CHAPTER II

FOLLOW-MY-LEADER!

All the next day, Sebastian Levi walked about with a throbbing head, and could not decide if he were suffering from the after-affects of ecstasy, wine, or metaphysics. Certainly his thoughts dwelt most persistently on the third of these, and this even while Letty’s petal-soft lips were quivering, half-shyly, in expectation of his eager kisses. Now he was swept by a flood of rage, recollecting Heron’s contempt of him; now he hated himself for his own Bacchic confidences; then again and yet again he revolved in his mind those few dropped sentences which hinted so arrestingly at a new way of thought--a new way of life. What did the fellow mean by his remark to the effect that he had quenched his star, which was too luminous? Did one then quench a star instead of following it? And why? Why? What result could possible ensue from such an act of madness?...

* * * * *

Sebastian’s father, Ned Levi, was of that species known as the strictly agnostic Jew. He neither went to Synagogue, nor did he keep the picturesque Jewish holidays. He did not tactlessly allude to himself, in company, as “the Chosen of the Lord.” He did not wear enormous flashing diamonds in his shirt-front, nor yet gesticulate over-violently, nor control, spider-fashion, the entire financial affairs of Great Britain. Likewise he ate ham with relish; and so naturally did bacon and eggs form the staple breakfast dish, that the partaking of them was not in the least degree a daily defiance. He was a little unostentatious man, with light-red hair and moustache grizzling untidily to grey, a quiet taste in clothes, and nothing to stamp him Israelite save a slight lift at the bridge of the nose, a kindly concern for the fortunes of even his most distant cousins, and a keenness of business acumen which had led him from a small grocery shop in the East End, to the massive and celebrated stores in High Holborn.

He had married, when his success was already established, a wife very much his superior in birth; a quiet sensible girl, with poverty-stricken parents,--strictly agnostic Christians. The two had vied generously in their readiness to embrace the other’s faith; and ended by leaving the matter for ever unsettled, and marrying at the registrar’s.

Sebastian was brought up very successfully to no religion at all, and an open mind that accepted with equal tolerance his Christian relations of gentle birth, and his more vivid and less reputable Jewish kindred. He was a good-looking lad,--or would have been, had not his auburn hair and dark eyes given him an aspect curiously flamboyant; and amusing,--or would have been, save for what seemed in him a tendency to show off, but was in reality a lack of confidence, an inability to get both feet planted firmly on the ground.

Also, ineradicable result of mixed caste and class, Sebastian held very few neat safely-rooted opinions of his own, and was liable to be dangerously fascinated by daring ideas; especially by ideas that were rather too far off for his attainment, but which held him by a certain remote splendour. He was all response and no initiative. He never got near enough to an idea to perceive its flaws; he never got right through an idea, and beyond it, and so free of it. He strained upwards, and clung on,--or let go, and thudded to the ground. Sometimes, accidentally, he broke things in his fall; and then he sorrowed over them exceedingly; and sickening of his intellectual scrapes, would steep himself in aught that required no assistance of the brain. It was one of these reactions that sent him spinning into the arms of Letty Johnson.

Letty--well, what was Letty? Letty had soft brown hair, which on Sundays was crowned by a hat of one feather. Thus she knew her Sundays. And thus her mother knew how costerdom was differentiated from the rich good taste of prosperous folk who lived in a nice house with a bedroom more than they needed, down Turnham Green way. One feather, and no more. And a velveteen costume in winter. And thin low-necked blouses, winter and summer. And shoes with big pom-poms. And, perhaps, little gilt side-combs, studded with blue stones, perfectly unobtrusive. Thus the outward and visible Letty,--on Sundays. Week-days hardly mattered.

On the table beside Letty’s bed, might be found the Sir Walter Scott birthday-book, a paper novelette, and “Indian Love-lyrics,” by Laurence Hope. Inside Letty’s head existed a quantity of far-fetched romance, the jumbled remnants of a High School education, and an uncertain sort of liking for the company of one Balaam Atkins, bank-clerk, who came very often to Turnham Green for supper.

Round and about Letty, Mrs. Johnson maintained an atmosphere of careful and deliberate laxity. Often the good lady was heard to declare that if Letty cared to go on the stage, no objections would be raised. Letty’s correspondence was always blandly ignored. Letty might spend whole days on the river at Richmond with a ‘jolly party,’ and if she came home after ten o’clock with all of the party dispersed except her immediate companion,--that was only to be expected of twentieth-century youth, remarked Mrs. Johnson to her husband. Indeed, Letty was given far more latitude than she needed, and walked quite placidly in a small area of liberty, wasteful of the wider spaces thrown open by her twentieth-century parents. Just occasionally, when his wife’s vigilance relaxed, Mr. Johnson would forget how tolerant he was, and break out in a row most refreshingly in the style of old-fashioned paterfamilias. But he was always made to atone afterwards for these aberrations, by taking his daughter to a play emphatically ‘for the adult mind only.’ Such performances bored Letty and bewildered her father; but Mrs. Johnson had given forth the watchword of the household: Be Broad-minded! and hers was the ruling spirit.

