Gods Men

9

IN THE RICH YEARS that followed World War I William profited exceedingly. His tabloids were the most popular newspapers in the country and he had several foreign editions. The old offices were long since deserted and he owned a monumental building on the East River.

He was still not satisfied. He wanted his country to be the greatest country in the world, not only in words and imagination and national pride, but in hard fact. He saw American ships on all seas, and American newspapers, his papers in all countries, American names on business streets, and above all American churches and schools everywhere. America was his country, and he would make her great.

This was the motor behind the scheduled energy of his life. He gave huge sums to American foreign missions, always in memory of his father. He established a college in China, known as the Lane Memorial University, although he steadfastly refused to meet face to face the missionaries whose salaries he paid. He had set up an organization to do that, the Lane Foundation. He had never gone back to China, although sometimes he dreamed of Peking at night when he was especially tired, foolish dreams of little hutungs, quiet between enclosing walls, wisps of music winding from a lute, sunshine hot on a dusty sleeping street. Memories he had thought forgotten crept out at night from his mind exhausted by the day. He ignored them.

These were the times in America when anything could be done. Yet he was not doing all he dreamed of doing. The common people, as he called them, meaning those ordinary folk who come and go on the streets on foot, by bus and streetcar, those who crawl under the earth in subways and live on farms and in small towns and mediocre cities, all these who bought his newspapers as surely as they bought their daily loaf of bread at the corner grocery, they were not of enough importance to govern, even by their yea or nay, the possible secret country which he now perceived lay behind the façade of present America. He had thought, when he was in college dreaming of vast newspaper tentacles, that if he had the common people in his influence he could guide the country. He never used the word “control” and indeed he honestly abhorred it. But guidance was a good word, the guidance of God, which after his father’s death he himself continually sought as power and money accrued. Common people were weak and apathetic. They listened to anybody. Now that radio networks were beginning to tie the country together, his newspapers could no longer exclude. This troubled him mightily. Print had its rival. He considered making his newspapers almost entirely pictorial, so that reading was unnecessary, and then rejected the idea. Pictures could not keep common people from listening to the radio, which also required no reading. He must secure ear as well as eye and he began to plan the purchase of key networks.

In all this Candace was of no use to him. She had grown indifferent to the frightful responsibilities he undertook as his duty and she had even quarreled one day with his mother. He had never been able to discover either from her or his mother what had taken place, except that he had been the subject of their difference. Candace had simply laughed when he pressed her for detail.

“Your mother has lived too long in Peking.” It was all she would tell him.

His mother went a little further. “I hate to say it, William, but Candace doesn’t appreciate you as a wife should. Whether she understands the wonderful work you are doing is quite beside the point. I didn’t always understand your dear father, either, and certainly I could not always sympathize with his ideas or even with all that he did, but I always appreciated him.”

Candace had grown strange and reckless in these years after the war, likely on any Sunday morning to announce that she was going to the beach with the boys instead of sending them to Sunday School. That William himself did not go to church had nothing to do with his sons, who, he felt, should be taught some sort of religion. Indeed, he himself, since his father’s death, had felt the need to find God anew, but he could not return to the pusillanimities of his former rector. He sought a firmer faith, a stronger church, and there were times when he thought of Catholicism. This, however, had nothing to do with Candace and the two boys. The seashore place was another recklessness of hers, although he had quite willingly bought the mile of private ocean front in Maine. She had declared that she wanted only a shack, to which he had simply said there was a right way to do a thing, and comfort he must have, even though in summer he could only be there a day or two a week. He had hired a young architect who designed an extraordinary house on top of a gray cliff, and a sliding staircase, like an escalator, which let them down to the sea and to a huge cabaña. Altogether it was effective and he was proud of it.

He had to acknowledge to himself now that Candace had never meant very much to him, and it had been years since he needed anything of Roger Cameron. When Mrs. Cameron died last year old Roger told William that he wanted to sell his shares in the newspapers.

“The dividends are going up,” William said.

“That’s why I want to sell,” Roger had replied.

This made no sense but William did not reply because he was vaguely wounded. His pride rose and he sent a memorandum to the business manager that he wanted all shares in the corporation bought up so that he might be sole owner. When the reports came in he saw the name of Seth James. Seth was now backing a new daily paper that William saw at once was doomed to die. Seth should have known better, he had told himself, as with complacency he studied the first issues. “The paper with a purpose,” Seth had foolishly announced. Of course people would not buy it. People did not want to be taught. They wanted to be amused. William himself was never amused. It was Jeremy’s task to find among thousands of photographs for his tabloids, pictures sorted by twelve girls under twenty years of age, those scenes which would make people laugh. Horror was as good as laughter and horror William himself could judge. A murder skillfully portrayed, a strangled woman, a dying child, a family weeping after the father was crushed under a truck, a maniac escaped, an airplane that crashed into a small home on Long Island, these were all pleasing to people.

Yet such was William’s conscience since his father’s death that he allowed no issue of a paper to be sent to the people without its quota of religion. He truly believed in God. His own being, ordered by purpose, convinced him of the existence of God and his tabloids carried photographs of churches and ministers, priests and nuns. William was not narrow. People worshiped God in many ways, though he rejected any form not Christian. He had disagreed with Estey, his new assistant editor, over a photograph of the Panchen Lama — news, yes, but not religion. People the next week saw the benign face of the Lama appearing side by side with the President’s wife in her Easter frock.

On a day in early October he sat thinking of these things in his immense office on the top floor of his own building. The office opened into a handsome apartment where he could sleep on the nights when he had to work late. Caspar Wilde, the young English modernist, had designed it for him. William had wanted it done by a Swedish architect, but when he examined the designs laid before him he had been forced to see that there was nothing to equal English modern in its conservative and heavy soundness. It was exasperating but true. In spite of the World War there was as yet no crack in the armor of the British Empire. His reporters, stationed permanently in India as in almost every other country, informed him of bitter disappointment among Indians after the war.

“Educated Indian opinion complains that Britain shows no signs of fulfilling wartime promises for independence, made to leading Indian politicos. Rumors are that in the next war Indians will seize the opportunity for rebellion.”

This perhaps was a crack in the imperial armor, but no more.

William had no sympathy with independence for India. His imagination, anchored by the mob in the Peking street, saw in India those faces darkened by the Indian sun and multiplied by swarming millions. If and when the crack became disaster for the British Empire, his own country must be ready to assume control.

America was young. When this crazy period of postwar play was over, Americans would see their destiny and grow up. In his editorials he skillfully reminded them now and again of that destiny. He roused their pride by pictures of the greatest factories in the world, the largest airships, the fastest trains. It troubled him that the American army and navy were not more impressive. When the navy decided upon maneuvers anywhere in the world he sent a flock of photographers with them. Bright sea and flying flags and ranks of men in white duck made wonderful pictures.

The people were still in a playful mood. On this bright autumn afternoon even he was not inclined to be critical. Times were good and people had money to throw away. He himself would play if he could, but he did not find the usual diversions amusing or playful. At Chefoo he had learned to play a brilliant game of tennis, cruel in cuts and slashes, all but dishonest and certainly ruthless, but he seldom played. There was no incentive for he had no competitors. The careless padding about the courts with Candace at Crest Hill, his home on Long Island Sound, or on week ends facing Jeremy who refused to be any man’s enemy even at sport, could not divert his mind. He liked an enemy and with an enemy in tennis he came nearer to amusement, enjoyment, relaxation, perhaps, than at any other sport, when occasionally he found an opponent equal to him.

