The Horse-Fair + 

The first person of their acquaintance they encountered, when Wolf and Mrs. Solent mingled with the lively crowd that filled Ramsgard’s famous Castle Field that afternoon, was none other than Mr. Albert Smith. Wolf was amazed at the cordiality of his mother’s greeting; and so quite evidently was the worthy hatter himself. + 

Mrs. Solent was fashionably dressed; but what struck her son more than her clothes at that moment was the incredible power of her haughty profile, as she flung out her light badinage, like so many shining javelins, at the nervous tradesman. + 

The thought rushed across his brain, as he watched her: “She’s never had her chance in life! She was made for large transactions and stirring events!” Letting his gaze wander over the groups about them, Wolf caught sight of Mr. Urquhart’s figure in the distance; and he decided that, since sooner or later he would have to greet the man, the best thing he could do was to get it over as soon as possible, so as to be prepared to face his Blacksod friends free of responsibility. + 

Leaving his companions to themselves, therefore, with a nod at his mother, he plunged into the heart of that motley scene. The day obviously was the culmination of the Wessex Fair. The large expanse of meadow-land lying between the castle-ruins and the railway was encircled by booths, stalls, roundabouts, fortune-tellers’ tents, toy circuses⁠—all the entertainments, in fact, which the annual horde of migratory peddlers of amusement offered, according to age-old tradition, to their rustic clients. + 

But the centre portion of this spacious fairground was carefully roped off; and it was here that the riding and driving competitions took place that gave so special an interest to this particular afternoon. + 

One segment of this roped-off circle had been converted into a sort of privileged paddock, corresponding to a racecourse grandstand, where the aristocracy of the neighbourhood, whose carriages were drawn up under the railway bank, could watch the proceedings in undisturbed security. + 

The opportunity Wolf had seized of approaching Mr. Urquhart was given him by the fact that the Squire of King’s Barton was standing alone, close to the rope, at some little distance from the privileged spot where most of his compeers were gathered. + 

He was watching with absorbed interest a stately parade of prize-stallions, who, adorned with ribbons and other marks of distinction, ambled ponderously by, one after another, as if they were parading in some gigantic super-equine festival that ought to have had superhuman spectators! The creatures looked so powerful and so contemptuous beside the stablemen who led them, that Wolf, as he approached this procession, saw for a moment the whole human race in an inferior and ignominious light⁠—saw them as some breed of diabolically clever monkeys, who, by a debased trick of cunning, had been able to reduce to servitude, though not to servility, animals far nobler and more godlike than themselves. + 

“It makes you feel like a Yahoo, Sir,” said Wolf, as he shook hands with Mr. Urquhart. “I mean it makes me feel like a Yahoo. Good Lord! Look at that beast! Don’t you get the sensation that those hooves are really making the earth tremble?” + 

But Mr. Urquhart, though he had grasped his secretary’s hand warmly and had seemed pleased to see him, took no more notice of this remark than if it had been some negligible banality uttered by a complete stranger. Wolf, standing by his side, said no more till the procession had passed. His attention began to wander from the great stallions to a mental consideration that made him straighten his own shoulders. + 

He had suddenly become aware of the felicitous appropriateness of Mr. Urquhart’s clothes; and although his own overcoat was a good one and his cloth-hat new, he felt somehow badly dressed in the man’s company, a feeling that caused him considerable annoyance. + 

“Damn this accursed snobbishness!” he said to himself, as he contemplated the vast grey flanks of the winner of the third prize. “Why can’t I detach myself absolutely from these things and see them as a visitor from Saturn or Uranus would see them?” + 

Mr. Urquhart turned to him when the last stallion had passed by. “Do ’ee know who my man brought with him over here?” he said, smiling. + 

Wolf could only lift his thick eyebrows interrogatively. He continued to feel uncomfortable under his employer’s quizzical gaze. “He looks me up and down,” he thought to himself, “as if I were a horse that had disappointed him by not winning even a third prize.” + 

“You mean Monk?” he said. “I can’t guess whom he brought with him. I thought he was driving you.” + 

“He put her on the box by his side,” went on the squire. “It was that old servant of our good Otters. I was compelled to look at the flowers in her bonnet and the tassels on her cape all the way here.” + 

“You don’t mean Dimity Stone?” murmured Wolf; and he contemplated in a rapid inward vision that sly, misogynistic eye fixed sardonically on the old woman’s wizened back, and the chivalrous grand air with which the coachman must have conversed with her, as he held the reins. + 

“I couldn’t let her walk,” went on the squire. “And the Otters had left her behind. I suppose they hadn’t room. They came in a wretched conveyance. I suppose they got it from the hotel.” He swung about and surveyed the crowd with indulgent arrogance. “I can just see the good Darnley from here,” he said. “There!⁠—can’t you? I wonder where that terrible person who’s always drunk has hidden himself! I saw him, too, a moment ago. And, by gad, there’s Tilly-Valley! Let’s go and stir him up. He won’t expect me to speak to him. You watch his face, my boy, when I nudge his elbow. Eh? What? Come on.” And greatly to Wolf’s annoyance he found himself compelled to support his limping employer on his arm, while the two of them pushed their way towards the clergyman. + 

“Tally ho! Run to earth!” was the squire’s greeting, as, with Wolf at his elbow, he came up unobserved to where the little priest was standing. “Afternoon, Valley! Should have thought this sort of thing wasn’t in your line; eh? what? Too many horsey rascals about? Too many rowdy young men, eh?” + 

If Wolf was astonished at Mr. Urquhart’s familiar tone, he was still more astonished at the expression on the face of the nervous clergyman. + 

Stammeringly Mr. Valley found his tongue. + 

“Fine horses⁠ ⁠… more of them than usual⁠ ⁠… did you see that grey one?⁠ ⁠… the Otters are here⁠ ⁠… they drove over⁠ ⁠… I walked⁠ ⁠… so did others⁠ ⁠… many others⁠ ⁠… it would be nice if there were seats here⁠ ⁠… don’t you think so?⁠ ⁠… seats?” + 

Wolf could hardly bear to listen to these broken utterances of the poor Vicar. There was something about his pinched face, his shapeless nose, his thin neck, his frightened eyes, that produced a profoundly pitiful feeling. This sensation was accentuated by the way a certain vein in the man’s throat stood out. Not only did it stand out, it pulsed and vibrated. All the panic that Mr. Urquhart’s presence provoked seemed concentrated in that pulsing vein. + 

“Seats, did you say?” chuckled the squire. “You don’t need a seat at your age.” And leaning heavily on his companion’s arm, he tapped the priest with the end of his stick with an air of playful familiarity. + 

It came over Wolf then, with a rush of sheer rage, that he must get his employer away from this man at all costs. Never had he liked Mr. Urquhart less. There was something in his wrinkled white face, at that moment, which suggested an out-rush of incredible evil⁠—of evil emerging, like some abominable vapour, from a level of consciousness not often revealed. + 

Wolf was tolerant enough of the various forms of normal and abnormal sensuality; but what at that instant he got a glimpse of, beneath this man’s gentlemanly mask, was something different from viciousness. It was as if some abysmal ooze from the slime of that which underlies all evil had been projected to the surface. + 

“Come along, Sir. We must get back to the rope,” Wolf found himself saying in a stern, dry voice. “They’re starting the driving-match and I can’t let you miss that!” + 

Mr. Urquhart’s hilarity seemed to sink fathom-deep at the sound of his secretary’s voice. He permitted himself to be pulled away. But Wolf noticed a perceptible increase in his lameness as he drew him along; and glancing sideways at his face, he was startled by the look of almost imbecile vacuity that had replaced what had been there before. + 

The crowd had thickened perceptibly now; and Wolf realized that he was seeing the most characteristic gathering for that portion of the countryside that he was ever likely to see. Here were smart, self-satisfied young tradesmen from Ramsgard with their wives and their girls. Here were weather-stained carters from Blackmore; cider-makers and cattle-dealers from Sedgemoor; stalwart melancholy-looking shepherds from the high Quantocks; a sprinkling of well-to-do farmers from the far-off valley of the Frome; sly, whimsical dairymen from the rich pastures of the Stour; and, moving among them all, slow-voiced and slow-footed, but with an infinite zest for enjoyment, the local rustic labourers that tilled the heavy fields watered by the Lunt. + 

The two men pushed their way back to the taut vibrating rope, beyond which the driving-contest was now proceeding; and as they rested there, Wolf’s mind felt liberated from all its agitations, and he drank in the scene before him with unruffled delight. The peculiar smells that came to his nostrils⁠—leather, and straw, and horse-dung, and tobacco-smoke, and cider-sour human breath, and paint, and tar, and half-devoured apples⁠—were all caught up and overpowered by one grand dominant odour, the unique smell of the trodden grass of a fair-field. Let the sun shine as it would from the cold blue heaven! Let the chariots of white clouds race as they pleased under that airy tent! It was from the solid ground under human feet, under equine hooves, that this Dorsetshire world gave forth its autochthonous essence, its bittersweet, rank, harsh, terrestrial sweat, comforting beyond conscious knowledge to the heart of man and beast. + 

Nothing could have been more symbolic of the inmost nature of that countryside than the humorous gravity with which these lean yeomen and plump farmers drove their brightly painted gigs and high dogcarts round that hoof-trodden paddock! The obvious reciprocity between the men who drove and the animals driven, the magnetic currents of sympathy between the persons looking on and the persons showing off, the way the whole scene was characterized by something casual, non-official, nonchalant⁠—all this produced an effect that only England, and perhaps only that portion of England, could have brought into being. Behind Wolf and his companion surged a pushing, jostling, heterogeneous crowd, giving vent to a low, monotonous murmur; and behind them again could be heard the raucous cries and clangings and whistlings from the noisy whirligigs. + 

Wolf could make out, here and there among the people round him, the well-known straw-hats⁠—manufactured by Mr. Albert Smith⁠—of the boys of Ramsgard School. “They must be having a ‘half’ today,” he thought; and his mind ran upon the various queer, unathletic, unpopular boys among the rest, who must be feeling, just then, so indescribably thankful for this blessed interlude in their hateful life! The thought of the unknown, undiscovered bullies that probably existed in Ramsgard School at that very moment made him feel sick at the pit of his stomach. “I put my curse on them,” he thought. “If I have a vestige of occult power I put my curse upon them!” + 

A short, stocky man, with powerful wrists, driving a lively but not particularly handsome horse, passed them at that moment inside the paddock. Wolf was wondering why the voices round him were discreetly lowered as this person trolled by, when he noted that the man exchanged a familiar nod with Mr. Urquhart. + 

“Not a bad turnout for a Lovelace,” muttered this latter, when the equipage had passed; “but they never can quite do it!” + 