Therefore, also, Letty took lessons in fencing. “Though I don’t see what she’s to _do_ with it?” said Mrs. Baker doubtfully to Mrs. Johnson.

Letty owned for live stock, a girl-friend, Violet Baker, who had been engaged to a fellow since two-and-a-half years; a Persian kitten; and a younger brother, Luke; she also occasionally remembered a God, imploringly or in gratitude, when the world went very wrong with her, or else very right.

And Letty was exceedingly pretty.

And thus are comprised her total assets. Till, on a summer holiday at Bournemouth, Sebastian Levi came along. Whereat she surrendered to him her all, including the one feather of which he disapproved, including her faint liking for the bank-clerk, and very certainly including her girl-friend’s fellow, who, on Letty’s return to Turnham Green, was to suffer fatally by comparison with the tall pale-faced auburn-haired Sebastian; suffer even unto extinction.

* * * * *

“... Because a man’s star leads him eventually to places too comfortable for the lean spirit to rejoice in....” Sebastian’s musings on metaphysics were interrupted by Letty, as she swung beside him, where he sat upon the garden-roller. None of the other boarders at the Farme would venture near that especial portion of the grounds; it was known as the “little lovers’ solitude.” “Little lovers” the pair had been nicknamed for their apple-green youth. Twenty-two and nineteen; a swing and a garden-roller; blue sky patching the thick green shade; a girl’s voice, hushed for the very breathlessness of love, speaking of white satin ... myrtle-leaves ... Sebastian ought to have been very happy. Yet for him perfection was already chilled to something less of permanence than yesterday’s warm eternities; and:

“Surely, Letty,” he broke in, “you won’t want all that display and fuss when we marry?”

Her head drooped. It was when Sebastian spoke thus loftily, that her father’s favourite remark: “We’re as good as other folk, my girl, if we like to consider other folk as good as us. And that’s logic,” seemed somehow inadequate. She felt that her lover stooped to her with ineffable condescension, and she hastened to sacrifice to him:

“Would you rather I didn’t wear a white frock, Sebastian? Would you rather I wore pink, or--or something quieter?” and she bade a mute farewell to all pretty silent dreams of herself looking like a picture in the “Lady’s Pictorial”; of the gleaming elaborate gown, to be worn afterwards, shorn of its train, at subscription dances and private parties; then dyed black for more matronly whist-drives; filmy veil that should be lain aside and cherished in lavender and memories, perhaps one day shown to her daughter ... Letty sighed, and swung herself faster and faster yet, breaking through the slanting sun-shafts, that slipped together again in her wake, and were broken anew as the board flew back.

“Would you prefer us to have a quiet wedding, Sebastian? with no presents or bridesmaids or cake? Father said something about grand doings and not minding the expense, but----”

He pulled her from the advancing swing into his arms; the narrow seat dangled back empty of occupant.

“Never mind your father, Letty; he doesn’t understand. Our wedding shall be such a tiny one that there will be only just room in it for you and me and the parson; it shall happen in some grey country church, the sun streaming through its windows like youth reviving in an old heart----”

“I call that beautiful,” interrupted Letty softly.

“And you shall wear just whatever you like best. But to me you are prettiest in a certain grass-green cotton frock, and a floppety light-blue hat, because then you look like bluebells in a larch-wood”--thus he caressed her, and teased her, and spoke the romantic nonsense her soul delighted in. And thus she was blissfully content--till Willy Percival rolled his ball into their Paradise zone, and came to fetch it, his mother in apologetic pursuit: “Willy doesn’t know yet where he isn’t wanted,” archly; involving much blushing and dimpling and deprecation on the part of Letty, and a rigid “Not at all” from Sebastian, mightily displeased.

“Can’t you stop these people from buzzing and chaffing?” he demanded irritably, when Mrs. Percival had withdrawn her offspring.

And again Letty beat back a wistful impulse to confide in him how all this was really and truly an essential part of the rose-coloured thrill of “being engaged”; how immensely she gloried in the questions and chaff; how any mention of his name, coupled meaningly with hers, caused her to hold her blossom head inches higher with pride; how like music were her father’s jokes on the subject; how she had been overwhelmed in delicious confusion when the blotting-pad, which was common property at the Farme, was discovered scribbled over and over with the mysterious names: Mrs. S. Levi; Letty Levi; and then, unaccountably: Letty Lovell.

