Century Magazine/Volume 97/Issue 5/"The Worm"

by Phyllis Bottome

PART II

AT first Onoria Strickland undertook Elsie Andrews as a conscientious educator undertakes bad material, but as the years passed and Elsie's affection stood solidly across Onoria's pathway as immovable as granite, she began to find in Elsie strange and exotic virtues.

"That girl," she would announce, "has the mind of the fourteenth century, mature and adventurous. She will do something one day. She is not like modern girls; she has character. Not that silly thing they call temperament, thank goodness! Temperament wobbles, stings like a jelly-fish, and arrives nowhere; but good solid English character. Elsie won't set the Thames on fire, perhaps, but she has n't set out with any such theory. Mercifully, she knows her limitations as a woman. What she has set out to do she will accomplish in spite of all obstacles. I call that dignified."

Elsie knew just what Onoria thought of her, because Onoria always told her friends exactly what she thought of them even when it was nice.

After her twenty-first birthday Miss Strickland became "Onoria" to Elsie.

It was difficult for Elsie to believe that she was dignified, but she knew that she had a kind of strength. She found in herself a fund of resistance enabling her to guard her friendship with Onoria. Neither her father nor her mother liked it, Mrs. Andrews because, like many mothers, it seemed to her unnecessary that her children should form any ties outside their home; Mr. Andrews because he foresaw that this one-ideaed occupation of his daughter's heart might damage her future prospects.

Elsie disliked young people. They believed all the things Onoria said were not so, and they carried on conversations that were not solely for the sake of conversation. They seemed to wish to attract one another.

Elsie knew that the fault lay in the women, and she would have talked to the young men if they had looked at her, but they did not seem to see that she was there. Onoria explained Elsie's position to her kindly, but firmly.

"You are not a man's woman," she said to her, "and you had better make up your mind to it once and for all. There are many other things in life."

What Elsie liked best in the world was sitting in Onoria's garden and being told what to think.

Onoria had fewer and fewer objects for her affection. Prendergast had changed from being an elderly and morose pug into being very old, and resentful of all claims upon his attention except in the shape of well-chopped-up food. He liked the results of tenderness without its expression. Peter Gubbins was just as faithful, but if one has been faddy and aggravating as a young man, he will infallibly become eccentric and exasperating when youth has left him. He wrote less poetry and rather more articles, and he grew the finest sweet-peas in the neighborhood.

There was one event which might have awakened Peter to the lapse of years if it had not come on almost as gradually as his success with the sweet-peas. This was the introduction of Elsie. She had not made friends with Peter at first; but after two or three years of speechless, tepid watchfulness upon both sides, a bond had been secretly and invisibly formed between them.

They could not have told why it was secret and they hardly knew that it was a bond. They only knew that in each other's society there was an absence of insistent racket, a blissful sense of not being at their best and liveliest, and not needing to be, which took the place of active pleasure.

There were very few of these harmonious moments. Usually Onoria was there, and they met under her eyes, and with the volleyings of her wit, and the tremendous onslaught of her theories thick upon them. But there had been June evenings when Onoria had letters to write, or was playing over new sets of pieces with a view to her profession, when Elsie slipped out of the long French window to water the flowers, and found that Peter was watering his, on the other side of the garden wall.

Peter joined her on these occasions, and they hunted for slugs together with an effortless ardor rarely obtained upon their separate quests.

Their talk was full of Onoria. They quoted her most strident sayings with bursts of nervous laughter, they bulwarked their own opinions with the justice of her utterances, and sometimes with bated breath they confessed to each other the little difficulties which arose on their domestic hearths when these hearths were confronted by Onoria; for Mr. Gubbins had a housekeeper who hated Onoria and was herself a redoubtable woman, while Elsie's family sometimes stood up and raged against her intimacy with Onoria.

"I said," Elsie explained breathlessly behind the rhododendron-bushes, "if you stop me going to see Miss Strickland, I 'll tell the vicar and Miss Bretherton. You know, father thinks the world of the vicar since we 've stopped going to chapel, and no one would like to have Miss Bretherton down on them, not even mother; so they just glared. Glaring's awful, of course; still, it can't do you any real harm."