Once again Wolf felt a prick of shame at the curious interest which this occurrence excited in him. What was Lord Lovelace to him? He glanced furtively at the squire of King’s Barton. The man’s baggy eye-wrinkles had, just then, a look that was almost saurian. From one corner of his twitching mouth a trickle of saliva descended, towards which a small fly persistently darted.⁠ ⁠… + 

Wolf turned away his eyes. The magic of the scene had completely vanished. The smell of the trodden earth was stale in his nostrils. A loathing of the whole spectacle of life took possession of him. And under his breath he repealed that strange classical lament, a tag in his memory from his schooldays, a mere catchword now; but it gave him a certain relief to pronounce the queer-sounding syllables. + 

“Ailinon! Ailinon!” he muttered to himself, as he leaned his stomach against that vibrant rope. “Ailinon! Ailinon!” And the very utterance of this tragic cry from the old Greek dramas soothed his mind as if it had been a talisman. But the disgust he felt at the pressure of things at that moment extended itself to this whole fairground, extended itself even to the prospect of seeing Gerda again. “How can I face her in the midst of all this?” he thought; and he recalled the outline of his mother’s profile, so contemptuously lifted towards Albert Smith. “What will she think of the Torp family?” he said to himself, in miserable discomfort. + 

Struggling against this wretched mood, he straightened his back and clutched the rope with both his hands. Savagely he tried to summon up out of the depths of his spirit some current of defiant magnetism. But the presence of Mr. Urquhart, taciturn and pensive though the squire had become, seemed to cut off all help from these furtive resources. + 

So he sought to steady himself by pure reason. + 

“After all,” he argued, “those gulfs of watery blue up there are such an unthinkable background to all this, that they⁠ ⁠… that they⁠ ⁠… a trickle of saliva more or less⁠ ⁠… a woman’s profile more or less⁠ ⁠…” And then, as he watched those painted gigs come swinging once more round the enclosure, and heard the exclamations of malicious delight, as a chestnut-coloured mare showed a vicious tendency to back her driver against the rope, a sense of terrified loneliness came upon him. What could Gerda, or his mother, or anyone else⁠—man or woman⁠—really feel toward him so that this loneliness should be eased? Emptiness leered at him, emptiness yawned at him, out of that watery blue; and what pointed spikes of misunderstanding he had to throw himself upon before this bustling day was over! + 

He ran his fingers along the swaying rope, sticky from the innumerable human hands that had clutched it. His mind seemed to hover above the form of Gerda and above the form of his mother, as if it had been a floating mist gathered about two sundered headlands. That familiar grey head, with those mocking brown eyes, and this other, this new strange head, with its sea-grey gaze and its wild, pursed-up, whistling mouth⁠—what would happen when he brought them together? + 

It would mean he would have to leave his mother. That’s what it would mean. Where was Gerda now, in this confused medley? She must be somewhere about; and perhaps Christie, too! + 

“You won’t care if I go off to look for my mother, Sir?” he found himself saying. And the words quite startled him, as if he had spoken in his sleep; for he had made up his mind that he would never speak of his private affairs to this egoistic gentleman. + 

“Eh? What’s that? Tired of the old man, ha? Want to gad after the petticoats? Well! Take me to the enclosure, out of this crowd, and I’ll let you go. I suppose it’s hopeless to find Monk in this hurly? He was to have come back for me. But Lord! he’s got his own little affairs, as well as another. There! That’s better. You needn’t go at a snail’s pace for me. There! That’s all right. I’ll find Lovelace in the enclosure, I daresay. He’ll wait to see the carthorses.” + 

Wolf steered the squire as well as he could through the jostling mob of people, and left him at the entrance to the privileged circle. + 

“You and I know more about some of these good folks than they know themselves,” remarked Mr. Urquhart, grimly. “Our History’ll make ’em sit up a bit; eh? what? Well, off with ’ee, me boy; and if you want to find your mother, I’d look for her in the refreshment-tent, if I were you. Never know’d but one woman who could see a horse-show out to the end⁠—and she was a tart of Lord Tintinhull’s. ‘Sack’ they used to call her; and ‘sacked’ she was, at the finish, poor bitch! Well, good luck to ’ee. We’ll do some solid work tomorrow, please God!” + 

Wolf mumbled some inadequate reply to this and strode away. What struck him just then was the contrast between the silky tone of his employer’s voice and the toll-pike jocularity of his language. “Neither tone nor words are the real man,” he thought. “What seething malice, what fermenting misanthropy, that mask of his does cover!” + 

Crossing the fair-field to the northward, leaving the paddock to his left and the whirligigs to his right, Wolf speedily found his way to the entrance of the great refreshment-tent. + 

The place was packed with people, some taking their stimulant at little deal-board tables, others eating and drinking as they stood, others again crowding about the massive serving-counter at the end of the tent, where great silvery receptacles, kept hot by oil-flames, were disgorging into earthenware cups a quality of tea that seemed to meet the taste alike of the Lovelaces and of the Torps, so varied were the human types now eagerly swallowing it! + 

Wolf speedily became aware that Mr. Urquhart’s jibe about few petticoats being able to endure a horse-show to the end was not without justification. About three-quarters of the persons filling this huge canvas-space were women. + 

The first familiar form he encountered as he pushed his way in was that of Selena Gault. This lady was seated alone at a small table placed against the canvas-wall, where she was drinking her tea and eating her bread-and-butter in sublime indifference to the crowd that surged about her. Wolf hurried to her, snatched an unoccupied chair, and sat down at her side. + 

He felt, for some reason, a sense of profound physical exhaustion; and underneath the pleasant badinage with which he returned his friend’s greetings he found himself positively clinging to this lonely woman. + 

The lady’s costume, to which she had given a vague sporting-touch suitable to the occasion, enhanced her grotesque hideousness. But from her deformed visage her eyes gleamed such irresistible affection that his ebbing courage began steadily to revive. + 

Their complete isolation in the midst of the crowd⁠—for the people jostling past their table gave them little heed⁠—soon led Wolf to plunge shamelessly into what was nearest his heart. Selena Gault’s ghastly upper-lip quivered perceptibly as he told her of his affair with Gerda and his resolve to get married without delay. + 

“Why, she’s here!” she cried. “The child’s here! She came in with her father a quarter of an hour ago. She certainly is one of the loveliest girls I’ve ever set eyes upon. I hadn’t seen her since she’s grown up. I was amazed at her beauty. Well! You have made hay while the sun shone. No! it’s no use! You can’t possibly see her from where you are. Now turn round and look at me; and let’s talk about all this, quietly and sensibly. It’s as serious as it could be; and I don’t know what’s to be done about it.” + 

“There’s nothing to be done, I’m afraid, Miss Gault,” said Wolf gravely, forcing himself to accept the situation; “nothing except to make some money by hook or by crook! Do you think if I put the case to Urquhart, he’d give me a little more? We’re getting on first-rate with the History.” + 

Never were human eyelids lifted more whimsically than were those of Wolf’s interlocutor at this mild suggestion. + 

“Oh, my dear boy!” she chuckled. “You don’t know how funny you are. To ask that man for money to get married on.” + 

“No good, eh?” he murmured. “No, I suppose not. But you don’t think he’ll show me the door, do you?” + 

Miss Gault shook her head. “If he does, we’ll put all our wits together and get you something in Ramsgard. There are jobs⁠—” she added, thoughtfully puckering her brows. + 

But Wolf, having twice twisted his head back into its normal position from a hopeless attempt to see further than a few yards in front of him, felt an irresistible impulse to reveal to this woman certain rather sinister deductions that he found he had been involuntarily making from recent glimpses and hints. Composed originally of the veriest wisps and wefts of fluctuating suspicion, they seemed now to have solidified themselves in unabashed tangibility. What they now amounted to was that Mattie was not Mr. Smith’s daughter at all but William Solent’s; and that Olwen, the girl’s little protégée, was actually the incestuous child of old Malakite, the bookseller, and of some vanished sister of Christie’s. It was the startling nature of these conclusions that tempted him to fire them off point-blank at the lady by his side, whose morbid receptivity made her a dedicated target for such a shock. + 

“Is it true that I have a sister in this town?” he enquired boldly, looking straight into Miss Gault’s eyes. + 

The appalling upper-lip vibrated like the end of a tapir’s proboscis, and the grey eyes blinked as if he had shot off a pistol. + 

“What?” she cried, letting her hands fall heavily upon her knees, like the hands of a flabbergasted sorceress, palms downward and fingers outspread. “What’s that you’re saying, boy?” + 

“I am saying that I’ve come to a shrewd certainty,” said Wolf firmly, “that Mattie Smith and I have the same father.” + 

Miss Gault astonished him by putting her elbows on to the table and covering her face with her extended fingers; through which her eyes now regarded him. She was not weeping⁠—he could see that. Was she laughing at him? There was something so queer in this gesture, that he felt an uneasy discomfort. It was as if she had suddenly turned into a different person, as different from the Miss Gault he knew, as the new Mattie they were talking about was different from the one he had met in that Victorian dining-room. + 

He wished she would remove those fingers and stop staring at him so discomfortably. When at last she did so, it was to reveal a countenance whose expression he was at a loss to read. Her face certainly wasn’t blubbered with crying; but it was flushed and disturbed. The impression he really got from it was of something⁠ ⁠… almost indecent! + 

He glanced furtively round, and, hurriedly extending his arm, touched one of her wrists. + 

“You must have known I’d find out sooner or later,” he said. “It doesn’t matter, my knowing, does it? He couldn’t mind. He’d be glad, I should think.” And he gave an awkward little chuckle, as he released her hand and began fumbling for a cigarette. + 

He had only just succeeded in finding the small packet for which he was searching, when he caught Miss Gault’s eyes lit up in excited recognition. + 

He swung round. Ah! there they were⁠—making their way straight towards them⁠—the portly figure of Mr. Torp, with Gerda leaning lightly on his arm! + 

He did not hesitate a moment, but leaping up from his chair with an incoherent apology to his companion, he advanced to meet them, his heart beating fast, but his brain in full command of the situation. + 

Gerda flushed crimson when she saw him, disengaged her arm from her father’s, and, coming to meet him with charming impetuosity, held out her hand. + 

She was dressed in plain navy-blue serge, and wore a dark, soft hat low down over her fair hair. This unassuming attire heightened her beauty; and the embarrassed, yet illuminated look with which she greeted her lover, brought back to his mind so vividly the events of yesterday, that for a moment he was struck with a kind of dizziness that reduced everyone in that crowded tent to a floating and eddying mist. + 

He caught at her hand without a word and held it tightly for a moment, hurting her a little. + 

