(1932)

Character List
John Geard	secretary-valet to the late Canon William Crow; later Mayor of Glastonbury.
Megan	his wife.
Cordelia and Crummie	their daughters
Philip Crow	Glastonbury industrialist.
Tilly	his wife
John and Mary Crow	cousins to Philip and to each other.
Elizabeth Crow	daughter of the late Canon Crow; aunt of, Philip, John, Mary and
Persephone Spear	wife of
Dave Spear	half-brother of
Nell Zoyland	wife of
Will Zoyland	bastard son of
The Marquis of P.	father of
Lady Rachel Zoyland
Edward Athling	yeoman farmer and poet.
Euphemia Drew	elderly spinster and Mary Crow's employer. Tom Barter, Philip Crow's manager.
Owen Evans	Welsh antiquary.
Mat Dekker	Vicar of Glastonbury.
Sam Dekker	his son.
Doctor Charles Montagu Fell	a disciple of Epictetus.
Barbara	his sister
Tittie Petherton	a cancer patient
Red Robinson	formerly foreman at the Crow Dye-works
Nancy Robinson	cousin of Red, Tittie' s nurse.
Penny Pitches	servant at the Dekkers'.
Abel Twig and Bartholomew Jones	("Number One" and "Number Two"), old cronies.
Isaac Weatherwax	gardener at the Dekke~s' and Euphemia Drew's.
Lily and Louie Rogers	sisters; housemaid and cook at Miss Drew's.
Tossie Stickles	Elizabeth Crow's servant.
Nancy Stickles	a devoted disciple of Mr. Geard
Mother Legge	procuress
Young Tewsy	doorkeeper at Mother Legge' s " other house.”
Bet Chinnock	a madwoman
Finn Toller	alias Codfin

CONTENTS


VOLUME ONE

1 The Will
2 The River
3 Stonehenge
4 Hic Jacet
5 Whitelake Cottage
6 The Look of a Saint
7 Carbonek
8 Wookey Hole
9 The Unpardonable Sin
10 Geard of Glastonbury
11 Consummation
12 The Dolorous Blow
13 King Arthur's Sword
14 Maundy Thursday
15 Mark's Court
16 The Silver Bowl
17 May Day
18 Omens and Oracles
19 The Pageant

VOLUME TWO

20 Idolatry
21 Tin
22 Wind and Rain
23 The Miracle
24 "Nature Seems Dead..."
25 Conspiracy
26 The Christening
27 The Saxon Arch
28 The Grail
29 The Iron Bar
30 The Flood





THE WILL


At the striking of noon on a certain fifth of March, there occurred
within a causal radius of Brandon railway-station and yet beyond
the deepest pools of emptiness between the uttermost stellar sys-
tems one of those infinitesimal ripples in the creative silence of
the First Cause which always occur when an exceptional stir of
heightened consciousness agitates any living organism in this as-
tronomical universe. Something passed at that moment, a wave,
a motion, a vibration, too tenuous to be called magnetic, too sub-
liminal to be called spiritual, between the soul of a particular hu-
man being who was emerging from a third-class carriage of the
twelve-nineteen train from London and the divine-diabolic soul
of the First Cause of all life.

In the soul of the great blazing sun, too, as it poured down its
rays upon this man's head, while he settled his black travelling
bag comfortably in his left hand and his hazel-stick in his right,
there were complicated superhuman vibrations; but these had
only the filmiest, faintest, remotest connexion with what the man
was feeling. They had more connexion with the feelings of certain
primitive tribes of men in the heart of Africa and with the feel-
ings of a few intellectual sages in various places in the world who
had enough imagination to recognise the conscious personality of
this fiery orb as it flung far and wide its life-giving magnetic
forces. Roaring, cresting, heaving, gathering, mounting, advanc-
ing, receding, the enormous fire-thoughts of this huge luminary
surged resistlessly to and fro, evoking a turbulent aura of psychic
activity, corresponding to the physical energy of its colossal
chemical body, but affecting this microscopic biped's nerves less
than the wind that blew against his face.

Far nearer to the man's conscious , and half-conscious feelings,
as with his overcoat buttoned under his chin and his fingers tight-
ening upon stick arid bag he moved to the station-entrance, were
the vast, dreamy life-stirrings of the soul of the earth. Aware in
a mysterious manner of every single one of all the Conscious
nesses, human and subhuman, to which she has given birth, the
earth might have touched with a vibrant inspiration this particu-
lar child of hers, who at twenty minutes after twelve handed up
his ticket to the station-master and set out along a narrow dusty
March road towards Brandon Heath. That she did not do this was
due to the simple fact that the man instead of calling upon her
for help called habitually upon the soul of his own dead mother.
Jealous and exacting are all the gods, and a divided worship is
abhorrent to them.

John Crow had given a hurried, suspicious sideways glance,
before he left the platform, at the group of fellow-travellers who
were gathered about the heap of luggage flung from the guard's
van. They all, without exception, seemed to his agitated mind to
be attired in funeral garb. He himself had a large band of crape
sewn upon his sleeve and a black tie. ‘Tm glad I ran in to Mon- ,
sieur Teste's to buy a black tie,"he thought as he met the wind on
the open road. "I never would have thought of it if Lisette hadn't
pushed me to it at the end."

John Crow was a frail, thin, loosely-built man of thirty-five.
He had found himself a penniless orphan at twenty. From that
time onward he had picked up his precarious and somewhat
squalid livelihood in Paris. Traces of these fifteen years of irregu-
lar life could be seen writ large on his gaunt features. Something
between the down-drifting weakness of a congenital tramp and
the unbalanced idealism of a Don Quixote hovered about his high
cheek-bones and about the troubled droop of his mouth. One
rather disturbing contradiction existed in his face. There was a
constant twitching of his cheeks beneath his sunken eye-sockets;
and this peculiarity, combined with a furtive, almost foxy, slant
about the contraction of his eyelids, contrasted disconcertingly
with the expression in the eyes themselves. This expression re-
sembled one particular look, as of a sea-creature without a human
soul, that Scopas gives to his creations.

A cold blue sky and a biting east wind were John Crow's com-
panions now as he took the bare grass-edged road towards Bran-
don Heath. The raw physical discomfort produced by this wind,
and the gathering together of his bodily forces to contend, with
it, soon brought down by several pegs the emotional excitement
in which he had left the train. That magnetic ripple in the divine-
diabolic soul of the creative energy beyond space and time which
had corresponded to, if not directly caused, his agitated state,
sank back in reciprocal quiescence; and the physical tenseness
and strain which he now experienced were answered in the far-off
First Cause by an indrawn passivity as if some portion of that
fount of life fell under the constriction of freezing. The soundless
roaring of the great solar furnace up there in the vast ether be-
came, too, at that moment worse than merely indifferent to the
motions of this infinitesimal creature advancing into the bracken-
grown expanses of the historic Heath, like a black ant into a
flowerpot. The man's movements now became weary and slow,
even though he caught sight of the words "To Northwold"upon
a newly whitewashed signpost. Humming and roaring and whir-
ling in its huge confluent maelstroms of fiery gas, the body of
that tornado of paternity concealed at that moment a soul that
associated John Crow not only with such beings as neglected
to invoke its godhead but with such beings as in their malicious
rational impiety positively denied it any consciousness. Among
all the greater gods around him it was the soul of the earth, how-
ever, that remained most jealous and hostile. It must have dimly
been aware of the narrow and concentrated feeling, exclusive,
misanthropic, which John experienced as he approached the
home of his dead mother. And thus as it shot quivering vibrations
through the greenish-yellow buds upon the hawthorn bushes,
through the tender white blossoms upon the blackthorn, through
the folded tremulousness of the fern fronds and the metallic
sheen of the celandines, to John Crow it refused to give that ex-
quisite feeling of primordial well-being which it gave to the rest.
Why, thinking of his mother, he felt so sad, was a strange fact
beyond this man's analysis. How could he know that mingled
with their awareness of wet, green mosses, of dry, scaly lichens,
of the heady-sweet odours of prickly gorse, of the cool-rooted
fragility of lilac-coloured cuckoo flowers, of the sturdy swelling
of the woolly calices of early cowslips, of the embryo lives within
the miraculous blue shells of hedge-sparrows' eggs, the thoughts
of the earth-mother throbbed with a dull, indefinable, unappeas-
able jealousy of a human mother?

Bending his head a little above his tightly buttoned greatcoat
collar, John Crow began to recall now certain actual moments of
his recent nights with young Lisette and old Pierre. These mo-
ments as he butted his way against this bitter east wind came to
him impregnated with the subtle smells of a Latin Quarter street.
He saw the neat frippery of Lisette's front room. He saw the gro-
tesque photograph of himself taken by a photographer in a
street booth at Saint-Cloud upon her mantelpiece. He saw her
absurd muslin curtains, tied with great bows of green ribbon. He
saw the big, cracked mirror with the little, carved Cupids at either
corner, from one of which the gilt had been chipped, revealing
scars of bare wood, black as if they had been burnt in a fire. He
saw these things against the far grey horizon, where as a child he
had been so often told to look for the great towers of Ely Cathe-
dral, visible across leagues and leagues of level fens. He saw.
them against old, stunted, lichen-whitened thorn trees. He saw
them against the curved, up-pushing, new-born horns of the sap-
yellow bracken, protected from the wind by the dead husks of
last year's mature ferns, and crouching low, like the heads of
innumerable mottled snakes, the better to leap at the throat of
life. He saw them against the' reddish gnarled trunks of inter-
mittent clumps of Scotch firs and against the scuttling white tails
of the rabbits and the hovering wings of solitary kestrel-hawks.
And over and over again he said to himself, "Philip will have had
all Grandfather's money, of course. Of course Philip will have
had all Grandfather's money."


At one point, when he came to a place where Brandon Heath
seemed to gather its personality together and to assume a scru-
tinising, haughty and inquisitive look, as much as to say, "Who,
m the devil's name are you, you dog-faced foreigner?"in reply
to this look of Brandon Heath John muttered a sulky defiance and
ejaculated aloud, as if to let the place know that he was more
than a common tramp: "I shall make Philip give me a berth at
Glastonbury. He had been on foot now for about an hour, and he
had been walking fast too; for the bite of the cold air seemed
to give an energy of demonic malice to his defiance of the wind,
of the sun, of the hostility of the earth. He had begun to notice
too that the heath scenery was transforming itself by degrees into
ordinary farm scenery, when he heard a motor car coming up
fast behind him.

He stepped hastily to the grass by the roadside and without
the least idea as to why he did so stood stock-still and stared at
the approaching machine. "Nothing would induce me to take a
lift,"he said to himself. "It must be a good two hours still be-
fore the time."

The car, however, lessened its pace the moment he stood still;
and as soon as it reached him stopped dead.

"Canon Crow's funeral, Sir?"

The driver's voice had that peculiar up-drawing, up-tilting,
devil-may-care intonation, no doubt derived from a long line of
Danish ancestors, which renders the Norfolk tongue different
from the speech of every other English county.

John Crow looked up at the speaker. There was something in
the man's tone that gave him a totally unexpected emotion. A
lump of long-frozen tears began to melt in his throat, a frozen
lump twenty years old, composed of all his memories of his child-
hood; composed of the image of his grandmother, reading to him
in the low-ceilinged, old-pictured, old-brocaded Rectory drawing-
room; composed of the image of his grandfather with his snow-
white hair in short, wavy curls covering his round, brittle-looking
skull, and his voice melodious as a great actor's. Mingled with
these came memories of the taste of a certain species of unusual
pink-coloured strawberries that grew in the walled garden and the
sharp, pure taste of red gooseberries that grew from near the
manure heap there; and surrounding all these as if by an atmos-
phere of something still more intimately felt, there came over
him, under the impact of that Norfolk utterance, an impression of
acrid smoke, the smoke of burning peat, rising from innumerable
cottage hearths.

"The funeral; Northwold; thank you very much,"John Crow
replied in broken phrases; and his own voice was to him as the
voice of one speaking in a dream. As he uttered the words his
eyes glanced in a bewildered daze over the contents of the motor
car. The back seats were all piled up with neat and very new
travelling bags, canvas hold-alls, and bright rugs, from among
which an elderly, gentle, majestic-looking woman smiled at him
in an extremely reassuring manner.

"There's room up here then, Mister,"went on the driver, after
a hurried turn in his seat and a glance backward at the lady amid
the pile of bags. "That's to say,"he added, with an appeal to a
figure at his side, whose presence had hitherto escaped John's
notice, "unless you objects to being crowded, Miss."

The pulse of time that followed this remark was one of the
most singular in all John Crow's experience. It was not, in fact
like a pulse of time at all. It was like a perfectly calm and per-
fectly quiet sinking aside, into a region altogether outside the
jeopardies and agitations of time. John and the young girl who
was seated on the further side of the driver exchanged a long
stare.

"You don't mind, Miss, do 'ee?"repeated the man. " 'Tis a
long walk for the gentleman; and the Canon would wish all that
come to his burying to be treated proper."

The nervous mouth of the young person he thus addressed,
which had mechanically opened, showing a row of long, strong,
white teeth, shut abruptly, and her eyes, which had become large
and round, became little dark-lashed slits in her sallow face. "Of
course not,"she murmured in a low voice, making herself ex-
tremely small and pressing close to the man's elbow.

John Crow walked round the rear of the machine and after a
moment's clumsy fumbling at the handle pulled the door open,
clambered up, and sat down by the girl's side. "All comfort-
able?"asked the driver. "Very, thank you!"came so simul-
taneously from both John and the young girl that it sounded in-
coherent. The man, however, started the car without further
parley.

Is my nephew expecting you to lunch?"came the pleasant
voice of the majestic lady from amid the luggage. "I wonder if
you are one of the cousins?"she went on. "There are really a
terrible lot of us. And we shall all be here."There was a pause
during which the driver remarked that there wouldn't be many
of the local people either who'd stay away. "They respect Canon
Crow in Northwold more'n anyone would suppose, seeing how
little he came out towards the end."

He speaks as if Grandfather were a snail,"thought the young
girl.

"My father liked his books better than visiting,"the lady con-
tinued. "But he used to read beautifully at people's bedsides. I've
heard him do that often when I was little. Some clergymen have
such poor voices."

"I never heard'n read myself,"replied the driver thoughtfully.
"Maybe 'twould have been better if I had. My dad brought me
up chapel; and chapel I've stayed; though I've often thought
Twere a pity. Chapel be all for salvation but it neglects the
King's Majesty...

"That's where we used to look,"broke in John Crow suddenly,
addressing the girl as if he had been completely alone with her,
"for the towers of Ely!"He pointed with his hand over the wide
horizon; and half rising from his seat strained his eyes to catch
a glimpse of what he remembered. "Oh, it's too late!"he added,
and sank by her side. "These cars go quicker than pony carts.
Grandfather used to drive a pony called Judy."

"I'm beginning to think I know who you are,"resumed the
elderly lady. "Aren't you my nephew John who went to live
in France?"

It was the girl who replied for him. "Yes, Aunt Elizabeth, he's
Cousin John. I knew him at once. You used to come with us
sometimes yourself when John took me down the little river in
the old boat. Don't you remember, Aunt Elizabeth? He was with
us that day we went to Oxborough Ferry, when Cousin Percy was
there. Cousin Percy wouldn't fish with worms! You must remem-
ber that, Aunt Elizabeth. She kept putting bits of purple loose-
strife on her hook."There was a nervous exaltation in the girl's
tone that her aunt did not miss.

"I knew Mary at once too,"John Crow said, turning round
to address their relative, "but you used to be very busy when I
stayed at the Rectory so it's no wonder we didn't know each other.
Dear Aunt Elizabeth!"And with a rather exaggerated foreign
gesture he stretched out his arm, and capturing the stout ladys
hand lifted it up to his lips. "I came every summer to North-
wold, you know,"he said, and he remained for a minute leaning
sideways and holding the hand he had taken. "And I came when
he came,"cried Mary with an abrupt and awkward intensity; and
she too turned and leaned back and took possession of her aunt's
other hand. Thus with their faces so close to each other that the
girl's hair brushed his cheek the two cousins, for an appreciable
passage of time, clung to the elderly woman as if their mutual
contact with her brought them closer.

And thus they entered the outskirts of the village of North
wold. It was Miss Elizabeth Crow who made the motion to releast
her fingers.

"Tis like old times to see ye all back,"remarked the driver
as his two front-seat passengers resumed their normal position.
It makes anyone wish he were brought up to Church. Us chapel-
folk are less liable to be gathered together by funerals. When the
Lord divides us. He divides us. But Norfolk gentry, all such as
I've seen, and I've seen a deal o'n one way and another, are
mighty tender over the family. Me own mother had five of us
and I've got more nephies than I knows of, yet devil a one would
I want to see coming up me steps. 'Tis as nat'ral to me to turn
and run from a blood-relation as it is to some folks to hug 'en
to heart."

I am afraid human nature is much the same all the world
over," remarked Miss Elizabeth.

So 'tis, Madam. So 'tis,"said the man, winking at John Crow.
"If I were a cousin of the late Canon, not Ameriky itself would
keep me from hearing Lawyer Didlington read the old gentle-
man's will!"

They had reached the middle of the village at this point and
the visitor from France laid his hand on the driver's elbow. You
can set me down here,"he said.

"No, no,"cried Aunt Elizabeth. I can't allow that. I'll vouch
for it that Philip will be glad to welcome you to lunch. He and
my niece Tilly went ahead in the first car, leaving us detached
females to follow with the luggage."

But the machine had stopped; and John, holding his bag in his
hand, was already out in the road.

"There'll be quite enough of us all without me, Aunt,"he said.
"Good-bye for a time! As our friend here reminds us, we'll all
meet in a few hours, when Lawyer What's-his-name opens Grand-
father's will."

But Miss Elizabeth was destined to receive a much severer
shock than the escape of her eccentric nephew.

"What are you doing, Mary?"she cried in consternation at the
sight of her young niece rapidly following John Crow out of the
motor car.

"I'm going to stay with Cousin John,"she said. "We'll be at
the service. You can tell Philip without fail we'll be at the service."

"But, Mary--you can't do that! What will Tilly say? What
will Philip do? Mary--think! We want your help with Per-
sephone and her husband. You know how Philip and Mr. Spear
always work each other up. Mary, you really can't do this!"

Mary came close up to the window of the car through which
her aunt was protesting. "It's all right, dear,"she said. "Tilly
will manage. You'll look after Dave Spear yourself and see that
he doesn't make Philip too angry. You're always doing that sort
of thing for all of us. Grandfather's servants are used to enter-
taining people. They won't run away, any more than we shall,
before the will is read."The bitter east wind made the girl pull
her black woolen scarf tightly round her neck. There was some-
thing in the genius loci of that Anglo-Danish spot that seemed
to evoke all her contrariness. "You're not Euphemia Drew,
darling, so don't try to be. It was to get rid of Miss 'Phemia for
a bit that I let Philip bring me. I know there's nothing for me in
Grandfather's will! Be the darling you always are. Aunt, and
explain to Philip. I swear I'll bring Cousin John to the service
in good time."

In the startled pause that followed the girl's appeal Elizabeth
Crow's mind flashed back to those days when she was indeed
"busy"as John had said. She had outlived all her generation;
and yet she was not even now an old woman. This came from
being the youngest by many, many years of William Crow's
children. Ah! How her thoughts ran to her dead father. He would
have no flesh and blood of his own to keep him company in that
crowded graveyard. Mary's parents were gone. Persephono'e par-
ents were gone. John had scarcely known his parents. And not
one of them lay in that place to warm the bones of the old man!
Till she herself was brought there he must lie by himself. Their
mother had died in a Swiss sanitarium and had been buried out
there. Yes, Cousin John was right when he said she had been
"busy"in those days. As she stared now at her rebellious niece
in a sort of humorous helplessness all that old imbroglio of
tragic difficulties patterned itself before her mind's eye. The Crow
family always had had a curious vein of gross, drastic common
sense; and when her quarrels with her father reached an intoler-
able point she had simply cut the knot by leaving him alone and
going to live with Philip. Thirty years ago she had gone to Philip,
when this proud man was a mere boy, beginning his life at
Glastonbury. She had achieved this separation with a secretive
suddenness that puzzled everyone who knew her; and it flashed
upon her mind now that something of this blind animal-like ob-
stinacy had lodged itself in Mary. "Better let her go,"she thought.
I dont blame her for being attracted to this trampish fellow.
The extreme opposite of Philip he is; and that's enough for
Mary. I don't care if she does fall in love with him. Father did
his best to shut me up and I'm not going to play that game with
any other woman."

Mary thought, "Dear old Aunt Elizabeth! She's got that queer
wrinkle in her cheeks at this moment which always means she's at
war with Philip. She's glad I'm going off with John--just glad."

The driver thought, "That young fellow will play upsidaisy
with that young lady, soon as they're out of sight! He'll do it,
sure enough. Look at's eyes all gimletting through the lass. He'll
eat her up, I shouldn't wonder."

John Crow thought, "I'll take her to Harrod's Mill to see those
big fish again. Yes, yes, I hugged her at the bottom of the boat
on the little river' when she was eight and I was ten. Yes, I did!
It was a Sunday afternoon I did that. It was drowsy that day;
sunny and drowsy. I had rhubarb tart that day with a lot of
cream. We went to Harrod's Mill. We left the boat at the dam. We
couldnt get it over the dam. There were unripe blackberries
round the dam that day."Then all of a sudden a different figure
from Mary's rose up in his mind. "I believe it was Tom at the^'
bottom of the boat,"he thought, "and not Mary at all!"

Such were the thoughts of four human skulls at that moment;
but only to one mood out of all these did the great maternal soul
of the Earth respond and that was to a sudden exultant sense of
peace and deliciousness in Mary's virginal breasts. Her conscious
thoughts were all with Aunt Elizabeth and how that brave woman
would deal with Philip's anger; but as she stepped over to John's
side and kissed her hand at the departing car something seemed
to stir within her like a warm wave that was at once fire, air and
water and it shivered up from the centre of her being to the tips
of her breasts.

As soon as the car was out of sight John and Mary glanced at
each other with unembarrassed satisfaction.

"I was puzzling in my mind ever since you all overtook me
how I was going to get you to myself, but now that I've got you,"
said John, "I don't care what we do or where we go."

"I care very much because I want to escape from everyone
but you."

"Well, then! The first thing to think of is to find something
to eat. Let's buy some bread and cheese at that Inn over there and
see if they'll let us carry away a flask of port wine."

They went into the little hostelry and had no difficulty in ob-
taining exactly what he had visualised. The Inn lacked a sign-
board and John asked the girl behind the bar what its name was.
"Name?"said the girl with that East Anglian rising inflexion
that seemed to mount up to the last word of the sentence as if in
a kind of optimistic chant or plain-song. "Dew ye come from
far, 'tis Northwold Arms. Dew ye live in these parts, 'lis just the
New Inn. The beer be the same dew ye be thirsty. 'Tis Patteson's
best ale and brewed in Norwich."

It was at this point that John heard a voice in the interior
parlour of this repository of Palteson Ale mentioning his grand-
father's name. "They say in Rectory kitchen,"said the voice,
"that old man Crow have left all his money to that bloke from
Glastonbury what preaches in Prayer-meeting."The voice became
inaudible then. But presently John caught further words among
which "Geard of Glastonbury"came clearly to him.

"May I leave my bag here for an hour or so?"' enquired John
of the barmaid. As the girl seemed unwilling to do more than
murmur some further information about the quality of Norwich
ale, he boldly got rid of the shabby, black object he was carrying,
hoisting it across the counter with an abrupt swing of his long
arm and dropping it shamelessly at the young lady's feet. "It's
just possible--that I'll be staying the night here,"he threw out,
with a catch in his breath from this sudden muscular exertion.

"Single or double?"responded the girl, putting her bare elbows
on the counter, staring gravely at Mary, and displaying a much
livelier interest in her visitors than she had done before.

The cousins glanced triumphantly at each other. Nothing could
have pleased them more at that particular moment than such a
question. "Single--at present,"he answered, giving the questioned
the most foxy and whimsical smile she had ever received.

They were just leaving the place--the flask of wine in John's
pocket and the bread and cheese in a neat parcel in Mary's hand
--when several labouring men, laughing uproariously, pushed
past them towards the bar. Norfolk, here too, showed its inde-
pendent Danish blood. There was no obsequiousness towards "the
gentry,"such as would have been apparent in Kent or Surrey.
One of the newcomers boldly addressed John.

"Relatives arrived for the funeral, I reckon? 'Tis as we all
knew 'twould be. Canon were left lonesome enough when he were
alive; but anyone would think the man were a Member o' Parlia-
ment now he be dead. Never have I see'd so many folk turn into
them gates. Old Ben Pod at the lodge, who counts every wheel
that passes--'tis his only joy since he lost the use of his legs--
must have broke his 'rithmetic in counting them."

There won't be so many to count when we be put under sod,"
remarked one of the other men. " 'Tis because there's been Crows
in England since King Canute."

Since when?"cried the other. "There's been Crows in Eng-
land since earlier than him. He be in History, he be; and this
here family goes further back than History. Talking of families,"
he went on, "I hope your lady won't mind my saying so but it's
singular how old customs abide in certain breeds. I don't know
how near related to the Canon ye two be? but every man's child
born in this place knows one thing about this family."He low-
ered his voice as he spoke. "There's not one of ye Crows when
'a comes to die, that has a son left to bury 'un. They be all sons'
sons that lay 'un in ground. There must be Scripture for't;
though why it should be as 'tis is beyond my conjecture. Some
man of old time, amidst 'en, must have done summat turble...
eaten his own offspring like enough, in want of kindlier meat
...summat o' that...and ever since such doings they all outlive
their sons. 'Tis a kind of Divine Dispensation, I reckon."

John and Mary, who had felt it impolite to desert the threshold
where they had been arrested by this discourse, were now enabled
to make their escape. For one second the phrase "Geard of Glas-
tonbury"returned upon John's mind; but it was gone as quickly
as it came.

"To the Mill, to the Mill!"he cried excitedly, and the two
cousins hurried eastward against the sharp wind down the
narrow, straight lane.

Harrod's Mill was approached, by its own drive, through a
couple of open fields. They entered this drive through a gate
leading out of the road to Didlington, just before the bridge over
the River Wissey.

The wind was sharp indeed as they crossed these two big
meadows; but there was a faint fragrance of sap-filled grass in the
air and the sun was hot. Mary's ecstasy of mood increased rather
than diminished as she walked by John's side, following his step
with her step and even picking up a stick from the ground as she
went along. This she did with the conscious desire to have some
sensation of her own exactly parallel to that which her cousin en-
joyed as he pressed the end of his stick into the ground. Mary felt
that everything she looked at was bathed in a liquid mist and yet
was seen by her for the first time in its real essence. It seemed to
her that the souls of all living things flung forth their inmost
nature that day in a magical rapture. All things seemed anxious
to let all other living things realise how they loved them. As for
herself she felt she could have stroked with her bare fingers
everything she looked at. The very wind, so keen, so bitter, that
now blew in her face and tugged at her clothes; even towards it
she felt a sort of tenderness! She seemed to divine that it felt
itself to be hated by all the human beings it encountered; and
she longed to disabuse it of this mistake.

At one moment she caught sight of a patch of small plants in
the grass of the field whose leaves seemed to have a glossy texture
and a greenish-whitish look that was familiar to her. "Aren't
those cowslips over there?"They both hurried to the spot. Yes,
they were cowslips; but so early or so stunted were they that the
tiny buds were barely yellow. John was immensely relieved that
she did not incontinently snatch at these pale, rudimentary, brittle
stalks, covered with tiny white hairs, like the forearms of young
girls, and hand them to him or keep them in her dress as memo-
rials of this hour. How often in country excursions with his
French friends, had he been railed at by them as a prig, a poseur,
un fou Anglais for his diseased conscience in refusing to pick
flowers.

Before reaching Harrod's Mill-pond they came upon an old
cow-shed, once black with tar, but now blotched with queer
patches of a minutely growing moss, which in some places was
green and in others the colour of rusty iron. Against the western
side of this shed the grass was twice as tall as in the rest of the
field and of a much more vivid green. The cousins surveyed this
erection in silence for a moment, he leaning on his hazel-stick
which was smooth to his hand, she leaning on the rotten bramble-
stick she had picked up which was rough to her hand. Their hesi-
tation was so humorously identical, that when they glanced at
each other they smiled broadly, their white strong teeth gleaming
in the sun.

Oh, to the devil with it!"he cried. "It'll get up again as soon
as weve got up. It does from under the cows and we're lighter
than cows. Come on, Mary--let's have our feast!"

He clutched at her skirt from his seated position and almost
pulled her off her balance. She slipped down, however, facing
him, her legs drawn up under her, and at once began untying the
parcel of bread and cheese, holding it carefully on her lap. High
above their heads several larks seemed bursting their little bodies
with their shrill canticle. Their song was stoical and continuous,
with a kind of harshness in its quivering rapture. "Hark at the
larks! said John to Mary, watching the careful way she was
dividing their viands. As a distributor of the bread and cheese
both the woman in her and the young girl played their part. She
made sandwiches for John and herself as if the two of them had
stood back to back measuring their difference in size. He mean-
while pulled out the cork of the flask and held it out to her for
her to take the first drink. Preoccupied with the sandwiches, she
let him hold it till his weary wrist rested upon her knee. But as
soon as she had put it to her lips he jumped to his feet again,
murmured some kind of abracadabra and poured out what he
told her was a libation to the gods.

When they had finished all there was of both food and drink,
he produced a packet of Gold Flake cigarettes, and they smoked
for a while, contented and at rest. But the larks had come down.
The cold wind rendered their exultation intermittent.

"Those men were perfectly right," said John. "It has become
almost absurd, the way, from generation to generation of our
family the older generation outlives the younger. When you come
to think of it it's quite unnatural that four cousins, Philip, you,
myself, and Persephone should all be grown-up orphans; and the
only child of Grandfather's alive should be Aunt Elizabeth. And
I'll tell you another thing that's queer too; not one of our parents
is buried in the churchyard! How do you suppose that happened,
Mary?"

"How do you know they're not buried there, Cousin John, when
you've lived all your life in France?"

"Oh, I've watched the family, Mary! Don't you make any mis-
take. I've watched them like a hawk. I know exactly how much
money Grandfather's got. I know where every one of the uncles
and aunts died and where they were buried. I could write a his-
tory of the Crows of Norfolk, I tell you, like Ranke's history of
the Popes."

"They've never been very much,"murmured Mary dreamily,
changing her position and stretching herself out on the grass.
"You're sitting on your coat, aren't you?"

"Yeomen, I fancy, for about five hundred years,"said John.

She lifted up her head to smile at him.

"I've never thought much of yeomen."Her next words came
with a drowsy, luxurious querulousness as she let her head sink
down again. "I wish he had been buried yesterday."

They were both silent for a couple of minutes. Then she pushed
herself with her hands a little nearer him and took off her hat,
flinging it on the grass a few paces off.

"I like your hair, Mary," he said, boldly twisting a wisp of it
back from her forehead, round a couple of his fingers. "It's the
nicest hair I've ever touched. It's just the right tinge of brown.
I say, it's awfully full of electricity!"

"I expect you're a great authority,"she said. Her remark was
made as if it were simply a grave statement, free from all irony,
and she went on in the same tone. "How many girls have you
made love to, John, in your whole life?"

As she spoke she propped herself up a little and this time let
her shoulders rest against his knees.

"God! My dear,"he muttered, "do you think I count them?
I'm not Ben Pod."

"I've never been made love to in my life,"said Mary. "So I
don't know what it's like. Does a girl get as much pleasure
out of it as a man, John, do you think?"

"That's the oldest question, Mary, ever asked of any oracle.
In fact it was first asked by the gods themselves."

"Tell me about it,"said Mary. "I feel just as I did, asking you
such questions when we went in the boat"

"They asked the greatest of all soothsayers,"John informed
her. "The old Teiresias; and do you know what he said? He said
that in the act of love it was the woman who enjoyed it most."
All the while he was speaking, he was indulging in a delicious
feeling of pleasure because she had remembered the boat.

"I expect he was right,"commented Mary gravely; and then,
after a pause, "I think he was right,"she concluded.

"The Queen of Heaven must have known he was right,"said
John, "for she was so angry that she turned him into a woman.
Does it strike you, that was a queer punishment?"

She fixed her brown eyes upon him. "Not at all, Cousin John.
It seems a very natural punishment."

From a meadow remote from where they were and at present
concealed by the shed there came to them at that minute the wild
familiar cry of the lapwing.

"I've been wanting all the time to ask you, Mary,"he recom-
menced, "whether you remember that day we couldn't get the
boat past the dam--the dam between the big river and the little
river? You said just now that you'd never been made love to.
Why! my dear, I've had a feeling of longing to see you again all
my life since that day that I hugged you and so on in the bottom
of that boat. Do you remember that too, the way the boat leaked,
and how fishy it smelt and the way I held you?" The queer thing
was that once more, even as he said these words, the image of the
boy Tom Barter rose up.

Mary frowned, struggling desperately to evoke the scene he
described. She remembered the day; she remembered the diffi-
culty with the dam; she remembered his pleasure as they leant
over the rowlocks to watch the fish; she remembered her grand-
father's anger when they came home; she remembered with a
peculiar sweet sort of shame having asked him various questions;
but the one thing she had completely forgotten was his having
hugged her "and so on." A rather sad smile flickered across her
face, a smile that she gave way to because her face was invisible
to him. "You're sure you remembered right which little girl it
was, John,"she said, "that you hugged that day?"

Her words arrested his attention. He could not tell whether she
was mischievous or grave because he could not see her face.
"You mustn't tease me like that, Mary,"he said. "You never once
teased me in those days and I never once teased you. There's no
need for us to be ashamed of being serious now any more
than then."

He noticed that one of her hands began to pluck at the grass by
her side but she made no reply to his words. "What do you re-
member, Mary,"he said, "about that day at the dam?"

The silence that followed his words was like the silence of a
field at the bottom of a mountain-valley, when the setting sun
touches the flanks of a herd of feeding cattle.

Mary's thoughts were like a rain of bitterness and a dew of
sweetness gathered in the hollows of a tree-root. A brimming over
from them all would have escaped and vanished if she had tried
to express them in any sort of speech. The shame of those ques-
tions she had asked of little Johnny Crow was a sweet shame.
That she had forgotten what he remembered was bitter to her.
Could he be inventing? Could it really have been another little
girl in another boat? How could she have forgotten whatever it
was he did to her? "I must have been an imbecile," she said to
herself. "If he were to hug me now, and so on, I should not
forget!"

His voice continued to murmur on over her head; and what
was this? His wrists were under her armpits and his hands cov-
ered her breasts. He was holding them very still; but her right
breast was beneath one of his hands and her left breast was be-
neath the other. That up-flowing wave which she had felt before
seemed now to encounter a down-flowing wave. Every conscious
nerve of her body seemed to be responding to his hands. Her
jacket and her dress intervened, or he would have felt her heart
beating. He probably did feel it beating! Her mind wandered for
a second to the secluded drawing-room of Miss Euphemia Drew
in the Abbey House at Glastonbury. Under the pressure of his
hands she shut her eyes and leaning back in complete relaxation
against his knees she gave herself up to an inner vision of the
Abbey Ruins through those great windows. How often had she
sat there in the late afternoon light in profound unhappiness
watching the rooks gather about the tall elms and the shadow of
the great, mutilated tower arch grow longer and longer upon the
smooth grass! How she had come to hate Glastonbury and hate
the Ruins and above all hate the legend of the Grail! Tom Barter
agreed with her in all this. That had been the secret of her
friendship with Tom. That and his having come from North-
wold. "Mary--there's a rabbit in the asparagus-bed! Mary , the
ducks are in the garden!"Oh, how she hated Miss Drew some-
times-hated her almost as much as the Ruins. And yet how good
the woman had been, putting up with her moods, her sulkiness,
her sheer bad temper, treating her always more like a daughter
than a companion. "I hope he won't kiss me or anything else,"she
thought And then she thought, "I don't want him to take his
hands away. I want him to go on like this, without a change,
forever."

And Jonn thought, "I'm English and she's English and this is
England. It's more lovely to feel her little cold breasts under
these stiff clothes, on this chilly grass, than all the Paris devices."
And without formulating the thought in words he got the im-
pression of the old anonymous ballads writ in northern dialect
and full of cold winds and cold sword-points and cold spades
and cold rivers; an impression wherein the chilly green grass and
the peewits' cries made woman's love into a wild, stoical, ro-
mantic thing; and yet a thing calling out for bread and bed and
candlelight! "Lisette would not have the faintest shadow of the
faintest notion of what I'm now feeling. England! England!"
How small, how very small Mary's breasts were! Why, as he
held them now they seemed like the cold cups of water-lilies, not
like a woman's breasts at all! God! She wasn't a woman, this
new-found Love of his. She was an undine out of Harrod's Mill-
pond! Yes, this is what he had been secretly craving; so long!
so long! In his foxy shifts, in his wanton driftings, in his stormy
reactions against the life of a great city, in his pathetic escapes
into those whitewashed villages with their orchards, barley fields,
and church steeples, in his crazy, reiterated attempts to do some-
thing better than the wretchedest literary hackwork, in it all,
through it all, he had been pining for a moment like this. Why,
this girl was his very "other self."What luck! What incredible
luck! He could feel her consciousness as he held her like this,
holding her where a woman's identity, her very soul, must surely
most of all lie hid! And her inmost consciousness was exactly like
his own--he knew it was--exactly like his own. "Oh, I needn't
kiss you or anything, Mary,"his thoughts ran. "We've met. We're
together. We've got each other now. It's all done. Once for all
it's all done."

He moved his hands from her breasts and encircled her thin
neck with all his fingers. He could feel the luxury of abandon-
ment with which her chin sank on his knuckles and her head fell
sideways. She was feeling exactly as he was feeling--only, as was
right and proper, the reverse way. Oh, what magical expressions
for the only things in love that really counted, were those old
ballad phrases. Mary was not pretty. She was not beautiful. She
had what the old ballads had. Yes, that was the thing. The best
love was not lust; nor was it passion. Still less was it any ideal .
It was pure Romance! But pure Romance was harsh and grim and
stoical and a man must be grim to embrace it. Yes, it went well
with cold March wind and cold rain and long chilly grass.

He released her neck and ran his fingers through her brown
wavy hair. Mary always parted it in the middle and drew it back,
each way. Mary's forehead always seemed fullest just over each
temple where there were little blue veins. Her nose was rather
long and very straight; but it had wide, flexible nostrils, the nos-
trils of an animal who goes by scent. John's restless fingers now
began feeling over all her features, one by one, as if he had been
a blind old man and she his unseen guide. It gave him a queer
sensation, like touching the exposed belly of some delicate fish or
bird, when he felt the pulses of her eyes beating under her tight-
closed eyelids. He and she were both of them blind now. By God!
And they both of them felt blind; and in the blind arms of
chance. When he came to her full lips and her rather large mouth
he hoped in his heart it would come upon her to bite his fingers.
And she did . He drew his bitten fingers away and sucked at them
dreamily. He struggled to his feet and catching her under the
shoulder blades lifted her up. The feeling of her body in his
hands excited his senses but he only gave her one savage hug,
pressing her fiercely against him, his long bony hands gripping
the front of her thighs. Then he let her go with an abruptness that
almost flung her on the grass.

"It's time to see the fish if we're not going to miss the funeral,"
he said.

They both picked up their sticks after that and went forward.

John Crow had forgotten how separated from the farm-house
the mill-pond was. He had just begun to feel those fears of dogs
and angry farmers common to all tramps and gipsies. But he was
to be spared any agitation of this kind. The Mill stood by itself;
and the face which it turned to the mill-pond was vacant of
windows. It was a queer blind face, under its heavy East Anglian
tiles. Mary and he soon found themselves leaning over the low
stone parapet and staring into the huge deep pool....

"It's the same!""I remember!""I remember!"

Their voices came simultaneously; and for one flash of a frag-
ment of a second something in them held a wind-blown taper to
a scene lost and buried more than twenty years. But from the
depths of John Crow's mind another image suddenly mounted up
and another memory. Tom Barter! Tom Barter! It was more than
once he had come here with Tom, a boy of his own age, the son
of the Squire of Didlington; but the episode came back now with
an overwhelming rush. What a heap of information about fish and
about fishing Tom had known! And he had got the boat up those
shallows and past the dam too...got it right into the "big river,"
near Didlington bridge! John became very silent now, staring at
the water and thinking of Tom. It seemed very curious, looking
back at that far-off day, that there should ever have been any
boy so strong, so capable, so extraordinarily nice to him as
Tom Barter had been. He and Tom were exactly the same age.
What had become of him?

"On one of those days,"he announced now to Mary, "I came
here with Tom Barter. Do you remember Tom, Mary? He was
probably the best friend I shall ever have!"

Their four hands were pressed against the parapet, palms down,
and their two heads were close together. Mary moved one of her
hands a little till it just touched one of his.

"Ye...es, I...think...I do,"she replied musingly, In her heart she
said to herself, "I won't tell him now that I know him quite well
and that he's working for Cousin Philip at Glastonbury,"

"Oh, you don't remember him if you don't see him clearly!"
cried John emphatically. "Look at that big one, Mary, look at
him rising there! It was that fish that brought him back to my
mind. Directly I saw that big one I thought of Tom. He got the
boat right up the dam that day, Mary, Tom did."

"I...don't...think...I was there that day,"said Mary in a low voice.
And in her heart she saw two little boys standing exactly where
they two were standing at this minute. Could it have been Tom,
and not her at all, that he had hugged at the bottom of the boat?
Boys no doubt are often shameless on long, hot afternoons!

"Right over the dam. . , went on John Crow. "I can see his
face now as he pulled at it. He must have taken off his stockings.
The dam was all slippery with moss."

"Damn the dam!"cried Mary in her heart. But she said quietly,
"I think I remember him in church, John. He used to sit in the
front pew. Or if it wasn't your friend it was a great, big, strong-
looking boy with curly hair and a freckly face. Yes, I think it
must have been Tom."

"Tom hadn't freckles,"said John Crow with a faint touch of
peevishness. There arose in his masculine brain an obscure an-
noyance with himself for having brought that boy into it at all.
His vague thought, thus limned in the darkness, was that certain
emotions were best kept separate! But this thought vanished as
quickly as it came and both the man and the woman instinctively
dropped the subject.

They dropped it without any feeling at all on his part and on
hers only a faint obscure sense that she would have to Confess
sooner or later that this boy was now living at Glastonbury. Then
they plunged into the deep pool together now with their eyes,
their minds, and their souls.

There are few mill-ponds like Harrod's in all Norfolk and the
sensation which these two returning natives got from looking into
its depths was unforgettable by both of them. On its outer rim
the water was of a pale, neutral colour, a sort of ashen grey, but
as the eye moved from circumference to centre it got darker and
darker; a faint bluish tinge mingled there with the grey and there
appeared a sort of mysterious luminosity as if there had been a
subterranean light at the bottom of the pool.

But what a thing it was to see those great fish, one after an-
other, rise up slowly from the unseen depths, mount to the sur-
face as if they were going to breathe the air, and then, with a
reversion of their slow ellipse, turn back towards the depths
again!

To the girl this sight was purely disinterested--just objectively
arresting like a flight of beautiful swallows--but to John, with
his boyish memory of fishing-rods and predatory pursuit, there
was a spasm of possessiveness in it, intense, disturbing, provoca-
tive, erotic. The girl satisfied no sense but that of sight as she
watched these mysterious water-denizens, first sub-aqueous clouds,
then vague darknesses, then noble fish-shapes, rising up and
sinking down as if in the performance of some elaborate court
ritual, the rules of which were as strict as in some water palace
of the Oceanides! But John's grosser nature was not so easily
content. A longing seized him, that seemed to carry with it some
primordial phallic tremulousness, to grasp with his hands these
slippery creatures, to hold them tight, to feel their fins, their
scales, their sliding coolness, their electric livingness.

Making no attempt to analyse why it should have been that
the sight of these alien beings, gliding upward, downward, with
such intense and yet easy volition, should excite his desire, he
moved instinctively behind his companion and slid his arms be-
tween her body and the rough fabric of the wall against which
they leaned.

"You're like a cormorant,"she gasped when she recovered her
breath' from the disturbance of his protracted embrace.

"Sorry,"he muttered. "I couldn't help it. Curse it!"he added.
"We've got to go, my dear, and quickly too! So say good-bye
trout, or chub, or whatever you are! I don't know what you are!"

He caught her hand and pulled her away, as if he feared she
might transform herself into one of those cold, slippery fish-
shapes, and vanish forever into the bluish-grey twilight. As he led
her off, his last glance revealed a gleaming circle of ripples.
"There's a rise!"he murmured. "The only one we've seen, but
we must hurry! I daren't look at my watch."

The tolling of the bell in the flint tower of the high-roofed
Northwold church did indeed begin before they reached the first
house of the village. The wind had dropped considerably and the
strong sunshine, warming their bodies through all their clothes,
combined with the motion of their rapid walk to throw them into
a glow of delicious well-being. John felt so well satisfied with
what life was offering him that his mind took a leap--unusual for
him--into his practical future.

"I'm going to ask Philip to give me a job in Glastonbury,"
he said.

The girl found a secret vent for the rush of rapturous delight
which this newt brought to her by clutching the flapping edges
of --------and pulling them tightly round her neck.

"I'm a companion to an old woman there called 'Phemia Drew,"
she said eagerly. "Her house is what they call the Abbey
House so I can see the Ruins from my bedroom."

"You owe your job to Philip, I suppose?"said John. "I de-
cided before I left the rue Grimoire, that I'd ask him for a job
there myself. So my English life will begin side by side with
your life."

Her voice was decidedly strained as she asked her next ques-
tion. "You're not married, are you, John?"

The tolling of the bell in the flint tower fell upon them at that
moment like a long, bony arm thrust out of a coffin. He uttered
a sardonic chuckle.

"If I were, my dear, she'd be a funny kind of Frenchwoman
not to have tricked me out better. She did buy me this tie "
He pulled out the object referred to and flapped it between his
finger and thumb as they hurried down the street. "No, no--I'm
not married. And now I've got hold of you I'm not likely to be--"
he cast a foxy glance at her out of the corner of his slanted eye-
lids; a look such as a thievish schoolboy, with a stolen plum in
his fingers, might throw upon the owner's daughter--"unless you
would marry me!"

She gave him a dreamy, abstracted stare in answer, as though
she had not heard his last words at all. Then she bit her lip with
a little frown and turned away her head. When she looked at him
again her face had cleared. "How lucky that Philip got the idea
of bringing me here, John. I don't believe you'd have thought of
Glastonbury if we hadn't met."

They had now reached the entrance to the churchyard; and
they found they had to push their way through a crowd of vil-
lagers to get through the narrow gate. They made their way to
where two clergymen were standing above a hole in the ground.
The white surplices these wore fluttered a little in the wind, dis-
playing at intervals the black trousers underneath. In front of
these white figures, on the other side of the hole, all the relations
were mutely assembled, the men in a sort of discreet trance,
shamefacedly holding their hats, over which their heads were
bowed; the women, much more self-possessed, throwing quick
little glances here and there and fidgeting with the umbrellas.
prayer-books and handkerchiefs which they hold in their black-
gloved hands. John and Mary advanced instinctively to the side
of Miss Elizabeth Crow, who was the only one of the whole com-
pany to be showing any deep emotion. She was sobbing bitterly;
and she held both hands, bare and empty, pressed against her
face.

Quickly enough, however, when Mary reached her side, she real-
ised who it was, and removing her hands from her face, gave
her, through her falling tears and the convulsed twitching of her
rugged cheeks, a sympathetic and humorous smile. Those were
the only tears, that was the only smile, evoked from any human
skull at the funeral of William Crow. This stalwart, stout lady,
now so sturdily wiping away her tears with the back of one of
her plump hands, was indeed, according to that queer destiny
which the man in the New Inn had discoursed upon, the only
child of the dead man left alive. All the rest of the company
were grandchildren; or they were county neighbours. "She treated
'un pretty bad in's lifetime,"murmured one of the village on-
lookers. " 'Tis too late to make a hullabaloo, now the poor man's
dead."

The service had begun some while before John and Mary ap-
peared upon the scene; so it was not very long before it was all
over and the company trooping back to the Rectory. This was
an easy proceeding for the simple reason that at the side of the
churchyard opposite to the public entrance there was a private
door leading into a portion of the Rectory garden; and not only
so, but into that very portion of it, a walled-in courtyard, which
surrounded the front entrance to the house.

It was in the large, old-fashioned drawing-room, that room that
had made such a deep impression on the mind of the youthful
John, that all the relatives were now gathered to hear Lawyer
Didlington read the will. It fell to Philip Crow to act the part of
host to everybody and also the part of the natural heir to his
grandfather; although, as a matter of fact, no one except the
lawyer himself had more than the vaguest speculative guess as
to what the will was likely to contain. But Philip had so much
nervous domination that he was the sort of person who always
takes the lead in any group or on any occasion of importance;
nor would an outsider have guessed for a second, watching the
man's youthful energy, that in a couple of days from today he
would be fifty years old.

The windows opened upon an enormous lawn which itself
opened out into a field surrounded by trees. In the middle of the
lawn was a great cedar tree. The windows almost reached to the
floor of the room; and thus, with the lawn and with the field,
entirely secluded from the outer world, the drawing-room itself
became the inner sanctuary of "a great good place,"a conse-
crated Arcadia. To the right of anyone standing at these windows
and looking out, rose, behind a border of laurel bushes, the high,
grey, flint nave of the church. Thus this room possessed that rare
delicious quality that certain old chambers come to have that
overlook scholastic quadrangles or walled-in college gardens.

It might, however, have appeared to an observer curious in
antiquarian lore that compared with similar retreats there was
about this scene in spite of the presence of the church something
essentially heathen and secular. The disproportioned size of the
Rectory and its great lawns compared with both church and vil-
lage gave an impression of the existence on that spot--at least a
former existence--of something high-handed and predatory. In
other words there was displayed in all this sequestered felicity
the same Danish tendency to profane self-assertion that has been
noted in the character of the Northwold villagers. "Possess, enjoy,
defy"might have been the heraldic motto of both rich and poor
in this portion of East Anglia.

While the sexton was lazily and contentedly shovelling into
the grave, on the top of the earth-covered coffin, all the good
Norfolk clay, so auspicious for the growing of roses, that had
been piled up at the foot of the hole--and be it noted that
several lob-worms and several lively little red worms, which are
so irresistible to Wissey perch, went down into that hole with the
clay--there hovered round the body in the coffin a phantasma-
goria of dream-like thoughts. These thoughts did not include any
distaste for being buried or any physical shrinking, but they
included a calm, placid curiosity as to whether this dream-like
state was the end of everything, or the beginning of something
else. Nerves of enjoyment, nerves of suffering, both were atro-
phied in this cold, sweet-sickly, stinking corpse; but around and
about it, making a diffused "body"for itself out of the ether that
penetrated clay and planks and grass-roots and chilly air, all
alike, the soul of the dead man was obsessed by confused mem-
ories, and deep below these by the vague stirring of an unini-
passioned, neutral curiosity.

William Crow was in his ninety-first year but he had never ex-
perienced such intense curiosity since his son Philip in his twen-
tieth year had run away and married an unknown woman.

Up and down, up and down, these memories kept washing,
Backward and forward they washed, they drifted, they eddied
And always, far beneath them, the root of curiosity stirred trem-
ulously, like a lazily swaying seaweed, beneath an ebbing and
flowing sea-tide.

The eyelids of the old, dead face under the coffin-lid were
tightly closed; and the mouth, that eloquent actor's mouth, was
a little open; but what remained totally unchanged was the
beautiful, snow-white hair covering the round skull on every side
with curls as silky as those of a child.

The memories of this death-cold skull gravitated always to-
wards the image of his long-dead wife. No emotion did they
excite, not one tremulous flicker, either of love or hate; only upon
each separate memory that calm curiosity turned its neutral gaze.

"A thoroughly mean man...that's what you are, William, a tho-
roughly mean and cruel man! That sad look in your eyes that
you always say is sensitiveness is really cruelty! That's what it
is. Just cold-blooded malicious cruelty...and sensual too, oh,
wickedly, wickedly sensual!"

With the absolute calm of a botanist observing a plant did the
curiosity in the soul of this corpse listen to this whisper of
memory.

And again the voice of the proud lady out of her Swiss grave
penetrated the Norfolk clay.

"Elizabeth Devereux to William Crow! I was a fool ever to
marry such a person as you, William. Mother always said it was
marrying beneath me."

The mouth of the dead face fell open a little further and the
terrible, unapproachable silence of decomposition deepened.

"My Philip's son will be like his father,"the woman's voice
reiterated. "He'll be all me! He'll be a true Philip Devereux.
He'll have no touch of the Dane in him."

The confinement of the coffin-boards was nothing to William
Crow. The raw clay, rattling noisily down from the sexton's
spade, was less than nothing to him. To suffer from anything, to
enjoy anything--he had forgotten what those words meant. En-
joyment, suffering? What strange, morbid by-issues of human
consciousness were these?

But the voice of the woman began again; and that cold, dis-
interested curiosity stirred placidly to hear her words.

"Yes! You may look at yourself in the looking-glass as long as
you like, William. That sad, weary look under your eyebrows,
over your eyelids, is nothing but selfish cruelty...such as kills
flies and torments people without hitting them! My family has
always taken what it wanted. But it never stooped to spiteful tor-
menting. My father used to say that when Norman families stop
ruling England, England will get soft and wordy and mean...
just like you, William...

With impervious calm, as he listened to all this, did the soul ot
that passive corpse wonder vaguely whether this Devereux despot-
ism was, or was not, the true secret of dealing with earth-life
below the sun. It wondered too, with the same complacent indif-
ference, whether the humming of these confused memories was
going to lapse into what they called "eternal rest"or going to
prelude some new and surprising change. Whichever it was, it was
equally interesting, now that pleasure and pain were both gone.
Annihilation--how strange! A new conscious life--how strange!
What indeed the soul of the Rector of Northwold experienced, at
that moment of his burial, was more like the Homeric view of
death than anything else--only with more indifference to love and
fame! Everything human in him was, in fact, subsumed in that
primeval urge which originally lost us Paradise. The Reverend
William, cold and stiff, cared for nothing except to satisfy his
curiosity.

Meanwhile in the great Rectory drawing-room another and a
far less disinterested curiosity was mounting up, mounting up to
a positive suffering of tantalisation, as Mr. Anthony Didlingtoa--
looking so much like a character of Sir Walter Scott that you
expected him, after every resounding period from his parchment
document, to take a vigorous pinch of snuff--read the late
Canon's will.

John and Mary had ensconced themselves on a small eight-
eenth-century sofa, that had the air of being the identical sofa
that gave a title to Cowper's poem; and that stood back, behind
the more pretentious pieces of furniture, near the furthest window.

In the most important place in the room sat Tilly Crow, Phil-
ip's wife, a small, trim, dark, little woman with a high forehead,
carefully parted hair, black, beady eyes, and under her chin a
colossal wedgewood brooch. Opposite Mrs. Philip, on the further
side of the hearth where a warm fire was burning, sat Elizabeth
Crow in her mother's little green velvet arm-chair which the great
black satin dress of the portly lady filled to overflowing. Her face
was weary and wistful rather than unhappy; but above and be-
neath her firmly modelled cheeks and rugged cheek-bones those
quaintly indented creases were extremely marked, whose con-
tractions, according to Mary, were an indication that there was
trouble in the wind .Lawyer Didlington with sedate pontifical
gravity sat on a high chair with his back to the largest window.
Not a glance did he give at that gracious lawn, across the smooth
surface of which the long afternoon shadows from lime-tree and
cedar-tree were already falling.

Close to the lawyer's table, and taking not much more notice of
the shadows on the lawn than he did, sat at another table, with
writing materials ostentatiously displayed in front of them, Dave
Spear and Persephone Spear. It might have been supposed that
this young couple were desperately transcribing every detail of
the late Rector's will; but this would have been an erroneous sup-
position. The papers which lay before them had been extracted
from a battered leather case which now reposed on the carpet at
their feet. The calculations upon which they were so absorbingly
engaged, and which entailed the passing across the little table of
all manner of pencil scrawls, had not the very remotest connec-
tion with what Mr. Didlington was reading with such careful and
explanatory unction; unless indeed all human activities of a revo-
lutionary character are to be regarded as having a relation to the
rights of property.

Persephone Spear and her husband had in fact just come from
a communistic meeting at Leeds and were proceeding to another
one at Norwich before returning to Bristol where they lived. This
matter of consigning Persephone's grandfather to his native Nor-
folk clay would not have allured them from a mile off if it had
not been for the fact that there was the possibility of a strike just
then at one of Philip's Somersetshire factories. Feeling a family
interest in this event they had naturally got into touch with the
leaders of the strike and were doing their best not only to give the
event a communistic turn but also to use the accident of their re-
lationship with him to win concessions from Philip

It was a faint amusement to Miss Elizabeth, even in the midst
of her sad thoughts, to observe how curiously unlike each other
these two young revolutionaries were, and yet what a perfect
unanimity existed between them. Spear was a short, humorous,
broad-faced youth, with closely cropped fair hair and small,
merry, blue eyes; while Percy was a tall, lanky maid of a brown-
ish, gipsy-like complexion and with a mop of dusky curls.

Mr. Philip Crow himself had been, until the lawyer actually
commenced reading, moving, like the energetic diplomat he was,
from one to another of all these relatives; and even now, while
everybody else was seated, he stood with alert, polite attention,
leaning against the side of the big window with his back to the
lawn and keeping his eyes fixed upon the old-world physiognomy
of Mr. Anthony Didlington. No one could have denied to Philip
Crow the epithet of handsome. He was indeed the only thoroughly
good-looking one of all the assembled relatives; but his good
looks were attended with so little self-consciousness and were
so completely subordinate to his formidable character that they
played a very minor part in the effect he produced. The man
drove himself--you could see that in his hawk's nose, his com-
pressed lips, his narrowed eyelids, his twitching brows--but he
drove others yet more inflexibly, as was apparent from the roving
intensity of his grey eyes, the eyes of a pilot, a harpooner, a big-
game hunter--in a word, of a Norman adventurer who took, kept,
organised, constructed; and who moulded sans pitie weaker na-
tures to his far-sighted purpose.

John and Mary were so absorbed in whispering to each other
as first one memory and then another stole into their minds out of
the aura of that old room, some associated with the view outside
the window, some with the furniture, some with the figures of
their grandparents, that they had little attention to spare for any
of the rest of the company. It is true that every now and then
John did cast a swift, foxy glance, past the bowed heads of the
two revolutionaries, at that great parchment document, with its
official red seals, that Mr. Didlington held as reverently as a priest
holds the Gospels at Mass. These hungry, furtive glances were the
tribute he paid to all those excited expectations of incredible
legacies, discussed at so many rue Grimoire suppers with Lisette
and Pierre. But these greedy thoughts came quickly and went
quickly! The seductive softness of Mary's long limbs, as she sat
with crossed legs and clasped hands staring gravely at his face,
made his already achieved good luck more precious than any ec-
clesiastical bequest.

It really seemed interminable, the list of plots and parcels of
good English ground, inhabited and uninhabited, which, in vari-
ous portions of Norfolk, William Crow had inherited from his
thrifty yeoman ancestors. Still it went on drawing itself out, this
protracted list; and as yet no hint had appeared as to who was
going to be the gainer by all this accumulation of properties, of
which apparently the dead man had an undisputed right of free
disposal.

The wind had quite dropped now. The shadows on the lawn
were darker and colder. The few yellow dandelions that had es-
caped the gardener's shears had closed themselves up and looked
--as dandelions do when near sunset--forlorn, impoverished,
empty of all glory. A pallid radiance alternated with velvet-black
shadows upon the trunk of the cedar; and over the daffodils in
the grass and over the hyacinths in the flower-beds a peculiar
chilliness, rising from a large hidden pond beyond the field, and
not yet palpable enough to take the form of vapour, moved
slowly from the edge of the distant shrubbery towards the house.

Philip's thoughts were like far-flung hooks piercing the gills of
some monstrous Fate-Leviathan that he had resolved to harness
to his purpose. He visualised his factory at Wookey Hole. He
visualised those stalactites and stalagmites in the famous caves
there and saw them lit with perpetual electricity. He remembered
how he had stood alone there once by the edge of that subterra-
nean river flowing under the Witch's Rock and how he had felt a
sensation of power down there beyond anything he had ever
known. "These Norwich-investments are nothing,"he thought,
"these over-taxed properties are nothing. The three big mort-
gages are the thing! Forty thousand they'd sell for. He's left
them to me--I feel it, I sense it, I know it. Besides, he promised
Grandmother. He confessed that to me himself. What a good thing
he died when he did! Never again shall I have to listen to that
voice of his reading Lycidas. Old epicure! I can see him now,
putting cream into his porridge and looking out so voluptuously
across his garden! Living for his sensations! That's what he did,
all his days. Putting cream into his porridge, reading his poetry,
and living for his sensations. What a life for a grown man! The
life of a frog in a lily-pond. Aunt Elizabeth is sorry now he's
dead. But she didn't like it when Johnny Geard became the favour-
ite. She very quickly cleared out. He must have fancied himself
a lot over that. Must have thought he was converting a Methodist
to the true doctrines. Old fantastical-brained, crochetty ass! I
shall rebuild the Wookey Hole plant entirely. That'll take about
ten thousand. That will leave thirty thousand to play with. And
by God! I'll play with it. Four thousand would take electricity
beyond the actual known limits of every one of those caves. I'll
do the plant for ten thousand and spend five on the caves. With
five thousand I could electrify the bowels of the Mendips!" What
Philip felt at that second of time when he imagined himself with
all that electric power at his disposal, standing among those pre-
historic stalactites, would be hard to put into rational human
speech. The drumming of a meteorite travelling through space
would best express it. "I...I...I...riding on electricity...I...I...I...
grasping electricity...I...I...I...alone...all-powerful...under the Men-
dips...letting loose my will upon Somerset...my factories above...
my electricity beneath....I...I , . , Philip Crow...planting my will
upon the future...moulding men...dominating Nature."

His hard grey eyes began to soften a little and his gaze, leaving
Mr. Didlington's face, turned itself towards vacancy.

"I shall have a completely new sort of boat made, to explore
that subterranean river,"he thought, "flatter than a barge, lighter
than a canoe. I'll build an electric engine for it and I'll have my-
self floated under the Witch's Rock and I'll make them leave me
there; and I'll have that feeling....I'll make it work too. I'll have
water power for my plant run by the buried river in the heart of
the Mendips! I'll electrify the caves of the Druids. I'll carry elec-
tricity deeper under the earth than anyone's ever done. How
slowly this old ass reads!"

But Miss Elizabeth Crow, staring sometimes into the fire and
sometimes out of the big window across the lawn, thought to her-
self, "I should have had an easier life if I'd put up with Johnny
Geard and stayed with F ather." She remembered how she had first
seen this Glastonbury ex-preacher whose mystical ideas got such
a fatal hold on William Crow's mind and on William Crow's heart.
She had been visiting her mother in Switzerland; and when
she came back there he was--the Somersetshire revivalist, in-
stalled in Northwold Rectory! "How his black eyes gleamed as
he listened to Father's morning prayers! The man was fascinating
in his own way. I can't blame Father for liking him."She could
hear now her father's resonant voice repeating the great poetical
chapters in Isaiah. "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith
your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem and cry unto her,
that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned;
for she hath received of the Lord's hands double for all her
sin!"And she could hear this charlatan interrupt--an unheard-of
thing for a servant to do!--and beg for another chapter of sacred
rhetoric.

Tilly Crow's mind was neither conjuring up large legacies nor
brooding over ancient grievances. It was occupied entirely with
minute problems connected with the larder, the pantry, the
kitchen, in her own home at Glastonbury. There was a certain
shelf in the pantry that her housemaid always kept too crowded.
Tilly Crow could see now a particular stream of light in which
the sun motes were wont to flicker when she entered that pantry
after breakfast. This light always fell upon a suspended dishcloth,
different from the rest, with a little green border, which she kept
for drying her best china cups herself when they had visitors.
Then her mind left the pantry and made a journey of about a
dozen feet to the larder. Here she saw with abominable vividness
a bluebottle fly--she maintained a special and constant warfare
against these--walking along the edge of a shelf where the butter
and cheese were kept. Not being able to endure this image with
equanimity she gave a sharp little shake of her head to drive it
away and as Mr. Didlington began a long list of freeholds in the
parish of Thorpe her adventurous mind took a daring leap to her
Glastonbury drawing-room where it concentrated upon the faded
pink ottoman wherein she kept her wools.must re-line the
ottoman,"she said to herself. "There's that rent that Elizabeth's
cat made. It always bothers me to see it. How sentimental Eliz-
abeth looks, staring out of the window! Oh, I hope the Canon has
left her enough money to go and live by herself in some nice
seaside place!" At this point in Tilly Crow's thoughts there came
an image that she would have been very reluctant to put into
words; but as a mere image in the void--brought to her by some
housemaid of the air upon a silver tray--she gave herself up to
it. This was the image of a solitary cup of tea carried up to her,
with her letters, by Emma the cook, during a paradisiac holiday,
when Philip--such was Tilly's furthest reach of felicity--had
gone to stay for a whole fortnight with Aunt Elizabeth, at that
pleasant seaside place!

But what was this? What words of fatal significance had fallen
from the lips of Mr. Didlington? By what incantation had this
roomful of grown-up people been incontinently jerked upon their
feet, protesting, exclaiming, jeering, enquiring, denouncing, argu-
ing; and by no means speaking gently of their Grandfather Crow
who, for all that he was one of the chief causes of their being
alive upon the earth, seemed to have turned into a deliberate
enemy?

"Does it mean that none of us get a penny--not even Philip?"
whispered Mary to John.

"Not a penny,"the man from Paris answered. "And what's
more, Mary, I'll have to borrow ten shillings from you to get to
Glastonbury."

"You'll want more than that,"she returned gravely.

"No, I shan't. I'm going to walk. Ten shillings is what I want.
Not more, not less. But I want it from you and you'd better give
it me now if you've got your purse; for they're terribly excited
and it's best to be on the safe side."

Mary fixed a very straight look upon him at this. But seeing
that he was perfectly serious she moved back a little towards the
window and nodded to him to follow her.

"How much money have you got left?"Mary whispered. He
searched his pockets thoroughly and produced three shillings and
fourpence. This sum he held out to her in his two hands as if she
had demanded it of him. She shook her head. "Put it back,"she
said. "I'd better get some more for you. You can't walk all that
way. I'm sure Aunt Elizabeth "

He pulled her nearer to him, interrupting her words. The mas-
sive green curtain on the left of the window--for the winter cur-
tains had not been changed yet--hung in bulging folds against his
shoulder. Mary long afterward remembered how exactly like a cer-
tain Venetian picture she had seen somewhere his refined rogue's
face looked against that background. "I'm not going to take a
penny from anybody but you!"he whispered fiercely, with a mali-
cious gleam in his eye. "I'll find you out at Glastonbury in a week
or so--not longer than two weeks anyway--and then we'll see. I
may sponge upon you like the devil then,"he added, giving the
girl a quick, searching look. "I have sponged on girls before. It's
a way of life that seems to suit me!"

Mary showed her strong white teeth in a schoolgirl grin. Turn-
ing her back to the room she drew out her purse and took from it
three half-crowns, a florin and a sixpence. "Miss Drew,"she re-
marked, "doesn't pay very much. Philip doesn't give tips either.
Aunt Elizabeth gave me this for pocket-money."

It would have been clear enough to any close observer that
Mary derived an exultant happiness from handing over her
pocket-money to John in this childish manner. It would also have
been clear that John's feelings were equally those of a romantic
lover and a sly, unscrupulous tramp.

‘Til ask Aunt Elizabeth if you can't sleep here tonight,"whis-
pered Mary, as they turned away from the darkening window.

He made a wry face at her. "Don't you dare!"he breathed.
"I've got more than three shillings without touching your ten
and I've left my bag at the Inn. I'll make them give me a room
and breakfast for two nights for that--you'll see! I want to go
with you to the big river tomorrow. We never went there
together."

Mary got red with excitement. "We did, John! You've forgotten
but I remember. We did just once!"

Their dialogue was interrupted by Philip's voice which was not
raised, but which was lowered to such a key of indrawn inten-
sity that it compelled attention.

He was now standing with his back to the fire, fronting Mr.
Didlington, who, with his fingers inserted between the loose plages
of this calamitous will, swayed heavily and limply before him,
like an obsequious but surly seneschal whose account has proved
faulty.

"The whole of...this...forty thousand...left absolutely to this man...
and no chance...of legal action...that...in short...is the situation?"

Mr. Didlington began murmuring something in a husky, injured
voice; but it was only the word "legacies"that reached the
ears of John and Mary.

"Damn your legacies!"said Philip in the same tone. "Two
hundred a year from the Norwich property to my aunt; and a
hundred in cash to the servants. That's all of your precious lega-
cies there are. The maddening thing is that it was Tilly and I who
introduced this sly dog to Grandfather."

His voice changed a little and he looked towards his wife.

Tilly Crow had drawn up her thin legs in the great arm-chair
and, with her hands clasped so violently in her lap that the
knuckles showed white, stared at him with frightened eyes.

"Where is this thief, Tilly?"he said, in a much gentler voice.
"Where is this holy rascal who has fooled us all?"The fact that
he had displayed self-control enough to speak in a half-humorous
tone was in itself sufficient to bring about the recovery of his
equanimity. "Why,"he finally remarked, looking round with the
air of a monarch addressing his courtiers after the loss of a bat-
tle, ‘‘why doesn't someone fetch this good, religious man and let
me offer him our united congratulations!"

"The furniture,"murmured Tilly. "Did he say the furniture
was to be divided equally? Does that mean, Philip, that we can't
have the silver with your grandmother's crest on it? Ask them,
Philip, ask them now! They will give us the silver, won't they?
And the linen? We don't want any more furniture, Philip, but
these girls must let me have the linen! Tell them we don't want
any heavy furniture, Philip. Tell them we want the silver and
linen."

