I

The taxi had scarcely drawn up before a small, prim house in Brompton Square when the door was opened by a neat maid in immaculate cap and apron.  She was so neat and respectful as to appear almost passionless.  She had the high complexion of a Country girl, good gray eyes, a slim, attractive figure and dark, wavy hair which escaped rebelliously from beneath her cap.  One wondered how she looked in her off-duty moments, when she wasn’t saying, “Yes, your Lordship” and “No, your Lordship.”  Tabs mustered a smile and called to her, “Thank you, Ann.  I’ll be with you in a moment.”

As he paid the fare, he let his eyes wander.  The outside of the house had been painted white, evidently in honor of his home-coming.  The work had been only recently completed, for the chalked warning on the pavement was not yet obliterated, “Wet Paint Beware.”  He had given no orders; it was Ann’s doing her accustomed, tactful thoughtfulness.  The steps were speckless as a newly laundered shirt, the brasses polished to the brilliancy of precious metal.  His window-boxes He glanced along the fronts of his neighbors’ houses; they hadn’t put theirs out yet.  His were ahead of everybody’s; they made a cheerful splash of red, with their soldierly upstanding tulips, above the long serried line of area-railings.  Again Ann’s doing!  And the snow-white curtains behind each row of panes were also Ann’s.

The driver clicked his “For Hire” sign into the upright position and chugged away to join the flow of traffic which thumped orchestrally past the end of the Square.  Tabs climbed the three low steps separately; he had been used to take them at a bound.  He tried to climb them slowly as though from choice, and not from necessity.  He was very conscious that Ann was watching.  As she closed the door behind him he said, “So you knew I was coming?  You received my telegram?”

“Yes, your Lordship.”

“I was sorry I couldn’t tell you the exact hour.  I didn’t know it myself.  I hope you didn’t trouble to prepare lunch.”

“It was no trouble, your Lordship.”

“Then you’ve managed to get some one in the kitchen?  They tell me that all the cooks have become bus-conductresses or lady-secretaries.”

“I did, your Lordship.  My sister the one who lost her husband at Mons. I thought you wouldn’t object ”

He cut her short.  “Ann, you know I never object; you never need to go into details.  Whatever you’ve done is right.  From what I’ve seen already you’ve done splendidly.”

Under his praise she flushed and became a little less the servant.  “I was afraid you might think I’d taken too much upon myself, what with the flower-boxes and having the house repainted.  I wanted to have things nice for your Lordship after ” She hesitated for a word, and then burst out, “After all the dirt and beastliness!  Your Lordship ought never to have gone in the ranks, begging your pardon; you weren’t fitted for it.  You ought to have gone as a General.  Then you wouldn’t have come home with that poor leg and ” She saw him wince and changed the subject.  “But about doing things without orders, I knew that if Braithwaite if Braithwaite ” Her voice sagged and her eyes misted over.  At last Tabs saw how she looked in her off-duty moments, when she wasn’t occupied with being respectful.  The sudden memory came back of intuitions he had had that she and his valet might one day marry.  From time to time he had twitted them on their fondness, taking an idle pleasure in forwarding the match.  And Braithwaite had kissed her before he marched away.  Ridiculous to remember it now!  It signified nothing.  People in their station kissed when they felt kindly, and on that occasion they had had an epoch-making pretext.

Her eyes were searching his with a hungry wistfulness.  “What I was meaning, your Lordship, was that if he had been spared, he’d have done things on his own and gone ahead, the same as he always did.  So I, seeing as how he wasn’t ”

Tabs touched her shoulder gently.  “It’s all right, Ann.  I appreciate your motives.  I’m glad you went ahead.  But you haven’t shaken hands yet.”

He glanced in at the dining-room before he went upstairs.  The table was spread for dinner.  Cut flowers were standing about in vases.  The very silver had a festive shine.

“Again I have to be sorry,” he told her.  “I’m dining with Sir Tobias Beddow.”

“And Miss Terry,” she inquired, “is she well?”

When he went to climb the narrow stairs she refused to permit him to carry his bag.  He guessed the reason that he might be freer to support himself by the rail of the banisters.  On the first small landing, which looked out at the back on to the Oratory and the graveyard of the Parish Church, there were still more flowers.  When he reached his bedroom, three flights up, he found that his evening clothes had been all laid out and just as carefully as if Braithwaite the old Braithwaite whom he had loved had been there before him.

As she unpacked his bag, opening and closing drawers, “I shall have to look round for another valet,” he said.

“Please don’t.”  Her tone was sharp with earnestness.

Tabs felt sorry for her.  She, too, like all the world was wanting the thing that she could never have.  He wondered whether it wouldn’t be kinder to tell her and let her know the worst.  “But sha’n’t I, Ann?”

With simple pathos, which was the more touching because it was so unconscious, she clasped her hands, “He might come back.  He was never reported.  My letters were returned unopened.  I’ve not given over hoping.  I shouldn’t like him to find that your Lordship If he found another man in his place, he might feel like he hadn’t been wanted.  Me and sister can manage ”

“But ”

He got no further, for her eyes were meeting his with an appeal that was desperate.  “A strange man his ways would be different.  He’d make one know that everything everything was ended.”

She glanced hurriedly round for a last time to make sure that there was nothing she had omitted collar, tie, silk socks, dress-shoes, shaving-water, razor.  “I’ll be listening for the bell in case there’s anything that I’ve forgotten, sir.”

With that she closed the door between himself and her emotion.  As she rustled discreetly down the stairs, he thought he heard a sound of sobbing.

II

It was too early to dress not five o’clock yet.  He made an estimate of the time he had to spare.  If he walked across the Park to Sir Tobias Beddow’s, that would take him from a half to three-quarters of an hour.  At the earliest he wouldn’t have to leave the house till six-thirty.  So he had the best part of two hours during which to think out his line of conduct and to dress.  At dinner he would meet Terry how would she act?  And what was the right thing for him to do as her family’s trusted friend?  He felt very tired.  It took a tremendous lot out of one pretending to other people that one wasn’t tired.  He was ashamed to have to own to himself how quickly nowadays he could use up his physical reserves.  For the moment there was no one to watch him; he stretched himself out at full length on the couch.