He soon dropped it, however, and said very hurriedly and quietly: “Gerda⁠ ⁠… forgive me⁠ ⁠… but I want to introduce you to my friend, Miss Gault.” + 

Gerda’s eyes must have already encountered those of that lady, for he saw her face stiffen to a conventional and rather strained smile. But at this moment Mr. Torp intervened, coming up very close to Wolf and touching the latter’s hand with his plump finger before he could lift it to greet him. + 

“So you and darter have fixed it up, have ’ee?” he whispered, in a confidential, almost funereal tone. “Don’t ’ee be fretted about I nor the missus, Mister. Us be glad in advance, I tell ’ee; and so it be.” He caught hold of Wolf’s sleeve and put his face close to his face, while Wolf, with a sidelong glance, became aware that Miss Gault had approached them and had been met halfway by Gerda. + 

“ ’Tis they wimming’s whimsies what us have got to mind, hasn’t?” whispered Mr. Torp. “What they do reckon’ll happen to we, ’tis what will happen to we, looks so! Don’t ’ee take on, Mister, about us being poor folks like. Darter’s different from we and allus has been, since her were a babe. She’s had grand courtiers ere now, though I shouldn’t say it. But Gerdie be a good girl, though turble lazy about house. Her mother once did think it ’ud be young Bob Weevil what ’ud get her; but I knewed a thing or two beyond that, I did! I knewed she were one for the gentry, as you might say. ’Twere barn in her, I reckon! I be a climbing man, me wone self. It’s like enough she gets it from I!” And before he withdrew his rubicund face to a discreet distance, the stonecutter gave him a shrewd wink. + 

It was then that Miss Gault took the opportunity of bringing Gerda up to them. She had evidently said something very gracious to the girl; for Gerda’s quaint society-manner had left her, and she looked pleased, though a little bewildered. + 

“We’ve made friends already,” said Miss Gault to Wolf, “and I’ve told her I knew her well by sight. How do you do, Mr. Torp! I was telling Mr. Solent that I knew your daughter already, though I’ve never spoken to her; but she’s not a young lady one can forget!” + 

What Mr. Torp’s reply to this was Wolf did not hear. Aware that the situation had arranged itself, he found as he kept looking at Gerda’s face, as she listened to Miss Gault and her father, that he was beginning to grow nervously hostile to all these explanations. Why couldn’t he and Gerda go straight off now, out of this hurly-burly, out anywhere⁠ ⁠… so as to be at peace and alone? + 

“Well, goodbye,” Gerda was saying. “Perhaps we’ll see you again later; but Father and I haven’t half gone the round yet, have we, Father?” + 

“Gone the round! I should think us hadn’t!” said Mr. Torp. “Bain’t what used to be, this here fair! I do mind when ’twere so thick wi’ gipoos and suchlike, that a person could scarce move. But Gerdie and I will see summat, don’t ’ee fear! They whirligigs⁠ ⁠… why there ain’t a blessed season since her was a mommet that we ain’t rid in they things; is there, my chuck?” + 

“No, there isn’t, Father. Goodbye, Miss Gault!” she added, with a straight, confiding, grateful glance at her friend’s friend. “I’ll be at home all tomorrow afternoon, Wolf,” she murmured, as she smoothed out her gloves and buttoned her jacket. + 

Mr. Torp caught the word. “So she shall be!” he cried emphatically. “I be a turble stern man, for ordering they to do what they’ve set their hearts on doing! Well, goodbye to ’ee, Sir! Goodbye to ’ee, Marm! If all and sundry here were to fling at they coceenuts, there’d be few left, I reckon!” + 

Watching that quaintly assorted couple moving away out of the tent, Wolf felt a glow of almost conceited satisfaction in the discovery that whatever vein of snobbishness it was in him that had made so much of Mr. Urquhart’s clothes and Lord Lovelace’s appearance, it fell away completely where Gerda was concerned. “I’m glad the old man is as he is!” he thought, as his eyes followed them into the open air. + 

“Let’s sit down again, shall we?” he said to Miss Gault. + 

His spirits were a little dashed, however, when he regarded the lady opposite him, as they resumed their seats; for her face seemed to have grown stiff and somewhat remote. + 

“This is very serious,” she said gravely. And then, with an almost plaintive tone, “Why is it that men are so ridiculous?” + 

“But I thought you liked her, Miss Gault! You were so especially sweet to her.” + 

She sighed and gave him a glance that seemed to say irritably, “And to cap everything you are an incredible fool!” + 

“You did like her, didn’t you?” + 

“So childish that they think of nothing⁠ ⁠… nothing⁠ ⁠… when their desire is aroused.” + 

“Why is it so serious, Miss Gault?” he said. And then he added rather maliciously, “My mother would see in a second how refined she is!” + 

Miss Gault lifted her eyebrows. “I’m not only thinking of your mother,” she said. “There’s no reason, that I know of, why I should fuss about her. I’m thinking of you and the girl herself, and⁠—and of all your friends. Listen, boy”⁠—and she bent on him one of the most tender and reproachful looks he had ever seen⁠—“all this is pure madness⁠—selfish, greedy madness! You can’t make a girl like that happy⁠—no! not for half a year! Good heavens, child, you’re as blind as a⁠—You’re as selfish as one of my cats! It’s the girl I’m thinking of, I tell you. You’ll make her miserable, you and your mother. She’s sweet to look at; but Wolf, Wolf! she and you will talk completely different languages! You can’t do these things⁠—not in our country, anyhow. I’ve seen it again and again⁠—these things bring misery⁠—just misery. And how are you going to support her, I’d like to know?” + 

“She has indeed a different language,” cried Wolf, irrelevantly; and his mind reverted to the blackbird of Poll’s Camp. And then, as he saw her face droop wearily and her fingers tap the table: “Why did you take it all so nicely just now. Why did you talk of getting me work in Ramsgard?” + 

She made no reply to this. But after a moment she burst out: “Your father would laugh at you⁠ ⁠… he would!⁠ ⁠… He’d just laugh at you!” + 

“Well, we’d better not talk of it any more,” said Wolf sulkily. + 

He cast about in the depths of his consciousness, however, with the vindictiveness of defeat, for some line of attack that would disturb and agitate her. + 

“Miss Gault,” he began, while with her gaze fixed upon vacancy she stared through him and past him into the interior of the great tent, “do you mind if I ask you a direct question? I know that Mattie Smith is my father’s child; but what I want to ask you now is⁠—whose child is Olwen?” + 

A faint brownish flush ran like a stream of muddy water beneath the surface of the skin of her face. She bent her head over the table; and like a great ruffled bird, in a cage, that has been shaken from the top, she began picking up and lifting to her mouth every crumb of bread in sight. Then, with a shaky hand, she poured some spilt drops of cold tea from her saucer into her cup. + 

“What I want to know,” repeated Wolf, “is why my sister Mattie has this child Olwen to look after. Is she a foundling? Is she adopted? Where did she spring from?” + 

But the daughter of the late headmaster of Ramsgard School remained obstinately silent. She folded her hands mechanically over the heavy teacup and sat straight in her chair, staring into her lap like an image of Atropos. + 

“Don’t you want to tell me, Miss Gault? Is it something you can’t tell me?” + 

Still the lady remained silent, her fingers tightly clenched over the cup. + 

“I knew there was something queer from the start,” he went on. “What’s the matter with you all? Who is this child?” + 

Then very slowly Miss Gault rose to her feet. + 

“Come out into the air,” she said brusquely. “I can’t talk to you here.” + 

They made their way together out of the tent; but they had hardly gone a stone’s throw into the cold March sunshine, when they encountered, without a possibility of retreat or evasion, Mrs. Solent and Mr. Smith advancing resolutely and blamelessly towards the place they were quitting. + 

The hatter of Ramsgard School looked pinched and withered in the hard, glaring light. Wolf received a sudden, inexplicable inkling that the man was wretchedly miserable. The look he got from him as they approached seemed grey with weariness. Mrs. Solent was, however, talking gaily. Her brown eyes were shining with mischief. Her cheeks were flushed. And now, at the very moment of salutation, he could see that proud face toss its chin and that sturdy, well-dressed figure gather itself together for battle. Once more it came over him with a queer kind of remorse, as if he were responsible for it: “She’s had no life at all; and she’s made for great, stirring events!” + 

But it was many days before he forgot the manner in which those two ancient rivals faced each other. It had, this encounter between them, the queer effect upon him of making him recall, as he had once or twice already in Dorsetshire, that passage in Hamlet where the ghost cries out from beneath the earth. A piece of horse-dung at his feet, as he instinctively looked away while the two came together, grew large and white and round. + 

“He can’t have a shred of flesh left on him down there,” he thought to himself, with a kind of sullen anger against both the women. But what puzzled him now was that Miss Gault did not rise to the occasion as he had supposed she would have done. To his own personal taste she looked more formidable in her black satin gown than his mother did in her finery; but it was clear to him, as he watched them shaking hands, that his mother’s spirit was poised and adjusted to the nicest point of the encounter, whereas Miss Gault’s inmost being just then seemed disorganized, disjointed, helpless, unwieldy. + 

That they shook hands at all, he could see, was owing to his mother. Miss Gault’s hands hung down at her sides, like the hands of a large, stuffed doll that has been set up with difficulty in an erect position. And they remained like this until Mrs. Solent’s arm had been extended for quite a perceptible passage of time. When Selena did raise her wrist and take her enemy’s fingers, it was to retain them all the while the two were speaking. But Mrs. Solent told Wolf afterwards that there was no warmth or life in that cold pressure.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Well, Selena, so it’s really you! And I couldn’t have believed there’d be so little change. You are at your old tricks again, I see, running off with my son!” + 

“I hope you are well, Ann,” said Miss Gault. “You look as handsome as ever.” + 

“I’d look handsomer still, if my son wasn’t so unambitious and lazy,” replied the other, giving Wolf a glance of glowing possessiveness. + 

“Men can be too ambitious, Ann,” said Miss Gault slowly, speaking as if she were in some kind of trance. + 

“We passed a really pretty girl a minute or two ago,” cried Mrs. Solent suddenly; “and Albert here says he knows who she is. You ought to go over to the roundabouts, Wolf, and try and find her! She was with a labouring-man of some sort, a stocky plump little man; but she was pretty as a picture!” + 

“Do you mean that Dorset labourers sell their daughters, Mother? Or do you mean that all beauty can be had for the asking? All right; I’ll hunt for her through all the tents!” + 

