mysterious, endless halt on the line! A lesson,
that experience, as to the weak folly of fussing about the safety of
the bridge before you had to cross it.

"No!" the old man repeated. "Nothing to bother over as far as _that_
goes. I did think at one time the through-coach at Boulogne might miss
the express at the Gair de Lion, but we shall be all right now."

"Oh!" said Alan, brightening his smile. "You're going beyond Paris
too, are you? So 'm I."

He indicated a satisfaction which he did not feel, but he was bound to
be pleasant to the old man, even though he shuddered at the prospect
of dinner and perhaps breakfast in a restaurant-car near to, or
perhaps at the same table with, the terrible hag-beauty. He was full
of sympathy for the old man.

"My dear wife," said the old man abruptly, preoccupied, showing no
satisfaction answering to Alan's; and stopped.

"She's not ill, I hope, on a day like this?" Alan stammered. He was
thunderstruck by the phrase 'my dear wife,' accompanied as it had been
by a strange momentary softening of the old man's hard eyes.

"She's in the ladies' cabin. She always disappears on board, whatever
the weather. I couldn't get a private cabin. You never can if you
don't book one ten years in advance. I gave the stewardess a
ten-shilling note, but I didn't like the look of the woman." His eyes
had hardened again.

"I'm sorry," Alan murmured.

"Talk about worry!" the old man continued. Alan saw that he had been
resisting the impulse to confide in a stranger, but the impulse had
overcome his natural reserve at last. "My dear wife's had three very
serious operations--very serious. It's marvellous to me how she's come
through them. Sheer grit, I reckon. But they've upset her nervous
system terribly. She didn't use to have a nerve in her whole body.
Always cheerful and ready for anything. Now she's all wires like the
inside of a piano."

"Dear, dear!" Alan responded. "Some women do have dreadful
experiences! Dreadful!"

The intense commiseration of his tone was a means of expressing, to
himself, his intense shame at a false and unkindly judgment. Not
without good reason, then, had he accused himself in the train of
judging the occupants of the Pullman unkindly! His soul blushed, if
not his cheeks.

The old man, shamed too, because of his importunate confidence to a
stranger, turned aside to end the interview. (The truth was that he
had much difficulty in keeping his anxieties to himself, and in the
longing for self-expression and sympathy would state them to almost
any stranger whose face pleased him and who would meet him half-way.)
Then he turned back.

"I'm Lucass," said he, hissing the _ss_ to indicate the spelling.
"Lucass, Livewright & Co., Tyne. Retired long since. Used to be
chairman. One of your rivals. You're Frith-Walter, aren't you?"

At the name of the great engineering firm, Alan smiled more
sympathetically than ever, with genuine spontaneity, and held out his
hand, which Mr. Lucass took.

"I'm delighted to know you. But how did you know me, Mr. Lucass?"

"Label on your suitcase," the old man answered drily, and walked off
with his affliction and his shame.

The sea seemed still more exquisitely beautiful to Alan; the sunshine
was a miracle. All the distant craft plodding through the waters had a
sudden pathos. The big, urgent Channel-steamer itself, with its
helpless load of luxury, had pathos. The French shore hid a beautiful
land of charming and logical civilisation where things were understood
that were not understood in England, and mis-understood which were
understood in England. The very word "France" had pathos. Children
delicious, appealing, and cruel--the French! The earth and all nature
in its widest sense were invested with a wistful loveliness; and life
became as delectable as it was sad. Alan fell into reflection.

"Here am I, a hard business man, and I know how Christ felt when he
spoke the beatitudes."

He peeped at his socks, felt his necktie, glanced down at his
handkerchief and his shirt-sleeves: all in harmony; and thought of
hours spent in shops when for a space such trivialities were the most
important and difficult affairs in life. And smiled tolerantly. He saw
himself walking about, the image of correctness, good taste, security,
wealth. And smiled tolerantly. Could any observer believe that his
secret heart held what it held of aspiration, tenderness, humility
before the formidable veiled face of destiny? Poor Pearl! What did it
matter whether she was in a mess or not? In either case equally she
needed sympathetic comprehension.




CHAPTER VI

CUSTOMS


The passengers were in the Custom House at Boulogne: the eye of the
needle. After the excitations and the somnolence of the voyage, after
varied formalities, after being stared at hard by the suspecting eyes
of officials, after crossing railway lines between enormous
locomotives and passing along rope alley-ways guarded by armed
soldiers of the Republic, all the passengers with all the hand-baggage
that littered all the decks of the two-thousand ton steamer were
herded and forced into a small barn-like interior of which the midst
was occupied by a quadrangle of benches; upon these benches luggage
was piled containing the intimate secrets of hundreds of lives.

The passengers, with no more pride than sheep, and no more sense,
jostled and crushed one another in the frantic attempt to get near to
the rampart of the quadrangle and to their possessions. And there were
no rich and no poor and no gentlemen and no ladies; none but sheep
vitalised by fear, impatience and resentment. Civilisation was
destroyed, and men lived as though it had never been, shameless under
the gaze of blue-smocked porters who were not men but numbered
myrmidons of some mysterious far-off deity omnipotent and terrible.

Within the quadrangle were a few beings of a higher order than the
porters, nonchalant in the assurance of limitless power. They
commanded, and were obeyed. They were without souls and--more
important--without bowels. All sheep were equal in their sight, for
they distrusted all in the completeness of their disillusion
concerning sheep-nature. They carelessly pointed, and the gesture was
equivalent to a ukase from which there was no appeal:

"Expose--and expose quickly."

And secrets were exposed, and the suzerains of omnipotence with
ruthless hands probed for deeper secrets, and, if they found no sin,
negligently marked leather with the magic sign of an algebraic root in
white, and sheep, smiling sheepishly with relief at salvation from
hell, hastened away, followed by porters stumbling under fantastic
loads of acquitted goods, and these porters collided with other
porters stumbling under other loads of other sheep's goods towards the
bar of accusation. This was the Republic's welcome to its guests
seeking the privilege of sowing the land of the Republic with fecund
money; the Republic's contribution towards that benignant
internationalism which alone would save the world from itself.

Waiting his turn at the rampart Alan felt a prod in his side. Mr.
Lucass's chin had unfairly succeeded in taking the place of some
released passengers, and the Lucass belongings--a numerous array of
cases and packages and hat-boxes--were dumped down on to the rampart,
and Mrs. Lucass, angry and shaken, stood close behind, telling, in a
hysterical voice, her grim, silent man exactly what he must permit to
be exposed and what not. Her mien, movements and tone were well
calculated to arouse the most sinister irascibility of autocrats, and
they had their effect. Old Mr. Lucass's hard blue eyes wished his dear
wife at the devil; but she had been deprived for a full hour of the
outlet for exasperated nerves which his society afforded, and she
would not leave him nor hold her tongue nor keep still.

Alan, extremely irritated by the spectacle, thought that not three
hundred operations could excuse her performances. He had no
forgiveness for her. Her sufferings and the trials of the journey for
that living wound were naught to him; the beatitudes were sentimental
twaddle; he would have rejoiced to see her drop down dead. As for old
Mr. Lucass, he ignored her, and tried grimly to soothe the autocrat
before him in northern English--and failed. Suddenly Alan, to put an
end to an intolerable situation, and quite selfishly, said to the
autocrat in French: "I will occupy myself with all those things."

"_Quoi?_"

"I am a friend of Monsieur Crevel." (Monsieur Crevel being a
super-autocrat invisible to common persons.)

"_Quoi?_" Very threateningly and brutally.

Another autocrat, catching the sacred name, touched the first autocrat
on the shoulder.

"_Monsieur est un ami de Monsieur Crevel._"

The features of the first autocrat changed in an instant from the
autocratic to the cringing sycophantic. Alan, as he witnessed the
metamorphosis, had a sickening glimpse of the lowest baseness of the
heart of man; but he hypocritically smiled and nodded. Nothing in
either Alan's baggage or the Lucasses' was exposed. The cases were
marked for freedom; had they been full even of matches, the autocrats
would have passed them with a benediction. Porters gathered them up in
straps. The door of the Republic was thrown wide open.

"Let me find your compartment for you," said Alan, resolving to finish
the job handsomely.

"You are really awfully kind," said the hag-beauty, and her face
became beautiful with pleasure and gratitude. Then it altered to
frightful scorn as she turned to her husband: "You see how it
_ought_ to be done!"

"I'm not kind at all. I only did it because I couldn't stick the sight
of your disgusting behaviour," said Alan, but not aloud.

The next moment he was admitting to himself that he had in fact been
very kind. His sympathy with old Mr. Lucass was positively passionate.
And then, in the alleviating reaction from strain, he was forgiving
and justifying everybody.

"They're bound to go on like that. How can they help going on like
that--all of 'em! Indignation is simply silly." Charity inspired him
(but charity made him self-complacent). "I'm as bad as any of them,"
he thought.

He felt that Mrs. Lucass had charm, and the discovery was marvellous
to him.

He joked with Mrs. Lucass, who laughed. He saw Miss Office walking out
of the barn, a bag in either hand, smiling triumphantly in good
temper. No porters for the self-sufficient Miss Office. A wonder, that
girl!

He tasted the prospect of the enjoyment of fine Gallic civilisation!
Scenes familiar and beloved and yet for ever strange!

It was just as they were leaving the Custom House, under the inimical
gaze of two sentinel soldiers, that Alan for no reason whatever turned
his head to glance at the thinning throng behind, and saw
Pearl--unmistakably. Instantly he felt the weight anew on his heart. Her
face recalled his son's wedding. He saw her again exactly as he had seen
her in the motor-car, with Jack looking rather an abashed simpleton by
her side, driving away to the station for the honeymoon. A face
composed and somehow commanding, the face of one fully equal to the
situation. A lovely blonde, with a perfect complexion. But the facial
angle too marked; and the long, straight nose denoted a calm, reasoned
egotism. He remembered the scarcely perceptible pursing of his wife's
lips, indicative of reserves concerning the daughter-in-law brought so
surprisingly and tempestuously by Jack into the family group.

He was afraid. Why had there been no word from Pearl, no word from
Jack? Of course the girl had not the least idea that her father-in-law
would be travelling by just that Continental service; for neither he
nor Jack was an ardent letter-writer, and he knew that mother-in-law
and daughter-in-law rarely corresponded. Why had the girl left
England? Where was she going? It struck him that her mother, an
enigmatic creature whom Pearl apparently adored, might already be in
the South, in one of those fashionable hotels in which she passed her
life, and that her daughter was joining her. But why? The mother might
be ill. No! The mother had a constitution of leather and was never
ill. No! A married daughter in conjugal difficulties flew to an adored
mother for moral support. That must be, was, the solution of the
puzzle.

In one second, even as he glanced, Alan's swift mind had imagined a
complete story of misfortune and disaster, in which the high-strung
Jack played an undignified, perhaps an ignoble role. If Alan's wife
had made such a baseless, purely fanciful conjecture, Alan would have
smiled with superior masculinity, and advised her not to think in the
manner of a hysterical schoolgirl. The conjecture was preposterous; it
had not a leg to stand on. But Alan was making it in detail, and he
could not rid himself of it. Why could he not be carefree and happy
for five minutes together? Was there no peace on his earth?

He knew his duty. He ought to walk straight up to the girl and accost
her and boldly meet the crisis, whatever the crisis might be. But he
did not. He had voluntarily promised to shepherd the Lucasses into the
train, and he must do so. Obligation of the strong to the weak, etc.
He could not decently desert the Lucasses. Moreover the train was due
to leave. Supposing he missed it! Catastrophe! Of course it would not
leave--half the passengers were still painfully awaiting entrance into
the paradisiacal Republic. The train dared not leave. But supposing it
did leave? French trains had been known to commit these enormities,
with a shrug of the shoulders and a "_Que voulez-vous?_"

After all he might not have chanced to see Pearl. And what then?... And
she was obviously so capable. There she was--he judged in the
tenth of a second--calmly and masterfully addressing the autocrat
within the quadrangle. Doubtless she was lying to him, for she would
smoke only one brand of cigarettes (she smoked too much--a bad sign!),
and she would certainly be smuggling her own brand quite
unscrupulously into the Republic; all women were smugglers by birth
and natural inclination. (A poor joke, he thought, even if based in
truth.) She might get herself into a mess. Well, she would get herself
out of it. He had a vision of the security of his reserved
compartment. He longed to flop down in it and relax, in the perfect
assurance that it would be his ark till he quitted it upon arrival at
his destination.

The two porters, heavily laden and bulging with luggage on either side
of themselves like milkmaids carrying milk-pails, staggered in front
of the party and halted, breathing quickly, at a coach the name on
whose great romantic label stirred no sensation of romance in their
hearts. A chocolate-coloured car-conductor appeared and took tickets
and conned them as attentively as though he had never seen a ticket
before, and then smiled and bowed and smirked to indicate his sure
trust that the princes of the earth would be very generous when the
distant moment in a distant place arrived for generosity. One of the
porters climbed up the steep steps into the car, and the luggage was
hoisted through the window piece by piece. One of the porters took his
tip genially as manna from heaven; the other glowered doubtfully at
the paper money in his palm and said not a word nor smiled a smile,
but went off glum with an unspoken verdict upon the injustice of
destiny.

"Nip up, my dear," said Old Mr. Lucass drily to his wife.

"What language!" Mrs. Lucass retorted, seizing the brass handles in
order to raise her ungainly mass from the low platform. She smiled
archly, first at her husband and then at Alan.

"I'm sure it's meant for a compliment," said Alan gaily.

They were all three conscious of the immense solace of having
miraculously found the through-coach and caught the train.

Mr. Lucass assisted his wife's body with a boyish push, and nipped up
boyishly after her. Alan remained on the platform. He no longer feared
the society of his charges on the long journey, rather anticipated it
with satisfaction as he watched the irregular decreasing stream of
travellers, porters, and baggage which issued from the Custom House to
assault the passive train.

"If she isn't in the next fifty," he said to himself, thinking of
Pearl, "I'll get in. It's too cold on this platform." (An excuse.)

She was not in the next fifty. He got in and sat down solitary, and
would not look out of the window, and waited interminably. Nobody
entered the through-coach, which was not full.

"She must be in the train by this time," he said to himself, and put
his face against the window and watched. He could feel his heart
beating with apprehension lest he might see her and be compelled by
his inconvenient, pitiless conscience to make his presence known to
her. He was afraid. She did not pass the window. When all hope had
vanished of the train ever starting, it started--with a frightful
jerk. Somewhere in the train Pearl must be moving with him towards
Paris.




CHAPTER VII

THE TEA-CAR


Alan searched the train for Pearl, forced to do so by his conscience
against his inclination. Sheer hazard had brought himself and his
daughter-in-law within sight of one another in the Custom House. Why
should he seek trouble, especially as Pearl had obviously had no wish
to meet him? Was it not silly, and perhaps morbid, to do so? But
Alan's conscience would not always hear reason, though his mind was
reasonable beyond the average; and in a struggle it would always in
the end vanquish his mind, even after an apparent glorious victory of
his mind.

Being by temperament methodical and thorough, he conducted his
examination of the train in a manner which justified certainty about
the result. Pearl was not in the train. Well, possibly she had got
herself into a mess at the Custom House; or, in the alternative, as
there had been another train awaiting the boat at Boulogne, she had
taken it.

Alan ought rationally to have been relieved, but was not. He had much
disliked the prospect and the business of clearing up the mystery of
Pearl's journey by meeting her and questioning her; he had weakly
preferred to ignore the mystery. Yet now that he had railed to find
her, and the mystery remained, he was more perturbed than ever--quite
illogically.

At the finish of a wearisome journey through seemingly innumerable
carriages of the long, shuddering, swerving, oscillating train, after
being pitched impolitely from side to side of dim corridors, and
asking ten thousand heedless and fat persons to make room for him to
pass, and crossing the dangerous causeways between carriage and
carriage, and peering with outwardly vulgar inquisitiveness into the
intimacy of scores of compartments, he found himself once more in his
own carriage, which was a sleeper and different in design from all the
rest. He had a sensation of returning home.

Night was falling. The train was lit with many scores of lamps, and
full of dark corners. Outside the windows the Republic slipping
backwards was hardly visible. He did not know where the train was. It
was a train somewhere in space; and it was indeed his home. He had
marked his compartment by the individuality of his belongings, and the
disposition of them. The attendant smiled at him as at an acquaintance
who was ripening into a friend. He recognised the faces of other
attendants and the faces of a few passengers. The young drink-ordering
couple had acquired quite an old standing in his memory. He had seen
them in England; now he saw them in France--and how English they were
in France!

The door of the Lucasses' compartment was open. Alan stopped,
hesitant. He stopped partly because of the romantic strangeness of the
spectacle within the compartment, partly by the desire for some
comradeship in the half-hostile indifference of the train, and partly
because he had done a good turn to the Lucasses and therefore somehow
was under an obligation to them. He agreed with them once more that he
really had been very good-natured in looking after them; he thought
that they might properly have shown more gratitude than they in fact
had shown; he had an impartial view of their shortcomings, and
particularly of hers, and yet, again because he had done them a good
turn, he defended them to himself against his own accusations; they
had become his children.

Old Mr. Lucass was lying on the seat; the hag-beauty, the spoilt
darling, was bending over him with an expression of the tenderest
soothing concern in her peculiar eyes. The astonishing pair had
exchanged roles. The sense of the romance of the sexual relation, the
romance which could thus defy age, was sharply awakened in Alan's
heart. The respective attitudes of man and wife revealed to him as by
a miracle the wondrousness of life, and of its inexhaustible, rich,
dramatic surprises. Never could he have foreseen what he saw then. It
was nothing, and it was tremendous.

Both of them looked at him. Mrs. Lucass seemed to bestow on him some
of the benevolence with which she was enveloping her prostrate
husband. Mr. Lucass, his head raised on a white pillow, nearest the
door, threw his glance round at the visitor.

"Hello, Frith-Walter!" said Mr. Lucass, familiarly and weakly.

"Hello!" Alan responded.

This was the former tyrant of the great Tyne firm, the legendary,
pitiless protagonist of more than one colossal battle of industry in
which workmen and their wives and children had starved--and the hardy
despot had sworn that he would see them rot before he yielded one inch
to their demands. And he had melted in fatigue beneath the solicitude
of the terrible wife whom he adored! The remains of sandwiches
littered the small table. Hand-luggage was everywhere. And Mrs.
Lucass's knitting reposed on the floor against the copper spittoon
provided by a conservative sleeping-car company for the needs of a
past generation. The knitting absurdly touched Alan. He smiled at old
Mr. Lucass because Mr. Lucass had once been a formidable rival and
hence cordiality was his due. Besides, Alan liked the infirm and
valorous relic.

Not merely the Lucasses' compartment, but the entire train was
transformed for the befriender of age. He comprehended that without
realising it he had been living, ever since the Boulogne Custom House,
in a sort of vague nightmare, which had swallowed up and destroyed all
his spiritual aspirations, his joy in the holiday, his Wordsworth-induced
feeling for the simplicities and the fundamentals of a right existence.
In the Folkestone train he had begun a new life, and already he had been
forgetting the renascence! And why? The apparition of Pearl! And now Mr.
and Mrs. Lucass in the domesticity of their compartment lifted his soul
and made the moving train miraculous and lovely by the pathos of its
freight of human beings in search of happiness. Happiness came to him
there, in the train. Also a cheerful courage. If Pearl's enigmatic
journey meant trouble for him or his, he would be capable of handling it
with skill, gaiety and charity. Nothing could be too much for his energy
and resource.

At that moment an attendant hurried along the corridor ringing a bell.
The signal at last for tea! Two luncheons had been served in the
restaurant-car, and now the harried staff were to provide tea for
which people who could not face a lunch or possessed no tickets for
lunch had been clamouring and pestering them without cease since
Boulogne.

"Come, Ernest," implored the hag-beauty. "Tea will do you good."

"Damn tea!" Mr. Lucass retorted grimly. "Haven't I had brandy? If
_you_ have tea that will do me more good than drinking it myself.
Can't you see? Be off with you. Get out. And turn off the light and
shut the door. Eh, Frith-Walter?"

It was all so pleasant, so intimate, so natural, that Alan just
laughed in reply to Mrs. Lucass's easy, tolerant smile. And moreover
he was flattered that the pair should admit him thus ingenuously and
candidly into their privacy. The hag-beauty, oblivious of her invalid
state, went off with him to the restaurant-car, having first carefully
shut the door on her Ernest.

"Quick!" she cried. "Before all the seats are taken!" And in the
promiscuity of the restaurant-car, aiming uncertainly at the mouth
cups of tea that were travelling across the Republic at a hundred
kilometres an hour, she maintained the same mood amid the continuous
vibration of crockery and the babble of many voices and the jingle of
her own bracelets. She was over fifty. Her body had lost its shape.
Her face was a ruin. The thin hair at the top of the forehead was a
sign of a querulous and tireless spirit. The complexion was that of a
chronic sufferer. The eyes set so near each other indicated some
malice. But those eyes looked out from her soul into the world with a
youthful and energetic sexual challenge; they were exciting eyes; they
compelled the interest of the male, and all that was masculine in Alan
responded to them eagerly. Alan had a new sense of vitality, because
those eyes expected him to be adventurously masculine, assumed their
power to move him. She was agreeable, talked with extraordinary
freedom, and showed quite frankly that she liked Alan and knew that he
would like her.

"Of course Ernest's been telling you about me," she said. "He does
tell people about me. He thinks I don't know it. But I know. He tells
them it's my illnesses have changed me. Nothing of the kind. I was
always the same. He puts it on to my illnesses because he worships me,
and his pride wouldn't let him think that he could worship any woman
that wasn't perfect. Most men are like that. I daresay it's their
conceit, but it doesn't matter what you call it. You see I'm a woman
and a man too. I know how exasperating I am. I know better than he
does, and he knows better than anybody else. I'm spoilt because I've
proved millions of times that I can make him forget all my cruelty
with just one smile. It's very unfair, but he likes it like that, and
I suppose I can't help it. At least I could, but.... A man can only be
managed in one way, and it's always the same way, and a different way
for each man. I don't know why I should be going on to you in this
style."

"Neither do I," thought Alan. And said aloud: "It's very interesting.
And I must say I think your husband's delightful."

She was plainly provincial. She wore no powder; her intonations were
coarser than those of London; she had even a slight burring northern
accent. But she fascinated him. And she revealed to him the insipidity
of Elaine, his wife, so nice-looking, so placid, so reasonable, so
capable, so conscientious, so acquiescent and so colourless. Elaine
was three years younger than himself. Mrs. Lucass was probably three
years older than himself. But whereas he felt much younger than
Elaine, towards Mrs. Lucass he felt as a mature, still questing man of
experience might feel towards a precocious and exceptionally
intelligent young girl who had everything to learn and yet knew
everything by instinct.

Mrs. Lucass was a creature for whom existence was a continuous,
charming, frightful, perilous battle between two sexes. And yet she
was not coquettish--or she was coquettish so subtly that few would
detect her in coquetry. She despised the minor weapons of warfare. She
had no more conscience than Elizabeth or Catherine. She would be
capable of enormities, and after committing them would not deny them.
Her generalisations about men and women were as crude and misleading
as nearly all such generalisations. Their contraries would have been
just as convincing, and she might well have enunciated their
contraries with a similar assurance of deep wisdom. But some truth was
in them.

And what a woman! What a woman now, and what a woman she must have
been a quarter of a century earlier! Youth and beauty and bodily
strength had been stripped from her. Her empire had been narrowed down
to one old man. But, indomitable, she was not defeated--rather
victorious. An irascible hag--enkindling that fine example of the
experienced man of the world, Alan, who had moreover been strongly
prejudiced against her by seeing her at her worst! Yes, Alan pictured
himself at one moment as the man of the world dealing with a
precocious girl; but at the next he was a callow young man rendered
clumsy and speechless by the brilliance of an idolised feminine
individuality. All very confusing and delicious.

"I like Ernest to have to give in sometimes--I mean his body. He's
always saying how old he is. But he never wants anyone to believe it.
He wants everyone to think how young he is for his age. And the older
he makes himself out to be of course the more astonishing his
youthfulness seems. Vanity, naturally. Did you notice him push me up
into the carriage at Boulogne? He loved doing that. Boyish.... But he
isn't really strong. He couldn't have stood half what I've been
through." She paused.

"Go on!" said Alan. "Go on! You ought to have said that no man could
have stood it. You always say that. Please may I have some more tea?"
He laughed.

"Yes," said she, ignoring the demand for tea. "And then you'd have
said it was only because women aren't so sensitive to pain as men! But
you can't argue like that with me because I won't give you the chance.
I love your necktie, but it wouldn't suit Ernest. I buy all Ernest's
for him, and if I'm too ill to go out I make the shop-people come to
the house. I know all you Tynesiders think Ernest is a terrible
fellow. But he isn't. Yes, he is, only I'm more terrible."

"I suppose you always talk about Ernest," Alan quizzed her.

"Yes, I _do_. And what then? He's the greatest man the Tyneside
ever saw. And don't you all know it! Only nobody knows him but me."

"Your life's been a romance," said Alan, who was thrilled by the
thought of her life with Ernest. "And still is."

"It hasn't. It's been hell."

"But you like hell."

"Well, of course I like hell," said she. "Here's your tea. Hell's the
great place for romance.... Would that be your son staying at the
Majestic at Harrogate last month?"

"It might have been," said Alan, startled.

"I thought it must have been as soon as Ernest told me today who you
were. So did Ernest.... Was he with his wife?"

"Yes, I expect my daughter-in-law would be there too," Alan uneasily
admitted. Strange that old Lucass had not mentioned having come across
Jack at Harrogate. "Did you see anything of them?"

"Not to speak to. They only stayed at the Majestic three or four days.
But we saw them all right."

Something most peculiar and disconcerting in her tone, thought Alan.
Something of a half-malevolent innuendo.

"I knew he couldn't keep out of here," said Mrs. Lucass, with a smile
large and happy and malicious.

Old Mr. Lucass had feebly entered the tea-car.




CHAPTER VIII

RUMOUR


The Gare de Lyon, headquarters of the vast system of transport which a
Minister of State had once, in an impassioned oration delivered after
a grand official banquet, poetically described as "one of the glories
of France"! The through-carriage from Boulogne, all solitary, pushed
by an insignificant shunting-engine, moved very slowly along the
interminable platform, moved more and more slowly, hardly did move,
until there was a percussion and a re-percussion, and it stood
moveless. With a quarter of an hour to spare it had at last caught and
joined the great Rome Express, timed to leave Paris nightly at ten
minutes past seventeen o'clock.

Impatiently, joyously, Alan jumped down on to the platform, in whose
distances people walked about like pigmies. Already men were coupling
the Boulogne coach to the main part of the train; they did it with
Gallic excitement, indifference and expostulations, as if they were
saying: "Better that this carriage should not break loose; do not
therefore be wantonly negligent; but if it does break loose, _que
voulez-vous?"_

The cold of the station atmosphere, after the heat of the carriage,
penetrated overcoats. Alan walked energetically to and fro, surveying
the train from end to end. It was densely populated, and judging from
the countenances against the windows and further within, chiefly by
Anglo-Saxons. They alone owned the world; scarcely a dark Latin face
in the whole panorama of physiognomies. Only the restaurant-car,
immaculate, spruce and gleaming with white linen and glass and
polished metals, was empty--save for an attendant setting flowers on
the tables. The salt of the earth could not swallow their food without
the sight of flowers to cheer them on through the succession of
courses. Baskets of fresh fruit also. A white-capped chef, towel
wrapped loosely round neck, leaned forth from the brass bar of his
inferno, from which shot a blast of odorous heat. Clocks, enormous
clocks everywhere! Their long hands showed four minutes to seventeen,
and then simultaneously the hands jumped and showed three minutes to
seventeen. Here, time did not fly; it leaped like a grasshopper, from
minute to minute under an impulse of electricity generated miles away
in some huge throbbing interior of whirring wheels, furnaces, boilers,
and greasy pale mannikins.

On a far platform, beyond several lines of rails, Alan saw men and
women hurrying into a train--train with a common little locomotive and
many narrow compartments marked with a "3". They had no luggage bigger
than handbags; they carried newspapers, some of them. Suburbans going
home, to-night and every night, to their small flats and their simple
evening soup, and their tiny enormous worries. The same lives were
being lived here, in this city of romance and prestige, as were lived
at Waterloo and Liverpool Street. And these were the elect of their
kind, for they must have left their bureaux and their factories as
early as four-thirty.

Disconcerting, troubling, this spectacle! Why were they humbled, and
why was he, Alan, among the salt of the earth, with flowers for
dinner, and not a third-class, nor even a second-class, on his mighty
and exclusive train? What had he done to gain his paradise? The
structure of society was inexplicable.... Crude reflections!

He turned away. But he was safe. He hugged his good fortune, drew it
closely about him as he drew his overcoat closely about him against
the cold. He had caught the Rome Express. On every carriage of his
train shone the immortal name of Rome, and glittered in gold the
impressive words: "Grands Express Europens." He had not a care in the
world, and he had escaped from the phantom Pearl. He felt the first
delicious sensations of hunger, for since breakfast he had eaten
nothing but some bread-and-cheese on the steamer, and some toast and
cake on the Boulogne-Paris train with Mrs. Lucass.

He turned again to look at the suburban train. Its place was empty. It
had silently vanished into the darkness of one of the glories of
France. A gulp in his throat. Why? After all, there was nothing new in
these notions concerning the contrasts of existence. He had had them,
vaguely, for years. Sometimes they had formulated themselves as from
his office-window he had watched thousands of the firm's employees
hurrying, hurrying out of the yard gates, a pathetic procession under
arc lights, at the sound of release given by a shrieking siren. But of
late these notions had been growing clearer in outline, less vague,
more insistent: the spirit of the age besieging, investing, the
citadel of his conscience. What noble, charitable, illuminating lines
would Wordsworth have written had he stood in the Gare de Lyon and
seen the suburban train steal with its cargo forth and disappear,
leaving the imperial, bright Rome Express to await the strictly
appointed hour of its own departure? He could not imagine what
Wordsworth would have written. Nevertheless, while finding no words he
thought that he thought like Wordsworth, with the same embracing,
comprehending, loving, brooding mind. Wordsworth had influenced him,
softened him, lifted him, made him happier. It amounted to a sort of
miracle.

Yes, and he exulted in the grandeur of the Rome Express, and all that
it symbolised of romance. The journey had now really begun. As far as
Paris England and the familiar prose of England had seemed to be
trailing after him. The Paris train was impregnated with English ideas
and traditions. It was not fully "foreign," and the English were not
foreigners in it. But the Rome Express was different. Inhabited though
it was by Anglo-Saxons, run though it was chiefly in their interests
and impossible to conceive without them, the Rome Express was
essentially foreign and had the perfect romance of the foreign. The
far-reaching spell of England was broken. And it was the halting,
apparently interminable journey round the slums of Paris that had
broken the spell. What a pilgrimage of horrors! (No, not horrors.
Wordsworth would have seen in it something finer than horrors.) The
sidings; the shunting yards; the foul, slatternly, clanging factories
smoking and flaming in the darkness; the dim, miserable, deserted
stations, at which no train ever stopped; the names of the stations
scarcely decipherable under oil-lamps; the signal lights that with
everlasting patience gleamed their admonitions; the high buildings
packed with homes--a window lit here and there, glimpses of
domesticity through half-drawn curtains, white washing that waved
slowly in the smutty gloom; and then the infinitely deliberate arrival
beneath the lofty vaulted roofs of the terminus that in addition to
being a terminus was a new beginning!

The prodigious long-distance engine, concealing its strength, rolled
with the most deceptive soft gentleness into the station; it was
pushing in front of it a coach and a brake-van. The train was at last
made up. Officials grew active. Then a group of passengers, three men
and a woman, went past Alan on the platform, and he heard the English
words:

"And they say that both trains caught fire."

"No. Only one. The Marseilles train."

"I tell you it was like this."

The group stopped quite close to Alan, talking somewhat eagerly, and
recounting again and again as people will when they are excited. He
heard in confused detail the recital of an accident, a collision,
which had happened earlier in the afternoon near Lyons. The number of
victims was variously stated--thirty, fifty, a hundred; very many
deaths, some persons burned alive. One of those disasters which give a
major thrill to the readers of every daily paper in the world and
which become historic in the annals of railway travelling. Ministers
of State, he heard, were already en route by special train to the
scene of the catastrophe, in accordance with the French custom.

And he had hitherto caught no rumour of the affair so tremendous and
terrible! He was travelling by express; in a few minutes he would be
rushing through the darkness at a hundred kilometres an hour, just as
the fated trains had been rushing--but by daylight. People as
thoughtless and unapprehensive as himself, perhaps bound like himself
on pleasure, had been anticipating as a matter of course the
satisfactory end of a journey; and now, after frightful agony, they
were incinerated corpses! The smashed train was probably still at that
moment going up in fire; bodies were still pinned in the wreckage;
sufferers were still yelling to be put out of their misery; doctors
were still at work, and automobiles were still flying across the
country side with the maimed and the dying. Severed limbs were strewn
about. Blood....

Horrible images filled his mind. Also he was dismayed by the mere fact
that only by chance had he got wind of the accident. It was better to
know. He might have started off in ignorance, ignorantly light-hearted.
He would have boldly joined the group and asked questions,
but, for the second time that day, his natural British reserve held
him back. And what more could he learn? The group would only begin the
story all over again.

"You needn't be a bit afraid, my dear," said one of the men to the
woman. "Two accidents like that don't happen in one day."

Superstition! Yet Alan himself had been exactly as superstitious in
his private reasoning about the still mysterious mishap on the
Southern Railway in England. At any rate that mishap had not had the
magic power to prevent an accident in France! Perhaps the magic power
could not cross the sea! He laughed harshly within himself at himself.
But such and similar fantastically idiotic ideas did indeed occur to
him.

The group walked along the train and boarded it. The officials had
their eyes on clocks and were calling insistently: "_En voiture._"
Their faces gave not a sign of calamity. Alan climbed into his
carriage. The people in the corridor there seemed to have a quite
ordinary demeanour. Surely they must know the fearful fact. Alan felt
heavy with the tidings. The tidings were somehow in the air; he was
breathing them; they permeated the carriage, the train, the entire
station; they gave him a curious feeling of blameworthiness--as though
he had been privy to the catastrophe; he suspected that he had a
guilty look. It was most odd. He ought to inform the Lucasses. But
then he might upset Mrs. Lucass, if not the grim old man. On the other
hand, supposing that he kept silence and afterwards they reproached
him: "What! You knew, and you said nothing to us!" How could he answer
the reproach? He stood hesitating. Then the floor of the carriage
trembled slightly. The station was gliding slowly past the windows of
the train.

Alan might have gone straight into his compartment, his home, his
castle, and shut the door and read Wordsworth till dinner; but the
desire, morbid no doubt, to see the Lucasses was growing in him. He
would pass their compartment; if they hailed him he would tell them
the news: if not, he would take that for a sign that he might postpone
the narration, or escape it by the talkativeness of somebody else.
Their door was open. He stopped.

"What's this about an accident?" Mrs. Lucass demanded abruptly.

He was abashed by the directness of the attack.

"How--how did you hear of it?" he asked.

"Then you did know? Why didn't you tell us? Before the train started?"
said Mrs. Lucass, with a certain provincial tartness.

There it was: the reproach which he had foreseen! Evidently the lady
was disturbed. And she was treating him with the brusque freedom which
is usually bestowed only upon old friends.

"A fellow came in here just now and told us," old Mr. Lucass
explained, more smoothly.

"Who? Anyone you know?"

"Don't know him from Adam. He just walked by and told us. Seemed full
of it." Mr. Lucass sniggered, rather self-consciously.

Without being asked, and yet by the wish of the occupants, Alan came
further into the compartment and closed the door.

"I couldn't tell you before," said Alan defensively. "I only heard of
it this minute--just as the train was leaving."

"Who told you? What did you hear? How do people get to know about
these things?"

Mrs. Lucass's tones clearly indicated that she was losing control of
those mysterious organs, her nerves. She began to knit, jerkily. She
was no longer the woman who had half-humorously fenced with Alan at
tea. There was a gleam in her eye, but a dangerous gleam, resentful,
cruel, with no fun in it. She had become the woman who knew that she
could tyrannise over her husband with impunity, could force him to pay
any price for even superficial peace and the hope later of a smile;
the unscrupulously self-indulgent woman. Alan had to relate his
version of the story, while she watched him like a crouching tiger.

"A hundred killed!" she exclaimed indolently, angry. "That's what we
heard. A hundred _killed_!"

"No, my dear," Mr. Lucass corrected. "He said a hundred victims--about
a hundred. He said the figures weren't known yet."

"I don't care what _you_ heard--_I_ heard a hundred killed, and I
expect there were more. He was trying to soothe us."

"Soothe us!"

"Yes. Besides, what does it matter? There's been an accident and there
you are! If we'd been in an accident we shouldn't care whether there
were a hundred killed or a thousand--especially if one of us was dead
or crippled for life--to say nothing of the shock to the system. I
simply can't understand all this quibbling about numbers."

Mrs. Lucass was growing more and more excited. Her husband, wise, made
no reply. Alan, anxious to calm her, said:

"Well, we aren't in an accident. There's been one, and there won't be
another. You can depend on that, dear lady."

"But that's only superstition," said Mrs. Lucass sharply. "And don't
we all know that French railway accidents always go in twos! There's
never one but there's another. Never. Everybody knows that. You only
have to read the papers. All this comes of travelling on a Friday."

Alan thought:

"Good God! Here she talks about me being superstitious, and the next
second she's going on about accidents happening in twos and about
travelling on Friday! Does she want all railways to be shut up on
Fridays? Women are impossible. All women are impossible. They're all
alike."

Elaine was one of the Friday-fearers. Remarkably acquiescent as a
rule, she was adamantine against Fridays. "It's no use, Alan," she
would say, "I won't do it." And she wouldn't. He remembered an
occasion when Thursday fell on the thirteenth, and they had not been
able to travel between Wednesday and Saturday. Yet Elaine was an
educated woman of the twentieth century! Incredible! Monstrous!
Elaine, however--he would say that for her--never lost her nerve. She
would have kept quite calm and amenable at the news of forty
accidents. Never was she flustered. He would have liked her to be
flustered sometimes. He had a secret longing for adventure, and life
with Elaine was not an adventure, and never could be. He was jealous
of old Mr. Lucass, whose life with Mrs. Lucass must be one endless
succession of adventures--perilous, exasperating, but vitally
interesting. Old Mr. Lucass lived; Alan did not. Such was Alan's
verdict. Stranger still, he thought:

"Supposing there _is_ something in this Friday business. People have
believed in it for hundreds of years: perhaps thousands! I shouldn't
be surprised if everyone who travels on a Friday is secretly afraid.
Am I? Yes, I daresay I am. The old lady is only saying out loud what
we all think."

And he seemed to recall that French railway accidents did have a habit
of happening in twos. More, he had known them happen in sequences of
threes and fours. Women were terrible.

"Well," he said brightly, and easily, and also superiorly--he could
not keep superiority out of his tone--"We shall see what we shall see.
There's always the efficacy of prayer, isn't there?" He prepared to
leave the compartment.

"Yes, that's all very well," said Mrs. Lucass uncompromisingly, "but
if I'd known a minute or two earlier I shouldn't have been in this
train now. No! That I shouldn't!"

"But what would you have done, Mrs. Lucass?"