He was glad to be back in this friendly house with its narrow stairways and endearing littleness; it had been his American mother’s before him.  Within its walls were the exquisite traces of a temperament and taste that had been hers.  She hadn’t always been a great lady; to the end of her days there had remained with her the love of small things which one finds in nun-like New England towns.  There had been times when the ostentation and entertaining at Taborley House had become too much for her; this nest of refuge had been her secret her place of retreat where she had regarnered her sincerities.  She had loved the Square’s old-fashioned primness, its tininess, its unchanging atmosphere of rest.  It was scarcely invaded by the strum of London.  In the cloud of greenness which drifted above its communal garden, one could still listen to the country sounds of birds.  At the back gray religion spoke in the tolling bell of the Parish Church; through Sabbath stillnesses one could catch the pealing of the organ in the Oratory and the mutter of worshipers at prayer.  Tabs had kept the house as she had left it.  It was something faithful to which to return, however much he failed in the search for his kingdom and however far he wandered.

However much he failed!  This first day of freedom had been anything but successful.  He felt as though every hope that he had had had been blotted out; that morning he had had no plan for the future which had not included Terry.  What would be the upshot?  Would Braithwaite accept his challenge to visit him?  If he did, what then?  He, Tabs, couldn’t very well ask his ex-valet, merely because he was his ex-valet, to desist from loving the same girl.  He had no doubt that Braithwaite, in his new incarnation as a General, did dare to love her.  He had little doubt that Terry had shown herself at least susceptible to the glamor of his infatuation.  How far had the matter gone between them?  There lay the guess.

He searched back, trying to piece together phrases which would indicate the correct answer.  There was her disturbing confession about having given away bits of herself, little bits of herself in wrong directions.  There was her reticence as to the ownership of the car and the way in which she had tried to prevent a meeting.  There was her sympathy for Maisie’s matrimonial excesses; her unnatural tolerance for Adair; her reiterated excuse for the current love-madness, that people had the right at any cost to be happy; and the eagerness with which she had seized on his own words, “to recover our lost years by violence.”  In the silence of his brain he heard her voice pleading, urgent with pain and underlying terror, “Don’t you see why I don’t condemn?  I’m sorry for you, for myself, for everybody.”  His knowledge of the world told him that impassioned latitudinarians were most frequently found among those who had themselves offended the conventions.  Whatever Terry knew or did not know, she was certainly aware that a match between herself and General Braithwaite was completely off the map and would be regarded by every one who counted as a mésalliance.

And what did she know?  Not that Braithwaite had been a valet most decidedly not that he had been his valet; at most she suspected that they had been acquainted when Braithwaite had moved in humbler circles.  Had she been possessed of the exact truth, she would never have borrowed a car from that quarter to meet her ex-lover on his home-coming.  She had been testing trying to discover.  She had scented a mystery one for the solving of which none of the General’s explanations had proved convincing.  Then had come the unforeseen encounter outside the War Office and Braithwaite’s falsehood, which even Terry had detected.  “You mistake me.  It’s the first time I’ve had the pleasure.”  What was the man’s game?  Did he hope to erase his old identity?  Did he think

At this point Tabs’ patience broke down.  “Dash it all,” he muttered, “if there hadn’t been a war, the fellow would have been running my bath-water at this moment.”

If there hadn’t been a war!  But there had; and this was only one of the many preposterous situations which had resulted from it.  Terry was right in at least one thing that she had said the world was upside down and walking on its head.

As he lay there thinking, with the topmost branches of the trees in the Square weaving a tracery of green shadows against his windows, a sudden inspiration came to him.  He sat up.  “By Jove, I’ve got it.  Terry’s proud as Lucifer.  I can stop this nonsense at any time by telling her who her lover was.  Braithwaite will have to call to see me; I can force him to it.  When he calls, the door will be opened by Ann.  I can hold the threat over him that, if he doesn’t promise to break with Terry, I’ll expose him.”

He went across to his writing-table, selected a pen and wrote:

     General Braithwaite,
        The War Office,
        Whitehall,
        London.

   Sir: 

   I shall be pleased to see you any time to-morrow at my house in
   Brompton Square, which you know so well.  The matter which we have to
   discuss is urgent.

     Yours truly,
     Taborley._

He addressed the envelope, sealed it and rang the bell.  When Ann appeared, he handed it to her.  “Please see that it’s posted immediately.”

He had done something decisive.  For the time being he felt happier.  “Nothing like getting a thing off your chest!” He took a bath and, having slipped into his dressing-gown, commenced to shave.  Between these acts he whistled snatches of street-songs to prove to himself his genuine light-heartedness.  It was while he was drying his razor that he started on the wrong air.  Where had he heard it?  Oh, yes, the sunlit street, the children dancing and a voice at his side murmuring the words of the refrain, “Âpres la Guerre, there’ll be a good time everywhere.”

The old argument commenced again, but with a new justice.  “What have I really got against this chap?  To rise from a private to a General is no crime; it’s to his credit.  We all had his chance and some of us had more influence; yet he got there.”

He tried to eliminate his own desires and wounded pride from the problem.  For five years he had been nothing and had been glad to be nothing, that the cause which he believed to be righteous might triumph by his self-effacement.  What sickness of soul had overtaken him that, on this, his first day of freedom, he had immediately surrendered to this orgy of outrageous selfishness?  It was Terry that mattered and only Terry.  The stronghold of her happiness was threatened by Braithwaite’s lie.  There was a kingdom for everybody, his old theory.  As for himself, if he had been mistaken and his kingdom was not Terry, then he must press on, for it lay further up the road round some newer turning.  Meanwhile, at whatever cost to himself he must rescue Terry’s happiness.

His heroic state of mind lasted no longer than it takes to set down.  He was demanding too much of his exhausted capacity for self-abnegation.  He was starving for her.  His old hunger to win her swept over him ravenously.  Only by winning her could his lost youth be regained.

III

He had almost completed dressing when there came a tap at the door.  Finishing what he was doing in front of the mirror, he answered, “Yes, what is it, Ann?”

“Before you go, I should like to speak with your Lordship.”