Aunt Elizabeth herself rose heavily from her seat now. Her
thoughts had been wandering away to Glastonbury, where thirty
years ago she had been so fond of the youthful Vicar of the place,
who had jilted her. to marry a maid-servant. She completely dis-
regarded Tilly and addressed herself to her nephew. "You are
thinking only of your own affairs, Philip,"she said sternly. She
looked at him, as she spoke, without a trace of the respectful awe
into which he had bullied the others. "Why don't you and Tilly
congratulate me on my two hundred a year?"

There was a weight of character in Aunt Elizabeth when she
was on her feet and confronting her nephew that enabled her to
reduce his importance and to reduce his loss of forty thousand
pounds! Mary pinched John's arm with delight and whispered to
him something he could not catch. It was from the other young
couple in the room, however, that the next word came.

"Percy and I congratulate you, Aunt,"cried Mr. Spear.

"Yes, yes,"echoed Persephone, straightening her shoulders and
tossing her head, "and we hope you'll come out of the enemy's
camp now and listen to wisdom."

Miss Crow moved towards them, attracted by something so
kind in their tone that it surprised and disarmed her. "I'm in no
enemy's camp, Percy,"she murmured, putting her arm round the
tall girl's waist. "I am an old-fashioned woman, and very fond
of my dear nephew and niece. I know nothing about politics--any
more than Mary does,"she added, making an instinctive move-
ment to bring the four young people together. John and Mary
did approach her.

"If there is to be anybody's wisdom thrust upon Aunt Eliza
beth,"John threw in, "I think mine would suit her best."

"What do you mean by that, Mr. Crow?"said young Spear, in
an argumentative tone.

"Yes, what do you mean, John?"repeated Persephone. "You
don't mean that Dave and I would try and browbeat Aunt Eliza-
beth, to force her to see the light, do you?"

"The light, the light, the light, the light!"cried John suddenly
with a convulsed face.

Aunt Elizabeth unconsciously started back a pace or two, drag-
ging Persephone, whose waist she still held, back with her; for
there was something about Percy's slender figure that provoked
people to touch her and made it difficult to let her go.

But John's face smoothed itself out in a second and the hum-
blest apologies flowed from him. "It's my French mischief com-
ing out, Dave Spear,"he said. "It's all acquired cynicism. Really,
I love to think that there are people with strong convictions,
people who know they are right, like you and Cousin Philip."

Philip's own voice broke into their talk at this moment. It had
not failed to strike him that Aunt Elizabeth and the four young
cousins, in their obvious indifference to the grotesque event of
forty thousand pounds passing from the Crow family to the
Geard family, had succeeded in ostracising him in a sort of
moral solitude. He and his wife might go on quarrelling with
Mr. Didlington over this fiasco. The others were civilised people,
prepared to take a mere financial blow with becoming urbanity!

"Don't lump me and Dave Spear together,"he interrupted,
pushing his way between Aunt Elizabeth and Mary with jocular
bluster. "Percy would never cook him another meal if she
thought we had anything in common. To my pretty Perse I shall
never be anything but a bloated capitalist, shall I?" And he also,
just as Aunt Elizabeth had done, put his arm round the tall girl's
slender waist.

Cousin Tilly,' cried Dave Spear, with a schoolboy grin on his
broad countenance, "come and stop Philip from flirting with
my wife!"

But Mrs. Crow, who had just rung the bell and had had a long
whispered conversation with the maid who answered it, was her-
self at that moment upbraiding Mr. Didlington in a plaintive but
penetrating, voice. "She says that horrible man departed yester-
day from Glastonbury. I suppose both of you knew that Grand-
father had left him everything."She paused, and then turning
to her husband, "Tea's ready in the dining-room, Philip,"she
said.

The lawyer made his way to the group in the centre of the
room and allowed his answer to Tilly's shrewish attack to be a
general professional reply to them all.

"It is true,"he said, "that Mr. Geard was aware, just as I was
aware, of the late Canon's intentions; and as his family live in
Glastonbury it was natural and indeed suitable that he should
proceed there at once to acquaint them with this very consider-
able bequest."

"Well, Didlington,"returned Philip, looking round at the com-
pany, "I hope you will do my wife the pleasure of letting her
pour out tea for you? Shall we go into the dining-room? Will you
follow Mrs. Crow, Didlington?"

He opened the door and they all trooped out into the passage.
Down this they moved, past the broad staircase where the walls
were hung with some really valuable oil paintings selected by
William Crow's great-uncle. Not far from this staircase was the
front door, leading--through a pleasant conservatory--out into
the courtyard. It was through this door rather than any other that
Mr. Didlington now hastened to pass, picking up his hat from a
marble table that offered itself conveniently to his attention.

"Have to get home, Crow. The wife expects me, you know, and
it's quite a walk. If I stayed to tea with all you good folk I
shouldn't be at Methwold till after dark."

Philip had the wit to see that Tilly's tactless outburst had
really upset the worthy man. What wild creatures women are!
He followed the lawyer out into the conservatory which was
fragrant with heliotrope and lemon verbena. "You must forgive
Mrs. Crow, Didlington,"he said quietly. And then, as the man
only nodded with a faint shrug of his shoulders, "The great point
you've made clear,"he went on, "is that the family has no case
against this fellow? We should have no chance--eh? not the
ghost of a chance--of upsetting tliis will?"

Mr. Didlington gravely bowed and buttoning his overcoat with
his free hand pensively picked a leaf from the lemon verbena
with the one that held his stick.

"Not the ghost of a chance, eh?"repeated Philip.

The man straightened and looked him in the face.

"I am acting,"he said, "for all parties concerned." He paused,
and resumed with real dignity. "My position as executor is a
difficult one. Mr. Geard recognises its difficulty. His departure for
Glastonbury proves that he does so. I hope that there may arise
no occasion for the introduction of further advice and Mr. Geard
hopes so too."

"I warrant he does,"thought Philip. But he only said: "I con-
fess to be startled, Didlington. You must have expected us to be
startled."

The lawyer continued crumpling up between his fingers the
lemon verbena leaf. "Mr. Geard has been your grandfather's
valet,"he said, "his secretary, his confidant, and, I might say,
if you'll permit the word, his friend, for the last ten years. No
opinion you called in would advise you to contest the will."

Philip Crow bent down and smelt a heliotrope. "Won't you
change your mind, Didlington, after all, and let my good wife
give you a cup of tea? She was over-excited just now. It was a
surprise, you know; and ladies always take things hard. I expect
if Mr. Geard wasn't . . hadn't been...well-known to us in
Glastonbury as a rather trying local preacher, she wouldn't have
felt--"

The lawyer shook his head. "In case there arose,"he said, "in
the mind of any of your family, a wish for further advice, I would
like to point out that the late Canon's doctor, a good friend of
mine, feels as I do, that your grandfather's mind was never
clearer than during the time he made this will. No reputable firm
would take up this case. Sir, on the grounds of undue influence.
Everybody knows--if you'll allow me to be quite frank--that his
family left the late Canon very much alone; and it is natural
enough that under these circumstances--"

Well--well--I'm afraid I must be getting back to my guests,"
interrupted Philip coldly. "I wish you a pleasant walk home,
Mr. Didlington."He opened the door of the conservatory and
bowed the man out.

No sooner had he entered the dining-room than Tilly Crow,
peering at him round the great copper urn which stood on the
table in front of her, with a little blue flame burning below it,
cried out to him in a tearful, plaintive voice. "It was our own
doing, Philip. That's what hurts me most. Oh, why, why did
we ever let that man go to him?"

"What kind of a man is he, this lucky wretch?"Percy Spear
enquired, as the head of the family sat down at the end of the
table.

"He was an open-air preacher who lived in Glastonbury, Perse,"
Philip explained. "He was always out of luck and had a wife
and two children. He was a nuisance to the whole town; and when
your grandfather wanted a lay-reader, or someone who'd com-
bine the duties of a valet and a curate, we packed him off to him.
No one would have dreamed of this being the result."

"Perhaps he isn't a bad sort of chap after all,"remarked Dave
Spear. "Did you ever see him, Mary?"

Mtary shook her head.

"I suppose,"said John in a low voice, as if speaking rather to
himself than to anyone in particular, "there is no way he could
be persuaded to give up some of it?"

Philip gave him a swift glance of infinite disgust. "One doesn't
do that sort of thing in England, Mr. Crow,"he said, "not, at
any rate, people in our position."

"A will is a funny thing,"said Dave Spear meditatively. "A
dead man arbitrarily gives to some living person the power that
he has robbed the community of! The mere existence of a thing
like a will is enough to prove the unnaturalness of private
property."

Aunt Elizabeth looked anxiously at Philip. "Don't start a dis-
cussion of politics now, I beg you, Dave Spear,"she said.

"My quarrel with Spear," interjected Philip in a low voice,
"is not confined to politics."

"What is it confined to?"cried Persephone sharply. "Don't you
begin teasing my Dave,"she went on, and as she spoke, she
stretched out a long, delicious, young girl's arm across the table
and taking Philip's hand in her own gave it a little playful scold-
ing shake.

Philip caught her fingers and held them gravely, while he looked
intently into her eyes. John saw the communist's rather rustic
countenance wince sharply while this magnetic vibration passed
between the cousins.

"What puzzles me about all your theories, Mr. Spear,"began
John, speaking rather rapidly, "is that they contradict the deep-
est instinct in human nature. To possess--doesn't the whole world,
for every one of us, turn upon this great pivot? Our philosophy,
for instance, what is it but the act by which we possess the Cos-
mos? Our love? That surely is the quintessence of possession. And
isn't this asceticism which you people practice, this giving up
of everything except the ‘bare essentials' as you call 'em, isn't
it a sort of wet blanket thrown upon human nature, a sort of
moral rebuke to the natural pleasures?"

"I think you will agree, Mr. Crow "began Spear excitedly, but
his wife broke in. "Let me put it to him, Dave!"she cried. "The
point is this, Mr. Crow. We fully agree with you about the impor-
tance of a free fling of our whole nature towards happiness.
But it's just this that the capitalistic system interferes with!
You are confusing two things. You are confusing natural,
instinctive happiness and the artificial social pride that we get
from private property. Under a just and scientific arrangement
of society such as they have achieved in Russia, our human values
begin to change. People feel ashamed of having money. It be-
comes a disgrace, like the reputation of a thief, to have more than
the essentials. But everyone has a right to the pleasures that bring
happiness. Everyone has a right to "

"She means,"interrupted her husband, raising his voice to a
very vigorous pitch, "she means, Mr. Crow, that everyone who
works honestly and doesn't live by exploiting others can have
enough to enjoy their life on. The exploiting classes, of course,"
here he nearly shouted, causing Tilly to give a quick glance at
the door, afraid lest the servants should hear him, "must be
starved out!"

The contrast was so great between, the rosy face of this fair-
haired youth and the fanaticism of his tone that John stared at
him in astonishment. Into the darkening twilight, past all those
dim faces sitting round the table, the fierce words "must he
starved out"twanged like a bow-string.

Philip Crow from the end of the table cast upon the young
revolutionary very much the sort of glance that some Devereux
of the Norman Conquest would have cast upon some Saxon
Gurth who had dared to challenge him as his horse broke through
the brushwood with a raised quarterstafF. "You could starve me
out, my son, if you won over the army and the air-force, but I
assure you you'll have one bloated capitalist you'll never starve
out."

"Philip means our friend Mr. Geard, I suppose,"murmured
Aunt Elizabeth.

"I mean Nature!"

Persephone gave vent to a rather uncivil whistle. "Nature?"
she mocked. "What are you talking about, Philip?"

"Don't you see, my good child,"he said quite gently, "that it's
always been by the brains and the energy of exceptional individ-
uals, fighting for their own hands, that the world has moved on?
What you people are doing now is simply sharing out what has
already been won. We have the future to think of; or, as I say,
Nature has the future to think of."

The blood rushed to the face of Dave Spear and a misty film
gathered in front of his eyes, so that what he saw of the room
and the people in the room was a swimming blur.

"I can't argue...with you . . he jerked out as if each word carried
with it a streak of his heart's blood, "but I know that...if the mass-
es...the masses of workers...the real workers...got...got the machin-
ery and the...the land and water . . into their hands...a new spirit...
not known before in all the history...of...of...of humanity conscious
of its fate...would be stronger, greater, more...more...more god...
more godlike than anything that your great selfish individuals have
...have felt."

In his emotion the young man had lurched to his feet, and had
seized with his fingers a half-cut loaf of bread which he began
squeezing spasmodically. Aunt Elizabeth stretched forth her hand
and removed this object; but not before that particular gesture
in this darkening room with the damp, green lawn and the sombre
cedar outside, had caught John's attention as something symbolic.
Long afterward John remembered that clumsy, bucolic figure
leaning forward over the shadowy, unlit table and clutching that
bread. With far more force than the slender Percy's eloquence
those awkward, blurted words seemed to carry the seal of proph-
ecy upon them. A green-coloured gust of rainy wind came rushing
across that spacious garden, came swishing and swirling through
the laurel-bushes, came moaning through the cedar-boughs.

"Just touch the bell, would you, Mary, so that they know we
want the lamp?"broke in the voice of Tilly Crow.

The coming of the lamp changed the whole mental atmosphere
of that group of people. It brought their minds back from the
vibrations of the ideal to the agitations of the real. As the round
orb of light was placed in the centre of the great table there
entered the devastating reminder that forty thousand pounds'
worth of power over the lives of men and women had passed from
this comfortable room, from this secluded lawn, into some little
shabby domicile at Glastonbury.

"How many children has this lucky person got, Philip?"en-
quired Mary in a low voice.

"Two,"was Philip's laconic answer.

"But didn't you say he was a nuisance?"persisted Mary Crow.

"Two great sprawling girls,"sneered Philip. "I suppose they'll
buy Chalice House; or try and get the Bishop to sell them Abbey
House and turn out Euphemia Drew."

"Oh, I hope they will!"cried Mary.

"You hope they will?"

"I'm tired of Abbey House. I'd like the fun of seeing Miss
Drew choose new wall-papers."

"I'm afraid you'll never get that pleasure, Mary,"said Aunt
Elizabeth " 'Phemia was born in the Abbey House and she'll die
in the Abbey House."

"It's all very well for you, Elizabeth,"piped up Tilly Crow in
a voice like that of a melancholy meadow-pipit, "you've got your
two hundred a year."

"Yes, and I'm going to leave you in peace, too, Tilly, and live
on my two hundred a year. I shall take one of those little work-
mens cottages m Benedict Street that the town-council put up!"

Philip turned upon her with good-humoured bluster. "You'll
take nothing of the sort, Aunt,"he cried. "Why, those wretched
socialistic cardboard toys don't even keep the rain out."

"It's simply disgraceful of you, Philip," threw in Persephone,
"the way you do all you can to make the work of that town-
council of yours so difficult."

"By the way," exclaimed Philip suddenly, disregarding her
protest and speaking in a raised and carefully modulated voice,
"where do you intend to sleep tonight, Cousin John?"

"Philip reads all our thoughts, you know," murmured Aunt
Elizabeth. "He thinks you've got an eye to that big sofa in the
drawing-room."

"There won't be any sleeping on sofas in a house where I am!"
cried Tilly Crow sharply. Her voice sounded so exactly like the
miserable tweet-tweet of a bird soaked in a windy rain that John
felt disarmed and sorry for her.

"Don't be afraid, Philip," he said, "and don't you fret about
the sofa, Cousin Tilly. I've got a room for two nights at the Inn."
Persephone leaned over and whispered something in Philip's
ear. It was impossible for John to hazard the least conjecture as
to what she said; but a minute later Philip addressed him in a
loud it not a very amiable tone.

"I shall be offended, Cousin John, and I'm sure your Cousin
Tilly will be terribly hurt if you don't let us pay for your room
while you re here. How long a holiday have you allowed your-
self? How soon are you returning to Paris?"

"I...I...I haven't--on my soul I haven't thought about yet,"
muttered John Crow. "But thanks very much for the room
at the Inn."His voice suddenly became unnaturally loud.
Thanks very much, Cousin Philip. I shall he glad to stay two
nights at the Inn at your expense. Shall I tell them to send the
bill to you up here?"

John's tone, when his voice subsided, left everybody a little
uncomfortable.

"Well,"Philip said, "well-yes. Yes, of course. Yes, I shall
be here a few days more...perhaps... His voice sank down at
that point in a polite but weary sigh. It was plain to them all
that he felt no very strong attraction to the wanderer from
across the channel. His exact and precise thoughts, in fact,
might be expressed thus: "This fellow never expected any legacy.
He only came to see what he could get out of me. He's on
his beam-ends. He's probably got consumption, diabetes and the
pox. If I give him an inch hell take an ell. At all costs I mustn't
let him come to Glastonbury."

Miss Elizabeth turned round towards Tilly Crow now, and in
a gentle, unassuming voice asked what time dinner would be.

"I do wish everybody would stop calling it dinner,"said Tilly,
peevishly. "It'll be just a cold supper. There is so much over
from lunch. I thought of it just for the family, you know, and I
hoped Mr. Spear would not mind it being cold."She glanced as
she spoke, not at Dave, but at John. And it was John who lifted
up his voice in answer. "Don't think of me, in your hospitality,
Mrs. Crow, I beg. I shall be running up that bill--is it not so,
Philip--that we spoke of at the Inn?"

He rose to his feet as he said. this. But Philip rose too. "You
misunderstood me, Mr. Crow,"he said sharply. "It was only a
bedroom I was unable to offer you."He paused for a second
while a flicker of unconcealed distaste crossed his features. "But
of course you are jesting. Anyway you're free to enjoy which
you please...a hot supper at the Inn or a cold supper with us
here. Well! he added in a different tone, "I've got some writing
to do; and I think I'll desert you all now and do it in the study."

There was a general movement to leave the table at this point
and under the protection of the confusion John whispered to
Mary, "Look here, I'm not coming up here again. That Beggar
hates me comme le diable! You come, tomorrow mornin^, after
breakfast, and call for me at the Inn. Ha? I'll find out if we
canget a boat on the ‘big river' Anyway, you tell Aunt
Elizabeth that you're off for the day. How long are you going
to stay here?"

But, woman-like, Mary went straight to the main issue. "What
time shall I call for you, John?"

"Oh, about ten, if that's not too early? That'll give me time
to find out about the boat."

She gave him a peculiar look. It was a steady calm look.
Above all it was a stripped look. It held his attention for a
second; but he missed everything about it that was important.
He missed its touching confidence, its bone-to-bone honesty. He
missed its unquestioning, little-girl reliance upon him. He missed
its weariness, he missed its singleness of heart.

"You won't change your mind, John, and start off for Glas-
tonbury at dawn?"

It was his turn now to reveal, in an eyelid-flicker of self-
abandonment, the animal-primitive basis of his nature. It had
evidently crossed his mind, in his reaction from the pressure of
the family, that it would be nice to escape and be upon the
road alone! His face betrayed all this; but the newly born ma-
ternal tenderness in her tone expressed itself in such a gleam
of humorous indulgence that he was lifted up out of the shame
of having been caught in such a treachery, on a delicious wave
of sheer repose upon her understanding.

"No, I won't change my mind,"he whispered, "but don't let
anything they say keep you from coming, Mary."

"I think I can get you a little more money for--for the road,
John,"she said hurriedly.

He treated this with the decisive gesture of a strong man show-
ing off before a weak girl. "I'll be very angry if you do,"he
said. " Nothing would make me take it! So it's better not to
waste breath."

Both dining-room and drawing-room and the hall and the
passage outside these rooms were now left to themselves. Silent
and alone too the now-darkened conservatory listened to the
placid sub-human breathings of heliotrope and lemon verbena,
the latter with a faint catch in its drowsy susurration, where one
of its twigs was bleeding a little from the impact of the fingers
of the indignant Mr. Didlington.

Silent and alone the broad staircase fell into that trance of
romantic melancholy which was its invariable mood when the
hall lamp was first lit. The oil paintings upon its walls looked
out from their gilt frames with that peculiar expression of in-
drawn expectancy--self-centred and yet patiently waiting of
which human passers-by catch only the psychic echo or shadow
or after-taste, for a single flicker of a second, as if they had
caught them off-guard.

Of all these rooms the one that now fell into the most intense
attitude of strained expectancy was the drawing-room..."You
ought to have been older than all your brothers, woman, instead
of younger." The words emanated from a pale, insubstantial
husk upon the air, a husk that resembled the cast-off skin of a
snake or the yet more fragile skin of a newt, diaphanous and
yet flaccid, a form, a shape, a human transparency, limned upon
the darkness above the great chair to the left of the fireplace.
The words were almost as faint as the sub-human breathings of
the plants in the conservatory. They were like the creakings of
chairs after people have left a room for hours. They were like
the opening and shutting of a door in an empty house. They were
like the groan of a dead branch in an unfrequented shrubbery at
the edge of a forsaken garden. They were like the whistle of the
wind in a ruined clock-tower, a clock-tower without bell or balus-
trade, bare to the rainy sky, white with the droppings of jack-
daws and starlings, forgetful of its past, without a future save
that of anonymous dissolution. They were like words murmured
in a ruined court where water from broken cisterns drips dis-
consolately upon darkening stones, while one shapeless idol talks
to another shapeless idol as the night falls. They were like the
murmurs of forgotten worm-eaten boards, lying under a dark,
swift stream, boards that once were the mossy spokes of some
old water-mill and in their day have caught the gleam of many
a morning sun but now are hardly noticeable even to swimming
water-rats. No sooner were these words uttered, than a simula-
crum in human form, seated opposite to the shade of the Rector
returned a bitter response.

"A cruel coward is what you are, William Crow, and what
you've always been; but if ever, when I am dead, you leave your
money to anyone but Philip's son I will punish you with a pun-
ishment worse than God's!

While these words were being uttered the thin wraith from
whom they came became lividly accentuated in its facial outlines
which were of a ghastly pallor and hideously emaciated; but at
the close, while she was actually crying out "worse than God's"
not a vestige of her lineaments remained visible

The other wraiths too, in the chair opposite, aIthough a faint
film of his identity survived hers by two or three seconds, soon
likewise faded. The chairs, the pictures, the ornaments on the
mantelpiece were already lost in darkness. The fire was now
nearly extinct. The only glimmer it was able to throw, in feebler
and feebler jets from a little blue flame that kept racing along a
charred bit of burnt wood, fell upon a tall, gilded screen painted
with mythological figures. These intermittent flickerings soon died
down m a dusky red spot that illuminated nothing and itself
became dimmer and dimmer.

One of the big windows had been opened by Tilly Crow "to
air the room" while they all went to their tea; and through this
window the presence of the night flowed in. Sweet-scented, ob-
litating equalising, it flowed in, taking the bitterness from defeat,
taking the triumph from victory, and diffusing through the air an
essence of something inexplicable, something beyond hope and
beyond despair, full of pardon and peace.



THE RIVER



When Mary arrived at the New Inn, punctually at ten o'clock,
with their lunch tied up in white paper in a basket, she found
John Crow seated on a bench outside the entrance, with two
oars and a long boat-hook lying across his knees.

The wind had sheered round to due south and what there was
of it was faint-blowing. The sky was covered with an opalescent
vapour; the sun was warm; and the wandering odours that were
wafted towards the girl from the neighbouring cottages had a
sweetness in them beyond the pungency of burning peat; a
sweetness that may have come from the new buds in the privet
hedges, or from the dug-up earth clods in the little gardens at
the back, where the spades and forks of the men still stood fixed
in the ground awaiting their return when the day's work was
over.

He rose with alacrity to welcome her, the two oars in one hand,
the boat-hook in the other. "I've got the key," he announced
triumphantly. It s at the end of Alder Dyke on the big river.
They say we'd better go there by Foulden Bridge." He lowered
his voice and bent down his head. "Did any of them try to stop
you coming? Did Philip say anything?"

She shook her head and stood for a moment without moving,
her face averted, looking dreamily down the street. "This will
never happen to me again," she thought. "I am in love with him.
He is in love with me. I shall never forget this day and I shall
never feel just like this ever again, whatever happens." She turned
towards John. "I don't care where you take me," her look said,
"or what you do with me, as long as we are together!" But her
lips said, "Do you mind going in and getting some more of that
wine, John? I didn't want to make my basket too heavy, so I left
on the table the bottle of milk that Aunt Elizabeth made me
take."

He propped up the oars and the boat-hook against the house
and went in. Mary moved away, crossed to the other side of the
road and bending over a low brick wall stared at a manure-heap
in which three black hens were scratching. The manure-heap with
the three black fowls became at that second a sort of extension
of her own personality. She felt at that moment, as she rested
her basket on the top of the wall and heedless of her sleeves
stretched her arms along its surface and ran her hare fingers
through the cool stone-crop stalks, as if her soul was scarcely
attached to her body. Almost without allowing her happy trance
to be broken she took down her basket from the wall, recrossed
the road and met John at the instant he emerged. "Sorry to have
kept you," he chuckled, "but I've made them give me a flask of
brandy as well as a flask of port. That's the best of having a
greatcoat on, even on a hot day. Its pockets are so useful."

They walked rapidly now side by side past the churchyard and
past the gardener's cottage at the drive-gate where Ben Pod had
counfed the cars. They came to a narrow foot-way that led them
across the little river by a bridge that was scarcely more than
a plank, and after that across the fields to the big river. Here
at Foulden Bridge, which they did not cross, they debouched
from the path; and turning to the left, followed th* river bank
downstream.

They had not spoken a word since leaving the Inn. Mary
grew conscious, just before they got to Foulden Bridge, that she
had been repeating to herself as she walked along, "That's the
best of a greatcoat on a hot day. Its pockets are so useful." What
she had been thinking was, how bony and thin was John's hand
as it clutched the boat-hook which swung horizontally between
them like an antique spear.

John was delving in his memory for something; something
important. There had been several patches of yellow marigolds
along the path they had followed and these had excited a tan-
talising feeling in his mind that he could not fathom. Those
gleaming yellow flowers kept leading his memory to the verge
of something and then deserting him and turning into a blur of
blackness! Tom Barter had to do with it; but it was not Barter.
This preoccupation with an obscure past, although it made him
grave and silent, did not lessen his delight in his companion's
presence. They were indeed, both of them, thrillingly happy, these
two flesh-covered skeletons, drifting so lingeringly along the
banks of the Wissey, but John's happiness was much more com-
plicated than Mary's. His return to his native land played a part
in it; the revival of local memories played a slill larger part;
and this latter feeling was so intimately associated with Tom
Barter that to oust that sturdy figure from its place was impos-
sible. He kept reverting to the marigolds, especially to their
stalks in muddy water, and he kept thinking too of the stickiness
of certain lumps of flour-dough mixed with cotton-wool and
treacle that Tom and he had used for bait for roach and dace.
Perch, that more rapacious fish, despised these harmless pellets;
and he wondered whether it could be the black stripes of these
deep-water fish and their enormous mouths, or the stickiness of
this bait for the others, or a certain kind of homemade ginger-
beer that their grandfathers cook used to make, and not the
marigolds at all, that had been the tap-root lo his rapturous
sensation. It was not that this tantalising sense of being on the
edge of some incredible life-secret interfered with his feeling
for Mary. It was that his possession of Mary had become a calm-
flowing tidal-stream which released and expanded all the an-
tennae of his nature. These responses leapt up towards the un-
known, like those great, slippery fish at Harrod's Mill. Tom Barter,
marigold-stalks, fish-scales, dough-pellets--all these, and the
secret they held, depended, like the long shining river-weeds
upon which his eye now rested, upon the flow of that stream of
contentment which was his possession of Mary.

They were walking now very close to the river bank and it
was not long before they reached Dye's Hole. This spot was really
a series of deep holes in the bed of the Wissey where the stream
made a sweeping curve. Over these dark places in the swirling
water bent the trunks of several massive willow trees and be-
tween these trees and the edge of the stream there was a winding
path, too narrow to be trodden by horses and cattle but inter-
spersed with muddy footholds and beaten-down clearings amid
the last year's growths, where it was just possible for two peo-
ple to stand close together having the willow trunks behind them
and the dark water in front.

John stopped when he reached the largest of these little clear-
ings, and standing on the trodden mud balanced the iv.o oars
and the boat-hook against the branches of an elder bush which
hung over a narrow ditch on the side of their path opposite to
the river. Then he turned round and facing Dye's Hole waited
for the girl to come up. The back of his head touched the vivid
green shoots of a gigantic willow tree whose roots, like great
thirsty serpents, plunged below the flowing water. As soon as
the girl reached him he took her basket from her and laid it down
on the ground, taking care to place it where a fragment of an
old post, of dark, rotting wood pierced by three rusty nails, would
prevent it from toppling over into the ditch. As he placed it
there he chanced to touch, between it and the post, a newly grown
shoot of water mint; and at once a wafture of incredible aromatic
sweetness reached his brain.

They both stood still and gazed round them. "I wonder if you
and I will ever see all this again?" he said.

"It's home to me," she said.

"It's home to both of us," concluded John; and the two of
them as if they were one flesh drank up in great satisfying
draughts the whole essence of that characteristic spot. With the
same unspoken understanding that had brought their thoughts
together before, the girl's hat and the man's cap were now
thrown together on the earth at their feet and they gave them-
selves up to a protracted love-making. What was remarkable
about this love-making was that during all their embraces, in
which the man held her and caressed her, first with her body
front to front against his, and then with her face turned towards
the river, their male and female sensuality--he "possessing" and
she being "possessed"--was, in its earth-deep difference, of ex-
actly the same magnetic quality. This was not due to his expe-
rience or to her inexperience; for, in these matters. Nature, the
great mother of all loves, equalised them completely. It was due
to some abysmal similarity in their nerves which, after making
them fall in love, made them "make love" in exactly the same
manner! There always remained the unfathomable divergence,
in their bodies, in their minds, in their souls, due to their being
male and female; but their similarity of feeling was the exciting
element sounding the depths of ever-new subtleties in this de-
liciousness of like-in-unlike.

What John and Mary really did was to make love like vicious
children; and this was due to the fact that they were both very
nervous and very excitable but not in the faintest degree tempted
to the usual gestures of excessive human passion. The rationalism
of analytic logic has divided erotic emotion into fixed conven-
tional types, popular opinion offering one set of categories, fash-
ionable psychology offering another. As a matter of fact, each
new encounter of two amorists creates a unique universe. No
existing generalisation, whether of the wise or of the unwise,
covers or ever will cover a tenth part of its thrilling phenomena.
In one respect this love-making by Dye's Hole was the most child-
like that the spot had ever witnessed; in another it was the most
cerebral. The nervous excitement manifested by these two was
so free from traditional sentimentality and normal passion, so.
dominated by a certain cold-blooded and elemental lechery, that
something in the fibrous interstices of the old tree against which
they leaned was aroused by it and responded to it.

And so when they forsook that ledge of muddy ground between
the confederate tree and the dark water, it was not only with
relaxed nerves and an absolute sense of mutual understanding,
it was with a dim awareness of some strange virtue having passed
into them. Lingering behind the girl for a moment the man
pressed his forehead against that indented willow trunk and mur-
mured a certain favourite formula of his, relating to- his dead
mother. After that, taking up his oars and boat-hook, he followed
the girl along the river bank. It did not take them long now to
reach Alder Dyke.

Alder Dyke! Alder Dyke! It was not marigold stalks nor the
smell of dough. It was alder boughs that brought Tom Barter
and that unknown ecstasy into the arteries of his soul! He made
a fumbling forward movement with his arms as he touched these
alders, as if welcoming a living person, and Mary divined merely
from the look of his lean vagabond's back, that some new e-
motion, entirety unconnected with her, had taken possession
of him. When he dived into the mass of entangled boughs he
plunged his hands into it and only after pressing an armful of
rough twigs against his mouth and cheeks did he turn his head
towards her. Any ordinary girl would have been disturbed by the
nature of the crazy sound he now made to express his feelings
and to summon his mate to enjoy Alder Dyke with him! It was
more like the whinnying of a wild horse than anything else and
yet it was not as loud as that; nor was it really an animal sound
any more than it was a human sound. It was the sort of sound
that this thick bed of alders itself might have emitted when tossed
and rocked and torn by some fierce buffetting of the March winds.
Instead of getting angry with him or thinking to herself "Who
is this man I have given myself to?" instead in fact of thinking
anything at all, Mary simply put down her basket, and ran
hastily to his side. Without a word she threw her arms round his
neck and pressed her lips against his cold leaf-smelling cheek.
An alder twig had chanced to scratch his skin and the girl tasted
now .the saltish taste of spilt blood. Johns cap had been already
switched from his head by his dive into the mass of boughs, and
Mary instinctively snatched off her own hat. Thus they swayed
together for a minute like two wild ponies who in joy bite furi-
ously at each other's necks. Then, using all his strength, though
she was nearly as tall as he, he lifted her up and trampling for-
ward like a centaur with a human burden plunged headlong
deeper and deeper among those twisted branches.

When he reached the banks of the deep ditch itself he turned
towards its mouth, and after an angry and tender struggle to
keep the twigs from striking the girl's face, emerged trium-
phantly at a grassy open space where the Dyke ran into the
river. There lay the boat he was looking for, moored by a pad-
locked chain to a stake in the ground, its rudder embedded in
mud, its bottom full of dark rain-water. He put the girl down
and the two stood side by side staring into the boat.

"It...rather...wants...bailing," gasped Mary.

John was too much out of breath to make any comment but
he glanced at her with a furtive look, half shame, half pride,
and his lips twitched into a wry smile.

"I'll look," she cried, jumping into the boat. "You stay where
you are for a while, John."

He saw her pass quickly to the stern, stepping from seat to
seat. Then she stooped down and began feeling about in the
bottom of the boat. "Here we are!'' she cried, holding up a big
tin cup. "Now don't you move, John, please, till I've got some
of this water out."

He sat still, watching her, hugging his knees and his hands.

"It smells very fishy down here!" she cried. He saw her
make a sudden face of disgust and scoop with her hands in the
bilge-water under the stern seat. "Ugh! It's the head of an eel."
She threw something far into the river, where it sank with a
splash.

"I'd sooner be an eel than a worm," he muttered, and the soul
within him sensitized by love-making flung forth an obscure
prayer across the flowing stream. Over the level Norfolk pas-
tures it went; over the wide fens and the deep dykes, until it
came to the sea-banks of the North Sea. Here John's prayer left
the earth altogether and shooting outward, beyond the earth's
atmosphere, beyond the whole stellar system, just as if it had
been an arrow shot from the Bow of Sagittarius the Centaur,
reached the heart of his dead mother where she dwelt in the
invisible world. "Don't let me ever compete with anyone!" his
prayer said. "If I'm a worm and no man, let me enjoy my life
as a worm. Let me stop showing off to anyone; even to Mary!
Let me live my own life free from the opinions, good or bad, of
all other people! Now that I've found Mary, let me want noth-
ing else!"

He continued to watch his new-found mate bailing out the dark
rain-water from the bottom of the boat. "This is our home," he
thought. "With the smell of Alder Dyke in our souls we'll defy
Glastonbury and Philip together! Our ancestors got their bread
from the fens and we'll get our bread from Glastonbury and then
come home, home to Alder Dyke! We won't compete with any-
one. We'll live our own life free from them all! If we are Alder
Dyke eels, let us remain so! If we're worms of Norfolk mud
let us remain so! Eels and worms can suck the breasts of life as
well as any of them. What does anything matter as long as Mary's
alive and I'm alive; and we're not divided?"

"Are you feeling all right now, John? I'm not going to bail all
day, I can tell you!"

The tone of her voice delighted him. It was an earthy tone,
like the sound of a horse's hoof on springy turf. He had a pe-
culiar sensation as if he could mount up on that tone of hers
as on a flight of mossy stone steps.

Extracting the key from his pocket he now unlocked the boat
and they were soon in midstream. "Don't let's row, John," she
said. "I'm tired and you've exhausted yourself carrying me. Let's
drift with the tide!"

She seated herself in the stern and took possession of the rud-
der lines. John, holding the oars in the rowdocks at an upraised
angle, placed himself opposite to her. Thus she steered the boat
and stared gravely forward past his face; while he, balancing
the blades of the oars above the water, watched every flicker
of her expression, as a look-out man on a ship watches the
horizon of all his hopes.

The river weeds, below the tide that bore them on, gleamed
emerald green in the warm sunshine. Across and between the
weeds darted shoals of glittering dace, their swaying bodies some-
times silver white and sometimes slippery black as they turned
and twisted, rose and sank, hovered and flashed by. Beds of
golden marigolds reflected their bright cups in the swift water;
and here and there, against the brownish clumps of last year's
reeds, they caught passing glimpses of pale, delicate-tinged
cuckoo flowers. Every now and then they would come upon a
group of hornless Norfolk cattle, their brown and white backs,
bent heads, and noble udders giving to the whole scene an air
of enchanted passivity through which the boat passed forward
on its way, as if the quiet pastures and solemn cattle were the
dream of some very old god into which the gleaming river and
the darting fish entered by a sort of violence, as the dream of a
younger and more restless immortal.

"Don't you think, Mary, that there was something rather touch-
ing about the way that young Spear hummed and hawed last
night, trying to express his ideas?"

"Look out, John! Look out! Push with your left! No, the
other one....Damn!"

He rose to his feet and shoved the prow of the boat round a
muddy promontory. "Can't you do it by steering?"

"No, I can't. Keep your oars down a bit. No! Closer to the
water! Give a pull now as I tell you."

He took his seat again and tried to obey her.

"With your left, now!" she cried. "Your left! Your left! Don't
you know your left hand from your right?" She loved him for
being so clumsy. She loved him for not knowing his left hand
from his right. And yet these things irritated her so much that
she could have boxed his ears. She would have liked to hit him.
She would have liked to throw her arms round his neck and kiss
him, after she had hit him!

"Don't you think it was rather pathetic, the way he talked?
I didn't like him at first. I thought he was a bully. But I came
round to him in the end."

"You didn't like Cousin Percy much. I could see thatl " said
Mary.

He was silent for a second, frowning. Then he struck the water
with the flat of one of his oars. "Only because she's in love with
Philip!" he cried. "That young Spear is what you English call
a decent chap and that girl is out for making him a cuckold."

"I think Percy is sweet," said Mary. "She can't help being at-
tractive to men. She's attractive to you, my dear, or you wouldn't
be so cross with her."

"She's a fatal girl," muttered John Crow.

"What did you call her?"

"Fatal. And that's what she is. She's the most dangerous type
of all. If she goes down to Glastonbury there'll be the devil
to pay. I could see Cousin Tilly had her eye on her...and
Aunt Elizabeth too."

"It's interesting you should concern yourself so much about
Dave," said Mary. "I expect he reminds you of that boy Barter,"
she added.

John gazed at her in astonishment.

"What a little witch you are! God! I must be careful what
thoughts cross my mind when I'm with you."

"Now I must tell him," Mary said to herself. "This is the mo-
ment to tell him." It was really beginning to amount to some-
thing grotesque, this inability of hers to explain that she knew

Tom Barter well and had often been to tea with him in a little
tea-shop near the Pilgrims' Inn in the Glastonbury High Street.

She dropped the rudder-lines and clasped her fingers in her
lap. "Row now, will you, John? And T'm not going to steer you
either. I'm going to have a cigarette."

Her instinct was always to smoke a cigarette at any serious
crisis in her life. She lit one now, and out of the midst of a
cloud of smoke she made the plunge. "I believe I know your
friend Tom Barter," she said. Damn! Why must her voice take
that funny tone? "I believe he works in one of Philip's factories.
I believe it's your friend; but of course it may not be. He's got
lodgings next to the Pilgrims' Inn."

Like an experienced fox who hears the dogs in the distance
and automatically takes to the hedge, a deep self-preservative
instinct in John, a male friend-preservative instinct, made him
say hurriedly, "Do you really think it's the same? I don't believe
it can be. Tom Barter used to go for endless long walks col-
lecting birds' eggs. Does yours do that? If he doesn't go on long
walks alone he's not the same!"

She surrounded her smooth, dark head with smoke that went
trailing in spiral wisps down the water-track behind them. "I
like Tom very much," she said, scrupulously weighing her words.
"There are few people down there that I like better.

They both looked away from each other at the darkly massed
woods which terminated the shining meadows on their right.

"It's the aspen poplars that give this scenery its character,"
he remarked sententiously. "Those rounded masses of foliage,
seen across absolutely level fields, and growing in great wild
scattered clumps too; they give the whole place a park-like look;
and yet it's a neglected, untidy park. Woods on flat ground look
much larger and more mysterious than woods on hillsides. Dont
you think so?"

He wanted above everything else to keep their conversation
away from Tom Barter but the harder he tried to do this the
closer to him did the friend of his boyhood come. The darting
dace cried out "Tom Barter!" as they flashed through the water.
The dazzling sun-gleams upon the surface of the current danced
to a jig of that name. The long swaying weeds laughed languish-
ingly and coquettishly, "Tom, Tom! Come back to us, Tom!"

"Yes, my dear," he continued, "we can't get away from the
fact that we Crows are plain sea-faring Danes, settled ‘for cen-
turies as simple working farmers in the Isle of Ely. We haven't
the goodness of the Saxon, nor the power of the Norman, nor
the imagination of the Celt. We are run-down adventurers; that's
what we are; run-down adventurers; who haven't the gall to steal,
nor the stability to work."

Mary threw her cigarette into the river and resumed her hold
of the rudder lines. "Row a bit, John," she said.

He let his oars sink into the water and commenced pulling
with long furious strokes. He began now to feel a longing to
make love to her again; and in his vicious cold-blooded manner,
like the depravity of a weather-beaten tramp, he began telling
himself stories of exactly how he would do this as soon as he
could create the opportunity.

The girl felt at once glad and sorry that she had told him
about Tom Barter. If the sun-sparkles on the water and the shin-
ing green weeds were voluble of Tom her girl's heart was heavy
with him.

The whole matter of Barter was a grievous wedge in the sweet
pith of her peace at that moment. She did so love her companion,
as she watched his deep-drawn breathing and noted his pathetic
attempts at feathering with his oars. She loved the way his
knuckles looked as he pulled. She loved the whiteness of his
wrists and even the frayed, travel-stained cuffs of his shirt. She
loved the extraordinary faces he made when the oar got en-
tangled in the weeds! She too began, in her girl's way, but quite
as subnormal a way as his own, to long to be made love to again.
And then at last, so deep was the psychic similarity between
them, they both fell silent; and in their silence, set themselves
to pray to the First Cause that their love might have a happy
future.

They prayed to this unknown Ultimate, out of their hollow
boat, above that gleaming current, so simultaneously and so
intensely, that the magnetism of their prayer shot like a meteorite
out of the earth's planetary atmosphere. Something about its
double origin, and something about the swift and translucent
water from which it started on its flight, drove it forward beyond
the whole astronomical world, and beyond the darkness enclosing
that world, till it reached the primal Cause of all life.

What happens when such a wild-goose, heart-furious arrow of
human wanting touches that portion of the First Cause's aware-
ness that encircles the atmospheric circumference of the earth?
So many other organisms throughout the stellar constellations
and throughout the higher dimensions are unceasingly crying out
to this Primordial Power, that it can obviously only offer to the
supplications of our planet a limited portion of its magnetic
receptivity. And again, as all earth dwellers discover only too
quickly, it Itself is divided against Itself in those ultimate regions
of primal causation. Its primordial goodness warring forever
against its primordial evil holds life up only by vast excess of
energy and by oceans of lavish waste. Even though the cry of a
particular creature may reach the First Cause, there is always a
danger of its being intercepted by the evil will of this vast Janus-
faced Force. Down through the abysses of ether, away from the
central nucleus of this dualistic Being, descend through the dark-
ness that is beyond the world two parallel streams of magnetic
force, one good and one evil; and it is these undulating streams
of vibration, resembling infinite spider webs blown about upon
an eternal wind, that bring luck or ill luck to the creature pray-
ing. The best time for any human being to pray to the First Cause
if he wants his prayers to have a prosperous issue is one or other
of the Two Twilights; either the twilight preceding the dawn or
the twilight following the sunset. Human prayers that are offered
up at noon are often intercepted by the Sun--for all creative
powers are jealous of one another--and those that are offered up
at midnight are liable to be waylaid by the Moon in her seasons
or by the spirit of some thwarting planet. It is a natural fact
that these Two Twilights are propitious to psychic intercourse
with the First Cause while other hours are malignant and bale-
ful. It is also a natural fact, known to very few, that many of
the prayers offered to the First Cause by living organisms in their
desperation are answered by less powerful but much more pitiful
divinities. Priests of our race, wise in the art of prayer, are wont
to advise us to pray to these lesser powers rather than to the
First Cause; and they are wise in this advice. For whereas the evil
in the First Cause is only partially overcome by the good, in
some of these "little gods" there is hardly any evil at all. They
are all compact of magical pity and vibrant tenderness. It hap-
pened by ill luck on this particular occasion that the prayer to
their Creator offered up by John Crow and by Mary Crow in
their open boat on the Wissey in Norfolk aroused a response not
in the good will of this ultimate Personality, but in Its evil will.
Neither John nor Mary was aware that if a human being prays
at noonday or at midnight it is better to pray to the Sun or the
Moon rather than to the First Cause. Chance led them to pray
on this occasion almost exactly at twelve o'clock; and although
their prayer reached its destination unintercepted by any other
power, it lost itself, not in the ultimate good, but in the ultimate
evil....

Was it a dim intimation of this that led John to redouble his
furious strokes as he rowed their boat down the Wissey? The
sweat began to pour down his face as he tugged at those long
oars and his mouth, open now and twisted awry, began to re-
semble the fixed contorted lineaments of an antique tragic mask.

Mary was divided in her mind whether to call to him to stop
or to let him alone until he stopped of his own accord. Assisted
by wind and tide as well as propelled by his desperate efforts,
the boat shot forward now with an incredible speed. The girl
had grown by this time more skilful with the rudder lines. John,
in the tension of his rowing, kept more even time than he had
done before. Thus, though their speed was much greater, they
seemed to avoid the beds of reeds at the river curves, and the
shallows opposite the deeper pools, and the floating masses of cut
weeds that they overtook, with much greater facility, than when
they were casually drifting.

"I'll make him stop in a minute!" she kept saying to herself;
and then something in the very effort they both were making,
he to row and she to steer, something almost religious in their
united tension, compelled her to concentrate upon what she was
doing and to hold her peace. Past deep, muddy estuaries the boat
shot forward, where the marigolds grew so thick as to resemble
heaps of scattered gold, flung out for largesse from some royal
barge, past groups of tall lombardy poplars, their proud tops
bowing gently away from the wind, past long-maned and long-
tailed horses who rushed to look at them as they shot by, their
liquid eyes filled with entranced curiosity, past little farm-
houses with great, sloping red roofs, past massive cattle-sheds
tiled with those large, curved, brick tiles so characteristic of East
Anglia, past sunlit gaps in majestic woods through whose clear-
ings tall, flint church towers could be seen in the far distance,
past huge black windmills, their great arms glittering in the sun
as they turned, grinding white flour for the people of Norfolk,
past all these the boat darted forward, rowed, it seemed, by one
relentless will-power and steered by another. And as he swung
his arms forth and back, repeating his monotonous strokes with
grim pantings and with a glazed, unseeing look in his eyes, it
seemed to John as if merely by making this blind quixotic effort
he was on the way to insure a happy issue for their love.

He had prayed to the First Cause and the superstitious idea took
possession of him that the longer he kept up this struggle the
more likely he was to get a favourable answer.

He was indeed a good deal more exhausted already than his
coxswain had any notion of. If she had not been compelled to
concentrate her attention on rounding the river curves she would
have marked how pale his lips were growing; but she too was
wrought up to a queer hypnosis of blind tension. Every now and
then she would cry out, "Right, John!" or "Left, quick! Left!
I tell you," but apart from these brusque words she remained as
silent as he.

One effect this nervous madness had. It united them as nothing
else could have done. The longer this tension lasted the closer
these two beings drew together. Casual amorists have indeed no
notion of the world-deep sensuality of united physical labour.
More than anything else this can give to a man and a girl a mys-
terious unity. Nothing in their sweetest and most vicious love-
making had brought these two nearer to becoming one flesh than
did this ecstatic toil.

It may be that a blind instinct had already warned them that
their prayer to the Living God had only stirred up the remorse-
less malice in that Creator-Destroyer's heart. Whether this were
so or not, it is certain now that some obscure and lonely fury
in them turned upon that tremendous First Cause, and deliberately
and recklessly defied it! The two of them were alone on that
Norfolk river, a man and a woman, with the same grandmother
and the same grandfather, with the same grandparents in a
steady line, going back to Agincourt and Crecy, going back to
all the yeomen of England, to all the sturdy wenches of England,
to all the John Crows and Mary Crows that fill so many church-
yards in the Isle of Ely unto this day.

The silver-scaled dace and red-finned roach that their swift
movement disturbed seemed actually to pursue this furiously
speeding boat. The quivering poplars seemed to bow down their
proud tops to watch these two; the cattle lifted their heads to
gaze at them as they swept by; beneath air-region after air-
region of tremulous lark-music they flashed and glittered for-
ward; water-rats fled into their mud-burrows or plopped with a
gurgling, sucking sound under the swirling eddies that their boat
made; moor-hens flapped across their way with weak, harsh cries;
small, greenish-coloured, immature pike, motionless like drowned
sticks in the sunny shallows, shot blindly into the middle of the
river and were lost in the weeds. The prolonged struggle of these
two with the boat and with the water became in a very intimate
sense their marriage day upon earth. By his salt-tasting sweat
and by her wrought-up passion of guiding, these two "run-down
adventurers" plighted their troth for the rest of their days. They
plighted it in defiance of the whole universe and of whatever
was beyond the universe; and they were aware of no idealisa-
tion of each other. They clung to each other with a grim,
vicious, indignant resolve to enjoy a sensuality of oneness; a
sensuality of unity snatched out of the drifting flood of space and
time. It was not directed to anything beyond itself, this desire
of theirs. It was innocent of any idea of offspring. It was an
absolute, fortified and consecrated by the furious efforts they
were making, by the diamond-bright sparkles upon the broken
water, by the sullen clicking of the rowlocks.

John had begun to count now. "I'll stop after twenty more
strokes," he thought. But when the last of the twenty came, and
he found in the beating pulse of his exhaustion an undreamed-of
nerve of renewal, he did not stop. The dazzling spouts of water
drops which followed his oars, each time he drew them from the
water, mingled now with a renewed counting. "Ten...eleven
...twelve...thirteen...fourteen...fifteen..." Those rhythmic, up-
flung splashes of dancing crystal, stirred and subsiding amid
the long emerald-green weeds, became the thudding reverb-
eration of his own unconquerable heartbeats. These again
became triumphant figures of victory, of victory over nature,
over custom, over fate. "Sixteen...seventeen...eighteen
...nine "

He never reached his second twenty. Disturbed by the appear-
ance of a living javelin of blue fire, flung forth from a muddy
ditch, darting, like a gigantic dragon-fly, down the surface of
the river in front of them and vanishing round a bend of the
bank, Mary gave a startled pull to her left rudder string; and
the prow of the boat, veering in midstream, shot with a queer
sound, like a sound of snarling and sobbing, straight into the
overhung mouth of the weedy estuary, out of which the king-
fisher had flown!

John fell forward over his own knees with a groan. His shoul-
ders heaved silently under his heavy sob-drawn breathing. He was
lost to everything except the necessity of finding free and unim-
peded breath.

Mary sat quietly on where she was. "I'll go to him in a min-
ute," she thought. "Better let him get his breath first." She could
not see his face. She could see nothing but his head and his
knees. But she knew, without seeing it, that his face was quite
hideously contorted. She noticed that something wet was falling
down from his face upon the plank under his feet. She peered
forward and stared morbidly into the darkness at his feet. Was
blood dripping from his mouth? "Dear God!" she cried in her
heart, "Have I killed him by my foolishness?" The cry was
followed by such a wave of love for him that she could hardly
bear it and remain passive any longer. She wanted to throw her
arms around him and press his head against her thin chest. This
feeling was followed by another one of an egoistic tightness and
self-pity. "It would be just like my fate," she thought, "just like
the way everything has happened to me all my life, if he has con-
sumption and this has given him a hemorrhage."

She remained rigid, her heart beating, holding herself in by
an effort of the will. At last his breath became quieter. For a few
seconds after that, his head seemed to sink helplessly down. It
looked almost as if it would touch the plank between his knees.
The oars, still clutched tight in his hands, stood up at a grotesque
angle. "Are you all right, John?" she whispered at last.

He did lift his head at that and smiled at her, drawing a deep
sigh. "Exhausted," he murmured. "I was a fool to go on so
long."

"Lean back a bit in the boat," she said. He tried to obey her
and she got up on her feet and crossing over to him took the oars
from the rowlocks and laid them side by side. As she did this
she thought to herself: "John and I are one now. Nothing in* those
hateful Ruins will be able to divide us now."

She helped him to lie down on his back in the prow of the boat
with his arms extended along its sides and with his head against
the acute angle of its wooden bow. "Give me the flask, my sweet!"
he murmured.

His overcoat was in the stern and she had to move once more
down the whole length of the boat to get it. As he watched her
doing this a most delicious languor rippled through him like a
warm tide. Something weak and clinging in his nature derived a
special satisfaction at that moment from being tended by this
girl. "She is what I've waited for all my days."

After he'd drunk the whiskey Mary began to wonder whether
she ought to suggest their having their lunch here in this king-
fisher ditch. She was secretly very averse to doing so. In her
mind's eye, all that morning, she had pictured herself spreading
out a Virgilian repast on mossy grass and under great trees for
herself and her lover. Anyway it would be much nicer to leave
this ill-smelling boat for a time and stretch their legs on the land.

"I'm going to explore the neighbourhood," she said at last, get-
ting up upon the seat where he had been rowing, and seizing a
willow branch wherewith to pull the side of the boat nearer the
bank. In the glow and relaxation which he enjoyed just then her
figure, standing there above him in the flickering shade of the
branch she held, gathered to itself that sort of romance which of
all things had always stirred him most. Both sun and shadow lay
across her brown hair, parted in the middle and drawn back to
a rough, simple knot, and upon her plain dress, and upon her
sturdy peasant-girl ankles.

"Very good, you beautiful creature!" he murmured. "You
might give me a cigarette out of my greatcoat before you go.
I'm too comfortable to move."

She jumped down with alacrity, gave him cigarettes and
matches, and then stepping lightly for a second on the side of the
boat sprang to the bank. "You won't go to sleep and let it drift
out, will you? It's fast in the mud; but you don't think I ought to
tie it to the tree?"

"You run off and explore, my pretty one!" he said. "I'll deal
with the boat." When she was gone he thought to himself, "It's
the way she parts her hair and pulls it back and twists it, that
I like so well. Who would have guessed that I'd find her like this
the first minute I got to my native land?" He frowned a little and
then closed his eyes. Though it was warm enough to be May
rather than March, it was too early for that confusing murmur of
insects which is the usual background for a hot afternoon. When
the rustling of her steps died away an incredible silence de-
scended on the place. The newborn reeds were too young to play
with the flowing river. The noon had become afternoon. The larks
were silent. The fish had ceased to rise. There were no swallows
yet and the few spring flies that hovered over that weedy ditch
were safe from attack whether from the firmament above or the
firmament below. The only sound that reached his ears was the
sound of a faint trickle of water which came from some infinites-
imal ledge in the bank above his head and fell down drop by
drop into the ditch. Not a breath of wind stirred. Not a leaf-bud
quivered. Not a grass-blade swayed. There was only that elfin
waterfall and, except for that, the very earth herself seemed to
have fallen asleep. "This is Norfolk," he said to himself, and in
that intense, indrawn silence some old atavistic affiliation with
fen-ditches and fen-water and fen-peat tugged at his soul and
pulled it earthward. And there came to his nostrils, as he lay with
his eyes shut, a far-flung, acrid, aromatic smell. It was not the
smell of mud, or leaf-buds, or grass-roots, or cattle-droppings, or
ditch-water. It was not the smell of last night's rain, or of the
sleeping south wind. It reached him independent of the eel
slime that still clung about the bottom of the boat. It was the
smell of East Anglia itself. It was the smell to greet which, on
uncounted spring mornings, his Isle-of-Ely ancestors had left
their beds and opened their back doors! It was the smell that had
come wandering over the water-meadows on afternoons like this,
to the drowsy heads of innumerable John Crows, resting from
their ploughing with their ale mugs in their blistered hands, and
their minds running on ewes and lambs and on bawdy Cambridge
taverns! A fleeting thought of what lay before him in Glaston-
bury no sooner touched his mind than he flung iL away as Mary
had flung the eel's head.

He made a feeble attempt to recall the subtle idea which he
had had when he prayed to his mother under the alders, but he
could only remember the part about never "competing." "Com-
pete?" he thought vaguely. "What does ‘compete' mean?" At
that moment there seemed nothing in the world comparable to
allowing sleep to steal through and become one with him, just as
this tinkling rivulet he listened to lost itself in the body of this
ditch. But all the while, though he kept yielding to these invasions
of sleep, he could not give himself up to it to the point of losing
his consciousness. Every now and then, when his eyelids still un-
closed a little, he saw a drooping willow shoot trailing in the
ditch beside him. Its extremity seen through the water was differ-
ent from the upper part of it seen through the air; and as some-
thing in him refused to yield to unconsciousness, he came by
degrees to identify himself with this trailing shoot. There was a
queer imperative upon him not to sink any deeper into sweet ob-
livion. There was an imperative upon him to remember his vow
about "competing." This "never competing" became identified
with the slow swirl of the ditch stream as it^made tiny ripples
round the suspended shoot. He was allowed, he dimly felt, to
enjoy his paradisiac lassitude, as long as he, this being who was
partly John Crow and partly a willow shoot, kept these ripples in
mind. All these phenomena made up a complete world, and in this
world he was fulfilling all his moral obligations and fulfilling
them with a delicious sense of virtue merely by keeping these
ripples in mind; and the drip-drop, drip-drop of the tinkling
rivulet at his elbow was the voice of the queer imperative which
he obeyed.

A moor-hen propelling herself in quaint jerks past this willow
shoot towards the river was so startled by confronting the face of
a man staring with flickering eyelids down into the water that she
rose with a scream and flapped off heavily into the rushes. This
aroused John, who in a moment forgot altogether the imperative
of the tinkling rivulet; and, clutching the edge of the boat with
numb sleep-swollen fingers, raised his neck like a turtle and
pricked up his ears to listen for his girl's return.

It was under a great ash tree in the centre of a neighbouring
field that they finally had their lunch.

"Why didn't you stand up to Philip more if you disliked him
so?" 'she asked when their meal was over and they were recalling
last night's gathering. His face worked expressively before the
words came out in answer, a curious pulse appearing in his cheeks
at the corner of his nostrils and a certain twitching round his
cheek-bones. It was a facial peculiarity not quite the same as that
of Miss Elizabeth Crow; and yet it was evidently a family trait.
Touching in the women, and no doubt often a signal of danger in
the men, this facial sign, like a well-worn coin, must have fre-
quently, in the last three or four hundred years, gone to Norwich
for the fair, gone to Cambridge to buy books and silk dresses,
appeared in the depths of old-fashioned looking-glasses, above
mahogany chests of drawers, before the pushing open of innumer-
able ivy-shadowed front-bedroom windows to watch visitors come
over the home-meadows. It must often have been the last of all
their possessions that they were forced to leave behind, when,
like William Crow on this beautiful March day, they lay with six
feet of East Anglian clay above them!

It appeared now indeed more emphatically than Mary had ever
seen it in any of her relative's faces except once when she had
asked her grandfather at breakfast, as he dreamily looked out
over that smooth secluded lawn, what the word "whore" meant.

"I'll tell you exactly why!" John Crow cried, seizing a clump
of soft moss, just beyond where his overcoat extended, with ex-
cited fingers. "It's for a reason that I wouldn't tell anyone in the
world but you. It's because I've long ago decided always to yield
to my cowardice. I was afraid of Philip the moment I saw him.
I hated him; but that's another matter. Something in his person-
ality frightens me. I could have struggled against it and made
myself say a lot of things. I thought of plenty of them. But it's
become a principle with me to yield to my fear of people. I pro-
pitiate them, or I'm silent, or I avoid them."

Mary looked at him very earnestly.

"Have you ever loved anyone you were afraid of?"

"You mean a woman?"

She nodded.

"I tell you I've never loved anyone; though of course I've made
love to endless women. Oh, yes! Yes! It would kill my love to be
afraid. Not at once, but by inches and inches. Oh, yes! If I ever
got thoroughly afraid of anyone in the end I should stop lov-
ing them."

She lowered her eyes and remained silent for a moment. Then
she cried with a kind of quivering fierceness, "I won't have you
dare ever to be afraid of me, John! "

He looked at her sharply. There was a note in her voice that
he had not heard before. It was the danger-note of the female,
beyond reason, against reason.

"Why not?" he asked.

She turned away her head and looked across the wide, flat
meadow at the Wissey bank, making no reply. A soft gust of
south wind stirred the lighter branches of the ash above them.
The cold, thin, smooth, grey twigs, with their clean, black buds,
moved solemnly up and down like classic dancers.

"Shall I be pleased with Glastonbury?" he asked after a pause.

"I believe you'll feel just as I do, John, about Glastonbury.
You'll hate- the sentimentality that has been spread over every-
thing there, like scented church-lamp oil! You'll hate the visitors.
You'll hate the tradesmen catering for the visitors; you'll hate
the sickening superstition of the whole thing."

"I hate it now, quite sufficiently," he interrupted. "Simply be-
cause Philip's there. Oh, I wish " He became so pensive that
she did not like to break into his thought. "I wish, Mary, that
you'd leave Glastonbury and try and find something of...of
the same kind...whatever it is...that you do...somewhere round
here."

She smiled a broad, amused smile, showing all her strong
white teeth.

"How funny!" she murmured. "Why, my dearest, I can't do
anything! You don't seem to realize that I've only been on my
own for a couple of years; and before that I did nothing at all
but look after Mother."

"Where did you live?"

"In Thorpe, near Norwich. Mother's buried in Thorpe. She
couldn't leave me anything because she lived on her pension."
Mary's eyes opened very wide as she spoke of her mother. No
tears came into them. They just opened very wide, with a curious,
self-conscious movement of the facial muscles.

"It was Philip of course who got me the place," she went on.
"Miss Drew is some sort of a connection of Tilly's." She leaned
forward now, and stretching out her hand caught hold of his
foot. "John, my dear John," she said with extreme and childish
gravity, "will you really walk all the way to Glastonbury?"

"I shall start very early tomorrow," he replied, "and I expect
I'll see you again in ten days. I suppose it will be all right to send
you a postcard when I get there? I shall anyway have a penny left
to buy that with."

Mary jumped to her feet, and gave her skirts a vigorous shake.
His question restored to her with a healthy rush her abrupt
woman- of-action quality.

"Yes," she said, "send me a card. Miss Drew, the Abbey House,
is the address. You won't forget that? You can think of the Ruins
for the Abbey part, and you can think of ‘screw' for the rest.
‘You,' ‘screw,' Drewl " and she laughed uneasily.

John slowly pulled up his legs and got upon his feet. The
hard, cautious, furtive look of a tramp was upon his face now.
"Will...you...really...be able...to help me...keep body and soul
together...when I get there?" And then shooting at her a
completely impersonal look, as if she were a housemaid hir-
ing him to chop wood, "How often does she pay you?" he
asked.

But Mary was totally undisturbed by this revelation of the
lower self of her lover. Indeed she looked pleased. "Every
month," she replied with shining eyes. ""It's my pocket-
money, you know."

Her pleasure at the ungentlemanly turn he had given to the
conversation brought such a glow to her cheeks and such a smile
to her lips that she became for a moment really beautiful. He
rushed up to her and caught her in his arms. Long and long did
he caress her under that confederate ash tree. "You're a hama-
dryad--that's what you are!" he kept repeating. "You're a
hamadryad!"

Every girl lives so constantly in the imaginative atmosphere of
being made love to that even the most ignorant of them is rarely
shocked or surprised. It is the material consequences that they
dread, not moral remorse or any idea that they are allowing what
is wrong. John's way of love-making might, however, have easily
palled on a more passionate nature than Mary's; for he was not
only profoundly corrupt but extremely egoistic, touching her and
holding her in the manner that most excited his own childishly
fantastic imagination and never asking himself whether this was
what suited her, nor for one second forgetting himself in any
rush of tempestuous tenderness. But Mary, as though she really
were a hamadryad, who had known the shamelessness of hundreds
of whimsical satyrs, treated the whole thing with grave, sweet,
indulgent passivity. Something in her kindred nature, some wil-
low-rooted, fen-country perversity, seemed to need just this pro-
tracted cerebral courtship to stir the essential coldness of her
blood and nerves. One quaint feeling often came to her, in the
oddest moments of his "sweet usage," namely, that he was one of
her old, faded, wooden dolls; yes, the most dilapidated and in-
jured of all four which used to belong to her, come to life again,
but this time full of queer, hardly human exactions that she
would willingly prostitute herself for hours and hours to satisfy,
so long as she could hear those wooden joints creak and groan in
their joy.

They both knew they were safe from interruption. Children of
generations of fen-country life, they were well aware how far
safer for lovers is the great, wide, flat expanse of grass-meadows,
than any thickly grown copse or spinney, where an enemy can
easily approach unseen.

Emanations of sympathy were not lacking from the vast, smooth
tree, with its upward-clutching branch-ends, though they were
of a different kind from those of that aged denizen of Dye's
Hole. They both knew well that after the heavy effort of getting
the boat back against the current to Alder Dyke, there would be
little chance for more than a few kisses before they separated for
their unknown future; and this made them loath to cease their
play. But the role the ash tree served was to bring to them in the
midst of their dalliance with incredible vividness the image of
their grandfather. Both of them saw clearly in their mind's eye the
well-known head of their grandfather, covered with thick curly
hair, "as white as wool," with his patient servants sitting in a
row on the red-leather dining-room chairs and with his life-weary,
King-of-Thule eyes in their hollow eye-sockets, lowered over the
page, as with his classic-actor's voice beautifully modulated to
the occasion, he intoned one of the poet Cowper's hymns.

The language of trees is even more remote from human intelli-
gence than the language of beasts or of birds. What to these lov-
ers, for instance, would the singular syllables "wuther-quotle-
glug" have signified?

"It is extraordinary that we should ever have met!" These
words, uttered by John in a moment of relaxed gratefulness,
struck the attention of that solitary ash tree in Water-ditch Field
with what in trees corresponds to human irony. Five times in its
life of a hundred and thirty years had the ash tree of Water-ditch
Field heard those words uttered by living organisms. An old
horse had uttered them in its own fashion when it rubbed its nose
against a young companion's polished flanks. An eccentric fisher-
man had uttered them addressing an exceptionally large chub
which he had caught and killed. A mad clergyman had uttered
them about a gipsy girl who did not know of his existence. An
old maiden lady had uttered them to the spirit of her only lover,
dead fifty years before; and finally, but twelve months ago, Wil-
liam Crow himself had uttered them; uttered them in the grate-
ful, attentive and astonished ears of Mr. Geard of Glastonbury!

All this the ash tree noted; but its vegetative comment thereon
would only have sounded in human ears like the gibberish:
wuther-quotle-glug .

The afternoon had by now advanced far. Long, orange-col-
oured rays of light fell horizontally across the flat meadow. The
shadow of the ash tree grew dark and cool as a stone-covered
spring. From the ditch where their boat was moored came the sun-
set melody of a blackbird, full, as that bird's song at that hour
always is, of some withheld secret in nature beyond human sor-
row and human joy. Sadly they gathered up the remains of their
feast and retraced their steps to the boat.

Their row back to Alder Dyke against the current was, as they
had anticipated, no light task. Armed with the boat-hook, Mary
at first stood upright in the stern and punted with all her strength
while John stubbornly rowed; but as time went on she became
conscious that they were advancing so slowly that something else
would have to be done.

"Let me sit by your side, John," she said at last, "and both of
us row."

She came over from the prow of the boat and sat down by him,
taking possession of the oar upon his left. In this position, each
pulling at a separate oar, but with elbows and shoulders touching
and their four feet pressing against the same stretcher they
rowed home.

"What is my address, John?" she said, letting the blade of her
oar rest flat upon the water when they reached Alder Dyke.

"Care of Miss Drew, the Abbey House, Glastonbury, Somer-
set" Thus came his answer quietly and grimly enough; but the
girl had a shrewd and bitter knowledge that, if only their hands
had not at that moment been clutching those heavy oar-handles,
he could easily--when once this simple lesson had been properly
repeated--have let his twitching cheek sink against her small
cold breasts and burst into a fit of convulsive, childish, unreason-
able sobbing.



STONEHENGE



AS he plodded along the hedgeless white road over Salisbury
Plain John Crow became acquainted with aspects of bodily
and mental suffering till that epoch totally unrevealed to him.
He felt very tired and although he had been lucky, during the
whole of his tramp, with regard to rain, he had been unlucky with
regard to cold. He had indeed endured eight days of exception-
ally cold weather and now as he moved forward with the idea of
reaching Stonehenge before dark the thought of having to sleep
again, as he had done ever since he left Didcot, in some sort of
draughty cattle-shed or behind an exposed haystack made him
shiver through every bone of his exhausted body. A warm bed
ran in his mind, a bed like the one to which he had treated him-
self at Maidenhead, which had one of its brass knobs missing;
and an excellent supper ran in his mind of potatoes and cabbage
such as he had enjoyed in that Maidenhead tavern before sleep-
ing. His overcoat was heavy, his bag was heavy, and what was
worse, one of his heels had got blistered, so that for the last
twelve hours, ever since he had left Andover at dawn, walking
had been a misery to him. He had only eightpence left. This had
to last him till he reached Glastonbury; so bed and supper to-
night were quite out of the question. He had got a pot of tea and
a roll and butter at Salisbury and he had still a couple of Social
biscuits and a piece of cheese wrapped up in his pocket He also
possessed unopened a packet of Navy Cut cigarettes. "I wonder
what these Workhouses are like?" he thought "I suppose the
officials are bullies; I suppose a person's always in danger of
getting lice. No, I must find a shed or something; but I'm going
to see Stonehenge first."