"I should have got out, bless the man! I should have waited in Paris
_till things had quietened down a bit_." She snorted. "Look at it.
Look at it!" the train shook over some points and swayed round a
curve. "We're just caught like rats in a trap, that's what we are!
Caught like rats in a trap!"

Alan could only give a placatory smile. He could think of absolutely
nothing to say; and he perceived that there was policy in the strict
silence of Mr. Lucass.

"See you at dinner, perhaps," he suggested, far more out of politeness
than from any desire to see them at dinner.

Mr. Lucass nodded, grimly amiable.

"You may see Ernest," said Mrs. Lucass, indicating by a disdainful
movement of the lips that for herself she could not tolerate the
restaurant-car, for all its flowers and its fresh fruits.

Alan glanced an au revoir at the couple, benevolently, half-enviously.
The hag was now paramount in Mrs. Lucass, the spoiled and ruthless
hag-beauty. All her shapeless body seemed to be simmering or
fermenting beneath the ruined skin and the vague, ignoble clothes she
wore. Tiny bubbles of issuing spit formed between her lips. She
knitted furiously. Her bracelets jingled to express continuously the
enormity of her grievance against God, his universe, and all his
creatures.

"Leave us!" her burning eyes said to Alan. "This is our affair, our
private life. He is mine, and I'm his, and you are only in the way.
With him I can be myself. I must be myself or else die for it. I will
heap troubles on him if I choose, and it shall concern no one but
ourselves."

She was like a man clearing his house in order to beat his wife at
ease. And Mr. Lucass's mien was resigned, rocky, indomitable. They
might love each other or hate each other, they might be in heaven or
in hell--they were intimately and inseparably attached, and this
attachment was the greatest, the only heroical factor in their joint
existence. Alan felt regretfully as though he were quitting
palpitating life, glorious and dreadful, for the pale ennui of torpor.
He was glad to go, yet opened the door with reluctance. The door
opened outwards into the narrow corridor.

"I _beg_ your pardon!" he exclaimed, with really apologetic alarm, for
he had crashed the edge of the door into the slim elegant frame of a
young woman who happened to be passing. This young woman was Pearl.




CHAPTER IX

NEWS OF JACK


Alan felt a shock far greater than the physical shock. The lees of his
mind seemed to be suddenly shaken up and all sorts of strange
particles to be swimming and swirling in the thought-fluid. He had
imagined that he was free of Pearl and any worries that her presence
might presage; he had definitely dismissed her. And there she was, as
startled at the sight of him as he at the sight of her. He must pull
himself together for the encounter; she was doing similarly. First,
with his habitual prudence, he smilingly closed the door of the
compartment of the Lucasses. Pearl was very close to him in the
vibrating, rumbling corridor; no other person in view.

"Well," he began, "of all the----Jack here too?" The last three words
were not convincingly said: they divulged his self-consciousness.

With a faint, puzzling, and somehow slightly superior smile, Pearl
shook her head in answer to the question. She let him take her hand;
the response of her gloved fingers to the pressure of his was hardly
perceptible; did her fingers respond or did they not? She was
watchful, defensive, planning tactics to suit the rapidly developing
circumstances of the occasion.

He respected her, decided that she had the capacity to be formidable.
She was perhaps showing more self-possession than her father-in-law.
An opponent--if an opponent--not to be trifled with! How
beautiful--save that the facial angle was a bit too pronounced and the
nose a bit too long! How sweet! Evidently she had just been titivating
herself. Her complexion was exquisitely arranged, and the rouge
brightened her hazel eyes. Her pale hair was lovely. She was delicately
perfumed. She wore her simple oatmeal-coloured travelling costume with
marked elegance. One of those young women who will not permit themselves
to go to pieces even on a long railway journey!

And how young! What a contrast with Mrs. Lucass! What a contrast with
Elaine! Another generation. He himself was cut off from her by the
vast spreading expanse of a quarter of a century. But he did not,
could not, feel himself to be appreciably her senior. His age was an
illusion created by the calendar. He felt as young as on the day when
Jack was born. He felt her equal. But he was saddened by the thought
that she must inevitably regard him as old.

Nevertheless she herself had changed. It was not that she looked
older--she looked merely more mature, sophisticated, subtle,
knowledgeable; she had eaten of the tree. It was an ingenuous maid,
for all her composed, kindly, fair-minded air of being determined to
protect her own interests, that Jack had brought to his parents, as if
half-defiantly saying to them: "This is mine. This is what I have
chosen, whether you like it or not." It was a maid that had driven off
with Jack for the honeymoon. Alan had not seen her since. Now he saw a
married woman who had lost the unique glance and bloom of virginal
innocence. Grievous, in a way, but magnificent, this transformation!
And he was her husband's father, and therefore by convention on terms
of intimacy with her. But in fact he was not intimate with her at all;
he scarcely knew her. Jack had whirled her off, on his impulsive
courses, not wilfully, but negligently, secretive. The parents'
information about the movements and doings of the couple had always
been very vague.

"You look extremely fine," said Alan, adding with cautious respect,
"if I may say so."

"Do I?" These were her first words, murmured.

She had shifted from him a yard or so. He surveyed her, and then
admiringly met her eyes, and then glanced at her feet. The expensive
shoes had no cross-straps; the top edges of them were scalloped with a
microscopic ornament that invited inspection.

"Where did you pick up that dress, my dear?"

She named a Paris house with a branch in London.

"What they call 'three-piece,' isn't it?"

She nodded again.

"And what's that fur on the collar?"

"Lynx."

"Oh! So that's lynx, is it? Well, now tell me. How have you managed to
be in this train? You weren't in the through-carriage from Boulogne."

"No. I was too late to get a place in the through-carriage. I drove
across Paris from the Gare du Nord."

(Then she must have escaped his search of the Boulogne-Paris train.)

"Now, if you'd only let me know I'd have fixed everything up for you.
I expect you haven't heard that the Sleeping-Car Company is my toy and
my wash-pot."

"No, I hadn't. And there wasn't time to let you know."

"But didn't you sleep in London last night?"

"No. I caught the Scottish express at Newcastle."

"And you don't look in the least tired after it."

"I'm going to see mother," said Pearl.

"She's not ill?"

"Oh no! Mother's never lost a tooth and never had a day's illness. But
she's lonely rather, and I'm spending New Year with her."

The girl spoke in an unemotional, even voice; her tone and
articulation were beautiful. Alan guessed instinctively that she was
playing for position. He too was playing for position. All their words
were meant to cover up their thoughts. He forbore to make another
allusion to Jack. Jack was his son, and, if trouble had arisen between
her and Jack, she would be counting him, Alan, among the enemy forces.
Pooh! How had he got this silly, far-fetched idea into his head? She
was going to spend the New Year with her lonely mother: and that was
all. And yet no! She was surely acting a part. Anyhow he would leave
her to be the first to mention Jack again.

"You got a compartment to yourself, my dear?"

"I wish I had. I'm sharing with a spinster who's on an art-pilgrimage.
She talks all the time and reads me her notes on the Louvre. She's
taken her boots off--boots!--and put on a man's bedroom slippers."
Pearl laughed tolerantly, but disdainfully. Not a reassuring laugh.

"Come and see _my_ cabin--I mean compartment," said Alan.

"I will," she agreed willingly.

But he knew that she was still playing for position. He knew that if
she would be frank he was destined to hear something gravely to his
disadvantage. He wanted both to induce her to be frank and to prevent
her from being frank.

"Which way?" she enquired.

"Behind you. Next door but two up the street. Funny we didn't run up
against one another on the boat or the Paris train or somewhere."

"Yes."

"Because when I'm travelling by myself, which I hate, I always look
through the train with a microscope for friends, or anyhow for someone
I know; and its wonderful how often you do find someone you know. But
not today I didn't. I could have taken my oath there wasn't the
slightest nodding acquaintance of mine in that train from Boulogne.
And yet you were in it--unless of course there were two trains to
Paris." He felt himself growing quite bright--she was having that
effect on him.

"Ah!" said she, lifting a finger warningly, "nobody can ever be sure
that anybody isn't in a train--I mean one of the big trains. And there
weren't two Paris trains either."

Her manner, playfully mysterious, showed that she had humour, and he
remembered noticing in her before, at their previous brief, few
meetings, certain obscure indications of humour. Elaine had no humour,
though she could often tell by wifely, loving instinct when he was
being funny, and would smile in order to please him; but he was
convinced that never in her life had Elaine really seen a joke. Jack
had no humour. Jack would occasionally stare puzzled at his father and
say: "Are you trying to be funny, Dad?"

He was suddenly drawn towards Pearl; he had the charming sensation of
genuine intimacy with the exquisite strong creature. Strange! For he
also went in fear of her. Beyond question Jack had chosen something
worth choosing. But was Jack--a fine fellow in many ways--worthy of
the choice he had made? A pretty doubt for a father! However, in these
moments Alan was not a father, nor a father-in-law. He was just
Pearl's appreciative fellow-creature, and beginning to luxuriate in
her society, in his discovery of her individuality.

They sat down side by side in his compartment. He observed with what
elegant grace she disposed her body and limbs on the seat. Her first
act was to take a transparent tortoiseshell cigarette-case out of her
bag, and a cigarette out of the case. She did this very rapidly and
neatly, with her gloves still on. Apparently smoking was her
weakness--perhaps her sole weakness. He was quick with a match for
her. She thanked him with a quiet smile, which flowered and faded all
in an instant. Was she feeling sympathetic towards him, thinking of
him as a fellow-creature? He was anxious to produce a good impression
on her because she was a beautiful woman and because she was the sort
of woman whose opinion he would necessarily value.

She enquired with politely eager cordiality about Elaine, whom she
referred to as "Jack's mamma," not as "Mamma," and Alan said he was
going out to join Jack's mamma, and she said of course he was, and
Alan said he had spent a quiet and lonely Christmas, with golf and
bridge in it, and she said that she and Jack had also been rather
quiet. And then the conversation, insignificant, groping, cautious,
slightly exacerbating to the nerves, dropped for a few seconds, which
Pearl employed in leaning across to the heavy copper ash-tray and
carefully dropping ash thereon.

"Heard about the railway accident, I suppose?" Alan resumed, in a new,
livelier tone, as of a man of the world who was aware of his duty not
to go to sleep or to let her go to sleep.

"Yes," she said, gravely. "Bad, isn't it? My art-student told me. But
aren't they always having accidents on that Bordeaux line?"

"Bordeaux?" he exclaimed, bewildered, shocked by a new and utterly
unexpected orientation.

"Yes. She said it was near to Bordeaux."

"Oh!" he murmured, crestfallen, almost disappointed. "I heard it was
somewhere down this line." He laughed; he could not help laughing.

"Well, I don't know. I only know what she told me." And Pearl laughed
too.

"Perhaps there hasn't been any accident after all. You know how these
rumours begin."

"Let's hope not," she said casually, with a faint sardonic gesture of
the lips.

Yes, he liked her style. No nerves, no superstition, no nonsense about
her. She would not have an iota of objection to travelling on a Friday
even if Friday was dated the thirteenth of the month. Nor would she
irrationally reason that accidents occur in twins, or triplets; nor
that one accident could prevent another. A man could have peace with
her, in the full assurance that she would not outrage his masculine
commonsense. (But did she have peace with the flyaway Jack?)

She raised the lynx collar round her ears; her delicate face peeped
out small through the enveloping fur.

"Yes," said Alan. "There's a devil of a draught from that corridor
window." And he jumped up and pulled the door to.

Now they were really alone together in the privacy of the compartment.
She was a kind of celestial prisoner. He thought: "What a friend she
could be!"

"Well," he said gaily, "how does my compartment strike you, Pearl?"

"It's just like any other compartment, isn't it? Who have you got for
a room-mate?"

"Ah! That's the point. I haven't any room-mate."

"But how do you wangle it?... I forgot--the Sleeping-Car Company is
your toy and your wash-pot. By the way, if you didn't find anybody you
knew on the train, who were that remarkable old pair whose compartment
you came out of when you nearly knocked me off the train?"

How sharp she was! And how agreeable her phrasing! How worldly!
Worldliness, he decided, was the quality which best appealed to him.
Wordsworth lessened in importance. Something nave about Wordsworth.

"I just cottoned up to them in the Folkestone train, or rather the old
man cottoned up to me. He knew me by name. But you must be interested
in my compartment, my dear. I don't wangle it. I simply and
expensively take two railway tickets and two berths. I can't see
myself sharing a cell all night with a complete stranger--the idea's
barbaric. And the Sleeping-Car Company is barbaric. Of course they
have their Train Bleu with a few single berths, and a fine fuss they
make about it. As if all the Scotch expresses hadn't got single berths
and had 'em for years and years!"

His eyes shone; he was on a pet topic--the barbarism of continental
trains, the superiority of English trains to all others.

"So your exclusiveness costs you about a pound an hour, does it?" she
smiled.

She had made the calculation with fair accuracy. And she was amusing.
He had managed to warm her; she was unfolding petal by petal. Hence
she must be thinking of him as a sympathetic fellow-creature. He was
proud, complacent, youthful.

"And what if it does?" He stuck out his chin at her.

"I know someone who wouldn't approve," she said demurely.

"Oh?"

"Yes, Jack."

To Alan that single word was like a dulled, alarming report of an
underground explosion, signifying a mysterious disaster. Something in
her restrained, carefully calm tone, of suffering and resentment
philosophically borne! But of course his first thought, as Jack's
father and therefore bound to justify the boy in his own mind, was in
defence of Jack. Jack would be right in disapproving. He, Alan, was
becoming the weak victim of luxurious habits. Why should he refuse to
accept conditions which were accepted by the majority of even wealthy
people? Travel was travel. A train could not be a hotel. A berth in a
double-berthed compartment would be regarded as the unattainable
height of comfort by millions and millions of decorous, respectable
human beings not less sensitive and refined than himself. A few hours
spent in the society of no matter what physically inoffensive
man--what was it? Naught.

He had a superfluity of money, and he was squandering it on an
inexcusable self-indulgence. Were his heart and brain in such a state
that he could find no better use for riches? Were there not hospitals,
educational schemes, the advancement of science? He was getting gross
and ostentatious, after the style of a plutocrat who by chicane has
made a fortune in a moment, and is too ignorant and coarse to employ
it with decency. He was ashamed of his compartment. Jack would be
right. But he could not instantly confess an error of taste to the
beautiful, superior creature.

"Well," he said gently, persuadably. "Perhaps. Perhaps. But Jack does
himself fairly well, I've noticed."

Jack had an untrammelled personal income of between four and five
thousand a year, which had been left to him direct by a rich
great-uncle (Alan's uncle): which money had been originally derived
from the same source as Alan's--namely, the great Tyneside firm.
Pearl's mother also was extremely rich, and gloriously generous to her
adored daughter. Indeed the two families were pretty well drowned in
money, and their wealth appeared to be continually increasing. Money
was always forcing itself upon them. The firm's profits rose
yearly--good management! And Alan himself had received more than one
mighty legacy from dead members of the opulent clan. They had to
dispose somehow of their affluence, and they bestowed parts of it on
Alan; and Alan in turn had to dispose of it somehow. So he had bought
two railway tickets and two sleepers. What then? After all, the
caprice was a trifle. His opinion of himself was improving again. Jack
was always incalculable, and what Jack thought about any action of his
father's was negligible.

"Yes," said Pearl. "Jack does do himself fairly well. But he'll soon
have to be more careful."

"Why? Hasn't been speculating, has he?"

"Oh no! He's going to stand for Parliament. Labour, you know.
Independent Labour Party, in fact."

And if, a minute earlier, her monosyllabic "Jack" had been like the
sound of an underground explosion, this present announcement was like
the loud, rending sound of an explosion visible, cataclysmic,
shattering and tumbling down all splendid edifices in sight. The mere
impact of it on his mind was frightful. Had he not from the first had
an instinct that trouble had matured or was preparing to mature
between Jack and Pearl? He had always blandly scoffed at instinct,
especially the celebrated feminine instinct. But how else explain the
correctness of his prescience? Here the trouble was--and far more
serious than any instinct could have foretold.

His first thought was one of sympathy for Pearl; his second, fury
against Jack. She had married the boy in innocence, unsuspecting. For
Jack, if an honest, was a most deceptive fellow. His demeanour,
tranquil, quiet, reasonable, apparently open to argument, was
constantly belied by his acts. Alan recalled in a flash a long series
of Jack's intellectual pranks. He remembered that, though at sixteen
an ardent pacifist, causing infinite unpleasantness at school, at
seventeen Jack had suddenly turned bellicose and was for enlisting in
the Air Force, under a false declaration of age, and becoming an
"ace," to the undoing of all Boche pilots. The distressing and absurd
episode had occurred during school-holidays, and had only been ended
by fearful threats and even force. But everyone had secretly admired
Jack's mad bravura in that particular affair. Impossible not to
forgive him.

All Jack's eccentricities had been forgiven. At various times Alan had
received discreet hints that he was apt to be too accommodating with
Jack. But really the lad was too sincere, too pure-minded, too
altruistic, too simple to merit the ruthless squashing which certain
relatives had prescribed as the one proper treatment.

Now Alan clearly saw that he had been judging Jack too favourably--no
doubt from paternal partiality. He had forgiven, excused, justified.
But not again! He comprehended at last that Jack's was precisely the
character which he mistrusted more than any other in the world: the
fanatic! His Jack, his own son, a fanatic! A bit startling, this news!
He used the phrase to himself, with false lightness, essaying a
private laugh, as if to persuade himself of his ability to meet any
situation whatever wisely. But of course there was nothing to be done.
Jack would not listen to pleading. Or rather, he would listen, and
politely, thoughtfully; but no pleading would be effective. The
situation could be met; it could be endured--with dignity and so
on--but it could not be handled.

The news would resound throughout the continents. One day, soon, it
would be the chief item on the front pages of newspapers. It would be
in every mouth. A scion of the world-renowned firm of Frith, Walter &
Co.--known familiarly as "Friths"--"gone red"! The thousands of
employees would grin. The partners would look askance. The directors
and heads of departments would look askance. The clerks would
unconvincingly pretend that nothing on earth had happened. The
official daily luncheons--such fine cooking!--on Tyneside, and at the
London offices where Alan reigned, would be scenes of mourning.

Alan's influence in the firm had generally inclined towards generosity
to the workmen, and indeed the employees of no firm were treated
better than Friths'. And here was the result of Alan's fatherhood!
Alan would be to blame. Probably no one would blame him to his face;
but unspoken blame would beat upon him. The thing was monstrous,
fantastic and preposterous. It was unthinkable. Imagine Jack's wild
speeches in the House, if he was elected--and he would be elected! The
mighty controllers of Friths would tremble to open their newspapers of
a morning.

He had been expecting to learn of some conjugal tiff between Pearl and
his son, and instead he had heard of this appalling imminent event. It
was the blow of his life. He was so shaken that he did not know how
shaken he was. He entirely forgot about train-accidents and
superstitions concerning train-accidents. A hundred victims killed or
maimed was a bagatelle. And if accident succeeded accident, and the
train in which he and Pearl and the Lucasses were travelling was
smashed to pieces in a collision, that also would be a bagatelle.
Nothing counted but the news.

There she sat, the bringer of the news, elegant to the last touch, a
finished product of centuries of laborious civilisation. And she would
be the chief sufferer by the event. She was the fanatic's wife, bound
to him. Conceive her elegance dragged in the mud on Jack's capering
pilgrimages! You couldn't conceive it. An outrage! She was holding
herself with amazing dignity. He admired her beyond words. And he was
melting with sympathy for her. He wanted to comfort her. And who would
dare to comfort her?

"I must say I'm surprised," he said quietly.

"You hadn't a notion of it, I suppose?"

"Not the slightest."

"Neither had I four days ago," said she.

Their glances admitted the full horror of the affair. Her glance was
accusing his son, and Alan's glance was admitting the justice of the
accusation.

"But he won't stay Labour," said Alan at a venture. Silly thing to
say.

"No," said she, with the very faintest well-bred sneer as she took a
fresh cigarette, "he'll be communist next." And it was of her own
husband she was talking.




CHAPTER X

CATTLE


"How did you get this table?" enquired Pearl.

"I tried for a table for two, for me and my artistic companion--she
asked me to--over an hour ago, and they said there weren't any to be
had. Bribery and corruption, I suppose?"

Her tone was playful and charming, but Alan detected a note of
fundamental sociological criticism, and suggested to himself that
despite her opposition to Jack's politics, Jack had been influencing
her.

The roaring, shaking restaurant-car was full of passengers squeezing
themselves into the narrow spaces between chairs and tables. Glasses
and cutlery rattled ceaselessly together in the vibration of the
train. A large fan swished its wings round and round in the centre of
the roof, disturbing the stagnant, steam-heated air. A hundred
advertisements, dehortations, exhortations, in a hundred colours,
beset the eye on every side. Beyond the dark windows mysterious, dark,
silent shapes swept by at terrific speed. Standing in perfect
tranquillity at the platform of the Gare de Lyon, and seen from the
platform, the restaurant-car had had the appearance of a rich,
heavenly refuge. Now it was transformed into an inferno, and there was
no peace in it for the senses.

The passengers had been impatiently anticipating this release from the
tedium and bondage of their compartments; they were excited by the
prospect of food; and the moment of realisation was at hand. They were
too eager to talk. They chafed; they crumbled bread; some of them
cleaned their glasses and the prongs of their forks with napkins, and
mutely displayed to neighbours the resulting black dust on the
napkins. Wealthy, luxurious, and dominating though they were, they had
to wait. They must eat together at the gesture of command, or not at
all. They must eat exactly what was given them, or nothing. A
balancing juggler, in the disguise of a waiter, appeared in the
doorway with twelve cups of soup disposed in two tiers of six on a
tray, and began to distribute them to the haughty travellers in the
manner of mugs of tea to children at a school-treat, and the
travellers looked up at the juggler and down at the cups, and were
grateful. The repast had started.

Alan merely nodded in reply to Pearl's question, but he nodded with
humour. He had come into the car ten minutes earlier and had been told
that he could not have a table for two. Whereupon he had curtly
summoned the head-waiter and given him a fifty-franc note. "You will
be very amiable to occupy yourself a little with me. A table for two
is necessary to me." The head-waiter had stared at him for two
seconds. "It is well, monsieur."

Anti-social, of course! Indefensible successful effort to gain an
advantage at the expense of others by encouraging a man in dishonesty.
Why had he wanted to sit alone with Pearl? Certainly not for his own
pleasure, though he liked her company, or would have liked it had
there been no family trouble to harass them. She had left his
compartment immediately after her declaration that Jack would develop
into a Communist, and no word had been said about meeting at dinner.
The moment she had gone he had felt the need for long reflection. He
would have preferred to leave their next encounter to the hazards of
the journey; at any rate not to hasten it. But his silly conscience
informed him that his duty was to lose no opportunity of seeing and
hearing her, and to draw bravely all the sharp points of the family
trouble to his sensitive breast; and that moreover Pearl was entitled
to his escort in the train. And so, reluctant and yet eager for a
martyrdom, he had secured the small table.

The complement of the car was made up by the arrival of two old
people--Alan identified them in a mirror--Mr. and Mrs. Lucass. Heads
were twisted to stare at them. They sat at the next small table but
one behind Alan.

"Those your friends?" said Pearl, in a murmur.

"Acquaintances."

"Well, I've seen them before. In a hotel in Harrogate."

"Oh!" Alan concealed his knowledge of the fact.

"Yes."

"You know who they are, of course."

"I forget the name. Lucass, isn't it?"

"I'll whisper to you--_The_ Lucasses. You know--old Lucass."

But the great name meant nothing to Pearl, who had never heard that
old Lucass had once been the tyrant of Friths' greatest rival. Alan
expressed surprise.

"But why _should_ I have heard?" Pearl protested, with an indulgent
smile. "Jack never mentions Friths."

"He wouldn't be where he is," said Alan quickly, "if there'd been no
Friths--I can tell you that."

"But if this Mr. Lucass was such a swell," Pearl asked, "how is it
you're making his acquaintance for the first time?"

She was cross-examining him, cornering him again; for an instant he
was discountenanced.

"It's like this. He would never come to London. He always insisted
that his Board should meet in Newcastle. And I was kept in
London--never went to Newcastle. I wasn't even a director of Friths in
those days. I did go to Newcastle once or twice, but I didn't come
across him. A queer fellow. Still, now I know him I like him."

"I can't say anything about him," Pearl went on, as if dismissing all
that as being without interest for her. "But I can say something about
her. She was hated in that hotel, a sort of laughing-stock and hated
by everybody."

Alan's plumage was ruffled by this disparagement of his admired hag.
Yet a few hours earlier his verdict on Mrs. Lucass had been harsh
enough.

"How do you know she was hated by everybody, my dear?" he asked.

"I know because her room was over mine. You never heard such goings-on!
Why! I could _hear_ her--her voice, I mean, as well as her feet!
And I don't believe she ever went to bed. I spoke to the chambermaid,
and I soon saw that all the servants were full of her. Then I spoke to
the manager, and he just hinted one or two things."

"Did you ever have any conversation with Mrs. Lucass herself?"

"I did not. We just left the hotel. Neither the manager nor anyone
seemed to be able to do anything."

Alan glanced at Pearl's fine, firm face in search of the key to her
individuality. He was in process of getting acquainted with her. The
process had its undulations. At the moment she somewhat antagonised
him by her hardness towards the old woman. She was in the full triumph
of youth, charm, intelligence, beauty; there lay before her years and
years of such triumph, which no difficulties with Jack could seriously
impair: and yet she had no mercy for the old woman who in her turn had
once triumphed, and whose life lay behind her. Because of a disturbed
night or two she nourished a prejudice against the old woman. A pity!
Had Pearl never broken the sleep of a fellow-guest in a hotel?

But he must feel sorry also for Pearl; her youthfulness was somehow
pathetic; her commonsense would perhaps be severely tried by Jack's
political and other vagaries; he must not be hard on her; he wanted to
soften everybody, and he must soften himself; his resentment against
Jack was illogical. (Nevertheless he morbidly nourished it, as she
nourished hers against the old hag.)

The waiter snatched up their soup-cups as though they had been in
unlawful possession of them. Not a nice sympathetic waiter. But
probably he was exasperated by the everlasting journeying between
Paris and the frontier, and the contacts of the close kitchen, and the
pricks of discipline, and the short, shaking nights, and the absence
of home-life. In love, somewhere! Or a wife, somewhere! No doubt he
could smile on a girl or spoil a child as well as anyone. Alan tried
to think well of the waiter. The fish arrived, one fish, one complete
animal, per person. Sailors had fished the animal now on his plate out
of the wild winter sea. A flushed, perspiring cook had bent over it in
the terrible heat of the stuffy kitchen. Wonderful! The wonder ought
to kill all uncharitableness. How wistfully young was this Pearl in
her conjugal quandary! She had fled from her impossible Jack, after
confiding to him her whole existence. And Jack?

"I tell you I must have some more wool!"

The voice was that of Mrs. Lucass, raised, clear, and precariously
cajoling. Precariously, because it might at any moment change to the
threatening. Alan and Pearl could hear plainly every word. Mrs. Lucass
had finished her wool, and demanded more, and insisted on more.
Evidently she was working herself up towards a nervous crisis. The
supply of wool was in one of her registered trunks in the luggage-van.
Yes, she ought to have taken more in her bag. No need for anybody to
tell her that. But she could not think of everything. However, she
simply must have wool for the sleepless night. The matter was quite
simple. All _he_, her husband, had to do was to get hold of the guard
and go to the van and have the trunk opened. It was a wardrobe trunk,
and the wool was in the second drawer from the top. Simplicity itself.
A tip would do the trick. It was her trunk; it belonged to her; surely
she had the right to open it, wherever it was. But men were so queer.
They always foresaw difficulties; they loved to foresee difficulties.
Come now ... as soon as dinner was over.... He could ascertain from
the head-waiter where the guard might be found.

Well, and what if the trunk _was_ under a lot of other trunks? The
other trunks could be moved. The guard had nothing else to do. What
was there silly or unheard-of in the idea? The idea stood to reason.
Nobody had the right to touch registered luggage till the end of the
journey? How absurd! No right to touch your own trunk? It might be a
question of life and death; and what then? Must people be allowed to
die because their luggage was registered? A pretty state of affairs!
Men were insane. They were like infants. They were perfectly
ridiculous.

Half the car had cocked its ears at this outrage on the Anglo-Saxon
social law which forbids the raising of the voice, or the display of
any marital discord, in a public place. But Mrs. Lucass was in a mood
to flout all codes, to affront the attention of the entire world; she
was giving an exhibition which far exceeded her performances in the
Folkestone train. As for old Mr. Lucass, he was defending his exposed
position in the fewest words and in the lowest tone. An unforeseeable
calamity had overtaken him, for which he could blame none but the
gods; he was too courageous, too chivalrous, to rise and leave the
car.

Pearl's faint, ironic smile seemed to be saying pityingly to Alan:
"Didn't I tell you what sort of a woman she was? Now you can see for
yourself." Alan had a sense of the tragedy of the hag's life. She had
been young. Vestiges of youth still remained in the variety of her
tone and in the vivacity of her gestures as he watched them in the
mirror. He could discern the surviving girl in her. And she had
nothing now to live for but wool, and wool lacked. Her case
crystallised and illustrated the sorrowful curse of the human race:
the flight of time, of beauty, and of faculties.

"She's had some dreadful operations, and her nerves are gone," Alan
apologised for her to Pearl in a whisper.

But Pearl's glance was not mollified.

"And what about my grandchildren?" the hag exclaimed shrilly. "My
daughters are all over the earth--I had Sally's letter from Rio the
day before yesterday, and well you know what was in it, and now I'm
stopped from knitting for the chicks! And all because--" She stopped
and wiped her eyes with an absurd atom of a handkerchief.

She knew she was demanding what the old man could not give. She knew
her arguments were preposterous. She knew the old man was being
cruelly ill-treated. But her conscience and her feeling for decency
were strangled in the frightful grip of the forces of reaction against
the shock of the report of the accident. She was not the criminal;
nature was the criminal, and she the victim. Strange person, Alan!
While thinking these thoughts, he was also thinking: "She knows I came
on the train alone. She's sure to have seen me here with Pearl at this
table. What'll she have to say about it afterwards? She's no idea
Pearl's my son's wife. But of course she has. She must recognise her.
I'm not thinking clearly. Only if she recognises Pearl, as she has
done, then she'll wonder why I didn't tell her Pearl was on this
journey. She'll think I was hiding it and imagine all sorts of
things.... It seems to me I go out and look for worries. As if I
hadn't got enough with Jack's capers! What the devil does it matter
what the old girl thinks, or how much she makes a spectacle of
herself? I'm sorry for Lucass, but he married her. I haven't married
her."

And then Alan's mood changed back to the humane as his mind dwelt on
the hag's daughters all over the earth. In conversation with him she
had not made the slightest allusion to her children. He had not been
aware that she had any children. (Of course they were daughters; were
they sons one or two of them would certainly have been implanted in
the great firm.) She knew the tremendous experience of becoming a
mother and of watching over the growth of children. And her children
were scattered all over the earth; and they too had had the tremendous
experience of becoming mothers. And now she was knitting for the
children of her children. She was not knitting, as he had superiorly
imagined, for the sake of knitting; but with a dutiful purpose. She
wanted wool out of the registered trunk for a benevolent end.

And here was the beautiful, proud Pearl disdaining her, mercilessly
pitying her with a scarce perceptible curl of lovely lips. Pearl was
naught in comparison with her. She knew a million times more of life
than Pearl knew, and, perhaps, than Pearl would ever know. Pearl was
an ingenuous neophyte. The hag was a grandmother with vitality enough
left after her frightful physical ordeals to behave like a girl and a
pampered mistress to her old husband.

The train swerved violently, swaying human bodies. Everyone thought of
the railway accident, and had qualms about the imminence of another
accident. The train slowed down, approaching the suburbs of some city.
Then a yellow illumination was seen, growing stronger. A shunting-yard.
A flare. Many parallel lines of rail visible in the light of the flare.
The flare, as it swam with strange deliberation past the train, was
unusual in character, and the vision of its large, capriciously
rising, smoke-emitting flame excited the whole car. Fragments of flame
detached themselves from it, lived apart in the air for a fraction of
a second, and expired. Another flare!

An American in the restaurant-car cried:

"The accident! That's the accident, sure!"

The constraint and uneasiness, and also the vulgar, unspoken or
muttered jeers, originating in Mrs. Lucass's terrible performance,
passed away and died instantaneously. All the diners, except those at
the row of small tables, which were on the side nearest the flares,
stood up and crowded towards the side. The number of occupants of the
car seemed suddenly to be doubled. Mrs. Lucass herself became an
occupant like any other occupant; and without ceremony people crushed
against her and the old man, bending heads to see under the tops of
windows; they had to steady themselves on the unreliable floor by
clutching at racks, tables, and shoulders. The rigid, timed ritual of
the meal ceased to be, and was utterly forgotten.

"See that crane! That's a crane!" cried another voice.

The gigantic, black, uplifted arm of a crane did indeed show
unmistakably against the varying yellow light. Then a coach of some
sort, lying on its roof, the wheels sticking up absurdly like the legs
of a shot animal that had rolled over in death. Then more coaches, not
upset, but ranged in a higgledy-piggledy procession off their rails,
and a locomotive at the end similarly immobilised. Steam wisping from
the locomotive. Men running to and fro. The faint noise of shouts
heard through the thick glass. And other noises, inhuman,
inexplicable, frightening.

"See! That must be corpses! There! _There!_" Fingers indicated objects
hidden under a tarpaulin.

If the force of man's volition should have stopped the train, it would
have stopped. But the train ran unheedfully on, inexorable as fate.
Then another jolt, more violent than the first! Men and women clung
desperately to one another in new alarm. There were two short, shrill
screams in the car, from women; they were unnoticed.

"There's another! That must be a doctor kneeling! Perhaps it isn't a
corpse. Perhaps it's only somebody injured."

No one could be sure of anything thus seen obscurely, across the width
of the shunting-yard, through the dirty glass of the moving car in the
fitfully lit night. The entire formidable nocturnal spectacle glided
backwards to the rear of the train. It would not stop. It was gone. A
few men rushed out of the car in the hope of seeing it afresh from the
doors of the platform.

A tremendous chatter of raised voices in the car! Many people could
now give precise, detailed accounts of what they had seen and heard:
but no two of them were agreed as to what they had seen. Each had seen
a different sight. Some sat down; the majority, however, recoiled from
the anti-climax of sitting-down. They counted corpses to one another.
They explained to one another exactly how the accident must have
happened. A man here had positively seen three coaches wrong side up.
A woman there would take oath that there were two locomotives funnel
to funnel.

"My God! My God!"

Some quietly wept. Some wiped perspiration from their faces. Some
grinned self-consciously. A man said with a titter:

"Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die." And laughed. "Come along,
waiter!" he called.

The other passengers turned and saw the waiter, whose presence they
had ignored or forgotten. Question after question was shot at him, in
English or in French. He was young and extremely pale; with both hands
he clutched at the open door leading to the kitchen. He tried to speak
and failed; his mouth worked, but words would not issue from it. The
ventilating fan continued to swish round and round with the
indifference of a god.

In a few moments the train, more and more dilatory, crept as it were
stealthily into a station, and came to rest with a jerk. The station
was vast and absolutely calm,--indeed deserted save for a
black-frocked woman fussing with newspapers at a bookstall on a far
platform, and a couple of distant porters whose inattention to the
arrival seemed to be complete. The passengers were conscious that they
were in the great Rome Express; but the great Rome Express passed
every night through the station, and the station, weary, thought
nothing of it. The passengers had just had a very disturbing emotional
experience, but the station apparently recked not of collisions,
overturned coaches, cranes, doctors, the dead and the injured lying
beneath flares in the winter night. The contrast between the
atmosphere of the station and that of the shunting-yard close by was
shocking by its mere dramatic quality.

The engine made periodic noises like the difficult breathing of some
leviathan beast, and these noises echoed portentously in the vastness
of the enclosure. Two young girls in uniform sprang up out of
nothing--also a truck, laden with comestibles and beverages. One of
them pushed the truck like a lad, her back nearly horizontal. They
were chattering and laughing to each other, too interested in their
gossip to give any heed to the train. The restaurant-car began to
empty, and immediately excited groups of passengers were seen on the
platform below the train. Alan saw an enormous sign, "Laroche."

"Laroche," he said to Pearl, and looked at his watch. "We must be half
an hour late already. I don't know how."

"No," said Pearl. "We haven't stopped much. It's wonderful how they
manage to get late."

These were the first words either of them had spoken since the
spectacle in the shunting-yard. And they were still in their seats at
the table. Alan was of northern stock by his father and southern by
his mother. Pearl, according to Alan's vague information, came from
the north. Whatever was northern had shown itself in both of them
during the passage through the shunting-yard. Alan had noticed no sign
of emotion in Pearl's demeanour, unless sitting rigidly tight was a
sign. Each of them had in fact been largely occupied in deploring the
behaviour of their fellow creatures under stress. "She is hard,"
thought Alan, "she is hard. She is surely capable of being very hard."
He regretted this quality in her, which had already been illustrated
in her attitude towards Mrs. Lucass. She might well be marvellous in a
crisis; but could she be sympathetic, could she melt in tenderness,
could her soul go out to a soul? He felt sorry for Jack, who needed
sympathy if he was to be happy.

Still they did not speak of what they had seen. They could not express
themselves about it without a sort of shamefaced self-consciousness;
therefore they avoided the subject, and spent breath on perfunctory
talk concerning the unpunctuality of trains! Northern! They were
enchanted in an inhibitory spell. Alan broke it by suddenly standing
up. He turned round to survey the car. Mrs. Lucass, the ornaments on
her hat nodding, was disappearing through the door, the old man
following. Only three other passengers remained, and they were silent,
motionless, as if at a loss how to comport themselves. The car was
quiet, no vibration, no movement, no rumbling, no tinkle of glass and
crockery. The car might have been fixed immovable in the foundations
of the earth, have never moved, be destined never to move.

The calm was disturbed by the entrance of the head-waiter, twisting
his horse-hair black moustaches. The head-waiter was angry, and his
anger fell on two waiters, including the pale, frightened young man,
who came in after him. He was angry because the service of his dinner
had been interrupted and deranged. He asked the subordinates what they
meant by such vagaries. He ordered them to proceed with the service,
to clear away the plates, to behave in short as though nothing had
happened. He was so assertive of his authority as to prove that he
secretly doubted whether he possessed it.

Alan put a question to him. He glared at Alan, and quailed, and then
tried to inflate himself. Accident? What accident? Victims? He knew of
no accident. Stay, he had indeed heard of some accident, but a long
way down the line. The shunting-yard, the field of manoeuvres?
Through which the train had run? Ah, _that!_ No, that was not an
accident. (He glanced about uneasily to see if the subordinates were
watching him.) That was only a shunting accident. Not an accident,
thus to say. (The railway-employee mentality all over again!
Non-committal nescience! The same in every part of the earth wherever
trains ran on lines!) He knew little, but one had informed him that it
was a case of some cattle-trucks and an error of points. Yes, no doubt
a collision. A derailment of certain trucks and waggons. Yes, perhaps
a violent shock. But no victims. Assuredly no victims. Some cattle
killed--possibly. Some, he had been told, were still in the trucks.
One had heard them. Regrettable, but veritably nothing. And he could
not comprehend the alarm of the passengers. He could have wished that
all the other passengers had held themselves as tranquil as Monsieur
and Madame. In fine, the dinner. It was necessary to continue the
dinner.... He ended by being quite human and friendly. Had Monsieur
commanded anything to drink?