And remembering this, Letty resolved now to unburden herself of a weighty proposition that hitherto she had not dared lay before Sebastian, lest it might rub against an unknown rawness in him. She could never quite disabuse herself of the notion that all Jews, even her splendid lover, are necessarily over-sensitive and forever on the wince. “Because I don’t see how they can ever quite forget that they are Jews,” would have been word-translation of her subconscious thought.

“Sebastian,” she caught hold of a lapel of his coat, and snuggled nearer to him, while the garden-roller gave an ominous lurch, “what do you think about changing your name before we get married? would you mind very much?”

“Rather a bother for nothing,” he rejoined lazily. “But if you’re set on it, darling,--what aristocratic title have you prepared for me?”

“Lovell!” ... breathlessly she hung on his decision, blue-grey eyes fixed attentively on his face. “Sebastian Lovell!” she repeated, dangling the combined effect in front of him, as a child might dangle a toy.

“Think I could live up to it?”

“Now you’re being a naughty boy, and teasing me.--But really, Sebastian, I’ve thought it all over seriously, and I chose ‘Lovell’ because it also begins with an ‘L.’ Of course, they say: change the name and not the letter, change for the worse and not for the better; but I believe that’s only for a girl marrying a man. And, anyhow, superstition is only ignorance. And perhaps--no, let me finish, Sebastian, because I’m awfully in earnest about this,--perhaps your father won’t mind, because Lovell is very like Levi, really; it has the ‘v’ in the middle, and all!”

“I’ll place the consideration of the v-in-the-middle before my venerable parent this very night,” laughed Sebastian. And: “I love you!” he whispered, into the sun-warmed web of her hair. “Letty, you’re adorable; I love you!” seeking by these means to stifle within him a certain sense of disloyalty; which increased, when, on the morning after, she deplored almost tearfully the break-up of the fine weather: “It’s _our_ weather, Sebastian; the weather you told me you loved me in; and it’s got no right to finish so quickly, before you’ve finished telling me.”--But Sebastian was glad of the tempestuous change.... “Care to join me next time the wind’s foul enough?”... He and Stuart set sail together that very afternoon.

They were away for three days. Sebastian had anticipated much stimulating discussion while sailing; his host holding forth, one hand idly resting upon the tiller; himself, the passenger, listening, stretched full length in the lazy sunlight, his pipe in his mouth, the waves lapping gentle accompaniment against the bows of the boat. But Stuart talked very little upon the voyage, and that mostly in curt vigorous language concerning canvas and harbours, and the evil behaviours of the same. He was quite a different being to the eccentric metaphysician of the Haven. Also, though he treated his guest with excellent politeness for the first few hours of companionship, he accepted heartily the boy’s embarrassed offer to “be of assistance” in the management of the boat; and thenceforward plunged him into an existence resembling equally a monkey’s and a cabin-boy’s; involving much perilous swarming, and unknotting, and a process known as ‘reefing’; much battling with drenched ropes and stubborn tiller against obstinate and treacherous winds. A persistently clouded sky overhead; very little to eat, and that uneatable; hard salt breathless days; evenings spent in small water-side inns; Heron exchanging bewildering technicalities with others just arrived in port. Then an uncomfortable lumpy bed, smelling inexplicably of seaweed, and offering but little rest to a stiff and aching body;--“Glad to turn in, eh, Levi?”--decidedly Sebastian was disappointed of the long intimate conversations, explaining riddles which had haunted him ever since his first fantastic meeting with Stuart Heron.

He brought back with him to Bournemouth a great astonishment at being yet alive, hope which he had forfeited many times in each single hour. Also, acute memory of an instant when presence of mind had prompted him to haul at the right sheet in an emergency, and Stuart had favoured him with a sudden curly smile, peculiarly his own, and a brief word of approval. And now Sebastian underwent sensations of weary flatness and depression, inhabiting once more the luxurious suite of rooms engaged by his father at the Boscombe Hotel. He debated all the while what thing he could do to win again that quick smile from Stuart. He wanted that man’s approval--more than aught else he wanted it--would force it somehow, no matter by what extravagance of action. He believed Stuart despised him, and the thought cut like rain-rods in a north-easterly. “If he doesn’t despise me, then why won’t he tell me more about his--his ideas?”

But on no subsequent visit to the Haven, was Stuart to be drawn. “My creed is the wrong sort for an engaged young man; better leave it alone. By the way, you promised that I should see your fiancée.”

“You’ll see her to-morrow, if you’re anywhere about. The whole Menagerie are swarming over in the excursion bus, to view this interesting spot. Letty and her mother and father will be with them. No, not me, thanks; I couldn’t stand three solid hours of the Earwig and the Cabbage-rose.” Sitting on the window-sill of the bungalow, mournfully jabbing tobacco into his pipe, he favoured Stuart with a vivid account of the ‘Menagerie,’ as he chose to term the boarding-house wherein his beloved dwelt.