He sat rigidly in front of his huge circular desk, his hands clenched in fists upon its blond surface, thinking. He had everything in his life except human companionship. He was remote from every human creature, even from Candace and his sons, and certainly from his mother and sisters. He had no one near him, neither man nor woman. Jeremy had long ago taken his position as a jeering light-minded brother-in-law who knew he could not be fired because it would make an office scandal. Yet Jeremy had a flair which gave the papers the humor that no one else could supply, William because he did not know how, and the staff because they were afraid of him. Jeremy could have been his friend, William sometimes thought with a certain wistfulness, but he did not want to be. Perhaps he could not understand or value the purpose for which William lived. The Camerons were all light-minded. Old Roger nowadays was as gay as an ancient grasshopper and Candace had grown benign and careless of her figure. She laughed at everything Jeremy said when the families were together and even Ruth could not make her mindful of what was dignity. William knew that Ruth was his life-long possession, but he wondered sometimes in the gloom in which he lived whether, were he permanently out of earshot, she too would laugh. He had, in short, no one of his own. His sons did not interest him. He was as lonely as a king.

Nevertheless, like a king, he reflected, he could not put out his hand to anyone without its being misunderstood. The gesture of ordinary friendship was impossible for him. If he put out his hand it must be for a purpose that was not yet clear to him. He doubted very much whether there was a woman in the world who could give him real companionship. Only his loneliness was plain to him, and profound.

In this state of mind he left his office rather early and entered his waiting car. The chauffeur was surprised and pleased to see him. Doubtless the man had a family and thought of getting home early. William did not ask, however. He merely gave his abrupt nod and said, “Direct to Crest Hill.” He wanted to go home and survey his house and his wife. There was no reason why, having achieved everything else, he should not have personal satisfaction. It seemed a small thing, but without it on this opulent autumn afternoon nothing he had was all it should be.

At Crest Hill Candace had spent a beautiful, idle day. It was what she called a day of grace, of which there were too few in every season. Thus although leaves had fallen and the first frost had killed the flower borders, although her furs had been brought from storage, yet the day was as warm as June’s best and she had done nothing at all. The outdoor swimming pool had been emptied and cleaned for winter, but she had ordered it filled again and had spent the morning in and out of the pool quite by herself and happy. She missed the boys but they had been going away to school for years and William she had learned not to miss, wherever he was. The huge house was unusually beautiful, the doors and windows open and the bowls on the table were full of late roses. Her rose gardens were sheltered by the greenhouses and escaped the early frosts. She was the most idle of women and enjoyed her idleness. A moment at the telephone could summon to her any of a hundred or so friends, men and women who were eager to share her genius for enjoyment, but she seldom summoned them. She liked best to be with Ruth and Jeremy and their little girls, and she disliked actively, out of all the world, only William’s mother. For her own father she had a delicate affection so appreciative that she welcomed his coming to her but she made no demands upon him. She made no demands upon anyone, being content in herself. Marriage with William had not given her high romance, but then she did not want such romance. She would have had to live up to it.

She was not prepared therefore for William’s too early arrival. At five o’clock, she told herself, she would leave the sun-soaked court surrounding the swimming pool and she would go upstairs, dry her hair, and put on a thin soft dress of some sort over her slip. Never willingly did she wear girdle or corset or any of the garments that women used to restrain themselves. What she would have done had she been fat she never stopped to ask herself, since she was not really fat. Old Roger’s leanness had so blessed his daughter that even carelessness had made her only gently plump.

At five o’clock William entered the wide hall of his house and inquired of the man who took his hat and stick where Mrs. Lane might be found.

“Madame is in the court, sir,” the man replied.

William walked down the hall which bisected the huge house and stood between the open double doors. Candace was climbing out of the pool. Her blond skin, sunburned to a soft pale gold, was pretty enough in contrast to the green bathing suit she wore. Her long fair hair was wet and hanging down her back. She was a pleasant sight for any husband, and William felt vaguely angry that a woman who looked as Candace did should not provide for him the companionship which he needed. What, for example, could they do together now? She played a lazy game of tennis and she could not keep her mind on bridge. She enjoyed horseback riding and rode well, but there was no companionship in that pastime. He preferred to ride alone in the morning before breakfast.

“Why, William,” Candace called. “Has something happened?”

“Certainly not,” he replied. “Why should you think so?”

“You’re home so early.”

“It was hot in town.”

“Come into the pool.”

“No, thank you.”

William did not enjoy swimming, either in the pool or the sea. He swam well, for he had been taught to do so at the English school. His hatred of the water went back to the day when a firm young English swimming master had thrown him into the Chinese sea, out of his depth, to compel him to swim for his life.

“Then I’ll get out,” Candace said, and began to wring the water out of her hair.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” William said. “I’ll go upstairs and change.”

“Will you come back?”

“If you wish.”

“Of course I do.”

She dived into the pool again and he went upstairs slowly to his own rooms. His valet had foreseen his need and had put out for him a suit of cool tussah silk that had been packed away and now brought out once more for the unseasonable heat. William showered and shaved himself, for hot weather always made his black beard grow too fast. Then he dressed and went downstairs again, wishing restlessly that he could think of something he could enjoy. Candace was still in the pool, but a servant had brought tall glasses of some drink and set them on table under an umbrella.

He sighed and stretched himself in a comfortable chair. Candace saw him and swam slowly to the end of the pool and got out. She wrung her hair again, wound it on her head and wrapped a huge English bath towel about herself. William found no towels in America big enough for him, neither did he like colored towels. Miss Smith the eleventh had once ordered six dozen enormous English bath towels from London and had sent them to Ireland to be monogrammed. Only Candace had other towels than these. In her own bathroom shelves she kept towels of peach and jade green. In public, however — that is, before William — she enveloped herself in one of the six dozen.

“I’ll just slip on something and be back,” she told him. He looked unusually handsome at this moment and impulsively she bent to kiss him. His dark hair was thinning slightly on top of his head, a spot she did not often see.

“William, you are getting bald!”

It was a wifely remark but the wrong one, she saw, the moment it was spoken. He did not reply; his eyebrows drew down and his mouth tightened.

“Not that it shows,” she said hastily.

“It must show or you would not have seen it,” William retorted.

“Oh well,” she said, laughed, and went on.

Upon him the careless remark fell like an arrow dropped from the sky. He was reminded that he was middle-aged. If he was ever to get anything out of life he must do it now. Decision accumulated in him. He recognized the process. A trickle, a slow stream, a monstrous river of feeling suddenly broke into inevitable sudden decision.

He would divorce Candace if necessary in order to get companionship before he died. He would find somewhere in the world the woman he needed.