The passengers one by one returned into the car, sheepishly. Somehow
they had become acquainted with the real facts.

"I always thought those things couldn't be passenger-coaches."

"But it was so difficult to see properly, and the train moving all the
time too."

"Pity about the cattle."

Pearl murmured two words to Alan, who had resumed his hat:

"Mob psychology."

And such disdain in her eyes!

"Yes, my girl," thought Alan. "You're right enough now. But you
thought it was the big accident. And so did I. But we're so careful of
appearances. We're stuck up, you and I are. Spiritual pride again."

In the revulsion he was moved to order champagne.

There was a series of sharp raps on the pane, and a man's hand with a
silver coin in it showed just over the crimson cloth that was
stretched along the lower part of all the windows, perhaps to mitigate
the cold which emanates from every window in winter. Alan looked. Old
Mr. Lucass was down below on the platform. His rugged face seemed
urgently to summon help. Alan hurried out of the car and jumped down
on to the bleak, blusterous platform. A whistle sounded. The
conductors of the different cars were preparing to embark, but they
had no appearance of caring whether or not passengers were left
behind. Mrs. Lucass stood forlorn a few yards away.

"She's got out and she won't get in," said Mr. Lucass grimly,
hastening to his wife.

Alan joined them. The hag's hat was awry, and the refreshment girls
were giggling at the odd sight of it.

"I won't go on," Mrs. Lucass protested savagely as the men closed on
her. "I can't stand any more of these accidents."

Nor would she have gone on, had she had to deal with the old man
alone; for she was once more on the edge of the hysterical. But Alan
intimidated her. Moreover, even in the nervous crisis, she wanted to
conserve his sympathetic admiration for her, which she had first
discerned in the tea-car of the Paris train. Vanity helped her
uncertain hand to straighten the hat.

"Now Mrs. Lucass," said Alan brightly. "We shan't be able to do
without you on this journey."

One at each shoulder the men cajoled and forced her to the steps of
the restaurant-car, and pushed her, all ungainly and hag-like and
expostulating, up into the car. At the same instant the train, as
insidiously as the first stirring of a passion, began to move. They
were all three aboard.

"Come and finish your dinner, my lass," said the old man, cheerful in
relief.

A voice said:

"She won't care to go back into the restaurant-car now. Let me take
you to your compartment, Mrs. Lucass. I know where it is. You two
gentlemen can go and eat. We shall manage."

It was Pearl, capable, grim, with a hint of calm sympathy in her
modulated, clear tones. She did not wait for an answer. She led the
hag down the corridor away from the restaurant-car, guiding her,
steering her. Her very back showed to the men that men were not
desirable.

"Considering all she's said and looked about the old lady," Alan
reflected, "Pearl's done rather a fine thing. I didn't think she had
it in her."

He watched the two women down the corridor. The sight of them touched
him, so beaten and clumsy and finished was the elder, and so young,
kindly and helpful was the younger. He turned quickly to the door with
what the Anglo-Saxon characteristically euphemises as a "funny feeling
in the throat." He leaned out from the doorway and gazed at the
station receding in its vast totality. The faces of the
refreshment-girls were now undecipherable in the distance. His heart
was uplifted because he had seen something beautiful and surprising.

"A damn near shave, that!" the old man muttered.




CHAPTER XI

AFTER CLOSING-TIME


A strange and perhaps a moving sight--Alan and old Mr. Lucass seated
alone together in the restaurant-car, back to back, Mr. Lucass facing
the direction of the train, Alan facing the mirror at the rear-end of
the car; ignoring one another, each apparently absorbed in the careful
conduct of a high-class cigar; Mr. Lucass with features grimly set,
Alan's younger features more mobile and more urbane! The mutual
disregard of the two friendly acquaintances after an afflicting
episode had seemed less odd while the car was full of diners; now that
everyone but themselves had gone it began to embarrass Alan, if not
Mr. Lucass. But Alan could not stir--even to turn his head, and he
felt that the reserved Mr. Lucass was even more deeply than himself
under the spell of a situation which had become immovably static.

The train had once more escaped from all geographical relativity. It
was going from nowhere to nowhere; it existed separate in space;
nothing could be discerned through the dark windows except the
reflected image of the bright, shaking car. The great ventilating fan
had lost its god-like quality, and hung still, dead. Little by little
the car had been depopulated. An attendant had vended cigars and
cigarettes; a higher attendant had been round writing and dropping
bills; his superior had been round with a zinc cash-tray and taken
money and given change and expressed grateful thanks for tips, and
vanished. The other diners had vanished, slowly, with reluctance,
toward the horrors of night in the compartments.

And Alan sat, and Mr. Lucass sat. Waiters had cleared all the tables,
save theirs, of cutlery, flowers and cloths. Waiters had looked in at
the door and gazed resentfully at the men who by their obstinacy were
disturbing the order of the universe of the car. The head-waiter had
entered the car, and glanced with respectful enquiry at his patron,
Alan; and Alan had met his hard black eyes firmly.

"Not finished here," said Alan to him. "Madame...."

And the head-waiter had retired.

As for Mr. Lucass, he was covered by Alan's firmness. The head-waiter,
who knew everything, knew that the old man was somehow connected with
Alan. Two wavy pillars of smoke rose. The train maintained its roaring
rush from nowhere to nowhere.

Then, in the mirror, Alan saw the door open behind him. Pearl's figure
showed in the doorway, blonde, colour of oatmeal, commanding, yet so
young. She looked beckoningly at old Mr. Lucass, who stiffly got up,
and squeezed himself out of the narrow space between chair and table,
then hesitated and abandoned to an ash-tray with regret his
half-smoked cigar. Pearl held the door open till he could seize it. She
went away again, first. He followed. The door swung to. Old Mr. Lucass
had been summoned to his inferno-paradise in the compartment two
coaches off. He was obeying the summons.

Alan sat absolutely alone in the restaurant-car. His mind had
gradually been leaving the Lucass pair and closing upon the Jack-Pearl
problem. Now it ran after Mr. Lucass along the corridors, but only for
a few moments. Was Pearl going to bed without finishing her dinner,
without saying a word to her waiting father-in-law? Why had she made
no sign to him? Terrible indeed was the prospect before a martyrised
father-in-law, father of a mad incalculable son! Of what use was
philosophy to conjure a son's communism or a daughter-in-law's
implacable judgment upon the communist?... No, not a communist yet.
He, Alan, would keep his head. Wordsworth? Not a syllable in
Wordsworth, he would wager, to help him to regard Jack's unspeakable
political apostasy with the charity of heaven. Poor Pearl!
Poor----! She would come back into the restaurant-car. Superior, calm,
formidable as she was, with her faint ironic smile, she would surely
come back. She came back.

"Everything all right out there now?" Alan asked as she sat down. She
infinitesimally shrugged her shoulders, and smiled with a measured,
half-pitying tolerance.

"Yes, let's hope so." Beautiful tone of voice, but the articulation
perhaps over-clear, over-precise.

Strange that after her good deed she should not be more compassionate.
When Alan had helped people he always thereby became their champion
and defender. Still, she had done the good deed.

"Everybody seems to be gone," she said. "How nice it is, isn't it? I
should have come straight in here before, but I thought I'd better
persuade my artistic companion to go to bed first. Then she'd be out
of the way." More fluted tolerance.

Alan felt afraid for Jack.

"Yes," said he to himself, "but that wasn't the only thing you went
back for. You've powdered yourself and you've scented yourself a bit."

Well, he was flattered by this proof of regard for his approval. She
had to be at her best even for a father-in-law. But he could not feel
towards her as, it seemed to him, a father-in-law ought to feel.
Conceivably in the world of her ideals there were no fathers-in-law
nor daughters-in-laws--only men and women.... A charming, yet
practical, train hat she wore.

"Now what will you have?" he enquired. "Let's see--where were you in
your dinner?" He had rung the bell, which was not answered.

"They've taken everything away," she said, surprised, critical. "I'll
have some fruit. No, nothing else. I never eat much in trains."

"Sure?"

"Quite, thanks."

"Well," he murmured, having waited for an answer to the bell, and then
rose and went quickly into the other half of the car where all the
food and drink came from.

A waiter was asleep across a table, his face hidden in the crook of an
elbow. The head-waiter was seated at another table, writing figures
on what appeared to be a very complicated form. The head-waiter looked
up questioningly, at once defiant and intimidated. He had the air of
saying that for a tip of fifty francs you could not fairly expect the
whole earth.

"Some fruit, please." A pause.

"Certainly, sir."

"Immediately."

"But yes, sir." The man glanced at the sleeping waiter, but dared not
stretch his authority far enough to give him an order at such an hour;
authority had limits. He got up himself.

"They're bringing it," said Alan, in secret triumph, rejoining Pearl.

"And some flowers," said the waiter, with a professional,
ingratiating, odious smile, arriving rapidly with cutlery and plate
and a basket of fruit in one hand and a flower-vase in the other.
Clever fellow! By a gratuitous attention which cost him naught he was
bidding for a higher tip the next morning at breakfast.

"But why did they take everything away?" said Pearl, still critical,
and not in the slightest degree impressed by the realisation of fruit
and flowers after closing-time.

"I'm afraid you don't understand what a wonderful thing I've done for
you, my girl," said Alan to himself.

But only in the privacy of his mind was he thus censorious of her.
Outwardly he seemed to be apologetic. He could not assume the
powerful, easy male. She somehow cowed him. He was the apostate Jack's
father. And anxious though he was to discuss fully with Pearl the Jack
problem, he feared to begin. He simply could not begin. He was like a
nervous lad.

"How nice to be all alone here!" said she, skinning a banana.

"Yes," he agreed; and to himself: "And not every man on this train
could have arranged it for you--no, not by a damned sight!"

Then she said suddenly:

"Let's talk about Jack."

She had directness, courage, audacity. She had sent the curtain up
with a rush. The fearful Alan was acutely apprehensive of drama.




CHAPTER XII

THE RING


"Well," said Alan, "where shall we begin"?

"Give me a match, will you?"

She was feeling for her cigarette-case in the bag which she had laid
on the table. In the midst of eating the banana she would smoke! Alan
did not like it. She was certainly a cigarette fiend. Imagine living
with a woman who smoked cigarettes all the time! He liked women to
smoke, but he did not like women who were, or were becoming, the
slaves of a mania. The male maniac he could more comfortably tolerate,
and forgive. He wanted women to be purer: a preference which possibly
had survived from the lost habit of putting women on a pedestal above
the rough pit where men so coarsely indulged themselves. He observed,
however, that though she used no holder Pearl's fingers were unstained
by nicotine. No doubt a particular instance of her general efficiency.

"You must get through quite a few cigarettes a day," he said, quizzing
her. "Five or six a day at least."

"Quite."

"Can you smoke any cigarette? I think I heard you couldn't."

"I cannot. I can only smoke my own. I get them in the City; that
shop--you must know it----"

"Then how do you manage when you're abroad?" He gave her a lighted
match.

"As well as I can."

"But the customs?"

"I have trouble sometimes with the customs. Had today."

"Oh?"

"I told the man I'd got twenty, and he asked me to show them--they
always do--and there were thirty-six. Oh! I had to pay. He made me pay
all right. I used to think you could take in anything under a hundred.
But they won't have that now. Oh no! And they're awful with women
travelling alone."

"So they ought to be. That's only because they've learnt by
experience. I honestly believe you're all smugglers. And where's the
point of it? Considering the risks! At this rate you'll have finished
your thirty-six by breakfast tomorrow."

"I know I shall. But I had another two hundred at the bottom of my
valise."

"But supposing he'd found them?"

"But he didn't. He'd had enough with the thirty-six. I knew he would
have. It's so easy to do them in if you go the right way about it.
I've never been caught yet."

"Well, I give you up."

She had lied; she had cheated the Republic; she had robbed the
Republican tax-payer! And she made nothing of it! Indeed she calmly
and cynically exulted. The enigma of the universe was woman, the
intact survivor of the Stone Age, uncivilisable, unalterable. He
compassionated Jack, himself, every man on earth. But he did not
confess to Pearl that he had seen her in trouble with the custom
officers, and had left her to it.

"Now where _shall_ we begin?"

Elated by moral superiority, he replied lightly:

"At the beginning of course. Are you fond of him, my dear?"

"Jack? Do you mean, am I in love with him? Do I love him?" She paused.
"Yes, I expect I do."

She was disconcertingly frank. Alan had employed the vague formula
"fond of him," because he found the phrase "love him" embarrassing to
utter. But she had no such foolish false shame in discovering her
feelings to him. Women were like that. There she sat, exquisite, with
a banana in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and smoke issuing
from her beautiful nostrils! (She inhaled, the suicidal miscreant!)
She loved Jack. That was something. He was conscious of relief. Love,
if it was genuine, would in the end resolve all difficulties.

"That's something," he said, and could not conceal his relief.

She said quietly, with her terrible distinctness:

"It isn't everything."

And now his sudden satisfaction was impaired.

"His mother and I have never heard just how you two came together."

"Very simple. Jack's so kind. He's so _nice_. And when he smiles
at you he's irresistible. And his eyes! He didn't get those from you,
did he?"

"I suppose not." Alan flushed slightly.

"And then he's so straight. So honest."

Alan nodded, not without constraint, trying not to seem as if he took
the credit for having made the marvellously kind and honest Jack.

"But his conscience!" Pearl continued. "His conscience! It's his
conscience. His conscience is awful."

"He got _that_ from me anyway," Alan observed grimly.

"Well, if he did I'm sorry. If you don't mind my saying so,"--a mere
perfunctory politeness on her part; the scandalising girl would say
anything without a quiver--"nobody ought to have a conscience like
Jack's. His conscience will spoil his life, and it would spoil mine if
I'd let it. It's the most frightful tyrant you can imagine. It's
morbid. It pokes its nose into everything, that's what it does. If you
give your conscience a free hand as he does, you're ruined. A
conscience ought to be kept in its place. There _are_ limits."

Alan thought:

"She's showing off a bit, but she's talking hard sense. The mischief
is that I agree with her entirely, only I mustn't show it too plainly.
I haven't noticed the lad's conscience as much as she has; but I've
noticed it, and I can feel that what she says is absolutely true.
Heavens! She's no ordinary girl. She gives me the shivers in the small
of my back."

He was afraid of her: she had such poise. The poise was displayed even
more in her tone than in what she said. And he was afraid for Jack
too. Never would Jack be equal to her; he would go down before her.
Jack had chosen well, but he had chosen too well. Yet how lovely she
looked! With what elegance, with what distinction, she accomplished
the double deed, so barbaric, of eating a banana, and smoking a
cigarette simultaneously! He fumbled about in his mind for something
effective to say, and found it not. There was a brief silence. She
gazed at him; and how serene was her gaze!

"Of course," she said, "I'm speaking quite frankly----"

"Oh, of course. You must say whatever you like to me. Forget I'm his
father."

"I was only going to say this. Jack's cruel." Alan opened his mouth,
but with a gesture she shut it for him. "Yes, yes. I know I said he's
kind. So he is, in one way. But he's frightfully cruel too. That's his
conscience. He's got no conscience so far as I or anybody else is
concerned: I mean any individual. His conscience tells him he has a
duty to the community. But if doing his duty to the community
means--means--well, a tragedy for me, he'll do it all the same. He
won't consider me for a moment. His duty to me won't count. He can't
even see it. He'd cheerfully sacrifice me to the community--not really
to the community, but to his own peace of mind. Because that's what it
is--his own peace of mind, Rank selfishness! But they're all the
same."

"Who are all the same?"

"Fanatics."

Alan had not foreseen the word. The worst was that in this appalling
indictment of her husband--yes, her husband, to whom she had been
married hardly a year!--she did not raise her voice; she was
shockingly tranquil, letting escape no hint of emotion. To counter
her, Alan smoked his cigar with all the scrupulous nicety which a fine
cigar deserves.

"I must say, my dear, I think you're being perhaps a shade unjust."

"Well, if I am I'm sorry. But I honestly can't see it myself. Where am
I unjust? I want to know. I'm dying to know."

Alan noticed suddenly that she was not wearing her wedding ring. In
spite of himself he was aghast. He thought: "She isn't showing poise
there, anyhow." She wore only one ring--a circlet of brilliants set in
platinum--and on the third finger of her left hand. He stared at the
sinister symbol of disaster.

"What are you looking at?" she asked. "My ring?"

"Where's your wedding-ring?"

"Why! This is it!"

"But you weren't married like that."

"No. I wasn't. Because I didn't choose the first ring myself. But
while we were on our honeymoon I got Jack to buy me this one instead.
Surely you know that gold wedding-rings are quite out of fashion?"

"I didn't, my dear," said Alan, rather softly, as he recovered his
self-possession.

"Well, you _are_ behind the times!"

"I'm afraid I am," he meekly admitted.

And indeed he thought how aged he must be, and how blind in his
senility to the phenomena of the new age. He did not like the amazing
innovation. Right wedding rings had always been of solid gold and
unornamented, and they ought to continue always to be of solid gold
and unornamented. Still, he was greatly relieved. This was his second
relief during the interview.

"Yes," Pearl went on. "These new rings have been worn for quite some
time now. I am surprised you didn't know. A plain gold ring makes you
seem so _married_."

"Good God!" thought Alan. But he hid the sentiment away.




CHAPTER XIII

PEARL'S DECISION


"Now about my unpleasant theory of your being a shade unjust," said
Alan with a new, bright, sympathetic smile.

After all she was so young, so pathetically sure of herself, so
wistfully dignified, so beautiful with her soft, straw-coloured hair
under the hat--he must give homage to her qualities, but he must lift
himself above her. "If Jack's convinced what his career ought to be,
do you suggest he should give it up because of you? I only want to
know. I'm not criticising."

"Now, look here," she replied, responding instantly to the advance of
his mood, leaning forward into closer intimacy, annihilating the table
between them, breaking into a sad smile far transcending in sweetness
Alan's own. Alan was unaware that his smile had enchanted her, that
she thought he was perfectly adorable. He was startled and enthralled
by the sudden revelation of a charm in her which he had not suspected.
He was in the old, wooing Jack's place for a moment. "Now look
here--what a heavenly cigar! I love the smell of cigars and men's tweed
caps--you say, 'If Jack's convinced what his career ought to be.' Jack
oughtn't to be convinced. It's absurd. By all means let him stand for
Parliaments. But let him stay Tory. He'd do much more good like that
than by going Red. He'd have more influence, heaps more. And he
wouldn't be laughed at. If he joins Labour he's bound to alter all his
way of living. He must. He won't even be able to wear the same
clothes. And look at the people he'd have to hobnob with, and the way
they talk--yes, and eat! I've seen one or two. I hate politics."

"Politics are the most important thing in the world, my dear."

"I daresay they are. But I hate them."

"I don't."

"If you don't hate them, why aren't you in them?"

"Not my line."

"Much more your line than Jack's. Because you've got a hundred times
more sense than he has. I admire Jack's character frightfully--in some
ways, but he simply doesn't know what the world is. Hasn't a notion of
it. Never will have, if you ask me. He thinks the Labour Party's the
only honest party. Can you conceive it All political parties are
dishonest. I admit they have to be, even if they didn't want to be.
But they _do_ want to be. And the Labour Party's the most dishonest of
all. Read their newspapers--that's enough. Oh! I've looked into it. I
thought I ought to, and I did. Not that I'm frightened by a bit of
dishonesty. I'm not. Jack won't see dishonesty, though. He _is_
frightened of it. No! What I object to is the silliness of the scheme.
I'm talking frankly. Jack has a terrific idea of you. He worships you.
And I'm sure you're very fond of him, and I don't want to hurt your
feelings. But I must say what I think, mustn't I?" Alan nodded, with a
fresh, reassuring, appreciative smile. "It's the silliness of the
scheme--that's what I say. I say there's nothing worse than looking
ridiculous in the eyes of commonsense people. Nothing worse! I
couldn't ever forgive it. And I should be so ashamed! Jack picnicking
about in the Labour Party--it would be worse than slumming, and
slumming is the most disgusting thing ever invented. A man like Jack
going Labour--why, it's against nature! Surely you can try to improve
the country without making a perfect spectacle of yourself! Having
these conceited democrats to tea in some private room of a cheap
restaurant because it wouldn't be nice to have them at your hotel, or
in your home. And putting on your oldest clothes for them. And
flattering them. And all the time you aren't being yourselves either.
And the elections! Canvassing. Smoothing them over. Shaking hands and
being jolly. I say it's against nature, and I loathe it--even if I
agreed with their views, which I don't. It's horrible. Don't you
agree, don't you agree, don't you agree?"

Alan laughed, as naturally as he could.

"I agree that slumming's the most disgusting thing ever invented," he
said. "But it seems to me we're off the point. If Jack's seriously
convinced about what he ought to do--what then? Is he to give it up?
Do you say that? The point isn't whether he's right or wrong. It's
whether he should give up doing what he thinks he ought to do. Now
what do you say?" He had made his voice very tender.

Pearl had finished the banana, and, though it was hardly more than
half-smoked, she crushed the cigarette into the heavy ash-tray.

"I couldn't bear it," she murmured, but still very distinctly, after
clearing her throat rather self-consciously.

Alan felt that he had her cornered; he was sorry for her. He went on,
gently pursuing his triumph:

"And I may tell you you've got it all wrong. Those fellows would love
to see you, both of you, in your finest clothes, and drive with you in
your motor, and eat with you in the very best hotels there are, or in
your flat or your house when you've got one. They're just as human as
anybody else, and as fond of luxury. And neither more nor less honest
than anybody else. They'd love it--so _that_ needn't trouble you, my
dear."

"Then they oughtn't to love it!" Pearl exclaimed almost passionately.

"Possibly not. But they would."

"They want to upset everything, and it wouldn't do any good. If it
would, I might think differently. But it wouldn't. Everybody would be
worse off, and they'd be the worst off of all. It isn't as if they
aren't better off now than ever they were before. It isn't as if
things weren't improving for them. I've been reading the Hammonds'
books. Jack told me about them, and I thought I ought to read them,
and I have done. And that's more than Jack's done--he never reads any
book all through. So I do know something about it."

"Quite. But, my dear, you haven't answered the question. Do you say,
or don't you, that he ought to give up his scheme because you object
to it and it would be dreadful for you?... I don't like his scheme any
more than you do yourself."

She stirred on her chair, leaned back a little, away from Alan.

"I couldn't bear it. I should be so ashamed."

Her tone was faltering, and yet somehow utterly obstinate. Alan saw a
marvel: the creation in her eyes of two dew-drops, diamonds, gems.
They hung perilously in the inner corners of her eyes, beautiful. They
exquisitely glittered, catching the rays of the electric-lamps. Of
what use her loveliness, her charm, her remarkable intelligence, her
powder, her paint, her circlet of brilliants, her chic? The deep,
incurable sadness of the universe had seized her, bowed her down. But
she would not yield. She ignored the danger in her eyes; she would not
attempt to hide it. She held the gems, swimming, by force of will, and
looked straight at Alan, who was moved as much as she. Again the
inexplicable, touching pathos of the car, of the whole train rushing
and grinding along in the darkness from nowhere to nowhere, wrung his
heart. And Pearl's courage in thus fronting him intensified the
torture. And the memory of her unexpected kindliness towards the
hag-beauty whom she detested, intensified it still further. He thought
of Wordsworth. He _was_ Wordsworth, mute, drenched in the heavenly
melancholy wonder of life. He spoke to Pearl with the extremest
tenderness.

"But can't you persuade him to change his plans?"

Pearl shook her head fretfully.

The swarthy head-waiter appeared suddenly at the door. He said
nothing, but his enquiring, protesting glance said:

"You must go. The power of your tip is exhausted."

"_C'est bien. On s'en va_," Alan threw at him with commanding
impatience.

The head-waiter retreated. Alan turned instantly to Pearl, by whom
seemingly the interruption had not been even noticed:

"No. I'm afraid nobody could persuade the boy to change his plans,"
said Pearl.

(The boy worshipped his father, she had said: touching!)

"Then what, my dear?"

Pearl said:

"I shall leave him.... Let's go."

Then only did she dab her eyes with a handkerchief.




CHAPTER XIV

PEARL'S KISS


They walked together along the train, Pearl in front. She seemed to be
perfectly composed. It was not late, by time, but by sensation it
might have been the deepest middle of the night. The blinds of the
narrow corridors were all drawn. The doors of the compartments were
all shut. Nobody was about, not even a chocolate-clad attendant. The
electric lights gleamed in vain with tireless continuance in the
curved ceilings of the corridors. The variegated shining maps
displayed in vain all the sleeping-car routes of Europe and Asia, and
all the names of the legended cities through which they passed. The
shaking, clattering linked platforms between the coaches, with their
striped curtains which so flimsily hid the glimpses of the world that
the train was for ever leaving behind and for ever rushing to meet,
were deserted, precarious bridges over hell. There was a profound
nocturnal silence and stillness in the midst of the deafening eternal
racket and motion.

But the unseen guardians of the train were watchful. A small red light
burned its signal at the end of a corridor. In a glass-covered box on
a wall could be seen tools ready for life-saving use in case of
accident. On the attendant's seat at the same end of the corridor lay
a bag and a portfolio of yellow and salmon-tinted forms; also an
official cap.

Alan's fancy tore down the doors of the compartments and saw the
searchers after pleasure and the fugitives from themselves lying in
bunk above bunk in slumber or sleepless. His fancy flew forward to the
engine and saw the driver and stoker in the glow of the fiery furnace
peering forth into the blast from the flanks of the terrific monster
which they tended. The whole organism of the flying procession had an
aura of touching, intolerable pathos. Yet despite his own woe, he
could clearly divine and appreciate its mysterious, ridiculous beauty.

He was exceedingly sad. He was affronted and hurt. He had a frightful
grievance against Pearl, for whom nevertheless his sympathy was acute.
She surely wouldn't "leave" Jack! A conjugal scandal in his most
respectable family, and on the top of the political scandal! The
thought was appalling; it was nearly unthinkable. Pearl might be
desperately driven, but she was wrong; she was mad, cruelly selfish. A
wife could not leave her husband because he happened to have a
political conscience and the moral force to obey it. Such heartless
follies were simply not committed by decent people. Pearl had taken
Jack for better for worse, and she could not properly abandon him at
the first serious strain upon their relations. If she did, the phrase
"for better for worse" had no meaning. But she would do it. And Jack
would let her do it. Neither would surrender. Jack was wrong in one
way but right in another. And equally--yes, he could not deny it--Pearl
might justify herself. She could furnish an impressive argument,
and should the argument fail, she could fall back on the unanswerable
and final, "I can't." If she couldn't tolerate the coming situation
she couldn't. The separation would be the queerest that ever was, and
not one acquaintance in a hundred would be capable of estimating it
fairly.... Elaine! Strange, but true: Alan had not till that moment
thought of the reaction of the disaster upon his wife. A reflection
upon her lack of character and her lack of importance in his world! He
had not remembered that Elaine too would suffer. At the journey's end
he would meet Elaine and he would have to tell her the calamitous
news, at the earliest opportunity. "Come here, my girl," he would have
to say, in a matter-of-fact yet grave tone, "I want to talk to you.
Something's happened."

Anyhow Elaine would receive the news calmly. But, though she would
hate Jack's new politics, she would without a doubt take Jack's side,
and in her nice, friendly softness, she would be absolutely implacable
against Pearl, and much pained if Alan said a single word in favour of
Pearl. Nothing would move her, and Alan would have to live with her.
Alan's judgment condemned Pearl, and yet he would be Pearl's only
champion. From whatever angle he surveyed the problem, it presented
itself as malignant, mortifying and insoluble. It was the sort of
problem that no perspicuity could foresee and no caution provide
against. A conjugal separation in the family! Why, a divorce might
follow--it would follow!

"I say," said Alan, when they had reached the door of his compartment.
"You aren't quite fit to go to bed straight off. Come and sit in here
for a minute or two."

He opened the door and turned on the light. The interior looked quite
inviting, with two books and a bottle of Evian and a glass on the
table, his crimson dressing-gown hung from a hook, and pale, fluffy,
wool-lined slippers under it, and the whiteness of the sheet showing
its border beneath the red-and-blue striped blanket. Everywhere brass
and mahogany glittered, and everywhere was tidiness. After nine
o'clock at night, when both berths of a compartment are taken, it is
impossible to sit down on the lower berth because of the interference
of the upper berth, but here the upper berth was still concealed in
the wall, and the lower one was comfortably available as a sofa. Pearl
silently, even meekly, went in.

"Squeeze yourself in there," said Alan, lifting a strapped rug from
the small seat on the side of the table opposite the bed.

Pearl obeyed. Alan, sitting on the bed near to the window, faced her.
He had closed the door. Pearl, nervous, examined her face in a
hand-mirror, and apparently found it satisfactory, for she did nothing
to it.

"Have a cigarette?" Alan put on an air of brisk cheerfulness.

"No thanks."

"What? Not a cigarette?"

"No. I've been thinking over what you said."

"About smoking?" He had a slight hope that she was referring to the
question which he had asked her to answer concerning Jack.

"Yes."

He was a little disappointed, but renewed with an effort his
cheerfulness.

"Then you must have some Evian."

He poured out the water, holding the glass in his hand so that the
swaying of the train should not spill it; and she drank. She seemed to
be strangely submissive, and grateful too for his protectiveness.

He was shut up with the young, independent, tortured, tragic creature
in the tiny cubicle, separated with her from the whole earth. Her eyes
were fixed on the glass, which she still held. He gazed at her averted
face. It had kindness, firmness, sorrow, rectitude, pride. But it was
impenetrable, baffling, enigmatic; he could not read it; it was a
rampart, and her mind lay hidden and protected behind it. He was not
with her; he was alone; he was always alone; he was never with
anybody; everybody was always alone. Somehow his grief seemed less
important than Pearl's. He could withstand no matter what; but she was
so defenceless in her confident, half-imperious pride, she who was
about to render herself solitary in the world. He was melting with the
heat of a desire to save her from herself and from fate.

"You know," he said compassionately, "you really ought to think again.
You can't give up Jack like that. You couldn't do it, my dear."

Silence. The skirts of the crimson dressing-gown trembled and swung as
if on a small ship in a smooth sea. Pearl picked up her bag from the
table, and squeezed herself out of the corner. Not a word. She tried
to smile, nearly smiled, and failed. Then she impulsively,
impetuously, seized Alan's hand, bent, kissed it, and dropped it--all
before he could make a movement.

"I couldn't bear it. It's no use. I could never bear it. I must go.
Good night."

She escaped. But the next moment there was a tap on the door, which
opened sufficiently for her to put in her head.

"It isn't as if the marriage-tie was so sacred as all that in these
days," she remarked calmly, and departed again.




CHAPTER XV

THE ESCAPE


After Alan had been in bed some time, sleepless and without
inclination to sleep, painfully and yet voluptuously abandoned to
meditation upon disaster and upon the mutability of existence, the
train stopped. Where it had stopped, why it had stopped, he could not
divine. In the ceiling of the compartment glowed the mauve light,
which a thoughtful, ingenious Sleeping Car Company had provided for
the timid as a compromise between total darkness and blinding glare.
It had a beautiful soft tint, soothing to the nerves and favourable to
melancholy; it shed romance even upon a little pile of underlinen and
hosiery.

"What does it matter to me where we are?" he reflected in grim
despair, as a man might reflect in the sure knowledge that he was
sentenced to be hung the next morning. He heard some object slip down
between the bed and the wall. He surmised that it must be the
Wordsworth which he had been trying, with ignominious lack of success,
to read for the steadying of his soul amid the storms of life.

"Let the damned thing go!" he reflected negligently. Then he heard
strange and violent noises, trampings, bumpings, and expostulations in
the corridor.

"No regard for other people--of course!" he reflected cynically. "Wake
up everybody in the carriage--if anybody was asleep: which is
doubtful. But there are some who could sleep through the Last Trump.
It's not me, though."

Silence. He strained to hear the next noise, because there was always
on such occasions a next noise. But silence. The suspense aggrieved
him as much as a noise or as the loss of all his fortune and all the
members of his family. His grievances were gigantic in the night; they
sprang full grown into enormity one after another, and this last one
was the highest. His sense of proportion was awry, and he knew it, but
he fiercely loved it to be awry and would not on any account have had
it altered.

"I may as well see where we are," he reflected savagely, and turned on
the bed-lamp. His watch, hung on a brass-hook to the wall by the bed,
said twenty-five minutes past eleven. He accused the innocent thing of
sloth, and pressed it against his ear. It was faithfully ticking. He
sighed. He would have guessed the hour to be 2 or 3 a.m.

"We must have passed Dijon," he reflected.

He seemed to remember a halt at Dijon, but all recent events exterior
to the train were very vague in his mind. He sat up and reached for
the purple-covered Sleeping Car Guide, could not find the page giving
Service No. 27, cursed, found it, could not decipher the figures
without his eye-glasses, cursed, searched vainly beneath the pillow
for his eye-glasses, cursed, found them. "Dijon. 10:11. Impossible.
Something wrong." He cursed again. His behaviour was puerile,
contemptible, and he knew it; but he gloried in it, ferociously hating
moderation, commonsense, self-control. At length he understood that he
had been looking at the itinerary of the return train.

"Why can't they give clearer indications? Ah! Dijon. Arrive 21:30.
Depart 21:37. Yes. We've passed Dijon. Unless we're two hours late.
Must be half-way between Dijon and Aix-les-Bains. But perhaps we are
two hours late. You never know on these awful French lines. Different
thing from the Scotch expresses, these French so-called
trains-de-luxe!... Couldn't be two hours late. Don't remember any delays.
All the same we were decidedly late at Laroche, and there hadn't been any
delays up to there. But everything's possible. Supposing she _is_ two
hours late. I'd better look out of the window. No! Dashed if I will!
What do I care?"

But the uncertainty fretted him, wore down his factitious obstinacy.
He sprawled along the bed, and, lying on his stomach, fumbled with the
blind of the window, and after more pitiable profanity, coaxed it to
shoot up, and wiped the glass clear with the sleeve of his pyjamas.
What he saw first was raindrops on the grimy pane, and then a low,
small platform dotted with tiny pools of rain. It had been raining,
but was raining no longer. A trifling, negligible station. One lamp
burning forlornly on the platform. No name on the lamp! No name
anywhere to be seen! The sole word which he could descry was
"Lampisterie," over a shabby door. Why in the name of incalculable
caprice should the majestic Rome Express, of which the Sleeping Car
Company made such a fuss in their conceited advertisements, choose to
stop at a miserable village station? He gave up attempting to sound
the depths of the idiocy of trains and traffic-managers.

Then Alan's ear caught more and still more violent sounds in the
corridor--not of bodies but of voices; they receded, died away. Within
a few seconds a figure stumbled on the platform, splashing careless
feet into the little fresh-formed pools. It was Mrs. Lucass descending
from the carriage, apparently without aid. She came to a standstill,
and remained absolutely motionless, her face towards the word
"Lampisterie," and her amorphous back towards the train.

In an instant Alan's interest shot up in a flame. Something was
happening to somebody else, not to him. With eagerness he welcomed the
distraction, exulted in it, enjoyed it. He knew that old Mr. Lucass
was in trouble, perhaps driven past the limit of endurance and ready
to commit homicide; but he had no feeling for Mr. Lucass; his feelings
were solely those of the callous spectator savouring with avidity the
emotions furnished by a performance to which otherwise he was
heartlessly indifferent. The thing was a godsend to his ennui,
weariness and distress. He kicked his bare feet on the bed and pressed
closer to the cold glass in order to miss nothing. He was glad to be
undressed; if he had been dressed, his inconvenient conscience (that
conscience which in a still more inconvenient form he had transmitted
to Jack) would probably have forced him out on to the midnight
platform to join in the episode.

He easily reconstructed events in their sequence. The hag-beauty had
tried to escape from the train at Laroche, and been foiled. She had
quite possibly made another effort at Dijon, and again been foiled.
And now the chance stopping of the express at this desolate, damp
platform without a name, had given her a third opportunity, for which
she must have been in wait. She was fully clothed in outdoor wear; she
was even very warmly wrapped up, and carried a rug on her arm.
Therefore she had refused to go to bed. Therefore old Mr. Lucass had
not gone to bed. Alan imagined them, the hag-beauty probably sitting
obstinate and silent on the small seat by the table, and Mr. Lucass
lying all dressed on the lower berth, hoping grimly to exhaust her
energy. At any rate he had not sat, because there would not have been
room for his head under the upper berth. There they had remained, hour
after hour, struggling against each other without moving and without
speech--for nagging and bickering could not continue for ever.

Then the train had stopped. The hag-beauty had not cared where the
stoppage was, nor for how long it would stop. She knew one thing--it
had stopped and she might be able to escape from it. She was
victimised by her nerves, obsessed utterly by the idea of the peril of
the train doomed by the presage of her nerves to disaster. Mr. Lucass
must have opposed her exit from the compartment, not by force, for he
could not decently lay hands on her. She had reached the corridor, and
then the old man's patience had at last given out; he had seized her;
he had perhaps lost his temper. The noise of their encounter had
frightened the respectability in both of them; the encounter had
ceased--and, at another effort towards escape by the hag-beauty, been
resumed. The hag-beauty was then so roused, so fiercely inspired by
her nerves, that she had become reckless of noise and of bad
impressions on neighbouring respectabilities. She had fought her way
to the platform of the carriage. Mr. Lucass, cowed, and fearful of the
signs of uncontrolled hysteria, had desisted from opposition. He was
bound to desist. She had managed to unfasten the double latches of the
carriage door; she had opened it, seen the tempting freedom of the
platform, and jumped down in all her heavy ungainliness.

And there she was, dominated by a single thought, waiting for the
train to leave her behind! The train might start at any moment. Alan
could see neither signal nor railwayman, nor any human being in all
France except the hag-beauty. The episode must end very shortly; it
could not be protracted. How would it end? Alan felt his heart beating
with excited apprehension.

Then Mr. Lucass appeared on the platform. Mr. Lucass too had jumped
down in a last desperate hope of exorcising the devil in his wife.
From the windows and doors of the train no spectator of the scene was
leaning forth. Probably not one was looking at it through a window.
And train-attendants were as invisible as policemen in a street row.
Old Mr. Lucass, with a muffler about his neck and an overcoat loose on
his shoulders, walked firmly across the platform to the hag-beauty,
and touched her on the shoulder. She did not budge. He went round her
and faced her. Alan could see from his lips and gestures that he was
talking. The hag-beauty turned her back to him, and thus Alan had a
sight of her face. She was smiling to herself, a most sinister smile--so
far as Alan could judge in the gloom. She tapped her foot on the
asphalt of the platform. Her head-gear seemed to tremble. Mr. Lucass
did not cease talking, and the hag-beauty did not cease her ignoring
smile at the train. Alan heard a faint distant whistle, the warning of
the engine. Then he heard a call from someone unseen who must have
been standing on the platform of the carriage. Mr. Lucass ran beneath
the voice--yes, the old man ran; but he did not board the train. The
train moved--a movement scarcely perceptible--but it moved. It was
going, going; the station, the word "Lampisterie," the hag-beauty,
began to glide backwards. The Lucass pair were being left on the
platform of a nameless station; they were being marooned in the dead
of night, without the least morsel of luggage save the rug on the
hag-beauty's arm. No light of any dwelling was anywhere visible from the
deserting train. The village--the place could not be more than a
village--might be a couple of kilometres off, five kilometres off;
such distances between houses and stations were common enough in
France.