“Is it important?  I’ve not got too much time.”

“It’s it’s something to do with myself.”

“All right.  Half a second.”

On opening the door, he saw at once that her face was disturbed.

“What is it?”

“It’s something to do with him, sir.”

“With whom?”

“With Braithwaite.”

It was evident that for Ann there was only one him in the world.

“Well, what of him?”

Ann commenced speaking slowly.  Under the stress of her nervousness she forgot the correct demeanor for a high-class parlor-maid and became a country girl, twisting the corner of her white, starched apron in her hands.

“I was noticing the address on that letter your Lordship gave me to post.”  Tabs thought quickly, “Hullo, we’re in for it.  That was foolish of me.  She’s put two and two together.”

But Ann reassured him in her next sentence.  “It was to a General at the War Office and I was thinking that he might help.  Braithwaite and I had an understanding.  I’m not saying we were engaged; we weren’t.  We didn’t tell anybody.  But we’d made up our minds to get married if he ever came back.  If I’d been engaged to him, I’d have a right to make enquiries; but now, in most people’s eyes, I was nothing to him.  That’s that’s the hardest part of it.  You see, sir, he was never reported dead or missing or anything.  I just stopped hearing from him.  So I thought that if this General was your Lordship’s friend ”

Tabs’ brain had been working.  He already had a plan.  “You thought that I might persuade him to use his influence to have the records searched?”

She glanced up hopefully.  “That’s what I was thinking.  Would he do it for your Lordship?  I don’t know how to set about things myself.  It’s this this,” she almost broke down, “this uncertainty that’s a-killing of me.  Sister knows about her man, but I ”

Tabs saw the redness of sleeplessness in her eyes; it was true the uncertainty was killing her.  “Don’t upset yourself by talking about it,” he said kindly.  “I’ll write to the General and post my request on my way out.”

He had supposed he had dismissed her and had seated himself at his desk.  A sound behind him warned him; he looked across his shoulder to find her still hovering in the doorway.

She answered his unspoken question as to why she was delaying.  “Aren’t there any particulars that your Lordship ought to have?  Things like his regimental number, and his birthday, and where he was born, and all that?  And wouldn’t this help?”

“What’s that?”

She pulled out from her apron-pocket an envelope.  “It’s one of his letters.  If the General was to see it, he’d know I had the right.”

“May I glance through it?”

Tabs unfolded the scribbled sheets of paper.  They were torn from an Army note-book.

   "My darling Ann: 

The jolly old war drags on and seems as though it were never going to end.  Not that I’ve much to kick about, for it’s proved a chance for me.  Here’s the great news.  I’m in for my commission and shall soon be ‘an officer and a gentleman.’  Don’t tell his Lordship if you write to him or see him; he’s still in the ranks and might not like it.  It’s funny to think that I shall be his military superior before many weeks are out and that, were he and I to meet, he’d have to salute me.  If I come through the war, I sha’n’t go back to being a valet.  Once having been a gentleman “_

Tabs ran rapidly through this sheet and turned to the next:

"You’re wonderfully good.  I got the socks that you knitted and the two parcels of food from Harrods.  You mustn’t spend so much of your money on me.  When it’s all ended, I’ll pay you back.  We’ll get married and have a little cottage in a little town, the way the song says that we heard together at the Comedy on my last leave.  You remember how it goes.

     ’And we’ll have a little mistress in a silken gown. 
     A little doggie, a little cat,
     A little doorstep, with WELCOME on the mat.’

   “My dearest sweetheart, I love you.

   “Yours, in the pink, etc."_

Tabs looked up.  “May I keep this for the present? And, by the way, how many more of them have you?”

“Nearly a hundred from the day he enlisted.  That’s one of the last I never heard from him whether he lived to get his commission.”

When she had vanished, he reread the letter more carefully, made a copy of it and slipped the copy into another envelope addressed to General Braithwaite, together with a note from himself, which read, “One of the important reasons why I am insistent that you shall call on me is contained in the enclosed copy of one of your many letters, the originals of all of which are in my possession.  To a man of honor it speaks for itself.”

IV

At the red pillar-box, at the foot of the Square, he posted this second missive.  “He’ll receive them both by the first delivery to-morrow,” he thought.  “I wonder what he’ll Rotten!  But it can’t be helped.”  Then he turned to the right by the Tube Station, going up the narrow old world passage, behind the backs of houses, through the graveyard of the Brompton Parish Church to Ennismore Gardens and the sudden, railed in solitudes of Hyde Park.

There were few pedestrians about.  Until he reached the Park they were for the most part men in evening-dress, going to dinner-parties, like himself.  Sometimes they were accompanied by their wives or sweethearts, whose little high-heeled shoes made a sharp tap-a-tap against the pavement.  Lamps were lighted.  The reluctant twilight was gradually fading; the sunset still glowed faintly above clustered chimney-pots to the west.  “I’m going to meet Terry,” he told himself.  “If the day had worked out as I’d planned, I should be going to ask for her hand in marriage When I planned that, I still believed that I was young.”

Then he thought forward.  Sir Tobias, from the moment he entered, would be scheming to get him to himself.  Sir Tobias must be avoided.  Directly dinner was ended, he would try to hurry him off and imprison him in his library to discuss this Maisie woman and Adair.  Still he was going to see Terry; merely to see her was a compensation which stirred his blood.

He crossed the Serpentine, stretching like a phantom lake, rose and slate-colored, through the Peter Pan haunted glades of Kensington Gardens.  Then he emerged from the Victoria Gate and found himself ringing a bell and being admitted by a butler, who relieved him of his coat and hat with the velvet-plush manner of a fashionable surgeon feeling a patient’s pulse.

“If you will come this way, Sir Tobias is waiting for your Lordship in the library.”

It was happening precisely as he had foreseen; it was being taken for granted that he had come as her father’s friend, and therefore in some absurd measure as his contemporary.

As he prepared to follow, his attention was attracted by the scarlet band and gold braid about an officer’s cap which was lying carelessly on the hall-table beside a pair of dog-skin gloves.

V

Sir Tobias was standing astride the hearth-rug with his back towards the fire.  As the door opened, he was caught in a last nervous adjustment of his tie.