John Crow had never in his life known a road more bleak and
unfrequented than the one he was now traversing over Salisbury
Plain. He knew that the sun had just sunk below the horizon
though its actual shape was invisible. It had been totally ob-
scured by clouds for an hour at least before it sank; but soon
after its disappearance the north wind which had been his fellow-
traveller ever since he left Salisbury dispersed some of these
clouds and swept the sky a little clearer. It was clearer, but it was
still grey with a greyness that was positively ashen. The differ-
ence between the pallor of the road, which was sad with a recog-
nised human sadness and this ashen grey sky overhead was in
some way disturbing to his mind. He kept staring at the sky as
he dragged his blistered foot forward. Every step he took caused
him pain and if the sadness of the road was congenial to this pain,
the appearance of the sky was intimately adjusted to it. The north
wind which had followed him from Salisbury and had kept on
whistling between his cap and his coat collar was not hateful to
him. He had almost got attached to its company. Once or twice
when he rested, sitting, under walls or under hedges, he found
himself missing its sullen monotone. Why the juxtaposition of
this particular cap and this particular coat collar should cause
the wind to hum and drone and sometimes almost to scream in
his ear was a puzzle to him. But this north wind travelling with
him over Salisbury Plain had many strange peculiarities and
although it was surly it did not strike him as in the least malig-
nant. Perhaps since he came from the North, from the rough
North Sea region, where this wind had its own habitation, it was
busy giving him warnings about Glastonbury. Perhaps it was
giving him warnings against believing anything that this ashen
sky was putting into his head. What the sky made him think of
were fleeing hosts of wounded men with broken spears and torn
banners and trails of blood and neighing horses. The sky itself
carried no token of such far-off events upon its corpse-cold vast-
ness, but such ruinous disasters seemed to rush along beneath it
in their viewless essences, wild-tossed fragments of forgotten
flights, catastrophic overthrows, huge migrations of defeated
peoples. And upon all these things that sky looked down with a
ghastly complicity. Two small motor cars, one dog cart, and a
queer-looking lorry with soldiers in it, were the only tangible
vehicles that passed him that evening as he went along; but the
road seemed full of human memories. There was not a signpost
or a milestone on that wayside but had gathered to itself some
piteous encounter of heart-struck lovers, some long and woeful
farewell, some imperishable remorse! Through ancient and
twisted thorn trees, whose faint green buds were growing as in-
distinct in the after-sunset as specks of green weed on the sides
of old ships on a darkened tide, that north wind whistled and
shrieked. Once as he rested his bad foot on the fallen stones of a
ruined sheepfold and stared across the chalky uplands in front
of him he caught sight of an embanked circle of turf with broken-
down wooden railings on the top. The look of this object so ex-
cited his curiosity that he limped over towards it and wearily
climbed its side. It was a circular pond full almost to the brim
of bluish-grey water from the middle of whose silent depths rose
a few water plants but whose edges were quite clear and trans-
parent. All the light that there was in that fatal-brooding sky
seemed concentrated on the surface of this water. "I know what
this is," thought John Crow to himself. "This is one of those
ponds they call a dew-pond." He advanced cautiously down the
slope, leaving his bag on the top of the bank, and supporting
himself upon his stick.

Arrived at the edge of the water, he stirred it a little with his
stick's end. But in a second he hurriedly drew his stick away.
There in that blue-grey, motionless transparency hung suspended
a dark object. "A newt!" In his boyhood in Norfolk he had loved
these minute saurians more than all living things; and to catch
sight of one of these, on this day of all days, filled him with an
almost sacred reassurance. "All is going to be all right," he said
to himself, "I'm going to get to Glastonbury and to Mary!"

He watched the newt with interest. Disturbed by his stick it had
sunk down a short distance below the surface; but there it floated
at rest, its four feet stretched out, absolutely immobile. Even as
he watched it, it gave the faintest flicker to its tail and with its
four feet still immoveably extended it sank slowly out of sight
into the depths of the water.

John Crow scrambled up the bank, picked up his bag, and
limped back to the road. For the next mile his mood was a good
deal happier. He was pleased by the way every milestone he
passed recorded the distance to Stonehenge, just as if it were a
habitation of living men, instead of what it was.

"Two miles to Stonehenge," said the particular one he now
reached, just as the after-sunset nebulosity began to turn into
twilight. He sat on the ground with his back against this mile-
stone. His blistered foot hurt him abominably. "It looks as if I
should have to sleep among those Great Stones," he thought. "I
shall be at the end of my tether when I get there."

A drowsiness fell upon him now, in spite of the pain in his
foot, and his head began to nod over his clasped hands and his
tightly hugged knees. Three things, the image of the bed at
Maidenhead with one of its brass knobs missing, the image of the
Great Stones as he had long ago seen them in pictures, and the
image of the newt sinking down into the dew-pond, dominated
his mind. He struggled frantically with this obsessing desire to
sleep. The wind seemed to have dropped a little. "Perhaps if I
see a warm shed," he thought, "I'll leave Stonehenge till
tomorrow."

He dragged his body into motion again and limped on. A motor
car passed him at top speed, sounding its horn savagely.
While it went by his one fear was lest it should stop and offer
him a lift. Its vicious look, its ugly noise, its mechanical speed,
its villainous stench, the hurried glimpse he got of the smart
people in it, all combined to make it seem worse to have any con-
tact with such a thing than to die upon the road.

His foot hurt him most evilly. He knew it was not serious. He
had not sprained his ankle or even twisted it. It was only a blister.
But the blister throbbed and burned, pulsed and ached as if his
heel had been struck with a poisoned arrow.

The grey sky had changed a little in character now. It was
dimly interspersed with twinkling points of pale luminosity. Most
of these points were so blurred and indistinct that it would have
been hard to catch them again at a second glance in the same
position in the vast ether. They were like nothing on earth; and
to nothing on earth could they be compared. They were the stars,
not of the night but of the twilight. The sky around those points
of light was neither grey nor black. It was a colour for which
there is no name among artists' pigments. But the man limping
across Salisbury Plain gave this colour a name. He named it Pain.
Where it reached the climax of appropriateness was in the west
towards which the road was leading him. Here there was one
fragment of sky, exactly where the sun had vanished, that to the
neutrality of the rest added an obscure tinge--just the faintest
dying tinge--of rusty brown. This low-lying wisp of rusty brown
was like the throbbing pulse from the pressure of whose living
centre pain spread through the firmament. Walking towards the
West Country was like walking towards some mysterious celestial
Fount wherein pain was transmuted into an unknown element.

First one leg; then the other leg. He had reached the point now
of being conscious of the actual physical automatism of walking.
That form of peculiar self-consciousness which as an infant had
made the art of walking a triumph of self-assertion now returned
upon him to make it a necessity of self-preservation. John Crow
felt that he was nearing the end of his power over the very
simple achievement of putting one leg in front of the other. He
struggled forward for about half a mile. Then he stood still. "I
must find a place to lie down in," he thought. "I can't go on."
The Maidenhead bed, with the one gilt knob missing, had re-
treated now beyond the horizon of opportunity. The image of
cattle-scented straw floated before him.

A dull, beating thud was proceeding from some portion of his
body and travelling away from it into the darkness. He felt like
a run-down clock which could not be hindered from a meaning-
less striking. Whether this thudding came from his heel, his heart,
or his head he could not tell. It might, for all he knew, come
from that rusty-brown place in the western sky.

"I can't go on," he repeated aloud. And then, quite as natur-
ally as he had before grown conscious, in that infantile fashion,
of the triumph of walking, he grew conscious now of the neces-
sity of praying.

And John Crow prayed, calmly, fervently, simply, to the spirit
of his mother.

His mother had died when he was six years old and his devo-
tion to her personality had been, ever since that day, not in the
least different from the extreme of superstitious idolatry. The
childish weakness of his character was just the sort of thing that
would endear an only son, as John was, to the protective maternal
instinct. The woman had died in a convulsive spasm of tragic
tenderness for the child she had to leave; nor is it difficult to
conceive how, even on the most material plane, some formidable
magnetic vibration, issuing from that grave in the Yaxham
churchyard, might linger upon the chemical substratum of the
ether, and prove of genuine supernatural value to the child of
her womb, when in his weakness he was most in need of her.
Thus it happened that when he had finished praying John found
he could move forward again, although with very slow steps.

His pace indeed was the pace now of an extremely old man
who used his stick as a crutch; and anyone listening to his ap-
proach might have taken him for a lame man or a blind man.
The heavy tap, tap of his stick upon the road was a sound that
travelled further than his footsteps.

At last he came in sight of the faint whiteness of another mile-
stone. This ought to carry the token "One mile to Stonehenge."
But this time the roadway opposite the milestone was not empty.
Under the nebulousness of that rusty-brown horizon-tinge stood
a small dark motor car. It had a red spot at the back but no
headlights. It obstructed the road, but it did not impinge upon
the scene with the crude violence of the car that had recently
passed him by.

As John Crow limped up to it a figure that he had not distin-
guished from the hedge advanced into the road to intercept him.

"You must let me take you on a bit," said a tall, gaunt, un-
gainly man wearing a dark bowler hat. "You are too lame to be
walking like this. I want to stop presently--a mile from here--
but only for a minute or two. I am going to Glastonbury."

A shiver of excitement ran through the worn-out frame of
John Crow.

"I was done in, dead beat, at...the end...of my...of my tether,"
gasped John when he found himself safely inside the little car.
And then, as they moved on very slowly, what must this im-
pulsive man do but confess to this stranger how he had just
prayed in the middle of the road to the spirit of his mother and
how he too was bound for Glastonbury. "There is another ex-
planation, my good friend," said the motorist gravely. "My mind
was at the moment absorbed in thoughts of Glastonbury--yours
was also--what more natural than that I should ask you to let
me take you there?"

John now became aware that although a few faint stars were
visible the departing day was still dominant. "It will not be dark
for half an hour yet," he thought. "I shall see Stonehenge before
night." They were now reaching a little upward slope of the road.
The wide Plain stretched around them, cold and mute, and it was
as if the daylight had ceased to perish out of the sky, even while
the surface of the earth grew dark. The identity of that great
space of downland was indrawn upon itself, neither listening nor
seeking articulation, lost in an interior world so much vaster and
so much more important than the encounters of man with man,
whether evoked by prayer or by chance, that such meetings were
like the meetings of ants and beetles upon a twilit terrace that had
thoughts and memories of its own altogether outside such in-
finitesimal lives.

To John's surprise, the stranger put on his brake and stopped
his car. "Can you see that thorn?" asked the man.

John peered forward through the twilight- Yes, he did clearly
see the object indicated. It looked to him like a dead tree. "Is it
a dead tree?" he enquired.

But the man went on, "From the foot of that thorn theres a
path across the grass leading straight to Stonehenge. You can
see Stonehenge from the foot of that thorn."

"Can anyone go there, at this hour? Someone told me in
France that it was guarded after sunset by soldiers."

"Are you able to come with me or would you like best to stay
here till I come back?" said the man, totally disregarding this
remark.

"I must come! Of course I must come with you!" insisted John
Crow.

They got out of the little car together. The stranger gave John
his arm; and although John would have liked to lean on it a
great deal more heavily than he did, it was some support. He
hobbled along as best he could, leaning the bulk of his real
weight upon his own root-handled hazel-stick, and staring for-
ward at the dead thorn tree with dazed curiosity. Deep in his
mind he was thinking to himself, "I'll always pray to her for
everything from now on. I'll pray to her that Mary and I can live
together in Norfolk!"

When they reached the thorn tree John stopped and drew a
deep breath. He pressed heavily now on his companion's wrist
and stared across the dark strip of downland turf before him,
staggered and thunderstruck. Stonehenge! He had never expected
anything like this. He had expected the imposing, but this was
the overpowering. "This is England," he thought in his heart.
"This is my England. This is still alive. This is no dead Ruin like
Glastonbury. I am glad I've come to this before I died!" "Will
you excuse me, Sir," he said, in a loud, rather rasping voice, the
voice he had always assumed when, in the presence of French
officials, he wished to assert himself, "will you excuse me if I sit
down for a minute?"

"Do you feel queer? Are you ill?"

"I want to look at it from where we are." They sat down on
the ground beside the thorn tree; and even as he did so John
observed that from one or two dark twigs upon a twisted branch
a few leaves were budding. "It's not quite dead," he remarked.

The stranger naturally thought he was speaking of the dark
pile in front of them. "You mean its powder's not left it?" He
paused and then went on in a low voice. "About four thousand
years it's been here; but, after all, what's that to some of the an-
tiquities there are in the world? But you're right--it's not quite
dead."

"It's very English," said John,

The man turned and gave him a strange, indignant glance. "Is
it English then to hide your great secret?" he cried excitedly.
"Is it English to keep your secret to the very end?"

"I expect you know much more about it, Sir, than I do," said
John humbly, "but I don't feel that those stones have anything
hidden. They look to me just what they are, neither more nor
less. They look simply like stones, enormous stones, lifted up to
be worshipped."

His companion swung round and hugged his shins, resting his
chin on the top of his knees and balancing himself on the extreme
tips of his haunch-bones. He gave his head an angry toss so that
his black bowler fell to the ground and rolled a few inches before
lying still.

"Could you worship a stone?"

"I...I think...I think so...." stammered John, a little disconcerted
by the man's intensity. "He must be a nonconformist preacher,"
he thought.

"Simply because it's a stone?" cried the other, and he hugged
his ankles so tightly and tilted himself forward so far that John
was reminded of a certain goblinish gargoyle that he knew very
well, on an out-of-the-way portion of Notre Dame.

"Certainly. Simply because it's a stone!"

"And you call that English?" the stranger almost groaned.

"I could worship that nearest one," John said, "the one that
stands by itself over there."

The man jumped to his feet and, picking up his bowler hat,
clamped it upon his head. He was a tall man and he looked pre-
ternaturally tall as he stood between John and the stone which
John had said he could worship. His profile was like a caricature
of a Roman Emperor.

"Do you know what that stone's called?" he cried, "Do you
know what it's called ?" In his excitement he bent down and shook
John by his shoulders. John thought to himself, "I wish my stick
had a heavier handle. This man is evidently a mad dissenting
minister."

"Have all these stones got names?" asked John eagerly, making
two desperate attempts to rise to his feet.

The man gave him his hand and John stood up. He surrepti-
tiously substituted the handle of his hazebstick for its ferrule end
and grasped it tightly. "If he becomes dangerous," he thought,
"I'll step backward and hit him on the head with all my force."
He laughed to himself as he swung his stick in the darkness.

The Great Stone Circle had stirred up in him an excitement the
like of which he had never felt in all his life before. The pain of
his blistered heel became nothing. He lurched forward, pushed
the man aside, and stumbled towards the huge, solitary, unhewn
monolith which had attracted his attention. The other strode by
his side murmuring indignantly, "It's more than that, it's more
than that." When they reached the stone John embraced its rough
bulk with his arms, his stick still clutched by the wrong end m
his fingers. Three times he pressed his face against it and in Us
heart he said, "Stone of England, guard Mary Crow and make
her happy."

The stranger continued his surly protest. "This stone, he said,
"is called the Hele Stone. It's this stone which stands exactly
between the sunrise on a certain day and the Altar Stone inside
the Circle--Hele--you can see what that is, can't you? It's
Helios, the Sun! You've been playing your little game, Sir, with
the Sun Stone."

But John, in that fading twilight, with Stonehenge looming up
in front of him, was not to be overawed. He felt too far drunken
with the magnetism emanating from these prehistoric monoliths
and trilithons. He felt no longer afraid of blaspheming against
any God, even against the great Sun Himself!

The two men confronted each other. It was not yet too dark
for them to see each other's faces. John leaned on his stick in a
normal manner now--the sight of the look of his companion's
aquiline nose, combined with his last remark, had reassured him.
No religious maniac would have referred to Helios. John con-
tinued their disputation, "I believe this stone," he said dogmati-
cally, "is far older than the rest. I believe Stonehenge was built
here because of this stone. I think stone-worship is the oldest of
all religions and easier to sympathise with than any other religion."

The stranger made no reply and looked round him with the air
of one who listens intently.

"Come!" he said peremptorily, taking hold of John by the
upper part of his arm. "Let's enter the Circle."

They moved on for a short distance and came upon a large
stone lying fiat at their feet. The man's fingers clutched John's
flesh now with a convulsive clutch.

"You know what that is, I suppose?" he said.

John's answer to this was to tear himself loose, go down on
his knees, fumble at the stone with his hands, scoop up some
seven-days' old rain-water that he came upon in a hollow con-
cavity there and lap it up noisily with his lips. The stranger's tall
figure hovered over him like a great, agitated dusky bird. He was
wearing a long, old-fashioned overcoat, thin at the waist and very
baggy round the legs, and the tails of it kept flapping against his
ankles as he went circling about John's crouching figure, gasping
forth bewildered protests.

"What are you doing? I've been here more times than I can
remember, and I've never dared do that! That water's stagnant.
It's worse than stagnant. They've killed thousands and thousands
of their enemies here. It's the Slaughtering Stone, I tell you!"

John Crow rose from his feet and drew the back of his hand
across his mouth. This childish gesture, visible enough in the
twilight, seemed to confound his companion.

"Have you no reverence at all?" he groaned, while the deep-
sunken eyes above his Roman nose flashed a disconcerting gleam
of anger. John Crow gave vent to a queer animal sound, that was
something between a fox-bark and a pig's grunt. Some ancient
vein of old Danish profanity seemed to have been aroused in him.

"I've got what I've got, Mister," he said, "but I want to kneel
by that Altar Stone in there before it gets too dark." He was
already limping forward when the man pulled him back with
a jerk.

"How did you know there was an Altar Stone in there?" The
words were uttered in such an awed whisper that John gave vent
to a gross Isle-of-Ely chuckle.

"Know it? Hee! Hee! Who doesn't know it?" Saying this he led
the way between two of the perpendicular cyclopean uprights
which bore aloft a third, a horizontal one. Vast, shadowy, terrific,
this third stone now took the place of the twilight sky. John
leaned his back against the left-hand monolith, digging his stick
into the ground, and his companion imitated him, standing erect
against the right-hand one. Above their heads, concealing the grey
mass of the zenith, hung that monolithic roof-tree. The faint stars,
as they gazed up at them, past the monstrous obstacle, seemed
less obscure than they had been before. To the northward, by the
way they had entered, they could dimly see the form of the Hele
Stone. It emerged out of the obscurity like a gigantic, bare-headed
man, wrapped in a skin or a blanket.

"I've been told," remarked John, "that the origin of these
Stones is entirely unknown."

"Not true," growled the other, in a tone that seemed to say.
You are the most irresponsive vandal that has ever entered
Stonehenge and your folly is only equalled by your ignorance.
"It is well known," he continued aloud, "that this is the greatest
Temple of the Druids."

John's blistered foot caused him at that moment a sharp pang.
He lost his self-control and cried aloud in a scandalous voice
that rang out far over the silent Plain, "Damn your Druids!" The
moment he had uttered the words he knew he had followed the
gathering-up and the mounting-up in his nature of an emotion
which, unexpressed, would have disgraced him in his own eyes.
He moved away towards the centre of the titanic Circle. "He'll
bolt now and leave me in the lurch," he thought, "but I can't
help it." He stood still and looked eagerly round, observing how
two of the largest monoliths had fallen across the ends of a yet
larger one but without concealing the centre of it. "If this isn't
the Altar Stone, it ought to be," he muttered audibly; and falling
down on his knees he tapped his forehead three times against
the rough surface of the stone and then continued to hold it there,
pressing it against the cold substance with a painful force. This
action gave him extraordinary satisfaction. When at last he
scrambled to his feet he found his Druidic friend seated on one
of the prostrate "foreign stones," surveying him with fearful
curiosity.

"You've been here before," he said severely, and heaved a deep
sigh, as a man sighs when he finds an intruder at his hearthstone.
John came over to him and sat down by his side. "To what kind
of stone," he enquired politely, "does that Altar Stone belong?"

The man turned gratefully towards him, free of all suspicion.
"The best opinions seem to agree," he said, "that this stone is
micaceous sandstone. It no doubt comes from that portion of
Wales where the Druids were most powerful; probably from
South Wales, like the others; but the others are of a different
geological formation."

John Crow felt at that moment as if he were endowed with
some magical gift of becoming inhumanly small and weak. And
not only small and weak! He felt that he possessed the power of
becoming so nearly nothing at all--a speck, an atom, a drifting
seed, a sand-grain, a tiny feather, a wisp of thin smoke--that he
was completely liberated from the burden of competing with
anyone, or disputing with anyone, or assuming any definite mask
or any consistent role. He seemed to have been given a sort of
exultant protean fluidity. He felt an intense desire to make a fool
of himself, to act like a clown, a zany, an imbecile. He longed to
dance round the grave personage at his side. He longed to go
down on all fours before him and scamper in and out of those
enormous trilithons like a gambolling animal. He felt as if all
his life until this moment he had been concealing his weakness of
character, his lack of every kind of principle, his indifference to
men's opinions, and a something that was almost subhuman in
him. But now beneath these far-off misty stars and under these
huge blocks of immemorial stone he felt a wild ecstatic happiness
in being exactly as he was.

"Very few people," he remarked to his companion, "could have
told me about that Altar Stone being made of micaceous sand-
stone or about it having come from Wales. I am deeply in your
debt, Sir, and I am overjoyed at having met you. My name is
John Crow. May I ask what your name is?"

"My name is Evans," said the other, making a dignified in-
clination of his body towards John. Had he said "My name is
Plantagenet," or "My name is Hapsburg," he could not have ut-
tered those syllables with more self-conscious weight. " Owen
Evans," he added, with a little sigh; and it was as if he desired by
this emphasis on Owen to indicate to his interlocutor that it would
have been more proper on general grounds if his Christian name
had been Caradoc or Roderick or Constantine or even Taliessin.
"My home used to be in Wales," he continued, "in South Wales.
I was in fact born in Pembrokeshire where that Altar Stone
comes from."

"Are you living in Glastonbury now?" John enquired. As soon
as he had asked this question he felt he had said something gross,
indecent, ill-advised; something lacking in all delicate intuition.

"Staying there...for the present," Owen Evans answered,
"and what's more," he continued, rising from his seat, "if we
want to get there before everyone's in bed we must look sharp."

He seemed to have forgotten--as indeed John himself had al-
most done--the lameness of his protege, and he strode off hastily
now, past the Hele Stone, back to the thorn tree, taking for
granted that the other was just behind him. But John Crow was
not just behind him. He had turned as soon as they were a few
paces away from the stones and was now gazing at them with an
ecstasy that was like a religious trance. It was an ecstasy that
totally abolished Time. Not only was Mr. Owen Evans and his
motor car obliterated, but everything, past and future, was ob-
literated! Mary alone remained. But Mary remained as an essence
rather than a person. Mary remained as something that he always
carried about with him in the inmost core of his being. She was
a dye, a stain, a flavour, an atmosphere. Apart from Mary, Stone-
henge and John were all that there was. The enormous body of
colossal stones wavered, hovered, swayed and rocked before him;
so wrought upon was he, so caught up was he. It rocked like the
prow of a vast ship before him. He and It were alone in space. Its
dark menacing bulk seemed to grow more and more dominating
as he stared at it, but even while it threatened it reassured. And
it did not only grow calmer and larger. The taciturn enormity of
the uplifted horizontal stones seemed to impose themselves upon
his mind with an implication more stupendous than the support-
ing perpendicular ones. These uplifted stones--these upheld
nakednesses--that covered nothing less than the breast of the
earth and upon which nothing less than the universal sky rested,
seemed to have become, by their very uplifting, more formidable
and more sacred than the ones that held them up. They were like
cyclopean Sabine women upheld by gigantic ravishers. Both those
that upheld and those that were upheld loomed portentous in their
passivity, but the passivity of the latter, while more pronounced,
was much more imposing. What the instinctive heart of John
Crow recognized in this great Body of Stones--both in those
bearing-up and in those borne-up--was that they themselves, just
as they were, had become, by the mute creative action of four
thousand years, authentic Divine Beings. They were so old and
great, these Stones, that they assumed godhead by their inherent
natural right, gathered godhead up, as a lightning conductor
gathers up electricity, and refused to delegate it to any mediator,
to any interpreter, to any priest! And what enhanced the primeval
grandeur of what John Crow gazed at was the condition of the
elements at that hour. Had there been no remnants of twilight left,
the darkness and Stonehenge would have completely interpene-
trated. Had the stars been bright, their eternal remoteness would
have derogated from the mystic enormity of this terrestrial por-
tent. The stars were, however, so blurred and so indistinct, and. at-
mospherically speaking, so far away, that Stonehenge had no
rival. John longed to get some impression of this vast Erection
from some subhuman observer, unperverted by historic tradition.
What would be the feelings of a sea gull, for example, voyaging
thus far inland from Studland or from Lulworth in search of
newly turned ploughlands, when it suddenly found itself con-
fronted by this temple of the elements? Would it lodge for a mo-
ment on the highest impost of the tallest trilithon? Had any of the
Wiltshire shepherds, who lived round about here, ever seen a sea
gull actually perched upon the Hele Stone? What did the foxes
make of Stonehenge as they came skulking over the grassy ridges
from Normanton Down? Did the sound of their barkings on wild
November nights reach the ears of travellers crossing the Plain?
Did a power emanating from these stones attract all the adders
and grass snakes and blindworms between Amesbury and
Warminster, on certain enchanted summer evenings?

Never would Stonehenge look more majestic, more mysterious,
than it looked tonight! The wind had almost dropped and yet
there was enough left to stir the dead steins of last year's grasses
and to make a faint, very faint susurration as it moved among
the Stones. The very indistinctness of the dying daylight served
also to enhance the impressiveness of the place. Had the night
been pitch dark nothing could have been distinguished. On the
other hand, had the twilight not advanced so far, the expanding
sweep of the surrounding downs would have carried the eye away
from the stones themselves and reduced their shadowy immensity.
No artificial arrangement of matter, however terrific and unhewn,
can compare with the actual hollows and excrescences of the
planet itself; but the primeval erection at which John Crow
stared now, like the ghost of a neolithic slave at the gods of his
masters, was increased in weight and mass by reason of the fact
that nothing surrounded it except a vague, neutral, Cimmerian
greyness.

"Stonehenge, you great God!" cried John Crow, "I beg you to
make Mary a happy girl and I beg you to let me live with her in
Norfolk!"

He tore himself away after this and hurried, as fast as he could,
towards the thorn tree. The voice of Owen Evans increased his
speed as he staggered up the slope. "Mr. Crow! Mr. Crow! Mr.
Crow!" came that voice from beyond the tree in a high querulous
accent. His blister began to hurt him again. He began again to
feel famished and faint. Once more he paused and looked around.
The effect at this distance had undergone a change. The stones
seemed actually to have melted into one another! It was no longer
at a series of stones he was looking, but at one stone. Perhaps
indeed just then he was seeing Stonehenge as it would have ap-
peared, not to a wild bird or a fox, but to a flock of sheep travel-
ling from their pastures to the shearing-place.

"Mr. Crow! Mr. Crow!" came the voice of the Welshman; and
John felt it incumbent upon him now really to turn his back upon
Stonehenge. When he reached the car John Crow was surprised
at the urbanity and good-temper of Mr. Owen Evans. He had
expected that the man from South Wales, even if he didn't desert
him, would reproach him vehemently. Nothing of the sort oc-
curred. John got in and took his seat by the motorist's side,
avoiding with some difficulty, for his legs were long and his foot
extremely sore, the mechanism that worked the machine.

"Are you going to stay long in Glastonbury?" enquired Mr.
Evans. John was perfectly frank with him in answer to this direct
question. Indeed, in the entranced and relaxed condition of his
nerves, he was more frank than he need have been. He became, in
fact, very voluble. He told him everything; only keeping back
the existence of Mary and the existence of Tom Barter. By de-
grees, as he conversed with the man, while their car reached and
passed the lighted streets of Warminster, he became conscious
that Mr. Evans' questions and answers were composed of two lev-
els of intensity, one below another. The upper, more superficial
level, was pedantic and a little patronising, but the lower level
struck John's mind as not merely humble and sad but tragically
humble and sad. One or two of his remarks were indeed as ex-
citing to John's curiosity as they were stimulating to his sym-
pathy. And another thing he noticed about the conversation of
this man in the large bowler hat and the tight black overcoat was
that it was always when the conversation returned to Glastonbury
that this secondary tone came into his voice.

"We'll get a late supper at Frome," Mr. Evans said at one
point; and the idea of this heavenly refreshment spoken of lightly
as a "late supper" so preoccupied John's thoughts that by degrees
he contented himself with a drowsy attempt to learn the names of
the villages through which they passed and dropped all other
conversation.

They skirted the wall of Long Leat Park. They passed Upper
Whitbourne; they passed Corsley Heath; they passed Lane End
and Gradon Farm; and while still the memory of his mother was
lulling him with a security beyond description, they entered the
main street of Frome. Mr. Evans seemed to know the place well,
and having left their car in the yard of one of the smaller inns,
the two men walked slowly down the street. Most of the ordinary
teashops were shut, but they found at last a little refreshment-
place of a more modest kind, where they were given a cordial wel-
come and a substantial though simple supper in a small private
room. During this meal this strangely assorted pair had the first
opportunity they had yet enjoyed to study each other's physiog-
nomy under illuminated and relaxed conditions. John found that
Mr. Evans had already heard rumours of the strange sequence of
events by which the lay-preacher Geard had inherited William
Crow's money. Evans himself, he explained, had made the ac-
quaintance of the Geards through the fact of Mrs. Geard being
a member of a very ancient South Welsh family called Rhys. The
motorist uttered the name Rhys with the most reverential respect.
Not that Mrs. Geard's immediate relatives, he made clear to John,
were anything but quite simple people, but all the Rhys family
were, as an ordinary person would put it, of the blood royal
of Wales.

It did not take any great diplomacy on the part of John Crow
to lead the conversation up to a point where he learned the not-
unexpected fact that the maternal ancestors of Mr. Evans himself
belonged to this same ancient House of Rhys. After a little further
dalliance round and about the subject of the Geards, John found
himself possessed of the further information that Mr. Owen Evans
was an admirer of one of Mrs. Geard's daughters, a girl in whom
"the very spirit of the old Cymric race" had found a notable hab-
itation. It was in his "first manner," the pontifical one, that Owen
Evans described this young lady. The foxy John had begun to
wonder indeed whether his whole discovery of these two person-
alities in his patron were not a crazy fancy of his own, when a
chance allusion to the Abbey Ruins brought back in a minute
that diffident, hesitant, almost cowering tone. It was a queer thing
and a thing that John never afterward forgot, as he saw a look of
positively tragic suffering cross those strongly marked linea-
ments, that he himself became extremely uncomfortable when this
second tone of his friend's utterances thus predominated. It was
exactly as if some bombastic masquerader in theatrical armour
had suddenly unclasped his sham gorget and revealed a hairshirt
stained with authentic blood. He got the impression, the longer
this confidential talk over this felicitous "late supper" lasted,
that it was to very few persons, and probably least of all to the
maiden with the "very spirit of the old Cymric race," that this
singular descendant of the House of Rhys revealed his real nature.

Once more sitting by Mr. Evans in the little motor car and
moving swiftly through the darkness, John's attention was dis-
tracted now by a certain vivid consciousness of being in a part of
England completely new to him and heavy with unique qualities.
After walking all day over the chalk uplands of Wiltshire this
long, enchanted drive into the western valleys was like plunging
into an ever-deepening wave of rich, sepia-brown, century-old
leaf-mould. From spinneys and copses and ancestral parks, as
they drove between dim, moss-scented banks, a chilly sweetness
that seemed wet with the life sap of millions of primrose buds
came flowing over him....

As both the men grew more and more dominated, by the mo-
tions and stirrings, the silent breathings and floating murmurs, of
a spring night in Somersetshire, they seemed to grow steadily
more sympathetic to each other.

"Do you believe, Mr. Evans, as so many people do," said John
suddenly, "in always struggling to find a meaning to life?" Very
slowly and very carefully did the Welshman reply to this.

"It's not...it never has been...in my...in my nature," he murmured, "
to...to take life...in that...way...at all. I find meanings everywhere.
My..." he hesitated for a long time here,"difficulties," he went
on, "are entirely personal."

John was delighted with this reply. "My difficulties," he said,
"are personal too. I simply cannot understand what people mean
when they talk of life having a purpose. Life to me is simply the
experience of living things; and most things I meet seem to me
to be living things."

In the darkness John felt the car crossing a little bridge.
"Nunney Brook," he heard Mr. Evans murmur. Soon they were
moving along the southern wall of Asham Wood, and then came
East Cranmore and West Cranmore and then a place called
Doulting.

"Look out for Shepton Mallet next," Mr. Evans said. "I'm
afraid all the pubs will be shut, or we 5 d stop for a drink there to
nerve us up for the last lap of our journey. His words were jus-
tified. It was plain that the inn-bars in Shepton Mallet were all
fast closed.

"We must put on speed now," said Mr. Evans, "or everybody
will be fast asleep. They go to bed early in Glastonbury."

John was soon conscious, as they left the last houses of this
little Somersetshire town, solidly built houses under the gas-lamps
at the street corners with old carved lintels and worn buttresses,
that the countryside was again changing its character. A faint
reedy, muddy, watery atmosphere visited his East Anglian nos-
trils. For a mile or two he was puzzled by these damp waftures
carried upon the cold night air, so different from that leaf -mould
sweetness, that smell of ancient seignorial parklands, through
which they had recently passed. He experienced a pang of sad-
ness which it was easy enough to explain. It was a thousand old
impressions of Isle-of-Ely dykes, called up, out of deep-buried
race memories, by the ditches, or "rhynes," as they call them, of
the Isle-of-Glastonbury.

"I am getting near Mary! he thought. "She's lying in bed
looking at those Ruins. And then he thought, "Evans is going
to get me a bed somewhere. He knows I've got no money. I'll see
her tomorrow by hook or by crook and then everything will work
itself out.

The thoughts of Mr. Evans, as they passed the hamlet of Pilton
and crossed the Whitelake River by a small stone bridge, were so
absorbing that he instinctively began driving very slowly. Like
all thoughts that have tormented a person's mind for many years,
these thoughts had bruised and beaten themselves against the
mental walls of habit until they had ceased to be thoughts and
had become palpable images. The images in Mr. Evans's case were
of a very peculiar nature. If they could have been revealed to any
average human mind--a mind less vicious and depraved than
John's--they would have presented themselves as something so
monstrous as to be the creation of an insane person. This they
certainly were not, unless all erotic aberrations are insane; and
Mr. Evans, apart from these images, was, as John had discov-
ered, a pedantically and even tediously guileless man. They were
scenes of sadistic cruelty, these pictures that dwelt in the back
chambers of Mr. Evans' mind; and the extraordinary thing about
them was that, in spite of their iniquity, which was indeed abom-
inable, they still produced in him--whenever the least glimpse of
them took form again--an inebriation of erotic excitement that
made his pulses beat, his blood dance, his senses swoon, his knees
knock together. The taste of the least of these loathsome scenes
was so overpowering to him that it reduced all the rest of life--
eating, drinking, working, playing, walking, talking--to tedious
occurrences, that had to be got through but that were wanting
entirely in the electric quiver of real excitement. What Mr. Evans
suffered from was a fever of remorse such as cannot very often
have taken possession of human minds in the long course of his-
tory. To say that the unhappy man wished that he had never been
born would be to put his case mildly. Like Othello he longed to
bathe in "sleep-down gulfs of liquid fire." No one would ever
know--unless Mr. Evans confessed to a priest--how many of
these abominations had actually been practised, how many of
them described in forbidden books, or how many just simply in-
vented by a perverted imagination. If the victim or victims of
Mr. Evans' perversion, supposing they really existed and were
not phantoms of his imagination, had suffered cruelly, Mr. Evans
himself had suffered, for the last five or six years, a torment to
which human history can, we must hope, offer few parallels.

His nature was so riddled and saturated with this appalling
habit of mind that it became a mania with him--now that he had
rejected all practice of it and all pleasure from all thoughts of
it--to blame himself for innumerable forms of suffering in the
world, of which he was entirely innocent. He walked about as if
the ground under his feet was red-hot iron, so fearful was he of
hurting so much as the tiniest beetle or the smallest worm. He
used deliberately to walk across heavy grass and heavy under-
growth so as to avoid the little half -made paths which always
struck his imagination as things that had been hurt. Since a
feeling of power, carried to a monstrous intensity, played such a
role in his vice, it was natural enough that when, aghast at what
he had become, he gave the whole thing up, he should labor
under the delusion of being a much more powerful force in the
world than he really was. Few modern persons, as intelligent as
Owen Evans, believed as intensely as he did in the existence of
a personal God. Perhaps there is something in the peculiar nature
of this vice which especially lends itself to this belief.

Recovering himself from his secret thoughts, as they came
nearer and nearer to the end of their journey, Mr. Evans mur-
mured to his companion such words as "Havyatt" and "Edgar-
ley." He nodded his head, too, towards a great level expanse of
low-lying country which extended southward, on their left, as they
approached their destination. In connection with these dark
fields he uttered the syllables "Kannard Moor" and "Butt Moor."
He further indicated that Baltonsborough and Keinton Mande-
ville lay on the other side of these wide-stretching water-logged
pastures, at which John, in his blunt East Anglian way, declared
that in his country such places would have had names ending in
"ham," not in such finicking sounds as "ville." He told Mr. Evans
that Saxmundham was a much more characteristic English name
them Keinton Mandeville!

As they approached the outskirts of the place, John became
aware of the dim pyramidal form of Glastonbury Tor, towering
above the walls and roofs of the town. The moment he caught
sight of this great pointed hill, with the massive deserted church
tower on its summit, he felt conscious that here was something
that suited his nature better than he expected anything to have
done in these parts.

Mr. Evans, speaking in his second manner, told him that it
was the tower of St. Michael the Archangel. I am glad, said
John, "that St. Michael's tower was the first thing I saw here!"
But in his heart he thought, "To the Devil with St. Michael! That
tower is nothing but a tall pile of stones. I like that tower--I
shall go up to that tower at the first chance!

But Mr. Evans in his tormented mind cared nothing whether
John liked the tower or not. He was crying, like a lost spirit, O
Cross of Christ! O Cross of Christ! O Cross of Christ!"

Thus did these two, the man from Wales and the man from
Norfolk, enter the silent streets of the town of Glastonbury.



HIC JACET



The Reverend Mat Dekker, Vicar of Glastonbury, was working
in his garden. He was loosening the earth round his long,
straight rows of potatoes, while his son Sam was going back-
ward and forward with an old wheelbarrow to a smouldering rub-
bish heap under the high wall upon which he deposited the weeds
which his father pulled up.

Mat Dekker was a man of sixty. A widower from his only
child's birth, twenty-five years ago, his powerfully banked-up
affections had long concentrated themselves upon two objects:
upon Christ, the Redeemer of his soul, and upon Sam, the son of
his loins. It was about ten months this March since the lad had
taken his degree at Cambridge; and the first serious misunder-
standing between father and son was even now, month by month,
gathering weight and momentum. It had to do with the young
man's profession, and with the young man's first love-affair.
Having brought him up with the constant idea of his taking or-
ders, having seen him graduate with a creditable third-class in
the Divinity Tripos, it is not difficult to imagine the crushing
blow that fell upon the luckless father, when--the question aris-
ing as to what particular theological college he was now to enter
--the lad gravely and resolutely declined to carry the thing a
step further. And at that point the matter had hung fire for more
than half a year. Refusing to give up hope of a change of heart
in his son, Mat Dekker had followed the policy of complete in-
ertness. Every opening in life, except unskilled manual labor,
requiring the expenditure of some initial sum, the older man,
without consciously tyrannising, acted on the assumption that eco-
nomic pressure, negatively exercised, was the best weapon that
age possessed in dealing with the wilfulness of youth

Apart from religion their tastes were unusually congenial. They
both loved gardening, they both loved natural history, they both
were proud and shy and anti-social. In their secluded Rectory,
surrounded by walls fifteen feet high and faced even across the
road by nothing more gregarious than the equally high walls of
the Abbey House, they were able to follow their hobbies as
botanists, entomologists, geologists, ichthyologists, without cessa-
tion or interruption.

Mrs. Dekker had been a French Swiss from the city of Geneva.
She had indeed been the pretty housemaid in this very house
when Mr. Dekker took it over, and the girl with it, when he
entered upon his labours in Glastonbury as a young bachelor
priest some thirty years ago. But she had died in childbirth; and
since that day there had been no more pretty housemaids; indeed
it might be said that there had been no more women of any kind,
within the Rectory walls.

For Penny Pitches, their one servant, could only be regarded
as a woman under what Sir Thomas Browne would have called,
in speaking of other difficult questions, "a wide solution." Penny
Pitches had lost her own baby just about the time of Sam's
birth; and since that day she had been as good as a mother to
Sam. She had suckled him, taught him his letters, taught him his
manners--for she was not one to spare the rod--taught him his
morality, his mother-wit, his legends and his superstitions. But
with these female attributes, Penny Pitches' appearance was
more gnomelike than anything else. She was undoubtedly the least
human-looking anthropoid mammal in the whole county of Som-
erset. Penny Pitches was not deformed. She was no humpback.
What Nature had done was to make her back so broad and her
legs so short that she presented the appearance of a Playing-Card
Queen of Spades; a Queen of Spades endowed with the privilege
of three dimensions and the power of locomotion, but denied that
natural separation of head from shoulders and of bust from hips
which is the usual inheritance of female mortality. She was in
fact an animated Euclidean Square moving about over the earth.
Nature had, however, in order to compensate Penny for these
peculiarities, given her a volubility of speech that was womanly
and more than womanly. To speak the truth, the tongues of a
dozen cantankerous shrews and a dozen loquacious trollops re-
sided in this gnome-like skull.

It was Penny herself who now appeared upon the scene and
standing between wheelbarrow and potato row delivered herself
of her view of that morning's general outlook. "'Tis not that I
querrel with 'ee for going out to ‘lunch,' as they called it. That's
as 'ee do please 'eeself about. What I do, and always shall, uphold
is that for a person not to know ‘inavarst' whether there's to be
dinner on table or no dinner on table is a mock to reason."

"Who told you that we were going out today, Penny?" pro-
tested Mr. Dekker mildly, leaning upon his fork. He was in his
shirtsleeves and his large, rugged cheeks were redder than usual
against the clipped grey whiskers that surrounded them. His chin
and his upper lip were clean-shaven; and, as if to make up for
this, his eyebrows above his formidable grey eyes were so long
that they resembled a pair of thatched eaves.

"Wold man Weatherwax," replied the Vicarage servant, "be
round to me pantry with sarcy tales enough to turn milk in a pan!
He do say that Miss Mary over the way have a cousin come to
town what be lodging with Mr. Evans, the new Antiquities man
who's looking after wold Jones' shop, who's to Hospital again
with one of they little cysteses what do trouble he. 'A said 'twere a
surprise to 'un--silly wold sinner as 'tis--that Miss Drew allowed
of such doings. But I said to 'ee, I said, if Miss Drew thinks
enough of Miss Mary's cousin to ask us to meet 'un, though 'a be
a friend of their new Antiquity man, 'a must be one of they great
factory people. Crow ain't no common name. Crow ain't no West-
Country name, Crow ain't. And our Miss Mary, as us do know,
be related to they rich folks. So I be come straight to 'ee, Master,
to reason wi' 'ee as to why, when 'ee be going out for dinner, ye
haven't let us so much as hear a word of it."

"I was just this very minute coming to tell you of our invita-
tion, Penny," murmured the clergyman. "It hadn't arrived at
breakfast. In fact Weatherwax must have brought it. I suppose
there's no excuse for us, eh, Sam?" and he glanced humorously,
from above the rim of his spectacles and from beneath his bushy
eyebrows, at the lad on the further side of the wheelbarrow.

Young Sam Dekker answered the look with a grin. Then he
suddenly got red. "You've not forgotten, Father," he said, that
you promised to have tea at Whitelake Cottage with the
Zoylands?"

Before Mr. Dekker could reply to this, Penny Pitches turned
angrily on the lad. "And you're dragging the Master out over
they girt marshes, are ye, too, then? It's that little white scut of
a Missy Zoyland ye be after, Sam Dekker; and don't 'ee forget
that I told 'ee of it! Oh, I do know 'ee, I do know 'ee, Sammy,
me blessed babe! Tis a daffadowndilly day, like this day be,
that leads to these unholy doings. On days like this day 'tis hard
for young men to bide quiet at home and take their cup of tea
with their dad, brought sweet and strong to 'un by such as knows
what a minister's table should be. A lot you care, Master Sam,
what poisonous foreign sweetmeats your dad'll have to eat, and
what devil's dam drinks he'll have to drink, out there over
Splott's Moor. It's thik Missy Zoyland ye be after. Look at's
cheeks, Master! Look at's hot cheeks! "

"I didn't know Mrs. Zoyland had a daughter, Penny," remarked
the Rector gently, looking anywhere except in the direction of
his son's confusion.

"I never said she had, Master," averred the woman stoutly,
glancing at her embarrassed foster-child with a defiant glare.

"Penny's thinking of that Fair at Hornblotton, Father, when I
took Mrs. Zoyland on the merry-go-round with me. You were
there yourself. You saw us. I'd be ashamed to say such unkind
things of a quiet little lady like that, Penny!"

"I baint said nothing about no quiet lady," protested Mrs.
Pitches. "My words be to do wi' a young master, what stands
afore us, among these here 'taties."

"Well, Penny," said Mr. Dekker with decision, "I'm afraid it
looks, anyhow, as if you'd be a lone woman today. Sam's quite
right. I did promise the Zoylands to walk over to Whitelake River
this afternoon and I did tell Weatherwax that we would come
across to lunch. Did Miss Drew send for any brandy as I told
her to?"

"Brandy!" cried Penny Pitches in high dudgeon. "Ye'll have
plenty of brandy left, ye will, if ye go giving it round to all the
old maids in Silver Street!"

"But, my dear Penny," said Mat Dekker, stretching out his long
white-shirted arm across the handles of the wheelbarrow and tak-
ing the woman caressingly by the shoulder, "Miss Drew sent
Weatherwax for that brandy that we might drink it at lunch, we
and Mary's new cousin; so I do hope you've not been crotchety
and refused it to him."

"Refused it!" The words came like a bullfrog's croak from the
geometrical centre of that well-aproned human square that had
planted itself before them. "Thik wold Weatherwax be settled in
me chair, in me pantry, at me table this blessed minute. Refused
it! Why, he's ‘been tasting thik brandy for the last hour. He says
he be tasting it to see if it be the same as Miss Drew had from ‘ee
at Christmas. If it be the same, he'll take it over, he says, same as
she told he to. And I do tell he that if it's not the same therell be
no need to worry about leaving it in bottle; for bottle'll be like
thee own stummick, Master, on Sunday morn! Bottle'll be empty
and tinklin'!"

"Well! you run off now, Penny, and let Sam and me finish this
couple of rows. Tell old Weatherwax it is the same. Let Miss
Drew have what she wants ; and cork up the bottle. I've got to do
some work this morning if we're going to Whitelake. Never mind
about those, Sam! I'll wheel away the rest myself. You go back
to the house now with Penny; oh, and if you change the water
in the aquarium, do find a bowl of some kind to put that minnow
in! It's only been up at the top since yesterday afternoon and
I changed the water two days ago." (This expression "up at the
top" referred to the habit of minnows when sick or dying of re-
maining with their heads upslanted at the top of the water
breathing heavily.)

Sam Dekker surveyed the retreating form of Penny Pitches. He
was of a lankier build than his father; and there was something
pathetically animal-like about his shambling limbs. He had a
clean-shaved, rather puckered face, with freckles all over it. His
nose was long and thin, like the nose of some kind of honey-
eating bear; and his small, greenish eyes were surrounded by
many wrinkles. His upper lip was long, like his father's, but
while Mat Dekker had a massive, square chin to support this
peculiarity Sam had a weak, retreating chin. Sam's retreating chin
was in many ways the most marked portion of his face, for it was
creased with all manner of queer corrugations. He had a nervous
trick of opening his mouth a little, drawing in his under jaw, and
pulling down the corners of his underlip. The effect of these
movements was to compel the contours of his chin to fuse them-
selves with the contours of his long neck. Had his face been any-
thing but what it was, this trick of contorting his chin would have
been much more noticeable; but where everything was so much
out of proportion no particular lapse could become prominent.

His greenish eyes almost closed as he stood there in a heavy
daze, while his father, anxious to finish that long piece of weed-
ing, bent again over his work. Sam Dekker was not one for
moralising on the events of his life, nor for analysing his motives.
He took for granted that it was just one more trick of Nature that
his interest in fossils, in birds' eggs, in fishes, should lose its
savour month after month, as he found himself entoiled in the
beauty of Nell Zoyland. He took it for granted that in his weak-
ness he should not dare to mention his entanglement to his father,
that in his weakness he should lie to the old man as to the real
meaning of the long solitary excursions he was always making
these days, past Brindham and Splott's Moor, across Whitelake
River to Queen's Sedgemoor; he took it for granted that he should
be too unpractical and too cowardly to dream of carrying Nell
off or of separating her from the formidable William, or of doing
anything at all to clarify the situation. All he could do was to
go on constantly seeing her, which intensified rather than resolved
the dilemma he was in! He loved his father with the deep passive
animal intensity with which he loved Nell. It was indeed his love
for his father quite as much as his natural timidity that made it
absolutely impossible that he should reveal to the older man the
real tragedy of the situation. This tragedy was that not only did
he love Nell Zoyland, but that Nell loved him, recklessly, shame-
lessly, and was constantly urging him, cost what it might to both
of them, to carry her off! It had been the deepest and the most
exciting astonishment of his life, the fact that a girl as lovely as
Nell could love an ugly, lumpish, uninteresting failure, such as
he felt himself to be; Nell, too, who had so original, so surpris-
ingly good-looking a man as Will Zoyland for her mate! William
was, it is true, a good deal older than Nell; but what a man he
was, with his leonine beard and rolling blue eyes, his enormous
courage, his immense physical strength! Under the low forehead
of Sam Dekker there stirred strange feelings towards this for-
midable rival whose power of character was so little to be trifled
with. Even Sains father, no negligible personage himself, showed
evident respect for William Zoyland. It was indeed this respect of
Mat Dekker's for the bearded man that had brought about the
excursion this afternoon, an excursion which, though he had him-
self reminded his father of it, filled Sam's heart with deep
uneasiness.

Now, as he slowly plodded off to refill the aquarium in their
play-room, he cursed Penny Pitches for her uncalled-for outburst.
What had induced the absurd woman to meddle in his affairs?
Never before had she deliberately and wilfully betrayed him to
his father. As a rule in any trifling misunderstanding between
her two men she took the side of her master's son against her
master. The more he thought about it the less he understood it.
Penny, he knew, was anything but puritanical. The indecent jokes
that passed between her and old Weatherwax were the standing
disgrace of Glastonbury Vicarage. "How much does she know?"
he asked himself as he entered the house; and the idea that some
gossiping crony of the old woman had seen his meetings with
Nell on Crannel Moor or in the old barn on Godney Marsh began
to taunt his brain.

Left to himself to finish his weeding, Mat Dekker sternly put
out of his mind the whole matter of Penny's attack upon Sam.
Dekker's nature was a rich, deep, passionate one; but his religion
had assisted him in bringing it under a rare and unusual control.
One of the chief things he had learnt to do was to obliterate every
sexual suspicion. One of Mat's favorite writers was St. Paul; and
he had made a custom of forcing himself not to think evil , a
characteristic of that divine Agape which, according to St. Paul,
held the magic clue to the universe.

But there was a power now shining down upon Mr. Dekker
that cared nothing for St. Paul. The soul of the great burning
sun which illuminated that massive, iron-grey, bent head had
many times ere this been roused to anger against him. Among the
myriads of conscious beings peopling that hemisphere of our
planetary orb who refused in that spring solstice to make the sort
of grateful gesture towards this great Deity which the Powers of
Nature demand of those they favour, this ruddy-faced man in
shirtsleeves bending now over his potato bed seemed to that flam-
ing heart the most obdurate and the most sacrilegious. "Let his
Christ protect him!" thought (if we can call the titanic motions
of super-consciousness in such a Power by the name of
"thought") this great outpourer of life heat. "As for us, we will
let loose his own offspring upon him; and the thing he loves most
in the world we will rouse up against him!"

It must have been about six hours after their talk with Penny
Pitches in the potato garden that Sam Dekker, troubled at heart
by what he considered the gross and inexplicable treachery of his
foster-mother, sat gloomily by himself on the warm steps of the
Abbey House terrace. A little below him, on wooden seats placed
side by side, above a low parapet, sat Miss Euphemia Drew and
her other guests. The more Sam meditated upon that afternoon's
excursion to Whilelake, the more troubled he became. Would his
father detect anything? Would Nell in her agitation as hostess
forget her prudence? Had William Zoyland secretly planned the
whole affair in order to nip in the bud this perilous growth whose
frail seedling-shoot he had already discerned? "I shall get red,"
he thought, "I shall get red as a turkey-cock, just as Penny said.
My hand will shake when she gives me my tea. We shan't dare to
look at each other, or speak to each other. Father's bound to
notice something."

Had Nell Zoyland seen the lad at this moment and watched the
puckering of his freckled forehead and the way, as he rose now
to offer help to Mary, the muscles of his poor chin contracted,
she would have loved him more than ever. Mary's own face, as she
carried a silver tray in one hand and a coffee jug in the other, was
drawn and white. It was all over as far as Miss Drew was con-
cerned! She knew that already, though the lady had not spoken
a word to her on the subject. John had behaved with irretrievable
folly at lunch; had talked wildly; had expressed disbelief in the
legend of the Holy Thorn, had announced that it was a pity that
the Danes had been turned back at Havyatt Gap and finally had
declared that the discovery of Joseph of Arimathea's tomb was
the mere mummery of the monks! Yes; it was all over for them
with Miss Drew. She would never ask him again. She would never
let her meet him again. It would be a lucky thing if she didn't
pack her off, then and there, merely for having such a cousin!

When Mary, with Sam helping her, for both Miss Drew's cook
and housemaid, the sisters Rogers, had begun to wash up, joined
the rest of the party on the terrace, John had fallen into a more
amiable mood. He still remained irresponsive about the Holy
Thorn, but he had evidently taken a fancy to Mr. Dekker, and he
was listening now quite humbly while the Vicar narrated to him
in a grave and unaffected tone certain historic facts about the
Ruins before them.

"Hic jacet sepultus inclitns Rex Arturus in Insula Avallonia"
recited Mat Dekker in a deep, quiet voice. "The end of the twelfth
century it was," he went on, "when they found the coffin, a great
hollowed-out oak trunk, with the bones of the king and queen.
Nearly a hundred years later Edward the First buried them be-
fore the high altar. The books say that Leland the Antiquary
actually saw them as late as the sixteenth century. Since then they
have been lost to sight." The Vicar of Glastonbury sighed as he
ceased speaking, and at the same moment a light wind from the
west, rustling across the masses of ruined masonry caught the
topmost twigs of the tall elms on the right of the Tower Arch and
made them bow before it.

"When I told my good friend Mr. Evans this morning," began
John Crow, "that I had been invited here, it did excite him! He
quoted what he called a Welsh Triad--something about no one
knowing where the grave of Arthur was."

Miss Euphemia Drew folded her cream-coloured cashmere
shawl more lightly round her neck, hiding the gold-mounted
moonstone brooch that clasped her bodice; and then, turning her
chin above the wrinkled fingers she had thus raised to her throat,,
"Not know where it is?" she said sternly. "Fiddle-de-dee! we all
know where it is! It's under that broken arch."

Mary tried to convey to her cousin by a rapid glance that he
must accept the verdict of Miss Drew as to the grave of the great
king without further question. But the run-down Danish adven-
turer refused to be stopped. "My friend Mr. Evans quoted a Latin
jingle too. What was it, Sir? I expect you know it. It began with
Hic jacet, just as yours did."

Mat Dekker smiled sadly. "You mean ‘Hic jacet Arturus, rex
quondam , rexque futurus '? Is that what he said? 'King once and
king to be,' " he added, with his clerical instinct for making
things clear. "Most of our Glastonbury sayings have to do with
some sort of ‘Hic jacet he concluded rather wistfully.

"Would you say, Sir," enquired John, "that King Arthur is
really the most deeply rooted superstition that this place repre-
sents?" The younger Dekker began to feel seriously angry with
the East Anglian. It was all very well to display a lack of anti-
quarian interest. But here, on this terrace, gazing out at Edgar's
Chapel, at the great Tower Arch, at St. Mary's Church, at St.
Thomas' Chapel, at the rich ruins of the most sacred ecclesia
vetusta in all Britain, to definitely challenge the whole genius loci
seemed to Sam's simple mind as much a lapse from Nature's ways
as it would have been to allow a minnow to perish for lack of
fresh water.

But the elder Dekker seemed totally unconscious of the insult
to the spot he loved. "Well, of course to our old-fashioned Prot-
estant ancestors Glastonbury must have reeked with what you call
superstition.' Three famous Saxon kings are buried here, some-
thing like six well-known saints are buried here. All the Holy
Grail legends gather to a head here. The Druids played a great
part here; and long before the Druids there was a Lake Village"
--he gave a grave, characteristically West-country jerk with his
head to indicate the northwestern point of the compass--"whose
mounds you can still see in the fields. Ancient British that prob-
ably was; older anyway than History! But I expect the deepest-
rooted superstition here, if you could compel Glastonbury Tor to
speak, would turn out to be the religion of the people who lived
before the Ancient Britons; perhaps even before the Neolithic
Men. At any rate we have some excuse for being 'superstitious' in
these parts. Don't you think so, Miss Drew?"

"I think you are very kind, dear Vicar, to answer Mr. Crow's
question at all," said the old lady severely. "For myself I would
answer it rather differently. I would assure him that what he calls
superstition we call the Only True Faith."

This remark produced a complete silence.

"My friend Mr. Evans,"--it was John who broke the spell--"says
that it's neither King Arthur nor Joseph of Arimathea that's the
real hidden force still active in Glastonbury."'

"What does he say it is?" enquired Mary, hoping against hope
that John would, even now, redeem himself.

"He won't say. He gets reserved and touchy. It's my own opin-
ion that it has to do with Merlin. But I expect I'm all wrong.
When I mentioned Merlin all he did was to quote a lot of Welsh
Triads in Welsh. He's a queer character, my friend Evans, but he
interests me very much."

"Will you take some more coffee or some more brandy,
Vicar?" interrupted Miss Drew in a tone that seemed to say,
"When once I have exposed the unpleasantness of a rude young
man there is no need for him to make further efforts to reinstate
himself in my favour." And then when the Vicar had shaken his
head, "Carry the trays away, child, please; and tell Lily and
Rogers that you and I will get our own tea today."

The cook's name was Louie Rogers. She was only a year older
than Lily and as a rule Miss Drew called her Louie; but when
upset by the spectacle of the world's disorder she always called
her Rogers. It had been her mother's as well as her grandmoth-
er's custom to call their cooks by their surnames and Miss Drew
reverted to it as a sort of invocation of these thin-lipped, tenderly
stern women, whose miniatures were on her writing-table. The
mere utterance of the word "Rogers" seemed to Miss Drew to
bring back decency and respect to human intercourse.

John had not the courage nor the wit to rise from his chair and
help his cousin carrying her tray into the house; so it worked
out that Sam Dekker once more was her companion. But Sam
never addressed a single word to her as he walked by her
side. His sole thought was his growing dread of the afternoon's
encounter. Mary herself pondered bitterly upon the interior mean-
ing of Miss Drew's little speech about their tea. It meant a kind
of emotional unbending, an intimacy, a crisis of sympathetic
confidence; hut it also meant that under no conceivable circum-
stances would her employer allow her to go on meeting her
cousin. Ladies who live together possess these indirect ways of
communicating with each other and by the tone in which Mary
replied, "Yes, dear, that will be so nice!" Miss Drew knew that
while there would be nothing in the nature of a scene between
them, the separation of Mary from John would take more than
one evening's dignified protest.

Meanwhile the sun began slanting its rays more and more
warmly and mistily upon the group on the terrace. The smooth
expanse of grass which separated them from the Ruins bore on its
surface now a few dark, fluctuating shadows as the light wind
stirred the elm-tree tops. The three hills of the place, Wirral
Hill, Chalice Hill and the Tor, were all behind them, and beyond
the Ruins and beyond the trees and beyond the vaporous roofs
of the town, stretched the wide, low valley where flowed the River
Brue, and where that Bridge Perilous was, into which, as Dekker
was now telling him, Arthur had thrown his sword. Dim and rich
and vague the valley stretched, covered with an undulating veil of
blue-purple mist. Orchard upon orchard, pasture upon pasture, it
sank away, the lowest pastoral country in the land of England,
lower than the level of the sea, heavy with its precious relics as
the sea bottom with its drowned ships. As he gazed at all this,
feeling more and more friendly to Mr. Dekker and more and more
hostile to Miss Drew, John began to say to himself that it was
nothing else than this very low-lying character of the country
that made it such a fatal receptacle for the superstitions of two
thousand years! Into this blue-purple vapour, into the bosom of
these fields lower than the sea, floated, drifted upon the wind,
all those dangerous enervating myths that had taken the heart
out of man's courage and self-reliance upon the earth. The True
Faith Indeed! Why, the land reeked with the honey lotus of all
the superstitions of the world! Here they had come, here they had
taken refuge, driven into flight by the great dragon-beaked ships
and the long bright spears of his own heathen ancestry! And
here, caught by these fatal low-lying flats they had lingered;
lingered and clung till they grew rotten and miasmic, full of in-
sidious mind-drugging poison. God! This place must be charged,
"thick and slab," with all the sweet-sickly religious lies that had
ever medicined the world! Here like green scum over old stagnant
water courses, here like green pond weeds upon castle moats,
these tender-false mandragoras lulled to sleep the minds of the
generations! No wonder Philip, with his accursed machines,
found no manhood to resist his despotism in a place like this!

It was at this point in John Crow's contemplations that Mary
and Sam came slowly back and reseated themselves by his side.
They had exchanged only two sentences on the way back from the
house. Mary had asked him whether they could spare Mr. Weath-
erwax, who worked in both their gardens, for the whole day to-
morrow, and Sam had replied that he thought they could, as
long as the old man "helped Penny to pump before he came
across the road."

John was soon made aware of the miserable depression into
which Mary had fallen. Her profile troubled him by its tragic
tenseness. He rose abruptly. "Good-bye, Miss Drew," he said,
bowing to her from where he stood. "Thank you so much for
having asked me here. Good-bye, Sir, I hope you'll let me see you
again. Cousin Mary, will you show me that short cut to Wir-
ral Hill?"

He swept her off with him so boldly and decisively, actually
taking her by the arm, that Miss Drew was nonplussed. "Don't
desert me, Mary!" was all she could cry out after them. They
skirted the kitchen garden and reached a little gate in a budding
privet-hedge, where old Weatherwax in some wanton mood had
planted hyacinths. There was a clump of these heavily fragrant
flowers by this gate and a lark high up above them was quivering
in the hot sky. Mary put her hand on the latch after giving him
minute directions of the way. They could see the whole ridge of
Wirral Hill in the distance and the girl knew she ought to leave
him at once and return; but it was hard to do so. Mr. Owen
Evans was expecting him, he explained, by a lonely tree up there;
and as he searched with his eyes the ridge she showed him, he
could see clearly a particular tree which stood out in clear relief.
He declared he could even see the Welshman's figure propped on
the ground against this tree; but the girl contradicted this. "I
know that black thing up there well," she said. "I used to take it
for a person. It's an old post. I went up there once to make sure."

"What tree is that? Evans said it was a thorn hut it doesn't
look like a thorn to me."

"It's a sycamore," she answered. "At least I think so. Oh, I
don't care what it is!" Her voice trembled. Her lips were
quivering.

"What is it, my treasure?"

"What is it?" Her tears were swallowed in a sudden gust of an-
ger. She dropped the latch of the little gate and her whole body
stiffened. "You know what you've done, I suppose, John, by your
silly talk? You've spoilt everything! She'll never ask you again.
She'll stop my seeing you again! Oh, how could you do it, you
fool? How could you do it?"

He was so astonished at the flashing eyes and the white face
that his eyes and mouth opened with a blank, idiot look. His ex-
pression in fact was so exactly like one of those pictures of
human beings that school-children draw on their slates, that
Mary could not refrain from a faint smile.

"You see, John dear," she said more gently, "it would be very
hard for me to get another job. If Miss Drew gave me notice I'd
be penniless. I'd have to be a governess or a companion with
someone else. That would almost certainly mean my leaving
Glastonbury. You don't expect to follow me about all over Eng-
land, do you, while I work in peoples' houses?"

"But I'm going to get work myself, here, and soon too," he
protested. "Evans knows lots of people. He's going to help me.
He's going to take me this very afternoon to see his cousin, Mrs.
Geard. Mrs. Geard and Mr. Evans are both Rhyses; if you know
what that means! At any rate you know too well who the Geards
are."

Mary did smile outright at that. She shook her head. "They
call ditches about here by some funny name like that. No!
Rhyne, that's it, not Rhys. But won't Philip be furious if you
go and see those Geards?"

"I don't care a damn about Philip. I hate the fellow! I'll make
this Geard chap give me work. He ought to do something for some
of us. Any decent man would, after collaring all that. And Evans
says he's all right."

"But it would hurt Philip terribly, wouldn't it, and Aunt Eliz-
abeth too, if you really did take money from that person? Does
your friend know if this Geard man is going to go on living here?"

"Certainly he is! Mrs. Geard--who's a Rhys; and don't you
forget that, Mary, for God knows all that that means!--has been
three times already to look at a place over there"--he swung
round on his heel and pointed to a sloping ridge not far from
the Tor--"a place they call Chalice House. So they're going to
stay here, don't 'ee fear. I tell you, my treasure, you needn't
worry. It's going to be all right. We'll go on meeting in that same
place in the Ruins where we did that first time. And as soon as
I get work we'll be married--and the devil fly away with your old
lady!"

Mary seized his wrist with all her fingers and lifted it to her
mouth. "I've a great mind to punish you for behaving so badly,"
she murmured. There was something about the smell of John's
bony hand that made her homesick for Norfolk. "It smells like
peat," she thought, and she began licking with the tip of her
tongue the little hairs which now tickled her lips. This gave her
a sharp tingling sensation that ran through her whole frame. In
a flash she imagined herself stretched out in bed by John s side.
"Oh, my dear, oh, my dear!" she sighed.

"Take care, my treasure; they'll see us," he whispered. "Wait
till tomorrow afternoon! About half-past two, eh? When your old
lady is asleep? I'll wait for you. So don't you get agitated; even
if you can't get away for hours. I'll wait there till they close up
the whole place! I'll walk about a bit, you know, and come back.
It's dry in that little chapel, even if it's raining outside."

Thus they talked by the gate, unwilling to separate, hugging
each other--though they were not actually touching each other
now--as tightly as if they were stark naked, but with no wild,
irresistible rush of passion. They were Norfolk Crows, Crows
from Norwich, from Thorpe, from Yaxham, from Thetford, from
East Dereham, from Cringleford, from Methwold. Their love
was lust, a healthy, earthy, muddy, weather-washed lust, like the
love of water-rats in Alder Dyke or the love of badgers on
Brandon Heath. They were shamelessly devoid of any Ideal Love.
Born to belong to each other, by the same primordial law that
made the Egyptian Ptolemies marry their sisters, they accepted
their fatal monogamy as if it were the most casual of sensual
attractions.

And in the etheric atmosphere about those two, as they stood
there, quivered the immemorial Mystery of Glastonbury. Chris-
tians had one name for this Power, the ancient heathen inhabi-
tants of this place had another, and a quite different one. Every-
one who came to this spot seemed to draw something from it,
attracted by a magnetism too powerful for anyone to resist, but
as different people approached it they changed its chemistry,
though not its essence, by their own identity, so that upon none
of them it had the same psychic effect. This influence was per-
sonal and yet impersonal, it was a material centre of force and
yet an immaterial fountain of life. It had its own sui generis
origin in the nature of the Good-Evil First Cause, but it had
grown to be more and more an independent entity as the centuries
rolled over it. This had doubtless come about by reason of the
creative energies pouring into it from the various cults, which,
consciously or unconsciously, sucked their life-blood from its
wind-blown, gossamer-light vortex. Older than Christianity, older
than the Druids, older than the gods of Norsemen or Romans,
older than the gods of the neolithic men, this many-named Mys-
tery had been handed down to subsequent generations by three
psychic channels; by the channel of popular renown, by the
channel of inspired poetry, and by the channel of individual
experience.

Names are magical powers. Names can work miracles. But the
traditional name of this entity--the Holy Grail--might easily
mislead an intelligent historian of our planet. The reality is one
thing; the name, with all its strange associations, is only an
outward shell of such reality. Apart from the fabulous stories
that have become the burden of this wind-blown "Numen" it must
be noted that as these two figures--this man and this woman--
longed to make love to each other but were withheld by circum-
stance, their intense desire--all the more electric for being as
vicious as it was--was urged by its own intensity (apart alto-
gether from any consciousness in these two as to what was hap-
pening) to the very brink of this floating Fount of Life. The
strongest of all psychic forces in the world is unsatisfied desire.
And the desire of these two at this moment, gathering electric
force out of the atomic air and striving blindly towards each
other in despite of the sundering flesh, was so caught up and so
heightened by the frustrated desires of two thousand years, which
in that valley had pulsed and jetted and spouted, that it did
actually draw near to that Secret Thing. Thus the loves of these
two people, both of them hostile to all these miraculous forces,
both of them rooted in fen-mud and vicious heathenism, did, by
reason of the strength of what the old Benedictines would have
called their "brutish and carnal purpose," approach the invisible
rim of that wind-blown mystery. Approach it, hut not touch it!
With a heavy heart Mary dragged herself off. Three times she
looked back and waved her hand, watching him make his linger-
ing way towards Wirral Hill. Southwest he went; and, each time
she turned, the afternoon sun seemed more obscuring, more
vaporously concealing, more hopelessly swallowing! He seemed
to disappear into that golden haze like "the knight-at-arms" of
the poet, "alone and palely loitering." But darkly, not "palely,"
did his figure pass away, vanishing amid the yet darker forms
of tree trunks and wall cornices and wooden water butts and
clothes lines and garden pumps; all mingling together in dim,
fantastic, purplish dream stuff; as if the slanting sun-rays had
hollowed out all substance, all solidity, from both them and
him!