"No," Mr. Gubbins murmured, with a long sigh of regret; "it's not as if your parents cooked for you. If Mrs. Binns has been crossed,—and whenever she sees Onoria she seems to get crossed,—she pours pepper into everything I eat. And, as I 've often told you, I have a very delicate throat."

"What are you two talking about over there in the shrubbery?" shouted Onoria from the window.

Mr. Gubbins looked appealingly at Elsie. They both trembled, but Mr. Gubbins trembled most.

"Slugs," in a wavering voice Elsie called back.

Her eyes fell before the accusatory ones of Mr. Gubbins.

He was thinking how true, how painfully true, Onoria's theory was as to the prevarication of women.

Whatever the consequences might have been, he could not have told a lie to Onoria. He would not have dared.

Jealousy is one of the faults which it is hardest for human beings to confess. It is the least successful of the vices, for by its nature it implies that you find yourself less attractive than somebody else, and you are aware that in the exercise of it you become still less attractive. Fortunately, righteous indignation often looks very like it.

Miss Onoria Strickland never dreamed that she suffered from jealousy. She considered it a slave vice confined to women and exceptionally feeble men. She was taken completely by surprise when Peter Gubbins and Elsie Andrews conspired behind her back to make a fool of her. This was her instant definition of their timid attempts to form a relation wholly apart from her.

Onoria might not have been so astonished if she had been a quicker hand at reading the silences of others. But, like most great talkers, she was apt to take for granted, unless directly contradicted, that some form of agreement had taken place. She did not realize that the silence which gives consent is only one out of many others far less accommodating.

Neither Elsie nor Peter had ever openly disagreed with Onoria, but their souls had rebelled in a wordless determination rather like that which precedes the back kick of a mule. They could not, for instance, see the harm of Peter Gubbins singing, to Elsie's accompaniment, old Scotch ballads. Peter had a great fancy for Scotch ballads, no knowledge of the dialect, and a tenor voice liable to those spasmodic interludes which sometimes take place upon a telephone.

Onoria had, not without justice, decided that he ought not to sing in public.

Peter had broken himself of the habit, but he still indulged in occasional orgies, which took place while Onoria was at school. He could only pick out the air with one finger on the piano and, to his great delight, Elsie agreed to accompany him. She arranged to come early to Onoria's before school hours were over and meet Peter in Onoria's music-room. When Onoria became due, Peter hurried out of the window into the garden, and crossed by the wall into his own domain. On Onoria's arrival she found Elsie, punctual and passive, waiting for her usual rites upon the piano.

Ostriches would have known better than Peter and Elsie. When they plunge their heads into the sand to escape an enemy they do not sing Scotch dialect songs with voices like a damaged kettle. Peter's voice carried, and on one still day it reached Onoria, coming up the road. She had a faultless ear and she knew it was Peter's voice, and that it came not out of his window, which would have been a misdemeanor, but out of her own, which was a crime; and she knew that Peter could not play his own accompaniments.

She hastened to the gate, but by the time she had reached it, Peter had already vanished. He did not know what he was leaving his accomplice to face, but there is no reasonable doubt that, if he had known, he would still have left her.

Breathless and terrific, Onoria rushed into the music-room.

"What," she cried, with piercing incisiveness, "are you doing here?"

Elsie was in the act of lifting her muff to her face. It was not much of a protection, but she had seized upon it when she heard the front door bang. She felt that it was the bang of a discovered crime. It took Elsie a long time to say, "Nothing," but at last she said it, and then she looked all round the room for a way of escape, and found none.

It would be difficult to say with which of the two criminals Onoria was angrier. She had been angry with Peter Gubbins all her life for being Peter Gubbins; his character irritated and at times eluded her. Elsie she loved; probably she was angrier with Elsie.