He was a little man, inclined to be podgy, brimful of a darting kind of energy and dignified with an air of fussy distinction which none of his antics, however grotesque, could diminish.  He was Shakespeare as he might have appeared at sixty, after years and a return to Ann Hathaway had quenched the taller flames of his poetic fire.  The resemblance was haunting and remarkable:  there underlay it a hint of gnome-like agility.  One suspected that he affected age as a disguise.  The pointed beard was white; the scanty hair had receded from the calm forehead; the eyes were blue and faded, and red about the rims with over-much study.  The top part of the face above the cheek-bones was noble; but the lower part fell away to a mouth and chin which were amiable and undecided.  At the hour of Tabs’ arrival, he was flinging up his hands and spluttering impotently, an inexpert swimmer in the waters of adversity.

“My dear Lord Taborley!  My dear fellow!” The moment he discovered his guest in the doorway he came darting forward.  “My dear boy, this is real friendship.  We missed you and wanted you so much. So you’re out of it at last?  I mean the khaki.”

The little, wrinkled hand with its stubby fingers reached up timidly in an attempt to pat the big breadth of shoulders.

“Yes, I’m out of it, Sir Tobias.”

Tabs didn’t want to be patted.  He was impatient of polite evasions.  He foresaw that he was expected to spend the next five minutes in replying to questions which required no answers all this as a conventional preface to a discussion of the delicate position of Adair and Maisie.  But Tabs had his own problem, and one question in particular about a hat on the hall-table that he was burning to ask.  They stood staring at each other, the big, fair man and the worn version of Shakespeare, both wondering how long it would be decorous to chatter before they clinched with the vital topic.

“May as well sit down.  There’s time for a cigarette.  Terry ” Sir Tobias made a short-winded attempt to push a second arm-chair into place beside the fire; Tabs achieved the desired end with one lurch of his body.  “Terry brought some one in to tea; he’s not gone yet.  They never know when to go, these New Army fellows.  Good at their job, they tell me, but no polish.  I suppose I oughtn’t to say that ungrateful of me!  But I’m sick of it all, the invasion of the classes, the women in trousers, the beggars on horseback, the Jazz music.  I want the old world back the womanly women, everybody labeled, and Beethoven.”

He pushed the cigarette-box fretfully across to Tabs, having first selected one for himself.

“Beethoven,” he snorted, “that’s what I want, and no bobbed hair and everybody happily married.”

“This New Army chap who’s with Terry,” Tabs paused to make his voice unanxious and ordinary, “does she see much of him?  Is she fond of him?”

“Fond of him!” The little man jerked round quickly.  He was in a mood to see the shadow of terror in the most far-fetched suggestion.  “If I thought she was, I should pack her off to Lady Dawn and keep her with her until the fellow was dead or ”

“What’s the matter with him?” Tabs flipped the ash off his cigarette indifferently.

“The matter with him!” Sir Tobias pulled at the point of his beard, making a mental effort to frame the charge.  “If you’d asked me that question five years ago I could have told you; but not now.  In 1914 we spoke of a man as belonging to our class and meant that he had our standards of conduct, our code of honor, our sense of public duty, our traditions that he could be trusted to run true to form.  To-day any man’s a gentleman, provided he killed enough Germans.”

“But still you do feel that there’s something the matter with him.”

“Yes, but I can’t tell you for the life of me why I feel it.  In many ways he’s admirable:  I believe he’s about the youngest brigadier we have who rose from the ranks.  There was no hanky-panky about his promotion either no petticoat influence; it was all sheer merit and courage.  He was a fighting-man from first to last and shared all the chances.  But the trouble is that one doesn’t know where he came from, and, therefore, one can’t be sure where he’s going.  I know that sounds snobbish.  You have the right to tell me that if a man was good enough to be butchered to save an old chap like myself, he ought to be good enough to sit down with me at the same table.  But what people don’t realize is that men have been wounded in protecting old chaps like myself in coal-mines, and on railroads, and a thousand other places ever since the world started, but until now we never felt it necessary to offer them a bed in our houses.  War asked for the simplest gifts from men, physical strength, uncomplaining endurance and courage.  The war’s ended, and if those same gifts are to continue to secure social advancement, every policeman who captures a burglar ought to be made a bank-president.  When I demand that a man shall have traditions to be my friend, I ask no more than when I refuse to buy a dog without a pedigree.”

“But this man, what’s he called?  If he’s as distinguished as you say, I ought to have heard of him.”

Before his host could answer, the door was discreetly opened.  “Dinner is being served, Sir Tobias.”

There was a rush of light footsteps and Terry breezed past the butler.  “I know you’re going to scold me, Daddy.  It’s all my fault that you were kept waiting.  It took me so long to persuade General Braithwaite.  By the time he’d consented I had to dress like a hurricane.  I’m not at all sure that I’m properly hooked up the back.  I know I feel draughty.”  Then, as though she had not remembered that he was expected, “Why, hullo, Tabs!  In a dinner-jacket!  You do look peaceful and jolly.”

VI

They had taken their places at the square handsome table, illuminated at each corner by a silver candle-stick, red-shaded and electric-lighted.  Tabs and Terry were seated side by side, so that he saw her always in profile, except when she turned to him in conversation.  He saw the soft roundness of her shoulder, the satin pallor of her throat and breast, the quivering gold of her childishly wavy hair.

The General sat isolated, opposite and facing them.  Sir Tobias and his wife sat at either end had they known it, for all the world like judges.

Lady Beddow was a proud, unbending woman, gracious to her own sort, unquestioningly respectful to those above her, tender in a practical way to those below her and coldly scrutinizing to any one who tapped at her door claiming to be an equal.  Being bred to her finger-tips, she was as ill-at-ease as her husband in the jostling democracy of the moment.

In the hall Sir Tobias rather huffily had introduced his guests.  Tabs had relieved the tension by smiling quietly at Braithwaite, “The General and I have met before.”

It was an uncomfortable dinner from the moment they sat down.  Sir Tobias, although he had shown no signs of it in the library, seemed to have developed a resentment at having been kept waiting.  No reference was made to this resentment, but Terry and the General were obviously the culprits.  Sir Tobias was vaguely unhappy and had to blame somebody.  Under the tacitly implied criticism Terry’s rebellious spirits rose higher, but the General’s authoritative assurance began to crumble.