As, hot and perspiring, John toiled up that dusty ascent, he
saw the boyish countenance of Tom Barter before him. He was
going to see Tom Barter tomorrow evening. Would he prove a
complete stranger when he was face to face with him? Tomorrow
evening was Saturday. He hoped Mary would be able to reach
that place in the Ruins in good time. Well! if she were late, he
would have to keep Tom waiting. But Tom would not mind. Tom
was always good-natured. Tom never got angry. No, he never
got angry, even when the boat was stranded in the mud, even
when the bait was left behind, even when a float was lost, even
when an oar got adrift, even when you kept him waiting for
hours!

By God! it was with Tom, and not with Mary, that he had
played that wicked game, that day, at the bottom of the boat.
How extraordinary that he should have mixed up those two like
that in his mind!

It was a steep and a dusty path he was following up the slope
of Wirral Hill. Oh, how he longed for the stormy north wind and
the wide fens. His nostalgia for Norfolk became a shrinking back
from the strangeness of Glastonbury! He found himself staring
at an iron seat which the municipality of the town had placed
on a ledge of that long ascent. His sensations were very queer
as he stood staring at this iron seat. "When I am having exciting
thoughts about making love to Mary," he said to himself, "I feel
careless and reckless; but when I think of Tom I have such a
sensation of being protected that it makes me frightened of every-
thing! God! I wish Mary and Tom and I were all safe back in
that Northwold drawing-room, looking out on that lawn! There's
something funny about this place. This place seems to be unreal.
I feel exactly as if it were floating on a sea of coloured glass. I
feel as if at any moment it might sink and carry me down into
God knows what!"

He really did begin, at that moment, to feel physically dizzy.
This alarmed him and made him tighten his hold on the handle
of his stick and hurry on up the hill. He soon perceived beyond
the curve of the incline, lifted above the dust of the pathway in
front of him, the gaunt, outstretched branch of the ambiguous
tree. And there was the black post; and there, with his back
propped against the post and his chin upon his knees, sat Mr.
Owen Evans. The sight of Mr. Evans, seated in that manner,
brought back, in a flash, to John's mind, the image of Stone-
henge. "Ha! those stones are older than Glastonbury!" he mut-
tered to himself. And then feeling his courage and his adventur-
ousness returning to him, "0 great Stone Circle," he prayed,
"give me my girl into my hands in spite of all these kings and
saints and thorn trees!"



WHITELAKE COTTAGE



When Mr. Dekker and his son set out to walk to White-
lake River they decided to cross that particular region in the
environs of Glastonbury to which local usage had come to re-
strict the romantic name of Avalon. Over the uplands known as
Stonedown they directed their way straight to the hamlet of
Wick. At this point Mr. Dekker began to take a little surreptitious
pleasure in their excursion independent of its troublesome and
complicated purpose. He always loved a long walk with Sam
and there was not a field or a lane within several miles of their
home where some rare plant or bird, or, as the Spring advanced,
some butterfly did not arrest their attention.

"I was telling Mr. Crow," said Sam's father, "about this hamlet
Do you know, it was the one thing I told him that really inter-
ested him. A quaint fellow this Crow seems to be."

His last words were spoken in a raised voice for Sam had
moved a little ahead of him and was standing by the side of
an immense oak tree which grew at the edge of the lane. Another
tree of the same species, equally enormous, grew a stone's throw
further on; and these two gigantic living creatures, whose top-
most branches were already thickly sprinkled with small, gam-
boge-yellow leaf buds, appeared to be conversing together, in
that golden sun-haze, far up above the rest of the vegetable world
and where none but birds could play the eavesdropper.

The sight of these two titanic trees, trees that might have wit-
nessed at least a fifth portion of the long historic life of Glaston-
bury, suggested to the mind of the elder Dekker thoughts quite
unconnected with either Vikings or Druids.

"We must try again here this summer for those Purple Hair-
streaks, Sam, my boy."

But the lad heard his father's words without his accustomed
sympathy in entomological pursuit. His body was at that mo-
ment bowed forward towards the great corrugated trunk, his out-
stretched arms pressed against it, his fingers extended wide. All
this he was doing in complete unawareness.

Was Sam's gesture, at this moment, destined to prove the ex-
istence of an increasing rapprochement in these latter modern
days between certain abnormal human beings such as were both
Sam and John, and the subhuman organisms in nature? Was it
in fact a token, a hint, a prophecy or a catastrophic change im-
minent in human psychology itself?

Across the soul of that immemorial oak tree, as it flowed up-
ward like an invisible mist from the great roots in the earth to
those gamboge-coloured leaf buds, there had passed more wild
November rains, more luminous August moons, more desperate
March winds whirling and howling over Queen's Sedgemoor and
Wick Hollow, than either Sam Dekker or his father had any
notion of. Then why to the troubled heart of the younger man,
just then, did there not come from the immense repository of
this huge tree's vast planetary experience, a kind of healing
virtue?

Why did Sam Dekker draw back from that oak tree uncom-
forted, uncounselled, unsoothed, uninspired? Against that great
rough trunk many a gipsy donkey had rubbed its grey haunches
and got comfort by it, many a stray heifer had butted with her
wanton horns and eased her heart, squirrels had scampered and
scratched there, and hung suspended, swaying their tails and
scolding, wrens had built their large, green, mossy nests there,
chaffinches had scraped and pecked at the lichen for their nests,
so small, so elegant, in the nearby blackthorn bushes. Past that
trunk and its great twin brother further down the lane had ridden
men in armour, men in Elizabethan ruffles, men with cavalier
ringlets, men in eighteenth-century wigs. Many of these no doubt
jumped down from their horses, drawn by an indescribable, mag-
netic pull, and touched that indented bark with their travel-swol-
len bare hands. And to many it must have brought luck of some
sort, some healing wisdom, some wise decisions, some hints of
how to deal with their mates, with their offspring, with the tumult
of life!

But nothing of this sort came to Sam Dekker. The son was he
of the man who refused to worship the sun! That great reddish
orb, now sinking down towards the Bristol Channel, had its own
strange superhuman consciousness. And this consciousness, roused
to anger against this simple priest, had resolved with a mysterious
envenoming tenacity, corrosive and deadly, to separate him from
the only earthly thing he loved!

The two men walked on in silence now, Mr. Dekker instinc-
tively understanding that his son was on tenterhooks about this
encounter, and beginning himself to feel, in his own sturdy con-
sciousness, certain premonitions of danger on the air.

They passed Wick Hollow. They passed Bushev Combe. As
they went on, they were sometimes compelled to stop and stare
at the hedges for it was weeks since they had been that way and
they were astonished at the extraordinary beauty of the celandines
this year. The ground was uneven, broken up into many little
depressions and small hillocks, and whether because February
had been exceptionally wet, or because the winds had been so
steadily blowing from the west, not only were the petals of the
celandines more glittering than usual, but their leaves were larger
and glossier.

"Celandines were my father's favourite flower," said Mat Dek-
ker as they moved on again after one of these pauses. It always
pleased him to think of his father when he was alone with his
son and to speak of him to him. It made him feel that the three
of them--three generations of Dekkers--were intimately bound
together, and bound together too with that fecund Somersetshire
soil. His piety in this classical sense was one of the massive single-
hearted motives by which he lived.

The landscape around them changed completely now, for they
descended from the verdurous island of Avalon down into a con-
fused series of cattle droves which led across the low-lying water-
meadows.

Few, even among the dwellers in Glastonbury, could have found
their way as these two did over these fields and ditches. When they
had passed the outskirts of Brindham Farm and reached the less-
frequented marshes of Splott's Moor, it was even more difficult
to proceed; for the cattle droves yielded place then to mere foot-
tracks from weir to weir and dam to dam. Wider ditches too,
interrupted their way, those great ditches of formidable water
called rhynes to which Mary Crow had referred in her conver-
sation with John; and the planks across these deep water courses
were, in many places, perilously rotted by rains and floods and
needed to be trodden with extreme wariness by two such heavily
built men. Whitelake River itself was also no contemptible ob-
stacle to surmount, for there were no bridges anywhere near;
but in the end they discovered a willow branch fallen across the
little stream, and managed to make use of this as a bridge. It was
in the overcoming of little chance difficulties like this in explor-
ing the country that Mat Dekker always showed at his best. On
this occasion, with the sun, his heathen enemy, already so near
the horizon he forgot completely the annoying nature of their
excursion and began chuckling and boasting over this or that
achievement of the way, as if they had been crossing the Danube
instead of Whitelake River!

They were now actually upon the marshlands of Queen's Sedge-
moor; and here they found themselves without the trace of even
a footpath to follow, and once again the elder Dekker had an
opportunity of displaying to his son his skill as a cross-country
guide.

"Whitelake Cottage is on the bank of this stream, my son," he
said gravely, "and ive are on the bank of this stream. All we've
got to do is to follow it down."

Sam mechanically obeyed, letting his father move in advance
of him by several paces. In his son's silence the elder man had
reverted to his natural custom of brooding sluggishly upon every
single little natural object they encountered. Nothing was neg-
ligible to this despiser of the sun when once he was out-of-doors.
There was no weed that lacked thrilling interest for him. But it
was not a merely scientific interest; still less was it an aesthetic
one. The master-current of the man's passionate West-country
nature found in a thousand queer, little, unattractive objects,
such as mouldering sticks, casual heaps of stones, discoloured
funguses on tree roots, dried-up cattle-droppings, old posts with
rusty nailheads, tree stumps with hollow places full of muddy
rain-water, an expression of itself that wide-stretching horizons
tailed to afford.

By approaching their objective this particular afternoon by so
rambling and indirect a road, it was a good deal after half-past
four-- the hour when they had been invited-- that they reached
Whitelake Cottage at last.

In recognition of the abnormally warm day, Nell Zoyland had
arranged to give her guests their tea upon a little grassy terrace
overlooking the swollen stream. Here then the father and son
sat, munching such exquisite thin bread and butter as Mistress
Pitches did not often cut for their delectation and trying to con-
ceal both from each other and from their host, the growing
measure of their uneasiness. For, truth to tell, the situation was
drifting, moment by moment, more and more out of control. Nell
Zoyland's cheeks were hot and her breath came quick. Mat Dekker
had certainly never seen a girl with more beautiful, mdre allur-
ing breasts than hers; nor had he ever seen one who dared to
wear a bodice so tightly fitting, so mediaaval-looking, so unfash-
ionably piquant! These beautiful breasts seemed indeed to domi-
nate the whole occasion. Mat Dekker felt that there was some-
thing so unusual about their loveliness that they endowned their
owner with a sort of privileged fatality; a fatality that might
lead to halcyon happiness; or on the other hand, to tragic devas-
tation and destruction. They seemed meant, Mat Dekker thought
as his eyes wistfully followed them, for something beyond the
suckling of any human infant. At this point the man's ingrained
morality pulled him up short. But he could not resist the feeling
that there was something in the loveliness of such breasts that
carried a person far from ordinary human life, to those old wild
legends of immortal creatures of mist, of dawn, of dew that
have troubled good men's minds from the beginning.

"It is only children of the elements," he said to himself, "that
such breasts ought to suckle!"

It was at this point in this singular tea-party that William
Zoyland began to speak his mind.

Sam Dekker soon ceased to drink any more tea or to eat any
more bread and butter. He sat now with his shoulders hunched
up and his chin sunk into his neck. His elbows rested heavily
upon Nell's wicker-work garden table. His eyes were fixed upon
the face of William Zoyland as if upon the face of a well-known
animal that had suddenly begun uttering surprising sounds,
sounds that belonged to an entirely different type of beast.

Nell, on the contrary, had the aspect of a girl desperate and
reckless at the close of a day-long struggle with an equal adver-
sary. She fixed upon her husband's leonine head, as he went
on speaking, that careless, contemptuous look, which, of all looks
in their harem, men dread the most.

Whitelake Cottage was like a little doll's house by the reedy
banks of Whitelake River. It only possessed two rooms down-
stairs and two upstairs, with a little kitchen at the back, above
which, under a sloping roof, which had been attached to the rest
of the house at a recent date, was a low-ceilinged attic-study de-
voted to the use of the master. They evidently had no servants
nor was there any sign of a flowerbed, although at the edge of
the grassy slope where they all now sat, several wild-flower roots,
by the look of the disturbed soil and the appearance of the
plants, had been lately put in.

Under that flowing torrent of deep-toned revelations, full of
startling import, to which they were perforce listening, Mat
Dekker was staring at last year's drooping rushes, brown and
crumpled, among which several newly green shoots were sprout-
ing up. The sun was quite below the horizon now; and in the
early twilight these green reed shoots threw forth a peculiar cool-
ness of their own, a pure, liquid coolness, after that warm day
that was like a calm but tragic Finis to some magical play of a
great playwright.

Mat Dekker was gathering up his forces to deal with a situa-
tion altogether new in his narrow and single experience, and
the effort to cope with this was so great that its effect upon him,
as Zoyland went on speaking, began to be the very last anyone
would have predicted. He began to grow extremely sleepy. This
tendency to grow sleepy at a crisis was indeed an old infirmity
in his family. The great-grandfather of his father, James Dekker,
had grown sleepy when called upon, with other well-known
Somersetshire gentlemen, to rise to the support of William of
Orange against the last of the Stuarts.

"It's for the wench to decide for herself," Will Zoyland was
saying, as, lying back in his wicker arm-chair with his leather-
gaitered legs stretched out in front of him and one hand deep in
his corduroy breeches' pocket and the other tugging at his great
yellow beard, he rolled his blue eyes from Sam's bowed face to
Sam's father's averted face. "I'm a philosopher, Mr. Dekker. I'm
not one to let myself suffer, or the girl either, when there's no
need for it. But it's too much for her to expect that I'll go on
living with her and sleeping in a separate bed. In fact, I refuse
to do it! I'm a philosopher, I tell ye; and as such I know that
all conventional idealism is puff-ball foolishness. Any girl can
love two men if she wants to, just as we can love two women. I've
no doubt a man like yourself, Mr. Dekker, has frequently' loved
two women at the same time. It's natural to us. Nell and this
silly lad here think they're in love. They've imagined till today,
or at any rate Sam has imagined till today, that I was the sort
of born cuckold who could be fooled till judgment. Well! I'm
not. D'ye hear, Sam, me boy? I'm not. I live my own life in my
own way and always have. I could live here perfectly well with-
out Nell, though she doesn't think so. She thinks I could live
without sleeping with her; but she don't believe I could get my
meals for myself or get on without having her to talk to. That's
where women are so stupid. They think they're necessary where
they're not necessary; and they don't know how necessary they
are, in another direction! But I'm a philosopher, as I say, Mr.
Dekker, my good Sir, and I know very well that my little Nell
still loves her old Will (though she doesn't know it herself!)
quite as much as she loves this sulky young gentleman here.
Now what I say to her, Sir, and to you, my romantic young
friend, is simply this. If Nell will stop this foolery of sleeping on
the sitting-room sofa, stop, in fact, this foolery of being cross with
me and cold to me, I'll be ready--d'ye hear me lad?--I'll be
ready to share her with ye. So long as ye don't tumble her 'in me
wone bed,' as they say round here, ye can have the lass uphill
and down dale--I'm mum. I'm mute. I'm the dumb fish. In fact,
to tell ye the truth, Mr. Dekker, I've got ridiculously fond of
this great hulking son of yours. I respect the boy. I like talking
to the boy. We've had some fine times together, haven't we, Sam?
No, no. I agree with that old rogue Voltaire. I'm one who could
be quite content to live 'a trois,' as the rascal says. But I'm not
one who can live side by side with a girl like Nell and have her
cold and cross and savage, like she's been this last month. To
Hell with her cooking! I'm as good a cook as she is; and a better,
loo. Sam would like her to remain my servant and to become his
light o' love. Nell wants to run off with Sam and leave every-
thing. Only when I tell her to stop talking about it and do it, she
says Sam hasn't the guts to leave his dad. And then when I
laugh at her and tell her to try him and see, she just cries and
cries at the thought of how her poor old Will is to get on, all
alone, without anyone to get him his meals,"

He paused and looked round to make sure that his wife had
not slipped away and retreated into the house. No; Nell Zoyland
was standing exactly where she had been when he began to speak,
her hands pressed against the back of an empty chair. It was then
that Will Zoyland's eye, as he looked round, caught sight of a
kestrel-hawk hovering in the air above some pollarded willows.
He clapped his great hand on his mouth with an inarticulate
shishing sound.

"Shish! Shish!" he murmured, glancing at the two Dekkers
and then at Nell. He rose to his feet, turned his back upon them
all, and stepping lightly on tip-toe, like a gamekeeper in pursuit
of a poacher, hurried to the side wall of his house.

Following his motions with his eyes, the elder Dekker remem-
bered now, what everybody in Glastonbury knew, namely that
Mr. Zoyland was the bastard son of the Marquis of P., the great
Somersetshire landowner. He saw the fellow seize upon his gun,
where it lay propped against the wall, and glance quickly up-
ward. Like the dedicated naturalist that he was, Mat Dekker hated
to see any bird shot; and even though he had been told that in
that low-lying ground, kestrels had grown to be a nuisance, he
still would have protested violently.

Without a second's hesitation he lifted up his voice from where
he sat and uttered a resounding, "Hoy! a-hoy! hawk-a-hoy!"

The report of the gun followed almost immediately; but,
startled by his guest's shout, the bearded bastard of Lord P.
missed his bird.

Nell fully expected the roar of a Polyphemus to follow this
mischance and a terrible, "Damn your soul, Sir! What do you
mean by that?" But neither Mr. Zoyland's voice nor any look in
his eyes betrayed a flicker of such emotion.

"Sorry, Sir!" was all he said, as he resumed his seat with his
gun across his knees ; "I ought to have remembered your penchant
for hawks. Sam told me how he used to keep a pair of them
when he was at school. I expect it was by taming hawks that he
learnt to tame girls. Well, Sam; well, Nell, what are you two
romantic children going to decide? Is poor old Will to go on
sleeping alone?"

There was something about the man's tone that roused the girl
to a level of emotion and a quality of emotion that astonished her
lover.

The slow-flowing water beneath them seemed to have taken
to itself all the daylight that was left; and between the girl's
tense face and its unruffled surface an affinity of whiteness that was
almost phosphorescent rose into being, established itself, and be-
came more and more dominant. Had the little house, the pollarded
willows, the gun on the bearded man's knees, the twitching chin
of Sam, been elements of sound in a momentous orchestra, this
whiteness of flowing water and of a woman's face would have
been the flute note or the oboe note in the symphonic effect.

Here sat together, on the darkening bank of this steel-white
water, three formidable men, any one of whom could have
crushed out that frail spark of girlish life as the swish of a
horse's tail might crush a currant moth. And yet the tension of
that single feminine heart reduced all three of them to the neg-
ligibleness of three wooden posts in the palings around an
agitated heifer.

And just as such a heifer's up-tossed head and lifted voice
might bring some farm girl upon the scene who would pass those
paling-posts by as if they did not exist, so the suppressed tem-
pest in Nell Zoyland's nerves brought to her rescue nothing less
than the great planet of the evening itself. Whiter than the White-
lake stream, whiter even than the girl's face, this celestial lumi-
nary, this immortal sign in the heavens "that brings the traveller
home by every road," emerged now from the cloudy western lake
wherein the sun had vanished.

A long relaxed shiver of nervous relief passed through Nell
Zoyland's perfect breasts, and through her ravished but uncon-
ceiving womb, and through her thighs and through her trembling
knees. Turning her gaze from the evening star she looked, for
some reason she could never have explained, not into Sam's
pathetic bear-eyes that were following her every motion, but into
two deep, twilit, granite pools. Into such granite pools--now that
his enemy, the Sun, had long since vanished--Mat Dekker's quiet
grey eyes, under their bristling eyebrows, had been transformed!
The man met the girl's gaze; and the mysterious sweetness of her
soul--troubled still but no longer convulsed with anger--rested
for a second upon the priest's new strength, as if he and not her
lover or her husband were her true friend among those three
men.

"Well, you two," repeated Will Zoyland, "aren't you going to
answer? I am one for living a civilised life in these things. Could
any man make a more liberal offer? If Nell will live again with
me, as she did when we were married a couple of years ago, I'll
let her see as much of our good Sam as she likes. Will's bed
isn't the only place where young blood can cool itself. There's my
offer. If you two want to go off together and leave Will to look
after himself, go! For God's sake, go! And good luck to you!
I can't hand you the money for expenses, because I haven't got
it. She knows--none so well as she!--that I haven't got it. But
if you go I won't trouble ye. I won't lift a finger to stay ye. Only
I won't take Nell back if she gets sick of it. ‘Once gone, always
gone' is my motto for runaway little girls.

"Well, Sir,"-- and he turned quite definitely to Mr. Dekker
now, bowing towards him over his gun--"do you feel like treat-
ing these frisky lambs to a trip abroad? Or are you prepared to
let 'em kiss and clip under our own roofs?"

Mat Dekker rose slowly to his feet.

"May I be allowed a few words alone with Mrs. Zoyland be-
fore we talk any more about this?"

The bearded man looked, for one quarter of a second, a little
nonplussed; but he quickly recovered himself and waved his hand
towards the house.

"You go in with him, Nell, if you want to! Can you light
the sitting-room lamp or do you want me to come and do it?
You can? Very well, then! Sam and I will stay out-of-doors. Come
and see my otter trap, Sam! It's more likely to catch a water-
rat than an otter in this little puddle; but you never can tell.
Queer if there should be an otter in it tonight--of all nights--
but I don't suppose there is."

The man went so far in his blustering bonhomie as actually
to take Sam by the arm. Sam was so dazed by all these events
that he offered no resistance. His mind seemed to have become
incapable of any thought or any decision. What wavered before
him just then was the gasping mouth of the sick minnow, at the
top of the water in the aquarium, in their play-room. He felt like
that minnow himself!

"You know, Sam, the truth is, since we've broken the ice"--
Zoyland's voice went booming on in the darkness by the lad's
side like a low-toned threshing machine--"our little Nell's not
so much in love with you as she's in love with Love. She's as
romantic as a child of sixteen. In fact mentally, I often think,
she is sixteen. That's what it is, Sammy, old friend, mentally six-
teen; and with no more idea of the realities of life than a school-
girl. It's a good thing it was a boy like you who came along.
With anyone else she'd have made herself seriously unhappy; but
with you she's safe. That's what I've said to her from the begin-
ning. ‘You'll never make me angry with you over Sam Dekker,'
I've said. ‘With that boy you're safe,' I've said. And you are
safe, aren't you, Sam?"

He pressed the lad's arm with his free hand as he led him
along the bank of the stream. Sam at least had the wit to notice
that in his other hand he still held his gun. By degrees Sam be-
came conscious too that he did have one clear and strong wish
in his confused brain. He wished that William Zoyland did not
live where it was possible for him to trap otters.

"My father doesn't like the idea of trapping otters," he re-
marked.

After following a kind of tow-path along the bank they came
to a small river weir. There was a gurgling sound under the
woodwork here, and a low humming and rustling sound; both
sounds were evidently being caused by the position of the dam
at that hour, but it was too dark to distinguish them exactly.

Out of the darkness of that full-brimmed swishing water there
emerged a damp, chilly, but not unpleasant smell, composed of
many separate elements. It was composed of wet moss, of old
dead leaves, of yet older dead wood, of long submerged, slime-
coated masonry, of clammy river weeds. The gurgling sound and
the rushing sound came forth hollowly together, producing upon
the ear a kindred effect to that produced upon the sense of smell
by the damp wafture.

The idea of a wild otter caught in a trap by his bearded com-
panion suddenly became unbearable to Sam Dekker. For the first
time in his life this much-enduring youth found himself trem-
bling from head to foot with a desire to kill. He imaged to him-
self the precise nature of the sudden, violent shove which would
precipitate this burly offspring of the Marquis of P. into the
rushing blackness.

"There may be one of them in it, you know. There may be one
of them in it," William Zoyland kept obstinately repeating.
Probably nothing would have happened. Probably some other
excuse would have presented itself for refraining from a piece
of silly violence that might not even have proved fatal, for it is
likely enough that Zoyland was a powerful swimmer. But the
excuse he did obey was the hoot of an owl coming from the direc-
tion of the cottage, and two or three times repeated. Sam an-
swered the owl's cry, imitating it exactly, and the thing was re-
peated again and again.

"He wants us back at your house," Sam said. "So we'd better
go. That's my father; that's not an owl."

"One minute, then--you go ahead, Sam! I'll be with you in
a moment."

But Sam had not waited for this permission from his host and
rival. He was already hurrying back with a shambling speed that
nearly broke into a run. He felt he was escaping, not from the
bearded man but from his own dark impulse. He was surprised
to hear strange voices when he neared the house and as he reached
it he observed, in the narrow lane behind it, the lights of a motor
car. When he entered the little sitting-room, he found it pleasantly
illuminated by the large green-shaded lamp to which his host
had recently referred; and there were red coals in the grate.

Talking eagerly to his father and Nell, and all of them stand-
ing in an animated group in the centre of the room, were Mr.
Philip Crow and Mr. Tom Barter. Sam shook hands awkwardly
and mechanically with the newcomers but all his attention was
concentrated upon Nell. Ever since the moment when some mys-
terious vibration had passed between the girl and that white
planet in the western sky, Nell's mood had completely changed.
The nervous tension that had been growing week by week ever
since she refused Will Zoyland his nightly embraces, seemed, at
any rate for the present, to have fallen away. In some remote
place in her heart, in some hidden chamber there, not far from
the spot where she had just now been so grievously wounded by
his words, she was, as a matter of fact, experiencing a reaction
in his favour. The realisation that she could leave him, if only
Sam would risk all, satisfied her inordinate mania for romance,
while the fact that it was clear that Sam never would risk all
helped her reaction towards her husband. Like Helen of Troy,
upon the high tower of the wall, she permitted Aphrodite to be
her guide. And the harlot goddess persuaded her to keep both
her man and her lover!

In Sam's simple brain it had been lodged as a ghastly and
tragic fact that Zoyland's love-making was odious to her. She
had been subtly and gradually impelled to lead him on to this
sinister view. And she had done it half-unconseiously; never ex-
actly lying to him; half-believing the fancy herself, as she yielded
to his pathetic and inexperienced advances. Men, especially young
men, because of something fastidious and idealistic in their own
nature, are always prepared to be touched to the heart by the
idea of a girl's physical loathing for another man. Indeed it is
given to few men, whether old or young, to understand the pro-
found part played by what might be called "the universal prosti-
tute" in every woman's nature. It is indeed always a puzzle to
men, the physical passivity which women have the power of sum-
moning up, to endure the inconvenience of an amorous excite-
ment which they do not share. Few men realize the depth of the
satisfaction to women's nature in the mere possession of the
power to cause such excitement. When a man sees a sensitive
girl with what he considers a thick-skinned, brutal mate, he expe-
riences a twinge--perhaps quite uncalled-for--of the sort of
imaginative pity which is the inverse side of male sadism.

Whatever passivity it was that Nell Zoyland gave herself up
to now, it had something about it of that mysterious passivity of
fate which the women of antiquity knew. And doubtless this
mood had been fortified in this case by the girl's talk with Sam's
father. Mat Dekker had risen to the occasion with a weight and
an insight that surprised even himself. To beg her to postpone,
to delay, to think, had been his intention when he spoke to Nall;
but below his grave and practical words there had been such a
clairvoyant tenderness, such a direct man-to-woman, as well as
priest-to-daughter vibration in his tone, that her nervous revolt
against her dilemma mounting up to such a pitch of blind anger,
and then soothed by the Planet of Love, ebbed altogether under
his influence.

"What I really came for," Philip Crow was saying, "was to
see whether there was a chance of Mr. Zoyland's helping me out,
over at Wookey Hole, as he did last year when I was in diffi-
culties. I know of course"--this was said with a little stiff bow
in Nell's direction--"that the remuneration is nothing to him.
But the work is interesting--he found it so last Spring--and I'm
prepared to pay him a little more this time."

"You mean you want Zoyland to act as official guide in Wookey
Hole?" threw in Mat Dekker. "By Heaven, Crow, if Zoyland
won't do it for you, I believe my Sam here would be just the
person! He's read everything there is to be read on Wookey, and
he's better up on neolithic weapons than anyone round here.
You'd help Mr. Crow, wouldn't you, Sam, if Zoyland refused?"

Sam, abashed by his father's words, threw a humble glance
like that of a bewildered horse in the direction of Nell but uttered
no sound at all.

"William may be pleased to do it," the girl said hurriedly,
speaking to Philip but replying to Sam's look. "But I think Sam
would be just as good a guide in those caves--perhaps better.
William's inclined to be flippant and off-handed with people
when he doesn't like them and there must be lots of very teasing
people who come to visit Wookey."

Philip Crow, whose habit was not to beat about the bush, now
looked straight at his business companion. He felt no necessity to
propitiate, for any direct purpose of his own, any of these peo-
pie; and that being the case, his narrow, clear-cut, war-axe con-
sciousness simply eliminated them.

"I wish you would do it for me, Tom," he said in a hurried,
quick voice. "I'd far sooner not trouble Mr. Zoyland; or anyone
else for the matter of that"--and he gave a quick, rather deroga-
tory glance at Sam.

"I don't...know...that I could deal with...Wookey Hole, Father,"
murmured Sam nervously.

What he really felt at that moment was an extreme reluctance
to deal with Mr. Philip Crow.

Tom Barter surveyed his employer with complete aplomb. He
was a shortish, squarish man of clear complexion and with a
round, fair, bullet-shaped head. He was the only person under
that green-shaded lamp who seemed entirely at ease and carefree.
He had been gazing at Nell Zoyland with a shameless glance of
covetous impersonal lechery.

"Can't leave the office, Phil," he said. "You people never know
where your own machine is tricky and jumpy. If I left that office,
for Wookey Hole, even for a fortnight, 'twould take six weeks
to get things straightened out."

Philip Crow made a humorous grimace directed towards Mat
Dekker. His gesture said, "You see what a good subordinate I
have; and how prettily he plays the role I've composed for
him." ^

At that moment Will Zoyland came clattering in, boisterous,
burly and jovial, and plumped down his gun against the wall.

"No otter, Sam!" were his first words as he shook hands with
his two visitors. "You needn't tell me what you've come for.
Crow," was his next remark, "for I see it in your grasping slave-
driving eye! You want to kidnap poor Will as your damned
showman! That's what he's after, isnit, Nell! Isnit, Sam?

"Well, Zoyland," snapped Philip sharply, evidently disliking
intensely the burly giant's familiar tone, "will you come out
there for a couple of months? I've got a chap from London, an
official antiquary and all that sort of thing, for the summer; but
people are beginning to come already and I've got no one there
now but just my ordinary workmen to show 'em round.

"Can't answer off the reel like this, Crow. Can't do it!

He leaned heavily upon a sort of mahogany sideboard that
stood against the wall. Three silver salvers, bearing the arms
of the Marquis of P., clattered down from their propped-up
position; and the whole sideboard groaned under his weight.
Philip turned instinctively to Nell. How many times had he not
been forced to get what he wanted from a rebellious man by
wheedling a practical woman!

"By the way, Mrs. Zoyland," he said, "I hope that wild step-
brother of yours hasn't heard about the trouble that started last
week among my people at Wookey. Don't you tell him, if he
hasn't! The very last thing I want to see is Dave Spear and his
fanatical wife down here at this juncture."

It was a good thing for Philip at that moment that the sus-
picious and malicious ears of Cousin John didn't catch this speech.
John would certainly have translated these words in the very
opposite sense from that which they apparently bore. "Write at
once," John would have translated them, "to your step-brother,
Dave and hold out to him the lure of a possible strike down here,
so that he'll bring his wife at once." Nor would John have been
greatly mistaken. The truth is that the main motive that brought
this Norman conqueror to Whitelake that evening had nothing at
all to do with William Zoyland or with Wookey Hole. William
was only the official motive. The true dynamo that brought this
electrifier of Wookey Hole posthaste to Queen's Sedgemoor was
the maddening temptation of Cousin Percy's slender waist.

Astute business man though he was, Philip had, when it came
to his passions, a swift-plotting recklessness that stopped at little.
Besides, his contempt for the practical ability of Cousin Perse-
phone and, for the matter of that, of the ability of her husband
also, was unbounded. No! He'd get Percy down here and give
her all the rope she wanted. Let the sweet creature "agitate" as
much as she liked. He'd settle the strikers and cuckold the Com-
munist! It was precisely the kind of dangerous human game that
suited his Battle-of-Hastings temperament. Did he divine in some
sly diplomatic cranny of his secret heart that either Nell Zoyland
or William Zoyland would be certain to tell the Spears the very
thing he so arrogantly bade them not to tell? He probably did;
but as with all daring and successful men the tricks and devices
of his subconscious nature were much more formidable than his
rational schemes; and so by a sort of automatic protective instinct
he kept them subconscious!

Had Nell's wits not been purged of idealistic vapour bv the
white rays of the great planet she might have missed the singu-
larity of this request. As it was, she was shrewdly struck by it.
With quick feminine craft she concealed her surprise. But in her
heart she actually formed the words with which she would com-
ment upon this episode to William Zoyland.

"Manufacturers don't as a rule try and stave off the arrival
of agitators by appealing to their relatives, do they, Will?" And?
she could hear the bellowing "Ha! Ha! Ha!" with which William
would receive this sally.

"No, I'll be careful, Mr. Crow," she said. "I'll be careful! Not
that I often write to poor Dave. We're only half-brothers, you
know."

Tom Barter, his eyes fixed on his own old-fashioned gold watch
chain from which hung the good upper-middle-class, county-
family seal of the Barters of Norfolk, thought to himself, "Think
of that funny little Johnny Crow turning up in town! Aye, but
I'll be glad to see the little urchin again." And then Tom Bar-
ter's mind ceased suddenly to think in definite words. The "little
river" and the "big river" at Northwold, the Bridge at Didling-
ton, were more than words. Such memories as they held could
not be put even by the practical, cynical, lecherous Tom, into any
human sentence. Whitelake Cottage vanished away, as he fum-
bled with his father's ancestral seal, a tall heron standing on one
leg. All these people vanished away. He only felt the presence
of little Johnny Crow. He only felt the cold strong wind in the
reeds of the Wissey. There was no longer any well-run office, no
longer any factory by Wookey Hole. The smell of the bottom
of a boat came over him so vividly that if he had not been the
practical manager of three factories, he would have walked
straight out of that house.

"Tomorrow I shall see little Johnny," he thought. And then
he thought, "I'd give a hundred pounds to sleep one night with
this girl here!"

Philip himself had now resumed his direct attack upon Wil-
liam Zoyland. Somehow it rather tickled his fancy to be able to
say, “My guide at Wookey, related, so everyone maintains, to
the Marquis of P."

Meanwhile Nell, seeing him so engaged, had managed to pull
Sam out of the open door into the river-scented garden.

“Don't you mind, little Sam," she was saying, “don't you mind
the way things are!"

It was fortunate for some of the persons in that small group
that the sudden passing of an airplane over Whitelake Cottage
completely absorbed the general attention. It was tacitly assumed
that it was to watch this illuminated air-equipage that Sam and
his hostess had wandered off in the darkness; and soon they were
all staring up at it beside the obscure, melancholy shapes of
empty chairs, dim tables and shadowy tea-cups upon the chilly
lawn.

“Barter! It's the man from Wells!" cried Philip, with nervous,
intense interest. “Or it's a plane exactly like his. We ought to have
stayed in tonight."

Tom Barter moved in the darkness close to the side of his
employer. “All planes look the same, Phil, at night," he said in
a low, emphatic tone. He spoke so quietly that no one but Nell,
who chanced to be nearest to Mr. Philip, caught these words and
this tone.

“He doesn't want Mr. Crow to give away something," the girl
thought. “Ill tell William about his hushing him up so. I
shouldn't wonder if they aren't buying an airplane."

When the plane had vanished, Philip and Tom Barter moved
off towards their car, Zoyland striding alongside of them and the
rest following. They soon formed a loquacious group around the
car, uttering those spontaneous and lively genialities which among
human beings imply instinctive relief at being able to get rid
of one another. It was at this moment that Mat Dekker said, “I
sometimes have thought of a queer thing, my friends."

Sam, who had been in a sullen daze since the episode of the
river bank, pricked up his ears at his father's tone. It was very
rare for Mr. Dekker to adopt this sermonising manner. Never
was a priest less pontifical than he.

"What, Father? murmured Sam dutifully, when none of the
others took the least notice of this remark.

"I've thought that the conquest of the air," Mat Dekker went
on, is such an enormous event in the history of the human race
that it is probably responsible for these reckless and chaotic
impulses which we all feel nowadays. What do you people think?
I'd go even further," he continued, raising his voice in the dark-
ness, “I'd go so far as to say that all these strange spiritualistic
occurrences that we hear so much about are the result of Man s
having found out how to fly."

"Tom here would give his head to be an airman," threw out
Philip with an explosion of motiveless malignity.

“Get into your seat, Phil, and let's start!" was the quick retort.

Barter's words were simple but his tone was black with indig-
nation. Philip Crow, from the very first time his Norfolk friend
had used his Christian name, disliked being called “Phil" by
his head-manager. In his displeasure now he was prepared to
go on teasing him.

“Barter's the most normal person I've ever met," he said, with-
out moving a step, “but when it becomes a question of flying, he's
as jumpy as a girl who hears her lover's name."

“Why don't you go in for flying, Mr. Barter? You could so
easily take lessons," said William Zoyland with innocent-wicked
mischief.

For a second the reserved Norfolk man was quite silent. Then
he burst out.

“Get into the car, Phil, can't you? I'm catching cold!"

But Philip suddenly swung round.

“Can't I take you two home?" he said.

Tom Barter at once echoed this. “Of course we must take
them home. There's easy room for three; and I'll sit on my
heels."

Philip repeated his invitation. “Please get in, Mr. Dekker;
please get in, Sam!"

The husband and wife-- his arm had slipped round her waist
now, and only peevishly, not with any repulsion, she tossed it
from her--joined their persuasions to those of the two motorists.

It took quite a little while for these four men to crowd them-
selves in so that Philip, who was driving, could use his brakes.
But they started at last; and the last word was Philip's.

“Think over that offer of mine, Zoyland. And remember I can
give you a few shillings more than I scraped up for you last
year."

Mat Dekker begged the manufacturer to drop them opposite
St. John the Baptist's Church, and it was an incredible relief to
Sam when at last, alone with his father and in complete silence,
he walked up the path to the church porch. To their surprise,
although it was well after eight o'clock, they heard voices in the
nave as soon as they pushed open the door and inhaled the
familiar musty smell. The verger had left a gas-jet burning in
the vestry under the great tower, and the little red light of the
Real Presence was suspended above the altar, but otherwise the
church was completely dark. And yet it was not! The father and
son, with the easy movements of long usage, opened the door
so quietly that they caught the sacrilegious striking of a match
in the western aisle. By the little yellow flame of this match
shaded between human hands, they perceived that two men were
bending over the lidless and empty sarcophagus of Joseph of
Arimathea. One of these men was on his knees, evidently tracing
out, in concentrated absorption and with his index finger, the
famous initials J. A. which are so deeply cut upon the northern
end of this huge receptacle. Whether it was a visual illusion due
to the flickering of the match, or whether it really occurred, Mat
Dekker could not be sure, but he fancied he saw this man, the
one whose fingers were fumbling at those formidable initials,
bow down his head as if praying to this empty tomb!

The priest swerved reverently at the sight of this real or imagi-
nary act of devotion and, followed by Sam, moved hurriedly to
the vestry, where with instinctive and discreet disregard of what
he felt to be a legitimate gesture of impulsive piety, he proceeded
to do what he had come to do. This was to rinse out a small glass
chalice and fill it with wine, ready for the morning's consecra-
tion. While he did this, Sam sat down on a wooden chair by the
vestment cupboard and stared sombrely up through the vestry
door at the dimly lit receding pillars of the perpendicular nave.
He kept feeling again and again the pressure against him of that
beautiful girlish body. With this feeling there returned too the
damp and deathly smell of the river weir and the murderous
desire he had had at that spot. He lowered his gaze from the
dim vista of high carved arches and with his vision still framed
by the vestry door he let it rest upon the red altar light, signify-
ing the living presence of the Body of God. He could hear the
trickling of water being poured from one glass into another in
the preparation for tomorrow's Mass, and he could catch a little
faint squeaky sound, like the voice of a new-born mouse, of a
cloth being rubbed against the edges of glass vessels. To what
precise point did his father carry his belief in the miracle of
Transubstantiation? It went much further anyway than his own
vague superstitious uneasiness.

“I feel just like a dog barking at the moon," he thought, “when
I see that red light." The pit of his stomach suddenly seemed to
sink inward then for he thought to himself, “She is going to sleep
with him again! I could feel it in the air when we came away."
That little, squeaky, rubbing sound behind him seemed to be go-
ing on forever. “She's probably taken off all her clothes now,"
he thought, “and she's holding up her nightgown with her bare
arms to slip it over her shoulders. He's got her now; to work his
will upon...Oh! Oh! Oh!...Sam tried to push this image away from
him but it persistently returned.

“Father! you must stop that rubbing!" he suddenly cried out.
“When a thing is clean, it is clean. It's no good going on and
on like that!"

Mat Dekker stopped what he was doing at once and began put-
ting the sacred vessels away.

"True enough, Sammy," he said with a sigh. "The truth is
I was thinking of something else." He closed the cupboard,
turned out the gas-jet, and they both emerged into the body of
the church. It now became necessary to communicate to the wor-
shippers at St. Joseph's vacant coffin that they were about to lock
up the church. They moved to the door and the father held it open
while the son crossed the aisle.

Since their appearance on the scene the two intruders had
contented themselves with a whispered conversation. They had
not dared to strike any more matches.

"Pardon me, gentlemen," said Sam, "my father wants to lock
up the church."

The man upon his knees struggled stiffly to his feet, emitting
a little groan as his bones creaked. They neither of them spoke
a word, but began following their dismisser meekly and humbly
to the church door. With a mute bow Mat Dekker indicated to
them his gratitude for this obedience and moved aside to let
them pass out. It was such a dark night that although he thought
he had seen both the men before he could not recall their names.
When the key was turned and the empty sarcophagus of the
Arimathean was once more left alone with that Presence under
the red lamp, the father and son followed the strangers down the
flagged path, past the miraculous thorn bush, to the gate into
the street. Here there was a suspended gas-globe, and here the
strangers turned, revealing the black bowler hat and hooked Ro-
man nose of Mr. Owen Evans, and a broad-shouldered, rather
fleshy individual, without any hat, whose grizzled head under
that suspended light seemed to Sam the largest human head he
had ever seen. It was the head of a hydrocephalic dwarf; but in
other respects its owner was not dwarfish. In other respects its
owner had the normally plump, rather unpleasantly plump fig-
ure of any well-to-do-man, whose back has never been bent nor
his muscles hardened by the diurnal heroism of manual labour.

"How do you do, Mr. Dekker? How do you do, Mr. Sam Dek-
ker?" The Welshman threw into these words all the Ciceronian
ceremoniousness of what John Crow called his "first manner."
"I know you two gentlemen, though you don't know me," Owen
Evans went on, "but of course you know my relative, Mr. Geard."

Both father and son looked at "my relative, Mr. Geard," with
unashamed curiosity. It gave them both indeed a queer sensation
to shake hands with this ambiguous person under the gas-lamp in
that silent street; for although Mr. Geard's visits to Glastonbury
had been few since he had left his family and gone to North-
wold, all the air had been recently vibrant with gossip about
him. The money that his employer had left him had been doubled
and trebled by such gossip. Wherever, since his return, his bare
hydrocephalic head had appeared, the envious feeling and the
wondering awe had arisen. "There goes a very rich man!" Mr.
Geard had become in fact a local celebrity, a fairy-story hero;
and the rumours about his purchase of Chalice House, one of the
famous show-places of the town, had kept alive a romantic in-
terest, which, if the man had left the vicinity, would have soon
died down.

"Of course we've heard of Mr. Geard," said the elder Dekker
politely, "and we met only today, at Miss Drew's, a very inter-
esting young man, who told us that he was a friend of yours,
Mr. Evans."

"I must not keep you, gentlemen, for I know it's late," went
on the Roman-faced Welshman, "but I would like to hear which
side you'd take in a dispute Mr. Geard and I have been having,
under the aegis of St. Joseph."

"I'd like to hear about it very much, Mr. Evans," said Mat
Dekker. "Won't you walk a step with us? For I'm a little afraid
that our housekeeper will be getting anxious about us. '

"Well...perhaps...murmured the Welshman, hesitating and glanc-
ing at his companion, "perhaps my relative, Mr. Geard, is feeling
tired."

But they all four set themselves in motion in the direction of
the Vicarage; and it was not long before they reached the mediae-
val front of the Pilgrims' Inn. Although the rest of the street was
quiet, there were lights and the sound of raised voices inside the
mullioned windows of this old building.

"I was trying," said Mr. Evans, "to convince my relative that
the fact that so many visitors come to this spot from all over
the world is no proof that it is miraculous; but it is a proof that
something important can at any moment occur."

"Occur where?" enquired Mr. Dekker.

"In the mind!" cried the Welshman, raising his hand to his head
and giving his bowler hat such a violent jerk downward that its
brim rested on the bridge of his great nose.

Very gravely, as they all four stood still upon the illuminated
pavement outside the ancient inn, Mat Dekker extended his hand
to this bowler-hatted oracle.

"Good-night, Mr. Evans," he said. "We won't take you further,
but it interests me profoundly that you should make that re-
mark, because it's what I've been feeling for several years. I
associate it myself, as I told them just now at Whitelake, with
the conquest of the air; but as you--" Mr. Evans did not let
him finish the sentence. He had already taken the priest's hand
and was shaking it vigorously; but he dropped it now as if it
had hurt him.

"The air?" he murmured gloomily. "Did you say the air?"

And pushing back the brim of his hat, as if it had been a
visor, he snuffed with angry nostrils at the element referred to.

"No, Mr. Dekker, no! What I was referring to was the mind.
When the mind is clean, the change we are looking for will come.
It's to clean the mind, Mr. Dekker; to purge it, to wash it, to
give it a New Birth, that all these people"--he removed his hat
altogether now and waved it, without finishing his sentence,
towards the illuminated windows.

"You do see a little what I mean?" he added then, addressing
the enormous cranium of Mr. Geard.

But the beneficiary of William Crow's fortune was engaged
just then in a private quest of his own. He had advanced cau-
iously towards one of the lighted windows and was peering in.
His air was so exactly the air of an inquisitive servant, gazing
with aloofness and yet respectful curiosity at a remote revel of
his masters that Sam was betrayed into a jest.

"Are they behaving decently or indecently in there, Mr. Geard?"

The Canon's friend swung round upon his heel and surveyed
the young man. The lad was astonished at the look of affectionate
reproach on his large face. Had Sam been an impertinent young
Sadducee addressing an insolent remark to some great Rabbi
whose Holy Innocence confounded him, he could hardly have felt
more ashamed of himself and more of a flippant fool than he did
at that moment. Mr. Geard, however, made no audible reply to
these rude words. It was the descendant of the House of Rhys
dio answered for both of them as they all nodded a final good-
ight.

"My relative, Mr. Geard," he said, "intends to bring a great
many people to Glastonbury...more than have come since
...since the time of the Druids...and we must pray that
all who come will be allowed to...to wash...their winds
clean!"

These singular words, spoken in Mr. Evans' second manner,
kept repeating themselves inside the hollow skulls of all his three
listeners, as they walked silently home to their different pillows.

When Mr. Evans took out his latch-key and let himself into
his little Antique Shop, he was disturbed by a particular sadistic
image that he had not been troubled by since he saw John Crow
embrace the Hele Stone at Stonehenge. This image was con-
cerned with a killing blow delivered by an iron bar. Mechanically
he closed the street door; mechanically he lit a candle; me-
chanically he met the marble gaze of an alabaster bust of Dante;
mechanically he ascended the flight of narrow stairs to his bed-
room above. Once in his chamber it was with the same automatic
movement that he laid the flickering candle down on a rosewood
chest of drawers and clicking open the stiff latch of the casement
gazed out into the empty street. He saw nothing of the massive
chimney across the way. He saw nothing of the carved Gothic
doorways. He caught no floating essences of diffused sweetness
from the beds of jonquils in the little gardens beyond these
houses. The mystical breath of sleep rising from the summit of
the Tor and from the pinnacles of Saint John's Church and from
the broken cornices of the ruined Abbey arches passed him by
untouched. One single image of homicidal violence, at once a
torment of remorse and a living temptation, wiped out completely
all these impressions.

Had the soul of that planet of love which had done so much
that night for Nell Zoyland been made aware of this figure of
a lean, hook-nosed man at a window, with a bowler hat upon an
unmade bed behind him, what would its attitude to such a one
have been?

"He has taken my own violence of ravishment, natural and
passionate and sweet," that planet might have thought, "and has
turned it into a crime against nature and against life. Never can
he be forgiven!"

But long after that star of the west went down behind Brent
Knoll, Mr. Evans' tormented murmur floated out over the Glas-
tonbury roofs -- "If only I could see it once....just once...
with my own eyes...what Merlin hid...what Joseph found ....the
Cauldron of Yr Echwyd...the undying grail...this madness would
pass from me....but...but...."

He craned his neck out of the window, pressing the palms of
his hands upon the sill. His pose was grotesque. It was as if he
were about to address a crowd assembled on the opposite roof.

"But," Mr. Evans screamed in his twanging, quivering, twitch-
ing nerves; and although no sound but a lamentable sigh passed
his open lips it would have been hard for anyone watching him
not to believe he was shouting, "but...but...I...don't...want...to
see it!"



THE LOOK OF A SAINT



Mr. John Geard lived in a house in Street Road, a road
branching westward out of Magdalene Street which itself lies to
the west of the Abbey Ruins. In their old sewing-room at the top
of their father's ramshackle brick house--a building which seemed
completely unaware of the unexpected riches of its owner--there
were talking eagerly together, one mid-March day, and with in-
tense absorption in what they were saying, Mr. Geard's two
daughters, Cordelia and Crummie. These were "the great spraw-
ling girls" to whom Philip Crow had made such contemptuous
reference at the Norlhwold tea-table.

The sewing-room where they were talking was also Crummie's
bedroom, and Crummie, the younger of the two, was certainly,
at that moment, answering Philip's description. She was lying on
her back in the bed, her fair, wavy hair disordered, her violet-
coloured eyes full of sleepy petulance, her skirts rumpled, her
skin showing white between her drawers and her stockings, her
slippered feet kicking peevishly the already crumpled coverlet
of the bed.

Cordelia, on the other hand, was in no sort of way fulfilling
Philip's unkind picture. A very plain, very dark girl, with nothing
lovable in her face except an occasional smile of melancholy
amusement and wistful indulgence, and with a thin, awkward,
bony figure, Cordelia Geard was an unsympathetic critic of her
father, a practical support to her mother, and at once the ad-
viser and the confidante of her lively sister. At the present mo-
ment she was sitting bolt upright in front of a little working-
table engaged on a piece of embroidery.

"I'm not indiscriminate! How dare you call me indiscriminate,
Cordy!"

"Do you want me to count them all for you?"

"I'm talking about, now, now, now!" cried Crummie. "There's
only Mr. Barter and Red Robinson now. And Red is afraid of
me now we are supposed to be rich; so he doesnt count!

"If by ‘now,' you mean since we got rich," said Cordelia
gravely, "I believe Mr. Barter would marry you tomorrow if
you'd have him."

Crummie toyed coquettishly with her skirt; and then began
caressing, with the conscious narcissim of a girl inordinately
proud of her legs, the soft flesh above one of her knees. "I'd
like to marry Mr. Barter--in a way," she said meditatively.

Cordelia shook her head. "He would never be faithful to you.
He's too indiscriminate himself."

"I hate the way you say that--every time," protested Crummie.
"I could keep him faithful, you'd see! He's never lived with me.
So he doesn't know."

"If he's never lived with you, you've never lived with him.
You'd find it horrid, Crummie, when he went off with other girls!"

"What about you yourself?" retorted Crummie. "You know
perfectly well what Mr. Evans said the other night to Mother
about your being what he calls ‘Cymric.' Cordelia dug her
needle into her work and sat up very straight. Her pale cheeks
had flushed a little.

"I told you last night, Crummie," she flung out, "I won't hear
anything more about Mr. Evans! Mr. Evans is Dad's friend and
it's not right to make fun of him."

Crummie removed her soft hand from her satiny flesh and
pulled down her skirt with an abrupt jerk. She was a good-na-
tured girl and next to her own rounded limbs she loved Cordy
better than anything in the world. But she adored chattering
about men; and for Cordelia to rule out of court as a topic for
gossip any living man was an annoyance and a vexation.

"You've never stopped me before," said Crummie. "We always
discuss Dad's friends. Besides, Owen Evans isn't Dad's friend.
He's a cousin of Mother's. He's our cousin--so I can say any-
thing about him I like."

Cordelia bit her lip. She felt at that moment that the one
thing she could not bear was that her sister should draw her
into a discussion of the only man who had ever--in all her vir-
ginal life of thirty years--taken any real notice of her. If Crum-
mie loved Cordelia, the elder girl's devotion to Crummie knew
no bounds. Megan Geard, their mother, was a reticent woman,
even with her children. She was uniformly cold to both and the
girls had long ago decided that in her heart she was dissatisfied
because neither of them was a boy.

"What...I...think...is" went on Crummie, "what....I...think ... is that
Mr. Evans and you--"

"Don't!" cried Cordelia. "I won't have you say it!"

"Well ... if I mustn't say...you know what," went on
Crummie obstinately; "at least I can say that I think Dad is
fonder of Mr. Evans than Mummy is. I believe Mummy thinks
that Mr. Evans is after your--"

This was too much for Cordelia. "If you dare once again,"
she cried, "to talk about Mr. Evans to me. I'll begin talking
about you and young Mr. Dekker!"

It was Crummie's turn to be outraged now. And she was evi-
dently quite as much astonished as she was hurt. She rose up
on the bed, propped herself on the palms of her hands, and
stared open-mouthed at the dark girl before her, whose uncomely
features were at that moment rendered almost beautiful by wrath.
"What?" Crummie cried. "What can you mean, Cordelia? Who
told you I ever met Sam Dekker--or had anything to do with
him? Except at school-treats of course!--and sometimes when
I've taken a few cowslips, in cowslip time, for the church--or
gone with Red to a cricket match at Street--or maybe at Michael-
mas Fair where everybody meets everybody--and if you dare to
say I'm sweet on Sam Dekker or have ever spoke to Sam Dekker
--except of course as a girl naturally does speak to a clergy-
man's son when she's helping the clergyman to distribute prizes
or to carry those texts around that have those big red roses on
them--I've only one thing to say of you, Cordelia Geard, and
that is--you're telling absolute lies!"

At this point Crummie pulled up her legs under her, with the
complete abandonment of a very little girl, bent her head till
her wavy hair fell in loose wisps and loops upon her lap, and,
covering her face with her hands, burst into passionate sobbing.

If Cordelia had intended to use a formidable weapon, she had
never expected that it would prove as deadly a one as this. Her
unconscious instinct, as often happens with women who want to
hurt each other, had gone to the mark quicker and surer than
any reasoned attack could have done. In a flash the elder sister
recognised the truth. She saw to her confusion how possible it is
to live intimately with a person all one's life and at last be abso-
lutely confounded by some revelation as to her secret sexual
life.

So Crummie was in love with young Mr. Dekker; really in love;
just in the same sort of way as she herself was in love with
-- but Cordelia pulled her thoughts up with a jerk. That was day
dreams and speculations too dear even for herself to dwell upon!
Little Crummie! Why, this was nothing less than tragic. Gossip
had already whispered to the sisters that young Mr. Dekker had
been "keeping company with this Zoyland woman out to Splott's
Moor." And in any case a marriage between the child of Johnny
Geard--even of a rich Mr. Geard--and the son of the Vicar of
St. John's was an unnatural consummation. She laid her em-
broidery down and went across to her sister's side. "Forgive poor
Cordy!" she murmured self-reproachfully. "Of course I know
that young Dekker is nothing to you. I was just cross, Crummie
darling,"--and she laid her hand caressingly on her sister's
head and bent down to kiss her--"your Cordy was just cross.
But I'm not cross any more, and you mustn't be cross with me!"

Crummie's cheeks were still wet, but her full red lips parted
in a faint smile. "We're a silly pair, Cordy!" she murmured as
they kissed each other, and she threw her arms tenderly round her
sister's neck and drew her close. After a second's tight hug the
younger girl swung her legs off the bed and they sat side by side
upon the ruffled bed-clothes.

"Better tidy yourself up now, Crummie. Sally will be ringing
that bell for tea."

"And Mr. Evans is coming to tea!" laughed the other roguishly.

Cordelia moved now to the table and began folding up her
embroidery.

"I must go down and put on my coral necklace," she said to
herself, "and brush my hair a bit; but what's the use? If he
doesn't like me for myself, he won't care. And if he does he won't
care, either!" And then the queer thought came into her head--
"If a man wants to marry a girl, when he likes her for her mind
alone, does he get any pleasure from kissing her and embracing
her? So deep did this queer and troubling question sink into
her consciousness that she let her embroidery lie where it fell,
unwrapt in its usual piece of blue tissue paper! She herself
sank down on her sewing-chair and stared in front of her. She
stared at the particular one of the pictures of "The Four Sea-
sons" which represented Autumn. Quite automatically she read:
"We too have Autumns, when our leaves fall loosely through
the misty air, and all our good is bound in sheaves, and we
stand reaped and bare." She had read these words in their fa-
miliar place on the wall of the sewing-room since she could
read at all.

Crummie was now clutching tight in her fingers the midstream
of her mass of fragrant hair, pulling it round her white neck and
passing the comb, with many little cries at the tangles, through
its down-shaken wavy curls. To twist it round her head and stick
the hairpins into it was a matter of a second or two. Then she
slipped off her dress and bending over the chest of drawers sought
leisurely for this and the other garment; weighing, rejecting, ap-
praising, selecting. Hovering there, all in white, with bare arms
and bare shoulders, she proceeded to smooth down with indolent
outspread fingers the creases of her slip, preparatory to pulling
her dress over her head.

Like a patient nun in a courtesan's tiring-room Cordelia
watched her, a little twisted smile on her lips. No! Of course
Owen Evans couldn't love a person like her. But if he really
thought she was "Cymric" in her ideas, and liked her for her-
self enough to marry her, why! she would marry him.

Crummie was sitting on the bed now, changing her stockings,
and if she had looked winsome and alluring before, she looked
even more so now.

As Cordelia watched the delicate softness of Crummie's limbs
during this lengthy ritual, and the whiteness of her flesh thrown
into tender shadows by the ruffled hem of her garment, there did
come over the plain girl's mind a faint, flickering spasm of
revolt. Why should her own poor knees be so bony and rough-
textured? Why beneath her bony knees should her legs be like a
pair of broom handles? If God had willed everything from the
very Beginning of the World, why had He willed that all this
exquisite delight in one's own body--Crummie was at the mirror
again now, turning this way and that way, as she tried on her
new party dress--should be given to one girl, while another girl
felt her body to be a troublesome burden to be carried about?
Oh, it didn't depend on having men to admire one, or to embrace
one. "It is the feeling," thought poor Cordelia, "of being beauti-
ful to one's own self that matters!"

The younger sister was ready now. "Cordy," she cried, re-
luctantly turning her head from the mirror, "aren't you going
to change anything?"

But Cordelia, rising to her feet, only gave two contemptuous
little pats to her dark hair, only gave a contemptuous shake to
her black skirt, only picked off the front of it a few coloured
threads left by her embroidery. Instead of glancing at the mirror,
she glanced, over her sister's head, at the coloured representation
of Spring, the first of those Four Seasons, hanging on the wall.
At the bottom of this picture, which had always been the younger 's
favourite of all four, was a little card, stuck in the edge of the
frame, carrying on its surface a childish sketch of a small girl,
done in crude pinks and blues, the hair just an enormous smudge
of chrome-yellow, which bore the inscription "Crummie by Crum-
mie, Aged Six." "Come on," she said, "let's go down and help
Sally."

The presence of Sally in the house--Mrs. Geard would hardly
allow her to cross the threshold of her sacred kitchen--was one
of the few tokens of domestic grandeur that had appeared in
Cardiff Villa, Street Road, since Johnny Geard's accession to
wealth.

And Sally--a daughter of Mrs. Jones of the High Street tea-
shop--was anything but a smart or experienced servant. But Cor-
delia was rather relieved not to be perpetually answering the door-
bell; and sometimes, when, in one of her bad moods, she was
lying supine on her bed upstairs, she did get a faint, malicious
satisfaction in hearing Sally repeat her most difficult lesson--
the inhospitable decree, "Not at home."

"Bloody Johnny," as the tavern-cronies in Glastonbury loved
to call Mr. Geard because of his preachings in the street and his
repeated references to the Blood of Christ, was evidently not in-
tending to use William Crow's money for the embellishing of
Cardiff Villa either with new paint, or furniture, or plate, or
servants! Cordelia wondered now, as they entered the kitchen and
found Sally Jones staring mute and awestruck before Mrs. Geard's
preparations, whether Mr. Evans realized yet how unlikely it
was that any large portion of this money would come to her

Even if she did marry him. "Never, never, did any man want tak-
ing care of more than Mr. Evans does!" she thought. Oddly
enough she never thought of her antiquarian suitor as anything
but "Mr. Evans." She had reached the point--no very easy point,
considering the ponderousness of the Welshman's second man-
ner!--of calling him Owen. But she never thought of him as
Owen...


"I really brought Mr. Crow to see you," said Mr. Evans, re-
ferring to John Crow, as they all sat around the tea-tray in the
front parlour, "because he's in difficulties." At the word "diffi-
culties" Megan Geard's mouth closed tight and she glanced
furtively at the preposterously big skull of her reckless husband.
She had known too well--and only too recently!--what to be "in
difficulties" meant.

But Bloody Johnny seemed to have no such memory. He
turned his hydrocephalic head on the pivot of his neck with the
slow gravity of the ghost in Punch and Judy and gazed at John
across the table."Your grandfather was a good friend to me,"
he remarked. "But I served him well. If you'll excuse the word,
Mr. Crow, and not think me presumptuous, I believe I can say
that I made your grandfather's last years very happy ones."

John reduced his eyes to two narrow slits. Through these aper-
tures he scrutinised Mr. Geard very closely, giving him the ap-
praising glance of a professional beggar, surveying a new coun-
tenance at a well-known back door.

"What I don't think is understood by any of your family, Mr.
Crow," the ex-preacher went on, "is that I regard your grand-
father's bequest in the light of a Divine Responsibility."

At the sound of these surprising words from his host and
namesake John Crow's eyes almost closed entirely, while the
hereditary twitch in his face became like a tiny jumping-jack
under the skin of his lean cheek. "You mean you're going to
give the oof back to us, Sir?" he said.

Bloody Johnny was the only person at that table who remained
completely at ease under the shock of this rude speech. "Well,
Mr. Crow," he remarked serenely, "not exactly give it back to
you, you know, nor to any of you; not, that is, exactly, as you
might say, give it back. But I do intend--and my friend Mr.
Evans agrees entirely with my intention--to spend your dear
grandfather's gift, or at least the bulk of it, on a purpose in no
way connected with myself or with my family." Mr. Geard's
voice raised itself a little as he uttered these final words and
his great head seemed to obey an interior command as it swung
resolutely round on its pivot. What it faced now under this in-
terior command, and John Crow seemed to hear an audible
creaking of its machinery as it turned, was the extremely agi-
tated countenance of Megan Geard whose mouth, at the words
"with my family" had become a thinly outlined half-circle whose
drooping horns were surrounded by twitching wrinkles.

"Mr. Evans thinks," went on Bloody Johnny, "that it would
be wrong of me not to take my wife and my girls, especially my
daughter Cordelia, into my confidence, though, as you know,
my treasure,"--here he fixed an unwinking gaze upon his wife's
wide-open eyes--"I am not one to reveal my designs till they
have matured." The reverberations of these grand words "designs"
and "matured" had scarcely died away when Bloody Johnny fol-
lowed them by a deprecatory murmur, addressed, not to his fam-
ily but to his God. "I mean," he added, "till they have been
blessed from Above."

A lack-lustre film formed over John's eyes, and he said to
himself, "If this fellow turns out to be a superstitious fool, in-
stead of a hypocritical knave, I shall get nothing from him. There
goes my easy job, up in smoke!"

"My relative, Mr. Geard," said Owen Evans, with a respectful
glance at Cordelia," has come to the conclusion that there are
ways of bringing to Glastonbury, by the wise expenditure of a
little money, shoals and shoals of pilgrims. They will come from
France, from Germany, from Russia. They will flock here in
such increasing numbers that Glastonbury will once more rival
Rome and Jerusalem as a centre of mystic influence. It only re-
mains for"--at this point, to Cordelia's complete astonishment,
though she thought, as she had said to Crummie, that she "knew
Mr. Evans through and through," his gaze dropped from her at-
tentive eyes and sank to her clasped hands which rested on the
table, while his voice became broken, spasmodic, intense--"for
some...for some...for some event to happen...and a new Religion...
different...from any that's ever been...will...will...will make a crack
in the world!" They all turned their eyes upon his contorted face;
all except Crummie who glanced wonderingly at her sister.

"What do you mean by 'a crack in the world'?" enquired John
Crow, the film of hopelessness passing from his lineaments and
his whole attention aroused.

"A crack in Cause-and-Effect," cried Owen Evans, his voice
rising; "a crack in the Laws of Nature, a crack in Matter! And
Something will break out, through that crack, that will take away
our torment!"

The word "torment" was uttered from such twisted lips that
it was as if it really came from a spirit in hell and Cordelia
Geard's heart began to beat. The others, except the profane John,
averted their eyes, as if from some apparition that was as ob-
scene as it was tragic. But as Owen Evans slowly recovered him-
self, the girl unclasped her hands and very lightly, and with a
gesture that no gentlewoman in the land could have surpassed
for dignity and grace, laid her fingers on the sleeve of his coat.

John, who was intently watching Mr. Evans, could not decide
whether the man even noticed this movement of the devoted girl,
whose fingers were withdrawn as soon as her friend was master
of himself again, but to the sly scrutiny of the "run-down adven-
turer" the incident was very significant. "He's not out for her
money," he thought, "but he's certainly out of her depth. I must
get at the fellow's secret. He's got some devilish spike sticking
into his midriff; but what it is the Lord only knows!"

As for John Geard, under this explosion from his Welsh ally,
what he did was slowly and deliberately to turn, not his head, but
his eyes, in their hollow motionless sockets, completely away from
the agitated man. Mr. Geard had his mouth full of sponge-cake,
of which he was particularly fond, and his voice sounded blurred
and thick. "What we ought to have in Glastonbury," he said,
"and Midsummer would be a good time for it--is a Religious
Fair, or Passion Play, that would attract people. There has not
been a Passion Play here for years." He paused and shut his
eyes. "Nor a Miracle either," he muttered. "No, not for three hun-
dred years; hut the time will come, and the Miracle will come!"

It was at that moment that Crummie, who was much more
aware of what Sally was doing than of what any of her father's
guests were saying, jumped up from her seat and ran into the
kitchen. From the kitchen--for the impulsive girl left the door
wide open--everyone could hear her scolding the little maid for
inattention. It was clear from the first words that ensued that
Crummie found the domestic truant standing in Street Road con-
templating the passers-by; but a moment later they heard Crum-
mie's own voice raised in lively salutation. Sally herself came
back, shamefacedly enough, into the dining-room and whispered
something to Cordelia; but there was such a draught of chilly
air entering the room now, that Mr. and Mrs. Geard and their
two male guests kept their faces tunied and their attention di-
rected towards the two open doors.

"It's young Mr. Dekker," said Cordelia presently, "I know his
voice." At the name Dekker there occurred that curious moral
stiffening, that gathering together of relaxed social awareness,
which always happens in England when an upper middle-class
person enters the company of a group of lower middle-class per-
sons. Cordelia had hardly uttered the words, "I know his voice,"
than Crummie herself came back into the room bringing Sam
Dekker with her.

There was a general rising and shuffling and shaking of hands;
and in the midst of the confusion, while Sally was pouring luke-
warm water upon stale tea-leaves, Cordelia slipped into the
kitchen and began to make a fresh pot of tea and to cut fresh
bread and butter. Sam Dekker sat down, awkwardly enough, by
Crummie's side. Here he was at the end of the table, next Mrs.
Geard, but also next the door. He refused to put. down his hat
and stick and kept protesting that he must not stay and that he
had already had tea.

"Oh, Cordy! How nice of you to think of that!" cried the
younger sister, when after a few nervous generalities about the
balmy mornings and the chilly evenings of this unusual March
the ice was broken by the appearance of fresh tea and fresh
bread and butter.

Sam did now consent to allow Crummie to take his hat and
his stick away from him. He had begun to look at John Crow
with a stealthy, silent, lowering curiosity, as if John had been
a fellow badger in a gathering of foxes.

"May I tell Mr. Dekker," John now found himself saying,
"about the grand plot that you two gentlemen are hatching to
make this place a sort of English Oberammergau?"

"I could hardly hope," remarked Mr. Geard, with an imper-
ceptible nod of approval towards John, "to convert Mr. Dekker
to my immature Design; considering the position held by his
father."