Lying in the warm declining sun he felt his deep and habitual tension suddenly relax. He had made a decision which though massive was right and therefore irrevocable. All his large decisions had come suddenly after long periods of indecisive restlessness. When he saw what he must do it was like coming out of a tunnel into the light. He closed his eyes and sipped his iced drink. He was not a simple physical creature such as he believed most American men were. He was not interested in dirty schoolboyish talk, and jokes about sex bored him. Something in his birth and childhood, the deep maturity of the Chinese, perhaps, or the intolerable wisdom of England, had aged even his youth.

When the thought of England came to him, he felt a strange nostalgia. He did not want to go back to China, but to go to England might give him the rest that he needed. Alone in England even for a few weeks, as silent as he wished, with nothing planned and yet ready for anything that might occur to him, he could cure himself, or be cured, of his spiritual restlessness. The peace that passeth understanding, of which his father spoke so often, might yet be his.

But he must be alone. Merely to be alone, he now felt, would bring him some of the peace. He thought of his office and the quiet apartment opening into it, and was eager to be there where he need not speak to Candace or see her. He got up and went into the house and met her coming downstairs, in a floating chiffon dress of apple green.

“I shall have to go back to town,” he said abruptly.

“Oh — I am sorry for that.”

She spoke sincerely but without petulance. After these years she was accustomed to William’s sudden decisions. She would wait until he was gone and then she would call up Jeremy. If he and Ruth were at home she would drive over to their house and dine with them. William’s mother was there, but on this heavenly evening she could bear that. Jeremy’s house stood near the water, its lawn sloping down to the Sound, and the moon would be beautiful upon the waves.

“Shall you be late, William?”

“I don’t know. Don’t sit up for me, of course.”

“If I am not here, I’ll be at Jeremy’s. Don’t sit up for me, either.”

She put her hands on his shoulders and pressed herself against him. He kissed her cheek but did not respond to the pressure. Ah well, her father had said loving was enough! She made it do.

William could have explained to no one his impulse toward England at this hour of his life. He had been often in England in recent years, but only for short times and for business. Now he wanted an indefinite time which might be short or long. He told himself that this depended upon how he felt. Actually he knew that he was going on a search, a romantic search, absurd if it were spoken, and therefore it could not be spoken. His real life had always been secret. Now he felt the need to confide. Vague need, vague longing, the middle-aged desire to live before he died, the thirst to learn how to enjoy before he lost the power, these were his private reasons, not to be shared.

He stayed in London for some days, ostensibly to attend a few business conferences. He toyed with the idea of setting up an entirely English office for the publication of a purely English tabloid and to discuss this he met Lord Northcliffe for a week end, and acknowledged frankly his debt to the master journalist.

“I saw one of your papers in the reading room at Harvard, my lord, and began that very day to plan my life around a newspaper like it.”

“Really,” the stubby lord said without surprise. “We’ve a bit in common, you and I, haven’t we? Success from the middle classes, eh? Your father was something odd, as I remember — so was mine.”

William preferred not to answer this. He remembered that this baronet had once put on his head a hat worn by Napoleon and had said without vanity, “It fits me, by Jove!” Since then he had spent some of his swift wealth upon such fantasies as arctic exploration, had forced upon his quiet countrymen noisy automobiles, had given prizes for airplane models and attempts at flying, and now clamored for fellow patriots to prepare themselves against the dangers of a rising Germany.

There was something about this plebeian lord which repelled William. They parted without being friends, the Englishman feeling with amazement that William was what he had never seen before, an American snob, and William feeling that England was better than this Englishman thought she was and that he was somehow unworthy. If he had met Alfred Harmsworth as a schoolboy he would have fought him and easily licked him. He sat, later that week, for an evening under the scintillations of an aging Herbert Wells, refusing however, to join in the absurd games devised for his amusement. He remained saturnine even before the brisk sallies and the ceaseless flow of his host’s fixed though fluid opinions.

After three or four weeks of being a quiet guest, unobtrusively American in English country houses, William met a young man to whom he was exceedingly attracted. He could not account for the singular strength of this attraction until he discerned in the young man a faint resemblance to the hero of his youth in the Chefoo school, the son of the British ambassador. This young man’s name was Michael Culver-Hulme, a name ancient enough in English history and with many branches. In the stillness of a Sunday afternoon before tea at Blakesbury House, where William had been invited by Lord Saynes, who had heard of his wealth and power, he met Michael.

Culver-Hulme, a distant cousin of Saynes, had asked frankly for the chance to meet the American whom everybody had heard about and almost no one had seen. Lord Saynes had laughed.

“What do you want to meet the chap for?” he had inquired of Michael.

Michael had replied, “I’ve a fancy to see him, that’s all. My uncle went to school with him — my mother’s brother. He’s told me rather grim tales. He’s quite proud now of having gone to school with him, though in the old days they all made fun of him. It seems he used to stalk about the school grounds rather like a silent and haughty young Hamlet.”

On this Sunday afternoon, beneath a sky of milky November blue, the Englishman saw William leaning lonely against a stone wall, gazing across the lawns to the valley beyond. He went to him with the bold and entirely natural charm which was both assured and youthful.

“I say, sir, I hope you won’t mind if I butt in?”

“Not at all,” William said. He smiled slightly. “Our World War seems to have left its effect at least upon the English language.”

“Not so much as your wonderful papers, sir. I wonder if you know how much they’re admired? I’ve heard that Northcliffe himself has taken a point or two.”

William felt the soft warmth of young flattery steal about his heart. He was flattered often enough, but this English flattery was sweet, and he did not discard it with his usual cynicism.

“I wonder if you could by any chance have had a relative once at an English school in China? I don’t believe in coincidence. But you look alike.”

“Not coincidence, sir. Many of our family have been in China or India. It’s a family tradition. It was my uncle, I think. He’s often spoken of you and been quite proud about it.”

Ancient wounds began to heal in William’s heart, but he maintained his dignity and only slightly smiled. “I remember him as an autocratic young man, quite beyond noticing a mere American.”

“He knows better than that now, sir.”

Michael waited and when nothing more followed, he began again with imperturbable chatty briskness. “I wish you’d come and have a week with us, Mr. Lane. My father and mother would be enormously pleased, and I’d be honored.”

“I’m here on a holiday,” William replied. “That perhaps will excuse my ready acceptance of a kindly invitation. I should like to come and call upon your father, if I may. If you are there, it is all the better.”

“Then will you consider it an invitation, sir? If so, you’ll have a note from my father. What week, sir?”

“Week after next?”

“Splendid! Shall you be in England for Christmas?”

“No, I must get home before then. My sons will be coming home from college.”

“Splendid! Where are you stopping?”

“I am at the Savoy.”

“Good! Then you’ll hear from us. Hulme Castle, near Kerrington Downs.”

“Thank you.”

The two words were so spoken that they seemed dismissal but Michael refused to accept them. He divined in the American a diffidence so combined with pride that it had become arrogance, a knowledge of superiority augmented by the fear of an incomprehensible inferiority. This American had all the kingdoms of the earth, a handsome body, a shrewd mind, wealth that had become a fable about which people guessed and gossiped on two sides of the ocean, and from all this a power was emerging which Michael knew was viewed with gravity even in the Foreign Office.

An immense curiosity sprang up in his somewhat light and inquisitive mind, and he imagined himself talking William over with his sister, Emory.