“It’s a ramshackle building stuck among pine-trees, a mile or two out of Bournemouth; and the proprietress--landlady--hostess--whatever you call her, has no more idea than Adam of management. She advertised in the papers, by way of an original start: ‘Charming home-like residence for the summer months; croquet, tennis, and private bathing-hut; terms moderate; run on Bohemian lines!’ That last statement fetched the victims. Such a crew!”

“Which of your prospective family-in-law was attracted by the Bohemian lines?” queried Stuart, enjoying the recital.

It transpired that Mrs. Johnson had caught sight of the advertisement, and had remarked to her husband, one breakfast time, “Matthew, we are getting into a Groove. What we want, what Letty wants, is Bohemian society. The best Bohemians, naturally. Here’s our chance. I’ve heard they take liqueur in their morning tea, instead of milk and sugar, like Christians!” Mr. Johnson had here stated firmly that nothing would induce him to do that; and Letty had further propounded: “whether they’ll like the sort of people _we_ are?” And her father had replied with his favourite remark: “We’re as good as other folks, my girl, if we like to consider other folks as good as us. And that’s logic!”

“So they all came; except the young brother, Luke, who went off on his own,” finished Sebastian, somewhat sulkily. He resented being made to talk, when he so itched to hear what the other had to say. And he believed Stuart was being purposely provoking and reticent.

“And what about the Earwig and the Cabbage-rose?”

“It’s a General and his wife. He’s brown, and about eighty; hobbles and shakes; a shrivelled little chap with beady eyes. She’s enormous and pink, with bulging petals, as if she’d been left out too long in the rain; some of the petals have fallen, and the rest are loose. She skits and sirens, and wears her evening-gowns too low. Now I ask you, Heron, don’t you consider she’s a bad influence for Letty? I do.”

Stuart pondered the matter: “I don’t think you can call a woman a bad influence because her outside petals are falling from her shoulders. However, I’ll have a look to-morrow, and judge for myself.”

But by the morrow he had forgotten the impending intrusion; and it was a mere accident that when the Menagerie trooped noisily on to the little wood and iron jetty, Stuart should just have been at its foot; unroping his skiff from among a welter of palings and steps, anchors and chains and beams, rust-eaten and weed-green. His trousers were rolled thigh-high over his bare legs; he wore an old blue sweater, and a sou’wester protected the back of his neck from the sun. Standing up to his knees in water, he glanced up in some curiosity, mingled in equal proportions with indifference. The various members of the party were easily enough distinguishable by Sebastian’s word-pictures: Here the Earwig and the Cabbage-rose; she in a large leghorn hat, waving a sunshade, and calling to Stuart in shrill tones: “Ferry! Hi, Ferry!” There, Archie Mowbray, the very spit of a Kipling subaltern; avowing, when questioned on the subject, that he ‘had no patience with Kipling.’ Besides him, the untidy girl of his adoration, Ethel Wynne, her blouse agape where it lacked buttons, her fingers stained with nicotine. And--yes, that must be ‘Maddermerzell,’ disturbingly piquante French governess of a small boy, who, Stuart surmised impartially, would in five seconds be headlong in the water, and require saving. And there Mrs. Percival, for eleven months of the year most respectable of British matrons that ever wore a hair-net, now, by some strange seizure of rejuvenescence, making a giggling fool of herself with the doggish husband of another matron, not rejuvenated, and therefore icy of eye. That pretty little maiden in white, with soft hair shadowed to brown beneath her big burnt-straw sun-hat, Stuart had no difficulty in recognizing as Letty, the other ‘little lover’ from the shadow-side of the hulk; Letty, looking demure, as she hugged the secret of how well _she_ knew these shores--by moonlight.

Stuart pushed off vigorously; then, leaning on his oars, looked up again to see if he could pick out Mr. Johnson from among the chattering gesticulating crowd. The Cabbage-rose was still desperately hailing the boat: “Hi! Boy! Ferry! we’re coming with you!”

“Not if I know it,” muttered Stuart; quite determined that the Haven should not see him again till cleared of the Menagerie. Then a graceful figure, auburn-haired and supple, thrust a way to the front of the jetty, and cried, in tones sufficiently supplicating to melt glaciers into torrents:

“Mr. Heron! Oh, Mr. Heron!”

“Aureole Strachey!” With a few powerful strokes, he brought the boat back to the palings, roped it securely, then plunged again into the water, and waded ashore. Aureole flew down the jetty, and met him on the sand:

“Oh, I’m so glad to see you; of all people in the world, you! you who awoke my sleeping--but let’s get away from these gorillas!” indicating with distaste the Cabbage-rose, who was approaching with the evident fell intent of an introduction. “How I hate them all, directly I come again in contact with someone from the old life.” Then, as Stuart drew her hastily in an opposite direction, “Have you--do you know where Oliver can be?” sinking her voice to a whisper.