Sir Tobias was continuing the conversation which had started in the library.  He seemed oblivious to the fact that it had then concerned the man who was now present.  “You can’t make the world afresh with a catastrophe.  Men are like water:  in a storm they rise above or sink below themselves.  When the disturbance is ended, they tend to find their own level.  War destroys; it never created anything.”

“That’s not true, if you’ll excuse me for contradicting you.  You’re speaking without knowledge.”  Braithwaite uttered himself bluntly as he would have done in his own Headquarters’ mess this despite the fact that it was Tabs whom his host had been addressing.

In his astonishment, Sir Tobias nearly gagged himself with the soup that he was on the point of swallowing.  He blinked mildly at this confident young man, his breast ablaze with decorations, whom he had not invited.  “Then, in your opinion, what has war ever created,” he asked with dangerous courtesy; “this war, for instance, that’s just ended?”

“This war that’s just ended is the only war of which I have had any experience.”  Braithwaite glanced across at Terry for encouragement.  “I know what it created in me and in thousands like me.  It created in us the most valuable of all assets character.  In the bitter test of pain and dirt and despair we found ourselves found ourselves capable of more nobility than we had ever dreamt possible.  We sorted out afresh, in hours that we thought would be our last, all our inherited superstitions and servilities; in so doing we discovered that God and life itself are much kinder than we had been informed.  Because of that discovery men who had been timid learnt how to face death gladly, shirkers how to shoulder responsibility, selfish people how to become decent through the fine humanity of sharing.  Time-servers learnt how to get up off their bellies and confront misfortune with a laugh.  I don’t know whether I make myself clear; perhaps one had to be a part of the great game to understand its lessons.  That we do understand them is the reward of those who have survived.  We’ve come back to you as uncomfortable fellows; we shall be much more uncomfortable before we’re satisfied.  We intend to fight for the same equalities in peace that you sent us out to fight for in war.  You asked me what this particular war has created; it has created a complete new set of social and spiritual values.  It’s done away with the uncharity of caste.”

During his last words he had been gazing across the table at Tabs with a fearless challenge, as much as to say, “That’s who I am.  Now expose me.”

But Tabs was remembering the coster’s reason for not having dragged him into the police-courts, “Served in the ranks, did yer?  Then you and me was pals out there!” Braithwaite, whether he knew it or not, had been doing a piece of special pleading for himself.  He and Braithwaite, whatever they might be now, had been pals out there.  Silently Tabs had been thinking while he had been listening, “You’re right and I’m with you.  I’d be with you still more if you’d only live up to your standards by sticking to Ann.”

It was Sir Tobias who took the offensive.  The soup-plates had been removed and the fish-course had not yet been served.  He had the leisure to talk.  “You men who have been in the Army,” he said testily, “especially those of you who have gained your promotion rapidly, always speak as if the rest of us had been receivers of stolen goods until you put on uniforms.  Armies are composed of youth; for most of you it was the first time you had tasted authority.  It’s gone to your heads; you want to brush experience aside and dragoon the older world into new formations.  You, who were civilians yourselves, have come back despising us civilians; your contempt is three-parts fear lest you’ll fail, as you failed before, in the old civilian competitive struggle.  You talk about the virtues war has taught; let’s grant them and grant them gratefully they saved us from destruction.  But what about the frantic recklessness it encouraged, the cheap views of bodily chastity, the desperate insistence on momentary happiness?” At the mention of bodily chastity, Lady Beddow from the other end of the table had stuttered a “tut, tut!” Her husband dodged it, as a boy might dodge a wheelbarrow upset in his path.  Without shifting his glance he ran on.  “A complete new set of social and spiritual values!  Rubbish!  War places an excessive premium on merely brutal qualities muscle, bone, sinew, all the paraphernalia of physical endurance.  What use has it got for old fellows of intellectual attainments like myself?  It takes the greatest poet, singer, painter, violinist; all it can do with him is to thrust a rifle into his hands.  All brains look alike, Michael Angelo’s or a rag-picker’s, when they’re spattered in the mud of a trench.  Take Lord Taborley here, for instance all that military stupidity could do with him was to keep him in the ranks for two years.  You can’t make me believe in your complete new set of social and spiritual values.  A complete unrest and insubordination to time-honored moralities is the legacy of war.”

Having delivered himself, he tucked his napkin tighter into his waistcoat and attacked the fish-course, as though by this display of gastronomic energy he could somehow strengthen his argument.

It was clear to Tabs that behind all that Sir Tobias had been saying lay his misery over Maisie and Adair.  He saw the world always in the personal equation.

“I agree with most of your statements,” the General blundered on.  “And yet you’re wrong.  You miss something.  I think it’s the vision of the stupendous heroism.  You never saw it; you don’t want to see it.  That you never saw it we can understand; but that you shouldn’t want to see it, makes us see red.  It was something that we did for you, and you take it all for granted.  You cheered us and jeered us into going because you were frightened.  You handed us white feathers if we hesitated.  You dragged us from our jobs and very often we were poor men, who had no such financial security as was yours.  You promised that if we would share our lives with you, you’d go fifty-fifty with us on your financial security.  There wasn’t time to have deeds of agreement drawn up; we took you at your word.  And what a lie it was!  Why, I passed a blinded officer in Regent Street to-day peddling shoe-laces.  The day before a jobless soldier threw himself beneath a train and his last words were, ’Over the top and the best of luck.’  There’s a Colonel I see by to-night’s paper who’s gone back to being a policeman.  If you see a man in uniform to-day, your unspoken thought is, ‘For God’s sake take it off.’  I tell you it’s all wrong.  It’s that kind of ingratitude that leads to revolution.  You talk about the brutality of war; it’s not a patch on the brutality of peace.  You treated men’s lives as yours while the danger lasted, but you insist that your possessions are your own now that it’s been averted.”

He took a breath and glanced round.