“He’s not a proper American at all. With just a little changing, he could make a fair stab at being an Englishman, if he wanted to. And the odd thing is that he would and he wouldn’t want to—”

To bring his mind back from such words, he began to describe to William the recent hunting he had shared with his uncle in Scotland. Then a bell rang suddenly from the house and broke across Michael’s endeavors to amuse.

“That’s tea, I’m afraid,” he said cheerfully, and thankful to be relieved of the conversation, he was liberal enough to wonder if William felt a like relief and daresayed to himself that he did.

Hulme Castle, William discovered, was one of the relics of the time of William the Conqueror and since it was near Hulme Forest, it had often been the hunting box of kings. In the fifteenth century it fell into disrepair, its last use being to shelter a mistress of the then ruling king. In the early sixteenth century it was given to a newly created earl, who rebuilt the castle but not the keep, rebuilt also the Great Hall, and discovered among old ruins a chest left by King Edward III. In the seventeenth century King James visited the castle while hunting and in the eighteenth century the then existing earl finished the rebuilding of the whole castle, remodeling the kitchens entirely and adding a handsome picture gallery. No building had been done since. The present occupants were the Earl, his wife, his son Michael, and his daughter Emory. On the third Sunday of every month the castle was open to the public except for the rooms occupied by the family.

So much William discovered from a small book he found in the British Museum. He had taken time to find out all he could about Hulme Castle. It was a small estate but an ancient one.

From the main highway through the Downs William, seated in the heavy motorcar he had bought for his stay in England, saw Hulme Castle on a low and pleasant hill. Twin towers of Norman architecture guarded the entrance through which, on a soft gray English day, he approached his destination. The chauffeur pulled a huge knocker and the door was opened by a man in some sort of informal livery.

“Hulme Castle?” the chauffeur inquired, knowing well enough that it was.

“Hulme Castle,” the manservant replied.

William got out, properly dignified, and mounted the shallow stone steps.

The manservant took his things. “Mr. Lane?”

“Yes.”

“Come in, please, sir. We were expecting you. I will show you your room, sir. This way, please, sir.”

A huge table stood in the middle of the entrance hall and behind it double stairs wound upward to right and left. Upstairs William went down a long and wide hall into a large room, quite modern in its decoration. A small coal fire burned in a polished grate under a carved mantelpiece, upon which the only ornament was a silver bowl of ash-pink roses.

“Tea is being served in the Panel Room, sir, to the left at the bottom of the stair,” the man said and disappeared.

William went to the wide leaded window. The sill was deep in the thick stone wall and he looked down over the tops of oaks still green. The hill declined sharply beneath this western wall and on the horizon the sun was setting, pink among the gray clouds. The castle was filled with silence and with peace, and he saw no human being. A feeling of rest and remoteness stole upon him and he sighed.

He stepped into the same stillness a few moments later when, having washed his hands and face, he went downstairs. The door of the Panel Room was open and he heard someone playing the piano. Of music he knew nothing and he had not missed it, but he was intelligent enough to know that the person now playing was a musician. He crossed the hall, entered the door, and saw something that he might have imagined. A long, beautifully shaped room, paneled in oak, spread before him. At the far end was a large fireplace, and above it the coat of arms of Hulme. Before the fire a tea table was set and an old man, the Earl himself doubtless, sat in an easy chair of faded red leather. Across the fireplace sat Lady Hulme, unmistakable, tall, thin, weathered, and wearing an old tweed suit. She was knitting something brown. Michael leaned against the mantle, his hands in his pockets, gazing at the fire, and at the piano sat a woman in a long crimson dress.

She lifted her head and smiled, a gesture of invitation, while she went on playing softly and firmly the closing chords. The Earl saw him and then Michael, and with the same smile and gesture they waited, Michael halfway across the room, the Earl standing. Lady Hulme lifted her large pale blue eyes, dropped them again, and continued her knitting.

At the piano the last chord sounded deeply. Michael leaped forward and wrenched William’s hand.

“How awfully good of you to come! This is my father — and my mother.”

William touched the Earl’s dry old hand and received a nod from Lady Hulme.

“Very good of you,” the Earl murmured. “It’s a long way from London, I’m afraid. We’re very quiet.”

“I like quiet,” William said.

He turned, still delaying, still dreading.

“This is my sister Emory,” Michael said simply.

William took a long cool hand into his own. “I’m afraid I interrupted the music.”

“We were only waiting for you,” she replied.

“Emory, pour tea,” Lady Hulme commanded. “I’ve dropped a stitch.”

She moved to obey, and for one instant William looked down into eyes dark and clear, set in a pale and beautiful face. He saw her mouth, the lips tender and delicate, quiver and smile half unwillingly, or so he imagined. She was tall and so thin that she might have been ill except for the look of clear health in her eyes and her pale skin.

“Do sit down,” she said in her sweet English voice, and seated herself by the tea table. “I’m filled with curiosity about you. I’ve never met an American.”

“I am not typical, I am afraid,” William replied, and tried not to stare at her hands as they moved above the cups. They were exquisite hands, and there was something about them so familiar that he frowned unconsciously to remember. Then memory came back to him. He had seen hands like these long ago, when as a little boy with his mother, he had looked at the hands of the Old Empress in Peking, the same thin smooth hands!

“Come along, Emory,” Lady Hulme said in her husky voice, still knitting briskly. She paused, however, to pull a bell rope with vigor as William sat down, and the manservant came in with a plate of hot scones on a silver tray.

“Hello, Simpkins,” Michael said. “How is it you’re passing the tea today?”

“Matthews has mumps,” Lady Hulme said. “It’s absurd, really, but he caught them from the new housemaid, I believe.”

“He did, my lady,” Simpkins said very gently.

Lady Hulme turned to William. “I hear you have pots of money. Here’s your tea.”

“Don’t heed my mother,” Michael said rather quickly. “She likes to think she’s daring. Why do you say such a thing, Mother?”

“Why not?” Lady Hulme retorted. Her face remained expressionless, whatever she said, the large eyes like pale lamps in her face that was reddened by sun and wind. “I can’t think of anything nicer than having pots of money. One needn’t be ashamed of it. I wish your father had it.”

William took his tea and helped himself to thin bread and butter and a hot scone. Some pleasant-looking cake waited upon a small, three-tiered table, but he knew, from school memory, that it would not be passed to him until he had eaten his bread and butter and scone. Sweets came last or not at all.

No one noticed his silence. Lord Hulme was eating with enjoyment, and drinking his tea from a large breakfast cup.

“I hope you weren’t seasick,” Lady Hulme said.

“Thanks, no,” William replied.

“It’s so beastly when one is,” Lady Hulme observed. “Of course American men are not so heartless as Englishmen. Malcolm always has believed that I am seasick purposely.”

“You are, my dear,” the Earl said.

“There, you see,” Lady Hulme said. “We went to Sicily for our honeymoon thirty-five years ago and I got ill in the little boat that took us across the Channel and had nowhere to lay my head. He wouldn’t let me put it upon his knee.”

“Oh, come now,” the Earl retorted. “As I remember, I hadn’t a chance to walk about — your head was always on my knee.”