“Oliver is in America, looking for you.”

“But how silly of him. Why is he looking for me in America? It’s such a big place--it would take him years to find me, even if I were there. And I’m not. I wouldn’t have gone to a place where it would be so difficult to be found.”

Stuart looked puzzled: “But he wrote to me a few days after the--um--episode on the Broads, saying he had returned to the house in Chelsea, hoping you were there; that you had been, and gone again, with all your luggage, and left a note for him----”

“‘Good-bye; I am a pilgrim for the land of freedom!’” quoted Aureole readily. “You told me, don’t you remember, that he would certainly follow me, and that we’d have a perfectly lovely scene together, and that he’d never neglect my individual femininity again. And if he has deserted me, and gone to America, then it’s your fault.” She drooped her full crimson lips reproachfully at Stuart; who, disliking this reminder of his disgraceful machinations, made heated reply:

“He _did_ follow you. If you say you are bound for the Land of Freedom, and then come to Bournemouth, I can hardly be blamed, can I?”

“I--I meant freedom of the soul,” murmured Aureole, and her eyes filled slowly with tears. It had been a shock to hear that her husband was so far away.

Then Stuart began to laugh: “If you _will_ be subtle with Nigger, and talk about Pilgrims and Lands of Freedom, naturally his thoughts lumber off on a wild-goose chase in the direction of the ‘Mayflower’ and ‘Hail Columbia.’” Mentally he substituted ‘wild-duck chase,’ but refrained from being unkind aloud, because Aureole was weeping unrestrainedly now, and he felt compelled to cheer her to the best of his ability. “Never mind. I’ll write to him directly he sends some address, and tell him to come home. Meanwhile, you’re quite comfortable in the menag----at the boarding-house, aren’t you? Or why not move to the hotel? you can use me as Oliver’s banker, till he turns up, you know.”

“I can’t move to any hotel,” she flared at him. “It’s _my_ boarding-house. Mine. And it’s in such a horrid m-m-muddle!”

Stuart sat down on a hillock of sand: “D’you mean to tell me that you were responsible for that advertisement?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to earn his respect; show that I could stand by myself, be free of him and the world and everybody--except Nature. I’m a Pagan.”

“But, my dear child,--no, don’t cry!--Pagans don’t run boarding-houses.”

“It’s a private hotel.”

“Well, even private hotels. Not usually.”

But Aureole felt she had been censured sufficiently by this young man, who had taken such a vivid interest in her wayward personality, when, in London, he had urged her to Norfolk, by a vision of her swaying form: ‘always among reeds’.... And then again had urged her away from Norfolk by much adroit talk on the subject of Ibsen, and pampered souls, and earthquakes. So that from him she had hoped for more sympathetic understanding of her movements and motives:

“I wish you had let us alone. People shouldn’t interfere between a husband and wife. Oliver and I were in perfect harmony before you meddled and sent him to America. And, anyway, what I do now is no business of yours. I’m surrounded by adventurers and harpies, and losing hundreds of pounds a week, if you want to know. And when Oliver arrives, you can tell him of my ruin and misery, and how you gibed at it all; you, whom he thought a staunch and faithful friend!” After which passionate denunciation, which scorched the tears in her eyes to brown points of flame, she walked swiftly away from him, in the direction of the adventurers and harpies awaiting her upon the jetty.

“I believe she’s right,” murmured Stuart. Perhaps he ought not to have tampered with matrimony as he had done. But he was so truly convinced that every married couple ought to be well stirred up at least once a year, to prevent them from setting into a mould. And what is the good of conscientious convictions unless you conscientiously induce others to act up to them?

And anyway, he was hardly to be blamed if Nigger so absurdly misread a cryptic allusion to the land of freedom!

* * * * *

It was the after-dinner hour at the Boscombe Hotel; and Sebastian Levi, pacing up and down the thickly carpeted lounge, listening to the tinkle and silken swish all about him, watching the waiters move to and fro with the coffee-services, threading a deft way between the visitors in evening-dress, felt impatiently that this was all an unreal stage set, as: ‘Curtain rises on hotel lounge, luxuriously furnished; guests grouped about, with natural appearance of animated talk.’ Felt that the only realities lay with a solitary figure, black and wiry against the pale shadow-land of his chosen retreat; Stuart Heron, probably at that moment pacing the ghostly wind-blown shores of the Haven, even as he, Sebastian, now paced in the hot artificial glare of his prison-house--so he termed it!--and wished, in a tumult of divine discontent, that he were now beside Stuart, re-living in talk one of their strenuous battling hours at sea, when every nerve was strained taut to catch the racing tide into harbour.