"Please don't tell me lies," she exclaimed, with deadly patience. "I heard perfectly well what you were doing as I came up the road. I could no more mistake Peter's voice than a donkey braying. It came from my room, and you—you, Elsie, were playing his accompaniments!"

Elsie bit a piece of fur out of her muff in anguish. The situation was too large for her. Speechless and overwhelmed, she cowered under it; but something at the bottom of her heart told her it was not fair, and would not be overwhelmed.

"What do you mean by such atrocious behavior?" went on Onoria, with fluent passion, "Using my house, behind my back, to do what you know I have forbidden! How dared you do such a thing, Elsie? How can you come here now and look me in the face with that treacherous secret upon you?"

Elsie made a gesture of despair; she put the muff down.

It was a late autumn evening. A river fog had crept into the room, and everything was a little indistinct, like a scene in a nightmare; only the bitter, sharp voice of Onoria, pelting at her, was as distinct as a succession of stones flung against a wall.

"Oh," Elsie gasped, "I did n't mean—we did n't think!"

"Mean! think!" cried Onoria. "What have you ever thought or meant, either of you? How can I tell now? How can I believe you? Don't you see what you 've done? You 've undermined my confidence. How many times have you played here without my knowledge? I don't believe this is the first."

"He did like singing the Scotch ballads so," Elsie murmured defensively. "It was an accident the first time. We just tried them over; it did n't seem any harm. He had come in to dust your books for you, and I was early; so we just tried them over."

Onoria changed her ground; she felt for a moment as if it was not so firm as she had expected. The crime did not stand out well against the background of Peter's services.

"Of course," she said more mildly, "you must n't think I mind for myself. People do not as a rule care to have their houses used for other people's meetings without their consent, but I overlook all that. Has it never occurred to you what a scandal such performances produce? No doubt you are being talked about all over Ticklington at this moment. If your parents knew of it, they would very rightly prevent your coming here again. And since it is my house, I am in a sense responsible for you. I have never been placed in such an insidious position in mv life—and by you, Elsie!"

"I did n't mean any harm," sobbed Elsie. "We only played 'Over the Sea to Skye.' I don't see why people should talk about it."

"You were alone here with Peter in my absence," said Onoria, coldly; "that is what they will talk about."

It was very unfair of Onoria to say this, because she was constantly alone with Peter herself, and nobody in Little Ticklington had ever talked about it. Nobody in Little Ticklington thought any more about being alone with Peter than they would have thought of being alone with Prendergast.

"I am speaking for your own good," added Onoria, more gently and even less truthfully; for, like most people who think they are speaking for the good of others, she was merely speaking to relieve her own spiteful feelings.

The sight of Elsie's tears softened her a little, but she mistook their meaning. They were not tears of penitence, as Onoria believed; they were the tears of an outraged sense of justice.

"I don't see what particular good you think this is going to do me," Elsie observed between her sobs. Onoria opened her mouth to reply and then shut it again. It took time to produce any tangible advantage to Elsie out of the vortex of her own bad temper. Finally, however, she did produce it.

"I hope it will check you," she said, with dignity, "before you do something more compromising still. My advice to you is not to see Peter Gubbins again. I will deal with him later, and let him know what I think of him for taking advantage of a young and, I hope, innocent girl."

"I don't see where the advantage comes," persisted Elsie, who had unaccountably stopped crying, "if he is n't to sing his songs any more."

"Don't be puerile!" said Onoria, sharply. "You know perfectly well what I mean. None of your green-girl prevarications with me!"

"No, I don't," replied Elsie, with astounding obstinacy. "You 've often told me it was always women who took advantage of men, and dragged them into things, and then complained about them afterward. Well, if it is, Peter could n't have dragged me into anything, could he? And I'm not complaining."

Nobody likes to be convicted out of his own mouth, and Onoria liked it less than most people.

"Please don't make such an absurd exhibition of yourself," she said, with heightened color and reduced softness. "I have told you what I think and how I intend to act. I am always perfectly direct and straightforward. It is a pity that you cannot be the same. We will discuss this question no further. Do you wish to take your music-lesson this afternoon or do you not?"