"What a dirty shame!" thought Alan, blaming the woman and
commiserating the man.

Then something flew from the train a few yards ahead of Alan, and a
suitcase fell endways on the platform and bounced up again with the
elasticity of a ball, and came to rest flat over a pool. Then another
suitcase, which opened in falling and also came to rest flat, having
first strewn the platform with its contents. Then a despatch-case, a
rug, an umbrella, hat boxes and a stick, which danced and turned
somersaults in quite an amusing style. Then a man's hat. These matters
sprawled along fifteen or twenty yards of platform. Evidently an
attendant had arisen from somewhere in the train, and old Mr. Lucass,
resourceful to the last though horribly beaten, had asked him to throw
the whole of the Lucass possessions out of the window of the
compartment, and he was obeying the instructions with gusto. Naught
else for a few seconds, and then finally sailed out a white collar,
which the wind played with, and an unresilient lump with no bounce in
it whatever, which Alan surmised to be Mrs. Lucass's knitting-bag.
This concluding item dropped into earth beyond the edge of the
platform. (But the registered luggage must be still on the train.) The
speed of the train ruthlessly increased.

A fortunate curve of the track enabled Alan to get a parting transient
glimpse of two vague, dark figures, both bending towards the ground,
tiny and far off. The train straightened its momentary sinuosity. The
Lucass pair were irrecoverably gone, vanished, cut off for ever from
the comity of the train, abandoned to desolation.




CHAPTER XVI

AIX-LES-BAINS


No sleep of course! Alan was reconciled to that. At any rate he
certainly had a bed, whereas old Lucass might not see bed for another
twenty-four hours. How could he, Alan, go off to sleep, even in ideal
conditions of silence and stillness, after witnessing the dreadful
comic scene which he had witnessed? Nohow! He had two sensations,
familiar to those of similar temperament who have been gravely
perturbed in the night. Pride in the resigned decision to bear his
cross cheerfully: and joy in the contemplation of a beautiful packet
of time which, as it were, fate had suddenly presented to him. He
possessed his wits, some ease of body, a mind not yet conscious of
fatigue, and several unexpected hours--rich leisure for the most
minute operations.

First of all he rearranged the contents of the compartment with a view
to the visit of the customs at Modane at 4 a.m., and also with a view
to dressing himself at the greatest possible speed the next morning.
He decided that he would shave himself during the halt at Turin, 7.50
a.m. A full ten minutes, and he could shave in five minutes.

Then, the compartment having been put in the desired order, he
perpended upon what he should do next. There was nothing to do--except
read Wordsworth, and he had no fancy to read Wordsworth. Wordsworth so
far had not been equal to the occasions of the day. However, here was
an opportunity for self-discipline. He had begun to read _The
Prelude_. It was his duty to continue reading it. He would continue
reading it. Having fished up the book, he did continue reading it--in
bed, and in the crimson dressing-gown so that his restless arms might
be free without the risk of chill.

And _The Prelude_ was refractory to him. He conned and conned, and got
naught for his efforts--no uplifted mood of charity, nobility, solemn
bliss. There was a wall between the verse and his brain. He yawned.
The beautiful packet of spare time was swiftly transformed into a
heavy pall of pure ennui, which gladly he would have given away but
could find no donee. He was bored, bored, bored--bored, bored, bored.
He chanted under his breath a rhythmic repetition of the word to
accompany the periodicity of the wheels of the train on the metals.
The prospect of several hours of this inactive insomnia was terrible
to him. Here was the man, the poet, the philosopher who scarcely a
dozen hours earlier had not a care in the world, and to whom
nevertheless in the meantime nothing worse than a vague menace had
happened!

A tap on the door.

"Come in," he answered, wearily and perfunctorily, as if he had been
expecting a tap for hours and had grown tired of waiting for it. He
thought the car-attendant had forgotten to tell him something
important about the customs and was repairing the omission by a visit
at an inexcusable hour. The devoted attendant ought to be reproved,
and should be. Nevertheless Alan was very pleased with the prospect of
any distraction whatever.

The door-knob moved.

"Oh!" Alan put his arm out of bed and undid the safety-bolt. "Come in.
Come in."

"Can I?"

It was Pearl's head that appeared as the door was cautiously opened.
She was dressed as completely as when she had left him.

"Damn the girl!" thought Alan, whose temper had gradually changed in
the night to the peevish. "Why isn't she in bed? Why do women always
want to start talking when they ought to be asleep?" (Elaine, if she
had a positive fault, showed a certain tendency that way.)

But he said aloud, with extreme sweetness:

"My dear, come in. Come in. What's happened to you to stop you getting
to bed--all this time, too?"

"They've gone!" said Pearl.

"Who've gone?" Alan asked, although of course he knew quite well whom
she meant: sign of his suppressed peevishness.

"Those Lucasses. They've--"

"Oh, them! Yes, I saw them, through the window."

"So did I."

"Ah, you did? Well, they've gone."

Had Pearl, he asked himself sardonically, come to rouse him up simply
because she had found that she could not rest until she had imparted
to him the strange news?

"But why? Like that?" said Pearl. "I suppose it was Mrs. Lucass's
doing. I never saw such a thing in all my life."

"Neither did I."

"But why did she----"

"She said nothing to you while you were looking after her in the
middle of dinner?"

"Not about that. She scarcely spoke."

"Well, I'll tell you why they went like that," said Alan. "They went
because her ladyship had got into her head that this train was
dangerous. She was afraid of an accident, and she worked herself up
until she was jolly well sure there _will_ be an accident. You know
how women are, my dear." Alan was strangely breezy.

"Yes, I do. Especially a woman like her. But really she must be mad.
That's the only excuse for her. If she's sane she deserves to be
smacked. It's inconceivable, that's what it is." Indignation in her
clear voice. "I _did_ feel so sorry for Mr. Lucass." Sympathy in her
clear voice. "I hope there won't be an accident," she added, half
negligently.

The last remark somewhat startled Alan, who had a transient conception
of the train as a doomed entity which the seer in Mrs. Lucass had left
to its fate.

"Yes," he agreed vaguely and meditatively, answering nothing in
particular, or everything, of what Pearl had said.

"I say----" She paused. She had shut the door and was leaning against
it, in a charming pose.

"They think out the curve of every finger. They always know exactly
how they look," reflected Alan, who in order to see Pearl face to face
had had to turn on his left side.

The ceiling-light was extinguished; the bed-light made shadows
everywhere in the compartment except on the bed. Pearl did beyond
question look extraordinarily lovely, extraordinarily elegant in the
shadowed corner by the door.

She proceeded after the brief pause:

"Do you suppose I could have their compartment? It's empty. Nobody's
using it."

Alan became more and more sardonic. Mrs. Lucass had informed him that
she was a woman and a man too--she, the most hysterically feminine
creature ever born. (Such were the words that Alan used in his mind.)
And now Pearl, the masculinity of whose intelligence he had been
foolishly admiring--Pearl was getting feminine also. The Lucasses'
compartment was empty by pure hazard. Had the Lucasses not abandoned
the train, she would have contented herself with a companion in her
own compartment, made the best of things, and been well enough the
next morning. But because the other compartment happened to be empty,
she wanted to upset the entire train, put him, Alan, to a devil of a
lot of bother, and deprive a car-attendant of some of his only
too-short ration of sleep! The fellow, already disturbed once, would
have to be about and alert again at Aix-les-Bains before one-thirty.
Such a caprice was perfectly rotten. (Again, Alan's vocabulary in his
private mind.) But he replied aloud, with a benignant smile and a tone
to match:

"My dear! Of course! What a good scheme! I'll see to it for you. I'll
get up and fix it. I expect you found it a bit uncomfortable in there
with your artistic friend." And thus he misled Pearl with complete
success as to his attitude towards her.

"You are a dear," she murmured appreciatively.

"I'm not at all a dear--far from it," he said to himself savagely.
"All I think is it's a bit odd that a woman who's decided to leave her
husband should make a fuss about a compartment. What's it matter
whether you sleep or not? You're going to leave your husband."

"The fact is," Pearl went on, speaking lower as she opened the door,
"my artistic companion is rather offensive. Would you believe it, she
hadn't begun to undress when I went in there after I'd left you,
though she'd said she would at once. She was writing in her notebook.
She'd taken the top berth without asking me, and she was writing up
there all sprawling on her stomach. I didn't complain; but of course I
had to let her see.... I couldn't bear to watch her undress, so I
looked out of the window, and that was how I came to see the
Lucasses."

"The usual thing," Alan reflected malevolently. "Two women thrown
together--fight like cats. I bet they've had the deuce of a shindy."
And aloud: "You run along and I'll fix the conductor. He's certain to
be about because we're getting on for Aix-les-Bains now. What's the
number of your wigwam? Sixth carriage isn't it in? Yes."

As soon as Pearl had departed, he lit a cigarette.

"Curse all women!" he exclaimed softly and religiously. "Anyhow she
wasn't smoking--for a wonder!" Withal, his attitude towards the female
sex in general, and in particular to Pearl, did not convince even
himself; for beneath his irritation and resentment was continuously
the memory: she had kissed his hand.

In the "flitting," as they called it on Tyneside, the getting out of
the old compartment and the getting into the new one, she was
delicious to Alan, and delicious to the attendant. The attendant was
her slave, and he was also the slave of Alan. But in her deliciousness
Pearl was exacting too. She let nothing go by in the execution of her
wishes; she was undoubtedly fussy. After every trifle had been carried
into the ex-home of the Lucasses and the attendant was offering
subtle, respectful hints of his real opinion of Mrs. Lucass as a
traveller, Pearl said suddenly:

"I think I'll have that upper berth strapped back so it won't be in my
way." The attendant recoiled, for the upper berth was now strewn with
Pearl's possessions.

"Will you really?" Alan asked, a mild protest in his voice. From the
corridor he was watching the manoeuvres, quite shameless in his
crimson dressing-gown.

The feeling of the two men was plain enough; but Pearl ignored it.

"Oh, I think so," she insisted, very blandly.

She was obeyed. The attendant climbed on to the lower seat, and Pearl
charmingly received articles at his hands. Then he stripped the upper
bed, and soon a pile of bed-linen lay in the corridor. Then he puffed
and struggled with the straps, and at last the whole deed was
accomplished. He gave a most urbane and chivalrous Gallic bow, and,
stopping in the corridor, picked up the bed-linen in his hands grimy
with train-dirt.

"Thank you so very much--a thousand times," said Pearl, beginning in
English and finishing in French, with a smile in fullest discharge of
her obligation to the exhausted man. And she lit a cigarette and
surveyed the field of her triumph.

"Well, that's about all, my dear," said Alan. "I'll leave you."

"You have been good," said she. "I know I'm a dreadful nuisance."

He moved to leave her, and at the very moment the train slackened
speed. The din and the vibration were reduced.

"By Jove!" thought Alan. "Aix-les-Bains already! Then it must be
nearly half-past one. No use going to bed till we're out of the
place."

He released a blind in the corridor and looked forth. Pearl came and
stood by his side. The train ran slowly into the big, echoing station,
which tens of thousands of de luxe winter travellers, asleep or weary
with insomnia, had passed through without even seeing it. No traveller
emerged from any compartment. Within the arcana of the compartments
travellers were asking themselves sleepily: "Where are we now? This
train seems to be always stopping." The train was at rest, silent,
taking breath. And the station platforms appeared to be as lifeless as
the carriage and the entire train. Only a huge clock was alive.

"One twenty-eight," Alan observed. "Four minutes late. Not so bad."

No one seemed to be leaving the train, no one entering it. As usual,
at these nocturnal halts, not an official was visible. Then Alan and
Pearl saw a man in a shabby blouse, not a railway porter, crossing a
track towards the train. He carried a rather unwieldy suitcase, and
kept glancing over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. He
was indeed being followed.

"That's Jack," said Pearl, with a self-conscious laugh.

"But how could Jack be here?" Alan asked quietly, emulating his
daughter-in-law's self-possession.

"Well," she answered, "there's only one way, isn't there?"

As the two men approached the train she tapped violently on the
window. Her voice was under better control than her hand.




CHAPTER XVII

THE EMBRACE


At the startling spectacle of his son and only child, whom he had not
seen since the marriage, Alan was suddenly inspired by an immense
paternal pride. Jack seemed not to be changed in any particular, yet
Alan beheld him with fresh, new eyes, as though beholding him as he
really was for the first time.

Jack was within a few days of his twenty-fifth birthday: tall, slim,
elegant both in body and in his sober, simple, costly tourist attire;
a firm, confident tread; his head unconsciously held high; the gaze of
his grey eyes direct, straightforward and calm; a pleasant, ingenuous,
honest look on his thin, rather pale, meditative face.

Though he had been uncompromisingly critical of his school, Jack wore
a school necktie, and by this Alan was specially affected, for he too
was entitled to carry a similar coloured rag, which for its wearers
symbolised centuries of a unique tradition--at least father and son
passionately regarded the tradition as unique.

The lad had a remarkably youthful air--more youthful than his
wife's--and Alan could detect the mere boy in him, but at the same time
he was curiously mature in Alan's sight.

Alan thought in nave wonder:

"Can this grown fellow, self-possessed, determined, and with a
complete philosophy of life and serious intentions upon the evolution
of society--can he be my son and Elaine's?"

Yes, he was immensely proud, and he could not master his pride. Jack
was a miracle.

But also Alan was frightened, he was positively intimidated, by the
apprehension of the immediate future. He perceived coming inevitably
together two tremendous individual forces, neither of which he could
control. He foresaw a clash, a collision, a terrible interlocking,
with most distressing consequences of all sorts. He compassionated his
son and his son's wife, but wanted to remove himself, as a fragile,
defenceless thing, from their dangerous vicinity. He wished intensely
that he had been travelling a day earlier or a day later.

Pearl had decided to desert this paragon of style and honour?
Monstrous! Inconceivable!

The girl stood hesitant, quite still, smiling vaguely, awaiting
whatever might happen to her, perhaps marshalling her numerous wits
for the impact. The moment was thrilling.

Jack gave a blue French note to the man, took the suitcase himself,
pushed further open the platform door of the carriage, and pitched the
suitcase inside. In a second, in the tenth of a second, in an
impossibly short space of time, he was in the corridor, his head
somewhere near the ceiling, his sharp, prominent chin sticking out in
front of him.

He saw nothing but Pearl, who turned to face him under the electric
lights of the corridor. He was pleasantly smiling. He pulled off his
cap, one of those tweed caps the smell of which Pearl had classed with
the odour of a fine cigar. He did not say a word. He simply advanced
upon Pearl, steadily smiling. He might have been going to kill her in
cold blood, or to embrace her. She stood like a victim till he was
over her, and then she stiffened into a defensive opposition which he
either ignored or did not notice. He put his long arms round her neck;
they encircled her almost twice, so that his hands in their pale loose
gloves nearly met under her chin. She was helpless. She could not move
her head. She must meet his glance--or she must close her eyes. She
did not close her eyes. He had travelled like lightning to catch her,
and he had caught her. She was his, even in her passive opposition. He
kissed her on the lips--a sustained kiss, powerful, ardent and pure.
He seemed to feel no constraint, no self-consciousness; he was
performing a natural act. He was aware of nothing but her. His gaze
burned its way into the secrecies of her thought. Young love,
victorious!

To Alan, as he watched, the nature and fierceness and simplicity of
young love were revealed. He reflected: "Did I once love like that? Is
it possible that once I was so young?" And he realised, as never
before, that he was old. But the realisation did not sadden him with
regrets. He was content to be tranquil and to appreciate in another
the ecstasy which he could no more achieve.

"Leave him?" he reflected. "The idea is absurd! She couldn't do it. No
woman could give up such a man!"

And he was glad. He felt again that the trouble between Jack and Pearl
would resolve itself, and that all his worrying had been utterly
unnecessary. What Pearl had said to him had no significance. Only the
embrace had significance; it was the final answer to every argument.

And Alan thought also:

"What an exquisite, lovely vision I have seen!" His eyes were just a
little moist at the vision. "It is the loveliest vision I have ever
seen!"

Then Jack loosed his captive as simply and naturally as he had
enfolded her. Jack was assuaged.

"You'd better get out here," he said cheerfully. "I didn't hope to
find you all up and dressed. I expected I should have to stand in the
corridor till morning. Come on. We'll stop here at Aix, my darling."
He was apparently sure of her acquiescence. He took everything for
granted. He had taken for granted that he would meet the train, and
that she would be in the train; and now he was taking for granted that
at his urgency she would leave the train. His decisions were
instantaneous.

Pearl shook her head.

"Yes. Come on. Train will be off in a moment. Never mind your things."

Standing precisely at the door of her new compartment, Pearl opened
the door, vanished into the fortress, and shut the door. The snap of
the inner catch was heard. Jack turned the outer knob, but the door
would not yield.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE FEAT


"I say," said Alan, in a voice as matter-of-fact as he could command.
He had been standing, in the crimson dressing-gown, in the doorway of
his compartment, two doors from Pearl's, and Jack, absorbed, had not
even noticed the figure of his father--rather absurd with the ends of
the legs finished off in trailing pyjamas and red slippers. The lad
was extremely puzzled; then, as he realised the identity of the
summoner, very suspicious.

"Come along in here," said Alan.

"Are you in this show, Dad?" Jack asked abruptly, inimically, when he
was inside the compartment, and Alan had shut the door.

The door swung open again, unobserved by the two men; but it mattered
not whether the door was open or closed; the corridor was empty, the
train asleep; the halt at Aix-les-Bains, the incident of Jack's
irruption, were nothing whatever to the train in its wandering, swift
pilgrimage across the vast lands of the Republic.

"Sit down," said Alan, seating himself. "No! I'm not in 'this show.'
I'm going to your mother, as I expect she told you. Sheer accident,
Pearl being in the same train." He gave a few details.

"Well I'm dashed! I _am_ dashed!... She told you anything?" Jack
questioned, his candid face softening as he acquitted his father of
any complicity against him, and as his astonishment at finding his
father wore off.

"Well, she's told me a bit. I understand enough."

Jack looked at him. There was a constraint between them, natural in
the circumstances. Jack was not now his son, and Alan was not Jack's
father. Jack was a completely independent human being, monopolised by
the sole thought of his own interests, harassed but self-confident,
not in the least anxious for advice or help; and Alan was merely
another man, influenced by the caution and the timidity with which any
wise man approaches a fellow-creature whom he knows to be in grave and
subtle difficulties.

"Why are you here like this--if one may enquire?" Alan added.

"I wanted to catch her before she reached her mother."

"You knew she was going to her mother, then?"

"I didn't exactly know. But she did just mention that she might go and
see her mother."

"When was that? When you told her about your--new scheme?"

"Yes."

"When was that?"

"Yesterday morning."

A silence.

"Now my boy," said Alan gently, beginning to feel his fathership a
little, "it won't do you any harm to be perfectly frank with me. Say
anything you like. I shan't mind, and of course I won't repeat it." He
touched the lad's shoulder by his side. "What sort of a person is Mrs.
Meadowes? I hardly know her."

"Oh! She's all right I suppose," Jack replied indifferently. "But
Pearl listens to her--and of course the old lady would be--er--against
me in this affair."

"Yes. But why did Pearl think of going to her mother all of a sudden?"

"It was when I told her definitely I should stand for Labour."

"She was upset?"

"Not for a minute or two, because I'd talked of it before. But she
soon got herself upset."

"Very?"

"Yes, I suppose you'd say very upset."

"More than you thought she'd be?"

"By Jove, yes! She must have been knocked about considerably, because
she went off last night without telling me. I was out for dinner, on
business, and when I got back she'd gone. I only found out by a
telegram she'd left lying around."

"What was the telegram about? I'm only asking because I ought to know
exactly where we all are."

"Yes. That's quite all right, Dad. It was only a telegram from the
Italian State Railways in Waterloo Place about a berth on this train."

"You were a trifle startled?"

"You bet I was, Dad!" Jack was diminishing to the navet of a boyish
son.

A tremor of the floor of the compartment. Alan glanced at the window.
The station was passing by with furtive, creeping deliberation. The
door of the compartment moved, hesitated, and banged into the doorway.
Alan latched it securely. Silence and stillness were broken; din and
clatter gradually resumed; cold air invaded the compartment from the
window.

"We're off!" Jack exclaimed.

"Yes."

It was as if, Jack being in the train with his wife and his father,
something definite and unalterable had occurred.

"And what did you do when you'd seen the telegram?"

"I rushed straight to the station."

"What station?"

"Newcastle, of course. The train had just gone--just gone."

"What time was it?"

"Oh, I don't know. What does it matter?" Jack displayed a nervous
sensitiveness.

"It doesn't."

"So I got hold of a Continental Bradshaw at the Royal Hotel, and then
I went off to find Macdonald--Alistair Macdonald--you remember."

"The air fellow?"

"Yes. Alistair was in bed. I soon had him fixed up."

"Then you'd decided what to do?"

"I had."

"All in a moment?"

"Yes. Why not? Alistair was ready to go anywhere."

"Did you tell him why you were in such a hurry?"

"Certainly not. And he didn't ask either. He said there'd be a machine
ready at the hangars, and there was. We left at seven forty-five this
morning, passports and all. He had his--that was a bit of luck."

"Was it light?"

"Of course it was light. We were at Paris by eleven. Thought we'd
better call there because of fuss about customs and so on if we
didn't. Left Paris by noon, and we got to Aix-les-Bains here before
three. Bit less than three hundred miles."

"Must have been jolly cold for you, eh?"

"Not a bit. Alistair fitted me out in leather. Everything was fine and
clear. Think I'll take my overcoat off." Jack took his overcoat off,
and sighed: "Well!" as he dropped it on the floor.

Said Alan, attempting humour in order to ease the sense of strain:

"I suppose you're doing that to prove to me that you were positively
too hot on the journey."

"No, I wasn't." Jack answered quite simply and seriously. "I wasn't.
This place is a shade stuffy, you know."

Alan smiled with a certain sheepishness. Never could Jack see a
joke--any more than his mother could.

"You've been at Aix for hours then?" Alan resumed.

"Nine hours about."

"Time to spare, eh?"

"Yes. But I nearly missed the train all the same."

"How?"

"Partly through old Mac wanting a big thing in suppers at a cafe--he's
going back tomorrow morning--and partly because they wouldn't let me
on to the platform here at Aix. Said I couldn't travel by the luxe if
I hadn't a ticket for it, and there was no other train. Quite some
fuss. I told them I didn't want to travel by the luxe or any other
train--I'd only come to give the suitcase to someone who _was_
travelling in the luxe. That, and me saying I'd flown from Paris,
and--oh!--the usual arrangement in the end did it. But it was a near
thing! I expect you saw me crossing the line just as the bally train
came in."

"I should think so. Why did you choose Aix?"

"Well! Landing-ground. Alistair knew it. He knows most of 'em, but he
didn't happen to know Dijon. Otherwise I should have joined you there.
We came down not far off the lake. Lovely landing he made."

"Before dark, naturally."

"Oh rather! Had to make it in daytime or we should have been done in.
That was why we started so early."

Alan continued to put trivial if interesting questions, and Jack
continued to answer them, because both of them feared the graver part
of the conversation, to which the discussion of the details of the
journey was merely a futile introduction. Both of them had in their
minds the picture of Pearl, solitary in her bolted compartment, and
were cravenly pleased to be postponing a crisis.

"You came over some mountains, didn't you?"

"Nothing to speak of. There isn't a mound till the Cote d'Or--round
about Dijon, you know. Aix is under a thousand feet!"

Now Alan sighed:

"And so here you are!"

Happy-go-lucky kind of person, Jack! But that was only his
youthfulness. Youth did not calculate, plan, weigh pros and cons
carefully. It took chances. The chances had favoured Jack. Wonderful
thing, youth! The lad had decided in an instant what he would do; and
he had done it, successfully. Earlier in the day he had been in
Newcastle--Newcastle, another world, a million miles off. Then in the
sky. Then in the suburbs of Paris. Then in the sky again; and over
mountains. And lo! he was here, in the same train as Pearl!
Marvellous! And he was quite modest over it. No doubt he had acted as
observer during the flight: but not a word from him about that. Yes,
he was extremely modest. True, his prominent sharp chin was sticking
out rather challengingly, the chin of one saying: "I said to myself
I'd catch her, and I've caught her."

A shock for Pearl! Pearl could not but admire such rapid decision,
such initiative, such enterprise, such success! Desert him? She could
not. She was bound to admire him intensely for his feat, and to
respond in the end to the passionate attachment to her which the feat
so convincingly demonstrated. Any woman would. These troubles were not
resolved by argument, but by emotion. He had said so before, and he
said so again. How fortunate that Jack had always been keen on flying.
Without that.... He had just missed the war. But had he been a year
older what a soldier he would have become! What an airman! What an
ace! Yes, and a hundred to one he would have been in his grave.

An odd journey for Alan. The oddest he had ever been through. First,
Pearl being in the train. Second, the amazing, nocturnal vanishing of
the Lucasses. Third, the still more amazing arrival of Jack. Not to
mention the earthquake in Jack's married life! He wondered whether
anything else of a breath-taking nature would happen. Privately, he
was growing somewhat more cheerful. The further he reflected upon the
matter, the surer was his trust that it would reach a satisfactory
conclusion. Of course there would remain the ghastly business of
Jack's standing for Labour. But that, now, in comparison with the
threatened conjugal disaster, was already seeming less ghastly. After
all!...

The train was being braked. Jack raised and twisted his arm to look at
his wrist-watch. One-fifty.

"Chambry," Alan murmured. "We're getting on."

Then a sharp tap-tap at the door. They both started. The attendant
showed himself.

"Madame would wish to speak to Monsieur."

He addressed Alan. In his voice was an intonation subtly implying that
Madame had ever strange caprices and all concerned must be resigned to
them.

"I'll go," said Jack, jumping up.

"Hold on!" Alan checked him. "If it's me she wants I'd better go." He
thought it might be well to have speech with her first. She was
reconsidering the situation; she was reconsidering....

The two men faced one another, hostile for a moment. Jack's eyes
gleamed.

"All right," said Jack.




CHAPTER XIX

CHAMBERY


There was a strong perfume in Pearl's compartment. Pearl had her back
to the door and was bending over a valise. She turned only for an
instant towards Alan.

"We're coming into Chambry, aren't we?"

"Yes. Terrific odour here. Delicious, but a bit powerful."

"Knocked the stopper out of a scent-bottle. One of Molyneux's too.
Full, and it cost me two pounds. Can't be helped. Never did such a
thing before." She was crushing garments and apparatus into the
valise.

Alan made no reply. His compartment and hers were two different
worlds. Two pounds for a bottle of scent! Why scent? To attract women
or men? Men. What men? All men? Or one? No, all men. What could be the
effect of a faint odour on a man? But every woman did it. Even on
Elaine, now and then, he had detected a faint, agreeable odour. Not
that Elaine ever talked perfumes! She never did. Still, she used
them--and they had absolutely no influence on the feelings towards her
of her husband; at any rate, so far as her husband was consciously
aware. A different and a stranger world! Doubtless women knew what
they were about in the matter of scent. Improbable that they could be
wholly deceiving themselves. But two pounds--and he guessed a small
bottle at that.

"See here," she said, without looking at him. "I'm going to get out at
Chambry. I can't stay in this train, and I won't!" Her clear, firm
articulation! "But I wouldn't leave without telling you."

She had lost her head. She must have lost her head; inconceivable
though it seemed that such a misfortune could have happened to such a
woman as he, Alan, had judged her to be. Well, one more proof that all
women were alike, and that he was a simpleton. He had an impulse to
laugh and an impulse to curse. Comic, it was, how people were always
either leaving this damned train or boarding it! He had been wondering
whether a fourth incident would succeed the three odd incidents
already arrived. Here it was. The astonishing folly of it! She must be
prevented. But she could not be prevented, curse her!

"I see," he said quietly. "But you know you may be jumping out of the
frying-pan into the fire."

"How? What do you mean?"

She snapped the catch of the valise, and began to straighten her hat
in the glass.

"Supposing Jack sees you?"

"But he won't see me--unless you go and tell him. I know he's in your
compartment, because I just looked in the corridor. I shall slip out
at this end." She indicated the direction away from Alan's
compartment.

"Do you think he'll stay alone there in my compartment when we get
into the station? Not likely. Anybody who's up and restless always
looks out. He mayn't move of course. But if he does? He's certain to
see you. And what then? You may depend he'll go after you--like a
shot. You can keep yourself to yourself here--if you want to. But at
Chambry station--and at Chambry in the middle of the night!... At
least that's my notion. I may be wrong. I daresay I am. Can I help you
at all, my dear?"

She sat down and put her hands under her thighs, and tapped her
perfect foot and said nothing. The train stopped with a bump, jerking
her body a few inches forward. Alan had steadied himself by a hook in
the wall. Silence. Stillness.

"You hadn't thought of that?"

"Well, no! That is, I hadn't really thought it out."

"You must be in a state then!" said Alan to himself. This was the
nicely poised creature who had spoken so wisely in the restaurant-car.
You might have imagined, then, that she was the wisest and coolest of
her sex. And look at her! One thing to be urged in favour of the mild
Elaine: she never did lose, her head--hardly ever, and never
completely! As a life's companion to a man she was preferable to the
brilliant Pearl type. Peace! Peace before everything!

"You might shut the door properly," said Pearl with curtness.

Alan obeyed.

"How did he come here?"

"Flew."

"I knew it. But how did he know I should be in this train?"

"Hadn't you told him?" And Alan added privately: "I'm cleverer than
you are. I don't propose to give anybody's show away. I stopped you
from going by offering to help you to go. I'm not such a hopeless
simpleton perhaps, my girl."

"Why should I tell him? I'd asked him to go away with me to the
seaside for a couple of days. But he said he couldn't. Too busy. But
he can find time to come running after me like this. And did _he_ tell
_me_ where he was dining last night? He just said 'business.' He might
have been open with me, and said it was to meet some of those Labour
men--as I knew it was. Why should I tell him what I was going to do?
Surely I can go and see my mother? She spent Christmas all alone, and
I didn't want her to spend New Year alone, too. And she shan't."

"That's not the point," said Alan harshly, but by no means to Pearl,
only to himself. She was not arguing fairly. She had lost her head,
and now she was losing both her dignity and her sense of justice.

"Quite," he said aloud, soothingly. You had to soothe them, to hide
your mind from them, to lie to them: it was the condition of getting
on with them at all.

"And then this mad escapade of his! He might have been killed! And I
don't see how anybody can say it's very polite to a wife for a husband
to rush after her as Jack has done. And bursting into the train in the
middle of the night. Makes her feel like a runaway slave, that's what
it does. And I've done nothing to deserve being treated like that.
This isn't the nineteenth century."

"Pathetic," thought Alan. "Humiliating!" In the heavy, scent-laden
air, with this young, fashionable woman in an advanced state of
nerves, he could do nothing, though really he was on her side and
against Jack; while with Jack he could have argued the case decently,
honestly, and outspokenly, and there would have been none but an
intellectual tension. The train started again, on another stage.

"There!" Pearl exclaimed. "We haven't been here for a minute. I could
have slipped out easily, and Jack wouldn't have had time----"

Alan thought:

"If he'd seen you he'd have jumped out even if the train had been
going twenty miles an hour!" But he kept mute.

"It isn't as if I hadn't made a good suggestion to him," Pearl
proceeded. "It was a good suggestion that he would help Labour better
by standing as a Conservative. He would have found plenty of
supporters among the young Conservatives. There's a lot of them. Now
isn't it so?"

"Yes," Alan agreed sincerely. "I think it certainly was a good
suggestion."

"But would he listen to it? No! He wouldn't let me finish. Believe me,
when he finally told me what he meant to do--join Labour--he seemed to
go absolutely mad. I flatter myself I was calm from start to finish."

Alan asked himself which of their utterly contradictory reports of
that same interview was nearer the truth--or further from the truth.
But whether Pearl was right or wrong--and from her present deportment
he concluded with a natural bias that she was quite possibly wrong--
he warmly regretted that she should have so far forgotten herself as
to attack the son to his father. It was not decent. Women, however,
were incapable of sustained decency.

"Chasing after me like a lunatic!" Pearl resumed her tirade.

"But you did rap on the window the moment you saw him," said Alan to
himself. "That must have been an instinctive gesture, coming from the
sub-conscious, showing your real attitude to him, my girl. You're
trying to be angry with him and you're succeeding; but the fact is
you're tremendously impressed, and pleased too, by what he's done
today."

Suddenly he was filled with compassion for her. And he reproached
himself for misogyny, and with remarkable detachment put his misogyny
down to fatigue. If she was a woman, she could not help it. Lovely in
her distress, she made a picture to draw pity and admiration from the
most blockish blockhead ever born a male. Confronted by these superb,
delicate, delicious, incalculable beings, you had to take the rough
with the smooth; you had to be ready cheerfully to pay the price--not
a price of your own fixing, but theirs. Men indeed were ready: they
always would be: it was a law of the universe. These strange beings,
with their marvellous qualities, were entitled to forbearance and
lovingkindness. You could do nothing for them but bestow loving
kindness. They were oppressed, by the very nature of things. They were
caught in life like rats in a trap.

After an interminable, sterile discussion, which served merely to
enfever Pearl, and which Alan felt must somehow be ended, he went to
her and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. She sprang up as though
his hand had been red hot.

"I must see him. I must tell him what I think," she cried, desperate.

"Not now. You're too tired. You'll do it much better tomorrow morning.
And he'll be easier to deal with then. He's had an exhausting day."

"No! Now! I can't rest till I've told him and had it out."

"Not in my compartment, anyhow," said Alan, with a grimness
half-playful. "I must have some quiet, even if you don't. I'll fetch
him."

He left her.




CHAPTER XX

ACCIDENT


The corridor was deserted as usual, electricity wasting brilliantly in
its roof. The door of Alan's own compartment was shut; Jack had been
very patient, with the patience of a hunter sure of his quarry. The
doors of all the compartments were shut. The blinds of two of the
corridor windows had been drawn up at Aix-les-Bains. Some meticulous
official had been along and drawn them down again, and hooked them. No
apparent life within the great, pounding, vibrating, rumbling life of
the entity of the train! Not a sign of the emotional upheaval in
Pearl's compartment or in Alan's! And there were half a dozen other
compartments in the carriage, and seven or eight other carriages full
of compartments, and any or every compartment might be concealing some
mortal affliction within its luxury. Alan pictured the succession of
compartments from one end of the train to the other. And how many
other similar trains might there not be that night on the face of
Europe speeding from nowhere to nowhere!

And as the compartments were hidden away from the corridor, so was the
outer world hidden away behind the blinds. Of the outer world nothing
could be divined except that the track was steadily rising towards the
distant height of Mont Cenis. Alan could feel the mighty impulse of
the engine as it doggedly forced itself, and dragged its tremendous
convoy, up the incline.

He stood still, thinking of just what he ought to say to Jack in order
to smooth as much as possible the approaches to the coming interview
between husband and wife. He was a little frightened of Jack. He had
been assuming throughout that Jack would not yield; and now he was
surer than ever that Jack would not yield. Pearl must yield--the woman
must yield. And she would. Undoubtedly she had a grievance against the
fanatic, but she must suffer it. What _was_ the thing, after all, in
comparison with the sum of human infelicity? Naught! Naught but
imagination, the fruit of ruthless egotism. Still, he hesitated to
confront Jack. Jack might pester him with a lot of awkward questions,
might even say, in his direct simplicity, that since Pearl had
fastened him out of her compartment she must herself invite him to
enter the same. Absurd of course; unwise. But he knew Jack. These
fanatics with their winsomeness and their consciences and their
abstract principles and their unwitting cruelty, were capable of being
the very devil.

His gaze examined the corridor, and saw black, gritty dust on every
ledge. The train was filthy. Hands were filthy. All trains, even those
best entitled to be called "de luxe," became odiously uninhabitable
after a few hours of continuous travelling. That was to say, on the
continent, not in England. English coal.... The famous Scotch
expresses.... Something ought to be done about Continental trains, so
absurdly labelled "de luxe." Perhaps in the future trains would be
kept as clean as cabins on board ship, and people would refer
condescendingly, incredulously, to the barbaric conditions of travel
in the nineteen twenties.

Alan was thus idly reflecting while he made up his mind to summon
Jack, when he heard an unusual thunderous sound from the invisible
world beyond the boundaries of the train. The sound disquieted him,
and restored his sense of proportion--dust was a trifle. Then there
was a frightful bump of the whole carriage, a bump which seemed to
prelude the end of the world, a horror-inspiring bump unlike any other
bump in his experience. Then a second bump--worse. The carriage might
have been instantaneously deprived by some sinister miracle of all its
springs. The carriage leapt from bump to bump. It leapt into the air,
and dropped to a cast-iron ground with an appalling thud, utterly
unresilient, and leapt again.

"We're off the rails," he muttered, in a panic.

His instinct was to rush for companionship to Jack, the enterprising,
the resourceful, the image of youth, his son. But in the same moment
he knew that he dared not stir, and must not stir. Safety, or
comparative safety, was in clamping himself immovably to the structure
of the carnage. He clenched his left hand frantically on one of the
leather loops that hung under the windows, and pushed the other hand
against the wall that separated the compartments from the corridor.
The train appeared to be slackening speed, but the leaps and the bumps
increased in nerve-shattering violence. He gave a cry. He heard a
muffled cry from the other side of the compartment-wall. Only a few
seconds earlier he had been secure, proud, assessing the far future
without any sense of the ridiculousness of so doing. Now the future
was brutally, implacably, lopped to the limit of another few seconds,
and he had been diminished to a helpless insect under the indifferent
heel of fate. He felt sick, without manhood, without dignity or
self-respect. He would have sold his soul to be out of the murderous
train, in a field, anywhere far from the line.

But in some recess of his intelligence he was thinking, with
unimaginable rapidity, as he wedged and clamped and jammed his
stretched body in the width of the corridor, about Mrs. Lucass. The
hag-beauty was justified of destiny. She had had a premonition, an
intuition, whatever you cared to call it. She had raised hell in the
train, and had continued to raise hell. She had been perfectly
preposterous, and continued to be perfectly preposterous. She had
outraged the patience of her commonsense old husband again and again.
She had kept up the agitation for hours. She had fought against wisdom
and been beaten, and fought anew. She had jumped on to a nameless wet
platform, and forced her man to jump. She had planted herself and him
there in the middle of space at the end of a string of possessions
forty yards long. And she had escaped a railway accident.

She had been right--for the wrong reasons, but spectacularly right.
She would be the star-turn of the front pages of three thousand
newspapers. She had silenced her old man for ever. Never again would
he dare to withstand her. The woman who had had a mystic warning of
the disaster, and who had obeyed the warning! There are more things in
heaven and earth, Horatio.... Setting forth on a Friday! Sequences of
three in calamity! Not one without a second: not two without a third!
And yet--Alan maintained obstinately in the very face of death--it was
all silly. The greatest blow for superstition ever struck by
mischievous chance! Superstition was re-established on its crazy
throne.... But could there be something in it after all? Were there
more things in heaven and earth, Horatio?...

All these thoughts in a flash in the recess of Alan's intelligence!