Sebastian wondered if he wanted to order the car, and drive over to The Farme--and Letty?... Not just yet.... Something trembled on the verge of decisive action....

Suddenly he went quickly from the lounge into the smoking-room:

“Can I speak to you privately, father?”

Mr. Levi, senior, looked his surprise. He was enjoying a late whisky and soda, and a mild political chat with some middle-aged cronies, and rather regretted leaving these amusements.

“Why, yes, my boy,--if it won’t keep till the morning.”

“No, it won’t keep.” Sebastian spoke breathlessly; his hair was ruffled as by many winds; his dark eyes flamed with strange fires, as he noted the numerous podgy somnolent figures showing dimly a-sprawl in the thick smoky atmosphere; ten-thousand-a-year figures!--Sebastian attempted to express his attitude towards them by violently slamming the smoking-room door behind him ... but it was padded, and refused to close otherwise than in a fashion both hushed and respectful; respectful to ten-thousand-a-year within.

“Well, Sebastian, and what is this very important matter that won’t keep? Anything connected with your poor mother’s pearls for Letty? Is that it, you grasping rogue? And what will your sisters say to that, when they are grown-up enough to know that pearls are pearls? hey?” Mr. Levi switched on the lights of their private sitting-room, and took up his stand in front of the empty fireplace. “Hey?” he repeated, quite prepared to yield the pearls. He was fond of little Letty.

Sebastian moved restlessly up and down the room; crossed abruptly to the window and flung it open, knocking over a tall palm on its stand as he did so. The breeze flapped the curtains far out into space. This was better....

“I just wanted to tell you, sir, that your offer of a junior partnership in the business, and fifteen hundred a year to begin with, is an extremely generous one----”

“Go on,” said Mr. Levi, frowning a little. How much more did the young beggar expect, at twenty-two?

“But I don’t want it. I don’t want any allowance. I’d rather be without.”

His father surveyed him during an instant of blank astonishment. The waiter entered with the whisky-and-soda Levi had ordered to be sent up after him, from the smoking-room. He tossed off the remainder of the glassful, and offered his son a drink.

“No, thanks,” coldly. He was anxious for the storm to break upon him, anxious to begin suffering his martyrdom. This dalliance with whisky, therefore, struck him as a needless compromise.

“And what does Miss Letty say to this, hey?” Levi had no idea what was at the bottom of the boy’s startling renunciation of ease and luxury; but he had been warned that young men sometimes pick up odd phases at Oxford--debts or old editions or Hedonism. Sebastian had always been of an excitable and impulsive temperament; a _liquid_ temperament. This phase, whatever it was, would not last long. Mr. Levi twinkled indulgently from the hearthrug:

“What does little Miss Letty say to it all?”

“I--I haven’t told Letty yet.”... What would Stuart say, how would Stuart look, when told of this shattering tribute to his influence?...

“You can’t marry on nothing a year, you know that, don’t you? pretty little Letty-birds need pretty little warm nests built for them.”

“Oh”--the lad twitched impatient shoulders. Stuart had not mentioned how asceticism could be made to work in with love. He must be questioned presently on the subject.

“Don’t be a fool, Sebastian,” advised his father suddenly; “Come, what’s it all about?”

The quick change from levity to kindliness, touched the boy almost to the point of explaining what were the ideals that had induced him to strip himself so dramatically of the world’s goods. And yet--how to put into words that uncomfortable stinging creed which he hated, and which yet held his brain as in a sort of vice, fascinated his thoughts to the exclusion even of Letty? And then that weak longing to impress Heron, prove that he understood his doctrines to the point of sacrifice--damn Heron! perhaps now he would condescend to talk to his disciple, instead of making polite enquiries _re_ Letty’s health. And, finally, that glimpse of an after-dinner hour in the well-furnished, well-warmed, well-appointed smoking-room--conflict of winds carefully shut out--doors that would not bang--waiters who walked noiselessly--conversation on stocks and shares and politics, carefully calculated not to excite the torpid brain.... Oh, Lord! would he grow, or rather dwindle, thus, if he went into his father’s business and accepted chunks of his father’s income? Was he started on that way, the night he had prattled so absurdly of his happiness to Stuart?... _Damn_ Stuart! always the point swung back to that imperturbable gentleman. And how could a fellow explain to Levi, of The Stores, High Holborn, the bewildering and topsy-turvy morality of the shears? Sebastian plunged--fatally:

“It’s just because of myself, father. It isn’t that I feel in the least that I oughtn’t to be enjoying my income because other people have less. But I think--I know I’m better without your money.”

The effect of his speech was electrical. Quite suddenly, Ned Levi began to bellow.