He felt himself speaking in such a strained, queer voice that he was not surprised to observe Miss Gault glancing nervously at Mrs. Solent to see if she had detected it. But Mrs. Solent was too excited just then to notice so slight a thing as a change of tone. As he spoke with his mother in this way about Gerda, something seemed to rise up in his throat that was like a serpent of fury. He rebelled against the look of his mother’s face, the proud outline of her scornful profile. “I am glad⁠ ⁠… I am glad⁠ ⁠…” he said to himself, “that Gerda isn’t a lady, and that her father is a stonecutter!” + 

And it came over him that it was an imbecility that any human soul should have the power over another soul that his mother had over him. As he looked at her now, he was aware of an angry revolt at the massive resistance which her personality offered. + 

It did not make it easier for him at this moment that he recognized clearly enough that the very strength in his mother which had been such security to him in his childhood was the thing now with which he had to struggle to gain his liberty⁠—that protective, maternal strength, the most formidable of all psychic forces! + 

She was like a witch⁠—his mother⁠—on the wrong side in the fairy-story of life. She was on the side of fate against chance, and of destiny against random fortune. “I don’t care how she feels when I tell her about Gerda,” he said to himself; and in a flash, looking all the while at his mother’s dress, he thought of the yielded loveliness of Gerda’s body, and he decided that he would shake off this resistance without the least remorse. “Shake it off! Pass over it; disregard it!” he said to himself. + 

“I shall come and see you, Selena, whether you like it or not,” his mother was now saying. “After twenty-five years people as old as we are ought to be sensible, oughtn’t we, Mr. Smith?” she added. + 

But Mr. Smith had managed to remove himself a pace or two from their company, under cover of a sudden interest in a torn and flapping Western Gazette, which he proceeded to push into a trampled molehill with the end of his stick. + 

Mrs. Solent glanced at her son shrewdly and scrutinizingly. “You look as if you were enjoying yourself, I must say! What’s come over you? Are you wishing yourself back in London? Well, come on, Albert Smith! I’m longing for a cup of tea. These people have had theirs.” + 

She was already carrying off her companion, after a nod to Miss Gault, which was received without a sign of response, when Wolf stopped her. “Where shall we meet, Mother, when you’re ready to go?” + 

“Oh, anywhere, child! We can’t lose ourselves here.” + 

“Say over there, then? By the roundabouts, in about an hour?” + 

“All right; very good! Mr. Smith shall escort me there when we’ve had our tea. It’s strange, Albert, isn’t it, that in this place of my whole married life, you’re the only friend I’ve got left?” + 

Wolf was aware of an expression in her brown eyes, a droop of her straight shoulders, that made him realize that there were strange emotions stirring under the surface of that airy manner. + 

“The roundabouts, then!” he repeated. + 

“All right⁠—in an hour or so!” she flung back. “And why don’t you and Selena have a turn at the swings?” she added, as she went off. + 

Her disappearance seemed to make no difference to Selena Gault. In absolute immobility the poor lady remained standing there, staring at the grass. It was as if she’d put her foot upon an adder that struck her with sudden paralysis, so that at a touch she would topple over and fall. + 

Wolf came close to her. “Don’t worry about my mother, Miss Gault, darling,” he whispered earnestly. “She’s not as flippant as she sounds⁠ ⁠… really she’s not! She’s like that with everyone. She’s like that with me.” + 

Miss Gault looked at him as if his words meant nothing. Her vacant stare seemed to be fixed on something at a remote distance. + 

“I know; I quite understand,” she murmured; and her hands, coming, as it were, slowly to life, began to pick at the little cloth buttons of the braided jacket she wore over her satin gown. The stiffness of these old-fashioned garments seemed to hold her up. Without their support it looked as if she would have fallen down just where she was⁠—close to the newspaper buried through the nervousness of Mr. Smith! + 

She seemed to Wolf, as he stood helplessly before her, like a classic image of outrage in grotesque modern clothes. “She’s like an elderly Io,” he thought, “driven mad by the gadfly of the goddess.” + 

“Dear Miss Gault! Don’t you worry about it any more! I swear to you she isn’t as malicious as she seems. You must remember that all this isn’t as easy for her as she makes out. She’s hard; but she can be really magnanimous⁠ ⁠… you’ll see! She doesn’t realize people’s feelings, that’s what it is. She was the same about Gerda. Fancy her noticing her like that!” In his desire to soothe his companion he seized one of the black-gloved hands. As he did so he looked round nervously; for he began to be aware that various persons among the groups who passed them stopped to stare at her perturbed figure. + 

But his touch brought a flood of colour to the woman’s swarthy cheeks. She clasped his hand tightly with both her own, holding it for a moment before she let it fall. + 

“I can’t help it, boy,” she said in a low tone. “Seeing her brings it all back.” She paused for a moment. “No one else ever treated me as a woman,” she added, her mouth twitching. + 

Wolf wrinkled his bushy eyebrows. + 

“You must let me be as fond of you as he was,” he muttered. “You must look after me as you looked after him.” + 

She nodded and smiled a little at that, rearranged the great black hat upon her head, and, after a moment’s hesitation, placed her hand on his arm. “Come,” she said, “let’s go to the roundabouts.” + 

They moved slowly together across the field. It occurred to him now that he could distract her mind and at the same time satisfy his own curiosity by renewing their interrupted conversation. + 

“I don’t want to tease you with questions,” he began presently. “But you promised you’d tell me⁠—you know?⁠—about Mattie and Olwen.” + 

“It’s not easy, boy,” said Miss Gault with a sigh. + 

“I know it isn’t. That’s why I want you to tell me and not anyone else.” + 

She walked by his side in silence for a while, evidently collecting her thoughts. “It’s the sort of thing one finds so difficult to tell,” she said, looking guardedly round them. + 

“Well! Let me tell you!” he retorted, “and you correct me, if I’m wrong.” + 

Miss Gault nodded gravely. + 

“Mattie’s my father’s child,” he muttered in a low, clear voice, “and Olwen is⁠—” + 

Miss Gault had managed to turn her face so far away from him that he couldn’t see her expression. + 

“Who told you all this, boy? Who told you?” she interrupted, in such a peevish tone that two solemn-faced members of the Sixth Form of the School, with blue ribbons round their straw-hats and sticks in their hands, glanced furtively at her as they passed. + 

“Olwen’s father was old Malakite,” Wolf went on; “and Olwen’s mother was Christie Malakite’s sister.” + 

Miss Gault still kept her face removed from his steady gaze. + 

“Aren’t I right?” he repeated. “But you needn’t tell me. I know I am right.” He paused, and they continued to cross the field. + 

“What’s become of the mother?” he continued. “Is she still alive?” + 

Miss Gault did turn at this. + 

“Australia,” she whispered. + 

“Alive or dead?” + 

She almost shouted her reply to this, as if with a spasm of savage relief. + 

“Dead!” she cried. + 

Wolf held his peace for a moment or two, while his brain worked at top speed. + 

“What Christie must have gone through!” he murmured audibly, but in a tone as if talking to himself rather than to her. “What she must have gone through!” + 

Miss Gault’s comment upon this was drowned by the brazen noise issuing from the engine of one of the roundabouts which they were now approaching. + 

“What did you say?” he shouted in her ear. + 

“I said that Christie Malakite has no heart!” cried Miss Gault; and her voice was almost as harsh as the raucous whistle that saluted them. + 

He stopped at this, and they both stood motionless, looking at each other covertly, while a magnetic current of inexplicable antagonism flickered between them. + 

“It wasn’t her he loved!” Miss Gault shouted suddenly⁠—so suddenly that Wolf moved backwards, as if she had lifted her hand to hit him. + 

“Who didn’t love whom?” he vociferated in response; while two small boys of the Ramsgard Preparatory School nudged each other and peered at them inquisitively. + 

“What are you staring for? Urchins!” cried Miss Gault. + 

“All the same they’re nice boys,” she muttered. “Look! I’ve hurt their feelings now; and they really are very polite. Here, children, come here!” + 

The two little boys, their heads covered with enormous and very new examples of the art of Mr. Albert Smith, pretended not to hear her appeal. They remained in fixed contemplation of a counter of glaring cakes and sweets. + 

“Come here, you two!” repeated the lady. + 

They did, at that, sheepishly turn round and begin moving towards her, with an air as if it were a complete accident that their feet carried them in that particular direction rather than in any other. + 

“I won’t hurt you,” she said, as softly as she could in the midst of the terrific noise that whirled round them. “What are your names, my dears?” + 

“Stepney Major,” murmured one of the little boys. + 

“Trelawney Minor,” gasped the other. + 

“Well, Stepney Major and Trelawney Minor, here’s half-a-crown for you. Only, when you next meet queer-looking people at the Fair, don’t stare at them as if they were part of the Show.” + 

When the two little boys had decamped, radiantly reverential, Miss Gault turned to Wolf. + 

“Didn’t they take off their hats prettily? They do bring ’em up well. Little gentlemen they are!” + 

She seemed glad of the interruption. But Wolf began speaking again. + 

“What’s that, boy?” she rejoined. “Terrible, this noise! Isn’t it?” + 

“Miss Gault!” + 

“You needn’t shout, Wolf. I can hear you. There⁠ ⁠… like that⁠ ⁠… that’s better!” And she shifted her position. + 

“Who didn’t love whom? We were talking of the Malakites.” + 

“My dear boy”⁠—and, as she spoke, a smile of the most complicated humour came into her strange countenance, transforming it into something almost beautiful⁠—“my dear boy, I wasn’t talking of the Malakites! I was talking of your father and Lorna Smith.” + 

“Mattie’s mother, eh? But why did you say⁠—oh, damn that noise!⁠—that Christie had no heart?” + 

Miss Gault stared at him. + 

“Haven’t you seen her? Didn’t you see what she was? Reading the books of that old wretch, keeping house for that old wretch? How can she look the man in the face, I should like to know? They tell me Olwen can’t bear the sight of her; and I don’t wonder.” + 

“But Miss Gault, my dear Miss Gault, what has Christie done? I should think she was the one most to be pitied.” + 

Wolf bent his shaggy eyebrows almost fiercely upon his companion; and after a moment’s encounter with his gaze Miss Gault glanced away and contemplated the sweet-stall. + 

“What has Christie Malakite done to you?” asked Wolf sternly. + 

“Oh, if you must have it, boy, you shall have it! Listen. I went over there when all that trouble happened. I had some sort of official position; and things like this, unspeakable things like this, were what I had to deal with. The Society sent me, in fact.” + 

Wolf lifted his eyebrows very high at this. He began to detect an aspect of Miss Selena Gault’s character that hitherto had been concealed from him. + 

“What society?” he asked. + 

“The Society for the Care of Delinquent Girls. And I found Miss Christie, let me tell you, both obstinate and impertinent. She actually defended that abominable old wretch! She wanted to keep Olwen in their house. Fortunately the child can’t bear the sight of her⁠ ⁠… or of that old monster either. It’s instinct, I expect.” + 