A ceiling-light went out, fell; the bulb dashed itself against the
outer wall of the carriage, and spread in front of Alan in small
crystal fragments on the carpet. That tinkling smash was like a herald
of more horrific wrath to come. Alan tried again to call, but his
throat was soundless. The bumping, thudding, leaping, grinding
persisted, and to them was adding the whine of strained woodwork. The
entire carriage seemed to be in pain, in the agony of final
extinction. Alan wished for death to end it. He wished also to be in a
suit of clothes with stout boots on his feet instead of in a grotesque
dressing-gown with senile slippers. Why in hell's name did no occupant
of a compartment open a door? Why did no attendant arrive and stop all
this idiocy? Why was there no life in the carriage save his, Alan's?
Would the next bump kill him dead? Or would he be merely maimed? What
would Elaine say when she received the news? And Miss Office? Miss
Office would be out of a job. They might see the first tidings in a
paper. They would stare at one another. No. Miss Office's train was
behind, the train of the humble, the safe train. What was Pearl
thinking now of her piffling quarrel with Jack? Was Jack still the
victorious husband? Jack--scatheless after a day in an aeroplane, only
to be destroyed in a train de luxe! Funny!

The awful shocks succeeded one another without end. Surely momentum
could not persist indefinitely. The train must reach equilibrium
sooner or later. Yes, and when it did it would go up in roaring flames
on the mountain-side.... Smell of burnt flesh! Alan's flesh!
Writhings! He knew that he was grimacing in a shameful and degrading
manner. He must be worthy of himself. He arranged his features as well
as he could, as though God on the seat of Judgment held him with
omnipotent eye.

Then a sudden rending of wood, rather like the tearing of paper; and a
section of the compartment-wall collapsed, some of it falling on Alan,
who felt nothing. Asmodeus might have demolished it, mistaking it for
a roof. Alan had full view of the interior of a comically contorted
compartment. Of the partition of this compartment only the door
remained upright. Alan straightened his features a second time, for
they had got loose again, lest he might be observed. He saw a
middle-aged woman in a saffron-coloured night-dress, on her hands and
knees on the floor, moaning and pulling fantastic faces. A man was
leaning precariously from an upper berth on his stomach; he seemed to be
dazed. A bump, and he slipped helpless, over the edge of the berth and
fell on the top of the woman, who squealed. Neither of them moved.
Alan gradually remembered having seen them in the restaurant-car, very
prim and correct, conversing in low tones. A walking-stick jumped,
apparently by its own volition, out of a rack in the compartment and
flew like a descending rocket towards the floor of the compartment,
alighting with neatness on its ferrule. The whole place was full of
physical magic by which inanimate objects were endowed with life: a
spiritualistic seance in a bright light--no deception possible.

Then every light was extinguished, as if turned off at the main switch
by a devil of an electrician. Blackness! Blackness which accentuated
the effect of the bumping and the thudding! And then a gigantic boy
seemed to be scraping a ruler along the outside of the carriage. Alan
heard the shattering of all the windows in a series. He heard showers
and cascades of splintered glass, and the flapping of ripped blinds.
He felt glass on his head and on his back. The bumping and the
thudding went slower. The train stopped. Equilibrium was established.

But because the floor was now no more a floor but a steep slope, Alan
stumbled and fell, and he decided that he would not trouble at the
moment to get up. He just lay in the blackness. He was aware of
something exquisitely cold and soft under his chin. Then there was a
tiny flickering flare; and he saw that the man in the compartment was
sitting on his haunches and had struck a match. The woman seemed to be
asleep; she was shockingly indecent. In the light of the match Alan
saw that the something white and soft under his chin was a big lump of
snow, and that blood was making red spots on it--drop, drop, drop,
slowly, reluctantly.




CHAPTER XXI

ALIVE


Alan was now lying on his back, and there was something (he thought)
under his head. The darkness was complete. The silence and the
stillness were complete. Also it was very cold. He had a sensation of
extraordinary fatigue; he had never in his life been so tired; in fact
it was quite curiously interesting to feel as tired as he felt then.

"At any rate I'm alive," he reflected. "And not hurt. What does it
matter about being tired? But what a business! What a business! So
this is a railway accident, and I've been in it, and I'm not dead! And
it's over!"

He was proud of the experience. Then he wondered if there were any
dead bodies lying near him. Probably no injured, because an injured
person would moan or make other sort of sound; and he could hear
nothing whatever. Uncanny! Uncanny, too, that there should be no gleam
of light, even a diffused light, anywhere! He suddenly had the notion:
"Am I blind?" He became aware of a disagreeable phenomenon on his
forehead. He had not dared to attempt to move a limb, lest he should
find himself unable to move.

But he gently tried his arm. Yes, it responded normally to the command
of the brain. He put his hand to that incommoded forehead, and
unintentionally pushed the something away, and saw in front of him a
railway lamp. He could trace the wire handle of it, the smeared lens,
and the broad wick smokily burning behind. He was puzzled.

"My intelligence isn't equal to this," he reflected. "I'm too tired.
Someone must telegraph to Elaine. I can't do it myself--no use
pretending I can."

Then he comprehended that he was within a compartment. Not the usual
double compartment, but one of those narrow things at the ends of
carriages. No lavatory to it. They were generally occupied by
train-attendants, who wrote figures down in books of accounts, or
examined bundles of tickets or passports. He described the window in
the sombre light of the lamp, which was in front of him beyond his
feet. The glass of the window was smashed to bits. An icy draught was
coming through that window.

"Well," he reflected, "I've heard of funny things happening in railway
accidents, but that I should have been pitched up here takes the
cake."

For, as he had gathered, he was lying at full length on the seat of
the compartment. The solution of the enigma gradually illumined his
mind.

"I've been picked up and carried here, and I never knew anything about
it. I wish I wasn't so tired. After all, I haven't been doing much, have
I? So I fainted. Nothing to faint for, but I must have fainted."

Outside the window--invisibility. Then he heard shouting very far in
the distance; and then crunching steps below the window. The
silhouette of a head and shoulder appeared in the oblong of the
window; the head shifted to right and left, peering. If it was not
Jack's head, it was the devil's.

"That's not you, is it, Jack?" He noticed his voice was as tired as
his body.

"Hello! Hello!" Jack's cheerful tones. "How d'ye feel, Dad?"

Jack's voice was the most comfortable, inspiring sound he had ever
heard in all his life. He entirely forgot for a few moments that he
was tired.

"I'm all right. Who put me here? Why was I brought here?"

"You got a smack on the eyebrow, and so we picked you up and here you
are. Doctor said there was nothing to worry about."

"What doctor? Have they got doctors already?"

"'Already!' It's long since. More than an hour. But there were two
doctors in the train--English or Scotch."

"You been hurt, Jack?"

"Not me."

"And Pearl?"

Jack answered, but with less conviction: "She's as right as rain."

"I hope her face isn't marked."

"She isn't marked anywhere. She isn't hurt."

"But surely she's shaken."

"Doesn't show it."

"Many killed?"

"No! Nobody killed! At least I haven't heard of anybody being killed.
Fourteen injured, if you count yourself, Dad."

"Badly?"

"One, I fancy. They've taken him away, to the village."

"What village?"

"La Praz. We're right in the mountains, you know. A thousand metres
up, they say. That's what I heard. We must be close to the frontier.
Of course it might have been much worse if we hadn't been going
uphill. The train didn't want a lot of stopping, you see."

"Not a lot of stopping! Good God! It seemed to me to run on for about
ten minutes after we were off the line."

"Ten seconds more like."

"I don't believe it."

And Alan did not, could not, believe it. In calculating the time at
ten minutes he had at first thought himself to be quite moderate,
though on consideration he was prepared to reduce his estimate to five
minutes--but the longest five minutes of his existence.

"How did it happen?"

"Oh! They don't really tell you. But you can see the other train out
here." Jack waved an arm.

"What other train?"

"Some special train that two American bankers had had, for Turin. It
was returning empty. An engine and two carriages. The engine's nearly
upside down. It left the track--some catch-points open or something,
and hit our engine and glanced off and hit us again. Anyhow that's the
talk. I daresay it's all wrong. The engine fairly scraped our coach
from end to end, or rather we scraped the engine."

"Oh, so _that_ was it!" Alan recalled the notion of the gigantic boy
with the ruler.

"Yes, it was that that stopped us in the end. I can tell you one thing
for sure: only three of our coaches left the track. All the rest stuck
to it like grim death."

"Where's Pearl?"

"She'll be coming in a minute."

"Whose is this rug someone's put over me?"

"Don't know. I found it lying outside, so I took it."

"You must telegraph to your mother. She may hear of the accident. She
ought to get the telegram first."

"Yes, yes," Jack agreed, rather casually.

His eyes accustomed to the dim light, Alan could now see his son more
clearly. The wide collar of his overcoat turned up round his slim
neck; the tweed cap at the back of his head; his much disarranged hair
showing; his mobile features bright, alert, benevolent. Alan was
intensely glad to have the boy with him. Supposing he had been all
alone!... Awful! A marvellous thing, youth. Jack had shaken off the
accident as a dog emerging from a pond shakes off the water....

There were queer matters, nevertheless. How, for instance, was it that
he, Alan, had been left by himself on the seat there, unconscious?
Seemed a bit negligent, that. But Alan would say nothing about it.

"What's that white on your overcoat, my boy? Is it snowing?"

"Just started again. I'll be back in a minute. You're all serene for
the present, aren't you?" He dropped down and was gone. Strange that
he had not come round to the other side of the coach into the
compartment, even if it had only been for a second!

"Come back soon. Or send Pearl," Alan cried, as loudly as he could,
and there was more strength in his voice now. Then he thought: "How
absurd of me! As if he could possibly hear!"

He felt much better; more cheerful; he seemed curiously to be quite
calm within. The idea of sitting up occurred to him; it presented
itself as an interesting and rather audacious adventure. He sat up; no
difficulty. He leaned back, set his feet on the floor, like an
ordinary traveller who has wakened from a long sleep. He touched the
bandage round his forehead and decided that it must be a towel; it was
fastened with a safety-pin. He wanted to look at himself, and see what
sort of a ridiculous figure of comicality he made, his head swathed,
in his crimson dressing-gown, and his trailing pyjamas under the
dressing-gown.

Of course at home, in a similar condition of damage, to sit near a
broken window in the middle of a cold night and in a snowstorm, would
have been regarded as incredible folly, and half a dozen human beings
would have conspired to remove him by force and save him from fatal
consequences. But as in the Folkestone train, so now, the sense of
relative values was all altered. He was convinced that harm could not
result from exposure to a perfect gale that penetrated the thick
dressing-gown, turning it into gauze. As for a cold, a chill--affrighting
bugbear of normal life in London, precursor of pneumonia, pleurisy,
death--it was reduced to naught by the enormity of the general
situation.

He even edged himself nearer to the window and the lamp. The metal top
of the lamp was so hot that it burnt his fingers when his hand came in
contact with it. Pressing towards it, he felt the warmth from it in
his groin. He looked out, but could see nothing except a few butterfly
snowflakes, large and white, immediately behind the black aperture;
the field of vision was limited to the oblong and a depth of a yard
beyond. One or two snowflakes wandered undecided, capricious, into the
compartment; one alighted on his cheek; a delicious caress. The wind,
though it froze him, was agreeable, and very invigorating. He had a
desire to stand up, stick his head through the window, and enlarge the
visible world: scores of various exciting phenomena to be observed!
But he dared not attempt the feat; audacity had bounds.

He heard no voices now, but a clanking of metal on metal, regular and
persistent; it stopped; it began again; it rang resoundingly in the
darkness.

He stooped and picked up the rug, which had slipped on to the floor.
The owner would be thinking regretfully that he had lost a valuable
rug in the railway accident. As he stooped he felt something hard in
the pocket of his dressing-gown. He thought: "What the devil can that
be? I never carry things in my dressing-gown." It was a small book.
"What the--" With the book he found a piece of thick glass. Where was
that from? He had forgotten the cascade of glass from smashed windows.
He dropped the glass, and held the book under the ray of the lamp. His
Wordsworth. Weird! He supposed that he must have pushed the book into
his pocket instead of beneath his pillow, after failing to read
intelligently as he lay in bed during the earlier part of the night.
But his mind had absolutely no memory of the unusual act. It was the
same book, plainly recognisable, but it had the strangeness of a book
never before seen.

He opened it flat on the seat, almost touching the base of the lamp,
which highly illuminated it. He bent over it. No! Without eye-glasses
he could not read. And where were his eye-glasses? Fancy looking for
eye-glasses in a smashed railway-coach! He could never recover them:
which would mean an order to the oculist. He wondered whether Miss
Office had kept the prescription in a discoverable place. She was not
very orderly. Once, while she was away, he had looked into the drawers
of her desk--and been horrified by the sight. He would have a thing or
two to tell Miss Office. She would be very.... But at the distance of
a couple of feet or a bit less he could, with difficulty, decipher
average print. He slowly remembered having done so on more than one
occasion when needs must and eye-glasses lacked. He deciphered:

                       Scenes different there are,
     Full-formed, that take, with small internal help,
     Possession of the faculties--the peace
     That comes with night; the deep solemnity
     Of nature's intermediate hours of rest,
     When the great tide of human life stands still----

He did not fully comprehend it, and it was certainly not apposite to a
railway accident. But it instantly lifted his mood to a higher plane.
The conscious emotion, and the far greater sub-conscious emotion, due
to the Pearl-Jack trouble followed by the accident and his escape,
were released and transformed into the beatific. He was born again. He
exulted in the existence of Pearl and Jack, and in his own. The
accident was over, and nobody had been killed, and he had passed
through a tremendous ordeal which would enlarge his experiences of
living and quicken all the faculties of his soul. He surveyed the
great tide of human life and saw its mysterious beauty. He had reached
a marvellous calm, and loved all men. He again had the sensation of
pride at being in a first-rate spectacular railway accident. Often he
would be asked about it, and often he would refer to it without being
asked. It set him apart; it set apart all the participators in it.
Something petty perhaps, in such feelings, but there they were,
cheering him.

Impatience had left him. He could wait in tranquillity for the next
step. He was sorry that he had cried out to Jack to come back
soon--even though Jack had not heard him. He could wait, and everything
in its due course would come. The time would come when he would be
sitting quietly with his wife and looking far back at the accident and
discussing with her the details of it, and relating to her eager ears
the whole history of the Pearl-Jack affair, then to have been settled.
He now could see nothing whatever to worry about in Jack developing
into a Labour M.P. Jack was an honest man; Jack must fulfil himself;
an honest man could not be made ridiculous. All right activities could
be justified, and Pearl's deep commonsense would be her salvation.

He was transpierced by the cold wind. But he did not care, and it
still caused him no apprehensions. If he had been laid senseless on
the veldt in the night without protection, and had come to, in a
cutting cold wind, he would have survived the exposure, would indeed
have thanked heaven for his life. The same now, and much more so. Life
had never been so precious!--not because he had nearly lost it, but
because the savour of it was sharpened to him by the education of the
faculties of his spirit.

"Now, Dad!" Jack strode into the compartment from the corridor. "You
must just see whether you can do anything with these. Pearl has an
idea you'll catch cold in that swagger dressing-gown."

His tone had in it some accent of the adult addressing a child. But
Alan, who knew himself immeasurably wiser than Jack, did not care. He
liked the tone; he liked to be a child. They had been thinking of him;
Pearl had been thinking of him. Jack had in his arms Alan's
travelling-suit, his new blue overcoat, a hat, socks and boots.

"Do you think you can?"

"Of course," said Alan. "But my shirt?"

"Pooh! What does the shirt matter? Put these on over your pyjamas.
It'll be warmer. Here, one second." He drew Alan's spirit-flask from
the overcoat pocket. "A drop of this first."

Jack stood above him, confident, happy amid the disaster, almost gay,
very powerful, and magnificent in youth. And his voice was elated. The
sight of him was extraordinarily inspiring. Yes! Alan did exult in the
mere existence of him and Pearl.

"And Pearl?" he demanded.

"Pearl's splendid. She's the only woman with any sense in this train."
Evidently Jack too was exulting in the existence of Pearl. The breach
between them had evidently been repaired to perfection.

"We shall be getting you out of here soon," said Jack, as he helped
his father in the gloom to remove the dressing-gown.

Alan felt joyously ready for anything. His optimism was vindicated.




CHAPTER XXII

SELF-SATISFACTION


Alan was puzzled again. There were three windows on the side of the
compartment opposite to the corridor, and the blinds of all of them
were down; whereas previously he had noted only the middle window, of
which the blind had been up and the glass was smashed, letting in a
ruthless polar breeze. Somebody must have lowered the middle blind.
The other two blinds were steady, but the middle blind fluttered and
faintly rattled. A grey light showed round the edges of all the
blinds, and enabled him to distinguish objects plainly enough in the
compartment. The oil-lamp was out; he touched it--quite cold now. The
Wordsworth lay open on his knee. Then he hit on the solution of the
extraordinary enigma, and for a moment it was as wonderful as might
have been a fundamental discovery in science. He had slept! Yet he had
no recollection of going to sleep or of trying or hoping to go to
sleep. Marvellous! He glanced at his watch, which marvellously was in
its proper pocket! After half-past six! He had slept for hours.

"Funny, this neglecting me for so long!" he thought, resentfully.
"Especially Jack!"

But a second new illuminating idea occurred to him: he had not been
neglected; "they" had come in, seen that he was asleep, and left him
to rest; how quietly must the middle blind have been lowered! He was
contrite about his resentment.... Yes, he remembered reading, with
great difficulty, some more Wordsworth, and he remembered nothing
later. He loosed the middle blind, which flew up with a sharp sound.
He could discern the landscape. Trees: a forest. Snow was no longer
falling. He thought:

"As it isn't snowing I ought to go out."

This was the way in which his mind was working: it grasped only one
factor of a situation. He was an invalid, both physically and morally;
but the snow had ceased--therefore he was entitled to go out. Feeling
refreshed and adventurous, he went forth strongly into the corridor.

The door of the carriage was open. The snowy ground was far below him;
he stepped down cautiously but neatly. Except that his suit hid
pyjamas instead of vest, shirt and pants, he was fully dressed. He had
stout boots, his new thick overcoat, and a soft hat, which had been
left for him on the seat in the compartment, together with his
eye-glasses. (A laudable attention to detail on Jack's part--or Pearl's!)

He could not now see the forest, because the carriage intervened, but
in front of him he saw a road. Though he knew that he was not in a
dream, his sensations had the strange, exciting, but scarcely
convincing quality of a dream. The hardness of the track beneath the
thin, uneven snow was unlike any other hardness that his feet had ever
experienced; a romantic hardness. Dawn had just begun, and the dawn
was a unique dawn, a phenomenon miraculous. He could feel the oncoming
of the dawn, its resistless growth from moment to moment. In the dawn
all colours were merged into a varied grey; the snow was grey; the
bare soil was a darker grey; the distances were a still darker grey.
It was all restful, soothing, yet mysteriously stirring, vitalising.
He was happy with an excess of life. He hummed a fragment of an air
from an opera. His perceptions were slow; there was nothing for him
yet but himself and the earth, and the heavy sky out of which the dawn
was flowing.

Then he turned and looked up at the carriage from which he had
descended--and was shocked. It was not a coach of the International
Sleeping Car Company at all. It was an ordinary first-class carriage,
and German. His brain was abashed in bewilderment. Further, and worse,
the carriage stood by itself on a siding; he saw the main lines
stretched tight on one hand and on the other in the driven snow, and
the carriage all alone in the system, a lost microcosm, forgotten of
mankind. The entire railway accident seemed to have been conjured away
by sinister magic. He put a hand to his forehead--unconscious gesture,
symbolising that his over-tired brain needed succour.... Then relief
came. Yes, there was the railway accident, real enough, far up to the
left. He could see dimly a group of carriages, horridly disordered;
moving dark dots of people; a flare fighting a losing fight against
the dawn. The spectacle coincided reassuringly well with a sane man's
notion of what a railway accident ought to look like. And he heard,
intermittently, the metallic clangour which he had heard hours
earlier.

He walked, instinctively, without thinking, in the direction of the
spectacle. Immediately he emerged from the shelter of the carriage the
wind startled him by its sudden bleak attack, blowing aside the skirts
of his overcoat. Still, he was well covered and felt quite warm. He
walked uncertainly on, by the edge of the track, towards the
spectacle. He walked more slowly, then stopped. He could not proceed.
He had plenty of physical energy: but some moral inhibition had
affected his legs.

"I daren't go up there," he confessed to himself. "I couldn't face it.
I should have to talk to people. I should have to explain myself. And
I can't stand any conversation. I shall just wait till Jack fetches
me." Much reliance on Jack. "This is absurd. Of course I can face it."
He made a new effort; but stopped again. "No! I'd better stay here.
Supposing I missed Jack, and he came along to the carriage and I
wasn't there!" Pitiable excuse. "Jack's bound to come along soon."

He could now distinguish some details. There was the light engine of
the bankers' special train, lying on one set of its wheels, the other
set of wheels in the air, the funnel seeming actually to touch a
carriage of the train de luxe. Unnatural, almost obscene object,
frightening. The two coaches tied to its tail were upright, but askew.
He could clearly make out the three damaged and horribly disfigured
sleeping-cars which had left the rails but incredibly had not toppled
over. Behind them were the restaurant-car, unharmed, and a brake-van
or something, also unharmed. He trembled, realising, as it were for
the first time, the significance and the potentialities of the
accident in which he had escaped death.

"I was in one of those carriages. Look at it. Jack was in one. Pearl
was in one. We might have been...."

He was sickeningly afraid of a danger past and finished with. He was
more afraid now than he had been in the moments of worst peril. His
imagination was at work.

Then commonsense, then exultation, then tranquillisation. He was
saved; he was whole. Jack and Pearl were saved--beloved beings. There
had been no deaths. Destiny was unbelievable; it was solemnising; it
brooded majestically over the earth. The earth as he saw it had
gradually evolved; human society had evolved.... For this! He was
re-born. Life had been bestowed upon him afresh, more beautiful, more
romantic, with larger responsibilities, graver and sweeter duties,
more vast horizons. He loved life and the living; he longed to
exercise kindness and charity.

Where were the cars which had been in front of the derailed cars?
Where was the big express engine? Vanished away? Strange! He crossed
the track to get a new view of the scene, and noticed that the dawn
had further advanced, was probably complete. The hard wind was
chilling him a little; but he could resist its effect. A few
snowflakes floated hesitatingly down out of the smooth, menacing sky.
Yes, it was snowing again. He saw a knot of people, a small engine
fussily smoking, its black plume continually torn by the wind and
perseveringly repaired at the funnel. He saw what seemed to be a
crane, hugely arching over a huge, reclining body, which was the body
of the express engine and tender. But of the front part of the train
de luxe, no trace. Then he saw, beyond the scene, a black hole in the
flank of the mountain--dreadful! The dreadful entrance into the
terrifying eight miles of the Mont Cenis tunnel--the rash enterprise
of man against nature. Impudent surgery! How could man dare?
Magnificent cheek!... It was in fact only the entrance to a short
tunnel, some miles nearer than the Mont Cenis, which he forgot was
beyond Modane, the frontier station. But its effect upon him was the
same as if it had been what he believed it to be.

His glance nervously wandered. It was held again by the sight of a
woman approaching from the jumbled trains. She had marked him, and was
evidently bearing down directly upon him. His impulse was to avoid her
by flight; but dignity, as dear now as ever, kept him still to meet
the encounter. She came nearer, and nothing would stop her. He
perceived that she was a brisk, youngish middle-aged creature in a
short frock and a thick mantle above it, with a permanent grievance
printed in the lines of her worn, harsh face; she dangled a bag in one
hand. Forgetting dear dignity, Alan at last turned to flee. A man was
approaching from behind. Caught, Alan stood.

"Trying to get warm," the woman addressed him unceremoniously in a
loud voice, while yet a few yards off. Alan smiled stupidly,
petrified. She stopped. "You see the handle of this bag? You see how
it's bent. Well, it was bent in the accident, and I don't know how.
All I know is if I can't get it straightened I shall have to have a
new bag. Don't you think these French railway accidents are simply
monstrous? They're always having them. And how long shall we be here?
Of course I've lived in France for years." (Why "of course"? thought
the purist, Alan.) "But after this I'm going back to America, because
Italy is just as bad for accidents, or nearly." (She had so slight an
accent that he would not have noticed at first her American origin.)
"My husband's from Brooklyn. He does a great deal for music in France
and Italy. Subsidises young players--doesn't matter to him whether
they're American or not. And I was going to meet him in Rome for a
concert he's giving for one of his young geniuses. I didn't want to
go. I mean I didn't want to go just now. But he wanted me to be there.
He likes me to work with him. And so I started. Vurry inconvenient;
not that I mind that, if it's for art. And then they have this
accident. They've got the engine out of the way and sent some of the
coaches on to Modane already. Only they made me wait. Said there was
no more room. Well, I believe they _were_ rather packed. And after all
an accident's an accident, though they don't seem to think so in this
country. They say there'll be a train down from Modane very soon. But
will there? My husband will be so disappointed if I miss the concert.
He wants me there. Not that I mind--myself. I'm fine. Some of them are
suffering from shock, but I'm fine. But I do think that these French
railway accidents...." She scowled. "Funny about the handle of this
bag, isn't it? And of course it _would_ be just this bag, because I
was just crazy about it." She started to move on. "I see you've got
some blood on your forehead."

"Yes," agreed Alan limply, but he doubted whether she had heard.

He sent his reflections after her:

"You're like that, and I'm sorry for you. It must be very awkward for
you sometimes, going about the world with no sense of proportion. And
no sensitiveness and no feeling for others, and talking all the time
too. You must miss such a lot of things. But you can't help it. And I
admit it was odd about the twisting of that gunmetal handle. Yes, I do
admit that. And you're upset by the accident even if you aren't aware
of it. Perhaps you don't always talk so loud and so all the time. Who
am I to judge you? I might have been dead.... So might you."

The man approaching from behind was upon him. Alan recognised the
fierce-eyed, black-moustached _matre d'htel_ of the restaurant-car.
He wore his chocolate-coloured trousers and a thin, black alpaca coat,
and had a napkin tied around his neck for a muffler. With formal
respect undiminished by unusual circumstances he raised his cap by its
hard shiny black peak.

"You're all right then," Alan greeted him in English.

"Yes, sir."

"I'm very glad. Your car wasn't damaged?"

"No, sir. I have been to the station to telephone for orders. If it
can be put back on the other way [line] we shall go to Modane. If
not--" he shrugged his shoulders and gesticulated: his fingers were
whitish-blue.

"That a station over there?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you know if the conductor of my sleeping-car was hurt?"

"What number--your car, sir?"

"Six. I think it was six."

"Ah! Six. Andr. No, sir. He was with me at the moment of the
misfortune." The _matre d'htel_ gave a sinister smile, and unable to
maintain his professional reserve, suddenly became one man talking to
another about a third. "I was speaking with him. He was very
preoccupied by the question of his _pourboires_. You see, sir, an
accident is not favourable to us. One forgets the _pourboires_ after
an accident. It is natural. But----"

"Quite," said Alan sympathetically. "Quite."

"He has already been in one catastrophe. He knows what he is talking
of. Yes, sir... I have still some food in my car, sir, if Monsieur
wishes----"

"Thanks," said Alan.

"Perhaps the fellow introduced the subject of tips on purpose," he
reflected, smiling indulgently to himself after the _matre d'htel_
had passed on. "A reminder. Clever of him. And why shouldn't Andr or
whatever his name is be preoccupied by his _pourboires_? I remember
last year a sleeping-car conductor telling me that they got no salary,
and had to pay for the cleaning of the cars; and some passengers only
gave them ten francs. I must remember Andr. He's come through with
his life, like me, but why shouldn't he be preoccupied by his
_pourboires_? I daresay he has a wife and family. And who will
telegraph to his wife to tell her he's safe? Why shouldn't he
be?----I mustn't forget Andr."

The wife of the Brooklyn husband was returning. The charity which had
been characterising Alan's verdicts on human nature was not durable
enough to fit him for a second encounter with her. With carefully
dignified deliberation he walked towards the road which ran parallel
with the railway-line, thinking, self-critical:

"Why am I so self-satisfied with my damned kindly understanding of
people, putting myself in their place, and all that?" He tried to
smother his odious, preening self-satisfaction, and failed.

He could not, without acrobatics which he felt to be dangerous, get
into the road. The station? Amusing to visit the station. He walked
along on the railway side of the fence. The white road was deserted.
Not a soul to be interested in the accident! Odd! He could hear,
beyond the road, the rushing chatter of a river. And he saw a large
factory, with glimpses of flame and tiny jets of unruly steam here and
there. Some kind of metal-works, he surmised. The factory was
functioning as usual, and the employees were allowed no leisure to go
and gaze at railway accidents. And millions of people were still
asleep, to whom a railway accident would be naught but a paragraph in
a newspaper. That day they would have two accidents in their evening
papers. But he, Alan, gave little thought to the first accident, which
apparently had happened both on the Marseilles line and on the
Bordeaux line.

The station was scarcely more than a shack. The painted word
"Lampisterie" caught his eye.

The Lucasses! Dash the woman! How wrongly right she had been! He
stepped up on to the low platform. An old man appeared from the shack,
and glared severely at Alan, who did his best to look jaunty.

"_Bonjour_," said Alan.

"_Bonjour_, monsieur. Your ticket if you please, monsieur."

"You are marvellous," said Alan. "You are all that is most marvellous,
and incredible."

Then the figure of the old porter-stationmaster began to wave in the
strangest curves.




CHAPTER XXIII

THE DRAMA


The coach began to move, and the instant it moved Alan realised that
he was not the steel-nerved creature he had complacently imagined
himself to be. But he reinforced his nerves by volition.

He had fainted in front of the porter-stationmaster. Jack, alarmed by
his disappearance from the German carriage, had heard of his
wanderings from the last person to see him, the _matre d'htel_ of
the restaurant-car, who had gone with Jack to find the unlicensed
invalid rambler. The swoon had been momentary. Part of the way Alan
had to be carried by Jack and the _matre d'htel_; then, when they
took a spell, he had walked a few steps; he had completed the journey
on a stretcher. The goal was a waiting train, beyond the scene of the
accident, which train the railway company by an astounding feat of
extempore organisation had despatched from Modane! It was the
prodigious arrival of this train, with the outcry of its excited and
proud officials about the need of hurry--according to them it could
not and would not wait more than three minutes even for emperors and
princes!--that had sent Jack in search of his erring father.

Alan had had his first sight of Pearl since the disaster. She was very
efficient; she had directed Jack. And now Alan was stacked up in one
corner of the compartment, and the entire hand-luggage of Alan, Pearl
and Jack, most exhaustively collected out of the accident, in another.
Unfortunately for the reputation of the railway company, the train,
which bore lying labels to the effect that it was bound for St.
Michel-de-Maurienne, was composed exclusively of third-class
compartments. Unfortunately also it was much too long for the
requirements of the situation. But a happy consequence of this
largesse was that the Frith-Walter family had an entire coach to
themselves. Alan sat on hard, yellow, unclean wood. The compartments
were not properly compartments, but mere semi-enclosures. No privacy
except the chill and draughty privacy of the entire coach! For there
was no heating. "Well," Alan had philosophically thought at first,
"this is how ninety per cent. of people have to travel, and it's just
as well to be reminded of the fact."

Jack was temporarily absent. Pearl was seated opposite to Alan. Though
neat and tidy, she had dirty hands and face, and she was cleaning her
face with powder or something. She perched on the edge of the bench, a
costly leather bag by her side, and gazed intently and very seriously
at her features in a hand-mirror. She might have been preparing those
features for a court ball. She dropped the puff and found a lipstick.
"Women," thought Alan, "are like nothing else on God's earth." He said
aloud, weakly facetious:

"Modane ought to be impressed when you get out on to the platform."
Incidentally he was trying to ignore the disconcerting movement of the
train.

Without interrupting her task, without shifting her eyes from the
mirror, Pearl retorted:

"D'you know, you've been rather naughty." Her tone was kindly, but it
was too indulgent for Alan's taste; she was a devil of a woman.

"How, naughty?" he enquired, though he knew the answer.

"Going off like that all by yourself. You really did give us a bit of
a fright." Pearl began severely, but ended in accents expressing a
tactful clemency.

"Well," said Alan, "how was I to know? I felt all right. And _you_
might have fainted, my dear, if you'd been asked for your ticket in
these delightful circumstances. Anybody might." And to himself: "I'm
doing pretty well." He was, though Pearl's face did not relax.

But then the train entered the tunnel, and there was darkness. Not a
lamp in the carriage. Of course not. You couldn't have everything. A
ridiculous but genuine fear seized Alan. Mercifully hidden from
Pearl's eyes, he clenched his teeth savagely and clutched at the seat,
nerves still ungoverned. As he grew accustomed to the darkness and
recovered his poise a little, he thought with intense resentment: "No
lights. Wood to sit on. And what springs! And this is how they fulfil
their contract to carry me first-class, and after they've damn nearly
killed me!... I must control myself. I mustn't be silly. The idiots
are doing their best.... But what a best! And what efficiency in
ticket-collecting!" The superior and charitable philosopher in him was
not very prominent now.

The tunnel, less than a mile in length, was endless. He knew that it
was not the Mont Cenis, but it seemed to him to be ten times longer
than any Mont Cenis. Then, just as day faintly glimmered again, there
was a sudden violent grinding of brakes. Alan gave a cry of terror; he
could not help it. He sweated in spite of the cold. He was in an
anguish of fear. The carriage jolted, and stopped with a hideous thud.
Absurd, this fright! The train groaningly, and with an apparently
desperate effort, resumed its course. Yes, absurd!

"My God!" he thought.

Still, he contrived to dwell on the comforting idea that he had at any
rate got clear away from the accident and would soon be in Modane,
another world, a sane, safe world, a world free from the horrible
contagion of disaster. He hoped that in the tunnel-magnified racket of
the train Pearl had not heard his cry of panic. The light slowly grew
as the train toiled slowly up the slope. No Pearl was sitting opposite
to him. She had mysteriously vanished.

The train came out of the tunnel. Alan heard a murmur of talk from the
far end of the coach--perhaps forty feet off. Then he could just see
the top of Jack's hat moving about the horizon of the wooden divisions
of the semi-enclosures. Jack must be standing up; and had he not been
tall even his hat would not have risen over the horizon. Alan could
catch no word--not that in his unsuspiciousness he felt curious. Then
he saw Jack's hand in gesticulation. At last he heard Pearl's voice,
incautiously loud:

"Well, that's my opinion, and I shan't alter it."

No more! Spoken in a cold, inimical, intimidating, utterly
uncompromising tone. Their talk was apparently ended. The train
rattled and shook. The snowy scenery crawled past the windows. The
cold was as ruthless as Pearl's voice. Alan divined with certainty
that those two had been discussing the future, their own future. And
he was gravely shocked by their lack of heart. Youth was a terrible
thing. They had been through a frightful experience. They had fringed
death itself. He himself was at any rate injured, if not seriously.
Others had been seriously injured, one very seriously. And it was all
nothing to them. They were arguing, quarrelling, hating, on a subject
which had no immediate actuality. They thought of no one but
themselves, and of naught but their trifling affairs. And Pearl's
tone--used in the midst of the great upheaval! Callous, they were!

The reality of their conjugal life together was suddenly revealed to
him, and he was staggered by it. Where was charity in their scheme of
existence? Had they no sense of the value of lovingkindness? Had they
no guiding philosophy? No, they had not. They were young animals,
yapping, barking. Worse, they had probably been yapping and barking
from the very start of the episode. Finding themselves unscathed, they
had resumed at once their altercation, and continued it in the
intervals of so ably helping the victims, including himself, Alan.
Their egotism was fantastic and incredible; it was revolting. He
remembered now the peculiar tone of Jack's first reference to Pearl.
"She's as right as rain." A strange lack of heartiness in the words.
They had been hating one another even then! (True, he had praised her
later.) And when they were tending and cosseting him, and fixing him
comfortably in this relief train, he had noticed in them a certain
constraint, a forced benevolence, towards both himself and one
another. He had attributed it, quite wrongly as he saw now, to the
emotion caused by the peril of the accident and by the physical
weakness of their parent. Their duplicity estranged them from him; but
it estranged Pearl more than Jack, for Pearl was the stronger and the
wiser, and she was a woman, part of whose mission it was to soothe and
to create peace.

And then, with a swift leap of his soul, he entered into their souls.
He became them. He reproached himself for uncharitableness. He
understood. He saw their quarrelling, as an epical, heroic struggle.
They were fighting terrifically for ideals which each believed
passionately to be of fundamental importance, for the happiness of all
their lives, for their salvation from everlasting misery. Neither of
them could yield, or ought to yield. To yield would be treason. The
fight must continue. If it ended only in mutual destruction, it must
continue. It was rooted in the secret, unchangeable nature of things.
He himself was negligible. His career was almost over. He belonged to
the past; while they were the contentious forces whose interlocking
would shape the future. What a simpleton he had been to imagine that a
passing incident like a railway collision, unrelated to any ideals
whatever, could or should influence their respective attitudes! He
admired them for a pair of mighty protagonists. And he was very
unhappy.

He shut his eyes to deceive them, because they were coming towards
him. Their filial duty! Pearl came first--Alan distinguished her
footstep. After a few moments he opened his eyes, simulating the end
of a doze. Yes, she was looking at him. Jack followed her and looked
over her shoulder. Both steadied themselves by the woodwork of the
carriage. Alan smiled.

"Hullo!" he muttered sleepily.

It might have been a scene in a play performed by members of some
amateur dramatic society. Alan was extremely self-conscious.

"All right, Dad?"

"Yes. Perfect. If my forehead isn't bleeding again." He knew that his
forehead was not bleeding. Pearl had previously washed it, from a
tea-cup, and bound it, and it felt quite comfortable. He was merely
continuing the performance.

They both moved nearer to him, dutifully concerned for their elder.
Pearl lightly touched the handkerchief-bandage.

"No! It isn't bleeding."

"Good," said Alan. And to himself: "What a farce this is! Why in God's
name can't we all be ourselves?"

"I think perhaps he ought to be lying down," said Pearl, glancing with
deference at her enemy husband.

"Oh!" Jack answered impulsively. "It'll be very hard, this seat will."
He corrected himself in an instant. "But whatever you think best,
dear."

The last word was the last straw to the back of Alan's self-control,
which broke.

"Oh, hang it!" he cried out, half in disgust and half wearily; not the
sedate, respect-inspiring elder, but an impatient young man totally
unaffected by the calendar. "Don't I tell you I'm all right? Doesn't
it strike you two as rather comic, you pretending for my benefit there
isn't anything up between you? D'you think I can't see you're having
an awful row while I'm sitting here? If you're having one, have it,
and let's know the worst." Assuredly his nerves were seriously
disorganised. He was ashamed, but he could not repent of his haste,
even to himself. "Do try not to be ridiculous," he finished.

Jack flushed; his protruding chin advanced; his fanatical eyes shone
darkly. As for Pearl, nobody could say whether under her rouge and
powder she blushed or did not blush. But her face hardened ominously,
beyond misinterpretation. They were implacably divided, those two
savages. Alan saw clearly in their demeanour the seed of the disaster,
inevitable, which he had feared and which would for ever shame the
family. He saw the trouble steadily growing; nothing could check it;
it would grow and grow until the final separation--and the dreadful
justifying of scandalous tongues. He had been acting; they had been
acting. The drama was begun, in which the characters were playing for
their lives. The air itself was charged and vibrating with the
invisible currents of that drama.