Tabs was nodding unconscious approval.  Terry’s face reflected the fire of his own passionate indignation and enthusiasm.  The butler in the shadows had turned his back non-committally and was making a pretense of fiddling with the next course.  Lady Beddow sat very upright and startled, grasping her knife and fork as though they helped to support her.  The only person who was still doing justice to the meal was the worn-out version of Shakespeare, who was responsible for the storm.

The silence seemed to call for a final climax.  The ex-valet cleared his throat.  And it was to his ex-valet that Tabs listened; he had forgotten the General.  It was as though the grimness of reality had interrupted a piece of play-acting.  There was less heat in Braithwaite’s voice now and more reproach.  “You said nothing about caste in those days, when you hurried us to the shambles.  You promised us What was it that you promised us?”

“A kingdom round the corner,” Tabs suggested.  The next minute he felt Terry’s warm little hand clinging to his own beneath the tablecloth.

Braithwaite stared at Tabs to see whether he were jesting; then smiled in relieved friendship at this proof of comradeship from an unexpected quarter.  “Yes, perhaps it was that a future kindliness, where we should all be men together, neither free nor bond.”  Then again to his host, “You sent us out there where everything was censored.  Scarcely a whisper of the truth reached you.  The very war-correspondents were instructed to delete the horror and to write nothing that would disturb your calm.  We’ve come back, what are left of us; we think you ought to know what really happened.  It isn’t that we take much pleasure in telling you, but we think that if you knew, you might be persuaded to keep at least some of your promises.  And what do you do?  You reassert your privilege to despise us.  You stuff your fingers in your ears and talk about caste, and forgetting the war, and getting back to work.  Sir Tobias, I’m afraid I’m being far too personal, but you’re a sample of millions who weren’t there.  You’re living in a totally altered world of whose very existence you’re content to be unaware.  Your complacency drives men like myself to the point of madness.  We hold that you have no right to be complacent until the bill you put your hand to has been settled.  I don’t know how Lord Taborley feels; he’s not expressed ”

“Tabs feels exactly the way you do and so do I.”  It was Terry speaking, like the shrill courage of a bugle answering the slow bass of a trumpet-call.  “We’re the world that purchased victory we three, while the rest of the world sat back.  It was men like you two who got gassed, and wrenched, and tortured, and girls like myself who patched you up and flirted with you so that we might send you back to the Front cheery girls like myself who hadn’t known love, or children, or anything but a nursery sort of happiness.  We three and people like us understand, because we paid the price together.”

“Really, Terry, I must confess there are times when you shock me.”  As Lady Beddow rose from her seat, she was the picture of disapproval.  From the door, which the butler held open for her, she glanced back.  “I think this discussion has gone very far.”

As she swept out, she called across her shoulder, as one might call to a pet dog, “Come, Terry.”

VII

But Terry did not come; she sat on tightly, just as if she were a man among men.  Until coffee had been served and the room was free from servants, there was a pretense at small-talk in which Sir Tobias did not join.  He crouched moodily in his chair, an unlighted cigar between his fingers, looking very old and somehow deserted.  With the instinctive tenderness which she always showed when she knew that she had hurt, Terry got up and went to him.  She linked her arms about his neck and stooped to kiss the bald-spot on his head.  “Cheer up, Daddy dear; it isn’t half as bad as it sounded.  Don’t you want me to light your cigar for you?”

Tabs, to distract attention from the reconciliation, addressed the General.  It was odd that he should feel so much sympathy for a man whom his letters, already beyond recall, would stir into panic in the morning.  “Do you intend to stay in the Army, sir?”

“No.  But why do you ask?  They’re getting rid of all of us who aren’t Regulars, no matter how brilliant our service.  They’re making the Army again a social club.  I shall soon be out of uniform.”

“And then?” Tabs persisted.

“Oh, then I shall find something else.”  He spoke airily, but the shadow which crossed his handsome face added plainly as words, “If I can find anything.”

“If it isn’t impertinence,” Tabs sank his voice, “may I ask what you intend to turn to?”

The General eyed him suspiciously, wondering whether he was again about to lay claim to the previous embarrassing acquaintance.  “I have several things in view,” he said sketchily, “from which a man in my position ought to be able to choose.”

“Ought!  But that hasn’t been the story up-to-date.  What of the Colonel you were just telling us about?” Tabs saw that another storm was brewing.  He leant across the table and hurried on.  “If the worst comes to the worst, I expect your old job’s waiting for you.  The qualities which have made you what you are to-day, must have been recognized and valued ” Terry had completed her reconciliation with her father and was resting her gaze upon them.  Tabs altered his tone.  “You put what you said at dinner rather strongly, sir.  But I understand what you were driving at it was the democracy of the front-line where courage, which at its best is unselfishness, was our only standard of aristocracy.”

Before the General could make reply, Sir Tobias had raised his bewildered head.  “It’s a thing that I for one don’t want to understand.  I don’t want to go on living, if what you’ve said is true.”

Tabs turned considerately to the older man.  “I think you would if you knew.  The difference that war made to all of us who were there was that it taught us to judge men by their good points rather than their defects.  It upset all our preconceived notions about society, especially our notions about the extreme value of race and breeding.  What we learnt was that there’s a breeding of the heart which enables a man from the gutter to run true to the highest form.”

Sir Tobias leveled his weary eyes in challenge.  “Then what about Adair?”

The name was out at last the name which he had been trying to get uttered all evening.  It didn’t matter that Adair hadn’t been at the war and had no proper place in the argument.  He had wanted to break through his reticence due to his sense of impending family disaster.  At last he had done it.

“I think, Daddy,” Terry said, “the General and I had better leave you and Tabs to talk alone.”

The next thing that Tabs saw was Terry making her escape with this other man.  He had it in his power to settle his suspense for all time by saying, “One minute, Terry.  You’re choosing between the General and myself.  It may help you in making your decision to know that Braithwaite was once ” But the coster’s definition of fair-play deterred him.  This man had been his pal in the trenches; because of that he allowed himself for the second time that day to be shut out from the company of youth.  He hadn’t discovered how much or how little she knew.  By her withdrawal he was made to feel middle-aged more nearly her father’s contemporary than ever.  Yet, as an underlying comfort to his distress, he had the remembered pressure of the little hand that had sought his own in secret friendliness.