"Mr. Geard has the idea," John went on, addressing himself
now to Sam Dekker alone, "of holding a sort of Pageant, a sort of
Religious Fair at Midsummer...I believe he has the twenty-
fourth of June in his mind,...in the Tor Fair-field, eh, Sir?
His idea is to make this such an event, that people will come to
it from France and Germany, as well as from all over England.
It will, of course, be entirely friendly to all religious bodies. It
won't be a church affair. It won't be a nonconformist affair. It'll
be...I'm right in this, aren't I, Mr. Geard?...a Glastonbury Revival,
absolutely independent of the churches. I can see you're in-
terested in the idea, Mr. Dekker; and so will everybody be when
we've got it advertised a little. Oh, I wish you'd make me your
secretary, Sir, or your master of ceremonies--anything of
that sort! I know I catch exactly what you have in your mind.
And it would hush up all gossip too, and look well in the papers,
if you had one of us Crows as your chief lieutenant. And in-
cidentally 'twould give me a chance to"--he was going to say "to
upset Philip," but as he surveyed Bloody Johnny's face he recog-
nised that malice towards an enemy was completely alien to the
man's nature, so he concluded differently--"a chance to marry
and settle down. I can see you're surprised, Mr. Dekker, to see
me here at all; considering my family's grievance against Mr.
Geard, and our envy and our jealousy of Mr. Geard; but I'm a
black sheep, you know. I don't mind confessing to all you kind
people"--here he raised his voice and glanced at the round, red,
hypnotised face of the maid Sally, who, standing behind Mrs.
Geard's chair, had long since been hanging upon his lips with
as much attention as if he had been the Human Chimpanzee
talking in the Magic Booth at Somerton Circus--"that I came
here hoping that Mr. Geard would let me help him in some way.
I even thought that his employment of me would act as hush-
money to all this gossip...a sop to Cerberus, as you might say...
but Mr. Geard reads my thoughts...you know you do, Sir! Yes,
you really do!"

He stopped now, quite out of breath; and Sam Dekker glow-
ered at him in sulky silence. Sam's attention had been wandering
from the beginning to the end of his discourse. He had been
saying to himself, "I know what it means, seeing Zoyland going
up Wells Road. He's walked in to see Philip! This means that he
is going to Wookey Hole. He wouldn't come to see him otherwise.
He didn't last year; and I fancy he couldn't very well...not
on a job like that." At this point, hearing the words of John as
if they were perfectly meaningless sounds, his mind ceased to
think in words. He felt himself sleeping with Nell in William's
bed. He felt the pressure of her breasts against his chest. This
voluble fellow opposite him, chattering about a Midsummer
Pageant was of no more significance to him than a quacking duck
in a farm-yard when he was on his way to Queen's Sedgemoor.
In fact as he glared at John, John's nose became the road be-
tween the two great oaks and the hamlet of Wick, while John's
forehead became the path over the water-meadows. "I must know
the truth, one way or the other," he said to himself. I must know
if she's going to bed alone out there when he goes to Wookey
Hole."

It was touching to Cordelia to watch the way Crummie was
behaving. She was no longer the wanton, playful, toying girl,
who delighted in tantalising the senses of men. She was a grave
maiden, a tender, drooping-eyed, watchful maiden, who did all
she could, by a thousand little attentions and tactful considera-
tions, to win favour with her absent-minded lord!

"He's a gentleman," Mr. Geard was thinking to himself. :and
he's a clever rogue. Of course he's an atheist. He doesn't believe
in anything. You can see that with half an eye. But ifs the
Blessed Lord who's brought him to me. He's the very man for
my Design--the very man! A believer would be difficult. A
churchman would be impossible. This lad will treat my Design
as a masquerade. He'll have no prejudices. He's what I‘ve been
looking for ever since I got back from Norfolk. And he is his
grandchild too--yes, he's perfectly right about the fortune. It'll
make a very good impression on all concerned, for me to have
one of these Crows as a sort of partner! Hell have a share in
spending his grandfather's money. With his help I shall...I shall
do...I shall have...I shall be...I shall make...an absolutely New Thing
--sobbing happiness--black earth--rain--dew--peace--"

By this time the towers of his New Jerusalem, thus built to the
Glory of the Blood, were rising clear and crystalline to his view,
piling themselves up, buttress upon buttress, rampart upon ram-
part, beyond his wife's windowbox of begonias! Castles of crys-
tal, islands of glass, mirrors and mirages of the invisible, hiding-
places of Merlin, horns and urns and wells and cauldrons--hill-
tops of magic--stones of mystery--all these seemed to Bloody
Johnny's brain at that moment no mere fluctuating, undulating
mind-pictures, but real things; real as the cracked wood of the
old windowbox, real as the indented frown upon Megan's fore-
head! John Crow could clearly see what an impression his words
had made upon his host; but be waited patiently till this fit of
absent-mindedness should come to an end.

Crumrnie had by now reached the point of daring to express,
in gentle, hesitating tones, her growing absorption in the study
of natural history. She was asking Sam if there were not some
easy books that she could buy on such things as aquatic plants,
water beetles, pond weeds, and so forth; for these, it seemed,
had for many years been Crummie's secret delight; though, for
the sake of peace in the family, it had been necessary to conceal
her obsession.

"Don't you think, John, it would be wiser," burst out Mrs.
Geard at last, finding her opportunity in one of those curious
long silences that seem especially to fall on groups of human
beings of just about the numbers that occupied that room, whereas
fewer people or more people would have been free from that em-
barrassment, "don't you think, John, it would be wiser to wait
till we moved into Chalice House before employing anyone else?"

"Mother dear!" interrupted Cordelia. "Mr. Crow doesn't mean
that he wants to live with us! Father will only pay him a small
salary for his help. It'll save Father a great deal. It'll save Father
taking an office."

At the word "office" Megan Geard crumpled up. She sank back
in her chair and gasped. The idea of the golden stream of this
great Northwold legacy being deflected into an "office" seemed
to her almost the worst that could happen. In the moving pic-
tures which she sometimes attended the word "office" was syn-
onymous with dissipation and deception.

Sam Dekker at this moment rose stiffly to his feet. He had
decided upon immediate action. He would go himself that very
second--it could only be about half-past five--and call upon
the Philip Crows. He shook hands hurriedly with his host and
hostess, nodded to John Crow and Mr. Evans, and was escorted
by the silent Crummie to the front door where she reluctantly
handed him his hat and stick. He was so obsessed with what was
in his head to do that he took his things from her with a mere
"thank you," gave her an abstracted nod, and hurried off up the
street. As he approached St. John's Church, on the way to Wells
Road, it occurred to him with extreme vividness that it was likely
enough that Nell had walked into town with her husband from
Queen's Sedgemoor. He had seen William alone, but that meant
little; it was Nell's frequent custom to separate from Zoyland
when they were together in Glastonbury, do her shopping in
peace, and meet him afterward at the Pilgrims' Inn. Sam well
knew this habit of hers and had ere now taken advantage of it,
meeting her in the Ruins, and once, even, but that was a danger-
ous risk, in a field at the foot of the Tor. His heart beat fiercely
now, therefore, but more from love than from any startled sur-
prise, when he perceived her figure passing under the iron gas-
lamp arch into the churchyard. It had been a grey day; and with
the approach of sunset the air was beginning to grow both chilly
and dark. He took hurried steps in pursuit and reached the
churchyard just in time to see her entering the church porch.

There were several people moving in and out of the church
at that hour. There were still more people passing up and down
in front of the churchyard entrance; and among these latter, as
Sam was about to hurry under the iron arch that held the gas-
lamp, was a figure in working-mans clothes who hesitated not
to stop him and address him. Sam could hardly endure this delay.
The man was polite enough and his general demeanour had the
air of a foreman or a master plumber. But Sam's soul was al-
ready inside the church. And what on earth was this pale, intense,
red-haired young artisan talking about? He had caught hold of
him by the lappet of his coat. He was agitated about something.
"I beg your pardon," Sam blurted out at last, "but I'm in rather
a hurry. I've got to go, if you don't mind, into the church. I've
got to go!" At that moment such a bitter sneer contracted this
excitable young man's face that Sam did notice it and stopped.
What was the matter with this fellow? Why was he so agitated?

"So you're the gent she can't sigh 'arf enough about," the man
began, in a strong cockney accent "She sighs you 'ave the look
of a sighnt. Well, Crummie, I sighs, the next charnst I gets I'll
tike a good look at 'im. It ain't every die yer sees a bloomin'
sighnt on 'Igh Street. But I'll arst 'im, I sighs, if 'ee won't speak
up for a poor dog like yours 'umbly. A sighnt's word, I'll tell
'im, ought to go pretty far with a gal if he cares to give a bloke
a 'and-up in 'is courtin'."

A light for the first time broke upon Sam's impatient mind.
This must be Red Robinson, the cockney Communist, who was
always plotting troubles and strikes in Philip's factories. Sam
now remembered the fact that Red Robinson's mother, with whom
he lived, was an old charwoman of the most rigid conservative
principles, who worked regularly in the church. Sam knew her
well and had often heard her speak sorrowfully and tragically
of the wicked opinions of her infidel son. The whole episode was
a revelation to him of how poor the Geards had been before
they inherited their legacy. It seemed hard to imagine this well-
to-do workman aspiring to Crummie's hand!

"You've come to see your mother home?" he murmured feebly.
cursing both mother and son, and thinking to himself, "If this
chap comes in with me now it'll be the last straw!'" And the last
straw it was. For Red Robinson, clapping his workman's cap
firmly on his head, as if to show that a churchyard was no more
sacred than any other yard, resolutely followed as Sam moved
away, and as he followed continued to talk of Crummie. Sam's
desperation grew worse and worse as they approached the church
door. He had never heard a cockney accent carried to such a
limit. The truth was that Red's accent was more cockney than any
living Londoner's. A deep vein of what might be called "philolog-
ical malice" in him had come to emphasise this way of speaking
as a form of spite against the Glastonbury bourgeoisie.

"She sighs you 'ave the look of a sighnt," Red kept repeating.
"She sighs you 'ave haltered 'er whole life. She sighs that since
she's known you she's a different gal. So all you've got to do,
Mister, is to sigh the word and she'll marry me tomorrow!"

"Well I don't see what I can do for you, Mr. Robinson; but
I don't mind speaking to Miss Geard." These words were auto-
matically jerked out of him, like peas shaken out of a bag. But
at this moment they passed into the church and Red Robinson
and his exaggerated cockney speech became for Sam's mind far
less important than the dust now being raised by Red's mother as
the old woman swept her brush about between the pews with her
long black skirt pinned up above her grey woolen petticoat.

For there before his eyes was Nell Zoyland! The girl was lying
back in one of the pews nearest to the font in an attitude not of
piety nor of peace, but of apathetic weariness. One of her arms
was thrown over the back of the pew. Her face was so shaded by
her hat that in the dusk of that interior it was a mere white blur.
She did not look unhappy. No one would have taken her for a
tragic figure. No one, on the other hand, would have taken her
for a care-free visitor to Glastonbury. She might have been a sis-
ter of Sam's, some tired daughter of the priest of this very church,
resting after a long country walk.

"Are you ready, Mother?" he heard Red Robinson exclaim.
"'Urry now, for I wants my tie! Say good-night to Jesus and
hunpin yerself quick!"

Sam went straight to the girl's side and greeted her in a whis-
per. She caught up her hand quick to her throat and gave a little
gasping cry. Sam was so excited that he did not modulate his
voice as he greeted her while she sprang to her feet and faced
him. "Has he gone to see Philip?" he asked eagerly.

Nell Zoyland nodded, clutching three paper parcels which she
held, tight against her bosom, and not offering him her hand.

"Is he going to Wookey Hole?"

Again she nodded without a word.

He did lower his voice now to a low whisper that she could
hardly catch. But well did she know the drift of that desperate
question! Had she gone back to him--since that night? Her eyes
assumed a strange, weary, indifferent look, in that dim light, and
they seemed to leave his face and gaze into the far distance.
"Have...you...gone...back...to him?" he repeated with almost brutal
insistence. For the third time she nodded; and then, moving her
feet a little, as if the ground was slippery beneath her, she
straightened her body and looked him full in the face; and he
thought as she did so that there was a reproachful flash in her
eyes.

"Come...this way," he said, pulling at her jacket. They moved
out of reach of the ears of Red Robinson and his mother;
and Sam soon found that he had led her quite unconsciously to
the great empty sarcophagus bearing the initials J. A. Here they
stood side by side, she with her body pressed against the outside
edge of the stone, he with his fingers clutching its inside rim.

"How soon is he going to Wookey Hole?"

"In two or three days," she answered, looking at him with an
inscrutable expression. "By Saturday," she murmured, "he's cer-
tain to be gone." She paused and then added humbly, poking the
end of her umbrella into a crevice between two stones, "I can't
understand how either of you can put up with such a weak, un-
certain creature as I am. I was telling William that, just now, all
the way from Wick Hollow to Maidencroft Lane. I know I shall
bring a curse upon you both! What I deserve is that you both
should go off and leave me alone! Oh, Sammy, Sammy, how
much nicer men really are, at bottom, than women!"

Sam sighed. "I'd chance all the badness you could call up,
Nellie," he said, "if only I could get you to myself."

It was her turn to sigh at this. "Why didn't you just carry me
off, Sam dearest, that evening on Queen's Sedgemoor? We'd have
managed somehow. I'm not a fool; and you've got such strong
arms!"

Sam drew a deep breath; so deep that it shook him from head
to foot. He felt a leap in the pit of his stomach, as if a fish had
risen there. He felt the blood throb above his cheek-bones. "We
....might...still...do it, little Nell," he stammered huskily.

"It's too late now, my dearest," she said.

"Why is it?" he groaned.

"Because...because he's made me give myself to him...as I've
never done...before this."

Sam was silent, pondering in his brain the inscrutable twists
and turns of women's hearts. He thought to himself, "What am
I to believe? That day we went to Pomparles Bridge and looked
at the dace in those pools, and she told me about Arthur's sword,
she made me believe he had ravished her the first day they met;
and now she says this! Do women delight to make themselves out
victims? She first says this and then that...I cannot tell what
the truth is!"

"But you still love me, Nell?" he pleaded. "You haven't turned
against me? You haven't gone over to him completely?"

"I shall always love you beyond all else in the world," she said.
He now led her towards the altar and they seated themselves in
the very front pew of all and before their pew was an open space
of time-worn floor, carrying several quite illegible and absolutely
flat tombstones. Beyond these were the altar rails. But the girl
kept her eyes fixed on the ground and ceased not to draw her
hand up and down the polished edge of the seat. "But to give
myself to you after giving myself to him as I've done since that
night has something"--she spoke even more slowly now, but
never seemed to hesitate for a word--"something about it that
I can't bear." She lifted her eyes from the ground and fixed them
shyly and humbly upon Sam's troubled face. "I wouldn't blame
any woman," she went on, "who lived with two men, if one was
her earthly friend and the other her ideal friend. But you and
Will--you mustn't mind my saying it, Sam!--are both earthly
friends. It was because of that...that I...that I made Will sleep
alone. I wanted to belong to you altogether."

Sam spoke hurriedly and eagerly. "But I must come over and
see you when he's away. It'll be madness, Nell, to let such a
chance go."

A spasm of anger crossed her face. "Chances, Sam Dekker?
You talk of chances? Why didn't you carry me off when you had
the 'chance'? No, no! A girl isn't a bottle of wine for a man to
lock up in a cupboard, to take a sip from whenever he wants to!
Will's a genuine man anyway in these things. He doesn't wait for
a 'chance.' He goes right ahead and takes risks." She stood erect
before him, her parcels pressed against her waist, her umbrella
clutched crosswise against her bosom.

Her electric flash of anger communicated itself to him in a
second and he too got up upon his feet. "If you feel like that,"
he grumbled sulkily, "perhaps the best thing would be for me to
give up altogether going out to see you."

He gave a quick glance round the darkening church. But the
stone coffin of Joseph of Arimathea lay undisturbed, a vague blur
of insubstantial whiteness in the gathering dusk, and the Robin-
sons, both mother and son, had disappeared. "I never thought a
time would come," he said fiercely, "that we should have a chance
like this, only to throw it away! Have you forgotten everything
we've done together, and where we've been together? Have you
forgotten that reed-hut on Splott's Moor? Have you forgotten
Hartlake Railway Bridge? Have you forgotten that withy-bed at
Westholme and the Palace Barn at Pilton?"

"I never thought," she said, "that you would ever come to speak
of such things in such a tone! I've been a fool to treat you as one
of the few men that a girl could trust not to behave like a cad!"
This word "cad" she brought out with vibrant relish like a pet
dagger from a hidden sheath. She glowed in her indignation to
see the twitch of his poor, funny chin as she plunged it in.

"I only spoke of those places to remind you of things," he
retorted with flashing eyes. "What you've done in going back to
him when you belonged to me was far worse than talking of our
little things. It was a kind of...a kind of...well! I won't say that to
you. But you know what I mean! You've never put him out of
your heart--never!"

"How can you say that to me after everything?" she inter-
jected.

"Because that's what you're like! Because when you went back
to him you were acting like a whore." (I've done it now, he
thought. I've dropped the last straw on the heap by calling her
that!) "Where does he want you to meet him? Can't I take you
anywhere?" he said in a toneless mechanical voice. He took her
hand. He repeated this hopeless formula. His lips seemed to have
gone dry. He dropped her limp fingers, but she held him back for
a second by the look on her face.

"You've...made...me...very...happy...Sam," she whispered, while her
eyes brimmed with tears. Sam ought to have had the wit to realise
at this moment that had he swallowed his pride and changed his
tone all would have been well. Apparently a man can call his love
a whore and be forgiven! But he was at once too aggrieved and
too simple-minded to take advantage of the tears that were now
pouring down her face.

"Good-bye," he repeated doggedly; "good-bye, Nell."


A little later that evening, Red Robinson sat talking to his
mother and Sally Jones in Mrs. Robinson's kitchen in an alley in
Bove Town, a district of Glastonbury situated south of Old Wells
Road and Edmund Hill Lane. Red was questioning Sally about
the tea-party at the Geards', while his mother, in a clean dress, a
clean lace collar, a clean blue apron, was preparing supper.
"Why do you torment poor Sal so grievous, sonny?" protested
the old lady. "You'll be the death of me with your hinsurrec-
tions. List to a hold 'ooman, Sal, and leave not the paths of God's
'oly Word. Lot of good me son's 'Party' will be to 'im, with 'is
Rooshian Spies when 'is ole Mother be dead and gone! And this
Crummie Geard 'ee pines for! Your mother and me, Sal, have
known Crummie Geard, and Bloody Johnny 'er dad too, since she
were a tot in harms. Could Crummie dish up a nice tighsty dish
'o liver and 'am and fried tighties such as ye'll tighst in a min-
ute? Not on your little loife!"

"But, Mother," protested Red Robinson, "Crummie's dad is a
rich man now. Since I 'eard of that I ain't gone near 'er. I 'as me
own pride, Mother; and dahn't yer forget it!"

"Pride be 'anged!" cried the old woman, banging his supper-
plate down in front of him and pouring water into the empty
frying-pan, "you and 'er were keeping company; or I dunno
what helse it were! "

"Well, anyway," went on Red, hungrily beginning to eat his
supper, "whether I get Crummie or not, Crummie's promised to
'arst 'er dad--and she can twist the old boy round her little
finger--to hinvest 'is cash in 'elping us bankrupt this Crow con-
cern. She says he told the Almighty 'Imself at family prayers that
Crow was 'eading for ruin. He 'ates Crow, 'ee must 'ate Crow,
because of his filling the town with factories; whereas Bloody
Johnny wants to preach to the visitors; and visitors don't like
factories. With a little of Geard's cash to back us up we'll mike
the brute 'owl and maybe get the Town to tike over his concern.
That's the idea anyway they've got at 'eadquarters."

"But didn't you hear what I said?" put in Sally Jones. "Don't
I keep telling you he's going to employ Crow's cousin? Crow's
cousin be a tidy lad and a nice-spoken gentleman too; and old
man Geard be goin' to hire he to bring a girt Fair into Tor Field
with a grand Roman Circus and a Golden-Jerusalem Theayter and
a 'normous Guy Fawkes Pope, and more o' they gipoos and For-
tune-Tellers than have been seen since the King cut off Abbot
Whiting's head!" Sally's cheeks flamed and her eyes glittered as
she described these wonders.

Red Robinson spat into the stove. "Don't yer make no mistake.
Baby Sal," he said; "there won't be no Fair in Glastonbury in
our time except the regular Autumn one."

"Did Mr. Geard really talk like that?" enquired Mrs. Robin-
son, as she removed her son's plate and substituted another with
a plump piece of pudding thereon. "There's no telling what a man
will do, who's been poor, when he grows rich. Common folk like
that ain't no notion how to spend money. It tikes the real gentry
to spend money as it ought to be spended."

"You shut yer hold mouth, Mother!" cried Red with a chuckle.
It was the cause of endless pleasantries between these two that the
revolutionary ideas of the man were countered by the inflexible
Toryism of the woman.

"Don't you go on. then, putting these crazy notions into Sal's
mind. Don't you 'eed 'im. Sally, me gurl. Red's not been as I've
'a been, 'ousekeeper to the Bishop of Bath and Wells what was a
Lord--rest his sweet soul!--in's own right, seeing 'ee was uncle-
born to the Marquis of P."

"Is it really true, Mrs. Robinson," asked Sally timidly, "that
Mr. Zoyland, out to Queen's Sedgemoor, be thik Markises wicked
by-blow?" The two women, the old one and the young one,
pulled their kitchen chairs closer to each other; while an identical
expression of complacent awe animated their faces.

"That's what I've 'a 'eered from folks what do know, Sal. 'Tis
true I've never arst Mr. Zoyland 'isself. 'Tis a thing a gent like
that--as I knows from my hexperience with 'is Lordship--be apt
to be ticklish about. Not that in 'igh society, Sal, them by-blows
be rare. They be common as hidiots be with us. There haint no
great family, from on 'igh down, what 'asn't got 'en, Sal. Tis
nature with they to have 'en."

By this time, in surprisingly few gulps, Red Robinson had dis-
patched his pudding. He now pushed back his plate and rising to
his feet proceeded to light his pipe. That done, he took down his
woolen scarf from one nail and his cap from Another. "Don't yer
sit up for me, Mother," he said. " 'Tis quarterly meeting tonight;
and the Comrades from Wells and Wookey will be there and
high'm the one delegated for the chief haddress."

"I'll stay and help Mrs. Robinson wash up," said Sally brightly.
She made no move, however, to rise from her chair. She was
clearly anxious to satisfy at one and the same time her nat-
ural kindness of heart and her longing to hear more about the
Marquis of P.'s by-blow.

Red was on the point of laying his hand on the door-handle
when the door itself opened from without. It opened with the
peculiar impetus that inrushing children give, and no fewer than
four lively youngsters precipitated themselves into the room.
Sally did not rise from her chair now; for the leader of this little
gang was her brother Jackie. Jackie was accompanied by Nelly
Morgan, a wild, dishevelled little girl of eight. Sis was ten, as old
as Jackie himself, and an incorruptible devotee of Jackie's; but
being a heavily built and heavily witted child and burdened,
furthermore, by the care of her brother Bert, an infant of five,
who in placidity and appearance resembled a giant mushroom,
Sis was outplayed, outrun, outdared, outjumped, outclimbed, out-
fought, outpassioned by Nelly Morgan, in spite of her advantage
over Nelly of two whole years. Nelly's mother was a charwoman
and was always at work; which gave the little girl an independ-
ence from parental control envied by all the rest. Jackie had Sally
to order him about, in addition to their mother; and the little
Coles, although orphans, had a very active and formidable grand-
mother. Nelly Morgan had no one; for her charwoman-mother,
although an incredibly good worker during the day, had the pe-
culiarity, indeed the unusual gift, of being able to drink gin with
no bodily ill-effect every night until she was completely fuddled
Every day she would rise again by five o'clock; get her own and
Nelly's breakfast, and go off cheerfully to her laborious work.
She never uttered an unkind word to Nelly; far less ever struck
her. But on the other hand she was wont to fall into a sentimental
trance, as soon as she had washed up after supper, from which
she never emerged again that evening. During this trance she
would shed silent tears, sigh repeatedly, and talk in mumbling
tones of Nelly's dead father; but Nelly herself became to her
mother at these times as if she were totally invisible, inaudible,
and non-existent. For a little girl of eight to become non-existent
to her only relation every single day of her life at seven o'clock
was an experience likely to have a noticeable effect; and Nelly's
nature got steadily more and more self-absorbed and more and
more eccentric. Though still only eight, the child had the intelli-
gence of a girl of eleven ; and on the few occasions when even the
bold Jackie showed the white feather, Nelly--lieutenant of this
robber band--played the devil with all strategy and all prudence.

Bert Cole--that titanic mushroom--was at once awed and
entranced by Nelly, who, in Sis's occasional absences, dragged
him, pushed him, carried him, transported him, upon undertak-
ings of fearful excitement. Bert never cried, never laughed, never
smiled, and very rarely uttered a word; but, although the young-
est of the robber band, he could not be called the least inter-
ested, for of all the people in Glastonbury, including even Mr.
Wollop, the draper, who had been three times Mayor, none--I
say none--contemplated the Dream of Life with a more concern
trated gusto. A little bewildered, but not, even then, profoundly
disturbed, when Nelly Morgan insisted on carrying his enormous
weight upon her slim back, Bert Cole surveyed the panorama of
existence with an unpossessive, grave-eyed relish that would have
put Diogenes himself to shame.

The inrush of this hurly-burly of excited children delayed for
a moment Red Robinson's departure. Sis and Nelly were both
favourites of his; and there was a general hullabaloo in that
peaceful kitchen while he "'unted," as he said, "'igh and low"
for a bag of sweets he had secreted somewhere. Mrs. Robinson
had even to move to another place her pile of mending from the
stately black-oak hall-chair, which came from the Bishop's Palace
and which served her as a work-table. She had to disarrange, too,
her reproduction of Constable's "Hay-Wagon"--another relic of
the Bishop's Palace---which was balanced on the top of her
dresser. All was joyous confusion; with Bert, like some ideal
prize boy, surveying life from Sally's knees, his plump legs
hanging down, his plump fists clutching together some bits of
blue glass he had picked up, and his grave eyes taking in the
Platonic Essence of the whole unique scene.

As for Jackie, a slender, fragile-looking but passionately in-
tense little boy, with chestnut-brown hair and hazel eyes, he had
begun a dramatic story to his sister Sal, the points of which he
had continually to emphasise, when Sally's attention wandered,
by tugging at the locket round her neck. Long experience had
taught him that the threat of a broken locket was the most atten-
tion-provoking of all gestures on the part of a younger brother.
"I seed she over Tor and over Wirral. I seed she again over
Chalice and over Stonedown. 'Twere a girt big 'un she were; and
'un flew low, like 'twere goin' to turn topsy. 'Twere the biggest
flyer ever made, out of Ameriky; and Nelly says she knows for
sure 'tis Mr. Tom Barter what be steerin' of 'er. 'Tis Mr. Crow's
airplane, Nelly says, and Mr. Barter be pilot on she."

‘'Didn't I tell you, Mother?" broke in Red Robinson, who had
been listening intently to all this. "That's what he's doing with
the money he takes out of the labouring man's sweat! You're main
right, Nelly, you're main right! Barter is the pilot. And that
means that he's letting the office down. And that means that the
whole business will be a washout. I'll tell 'em at the Quarterly
tonight what you've seen, Jackie. You wait, Mr. Crow! You wait!
You'll find Red Robinson isn't a fellow to spit upon, little though
you may think of his dependableness!" This word referred to a
personal quarrel which Red had had, just a year before, with
Philip Crow. Philip had dismissed him without proper warning
and when angrily challenged by the man had coldly told him that
he did not find him "dependable." The truth is that Red Robinson
-- although politically a Communist--was temperamentally a
Jacobin. A rankling personal hatred of Philip Crow had grown
by degrees to be the dominant passion of his life, stronger even
than his devotion to Crummie Geard. That "not dependable" had
become a kind of vicious quartering on the great, heraldic
blazon of Mr. Robinson's revolutionary faith.

Automatically replacing his mother's basket of mending for the
church upon the stately hall-chair, which bore upon its back the
episcopal arms of Bath and Wells--God knows how the ex-
housekeeper had got hold of it!--Red Robinson picked up for
the second time his cap and scarf and let himself out into the little
dark street. On his way to the small upper room in Old Jones'
Antiquity Shop, which had for years been the Comrades' meet-
ing-place, Robinson found it necessary to pass quite close to a
low stone wall, over which--at a single field's distance--he could
not escape from seeing in the starlight the richly carved ruin of
that oldest and most sacred building in Glastonbury, the Church
of St. Mary, usually known as Saint Joseph's Chapel. On this
spot stood the original Wattle Church built by Joseph of Ari-
mathea. Here was the stone church erected much later by Saint
David of Wales; and here too was discovered, in comparatively
modern times, the carefully preserved Well, into which a blood-
red stream of magical water once trickled down from the very
slope of Chalice Hill. It was to the monkish guardians of this
mystical spot, doubtless carrying in its enchanted soil, fed by the
bones of untold centuries, the psychic chemistry of religious cults
far older than Christianity, far older than the Druids, that King

Ina's charter was given, the charter which still exists, an actual
piece of material parchment, inscribed by an unknown human
hand in the year seven hundred and twenty-five. One of the most
familiar of the constellations--was it Cassiopeia?--Red Robinson
was weak on the subject of the stars--hung suspended just above
this famous fragment of antiquity. Red surveyed this stellar sign
with approbation. It was useful; it afforded light--though in a
primitive form and not very freely--to the delegate who was to
address the Comrades that evening. There was no nonsense about
it. Those twinkling celestial orbs might have been electric bulbs,
inaugurated by some disillusioned Lenin of the Ether. Thus did
Red Robinson set the seal of his revolutionary approval upon
the stellar system. But the shadowy Norman arches of St. Mary's
Chapel, as he surveyed them now, filled him with anger and con-
tempt. He went so far as to spit over the low wall in the direction
of that Bastille of Superstition. That his spittle only fell on the
back of a small snail that was travelling across a dockleaf by the
light of those same stars was an incident of small importance. He
had expressed his disgust with Saint Joseph, Saint David, Saint
Patrick, Saint Dunstan, Saint Indractus, Saint Gildas, Saint Be-
nignus. He had expressed his disapproval of King Edgar the
Peace-Maker, of two King Edmunds, and of more Abbots than he
could possibly name! As to King Arthur--but he swallowed his
wrath now and moved on.

He was soon entering the little shop of Old Jones. Old Jones
was still in hospital. The little cyst, referred to by Penny
Pitches, had been successfully cut out of Old Jones' withered
frame; but the shock of the operation delayed his recovery. Mr.
Evans was still, therefore, playing the role of his representative.
It was in a bare room, filled with school-forms, and a little school-
platform--for it served on Sunday as a meeting-place for a hand-
ful of Plymouth Brethren--that the quarterly gathering of
Comrades was held. This room was on the third floor and was
just above the bedroom occupied by Mr. Evans.

The Welshman was now seated at his open window finishing for
exactly the twenty-fifth time, the “Morte d'Arthur" of Sir Thomas
Malory. The indescribable sadness of those final pages was wrap-
ping him round in a delicate melancholy, when he became aware
of the hustle and the clatter of the meeting above his head. He
tried to render himself oblivious to these intrusive sounds. He
even placed his pair of guttering candles upon the broad window-
sill and the book between them. But to no avail! The voices of the
Comrades, the scraping of their feet, the vigorous clapping of
their hands, entered his window, descended his chimney, and
came down through the cracks between the creaking boards of
his ceiling. The voice of Red Robinson raised in indignant de-
nunciation, lowered in Machiavellian persuasion, clear and in-
cisive in practical suggestion, presently drove the sorrowful piety
of the repentant Lancelot completely off the field.

The unfortunate thing was--but such was Mr. Evans' psychic
constitution--that he no sooner lost his sacred and sweet melan-
choly under this downpour of communistic reasoning than his old
fatal temptation began to trouble his mind. It attacked him
vaguely, mistily, atmospherically, with a sort of deadly diffused
sweetness of indescribable poison. And what was the worst thing
about the way it attacked him was the fact that it made the
project of being married to Cordelia Geard an expectation of
such withering dullness that it made him groan to think of it.
And yet he did genuinely love Cordelia. Not with any kind of
physical love. That was impossible. But with a feeling of pity that
shook the foundations of his nature. He had never pitied anyone
as he had come to pity Cordelia. His pity for her had grown step
by step with his admiration for her mental and spiritual qualities.
Why then this intolerable sense of dullness--oh, much worse
than dullness!--this sense that the very leap of life in his deepest
fibres would perish of sapless sterility if he were to live forever
by her side, day and night, night and day by her side! How
could he have permitted this corrosive poison so to soak, with its
fatal fungus-juice, every nerve of his being? Struggling with this
vague temptation now, he began to dally with the ghastly idea
that apart from some element of sadistic feeling it would be im-
possible for him not to shrink away with infinite loathing from
any physical contact with Cordelia. He had thought at first, on
finding how fond he was getting of Cordelia, that here--in this
one single point--he had the advantage over normally amorous
people. Since with him the natural urge towards feminine beauty
as feminine beauty was less than nothing, surely he might be
permitted to indulge his pity--this pity, that was the magnetism
of his love--to the limit, without fear of feeling repulsion? If,
without the sadistic shiver, if, without this infernal Nightshade
juice, all flesh was literally grass, why couldn't he “make hay"
in human pastures from which normal people would shrink in
sick aversion? But the ghastly doubt began assailing him now;
suppose he had so drained away every drop of magnetic attraction
to natural human flesh that the daily presence of another person
would strew his life with the dust of the ultimate boredom to such
a degree that everything he felt, everything he saw, everything he
tasted, everything he heard, would exude a withering dry-rot?

He began inadvertently to listen to what Red Robinson was
saying in the room above. He had been hearing him, it seemed,
for hours; but he began to listen to him now. He blew out one of
his candles and moved the other one, and the volume of Malory
with it, back into the room. Sitting at his table, with the candle
and book in front of him, he set himself to listen attentively. But
it was hard to listen attentively. Oh, it all seemed so unimportant
--this problem of what became of mankind in general--compared
with what he was feeling in his own solitary being! Well! Any-
way that perilous quiver upon the air was drifting away now!
What brought it at some moments so much more strongly than at
others? Were there really powers of good and evil moving about
in the ether and touching us all at their own will, not at ours,
and at the strangest moments? He closed the book and pushed the
candle further from him. Through the open window came the
sound of a single, old, cracked bell. He couldn't imagine where
that bell hung. In some little neighbouring nonconformist chapel,
he supposed!

Still the voice of Red Robinson went on, arguing and proving
and denouncing and cajoling and persuading; and it was a curious
thing that in his public oratory the man largely succeeded in
dropping his cockney accent. "Incorrigible heretic! Curse him
with bell, book, and candle!" thought Mr. Evans. The Welshman's
triadic mind dived like a plummet, then, to the sea-bottom of
loathing from which he was always trying to escape. How queer
that that fainting sweetness, that quivering, shivering, swooning
sweetness, that was all about him in the air now, making every-
thing not touched by itself an ash-bin of intolerable dullness,
should be the thing that led him on and on and on till he incurred
this undying Horror!

Owen Evans leaped up upon his feet as if Something far worse
than any conceivable hell-torture had come into his head. He
stood still for a second and then swung round and faced the
window". And by slow degrees it came over him that what he
was really seeking from Cordelia was punishment. If he punished
himself enough, might not the Horror be disarmed, be repelled?
"Christ!" he murmured, staring out at the darkened windows on
the opposite side of the street, "if it is like that to live with her,
why should not that be my punishment? Why should not that
save me?" This sudden unmasking of a secret motive in his own
action which had hitherto been concealed from him gave Owen
Evans such a consoling sensation after his recent self-torture that
he lit his second candle again and sitting down once more at his
table re-opened Malory. He was careful to open the book this
time not at the end, but at the beginning; and he turned over the
pages till he came to a particular passage about Merlin which
always stirred him profoundly. Everything that he could discover
about Merlin sank into Mr. Evans' mind and took a permanent
place there. Scraps and morsels and fragments, mythical, histori-
cal, natural, supernatural, as long as they had some bearing,
however remote, upon the life of Merlin, filtered down into Mr.
Evans' soul. He had already begun to write a life of Merlin more
comprehensive than any in existence. In fact Mr. Evans' "Life
of Merlin" was to include all that has been written of that great-
est of enchanters in Welsh, in English, in French, and in Old
French. As all Merlin's disciples well know, there is a mysterious
word used in one of the Grail Books about his final disappear-
ance. This is the word "Esplumeoir." It is inevitable from the
context to interpret this as some "Great Good Place," some mys-
tic Fourth Dimension, or Nirvanic apotheosis, into which the
magician deliberately sank, or rose; thus committing a sort of
inspired suicide, a mysterious dying in order to live more fully.
As he sought for one of his favourite passages--for "Esplumeoir"
does not appear in Malory--he kept murmuring that particular
invocation under his breath, pondering intently on the occult
escape offered by this runic clue from all the pain of the world,
an escape so strangely handed down from far-off centuries in
these thaumaturgic syllables.

While Mr. Evans was thus occupied, Red Robinson in the room
above where the Comrades were assembled to hear his speech
was thinking to himself that he must conceal one little fact about
his grand message to them and the scheme he intended to lay
before them. This was the fact that it was really none other than
Persephone Spear, who, through her husband's mouth, had first
broached the idea of starting a Municipal Factory in Glastonbury.
It needed the wit of a woman to think of such a simple thing. But
Red Robinson, like many another masculine politician, was re-
solved to take all the credit to himself of this flash of feminine
inspiration! It was not long before the cockney's penetrating voice
began to make itself again audible to the ears of Mr. Evans, lifted
up to a yet shriller pitch as Red approached his main argument.

As a propagandist Mr. Robinson always aimed at a disciplined
art that resembled that of a Catholic peasant-priest carefully
trained in a Seminary; but it often happened that his art broke
down. "We have several Comrades," Mr. Evans heard him ex-
claim now, "who are on the Glastonbury Town Council. I appeal
to these Comrades; I beg these Comrades, to use every means
at their disposal to familiarize their colleagues with the prin-
ciples of municipal ownership. These factories depend upon
natural resources. The Wookey Hole one depends on the sub-
terranean River Axe which flows from beneath the Mendips. The
Glastonbury one depends on the waters of the River Brue. Does
this man Crow, does this selfish, luxurious rich man, cause these
rivers to flow, or create the rains and the springs that fill these
rivers? We are all Comrades here; and I may talk freely here. I
have come to learn that this religious fanatic we are accustomed
to hear called by the name of Bloody Johnny"--here there was
a terrific stamping of feet and loud hilarious laughter above Mr.
Evans' head!--"is intending to use his legacy of ill-gotten bour-
geois money, of which all the Comrades here have heard, to bring
crowds of visitors to the town. You know, Comrades, how such
bourgeois visitors dislike everything industrial, their dislike
is not shared by the man I refer to. Now this is what I propose
to you, Comrades; I propose that some one among us should be
delegated to approach this man Geard, who is evidently prepared
to throw his money away, and try and persuade him to lend the
Town Council, of which he is now a member, funds large enough
to buy out this devil Crow! I propose that this delegate from the
Party persuade Geard to buy for himself the factories, if he can-
not induce the town to purchase them. Anything is better than
leaving them in the hands of such a devilish enemy of the work-
ing-man as we know this Crow to be. And they'll go for a song,
I tell you, Comrades. They'll go for a song; because a really big
strike will throw the concern into bankruptcy.

"Don't interrupt me. Comrades from Wells! This is only half
my plan. As you all know this is the year for the election of our
Mayor. Geard is a fool. But he is a well-meaning fool. He is
sympathetic to our cause. He is almost one of us. He is further-
more the sort of man that could be persuaded into anything! I
have myself the entree into his house...I needn't say any more
at this moment...and if this Quarterly Meeting of the Com-
rades of Wells and Glastonbury delegated me to approach him as
their representative, I believe there would be a good chance of
persuading him. We would have to make his name prominent--
that's what all bourgeois philanthropists want--to be talked of,
to be heard of! The Comrades on the Town Council would then
propose him for Mayor--to succeed that prize ass, Wollop. Noth-
ing would please him better than to be proposed for Mayor. With
Geard as Mayor, and the Party behind the Mayor, we might
municipalise the water, the gas, the electricity and finally these
factories! This, Comrades, is simply common sense. Some Com-
rades here may object that this is a wild-goose scheme; that
in proposing it to them I am departing from practical pol-
itics. Let such Comrades bethink themselves a little! Here
is this sum of money, inherited by this incredible fool who
wants to spend it on being talked about. Why should not we
elect him Mayor when the elections come on? No Party but
our Party would bother with such a catspaw. But that's just
why we must win in the end. Because we despise no means!

The Conservatives of course will oppose him. But the Liberals
and Labour men will support us if we take a strong lead. That's
the great thing; to take a strong, clear lead! Half the Town
Council are sick to death of Wollop. He's been Mayor of Glaston-
bury so long that everyone wants a change. The drinking men
would all vote for Bloody Johnny, just for the sport of it and to
stir things up. All the Nonconformists would vote for him. Crow
hates the mere thought of the fellow. Crow will get angry and
say wild things and make some howling blunder; and then the
Town Council, with our Party in the background, will have Glas-
tonbury in their--"

It was clear to Mr. Evans, who had begun at last to grow seri-
ously interested in this discourse when he realized how closely it
concerned "his relative, Mr. Geard" that the meeting had called
the speaker to order and shouted him down. Some other voice
was speaking now in cold, low, sarcastic tones. Evans caught the
words "personal ambition," "fancy scheme," "fairy-tale poppy-
cock," "wasting the Party's funds," "Menshevik-claptrap." He
even imagined he heard the name of "Crummie" coupled with a
very gross epithet. The Quarterly Meeting evidently regarded it-
self as free from eavesdroppers and was permitting its speak-
ers untrammelled licence. After a while Red Robinson's voice
was audible again. Evans had met him once at the Geards' and
was sure he was not mistaken as to his identity.

This time it was clear that the cockney orator was trying to
carry the day by an emotional appeal. "We shall never have such
a chance again, Comrades," he was saying. "Geard is a fool but
Geard has a good heart. By electing Geard as Mayor we shall be
electing ourselves into the power behind the throne. And what
could we not achieve then? Away with all these mediaeval super-
stitions! Away with all these pious Pilgrimages! Glastonbury is.
only one town among other towns. There's nothing wonderful
about Glastonbury but the health and freedom and happiness of
its men, its women, its children! While this fellow Crow exploits
the natural resources to his own profit, and while our bourgeois
tradesmen exploit all this mediaeval superstition to their profit,
what becomes of the real men and women, able-bodied Somer-
setshire men and comely Somersetshire women? They can't afford
meat or butter! They can't afford fresh eggs! Their children are
underfed. Look at them, Comrades! Look at the children in Beck-
ery and Bove Town. Look at the children in Benignus Alley! and
Paradise! There you have the whole issue! On the one hand Crow
and Wollop exploiting the people's bodies; on the other these
pious mountebanks exploiting their souls! And all these fine
bourgeois gentry, Lawyer Beere, Doctor Fell, Parson Dekker and
so on; and old Wollop the worst of all; what are they doing?
They are burning toy candles to the 'oly Grail! Yes, they are
burning incense while women and children haven't enough to
eat!

I tell you, Comrades, Geard is our man. I've talked to him al-
ready...I have already...I needn't go into that...though the
Comrade from Wells did use insulting language I scorn to an-
swer him....I have already a certain influence over Geard
through his favorite daughter....I've already made Geard see
the light upon many economic points...I have already made
Geard open his mind to many bourgeois tricks. Geard has had
the working-class mentality opened up to him. It is the Com-
rade from Wells, not I, who has departed from the Party's prin-
ciples in his abuse of me and Geard. The time has come for
real action. The election of the Mayor comes on in a few weeks.
We can't elect one of ourselves Mayor. The Comrade from
Wells knows that perfectly well. But we could elect Geard; and
then work the Council through Geard. My plan is not a wild-
goose plan; it's a carefully thought-out scheme based upon
psychology . That is the reason, no doubt, why the Comrade
from Wells found it so hard to understand!"

Mr. Evans heard uproarious laughter and applause as the
speaker ceased. It was evident that that finai hit at the opposition
was very popular with the Comrades. He himself sneezed vio-
lently at this point and the sound must have ascended to the room
above, raising the disturbing question as to their conclave hav-
ing been overheard. After a profound silence he heard the sound
of steps descending the stairs and there were whispers outside
his door. In order to make clear to the whisperers that he knew
what they were up to, Mr. Evans began clattering with his fire-
irons among the cold ashes of his grate. No sooner had he done
this than the steps receded up the stairs again. All subsequent
discussions in the room above were henceforth quite inaudible
and it was not long before the Quarterly Meeting broke up.

When Mr. Evans was at length in bed, with the little table and
one of his two candles convenient to his hand, he proceeded,
while he smoked his final cigarette, to take stock of what he had
overheard. "I shall tell Cordelia all they are plotting," he said to
himself. "But I don't see why they shouldn't elect my relative
Mayor. I think he would make a very good Mayor." And before
the Welshman's mind, as he squeezed out the fiery embers of his
cigarette on a broken china saucer that he had brought up from
the shop below, there floated an exciting dream of a communistic
Glastonbury, presided over by his relative Geard; a Glastonbury
in which he himself would play a sort of court-magician part and
with Cordelia--that free spirit of the Cymric race--inaugurating
the laws and regulations! As he finally turned over to the wall
and shut his eyes, he felt happier, thinking of this, than he had
felt for many a long "week. "If these working-men decide upon
this," he thought, "I suppose it'll really happen. I wonder whether
it's the Town Council, or the Church, or the Government that
gives a person leave to excavate?" He saw himself possessed
of John Crow's hazel-stick with its queer root-handle. He remem-
bered how John had assured him that with such a stick a person
could find anything buried in the earth.

"Hie jacet Artur us...Hie jacet...Artur us...Hie jacet...hie..."



CARBONEK



TWO OR THREE DAYS AFTER THE QUARTERLY MEETING ABOVE
Old Jones' shop, the Bove Town robber band, that is to say
Captain Jackie and his infantile followers, were deploying, if
such a word may be used for the movements of so diminutive
a troop, in loose marching order up the narrow Godney Road.
They had left all the decent houses far behind when they de-
bouched from the Wells Road. They had long ago passed the
drive-gates of The Elms where Philip Crow' lived. They vrere
now on the edge of what was called Common Moor and were not
far from Backwear Farm which is the site of the British Lake
Village. The road they followed did not carry much traffic along
its hard, tarred surface; but the weather was so warm that the
robber band was exhausted. The air would have been dusty if
the road had not been so polished and so hard, but wherever the
brown earth showed between the clumps of rough grass by the
roadside it was dry and sapless and unsympathetic and depress-
ing. The day was one of those early Spring days that for some
mysterious reason, very hard to analyse, are felt to be ill-omened
and unpleasant. Something was certainly wrong with this day!
All animal nerves felt it. All human nerves felt it. All living
things were irritable, restless, disturbed; sick without being sick;
sad without being sad; annoyed without any apparent cause for
annoyance!

Sis was already carrying Bert on her back. "Plo-chuck...plo-
chuck..." went her sturdy legs, under the weight of the com-
placent and impervious infant. Nelly and Jackie were a little
in advance; but even they were walking in single file, silent and
grim. Nothing but the indomitable will of Captain Jackie could
have kept this exhausted cortege on the move; or brought it so
far afield on that nervous, touchy, irritable March afternoon.

At last they came to a standstill by a low, ancient, broken iron
railing which separated an object from the Godney Road. This
object could hardly be called a house. It was a tiny, little, stucco
building of two storeys, each with two windows, one looking
towards the road and one looking away from the road. The stucco
was of a whitish-yellowish colour and was peeling off. It was
stained here and there, too, with stains of a rusty brown. Only
an expert in the decline of material substance under weather
invasions could have interpreted these stains. They were not
lichen. They were not moss. They looked like rusty blood; but
they could not have really been blood; for no one would have
thrown blood against the wall of a house eight or nine feet from
the ground? Weather stains they obviously were, of chemical
origin; but this did not lessen the strangeness of the fact that
these rusty stains upon this stucco house had seen fit to assume
the surprising shape of a map of North and South America.

On the left-hand side of this tiny house was an open shed, one
portion of which served as the roosting-place for half a dozen
white fowls who were now wandering in the adjoining field.

At the back of the house was one of those large dykes or rhynes
on the edge of which grew three pollarded willows; and between
this little stream and the back door of the one single ground-floor
room there was a small vegetable garden, the leafy promise of
which was a good deal further advanced above the loamy clay
than in either of the grand bourgeois gardens tended by Mr.
Weather wax.

Seated in his shed, sharpening a faggot of sticks for the support
of his young peas, crouched the owner of Backwear Hut, a very
old man called Abel Twig.

No sooner did Jackie catch sight of Mr. Twig than he caused
his lieutenant Nelly to proclaim a halt.

It was not difficult to obtain obedience to this command, so
exhausted was the main body of the Alley Gang; and Bert, slip-
ping like a sack of flour from the back of Sis, was soon propped
up against the iron railings, through which his round eyes stared
in wonder at the map of North and South America.

The small hands of Jackie, Nelly and Sis clung in a row to the
topmost railing of Mr. Twig's sole line of defense while the hat-
less heads of Jackie, Nelly, and Sis looked down in unabashed
curiosity upon the interior of Mr. Twig's shed.

"Hullo!" cried Jackie in a shrill voice. "Hullo, Number One!"

In every town of the size of Glastonbury there are produced
by great creative Nature certain laughing-stocks, or butts of de-
rision, for the amusement of the rabble. Old Jones of the An-
tiquity Shop--now in the local hospital--and Old Twig, now be-
fore us in his shed, were the butts of Glastonbury. Thev were
bosom cronies, these two old men, and not a child in the poorer
district but had not at one time or other followed these queer ones
down the street mocking and shouting. They were always called
Number One and Number Two; and so widely spread were these
nicknames that in some of the bewildered heads of the contempo-
raries of Young Bert the two great excretory functions of our
poor animal organism, so prominent in children's lives, were
confusedly associated with these venerable old persons.

"Hullo, Number One!" repeated Jackie.

"Number Two be in Orspital!" echoed Nelly.

"Bert wants a glass o' water, Bert do," added Sis in a less com-
bative voice.

"What did I tell 'ee, eh? What did I tell 'ee, ye young sca-
mooches? I told 'ee yesternight I'd set Bumboggle at ye if ye
came again. Hi there! Good dog! Hi there! Hi there, Bumboggle!
Hi! Bumboggle! Ye girt sleepy beast! Come and eat up these
three impidents!"

Captain Jackie did not budge. Lieutenant Nelly did not flinch.
It is impossible, however, to conceal the fact that after this alarm-
ing invocation there were only five little hands clutching the rail-
ings. Sis, concerned for Bert, had thrown one arm round her
small brother's neck. Bert himself, however, to the honour of the
Alley Gang, replied to the challenge in a momentous sentence.

"I baint afeard o' no fancy dogs, I baint."

"Bert wants a glass o' water, Number One, Bert do!" repeated
Sis in a singsong monotone.

"Oh, he does, does he?" growled Old Twig. "I'll water him.
I'll firk him! I'll ferret him! Oh, he does, does he?"

Talking to himself all the time in the manner of a ferocious
ogre, Old Twig got up and retired into that square object which
went by the name of Backwear Hut. He returned almost imme-
diately with a tin cup, full of water, which he handed to Bert
between the railings, not relinquishing it himself, but tilting it
up, while the child drank long and deep. No sooner had the old
man returned to his shed and his task of whittling his pea-sticks
than Nelly lifted up her high-pitched voice.

"Tell us some more about they funny men what lived in Lake
Village in your grand-dad's time."

Muttering and chuckling the old man moved up to the railings
and leaning over tried to lift Bert across. But Bert, far too heavy
for him, was already pushing himself under the lowest bar. The
three 'older children were now scrambling over the top of the
railings; and in about three minutes after their first "Hullo" they
were all seated at Old Twig's feet in the front of his shed listening
spellbound to what he was saying.

"'Twould be in me wone field," he began, "this here Lake
Village if all had their rights. Grand-dad sold 'un to Lawyer
Beere's father and Lawyer Beere's father sold 'un to Mr. Crow up
at Elms, and Mr. Crow, they say, is goin' to turn sheep out and
make it a visitors' field. He've a-brought one party here already
this season and so have Mr. Barter. Other folks say he be going to
turn this wold field into one of they landings for airboats. If this
be true 'twill be terrible disturbing for them old ghosties in Lake
Village."

"Have you ever seed one of they funny men's ghosties, Mr,
Twig?" enquired Sis.

"Don't interrupt, Sis!" cried Nelly. "Number One ain't begun
his story yet! His story ain't about Mr. Crow."

"It ain't about any of the like of us," echoed Captain Jackie,
taking the cue from his lieutenant. "'Tis about they old men
theyselves."

"Be I telling this 'ere tale or be ye telling this 'ere tale?" said
Abel Twig. It dawned upon him rather sadly that his listeners en-
visaged the ancient heroes of Lake Village as so many feeble
replicas of Number One.

"Bert be a good boy, Bert be!" ejaculated irrelevantly the
owner of that name.

"When I tell this 'ere tale to Bumboggle," said Mr. Twig,
"Bumboggle do prick his girt ears and say nothink."

There was a complete silence among the Alley Gang at this,
and Old Twig went on.

"'Twas years and years afore King Arthur that they Ancient
British funny men lived in Lake Milage. Them funny men were
terrible feared of beasties in they days, beasties as big as my
house."

"Your house baint as big as my mummie's be," interrupted
Jackie.

"Number One's house be a very nice house," threw in Sis. evi-
dently feeling for a second as if Mr. Twig were a larger edition
of Bert.

"Were it afore your grand-dad sold thik field that they Ancient
Britons lived in they reed-houses?"

Nelly looked with astonishment at her gallant captain when he
made this unintelligent remark. She began to recognise, as many
romantic young women have been forced to do before, that high
military achievement is compatible with very crude historical
perspective.

But Mr. Twig was rather pleased than otherwise at this refer-
ence to his grandfather's hasty disposal of landed property.

" 'Twere a little while afore poor old Grand-dad s days," he
said, "that they Ancient British lived."

"Bert's got pins and needles," said Sis. "He be waggling wi'
his foot."

"Sit ride-a-cock on Number One's knee!" rejoined Old Twig,
placing the little boy upon one of his thin legs.

Seated solemn and erect, without moving an eyelid, Bert con-
templated the countenance of his host while Sis began rubbing
the child's instep.

A faint smile flickered over the little boy's face.

"Bert be pee-ing his trowsies," cried Sis with concern.

"No, I baint," retorted the infant indignantly.

"Why did yer look like that then?" argued his sister.

The child got very red and said nothing.

"You be," the girl reiterated.

"I baint," shrilled the youngster. And driven by the injustice
of the world to break his own rule of politeness--"He be like
Guy Fawkes!" he brought out, while the corners of his mouth
went down.

It was an unusual event for Bert to smile; it was no less than
a historic event for him to show signs of tears. Sis lifted him
from the old man's knee, took him upon her own little lap and
hugged him against her sturdy frame.

"There was one of they funny men in them times," went on the
old man hurriedly, "who killed a girt beastie wi' a flint arrow.
Thik beastie was called Giant What's-his-name on account of his
name bein' so hard to say; but when the funny man killed it he
took off all its skin and made a fire and his sister, who was his
wife too, cooked thik girt beastie."

Bert lifted up his head at this exciting point.

"Sis be Bert's wife," he remarked with intense gravity.

Sis slapped him sharply and turned reproachfully to Mr. Twig.

"Those times baint our times," she protested.

"I wish I lived in those times!" cried Nelly with flashing eyes.
"I'd have helped Jackie to shoot thik girt beast. I'd have carried
a bundle of they flinties!"

"My grand-dad's field what he sold to wold Lawyer Beere
baint the only field he had. Yon field, over thik dyke, were his'n,
and it be mine today."

Into this chorus of boastings it was natural enough that Cap-
tain Jackie should fling his contribution.

"When Mr. Barter do fly from this here Lake Village 'twon't
be with any ghosty, 'twill be wi' I!"

The whole robber band regarded their leader with wonder-
ing awe.

"I'll be there to wave to 'ee!" cried Nelly. "And I'll throw sum-
mat at 'ee, maybe, for luck!"

"Will you fly above your mother's chimney, Jackie?" enquired
Sis.

"Sis be Bert's airship," remarked the wide-eyed infant, glanc-
ing obstinately at his sister in full expectation of being slapped
again.

But it was old Twig, not Sis, who broke up this happy colloquy.
He suddenly clapped his hand to his head and beat on his hard
skull.

"Oh, the duck-a-duck!" he cried. "In sense! Out foolishness!"
And still beating his old pate he set himself to run with sham-
bling gait into Backwear Hut and up the single flight of stairs.

"Be off! Be off! B'off! Quick! Quick! If ye love Old Twig the
price of a bright penny, be off! Out of here! Afore they come!"

These remarks were addressed to the robber band from the
upper window of Back wear Hut, out of which the old man's with-
ered neck and grizzled head protruded.

It was clear that Captain Jackie was seized with panic--the
bravest are subject to such emotions once or twice in their lives--
for forgetting entirely about his little army he scrambled at top
speed over the railings and bolted up the road in the opposite
direction from the town. It was then that the heart of the band's
fiery lieutenant was torn in two; for while both fear and love
urged her to follow Jackie, an impulse in her girl's breast stronger
than fear and love constrained her to help Sis get Bert out of the
shed and over the railings. Then, however, she waited not a sec-
ond, but followed her lord on flying feet!

Poor Sis! The stolid little lass suffered a most evil moment, as
under the eyes of the frantic old man leaning out of the window
she tried in vain to get the panic-stricken Bert to mount upon her
back. Desperately she propped him up upon the lowest bar of the
railings and, turning round, clutched wildly at his legs. Each time
she seized his legs he toppled back against the railings. In vain
she lost her temper. In vain she slapped him. The panic of Jackie
and Nelly, the old man's frightened voice out of the window, her
own unusual agitation, quite broke down the philosophy of Bert.
The little boy, for the first time since he was two years old, burst
into a howl of desolate crying.

Two events now occurred simultaneously, while Sis, on her
knees by the blubbering child, soothed him with words and car
resses. The old man withdrew from the window, stumbled down-
stairs and rushed into the road. At the same moment two
extremely neat young ladies, both in elegant black, one with a
blue ribbon round her neck, and the other with a pink ribbon,
advancing side by side from the direction of the town, arrived at
Mr. Twig's gate.

They surveyed the sobbing Bert, who was making up for the
rarity of his departure from philosophic calm by his difficulty in
regaining it, with aloof distaste. This was the sort of thing that
both Louie and Lily Rogers--for such they were--had become
handmaidens to escape. The mere sight of Sis and Bert brought
back vividly to their minds their own early experiences. They
edged away from the little girl and the little boy and one of them
began fumbling rather nervously with the dilapidated latch of the
still more dilapidated gate. This gate had not, as a matter of fact,
been opened for years--perhaps not since the death of Mr. Twig's
grand-dad--and it became apparent to Louie, for in Miss Drew's
absence no human creature addressed her or thought of her as
"Rogers," that whatever entrance or exit Uncle Abel may have
possessed this rusty gate was not it.

Meanwhile Uncle Abel himself, full of the most obsequious
apologies, had appeared upon the scene and was now hovering
like the bewildered physician at Dunsinane, between the mental
trouble of one claimant on his attention and the physical impasse
of the other.

"'Tis here, my dears! 'Tis here I steps over," he cried, waving
to his dainty nieces to follow him and hurrying along the edge of
his domain till he reached a place where the top rail was non-
existent. "Here's the place, my precious ducks, 'tis only to lift
your pretty skirts a trifle so's not to get rust on 'en. 'Tis here, 'tis
here, my sweethearts! Up she goes, and over the hurdle! Here!
'Tis here I goes in and out!"

But the two elegant creatures--for they were really good-
hearted girls--had both of them by this time drifted up to where
Sis knelt by the prostrate Bert. The philosopher's sobs were over,
but his deep shame remained; and this emotion, as often happens
with wise men who have been unwise, displayed itself in irra-
tional anger towards his nearest and dearest. Bert, lying on his
face in the grass, kicked obstreperously every time Sis touched
him. Matters were further complicated at this moment by the re-
turn of Jackie and Nelly. Nelly in a moment jerked Bert upon
his feet; and once in a perpendicular position the child's interest
in the surprising scene around him made him forget his disgrace.

"Who are these children, Uncle?" enquired Louie of Mr. Twig.

"Hadn't you better be taking that little boy home to his mother,
child?" said Lily to Sis.

"'Tis Grannie," replied Sis. "Mother be dead and buried."

Abel Twig was now scrutinising with sly interest a paper bag
carried by Lily. The girls were accustomed to bring him some
casual token of Mr. Weatherwax's activity and it presented itself
very strongly to his mind that here was a providential chance of
getting rid of the children.

So he spoke up. "They be good children, they be, my rosebuds.
'Twere the sight of such good children, walking quietly along
road, while their decent mothers cleaned house, that made Uncle
Abel call 'em in. But now be time for ye all"--he turned to Sis
as being the one among the group who was most grown-up--"to
begin traipsin' home-along."

He gave Lily, who carried the paper bag, a little twitch of the
sleeve and pulled her a few steps aside.

"Have 'ee brought some o' they sweet apples what old Weath-
erwax do keep so long in hayloft?" he whispered craftily. "If 'ee
have brought they, I be terrible thirsty for 'en. Me stummick be
watering to get me teeth into 'en--them nice little firm sweet
fruities. Poor old Uncle have a girt fancy to taste, now and quick,
what his pretty nieces have brought to he in thik little bag."

"Of course. Uncle Abel," said Lily sweetly. "You shall have
them at once. There! I haven't had my kiss yet," and she touched
his bristly cheeks with her lips. "Of course they are all for you!
Eat them, keep them, cook them They're yours entirely! Louie and
I brought them for you with our love."

She gladly enough handed the paper bag over to him and
smoothed out with her cream-coloured, neatly gloved fingers the
ruffled front of her black dress.

Once in possession of this great bag of Hesperidean fruit the
astute owner of Backwear Hut felt himself to be master of the
situation. He took out five beautiful apples, one by one, and
began munching with hurried bites, though not without difficulty,
for his teeth were few, the first of these. The other four with a
cunning leer he handed over to Captain Jackie.

"These apples," he said, "what these young ladies have brought
be the cause why them funny men, what I tell 'ee of, called our
town Avallonia which be ancient British for orchard." Here the
wily old man addressed himself to Lieutenant Nelly. "Ye be a
robber band, ye be, same as they fierce invaders what plundered
poor old King Avallach. These apples be rich plunder. Robber
bands do march, robber bands do, slow and quiet, carrying their
plunder, till they be round thik corner of road; then they do eat
what they've taken from frightened natives!"

He had said quite enough. Without a second's hesitation, in the
most resolute order and in profound silence, the four children
went off hand in hand along the footpath by the roadside in the
direction of home.

Louie and Lily, now safely inside the railings, watched with
wonder the surprising exhibition of discipline in this well-exe-
cuted retreat. When the four were near the twist of the road
which would take them out of sight, they saw Jackie turn and give
one hurried glance round. He then began running. He was fol-
lowed by Nelly first, then by Sis who carried Bert like a bundle
of something precious and heavy, hugged against her body.

As if ashamed of their prolonged observation of this ragamuffin
crew, Louie and Lily now devoted themselves to being as ladylike
and patronising as they could to their eccentric uncle. They were,
however, so attached to the old man that it was not long before
they were unburdening their bosoms of a thousand intimate
troubles, triumphs and grievances. It appeared they were due in
an hour's time to take tea with Emma, the confidential servant of
Tilly Crow T; and much that they had to relate had to do with the
Philip Crow establishment.

Uncle Abel on his part had a good deal to say about the recent
experiences of his ancient crony and ally, Old Jones, in his ward
in the hospital. To anything concerning the hospital both the
girls lent a curious ear, Louie being especially interested in the
culinary economies, which were notoriously generous in this in-
stitution, while Lily kept enquiring about the bed-covers, the
linen-chests, the nurses' caps, the doctors' white coats, the slippery
floors; and whether it was from Miss Bibby Fell's daffodil-beds,
or Mrs. Crow's conservatory, or Mayor Wollop's greenhouse, that
the best gifts of flowers were received.

"Emma says that poor Mrs. Crow is very concerned about all
this flying," observed Louie.

"Yes," threw in Lily, who being the younger was more roman*
tic than the buxom cook and if possible more ladylike, "yes,
Emma says that the mistress cries her poor self to sleep night
after night thinking of all the money they're spending."

"But they be rich, baint they?" commented Number One, think-
ing to himself, "I be a wonderful comfortable man--I be! I
baint one for envying they rich." And full of complacency the
old man surveyed the tops of the budding willow trees, the brown
and white back of the cow Betsy and these two gracious visitors
seated side by side on his kitchen chairs.

"Emma says," went on Louie, whose character it was to give
the practical details of life their due proportion, leaving to the
more pensive and more romantic Lily the psychological aura of
the events under discussion, "that Mr. Crow made certain he was
going to have all Canon Crow's money; and that he's been spend-
ing more than he could afford on Wookey Hole alone."

"He likes electrifying things," murmured Lily dreamily. "They
tell about the Wookey Hole witch up in Wells. Do you remember,
Louie, what that woman said when we were out there on choir-
treat day, how that she'd once been down there, where those
stalagmites and stalactites grow, and that she ran out in hysterics,
thinking she saw the witch?"

"It's this flying he's started on now," went on Louie, holding
the topic resolutely down to facts, "that's the main trouble. Of
course on the top of his well-known electric schemes it does mean
a very considerable expenditure."

As she uttered this judicial remark Louie crossed her knees, as
if her neat shoes were resting upon an embroidered footstool in-
stead of upon Number One's brick floor, and folding her gloved
hands over her knees she began rubbing her right hard very
slowly over her left hand.

It must have been with this precise gesture, with these exact
words, and with this identical intonation combined with a frown-
ing glance given to some remote object--in the present case, alas!
to nothing more dignified than Number One's swill-pail, turned
upside down--that Miss Euphemia Drew had received the town
gossip about Philip Crow's financial state.

"Who was that wild-looking child you had here just now.
Uncle?" enquired Louie, dropping her Miss Drew airs.

"Eh? Who? Which on 'em do you mean?" muttered the old
man with startled embarrassment. He had been secretly hoping
that no more would be said about his previous visitors.

"The thin little girl, with great black eyes, and her hair all un-
combed, and her clothes so dirty."

"As far as I knows that be Nelly," replied Abel Twig.

"But Nelly what, Uncle?" insisted Louie. "She must have a
surname."

"I talked to my friend Jones in hospital about Nelly," con-
fessed the old man reluctantly. "I told him all about she, and
how she went round with Jackie Jones and Sis Cole; and he did
say that her mother's name was Morgan. So I suppose--though,
mind ye, I baint sure--that her name be similarwise." He was
silent and then muttered under his breath, "Morgan, Nelly Mor-
gan, Eleanor Morgan," as if he were wondering how to give to
these syllables some special rhythmic secret. At the name "Mor-
gan" he was surprised to notice the two sisters exchanging a
swift, significant glance. Louie actually nodded at Lily, as who
should say, "You see! That's just what would happen, that that
child, of all children, should be picked up by Uncle!"

Full of greater fear than ever, after he had caught this inter-
change of glances, that by continuing the topic he should bring
harm in some way upon his little friend, Number One hurriedly
went on.

"I expect Nelly's name isn't Morgan at all. No...no. When
I come to think of it, Number--I mean my friend Jones--was
sure it wasn't! Jackie calls she Nelly. Sis calls she Nelly. There
be many well-thought-on women in the world what have only one
name." Number One racked his brains to think of some of these
famous monosyllabic females. At last his face lit up. He recalled
his grand-dad's Lake Village. "The Lady of the Lake," he cried
triumphantly, "had only?" He stopped in dismay; for there
came into his head a conversation with old Mr. Merry, the Cura-
tor of the Glastonbury Museum, from whom he had sought to get
information about his grandfather's historic field. This authority
had told him that the real Lady of the Lake was none other than
Morgan Le Fay, the very ambiguous sister of King Arthur!

"It's Nelly Morgan that was here with Jackie Jones and Sis
Cole," said Louie with decision. "You've let your kind heart run
away with you again, Uncle. It s lucky no one but Lily and me
knows about this. But we've told you now and you do know, so
you can act according."

"What be talking about, me pretty?" stammered Uncle Abel.

Lily meanwhile had assumed a sad, poetic expression. "What he
feels, 'tis strange to think," she interrupted dreamily, "as he lies
pondering on a poor betrayed girl, and on a little child who be-
longs to him and yet doesn't belong to him."

"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Louie. "All he thinks about is
electricity and flying machines and asking Mayor Wollop to drop
in to dinner. He doesn't think of anyone's feelings."

"Will it be best to tell Emma about that child being with
Jackie and Sis; and about her having been in Uncle's house?"
Lily put into this question as much dramatic gravity as if she
were taking a personal part in some great cause celebre.

Louie knitted her brows in solemn consideration.

"It will be wisest," she replied, in the very manner of Eu-
phemia Drew, "to leave what we say till we see how things ar-
range themselves. I would not like to upset Emma; and it might
make it harder for Emma too, if she knew what Mrs. Crow
didn't know."

Number One could stand all this no longer. His awe of his
nieces broke down completely under the pressure of his mental
bewilderment. He rose up from his chair. "What the holy terror,"
he cried, "are you gals gabbling about?"

Lily's expression was a masterpiece of refined protest, senti-
mental relish for the whole situation, and an irresistible desire to
be the one permitted to tell him all.

But she was not that one; for that one was Louie.

"Don't get agitated, you poor darling, and do please sit down.
It's all very dreadful"--the intonation of Miss Drew was mingled
here with a vague mimicry of certain lady-visitors--"but we must
be as collected and sensible as we can. The truth is that Emma
has found out a very unhappy story. It appears"--here Louie
took breath and fidgetted in a modest manner with her ribbon--
"that Mr. Crow misconducted himself some eight years ago with
Jenny Morgan. Jenny seems to have forgotten herself completely
and the result was that she had a baby."

The style in which Louie delivered herself of this grand climax
was, it is needless to point out, entirely her own. No one but
Louie would have used that derogatory and indeed disagreeable
word "misconducted." No one but Louie would have used the
expression "forgot herself" for the normal lapse from the vir-
ginal state.