“It doesn’t happen to be anything you or Mattie may have let fall?” shouted Wolf in her ear. + 

“Why, you’re defending them now!” Miss Gault retorted, her face dark with anger. “If you knew all, boy, you wouldn’t dare!” + 

Wolf felt extreme discomfort and distaste. + 

“What else is there for me to know, Miss Gault?” he demanded aloud and in a quieter voice; for there had come a pause in the whistling of the engine. + 

“That old man was one of the most evil influences in your father’s life.” + 

“Does Mattie know that?” he enquired. + 

“Oh, Mattie!” she cried contemptuously. “Mattie knows just as much as we’ve considered it wise to tell her.” + 

“Who are we?” said Wolf drily. + 

“Mr. Smith and myself. Don’t you see, boy, we had to make ourselves responsible to the police for Olwen’s bringing up? It’s been an unholy business, the whole affair! It gives me a kind of nausea to talk about it.” + 

Wolf found that his protective instincts were thoroughly aroused by this time; and Miss Gault’s figure assumed an unattractive shape. + 

“It’s this accursed sex-suppression,” he said to himself; and he suddenly thought with immense relief of his mother, and of her scandalously light touch in the presence of every conceivable human obliquity. “I must be cautious,” he said to himself. “I mustn’t show my hand. But who would have thought she was like this!” He looked Miss Gault straight in the face. + 

“Does Mr. Urquhart know the history of my sister and the history of Olwen?” he asked abruptly, leaning so heavily on his stick that it sank deep into the turf. + 

A flicker of relief crossed the woman’s agitated features. + 

“Mr. Urquhart? Oh, you may be sure he has his version, just as all the neighbourhood has! It’s been the great scandal of the country.” + 

The use of this particular word made Wolf explode. + 

“Greater than the doings of Mattie’s father?” he rapped out. + 

He regretted his maliciousness as soon as the words were uttered. That scene in the cemetery came back to his mind. + 

“I didn’t mean that, dear Miss Gault!” he cried, pulling his stick violently out of the sod. But she had turned her face away from him, and for a little while they stood silently there, side by side, while the crowd jostled them and the engine renewed its whistling. At last she did turn round, and her face was sad and gentle. + 

“We won’t quarrel, will we, Wolf?” she murmured, bending close to his ear so that he shouldn’t lose her words. It was the first time she had dropped that rather annoying “boy”; and the use of his name did much to restore his good-temper. + 

“It’s all right,” he whispered back. “Let’s go on now, eh?” + 

The merry-go-round in front of which they had passed was isolated from the rest. They proceeded to push their way through the crowds towards the next one, which was some three hundred yards further on. + 

Suddenly they saw before them the anxious little figure of Mrs. Otter, leaning on Darnley’s arm; while Jason, his melancholy gaze surveying the scene as if he were a Gaulish captive in a Roman triumph, was standing apart, like one who had no earthly link with his relations⁠—or with anyone else. + 

Wolf felt singularly disinclined to cope with these people at that moment. He had received of late so many contradictory impressions, that his brain felt like an overcrowded stage. But he gathered his wits together as well as he could, and for a while they all five stood talking rather wearily, exchanging commonplaces as if they had been at a garden-party rather than a fair. + 

By degrees Wolf managed to edge away from the two ladies, who were listening to Darnley’s criticism of the horse-show, and began to exchange more piquant remarks with the dilapidated poet. + 

“Did you see our clergyman?” said Jason. + 

“Mr. Valley?” + 

The man nodded. + 

“Certainly I did. I talked to him when I first got here.” + 

“Making a fool of himself as usual⁠—” + 

“Come, Mr. Otter⁠—” + 

“Well, I daresay it’s no affair of ours. It’s best to mind one’s own business. That’s what God’s so good at⁠ ⁠… minding His own business! Seen Urquhart anywhere?” + 

“I was with him just now. Monk drove him over.” + 

Jason Otter’s face expressed panic. + 

“Is that man here?” he whispered. + 

Wolf had already remarked how oddly Jason’s fits of mortal terror assorted with the monumental dignity of his grim and massive countenance. + 

“Why not? I understand he gave a lift to your old Mrs. Stone. You ought to be grateful to him.” + 

“Urquhart pays him to spy on me, and one day he’ll beat me like a black dog!” + 

“Incredible, Mr. Otter!” It became more and more difficult for Wolf to take seriously the man’s morbid timorousness. It was impossible to make sport of him; but he could not prevent a faint vein of raillery from entering into his reply. “He looks a powerfully built fellow.” + 

“I tell you this, Solent, I tell you this”⁠—and Jason clutched Wolf’s arm and glanced round to make sure that the others were out of hearing⁠—“one day I shall be picked up unconscious in a ditch, beaten half-dead by that man!” + 

But Wolf’s mind had wandered. + 

“By the way, Mr. Otter, if you ever want to sell that Hindu idol of yours, I’ll buy it from you!” + 

The poet stared at him blankly. + 

“I’ll give five times whatever it cost you!” + 

“It cost me a pound,” said Jason grimly. + 

“Very well; I’ll buy it for five pounds. Is that agreed?” + 

Jason pondered a little. + 

“Why do you want that thing? To bury it?” + 

“Perhaps that’s it! How discerning you are!” And Wolf smiled genially at him. + 

“Very well, I’ll sell it to you.” He paused for a moment. “And if you could let me have that five pounds tomorrow, I should be very much obliged.” + 

“Good Lord!” thought Wolf to himself. “I’ve done it now! Probably they keep the poor wretch without a penny, to stop him from drinking.” + 

“I’m not sure that I can manage it tomorrow,” he said affably, “but you shall have it, Mr. Otter; and I’m sure I’m very grateful to you.” + 

“Shall you bury it?” whispered Jason again, in a voice as sly and furtive as a wicked schoolboy. + 

“I don’t want you to have it any longer, anyhow,” said Wolf laughing. + 

Jason put his hand to his mouth and chuckled. + 

“By the way,” Wolf went on, “I’ve never yet read a line of your poetry, Mr. Otter.” + 

The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he stared at the man in bewildered amazement. It was as if a mask had fallen from his face, revealing a totally different human countenance. + 

“Will you really read something? Will you really?” + 

The tone in which he said this was so childlike in its eagerness that Wolf felt a sudden unexpected tenderness for the queer man, quite different from his previous amused indulgence. “How they must have outraged his life-illusion among them all!” he thought. + 

“But your mother adores your poetry; and your brother likes it too, doesn’t he?” + 

Jason gave him one deep, slow, penetrating look that was like the opening of a sluice-gate. + 

“My mother⁠ ⁠… my brother⁠ ⁠…” And the man shrugged his shoulders as if Wolf had referred to the activities of water-flies in relation to human affairs. + 

“They don’t understand it, you mean? They don’t get its significance, for all their devotion? Well, I think I realize what you suffer from. But I don’t suppose I shall understand it either.” + 

“I’ve written lately⁠ ⁠… very lately⁠ ⁠… last night, in fact⁠—a poem to him.” + 

“To whom?” + 

“To him⁠ ⁠… to Mukalog.” + 

Wolf wrinkled his eyebrows and stared intently at him for a moment. “You’ll be altogether happier when you’ve sold that thing to me, Mr. Otter,” he said. + 

“You’d like to bury him in your garden,” Jason muttered. And then quite unexpectedly he smiled so disarmingly that Wolf once again experienced that wave of affection. + 

“I expect lots of people wish I were dead,” he added, with a queer chuckle. + 

“I don’t wish you were dead,” said Wolf, looking into his eyes. “But I wish you would let me throw away that demon!” + 

A gleam of nervous irritation flashed from Jason’s eyes, and his upper lip trembled. + 

“He’s myself!” he murmured. “He’s what I am!” Then after a pause he jerked his thumb towards his brother. “Darnley’s a funny one,” he whispered, nudging Wolf’s arm. “Listen to him talking to the ladies! He ought to have been a member of Parliament. He loves to behave like a grand gentleman.” + 

“He is a grand gentleman!” said Wolf drily. + 

“And as for that great bully of yours, Squire Urquhart,” Jason went on, raising his voice, “he’ll die without any demon to help him. He’s on that road now!” + 

These last words were uttered with such concentrated vindictiveness that Wolf opened his eyes wide. + 

“Did you see how he looked,” went on Jason, “when those stallions passed him? He had to hang on to the rope to keep himself from falling.⁠ ⁠… I can tell you what crossed his mind then!” + 

“What?” enquired Wolf. + 

“To throw himself under their hooves! To be trodden into the ground by fifty stallions!” + 

“Are ye talking of stallions, gentlemen?” said a well-known voice; and Roger Monk, accompanied by the waiter of the Lovelace Hotel, stood before them, touching his hat politely. + 

Darnley and Miss Gault moved forward now, and Mrs. Otter began asking Monk about Dimity Stone and thanking him for picking up the old woman. + 

“Come on,” whispered Jason in Wolf’s ear. “Let’s clear out of this! You see what he is⁠ ⁠… a great lubberly catchpole, not fit for anything except horse-racing! He’s got rid of Dimity and joined up with that waiter with the idea of annoying someone. He wouldn’t dare to insult anyone alone; but with that sly dog of a waiter⁠—you know what waiters are⁠—” He paused and glanced back furtively at his mother and at the two serving-men. “I’d like,” he added, “to see Valley well fooled by those rascals. He’d have to go home alone then; and a good thing, too!” + 

“You’ve got your knife into us all, Mr. Otter,” said Wolf slowly. “And I think it’s a mistake. It’s a waste of energy to hate people at the rate you do.” + 

But Jason’s attention was still so absorbed in watching Monk and the waiter, that he listened to him only with half an ear; and, indeed, shortly afterwards he shuffled off with barely a word of farewell. + 

Shrugging his shoulders, under this rebuff, Wolf strode away in pursuit of Darnley and Miss Gault. + 

When he reached these two, he held out his hand and raised his hat. + 

“I think I’ll leave you now in Mr. Otter’s care,” he said to Miss Gault. “It’s about time I began to look for my mother.” + 

Selena appeared a little disconcerted at his abrupt departure, but Darnley gave him his usual gentle and indulgent smile. + 

“You always seem to bring me luck, Solent,” he said. “But au revoir! We may meet on the road; for I expect my mother will be tired of this soon.” + 

Wolf shogged off by himself; and as soon as the crowd concealed him from the sight of his friends, he began waving his stick in the air. This was an old trick of his, and he invariably gave way to it when, after any prolonged period of human intercourse, he found himself alone and in the open. + 

He made his way rapidly to the extreme western corner of the great fair-field, where there were certain small swings patronized rather by children than by grown-up people. + 