They wrangled amiably, worrying the old subject between them, and Emory sat watching them with amused and lovely eyes, glancing now and again at William. She did not interrupt and at last Lady Hulme was weary.

“More tea all around,” she announced.

The Earl, revived by tea and argument, turned to William. “I see those papers of yours sometimes. What sort reads them, shopgirls and so on, I suppose!”

Michael sprang into the arena. “Everybody reads them, Father.”

“Really? Mostly pictures, though, aren’t they?”

William took the Englishman into his confidence. “Our people don’t read very much. One has to use pictures to convey one’s meaning.”

“Ah, then you have a purpose?” Lord Hastings said rather quickly.

“Doesn’t everyone have a purpose?” William replied. “The power potentiality of several million people is a responsibility. One cannot simply ignore it.”

“Ah,” the Earl said. He tipped his cup, emptied it, wiped his mustache with his lace napkin, rolled it up, and put it in the cup. Then he got up. “I suppose you’d like a walk? Michael and I always get one in before dinner.”

The early twilight was not far off and William would have preferred to stay in the great firelit room with the beautiful woman who sat in such silent repose, but some compulsive hand from the past reached out and he rose. After tea at school the headmaster ordered a walk for everyone. Not to want fresh air was a sign of laziness, weakness, coddling one’s self, all English sins.

“Those boots right for mud?” Michael was looking down at William’s well-polished country oxfords.

“Quite all right,” William said.

They tramped out into the shadowy fragrance, Michael respectfully in the rear. The Earl lit a short and ancient pipe, refusing William’s aid. “Thanks, no — I’ve got long matches — have ’em made to order. They’ve a chemical in the tip that keeps them from blowing out in a wind.”

After this a long silence fell as the three men walked through country lanes. William knew the English silence and he determined that he would not break it. Let these Englishmen know that he could endure the severest test! The Earl turned away from the drive and across a sloping lawn to a meadow. At a gate in a white fence he paused again to fill his pipe.

“I’ve never been to America. Michael is always wanting to go. But since he’s the only son, I’ve forbidden it — for the present.”

Michael laughed. “I have to marry and present him with an heir before he’ll let me go anywhere.”

“That is the way the Chinese feel, too,” William said. “But I hope you will visit us some day.”

“Where do you live?” the Earl inquired.

“I have a house in New York and another in the country.” William’s voice was as detached and tranquil as any Englishman’s.

“You do yourselves very well, you Americans!”

“Not better than you English!”

“Ah, but it’s taken us thousands of years.”

“We had a bigger bit of land to begin with.”

The Earl knocked the ash from his pipe and opened the gate. A hen pheasant started out of the grass and he watched her scuttling flight. “What fools we were to go after India instead of keeping America!” He was filling his pipe again. “Think of what the Empire would be if we’d really fought you rebels in 1776 instead of hankering after the fleshpots of that sun-blasted continent! It would have been to your advantage as well as ours. We’d have been invincible today against Germany or Russia if we’d been one country.”

“We, on the other hand, might have been merely a second Canada,” William said. “Perhaps we needed independence to develop.”

“Nonsense,” the Earl retorted. “It’s stock that counts. The people of India have no stamina — always burning with some sort of fever of the spirit. It’s the unhealthy climate.”

“I can’t imagine ourselves part of an empire,” William said.

“Not now, of course,” the Earl conceded. He stole a sharp shrewd darting glance at William. “Certainly not when you’re dreaming of your own empire.”

“I doubt we want an empire,” William replied.

Nevertheless the idea played about his mind as they walked across the meadow. Empires had their day, and the ancient British Empire was dying as surely as the sun was setting across the wooded hill opposite the brook. He saw the sunset bright in the still-flowing wafers.

“Do you fish in the brook?” he asked Michael.

“Nothing much there,” Michael replied. “A trout now and then.”

“The boys in the village catch everything. They’ve got very lax about poaching,” the Earl said rather angrily.

They reached the brook after another silence and stood gazing into its shallow clarity. There were minnows in plenty darting about under the surface, snatching at the last chance for food. The Earl stirred them with his walking stick. “There’re always minnows, somehow.”

He said it in a musing voice but William saw no significance in the words and did not answer.

“Millions of minnows,” Michael said.

The Earl was looking across the brook as though he pondered the other side and then changed his mind. “We’d better go back, I dare say. The evening is turning chill.”

They climbed the hill again, this time in silence that none broke. When they entered the great square hall of the castle, Simpkins met them and took their hats and sticks. The Earl yawned.

“We’ll meet again at dinner — in an hour.” He walked away with his heavy step and William stood uncertainly.

Michael, so fresh and friendly, now seemed uncertain too. “I hope you won’t mind my parents, sir. I always forget how they are until I’m home again. Will you come in by the fire or go upstairs?”

“I shall enjoy you all,” William said with unusual grace. He looked into the great room behind the hall and saw it empty. Lady Emory had gone. “And I think I shall go upstairs until dinner.”

After that day William made no pretense to himself. For the first time in his life, he had fallen desperately in love.

His eyes, covert but acute, had searched every woman whom he had met and others whom he had not met. Their eyes in turn had gazed upon him with courtesy and with indifference. The young had looked upon him as old and forbidding, and from those who were not young he had averted his own eyes. English women did not age with grace or beauty. He found them garrulous or caustic, and from sharpness he shrank by instinct. He wanted intelligence but not sarcastic wit which he was not skilled enough to master and therefore despised. If he disapproved he said so plainly and finally. Sarcasm, he said often, was the exhibitionism of a showy but weak ego, the displeasure of a coward, and the natural refuge of those who had only their tongues for weapons.

All that he had ever dreamed of England and what England had meant to him, all that he had never acknowledged even to himself, now centered in a woman whom he did not ask himself if he understood, for he knew she understood him. He was able to talk at last and to tell her all that he had never told anyone. She listened, her eyes thoughtful and kind. Kindness was her genius. It shone not only upon him but upon everyone who was near her. Her father and brother basked in it, accepted it, took it for granted, imposed upon her, William decided, during the week of days that followed one after the other. Guests came and went and drew from her kindness what they needed. She was busy continually and yet she had time for him, lending him her whole attention in the hours they were together.

He supposed she was not young — that is, she was certainly not a young girl. She was perhaps thirty. He could not understand how it was that he had found her unmarried and one day told her so in words that he feared were crude. She hesitated, then said with scarcely a change in her look or in that sweet deep voice:

“I suffered the same fate that so many English women did. My fiancé was killed during the war. He was Cecil Randford, son of the Earl of Randford. We had grown up together.”

William heard the name with pangs of jealousy which he tried to hide. “Forgive me,” he muttered.

“I do,” she replied simply.

By the third day he wished that he dared to ask her to call him by his Christian name. Lady Emory had a sort of intimacy which Mr. Lane did not have. If he had been Sir William! But he was not. He fretted himself about his courtship. There was so little time. He wanted to get it over, to have her love him quickly, to take her home with him soon and begin their life together. When he went back at Christmas he wanted to get through the hateful business of telling Candace and his sons and of consulting with his lawyers and his public-relations men as to how divorce and remarriage might be accomplished swiftly and privately. He ground his teeth when he thought of the pleasure that common people took in these matters, which should be as private as a man’s own thoughts.