"There! There!" Pearl soothingly murmured to him: a brilliant actress.




CHAPTER XXIV

THE FRONTIER-RESTAURANT


The shabby waiter in that particular restaurant was like all the
waiters of the world in the possession of one psychic quality--the
gift of missing the eye which was trying to catch his. There was no
malice in the waiter; he did not even know that he had the gift; and
it was uncanny, the fashion in which time after time his wandering eye
just failed to meet the eye of the hungry man. Half a dozen other
customers were eating their fill. And Alan was incapable of calling
out in a loud voice even in the frowsy restaurant of a frontier
railway-station. He did murmur appeals and protestations at intervals,
but the waiter had no ear for murmuring.

Though his nerves had mutinied again, Alan was resigned to his fate.
He had permitted himself gradually to sink to the status of a living
package, dominated and moved about by persons of superior vitality and
volition. It was easier so. At the beginning of the long loop of line
by which Modane was approached, the relief train had halted and
stayed. It had stayed and stayed. Apparently it had struck roots deep
into the frozen earth, and would remain fixed for ever where it stood.
Nobody complained, because there was none to whom to complain. And was
complaint justifiable? In sending down a relief train, in actually
starting it back and getting it within a mile and a half of its
destination, the railway company had already accomplished such a
marvel of enterprise that no fair-minded person could decently
reproach it on account of a hitch when the journey was as good as
finished. Moreover, every minute the train was expected to resume. At
the end of a hundred and thirty-five minutes it had indeed resumed--
and puffed into the station in the grand manner.

Then Pearl had conducted her father-in-law to the restaurant, sat him
in a chair at a small table, ordered for him what she considered he
ought to eat and drink, snatched two rolls of bread off the counter,
and hurried away saying that she would return soon. Where and why she
went Alan was not told--you do not give information to packages--but
he supposed that her business was connected with enquiries about
registered luggage, obviously a matter of tremendous importance. He
looked at his watch; the day was half gone, somehow; the hours had
been tedious, and yet time had acted up to the proverb: dawn had
hardly occurred before night would stoop over the landscape. At any
rate, thought Alan sighing, another stage of the journey was achieved.
And he thought:

"Yesterday morning I was thinking that I hadn't lived--as old Lucass
for instance has lived. I've lived now. After this I can never again
say I haven't lived. Damn those two." He meant Jack and Pearl. He was
still very sad, sadder than he had ever been. "I wonder if Jack's
telegraphed to his mother. He said he would. It's something that this
place is warm. That stove's red hot at the top." The heat of the room
was beatific for him. He stared around. The incredible came to pass.
The waiter caught his resentful, appealing eye, and gave a jump as
though a strong current of electricity had shot through him.

"Monsieur?"

"How long will my food be?"

"At once, monsieur."

"But you said that when it was ordered," Alan positively snarled.

"Eh, monsieur. What would you? This morning one has had such a
demand!"

"But you knew hours since about the accident."

"Eh, monsieur, as for that...." The waiter's face and tone said: "The
accident--that does not concern me. I accept no responsibility.
Officially I know nothing about it. I am a waiter in a restaurant."

But he added, the humanity in him relenting:

"Monsieur is not seriously injured? No! I will hurry them in the
kitchen." He strode off.

"How the devil do you know I'm not seriously injured?" Alan threw the
savage question soundlessly after the waiter's disappearing back.

He noticed from the demeanour of one or two lunchers that they were
ready to be sympathetic and inquisitive. The bandage on his forehead
no doubt attracted them. But he gazed defensively down at the
tablecloth, spread with everything necessary for a meal except the
food. The inhibition against chatter had not been lifted. He admitted,
gloomily, that he was indeed not seriously injured. A scratch. Nothing
more. Unless of course a splint of glass was buried in his temples.
His inconveniences were merely nervous and physical fatigue, and heavy
forebodings as to the future of the sacred family.

The waiter reappeared, without any tray.

"The engine-driver is dead," said the waiter.

"Dead? Dead?" from several voices. A woman cried.

"Five children," said the waiter, and departed, after a glance at the
unfed Alan.

"Strange!" thought Alan with acid humour. "They're always orating
about race-suicide in this country--if I'm still in France--but when
anyone's killed sure enough he leaves a widow and five children."

This news was a sort of culmination. It spoiled the accident. Or
rather it gave reality to the accident, which till then had been
simply a spectacular smash of no interest because it had sent not a
single soul into the next world; a smash to have been described in
five casual lines of the newspapers had it not involved one of the
great international luxury expresses. Alan had previously heard that
the only injured man in a critical condition was the driver of the
engine of the train de luxe. The man ought to have been safe at
Modane, where his night's task was scheduled to finish. It was his
life's task that he finished at Modane.... A bit sentimental, that!
But true--and how else should you phrase it? The man had a home
somewhere, hopes, regrets, ambitions, plans, a past, a future, good
qualities, was of a certain experience and maturity, was highly
skilled--or he would not have been put in charge of a precious train
de luxe, scores of lives entrusted to his good judgment and technical
equipment. And he was entirely innocent, and he was dead. Simple! And
his widow would soon know she was a widow, if she did not already know
it. Alan could hear the woman telling her five children: "Your father
is dead," and the younger children crying and not quite understanding
why they cried.

At this point two things happened, almost simultaneously. The waiter
brought Alan's food and wine, setting it down proudly as one saying:
"I have done the impossible for you." And Mr. Lucass entered the
restaurant. Not the old Lucass whom Alan had known on the previous
evening, but a far older one, indeed the ruin of the original Lucass,
unkempt, dirty, his once glinting blue eyes without lustre and dead,
an enfeebled little antique of ninety or so. Mr. Lucass glanced about
the room, dazed.

Alan was instantly transformed into a member of the younger
generation. He forgot not merely the engine-driver and his own
troubles, but all his fatigue. His faculties were suddenly marshalled
and sharpened. He ceased to be a package. He realised that he had
something to do. Instead of being succoured, he had to succour. Yes,
and he was happy. He jumped up from his chair; and if any persons
present had known Jack, they would have seen Jack's youthful spryness
in Alan's quick movements. He went straight to the old man and put a
hand on his shoulder.

"Come along here," he said firmly and cheerfully.

The old man looked at him, bewildered for a moment.

"That you?" The old man's voice shook. "Yes, they did say you were in
here. What's that on your forehead?"

"Nothing," said Alan. "Take no notice of it. Come and sit here."

He masterfully led the old man to the chair from which he had just
risen, and forced him into it. Mr. Lucass beheld food, and his eyes
began at once to brighten.

"What's this?"

"It's for you," Alan answered, and scraping a chair across the tiled
floor, sat down opposite to his charge. "I've got it all ready for
you.--Eat some of the veal first, and then you must have a drop of
wine. Waiter!"

The waiter, having provided Alan with everything necessary for a meal,
was now of course attentively watching in close proximity.

"Monsieur?"

"Bring me another glass and some more bread first, and then another
plate of this veal."

"Yes, monsieur."

Alan poured out wine into two glasses, and munched bread, and
immediately felt that he could eat all the bread in the world and that
bread was the finest of all comestibles. Mr. Lucass ate, slowly, and
then quickly. He drank at one gulp all the wine in his glass, which,
however, through Alan's foresight, had contained very little.

"Better eat before you drink much," Alan warned him benevolently.

"I suppose you're wondering how we got here?" said Mr. Lucass.

"No," said Alan. "I wasn't. I'm full of my railway accident." He
smiled. "I must tell you about it." He monopolised the talking.

"I'm managing this rather well," he thought complacently. "It's the
kind of thing I _can_ do.... I hope the old fellow hasn't been in an
accident too. Looks as if he had. How the devil did they manage to
reach here like this?"

Mr. Lucass's presence had in fact an air of being magical. Alan had
left the fated couple in the middle of the night on the wet platform
of a village station a thousand miles from anywhere. And in the man
walks to the restaurant at Modane! Mr. Lucass's age was now
momentarily falling. It fell like the mercury of a thermometer removed
from the sun into the shade. And that too had an air of being magical.
Alan, aware of a sudden disconcerting weakness within, and grievously
changing his mind as to the supremacy of bread, envied the old man his
veal and his renascent strength. He stopped talking. The waiter
arrived with a second meal, which Alan ravenously pounced upon.
Silence.

"I expect you drove here," Alan resumed at length. "But how on earth
far is it? How did you do it in the time?"

Mr. Lucass replied:

"I'll have some cheese, I think. No. We got a goods train."

"A goods train!"

"It was the wife did it. You know how much French _she_ speaks! And me
none. But the guard spoke English, and he enjoyed talking English.
They always do. You see, the wife was very anxious about the
registered trunks. She was determined to get to Modane. She said the
stuff would be held up there, here, and it seems it was."

"Where is Mrs. Lucass?"

"She's in the customs here."

"But has she had anything to eat?"

"Not she. Didn't want anything. Lives on her nerves when she's got an
idea in her head."

The old man related how they had travelled in a brake-van, sitting on
a bench, for endless hours, as far as St. Michel-de-Maurienne, where
the train ended its journey, and how they had been shunted violently
at short intervals, and how they had not slept, and how he was bruised
all over, and how Mrs. Lucass was too restless to stop at St.
Michel-de-Maurienne, and how they had first heard of the railway
accident there, and how it had made Mrs. Lucass more anxious than ever
to reach Modane, and how they, or rather she, had contrived to hire a
Ford car (with a left-hand drive and a hood but no side-pieces), and how
they had bumped uphill through snow all the miles to Modane, and how Mrs.
Lucass had insisted on his coming into the restaurant, and he had
yielded in order to save her from getting hysterical. And how, and
how, and how! A heroic pilgrimage. An Odyssey.

"Nobody killed, I hear," said Mr. Lucass.

"No," lied Alan. "Some injured."

"That daughter-in-law of yours all right then?"

"Oh yes. Funny thing, her husband--my son Jack, you know"--pride in
his tone--"flew over from the north of England to Aix-les-Bains, and
joined our train there. And he wasn't hurt either. Not a scratch."

"Flew over? What d'he do that for?"

"Oh!" said Alan lightly. "Wanted to catch up with his wife. Youth!
Youth!"

"Some lad!" said the old man grimly.

"Some lad," Alan casually agreed, with affected paternal modesty. "I
say. You must have had a hell of a time." He reconstructed the horrors
of the Lucasses' incredible journey. And all for trunks!

"I did. Nearly finished me. The joltings. And no sleep. And then that
motor-car drive. Why! It's all mountains. Never stop climbing. And
what a road! Good thing we had a chain on the back-wheel. If we hadn't
we shouldn't have got here. I don't mind telling you I gave the
chauffeur a thousand-franc note. Opened his eyes. Bit of luck I
happened to have it on me. I tell you Mrs. Lucass is a go-er when she
starts. Nearly finished me. But not her. Not her. She's younger than I
am, if she _is_ an invalid."

"Women have no sense of danger," Alan observed sententiously.

"No sense of danger! I like that!" exclaimed the old man, offended,
but showing restraint born of complete confidence in his position, and
using the calm voice of one accustomed once to exercise moral
authority among his fellows.

So far Alan had avoided any reference to the hag-beauty's amazing and
exasperating performances in the night as a prophetess of evil
determined at any cost to act on what she absurdly believed to be her
intuitions. Convinced that the old man had logic and commonsense in
his soul, he had thought that the chief sufferer from the whims of the
hag-beauty would be feeling rather ashamed of them and would prefer,
as the natural guardian of his wife's dignity, not to have them
mentioned. He now got his first inkling that he was expecting too much
from human logic and commonsense, and he saw that thoughtlessly he had
used the very phrase most likely to weaken logic and commonsense in
the old man.

"Considering," said the old man, "that if it hadn't been for my wife's
sense of danger, we should have been through what you've been
through--!"

"Quite!" Alan agreed. "Of course you were fortunate. And of course
Mrs. Lucass did insist on getting out, and if she hadn't insisted you
wouldn't have been fortunate--"

"I should think not," the old man interrupted, "We might both have
been killed, or at any rate injured. And at the best--the shock of it
all, to her!..."

"But you don't mean to say your idea is that the two things are
connected?"

"What two things?"

"Why! Her feeling about an accident, and the fact that there _was_ an
accident. You don't mean to say that there was anything in it except
pure coincidence?" Defying prudence, still unable to believe that with
such a man as Lucass prudence was in the least advisable, Alan stuck
to his point.

"I don't know," answered Mr. Lucass with a touch of acerbity. "Do you?"
"All I know is that I'm nearer the grave by a long sight than you are,
young man. That kind of thing doesn't seem so simple to me as it did
when I was your age.... Who does know? Anyway my wife was right. She
was right. And you can say what you choose. But why do you say women
have no sense of danger?"

"Speaking generally," Alan tried weakly to soothe. And he thought:
"Senile. Can't think straight.... But is he senile? Can there be
anything in it?" The old suspicion recurring that he had had in the
train.

"'Generally' be damned!" Mr. Lucass took him up. "You were speaking of
my wife. You weren't speaking generally at all. And I ventured to say
that if you'd been saved from the accident in the same way as my wife
and I were, you wouldn't be so cocksure either."

Some constraint between them.

"Perhaps not," Alan murmured still more soothingly.

The constraint brought about a short silence, which Mr. Lucass broke
by an affirmation, ardent, exalted, devout:

"My wife is a marvellous woman--though it's me as says it!" By the
colloquial phrasing and the lighter tone of the supplementary last
words, Mr. Lucass intended to correct the perhaps exaggerated
solemnity of the first, also to dissipate the constraint which he felt
that he had caused.

"She is! She certainly is!" Alan responded with eager friendliness.

Alan was uplifted. For the second time the old man had made him young.
But after all the old man was even younger. It was plainly apparent
that the old man still had a passion, and a violent passion, for his
marvellous hag-beauty; a passion which age could not chill; a passion
strong enough to affect his mental faculties and bend his mind. The
passion had gloriously survived his wife's slow transition from beauty
to ugliness, her maladies, her nerves, her tantrums, her tyrannies,
her senseless preoccupation with such trifles as trunks, her eternal
knitting, her injustices, her infernal tongue, her ruthless disregard
(as on that morning) for the infirmity of his years, her fiendish
obstinacy in having her own way. And it had survived his physical
decay. He ought to have been as cold as a fish, as indifferent as a
mummy. And here he was behaving like a lusty youth! The thing was
magnificent, enheartening, inspiring. Alan in those hours related
everything to the case of Jack and Pearl, and he instantly related to
it the extraordinary phenomenon of the old man's devotion. If Jack and
Pearl loved, as they surely did--Jack had proved his love and Pearl
had admitted hers--no difficulty nor conflict could part them; and all
would be well.

Mr. Lucass sat back in his chair and went fast asleep. His features
relaxed, and he looked old again. Like many old people asleep, he had
a frightening resemblance to the corpse of himself. The other
lunchers, having begun simultaneously, were ending simultaneously, and
there was stir and noise in the restaurant. The waiter was receiving
money. But Mr. Lucass slept on undisturbed. Alan gazed at him,
pitifully. What had been magnificent was now touching, pathetic.

The door opened, and Pearl came in. She had completely renewed her
appearance.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, seeing Mr. Lucass. "Well, it will do him good. We
want your trunk-key, please. Has to be opened. They _say_ there'll be
a train on quite soon." Alan drew forth a chain of many keys.

"Oh! Which one?"

"Not quite sure," said Alan feebly.

"Do you think you could come with me to the customs?" Pearl asked.
"Now you've eaten. Might save trouble. If you could come now. You can
settle up here afterwards. Oh yes, _he's_ all right. Just tell the
waiter."

"I'll come," Alan agreed, feeling that he was a package once more, and
not ill-content to be a package.




CHAPTER XXV

OLD LOVE


The Custom House, when Alan and Pearl went into it, was like all
railway custom houses: a dirty floor, scarred wooden benches protected
here and there from complete destruction by metal bands, foul bare
walls whitewashed at some date distant in the past, electric fittings
apparently improvised at about the same date and precariously
surviving from year to year, baggage smart and frowsy, large and
small, open and closed, thrown down at all angles in heart-rending
disorder, a few curt prohibitions in two languages, slatternly porters
maintaining an attitude of careful impartiality, slow-moving examiners
like judges ready at any moment to assume the black cap, anxious and
aggrieved passengers (a thin crowd of tired white faces) whose fears
choked back the lies they wanted to tell--and the spirit of autocratic
bureaucracy brooding invisible but felt. Boulogne over again, but more
acute.

"Do you know what that man said to me?" shouted the Brooklyn lady,
accosting Alan with imperfectly controlled gestures. "He had the
insolence to say that I ought to think myself lucky to get my baggage
at all! The insolence! After the shameful accident we've had! I shall
certainly complain to our ambassador."

Other passengers looked at her as at a heroine courageous enough to
utter the universal sentiment, hoping timidly, however, that the
examiner did not understand English.

"Yes," said Alan.

He knew that he could never say anything except Yes or No to the
uncompromising coarse creature. Why could not people make allowances
for human nature? Did it not occur to them that vast organisations
worked and must work in separate compartments. These custom-officers
had to remember only one thing--that goods possibly liable to duty
were leaving one country to enter another country. They had naught to
do with accidents, injuries, fatigues, sleeplessness, death. Not their
business, all that! They knew well enough that passengers were lumping
all officials together and consciously or unconsciously blaming even
custom-officers for their misfortunes, and they were consciously or
unconsciously resentful of the gross injustice to themselves. The
accident had affected _their_ nerves too; for passengers were not the
only persons to have nerves. And further, they were determined not to
incur the risk of reprimand and jeopardise their careers by omitting
any duty laid upon them by the rigid rules of the high gods of the
Revenue. What would happen to them if in reply to some inquisition of
a superior in a distant central office they excused themselves: "But
there had been an accident"?

Thus and thus thought the absurd Alan, with his distressing faculty of
putting himself imaginatively in the place of others, he suspected
that he was exaggerating the position, but he did not care, because he
detested the arrogant Brooklyn lady. He might fairly have tried to put
himself in her place. But he would not try. With a masculine
indifference to individual instances of hardship, he callously charged
her in his mind with confusing two entirely unconnected issues. Could
the muddle-headed egotistical woman give one single reason why a
railway accident should justify her in evading the laws of a great
power which was as innocent as herself of responsibility for the
disaster? She certainly could not. None of these folk had imagination.
He alone had imagination.

He then thought:

"I'm getting self-righteous, critical,--nerves! I must overcome them!
There're quite enough nerves knocking about this show, without mine."

He saw Mrs. Lucass nearly at the other end of the room. A wardrobe
trunk stood open on the floor beside her; she had pulled a lot of wool
out of one of the drawers, which she had not properly shut. The wool
lay on the bench in front of her. By the wool was an open hat-box. She
had taken a hat from the hat-box and was putting it on, with
unintentionally comic persuasive movements of her braceleted wrists
and bony, ringed hands. The hat was grotesque and she was grotesque.

"I suppose you haven't got a mirror?" she said sharply in English to
the examiner behind the counter.

He shook his head, signifying that it was useless for her to address
him in an unknown language. Then she bent down to the trunk, drew out
another drawer, and after much rummaging found a hand-glass. She
looked at herself and at the hat in the glass, grimacing. The
examiner, who had been yawning, smiled cruelly, and winked at another
examiner, who winked back. The scene was in its way dreadful, the
demeanour of the examiners revolting. The ungainly hag-beauty was
hideous to the view. She was the ugliest and most preposterous old
woman in the world. Alan was ashamed for her. He wanted to remove her
into some secret chamber and there magically render her beautiful and
dignified so that she might be worthy of the passion for her which
burned in the heart of an otherwise sane old man. And yet somehow she
had dignity, throughout all the egregious, self-centred performance.
And perhaps she was changing her hat in order to flatter the eye of
the adorer. You could not be sure. In some matters women were never
old; they could not age. And she well knew that she had an adorer and
a slave in her husband, and the tremendous fact influenced all her
actions.

Did Pearl feel similarly about Jack? Was Jack capable of the old man's
unbounded devotion? If so, there was hope. But the younger generation,
the formidable, incomprehensible, hard younger generation--you could
be sure of nothing in regard to it. Alan's glance happened to meet
Pearl's. She had seen what he had seen, but her face remained
insensible. She did not smile, nor frown, nor show sympathy. Not a
sign of any answering emotion. Possibly she deemed the extraordinary
antics of the old girl to be beneath her august notice. An implacable
young lady, beyond human weakness.

Alan lowered his glance, and followed her rather uncertainly to the
bench where the assembled belongings of the Frith-Walter family, some
of which had already been enquired into, stood displayed under the
guardianship of Jack and a porter. He knew that he must greet Mrs.
Lucass, but he felt self-conscious, averse to greeting anybody, and
decided to leave the encounter to chance.

Mrs. Lucass, aware of the presence of more people near her, suddenly
turned and looked, and saw Pearl. She hesitated a moment and then,
abandoning her luggage and her mirror and her loose wool, moved
impulsively to Pearl. She totally ignored both Alan and Jack, had no
eyes for them. She stared at Pearl who, to Alan's momentary
astonishment, gave her a warm smile. Pearl had ceased to be an
implacable young lady beyond human weakness. Mrs. Lucass was obviously
excited. Her bracelets jingled, her newly donned hat was shaking, and
also it was somewhat awry on her head.

"What a mercy it was our luggage happened to be in the front part of
the train," she said, "otherwise we might never have seen it again!"
She giggled for half a second. "I--I----" Her voice got out of control.
Then her hag's face grew distorted, and tears fell from her eyes as
from an overflowing spring. She wept without the least attempt at
self-control, without shame, without any thought of spectators. She
was no longer a woman and a man too. But she was a little girl, as
well as a deeply wrinkled, hideous hag. Her sobbing intimidated the
whole room. Not a smile nor a nudge anywhere. Pearl's face lost its
smile. Everybody was uneasy.

And then Mrs. Lucass jumped at Pearl, assaulted her with a violent hug
round the neck, kissed her violently, perhaps hysterically, and clung
fiercely to her. Pearl's face was sympathetic; she did not recoil.
Alan had a lump in the throat. Mrs. Lucass put her head on Pearl's
shoulder and kept it there. The blonde face of the young beauty, and
the dark, seamed face of the old hag (with the hat above it all
crushed) were very close together, and the contrast between them was
at once dramatic and pathetic.

Pearl's demeanour was benevolent, daughterly, motherly, quite calm.
Alan would have expected her to betray, in her superficial
tranquillity, some resentment at this wild exhibition. But it was not
so. Nor was she in the least self-conscious, though every other face
in the room showed self-consciousness, as well as compassion. Indeed
she put up her hands to the old woman's head, moved it gently, and
softly kissed her, right on the mouth, that all might see. Fresh light
on Pearl for Alan! In the swift revelation he understood the qualities
in her which had known how in a few minutes on the previous evening to
inspire such violent affection and worship in the historic wreck
called Mrs. Lucass.

"I couldn't have borne it if you'd--you'd b-been injured, my dear,"
the old woman openly blubbered through her shaking sobs. "You're too
lovely. Your husband's been talking to me. What a m-an, what a man
you've got for a husband, my dear! Fl-ying to you like that. He told
me you weren't hurt, nor him either. And I was so glad. But it was
just seeing you all of a sudden like this that made me really feel how
t-errible it would have been if you _had_ been hurt. Just seeing you.
Oh dear! What an old fool I must be to be going on this style! I'll
stop."

Pearl still said nothing, but she smiled again. What dignity (Alan
thought) the girl had! What a wife! What a husband! Nothing sinister,
surely, could mar the relations of the wondrous pair, who had chosen
each other by a unique natural instinct that could not delude itself.

Mrs. Lucass, gathering her wits and establishing self-command,
withdrew from Pearl and flopped down on to the bench, out of breath.
Her nerves had at last given way after the ordeals of the night and
the morning. The paroxysm was brief, but it wasn't yet quite over.

"Where's Ernie?" she cried, addressing no one in particular. "I must
have Ernie."

"Mr. Lucass is asleep in the restaurant," said Alan. Mrs. Lucass
glanced angrily at him, without seeming to recognise him.

"Fetch Ernie at once!" she loudly and imperiously enjoined the world.

Alan murmured desperately to Jack:

"Run and see if you can bring him."

The next moment an official entered the custom house and with
excusable elation and pomp announced that a special train would very
shortly depart for Turin, Genoa, Pisa and Rome. Excitement in the
Custom House at these prodigious tidings, an excitement which stirred
even the examiners out of their professional nonchalance! Alan jingled
his keys. Pearl left Mrs. Lucass in order to help him. And then Jack
returned to the Custom House with old Mr. Lucass.

"Quick, Ernest!" the hag-beauty called her command to him before he
could reach her. "There's a train. See the porter shuts those things
up properly, and put the wool in your overcoat pocket, and don't leave
the mirror out."

Mr. Lucass came near her, gazing at her face and her thin, dyed hair.

"What's the matter, lass?" he questioned, apprehensive.

Mrs. Lucass gazed at him with her close-set eyes blinking--and made no
answer.

"Give me my spectacles," she said at length. While he was searching in
his pockets for her spectacle-case, she stretched her arm, and took
his handkerchief from his breast-pocket, and wiped the tears from her
face. Clumsily he drew the spectacles from the case, and she placed
them clumsily on her nose, and peered closely into his face. Then, at
the evidence of his fatigue, new tears shone in her eyes.

"Darling!" she whispered tenderly. Her voice was charged with a fierce
emotion. Mr. Lucass fidgeted. "We'll sleep here to-night--at Modane.
No more travelling for you till you've had a night's rest!"

"Oh no!" he protested. "I'm all right."

"I say we will sleep at Modane," she repeated savagely.

Only Alan saw the scene. Pearl had taken his key-chain and was bent
down upon an obstinate lock. The rest of the company were absorbed in
their own urgent affairs.




CHAPTER XXVI

TEMPER


Dusk was already descending on the station, slowly, surely. Alan sat
in the wonderful train, which comprised sleeping-cars and a baggage-van,
but no restaurant-car. The rumour was that a restaurant-car would
be added to it at Turin. The Wagons-Lits Company had done marvels,
producing magically a whole train, heated, out of a hat, with
conductors and all complete. Rumour said also that the complementary
train in the opposite direction--Rome-Boulogne--had been diverted to
another route; and that the line would be cleared in another two or
three hours for all traffic. Ill-natured rumour said that the
authorities had provided the special train so expeditiously only
because the succeeding train from Boulogne would be upon them in the
night, before they knew where they were, and for their own sakes they
wished to avoid an accumulation of trains and passengers at a spot
like Modane. Jack was in the new compartment, fixing his father's rug
on his father's knees and being generally attentive and soothing.

Suddenly the voice of Pearl, unseen, was heard in the corridor:

"Hullo, doctor!"

The doctor, an Englishman, related to her his deeds: in connection with
a compound fracture, two simple fractures, concussion, slight hysteria,
flesh-wounds--nothing really serious now, except the case of the
engine-driver, which had gone past seriousness; of course, speaking
privately, he had known from the first moment he set eyes on it that the
engine-driver's case was perfectly hopeless; details of the
engine-driver's case; the narrative finishing with an account of a short
but perilously fast motor ride, the doctor being absolutely determined
to catch this train, of which he had had news. Yes, he had not done
much, but he had done what he could, and yes, he was a bit tired, fairly
tired, but naturally as a doctor he was accustomed ... etc. "You were
very helpful, Mrs. Frith-Walter, I'm bound to tell you."

So he knew her name and everything. Indeed the two seemed to have
become quite intimate. Pearl said little; the doctor did nearly all
the talking. A breathless, excitable sort of a man, Alan judged. The
suspense of waiting for the colloquy to cease and for the train to
start was strangely trying to Alan's nerves. But already for half an
hour the train had been on the very edge of starting.

"Well, I haven't had much chance to see after my own things. I'd
better get busy. I'm in the next car. Conductor there says they're all
right. Decent fellow, I fancy. Not like some of 'em today. Your
father-in-law's no worse? Much better? Good! Knew he would be. Slight
shock--nothing else. You can make your mind _quite_ easy. Au revoir."

Silence.

The train moved, stealthily. And the instant Alan felt the faint
commencing vibration, his nerves seemed again to tighten with the fear
of danger renewed. He must control them. There was no danger, but he
hoped that the train would not permit itself any excessive speed. He
could not bear speed. A most cautious moderation was what he insisted
upon.

Jack looked out of the window, stooping.

"There's the old lady, waving." He meant Mrs. Lucass. He waved in
response.

Alan neither stirred nor spoke. As the train cleared the station, the
light increased; it appeared to be full day again. They were away.
They were in flight once more from the contagion. They were a band of
refugees, separated from the world, drawn together by a danger
escaped. Alan had a peculiar feeling of intimacy and brotherliness
with every passenger in the train. Pearl went by the open door of the
compartment.

"Pearl!" Alan cried sharply, without in fact intending to call her.

She returned to his view. Her beautiful face had the old slight,
perhaps ironical smile. She waited.

"Come in," said Alan. "Come in and sit down, won't you? Plenty of room
for three."

"I think I'll just go to my compartment," said she, very quietly. "You
and Jack can share this one between you."

With a single phrase she had raised the whole question of her
relations with Jack. It was astounding, formidable, the effect on Alan
of her remark. She and Jack, then, were surely in the midst of a
rupture. And she was realistic; she was implacable. Could they not
have had the decency, for the sake of their father, to postpone these
terrible dissensions for a few hours? Could they not pretend?... No!
Alan felt as if he was bound and shackled in front of the elegant
creature. A railway accident was naught to her. Love and passion were
naught to her. For she had an idea in her head, one idea. And she
would fight for it, unscrupulous about weapons, unalterably decided to
give not an inch of ground; evidently she dismissed the mere notion of
compromise or temporising.

"Come in and sit down," Alan repeated, persuasively. "And let's be
comfortable." Then his nerves betrayed him, and he added, pettish:
"For goodness' sake!"

Pearl stiffened visibly.

"I'm rather at the end of my tether," she said coldly. "If you don't
mind. You and Jack'll be perfectly all right here."

The idiot Jack had not enough wit to hold his tongue. Nervous also,
doubtless, he must needs put in:

"I really think the Dad ought to be left alone to sleep if he can."

"Well, then, all you have to do is to keep quiet, if he wants to
sleep," said Pearl, openly acid. And she slipped out of sight.

The train dashed into the long tunnel of Mont Cenis. Darkness.
Electric light to be turned on. A deafening racket. Involuntarily Alan
clung to the seat. Then gradually he relaxed. Jack shut the window and
the door, and the noise became more bearable. The door opened. Pearl
entered.

"Here I am," she said gently and sweetly, just as if half a minute
earlier there had been no friction between them whatever. She sat by
Alan's side, but a foot away from him. Jack was in the little
window-seat opposite to them.

"Now just tell me exactly how you are," she said, leaning a little
towards Alan, and touching his shoulder with her hand.

He was delighted with her, almost completely reassured about her and
Jack. This charming trick of hers, of which he had had previous
experience on the journey, of arriving unexpectedly in a compartment
after she was supposed to have left it for good!

"Well," he answered, cheerful, uplifted, teasing, "if you want to know
the disturbing truth, I don't feel so queer as I ought to feel,
considering everything. I'm tired and I wish I was sleepy, only I'm
not, but otherwise in spite of honest efforts I can't find anything
the matter with me--except nerves of course." Such was the influence
over him of her new demeanour. He saw clearly into the mind of the
young woman. She had repented of her hardness, her stiff coldness, and
nobly she had returned to publish her repentance. "I myself," thought
Alan, "could never have done it like that, all of a sudden. I couldn't
have broadcast it. I could only have let it be known, bit by bit. In
some ways 'they' are our betters. Anyhow she is."

"I'm so glad," she said. "I had an idea you were better, but I daren't
be sure."

She smiled a quite original sort of smile. She half reclined on the
long seat, exquisitely, elegantly. It was wonderful how she kept her
elegance throughout railway accidents, custom-house harassments, and
all such trifles. This was the enchanting creature who had nursed the
old hating and hated Hag, and been kissed and clasped and cried over
by the hag. And this was the enchanting creature who had kissed his
hand, Alan's. What had he done to deserve that impulsively bestowed
honour, in one sense the greatest honour he had ever received, the
honour that had made him proudest? Whatever happened to him in the
future he would never forget the light pressure of her lips on his
fingers. And she was Jack's. She had Jack in charge. She had a supreme
responsibility to Jack, and she was not the young woman to ignore it
in the smallest degree. She was a creature of rare character. She
certainly had more sagacity than Jack, more poise, a truer estimate of
the world than Jack, who, as she had indicated before, was ingenuous
and without a proper appreciation of the real nature of his
environment. Jack was the babe unborn, she the woman aware. She still
smiled. What an alluring display of charm, a display surpassing even
that which she had so suddenly given to Alan in the restaurant-car on
the previous night! The tears, the dew-drops trembling and shining in
her eyes, then! Memorable! He glanced at Jack, whose face had not
softened. Which lack of elasticity on Jack's part hurt him.

Pearl said:

"As you're so much better, I think I may as well say what I have to
say, You'll have to know it some time soon, and the sooner the better.
I can't bear to have things hanging over me. I always want them to be
settled and done with. Jack and I have decided to part. We've had it
all out. In fact we've had it all out more than once, haven't we,
Jack?"

Jack, after a half-savage gleam of astonishment, nodded glumly, all
the vivacity vanishing quickly from his face.

"And we've decided to part. I told you he'd never give way and he
won't. I told you, didn't I? We're quite friends. So now we all know
where we are." She gazed straight at Alan with the same benevolence as
before, and her tone was kindliness itself.

As for Alan, though he was astounded, an inordinate fury so quickly
succeeded his momentary stupefaction that the change in his bearing
startled himself just as much as it startled the other two.

"Well I'm damned!" he exploded, with uncontrolled violence.

Pearl's reaction was to sit up straight.

Both she and Jack were guilty, but she was the guiltier because she
had spoken and because she would not wait. Moreover, she had deceived
him, deliberately. She was not kindly. She was two-faced. She had been
playing a part, with her damnable mask of kindliness. Why had she done
it? She was incredible. She was untrustworthy, a cat, a vixen, a
she-wolf, a tigress, without scruples, without bowels, implacable in
egotism. He had sometimes suspected that the calm Elaine did not
really care for her, and the calm Elaine was right.

The dull, subdued, reverberating racket of the endless tunnel
intensified the drama proceeding in Alan's mind. The electric light,
illuminating halves of faces, making dark, crude shadows on faces,
glinting on brass fitments, lit the drama strangely. The dim lamps of
the tunnel, gliding regularly by, punctuated it with eerie commas.
There they all were, within the earth, crawling perilously through the
earth, millions of tons of earth and rock over them, the snowy peaks
of the Alps thousands of feet above. All was majestic and terrible,
except themselves, and they were pigmies. And she had chosen this
moment to announce a preposterous decision. Damn them! Curse them!
Damn them! Curse her to hell! Damn the self-sufficient girl, with her
too-precise, somehow superior intonations! She had proclaimed
disaster, ruin and shame with the silly ease of a damned silly hostess
pouring out a cup of tea at a tea-party. Alan thought in the back of
his brain:

"I've never been like this before. I've lost my temper. I don't
remember losing my temper since I was a boy. I'm the man famous for
always keeping his head. I ought to have kept my head. But I don't
want to keep my head. I'm justified in not keeping it. Why should I
keep it? I'm jolly glad I didn't keep it. Do they think they can do as
they please while I smile and thank them for their blasted high-flown
wisdom?"

He exulted in a new and marvellous sensation. Never had he felt such
vitality. "This is nerves. This is the result of the accident. Well,
let it be nerves!"

He gazed around. Jack--("Worships me, does he? Well, I'll give him
something to worship!")--Jack was looking at the table, his lower lip
hanging. Jack was discountenanced by the unprecedented phenomenon of
his father's demeanour. Pearl rose quickly and cautiously, moving
towards the door.

"Where are you going?"

"I thought I'd better leave you." Her voice was uncertain.

"Sit down. How dare you say what you did and then try to slink off?
Have some decency. Sit down, I say." ("She kissed my hand, did she?
I'll let her know whose hand she kissed!")

Pearl sat down.

"She may be a strong, powerful individuality," he thought with bitter
grimness, "but now she's up against a stronger, and she'll soon find
it out." He had taken control of the situation--in an instant. He had
lost his temper; he was, however, using his wrath victoriously. His
righteous wrath might be a symptom of racked nerves, but he had quite
ceased to be nervous about the swaying movement of the train. Kids!
Infants! Playing clumsily, idiotically, with their lives, with his,
with Elaine's! Grotesque in their egotistical self-conceit.

"Now!" said Alan, as though the situation were a team of only
half-broken wild horses and he were gathering up the reins, as though he
had come down from Mount Sinai and the team were quivering at the foot
thereof. "Now!" He repeated the word more quietly, being quickly
appeased. "What does all this mean? You must excuse me if I'm a bit
disturbed."

"Oh, please!" said Pearl, eagerly, forgivingly, perhaps a little
patronisingly. "After this morning--and the night--of course--of
course. I _quite_ understand."

He was nettled, but he managed to hide his resentment: he could be as
calm as she or as anybody.

"Yes," he said, with a superior, burning iciness. "We've all been
through something, you as well as I. And no one's in a fit state to
see things clearly and in proportion. And yet--"

"I'm perfectly all right," said Pearl. "And so's Jack."

"But even you've had no sleep," Alan countered sarcastically. "I
suppose that doesn't affect you."

"It doesn't really," said Pearl. "What's a night's sleep? I always
feel frightfully well after I've been up all night. One does, you
know. I've heard the same from doctors."

"Possibly. Let's admit that your judgment is as sound today as any
other day. What then? Don't you think that in a business of this kind
it wouldn't have been a bad plan to talk to your friends before coming
to any hard-and-fast conclusion? Your mother, for instance? Jack's
mother? Even me?" He was bitter, but he estimated that he was not
trying her too hard.

Pearl replied, unruffled:

"But you see our point is that it's a business that doesn't concern
anyone but ourselves."

Curious: the estranged husband and wife seemed to have constituted
themselves a league against their families and the world!

"Oh!" Alan observed, very blandly now, very dispassionately. "So
that's the point, is it? Well, I'll make just one request, my dear
Pearl. Let's leave it all for the present. Naturally it must be
discussed. Two families are concerned anyhow. _You_ may be at the top
of your form"--he actually smiled--"but I'm not. Let's sleep on the
affair--I know that's an old-fashioned suggestion."

"But I doubt if we shall be together tomorrow," Pearl objected.

"Now please oblige me, I--do--not--want" (Alan separated the words to
emphasise them) "to discuss it now. There can't be all this breathless
hurry. Surely it won't be beyond our combined ingenuity to arrange to
be together tomorrow, or the next day. Anyhow I'm not equal to
discussing the thing now with either you or Jack." He had absolutely
decided to say no more and to listen to no more. He would impose
himself upon them.

Then Jack, recovering himself somewhat and looking up, said:

"So far as I know there hasn't been any definite decision to part."

Jack's chin!




CHAPTER XXVII

POLITICS


Pearl said in a cheerful, unperturbed, unresentful, absolutely
confident tone:

"But my dear Jack, you've told me I don't know how many times you
wouldn't alter your plans--and as a matter of fact I told your father
last night I was sure you wouldn't--and I told you quite definitely
that if you didn't we couldn't go on and I wouldn't go on. What could
be clearer?" She put on her faint, ironic smile, which always
disquieted Alan.