“So that’s it, is it? And I’m to sit here and thank you for the honour, am I? Well, you can go--anywhere; do anything; I don’t care. I’ve done with you. If my money isn’t good enough, you needn’t touch it. Want a purer sort of gold, do you? I knew this was bound to happen some day. That’s what one has a son for.” And still muttering incoherent commands to Sebastian to get out of his sight, the agitated old man himself lumbered from the room, his hand trembling, his grey eyelashes stiff with rage. Sebastian’s unfortunate phrasing had hit his father on a dread quite unsuspected; dread that one day his only son, born to the best of everything, would be ashamed of the way the Levi wealth had been amassed; ashamed of trade; ashamed of his humble parentage.

--“But it seemed to me the boy was all right, when he got engaged to Johnson’s girl. No la-di-da notions about him then. And now he’d rather do without money, than touch mine that was made in honest trade. Suppose he thinks I cheated it out of people’s pockets; sold inferior stuff, and got swollen on it. Well, it don’t matter--it don’t matter...” brooding on to-night’s culmination of all his fears. If his wife had been alive--he could have had it all out with her, all his bitterness and disappointment; and she would have said in her sensible way: “Never mind, Ned; the boy doesn’t know what he’s talking about; he’ll come round all right,--he’s a good lad, really.”... But his wife was dead. And his two daughters--he had heard them flippantly remarking to visitors that they were “bringing up dad in the way all parents should go!”--not much consolation to be had from Editha and Ivy. Ned Levi, in his loneliness, wondered if it ever struck the strange hard young people of modern times, how very little fun it was to be a parent.

* * * * *

Sebastian had no idea that his thrice-twisted motives could have been misconstrued by his father to aught so simple as a shrinking from wealth earned in trade. He was even unaware that he had hurt his father--thought he had merely made him angry. He determined, standing on the hotel steps, and letting great gusts of clean air lift the hair from his heated forehead, that both Letty and her father were entitled to hear without delay what he had done. Then, and then only, would he allow himself to tell Stuart--and his heart raced madly for an instant, as it struck him he might still have time to get over to the Haven this very night.

“Do you want the small car, sir?” queried the liveried porter respectfully.

“Yes--no----” Sebastian remembered that a too frequent use of his father’s automobile was hardly compatible with his recent hotly spoken resolutions. He walked a few quick steps along the sea-front ... then returned, and ordered the two-seater. There would be no possibility of reaching the Haven unless he drove. And, after all, “once more doesn’t count.”

--“We needn’t ask who _that_ is!” chirped the Cabbage-rose, when the throbbing of an engine was heard outside the Farme. “I don’t suppose it’s a visitor for _us_, do you, Mrs. Strachey?”

Letty blushed, and ran to meet Sebastian. A few moments later, with a puzzled air, she fetched in her father from the garden. Sebastian wanted to speak to him. “No, Pups, I don’t a bit know why.” Mrs. Johnson, from a deep-rooted conviction that men could not be trusted to be broad-minded without a woman to guide them, joined the conclave unasked. The quartette had the dining-room to themselves.

... “Decided not to accept your father’s allowance?” repeated Mr. Johnson incredulously. “Why ever not?”

And again the disciple was confronted by the difficulty of explaining the creed of the master, to apparently unsympathetic listeners. He stole a glance at Letty, and felt braced by her answering smile. Her blue eyes were no longer bewildered--they shone at him like stars.

“It’s a man I know,” Sebastian started rather lamely, “who has put me in the way of--well--of thinking rather differently about life. About wealth that isn’t striven for, and--and things one gets too easily.”

“I like argerment,” Mat Johnson put in briskly. “I’m quite a good one for argerment. Now what I say about what you say he says, is this: unless we don’t mind taking things easily from other folk, other folk will take them easily enough from us. And that’s logic.”

“But that would be nothing to do with me; that would be their concern, and their loss of the--oh, of the fun of striving, don’t you see, sir?” Sebastian was afraid he was making out rather a poor case for the defence. “It’s with the effect of easy achievement on me personally that my friend is concerned. He says I’m in danger of growing fat.”

Matthew Johnson, himself inclined to corpulence, took the allusion as a personal affront, and was coldly silent, while Mrs. Johnson interrupted indignantly: “I’m sure you have an elegant figure, Sebastian; hasn’t he, Letty?”

Letty said nothing; only smiled softly, as at some misty golden thought.

“You introduce me to this pal of yours, Levi,” continued Mr. Johnson, recovering his good-humour, and tilting back his chair at the ceiling; “and we’ll tackle the matter together. I daresay he’s young, and maybe I can put him right on one or two bits. And as for you, run back to your dad and tell him you’ve thought better of that fifteen hundred quid a year, and that you’ll pocket it with many thanks. See?” and the note of rising authority on the last syllable drew from Sebastian a quick:

“Yes, I see. But I won’t. That would be rather stupid and inconsistent, wouldn’t it? After I had so definitely refused either to go into the business or accept the cash.”