Meantime it was impossible to talk to the Earl or to Lady Hulme, he discovered. He did not exist for them, and yet they were aware that in his way he was important because he was rich. Nor was he at ease with them even though his week was swiftly passing. This castle, this English family, he approached with a diffidence that he would not recognize although he had long since reached a height in his own country that made a secretary’s telephone call enough to open even the door of the White House — not the big front door into which sightseers and patriotic Americans swarmed but the side door where a huge brass key is kept turned. He reminded himself that the Earl of Hulme was not the King of England, that there were many peers of whom he was only one.

The first sight of the castle by daylight had been comforting. It would take a great deal of money to modernize it. For fifty bedrooms there were only five baths, inconvenient, and of plumbing so ancient that tanks of water hung above the toilet seats and water for the enormous tub was warmed by gas heaters that threatened to asphyxiate bathers unless carefully tended. William was surprised to have a manservant remain in the room, his back carefully turned, when he took his bath the first night because the heater had looked for the last few months as though it might explode if overworked, and Americans, as everyone knew, insisted on having their tubs full.

“It was much easier, sir, in the old days when we fetched in tin baths,” the man had said, not looking around.

“Why don’t you get some American plumbers?” William asked, submerged in soapsuds. The water was beautifully soft.

“They could never understand the system, sir,” the man said. “Let me know when you’ve quite done, sir. I’ll turn it off and get quite out of your way.”

He did so a few minutes later and William, wrapped in a bath sheet, had returned to his own room down a hall an eighth of a mile long.

Here in his vast room he felt the silence centuries deep about him. It made him think of Peking and temples and palaces and the Old Empress again. It was the atmosphere he loved and he would have given his soul to have been born to it, for it was something which could not be imitated or made. To belong in it, to know the certainty of place, would have given him peace. Yet he was ashamed to acknowledge his own longing. Before these English, he must be his best, an American, rich, powerful, able to hold his own, a republican among aristocrats. He looked at himself in the long gilt-framed mirror and chose a somber tie.

Lady Emory had neither wish for love nor expectation of it. Her self-control was absolute and by now had penetrated every fiber of her being. She had been reared in self-control and believed that decency depended upon it. Only with Cecil, whom she had trusted entirely, had she felt that she did not need to think of herself, and so she had loved him with warmth and reality if not with heartiness. Nevertheless she was glad now that she had not married him, since he would have been killed, anyway, and not having married him she had learned to be glad that she had not slept with him that last night before he joined his regiment. They had discussed the last night frankly, as they discussed everything, their vocabulary being the same and their thoughts and ideas identical. It was not a question of sin or decency or of personal morality, since they were irrevocably in love. It was the far more important matter of an heir. Unlikely as it was that there could be any issue after a first and single union it was still possible that she might have a child, the heir of Randford.

“I shouldn’t like him born anyhow, you know, darling,” Cecil had said.

“We should have married,” she had murmured.

“I hate these hurried, patched-up weddings,” he had persisted. “I want to marry you in state, my darling. The Earls of Randford have always married their wives in the little abbey, and the tenants would hardly forgive me, you know, if I scamped it.”

“What if …” she had not been able to finish.

“No ifs,” he had said gaily. He was a god, young and blond, defying death.

So they had denied themselves for the sake of the child, who was never to be born, though they could not know it, and she had not allowed herself to regret her acquiescence. Cecil had felt his duty to his race, and though he loved her and she had never doubted his love, he drew her into his duty. This she had understood, for she had been reared within it, too. A noblewoman, however loved and cherished for her own sake, was nonetheless dedicated to the sacred future. She would not have been happy, either, had she forgotten that. Their love was purified by their faith in themselves and their kind, their belief that they were more than simple human beings.

Now that Cecil was dead she was released from that duty. There was nothing sacred in her being anything except herself. She knew no other heir of England whom she wanted to marry, or who wanted to marry her, and had there been such an one, it was doubtful whether the high sense of obligation would have been enough. With Cecil she could consecrate herself but without him, and therefore without love, even duty was not enough for her. There was no reason why she should consider it necessary merely to produce an heir for an ancient house. She was quite free.

Such freedom led to the immense restlessness which her self-control concealed beneath a cloak of consideration and kindness, these being also essentials of habitual good breeding. Only Michael divined that beneath the cloak so gracefully worn she was trembling with discontent.

“You need to get away,” he had told her. “You are jumpy.”

“I am not jumpy,” she had replied with unusual brusqueness.

“Don’t pretend,” Michael had said. “You ought to marry. Cecil has been dead for years.”

“I don’t see anyone to marry,” she had retorted.

“I’ll look about,” he had promised in a lordly way.

To which she had merely said, as she used to say to him when he was a little boy, “Don’t be silly.”

Nevertheless he had come back from London some months later with the preposterous declaration that he had found a chap, an American, who might be amusing for her to marry. Such conversation of course was not carried on before their parents. Even so she had been irritated by it. “I can’t imagine any marriage amusing,” she had told him. They were outdoors in the yew garden and she was on her knees by the Italian fountain, cleaning away fallen leaves. Michael stood watching her, not offering to help. He did not like to dirty his hands.

“This chap isn’t amusing, exactly,” he said.

“He’s rather terrifying actually — immensely tall and thin, greenish gray eyes under black brows, and that sort of thing. He looks immensely unhappy, I must say, the way Americans do if they are not the giggling kind. He’s searching, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Searching?” She had looked up.

“He’s rich as mud,” Michael said. “It can’t be that. I can’t make him out, except that there’s power in him.”

“What power?”

“I don’t know — energy, smothered under something impatience held down, enemy of everybody! He’s not friendly, doesn’t put out his hand when he sees you. I’ve invited him down — you’ll see.”

She had been attracted to William Lane the moment she had looked up from the piano and had seen him standing there. She had gone on playing so that she could look at him without speaking. He was not youthful, and above all things now youth wearied her. For the first time in these ten years she had found herself conscious of being a woman, not young but still beautiful and wanting so to be thought.

She had seen very soon that William thought her beautiful not merely for herself but for what she was over and beyond. He valued her for what she had inherited, but which was nevertheless a part of her, and it pleased her to have it so. He could not, she believed, have fallen in love merely with beauty. A chorus girl whom a king might love would have repelled him.

Pondering upon this, asking herself why it was that kings and peers throughout the history of England could so joyously lie upon hay and straw with milkmaids and gypsies who could not be queens, she penetrated the secret of William’s soul. He wanted a queen that he might be king. His kingdom he had made, a modern kingdom, money and power in absolute combination now as always, and over it he reigned ably enough. But the secret longing was in his soul unrevealed, and perhaps unknown even to himself. If she accepted him he would be assured. He would have evidence of what had been unseen, he would become in substance that which he had hoped he was.

At thirty, she reflected, as the days of that week passed, a woman accepts quickly or she rejects. He was in the decade beyond her and was, moreover, a man accustomed to quick decisions. He let her know within a few days that his was made. When he left Hulme Castle at the end of the week he managed to say good-by alone with her, and she helped him to arrange it so.

“May I come back in a fortnight?” he asked.

“We shall be happy to see you,” she had replied, purposely conventional.