"Jenny has taken to drink," Louie went on, "since then, but she
works for the child. She couldn't bring herself to dispose of the
child. She used to hear such terrible things of those institutions.
Emma thinks he sends her a little money every second Wednes-
day. Emma knows he always goes to the Post Office on that day.
That's what Emma thinks , mind you,--that he sends her a little
regularly. Emma doesn't know for certain whether he does or not,
but she is almost sure he does."

Number One's countenance had begun to beam with relief and
satisfaction. He had feared he knew not what; and now to learn
that all this agitation was only about Nelly's illegitimacy com-
pletely reassured him.

"Nelly Morgan," he repeated cheerfully. And then, thinking of
the Curator's words, "Morgan Nelly," he added.

"Mr. Crow isn't altogether a wicked man," threw in Lily. "He
is a strange man though. I believe he lives a wild life unknown
to the world." Her voice sank and ceased. She looked away into
the distance, far away beyond the pollarded willows. A skilful
observer might have read in her face that she felt that shame and
even desertion would not have been without their own melancholy
compensations if it had been her lot, in place of Jenny Morgan,
to "forget herself" with so Byronic a seducer as Philip Crow.

Number One, who had quite recovered his spirits since he had
learned that his elegant nieces had nothing against Jackie's lieu-
tenant except her birth, suggested now that before they left Back-
wear Hut they should see his "garden."

In pursuance of this design he led the way through his back
door, past the post to which Betsy was tethered, till he reached
a little square plot surrounded by a low, whitewashed fence.
Here were several rows of young peas and scarlet-runners and
one row of freshly sprouting celery. But at the corner of the
garden--a reserved space of about a square yard--waved in the
warm air a fragrant patch of pheasant-eyed narcissus. Number
One clicked open a little toy gate into his garden and stepping
carefully over the young vegetables picked with reckless impetu-
osity at least half of these lotus-scented flowers. These he divided
into two bouquets of exactly the same size; and when, after a few
affectionate good-byes--for Louie and Lily felt very protective
to their only male relation--the girls went off, up Godney Road
to where it joined Wells Road, these white flowers, pinned on
their black dresses and matching most felicitously their black and
white Easter hats, gave them a really charming appearance.

It must have been about an hour later that the discreet Emma
was serving tea in her immaculate kitchen to these pretty wearers
of Abel Twig's nosegays. Emma was also dressed in black but
over her dress she wore a spotless white apron and upon her
head, the most carefully brushed and tidied head in Glastonbury
she wore an old-fashioned cap trimmed with handmade lace.

Emma, unlike her visitors, had never made any attempt to copy
her mistress' manners or speech. Emma's manners were digni-
fied, but they were those of one, who as she always expressed it,
"knew her place," and her speech was as local as a Mendip
quarry. She was the kind of servant who in place of losing her-
self in her employer's fortunes or way of life made of those
things the background for her own resolute character. The char-
acter of Emma was not eccentric like that of Penny Pitches.
Emma detested eccentricity. She was no worshipper of the aris-
tocracy either, like Red Robinson's mother. What she really was
was a strict Professional; and her Profession was that of the
Perfect Servant. In Tilly Crow she had found what she con-
sidered to be the Perfect Mistress. Mrs. Philip's deplorable lim-
itations, obvious to all the rest of the world, were not limitations
at all to Emma. They were virtues high and rare; and for the
sake of these virtues she was as devoted to this neurotic and shrew-
ish recluse as any old-fashioned lawyer's clerk was ever devoted
to a narrow-minded, pettifogging scrivener.

In this great turbulent universe, wherein ships at sea, certain
farms on land, certain soldiers' camps, certain outposts of civili-
sation, conducted under scrupulous authority, become oases of
order in the midst of chaos, the miniature polity entitled The
Elms, ruled over by Emma and Tilly Crow, was in its own way
almost without rival. The kitchen tea-party which was now pro-
ceeding would have been as much disturbed by the presence of
any of the "gentry"' who were contemporaneously taking tea in
Tilly's drawing-room as any of Tilly's guests would have been
had Emma, in place of answering the bell, sat down on the sofa
beside her mistress. But the domestic ritual in the drawing-room
under the rule of Mrs. Philip was no less punctilious than the
ritual in Mrs. Philip's kitchen under the rule of Emma; and be-
tween these two women, on this nice professional point, there
was a uniformity of opinion too deep to be expressed in words.
Their mutual ideal was, as a matter of fact, as different from the
aristocratic way of taking things as it was different from the pro-
letarian way, or from the easy-going, lower-middle-class way of
Mr. and Mrs. Geard. It was upper-middle-class. And not for
nothing does one note that it has been from houses conducted
under the Emmas and the Tillys of life that such characteristically
English characters as Charles Darwin and Horatio Nelson have
projected their world-shaping opinions and their heroic deeds.
Indeed it might with justice be said that two oases of perfect
order and peace, and two alone, existed in Glastonbury at that
epoch--the draper's shop of Mr. Wollop, the Mayor, and the
home of Tilly Crow! Outside these harbours of tenoned and mor-
tised security everything ebbed and flowed. These were, so to
speak, the Parmenidean rafts of stillness in the Heraclitean flux
of Glastonbury life.

The lights had been lit in both drawing-room and kitchen be-
fore the visitors departed. In other houses they would not have
been lit! In other houses people would have been too absorbed
in talk, too enamoured of the twilight, to have sent for lamps and
candles, or thought of closing shutters, drawing curtains, pulling
down blinds! This closing out of the twilight was indeed a char-
acteristic Norfolk habit. The great green curtains in Northwold
Rectory were always drawn close, had been drawn close for years,
when twilight began. So no doubt had the old Vikings, when they
landed at Wick, gathered round their bivouac fires and turned
their backs to the ghostly Druidic light lingering in the west!
This closing of the shutters at The Elms was in fact a Norse cus-
tom. All the West-Country servants hated it, except Emma, whose
own people in their high Mendip farms, had practised the same
habit.

Tilly Crow's guests were William Zoyland, who tonight was to
be transported to Wookey Hole in Mr. Barter's airplane, and
Dave and Persephone Spear, who had arrived that morning from
Bristol and had taken lodgings in High Street.

William Zoyland rather enjoyed the thought of a couple of
months' showmanship in Wookey Hole. A descendant of a long
line of attendants upon kings, there was nothing unpleasant or
undignified to Will in the office of lord chamberlain to a subter-
ranean river. Yet another cause of the delicious feeling of well-
being that flowed through him at this moment was the frank and
shameless delight he took in the society of the dark-haired girl
now occupied in amusing their hostess. The man he was talking
to was Nell's half-brother; so he had every justification in treat-
ing the husband as cavalierly and the wife as gallantly as he
pleased. There was indeed something piquant about keeping up
a conservative argument with a passionate enemy of society
while at the same time he played the courtier with his opponent's
lady. The more deeply he got entangled in argument with Dave
the more frankly unashamed were the glances of admiration
which he bestowed upon Persephone. He experienced at this mo-
ment a feeling as if, with that firelight warming his great limbs
and the boyish hips of this curly-haired girl warming his proud
soul, there was nothing in heaven or hell he wouldn't enjoy
facing! If this cropped skull and patient eyes opposite him were
to condemn him to the guillotine at dawn as a cumberer of the
earth--he'd still be happy. If this enchanting girl would slip into
his bedroom tonight, undress before his eyes, and be off before
he touched her--he'd still be happy. If he knew he were to be
compelled that very evening to eat a basketful of otter's dung
while Sam Dekker embraced Nell before his eyes and they both
mocked at him--he'd still be happy.

"There's something almost awful," he said to himself, using
those exact words, "about my power of enjoyment. I believe I
could enjoy smelling a bunch of violets if I were on the rack.'
He began lazily throwing into his retorts to Dave's careful logic
a little spice of this savage aplomb; and as his roving blue eyes
caught the fact that the treacherous girl was listening, and even
encouraging him, they commenced to darken in the candlelight
with feline zest. But the sense of having carried the proletarian
gonfalon into the very heart of the enemy's camp was inspiring
Dave Spear that evening beyond his wont, and it was not long
before both of the women, as well as the life-loving adventurer,
were gazing at him in reluctant respect. It was when he dropped
his logic and became oracular that this crop-headed, prosaic
young man swept the field.

"Nature is on our side," he was saying, "and the dark, blind,
non-moral creative tidal wave. The inarticulate masses of man-
kind are only beginning to wake up. The millions of the Orient
are only beginning to wake up. We use reason and we are pre-
pared to use force without a shred of compunction. But in reality
we are only the ‘mediums' of destiny. Communism is the destined
next phase of evolutionary, planetary life. Nothing can stop it.
That is why the stupidest, the silliest, the clumsiest among us has
something that you vainglorious individualists completely lack.
We are the still, small voice of the next phase. We may be un-
imaginative, undistinguished, lacking in all sense of humour. We
may even be inhuman. We can afford to be what no one else can
afford to be; for the simple reason that we are the solidifying of
the intention of evolution

While this argument was going on in the most perfect of upper-
middle-class drawing-rooms, in the equally perfect kitchen a
somewhat similar discussion was proceeding. Destiny found its
voice here, however, in the dreamy, sentimental utterances of
Lily Rogers. Louie and Emma both strongly upheld the view that
the longer the existence of Nelly Morgan was kept secret from
Mrs. Crow the better it would be for all. Lily, on the other hand,
advanced the startling and disturbing doctrine that "since things
which are hid are fated to become known, and things which are
dark are fated to be made clear"--this was the girl's own phrase-
ology--"it would be kinder to make Mrs. Crow acquainted with
the sad truth." This "kindness" presented itself to the temporis-
ing, Mendip-bred mind of Emma Sly as plain cruelty, and a con-
troversy began between them that almost spoilt the taste of
Emma's famous pear-ginger jam in the connoisseur-mouth of
Louie. Thus, in both drawing-room and kitchen of The Elms there
gathered on the horizon certain clouds of danger to the master of
the house. In the one case, these vanguards of evil women were
held off by Lord P''s bastard; in the other case, by the daughter of
Amos Sly, Lord P.'s shepherd, but in neither case, for all the
closing of shutters against the blue twilight, were the clouds
altogether dispelled. They did not advance; but night fell leav.
ing them undispersed.


Perhaps the two persons in all Glastonbury who caught most
fully the essence of this cool blue twilight, falling at the end of
so unnaturally warm a day, were Mat Dekker and Miss Elizabeth
Crow. The Vicar, upon whose conscience it was to enter every
house in the town, had invaded the domain of Doctor Sodbury,
the parson of St. Benignus. Miss Elizabeth had already done
what she said she would do at the reading of the will in North-
wold Rectory. She had taken one of the smallest of all the Town
Council's workmen's houses--a tiny little place with a tinier little
garden with the word "Rosemary" inscribed on the top of the
wooden gate. Here she lived with a little maid of eighteen, called
Tossie Stickles, the plumpest as well as the most good-tempered
young woman who ever put on an apron. She paid Tossie five
shillings a week, and every penny of this Tossie put into the sav-
ings bank, "to bide there till she were bedded or buried."

Miss Elizabeth had seen Mat Dekker's tall figure passing down
the street and had sent Tossie to call him in to partake of an
early tea. No one but Mat Dekker himself knew the effort that it
cost him to accept this thoughtful invitation. He particularly
wanted to finish his visiting in Benedict Street in one afternoon
and Penny expected him back to his own high tea--for they dined
early--at half-past six. He was counting on an afternoon quite
free from visiting on the morrow, for a treasured walk with Sam
over to Butleigh Wood, beyond the village of Street, which was a
favorite objective of his; and this summons from Rosemary
meant not only the spoiling of his appetite for his evening's
meal, which he enjoyed more than any other, but made it likely
enough that in place of this excursion he would have to return
tomorrow to this row of little houses. Once launched, however,
in a deep colloquy with his old friend he began to feel that neither
of these sacrifices was wasted. Miss Crow was the only woman
he could confide in, in all Glastonbury, on the point where he
most wanted feminine advice, and he found himself, as he sat
opposite her in the bow-window side by side with boxes of yellow
pansies, talking more freely to her than he had done to anyone
for years.

Not only did Miss Elizabeth forbid Tossie to touch the window-
blinds, but she even opened one of the windows when she saw
her friend arrested by the beauty of the evening. Thus together
they sipped their tea, inhaled the fragrance of the yellow pansies
and were soothed by the mystical blueness in the air.

"It's exactly the colour those early Venetians always used,"
said Miss Crow, "for the Madonna's dress. I shouldn't be sur-
prised if it had some peculiar effect on human nerves, this par-
ticular blue."

"I've seen it in many places, Betty," said Mat Dekker, "but
never as deep a shade as here in Glastonbury. It's nice to think
we live in a place that's famous for its twilights."

Miss Elizabeth adored to be called "Betty," and here, sitting
opposite her in her bow-window, was the only person she would
have allowed to do it.

"By the way, what's this I hear about Philip turning away
some of his hands and threatening to close up one of his mills?
Why can't he come to terms with his men? All the old wives
I've been talking to in Benedict Street say that their husbands
don't want to strike and it's only this Barter fellow who's making
the trouble. What's up with Philip, Bett? Is he getting under this
fellow's thumb?"

Miss Elizabeth tossed up her head. Every woman, old and young
alike, has certain gestures, whether of anger or surprise or sad-
ness or detachment, that only one or two persons in the world
are permitted to see, and this smile of hers now with her head
held high up and a little back, and her eyes half closed, was one
of Miss Crow's gestures that no one in the world, except her
mother and Mat Dekker, had ever seen.

"It's no good coming to me again to interfere between Philip
and his hands," she said. "You remember how angry he got when
I did it before and how it hurt the men rather than helped them?
My advice to both sides would always be--come to terms."

"Do you think Philip realises what a lot of feeling there is
in the town against him?" went on Mat. "They told me today
that there's a movement going on to elect a new Mayor; and, of
all people in the world, do you know who it's to be?" Miss Eliza-
beth shook her head. "Your father's Mr. Geard"

"No, no--Mat! You're fooling."

"Yes, I say yes...Mr. Geard!"

"Impossible, Mat Dekker!"

"Ask any of your neighbors and you'll soon see!"

"Does Philip know this? Does Mayor Wollop know this?"

"I can't tell what Philip knows. Old Wollop certainly knows
for he told me himself."

She made an impatient movement with her hands. "I'm tired
of town politics," she said.

Mat's face assumed the rather sulky expression that is natural
to a man when his interlocutor changes the conversation. But it
was then that she soothed this sulkiness away by beginning to
talk of Sam.

"Has he been over there lately?" she asked.

"Not since the woman began living with her husband again,"
said Mat Dekker; "but now they tell me Zoyland's going to leave
her alone out there while he's at Wookey Hole." He sighed deeply.
"I like the girl, Betty," he added gravely.

Miss Elizabeth smiled. "I have seen that for a long time,"
she said. "But you wouldn't like her so well if she made him
carry her off."

He frowned and sighed deeply again. "No, I suppose not," he
said, "though one feels ashamed sometimes at interfering with a
real love-affair. I'm a believer in love, Bett, my dear. All passion,
I know, is not love, and lechery, of course, is lechery. But all the
same there is such a thing as love and I have a fixed and rooted
notion that when a man and woman really love each other it
becomes, Bett, my dear--" He lowered his voice.

"What does it become, Mat?" she asked, moving his cup a
little further from the edge of the tray and brushing off with
her fingertips a few crumbs which were adhering to its beautiful
pattern of inlaid mother-of-pearl.

"It becomes a transaction...a transaction...He broke off with a
shrug.

"What kind of a transaction?" she enquired in a calm, con-
trolled voice.

"I only meant," he said, "that just as what I call the Mass is
an act that belongs to more than one plane of existence, so any
great love between two people may have an importance beyond
the world we know."

Miss Crow's hands began nervously fidgetting among the ob-
jects on the tray. Her portly figure had erected itself very straight
as she sat in her chair, but it seemed as if her fingers found it
difficult to be as reserved and as dignified as their mistress.

"I cannot imagine what Sam is feeling or thinking these days,"
Mat Dekker went on. "His mind is working it all out in its own
way, I think, but I am quite in the dark how he's working it
out."

Miss Elizabeth looked her friend straight in his troubled eyes.
"You've changed yourself, Mat," she said, "over all this. You
seem prepared to let them go off. Surely it would mean disaster
to you if they did?"

He rubbed his great, ruddy face with both his bony hands, as
if to rub off the sticky remnants of a discarded mask.

"I thought it was just a wanton child's caprice, her taking
up with him," he said, letting his hands drop down heavily on
the table. "But I soon found, when I talked to her, that it was
much more than that."

Elizabeth shot a quick, sharp glance at him. "You've not
gone and fallen in love with that woman yourself. Mat, have
you?"

He rose from his chair noisily, making the contents of the tray
rattle. "Shut up, do, Belt!" he groaned. "I'm worried by all this.
It's too serious to jest about. But I must be off now. You know
what our Penny is!"

He went over to get his hat and stick from her little parlour
sofa. She opened the door for him and held out her hand. "I
wasn't jesting, Mat," she said. "I believe you are a little bit in
love with that girl."

An electric shock of fury made his big frame tremble from
head to foot. "I won't...allow...anyone...to talk to me like that!"
The words burst from him before he had the remotest idea that
he was going to be seized by this rush of blind anger. He exper-
ienced a little difficulty in the gathering dusk over the latch of
the small gate.

Miss Crow was soon standing by his side. "I didn't mean to
tease you, Mat. I ought to have known better," she whispered.

He bowed his head so that she could see only his rough eye-
brows sticking out beneath the frontal corrugations, like those
of a Neanderthal skull, of his heavy forehead. He regained his
composure by staring at a minute ant that was making a dead
moth move as if it were alive upon the ground under the gate.
He swallowed his saliva in a fierce gulp and raised his head
with a jerk. "We are a pair of old fools, Elizabeth," he said,
"and that's the long and short of it. You're much too good to
me, and don't you ever think I don't know it! Well! Take care
of yourself and don't 'ee carry that heavy coal-scuttle any more.
Tossie's got twice the strength you've got. I suppose you earn
your own water upstairs too?"

"Not always, Mat dear; not often! Good night and God bless
you." And she turned and re-entered her door.


While Mat Dekker, the father, was parting from Elizabeth
Crow to return to the kingdom ruled over by Penny Pitches,
Sam Dekker, the son, was unwillingly tearing himself away from
the lodgings of John Crow, Elizabeth's erratic nephew.

It was John, now the salaried secretary of Mr. Geard, who had
made the advances. It was part of his new job to make advances
in every direction. John had already "approached" nearly a
third of the educated citizens of Glastonbury and it had become
time to approach the younger Dekker. He had given Sam tea in
his new room, and Sam too, like his father, had cursed himself
for eating so much bread and butter while the despotic Penny
waited for him in the offing. And he had cast a complete glamour
over Sam. Sam, unlike his father in this, had no living soul to
whom he could tell his troubles. His heavy, brooding nature had
been gathering emotional, volcanic lava for three days, and this
night--the night of Zoyland's airtrip to Wookey Hole--his whole
being was seething and fermenting with contending passions.
While the father sat in Miss Crow's bow-window on Benedict
Street, the son stood at John's casement- window at the back of
Northload Street. The window looked across a level meadow and
across Dye House Lane to the fields lying north of the district
called "Paradise," and from it could be seen not only the Polden
Hills but, rising up against the horizon, beyond the Bridgewater
fens, the far-off blue ridge of the Quantocks. The heavy, power-
ful youth and the lean, emaciated man were standing side by side
looking out upon this scene. A cheerful fire was burning in
John's little grate and something about his shelves, his chairs,
his books, his pots and pans, his gas-stove, his couch-bed with
cushions on it, his few cheap prints, his yet cheaper rug, his
shining fender, bore witness to the hand and brain of Mary;
while the fact that he was there at all, with everything so com-
fortable round him, bore witness to the liberality of Bloody
Johnny.

"I'm not saying I've ever practised or ever could practise
what I'm talking about," Sam was asseverating in an excited voice.
"All I'm saying is that there's no life that frees anyone so com-
pletely from unhappiness as does the mystic life. If you give up
possession, if you give up trying to possess what attracts you, a
lovely, thrilling happiness flows through you and you feel you're
in touch with the secret of everything. There are only two mortal
sins in the world; one of these is to be cruel and the other is to
possess, and they are both destructive of happiness."

"I agree with you! I agree with you!" cried John. "The only
thing is that the opposite of what you say is true too. No, no!
There's a great deal in your Christian method, there's everything
in your Christian method; but it must be applied for heathen
ends! That's the great doctrine of the Tao, which no one under-
stands--except me!" A positively diabolic light gleamed in
John's glaucous eyes and his sinuous, feeble form seemed actually
to curve in tiny ripples of magnetic coils, like the coils of smoke
which followed his cigarette.

"You're too subtle for me," growled Sam, extending his grey-
stockinged legs and looking down at his enormous dirty boots
and at the bright rug, chosen so carefully by Mary at Mayor
Wollop's shop.

"I'm only subtle because I'm simple," replied the other. "Listen,
Dekker," he went on, "you mustn't think I'm meddling with your
private affairs if I give you a piece of advice."

A spasm of annoyance crossed Sam's face and the muscles of
his chin contracted. For a second of time the two men regarded
each other, like animals of a different species, who have met by
accident in a forest glade. The twitch in John's left cheek made
its silent signal to Sam's wrinkled chin very much as the quiver
of a rat s whiskers might answer the sniff of a badger's snout.

"Lord-a-lord! " ejaculated Sam, beginning to stride up and
down his host's room with his hands in his pocket. "So it's come
to it, then? Come to what I always feared--that everybody in
Glastonbury would know about my troubles. Lord! how I do
loathe and hate the human race! That's the 'advice' I'd like
you to give me, Crow. I'd like you to say ‘escape from it all,
Sam, you blundering dizzard, escape from it all and try and
imitate those old mediaeval saints!' "

John Crow looked away. It was one of his peculiarities to be
able to stare into people's eyes with a shameless, unsympathetic
scrutiny; but Sam's emotion gave him a peculiar feeling of
shame. To look at Sam's agitated face any longer at that mo-
ment seemed like eavesdropping at a confessional-box. So he
glanced at the now faintly observable ridge of the Poldens and
thought to himself, "There's something in spiritual excitement
that makes me uncomfortable. I must have the heart of a stone!"

"My advice would be, Dekker," he said, in an obstinate low
voice, still staring out of the window, "my advice would be to
do what hares do when they catch sight of something dangerous--
that's to say, freeze . You know that word? Turn, pro tem., into
the inanimate...turn into a stump, a post, a clod of clay. Then,
after a while, when things have worked themselves out, you can
scamper back to your feeding-place!"

He got up from his chair-arm and stood hovering at the win-
dow. As Sam paused in his sentry's march and threw a glance
at him out of his screwed-up bear-eyes, his figure at the window
seemed made of something less solid than flesh and blood, seemed
as if it would need very little to turn it into one of those drifting
vapours that floated over the ditches.

"It's like this, Crow," he began; but he felt so much as if
that trampish figure at the window, even as he addressed it,
might decompose, dissolve, disintegrate, that he couldn't go on.
The chemistry of human bodies, even apart from their shape,
is an extraverted manifestation of the souls that animate them,
and doubtless in all Glastonbury there couldn't have been found
souls more different than John's and Sam's.

When he began saying--"It's like this, Crow," Sam could feel
his own lanky, lumbering frame gather itself together, to express
his new-grown purpose. But to set the seal of his solemn inten-
tion upon this feeble and fluid apparition at the window was as
hard as if he were to shoot an arrow into a bundle of feathers
or write a "credo" upon flowing water! Nevertheless he made
one more attempt. "It's like this, Crow. For me the whole thing
is dualism. It's a perpetual war between good and evil. Whichever
side you take you get inspiration from outside the visible world.
But inspiration from the outside evil means in the long run
anguish and insanity, while inspiration from the outside good
means an ecstasy that grows and grows! To possess is evil. The
whole idea of private property is evil. It comes from the devil.
What made those mediaeval saints so happy was that they always
said to themselves ‘Let the beautiful girl go free!'"

"What's that? What's that your saints say?"

It was as if a mild mist-phantom had been transformed into a
mocking goblin. Crow slid back into the room, lurched towards
the fire, crouched dowm on a stool by the grate, and leaning
forward towards it, as he crouched, struck a match for his
cigarette against the bars.

Sam watched him gloomily. The man seemed to be worship-
ping fire. Sam took his great fist from the mantelpiece and
stepped hack a pace or two. Damn the fellow! That it had been
such a hot, dusty sort of nondescript, unpleasant day made the
fact of there being a fire at all in that room a grotesque thing.
The chap had seemed to be melting into the twilight outside the
window; and now he seemed to be on the point of diving into
the flame!

He raised his hand to his chin. "He said she said I had the
look of a saint," he thought to himself. And then there came over
him the realisation that tonight Zoyland was reallv off--piloted
by Barter or some London crony of Barter's--to Wookey Hole.
Everybody in Glastonbury knew it! Everybody in Glastonburv
knew that Nell was all alone on Queen's Sedgemoor. "I could
bear it," he thought, "if she'd never leant against me with her
breasts. Who could bear that and not want to 'possess'; and not
have to 'possess'?"

The wild idea came surging into his head that he would wait
till his father and Penny were asleep; and then let himself out
of the house, and hurry over there; even if it were the middle of
the night, even if he didn't get there till dawn!

"Well, Crow, I've got to be off," he said. "I'm late as it is.
Thanks awfully for the Lea. God knows how I'll be able to drink
any more. We'll go on with this another time."

The demon by the fire leapt to its feet and became once more
the drooping, feeble, nervous beneficiary of the bounty of Mr.
Geard.

"Good-bye," he said, "and don't forget to tell your father
that I want to see him about the Midsummer Fair. The only
person who won't like our Fair will be my precious cousin. And
I can promise him we're going to give him a reason for not
liking it. We're going to 'larn' him, as we say in Norfolk, to
turn Glastonbury into a factory-town! We're going to shake up
his capitalistic complacency--you'll see! Well, good-bye, Dekker,
and don't forget to 'freeze' like a hare and let chance and destiny
fight it out for themselves!"

While father and son were slowly gravitating back to Silver
Street, snug in the Vicarage kitchen sat Penny Pitches and Mr.
Weatherwax. If Penny was all body, and a very square body
too, Weatherwax was all face. He was like one of those absurd
political caricatures that represent some familiar physiognomy
enlarged to monstrous size and unnaturally balanced upon a
manikin's frame. The face of Isaac Weatherwax was a large, flat,
sunburnt expanse, like an ancient map of some "Terra Incog-
nita." Arranged at traditional distances in this expanse were
eyes and nose and mouth. There were also various excrescences
of a less usual kind, "mountains," one might say, in this sun-
scorched moon, to which Mr, Weatherwax was wont sometimes to
refer, as "these here bugg-uncles what do grow out of me cheeks."

All the preparations for the Vicarage high tea were awaiting
the return of the old and the young master; but meanwhile the
two ancient gossips, as if a Square were entertaining a Circle,
were enjoying themselves well enough, independent of the
tea-pot. Mr. Weatherwax was tasting in advance a bottle of
cognac, so that whenever the Abbey House sideboard should be
debtor again to the Vicarage cellar, there should be no abrupt
or disconcerting change in the nature of the loan!

"So us be going to have a new' Mayor, come election-day,
among they councilmen," remarked Mr. Weatherwax dreamily,
"all of we work-folks be requested by some as we do know to
nudge they councilmen and stir 'em up. 'Tis said by some as we
do know that Mr. Wollop and Mr. Crow be out to turn our
quiet town into a girt city Borough by increasing the population.
But whatever they says, my gal, I holds by authority. I holds
by Mr. Crow. Tis said this here Geard, a man no different from
I, a man what can pray high and drink deep like any common
man, will be for letting visitors in and keeping hindustry out;
but I holds with Mr. Crow and his hindustries. Do 'ee want to
know, my gal, why I holds wi' he?"

"Will 'ee have a taste of me 'gorlas,' Isaac?" interrupted
Penny. "'Tis better than usual today."

Mr. Weatherwax permitted a faint sign of affirmation to flicker
across his political gravity while Penny rose from her chair.
She proceeded to make some rapid changes in the relative posi-
tion of pots and the lids of pots upon her great stove while her
visitor finished the brandy. This flat expanse of rusty iron sur-
face with its many round-lidded apertures, was Penny's Colos-
seum of Encounters with Brute Matter. It was an older stove
than that used by Emma Sly up at The Elms and it was handled
in a more primitive manner. The Elm's stove was always kept
well blacked. Like Louie's stove at The Abbey House it possessed
polished knobs and shining ornamentations, whereas the Vicarage
stove might have been the stove of a tribe of gipsies. All sorts
of things would be spilt on it. Penny didn't care. Penny was as
sylvan in her ways as if she had been the Salvage Man of The
Faery Queen fresh from some primordial Arcadia.

At the back of her stove there rested a large simmering cauldron
that she used for making a particular kind of broth. This cauldron
was literally never empty. It was like the cauldron of "the Head
of Hades" in the poetry of Taliessin. Penny had a name of her
own for this perennial brew of hers. She called it "gorlas."
Whether this extraordinary word had come down to her in
some very old Glastonbury tradition and was really a corrup-
tion of the word "gorlasser," which seems to have meant a dark-
blue, livid color, and was used to describe a mysterious "corpse-
God" or "Rex Semi-mortuus" in the old Cymric mythology, is
a question that Penny, less lucky in her introductions to learned
men than Abel Twig, had never had a chance of referring to the
Curator of the Museum.

"Do 'ee know, Penny," said Mr. Weatherwax, as he partook of
his friend's brew, "what be the pivot of life upon earth?"

Penny smiled the smile of all women at all philosophy, but
she shook her head obediently.

"Well, me good soul," Mr. Weatherwax continued, "I be the
one what be tellin' thee what thik thing be. Thik thing be Au-
thority. When I sees true livin' Authority I knows vegetables
grow, and hens lay, and cattle breed, and poor folk be fed and
clothed." His voice sank into a low, confidential whisper--"There
be only one true, livin' Authority in our town and that Authority
be Mr. Crow. If so be as your silly women and your fly-by-night
preachers do turn our town from serving Mr. Crow to serving
idols, then I says, 'Look well to it! The end of all things be at
hand.' " His voice ceased. He lifted up the bowl of gorlas to
his capacious mouth and leered tipsily over its brim.

"Folks be queerer than ye wold bachelors do mindy," retorted
Penny enigmatically. "Folks 'ud rayther brew their own broth
theyselves than be fed wi' all the Milk o' Paradise."

When Sam returned to his father's house it had grown quite
dark. He heard old Weatherwax muttering tipsily as he shuffled
down the hack drive, and he himself, to avoid the gardener,
moved on to the front-drive gate. He felt so disturbed in his
thoughts that when he laid his hand on the handle of the great
iron gate it came over him that it was almost impossible to face
his father. Heavily and slowly he drifted on a little way further
up the road. He soon came to the end of Silver Street, and
wavering there a moment finally turned to his right and fol-
lowed the outside eastern wall of the Abbey grounds down the
ancient road leading to the Tor that bears the historic, but con-
fused, name of Chilkwell Street. When he reached the turning
into Bere Lane he saw before him the vast Gothic shape rising
rich and dim in the darkness, of the greatest Abbey Barn in
England. This edifice is still used as an ordinary farm barn,
but Sam knew every lineament of its faqade so well that through
the darkness, as he now approached it, the four mystic creatures
of the Evangelists that protect its ramparts seemed to murmur at
him and signal to him. Sam scowled gloomily back at these
Apocalyptic Beings. They had watched so many huge wagonloads
of hay, of straw, of oats, of wheat, of barley, so many litters of
pigs, so many cartloads of turnips and mangels, being carried
under that Gothic archway, that they seemed to call upon Sam
also to bring them something, to bring them anything! But Sam
had only one offering in his heart just then, and that offering he
felt he could not offer! Sullenly and heavily he dragged himself
a little further along Chilkwell Street, till on his left hand he
saw the stone walls of Chalice House--at that time completely
unoccupied and on his right the lighted windows of St. Michael's
Inn. Both these buildings were still many hundreds of yards away
and the paved footpath he was following was raised about six
feet above the level of the road. There were a few small stone
houses here abutting upon this footpath and, behind these, sev-
eral small garden-paths. These paths, ascending between low
mossy walls, led up to the lower slopes of Chalice Hill. Sam
was unfamiliar with that far-rumoured version of the Grail story
which places the enchanted Castle of Carbonek, where the Mys-
tery was guarded, upon the summit of Chalice Hill; and he now
turned his abstracted gaze, as one by one these dark ascents be-
tween the shadowy lines of masonry came into his scope, upon
the Hill's higher reaches as if it had been any ordinarv upland.
At the base of one of these ascents, however, he was suddenly
arrested by the sight of a dusky figure leaning against a low
wall. The manner in which the outlines of the figure resolved
themselves into what surrounded it, into the soil, into the stones
into the stone-crop, into the darkness, enabled Sam, though he
had the eye neither of a Rembrandt nor a Hardy, to recognize
it for that of a woman. His poor head was so full of one par-
ticular woman that it was natural enough that his first thought
was: "She has come to me!" But he soon realised that the figure
was that of a lean, ungainly person, as totally unlike his Nell
as a raven is unlike a dove. It then came vaguely over him that
he had seen this person before and not very long ago either.
Who the devil did she make him think of? He stared sullenly
and gloomily at this solitary, motionless form till at last it
began lo strike his mind that whoever it was it was someone who
had no wish to be watched. Then he knew in a flash who it was.
It was Cordelia Geard! Simultaneously with this knowledge it
came over him that Cordelia had been seated by the side of
that queer-looking devil from Old Jones' shop when he met her
in that funny Geard room. So that was it! She was waiting for
that fellow now. They were keeping company; and he'd left
her for a minute for some reason; probably to relieve nature.
They were no doubt prowling round the environs of Chalice
House. Her father had very likely been buying up these little
cottages. The shock of seeing Cordelia when he so little ex-
pected it pulled his wits together with a jerk.

"God! how selfish of me to keep old Dad waiting for so
long! I must get back at once!"

He disappeared, and Cordelia, who had been watching him
from above, far more intently and nervously than he had been
watching her, breathed a sigh of relief.

She was alone again. "Shall I go on?" she thought, "or go
back? Crummie wants me. Mother wants me. Dad will be fussing
about me. If Mr. Evans comes and I'm out, he'll think my feelings
were hurt by the way he acted this morning. Oh, let them all want
me! I've been considerate to everybody too long. I've thought of
everybody except myself too long." She looked round, pondering.

"No, no, I don't care if they do want me!" and she turned
resolutely to the dark hillside above her. "I don't care if they do
have to wait for me! I don't care if I never see any of them
again; if I never go back, down there, ever again!"

She began rapidly ascending the hill. The air seemed to grow
fresher as she advanced. What a dusty, colourless, neutral day it
had been! But the blue twilight had been strange! And what
queer vapours, though there was nothing damp in the air, had
kept gathering, separating, rolling away, in confused retreat, over
the banks of the Brue and over the gardens of Street Road. It
had been partly the strange twilight that had lured her forth--
that and this new restlessness in her blood....

This slope of Chalice Hill had been one of her favorite resorts.
When her "bad" moods were upon her she always went off alone
to one or other of such places. "It's one of my resorts," she
would have said, if Crummie had questioned her.

In every little town in England there are probably several
eccentric women who habitually break loose from their family
and realise their inmost selves by excursions to certain particular
spots. Such people often end by becoming half-crazy. Sometimes
they end by committing suicide; but it is without question that
in the interim between their slavery to their family and this mad-
ness or this suicide, as they visit these favorite resorts and
carry there their inhuman, contra-human thoughts, they expe-
rience raptures of a dark, strange quality such as so-called "con-
tented" people may go through a whole life and never know!
What a destiny these lonely resorts of these lonely people
come to know! There can hardly be a village in England or a
small town in England--the great cities of course drown all such
things by the washing of their huge tides of humanity--where
there are not certain isolated spots loaded with the wild thoughts
of these solitary ones. They have a fate like Io, the heifer-maid,
these women, driven mad by the gadfly of Hera! Every one of
them is a prophetess, a companion of Prometheus! Every one
of them has been spiritually ravished by the great unmerciful
Father of all Lies! How those lonely spots must be impregnated
with these women's rebellious imaginations! How they must carry
these strange, rapturous thought-children, watered by floods and
deluges of releasing, melting, dissolving obliterating tears, and
leave them there to be nourished by the Mother of us all!

The lonely meadows and orchards of this particular hillside
and especially certain bare patches of common land, without
hedge, or railing, or furrow, or crop, or bush, or tree, had long
rendered Chalice Hill one of Cordelia's favorite refuges. These
had been her escape years before her father inherited the Rector
of Northwold's money. Of late, since the local chatter about their
buying Chalice House, she had rather tended to avoid the place
and to select others. Tonight, however, she felt that nothing but
Chalice Hill would ease her mind. She had fancied that she
knew the spot so well that she would attain with ease a certain
bare expanse of grass that she held in her thoughts; but she had
not allowed, as we seldom do allow, for the psychic pressure of
the darkness itself, like a living entity surrounding her. This
invasion of the bewildered senses of a day-dweller by the enfold-
ing presence of night is a unique phenomenon in human expe-
rience. However frequently it may have been felt it always returns
with a shock of disturbing surprise. The darkness becomes a
polymorphous amorist, irresistible, not to be stayed! We beat
it back with blinded sight, paralysed touch, confused hearing.
But there is nothing of us that it does not invade! When it is
a woman who is in its grasp it seems to arouse something in the
feminine nature corresponding to itself, so that the recessive
mystery of darkness in the woman--that underground tide of
the old ancestral chaos that ebbs and flows at the bottom of her
being--rushes forth to meet this primal sister, this twin daughter
of the Aboriginal Abyss, whose incestuous embrace is all about
her! Cordelia seemed unable to escape from the apple orchards
on Chalice Hill. She was perfectly familiar with these in the
daylight and had often lightly and quickly clambered over the
low walls that surround them; but tonight they seemed to extend
like an enchanted forest. Insula Avallonia! She was certainly
wrestling with a soil and with the growths of a soil that were
more soaked in legends than any other hillside in Wessex.
Legends seemed to thicken around her as she struggled blindly
on between these budding apple trees. The fresh spring grass
at the feet of these trees seemed in that darkness to be growing
out of an earth that yielded to each step she took, an earth that
was porous with mystery, an earth that was descending into
supernatural dimensions where it had its unrealisahle roots. How
soft to her touch, as she stretched out her arms and her bare
hands, were the branches and the trunks of these apple trees!
Would she never escape into the high bare uplands? These apple
trunks that she encountered seemed to grow thicker around her
as she struggled up the grassy slope. They seemed to respond to
her groping hands with a magnetic effluence of dark, rich, in-
scrutable vitality. They were like a sisterhood of invisible beings
about her, full of sympathy with her feeling, impeding her
progress with their mute conspiracy of understanding. Her brain
was whirling with wild imaginings. Tears were now pouring
down her cheeks; not unhappy tears, but sweet, relieving, aban-
doning, delicious tears. She wanted to free herself from these
sister-arms, but the darkness itself was weakening her resistance
to them with its own sister-passion, a passion older than the
world. The master thought that drove her on was the thought of
the unhappiness of her lover. "What is it? What is it?" her
brain kept repeating. "He is unhappy; and I know not what it
is! I thought I knew him through and through--but oh, I know
not what it is!"

Cordelia had almost reached the point of feeling as if she had
become enchanted, or, in a more realistic sense, as if she had
gone crazy and were going round and round in a circle instead
of ascending, when she suddenly found herself on the top of the
hill and in open ground. Not only was she now in a bare field,
but she knew exactly where she was. She was near the place
where a footpath over the other side of Chalice Hill led to the
lane where the two giant oaks grew. Mr. Evans had talked to
her many times about these oaks. He of course associated them
with the Druids. But Cordelia had heard quite a different story
from her father's new secretary who had informed her that they
had been planted to mark the spot where the Vikings had landed!

Mr. Geard's daughter now became aware that some large and
mysterious release had come to her vexed spirit.

There came a change in the weather too as she made her way
across Stonedown and approached the hamlet of Wick. She felt
it at once as she swung along, walking so fast and free, some-
times with her hands tightly clenched, and sometimes with her
fingers so loosely extended that they trailed amid the chilly
umbrageousness on both sides of the little lane. Cold gusts of
wind she felt rising. She felt them blowing, not regularly, but
intermittently. They blew over Wick Hollow, over Bulwarks
Lane, over Maidencroft Lane, and whenever they reached her
body they swirled round it as if they would have washed her, or
laved her or exorcised her! Intermittent and erratic as they were
and though they veered a little according to the lay of the land,
they came on the whole from the northwest. From the Bristol
Channel they came, and from further away than that. They came
from Mr. Evans' native country, from the native country of her
own ancestors; they came--like those strange stones at Stone-
henge--from South Wales.

Cordelia reached the nearest of her great oaks--whether Viking
or Druid--in what seemed to her so short a time that she felt
as if she had been spirited there in the teeth of these western
gusts. She came upon the oaks from the top of the eastern hedge-
bank, for she had come, on her wild approach, recklessly across
the country. Here on the top of this hedge-bank she rested, clutch-
ing a sweet-scented hazel-branch with one hand and a bitter-
scented elder-branch with the other. The wind rose about her as
she stood there, in wilder and wilder gusts. And then Cordelia,
gazing directly into the wide-flung branches of the biggest of
the two giant trees, was aware of something else upon the wind.
Those enormous branches seemed to have begun an orchestral
monotone, composed of the notes of many instruments gathered
up into one. It was a cumulative and rustling sigh that came to
the woman's ears, as if a group of sorrowful Titans had lifted up
their united voices in one lamentable dirge over the downfall
of their race. It kept beginning afresh, this solemn moan upon
the air--a moan which always mounted to a certain pitch and
then sank down. Sometimes, such were the vagaries of the wind,
before this portentous requiem started afresh, there was a singular
humming and droning in those huge branches, as if the tree
wished to utter a private secret of its own to Cordelia's ears,
before it recommenced its official chant. Yes! the peculiarity of
this humming sound was that it shivered and shook with a special
intonation for the woman standing upon the bank! And Cordelia
knew well what that message was. The great tree was telling the
hillside that there was rain upon the wind; but it was telling
Cordelia something else! Then all was absolutely still; and in
that stillness, a stillness like the terrible stillness of uttermost
strain in travail, there came the first cry of birth, the fall of a
single drop of rain. That first drop was followed by another
and that again by another. Cordelia did not hear them in the
same place. One drop would fall upon the roadway beneath her;
one upon a dead burdock leaf; one upon a faded hart's tongue
fern of last year's growth. Then the sound of the falling drops
would be drowned in a reawakening of that orchestral dirge.
Then the wind would die down over all the upland, and once
more an absolute stillness would descend; and in the stillness
again--only now in an increased number--the big raindrops
would splash to earth, one falling upon a dead leaf, one upon
a naked stone, one upon a knot of close-grown twigs, one upon
Cordelia's bare forehead. Her feeling at that moment was that
some deep psychic chain had been broken in her inmost being.

Hola--Hola! She could not restrain herself from giving vent
to a wild cry of exultant delight as the first bursting deluge
followed these premonitory drops. She waited for a minute or
two with upturned head and closed eyes, letting the water stream
upon her face. Then, slithering down the wet bank she reached
the lane; and without a glance in the direction of the oaks,
which were now totally invisible, she began, with head bowed
down and fingers tightening upon her jacket collar, to make her
way back to the town. Only once, on her way back, did she pause
and glance upward at the down-pouring blackness. This was when
she distinctly heard the drumming of an airplane somewhere
above her head. "That's Philip Crow," she thought to herself,
"travelling like the devil through the Black rain! He's off to
Wookey Hole."



WOOKEY HOLE



The Mayor of Glastonbury had finished his breakfast
and was reading the Western Gazette. Mr. Timothy Wallop was
an honest man. He had never deliberately cheated a fellow-
creature of a farthing. He was a self-controlled man. He had
never, since the death of his father, Mr. Constantine Wollop., lost
his temper with any living soul. To his father, now in his grave
in the cemetery on the Wells Road, Mr. Wollop had been irritable
on several occasions. But old Constantine's ways towards the
end had been past all bearing. A saint would have cursed the
old wretch. A philosopher would have done worse. An ordinary
man would have murdered him. But Timothy had only been just
perceptibly cross! Mr. Wollop had neither wife nor children.
His servants were kept at such a respectful distance that they
may be said to have been non-existent. They were the hands that
kept his house clean and warm and that brought him his moderate
meals at reasonable hours. Had they been the Ravens that fed
Elisha, or the invisible attendants who waited upon the Prince
in the fairy story, they could not have been more de-humanised.
Mr. Timothy Wollop lived to himself. To say that because he
was lonely he was unhappy would have been to utter the extreme
opposite of the truth. Mr. Wollop was one of the happiest men
in Somersetshire. He neither smoked, nor drank, nor whored.
He never gave way, even in the solitary watches of the night, to
the feverish pricks of sensual desire. As soon as his head touched
the pillow he fell asleep. Of what did Mayor Wollop dream? He
never dreamed; or, if he did, he forgot his dream so completely
on awakening, that for a man to say, "I dreamed like Mayor
Wollop," would be tantamount to saying "My sleep was dream-
less." Of what did Mayor Wollop think as he walked from his
house in Wells Road to his shop in High Street? He thought of
what he saw. In truth it may be said that with the exception of
Bert Cole no one in Glastonbury regarded the Panorama of
Things and Persons with more absorbing interest than did its
Mayor. Not a stick or a stone, not a bit of orange-peel in any gut-
ter, not a sparrow upon any roof, not a crack in any window,
not any aspect of the weather, wet or fine, not any old face or
any new face, not any familiar suit of clothes or any unex-
pected suit of clothes, not any dog, or cat, or canary, or pigeon,
or horse, or bicycle or motor car, not any new leaf on an old
branch, not any old leaf on a new roof--but Timothy Wollop
noted it, liked to see it there, and thought about its being there.

The Mayor was one of those rare beings who really like the
world we all have been born into. More than that; oh, much
more than that! The Mayor was obsessed with a trance-like ab-
sorption of interest, by the appearance of our world exactly
as it appeared. What worries some, disconcerts others, agitates
others, saddens others, torments others, makes others feel re-
sponsibility, sympathy, shame, remorse, had no effect upon the
duck's back of Mr. Wollop beyond the peaceful titillation of
surface-interest. Below appearances Mr. Wollop never went. Be-
low the surfaces of appearances he never went! If the unbear-
able crotchets of his father had been confined to the old man's
thoughts, Mr. Wollop would never have been ruffled. People's
thoughts were non-existent to the Mayor of Glastonbury; and if
there is a level of possibility more non-existent than non-existence
itself, such a level was filled (for him) by people's instincts,
feelings, impulses, aspirations, intuitions. The servants in his
house, as far as any interior personality was concerned, might
have been labelled A. B. C. and the assistants in his shop, in
the same sense, might have been named D. E. F. When B. (shall
we say?), a female servant in a fit of hysterics, put on her cap
back to front, Mr. Wollop was as interested as when on his walk
to his shop he mildly observed that a well-known tabby-cat's
ear had been bitten off. When E. (shall we say?), a male shop-
assistant, appeared one morning tricked up for a funeral, Mr.
Wollop enjoyed the same quiet stir as when on his walk down
High Street he noticed that a black frost had killed all the
petunias in old Mrs. Cole's window-box. Mr. Wollop had once
overheard one of his younger shop-assistants--a young man in
whose sleek black hair he had come to take a quiet interest,
wondering what hair-wash the lad patronised--refer to some-
thing called "Neetchky." From the context Mr. Wollop gathered
that "Neetchky" could hardly be the name of a hair-wash. It
seemed rather to be some pious formula used by the young man.
by which he threw off responsibility for having got some young
woman into trouble. At that point Mr. Wollop's interest ceased,
just as it had ceased when the question arose as to how the
tabby-cat had lost its ear. Mr. Wollop had no quarrel with young
men who had formulas for dodging responsibility, as long as
they did their work in the shop. What he was conscious of was a
certain puzzled contempt for anyone whose selfishness was so
weak and shaky that it required a pious formula! Mr. Wollop
needed no formula, pious or otherwise. The appearance of things
was the nature of things; and all things, as they presented them-
selves to his attention, in his house, in the street, and in his shop,
fed his mind with slow, agreeable, unruffled ponderings. Mr.
Wollop was not greedy at his meals, though he frequently thought
of his meals; and, as I have hinted, he was totally devoid of
specialised sensuality. No man, no woman, no child could ever
have said, if they spoke the truth, that they had caught the
Mayor of Glastonbury fixing upon them a lecherous eye. The
truth seems to be that the Mayor was exactly like young Bert
Cole. Bert and Mayor Wollop diffused the projection of their
amorous propensities over the whole surface of their world; and
their world was what they saw.

Little did the more intelligent inhabitants of Glastonbury
realise what a happy life was lived by their Mayor. Mat Dekker
pitied him for never taking any exercise (beyond his daily walks
to and from the shop) and for not smoking a pipe. The young
men in his employment pitied him profoundly, when they thought
of him at all, for having no lady to flirt with by day and no
lady to sleep with by night. Philip Crow pitied him for having
no spirit, no initiative, no adventurousness, no River Axe and no
airplane. Mrs. Philip Crow pitied him for having no Emma. Emma
herself had announced once to Lily Rogers that of all the houses
in Glastonbury that poor lonely Mr. Woliop's was the unhome-
liest she'd ever set eyes on, outside the workhouse.

In his dealings with his fellow-citizens upon the town council
the Mayor held his own very well. He did this by the enormous
advantage he possessed over people who believed in the reality
of thoughts and feelings. Sometimes when a thief or a liar came
into conflict with him the offender was bewildered by the Mayor's
penetration. In reality it was not penetration. It was common
sense. But it was common sense of such prodigious proportions
as utterly to confound the victim of its shrewd judgment. Mr.
Wollop had only twice, in his life of sixty years, "taken," as they
say, "to his bed." On these occasions he had been pitied by every
gossip in the place. "Thik poor old gentleman, wi' his silver
whiskies and his girt stummick, 'a has no soul to care for 'en,
whether 'a lives or dies!" The Vicar of Glastonbury had arrived,
on one of these occasions, when the patient had a dangerous
attack of pneumonia, to pay an official call upon the Mayor. It
was Mat Dekker's notion that the hour had come for the man
to think of his immortal soul. In place of such thoughts he
found Mr. Wollop's placid countenance, his great silver whiskers
extended on either side of the pillow, irradiated with absorbed
interest in the movements of three wasps upon the ceiling.
"They keep going round and round," he told the Vicar; and the
visitor was sadly awrare that when he finally uttered the words,
"In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,"
the sick man was still rapt in interest in those three soulless
insects.

For two whole days after the rainstorm that Cordelia had
watched beginning, by the great oaks of Wick, the rain had
fallen almost incessantly. Towards the close of the third day it
began to show signs of clearing off; and about four o'clock, al-
though it was getting so near tea-time, quite a number of people
drifted into the draper's shop. Wollop's was well known all
over that part of Somersetshire; and the business did not depend
upon local patronage; but since the great, quiet, cavernous place
had plenty of seats, both against its broad counters and other-
wise, there "were often quite a number of ladies, who knew one
another well, chatting together there with their parcels in their
hands. Since the old shop did not depend altogether on local
trade, activity at Wollop's had the power of languishing without
serious loss to its owner. But these idle hours hung heavily on
the heads of many of the assistants. The older ones suffered the
most. The younger assistants had so many thoughts of love,
thoughts hidden away in that non-existing world which Mr.
Wollop disregarded, and so much to tell each other about these
thoughts, that they did not mind these interims of ebb-tides
among the customers. The older assistants--and some of them
had acquired a peculiar look, that Mary Crow told John Crow
was the Wollop "grievance-look"--not having love-affairs to
share, were wont to have the meanest, bitterest, most indurated
quarrels among themselves that existed in all Glastonbury. Mr.
Wollop being occupied with the apparitional world was certainly
not oblivious of these seething recriminations, for Mary's "griev-
ance-look" was quite apparent; but he must have accepted it as
a mysterious ultimate, just as he accepted the fact that Tor Hill
was opposite Chalice Hill, and regarded its cause as belonging
to that world of non-existent essences which a sensible man ruled
out of court. On this particular afternoon Mr. Wollop ?was seated
serenely (as he always was) on a polished swivel-chair in a small
iron cage. He had bought this cage from a bankrupt bank in
Taunton, bought it at an auction for next to nothing. No living
person except the Mayor and Bert Cole would have been as much
interested in a man-cage as in a bird-cage. But Mr. Wollop, cast-
ing his Bert-like eye round the auction-room, had been agreeably
struck by this object, and had promptly bought it. That he
bought it for no sinister purpose was soon obvious; for the
person he put into it was himself. The Mayor's shop-assistants,
especially the younger ones, seemed to have the privilege oi wan-
dering all over the place; but once in his cage for the day, the
Mayor himself never came out except at such times as nature
compelled him to do so. His lunch was brought to him in the
cage.

Close to the great man's retreat, a day or two after Cordelia's
visit to Chalice Hill, while in his contentment Mr. Wollop was
murmuring over his accounts like an amiable sea-elephant, there
sat on a stool at one of the counters none other than Mary Crow,
She had come to buy a tablecloth for John's room in Northload
Street. As the young man who waited upon her was the young
man who took hair-wash for his appearance and "Neetchky" for
his conscience, it may be believed that the buying of this simple
thing was a slow business. The young man and Mary Crow dif-
fered in every point of taste and choice where tablecloths were
concerned.

"Have you heard the news, Miss Mary?" These words came
from the cage. The Mayor was addressing his customer.

"How do you do, Mr. Wollop! I hope you've been well lately?"

"Some folks in this town, Miss Mary," the man in the cage
went on, "are so solicitous for my health that they've decided
on my retirement from public life."

"Pardon me--no! Oh no! I don't like that at all." This was
addressed to the young man, who promptly went off, whistling.
"Pardon me, Mr. Wollop, did you say your retirement? I don't
quite understand."

"These folks want for me to stop being Mayor," explained the
caged man. "They want for me to turn into a Hex-Mayor."

"Why I thought you were Mayor for life, Mr. Wollop," cried
Mary sympathetically.

He shook his head; and then in a lowered voice, bending down
towards her so that his forehead touched the bars of his cage--
"It's that Mr. Geard who's to he the Mayor instead of me, so
that I can keep my good 'ealth hunimpeded."

Mary had no need to pretend her astonishment at this. She
was genuinely amazed. "I can't believe it, Mr. Wollop. Surely it
isn't true! The councilmen elect the Mayor, don't they? They'd
never, never elect Mr. Geard instead of you!"

"That's what they're going to do. I can see it as plain as a
map, Miss Mary."

"But it's a shame! It's a scandalous shame! Why everybody
in Wessex knows the Mayor of Glastonbury. Why! Weren't you
Chairman of that grand Public Meeting when the Bishop bought
the Ruins for the Church?"

"It's what they're going to do, Miss Mary."

"But Cousin Philip is on the council, isn't he?"

"Only as one among the rest, Miss Mary. And though I don't
want--" he lowered his voice to a penetrating whisper--"though
I don't want to he a Halarmist, what with 'is trouble with 'is
workmen and one thing and the other, I'm afraid Mr. Crow is
not altogether the Hinfluence in the Borough that he once was."

"But...Mr. Wollop " she stopped in sudden consternation, re-
membering John's close association with Mr. Wollop's rival.
"But, Mr. Wollop, my cousin, John Crow, would have told me
about this if there'd been anything in it. He's working for Mr.
Geard now over this tiresome Midsummer Fair they're getting
up, and he's never told me a word."

The Mayor of Glastonbury permitted a broad smile to flicker
across his face. He pulled back his head from the bars and
stretched out his cramped legs as far as they would go. ‘"Peo-
ple don't tell people everything, Miss Mary, even when they are
engaged to be married."

The word "married" came as a second authentic shock to the
sympathetic young lady. She had never guessed that the gossip
about her and John had gone so far as to reach the ears of the
Mayor. Obstinately she returned to the main issue of the discus-
sion. "They would never do it! They would never dare to do it!"

"The Liberal and the Labour councilmen, Miss Mary, if they
vote with these Bolsheviki, 'ave the majority, and if the majority
says so, so it has to be."

The sleek-haired young man now returned with a great pile
of tablecloths over his arm. Mary impulsively got up and ap-
proaching the cage thrust her arm through the little aperture in
front of it. "I can only tell you, Mr. Wollop," she said, "that
"whatever John thinks, or is bound now to say he thinks, I shall
always think of you as the Mayor of Glastonbury!"

The white whiskers bowed low over the outstretched hand.
For a second Mary had the wild fancy that he was going to kiss
it; but instead of that he shook it vigorously. "I expect I'll see
you next week, Miss Mary," he said, "at Mrs. Philip's tea-party.
Look after Miss Crow well, Booty!"

This remark from his employer had become really necessary;
for on her return to her seat at the counter Mary found such an
array of highly coloured tablecloths, all after the taste of Mr.
Booty and none after her own, that her difficulty recommenced
with accumulated weight. She bought something at last, how-
ever; and nodding to the Mayor walked away with her parcel
down the central aisle of the shop. The "Wollop grievance-look"
had left most of the faces she passed, for the clock was moving
round towards closing time, but the smell of the place, that
peculiar smell of rent fabric, especially of rent-linen fabric,
sank like a thin, delicate dust into her nostrils, into her throat,
into her consciousness.


I'm glad I don't work here yet," she thought, "but if Miss Drew
turns me out, when I'm married to John, I swear I'll ask tne old
chap to let me come to him. I could sell tablecloths, anyway,
better than that conceited boy." Once on the pavement she
hesitated as to whether she had time to take John's tablecloth to
his rooms in Northload Street before returning to tea with Miss
Drew. Pondering on this point she remained in front of Wollop's
shop staring into the window. It happened that the light fell in
such a way upon the window-glass as to throw back a reflexion
of her face. Mary was startled at its pallor and its haggardness.
How many weeks had she been looking like that?

"Girls ought not to have anything to do when they're in love,"
she thought. They ought to be let off everything!"

She turned away now from her reflexion in the shop window.
"I'll just leave this parcel with the landlady," she said to herself.
John was not expecting to see her today at all. She assumed he
was spending all his time today with Mr. Geard. "No; I won't
go up those stairs," she thought. "I'll leave this with the
woman." She hurried down the street, turned to the right by St.
John's Church, followed the railings of the cattle-market, turned
to the left down George Street, and finally arrived at the door
of number fifteen, Northload. She could not find the landlady.
Always present when she would have given anything for the
woman not to be there, today when she wanted her she was
nowhere to be seen. Nor were there any neighbours around. Over
dre whole of number fifteen hung a sinister and unnatural silence.
The street door was wide open, and just inside it was the land-
lady's door; but all was silent, forbidding, desolate. Three times
she rang the bell. Not a sound! She went back upon the doorstep
and rang the outside bell. Not a sound!

"Well I'll just run up and leave it outside," she said to herself
and began ascending the stairs. What was her astonishment
when she heard voices up there while she paused to take breath
on the first landing. At the top of the second flight she could catch
actual words. She stopped there hesitating. Yes! He had someone
in there with him; and she knew who it was too! It was Tom
Barter. She stood for a second, resting herself, with her parcel
propped upon the balustrade. She did not pause there to listen;
she paused because she felt unable to enter and equally unable
to go away. It was one of the most wretched moments of her
life in these last agitating weeks.

"I'm going to make a little money," she heard Barter say.
"and then I'm going to clear out of this blasted hole. That was
what Mary and I used to do all the time when we were so thick.
We used to curse these bloody superstitions! It's all a fake. It's
only to draw visitors. Your precious boss, Geard, is the greatest
humbug of all. But of course you know that! You're out for
making a little money, just as I am; and then, Holy Moses!
you'll do a bunk just as I shall!" There was a sound of shuffled
chairs and the clatter of china. Mary Crow became suddenly con-
scious that her attitude to Glastonbury had changed of late. It
was Tom Barter she hated now, not Glastonbury.

John's voice uttered the next words, and they did not improve
matters. "Where on earth has she put my whiskey?" she heard
him cry. "Oh, I wish to God women wouldn't always tidy things
up!"

Then came Barter's voice again. As far as she could catch his
words he seemed to be criticising John's biscuits: those Huntley
and Palmer biscuits that she had bought with such care a week
ago! "It's just as if it were a rough-and-tumble undergraduate's
room in Oxford," she thought. Yes, Tom was criticising her bis-
cuits. He was strewing her rug with them too, no doubt, and
trampling them into it! They had now apparently found the
whiskey and were hunting for glasses. Then ensued more clatter
and more half-humorous and half-peevish groans. Then when
they had seated themselves again, still worse ensued.

"Don't be later than nine, Tom, will you?" she heard John
say. "And I'll get another bottle of this when the pub's open
again. If they're funny, where you live, about your coming in
late, you can sleep here with me. I've got a double bed."

She was unable to catch Tom's reply to this, but presently her
whole frame stiffened and a cold shiver ran through her.

"I suppose Mary's often told you what friends we were," she
heard Tom Barter say.

John's voice was a little indistinct. "Something of the sort,"
she thought she heard him murmur.

"I ought perhaps to tell you that I got so fond of her," went
on Tom Baiter, "that I once even spoke about our being married.
I suppose she never told you that, did she?"

"No," John's voice replied. And oh how she dreaded the tone
he was using now! It was not a frank, single-hearted, trusting
lover's tone. "No," said John, "she never told me you'd spoken
of that."

"It came to nothing, of course," said the other, "and I changed
my mind about it before you came along....Are you going to marry
her?"

At this point Mary let the parcel containing the tablecloth slip
down to the floor between her body and the balustrade. She
thrust her fingers into her ears and ran hurriedly down the stairs.
Down both flights of stairs she ran, and it was not till she was
out of the house that she realised that she'd dropped her parcel.
Her misery of mind rose up now out of all proportion to its
cause.

She had come to feel towards that room of John's a peculiarly
tender feeling, the feeling that a woman naturally gets towards
her first real possession. To find that that room, which had been
of late the centre of all her thoughts by day and by night, was
being turned into a ramshackle bachelors' rendezvous was an
outrage to something so deep in her that her emotion about if
puzzled herself. She felt as if she were an outsider--a light-of-
love--whose visits to number fifteen were devoid of all lasting
significance. And Tom's tone about Glastonbury--how she dis-
liked it! Those many secret meetings with John she had had in
St. Mary's ruined Chapel had recently, by a natural process of
association, begun to convert her to the ancient place. And this
room--her room with John, their menage together--to have it
henceforth associated with Barter's rough cynicism and super-
cilious brutality was the last straw. For herself she cared nothing
about his thinking of her as a girl he had decided against marry-
ing. It was only John's hurt vanity she was nervous about. She
herself was only too thankful he had decided against it. Be-
sides--always was she Mary Crow. Her personal pride was far
too deep to be affected by the opinion of her held by any man.
No, it was none of these things that rankled now in her heart
and made her face so white and tense as she hurried back to the
Abbey House. It was something much deeper, something that she
had secretly been dreading ever since those two sacred Northwold
days. It was in fact a dark, bitter, suspicious, corrosive and yet
intangible jealousy of Tom Barter. She knew--none better than
she what a deep vein there was of erotic attraction to men in
John's nature. She knew--and she had good cause to know--how
little of the normal, passionate lover there was about him. She
and he were bound together by imponderable cravings, by inex-
plicable, magnetic lusts, which were as sterile as they were in-
tense and unsatisfied. Had he already possessed her as men
possess women, what would she have to fear, what to be jealous
of, in his love for Tom? She would belong to him as Tom never
could belong to him. It was because she knew that she might
never be possessed in that sense, even though they were married
by the most apostolical of priestly hands, that she felt the ghastly
fingers of cold fear fumbling at her vitals. Not a single tear
trickled down her cheek as she walked resolutely home. Home she
walked with steady lips and a swift, quiet tread. Home to Miss
Euphemia Drew!

When Miss Drew, a quarter of an hour later, asked her, "Was
it not a nice, warm day for March," she found she could not re-
member one single moment when she had been conscious of
warmth or of the absence of warmth. That, however, did not
prevent her giving the old lady a lively and picturesque account
of her visit to Wollop's.

"What did you go in to buy, my pretty?"

"I went in to buy some hairpins, dear.'

Miss Drew took up a little piece of one of Louie's most suc-
cessful tea-cakes and nibbled at it elegantly with her false teeth.
There was a physical stir at the bottom of Miss Drew's stomach
as she delicately lifted up her tea-cup, her little finger fastidiously
extended, to wash down--for otherwise she would have had diffi-
culty in swallowing--this honey-sweet fragment. Well did she
know that Mary was lying when she spoke of hairpins. And
Mary, sitting opposite her, every now and then taking a whiff of
eau-de-cologne from a little green-edged handkerchief, made for
her by Miss Drew, knew that she knew that she had lied. Miss
Drew's inmost feelings at the moment when Lily answered the
bell and went away, in dreamy sadness, to bring more hot water,
might have been described in the following manner: "She is buy-
ing things for that male brute to furnish some slum-room in the
town. She's either married him already or she's going to live with
him as if they were married. It's almost more than I can bear, but
I must be strong! If I lose her--but I can't think of it, consider
it, imagine it--for a minute! I don't know why God has laid this
upon me. But I've come to depend on her; and if " Miss

Drew, even to herself, was forced to cover up the passion of her
love for her companion by the use of the vague word "depend."
As a matter of fact, she loved Mary with a love like that which
John would have had to content himself with if he had been for-
bidden by some inexplicable mandate to make love to her. Every
movement of Mary's was delicious to Miss Drew. Every word she
uttered entranced the poor lady. Every garment she wore was as
sacred to her as the paten that held the bread at Holy Communion.

Lily was longer than usual fetching the hot water, and when she
finally came in it was with a much quicker movement and a less
dreamy gesture than usual that she laid down the little silver jug,
a jug whose lid had been soldered once under the regime of Miss
Drew's grandmother, and once more under the regime of Miss
Drew's mother, beside the silver tea-pot.

"Please, Miss, Louie wants to know if you'd mind if we ran
out for a minute to King Edgar's Lawn to see Mr. Crow's air-
plane. It's passing now, Weather wax says, and Louie's never seen
it close by."

"Certainly; of course; run off; both of you!" replied Miss
Drew; and she turned to her companion with the same look of
benevolent superiority to the tastes of the lower classes that her
grandmother displayed when her servants ran out to see the first
bicycle and which her mother displayed when her servants ran
out to see the first motor car. "King Edgar's Lawn" was a popu-
lar name that had locally arisen when a famous modern anti-
quary--guided, he himself declared, by supernatural agency--
had traced the foundations of that great monarch's chapel.

"Lets go out, child, and see this wonder ourselves!" said Miss
Drew, after filling the tea-pot from the silver jug.

The two ladies left the room together, picked up their cloaks
in the hall, descended the terrace-steps, stepped carefully across
a thin strip of crocuses and a sunken wall, and joined their
maids and old Weatherwax on the smooth-cut expanse of velvety
grass beyond which rose the ruins of the Tower Arch. It certainly
was a startling sight to see the airplane, like a colossal dragon-
fly, cross the empty air-spaces above these historic Ruins.

Mr. Weatherwax, however, gave the thing the most brief and
cursory glance. "Me broad-beans be going to make a fine show
this year. Have 'ee been round to see 'em, Miss?"

Euphemia Drew took her arm away from the wrist of Mary
and turned her eyes from the calm expanse of the sky to the
lesser but by no means negligible expanse of the countenance of
Isaac Weatherwax. "Are they as high as our good friends' across
the road, Isaac?"

This remark somewhat nonplussed the gardener. Between the
two gardens which he presided over he liked to keep up a pre-
tended rivalry. He was "Weatherwax" to the Vicar, and "Isaac"
to Miss Drew; and between "Isaac" and "Weatherwax" there was
a lively competition. "Well, Miss," he confessed, after a disdain-
ful glance upward at the stupendous humming of the flying-ma-
chine, "Well, Miss, 'tis true they broad-beans across the way
may be a miserable couple o' inches taller than ours. 'Tis when
us considers the 'ealth and 'spansion o' the plants that ours do
take the prize. They be vigorous growers, they beans of ours, and
them tall ones can't hold a candle to 'en."

Mary was thinking to herself, "Tom must have left John
directly after I ran away, or he couldn't he piloting this thing
now!"

The afternoon was slowly turning into evening. A delicate
golden glow filled the western and the southern quarters of the
firmament In the midst of this glow a number of rose-coloured
clouds, floating filaments of vapour, air, feathery wefts, undu-
lated, fluctuated, thickened, dissolved, as the chance-strewn cata-
falque of that particular day's obsequies limned itself in space.

Totally disregarding Tom Barter, who was gravely piloting the
machine in the control of which his whole being seemed satis-
fied, Philip Crow was looking down intently at the moving pan-
orama below them. How unfamiliar those ancient Ruins looked
as he saw them now gliding away beneath him--aye! and how
unimportant, how negligible! Surely it was the round earth itself
that was moving; not the shining, steely projectile in which he
was being hurtled through the sky! He snatched a second to stare
straight down at St. Michael's Tower on the top of the Tor as they
shot drumming and droning over it. Philip's thoughts were dis-
turbed at the moment. Three separate dangerous blows had been
struck of late at him and his factories. Red Robinson's machina-
tions had consummated in a formidable movement among the
town-councillors to make Geard Mayor. Dave Spear had got
twice as long a list of the factory-hands ready to strike than had
been expected by either party. And now this crazy ne'er-do-well
cousin of his, John Crow, had opened an office near the station
and was feverishly advertising some sort of religious hocus-pocus!
This last blow struck him the hardest; though it would have been
hard to explain exactly why. Perhaps he himself could not have
explained why. One thing was clear, all his own activity, all his
own effort, all his own prestige were connected with turning Glas-
tonbury from an idle show-place into a prosperous industrial
centre. On this particular point he was at one with Red Robinson
just as he was at one with Tom Barter. To beat down this pious
Glastonbury legend, this piece of monkish mummery, to beat it
down and trample it into dust. He longed to do this beyond every-
thing in the world except electrifying the entrails of the Men-
dips; and he would do it too! He would do it alone if the labour
element--short-sighted as it always was in regard to their true
interests--betrayed him for this sneak-thief, this crafty hypocrite
Geard!