As he threaded his way through all those excitable West Country folk he did his best to reduce to some sort of order the various jolts and jars he had received. So many confused impressions besieged his consciousness that he wished devoutly he were going to return to King’s Barton on foot instead of driving. + 

His thoughts became complicated just at this moment by the teasing necessity of finding some place among those tents where he could make water. Drifting about with this in view, he found himself recalling all manner of former occasions when he had been driven to this kind of search. It took him so long to find what he wanted, that when he had found it and had re-emerged into the sunshine, he experienced an extraordinary heightening of his spirits. + 

The acrid, ammoniacal smell of that casual retreat brought back to his mind the public lavatory on the esplanade at Weymouth, into which, from the sun-warmed sands, he used to descend by a flight of spittle-stained steps. This memory, combined with an access of pervading physical comfort, drew his mind like a magnet toward his secretive mystical vice. Once more, as he gave himself up to this psychic abandonment, he felt as if he were engaged in some mysterious world-conflict, where the good and the evil ranged themselves on opposite sides. + 

He rubbed his hands together in the old reckless way, as he walked along; and it seemed to him as if all these new impressions of his took their place in this mysterious struggle. That ravaged face of the Waterloo steps mingled its hurt with what Jason, Valley, Christie, were all suffering; while the sinister magnetism that emanated from Mr. Urquhart fused its influence with that of Jason’s idol, and the cruelty of Miss Gault to Christie, and of his mother to Miss Gault! + 

When this orgy of mystic emotion passed away, as it presently did, leaving him as limp and relaxed as if he had been walking for hours instead of minutes, he became aware that there were two irritating perplexities still fretting his mind, like stranded jellyfish left high and dry on a bank of pebbles. + 

He found himself steering his consciousness with extreme care, as he walked along, so as to avoid contact with these two problems. But, as generally happens, he had not gone far before he was plunged into both of them, mingled confusedly together. + 

All about him was the smell of trodden grass, of horse-dung, of tar, of paint, of cider, of roasted chestnuts, of boys’ new clothes, of rustic sweat, of girls’ cheap perfumes, of fried sausages, of brassy machinery, of stale tobacco; and these accumulated odours seemed to resolve themselves into one single odour that became a wavering curtain, behind which these two dangerous thoughts were moving⁠—moving and stirring the curtain into bulging folds⁠—as concealed figures might do on a theatre-stage, between the acts of a play. + 

The first of these thoughts was about his ill-assorted parents. He felt as if there were going on in his spirit an unappeasable rivalry between these two. He felt as if it were that grinning skull in the cemetery, with his “Christ! I’ve had a happy life!” that had made him snatch at Gerda so recklessly, with the express purpose of separating him from his mother! It was just what that man would have done had he been alive. How he would have rejoiced in an irresponsible chance-driven offspring! + 

And then, before he had finished untying this knot of his parents’ hostility, he was plunged into the second dangerous thought. This was more troubling to his peace than the other. It was about that grey feather which he had found in that book of Christie’s! Why did it rouse such peculiar interest in him, to think of Christie and of Christie’s fondness for the works of Sir Thomas Browne? What was Christie to him with her books and her queer tastes? What stability could there be in his love for Gerda when this troubling curiosity stirred within him at the idea of Gerda’s friend? + 

As he thought of all this, his eyes caught sight of the golden face of a little dandelion in the midst of the trodden grass. He touched the edge of its petals rather wearily with the end of his stick, thinking to himself, “If I leave it there it’ll probably be trodden by these people into the mud in a few minutes; and if I pick it up it’ll be dead before I get home!” + 

He decided to give the dandelion a chance to survive. “After all, it may survive,” he thought; “and if it doesn’t⁠—Ailinon! Ailinon! What does it matter?” + 

Moving on again at random, burdened with perplexities, he suddenly found himself in the midst of a circle of children who were gazing in envious rapture at a gaily decorated swing that was whirling up and down in full, crowded activity. It was a boat-swing, and the boats were painted azure and scarlet and olive-green.⁠ ⁠… + 

And there, among the children in the swing, was Olwen, and there, by the side of it, watching Olwen swinging, was Mattie Smith herself! To come bolt-up upon her like this, in the midst of so many agitating thoughts, was a shock. He experienced that sort of mental desperation that one feels when one forces oneself awake from a dream that grows unendurable. And in his knowledge that she was his sister he saw her now as a totally different Mattie. But⁠—what a sad face she had! She was so nervous about Olwen that he could regard her for several long seconds unobserved. What heavy ill-complexioned cheeks! What a disproportioned nose! What a clouded apathetic brow, and what patient eyes! “She’s had a pretty hard life,” he thought. “I wonder if she knows or doesn’t know?” + 

Olwen was the first to catch sight of him; and her excited waving made Mattie hurriedly glance round. + 

She recognized him at once, too, and a flood of colour came into her pale cheeks. Wolf felt a curious embarrassment as they shook hands; and it was almost a relief to him to be forced to take his eyes off her in order to respond to Olwen, who was now waving to him frantically from her flying seat. + 

The child could not of course stop the machinery of the swing; and when she saw that he had answered her signal, she contented herself with just sweeping him into that rapturous topsy-turvy world⁠—of people, grass, horses, trees, ruins, and hills⁠—which rose and fell around her as she rushed through the air! + 

The cries of the children, the clang of the machinery, the voices of the showmen, covered Wolf and Mattie with a protective screen of undisturbed privacy. In the light of subsequent events they both looked back upon this moment with peculiar and romantic tenderness. + 

Directly she gave him her hand⁠—even while he still held it⁠—he had begun to talk to her of their relationship. + 

“I’ve known it since I was fifteen,” she said; “and I’m twenty-five this month. That was what made it so awkward when you and your mother came to our house. She knows it, of course; and she let me see that she knew it. But I saw she had kept it from you. Has she told you about it since? What I cannot make out is whether Father knows. He knows about Olwen, of course. In fact, he and Miss Gault were the ones who took Olwen away from Mr. Malakite.” + 

She paused, and gave Wolf a quick, furtive look; but what she saw in his face appeared to reassure her, for she smiled faintly. + 

“It’s all so hard to talk about,” she said in a low voice. “I’d never have thought I could talk to you about it. But it seems easy, now I’m actually doing it! I was young then, you see⁠ ⁠… only fifteen; and Father and Miss Gault thought I knew nothing. But I’d heard the servants talking; and I read about it in the ‘Western Gazette.’ Why do you think it was I wasn’t more shocked⁠ ⁠… Wolf?” + 

The hesitancy with which she brought out his name enchanted him. He snatched at her hand and made a movement as if he would kiss her; but she glanced hurriedly at the swing and drew back. + 

“I’m pretty hard to shock, too, Mattie dear,” he said. “I expect we inherit that!” he added lightly. + 

“It was when they brought me to see Olwen at the ‘Home,’ ” the girl continued, “that I made Father have her at our house, for Nanny⁠ ⁠… she was my nurse then⁠ ⁠… and me to take care of! I knew she was at the ‘Home,’⁠ ⁠… oh, Wolf, she was such a sweet little thing!⁠ ⁠… for I heard them talking about her. And I made Father take me to see her, and we were friends in a second.” + 

“So it was you that persuaded Mr. Smith to take her into his house?” said Wolf. “And you were only a child yourself.” + 

Mattie gave a quaint little chuckle. “I was a pretty obstinate child, I’m afraid,” she said. “Besides, Olwen and I both cried terribly and hugged each other. I was mad about children,” she added gravely; “just mad about them, when I was young.” + 

“Was your father hard to persuade?” enquired Wolf. + 

The girl gave him one of her lowering sulkily-humorous glances. + 

“I made a fuss, you see,” she said solemnly. “I cried and cried, till he agreed. It was Miss Gault who opposed it most. Oh, Wolf, it’s terrible how Miss Gault has made the child hate Christie. Christie has seen her several times. I managed that for her! But Miss Gault must have said something. I don’t know what. But the last time Olwen would hardly speak to her.” + 

Wolf frowned. “Of course, it’s possible, I suppose, that it’s some kind of instinct in the little girl⁠—” he began ponderingly. + 

“No! No!” cried Mattie. “It’s Miss Gault. I know it’s Miss Gault!” + 

“Christie told me she might be here this afternoon,” said Wolf, looking about him from group to group of the noisy young people around them. + 

“Did she?” said Mattie, with a nervous start. “Did she really, Wolf?” And she, too, threw an anxious glance round the field. “I wouldn’t like her feelings to be hurt,” she added. “They would be, I know, if she tried to speak to Olwen.” + 

Wolf’s mind reverted violently to the solitary grey feather in the Urn-Burial. At that moment he felt as though not anyone⁠ ⁠… not Gerda herself⁠ ⁠… could stop him from following that fragile figure if he caught sight of it in this crowd! + 

But Mattie was now waving her hand to Olwen, whose airy boat had begun to slacken its speed. + 

They moved together towards the swing; and Wolf rushed forward to help the child to the ground. As he lifted her out, he felt his forehead brushed by the floating ends of her loosened hair. + 

She put her thin arms round him and hugged him tight as soon as he set her down. + 

“Oh, I love swinging so! I love swinging so!” she gasped. + 

“Would you like to have another one?” he said gravely, looking down at that glowing little face. + 

Her eyes shone with infinite gratitude. “Aunt Mattie’s spent every penny Grandfather gave her,” she whispered. “Would you really give me one more? There! You pay it to that man over there; the one with the funny eyes!” + 

Wolf handed over the coin and lifted the child back into the painted boat. He waited at her side till the machinery started again and then returned to Mattie. + 

“Didn’t you have the least guess about you and me?” the girl said; and it gave him a thrill of pleasure to see what animation had come into her stolid countenance. + 

“Not exactly a guess,” he answered. “But I did have some kind of an odd feeling; as though I understood you and followed your thoughts, even when you were silent. Heavens! Mattie, dear; and you were silent almost all the time!” + 

“Your mother wasn’t very nice to me.” + 

“Well, one can hardly blame her for that, can one? People do feel rather odd in these situations.” + 

“But I was nice to you, wasn’t I?” the girl went on. “And yet I couldn’t bear to think that Father wasn’t my real father,” she added faintly. + 

Mattie’s face had such a touching expression at that moment⁠—an expression at once so thrilled and so puzzled⁠—that with a quick and sudden movement he flung his arm round her neck and gave her a brusque kiss, full on the mouth. + 

“Mr. Solent! Wolf!” she protested feebly. “You mustn’t! What will she think?” + 

“Oh, she’ll think you’ve found a young man,” he replied, laughing; “and so you have, my dear,” he added affectionately. + 