“It will be a long fortnight for me, Lady Emory.”

She had only smiled at this, and she looked down and saw his hand clasping hers. A strange small hand he had, curiously hairy!

“Come,” she said to herself in silence, “let’s not think of such things as that!”

To discipline herself, she let him hold her hand a second longer.

When William came back after a fortnight he found Lady Emory so composed, as she led him on the second evening to a part of the castle still unknown to him, that he wondered if she had divined his thoughts. He was surprised to feel his heart begin to beat more quickly than he had ever felt it before.

“You haven’t seen the gallery, I think,” She opened a paneled door and he saw a space, seemingly endless, hung with paintings. “Let’s walk right away down to the end. The view is the loveliest picture of all.”

He followed her a long way to the great windows from ceiling to floor at the end of the gallery, and when she sat down on a yellow satin sofa he took his seat there, too, but not near her.

She looked at him, her dark eyes quietly waiting, and he saw with some shock that she was used to men falling suddenly in love with her, that she was prepared, and then he dreaded so soon to put her to the test of proposal.

“Did you know I grew up as a boy in China?” he asked her abruptly.

“Yes. But what makes you think of it now?” Lady Emory asked.

“Something about this castle, the silence here, and the moon shining as it used to on a palace in Peking.”

“The moon was late tonight.”

“Do you take an interest in the comings and the goings of the moon?” He accompanied this unusual triviality with an effort at a smile.

“No except that from a window in my room it rather forces itself upon me.”

He did not reply to this, and after a while she said, “Tell me something about your childhood in China. I’ve never been anywhere except in Europe.”

“I don’t want to think of my childhood,” he said with the strange sort of abruptness which she was beginning to realize did not mean irritation.

“Was it unhappy?” she persisted.

“No, just useless to me.”

“Useless?”

“Yes. I was the son of a missionary. You don’t think there could be any advantage to me to have missionary parents, do you? I kept it a secret all the time I was at college. It was a fearful disadvantage to me even in the English prep school I went to in China.” He wanted her to know the worst about him and he pressed the point. “To be the son of a missionary made my classmates think I must be queer. As a matter of fact, my father was rather remarkable. I didn’t discover it, though, until he came home to die in my house.”

“Tell me about him.” Her voice led him on.

“Sometime, Lady Emory. I don’t want to talk about him now.”

“Wait,” Lady Emory said. Her brown eyes widened a little and her soft voice took a slight imperious edge. “I wonder if I know what you want to talk about to me. If I do, I beg you to remember that we scarcely know each other.”

“You may not know me but I know you,” William replied. Passion seized him with a violence monstrous even to himself. He did not want to wait one moment to take this beautiful Englishwoman into his arms. He wanted her now, he wanted it settled.

Lady Emory looked frightened. “How can you know me?”

“I’ve always known England,” William said. “I’ve always loved England, against my will I confess, but there it is. Now I’ve found you and you are the personification of all that I have loved.”

“Michael said you were married—”

“That has nothing to do with you or me.”

“No.” Her word was a breath, a sigh, and he let it be acceptance. He took one step and she rose at his approach, and he drew her into his arms. Sweet and fearful was this exultation, his soaring pride in what he had, this arrogance of love! He was speechless, his face in the darkness of her hair, and he did not notice her silence or the still motionlessness with which she stood.

She was shocked to discover that the conviction in which she had sheathed herself since last she stood in Cecil’s arms was entirely false. She did not feel repelled at all by another man’s body pressed against her own. She had supposed it would be intolerable, eternally abhorrent, and it was not. It was even pleasant and comforting, as it would be pleasant and comforting to live in riches and plenty, no more a burden to her parents because she did not marry, no more a charity for Michael when his inheritance came to him. England was old and tired, and somehow with her dead lover it had died for her. America was young and strong, a rising empire, and to go there now, to leave England and take her own unspent womanhood with her, would be the nearest happiness that she could know. And this American, she perceived, contrary to what she had always heard about Americans, was neither stupid nor boyish.

“You can’t love me — as quickly as I have loved you — I don’t expect it—” William was stammering these broken sentences.

She was an honest woman, though beautiful, and what she now knew she would do, she wanted done with all her heart.

She stepped back, but only a little, and she let him hold her hands. “I suppose it is too soon,” she said frankly. “But I don’t think it is at all impossible — William!”

July in Ohio could be as hot as in India. Henrietta felt the heat. She had spent the last month with Clem in Mexico, where he had gone to confer with the Food Minister who wanted American wheat. Washington had been apathetic and he had called on Clem who, after listening carefully, had insisted on seeing Mexico for himself, so that he would know just how much the people needed wheat. He had not noticed the hot weather. His blood ran cool and he was thinner than ever. Mexican food was poison to him, the tamales hot as Indian food and even the vegetables full of red peppers, the spinach boiled to the color and taste of dead grass. He doggedly ate the native foods here as elsewhere, however, because he wanted to know what the people lived on, and afterward was tortured with the dyspepsia that got worse as he grew older. He had promised to get the wheat somehow, and they had come home.

Their house now as they opened the front door was hot and dusty and the air was stale.

“You get your dress off, hon,” Clem said to Henrietta. “Go upstairs and put on a wrapper and relax. I’ll open the windows.”

Henrietta obeyed without answer. She had begun to gain weight and it was a relief to get out of her corset. She went upstairs into the large bathroom which Clem had fitted up himself and modeled after the ones in India. She stood in the big zinc-lined tray and filled a jar with water from the tap; then with a dipper she poured it over herself Indian fashion. The house was full of things that Clem had admired in other countries. He liked chopsticks, for instance, better than knives and forks. They were cleaner, he said. The water was lukewarm but even so, cooler than she was. She toweled herself and then put on the negligee that Clem always called a wrapper. She did not mind. It was comfortable to live with a man who did not know what she wore.

She went downstairs to unpack the groceries they had bought for supper. Clem had taken off his coat and sat in his white shirtsleeves at the dining table, figuring on a sheet of paper. His shoulder blades were sharp and the back of his neck was hollowed. He had lost weight in the Mexico heat. She did not speak aloud her worry. Nothing annoyed him more than to hear her worry about his being thin.

She sat down in a large wicker chair, tore open the envelope which was postmarked New York City, and began to read to herself. The first paragraph revealed catastrophe. Her mother wrote, “I am glad your poor father has passed on. He could never have endured what is about to happen to our family. I have wept and prayed to no avail. William is adamant. He is beyond my reach. I remember when he was a small infant upon my bosom. I know he is my son, but I cannot recognize him. What have we done to deserve this?”

Thus far Henrietta went without comment to Clem. Then she saw the next sentence and a smothered cry escaped her.

“What is it?” Clem asked.

He turned from his figures. It was not like Henrietta to cry out about anything. Now her large gray eyes were wide, staring at the sheet she held. They were the color of William’s eyes but not like them in their depths.

“William is going to divorce Candace!” She breathed the words with the utmost horror, and he received them with horror as they looked at each other.

“What’s Candace done?” he asked sternly.