He turned to Sir Tobias.  “Yes, what about Adair?  Terry said that you wanted to consult me.  If there’s anything that I can say or do ”

VIII

The door was reopening.  Tabs glanced back across his shoulder through the shadows.  She was hovering just inside the threshold, hastily clad in her evening-wrap; beyond her in the hall the General stood fidgeting with his cap.  Sir Tobias was sitting with his head bowed; he had not heard the sound of her reentry.  He spoke evidently believing that they two were alone.  “I don’t like that fellow.  It’s the last time he ever comes to my house.  Whatever Terry can see in him And he’s not good for Terry.”

She tiptoed back into the hall, pulling the door softly behind her.  A moment later the front door closed with a bang.

“What was that?” Sir Tobias looked up gnome-like and startled.

Tabs guessed what it was; but because, as she had said they three had paid the price together, he kept her secret.  “General Braithwaite, probably.  But you were speaking of Adair?”

Sir Tobias shivered, betraying his nervous tension.  “A disturber,” he said irritably, “even in his going.  And yet, I suppose it’s true; we shouldn’t be sitting here comfortably to-night if it hadn’t been for his sort.”

Now that it had been broached, it was anything to avoid the main topic.  He drummed with his fingers on the table, ceased drumming and sighed heavily.  “Yes, I was speaking of Adair.  I don’t understand him.  I’ve grown out of touch; I don’t seem to understand anybody.  I’m left behind, somehow.  People do things to-day that they never used to do.  They shout about things from the house-tops which all my life I’ve mentioned only in whispers.  Terry does; you heard what she said to-night about never having been loved and never having had children.  The loss of delicacy ”

“I wouldn’t call it a loss of delicacy.”  Tabs struck a match.  “I would call it a loss of prudishness.  We all know that girls are born to be married and that the best of them long to have children.  Why shouldn’t they own it?  You owned it long ago when you bought her dolls.  The lid is off false réticences.  I hope it stays off; we shall be a much honester world.”

“The lid’s off!  That’s the phrase I was searching for.”  Sir Tobias leant forward confidentially.  “You haven’t been much in England during the past four years or you’d know how badly the lid is off.  You men, when you were in the trenches, lived above yourselves; but, the moment you came home on leave, you taught the world that wasn’t in khaki how to live below itself.  I could tell you stories ”

“I know.”  Tabs didn’t want to hear those stories.  “It was pathetic.  Men tried to steal in a handful of hours all the passionate experiences that would have come to them beautifully and legitimately over forty years.  It was like snatching from a bargain-counter things that you hadn’t time to pay for.  You were young and you were so soon to be snuffed out.  The unthoughtful took desperately what they believed life owed them.  They ”

It was the turn of Sir Tobias to interrupt.  “But so did the women this Maisie woman, for instance.  It was astounding the women one would least have expected.  All the desires we had caged through the centuries broke loose caged with traditions, with public opinion and scriptural penalties.”  He was delighted with his image and went on to elaborate it.  “They broke loose like wild animals from a menagerie.  We’d always known they existed.  Sometimes we’d paid surreptitious visits to them in books,” the old eyes blinked cautiously, “the way one goes to the Zoo, to remind himself that there is a jungle somewhere.  But we’d only regarded them as specimens; we’d never expected to meet them roaming about the streets loose or coming as domestic pets into our houses.  Now the war’s ended and the jungle’s all about us; we can’t get the animals back into their cages.  Fellows like this General Braithwaite don’t help matters by telling us that we oughtn’t to want to get them back ”

“Perhaps he’s one of the animals,” Tabs interpolated.  “You couldn’t expect him to want to be put back.”

“Perhaps he is.  In fact that’s what I’ve felt about him.  That’s what’s helped me to make up my mind that he shall see no more of Terry.”  He reached out and tapped Tabs’ hand, taking it for granted that he was his ally.  “The sight’s becoming far too normal wild beasts everywhere, sunning themselves in impertinent freedom, as if they were house-cats.  Nobody’s shocked at it any longer.  Terry isn’t.  Lloyd George isn’t at least he pretends he isn’t for fear the wild beasts may lose him an election.  No one makes a stand.  It’s left for private individuals like ourselves, to ”

“To do what?”

Sir Tobias lost his stride.  He blinked reproachfully.  “To get them back into their cages.”

For an instant Tabs nearly smiled.  “And Adair is he the first wild beast we tackle?  Have we got to get him back into the cage of matrimony?  Tell me about Adair.”

“It was no cage.”  Sir Tobias spoke almost resentfully.  “His home was a kind of nest and Phyllis was the mother-bird.”

The butler had looked in several times to see whether he was free to clear away.  For the first time Sir Tobias became aware of him pottering in the shadows.  “Perhaps we’d better continue in my library.”

He pushed back his chair, dropped his napkin, groped after it feebly, then led the way solemnly across the hall.  When he had seated himself before the fire and fortified his courage with a fresh cigar, he plunged headlong into the story of his son-in-law’s delinquencies.

IX

“How a man who has a daughter of mine for his wife can find attraction in any other woman is more than I can fathom.”

“I agree with you there, sir.”  Tabs suddenly found himself carried off his feet and on the point of a confession.  “If any man were to play false by Terry, I think I think I’d brain him.”

Sir Tobias half-closed his eyes and regarded his guest with sleepy approval.  “I somehow knew,” he said slowly, “that that was how you felt.”  Then he opened his eyes wide and darted forward in his chair, as though to trace exactly the effect of his words.  He was full of tricks and contradictions, obstinacies and tendernesses, this Punch-like old gentleman with the head of Shakespeare.  “I knew that was how you felt,” he continued, “because you’ve seen all the love that has gone to their making.  You were already a big fellow when they were still tiny.  Wasn’t it Terry who first called you Tabs because her tongue couldn’t get round Taborley?  Ah, I’ve been so proud of my girls!  They were so little and white when they first came to us.  They couldn’t walk not a step.  One had to carry them everywhere.  Then they began to crawl; they couldn’t stand up right unless one gave them his hand.  And then at last they walked.  They walked by one’s side at first and soon got tired.  But as they grew stronger, they walked away and away, always getting more incomprehensible, till finally it hasn’t happened to Terry yet till finally they met a man.  Wait till you’re a father, Lord Taborley; from the moment you give all that whiteness into another’s keeping, you never cease to be jealous of him.  He can never appreciate what a gift you have made him.  He never saw her when she was little and helpless.  She’s your youth she’s everything vigorous that you were.  The first time he affords you with a reason for hating him, you’ll hate him like The way you said:  so that you could brain him without compunction.  Adair I could cheerfully kill him.”