But though he laughed at her embarrassment, and though she laughed faintly with him, it was clear enough to his mind, as he glanced at the face of the child in the swing, that their kiss had not been received very happily up there. + 

Two burning eyes flashed down at him like two quivering poniards, and two fierce little hands clutched the sides of the olive-green boat as if they had been the sides of a war-chariot. + 

“That child of yours is jealous,” he whispered hurriedly in his companion’s ear. “But don’t you worry,” he added. “It won’t last, when she knows me better.” + 

He moved up to the swing and remained watching the little girl as she whirled past him like a small angry-eyed comet. + 

By degrees his steady matter-of-fact attention disarmed that jealous heart; and when the swing stopped, and he had gravely kissed her and handed her back to Mattie, all was once more well. + 

“We must go now and find your grandfather,” said Mattie to Olwen. + 

“I’ll come with you,” said Wolf. “I left my mother with Mr. Smith; so we’ll kill two birds with one stone!” + 

They moved off together; but suddenly, crossing a gap among the people, Wolf caught sight of Bob Weevil and Lobbie Torp. + 

“You go on, you two⁠—do you mind? We’ll meet later. There’s someone I must run after.” + 

Both of his companions looked a little hurt at this brusque departure; but with a repeated “We’ll meet later! Goodbye!” he swung off in clumsy haste, pushing his way so impetuously through the crowd, that he aroused both anger and derision. + 

For a time he was afraid that he had lost his quarry completely, so dense had the medley become around the booths; but at last, with a sigh of relief, he came upon them. They were both watching with unashamed delight a young short-skirted gipsy who was dancing wildly to a tambourine. As she danced, she beat her knees and threw bold, provocative glances at her audience. + 

Wolf approached the two boys unobserved and was conscious of a passing spasm of shameless sympathy when he caught the expression of entranced lechery in the concentrated eyes of the young grocer. Lobbie Torp’s interest was evidently distracted by the audacious leaps and bounds of the gipsy-wench and by her jangling music; but Mr. Weevil could contemplate nothing but her legs. These moving objects seemed to be on the point of causing him to howl aloud some obscene “Evoe!” For his mouth was wide open and great beads of perspiration stood out upon his forehead. + 

The girl stopped breathless at last, but without a moment’s delay began to collect money, holding out her musical instrument with long, bare arms, and indulging in liberal and challenging smiles. + 

It tickled Wolf’s fancy at this juncture to note the beaten-dog expression in Mr. Weevil’s countenance as he pulled Lobbie away with him and tried to shuffle off unobserved. In their hurried and rather ignominious retreat they ran straight into Wolf’s arms. + 

“Lordie! Hullo!” stammered Lob. “It’s Mr. Redfern⁠—I mean, Mr. Solent, ain’t it?” said Bob Weevil. + 

Wolf gravely shook hands with them both. + 

“It’s not easy to keep one’s money in one’s pocket on a day like this,” he remarked casually. + 

Mr. Weevil gave him a furtive water-rat glance; and Wolf would not have been surprised had the young man taken incontinently to his heels. + 

“Bob knows all about they gipoos when they do zither like moskitties,” observed Lob slyly. + 

“Shut up, you kid!” retorted the other, “or I’ll tell Mr. Solent how I caught you kissing a tree.” + 

“I never kissed no tree,” muttered Lob sulkily. + 

“What?” cried his friend indignantly. + 

“If I did, ’twere along o’ they loveyers us seed in Willum’s Lane ditch. ’Twere enough to make a person kiss his wone self, what us did see; and ’twere ye what showed ’em to I.” + 

“I hope you have both enjoyed yourselves this afternoon,” began Wolf again. “Christie can’t have come,” he thought to himself; and he wondered if he should ask Mr. Weevil point-blank about her. + 

But Mr. Weevil was bent upon his silly, obstinate bullying of Lobbie. He kept trying to inveigle Wolf in this unamiable game. + 

“Lob thinks we’re all as simple as his Mummy in Chequers Street!” continued the youth, with an unpleasant leer. + 

“Don’t ’ee listen to him!” cried Lob. “Everyone knows what his Mummy were, afore old man Weevil paid Lawyer Pipe to write ‘Whereas’ in his girt book!” + 

“Listen, you two⁠—” expostulated Wolf. “I want to ask you both a question.” + 

“He’ll answer ’ee, same as my dad answered Mr. Manley when ’a cussed about his mother’s gravestone. ‘Bless us!’ said my dad, ‘and do ’ee take I for King Pharaoh?’ ” + 

“What was it you wanted to ask us, Sir?” enquired the elder youth, pompously interrupting Lobbie. + 

“Oh, quite a simple thing, Mr. Weevil. I was only wondering if Miss Malakite was out here today.” + 

“Certainly she’s here, Sir. Certainly she is.” + 

“Us came along o’ she, on our bicycles,” threw in Lobbie. + 

“Where is she now, then?” Wolf insisted. + 

“She went castle-way, I think, Mr. Solent,” said Bob Weevil. + 

“She said to we,” interjected Lobbie, “that her reckoned she’d have a quiet stroll-like, long o’ they ruings.” + 

Wolf looked from one to the other. “So, in plain words, you deserted Miss Malakite?” he said sternly. + 

“Lob knows what I said when she was gone,” mumbled Mr. Weevil. + 

“When she were gone,” echoed the boy. “I should say so!” + 

“What did you say?” asked Wolf. + 

“He said her walked like a lame hare,” threw in Lobbie. + 

“I didn’t, you little liar! Don’t believe him, Mr. Solent! I said she walked lonesome-like with her head hanging down.” + 

“That weren’t all you said, Bob Weevil! Don’t you remember what you said when us were looking at thik man-monkey? No! ’twere when us seed they girt cannibals all covered with blue stripes. That’s when ’twere! Dursn’t thee mind how thee said ’twas because Miss Malakite hadn’t got no young man that she went loppiting off to they ruings ’stead of buying fairings like the rest of they?” + 

Wolf suddenly found himself losing his temper. “I think you both behaved abominably,” he cried, “leaving a young lady, like that, to go off by herself! Well, I’m going after her; and I’ll tell her what I think of you two when I’ve found her!” + 

He strode off in the direction indicated by the boys’ words. It was towards the southern extremity of the fair-field that he now made his way, where a dilapidated hedge and a forlorn little lane separated the castle-field from the castle-ruins. He hadn’t gotten far, however, when, glancing at a row of motionless human backs, transfixed into attitudes of petrified wonder by the gesticulations of a couple of clowns, he became aware that two of those backs were obscurely familiar to him. He approached them sideways, and his first glance at their concentrated profiles revealed the fact that they were Mrs. Torp and old Dimity Stone. + 

It gave him a queer shock to think that this tatterdemalion shrew in rusty black was actually Gerda’s mother. For the least fragment of a second he was aware of a shiver of animal panic, like a man who hears the ice he is crossing bend and groan under him; but he forced himself to walk straight up to them and salute them by name. + 

“I’m glad to see you, Mrs. Torp,” he said cheerfully. “How do you do, Dimity? You and I haven’t met for several long days.” + 

“Hark at him, Mrs. Stone,” gasped Gerda’s mother. “Hark at him, how ’ee do coax a body! He do look and speak just as I was telling ’ee, don’t ’ee, now? If I hadn’t told ’ee, honest to God, how the gentleman spoke, ye’d have never known it, would ’ee, Mrs. Stone?” + 

The withered face of Mrs. Torp remained turned toward her companion as she uttered this ambiguous welcome. She seemed unable to give Wolf so much as one single glance from her little vixen eyes, over which two artificial pansies, hanging from the battered bonnet on her head, jiggled disconcertingly. + 

But old Dimity retained Wolf’s fingers quite a long while in her bony hand; and with absorbed and searching interest, as if she had been a fortune-teller, she peered into his countenance. + 

“The gentleman be far from what thee or any others have reckoned,” repeated the crone slowly. “I’ve always known you were a deep one, Mr. Solent,” she added. + 

“I’m glad you think better of me than Mrs. Torp does, Dimity,” threw in Wolf, and he glanced anxiously over their heads toward the boundary of the field, his mind full of the deserted Christie. + 

“I think of ’ee as one what speaks fair enough,” grumbled Gerda’s mother, “but ’tis deeds I waits for. As I said to Torp this very mornin’⁠ ⁠… ‘Thy fair-spoken young gent,’ I said, ‘be only another Redfern; and all the country do know how daft he were!’ Squire Urquhart must have ’em daft! Daft must they be for he, as I said to Torp. And that’s because it’s only the daft ’uns what’ll serve for his cantrips⁠—the girt bog-wuzzel ’ee is!” + 

Wolf detected a very sagacious expression in old Dimity’s eye as she dropped his fingers at this. + 

“This gent bain’t no more a Redfern, Jane Torp, than a pond-pike be a gudgeon. What I’ve a-said to ’ee in neighbour-fashion I’d say now to ’ee on Bible-oath.” + 

There was a dead silence for a moment between the three of them, broken only by the gibberish of the two clowns, which sounded like the chatter of a pair of impudent parakeets amid the slow, rich Dorsetshire speech about them. + 

Without pausing to think of the effect of his words on Gerda’s mother, Wolf could not restrain himself from uttering at this juncture the question which so occupied his mind. “By the way, Mrs. Torp, have you, by any chance, seen Miss Malakite here this afternoon? I wanted to find her.” + 

Mrs. Torp nudged her companion with the handle of her umbrella. + 

“So ye’re after her, too, are ye, Mister? What do ’ee make o’ that, Dimity Stone? Hee! Hee! Hee! The gentleman from London must have a sweetheart for Wednesday and a sweetheart for Thursday. But you have a care, Mr. Solent! Our Gerda bain’t one for sharing her fairings; and she’ll let ’ee know it! Won’t she, Dimity Stone?” + 

Wolf felt unable to decide whether this outburst, under the pressure of which the thin cheeks of Mrs. Torp tightened over their bones till they were as white as the skin of a toadstool, was just ordinary Blacksod humour or was malignity. He contented himself with taking off his hat, wishing them a pleasant evening, and hurrying away. + 

As he moved towards the southern boundary of the field, he found his mind beset with a burden of tumultuous misgiving. Mrs. Torp’s malicious “Hee! Hee! Hee!” continued to croak like a devil’s frog in the pit of his stomach; and he remembered with hardly less discomfort the queer look that the old Dimity had given him. He must find Christie! That was the one essential necessity. Every step he took towards that ragged little hedge increased his nervous agitation. + 

“Why did chance throw them both in my way at this same moment?” he thought, as he walked automatically forward. And then a still more furtive and dangerous whisper entered his mind. “Why didn’t I meet Christie first?” + 