He hoped at this moment that Barter would be minded to
extend his circular hovering for hours so as to give him a long
hawk's flight over this idyllic Somersetshire. He would conquer
it, this effeminate flower-garden of pretty-pretty superstitions and
mediaeval abracadabra! He would plant factory upon factory in
it, dynamo upon dynamo! He would have mines beneath it. rail-
ways across it, airlines above it!

If Barter had not been a novice at flying and consequently
afraid to remove his attention for a moment from his task, he
might have divined his passenger's mental state and humoured
him by staying up longer. But Philip was in no mood openly to
confess such feelings. He had told his subordinate laconically
enough to take him to Wookey Hole; and to Wookey Hole Barter
must take him! There was a good field for landing on the :Men-
dips side of the Hole, away from the direction of Wells; but
he decided to make a small detour first. Philip recognised the
general lie of the land tonight and its natural landmarks more
quickly than most passengers would have done in one of their
first ascents. So might some hawk-eye among his Norman ances-
tors have surveyed the landscape from the high keep of some
newly built castle and known it hill by hill, stream by stream,
valley by valley, forest by forest, for what it was.

As he looked down upon the earth, that clear March evening,
and watched the chess-board fields pass in procession beneath
him, and watched the trees fall into strange patterns and watched
the villages, some red, some brown, some grey, according as brick
or stone or slate predominated, approach or recede, as the plane
sank or rose, Philip's spirit felt as if it had wings of its own
that were carrying it over this conquered land independent of
Barter's piloting. They passed over Havyatt, where the monks on
one occasion persuaded the Danes to draw back and refrain from
plundering the Abbey; they passed over West Pennard, and over
Pylle and Evercreech; they passed over Batcombe and over Wan-
straw and over Postlebury Wood; and it was not till they reached
Marston Bigot where they could see to the eastward the livid-
grey waters of the Somersetshire Frome that Barter swung the
plane round and headed west again. Due west, they flew now, over
the stone roofs of Shepton Mallet, straight to the city of Wells.
When they were above Wells and they could look down on the
Cathedral directly beneath them, they turned northwest; and soon,
without trouble or mishap, they descended in the precise place
they had aimed for, between Wookey Hole and Ebhor Rocks*

The impressions which rioted in Philip's brain as he clambered
out of his seat, and stretched his legs upon solid earth in that
darkening meadow, resembled the release of a charge of elec-
tricity. How small and unimportant Wells Cathedral had looked
from up there in the air! It was of the planetary earth, a sen-
sitised round orb circling through space, not of any calm earth-
mother, lying back upon her secret life, that his mind was full.
It had all passed only too quickly! It seemed only just a minute
ago that he had scrambled into his seat on the back of this shining
torpedo with dragon-fly wings. But what thoughts, what sensa-
tions! His brain whirled with the vision of an earth-life domi-
nated absolutely by Science, of a human race that had shaken
off its fearful childhood and looked at things with a clear, un-
filmed, unperverted eye. He said to himself, as he walked out
of the field with Barter--for they were intending to stay the
night at Wookey Hole--that this conquest of air had reduced
those Glastonbury Ruins to nothing. And how utterly unimpor-
tant and irrelevant all this disputing about capital and labour and
private property! Science must soon, he thought, give into the
hands of every individual so much power--power of creation,
power of destruction--that this dogmatic doctrine about com-
mon ownership will cease to have any meaning.

"Don't wait supper for me," he said to his companion as they
closed the gate leading into the highway. He and Barter had
their own particular bedrooms, in a little wayside inn called the
Zoyland Arms, close to the entrance to Wookey Hole Cave. The
factory there held no accommodation for travellers, for though
its wheels were turned by the River Axe as it emerged from its
underground caverns, it was not much more than a series of large
workshops. The working-people came on foot or by lorry from
the Wells suburbs which were only a couple of miles away and
people who wished to remain overnight were at the mercy of the
landlord of the inn. The two men were expected that evening to
supper, and Will Zoyland was already seated at the parlour-table,
with an uncorked bottle of wine at his side, enjoying his soup,
when they entered the place.

Philip was still in an unusual state of excitement as he ran
upstairs to his little room, where the gas had already been lit.
His window looked out on the white road, and opposite it in the
darkening hedge there was a small ash tree, whose black, sticky
buds had already burst here and there into the blurred shapes of
embryo leaves, shadowy and indistinct against the livid western
sky. A strange exultation still throbbed in his pulses as he found
himself alone in this small chamber looking out on the silent
road and on that tree. He felt in no hurry to join the others.
Let Zoyland entertain Barter as he pleased till he chose to go
down! He was their employer. He would dine when he felt in-
clined. He pushed his way past the heavy, cheap dressing-table
with its great, ugly looking-glass and jerked aside the sham-lace
curtains that obstructed his view. He made an effort to open the
window at the top. In the flare of the gas-lamp suspended from
the ceiling he saw a couple of dead flies on the narrow ledge
where the window-latch was. Something about these flies, com-
bined with the lace curtains and with the fact that he found diffi-
culty in opening the window, brought his spirits down to earth.
When he did jerk the window open, one of the dead flies fol-
lowed it, but the other one remained upside-down, its legs stiff,
its small cuirassed head inert, its body drained of all life-juices,
husk-like and hollow. He flicked the dead fly with his finger-
nail out of the window, and resting his elbows on the woodwork
leaned far out. A faint odour of funguses came to him, mingled
with that peculiar smell of road-dust that bears upon it the first
weight of the falling night. A rustling sound followed by a series
of sleepy, peevish clucks and then by more rustling indicated the
presence of roosting fowds. The little ash tree against the dying
fragments of steely whiteness in the sky stretched out its
branches; stretched them out with that particular upward clutch
of the twig ends that characterises its tribe.

Philip's face at that moment would have presented a mask of
stony human fanaticism to the senses of that little tree if they
could have pierced the dark. From this air-flight, one of the
first he had ever taken, he had gathered a momentum that no
dead fly, however discouraging, could retard. He used it now to
shoot his mind, like a rock-shattering projectile, into those re-
mote caves of Wookey Hole out of which rolled the subterranean
river that turned the wheels of his factory. A grim smile crossed
his mouth when he recalled how contemptible, how unimportant,
the massed towers and buttresses of Wells Cathedral had ap-
peared as he flew above them! His thoughts clanked harshly
along the up-curving branch in front of him, like a proud brigade
of arrogant tin soldiers. A cold fury of destruction possessed
him when he thought of Glastonbury. Arthur and the Holy
Grail, Abbey Ruins and Saint Joseph--he was the man to blow
them all sky-high! Communism? A thing of mere distribution
of spoils! What did a meticulous economy of that kind matter?
On, on, on!--destroying the past, creating the future--on, on!
The hard light of his electric bulbs on the stalactites in Wookey
Hole could not have glittered more fiercely, the steel surface
of his new plane could not have shone more coldly than the
narrowed eye-slits of Philip Crow as he drew his head back,
under the hanging gas-globe, and walked over to the wash-
basin.

Damn! Another dead fly in his soap-dish! He tossed out
the soap and carried the dish to the window and shook it there
with a vindictive sweep of his arm. He felt as if his glittering
onrush through the world, engine after engine after engine, and
himself yanking them forward with an iron heart, was outraged
by the mere existence in the world of dead flies. That fellow,
John--damn him, oh damn him!--was a dead fly come to life.
Geard was another. Those ridiculous Dekkers were others too.
Tilly, in his own house, with her black beady eyes, was yet
another! All were buzzing flies, whose existence stung him in
life and dispirited him in death. What was that line, in some
old poet, that he had had to learn by heart at school and that
he'd never forgotten? "Heads without name, no more remem-
bered than summer-flies!" "Heads without name." His head
had a name. Devereux--that was a name for a man to face life
with!

He hurriedly washed his hands and face; plastered down
his iron-grey hair over his narrow skull, grinned like a wolf
at himself in the ugly looking-glass and ran downstairs. An
unexpected shock was awaiting him as he entered the little
parlour full of small supper-tables. There were Zoyland and
Barter, laughing together, already warmed by Zoyland's wine;
but there at another table--and they rose at once to greet
him--were Dave and Percy Spear! They must have been agi-
tating all day and collecting names in his Wookey Hole plant.
But he could not restrain his pleasure in seeing them there.
How perfect she looked in this dim inn-parlour light! He thought
Dave looked a trifle embarrassed--and no wonder, the revo-
lutionary rogue!--as they shook hands; but she--she was his;
her eyes told him she was his! He knew it in the marrow of
his bones as she leant towards him, giving him--not only her
ungloved hand, but everything! Yes; she was like that long
swaying ash-tree branch, just budding, in the night out there.

He hurriedly crossed over to his own place, jested coldly
about Zoyland having opened the bottle, murmured something
sarcastically to Barter about "propitiating his Bolsheviki rela-
tives" and carried his chair to the Spears' table.

"Have you brought your stiletto for the wicked Capitalist?"
cried Will Zoyland.

"Aye, what's that, Will?" threw in Dave.

"I asked Percy if she'd got her dagger hidden away in her
underlinen to give Crow his quietus," repeated Lord P.'s bastard,
winking at Barter.

Barter's face at that moment was indeed one in which could
be read "strange matters." The wine had heated him; other-
wise he would have found the whole situation bristling with
discomfort. His cautious upper-middle-class respectability had
already been outraged to its foundations by Zoyland's noisy
camaraderie. Zoyland and his brother-in-law's wife had by
this time exchanged not a few strokes of reckless roguery.

Barter's lecherousness had for years been roused to a fever
of aggravation by Percy Spear. He had seen more of her in
their Norfolk childhood than he had seen of any of her cousins
and he had used her young figure on many a sex-starved occasion
for the satisfaction of his amorous thoughts. But Percy had
never let him touch her. She disliked him mentally and she
loathed him physically. But she was ready enough to chaff him;
and when she did this she always bewildered him by her clever
modernity.

Barter had felt a horrible sense of social inferiority just
now as he had sat sullenly drinking William Zoyland's wine.
His family was in reality quite as "good" as that of the Crows;
hut he totally lacked the suppleness of the Crow mind. He
was in fact socially old-fashioned; and to be old-fashioned
at this date meant being made a fool of by clever women.

It was still more uncomfortable for him when Philip
appeared and began his dinner at the Spear's table. Zoyland
had called for a second bottle and had begun to grow slightly
tipsy; and with his tipsiness extremely confidential. Even
so, he didn't treat Barter--at least so Barter thought--
like a real equal. He confided in him blindly, grossly, cal-
lously; a good deal as a gentleman would confide in a faith-
ful servant of whose discretion he was sure but towards whose
personal reactions to what he confessed he felt complete in-
difference.

Tom Barter had not one single relative of any kind living.
He had never been to the university. His diploma of social
position went back to an earlier date; for he had been to Grey-
lands School. He had entered an office at nineteen and since
then had lived for two things, lechery and money. He had seen
to it that these two things did not clash by habitually taking
his pleasures cheaply. This he did by eschewing harlots and
mistresses and by enjoying constantly new adventures with
flirtatious middle-class girls. With shopgirls, business-girls,
waitresses, barmaids, Barter always won favour, partly by rea-
son of his being a gentleman, partly by his shameless advances,
but most of all by a certain direct, unassumed, cynical but
very honest interest in all their professional problems. They
felt at home with him. They trusted him. And except for de-
priving them of pretensions to "purity," he really was to be
trusted!

"She's alone there; and of course he may have gone over. He
may be over there now, as I clink this glass! But I don't think
so. A person has instincts in these things, don't you agree, Barter?
Instincts. You know what I mean. Barter? But perhaps you
don't! Perhaps you despise instincts! You rather look like some
one who despises instincts. What would you do. Barter, if you
were married and your wife fell in love with a young chap of her
own age? Eh? What would you do? Would you let him pull
your nose and say nothing? Have you ever had your nose pulled,
Barter? I mean really and truly pulled? Would you let him do it?
Tweak your nose, and give it a good pull?"

Tom Barter's fingers itched to give his aristocratic friend what
at school was called a bloody nose. Short of hitting him, how-
ever (and what chance would he have in fisticuffs with such a
fellow?), he could not just then think of any method of putting
him to rout.

"That's my way, Barter, and so now you know it. It mayn't be
a good way; but it's my way and when it comes to women it's
no good unless you're playing your own hand. They don't give
a fig for book-learning, Barter. Perhaps you've never seen thro'
their pinnies far enough to know that? But that's the truth. Not
a fig! What women like is bed-rock-bottom--every time! You
can't go wrong with them--from Queen Gargamelle to Maid
Marian--if you talk facts and think smut. You seem to me a
downright man-to-woman kind of chap, Barter, so I expect you've
found that out for yourself. But perhaps not. Perhaps you've
puritanical and have never meddled with the hussies. I don't think
so, though--you look to me as if you knew a hawk: from a
hernshaw! "

Tom Barter could only drink more and more wine, as he did
his best to carry off this uncomfortable situation. In his heart he
longed to be back at number fifteen, Northload Street, drinking
whiskey with John. How different John was from this bearded
ruffian! If hatred had the power to kill, Lord P.'s bastard would
certainly not have played guide again to any more stalactite
caves! "Not one of these people cares a fig what becomes of poor
Tom," Barter thought, as he grew more and more sulkily mono-
syllabic, under Zoyland's heavy joking. "At this moment, as I
sit here, not one single human being is giving me a thought. None
of the wenches I make love to in Glastonbury care a tinker's dam
for me really! Mary used to think of me sometimes; a little; just
a little; but God! now John's appeared, I am out of it there, too.
Crummie turned on me like a spitfire pussy-cat the last time I saw
her. Who have I got in the whole bloody world? Nemo, nihil,
none! Not a living soul!" And then his mind went back to the
Northwold River and the talk he had had with John about those
childish times. John was something. He was the Past and that was
something. "I like old John," he said to himself. "By God I be-
lieve when I'm fooling with old John I don't feel as if I were quite
alone. 'Twas a queer idea of his though--what he hinted at this
afternoon--that I should get a job under Geard, when they make
him Mayor, and give Philip the go-by! I must talk to John a bit
more about that. There'd be nothing permanent in that though.
But, by Jiminy, it would be almost worth it, just to watch Philip's
face when I told him!"

"Why do you say 'yes' like that, Barter? You think I'm drunk.
You're not listening! I asked you whether you thought I was a
fellow who could be cuckolded with impunity. And you said
'yes.' "

"I meant 'impunity' for a time, Will; while you led the person
on; and let them make a fool of themselves."

A dangerous gleam shot forth between the candles from Zoy-
land's drunken Teutonic eyes. It annoyed him to be called "Will"
by Barter, just as it annoyed Philip to be called "Phil." "Fool be
damned! You don't know what I'm talking about, Barter. When
I give up my girl to her lover I'm not revenging myself on any-
one; I'm...I'm...I'm acting altogether outside the wretched herd
of common human animals! I'm...I'm...I'm acting like a god, little
man!" His drunken voice was so loud that Dave and Percy and
Philip ceased talking among themselves and stared at him. Philip
got up and came towards him, followed after an interval by the
husband and wife.

"Don't you start bullying our friend Tom, Zoyland," said Philip
coldly, fixing a Norseman's eye upon the gigantic toper.

"Oh, you shut up!" growled the other. "For a very little I'd
chuck both of ye into the bally road!"

Philip shrugged his shoulders and turned to Spear. "Dave," he
said, while Barter got up sulkily from his seat and went over to
Persephone, who stood regarding the whole group with dreamy
amusement, "do you mind, Dave, if I took Cousin Percy out for
a stroll down this 'road' he talks about?"

The girl gave a start and glanced quickly at her husband. A
look, quick as lightning, from her dark, languorous eyelids, said,
"May I go with him? I'd rather like to go with him, Dave. But
I won't if you don't want me to!" While a look, a little slower to
come, replied from Dave's ruddy face,. "Go, by all means, if you
want to, my dear; why not?"

"Hullo, Dave, are you going to lecture me, too?" drawled
Zoyland, as if he had noticed the presence of his brother-in-law'
for the first time. "Tu Brute, Dave! Then Big Willy must reallv
behave himself and be polite to these solemn money-grubbers."

"Dave will amuse you, William, while Philip and I get a
breath of air," said the girl cajolingly. "And mind I'll speak to
Nell about you, if you drink any more tonight! I'll be seeing her
at Tilly's party, if not before."

Dave obediently sat down by the man with the great beard. He
looked, as he did so, just as if he had been some sagacious young
clerk-in-holy-orders taking his seat at the dais by the side of an
angry Charlemagne.

"I like you, Dave Spear," said the Bastard, "your bloody Com-
munism is all poppycock, but I'm damned if you're not more
of a man than any of us here; and you can tell Nell I said so."
He stretched out his hand as he spoke, and laid it on Dave's knee,
while an effusion of melting German-student sentimentality made
his blue eyes moist.

"I think I'll adjourn, if you people don't mind," said Tom
Barter, addressing the whole company and making a little nod
with his head as he leaned his hand against the back of a chair.
"Philip can bear witness," he glanced furtively at his employer,
"that I've got a lot to do at the office tomorrow; so I think bed is
the place for me. Good-night, Mrs. Spear, you'll excuse me,
won't you?" He had isolated himself completely from the rest of
them by this time; not exactly by what he said but by the way he
looked at them. He might have been a Frenchman in that group,
instead of the descendant of a family of Methwold squires who
were landowners when the Crows were just Isle-of-Ely farmers.

Some visitor from Venus or Mars, interested in human social
differences, would have been puzzled to know what the real
psychic cause was of Barter's repeated humiliations. How could
such an one know that the sole and simple cause of it was the
manner in which, when a boy, he had been bullied at Grey lands
School? But this was the cause and none other. Barter had been
so humiliated at Greylands, at Gladman's House there, that in
his heart he felt himself to be inferior to every educated man
he met. And this feeling in his own mind every educated man he
met, without knowing why, was compelled by some invisible urge
to take advantage of! "Bullied at Greylands--always bullied"
might have been a truth-speaking Wessex proverb. It was only
at rare moments, when he lost his temper, that he dared to look
Philip straight in the face; and yet, curiously enough, Philip
came much nearer being afraid of Barter than of anyone else in
Glastonbury. It was that Greylands bullying, those memories of
what went on at Gladman's House, that made a neurotic catch-
pole of this sturdy descendant of Norfolk fox-hunters.

Philip ran immediately upstairs to his small bedroom. Here he
snatched a rough overcoat from a nail and an old sporting cap of
the same faded cloth. This latter he instinctively--as if bound
for some dark adventure--pulled low down over his narrow fore-
head. The ugly looking-glass by the window made him think of
dead flies. His angry contempt for Barter, "going to bed like that
because he'd been insulted by a hulking zany," made him think
of "heads without name, no more remembered"--and with this on
the mute lips of his mind he turned the gasjet low and hurried
down again. Here, in the porch of the little inn, he found Perse-
phone, wrapped, she too, in a long cloth coat, and wearing over
her fuzzy, dusky hair a boyish cap. They went out together in
silence. In silence he led her up the road, round a turn to the
right, till they came to a closed gate in the hedge. This he opened
for her, lifting it bodily off its latch and replacing it by the same
main force when she had stepped through. He now led her, still in
a sort of guilty silence, up a narrow winding hill-path on each
side of which grew large, indistinct trees, their roots in the sloping
bank. At this point Philip produced an electric flashlight from his
overcoat pocket and held it so as to illuminate their way.

Persephone became aware now of the sound of water, down
somewhere in the darkness to their right, and it was not long be-
fore he made her stop and look between the tree trunks, upon
whose rough surface he threw the light of his flashlight. There she
saw a single bright lamp burning, throwing morbid shadows upon
an expanse of grass. By this radiance a little lawn with chairs
and tables set out became apparent, al! these things motionless
and deserted, looking ghostly, and even ghastly there. "I keep
it lit," whispered Philip in her ear. There was no obvious need
for him to whisper. It was hard to raise his voice just then.
"It's my electric plant. That's where we serve tea to visitors.
I expect you've been there yourself, only you came in a different
way."

They went on again, the path they followed growing steadilv
narrower and steeper. They walked closely side bv side and
presently Philip without a word possessed himself of her hand.
At last she saw before her the upward rise of a precipitous rock
covered with moss and last year's ferns, and right before them,
at the base of the rock, a little square doorway. Philip took
from his waistcoat pocket a large key, like the key to a drive gate,
and using his flashlight turned it in the lock and pushed the door
open. When once they were both inside he locked the gate again
put the key in his pocket and drew a deep breath. "Perse, Perse,"
he whispered, and hugging the girl fiercely to his heart kissed
her with a long clinging kiss full on the mouth. She hung limp
and yielding in his arms. His kiss was of the kind that needs
no response, that could be aware of no response except a des-
perate resistance. But there was no flicker of resistance in
Persephone's yielded mouth and abandoned body. She yielded
to him utterly, as dark water yields to the plunge of a diver.
When he let her go she appeared so drugged by his embrace
that for a second she swayed and staggered. But he caught her,
with a strong clutch round the waist, and holding her so led her
forward. Up and up they climbed, and then, after stopping to
breathe at ease for a moment on a little level platform, down,
and again down they went. This was repeated, in spiral curves
of progression, several times. The girl seemed still too dazed
to realise the curious character of the path he led her by, and
though he often flashed his light to the right and the left neither
of them breathed a syllable.

They were isolated from human interference as completely
as if they had descended into some cavern at the bottom of the
sea. There was only that one entrance to Wookey Hole Caves,
at least only one known to modern man, and the key to that
one entrance lay in Philip's pocket. It was his money that had
opened these caves. It was his money that would presently
electrify these caves. He was like a solitary magician, whose
secret kingdom hidden in the bowels of the earth and guarded by
invisible demons, was as impenetrable to invasion as the private
thoughts in his own mind were impenetrable. Philip had never,
in all his conscious days, known a moment to compare with this
moment. He had got her! The rapacity of his desire to possess
her wholly, to ravish, not only her body, but her inmost soul,
compelled him now to exercise an adamantine restraint upon
his passion. He suddenly became a Fabius Cunctator of erotic
strategy. A cold and calculating calm rose up from the crater
of his desire, as if a volcano had engendered a shaft of ice. He
supported her now down a long, narrow, winding flight of rough
steps and not until they reached the bottom of these steps did
he utter a word. Once at the bottom, however, and on the edge
of a limestone platform leading into a vast cathedral-like cavern,
he raised aloft his flashlight and directed it against the amazing
walls that surrounded them.

These were walls composed of enormous stalactites hanging
from the roof and of equally monstrous stalagmites rising up
from the floor. These strange things--objects for which, since so
few of mortal men ever beheld them, there are in our language no
adequate descriptive words--showed themselves to be, under the
beam of light which he threw upon them, of the most staggering
variety of iridescent colours. A livid greenishness and a livid blu-
ishness were what predominated; and next to these a ghastly
kind of phosphorescent orange.

Philip found it possible to lift up his voice now; but it was
still an effort for him to speak above a whisper and he yielded to
this weakness without shame. "See those two, over there, Perse?"
he said, holding out his flashlight with one hand and pointing his
other towards what he wanted his companion to see. What he
pointed at were two of these barbarous shapes that had advanced,
one from below and one from above, in slow accretions, until they
were within an ace of each other, their extreme points, in fact,
almost touching.

"How long did they take?" whispered Persephone.

"To grow, you mean?" he whispered back. "I forget exactly.
About an inch in a thousand years. Those two things would only
have been separated from each other by about two inches when
Christ was crucified!"

"Stop! Is that water?" she cried suddenly, breaking the spell in
her excitement. Her cry was caught up by a singular echo that
did not confine itself to a single note but repeated her last four
syllables.

"Is that water?" reverberated the echo. Is that water?"

"It's uncanny!" she cried, catching hold of his arm.

"Uncanny!" repeated the echo.

The girl still clung tight to his arm, but child-like she wanted
to show off her courage. "Who are you?" she shouted at the top
of her voice.

"Who are you?" returned the echo.

"Are you a devil?" cried Persephone Spear.

"--you a devil?" threw back the echo.

Philip interrupted this dialogue by directing his flashlight to-
wards the water. It was of an indescribable tint, this water. It
might indeed have been the Styx, that mysterious river by which
the gods swore their only inviolable oath.

"Is it the Axe?" she asked.

"A tributary from it, I think" he said. "One day I'm going to
make it carry me to the Axe!"

The girl yielded to a delicious shiver. "Down there, do you--
oh, there's a boat, Philip! There's a boat!"

"Yes, that's my boat," said Philip Crow in a tone wherein
Jason might have said, "my Argo."

"Let's go down to that water," she said. "Can we do that?"

Since this was precisely what he had long since decided upon,
he promptly acceded to the girl s request. They walked with
careful steps down to the very edge of this prehistoric estuary.
He was trembling too much with the near approach of the con-
summation of his desire to have time for such imaginations; and
she was too excited by the sight of the boat down there; otherwise
they might have wondered what strange shapes of what neo-
lithic cavemen, long before the epoch of Abel Twig's Lake
Dwellers, had bent down to drink, or to wash the blood from
their hands, in that Stygian flood. "In the bowels of the Mendips,"
his wild feelings ran, "my girl...my pleasure...I, I, I,...taking my
pleasure...conquering this land underneath the earth...as I con-
quer it in the air...I, I, I, stamping my will on life...on woman...
on...on...on the Future!"

"Can't we get into the boat, Philip?" she whispered. Her sub-
dued voice made his pulses beat. Had her girl's instinct already
divined his proud intention?

He made no reply, but seizing the rope which moored the boat
to an iron stake at their feet pulled it to land. At the bottom
of the boat were lying a pair of oars. He helped her to get in and
to sit down on one side of the two small benches. Hauling the
rope after him he sat down himself on the other bench and gath-
ered up the oars from where they lay. He handed the flashlight into
her keeping. She put up her free hand and touched his shoulder
as he began to row, taking long, hard strokes.

"You are Charon!" she whispered into the back of his Bayeux
Tapestry skull.

He panted in quick little gasps as he rowed. The light from the
flashlight which she held fell upon the water and upon the black
stones of the shore.

It suddenly occurred to Philip's mind as he rowed--what
if their little flashlight went out? He let his oars rest on the
surface of the livid water, where strange terrific shadows kept
moving, shadows that might well have been the upheaving forms
of monstrous, antediluvian creatures--ichthyosauri perhaps--
that had escaped the doom, down here below the Mendips, of
the evolutionary process of a hundred thousand years. With
feverish fingers he searched his pockets. Thanks be! In both his
coat and his overcoat reposed boxes of good Swan Yesta matches.
So that was as it should be. He knew the place well enough
to be perfectly safe, with all those miniature torches in his
possession!

"Why don't you go on, Philip? You make me nervous. What
are you looking for? Cigarettes?"

"You shall have your cigarette presently, my girl," he thought.
But aloud he cried, "Careful, Perse! Careful! Hold it a bit
higher!"

Their craft grounded now upon a broad, low slab of prehistoric
limestone. Above it a great, slippery, precipitous wall ascended to
the roof. Here there was a very strangely shaped formation of
petrification such as would have required the grossest of modern
minds to endow with a human image; although Dante might not
have hesitated to find words for it. "They call that," he said,
pointing at this curious stalagmitic conformation as he helped her
from the boat, "tbey call that, the Witch of Wookey Hole. They
say a monk from Glastonbury turned her into--I say! What's
the matter, child? What is it? Oh, for God's sake, what is it.
Perse?"

The girl had fallen into a hunched-up crouching position upon
the slippery limestone slab by the water's edge and had covered
her head with both her hands. He was convinced she was weeping
by tbe movement of her shoulders, though she did not utter
a sound. There was not in all Philip Crow's profoundest being
one least little grain, one tiniest atom, of what Mr. Evans
suffered from. With all his maniacal lust for power, his was probably
the least cruel human soul within a radius of twenty miles from
that singular spot. That his high-spirited Percy--his secretest,
most private "possession"--should suddenly be seized with
an excess of trouble to which he lacked the clue, shook the
foundations of his pride. There was something nobly courteous,
nobly tender, in the timorous gesture with which, having tossed
the oars back in tbe boat and pulled its prow up the shelving rock,
he bent down and folded his long fingers round that head in the
boy's cap. What was his astonishment and relief when, under
this grave caress, the extraordinary girl rose to her knees before
him. Persephone Spear was shaking with laughter! She had not
been weeping at all. For a second he thought she was hysterical;
but when, through the contortions of her childish paroxysm,
she put out her tongue at him, he was assured. So disturbed
had he been, however, that for a minute or two all the erotic
feelings in him became as petrified as that stone image of the
Witch that stood over against him. The girl could see he was
disturbed and the sight of his gravity increased her mirth.

She dropped the flashlight upon the ledge of rock and clutching
at her sides she stayed to and fro in a breath-taking laughing-
fit. Every time she came near to stopping, something about
her lover's face would send her off again. It almost seemed as
if the pent-up little-girl gaiety of her whole mature life had broken
loose by the waters of this miniature Styx!

Philip simply could not understand this exhibition of school-
girlishness at this particular moment and in this particular place.
But he was too relieved that it was not any emotional reaction
or any distress in her, to feel angry with her as she struggled
to regain her composure. He felt a slight sensation of being
made a fool of, but not to any embarrassing extent. How could
he know that the deepest rift between his cousin and her hus-
band had been that during the whole three years of their marriage
Dave Spear had never once shown one single flicker of humour.
And here, in her seducer of this mad night under the roots of
the Mendips, she had suddenly recognized the same lack! It
was the contemplation of Philip's portentously grave face--
grave with the gravest of all emotions in the world!--that,
combined with the strangeness of her surroundings, had brought
on that fit of laughing. She had laughed exactly as a child laughs
in church; simply because she knew it would be outrageous,
unseemly, inartistic, and even a little monstrous to get a laughing-
fit at such a moment! Of course, the fact that Persephone could
laugh like that, under the circumstances, was a revelation of
her character. It showed the detachment of her soul from her
senses. It showed that, at the core of her being, there was a
profane mocking demon, that scrutinised derisively, in cold
blood, every situation in which she found herself.

But Percy's burst of laughter only shamelessly expressed
what many and quite normal women have often felt; namely,
the grotesque gravity of masculine lust. It is possible that
Aphrodite herself was called "laughter-loving" by her lover
Ares when he was furiously angry with her. In any case, it was
queer enough to hear such a ringing peal of shameless girlish
mischief rising up from the plutonian edge of that ghastly
water.

What gave the whole scene, too, an element of fantastic
bizarrerie was the fact that the fallen flashlight illuminated at
this moment only the girl's legs, leaving the rest of her figure in
dark shadow.

Philip held out his hands to her at last; and she became quiet
and quite calm when he lifted her up upon her feet. He allowed
their flashlight to remain on the ground. He pulled her hack a
little way, where the rock was smoother, under the dark wall of
the cavern. "Do you see where the water disappears. Perse?*' he
said, making her sit down by him. Their backs were now resting
against the side of the cavern; and from this position they coidd
follow the long beam of the prostrate flashlight which now illu-
minated for them a strange phenomenon. Not more than a dozen
yards from where they crouched, the water flowed under a low,
flat bridge of solid stone. There was only about three feet of
hollow space between the outflowing water and the massive rock
that hung above it.

"One day. Perse, I'll have a barge made, flat enough to carry
me under that rock, and back again. No one can tell what I may
not find if I follow that water!"

She threw her arms round his neck and gave him a quick, pas-
sionate kiss. "I'll go with you, Phil, if you do!"

The horizontal beam projected by their fallen light was wide
enough, before it reached this vanishing-point of the illuminated
water, to throw into evidence a strip of soft greyish sand a little
distance off. As a contrast to the weird colours thrown out by the
copper, iron, lead, and manganese in the walls of the cave, this
strip of grey sand assumed an appearance of Cimmerian neutrality.

Persephone showed no surprise and no reluctance when he
took her by the hand to lead her there.

The level beam of flashlight fell upon the hem of her dress and
upon her feet, while the rest of her remained in shadow. Her
slender ankles, resting motionless there side by side, suddenly
struck Philip's mind with a sense of extreme human pathos. They
looked like a doll's ankles; and they hit his fancy as being so
quaintly irresponsible, so oddly detached! They had to carry all
this burden of a girl's turbulent heart, her blunders, her errors,
her triumphs, through the long track of her days; and what had
they done?

He opened one of his precious boxes of Swan Yestas, casting,'
as he did so, a fellow-bandit's leer in the direction of the flash-
light. "You've served me well, old boy," his look said, "but
I'm glad I'm not quite dependent on you!" He lit her cigarette
and then lit one of his own. The tortoise-shell case that had
held them took on in his eyes at that moment the welcome
reassurance of a familiar possession in a strange surrounding.
For a few minutes they smoked side by side in a delicious languor
of contentment and peace. Certainly, if the girl had held up a
lighted match to his face at that moment she would have seen
upon it what William Blake says women love best of all to
see.

Philip's fierce predatoriness had melted into the sweet security
of possession; while Percy's proud wilfulness had melted into
the delicious passivity of being possessed. No thought of their
treachery, no thought of Dave or of Tilly came to disturb their
peace. The satisfied physical desire of each of them had trans-
formed itself into an indescribable tenderness for the bodily
presence of the other one. It was as if their two souls--like
the souls of a pair of triumphant chemists brooding above the
successfully mingled elements in a passive crucible--awaited
the creative act of the occult life-force. Their bodies felt as
though they were still linked together in an indescribable sweet-
ness of identity, while their minds felt a profound reluctance
to allowing any hasty movement of thought to tilt the brimming
cup of their bodies' satisfaction and spill the precious ichor.
So strong was the bent bow of their proud contentment that
in the twanging of its string it shot their spasm of gratitude
straight to the heart of the Cause of Life. And unlike the prayer
of John and Mary from the surface of the sun-lit Wissey, this
singular cry from the banks of the Styx reached the good in
the nature of the Eternal Being and dodged the evil. By pure
chance--as in the other case--did this occur; but in its ocur-
rence it brought a backwash of profane delight down there to
that strip of grey sand such as that ancient spot, in all its pre-
historic longevity, had never known before. The luck which
that spasm of gratitude from these two cousins stole from the
double-natured Cause of Life continued to soothe their nerves
even after they had risen from their Cimmerian bed and re-
crossed their Styx.

The girl's cynical detachment neutralized this luck in the
end; but all the long journey back it remained with them. It
remained with them even when they had finallv parted at
their adjoining doors on the little upper landing of the Zoyland
Arms, he to re-enter his solitary room of the dead flies, she to
clamber across the sleeping, or apparently sleeping, body of
her husband and to stretch herself out and make herself as
imperceptible as she could close up against the thin, hard,
wooden partition that now separated her from the owner of
Wookey Hole.



THE UNPARDONABLE SIN



Mr. Owen Evans, seated by the gas-stove at the back of
Old Jones' shop, was enjoying a late breakfast. It was the day fol-
lowing the one wherein Philip Crow conducted Persephone to his
subterranean kingdom. Mr. Evans' breakfast differed a great deal
from the breakfast partaken by Mayor Wollop on the preceding
morning. It lacked the Mayor's invisible attendants. It lacked the
Mayor's Dundee Marmalade. It lacked the Mayor's Western Ga-
zette. In place of this latter purveyor of topical items, Mr. Evans'
bodily refreshment--consisting of a pot of tea and three stale
rolls--was heightened by the presence of an old edition of the
Inferno in the original Italian, open at the page that describes
the blasphemous obstinacy of the heathen giant, Capaneus.

"As I was then," howled this unconscionable rebel against the
Emperor of the Universe, "such am I still!"

Mr. Evans found no difficulty in translating this passage, even
though the lettering of the old book was such a stumbling-block
to modern eyes; and in his troubled response to its terrible im-
port he placed no less than half of all the butter he possessed
upon the piece of roll-crust which he now proceeded to munch in
absent-minded voracity.

He was disturbed by a heavy knock upon Number Two's shop-
door. He cursed audibly and glanced angrily at one particular
clock, among all the old ticking timepieces, which he had grown
accustomed to consulting. He consulted this one not because it
kept better time, but because he pitied its woebegone face. He
cherished the fancy--in his confused South Wales mind--that he
might restore the prestige of this silly old clock among its
grander companions if he made this little diurnal preference. But
the clock only confirmed the knock. The knock and the clock said
the same thing. "Reading done...business begun," said the
clock and the knock.

Mr. Evans angrily opened the shop-door. This proceeding took
more time than one would have supposed the stock-in-trade of
Number Two justified. Never were there so many or such rusty
bolts! But the Welshman got them all drawn at last: aud red in
the face and panting hard he opened the barricaded door. Into
the shop stepped Sam Dekker. Sam's face, to anyone who saw it
less frequently than his father and Penny Pitches would have
displayed a startling change. It had changed from the face of a
lad to the face of a man. Sam had come to know something of
the terms upon which the happiness of being alive has been of-
fered us.

"How do you do, Mr. Evans," he said. "Oh, you are having
your coffee! Im awfully sorry I've disturbed you."

He made no motion however to go away; but proceeded to re-
move his coat and hat, and lay them both, together with his stick,
upon one of Number Two's best specimens of the art of eight-
eenth-century chair-making. Then he sat down; and Mr. Evans,
bringing up his own chair from the rear of the shop, sat down too.

"I've come to ask you rather a funny question. Sir," the visitor
began, "but if you knew how few people in Glastonbury have
books, or care anything for books, you'd understand my coming
to you. By the way, do you people--does Old Jones, I mean--sell
books as well as antiques? Has he got any old books here? Any
old...you know?...any old theological books?"

The Welshman's face assumed a very odd expression. "Yes!"
he said with a sort of resigned hesitation. "Oh, yes! There are
quite a lot here. I've been going through them. They're down in
the basement. It was chiefly because of them that I consented to
undertake this shop. Oh, yes! There are quite a lot of interesting
books down there, Mr. Dekker. But I don't know "

There was a moment's silence during which the shrill cockney
voice of Mrs. Robinson addressing herself to Grandmother Cole,
as the ladies moved slowly downtown on their way to St. John's
Church, entered through the closed door.

"If 'twere only a rat what gnawed 'en 'twill be a heasy bit o'
'emming; but if what 'ee seed to-die be goin' to be worse tomor-
row, then 'tis more nor rats! Then 'tis moth. And if 'tis moth,
'twill be 'ell's own job. If 'tis moth. I'd sigh 'No, Mr. Vicar!
Not hon your little life will I hundertake sech a 'eart-breakin'
job!'"

Sam couldn't restrain a faint grin at this overheard revelation
of a labour-revolt in the ecclesiastical sphere; but Mr. Evans
lacked all sense of humour in such matters. The man's hooked
nose, sardonic eyebrows and long upper lip looked as impene-
trable to High Street back-chat as the bust of Dante itself which
he was now regarding with a secretive eye. The charwoman and
the sewing-woman of St. John's Church passed on down the street;
and Sam became as grave as the Welshman.

"I may as well be quite open with you, Sir," Sam said. "For
more than a year now my father has been hoping that I'd accept
his offer to send me to a theological college. I've refused to go;
and I never shall go. But I ought to...I want to...read a
little more. When I was at Corpus "

Mr. Evans interrupted him. "Corpus!" he cried, leaping to his
feet, "do you mean Corpus Cambridge? I was at Oxford myself,
but you Corpus people at Cambridge have got a library...I
say you've got a library...that would madden Paracelsus him-
self. There are folios and quartos there that are " He lowered
his voice and lifting the second finger of his left hand tapped
with it the bony knuckle of the first finger of his right hand.
"There are Welsh manuscripts there, my good Sir, that are price-
less. They are prejudiced against me there; but that's nothing.
I'm nothing. But if they'd let me have those manuscripts and
take them to South Wales with me and compare them with--Why!
my good man!--They are prejudiced against me there; but that's
nothing. What am I? Nothing. Nothing at all! But they've got a
number of Bardic Triads there...in an underground chamber
...a Welsh bedmaker told me all about it...that give incredible
details of Merlin's life! Think of your being at Corpus! They
are prejudiced against me there...a trifle...a little ... They mean
well...but of course!...but that's nothing ... for what am I? Ob-
viously nothing!"

Sam Dekker watched Mr. Evans' back as he moved about in
that stuffy little shop, looking for something. A cold watery sun
filtered into the shop through the street-window. This window was
full of an extraordinary assortment of ill-chosen objects. One
could hardly have called them objects of art. They were more like
a Noah's Ark or a raft of candidates for Limbo. There was a
cracked Chinese vase decorated by a series of she-dragons each
of whom was apparently giving birth to, or being suckled by a
double-tailed goldfish. Next to this vase there was a pepper-box
of unnatural proportions on the top of which, where it was per-
forated for shaking, gaped the head of a preposterous Punchi-
nello. A rusty faucet, of ornamental brass, serviceable now for no
conceivable purpose, was propped up against the pepper-box. At
the base of the vase reposed a white-feathered shuttlecock with
a vermilion centre; while between the pepper-box and the win-
dow-frame was a small croquet-mallet of a kind that had become
quite extinct. Resting on the handle of this croquet-mallet was a
large Pacific Ocean shell, on the back of which some meticulous
Miss Drew of a hundred years ago had painted a sad little land-
scape wherein a diminutive goatherd and a gigantic goat contem-
plated a sinking ship from a green island. Leaning against the
rim of this painted shell was a big, old-fashioned shaving-cup,
upon the side of which was sketched a distant view of a castle on
the Rhine, seen between two nameless trees and above the back
of an overloaded mule.

The watery sun which struggled into Old Jones' shop, through
what portion of the window was not obscured by these objects,
enabled Sam to watch every movement of Mr. Evans.

The man was standing on tiptoe against a shelf and struggling
to open a little china pot which stood there without removing a
marble paperweight which rested on its lid.

Sam got hesitatingly up from his seat; but remained with his
hand on its arm. There was something distressing, teasing to the
nerves, something that set one's teeth on edge, about Mr. Evans'
effort to get his fingers into this little oblong pot.

"Ah!" he ejaculated at last, "I feel it now. Ah!"

Sam had never seen the human form stretched to such tension
as was the form of Mr. Evans with his fingers in that small re-
ceptacle. He couldn't help looking at the man's bare heels, both
of which were protruding now, as his feet rose out of his slip-
pers, through large round holes in his knitted socks. His feet
came back into their shoes as he uttered this exclamation, and he
himself turned with a tiny key in his hand.

"Come," he said. "Come...come...come!"

He led the way to the back of the shop where on the opposite
side to the narrow staircase going up was a still narrower stair-
case going down. At the top of this he paused; and taking a
candlestick from a little bracket began fumbling awkwardly with
a matchbox.

His helpless struggles with all these inanimate objects had now
got on Sam's nerves to such a pitch that he rushed forward to
assist him. Between them the tiny key fell upon the floor. Sam
picked it up and handed it to him. A faint stream of sunlight from
the window, full of little wavering motes, fell upon Mr. Evans'
countenance, as, with the key clutched in the palm of his hand, he
at last managed to light the candle. Sam was shocked by the nerv-
ous trouble upon the man's face. Was it due only to the obduracy
of all these little teasing inanimates, vexing like demons the
movements of a philosopher? Or was his request for these books
the most ill-advised demand with which he could have come
upon him?

Once more he had an opportunity of studying Mr. Evans' back
as he followed him down that dark little staircase. The lifted
candle the man carried caused that hooked nose of his, as he
turned to warn Sam of a particular step, to become like the nose
of an extremely old miser visiting his hoard of ducats and guil-
ders. The one eye too, which was all Sam could see in that shad-
owy profile, as he went down after him, was like the eye of a de-
mented goshawk.

They reached the cellar at last. It was small enough. It was
tidier than the shop above. It was a little low room lined with tall
book-shelves. Sam saw at once that most of the books were of no
interest to him. They were almost all of them ancient magazines
bound in leather covers and interspersed with tattered school edi-
tions of the classics. One shelf, however, had glass over it; and
it was to a key-hole in this glass door that Mr. Evans applied his
little key.

What was the matter now with the man? His legs were shak-
ing. His knees were knocking together! His fingers must have been
shaking too; for the candle grease began dripping over the front
of the glass case as he tried to open it with his key.

Sam stepped forward and made as if he would take the candle
from him. His gesture was a very natural one under the circum-
stances. Why then did the Welshman turn upon him a look of
contorted fury? But the latter got the glass doors open finally;
and Sam, peering over his shoulder, surveyed the exposed books.
They were indeed "theological" works! Sam had never seen so
many parchment-covered and vellum-covered and leather-covered
folios. He read the names. There were Bonaventura, and Duns
Scotus, and Thomas Aquinas, and Albertus Magnus, and Avi-
cenna, and Bernard, and Jerome, and Anselm.

Sam could not restrain a weary, disappointed groan. What good
were these to him?' He was no scholar. What he wanted was
something--well! He really didn't know exactly what he had
wanted; for in the world of theological books Sam had the simple
imagination of a student of minnows and butterflies.

But he saw Mr. Evans' hand now hurriedly withdrawn from the
shelf with a beautifully bound book clutched in his fingers. There
was a big gap where he had just removed this work and another
book, that had been standing erect by the one he had taken, top-
pled sideways now across this gap, and lay there diagonally,
resting against some thick mediaeval tome with an obscure Latin
title. Towards this book Sam's attention was at once attracted, for
it was different in appearance from the rest. His sharp, observant
bear's eyes caught its title in a second. It was called "The Unpar-
donable Sin."

Mr. Evans now turned upon him hurriedly.

"Here's the one for your purposes," he said, emphasising the
"your." "They didn't teach you at Corpus to read Church-Latin
I'm afraid," he went on. "But this is the 'Confessions' in English
... the best modern edition...it's worth twenty pounds...I don't know
how Jones ever picked it up."

He was beginning to close the glass doors again when Sam
made a motion towards the book fallen across the gap. Mr. Evans
jerked his arm away but in such a manner as to make it appear
that he did so by accident. He might have done it by accident; for
here he was, fumbling as helplessly as ever, with his precious key!

Sam had grown really impatient by this time--Saint Augustine's
"Confessions"! Why his father had got that book on a shelf
that Sam had known from his childhood, side by side, not with
"The Unpardonable Sin," but with Bewick's "Birds." Whatever
it had been that he had in his mind when he came here this morn-
ing it certainly had not been Saint Augustine. No! It had been
just a vague craving to make one more attempt to find some pos-
sible attitude, less sceptical than the one he had grown to adopt,
towards his father's creed.

He felt indignant with Mr. Evans for rousing his hopes like
that and then presenting him with undecipherable parchment-
folios and with "The Unpardonable Sin."

But he hadn't lived cheek by jowl with a priest of God for
nothing. He had wit enough to know now why Mr. Evans' knees
had knocked together! Either that book was some monstrous
Aphrodisiac of Obscenities or it was some pseudo-Biblical fantasy
that had turned, or was in process of turning, this poor lonely
devil's head. But what was the astonishing fellow doing now? Mr.
Evans had put down his candle upon the floor and was on his
knees by a carved chest, on the top of which was something tied
up in brown paper. The man was cursing under his breath as he
tugged at a knot in the string of this large flat parcel.

Sam received the impression that he was under the guidance of
a non-human puppet, for whom the least attempt to cope with the
obstinacy of matter was an impossible task.

But Mr. Evans summoned him now to his side. He had com-
pletely recovered his equilibrium. He was once again the long-
winded antiquary.

"Merlinus Ambrosianus," Sam proceeded to spell out from the
cover of the large volume now presented to his view.

"Is this your own make-up?" he asked, using a word that his
foster-mother Penny might have used.

"You mean my own composition?" said Mr. Evans, turning to
his interlocutor the bland, bewildered, blinking face of a harmless
Dominie Sampson.

"Oh, no! My Vita Merlini, when it is finished--I have only
just begun my collection of notes--will include elaborate details
of the Magician's life that this blundering idiot here does not
seem even aware exist. Oh, no! This is a reprint of an eightpenth-
century compendium of excerpts from the Bodleian. It has certain
documents that they won't let you take out of the Bodleian. For
instance, it has the famous Pontyprid version of the disappear-
ance of Merlin; proving conclusively that the Turning Castle
called Carbonek was not at Bardsey, but here at GIastonbury,
probably on what you people call Chalice Hill; but it is not an
important book. I would never have purchased it if those Oxford
fools--they are worse at Oxford than at Cambridge--hadn't got
suspicious of me. I don't know why it is. Mr. Dekker"--he now
scrambled to his feet, and Sam was relieved to see that he relin-
quished all attempt to tie up those strings again--"but I seem
to excite suspicion when I go about. It's something to do with my
appearance. I don't inspire confidence."

He stretched himself up to his full height as he spoke. He had
re-possessed himself of the candle and also of the volume of
Saint Augustine, worth twenty pounds. He now rose and fell in
his loose slippers as if performing some species of gymnastic
exercise.

"Have you any idea why it is? Is it my nose, do you think?''

He lifted his hand, apparently quite forgetting that it held the
candle, towards this feature of his face; and as he did so he
smiled at Sam with such an ingenious, Don Quixote kind of
smile, that Sam felt singularly disarmed.

But Mr. Evans shook his head whimsically and hugging the
big volume of Saint Augustine and carrying his candle, he led
the way up the stairs, back into the shop.

"Well, I must be off, I suppose," murmured Sam vaguely. "I
certainly can't afford twenty pounds." After a pause he added
rather sadly: "I can't afford twenty shillings."

"I'll lend you the book," cried Mr. Evans. "You'll never find
another edition as pleasant to read; and if you haven't read it
lately you'll get a lot out of it. It's an interesting book; only
rather morbid. But you are morbid yourself, just as I am! I
should think it would rather suit you."

Sam remained, for what seemed to him an interminable time,
staring at the back of the Punchinello pepper-box in the window.

Mr. Evans was engaged in one of his perennial struggles with
the inanimate. He was wrapping up the Saint Augustine in card'
board boards, making as he did so such facial contortions as
would have been extravagant in a wrestling bout.

When the Welshman at last handed him the parcel, Sam re-
marked nervously, "Are you very busy this morning, Mr.
Evans?"

Number Two's representative looked at him in surprise.

"Not especially," he said.

"I only asked you," wavered Sam, laying his fingers on the
shop-door handle, "because my father wanted me to go to the
station to see your friend Crow, who's sending round all these
queer announcements. He's sent you a lot, no doubt."

Mr. Evans nodded. "You want me to go with you?" he asked.

"I thought it would be nice," returned Sam.

"All right. Why not?" said Mr. Evans. "I've got nothing to do
but lock the door! People don't often drop in in the mornings."

"When the two men reached the little office, down by the station,
they found John preparing to sally forth on a private expedition
of his own. It was difficult to catch his explanation of the purport
of this expedition, because the wooden shanty he occupied was
invaded at that moment by a violent outpouring of steam from the
engine of a luggage-train that had stopped close behind it.

Geard's office having been the temporary office of a coal com-
pany and consequently situated in the goods-yard of the Great
Western station, it had been to the accompaniment of the day-long
shunting of trucks and puffing of engines that John Crow had
composed his extravagant advertisement of their Midsummer
Pageant.

As the three men stood together now at the door of the little
office, Sam was unable to avoid a sidelong glance at the majestic
proportions and almost personal dignity of the great green en-
gine towering above them. The vast Creature carried its name in
clear gold letters upon its belly. It was called "Sedgemoor." It
may well be imagined how the appearance of this particular word,
in so unexpected a place, gave to all these polished pistons and
cog wheels a symbolic significance to the enamoured heart of
Sam!

Just for the sake of that word "Sedgemoor" there floated--like
the "disarrayed" Loveliness that so tantalised Spenser's stern Sir
Guyon--the white limbs and the tender bosom of Nell, in and
out of the iron entrails of this majestic monster.

"I've got to go to Tor Field," John Crow was saying, "before
I can get on with my next set uf circulars. I musl see the lie of the
land. Why don't you two come with me? At any rate as far as the
Vicarage? I don't want to drag \ou any further; but it'll be easier
to talk if we get away from here.'"

Sam and Mr. Evans both signified their willingness to accom-
pany him.

"I really came," said Sam. with a disarming candour, "as my
father's plenipotentiary. He's read your first batch of circulars
and he's anxious to know more about the whole business. You
mustn't think it's just impertinent interfering; but my father
could really be an immense help to you if he got interested and
liked your ideas--as I'm sure he would!"

"Well, I'll tell you how far we've got," said John, '"and then
you'll have something definite to tell your father. I ought to have
called on him about it long ago and asked his advice, before it
got as far as it has. Mr. Geard wanted me to. But these last days
have slipped by with such speed that I don't seem to have had
time for anything.

"What we propose," he went on, as they all three walked
slowly up Benedict Street, "is to have a mixed entertainment.
Part of it will be just an ordinary Fair, like what you have here,
at Michaelmas, only more lively, I hope! Part of it, though, will
be quite different from that. We propose to have"--he peered
craftily and furtively into the faces of his companions--"a Glas-
tonbury Passion Play."

John had a suspicion in his Isle-of-Ely mind that the words
"Passion Play" would excite annoyance in both these men. He
forgot the indelible egoism of human beings! Because his own
head was just then so full of this scheme of Geard's, It seemed to
him that the mere mention of it would arrest lively attention, and
evoke either hostility or sympathy. He was not prepared for
casual indifference. But casual indifference, tempered by polite-
ness, was precisely what his grand news received.

Sam's brain was full of Nell and of his struggle with his own
passion.

Mr. Evan's head was full of the sinister thoughts which his
visit to that bookshelf had stirred up.

Thus John's mentioning the historic Passion of Jesus passed as
lightly over both their heads as if he had been referring to *
famine in China.

Twice on their walk through the town, from Benedict Street to
Chilkwell Street, Mr. Evans was on the point of leaving them and
going back to his shop. When they passed the Vicarage gate in
Silver Street, Sam was on the verge of bidding them good-bye.

It was one of those occasions when a casual group of people
seems held together by some invisible bond, contrary to the in-
dividual desire of every person composing the group. The dreamy
passivity of both Mr. Evans and Sam was partly due to the fact
that their own fate seemed to them to be hanging in the balance.
Sam retained an obstinate clutch upon the edition of Saint Au-
gustine which he had borrowed. This he could sweep into the
master-current of his feelings more easily than any vague purpose
of John Crow's in Tor Field.

Mr. Evans was able to get rid of every embodiment of his dark
temptation, except one single passage in "The Unpardonable
Sin," which some supernaturally crafty devil might have com-
posed especially to devastate and overwhelm him. Certain images
called up by this particular passage were so seductive that his
knees grew weak as he thought of them. The worst of these
images had to do with a killing blow delivered by an iron bar.

The three men had reached the Abbey Barn at the corner of
Bere Lane when things came to the worst with Mr. Evans.

The wild and desperate thought seized him...as it had done
only once before since he came to Glastonbury..."Why not
fling away every scruple?"

His mind seemed at that second absolutely balanced on a taut
and twanging wire between two terrible eternities, an eternity of
wilful horror, and an eternity of bleached, arid futility, devoid of
all life-sap. He could feel the path to the horror, shivering with
deadly phosphorescent sweetness. He could feel the path to the
renunciation filling his nostrils with acrid dust, parching his
naked feet, withering every human sensation till it was hollow as
the shard of a dead beetle! The nature of his temptation was such
that it had nothing to redeem it. Such abominable wickedness
came straight out of the evil in the heart of the First Cause,
travelled through the interlunar spaces, and entered the particular
nerve in the erotic organism of Mr. Evans which was predestined
to respond to it.

The unhappy man now surveyed with a sick eye those symbols
of the Evangelists which endow this ancient barn with such a
majestic consecration. He felt a sudden loathing for the human
spirit, so hampered by matter as to be driven to shifts like this--
to the ransacking of the kingdoms of terrestrial life for their clue
to the beyond-life.

Drifting forward up Chilkwell Street went the three men: and
it was between the Barn and St. Michael's Inn that the bloody
sweat of Mr. Evans' mental struggle poured down till he felt
actually faint.

"If I yield," he said to himself, "what then?"

Oh, with what blasting clearness he saw that terrible alterna-
tive! He saw himself obsessed again with the old bite, the old
itch, the old sting, the old insatiable torture of desire

"The thing has no end," he thought. "The other way leads to
places where you can rest. This goes on...and on...and on
... without an end. The struggle to renounce it is pain. Each
day new pain. The pain of unspeakable dreariness. But if I don't
struggle against it, it is worse than that. These men don't know
whom they are walking with. They don't know! Oh, why should
there be such a thing in the world as this?"

His mind recoiled from an attempt to envisage the nature of
what it was that had first engendered the poison-seed which had
attracted to itself so much kindred evil from the heart of the
universe.

"If I yield to it--if I yield to it--" he kept repeating; while
the image that worked the madness in him slid again into the
fibres of his being and nestled, nestled there, like a soft-winged
bird. And his imagination, as they drew near St. Michael s Inn,
settled itself like a dung-wasp upon the nature of his conscious
life if he did yield to it. He saw his soul in the form of an un-
speakable worm, writhing in pursuit of new, and ever new mental
victims, drinking new, and ever new innocent blood. And he saw
the face of this worm. And it happened to him now that he ob-
tained what is given to few to obtain, an actual certain knowledge
of what thoughts they were, if they could be called thoughts, that
would come to stir in the darkness under the mask of that face
that was no face!

Absolutely alone except for its consciousness of a certain little,
round, red eye--the eye of the Evil in the double-natured First
Cause--fixed upon it with a bottomless enjoyment of its suffering,
the worst of the thoughts of this creature would be the intolerable
effort required of it if it were to struggle to escape its doom. It
would know that it could escape if it struggled. But the effort
would be worse than what it suffered. And it would know its
doom. It would see Remorse slowly changing its nature and be-
coming Something Else in the process of self-torture. It would
know that its doom was no crashing annihilation, but a death as
slow as the disintegration of certain mineral deposits which
under chemical pressure gradually lose their identity and are
converted into amorphous dust.

They were now passing the entrance to St. Michael's Inn, a
simple little tavern, frequented chiefly by the poorer class, and
possessed of only two storeys.

As Mr. Evans cast his eye upon the windows of the upper
storey he saw the muslin curtains of one of them pulled aside.
They were not pulled far...only a little way...and the hand that
pulled them remained clutching them tightly, as if in fear of
being interfered with. Between these curtains Mr. Evans saw
a face looking out at him, apparently the face of a woman. The
head of this apparition shocked Mr. Evans and indeed caused
him to feel queasy in the pit of his stomach; for it was totally
bald. An ordinary observer would have regarded this face as that
of an idiot; but Mr. Evans knew better. It was the face of a re-
morseful sadist. Yes! it was a face of unspeakable cruelty, but
the nature of its cruelty had changed. The mind behind that face
was still occupied with devices for causing suffering; but the
object of these devices was no longer--by the blessed interposi-
tion of chance--external to the woman herself.

He imagined her, or rather he saw her, for the woman looked
at him and he looked at the woman, slowly torturing herself to
death; and this by a process that Mr. Evans completely under-
stood. It was a process of pleasure-killing. He knew the part
played in this process by everything in the woman's room. He saw
her refusing to pick up crumbs from the floor, although to re-
move crumbs from the floor was a pleasure to her. He saw her
draw the muslin curtains across the window when it rained--and
he knew she liked rain--and drawing them back when the sun
shone; and he knew' she loathed the sun. He could see the chair
she longed to sit upon and never. allowed herself to sit upon. He
could hear the ticking of the clock which she wound up so care-
fully every night; although it was the ticking of this clock more
than anything else that she found intolerable.

Mr. Evans was well aware of the efforts that the people of the
house must be making all the while to persuade the woman to
cease this maniacal self-punishment, this slow murdering of all
the little diurnal sensations of pleasure. But these efforts were
doubtless of no avail. Oh, no! They were wrong to call her an
idiot. Mr. Evans knew all about her. He knew how she poured
water out of her washing-jug over the red coals in her grate the
minute she caught herself getting any pleasure from the warmth.

He knew--but he had already lingered ridiculously long behind
John and Sam. He must catch them up.

They arrived now at an old rickety gate on their right which
led direct into Tor Field where at Michaelmas for a thousand
years, the great Glastonbury Fair had been held; although of
recent years it had been moved to a meadow on the further side
of the town.

Sam opened the gate and they all three entered the field. When
Sam turned to his companions, after lifting the gate back into
place, he was met by a somewhat bewildered, vaguely appealing
stare from both of them. It was entirely instinctive, this movement
of theirs. It must have been a deep unconscious impulse. Just in
this manner, on countless forgotten pilgrimages, men must have
turned to some fate-appointed leader, drawn by what Mr. Weath-
erwax would have called "natural authority."

It was as if they both secretly in their hearts expected Sam to
say: "Follow me up the hill."

Sam, however, said nothing of the sort. He laid down his parcel
on the grass and began searching about at the side of an ancient
fallen tree for a certain kind of moss that he knew grew here, of
a rather uncommon variety.

John and Mr. Evans both turned their eyes to St. MichaeFs
Tower. The Tower upon Glastonbury Tor varies in appearance as
much as any hill-erection in Wessex. This is due to the extraor-
dinary variety of atmospheric changes which the climate of that
district evokes.

On this particular day the weather conditions had assumed a
cloud-pattern, an air-pressure, a perspective of light and shadow,
such as dwellers in Glastonbury recognized as more natural and
normal than any other. Over the surface of the sky extended a
feathery white film of vapour. The effect of this filmy screen upon
the sun was to make it seem as if it shone through a roof of
water. As a matter of fact, this vaporous film reduced the sun-rays
to so mild a diffusion that they ceased to be rays. The sun's orb,
thus shorn of its outpouring of radiance, came to resemble the
disk of the moon. The great Luminary was so reduced by this
film of clouds that, like Agamemnon in the toils of Clytemnestra,
it could hardly be said to shine at all. It peered helplessly forth
over the green meadows of Avalon; so that stubborn Christian
spirits, such as Mat Dekker, had the satisfaction of being able to
confront the great Light-Lord, and stare him full in the face with-
out blinking.

The result of this veiling of the sun was that only a watery
suffusion of liquid luminousness flowed over every object that
emerged into prominence at all, over every object that had any
form or any outline.

All were equally blurred and softened. Thus it came about that
a moon-like circle of pallid whiteness looked forth upon a world
from which every harsh projection, whether of stone, or wood, or
metal, or horn, or scale, or feather, or bone, or rock, had been
obliterated; a world of flowing curves and sliding shadows, a
world of fluctuating shapes and melting contours.

What this veiling of the sun further did was to heighten the
effect of colour. Colour as a phenomenon in the world became
doubly important. Every shade, every richness, every variety of
colour, lent itself to this colour-invasion of the kingdom of form.

Thus as these three men stood together at the foot of Glaston-
bury Tor the grass of the hillside seemed of an incredibly rich
depth. It was like a mounting wave of palpable greenness into
which, if you began to walk, your feet would sink down.

"My idea is," said John at length, when Sam had risen up from
his search for mosses on the underside of the prostrate tree,
"my idea is to have the regular Fair down here, on this level
ground. But the Miracle Play, or whatever you like to call it I
want to have on the slope of the hill, with that Tower as mv
background. Do you catch my idea?"

"Let's sit down a second," said Sam, taking his seat on the
fallen tree.

"What I want to do," said John, looking around him, "is to try
and realise this place with a crowd of people moving about, and
booths and tents and bands and so on. I can't imagine it! But.
after all, when you cross any ordinary fair-field at this time of
the year, it's impossible to see it as it is when it's crowded with
people."

He seated himself by Sam's side as he spoke and Mr. Evans
sat down, too. The position of the three men when thus seated was
as follows: John was nearest the Tor; that is to say, southward of
the others; Mr. Evans was nearest Chalice Hill; that is to say,
northward of the others; while Sam had the middle place, oppo-
site that spot in the horizon where the gap called Havyatt breaks
the ancient line of trenches, thrown up to repel the Danes.

Mr. Evans sat starkly upright on their log. His black overcoat
hung about his thin knees like a priest's cassock. His black bowler
hat was pulled so low down over his forehead as to resemble the
hat of a Jewish comedian on a music-hall stage. He leaned for-
ward on a nondescript cane, picked up anywhere, but he bent his
head over his folded hands as if he had been a chieftain out of
Ossian's poetry, brooding over some irrevocable doom.

Sam wore a very rough, thick, Norfolk jacket. His knicker-
bockers were stained, worn threadbare, very faded, his woolen
stockings were slipping down, and as they slipped they no longer
concealed his heavy woolen drawers. Sam's cap had been pushed
back off his forehead, and his wrinkled, animal physiognomy
scowled forth in a puzzled and nonplussed protest at a world that
contained both good and evil to a degree beyond the fathoming of
his simple spirit.

As for John, he had bought by Mary's advice an overcoat at
Wollop's which was really a bargain. Not that this new overcoat
destroyed his trampish appearance, but it made him look more
like a thief or a rogue or even a furtive-eyed cardsharper than he
had done when tidied up for his English adventure by his French
grisette. Mary's attempts to give him a gentlemanly air had only
given him a shabby-genteel air; an air that was very disconcert-
ing to the girl, and for which she could not quite account.

John looked, in fact, exactly like the tricky showman he was,
calculating the possibilities of his Midsummer Circus. The over-
coat which Mary had chosen for him hung on his lean figure like
a garment he had stolen. It was as if some well-dressed man,
passing down a road, had tossed that coat over the wooden cross-
beam of a dilapidated scarecrow. He sat sideways, in a hunched-
up posture, prodding the earth with his hazel-stick and looking
first at one of his companions and then at the other. Every now
and then, however, he glanced stealthily at St. Michael's Tower
on the top of the Tor, as if that were a Fourth Person in this
colloquy, whose temper, just as incalculable as that of the other
two, had to be kept an eye upon, lest it should make trouble.

It was after one of these surreptitious glances that he suddenly
broke out--"You see that ledge over there? That's where I'm
going to have my Crucifixion."

The terrible word came with a shock to the ears of the other
two men.

"Will it be allowed?" asked Mr. Evans.

"How do you mean, 'allowed,' " said John.

"By the police, Mr. Evans means," said Sam, "and by public
opinion. You must remember, Crow, this is a Protestant country.
You seem to have forgotten how they killed Abbot Whiting on
this very hill."

"I really meant by the Glastonbury people themselves," ex-
plained Mr. Evans. "But it's true they let that devilish king kill
their Abbot here."

"He was a Welshman like you," said John.

Mr. Evans surprised them by the depth of the sigh he gave at
this point

"What a sigh was there!" quoted John. "The heart is, surely
charged."

Mr. Evans sighed again.

"Whose is not?" he muttered.

Sam was now lost in heavy ponderings, as he stared at the
brown-paper parcel containing Saint Augustine which he had
tossed down on the grass when he began searching for that speci-
men of moss.

His was not a nature to be carried away by any sudden idea.
The feelings that had been fomenting within him of late had only
been stirred up. They had not been created by his passion for
Nell. But the girl's having gone back to Zoyland's bed had been
a shock to his deepest pride; and by his new gesture of complete
renunciation he was, in some subtle way, recovering his threatened
life-illusion.

As for Mr. Evans a most singular idea had just entered that
Roman skull under the Jewish-comedian black hat. Why should
he himself not play the part of the Crucified in the blasphemous
mummery of this mountebank?

In the agitation of this thought Mr. Evans actually took off his
bowler hat and standing up on his feet stretched out his arms in
the manner of a crucified person. That one of his hands held his
hat while he did this was nothing to him. He was startled by the
magnetic wave of emotion that poured through him as he made
this sudden gesture.

Sam did not notice what he was doing. John thought he had
got cramped and was stretching himself.

Mr. Evans let his arms drop and addressed John in an eager
voice.

"I'll go over to your terrace, Crow," he said, "and play the
Crucified for you; so that you can see how it looks."

John was delighted with this offer.

"Isn't. that splendid!" he cried in a high-pitched tone. "Bravo!
That's the very idea! How decent of you, Evans! What a good
thought!"

Sam regarded this transaction with a very uneasy eye. If he
found it hard to say the Creed with the simplicity of his father.
anything that smacked of blasphemy brought an evil taste into
his mouth.

Mr. Evans walked up the hill till he reached the grassy ter-
race. This time he put down both his hat and his cane. He also
buttoned up tightly his long black overcoat. In this guise he raised
himself to his full height, flung back his head and stretched out
his arms.

John leapt to his feet in an ecstasy.

"Wonderful! It's wonderful!" he cried. He came hurrying up
to Mr. Evans.

"Seriously, Sir," he blurted out, "you'll have to play Christ in
my Pageant. You will! You will! You're not exactly the type
... but that doesn't matter a bit. Oh, you will! You will! Why,
you'll beat that Oberammergau person hollow."

Mr. Evans picked up his hat and nondescript cane and advanced
hurriedly to meet John. In his secret heart he was astonished
and even puzzled by the feelings that again poured through him
as he made the terrible symbolic gesture.

"I...don't...mind," he panted in a hoarse voice. "Only you'll have
to make it as real as you can."

John regarded his friend through shrewd, screwed-up, medita-
tive eyelids.

"Oh, we'll make it real enough," he said. But he was too occu-
pied with an imaginative picture of that future scene to care
very much what he was promising Mr. Evans.

"Come on up to the top of the hill, you two, won't you?" he
pleaded now.

"Can I leave this book here?" said Sam, looking first at Saint
Augustine and then at Mr. Evans.

The Welshman surveyed the parcel which he had done up so
carefully. He evidently remembered that it was worth twenty
pounds.

"I'll carry it," he said. "Boys might come. You never know."

The fear of "boys" was one of Mr. Evans' peculiarities. In fact
he was nervously scared of all children.

But Sam tucked the big parcel under his own arm.

"It's not heavy," he said.

It must have been about thirty minutes after twelve when they
all reached the top of the Tor. They surveyed the great entrance
to the hollow tower and John tapped with his stick at the hoard-
ings with which it had been closed up.

"Mayor Wollop had that done," he remarked savagely. "0ld
Sheperd found a boy and girl making love inside; and that was
enough for our precious procurator. Boarded up it must be; so
that the king should not have to fight his enemies with bastards!"

"Let's sit down for a minute," said Sam.