“Oho! you’ve refused the partnership in the business as well, have you? And how, may I ask, d’you mean to support my daughter when you’re married? Or is your Mightiness going to refuse her too?”

Sebastian held his head very high, as he replied that nothing in the world would induce him to give up Letty.

“And how d’you mean to keep her, eh?” repeated his future father-in-law, stubbornly.

Mrs. Johnson detected trouble brewing; and clinched matters, so she thought, by a brilliant compromise:

“Couldn’t you take half of what your father offers you, Sebastian? I’m sure seven hundred and fifty pounds a year is quite as much as any wife needs to start on. Isn’t it, Letty?”

“Taking half would be exactly the same as taking all,” retorted Sebastian, desperate now of forcing understanding.

“You’re wrong there, my lad. It ’ud be just less than fifteen hundred quid by one half of fifteen hundred quid, which is seven fifty. But there’s to be no halves about this business, mother; d’you mark me, Letty? Are you attendin’, Sebastian Levi? I’m not going to have my girl waitin’ about the best years of her life for a young fool who didn’t know when he was well off. I like your father; we were neighbours once, he and I; and I liked you well enough till now, though not a patch on him. But unless you come to me in a week or two with all these taradiddles biffed out of your head--then biff goes the wedding!” Mr. Johnson rose to his feet, and in time-honoured fashion whacked at the table with his clenched fist. “And meantime you’re not to see so much of her, either. Come along, mother; come along, Letty”; summoning his women-folk from the room, he marched forth. Mrs. Johnson followed meekly; her laborious tolerance shrivelled to nothing at this first hot blast from the actual furnace of ‘advanced ideas.’

Sebastian caught at Letty’s hands, as she passed him--

“Letty?”

“It’s all right, dear; I do understand.”

“Really?” he was surprised at her emphasis.

“Really and truly. Good night ... darling,” scarcely breathing the last word, she slipped out of his arms and vanished. Left him, marvelling....

* * * * *

The car and the road again, and the buffeting masses of wind. Sebastian’s exhilaration, dashed somewhat by his two recent interviews with unresponsive middle-age, whipped itself anew to a tremendous height. For now he was clear of worldly burdens; stripped like a runner for the great race; and with the discovery new upon him of just how easy of accomplishment were the things that had never before entered into the range of normal possibility. The quest of spiritual adventure.... And the Haven rushing nearer and nearer, as sombre patches of pine-gloom, spectral open spaces, tore helter-skelter in the opposite direction. Soon he would be telling Heron--and the older man would flash him that quick curly grin of approval.... Now the flat oozing stretches of mud, and the glimmer of a sluggish tide, far out towards the horizon.--And now all brakes jammed on--the car ceased to hum, and stood immovable, but still vibrating from the reckless pace at which it had been driven.

Sebastian leapt down the sand-banks, on to the beach; found Stuart musing, bare-headed, at the door of the bungalow; evidently quite oblivious of wind and tempest. And now, in actual presence of his idol, a sudden diffidence swept over the boy. This Stuart Heron, while stimulating the most fanatical exploits in others, yet contrived himself to retain an atmosphere entirely ordinary. Flushing scarlet, and rather breathless, Sebastian dashed into his recital:

“I’ve been wanting to tell you, Heron, how immensely I admired your ideas--about renunciation--and all that; how they struck me as fine--and clean ... like star-spaces ... when everybody else is so beastly, and grabs at things, money and--and furniture, the heavy tangible articles that block out the view and the air.... I’m expressing myself horribly badly, I know, but you’ve rather knocked the stuffing out of me lately; just lately, when I was smuggest. And anyway, I don’t want only to jaw; anybody can do that. So I turned it about--your philosophy, creed, religion, whatever you like to call it,--chewed it, and worried over it, and cursed you up and down.... And to-night I chucked up my whole future as it was mapped out for me; told the Guv’nor that I wouldn’t take his fifteen hundred a year; take it, and loll on it as if it were a sofa of cushions. Chucked up my partnership in the business; and, I suppose, all chances of a comfortable marriage just yet. Chucked it all up....”

He stopped. The impetus which had carried him so far, gave out suddenly. He was still a bit dazed as to the actual reasons which had inspired his recent startling performances; was just conscious of a mighty upheaval in his affairs, overwhelming changes starting on the morrow. For the present, tired out, he craved only to hear the surge of praise due to him--

“Chucked it all up,” he pleaded....

Stuart shifted his pipe into the corner of his mouth. His gaze was still bent outwards to the sluggish line of tide on the horizon.

“Rather a theatrical proceeding, surely?”