T

CHAPTER I

HE terrible calamity fallen upon the house of Glaive had sent the master of that

house post-haste to his lawyers in London. Mr. Sidney Starr Glaive, estate-agent to the Marquis of Yetminster, had never been so baffled, never so deeply angered, never so humiliated. He had protracted his absence and those fruitless but sympathetic discussions with the lawyers for a considerably longer time than was warrantable, except by his strong disinclination to face the people of his neighbourhood. His younger son had given him an excuse for delay. The boy was finishing his last term at school he was yet to be informed of the tragic family event, and his father could reasonably wait until the term ended, meet Alec at Paddington Station and break the news to him as they travelled down to Suffolk together.

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On the morning after this return Mr. Glaive was reading Prayers. He addressed his two sons, his widowed sister, and his servants, in tones of combative assertion of dignity, teased and pulled at by spleen. He was consoled, dimly, by his sense of the drama of the occasion, by the jumping and stiffening of his response to the scene-so familiar, those kneeling domestic figures, under his presidency, and now that empty chair-ah!

The thought, rushing, caught him: how carefully he had chosen this second wife of his, this stepmother for his children! He had chosen her for her tenderness, for her soft dependent ways, for her large devoted wistful eyes that promised him the straitest fidelity, a fidelity almost fanatical. She had had such a sensitive trustful mouth, the lips rather tremulously apart. He had been old enough then, this little man with his little fierce fires, to give discretion the whip-hand of mere passion: it had been a sage choice, a choice guided by brain, by experience. . . . So now it was not alone his pride of property that was injured, but his pride of judgment. . . . Mr. Glaive choked. Instantaneously convinced that he was suffering from the emotion of a strong smitten man, he passed his Prayerbook silently to his elder son. He constrained his lips. "A motherless home!" he said to himself, taking comfort in the appeal of the phrase.

Mervyn read aloud the holy words as rapidly as he could. He was extremely hungry. The morning's disorganization had delayed Prayers and breakfast. Mr. Glaive watched his son with growing irritation. He took the book from him, just as the boy was beginning a new prayer. Mr. Glaive turned the page: "The blessing of our Lord Jesus Christ," he read in a vexed dry voice, "the love of God, and"-he snapped viciously on-"the fellowship of the Holy Ghost... world without end, Amen. Johnson, why are you here?"

The under-gardener had already opened the door.

"Beg pardon, sir-" He hesitated awkwardly. "Thought as I might fare to come into Prayers 'smornin', sir."

"You never do. I mean you only come on Sundays. You know perfectly well that only the maids attend Prayers on week-days."

"Yes, sir. Seemed sort o' like a Sunday today, sir."

"You can go, Johnson."

""Thought he'd better make up the quorum, I s'pose," Mervyn whispered to his younger brother. There was silence as the rest of the servants walked out with self-conscious solemnity. As the door shut, Alec heard, faintly, the kitchenmaid's giggle. It reminded him of the girl's cousin, "Frippie" Clark, -she had been christened "Elfrida,"-a wench of the village. The boys' aunt kept looking over her brother's head, with nervous glances of a fretful reprobation which she enjoyed.

"What beastly weather." Mervyn fastened the two bottom buttons of his corduroy waistcoat. His father gave him a carefully dramatic glance of austerity tempered by grief. Alec, irritated by the thinned-out discontent that his aunt cherished, walked away to the end of the room, and sat down in the alcove, by the small-sized billiard-table. Outside, a sparse rain, weakly persistent, was wetting the disconsolate Suffolk landscape. The youth turned back, resting his eyes on the legs of the billiard-table. He observed Nature no more closely than do most boys brought up in the country. Mervyn, joining him,

whispered: "Christ! Nice weather for an elopement."

"Shut up." Alec's lip trembled.

"For God's sake don't go and have a fit of the giggles."

"I'm not. Do shut up.-It's bad enough the way you fool in Church. You're awful; always nearly making me laugh in the middle of reading the Les

"You did, that last time, practically. Your bloomin' silly voice cracked. Why the devil don't you have more self-control? If you get a laughingfit now, the old man'll stick the bread-knife into you."

"Well, you shut up, and I won't laugh."

" 'Didn't know I was a humourist.' ""

"Oh, just now anything'd make one laugh, with all this rumpus. You know how it is."

"That's rich. I suppose one's Mater runnin' away with a chap is enough to make a cat laugh, anyhow-"

"Oh, do shut up!" Alec smoothed his quivering mouth with his hands, turned his head, and gulped.

"Come to breakfast, you boys!" Mr. Glaive called them. "What's all that whispering about?" He shot his little fired eyes from one to the other.

"After all," Mervyn lowered his voice still more, "you can hardly blame the Mater, can you?” "What's that?"

"Oh, I'm hungry, that's all."

"Hungry? That's either impertinence, or else ut

ter lack of feeling. For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. The fearful blow that has fallen upon us, and all you can think about is whether you're hungry." The aunt put her bowl of porridge from her. "I've noticed that your self-indulgence has got worse and worse ever since you left the Army." He poured cream into his porridge. "You could rough it well enough out there, couldn't you? Now you come back and you want to turn everything into a-er-into a veritable sty of Epicurus."

"Sort of a garden he had, though, wasn't it?" Mervyn queried vaguely. Alec was in agony.

"The general atmosphere-the general atmosphere -is- It's altogether unspeakable. Moral atmosphere. The amount of looseness, of vicious self-indulgence. I never did believe that it was the right thing for women to go earning their own living. Why, there are married women now-many of them -who do it. Disgraceful-degrading to their husbands. They'll find that out, soon enough. That's a large part of our present trouble."

"Earning her own living?" Mrs. Mowry, the aunt, looked up, deprecating. "But, my dear Sidney, surely that wasn't-"

Her brother glared at her, and she dropped her spoon. "I can't eat," she remarked, concentrating her gaze on the heavy spoonful of porridge and cream that went its automatic way to Mr. Glaive's redmoustached lips.

"We are not urging you to eat, Catherine.-I sup