They all obeyed him, sitting side by side on the grass, with
their backs leaning against the western flank of the cold, slate-
coloured base of the tower. Before them to the westward stretched
the green water meadows, among which, a mile or so out of
town, could be detected the wide Lake Village Fen and even the
little shanty of Abel Twig; while to the southwest, beyond the
fens, rose the blue-grey ridge of the low Polden hills. All these
were softly suffused by the cloud-latticed vapour-filmed sun; a
sun which, though riding at high noon, lacked the potency to
dominate what it bathed with that glamorous and watery light.

Here under St. Michael's Tower sat these three figures, the lean
shabby-genteel John, the hulking weather-bleached Sam, the
black-coated Mr. Evans--all atheists towards the life-giving
Sun-God, and all expanding now, in their thoughts, their feelings,
their secretest hopes, because of the victory of vapour over light
and of dampness over heat!

A landscape of green and grey, a landscape with all hard out-
lines obliterated, was what just suited these three fantastical
human beings. A common relaxation, a common inertia, a com-
mon languor descended upon them as they sat there, gazing down
on that pastoral scene.

And as they sat there they each thought of a particular girl.
They thought of these three feminine identities so intently that
by the automatic preoccupation of their feelings the souls of all
three girls were drawn towards them; three wraithlike eidola! Ah!
How little do the feminine creatures of the human race realise
what long journeys they are compelled to take...what long,
rapid journeys...swifter than light...under the compulsive magic
of their men's imaginations!

To the supernatural eyes of that veiled sun as he dreamed his
indescribable planetary thoughts, vaguely hostile and vaguely
menacing, one of these feminine forms came naked to the waist--
that was Nell; one came naked from the thighs downward--that
was Mary; and one came garmented like a nun, from head to foot
in black--and that was Cordelia!

Together these three men represented--in Remorse, in Renun-
ciation, in Roguery--everything that separates our race from na-
ture. Their three intelligences floated there, on that hilltop, above
their clothed and crouching skeletons, like wild demented birds
that had escaped from all normal restraint.

Any student of ancient mythology might well have fancied that
Gwyn-ap-Nud, with a host of his elementals, finding these three
detached intelligences--Remorse, Renunciation, Roguery--sepa-
rated from natural human life--had cast his immemorial spell
over them; that oldest of supernatural spells against which St.
Michael's aid had been so often implored in vain.

"What slaves we all are," remarked Mr. Evans suddenly, "to
traditional ideas! People say we ought to be always admiring Na-
ture. God help me! There are endless occasions when I loathe
Nature. I think the truth is that God is outside Nature...alto-
gether outside...creator of it...but often loathing it as much as
I do! I feel sometimes that Matter is entirely evil...and that to
cleanse our minds we must destroy its power...destroy...its power."

He repeated these last words in his most serious tone; that tone
which John had noticed when they first met; that tone in which
each word seemed torn out of him like the deep-burrowing dock
root.

Sam's hulking form swayed like a gnarled thorn bush in a
high wind.

"I protest against what you've just said, Evans, with every instinct
I have! That's the essence of the Incarnation...that's the...

He had become so excited that without knowing what he did he
was plucking great handfuls of the turf -grass from between his
huge thick-soled boots.

"That's what they really killed the Abbot for," he went on, "be-
cause he wouldn't let anything come between him and It. It's the
whole secret It's where the most commonplace Christians can
refute the greatest sages. Matter must be redeemed: and only
Christ can redeem it. Christ, I say; not Jesus. Verbum caro fact-
um est. Your making Matter evil undoes the whole thing. It's he
Incarnation that transforms Nature. It has been done once.
Nothing can reverse it. Something has come into it from outside;
rom that Outside you talk about. But Its in it now! You can't get
rid of it. The simplest person has an instinct about this, wiser
han the greatest philosophers. Something has taken up Matter
into Itself. Two and two can now make five! It's the Thing Out-
side breaking into our closed circle. And every atom of Matter
eels it. Matter is no longer separate from Spirit. It has become
he living flesh of Spirit. Verbum caro factum est!"

Sam stopped. He gazed with confused surprise at the little
weeds he had grubbed up in his agitation. He began planting
them again in the hole he had made. He squeezed them into the
fielding sod. He pressed them down with his strong thumbs;
vhile his retreating chin, with all its quivering muscles, seemed
to echo his discourse, in a mute ripple of the Matter whose re-
lemption he had been defending.

John regarded him with intense curiosity, as if he had been
Balaam's ass suddenly endowed with the gift of speech. "I sup-
pose," John said, "you would call the Mass this kind of miracle?"

Sam's reply to this was a vague groan.

"Maybe you're right," he muttered. "Maybe you're right."

"I suppose," said John to Sam, "you don't want to come to our
rehearsals of the Miracle Play? The chap I'd meant for the cen-
ral figure will be glad enough to give it up to Evans. Shall I make
the lad who is doing St. Peter, hand that part over to you?"

Sam felt at that moment as if he were a child whose secretest
md most private game, a game he'd never revealed to a living
souI, had become the sport of a noisy dormitory of jeering boys,
He lowered his freckled face and drew down the corners of his
mouth. Three times he swallowed his saliva; and then he said
vith a forced unnatural chuckle, "I'll pay the entrance-fee and
come and see your Circus, Crow. But nothing you could give me,
nothing; not all the fortune of your Rector of Northwold, would
nake me take part in it."

"Oh, don't say that, Dekker! What makes you say that?"

"We'll...call...it...shyness...Crow," said Sam slowly, but in a tone
that was decisive.

"Well, gentlemen," said Mr. Evans rising to his feet, "I'm afraid
I must get back to my shop! There's always a chance of visitors
after lunch and it's half-past one already."

"Don't you have lunch yourself, then?" enquired John. "I was
just going to suggest that we all have lunch together at that little
tea-shop in George Street "

Mr. Evans pondered. He felt very hungry and there was nothing
in his larder except half a roll and a small piece of butter.

Sam had felt so restless that morning that he had told his father
not to expect him back to their mid-day dinner. If he hadn't
found Mr. Evans in his shop he would have probably gone off
on a long solitary walk--perhaps in the direction of Queen's
Sedgemoor and perhaps not.

He got up slowly upon his feet, as also did John. They were all
three erect now under the tower of St. Michael; that same tower
against which the murderous Tudor's executioners had leaned as
they prepared for butchering Abbot Whiting.

Sam spoke up boldly.

"You two have given me so much to...to think about...that I...that
I shall...have to walk off...my excitement. I wonder ...he hesitated
for a second with bowed head and working chin. Then his words
came out with a rush...I wonder if you'd mind leaving this book at
the Vicarage as you go by?"

There was no difficulty thrown in Sam's way by either Mr. Evans
or John, and he strode off alone down St. Michael's Hill. In order
to leave them abruptly while it was easy for him to do so', he de-
scended the Tor by its eastern slope. He had indeed stated no
less than the exact truth when he said he wanted to walk off
his excitement.

His gaze swept the countryside as he climbed down into the
valley. He glanced at Pennard Hill and Folly Wood and at the
fields and hedges round Stony Stratton. He glanced at the low-
lying downs near Chesterblade; and thought to himself--"That's
the source of the Alham; and where the Alham runs into the
Brue is only a mile south of Hornblotton."

Thus was the little river Alham compelled to be the bearer of
a lover's memory. For it was at Hornblotton that Sam had ridden
with Nell when at that circus, so fatally remembered by Penny
Pitches, he had taken her on the roundabout.

When he reached the valley he struck across country heedless
as to lanes or paths. His instinct for geography was only second
to that of his father; and it was easy for him by following the
meadows beyond the town-reservoir, between Norwood Farm and
Havyatt, to reach the village of West Pennard without touching
any road. Here he turned due north; and still crossing every
hedge and ditch with the same animal-like straightness of direc-
tion, he made his way over Hearty Moor, across the tracks of
the Burnham and Evercreech railroad, till he came to Whitelake
River at Whitelake Bridge.

This he reached when the watch in his pocket pointed at seven-
teen minutes past three. He had no idea what the time was. In
fact he did not give the matter a thought. His thoughts followed
one another like horses round a treadmill. Anyone reading his
thoughts, and contemplating the motion of the hands of his watch
in his pocket might have been tempted to an extremely deter-
ministic view of life. The mainspring in the one case was made
of metal, and the other case made of the brutish sting of desire;
but there was in both cases the same monotonous revolution
around predetermined figures of demarcation.

The filmy screen that hid the sun had grown thicker since
high noon. The surface of the small river reflected now what
appeared to be a very cloudy sky and the willows and alders
were not mirrored there at all. Staring at the water, he tried to
summon back every link in the dragging chain that had pulled
him to this place. He meditated on the curious difference which
exists--when you consider the life of a river--between the out-
lines of reflections in its flow and the outlines of shadows.

He sat down on a willow stump and stared at the river as
intently as if it held a secret for him that at all costs must he
drawn forth. At what point, since he stood by Mr. Evans' side
in that queer basement of Old Jones' shop, had the determination
seized upon him to come out here? Was it when he was looking
at that surprising volume...he could envisage its dirty-whitish
modern binding now...that fell across the gap in the shelf
left by the extraction of St. Augustine? Was it when he was
looking for that "fairy-cup" moss by the log on which the three
of them had sat down? Was it at the very moment when he had
that sudden inspiration about the secret of Christianity and the
redemption of Matter?

The willow stump on which he sat now had one living sprout;
and from this sprout a little cluster of emerald-green buds had
burst forth. These buds now became a portion of what he was
feeling and thinking. One conclusion certainly had formulated
itself in his slowly moving mind, during that ascent of the Tor;
the conclusion, namely, that it was unnecessary to trouble him-
self one way or the other about his father's Creed; since the
essence of the thing lay in the conduct of life rather than in any
intellectual doctrine.

"She said you had the look of a saint." What a funny remark
that was of Red Robinson's; and how hard to associate it with
any impression he had ever received from Crummie Geard! Well,
the look of a saint or the look of a satyr, he knew what he could
not help doing now! For good or for evil he must see Nell
Zoyland that day.

He got up from the willow stump, crossed the bridge, and
began tramping westward, along the opposite bank, which, at
that portion of the river's progress, resembled a natural tow-path.

When John and his Welsh companion came out of their tea-
shop on George Street, they encountered Tom Barter. John had
taken the opportunity of carrying further his sudden inspiration
as to using "my good friend Evans" as the central figure of his
profane Passion Play. The idea of this appealed to a vein of
sheer devilry in his impulsive nature. The less there appeared
of the Christ-like in the degenerate Roman physiognomy of his
Celtic ally the better pleased and the more tickled did this nerve
of roguery in him become!

Having agreed to the wild scheme in his "second manner,"
the Welshman was now prepared, it seemed, to throw into the
notion all the ponderous, pedantic weight of his "first manner'';
and the more he talked about it with John the fuller of dramatic
possibilities did the plan seem for John's lively imagination.

But Mr. Evans went off to his shop now; and the two old
friends, of the far-off Northwold days, were left together in that
drowsy Glastonbury street. It came back to John, as he drifted
by his friend's side towards the office of Philip's factory, how full
of this man's personality every glittering, rippling reach of that
"big river" had been. It came back to him how he had thought
of Tom as he stood with Mary at the mill-pond looking at
those great salmon-trout. It came to him how he had recalled,
without realising the full import of it, their vicious play that
hot Sunday afternoon at the bottom of the boat! Vicious with
every sort of East-Anglian sensuality had they both been; and
John was surprised at himself, glancing furtively at Tom's stolid
profile, to find what an intense thrill it still gave him, what a
delicious, voluptuous sensation, to feel himself weak and soft,
where Tom was strong and hard!

Their way took them--John knew he ought to return to his
office but he simply could not tear himself away from his friend
--past some of the worst of the Glastonbury slums. These were
altogether minor slums compared with those of any big city;
but such as they were they were not a pretty sight. Here in
these back alleys lived the failures in the merciless struggle of
life. At this present moment many of the people who lived in
these houses were men and women who would have found em-
ployment if Philip Crowds factories had been working full-time.

The sight of the two leisurely men, both of them absolutely
sure of two more pleasant meals that day, and of good clean
sheets and a quiet bedroom to sleep in, when that day was over,
strolling past, did not enhance the peace of mind of such dwellers
in "loop'd and windowed raggedness" as chanced to watch them
go by.

They had scarcely got past this quarter when they were hailed
from behind; and on turning round found Dave Spear hurrying
after them. Dave's cheeks were less rosy than usual and there
was a dangerous glint in his eye,

"Do you mind if I walk with you a step or two?" he gasped,
panting a little, like a dog that has been overtaxed.

"I'm always glad to see you, Spear," said John. "You know
Mr. Barter, of course?"

"Why I troubled you, Crow," said Dave, when he had nodded
gravely at Tom Barter, and they had moved on together, "was
that I've just been reading some of your circulars. They're very
good, man. They're topnotch in their way, let me tell you! And
I'm a connoisseur, being a Communist, of the art of propaganda."

"I'm glad you like 'em," said John, mightily pleased at this
unexpected praise from so experienced an expert.

"But what I want you to do, what we want you to do"--it
was not clear to John whether this "we" referred to Persephone
or to the Bristol headquarters--"is to mention in your circulars
that in addition to her other interests, your town here is going
to try the experiment of running a municipal factory. You might
mention it as an important experiment in the economic life of
the town and suggest that visitors come to see it."

John's eyes gleamed with malicious delight at hearing these
words.

"Certainly, certainly, certainly!" he cried eagerly. "I'll have
what you say printed in my new set that I'm getting out next
week."

"Would it he a philistine thing, Mr. Spear," put in Tom Barter
in a casual and supercilious tone, "if I enquired where this mu-
nicipal factory of yours is?"

"We'll have it in working order by the time Mr. Geard's vis-
itors are really here. You'll know where it is then, Mr. Barter."

John looked a little glum at this remark.

"At first we did think of June the first," he said, "but we
decided that it would be better to have more time to prepare.
Fm in favour...for reasons of my own...of St. John's Day."

They came in sight of the factory where Barter's office was.
There was a wooden gate leading to a narrow lane between high
"walls here, which was the access to his labours usually employed
by this Norfolk manager of a Somerset mill.

The others leaned over this gate with him for a moment out
of politeness; for he didn't wish them to come any further. There
was a very wretched house adjoining this gate, an old house,
probably built during the Wars of the Roses. for its stone but-
tresses and lintels still carried deeply cut Gothic foliations, and
its crumbling walls were thick as those of a castle. But its rafters
were rotting, its thatch dilapidated and full of holes, its broken
panes stuffed with rags, and so many bricks were missing from
the top of its chimney that one interior side, covered with black
soot, was open to the air.

Out of the interior of this house there emerged at equal inter-
vals a low moaning sound, a sound that had something in it that
was peculiarly disconcerting.

"Hear that?" said Barter in a flat, toneless voice.

"Is anything wrong?" said John.

"Oh, no...all is in order," said Dave Spear. "I heard this
noise the other night, Mr. Barter, when I was calling on the
people round here. All is quite regular. No one is being tortured.
Oh no! nothing is wrong. It's only an old woman who can't
afford any comfort, dying of cancer. I can even tell you, gentle-
men, her name. Her name is Tittie Petherton. She is not entirely
unhappy, in spite of that sound; for her only fear is to die in
the hospital. She'd be in the hospital now if the Vicar didn't pay
someone to look after her. I've been in there. I've seen her. And
though she can't help making that noise her mind is reasonably
satisfied. She has no fear of death. All she fears is the hospital.
Our good cousin Philip would have sent her there, too, if the
Vicar hadn't come to her rescue. Oh, no, gentlemen, all is quite
in order."

"Aren't you making rather too much of one sad case, Spear?"
said Barter.

Dave Spear gripped the gate with both his hands and began
to shake it. This proceeding arrested the full attention of John
who was one who always took note of such manifestations of
sudden feeling.

"Besides, my good Sir," Barter went on, "your Communistic
State wouldn't prevent people from getting cancer."

A curious thing occurred then;...or at least to the insatiable
nervous attention of John it was curious...for it was as if this
short, broad-shouldered, sturdy, little man, without any over-
coat, and in a neat navy-blue suit of serge, spoke in a voice
like the voice of a terrible prophet. John, for his part, never for-
got that moment. He was himself standing close to his friend
Barter. He even had his arm over Barter's shoulder and the smell
of Barters leather coat was in his nostrils. But what he kept his
eyes upon, as he stood like that, was a broken corbel that must
once have supported some kind of stone shaft, belonging perhaps
to a vanished archway between this ruined house and another
house. This disfigured fragment of stone came to resemble, as
John gazed at it, a face whose eyes were at the end of its snout.

"Maybe it was a face once," he thought, "a gargoyle-face, de-
liberately carved by some mad workman in those old days to
ease his mind of some frightful thing." .

Every time that the moaning sound from the interior of the
house came again, an invisible hand upon his twitching cheek
seemed to turn his face towards the petrified snout, endowed with
eyes.

"Come now, Spear, that really is going a bit too far!" were
the words that lay, like a tedious meaningless scripture, upon the
counter, so to speak, of Tom Barter's practical mouth. But he
could not utter them in a convincing tone.

"Come now, Spear!" he began again. And then he flung out
"Going a bit too far!" And then his voice could be heard in a
sort of stage aside--"Now, Spear, that really is--"

"The pleasure we get from chaos," Spear was saying, "is not
a patch upon the pleasure we get in reducing chaos to order.
Life will never be really pruned and clipped and trimmed, what-
ever we do to it. It will always brim over and escape us. The
Communistic State is the only way that's ever been found for
using force on the side of the weak. The whole system of human
life depends on two things; on work and on pain. Communism
takes our power of work and our power of bearing pain and,
puts these two, like the immortal horses of Achilles, into the
harness of the State. Politics are intolerable to all sensitive
people. But why are they so? Because they don't touch the real
quick, the real nerve, the real ganglia, of the situation! The
situation is not political. It's economic. It isn't want of a Napo-
leon. It's want of a world-machine, run by impersonal force, on
behalf of the Weak. When I say "weak' I mean the poor and
the children of the poor. Money is strength, power, comfort
leisure, thought, philosophy, art, health, liberty, freedom, faith,
hope, peace, rest. Money is sleep. Money is love. Money is ease
from pain. Those who deny this are lower than men or higher
than men. They are rogues or madmen. They are liars or mad-
men. They are fools or madmen. Money is the blood of life.
Life is created out of work and pain. Life is defended by force.
The Communist State is the organised force of humanity. Evo-
lution has been fumbling, groping, staggering, through blood,
through tears, through torture, to this organising of human force
to human ends. Evolution has created money and it has created
the Communistic State to monopolise money. Money--the engine
of life--is an engine of death when it is in the hands of indi-
viduals. Put it in the hands of the Communist State and what-
ever blunders are committed the whole situation is transformed!
The individual has no more right to own money than he has to
owm earth, air, water, fire. We are all a herd of gibbering mon-
keys in a madhouse of inherited superstitions; and the maddest
and wickedest of all these superstitions is the idea that private
people have a right to be rich! No one has a right to be rich.
It is crime to be rich. It is a perversion, an obscenity, a mon-
strosity. It is an offence against nature, against intelligence,
against good taste. To be rich is to be a moral leper. To be rich
is to be on the side of Cancer!"

"--a bit too far, Spear!" came the voice of Barter, like the
sound of a rain-gutter dripping on a tin roof.

"I wish Mary could have heard that," thought John; and he
found himself taking his arm from his friend’s shoulder and
feeling a certain nausea from the smell of the leather jacket.

His nerves were so much on edge at that moment, that, as Barter
quietly unlatched the gate and let himself through, he burst out
is if they had been alone:

"Don’t forget, Tom, that, if you get fed up with Philip, Geard
would willingly take you over. You’ve only to say the word!
Only to say it, Tom!"



GEARD OF GLASTONBURY



THE TWILIGHT OF THAT DAY HAD TURNED INTO DARKNESS BE-
FORE Tom Barter returned to his lodgings in High Street to wash
his hands preparatory to his going out to supper. Tom very rarely
had a chance to enjoy any tea. His diurnal relaxation was his
mid-day dinner at the Pilgrims, which he relished with the ap-
petite of a fox-hunter. The waitresses there, with every one of
whom, especially with a girl called Clarissa Smith, he had a
separate and complete understanding, rivalled each other in ca-
tering to his taste. Tom's taste was all for freshly cooked meats
and substantial puddings. Any petticoat fluttering about these
solid viands was sauce enough for him: and when he blew off
the froth from the top of his pewter flagon of brown Taunton
ale and followed with his eyes these buxom attendants, passing
in and out of the old red-baize swing-door into the mediaeval
kitchen, a massive sensual satisfaction, worthy of any of those
tall Vikings who grounded their keels at Wick, filled the veins
of this short, broad-shouldered man.

Tom was no adventurer like his tyrant vagabond-friend John.
He was no devil-may-care swashbuckler like my lord’s bastard.
He would have made a first-rate sergeant-major of a regiment,
a first-rate boatswain of a ship. Something...a certain pride,
a certain fling, a certain chivalrous magnanimity...had been
knocked out of him forever by those bullies in Gladman’s House
at Greylands. They had found Tom Barter a frank gentleman--
they had left him a secretive cad. It was only with John, whose
friendship antedated those Greylands days, that this reserved man
let himself go; only with John and with any petticoat of the
lower classes!

How often had he stared into the bottom of his pewter-pot,
where a little brown liquid made a fairy moat around the bubbles
of white froth! "I have not got a soul in the world that really
cares," he would think then, "except John; and he’s nothing
much to rely on!" and then he would sigh, put his finger and
thumb into his waistcoat pocket, where he kept his silver, and
place a sixpence beside his plate. Aye! But how he did sympa-
thise with these working-girls: Oh. what kind, sweet creatures!
Oh, what pretty ways of making a man feel that he was a man!

As he entered his comfortless room at the top of a saddler's
shop, and poured out the water from the bare white jug and
selected the thin little bit of Pear's soap, which he had been
using for a fortnight, rather than the big new square yellow
piece, with such hard edges, that his landlady had put there this
morning, it came over him that he really was leading rather a
desolate sort of life. "But if I can get Tossie Stickles to undress
for me somewhere or other, or even to let me play with her in
one of those Spinneys beyond Bushey Combe, it'll make up for
a lot! It’s certain that if I were married and had a nice fireside
and my books and a garden, I couldn't enjoy myself with these
girls any more. And they are so sweet and unexacting! Oh, they’re
so different from these finicking bitches who think themselves
ladies!"

He ran down the stairs and out into the street. The remainder
of the hours from now on, till he was asleep in his chilly room
above the saddler’s, seemed invariably to fall below the average
of normal human experience. The day did not become actually
miserable, but it was far from gathering any glow or lustre as
it waned. It was just a day dying out; of no more interest, of
no more importance, than a bonfire of cabbage stalks, over
which someone has thrown a bucket of water.

The bruise in his nature never hurt him except when con-
fronted by a man or by a woman of his own class. It was this
bruise which Mary, all unwitting, must have struck again and
again. It was because of this bruise that he had never dared,
in the whole course of their platonic friendship, to attempt to
make love to Mary or even to kiss her. "Will you marry me?"
lie had blurted out one day, on the side of Tor Hill, and Mary
--reacting from her morbid slavery to Miss Drew--had mur-
mured a reluctant "Yes, if you want me to, Tom!"

Once in the street today, Barter made his way, as usual, not
to the cheerful tea-shop in George Street, where John and Evans
had had lunch, nor to the one presided over by Sally's mother
in High Street, but to a common little restaurant called the
Abbey Cafe where a waitress whose name was Joan brought him
a plate of fish and potato chips. This overworked attendant re-
sembled that Joan in the song, "While greasy Joan doth keel the
pot," and no other educated man in Somersetshire would have
flirted with her as Barter did. But it was but a poor pleasure
he got from this--indeed, night after night he would swallow
his ill-chosen supper and answer the wench in sulky monosyl-
lables while he stayed on and on; merely putting off the moment
when he had to face the sight of his cold bed, his portmanteau
on the floor, and the picture of Tel-El-Kebir over his fireless
grate. Tonight, he managed, by his extraordinary power of sym-
pathy with the economic side of a waitress' life, to put off his
moment of rising from that hard seat at that dirty tablecloth
till nearly nine o'clock.

Again in the lighted street, he was seized with a sudden loath-
ing. for that wretched bedroom of his, and something like a
spasm of bitter distaste for his whole life in Glastonbury.

"I'll go and see Mary," he thought. And then he thought,
"What's the use?" But when he came opposite the darkened
windows of the saddler's and heard, through the open side door,
the sound of his landlady's voice scolding her husband, his feet
began automatically taking him to the Abbey Horse.

When Lily Rogers opened the door to his ring, she smiled
more pleasantly upon him than she would have done upon any
other surprise-visitor at that late hour. Barter had long been
the chief favorite, out of all the gentlemen in Glastonbury, with
Miss Drew's servants, just as he was a great persona grata with
Miss Drew herself.

"We've got company in the drawing-room," Lily said. "Mr.
Dekker has brought that man Geard here, to see Miss Drew. She
never would have seen him if the Vicar hadn't told her it was
her duty. They're all in there now! Would you prefer that I
called Miss Crow out, Sir, and brought the lamp into the dining-
room?"

Barter nodded; but seemed in no hurry to dismiss Lily, who,
in the dim hall-light and in her black dress and white apron,
looked a sweet picture of domestic security.

"How's Louie?" he asked. "Have you been up to The Elms
lately?'' he asked. "You two had such pretty hats on last Sun-
day," he said. "One day I must take you up in the air with me."
he said. "Would Louie be frightened?" he asked.

It was with a rosy spot in each of her soft cheeks that the
girl finally escaped, and with the utmost discretion ushered Mary
into the dining-room, lit the candles there, and closed the door
softly upon them. Once back in the kitchen with Louie, she burst
out:

"It's that nice-looking Mr. Barter, I declare, that Miss Mary
ought to marry! Whats the use of her keeping company and
acting soft with a queer one like that Mr. Crow? Mr. Barter
is a real gentleman, he is. She's gone to him now--don't make
such a noise, Lou! Maybe if you stopped gollumping round on
those creaky shoes we could hear them talk in there."

The sisters Rogers advanced into the passage and stood listen-
ing. Not otherwise might a pair of white doves, perched upon
a roof, have watched their young lady's casement close tight
behind an adventurous gallant. Lily had forgotten, in her appre-
ciation of the sly Barter, to fetch the lamp she had referred to,
so it was by no brighter light than that of two tall silver candles
standing between several vases of daffodils, that the two natives
of Norfolk exchanged their confidences over the dying fire. Barter
sat in the faded leather arm-chair of Miss Drew's father, while
Mary crouched on the rug at his feet.

The girl was sadder than usual that night She spread out her
strong hands over the fading coals and lifted her chin towards
the figure of the man in the arm-chair. The flickering glow ir-
radiated her dusky hair, touched the sad circles under her grey
eyes, fell upon her parted lips and made her white teeth shine.

"No, she isn't as pretty as she was," thought Barter and a
shameless comparison between what it would be like to have
Mary "between him and the wall" and Lily Rogers, passed
through his mind.

"My goodness!" he thought. "But I suppose Lily would be
like a cold flower-stalk; whereas this girl--"

"I've come to think I'm one oi the biggest fools in town,"
he remarked.

"Why, Tom?" she murmured wearily.

"I was an ass not to rush you off, Mary, and get married be-
fore old John turned up! You'd have had your friend Tom,
wouldn't you, you lovely creature?"

"What's wrong with you, Tom?" she asked abruptly. He looked
at her sharply.

"Nothing," he said, "what are you talking about? Nothing's
wrong with me."

"When I think of your life sometimes," she said, "between
the office and that awful room of yours, I can hardly bear it."
This she said gravely and intensely, looking in his face; and
every syllable of it was true; for this man had become like a
brother and more than a brother to her; and yet as she looked
at him now, in that familiar, grey office suit, actually wearing
a purple tie she had chosen for him at Wollop's, when John
was no more than a name, she could have found in her heart
to wish that she had never seen him; never known that such a
person as Tom Barter was in the world. It was an odd feeling to
look up at him now, sitting there so easy and natural in old
Mr. Drew's leather chair, and say to herself--"There's the man
who couldn't bring himself to marry me!"

He had been, all along, a fatal apparition in her life. Yes,
he was an unconscious nemesis; although their relations had
been so innocent.

She remembered an occasion at Thorpe, near Norwich, when,
sitting with her mother by the river bank watching a barge go
by, the older woman had suddenly said, "You're a deep nature,
Mary. Your danger won't come from any little ripples on the
tide of your life. It will come from large things bearing down-
like that barge."

This man sitting there opposite her now was just like that
barge on their native river, which her mother had noticed, com-
ing so strongly and massively forward with the tide.

"It's no good hiding it from each other, Tom," she began
now, "we old friends had better be frank with each other. Neither
of us are happy in our life. You're sick to death of running
Philip's business for him and flying his plane for him. You long
to be on your own; to whistle Philip and his affairs down the
wind and be your own master. I'm bored to death by Miss Drew
and everything in this house. Sometimes I think of lea^inc: John
and all the rest of them here, and of getting a place somewhere
else. Glastonbury doesn't suit me any better than it suits you;
though I have, I confess, come to like these ruins a little better
than we did at the beginning. Do you remember how we hated it
all, Tom?"

Her eyes shone so strangely now as she looked up at him, that
the wild idea came into Barter's head that if he pressed her in
one grand coup she might even, out of pique for John's neglect,
throw John over and allow herself to be carried off by him, car-
ried back to Norfolk perhaps, if he dared to chance it!

"No," she went on, "no, old friend. You and I are both pretty
miserable, this fine Spring! Come, confess to me, Tom. wasn't it
because you were feeling lonely that you came to me tonight?
I'm feeling lonely myself, to tell you the truth, and it does me
good to see your solid, old Norfolk face in this weird place!
What would we not give, Tom, you and I, for a breath of real
east wind, coming up sharp and salt from the North Sea?"

His face had something about it at this moment so like the face
of a reticent school-boy who wants to cry but is ashamed to cry,
that, moved by an impulse that surprised herself, she scrambled
to her feet and coming up to him sat down on the arm of his
leather chair, placing her hand lightly on his shoulder to balance
herself, and smiling sadly down upon him.

"A breath from the East Coast is what we want, Tom, old
friend! Am I not right? This holy earth with its hundreds of
saints and its scores of kings is a bit sickly to us sometimes, isn't
it? That arch-conjurer Geard has got such a hold on John, that
he doesn't seem to feel the oppression, does he? He's got John
as fast as he got our grandfather. He's in there now--Lily told
you, I expect? Even Miss Drew treats him with---with--But I
don't like him. There's something about him that makes me feel
shivery and funny--as if he were a great toad. Poor old Tom.
This isn't a very nice world, is it?"

She did a thing then that astonished herself as much as it
astonished the object of her gesture--she lightly touched the
man's forehead with the tips of her firm fingers, pushing back
his stubbly hair. He made a sort of fumbling movement to take
possession of this friendly hand; but the girl slipped quickly
then off his chair s arm, and went over to the mantelpiece against
which she leaned her elbow.

"John is fonder of you in one way than he'll ever be of me--
even if we were married," she said gravely.

Barter thought he had never seen grey eyes look so large and
dark and appealing as hers looked now.

"She's getting at me, to make it up between them," he thought;
and the idea that all this kindness in her tone was just to cajole
him, made something grow rough as a peat-brick beneath his
ribs.

"What the deuce are you talking about, Mary?" he said sulkily,
rubbing his face with both his hands as an angry, independent,
proud boy might do, who had been kissed by a woman who was
attempting to play the mother over him.

"You're not such a fool," she said, "as not to know that he's
desperately fond of you?"

"Oh, old John's all right," he muttered awkwardly, thinking in
his mind, "This is the worst of these clever women. They're always
probing people with what they call psychological questions. I'll
never come and see her again! I'll take Tossie Stickles out to
Bushey Combe tomorrow night. It's no use! I ought to have
known it was no use coming to her. She only wants to play some
game with me to get at John--John'll be helpless in her hands
if she does get hold of him."

Her next question made him jerk up his back very straight
in the leather chair and draw his eyebrows together till they made
a continuous line across his brow.

"What made you think you liked me enough to want to marry
me, Tom?"

He looked first to the right of her dark-flashing eyes and white
cheeks and then to the left. His expression at that moment so
exactly resembled that of a great Newfoundland dog, whom she
had troubled with her gaze, that she smiled at him with renewed
sweetness.

"You're a dear. Tom; do you know it?" she said, taking her
elbow off the chimney-piece. "I like you a lot better than you
ever liked me. I could have made you happy, Tom, if I'd married
you: a good deal happier, I'm afraid, than I'll ever make him.
And yet, my dear. l‘d see you dead in you: coffin...if:...if...
...if I could pluck out of you...whatever it is"--her heavv.
lower lip began trembling a little-- "whatever it is that John
likes in you so much more than--"

She bit her lip and lifting her head back, stretched out her
arms, clenching her hands.

"Oh, dear, it's a business, isn't it, old Tom, this affair of being
alive?"

She let her arms drop to her sides with a sigh that heaved
through her whole body. Tom Barter rose slowly to his feet. He
felt now that he had wronged her with his vulgar suspicions. After
all, she was laying bare her heart to him. She was a good, honest
Norfolk girl. Perhaps what she said was true. Perhaps she could
have made him happy.

He moved up close to her. She could see by his eyes that he
was going to touch her.

"No, no! No, no!" she murmured. "You and I are too old for
that, Tom. Listen, my dear! Why don't you do what John is al-
ways talking to me about? Why don't you chuck Philip and
work with John for a bit? That man wants you; you know he
does. He'd jump out of his skin to have you with him!"

They stared at each other with a long, puzzled stare, after
these words had left her lips. Both of them, with an unconscious
movement, glanced towards the door. Mary had not had the least
idea that she was going to suggest what she had just suggested.
It was as if the presence of Mr. Geard under the same roof had
confused her wits.

"No! Of course you can't leave Philip," she said hurriedly.
"It's your work; I know--and there's your plane too. I can't
think what made me say that, just then It was only...it was
only...Oh, I feel that both you and I, Tom, want something
to change...something to go to smash in our life; so that we
can start again. Isn't that true? But, you needn't speak. I know
too well it's true!"

They looked at each other then with another of their long,
heavy-eyed, puzzled, unyielding, East-Anglian looks, those old
heathen, sullen looks, full of the obduracy of rooted poplars in
driving sleet.

They each needed something from the other--something which,
in all the world, that other alone could give--but between them
there seemed to emerge, emanating like a monstrous offspring
from their sterile psychic embraces, a huge, dark obstacle, not to
be overstepped.

Mary had come out of that room, where the presence of Mr.
Geard was so odious to her, and where the whole aura reeked
of these Glastonbury morbidities; she had come out 'with a reck-
less urge of forlorn hope to get some help from Tom.

He had come from his wretched vigil in that cafe, at a des-
perate run and with a blind leap, like a frantic prisoner catch-
ing at one chance in a thousand, to get he knew not what from
this Norfolk girl. But, their mutual plunge ended here...they
both knew it...ended here with this long, sullen, helpless look
. . . ended here with the same baffled frustration with which their
friendship had always ended, when it tried to break away from
the impeding limits set by the fatality of their own characters!

"Can I get out of here?" he said, when his eyes had drawn
up the great empty plummet-net he had let down from the unan-
swering depths of her eyes, "Out of this place, without meeting
anyone?"

She gave a quick sigh as if aroused by his words from a trance
that was obscurely baffling into a reality that was labour and
struggle.

"Of course, Tom," she said. "Come this way! I'll let you out
through the back."

She blew out the two candles on the table and with his nostrils
full of the sour taste of carbonic-acid gas he followed her to
the door. There was one moment, as she touched the door-handle
by the dying flicker of the fire, that he felt a longing...not
sensual nor passionate, but simply sad and love-starved...to
clasp her well-known form in his arms. But he did not dare. The
moment perished forever in the white smoke of those two tall
candles, and he followed her on tip-toe through the dim-lighted
hall. He was not unaware of the irony of his passing now, with
only a silent nod and a casual glance, those two pretty figures
seated at the kitchen-table enjoying their supper. Purged he
surely was, at that moment, of his wonted lechery.

Mary opened the door into the garden and shivering a little,
for she had forgotten to put on any wrap, led him, across the
daffodil-bed and the fading crocuses, to the edge of King Edgar's
Lawn.

Here she gave him her hand and let him squeeze it in his
strong air-pilot's fingers, till it tingled and smarted.

"You know that place in the wall," she called out softly after
him, "where it's easy to climb?"

He made no answer. He only turned and lifted his hand to
his head, saluting her thus as he w^ould have saluted some superior
officer if he had been...what would have suited him so well
to be!...the careful sergeant-major of a garrison of besieged
soldiers.

She watched his short sturdy figure, after that, as it vanished
with never another look round.

A tide of inexpressible sadness flowed through her heart. Tom
was gone; and she had got scant comfort from him--and Tom
was gone; back to his wretched quarters in High Street! Or
would his lonely, unsatisfied mood put into his stubborn head
to drift on, past his own door, to that cheerful Northload room,
which was her own prepared bridal-chamber?

She glanced up at the great broken tower-columns of the van-
ished nave of the Abbey Church. Would other girls, all the way
down the centuries, she thought, look up at those two stupendous
pillars and fill the space between them, in their sad imagination,
with the high carved arch full of wafted incense and choir-
echoes and deep-voiced prayers? What had she hoped to get
from Tom, or he from her? Neither of them had seemed to know!
It had all ended anyway, just as so many of their old encounters
had done, in a sense of weary frustration.

Ruins! Ruins! It was not only in ancient stone that baffled
human hopes held up their broken outlines, their sad skeleton-
patterns, as resting places for the birds of the night! She was on
the point of turning, of retracing her steps across the dark
flower-beds where fading crocuses and new-sprouting tulips drank
in, in silent long-breath'd draughts, the secret influences of the
darkness, when she was suddenly caught up, completely caught
up, out of herself, as she never in her life had been before by
any natural power.

There, very low down In the western sky, about a couple of
yards, according to human measurement, above the bounding
wall of the enclosure, was the coracle-like crystal shell of the
crescent moon in her first quarter.

There was nothing to which it could be compared! Unique, in
all the universe of matter, if only by reason of the associations
hung about it of twenty-five thousand years of human yearning,
it floated there before her, daughter and darling of the dark ter-
restrial orb, elf-waif of the infinite night! What hands, what
arms, had stretched forth to it, out of their human misery--
brown arms, white arms, black arms--what heart-cries, "I want!
I want! I want!" had been tossed up towards it, from groaning
hairy chests and soft-swelling tender breasts and the troubled
nerves of bewildered children! And ever, and especially, had it
been the comforter and the accomplice, and the confederate of
women, gathering their life-streams towards itself, guarding their
mystic chastity, nourishing their withdrawals, their reticences,
their furtive retreats and denials, companioning them when all
else failed!

It would draw the vast, bottomless salt tides towards it--this
slender night-waif, this leaf of tender sorrow, this filmy weft of
hope against hope--ere it had rounded to its full! Shoals of
glittering fins would follow its pathway across the Atlantic...
on far-off untraversed moorlands its reflection would turn the
ripples to silver. In pools where even the wild geese in their
equinoctial migrations, never disturbed the silence, its frail image
would rock among the reeds. On no different, on no changed a
shape from this, upon which she now gazed and trembled, the great
magicians of antiquity had stared and muttered; their predictions
confounded, their inspirations perverted, their wits turned! Here
floated the virgin-mistress of the tragic madness of maids, the
patroness of all defiers of man's law's! Here was the girl-child
from the dim shores of ancient anarchy, at whose bright and
horned head the kings and the priests of man-made tradition have
always shivered and quaked in their sacred sandals! She has
been the tutelary mistress of all sterile passions, of all wild re-
volts against "the Mothers," that have led the virgins of prophecy
to shatter this world's laws. That shapeless conch of dangerous
whiteness, tossing herself, through the scudding drifts of ship-
swallowing seas, rocking like a sea-mew in the rigging of doomed
ships, gleaming in the cold dews of uncounted dawns upon
blood-stained Golgothas and lost battlefields, and now shining
down, calm and lovely, upon hillside fairy-rings and upon
smooth, wide-stretching, glittering sands, has always been the
forlorn hope of the impossible; has always been the immortal
challenge to What Is, from, the wavering margins of What
Might Be!

The popular opinion that the moon is a planetary fragment,
broken off from the earth or from the sun, is probably a gross
and clumsily conceived error! Much more likely is it that she
is the last-remaining fragment of some earlier stellar system, a
system of material forms and shapes now altogether lost, but in
its origin nearer to the beginning of things in the ambiguous
imaginings of the Primal Cause.

Surely, not only in the Religions of this planet has she played
a dominant and inextinguishable role. But she has always been
on the side of the weak and the sick against the strong and the
well-constituted! With her silvery horns of Mystery gathered in
the folds of that blue robe or bearing up those divine feet of the
Maid-Mother of the Crucified she has challenged the whole
authoritative reign of Cause-and-Effect itself. And it was this
whiteness beyond all whiteness; it was this whiteness, like the
wet curves of unimaginable sea-shells and like the spray about
the prows of fairy ships, that now came with its magical touch
to bring healing to Mary Crow.

The girl stood transfixed on the chilly edge of that bed of
cold, pale-leafed immature tulips. She stared and stared at the
celestial visitant, as if she had never before seen the moon,
under any sky.

"What does it make me feel?" she thought. "Is there something
about it that every woman who has ever lived in Glastonbury
must feel? Something that the Lake Village women felt? Some-
thing that immured, mediaeval nuns were comforted by?"

Her body as well as her spirit fell now into a wordless prayer
to that white, floating, immortal creature. "Bury. oh. bury your
strange secret in my breast!" the girl's heart cried out. "Bury it
deep, deep in my womb, so that henceforth to the end of my
days, something cold and free and uncaught may make me
strong!"



As soon as Mat Dekker and Mr. Geard were out of the house,
the former explained to the latter that he had an important visit
to make that night before he retired, "to a woman dying of
cancer near the Crow factory."

Mr. Geard seemed, in spite of this information, very reluctant
to part from the Vicar of Glastonbury. He proposed to Mr. Dek-
ker that they should stroll up Chilkwell Street together and take
a glance in the darkness at Chalice House. "I'd like to know what
you think, Vicar," he said, in his thick, unctuous voice, "about
my scheme for altering the old place. If I don't buy it it may
fall into the hands of the Papists again. And yet they're asking
a fancy price. Just come and take a look, won't you, Sir?"

Mat Dekker permitted himself to be led past the Tithe Barn
and up Chilkwell Street.

"What I had in my mind," said Mr. Geard, in a self-satisfied
voice, when they had skirted the high blank wall of Chalice House
and had reached the particular garden hedge beyond which lay
the Sacred Fount, "was to build a wall here that would be worthy
of the Blood. He uttered this last word in a casual, matter-of-
fact way, as if he had said, "worthy of the view" or "worthy of
our age," and a certain flavor of unctuous gusto in his tone was
especially repellent to Mat Dekker.

"With an entrance, I suppose?" said this latter.

But it now transpired that Mr. Geard had not considered an
entrance. What he had been thinking about was guarding, pro-
tecting, defending, consecrating "the Blood," as he called this
chalybeate spring. He had been so preoccupied in keeping sac-
rilege out, that he had not considered how to bring devotion in.

Mat Dekker as a professional priest naturally had his flock
in mind. "You won't charge any entrance-fee, I hope?" he went
on. "Since the place has been empty the caretaker has been tak-
ing tips; but I don't like that at all. Everybody ought to be free
to drink of this water!

Mr. Geard approached the thick hedge; and ascending the little
bank below it plunged his arms and his face into the early spring
freshness--the hedge exhaled a delicate fragrance as he touched
it; a fragrance that flowed out into the darkness on all sides.

"No--no," said Bloody Johnny, stepping back into the road.
"I'll have a Saxon arch and a heavy door with a bell inside--a
loud bell--with a rope hanging down.'"

"Why a Saxon arch?" remarked Mr. Dekker. "I don't think
there were any Saxon arches--wasn't it the Normans who "

"Brought the Devil with 'em," cried Mr. Geard, "and the
Devil's gentlemen! No, no. There's going to be one Saxon arch
at any rate in Glastonbury. Our oldest charter is a Saxon Charter.
Our oldest real Abbots are Saxon Abbots. Our oldest real kings
are Saxon kings. If King Arthur comes back--as my wife's cousin
says he will--he'll have to ring my Saxon bell in my Saxon wall.
My own folk haven't one drop--not one drop--of gentlemen's
blood. I'm going to give back Chalice Well to the People, Mr.
Dekker!"

The man's hoarse voice had risen to that rich, rolling tone of
rhetorical unction that the Glastonbury street corners had come
to know so well before he went away to Norfolk.

"Give back Chalice Well to the People," sounded over and
over again in Mr. Dekker's ears, as the two men retraced their
steps. Outside the Vicarage gate they stopped to say good-night
to each other. They instinctively turned round, as they did so,
to catch a glimpse of the tall elms growing in the Abbey enclosure
between the boundary wall and those foundations of the Chapel
of King Edgar that had been discovered by supernatural aid.

The new moon had long ago gone down but the sky was
clear; and over their heads stretched the long, faint, whitish
track of the Milky Way.

Geard snuffed the night air like a great sick ox, that had been
kept too long in its winter-stall. As Mat Dekker looked at him
now he got an impression of a reserve of power--of some kind
of power--that was actually startling.

"This Religious Fair of mine," said Mr. Geard, "will be some-
thing quite different from the Oberammergau Passion Play. Mr.
John Crow, who by the way. is a most intelligent young man,
(Mat Dekker smiled in the darkness at this) "with a good deal
more religion than he thinks he has--has received so many re-
plies from all over the worid. that I really think this occasion
is going to he quite an important one in the history of our
country."

"That's just what I wanted to know. Sir," said Mat Dekker--
"only I mustn't keep you now; and my son, if he has come in,
will wonder where I am. But I did want to know what your real
inmost purpose was. Of course, if you don't care to speak of
such things. I would not press you; but I'd be happier if I knew
what was really in your mind. But won't you come in for a min-
ute. Mr. Geard? Please do! We can talk quietly in my little
museum if my son is at home, I know he'll be delighted to see
you: for he has heard so much about you. Indeed, he told me
he had been to tea with you. Your second daughter...she is
your second, isnshe?...has been a great help to us, quite
often, in so many ways. Do come in, Mr. Geard. I've got to go
out later to see that woman with cancer; but I told her nurse not
to come for me till late, so that she would know if the poor thing
was going to get any sleep tonight. Please come in now anyway."
The ex-preacher of the gospel hesitated for a moment.

"I don't want to intrude." he murmured: but Mat Dekker swept
this aside.

It is really important, Sir," he said emphatically, taking the
other by the arm, "that I should hear everything about your
scheme. I may be of use to you; more use to vou than you
realise."

Bloody Johnny permitted himself to be persuaded; and soon
found himself seated in a comfortable wicker chair by a warm ?
fire in what the father and son called their "museum. " The door
of this chamber having been left ajar, the legatee of Canon
Crow was enabled to listen to a rather singular conversation in
the kitchen-passage.

"Master Sam ain't come in," he heard the voice of Penny
Pitches saying, "and Weatherwax were in kitchen just now with
a tale of having talked with gamekeeper's young man from West
Pennard, come in for pheasant-feed, or summat o' that, and
Weatherwax said 'a told 'un that 'a seed our Sam walking across
Hearty Moor like as the Deil were arter he. Twas Tomnn Blake,
the young man were, what used to live down Bere Lane, so he
know'd our Sam as 'twere his own kin; and ye do know, thee
wone self, Master, what be beyond Hearty! Whitelake River be
beyond Hearty; where thik Missy Zoyland do live. And so. I
reckon our Sam be gone to see she; gone to see she while shes
old man be out to Wookey Hole."

"He may have been walking in that direction, Penny, without
going to that house."

Mr. Geard uncrossed his legs and purposely made his chair
creak by shifting his position in it. One of the grand secrets of
the man's magnetic power was that he forced himself to see noth-
ing, to hear nothing, to think nothing of other people's affairs.

"Direction be shot!" cried the old woman, "\oung men will
do it, an' they come to 't! Direction, say ye? He'll direction her,
and direct her too; don't 'ee make no mistake. Master."

"Well, I hope she'll give him a good supper anyway, Penny,"
threw out Mat Dekker, with a forced smile.

"Don't lock the front door, Penny, when you go to bed," he
went on, "and will you bring me some brandy into the museum,
the very best, you know, one of those bottles you hid from
Weatherwax last Christmas?"

He returned to his guest and sat down opposite him. He too
had a very creaky wicker chair; and for a little time, while Penny
waited on them, in sulky silence, there was nothing audible in
that ramshackle room but the creaking of those two chairs under
their heavy bodies.

Mat Dekker's mind was away at Whitelake Cottage. A spasm
of unreasoning anger against his son kept surging up in the
depths of his being and a wild imaginary dialogue between him-
self and Nell Zoyland began incoherently to shape itself on the
tongue of his hidden soul-- "She turned to me," he kept think-
ing, "she turned to me in her trouble. She looked at me more
than at either of them. She would do exactly what I told her.
She said as much as that with her eyes." The dangerous hidden
waters in this man's rock-rooted Quantock nature began now to
toss and foam and churn, as he thought of Sam and his sweet
adultress.

Mat Dekker repeated to himself now what his old flame, Elizabeth
Crow, had said, as he looked at Mr. Geard's greenish-black trou-
sers--"I believe you are in love with that girl yourself." A dusky
flush of anger came into his ruddy cheeks as he recalled this. But
if it was all nonsense, why did the thought "Sam will probably sleep
with her tonight" cause him such singular perturbation? Not be-
cause of any moral distress about Sam behaving badly. Mat had
absolutely nothing in him of the congenital Puritan; and his long
association with birds and beasts and reptiles had given him a very
natural and earthy attitude towards erotic emotion--nor had he any
particular concern about William Zoyland's feelings! He had always
regarded Lord P.'s bastard as something of a ruffian and a bully.
Secretly in his heart he was rather proud of Sam for having been
able to steal away a girl's heart from a handsome rogue like that.

It may be well imagined that with all these stirrings and upheavings
going on in his mind it was very hard for Mat to give any concen-
trated attention to Mr. Geard and what the bar-rooms of the town
called Bloody Johnny's Midsummer Kick-up.

Mr. Geard was not one to miss the preoccupation of his host; but
such was his nature that it caused him no particular annoyance,
He enjoyed the Vicar's brandy: and kept re-filling his glass and
sipping its contents with a quiet relish, while he talked on and
on, apparently quite as much for his own edification as for that
of his abstracted hearer. His eyes, as he talked, kept wander-
ing about the room, which was more like the play-room of a
whole family of young naturalists than a theologian's study,
though on one side of the apartment there was a large gloomy
bookcase full of standard Anglican works.

What arrested Mr. Geard's attention most was an enormous
aquarium standing on a bench in the middle of the room. There
was a lamp, not far from this object, on a table littered with
magazines, and the light from this, falling on one side of the
aquarium, made an illuminated segment of bright water through
which some very energetic and very large minnows kept darting
and hovering. These lively fish, circumscribed in a luminous void,
associated themselves very vividly with what Bloody Johnny was
feeling as he rambled on. "Someone must make the start," he
was saying, "and why should not I? Life advances by leaps and
bounds, and so does Religion. There's no doubt that this is the
moment for something drastic...for something"--he hesitated for
a word, while a soft-mottled loach, lifting its white belly from the
gravel at the bottom of the aquarium, pressed an open mouth
against the illuminated glass side of the vessel and fixed upon
this singular Prophet a cold fish-eye--"for something...miracu-
lous. There are only about half a dozen reservoirs of world-magic
on the whole surface of the globe--Jerusalem...Rome...Mecca...
Lhassa--and of these Glastonbury has the largest residue of
unused power. Generations of mankind, aeons of past races,
have--by their concentrated will--made Glastonbury miraculous.
But since the time of that incredible fool, Henry the Eighth, the
magic of Glastonbury has been unused."

Bloody Johnny permitted his host to refill his glass. The bottle
was two-thirds empty already. Here was an unexpected rival for
poor Mr. Weatherwax! The lower the liquor sank in the bottle, the
less water did the visitor mix with it. And the more he drank the
more metaphysical he became. Mat Dekker kept replenishing his
own pipe from an earthenware jar of Craven Mixture which stood
between the lamp and the aquarium. There were no other sources
of light in this study-museum beyond the fire and this one lamp,
and the two men's massive physiognomies were lit up by this two-
fold radiation in a manner that would have delighted any connois-
seur in the mystery of lines and contours, of plane surfaces and
carved-out hollows. Bloody Johnny did not, apparently, make use
of tobacco in any form. This was one of those Nonconformist
traits in his curious character that a little disconcerted his host.
The brandy-drinking, however, carried to such a surprising length,
and producing no sign of tipsiness, was a considerable comfort to
the priest's Quantock-bred mind. If only the fellow had smoked too!
But with these queer chaps one couldn't have everything. If the
man had neither smoked nor drank the priest-naturalist would have
experienced a positive physical distaste for this alien presence in
his museum. He would have snuffed the air suspicious, like a hound
who smells a weasel in place of a fox.

"Why shouldn't the Lord have chosen me," Mr. Geard was
now saying. as he leaned forward in his wicker chair, hugging
his legs and wagging his hydrocephalic head, "to bring back an
Age of Faith to our Western World? The way I am doing it will
seem heresy to some, blasphemy to others, pure hocus-pocus
to most. But that's exactly, my dear, what all new out-spurts of
the Real Presence have seemed. Do 'ee think anyone can put a
stopper on me?"

Mat Dekker had never, since Sam's mother's death, been called
"my dear'' by any living soul: but it was such a quaint word
for the man to use just then, at such a moment, this word
"stopper." that he looked at him with something like real respect.
The chap could not be a humbug! No humbug would say "put a
stopper on me."

Mat Dekker now began scrutinising his guest's great bowed
head as Bloody Johnny grew somnolent, and the way his huge,
plump, clenched fist lay on the rough little garden-table by the
edge of his bottle and glass. "There's the head of a heretic,"
he thought. "No doubt the great Marcion, with his skull full of
spiritual errors, had a head like that. But it's all wrong! Christ
has chosen to reveal Himself through the traditions of His
Church, and in no other way. When the Church's authority is
undermined life falls back into chaos...into the blind gropings
of Matter or at least of Nature."

"The Lord...has...filled me . . rumbled Bloody Johnny again in
his hoarse voice, "with the power of His spirit, my dear, and
nothing can stop me from doing His will! I feel His will pouring
through me, my dear, by night and by day. Let the glory go to
whom He pleases! I am but a reed, a miserable pipe, a wretched
conduit, a contemptible sluice. But never mind what I am!
Through me, at this moment of time, the Eternal is breaking
through. Yes, dear, dear Sir, for I admire 'ee and respect 'ee.
it's breaking through! I'm going to make Glastonbury the centre
of the Religion of all the West. I feel it in me. this power; I feel
it dear, dear Mr. Dekker, and nothing can stop me, nothing!" He
lifted his heavy fist and emptied the remainder of the bottle into
his glass, and tossed it, this time without one drop of water, down
his capacious throat. After this, the man's chin sank down again
upon his chest and his host had time to abandon himself in peace
once more to his troubled thoughts.

Mat Dekker, noticing at last that his guest's eyes had actually
closed, brought out his great old-fashioned watch with its blue
enamelled back and looked at it with puckered brows. A deep
sigh came from his heart as he replaced this timepiece, for he
had seen the little hand approaching eleven and the big hand
approaching ten. Ten minutes to eleven--and Sam not back. He
must be staying with her, sleeping with her. His hands, old
clumsy Sam's rough hands, the hands that had hammered to-
gether the little garden-table on which that empty bottle rested,
must be now caressing her naked satiny limbs. Mat Dekker's
face positively contorted itself with suffering as this image or
rather as this imaginative projection of his own feelings into
those of his son's, went on dominating his senses....Suddenly
there was a loud ring at the front-door bell. Mat Dekker started
up upon his feet. John Geard jerked up his head, and pushing
away the empty bottle with the back of his knuckles, gathered him-
self together to face whatever new incursion into the museum
this sound portended. The clatter of Penny Pitches' heavy shoes
came echoing down the passage.

"Is it your son?" broke in Mr. Geard, but the priest shook his
head.

"He'd never ring," he murmured. "The door's always--"

]His voice was lost in the noisy opening of the front door
while an alarming colloquy, overheard by both of the men, be-
gan to take place on the doorstep. "She can't abide the pain one
hour longer, and Doctor said she couldn't 'ave no more morphia
till he comes tomorrow. I've run near all the way, for I can't
bear leaving the pore thing like as she is. She be crazy with pain,
and that's the truth."

Mat Dekker was out into the hall now; and Mr. Geard, his de-
serted chair creaking like an anxious goblin, was in the museum
doorway. "This is Nurse Robinson. She is a niece of our Mrs.
Robinson whom I expect you know. Nancy, I call her," said Mr.
Dekker; and, as Penny Pitches retreated down the passage to her
own domain, the nurse and Mr. Geard shook hands. The new-
comer was certainly more like a "Nancy" than like a nurse. A
red-faced lusty creature she appeared, when she threw back her
hood, but her face betrayed a natural agitation at this moment
that was more humane than it was professional. "But this is out-
rageous!" cried Mr. Dekker: and by the light of the hall-lamp,
hanging from the ceiling, Geard could see a vein in the priest's
forehead swell and swell, till it resembled a little thin snake
beneath his skin. "This is unbearable! Have you called the
doctor up? Have you talked to him?"

Nurse Robinson nodded. "'Ee says 'tis the law," she responded.
"'Ee says Hi've 'a given 'er already more'n the law allows. 'Ee
says if the chemist gave me more for 'er till hate tomorrow, I
should be 'eld responsible if anythink 'appened."

"You must excuse me, Mr. Geard," cried Mat Dekker, snatch-
ing his coat and hat from a peg. fc 'TH come straight with you to
the doctor's, Nancy, and stir him up. Til take the responsibility
myself. It's outrageous. It's intolerable. Penny!" The square
servant advanced down the passage at her master's summons.
"Don't go to bed till Mr. Sam comes in. Penny, and keep some-
thing hot for his supper. He may have been walking miles and
miles."

"We do know where he have been ^walking!" grumbled Penny.
"I'll stay up for he, right and certain, Master, and when he
comes in, it'll go hard but I'll give he a piece of me mind, gal-
lumping over they girt moors, to the disturbance of our decent
house--and all because of a whey-faced missy what's another
man's wife!"

"Hush! Hush, Penny!" commanded her master, nodding to-
wards Mr. Geard to indicate that they were not alone. "Help the
gentleman into his coat, Penny, can't you? Our way lies in the
same direction, doesn't it, Sir?" he went on. "Ready, Nurse?
You've got your breath again? That poor woman...left alone
in positive torture...Perhaps you'd prefer to walk more slowly,
Mr. Geard? But Nurse and I must hurry on!"

Bloody Johnny proved himself able to walk quite as fast as
his companions, though it is true he covered the ground in rather
an eccentric manner. He walked with a sort of dot-and-go-one
step, and in addition to this mode of progression he also had a
kind of sailor's lurch, as if he had just landed from a rolling
deck. "What doctor are you going to disturb?'" he enquired
breathlessly 'when they reached the town.

Doctor Fell, Sir, Doctor Fell," replied the nurse. ‘^Doctor
Fell be a kind-'earted man, but he lives with 'is old sister Miss
Bibby who be reglar devil. And if we ring at Doctor's door it
won't be the doctor well see. Well see old Bibbv for sure and
Bibby'll knock our 'eads off waking of 'er up."

"I'll have the doctor out of bed," muttered Mr. Dekker grimly,
"if once you get them to open the door for us, Nurse."

But at this point Mr Geard laid his hand on the Vicar's arm.
"Let me go with Miss Robinson and sit up with this woman,"
he said. "You can telephone to my family when you return home,
so that they won't be alarmed. I can sleep wherever I am. It's a
trick I possess."

Mat Dekker showed some impatience at this. "It isn't a question
of sitting up with her, Mr. Geard. It's a question of stopping the
torture she's enduring. It's a question of giving her sleep! Mor-
phia alone can do that."

"Christ alone can do that!" cried Bloody Johnny in a voice
that sounded like the voice of an angry boatswain, so resonantly
did it reverberate through the empty street! "Pardon me. Sir,"
he went on. "Pardon me, Miss Robinson. When I said just now
that I would sit up with this woman, I meant of course that in
the Power of the Blood I would send her to sleep. Please take
me there quickly, Nurse! There is no reason why we should
trouble Mr. Dekker any more tonight. Only don't forget, Mister,
to telephone to Mrs. Geard."

Nurse Robinson looked from one to the other. They were all
three now standing outside Saint John's Churchyard, in the ob-
scurity of which the Holy Thorn was just visible and the vast
bulk of the shadowy tower. But Mat Dekker's face was clouded
with indecision. He kept turning his head, first to the right and
then to the left under the pressure of Mr. Geard's words, exactly
as a large dog might have done under a human eye. He seemed
unwilling to look at Mr, Geard. He struck the pavement with the
end of his stick once ur twice, muttering. "Well, I don't know,
on my soul. I really don't know." Then, with a deeply drawn
breath and a queer, little, fluttering movement of one of his big
hands, "Come," he said. "and see what you can do. But for God's
sake let's be quick! She may be crazy with the pain."

Walking fast up George Street they were soon at Tittie Pether-
ton's ruined Gothic cottage. Nurse Robinson opened the door
and went in first. A small oil-lamp was burning on the kitchen-
table and a black, sooty kettle simmered feebly upon a coal-stove
whose fire had almost gone out. Nurse Robinson had begun to
turn up the wick of the little lamp when they were startled by a
moan of anguish more horribly acute than Mat Dekker had ever
heard in his life. He had heard Tilde's groans before, under her
abominable affliction...but never a sound quite like that. The
blood rushed to his face. "Damn these doctors!" he cried. Nurse
Robinson glanced at Mr. Geard to see what effect this horrible
sound had upon him. She was astonished to see his face twisted
in a spasm of physical pain. She was so startled by the twisted
mouth of Mr. Geard that she found herself expecting to hear
from it the same cry of torment as that which they had just heard
from the room above. But the spasm was over in a second of
time and she turned to the door which concealed the steps that
led to her patient's bedroom. Up these steps she now climbed,
followed first by Mat Dekker and then by Mr. Geard. There was
a second little oil-lamp, identical with the one downstairs, upon
a table by the bedside, above which the massive eaves of the
roof sloped down.

A gaunt woman, propped upon pillows, who had pulled herself
up so desperately to a sitting posture that the bed-clothes
were clinging in a disordered mass about her knees, was leaning
forward with a terribly fixed stare. She began at once an inco-
herent and piteous pleading. "Have you the stuff? Have you
brought the stuff? Oh, for Jesus' sake, give me the stuff! Is it
there? Have you got it?" At this point she gasped and struggled
for breath, clutching at her body with her fingers. Then she began
again. "Give me the stuff. Nurse, give it to me quickly! If I don't
have it, this minute, I shall curse Them Above. Oh, the stuff! the
stuff! I want nothing but the stuff!"

Mat Dekker was aware of a sleepy twittering above the gutter-
pipe outside the window. "Sparrows," lie said to himself" "but
too early for nesting...a little too early; but they must be
thinking of it...they must be pairing." The oil-lamp reeked
vilely, and from the tortured woman's bed there emanated a
sweetish-sour and very sickly smell, which made Mat Dekker
shudder as he stood there mute and helpless. It was as if, beyond
and behind the living-room, some unspeakable Entity of Pain
writhed in the darkness, and it was from the substance of this
thing and not from any human flesh and blood that this abomin-
able smell issued forth.

Nurse Robinson approached the bed. "Lie down now, Mrs.
Petherton. It'll be better if you lie down. There! Let me turn
your pillows." The woman opened her mouth and drew in her
lips. Her expression was that of a despairing animal who would
blindly bite at the whole world. But she allowed herself in her
weakness to be laid flat upon the pillow by the strong hands of
the nurse.

Then Mat Dekker approached the bed and folding his great
knuckles together and bowing his grey head began praying: "In
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,
give unto this woman, thy poor stricken servant, O God, strength
to endure the grievous sufferings which Thou in Thy wisdom
hast been pleased--" He got no further, for the woman's eyes,
which she had momentarily closed, opened again and a look of
renewed torment, combined with wild hatred for the priest, came
into her face. Nor was this all. Unable in any other way to ex-
press the abyss of her defiance she made the motion of spitting at
the worthy man. Her wretched drop of ejected saliva did no more
than drip down the wrinkles of her own cheek. But Dekker caught
her intention and it froze his heart.

It was at this moment that Mr. Geard came forward. Unob-
served by his companions he had removed his coat and waist-
coat, and now showed himself in his purple braces and grey
shirt. He did not even look at the woman's face. To the astonish-
ment of the others he stretched himself out flat by her side upon
the bed, using the little table as a support for one of his great
elbows. Mat Dekker could not help noticing that the bulge of
his stomach had burst the top button of his trousers. But from
this position he rolled his eyes towards the nurse. "Put summat
under me head, will 'ee, kindly," he muttered, relapsing into
the broadest Somerset. The nurse promptly obeyed him, snatch-
ing a faded cushion from a chair on the further side of the attic.
"Take thik lamp away, one o' ye, if ye doant mind. No! No! Put
the little bugger on floor. Missus, where't woant shine in our
pore eyes." Again the astonished nurse obeyed this singular au-
thority, placing the lamp in the centre of the floor, and turning
the wick down as low as she dared. "Now, Tittie, old gurl, thee
and me be 'a goin' to have some blessed sleep. I be drowsy as
a spent bullick, I be. Night to ye both; night to ye all. Tittie and
me be all right. Us 'ull be safe and sound till mornin'. And then
maybe ye'll bring up a cup o' tea for we to bless the Lord in!"

With the lamp placed where it was, it had become impossible
now for either Mr. Dekker or Miss Robinson to see anything but
two blurred human faces, laid side by side. "Are we really to leave
you like this, Mr. Geard?" enquired Mat Dekker. Not a sound, not
a movement came from the bed. The priest picked up Mr. Geard's
overcoat and his other clothes from where the man had let them
fall on the floor. These objects he carefully stretched out over
Bloody Johnny's prostrate form. "Come, Nancy," he muttered.
"For God's sake let's do exactly what he says. L really think
that, by the mercy of God, he's done what I couldn't do; and
perhaps"--here he sighed deeply--"what no doctor could do.
Come, Nancy! Better leave them just as they are." He led the
way down the narrow stairs, and Nurse Robinson followed after
him. The nurse looked at a dilapidated arm-chair covered with a
big red shawl full of holes which stood by one of the Gothic
windows. Mat Dekker lifted up the sooty kettle and peeped into
the stove. "Wait a second, Nancy," he said. He opened the back
door of the wretched room, from the rafters and walls of which
the damp of centuries seemed to emanate. A draught of chilly
midnight air entered and made the little lamp flicker and the
shadow of Nurse Robinson move portentously across the yellow-
ish strips of torn wallpaper that hung from the opposite wall.

He returned in a minute, carrying a bundle of small pieces or
wood pressed against his black waistcoat. These he piled up by
the side of the stove, and then threw into the aperture the most
auspicious-looking of the pieces, "Well! I'll be getting home,
Nance," he said. "You'll be all right, won't 'ee?" He moved up
to a small cupboard and shamelessly opened it. "Yes, you've got
some tea and some biscuits, I see. Have you got anything to
read?" He looked round, but could see nothing except Tittie
Petherton's great family Bible. Being the man he was, this par-
ticular work seemed in some way inadequate for a night-long
vigil. He searched his great overcoat pockets and giving a grunt
of satisfaction extracted from one of them a small copy of White's
Selborne. This he presented to the watcher with many nods and
smiles. "'Twill help 'ee awake or send 'ee to sleep, Nance, just
as 'ee do have a mind!" Like Geard of Glastonbury, Mr. Dekker
was always ready to revert at a pinch to the West-Country turns
of speech. In sheer physical relief at escaping from the strain of
Tittie Petherton's suffering the good man now rubbed his big
hands together and chuckled benevolently. For the last quarter
of an hour he had forgotten Whitelake Cottage! Thus, in the huge
compensatory ebb and flow of great creative Nature, one tension
of human feeling has the power of ejecting, or completely can-
celling, another strain of feeling. For the emotional tension of a
frustrated passion there is no better cure than to spend an hour
or two in the presence of terrible bodily anguish. Mat Dekker
was not an idealist, but he was a man of a proud and stormy
heart, and what he had seen tonight had had the famous Aris-
totelian effect upon him. As he walked rapidly home, however,
down George Street and High Street and Silver Street, this
catharsis relaxed its calming force. By the time he reached the
gate of his Vicarage, poor Tittie and her heretical hypnotist were
forgotten. He found his heart beating, his pulses throbbing, to
the old fatal tune .Had Sam come back?

He strode up the winding driveway and burst into the hall of
his house. "Penny!" he shouted. "Penny!" The old servant came
grumbling and blinking out of her kitchen where she had been
asleep in her chair. "Has Sam come home?" he enquired sternly.

"Not that I knows, Master," the woman answered; "not unless
he crept upstairs on his stockinged feet."

Mat Dekker ran upstairs just as he was, too perturbed in mind to
take off either his hat or his coat. He hung open the door of
Sams bedroom. Empty it was with that indescribable look of
desolation that bedrooms of the absent and of the dead so quickly
assume; and Sam's father stood for a second on the dimly lit
landing, chewing the bitter cud of remediless loss. Then he went
slowly to his own bedroom; and having telephoned to the Geards'
house to tell them what had become of their man, he undressed
and sought his pillow.

But the priest's rest that night was feverish and disturbed.
Nor was its Vicar the only troubled sleeper in Glastonbury. Under
many of her roofs, from the brick tilings of the Town Council's
houses in Benedict Street, to the slate roofs of the tradesmen's
villas in Wells Street, outraged and wounded hearts kept human
souls awake.

Perhaps in one house alone there was absolute peace, in one
house alone a deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill," and that
was the house m which Bloody Johnny and Tittie Petherton slept