Tabs felt rather than heard the pent-up passion in his voice; it alarmed him with its sincerity.  “But mayn’t you be exaggerating?” he suggested.  “Are you sure that Adair What I mean to say is, he may be only philandering.  Heaps of men do that go through all the motions of making fools of themselves and actually do nothing.  He may be only expressing the discontent of the moment, the revolt from suspense, the flatness of quiet after terrible excitements.  One didn’t need to be a fighting-man to share those excitements.  You say that Phyllis made a nest of her home.  Perhaps he didn’t like nests.  It may be that that’s done it.  Adair can’t have altered so radically over night; he wasn’t forceful enough to erupt so disastrously.  He was decent ”

“I know nothing definite.”  The passion had died down.  It was again an old and weary man who spoke.  “I only know that she believes he’s abandoning her and that it makes her wretched.  She wants him back; if there’s any way of getting him back, she must have him.  I never denied anything to my girls.  If money will persuade him, it’s for you to find out how much.  If this Lockwood woman has a price, let her state it.  I’ll spare nothing.  Though everything else has lost its value, money still has the power to purchase.  I can’t buy back faithfulness and loyalty; but I should be able to buy the appearance of it.  If I were you I would tackle this Lockwood woman first.”

He tossed the stub of his cigar towards the fire.  It fell short in the grate.  He picked it up and rammed it deep into the burning coals.  He looked a poor, old, pitiful child, uttering embittered hérésies.  “All women are mercenary; all of them except my wife and daughters.  Ah, yes, and Lady Dawn.”

Tabs wondered what Lady Dawn had done to gain exemption from this sweeping accusation.  “I’ll see this Maisie Lockwood to-morrow,” he said, “if you can tell me where she lives.”

Sir Tobias had risen and was seating himself at his desk.  “I’ll copy you out her address.  I have it somewhere buried among these papers.”

He had hidden it so thoroughly that it took a few minutes to find.  As he rustled sundry sheets and stooped over them round-shouldered, Tabs had time to reflect.  Terry!  Where was she?  She was so little and unprotected and white.  Would a day ever come when a man would play her false?  At this moment he had it in his power to prevent that day from ever arriving.

“Ah, here it is!” It was his host talking.  Then the painful scratching of the pen commenced.

“Sir Tobias, I want to speak to you about Terry.”  The scratching of the pen stopped, but the shoulders remained bowed.  “This is an unfortunate night for me to choose to talk to you about her, but To tell the truth, I feel that if I don’t speak to-night I may lose my chance.”

“What do you want to say about her?” The shoulders had unhunched themselves, but the head had not turned.

“Only this, that I’ve loved her for a very long while and that if you don’t think I’m too old, I should like your permission to ask her to marry me.”

Tabs thought to himself with a glow of satisfaction, “At last I’ve done it.  And done it in just the way and at just the time that I’d always planned.”

He felt the pride of a man who had worked on schedule and been punctual to the second.

Sir Tobias turned.  His face was composed.  It was some seconds before he spoke.  “Of course this is no surprise to me.  You are old for her.  You’ll be fifty-five when she’s scarcely forty.”  He paused and Tabs’ heart sank.  “You’re older than her; but then you’re wiser.  She needs a husband who’ll be wise.”  He sat leisurely as though he were resting from a long journey; then he stretched out his hand.  Tabs went over and took it.  “My dear fellow, there’s only one thing I ask:  make her always happy.”

The clock in the hall struck midnight.  He lifted himself to his feet.  “I had no idea how the time had flown.  By the way, that’s the address the Maisie woman’s.”

Tabs took it carelessly.  It had become a thing of little consequence.  He folded it away in his pocket.  “And when shall I see Terry?” Of a sudden he felt that he must see her; see her and make sure of her without loss of time.

“To-morrow, I suppose.  Say about eleven.”

Tabs thought back.  He had expected to receive a call from General Braithwaite about eleven, or at least to hear from him as soon as he had opened his morning’s letters.  Then he smiled to himself; when once he was engaged to Terry, what General Braithwaite did or did not do would be no longer of any importance.

“Yes, about eleven, if it’ll be agreeable to Terry.”

“There’s not much doubt about its being agreeable to her.”

They passed out into the hall.  While Tabs found his hat and coat, they spoke only in monosyllables.  The servants had gone to bed.  The house was intensely silent.

They had got as far as the front-door and Sir Tobias already had his hand upon the latch, when a taxi purred up to the pavement and came to a halt immediately outside.  “Some one stopping at the wrong house,” he hazarded and threw the door wide.  “See you again to-morrow.”

“Yes, to-morrow.”

“At eleven,” Sir Tobias reminded.

“On the dot of eleven,” Tabs confirmed.

He passed into the cool night air, wistful with the fragrance of unseen flowers.  His eyes were dazed for the moment by the sudden change of light.  He made out the blurred silhouette of the taxi and faltered, thinking he might have a chance to hire it; then he saw that its shadowy occupants were climbing back into its deeper darkness.  It seemed that Sir Tobias had been right; it had stopped at the wrong house.

As he reached the corner where he turned, he glanced back.  The taxi had not moved.  Its occupants were again getting out an officer and a girl.  The girl was ringing the bell of the house that he had left, while, the officer was settling with the driver.  As he joined her, the door opened, letting fall a shaft of light.  There was a brief parley evidently hurried explanations.  Even at that distance he could recognize the indignant tones of Sir Tobias’ angry voice.  Then he heard the “Shish, Daddy!” from Terry.  They entered.  The door closed behind them.  The taxi moved off in the opposite direction.  Again there was silence nothing but the fragrance of unseen flowers and the wistfulness of the cool, spring night.