"But I didn't say we couldn't go on," Jack replied. "It takes two to
make a separation."

"No, it doesn't. It only takes one," Pearl retorted indulgently.

They were both apparently quite ignoring Alan's instant request for
surcease from discussion.

"You see," said Jack, in a new tone, and to nobody in particular,
"what I say is this--"

"I don't think you can say anything you haven't said already," Pearl
stopped him. "Besides, your father doesn't want to talk now. I believe
he's not so well as he thought he was."

"Yes," Alan corrected her. "I'm perfectly all right. I may as well
hear all there is to hear. I'm inclined to agree with you it's best to
get it over." Then to Jack: "What did you say?"

Pearl's precise enunciation and kindly tone seemed to have added to
her spoken words:

"Your father is an old man and must be humoured--he isn't so strong as
we are."

Alan did not care to be treated as an old man or an enfeebled man. He
was not old. He tightened his muscles and sat up straighter. The older
generation could match the younger. (Think of Mrs. Lucass!) He was
determined to display the same elasticity of mind as his son and
daughter-in-law. All nonsense, he admitted to himself, what he had
said about his not feeling equal to a discussion just then. Of course
he was equal to it.

Moreover he had a renewed sense of the mighty battle which those two
had been fighting--for a principle, for their careers, for their whole
lives. He was inspired and uplifted and thrilled by the conception of
the battle. It was a great phenomenon, one of the most significant and
important of all phenomena; he saw it as symptomatic of the age. And
the two protagonists were so powerful, so appealing in their
youthfulness, so attractive--Jack quivering like a racehorse, elegant
as a racehorse, Jack with his defiant chin and his pure, idealistic
face, Jack his own son, begotten of himself; and Pearl, elegant too
with her finely-tended complexion, her smart costume (though the
oatmeal costume was a little stained now), Pearl with her pronounced
facial angle and the long straight nose of a self-centred yet
agreeable woman, Pearl the splendid creature of his son's choice. He
defied but he admired them. He would be their peer, more than their
peer. He had the experience, the wisdom, and the wit to manipulate the
pair of them, no matter how obdurate they might be under his moulding
hands.

Jack hesitated.

"Here. Have a cigarette," said Alan lightly to Pearl.

"No thanks! Don't smoke."

"Really?"

"Really." She gazed at him.

Alan was flattered. A few words from him, then, had frightened her off
a dangerous habit. She would take two hundred cigarettes back to
England with her. Yes, he could influence people. But what character
the girl had!

"Out with it!" Alan encouraged his son gruffly but benevolently. His
tone was all the apology he meant to offer, or could bring himself to
offer, for his recent outburst of temper.

"Of course," said Jack, rather nervously smiling, "you've never heard
much about my views, have you, Dad?"

"Not your mature views," Alan replied, and in spite of a real desire
to be completely serious as well as sympathetic, he did not quite
succeed in avoiding an ironic note--that was because he was by so much
the oldest and wisest person in the compartment.

Jack, however, seemed not to observe his father's naughty playfulness;
humour went past him. A grave defect in him, thought Alan.

"All I say is," Jack continued, "something's got to be done about
things. Things generally, I mean. They're all wrong. I mean all wrong
for the under-dog. Everybody knows that. No-one can deny it. You can't
educate the under-dog and then expect him to behave as if nothing had
happened. You may say things were always wrong for the under-dog, and
perhaps more wrong before than they are even today. I agree. But that
makes no difference. The under-dog understands now how wrong things
are, and he believes they can be altered. He hadn't used to
understand. And there's another point. _Our_ consciences have been
wakened up. No one's easy in his mind about things. It wasn't like
that forty years ago. Our lot didn't trouble themselves then. I expect
they took everything for granted. 'The poor we have always with us'
and so on. All very well, that--then! I daresay a lot of 'em say even
today 'The poor we have always with us.' And believe it honestly, too.
But what do you mean by 'poor'? Poor's such a vague word. Would anyone
today say 'The under-fed we have always with us'? Or 'The one-roomed
tenement we have always with us? Father and mother and growing-up
daughters and sons and so on sleeping and eating and washing and
washing their clothes all in one room--we have always with us'? Why!
There isn't a man in the country dare stand up and say that, and I
don't care who he is. That's one reason why there's a Labour Party.
You may say that all parties want to alter that. Yes, in a way. But
the Labour Party wants to more than any other party. And the Labour
Party knows more about it than any other party. And it's got a better
right to try. The Labour Party really wants to alter it. And it's
entitled to all the help it can get. I intend to help. Pearl thinks
I'm inconsistent. I don't. I simply can't see it." Raising his
eyebrows, as if to emphasise his feeling about the incomprehensibility
of the attitude of other people, Jack paused and stared around.

"Bit stuffy in here," said Pearl. "Shall I open the door?" She put the
question in the softest deferential tone, the tone of one anxious for
the general welfare. Alan nodded, and Pearl quickly opened the door,
and they saw two persons pass along the corridor.

But Alan somehow in secret objected to both her word and her deed,
seeing in them--whether justly or not he could not decide--a
symbolical unsympathetic criticism of Jack's statement of his case.
Jack had impressed him. He was astonished at Jack's development. He
had never till that moment thought of Jack as anybody in particular.
He now saw him as somebody, as a potential force in the world. He
noticed that Jack had a fine speaking voice, and he began to picture
him as an orator, holding and swaying public meetings and being loudly
applauded. The boy's manner was nave, but it was saved by his
passionate sincerity. Though the boy might be wrong, might be blind to
all sorts of important considerations, he certainly had a positive
power which would reduce to nothing a thousand negative faults.

Those phrases, "The under-fed we have always with us," etc., were
extraordinarily picturesque and striking. And they must be accepted
because, even if they could be answered, nobody, as Jack had said,
would dare to attempt to answer them. And were they answerable? They
made Alan uncomfortable. He hated to feel uncomfortable: he disliked
and feared an excess of uncompromising honesty: he feared what might
happen to himself if the habit grew of uncompromising honesty; but he
personally could not answer the phrases. Had Jack invented them, or
had he appropriated them? He wanted to know, but could not bring
himself to commit the crudity of bluntly asking. Yes, he was afraid of
his son's simplicity and sincerity and directness, which induced in
him a mood of uneasy social guilt and of responsibility evaded. But he
was intensely proud of the surprising Jack. He understood at last
Elaine's pride in Jack. Damn the lad with his "The one-roomed tenement
we have always with us"! Thirty hours earlier all had been well with
Alan, who had been dedicating himself to enjoyment in security--work
accomplished, pleasure earned, not a care, nothing but rewards. And
here was the boy creating an enormous mess in the family and about to
create a still more enormous mess in a stable and conservative
country! The prospect of the future was worse than disquieting; it was
terrifying.

Pearl continued to smile.

"Go on, Jack," she said nicely. "I want Father to hear everything."

Was there disdain in her calm accents? At any rate Alan was glad that
she had said "Father," not "your father," for it showed that she was
still willing to accept a share of his fatherhood. "I'm catching at
straws," he thought. "That's what it is."

"Not much else, is there? No use me repeating myself." A tone of
weariness in the boy's voice was succeeded by a lighter tone and a
bright smile aimed straight at Pearl.

"But your reply to the inconsistency charge, and so on," said Pearl.

"Oh! That!" Jack shifted his glance from Pearl to Alan. "I'm being
asked night and day why I don't give up my money. Why should I? I
wouldn't mind doing it if I wasn't married----"

"Ah!" breathed Pearl with a tranquillity that disconcerted Alan.
"That's new."

"--if I thought it would be any use. But it wouldn't only not be any
use--it would do harm. Poverty's a cancer. Supposing a doctor was
trying to cure a cancer case and somebody said to him: 'If you haven't
got cancer yourself you'd better go and get it before you start in,
otherwise you aren't consistent.' What should you say to that?"

"Another deadly phrase," thought Alan, and wondered why he should have
invited the boy to be so devastating.

"What the Labour Party needs more than anything is money," Jack
proceeded. "You can only fight poverty with money. I'm going to live
reasonably--Pearl can always have all the money she wants from her
mother, who has far more than she knows how to spend--and use every
cent I can spare for politics--the campaign. If I did get rid of my
money, whom should I get rid of it to? Of course you'll say the Labour
Party. Well, I mean to use a lot of it for the Labour Party, but I'll
use it in my own way; I can use it a darn sight more usefully than the
party could use it. It wouldn't amount to half a drop in the party
funds. Besides, if I'm to give up my money so as to be poor like the
poor, why shouldn't I give up my baths and be dirty like the poor, and
my grammar and my accent and talk like the poor, and stick my knife in
my mouth like the poor? The whole argument's too absurd, and what's
more, it isn't genuine. It's nothing but a catchpenny argument
intended to put me in an awkward place and queer my pitch with the
party if that's possible. Isn't as if the place wasn't awkward enough
as it is. No!" At this point Jack's voice rose suddenly as he added:
"It's not a genuine argument. And anyone with any brains knows it
isn't genuine. It's claptrap."

"Of course it's claptrap," said Alan, but not aloud. He regretted that
the boy should have raised his voice. Passers-by in the corridor,
those ever-restless creatures who infest trains and whom even railway
accidents cannot chasten, might over-hear him; they might stop, stare,
smile; and this possibility presented itself to Alan as the most
humiliating of all misfortunes. To attract attention by undue noise:
deplorable! He agreed with the boy's reasoning, but the word
"demagogue" came into his head.

"You see," Pearl remarked, with soft destructive sweetness, "Jack
can't believe that anybody who differs from him is really sincere.
It's a pity, but there it is and I know he can't help it."

Alan felt her looking at him, and he avoided her eye. In two seconds
the situation had grown too difficult for him. He was not controlling
it in the least. As for cleverly and superiorly manipulating the
callow youngsters as he had meant to do--he had not even begun to set
about it. Pearl's short speech was terrible; the quiet sweetness with
which she uttered it was more terrible. She was a dire young woman.
Dire. Jack moved strangely in his seat. The racket of the train,
hushed though it was by the closed windows, exasperated Alan's ear. He
felt that if the train did not soon emerge from the interminable
reverberating tunnel, and the electric light soon yield to the dusk of
nature, he would lose sanity.... Nerves!

Then Jack slipped startlingly out of his seat, stood at full height
above Pearl, and exclaimed with passion, reckless of publicity:

"Darling, _why_ were you so angry because I flew over to catch you
up?"

The situation with incredible swiftness had now taken an entirely new
turn, which none could conceivably have foreseen.




CHAPTER XXVIII

OTHER POLITICS


Of course, another example of nerves. Despite their boasting, these
youngsters were in the same state of semi-hysterical excitability as
Alan himself. (He smiled secretly.) Another consequence of the
accident.

Well, the accident was having its uses. In a way he was glad of the
accident. It had the effect of bringing hidden matters to the surface,
of intensifying emotion and discouraging suppressions. It might, it
probably would, influence the whole future. It had certainly increased
his own capacity to appreciate the strange spectacle before him in the
compartment. (He still felt some of the glow of his own display of
temper.) The accident was, now, exposing the realities of the
situation between Jack and Pearl. There was more in the situation than
politics. For a moment Jack had seemed to be leaving the point at
issue; but perhaps, in a deeper sense, he was keeping to the point,
even getting closer to it. Perhaps his instinct was more logical and
orderly than the superficialities of reason.

The lad had sinned against the British code of restraint. But to do so
in the presence of his father--what a proof of confidence and trust in
his father! Never had Alan felt more intimately and proudly paternal.
The lad was not afraid to be natural in front of his father. Was Pearl
capable of rightly judging the beauty of their relations? He
affectionately admired Jack. The ingenuous face, the pure, passionate
eyes. The magnificent freedom from self-consciousness! The elegant
dignity! Race! His own race!

He remembered suddenly and vividly a reference, more than one
reference, of Elaine's to their son's fierce hatred of injustice. He,
Alan, had not particularly noticed the quality for himself; it was the
knack of dreaming women to notice these profounder things. Here was an
instance of Jack's hatred of injustice. The lad thought that Pearl had
been unjust to him about the flight. She had taken it in the wrong
spirit. The sense of injustice had lain active within him, possibly
for hours and hours, and at last it had burst forth articulate. Why
had his pursuit of her angered her? He was demanding justice from
Pearl; he was not suing for it; he was demanding it. What a man for a
woman! Love and passion in his gaze! His ardour was surely
irresistible.

Alan had the feeling that Pearl was on her trial; she was being
tested. His opinion of her would be decided by her reaction to the
ordeal. He did not care what her reaction might be, if only she would
abandon her exasperating, detached calm. He watched her, ready to
condemn. She did not abandon her calm. She looked up mildly at her
husband, and said in a very quiet, soothing tone:

"Why? Why was I angry at your coming after me? I wasn't angry. I never
said anything."

"I know you didn't say anything. You wouldn't say anything, though you
knew I wanted you to. I'm sure you were angry. Only you hid it. Why
should you be angry?"

"I wasn't. Still, I do think a woman ought to have some freedom.
You're free to go where you like. Why shouldn't I be? Why should I be
chased--all over Europe?... If you really wish to know." She kept her
gaze on him, steadily.

"Considering I only wanted to talk to you," said Jack, rather sullen.
"I had to talk to you."

"Considering I only wanted to talk to Mother!" Pearl smilingly
retorted.

"Of course if you look at it like that, I'm sorry," said Jack, gloomy.

"It's quite all right. And I wasn't angry."

"I should have thought you'd have been a bit pleased--me flying so
that I could have another talk with you."

"So I was pleased. It's childish somehow; yes, childish; but it's
flattering. I wouldn't deny that for a minute. But something else in
me wasn't flattered. I'm telling you just how I felt. I know you
always like me to be frank."

A kind of appeal in her voice, as it were the expression of a desire
to have his good opinion of her.

Jack was touched. His face seemed to hover over hers.

Alan was uncomfortable. The feeling of being one too many in the
compartment most seriously irked him. He had the idea that were they
alone together Jack would seize her and finish all argument for ever
in the illogical, fraudulent way that women adored--or were supposed
to adore. "I'd give anything not to be here," he thought in distress.
He might have walked out of the compartment, but he was mysteriously
fixed to the seat. He imagined the flower itself of love ready to
blossom in many-coloured magic between Jack and Pearl like a firework
in a night sky. He imagined the wonders and marvels of tenderness....
But no! He could not move.

"'Childish'? 'Childish'?" Jack murmured, repeating Pearl's word
reflectively, discontented, critical.

"Oh well!" Pearl exclaimed, sweet, but imperceptibly impatient at his
cavilling. "Any adjective you please, Jack. But do believe I'm not
angry. Do! Besides, what does it matter? We weren't on that subject at
all. In fact honestly I'd quite forgotten it. It hasn't anything to do
with the real point." She turned suddenly to Alan. "Has it?" in a
tranquil and pleasant tone, exactly as though common social politeness
had prompted her to draw him back into a conversation from which he
had been ungraciously excluded. She was terrible, with her perfect
aplomb. She was a devil. But what arts!

The firework had failed to germinate and squander its loveliness. Alan
could not speak. His limbs, his tongue, even his brain were all
equally paralysed. He blinked stupidly again, thinking of himself:
"I'm sullen just like Jack was." At length he said:

"Real point? There's no real point. There's a lot of points. It's a
regular area." He tried to brighten. Gave a weak smile. A poor
attempt!

"Rich or not rich," Pearl blandly continued, apparently not in the
least discouraged by the spleen of her men. "Keep your money or don't
keep it. What's that? If Jack stands for Labour he's going against all
of us. He'll make us all ridiculous. I've said so already. I've said
it to you, and I shall keep on saying it. It's that that upsets me. I
could never swallow it. Never! When you feel ridiculous, something's
wrong. You may argue till all's blue, but there it is. Even if we
didn't have to copy the Labour people and live like them, and have
them at home, and so on and so on--at first I thought we should have
to, but I admit we perhaps needn't--but even if we didn't, we should
be just as ridiculous, possibly more. Everybody would laugh behind our
backs. They might say how splendid it was of Jack, and all that, but
they'd smile to themselves just the same. I don't care for any
argument--all argument's in the air, it's all abstract--but this isn't
abstract." She turned to Jack. "And you can't frighten me by saying
I'm not genuine, though I don't think it's quite nice of you, Jack.
I'm just as genuine as you or anybody else. What do I mind about
parties? I mind about people; and besides, parties are only people.
I'm thinking of my family and your family, and all my belongings, and
the way I was brought up, and the way you were brought up. And I say
that that isn't selfishness on my part. No, it isn't. Not what I call
selfishness. I belong to a certain class, and so do you. And I think
that if anyone belongs to a class in his bones, he oughtn't to go out
and try to ruin it. And that's what Labour people are after--ruining
us. I'd like to see justice for Labour, but I want to see justice for
everybody. Labour people don't. Jack does. Oh, yes! But Labour
doesn't. It wants everything for itself. What a mess they'd make! What
a mess! Especially of us. You'd see! Do you imagine I don't understand
politics because I'm a woman?" "Why, politics are as easy as A.B.C.
There's nothing to understand. Anyhow, if I was in politics I should
fight for my own class, not against it."

"My dear," said Jack solemnly. "You'd have a class war then, would
you?"

"Now there you are!" She looked at Alan. "There he is. That's Jack.
He's pretending to himself there isn't a class war already. But there
_is_ a class war. And there always was and there always will be. As if
all politics weren't class war! And if there isn't a class war, who's
going to begin one? Not us. It's Labour that's out for a class war.
Not that I care so much about class. What I care about is my family,
and yours too. When you really get down to bedrock, the family's the
most important thing."

She gave a little nervous cough.

"Quite a speech," she said, and looked up above Jack's lofty head and
smiled at the ceiling, and then at Alan. She was moved by her speech,
and rather ashamed of being moved, for she had meant to remain
perfectly calm.

Alan saw vaguely the flaws in her case, which involved the reduction
of all home politics to a sinister game of snatch-as-snatch-can, and
the inevitable permanent defeat of the under-dog. He might have seen
the defects clearly, but he deliberately would not. For Pearl had
captured the whole of his sympathy by her appeal for the institution
of the family. The family for him was more sacred than anything else
in the social structure. It was the main article of his religion. And,
though she had slighted marriage to him, how she had defended the
family! She cared tremendously for the ornaments of existence; she was
without doubt luxurious. But her preoccupation with powder and rouge,
the cut of frocks, manners, the arts of elegance, did not prevent her
from having basic ideas about life.

She had thought. She had used her brain; she had a brain worth using.
She extorted full respect. She was an equal. He admired her intensely.
He said to himself, "I am very fond of this girl." And now she was
very magnificent in her controlled, powerful emotion. She was one of
the most wonderful spectacles he had ever witnessed. She had quickened
and ennobled the fundamental vitality of the compartment. She had gone
deeper and risen higher than Jack with his resounding abstractions,
his limited vision, his cruel fanaticism. There was in her mood
something of the Wordsworthian grandeur....

No, he must not be unfair to Jack. If Jack's vision was limited, so
was Pearl's. And it might be argued, too, that Pearl also was a
fanatic. But the boy lacked humanity, in which Pearl abounded. Jack
burned with a fiercer flame, Pearl with a richer glow, than the other.
Alan himself, while his instinct was on Pearl's side, wished to judge
impartially between them. And, as gradually he allowed himself to do
so, he saw that he was judging impartially because maturity had cooled
his fires. The younger generation surpassed him in the heat of
passionate conviction. He envied them their certainties. Why should
either of them ever yield? He would be compelled to despise them for
yielding. Neither of them must yield. Disaster was ahead: but there
were finer things than the avoidance of disaster, things which were
not too dear at the price of disaster. Disaster might be splendid--it
would be. He was almost ready to welcome it. The pair, and Pearl
specially, had uplifted him to a higher plane of being; the battle was
on that plane, not below. The battle was endless; a decision simply
could not be conceived. Even the destraction of all life would not be
a decision--only a shirking by the Creator. The endlessness of the
battle, the unanswerableness of the famous riddle, alone rendered life
worth living. The train, sweltering in the subterranean arcana of the
terrific mountain, obstinately rasped and rattled its forward way,
bearing the battle along with it. And in Alan's heart happiness and
misery were fused into a single sensation transcending the sum of
both.

"Well," said Jack, with hard urbanity, glancing down at Pearl. "I
don't see it. I'm sorry."

He looked at his father and, retreating from Pearl, resumed the little
seat in the corner opposite Alan. He said no more. His face said no
more. He was a piece of marble, from which Pearl's arguments had
dropped like flung dry earth. The couple were fixed in opposition.

Yet Alan felt that even now a passionate emotion was straining to
escape from its marble prison in Jack and surge upon Pearl and
dissolve her and drown her, and that Pearl too was hiding a tenderness
which, could it elude the jailer her brain, might melt marble and
perform a hundred other wonders in order to coalesce with Jack's. At
the same time Alan knew that the miracle was impossible. Intellectual
pride, spiritual pride, energised by the profoundest instincts--pride
was in command, and nothing could dislodge it.

A tunnel-lamp, flitting by, showed more palely than the previous one.
The next minute the train was out of the tunnel and running through a
station with the name of Bardonnecchia. Another land! The early
evening seemed lighter here than at Modane, though half an hour had
passed; but this impression was only the effect of contrast after the
darkness of the tunnel. Already the train was sliding rapidly down
slopes, all sense of effort gone. Pearl rose and, standing at the
little table, contemplated the windows, completely ignoring Jack, who
was almost touching her. The views, however, were on the other side of
the carriage, framed in the woodwork of the doorway. Nobody spoke a
word. Now and then, between hills, brief glimpses of a red sunset
stain on the western clouds! The train curved eastwards, skirting a
foam-patterned stream. It crossed the river, again and again. It sped
through short tunnels and over viaducts. It was in a gorge, peaks on
either hand. Grey-green trees. Rocks. Tiny and forlorn dwellings in
the solitude. Then a little fortressed town, perched on a height, came
and vanished in five seconds. Then a broader valley arrived. Night was
closing down.

Putting her hand on a clasp of the window, Pearl glanced enquiringly
at Alan. Might she open it? He helped her with the stiff machinery.
Jack did not move. She breathed in the tonic air voluptuously. Yes,
another land, a different climate, southern, far softer, despite
winter and dusk and the still lofty height. Broad spaces to the south.

"The plains of Italy!" Pearl murmured.

What she saw was mist, not the plains of Italy, but its effect on her
was the same.

Nothing else was said. Alan noticed tears rising in her eyes. He had
seen them there on the night before the accident. And she had held
them, then. But now they were less obedient to her will.

"I suppose that art-student woman would have said something very
technical about 'values' in this landscape," she remarked. (The first
reference Alan had heard to her former companion in the original
train! And for himself he had not once thought of the woman, who had
doubtless preceded them in an earlier train.) Pearl tried to give one
of her ironic smiles; and failed. The tears slipped unruly down her
lovely cheeks; some of them dripped on to the table over which she was
bending. She had ceased the effort to maintain appearances. She
sobbed. "Even the youngest of us," thought Alan grimly, in the conceit
of his age, "can't stay up all night and go through railway accidents
and break up their lives and their husbands' lives, without paying for
it in nerves. She's all gone to pieces at last." But he dared not
attempt to comfort her, lest worse should happen.

"Oh, damn!" she exclaimed sharply, angry with herself. "Jack, help me
to shut this window."

The window was shut, by the two men. Pearl sat down and wiped her
eyes, not furtively, and sighed. The blinds were drawn. There was
nothing but the train, the interior of the compartment. Silence, save
for the dulled roar of the train. Alan felt that he had been brought
near to the very roots of life, and that disaster had beauty.




CHAPTER XXIX

LEAVING THE TRAIN


Genoa. The train journey was over for Alan. The train had run through
the ravine separating the city from the port, with glimpses of the
lights of lighthouses, and of many steamers and trams, and come to a
stop at the curving platform of the Piazza Principe station. Alan had
said a strange, self-conscious good-bye to Pearl, who was going on to
her mother at Viareggio, and, Jack attentively watching over him, had
got down the steep steps from the carriage. Pearl had scarcely risen
from her seat. No beds had yet been made up in the compartments. Jack
had wanted to accompany her to Viareggio--only two or three hours
further on, but Pearl would not agree. She had said: "I _prefer_ not,"
with finality. Also: "Jack must see his mother. She'll be anxious, and
of course he must see her, and the sooner the better." Jack was
taciturn.

Alan noticed that at parting husband and wife shook hands with an
affected nonchalance imitating the casualness of acquaintances. From
the platform he glanced at the windows of the carriage. No Pearl there
to smile and wave them on their way with her affection! Nor had Pearl
charged him with any message for Elaine--but no doubt in the nervous
stress of those moments she had merely forgotten the customary
courtesy: excusable. Alan nevertheless regretted the omission. He
stood on the platform, rather confused and forlorn, while the strong
and masterful Jack dealt with a porter in an Italian which was
inferior to Pearl's.

A small crowd as usual on the platform, but apparently no special
interest in the train; no sign of official interest. Every passenger
in the train had probably seen death close, had lived through a
shattering experience; yet nobody waiting on the platform seemed to
care or even to know. Genoa might never have heard of the great
accident. Turin had displayed symptoms of excitement, but somewhat
faint. Alan was resentful at such atrocious neglect. He had an idea
that the Mayor and Corporation of Genoa ought to have been present to
condole publicly with the victims of misfortune....

The car would have to be found which Elaine was to send for him from
Arenzano, ten miles or so westward, her favourite spot on the Italian
Riviera, the spot which by much frequenting she had made hers, and
which she would refer to as if she owned it. But would the car be
there at that hour? Complications. Happily Jack was at hand. Without
Jack.... Then he caught sight of the magical, astounding apparition of
Miss Office. She was talking vivaciously, but with seriousness, to a
uniformed representative of Cook's, and her eye was searching all the
time. She saw her employer and hurried towards him. He felt the
irrational guilt of a man who is hiding, and must hide, terrible
secrets, for which he is entirely unresponsible. He simply could not
be natural. But he was intensely, ineffably relieved to behold Miss
Office. How like her to be so miraculously there to meet him! Her
expression was perturbed, concerned, but it had all its old smiling
helpfulness. Before she had spoken, or even reached him, she had
become a cushion for his abraded sensibilities. He was very glad that
the doctor had visited the compartment while the train halted at Turin
and had substituted for the bandage round his forehead a much neater
and less noticeable dressing of cotton-wool, cyanide gauze, and
sticking-plaster. The bandage had given to his wound a most misleading
air of importance.

"And how come you to be here before me, young woman?" he asked
cheerfully, taking her ungloved hand.

"Oh! I've been here for hours--four hours," said she. "They sent us
round--I forget the route--but we got here first, you see. My word, I
did have a turn when I first heard of the accident. You aren't
_really_ hurt then? That Cook's man there's been awfully nice. He's
Italian. He showed me about it in the Italian afternoon paper. And the
other accident too, near Toulouse. Your name wasn't among the injured.
I _was_ glad." "Especially for Mrs. Frith-Walter. Directly I got here
I got a car and drove to Arenzano. I thought I ought to break it to
her. But she'd had your telegram then, and she was just coming over to
Genoa. So we came back together. I got rooms for you at the Nettuno.
Mrs. Frith-Walter said you always stayed there when you came to Genoa.
Besides, I knew of course. She wouldn't hear of your motoring to
Arenzano to-night in the dark. It isn't far, but I must say the road
_is_ bad. She'd be here now to meet you, only this train's come in
nearly an hour before they said it would. She _will_ be disappointed
not being here at the station to meet you. I only came so early
because I wanted to be sure. I suppose it was awful, the accident.
I've never been in one myself; but I can imagine it." Miss Office was
talking more than usual, and faster, and more loudly. Excitement,
naturally. "That on your forehead, Mr. Frith-Walter--it's not----"

"Nothing. Nothing at all. A bit of glass. Bled a bit at first."

"But were you stunned?"

"I believe I was--at first; but I was soon all right. Yes, it was
something of an experience."

"Well, you _were_ lucky. I mean--you weren't lucky to be in the
accident. But seeing there was an accident, you were lucky it wasn't
any worse. I _am_ glad. Oh! Mr. John! Mr. John here too?"

Jack had joined them. They were being jostled.

The porter waited for instructions, a collection of small baggage at
his feet. He was ignored. Jack shook hands, silent, with a stiff,
preoccupied, urbane smile.

"Didn't you know Mr. John was here?" Alan clumsily enquired. He was
muddled now, scarcely knew what he was saying.

"No, I didn't. Mrs. Frith-Walter showed me the telegrams. One of them
said about Mrs. John, but nothing about Mr. John. Unless I was in too
much of a state to read them properly."

"How did you sign those wires, Jack?" Alan enquired, still more
clumsily. He knew that two telegrams had been sent.

"I signed both of them in your name, Dad," Jack curtly answered.
"Thought I'd better."

Alan thought in frightened apprehension of the explanations that lay
before him. He must consider carefully how to phrase them to Elaine.

"And Mrs. John?"

"Mrs. John," said Alan. "She's going straight on to Viareggio to see
her mother."

"Oh!"

Just that sole monosyllable betrayed the secretarial delicate sense of
the existence of something equivocal, dubious in the situation.

Miss Office added:

"Of course Mrs. Meadowes must be frightfully anxious. She's at
Viareggio, is she?"

"Yes," said Alan. "Mrs. John was going to stay with her there for the
New Year."

"Oh, I _see_", said Miss Office brightly, as if trying to show them, and
herself, that the situation was not in the least equivocal, after all.

Alan's apprehensions about the immediate future increased. His
imagination was working, and he began to realise more acutely the
appalling nature of the oncoming difficulties. In a few hours at the
latest, perhaps within the next hour, he would have to acquaint Elaine
with the inconceivable fact touching her son and daughter-in-law.
Elaine was tranquil by temperament, but he was afraid--he was afraid.

"And what now? What now?" Jack demanded, grim man of the world.

"Well----" Alan murmured.

"I think, Mr. Frith-Walter," said Miss Office, "if you went straight
off now, you'd be at the hotel before Mrs. Frith-Walter leaves. I'm
sure you would. And if you'll give me the luggage-ticket I can stay
here and see to your trunk and bring it along. That Cook's man will
help me. But it's just as you like."

"Yes," said Alan, hating a definite move, but as it were borne forward
on a mysterious current.

He produced the baggage-check and handed it to the faithful Irene.

"Yes, this is it," said she. "I remember the number." The
extraordinary creature seemed to be just as perfectly at home at
Genoa, where she had never been before, as at Victoria itself. "You
aren't so awfully late, you know," she gently laughed. "Only twelve
hours, about. And considering...."

To Alan months had elapsed. And it was odd to see Miss Office still
alive and utterly unchanged.

"And you, Jack? What will you do?"

"Well, I'll follow. I may have some trouble here because you see I
haven't got any ticket. I ought to have seen to that at Turin. I'll be
responsible for all this small luggage. Don't you trouble about
anything."

Plausible (thought Alan), but the lad was dreading the encounter with
his mother. Or was his idea to return to Pearl?

"There's the way out," said Miss Office, pointing. "You go downstairs
first. You have your ticket, haven't you? There are lots and lots of
taxis outside."

Alan moved desperately away. The next moment he perceived that a
porter had been thoughtfully sent after him with his suitcase. One of
Miss Office's fine shades of efficient secretaryship.




CHAPTER XXX

ELAINE


"Elaine!"

Alan gave the call nervously. The rather over-illuminated room into
which he had been shown was empty. A large, shining, very clean, pale
room, with two beds in it, side by side and close together. Two
counterpanes had been folded away and the beds turned down for the
night. Alan pulled off his overcoat. He touched a pillow, a sheet.
Heavenly whiteness, softness, purity! To lie in one of those beds
seemed to him to be a celestial prospect of physical sensations
surpassing any that he had ever experienced. An inner door was open.
He passed through the doorway, calling again:

"Elaine!"

Bathroom, long, narrow and lovely. It had been used. Bottles on the
glass shelf above the lavatory basin. A familiar dressing-gown hung
up. Exquisite domestic, feminine disorder. Bath taps marked "C" and
"F". To have a bath! To slip into the soothing, laving water! To
abandon himself to the cleansing caresses of the water!
Paradise.... Elaine appeared at the door opposite which led from
another room beyond. She started.

He beheld her as though she had risen from the dead, as though he had
not expected ever to behold her again. Tall, slim, pallid. Mother of
an adult son, of a Parliamentary candidate; and no doubt she looked
the mother of an adult son. But Alan still saw in her the girl that he
had married. For she had kept her figure, and the rather flattish
contours of her pensive face were scarcely changed. No rouge on her
lips, but a little powder on her face and the somewhat desiccated
neck.

"Oh, Alan! How--Oh, Alan!" Her low, soft voice vibrated quite
unusually. Pathetic! Touching! That was what she was. It was as if
she, not he, had escaped death in the night. "How did you--I was just
coming. I'm all ready except my frock."

He took her. She was one of those who have to be taken. Nonchalant in
love, infinitesimally responsive, and not always acquiescent she was.
But from her the faintest response was thrillingly significant. He
kissed her again and again, not twice in the same place. He could kiss
easily and naturally; and he knew how to handle her, having spent over
a quarter of a century in acquiring knowledge and understanding of
her. How youthfully soft the skin of her shoulders. He clasped her
tightly, so that she could not move. Weak, he was a Hercules compared
to her. She tried to push him away. He would not be pushed. Her desire
was to look at him. He let himself be pushed. With her frail hands on
his tweed shoulders she gazed at him She was gazing at the plastered
place on his forehead.

"It's simply nothing," he said.

She put her hand gently on his forehead, just above the wound. Her
hand was cold and damp; "_moite_,"--he thought of the French word for
it. He had never felt her hands cold before. She was indeed moved. "I
didn't really know her till this moment," he thought, and gazed down
the long vista of his intimate, conjugal, habitual life with her,
which became mysteriously romantic. He gazed into her face, and at
once guessed that she had left her lips unrouged, because to her
strange, subtle sense of fitness, rouge would have been unseemly for
the solemn encounter at the railway station; he was capable of these
divinations.

"Oh, Alan, I was so frightened."

"Did you hear of the accident before you had the wire?"

"No."

"Well, then!... You knew I was all right." He thought: "If you'd seen
me holding on to the corridor and the carriage all coming to pieces,
you'd have been frightened then!"

She questioned him for details or the accident. She wanted to afflict
herself. That was it. But he wilfully understated everything, made
light of it all.

"Of course," he said, "every time they shoved the brakes on in the
train we came on by I felt my nerves a bit rasped. You know--sort of
notion there was going to be another mess-up. But otherwise I was
absolutely all right."

He did not convince her, however. She had no mind to part with her
emotions so easily.

"Brakes! Oh!" she shuddered. Yes, she was tremendously moved.

"This is worth the accident," he thought. She alone had imaginatively
comprehended. The effect of the brakes on him, for instance. The
brakes had horribly jarred his nerves throughout the journey from the
scene of the accident, right down to the final application of them as
the train entered Genoa. He had mentioned the recurring ordeal of the
brakes once to Jack; but Jack had only smiled with easy forbearance as
at a foolishly frightened child; Jack had not comprehended.

Some difference between Elaine's state and even the faithful Irene's.
The fact was, Miss Office had been a shade too placid, ever so little
disappointingly placid.

"I must tell you," said he impulsively, but well aware that he was
going out to meet trouble when he might have postponed it for a little
while, "Jack'll be here in a minute or two."

"Jack? But--" She was thunderstruck.

"Took it into his head to fly over to Aix with that fellow I forget
his name--friend of his, you know," said Alan, with forced lightness.

"To Aix! Fly over--in winter! I wonder what on earth that boy will do
next! Oh, my dear! It's too much. It really is. All coming together!"

Evidently she had a secret fixed conviction that Jack was a wild man,
capable of the most fantastic madnesses. Evidently she had long ago
grasped that disturbing fact better than Alan. And so Jack _was_ a
wild man! Alan said to himself: "My girl, you'll soon have to know
what your son is doing 'next'!"

"But why should he go and do a thing like that?"

"Well, you see, Pearl was in the train. A fancy of his!"

"And was Jack in the accident?"

"Yes. Not a scratch."

"And Pearl too?"

"Yes. Not a scratch either."

"But you didn't say anything about Jack in your telegrams--you did say
about Pearl."

"They weren't my telegrams. Jack sent them off. He didn't tell me what
he'd said in them."

"But they were signed in your name?"

"I expect the lad thought you'd like to hear from me direct. See?"

"And why was Pearl in that train? You never let me know she was coming
with you."

"I couldn't. Didn't know myself till I met her in the train. Sheer
chance. She didn't know I was in the train, and I didn't know she was
in the train. She was on the way to Viareggio to spend the New Year
with her mamma." Alan was now endeavouring to be sprightly. "Here, my
girl. Put something on. You're hardly decent."

He snatched at the peignoir; and frowning, puzzling, absent-minded,
she pushed her arms into its sleeves while Alan held it.

"Well," said Elaine, "I shall have something to say to them when I do
see them." She smiled, wanly resentful against circumstance.

"You won't see Pearl. You'll only see Jack. Pearl's gone straight on
to Viareggio. Same train, you see. No changing or anything. Thought
her mamma would be anxious. Jack thought _his_ mamma would be anxious.
So they separated."

A brilliant piece of explanatory, plausible narrative. But Elaine's
face did not clear. Women were always so damnably suspicious. The
trouble was that in this case the woman was suspicious with cause.

"And where _is_ Jack?"

"He's coming. He'll be here directly. He's fixing things with Miss
Office at the station."

"Well, I do think Pearl might have stayed with Jack here just one
night. Mrs. Meadowes would have understood. It couldn't have made much
difference to her."

Egotism of the mother! Alan perceived that already Elaine was thinking
more about her boy than about the boy's father. Natural! Proper! A
sound instinct! Nevertheless....

"I agree," said he. "But you know what people are. Now _re_ food. I
don't want much. But I want a little."

"Oh, darling. Forgive me." Her tone changed. She was calm again, and
contrite. "Come. Everything's ready. You poor dear! You're wonderful."

She took his hand and led him through another double-bedded room into
a sitting-room, where a cold meal was deliciously laid for three, with
flowers. The sight of it would have stimulated appetite in a dying
man.

"This was for Pearl," said Elaine, indicating the third place. "Now
it'll be for Jack." She rang the bell.

"You've got hold of an A1 suite," said Alan.

"I insisted on double-bedded rooms," said Elaine. "The single rooms
are always so small. But there's a single room next to this. It was
for Pearl. Now it'll be for Jack."

Strange, the effect of her repetition of the phrase!

Alan dropped into an easy-chair and surveyed the large, garish room.

"I think I'll have a bath first," he suggested.

A waiter came in, inhumanly detached from all railway accidents and
domestic complications, bearing a silvern bowl of soup.

"You'd better have some hot soup first, darling," said Elaine,
regaining her customary, tranquil tenderness. "It will do you good.
And then you can eat after your bath. I'll run and get it ready for
you." And to the waiter: "Soup for one, please. And will you open the
champagne?" Smiling encouragement at Alan, she hurried away into the
bathroom. In a moment--the waiter had just gone--she reappeared, tying
on a belt which matched the peignoir.

"Now is it nice? Is it hot? Let me see you take it. I've turned the
taps on." She enveloped him in solicitude. "And then I thought it
would be _better_ to have double rooms. Because like that if you can't
sleep and you want nursing, I can lie down on the other bed in your
room."