Henrietta returned to the letter. “She can’t have done anything,” she murmured. Her eyes swept down the page. “Mamma doesn’t say — yes, she does. She says Candace is just what she always was — there’s no excuse for William — he doesn’t even make an excuse — you know how he is. He always does what he is going to do and never says why. Mamma says it’s just an infatuation. It’s an Englishwoman he met on his trip.”

Henrietta would have cried had she tears, but she had none. Against William her heart hardened, and she crushed the letter in her hand and threw it into the woven wicker wastepaper basket. She had never loved Candace but now she almost loved her. Long ago she had left her father’s profound faith, but she had a sort of religion, fed by Clem’s unselfishness and devotion to his single cause. The Camerons were good people, in their way as good as her father had been, and all the old decencies remained. A man did not divorce his wife without cause and the best of men did not divorce their wives for any cause. William had left the ranks of the good.

“I don’t ever want to see William again,” she declared with passion. Clem rose from his chair and came over and knelt beside her. She put her head down and upon his narrow bony shoulders. His thin arms went around her.

“There, there,” he muttered.

“Oh, Clem,” she sighed, half heartbroken. “I am glad you are good. It’s your goodness that I trust.”

He pondered this, patting her back in a rhythm. “Maybe we need some sort of religion, hon,” he said at last. “We grew up with God, you know. We haven’t deserted Him exactly, we just haven’t known how to fit Him in.”

“You don’t need anything, you’re just naturally good.”

“I might be on the wrong track, always thinking about food. Man does not live by bread alone.”

She pressed his head against her cheek. “Don’t be different, Clem!” Then after a minute, “Poor Candace! I must write her a letter.”

She got up and sat down where Clem had sat, and saw upon the pages of yellow paper he used for his endless figuring the words: “Average yield per acre (Mexico)” followed by lines of calculations of Mexico’s millions of people. She tore off a yellow sheet, too tired to look for better writing paper.

Dear Candace,

We are just home from Mexico. I found Mother’s letter here. I cannot say a word of comfort to you. I am ashamed that William is my brother. None of us have ever understood him. Mother is glad my father is dead and I think I am too, unless Father could have kept William from being so wicked.

There is nothing I can do, I guess. It’s too late. I don’t pray as I used to but if I did, I would go down on my knees. Perhaps I should even yet. I feel closer to you than I ever have. And there are the two boys — how they must despise their father! It is all wicked and you have never deserved anything like this. I cannot imagine what reason he gives. You are so pretty and so good tempered. I hope William suffers for this.

Candace read the letter in her old room at her father’s house. She smiled rather sadly, thinking that she had never known Henrietta until now, when the bond between them was broken. She glanced at the small silver clock on the dressing table. She was no longer William’s wife. The decree was to be granted at noon and it was now six minutes beyond. She had been acutely aware of the time as it had passed and then had forgotten it for a few minutes and in that little space of time it was over. She let the letter drop on the floor and leaned her head back against the back of the chair and closed her eyes.

She had protested nothing. That was her pride. Jeremy had flung himself out of William’s offices forever, he said, but when she saw Ruth she had made him go back. Ruth had no defense for William — she was too gentle and good for that. But she did not blame him, for to her alone William had explained himself, and she had tried to explain him also to Jeremy and to Candace. “He’s always been different from everybody,” Ruth said in her earnest, sweet little voice. “He’s been so lonely all his life. I sometimes think if Father hadn’t died … Father understood William, but he had to wait for him to grow up. I remember Father saying that once.”

“It’s his own fault if he is lonely,” Jeremy had retorted. “He holds himself above everybody. Yes, he does, Ruth. He lords it over us all.”

“I know it seems that way, Jeremy, but really inside he’s quite lost.”

Jeremy had snorted and Ruth nodded her head up and down very positively. “Yes, William is lost. He needs something he hasn’t got. None of us can give it to him.”

Upon this Candace had spoken. “If Emory can give it to him, then I shall be glad.”

“Oh, Candy, you’re so generous,” Ruth had cried, the tears streaming from her soft blue eyes.

But still she had defended William in her heart and Candace saw it, and because Jeremy loved his wife he, too, would allow William his way. She had no knight, unless her old father came forward. But he evaded life nowadays, indeed not from lack of love, so much as from too much love. So sensitive had he grown as age came upon him, so excessively tender, so wishful that human beings should all be happy, that when they were not he could not bear to be near them. So because she loved him, Candace had shielded her heart from her father and affected to be gay about William’s new love, and she insisted that of course he must marry Emory, and she even pretended that she and Emory could and would meet and be friends, while in her heart she knew that this could never be.

With her sons, she was cavalier. Will and Jerry, though tall young men, still cared more for football than for anything else on earth. “We mustn’t blame your father,” she had said to them brightly. “The truth is, our marriage never quite came off, if you know what I mean. Why should you know? It’s like a flower that doesn’t quite bloom. Still, I’ve had you two and that is a great deal to get out of one marriage.” She had looked from one solemn young face to the other.

“Are you going to marry again?” It was Will’s question. She met his young gray eyes and shook her head, still playfully. This was her protection now and forever, not to care too much, not to mind. She thought of fallen leaves floating upon the surface of the swimming pool, of leaves drifting down from the trees, of a bird resting upon the waves of atmosphere, of flower petals dropping upon the grass. Her father was right. Escape life, perhaps, but certainly escape pain! The blow had been dealt.

Jerry, the younger, had spoken with sudden rage. “Why don’t you go and see that woman and tell her she has no right to—”

“Shut up,” Will said for her. “You don’t understand. You’re only a kid.”

Neither son had spoken one word of their father. He was immovable, unchangeable; none could reach him. Whatever he did was done. He was absolute.

William had needed none of them, not his mother, not Ruth. No one existed for him except himself, his monolithic being, his single burning purpose, more consuming than any he had ever known. He was ruthless in his office, angry with all delay, intolerably demanding upon his lawyers.

He had tried to compel Candace to go to Reno so that in six weeks he might be free. She had refused and old Roger Cameron had demanded an appointment. William had refused that. He gave orders that he would not speak with anyone on the telephone. He lived entirely in his apartment at the office and made no communication with his sons. After he was married to Emory he would let them see for themselves why he married her.

When he discovered that Candace was not going to Reno, he went himself. He endured weeks of loneliness without Emory, days when he called her by telephone that he might hear her voice and assure himself that she still lived, that she had not changed her mind, that she had no thought of delaying their marriage. His decree granted, he left by the next train and, speeding to England upon the fastest ship, he went straight to Hulme Castle.

She was there waiting for him, the wedding day set two days hence, and when he had her in his arms, he let down his heart. He put his face into the soft dark hair.

“Oh, my love—” They were words he had never used to Candace.

“You look fearfully tired, William.”

“I shan’t be tired any more, Emory.”

She did not reply to this, and he stood for a moment letting his weariness drain away in the silence.

“Two days from now we’ll be married.”

“Two days,” she echoed.

“I wish it were now.”

To this, too, she made no reply.

They were married in the room where they had first met. She did not want to be married in Hulme Abbey, where, had Cecil lived, the ceremony would have taken place. Her parents had agreed, and so an altar had been set up in the drawing room. No one was there beyond her family and the vicar and his wife and a few people whom William had never seen before. “A quick, quiet wedding,” he told her and she obeyed.