The ghastly treachery of this final speculation, coming to him on the very morrow of the “yellow bracken,” only made him shake his head, as if freeing himself from a thicket of brambles, and stride forward with more reckless resolution than ever. + 

Long afterwards he could recall every slightest sensation that he had as he crossed that empty portion of the fair-field. One of these sensations was a vivid awareness of the sardonic grimacing of that man in the churchyard. The perversity of his father seemed physically to weigh upon him. He had the feeling that he was himself reproducing some precise piece of paternal misdoing. He felt shamelessly like him! He felt as though his arms were swinging as his arms used to⁠ ⁠… his legs striding the very stride of his legs! + 

He had now left the last tent far behind, and was approaching the low thickset hedge that separated the castle-field from the castle-lane. + 

As he came up to the hedge, he nearly stumbled over a half-skinned, half-eaten rabbit, one of whose glazed wide-open eyes fixed itself upon him from the ground with a protesting appeal. + 

Mechanically he stooped down, and, lifting the thing up by its ears, placed it among the young dock-leaves and the new shoots of hedge-parsley. + 

Then he leaned both his arms over the top of the brambles, and, raising himself on tiptoe, peered into the lane beyond. + 

Ah! He had not then come to no purpose! + 

A little way down the lane, under a closed and carefully wired gate leading to the castle-ruins, crouched the unmistakable figure of Christie Malakite. + 

The girl was on her knees, her legs crooked under her and her hands clasped on her lap. By her side, fallen to the ground, were her hat and some sort of paper parcel. She lifted her head and saw him there; but remained motionless, just staring at him without a sign. Wolf tightened his long overcoat round his knees and forced his way straight through the thick brambles. A couple of minutes later he was kneeling by her side on the grass, hugging her tear-stained face against his ribs and stroking her hair with his hands. “I’ve had a hunt for you⁠ ⁠… a hunt for you!” he panted. “What did you come to this damned place for? Well! I’ve got you now, anyway. I don’t know what I should have done if I hadn’t found you. But I’ve hunted you down⁠ ⁠… like a hare, my dear⁠ ⁠… just like a hare!” + 

“I’m⁠ ⁠… a⁠ ⁠… little⁠ ⁠… fool!” she gasped faintly. “I’ll be all right in a minute. I ought⁠ ⁠… to have⁠ ⁠… known better than⁠ ⁠… to have come here! The boys were kind⁠ ⁠… but, of course, they wanted⁠ ⁠… to enjoy themselves. I was a burden on them⁠ ⁠… and then I felt⁠ ⁠… I felt I couldn’t⁠ ⁠… bear it!” + 

She pressed her face against his coat, struggling to hold back her tears. + 

Moving his hands to her shoulders, and bending down, he touched the top of her head with his lips. Her hair, neatly divided by a carefully brushed parting, was so silky and fine that he felt as if his kiss had penetrated to the very centre of her skull. But she did not draw away from him. She only buried her forehead deeper in the folds of his heavy coat. + 

There was a tuft of loosely-growing stitchwort in the hedge by the gale-post; and this frail plant, as he surveyed it across her crouching form, mingled with his wild thoughts. Had anything like this ever happened to a man before⁠ ⁠… that on the day after such an ecstasy he should feel as he felt now? “I must be a monster!” he said to himself. “Am I going to begin snatching at the soul and body of every girl I meet down here?” With the cluster of stitchwort still illuminating his thought, as a flower-scroll illuminates a monkish script, he now struggled desperately to justify himself. + 

“This feeling,” he protested, “is a different thing altogether. It’s pity⁠ ⁠… that’s what it is! And, of course, Gerda being so beautiful, pity doesn’t⁠ ⁠…” + 

Christie lifted up her head now, and sat back, hugging her knees and staring at him. He, too, changed his position, so that his shoulders leant against the lower bars of the gate. “It’s queer how natural it seems to be⁠ ⁠… to be with you like this,” he said slowly. + 

She gave a little nod. “I used to tell myself stories⁠ ⁠…” she began, searching his face intently as if what she wanted to say lay hidden in its lines. “I feel so different now,” she went on, “that it would be easy to tell you.⁠ ⁠…” Once more her voice sank into silence. + 

“It’s better to be alone,” he echoed, “unless you can think aloud. I’ve been walking about this fair-field all the afternoon and talking to everyone; but I couldn’t think aloud until this moment.” + 

They were both silent, staring helplessly at each other. + 

“I wish you were a boy, Christie!” he brought out abruptly. + 

Something in the peevish gravity of this must have tickled her fancy, for she smiled at him with a free, unrestrained, schoolgirlish smile. + 

“I used to wish that myself,” she murmured gently; and then she sighed, her smile fading as quickly as it had come. + 

He knitted his heavy eyebrows and scowled at her in deep thought. + 

Two persistent sounds forced their identities into his drugged consciousness. The first was the brazen clamour of the whirligig engines. The second was the whistling of a blackbird. This latter sound had already assumed that peculiar mellowness which meant that the sunrays were falling horizontally upon that spot, and that the long March afternoon was drawing to its close. + 

It was impossible that this bird’s voice could fail to bring to his mind the events of yesterday’s twilight and that upturned face at which he had gazed so exultantly in the gathering river-mists. To drown the blackbird’s notes, he began hurriedly telling her one thing after another of his afternoon’s adventures. When he came to his conversation with Miss Gault, they both instinctively shifted their position; and he found himself helping her to adjust the loosened belt of her old-fashioned cloak with a gesture that was almost paternal. + 

“One thing I cannot understand,” he said. + 

“Well?” she murmured. + 

“I cannot understand how Olwen should feel towards you as they tell me she does.” + 

The girl’s forehead wrinkled itself into a strained, pinched intensity; but all she said was, “I could never take care of any child as well as Mattie Smith.” + 

“I don’t believe you,” he retorted bluntly. + 

He avoided her eyes now; and, as he looked away into the great elm-tree that grew near the gate, he caught sight of a large nest up there. + 

“Is that a rook’s nest?” he asked, pointing it out to her with upraised arm. + 

Christie turned and peered upwards. + 

“A missel-thrush’s, I think,” she said, after a second’s hesitation. “Rooks’ nests are all sticks⁠ ⁠… and they’re higher up, too.” + 

With lifted heads they both stared into the elm-tree, and, beyond the tree, into the cold March sky. + 

“Why not take us as we are,” he said slowly, apparently addressing the missel-thrush’s nest, “as two hunted, harassed consciousnesses, meeting by pure chance in endless blue space and finding out that they have the same kind of mind?” + 

Their heads sank down after this, and Wolf automatically fumbled for his cigarettes and then consciously let them go. + 

“I’ve never felt as much at ease with anyone as with you, Christie⁠ ⁠… except perhaps my mother. No, not even except her.” + 

“I think we are alike,” she said quietly. And then, with the same schoolgirlish simple amusement that had struck him before, “We’re too alike, I think, to do much harm to anyone!” + 

Her face grew suddenly grave, and she stretched out her thin arm and touched Wolf lightly on the knee. “You must be prepared for one thing,” she said. “You must be prepared to find that I haven’t a trace of what people call the ‘moral sense.’ ” + 

“I’ll risk that danger!” he retorted lightly. “Besides, if you’ve got no conscience, I’m worse off still. I’ve got a diseased conscience!” + 

She didn’t even smile at this sally. With a quick wrinkling of her brow, as if under a twinge of physical discomfort, she scrambled to her feet. + 

“I must get my bicycle,” she said, with a little shiver. “Father will be waiting for his supper.” + 

Wolf rose too; and they stood rather awkwardly side by side, while the blackbird flew off with an angry scream. + 

“Where is your bicycle?” he asked lamely; and as he saw her and felt her, standing there by his side, so pitfully devoid of all physical magnetism, he could not resist a chilly recognition that something of the mysterious appeal that had drawn him to her had slipped away and got lost. + 

He felt in that second that it had been a piece of pure madness to have wished that all this had happened before yesterday’s “yellow bracken.” + 

She glanced up at him with a quick, searching look. Then she tightened her cloak resolutely round her. “It’s in the Lovelace stables,” she said. “I can easily find it. You needn’t come.” + 

“Of course I’ll come! I’ll go with you and put you on it; and then I’ll come back for my mother.” + 

“It’s pity I feel,” he said to himself. “I’ve got Gerda for good and all. It’s just pity I feel.” + 

They followed the lane westward, skirting the edge of the fair-field. When they reached the foot of “The Slopes,” they saw the whole of Ramsgard outspread before them. The sunset-mist, rising up from the River Lunt, threw over the little town the sort of glamour that cities wear in old fantastic prints. Vaguely, under the anaesthesia of this diffused glory in the chilly air, he marvelled at the mad chance that had plunged him into these two girls’ lives with this disturbing simultaneousness. He began furtively trying to annihilate with his imagination first one life and then the other from his obstinate preoccupation. But the effort proved hopelessly futile! To conceive of the future without Gerda’s loveliness was impossible. But equally was it impossible to cover up this strange new feeling. Only “pity,”⁠ ⁠… but a pity that had a quivering sweetness in it! + 

“You’re all right now?” he enquired abruptly, as they crossed the railway-track. + 

“Absolutely,” she answered firmly, evidently recognizing that this allusion to her original trouble was a sign of a certain withdrawal in her companion. “And please, please, believe me when I tell you that I hardly ever⁠ ⁠… no, practically never⁠ ⁠… give way like that.” + 

“What do you think did it?” he blurted out clumsily. “Those silly boys deserting you?” + 

She made no reply at all to this; and he experienced a wave of embarrassment that brought a hot prickling sensation into his cheeks. + 

“You’ve been very kind to me,” she said unexpectedly, in a clear emphatic voice. And then she added very slowly, pronouncing the words as if each of them were a heavy bar of silver and she were an exhausted stevedore emptying the hold of a ship, “Kinder⁠ ⁠… to me⁠ ⁠… than anyone’s⁠ ⁠… ever been⁠ ⁠… in the whole of my life.” + 

These words of hers, healing his momentary discomfort, gave him such happiness, that, as they entered the Lovelace stables and she moved in front of him across the cobblestones, he furtively rubbed his hands together, just as he would have done if he had been alone. + 

“What a good thing you came over here this afternoon,” he said, as he wheeled her bicycle out of the yard. + 

“I don’t know about that!” she answered promptly, with a flicker of her peculiar elfish humour; and it turned out to be the tone of these words beyond all others, that remained with him when she was gone. They had the tone of some sort of half-human personality⁠ ⁠… some changeling out of the purer elements⁠ ⁠… upon whose nature whatever impressions fell would always fall with a certain mitigation, with a certain lenient tenuity, like the fall of water upon water, or of air upon air! + 