Alan reflected:

"I wish to God this night was over!"

His apprehensions were countless. Her solicitude was infinitely
precious to him: but he guessed that she was compelling herself to be
calm and efficient, and that that which had to be would be.




CHAPTER XXXI

JACK AND HIS MOTHER


"I've sent down to enquire of the bureau, whether they've seen
anything yet of Jack," said Elaine, as she came into the bathroom for
the fifth or sixth time, adjusting the frock which she had put on
since the previous visit. She had been meticulously attentive to Alan
during the bath, proceeding on the assumption that he could do nothing
for himself. And in addition to being attentive she had shown in her
tranquil and restrained manner a solemn passionate affectionateness.
Alan had been made to understand that only one person in the world was
capable of caring for him as he ought to be cared for, that Elaine was
that person, and that in executing the role of attendant she was
fulfilling her highest mission, living at her intensest vitality, and
obtaining happiness for herself. Once, between the peignoir and the
frock, she had kissed the plaster on his forehead as he lay in the
water.

He almost forgot, in his luxuriating felicity, the prospect of woe
that menaced them. He thought: "Would Pearl ever have done this for
Jack? Or anything like it?" And he answered, No. The older generation
had somehow remained young, but the younger generation had always been
old. "You are mine, you are mine!" Elaine seemed to be saying with
every cosseting gesture. "You are absolutely mine. But I am even more
yours than you are mine." The sense of the unreserved privacy of two
was richly sweet to him. Elaine would not hurry. She revelled in her
dominion over him as he lay at her loving mercy. She would not consult
him, nor even ask a question, as to his clothes. She had opened his
suitcase without a word to him. And without any apology she presented
to him her ultimatum of clean linen, muffler, another pair of
trousers, another waist-coat, dressing-gown, soft slippers. When he
was dressed she handed to him his hair-brushes, and when he had
brushed his hair she gave it a few modifying touches of her own. Then
she took him by the arm back into the sitting-room.

"Now," she said, in a tone as if saying: "I'm sorry it's over, but you
must eat."

In the sitting-room she rang the bell impatiently. After a long delay,
the waiter came, and informed her that Mr. John Frith-Walter had been
in the hotel some time, and had taken a room on the floor above, where
he was at that moment.

"Well!" she exclaimed under her breath, and said to the waiter:
"Please send up and ask the gentleman to come down here, and have all
his things moved into the room next to here." She indicated the small
room adjoining the sitting-room.

All this in an assured, politely imperious voice, without any
reference to Alan.

Alan ate, and Elaine pecked, so that he should not eat alone. Alan ate
in dread of Jack's arrival. He felt the catastrophe approaching. He
pictured Jack's arrival. He could not credit that Jack would ever
arrive. But everything comes to pass. The door at length opened, and
Jack came in; fresh and neat as though he had just taken himself out
of a drawer. Alan heard the growling of thunder round his horizon.

"Well, Mum?"

Elaine sprang up.

"My dearest boy!"

Jack put his arms about her. She let herself be kissed. There were a
hundred reserves, a hundred unspoken enquiries in her fond, anxious
glance. Alan, nervous, knew that she knew she had yet things to learn.

"Why didn't you come straight here?" she asked.

"I thought I'd better tidy up a bit first, Mum."

"And I haven't seen you for so long! And after all this, too!"

"Yes," said Jack, "a nice set-out, wasn't it? However--hello, Dad!
Thought if I tidied up first I shouldn't have to leave you again. I
was just coming."

But Alan guessed that the boy had still been putting off the encounter
with his mother.

"I've got a room for you here," said Elaine. "Next to ours. I wanted
us all to be together."

"Ah! But how was I to know that? However...." He sprawled on to a
chair at the table. "This knife and fork for me? Good! Champagne, eh?
Not a bad idea, Mum."

"So Pearl's gone on to Viareggio?" said Elaine. Her eyes added: "I
think my son's wife might have stayed here for the night."

She apportioned to her son cold chicken, ham, and some salad. The boy
absently poured out champagne for himself. They were together. Alan's
entire family were together once more, for the first time since Jack's
marriage. Nobody spoke. The constraint characteristic of near
relatives.

Jack said suddenly:

"I suppose Dad's told you?"

"Told me what, my dear?" Elaine's suspicions were now in an instant
arrayed in full order to battle.

"You've told her, Dad, haven't you?"

"What?" Alan demanded gruffly.

Jack turned to his mother.

"I've decided to stand for Parliament, Mum."

Elaine's face lightened with pride.

"Oh! I _am_ glad. But your father and I had other things to talk
about. So he hasn't had a chance to tell me."

"Yes. Labour."

Jack's tone was challenging--exactly the defiant tone that Alan had
heard earlier. Alan saw that he had determined to bring the situation
to its climax, or to the first of its climaxes, with a rush. Perhaps
the best course. But how alarming!

"What do you mean 'Labour'?"

"I'm going to stand as a Labour candidate. I've joined the Labour
Party."

There it was--the first climax!

"You don't mean that!"

"I do. And I know all it means to you, Mum. But I've _got_ to stand
for Labour."

Swift tears glistened in Elaine's eyes. Only a fraction of time had
elapsed since her caressing hands were wet with the water of Alan's
bath, since she was a mistress, a handmaiden in the unashamed privacy
of two. Now she was the sedate dignified mother, charged with
unimagined trouble. Yet the same woman, somehow. Even the accident was
forgotten. Jack's fearful, defiant face, as he ate, was all chin.

"And without asking your father about it!"

"No use asking the dad when I'd made up my mind."

"Jack!... And I hear you flew over. What had that got to do with it
all? I suppose it had something to do with it. But I'm all in the
dark. You go and do--! Everything coming at once like this!"

"She won't argue," thought Alan. "She's past argument. She's come out
on the other side of argument. Simplest."

"I'm awfully sorry, Mum."

"You aren't as sorry as I am," said Elaine, recovering a little her
composure. "Labour! A Frith-Walter! After the way they're always
behaving at the works too! Well, I give up trying to understand you,
Jack. But I gave up long ago. And this flying again!"

There was a knock at the door. Miss Office entered.

"May I come in?"

Elaine completed her recovery. To Alan, in her sedate dignity she was
infinitely pathetic, a tortured courageous child within a mother; for
him nothing mattered in the catastrophe save its effect upon that
helpless child. His compassion for her pained him acutely and absorbed
him. He cared naught for Jack's wicked conscience, or the great social
problem, or Pearl's feelings, or his own feelings. He wanted to
comfort Elaine, who was perhaps mentally incapable of argument on the
high philosophic male plane, but who had the robust sense to see the
folly of all argument, and who was the chief and saddest victim. And
he could not comfort her.

Miss Office was plainly worried, self-conscious. She shut the door
rather solemnly, but held on to the door-knob, fingering it in the
manner of an actress who is trying to express feelings which the
dramatist has not put into his dialogue. Alan knew the look on her
face.

"Well, Miss Office, what's the latest calamity?" he asked, with an
attempt at cheerful bluffness.

Miss Office smiled feebly.

"I'm afraid there's been a muddle about your trunk, Mr. Frith-Walter.
The number on the trunk doesn't correspond with the number on the
luggage-check. It's my fault. I ought to have looked at it at
Victoria. I thought I had done. I told them it was your trunk--at
least that Cook's man told them for me. I offered to open it for them,
because I always carry your second key myself, in case anything should
happen. But they wouldn't hear of it. Cook's man says they say you'll
have to go down there yourself and sign a paper about it. I said you
were ill, and all about the railway accident and so on. But no! It
wouldn't do for them. I do think it's a bit cool. I'm awfully sorry. I
know it's my fault." She looked at Elaine as the chief possible source
of dissatisfaction with her.

Alan was relieved. The trunk at that moment was a trifle in his eyes.
Sooner than trouble about the trunk he would be ready to go out into
Genoa the next morning, and buy afresh the entire outfit that the
trunk contained.

"Now don't think twice about it," he said masterfully. "You get
something to eat and go to bed. It's not your fault at all. It's the
fault of those tip-cadging fiends at Victoria. Anyhow we'll see to it
tomorrow."

"Yes, Mr. Frith-Walter. Just as you think best."

"I'll go down to the station myself in the morning," said Jack in a
lordly, casual tone, as one who would put the fear of God into Italian
State Railways. "You haven't given up the check?"

"Oh no!" said Miss Office, quietly triumphant on that point. "I wasn't
going to let them have _that_!"

"Good!" said Jack. "How long was the Rome train before it went?"

"Well," Miss Office gave one of her nervous starts, and faltered. "The
truth is it hasn't gone. They kept it waiting ever so long, and then
they came and told the passengers it couldn't go on to-night, but
there'd be another train tomorrow morning. I suppose they meant
tomorrow's Rome Express, and they'll add carriages to it. I do think
it was a bit cool. Of course all the passengers had to get out and
arrange the best they could for themselves."

Alan was watching her. She had the uneasy, guilty air that he himself
had when compelled to announce misfortunes of which he was utterly
innocent.

"Well I'm damned!" Jack exclaimed, visibly turning pale. He gazed hard
at his plate.

As for Alan, he foresaw complications of the most awful nature. He
felt that he could stand no more hammering from fate; but that he
would have to stand more.

Elaine said calmly and coldly:

"Then Mrs. John has come here?"

"No, madam. She's gone to the Cecil."

"But didn't she know we were all here?"

"I really couldn't say, madam."

"But didn't you tell her?"

"Yes, madam, I did. I offered to help her. But she said she'd be quite
all right. Perhaps she thought there wouldn't be room here. She did
say she'd stayed at the Cecil before."

Alan was stupefied; Jack also. The cat was out of the bag. The
disgrace of the Frith-Walter family was public, Miss Office being the
public. Miss Office could be trusted; her loyalty was absolute; the
woes of the Frith-Walters were her woes; but she was the public. This
horrible contretemps it was, and not the affair of the trunk, that had
upset Miss Office and painted guilt on her face.

"Thank you, Miss Office," said Elaine, grandly assuming charge of the
situation. "I'm sure you did everything you could. Do go to bed--as my
husband says."

Miss Office escaped, like an examinee from the terrors of a _viva
voce_. The Frith-Walter family were again alone together.




CHAPTER XXXII

THE MOTHER


Elaine glanced at Alan, who raised his eyebrows and parted his lips,
to indicate to her that he knew no more than she knew and that even if
he did he refused to accept any responsibility for anything that had
happened or might happen. Then Elaine turned to Jack:

"Jack, you must go along to the Cecil at once, and bring your wife
here. You can't possibly stay in different hotels like this."

"But Mum, she'll be all fixed up by now. She won't want to be moving
again at this time of night."

"Then you must go and stay _there_. I can't understand, if she really
had to go on to Viareggio without seeing us, why you didn't stop with
her till the train started. Then this couldn't have happened."

"Oh yes it could. Besides, she didn't wish me to stop with her. She
said I'd better come to you at once."

"That was very sweet of Pearl," said Elaine coldly. "But your place
was with her."

"You don't know Pearl, Mum. I had to leave her, and what did it matter
whether I left her a bit earlier or a bit later?"

"It seems to me," Elaine replied, "it mattered a lot. If you'd stayed
with her, I say, this wouldn't have happened."

"I say it would," said Jack curtly.

"Have you and Pearl quarrelled then?" asked Elaine. Her tone was calm;
it was stately; but in the sounds of her voice tragedy faintly
vibrated. She was the mother; had never been anything else but the
mother.

"We haven't quarrelled at all. We've separated." Jack went on eating,
grimly. Alan had finished his meal. "You see it's like this. As I've
told you, I'm going into Parliament as a Labour member, and Pearl says
she can't stick living with a Labour member. And that's that. We've
talked it all out. She won't give way. And I can't. Can't be helped."
He took a fresh mouthful.

Alan demanded gently:

"But when did you decide to separate? You hadn't decided when last we
were discussing it."

"_She_ had. Possibly I hadn't."

"But you said you hadn't."

"I did say something like that. But while you were asleep after Turin,
we went into the other compartment and settled it finally. As she
said, no object in letting the thing drag on. May as well face the
facts."

"But my boy, this is terrible. You don't realise how terrible it is,"
said Elaine.

"Don't I!"

"I simply refuse to believe it. Pearl----"

"Still, there it is." Jack drank some champagne, threw his napkin on
the table, and lit a cigarette.

"Do you mean to tell me," said Elaine, now more than a mother, a
queen. "Do you mean to tell me that your wife is ready to leave you
because--because you don't have the same opinions about politics?"

"I only mean to tell you what she's told me.... That's what women are
these days," Jack added.

"Breaking up the home."

"There is no home."

"Then there ought to have been. All this living in hotels...."

"I know. I know. Of course there ought to have been a home. Don't I
see it! But hotels save so much trouble."

"_Do_ they save trouble?" said Elaine effectively.

Too effectively, Alan thought. Her tone was that not merely of a
mother to a child, but of a mother to a child who was under no nervous
strain, and who was being silly out of simple naughtiness.

Elaine went on:

"May I ask whether you and Pearl had come to this decision before you
left England?"

"No. Not exactly."

"Or before the accident happened?"

"Oh no! Didn't you hear what I said to Father?"

"Then you just made the decision casually in the train?"

Elaine's manner, provocative and hostile, still showed no concession.
Alan had a desire to instil the wisdom of diplomacy into both of them;
but he forbore, lest he might render bad worse. He sat helpless, and
watched the breach widen between them. It was indeed deplorable that
Elaine should be cross-examining the boy on a point which he had
already explained quite clearly in reply to Alan's question. Jack
might excusably have charged her with casually not listening.

"Casually, do you say?" Jack burst out. "Casually? Certainly not. Do
you seriously suppose that anybody does that sort of thing casually?
As for it being in the train--why shouldn't it be in the train?" He
stood up, and glared and flared. "A train's just as good as any other
place. We knew each other's minds, positively." He came near to
shouting. Then he sat down, glancing at his father an appeal, an
apology. "Sorry!" He finished on a quiet, subdued, controlled note:
"You say I don't realise! I 'realise' better than anybody. I've got
the best reason for 'realising'." He resumed smoking gloomily,
sulkily.

Elaine said:

"I'm so disappointed in Pearl that I can't say _how_ disappointed I
am! Why, if your father had turned Bolshevik do you imagine I should
have cut loose from him? A wife! Why, even if he had committed
murder--surely wives have a duty. Besides, what business is it of
Pearl's?"

"Come, Mother. You're going right round now. First you say you can't
understand me, and now it's Pearl you can't understand. First you take
her side, and now you're taking my side. Of course it's Pearl's
business. I can understand her even if you can't. And 'duty'--Pearl
would tell you she had a duty to herself first."

Alan was admiring the boy for his imaginative impartiality in judging
between himself and Pearl. He had rarely admired him so much. The
boy's sense of fairness surprised him, made him think: "I have been
underestimating the lad. He has a quality which I didn't suspect." And
Alan thought also in his vanity (but was it vanity?): "He's like me in
that. He takes after me."

On the other hand, his estimate of Elaine was being diminished by her
attitude and behaviour. A minute or two earlier all his sympathy had
been for Elaine. He could no longer see clearly in her the pathetic,
tortured, helpless child. What he saw was chiefly a very grown-up,
unimaginative, somewhat unjust and harsh lady who was submitting her
reason to her susceptibilities and indulging in an egotistic
sentimentality. He said in her excuse: "She's a mother," but his brain
did not find the excuse valid. He was disappointed in her. More
serious, she had lowered the plane of the great altercation. Alan had
discerned something magnificent and fundamental in the impasse between
Jack and Pearl. It was terrible, but it was beautiful; the parties to
it had seemed to be without blame, and the tragedy of their
indifference to be redeemed by the fineness of their irreconcilable
ideals. Elaine had somehow cheapened the disaster.

But then she rose and went across to Jack and bent over him, and put
her fragile white hand on his rough shoulder, and as if this was not
intimate enough she lifted her hand and put it on his smooth and
glossy head--the boy's hair was seldom in disorder. She had little
elegance of costume, but much distinction of figure, with a natural,
quite unconscious gift for the statuesque; and, joining herself thus
to her son, whose elbows rested on the tablecloth, his hands covering
his eyes, she suddenly achieved a sculptor's effect of grouping in the
garish banality of the hotel sitting-room which had been lived in by
hundreds of unknown people in the past and would be lived in by
hundreds of other unknown people in the future.

"Johnnie," she murmured, with moving tenderness; "I do feel for you."

Alan had no belief in the ability of any person, man or woman, to read
thoughts. But he knew that she had guessed his verdict upon her, and
that this action of her was the swift result of a determination to
regain his approval--and he admitted that it was none the worse for
that. He admitted further that, after cheapening the disaster, she was
refining it by mysteriously eliminating from it all the grossness of
politics and reducing it to its elements of pure human sorrow and
individual frustration. True, she had left him, Alan, completely out
of the affair. She, not he, was directing it, by right of superior
initiative and force. He accepted the role of ignored spectator
without any sort of resentment.

"My darling," she said. "You must both think of what is going to
happen to you--I shall see Pearl myself; she can't refuse to let me
talk to her. You would both of you be alone. It would be worse for her
than for you because she's got nothing to be interested in, and you
have. She'd have nothing at all, and you wouldn't have anything that's
worth having. She'd go and live with her mother--all hotels and
hotels. She'd be simply splendid as the mistress of a home, but she'll
have no one to make a home for. She's a first-rate girl, Pearl is, but
she needs to be loved, all the time. She needs someone to live for. We
all do. You'll both get more and more miserable. But you'll get used
to things, and that will be the worst of all. How'll you feel, making
speeches in the House of Commons, when you remember your wife's
playing bridge or going to bed with a book in some hotel? And the
longer you go on the less you'll be able to alter it. It would be
harder every year. Of course you could be divorced, and you'd be free,
but what horrible thing will you have to do to get a divorce? I
daren't think about it. It would kill me. She ought to be going to
have a child, and you ought to be worrying about her in that way. That
would be something worth worrying about--when she couldn't walk much,
and would only go out in the dark, and you had to humour her, and send
for doctors and nurses ... instead of this!" She ceased her gentle
cooing, and there was silence, until she added in a new, almost
dramatic tone: "Me a grandmother! And it was only yesterday that you
crawled up the stairs of Abbott's Ferry on your hands and toes."

Alan was ashamed. He was ashamed because he had scarcely given a
thought to the result of politics on the domestic future of Jack and
Pearl. He had not thought once of the idea of a child, of being
himself a grandfather. (A funny, youthful kind of a grandfather, he
said to himself.) He admired Elaine beyond words. She had not been
clever in the least. She had only said softly what had come into her
head, probably without design. She had suggested no solution of the
frightful dilemma. But she had drawn two pictures; she had drawn
three. He saw her when she was outrageously big with the future
fanatical politician. But it was not like yesterday. His throat
inconvenienced him.

"Don't!" cried Jack angrily, slipping from under Elaine's hand and
standing up tall. "What's the use of rubbing it in? I believe you
enjoy rubbing it in. Don't I tell you I know everything you can tell
me--and more! And don't I tell you it's no use! I'm going to bed. I
shall go back to England tomorrow, and if there was a train I'd go
back to-night. For God's sake leave me alone!" He stamped out of the
room, and the door banged.

Elaine looked at Alan as if for guidance from the stronger.

"Better let him be," said Alan, in a little more than a whisper.




CHAPTER XXXIII

THE BALCONY


"Darling," said Elaine later, "I'm not looking after you. You must go
to bed."

They had scarcely spoken. As to the domestic situation Elaine had
uttered no word, save to remark that Jack was being rather noisy in
his room--next to the sitting-room.

"So must you go to bed," Alan answered.

"It's you who need to be looked after, not me," said Elaine. "I shall
look after you."

She put him to bed, insisted on waiting upon him like a valet. When he
protested she replied that he must let her do it, because it soothed
her to do it.... He was in bed. He was tucked up. All requirements for
the night were at his hand. The ceiling light was extinguished. At his
request she had, protestingly, closed the window, to keep out noises.
She bent over him and kissed him, and still bent over him.

"Well, are you 'soothed' now, my child?" A cheerful, affectionate
raillery.

Elaine nodded, trying to smile.

"Then go and get some sleep."

"I don't feel a bit sleepy. When I think what _might_ have happened to
you! I know I shall dream about it."

He pulled her head down and kissed her.

"I don't mind you dreaming, as long as you sleep. Get away, my child."

"Do you think you'll sleep?"

"Yes," said Alan, telling a lie in order to continue the process of
soothing.

"I shall leave the door open so I can hear you if you call."

"No. If the door's open I shan't sleep a wink. Shut both doors."

She departed, and shut his door gently. The next moment she opened it
again.

"Supposing I took some aspirin?"

"Don't do it," said Alan. "You'll sleep without aspirin."

She had a tendency to be addicted to aspirin and other depressents.
Alan fought this tendency in her, inveighing sometimes with positive
acrimony against the habit of "drugs," which he condemned as foolish
and futile and the resort of weaklings. She shut the door, even more
gently. Alan was alone. He argued with himself whether he should
soothe himself by reading or whether it would be better to take a
chance and turn out the bed-lamp at once. He was certainly exhausted,
and he was comfortable....

"By Jove!" he murmured, "I must have forgotten to turn out the light."
His travelling-watch on the night-table showed that two and a half
hours had passed. He had slept heavily. He felt enfeebled, relaxed;
but extremely wakeful; as though he should never sleep again. He ate a
biscuit, drank water, thought of all the names of fishes beginning
with "m," in both French and English, and went through other
performances stated to be soporific. His brain was but stimulated
thereby.

He drew the volume of Wordsworth from the night-table and began to
read. He counted on Wordsworth to induce in him a tranquillising mood
of grand, philosophic, loving comprehension of human nature and its
pathetic errors. The result was desolating. It seemed to him that the
passages which had inspired him on the previous day and night were
exceptional, were even unique, in the book. _The Prelude_, that
historic work of poetry, was apparently a sticky mass of bald and
tedious prose. With impatience he turned page after page, more and
more quickly, and his eye found nothing but such terrible lines as:

     Among that band of officers was one
     Already hinted at----

or:

     Through Paris lay my readiest course, and there
     Sojourning a few days--

The thing was merely unreadable, and Wordsworth a copious bore. Then,
contumelious and exasperated, he came across the following:

     Then was the truth received into my heart,
     That, under heaviest sorrow earth can bring
     If from affliction somewhere do not grow
     Honour which could not else have been, a faith,
     An elevation, and a sanctity,
     If new strength be not given, and old restored,
     The blame is ours, not Nature's.

"That's not so bad," he thought. "It's a bit preachy and sententious,
and it's only second-rate poetry. But it's not so bad."

He read it again:

     If from affliction somewhere do not grow
     Honour which could not else have been, a faith----

"Something in it," said he. "Preachy or not. Damned fine! It's an
idea." And suddenly Wordsworth had inspired him once more, and more
fully. "Of course I knew it before, but I didn't know I knew it." He
was uplifted. He saw a plain road before him in what had been
confusion. He was conscious of strength to mount the road. He was
equal to anything. "That's enough for one night!" He turned out the
lamp. He was happy within. But he could not sleep. Thirty minutes went
by. The blood began to throb in his damaged temple.

"Aspirin. I saw it in the bathroom, didn't I?" The drug habit was a
danger; it was foolish and futile--but not to himself. He longed for a
drug, and thought of a hundred arguments in favour of a drug. He rose
from the bed like a criminal, and without a sound opened the door.

The door opposite, leading to Elaine's room, was ajar, and light
showed in the narrow, upright rectangle. Beyond the darkness of the
bathroom he could see Elaine sitting and leaning back in an easy-chair
in front of the open window, a glowing cigarette in her hand and
afterwards in her mouth. She had put on another dressing-gown, thicker
and paler and more golden than the first one. Her legs were crossed,
and the upper one dangling slowly. A mournful, almost despairing
expression in her face. A helpless girl. He gazed at her, not moving,
and thought: "This is my chief concern. The others must look after
themselves. Anyhow she came out of her supine state to-night. By God
she did!"

She turned with a start and saw him, and tightly gripped the side of
the chair with hands in the traditional pose of a sphinx.

"Alan! What's the matter?"

"You naughty little thing!" said he lightly, blithely, advancing.
"Didn't I order you to shut both doors?" She made a gesture of
anxiety, and he reassured her: "I'm all right. I slept like a log for
I don't know how long, and then I woke up and I couldn't go to sleep
again. I _did_ think I could wander around without disturbing you. I
knew I shouldn't get to sleep unless I did wander. So up I jumped."

His tone was meant to ease her, and it succeeded. As he approached she
raised her glance. He stood close to her, and with a sudden movement
snatched the cigarette from her mouth and took a puff. To him there
was always something comic in Elaine's smoking. The way she tapped the
cigarette on a table before lighting it, to force the tobacco down
from the top end was very funny: a ritualistic motion which must on no
account be omitted. And the instant she had drawn in smoke she would
whip the cigarette from her mouth as though it were dangerous. She did
not smoke from pleasure, but from a desire to show herself that she
was broad-minded. He restored the cigarette to her lips and it hung
there suspended. Yes, his playfulness had reassured her. Neither of
them spoke. Alan could think of nothing wise enough to say. He went to
the window and stepped out on the balcony.

She vanished quickly through the bathroom and returned with his
dressing-gown, which she held beseechingly for him to put on. He put
it on. He leaned on the rail of the balcony. She leaned close to him
on one arm, and passed the other through his, and he squeezed it
tight. The vast port lay far beneath them under a cloudy night sky. A
warm air. The entrance-lights of the port flashing in colour. The
lofty lighthouse to the right sweeping its powerful beam. Nearer, the
dim, huge forms of serried steamers, some of them--liners--blazing
with electricity. Still nearer, the quays, alive with carts and horses
and motor-lorries in movement, and moving trams skirting the quays,
and trains ceaselessly shunting and snorting in the deep ravine of the
railway track. A racket of various sounds. The port never slept, night
or day. There was a mysterious quality, sinister and very sad, in its
terrible activity. And yet it was exalting too with its everlasting,
untiring human endeavour. So it had gone on and so it would go on,
dwarfing all individual lives. But man had made it.

Alan felt the warmth of his wife's slim arm. The girl's arm, the arm
of the girl who wanted to be a grandmother, the majestic arm of the
queen! His heart as well as his body was very near her. The affection
and use of a quarter of a century of placid companionship joined them
together.

"Now you must go back to bed," he said.

She let fall the burning cigarette-end, which sank in spiral curves
till it disappeared in shrubs on the level of the piazza.

"Alan!" she murmured. "I couldn't bear a divorce."

"Oh!" said he. "They don't think anything of a divorce these days." He
recalled Pearl's remark, apropos of her wedding ring. "Nobody does."

"I do."

"My girl," he said, leading her masterfully into the bedroom. "It will
all come out right. You'll see." He kissed his confidence into her; he
inspired her by virtue of the inspiration which he had received from
Wordsworth. His mood was entirely due to Wordsworth. Miracle! He
recalled that he had most deplorably and astoundingly lost his temper
in the train. But he felt no shame, only philosophic amusement.

"You _have_ done me good!" Elaine said admiringly, trustfully.

"Now off with that padded thing and into bed. You'll sleep now. So
shall I."

She seized him and kissed him solemnly; her ardour was religious.

"Well," thought Alan. "The boy can have politics."




CHAPTER XXXIV

YOUNG LOVE


Being persons of regular morning habits, not to be disturbed by
irregular nights, Alan and Elaine came together into the sitting-room
the next day, just as if nothing unusual had happened. Elaine, dressed
easily first, had helped Alan to dress--not because he needed help,
but because she wanted to help him. She had ordered their breakfast
for ten o'clock punctually, and at ten o'clock punctually they
appeared, though the breakfast did not. They saw Jack leaning over the
balustrade of the balcony, just as they themselves had been leaning a
few hours earlier. The bustle and noise of the port was still
enormously proceeding, careless of the infinitesimal destinies of
important human beings above. Elaine's face instantly changed to an
expression of intense nervous anxiety. She glanced at Alan, who
cheerfully raised his eyebrows and called out with heartiness:

"Morning, Jack."

Jack turned.

"Morning, parents," he responded, imitating the demeanour of his
father, and slipped into the room and kissed his mother. "For an
invalid, Dad, you look pretty fit. How's the gash?" He was clothed, of
course, with plenary correctness as a tourist who knew all the
sartorial rules of travel and respected them. A distinguished object,
bearing no sort of resemblance to the popular conception of a Labour
M.P.

"You've been to the barber's already," Alan chaffed him, after
replying about his own state of health.

"I have. Makes you feel hungry," Jack retorted, in a similar tone.

Elaine, silent, rang the bell. The breakfast entered, on wheels.

"I'm glad you've had it laid for three," said Jack.

"But naturally I've had it laid for three," said Elaine gravely. "I
certainly expected you to have breakfast with us. I should have been
very disappointed if you hadn't."

"Maternal instinct for keeping the family united in grievous
circumstances," thought Alan, who was brightly sardonic.

"Well," he began, when the waiter had gone and Elaine had poured out
tea, "what's the news?"

"Well," Jack answered. "I've written a letter to Pearl and sent it to
the Cecil." He was now noticeably self-conscious.

"We're in the middle of it all again," Alan reflected; he said
nothing.

"Yes," said Jack. "I thought it all over in the night. I can see
there's a lot in what you all say, and I've told her I shall withdraw
my name as a candidate."

"Then you won't stand for Parliament?" Elaine exclaimed, low,
half-incredulous.

"That's it," said Jack.

"You've really decided?" Elaine's face was lightening.

"That's it. I can see it wouldn't do. I don't particularly want to
argue about it. I'll only say I think I may be more use outside the
House than in it. My being in the House might prejudice the Party."

"My dear boy, what a relief!" cried Elaine, ecstatic, with tears in
her eyes. "It all came so suddenly--last--night--I couldn't believe
it. And now it's ended suddenly, and I'm so glad I can't tell you.
Your father said it would all come right. But Jack, these things are
terribly wearing for your mother, and your father too." She rose
slowly, and with much dignity kissed Jack, who was restive under the
caress. Then she wiped her eyes. "You'll go and fetch Pearl here."

"Yes," Jack agreed. "Only we don't know yet what time her train goes."

"You'll go with her to Viareggio?"

"I certainly shall," said Jack.

Alan stared boldly at the boy, who avoided his gaze.

"Well," said Alan. "All I'll say is I'm glad. We'll leave it at that."
And he was glad, but he was also not glad. And he was far more not
glad than glad. The reputation and the unity of the family were saved.
He would be spared strange remarks from his fellow-directors, and
strange glances from the employees. Separation and divorce were no
longer a menace. Pearl was saved from the fate of the lone woman, and
Jack from the fate of the lone man. But what about political ideals
and aims? What about the boy's zeal for what he deemed to be the
welfare of the country? What about the under-dog? Abandoned, all
abandoned in favour of passion for a woman! Alan knew that any reasons
which Jack might advance for his change of front would be merely a
cover for the real reason--passion. Men who were not passionately in
love did not fly hundreds of miles in winter to overtake their idol.
Passion in itself was fine; but in Jack's case it had defeated his
conscience. What must his passion be to have got the better of that
obstinate chin! The boy was a miserable slave. It was not his fault,
nor Pearl's. It was his misfortune. He was a victim. The result was
dire, in the profoundest sense. Alan was amazed and depressed by
Elaine's apparent total failure to perceive the secret tragedy
underlying her son's return to sanity. Better madness and disaster
than this sanity based on emotion. He was very sad, sadder than he had
ever been on the day previous. He felt that he was sad for the rest of
his life. And there was Elaine exultant, blind, without vision.
Nevertheless he gave himself strength to meet the fresh, astounding
development of calamity. "If new strength is not found," he said to
himself firmly, "the blame is ours, not Nature's."

But he had no notion of what he ought to do. Dangerous to upbraid the
boy, to attempt to undermine the boy's confidence in himself! The boy
had taken a heroic decision; or, otherwise expressed, the boy had
yielded to cowardice. But in either case the boy must be supported. So
Alan maintained cheerfulness, and made one or two subtle jokes of
which neither the boy nor his mother perceived the point.

"Yes, you can clear away," said Elaine to the waiter who entered.

But the waiter said:

"A lady, madam."

Pearl came in. She was wearing a frock, coat and hat, in shades of
blue, to which Alan was a total stranger, and he wondered how she had
contrived, in the maze of Italian red-tape, to get hold of trunks
registered for Viareggio, and how, having obtained them, she had had
the energy to open them if she meant to continue the journey by the
noon train. She showed the same plenary correctness as Jack. A
fine-looking couple!

Pearl, despite efforts to hide the fact, was nervous, and instantly
the other three grew very nervous, Elaine and Jack more than Alan, who
was cultivating the devil-may-care attitude.

"Good morning, everybody."

Jack stood up and said nothing. Elaine stood up.

"My _dear_" Elaine murmured.

The two women kissed--the kiss of women who know what is expected from
them. Pearl had perceived in the tenth of a second that her mother-in-law
was faintly hostile. Alan perceived this too, but he could not
understand why Elaine should feel resentment against the girl whose
firmness had saved the family from the humiliation of possessing a
Labour M.P. Simultaneously he understood the mystery perfectly well.

"In my quality of invalid," said he, "I'm not supposed to rise."

Pearl put her hands on his shoulders, looked at him affectionately,
and refrained from kissing him. No doubt the presence of the waiter
had checked her; but Alan was disappointed. Still, he said to himself
for solace, "She kissed my hand in the train, anyhow." And never would
he forget it.

"You're absurdly beautiful this morning," he said, taking her hand
after he had replied to a question about his condition.

"Am I?"

Constraint again: Alan had failed to dissipate it.

The waiter was unbelievably slow.

"By the way," said Alan. "Where's Miss Office? I expected to see her
earlier than this."

"She was in here before you came in," said Jack. "I told her to go out
for a walk."

"But my trunk? I must have my trunk."

"My dear father," said Jack, with benevolent condescension. "Don't
worry about your trunk."

"I said I should see to it and I have done. It's in the corridor."

Alan waved a hand.

The waiter, having replaced a bowl of flowers on the table, finally
departed. All were now sitting. Renewed constraint.

"Dearest Pearl," Elaine began sweetly, "your father-in-law and I are
very glad indeed at what's happened. We're sure Jack's right to change
his mind."

"Change his mind?" Pearl repeated, as it were absently.

"Haven't you had my note, Pearl?" Jack burst out--his first words.

"Yes," said Pearl. "I've had it, thanks."

Her nervousness had increased. In the train Alan had thought her the
most self-possessed woman in the whole world, with a mature equanimity
impossible to disturb in almost any circumstances. But now, especially
in comparison with the dignified and older Elaine, she seemed very
young, rather wistful, rather touching, rather appealing in her
surprising embarrassment. She had won the great conjugal battle, but
she had no air of a victrix.

"I'm sorry you're glad," she faltered, to Elaine. Then she got up and
went across to Jack. "Do you think, my poor boy, that I'm going to let
anyone say that you gave up your political career for a woman? Do you
think it for a single moment? Because if you do you're wrong. I should
be too ashamed. I couldn't bear it. You're a horrid nuisance with your
politics, and you'll upset your mother dreadfully; but you've just got
to go on with them. I forgive you that letter. What am I saying? As if
I had anything to forgive! Your letter was--well, never mind what it
was. All I say is you aren't going to give up any career for me. And I
shan't leave you. If you must ruin your native country, I'll stand in
with you. What does it matter? All politics are silly. No, they
aren't. Well, I don't know what I mean." She turned to Elaine. "I
suppose I've done for myself with you. I can't help it; and so there
we are! Jack, I didn't like you being so weak, but if you hadn't
been--I don't know where we should have been. No, I really don't! With
my obstinacy. Not that I _really_ think you were weak. You were
clever. Nobody else could have been so clever. Jack--" Her clear tones
had thickened. She began to cry and fell on to him, somehow, in a
lump, her elegance all gone.

"My dear," said Elaine plaintively to Alan, with equivocation and an
incomparable presence of mind, "I _do_ think you ought to let me dress
your forehead now. I shan't ask you again."

They left the room for Elaine's bedroom; Alan shut the door; they
breathed out relief. Alan had the feeling of having escaped from
something too formidably impressive, and he saw that Elaine was
similarly moved.

"I simply don't know where I am!" said Elaine in a low, uncertain
tone. Then louder: "Everything was all right, and now she's gone and
spoilt it all when she needn't have done." She added, more softly, but
still somewhat critically: "It's to her credit that she can cry. I
never thought she could."

"She's a great girl," said Alan, secretly alarmed to discover that he
could scarcely control his voice.

There they stood, the older ones, shaken by the spectacle of a
youthful, impassioned emotion which they knew themselves incapable of
emulating, and which they could emulate less and less as the years
passed over them.

"But my dear," said Elaine, "this is terrible."

"You know it isn't."

"He'll be Labour after all."

"And what if he is?"

"They'll never agree."

Alan nodded a contradiction.

"She'll play it," he murmured. "You'll see."

"Play what?"

"The game."

Elaine reflected aloud:

"I should just think she _did_ give way to him! Him flying after her!"

"She was more cross about that than anything."

"My poor darling, do you really think so?" said Elaine superiorly, as
to a simpleton.

"Well, if she was acting she ought to be on the stage," said Alan
stoutly.

He admitted, however, to himself that the flight must have had a
tremendous effect on her, an effect against which she had fought
savagely. Then the stress of the railway accident had intensified
every sensation, producing violent extremes. But for the accident
Pearl might never have comprehended her own heart until pride had
carried her too far for comprehension to be of any avail.

"I'm sure Jack's been splendid," said Elaine.

"Yes, Jack's all right. And it's something to be in love as that boy
is."

"They'll have frightful scenes, you know."

"I know. Let 'em. They're the goods. Pearl is, and Jack is."

"And do you see her as a socialist, darling?" Elaine was never nearer
the ironic.

"If I like I'll see her as a Bolshevik," said Alan defiantly. "I don't
care." And he did not care.

"You're happy."

"So are you, you two-faced little thing." In his beatific exuberance
he kissed Elaine violently.

A door banged. Alan cautiously opened the door into the sitting-room,
and saw Jack opening the door opposite, which led from his bedroom, a
heavy bag in his hand.

"Jack," called Pearl unseen. "I won't let that bag go like that. It's
bound to burst open." She appeared, with Jack's overcoat on her arm.
"Give it me." Her tone was sharp, imperative. "Oh!" she exclaimed,
seeing Alan. Jack, intimidated, dropped the bag, which Pearl knelt
down to rearrange.

Elaine entered.

"You aren't going?"

"Good-bye! Good-bye! Just time to get to the Cecil and catch the
train. Good-bye!"

Kisses. Elaine's long embrace of Pearl contradicted all the criticism
which she had been uttering to Alan.

"And what will Mrs. Meadowes say to all this Red politics?" Alan
demanded teasingly.

"Mrs. Meadowes," Pearl answered, "won't hear a word about it till
we're back in England."

They were gone, arguing and laughing, and bickering. They seemed to
pass from mood to mood with the levity of children.... Their way of
making love, no doubt.

"Yes," thought Alan, while Elaine sat meditative and a little tearful
in her dignity. "There'll be storms. Typhoons. But she'll stick to it.
New strength required daily. I'm dashed if I don't read everything
Wordsworth ever wrote. Because never again shall I be without a care."

THE END




[End of _Accident_ by Arnold Bennett]