Of course Elsie did not wish to take her music-lesson, but habit is very powerful, and the habit of surrendering to a stronger will is probably more difficult to break than any other habit. She gasped, put her muff down, and took her lesson as if it were a dose of medicine.

She even kissed Onoria good-by when she left; but if Onoria had been an adept in kisses, which she was not, she would have felt that something was wrong about Elsie's.

The scene between Peter and Onoria was far less drastic. Onoria had quieted down before she saw him, and she spoke as man to man. She pointed out to Peter that he had taken an unwarrantable liberty with her premises, and that he had acted in a compromising way with a girl very nearly thirty years younger than himself.

Peter did not tell her, as the more virile type of man whom Onoria admired might have told her, that she was a bad-minded old hen and was talking a pack of nonsense; he took what she said with extreme seriousness. He quite saw her point about her premises, and apologized. He would not enter them again unless she were there herself.

He hoped that he had not done Elsie any harm, and it had never occurred to him that any one would dream of coupling their names together. The bare idea of it was painful to him. Still, he quite saw what Onoria meant.

Onoria was quite genial, and they smoked several cigarettes together; then Peter went home. It was quite true that he meant to be careful, very careful indeed; but the person of whom he meant to be careful was Onoria.

Peter Gubbins had always taken great care of his broken heart. In a place like Little Ticklington, full of marriageable women, it was a very important asset. It played the part of a chaperon. No one could expect to marry a man whose heart was as steadily and obviously broken as Peter's.

It had never occurred to Peter to marry any one but Onoria. He had a pleasant income for a single man, reinforced by certain small checks for his articles. He would never have confessed it even to himself, but he knew he was a great deal better off as he was. There was nothing in Elsie Andrews to lead him to change this opinion.

At first he thought her a nice, quiet little girl; then, when she shot up into long skirts, and grew half a head taller than Onoria, he thought of her as a sensible young woman. She made no effort to attract Peter, and Peter, like many not very attractive men, was very suspicious of efforts made to attract him.

He did not often grasp new subjects, but when he did, his mind played upon them with the magnifying effect of a microscope. It excited him to be told that he had compromised Elsie; he had never compromised any one before, and he was not quite sure what it involved.

Peter wished to continue to meet Elsie, but he did not wish to be morally bound. He gave the matter a great deal of quiet study and reflection, but he did nothing to precipitate the event of seeing Elsie again. He felt that if they met by chance, it would rob their meeting of any dangerous intensity that it would otherwise have.

The meeting took place at the post-office precisely a week later. Elsie was standing with her back to Peter, reading the notice of an oratorio that was to be performed at a neighboring cathedral town. Peter bought three ha'penny-stamps and a packet of post-cards before anything striking happened. Then Elsie, turning, gasped:

"O Mr. Gubbins!"

Peter kept his head, and paid for the post-cards before he answered her.

"Oh, it's you, Elsie, is it?" he remarked guardedly, having counted his change. "Have you ever heard 'The Messiah'?"

Elsie said she had n't. She did n't know whether to go out of the post-office into the street, where anything at all might happen, or to remain in the secure shelter of the post-office, where it would be more difficult to get away if anything did happen. Eventually they got into the street.

"It must be splendid," said Elsie, referring to "The Messiah." "Only, I believe Onoria said it was n't; so of course it can't be. Have you ever heard it?"

"Oh, time and time again," said Mr. Gubbins, lightly. "It is one of my favorite entertainments. As a young man I went regularly to hear it every Christmas eve at the Albert Hall. I only gave it up after an attack of tonsilitis I had one winter. I may have told you about it? I date all my throat trouble from then."

He had told Elsie about it several times, but as she merely murmured sympathetically, he told her about it again. After he had finished, he came back to "The Messiah."

"How would you like to go and hear it at the cathedral?" he inquired.

"Like it!" exclaimed Elsie. "Oh, frightfully; but, you see, mother and father hate music except bands on the beach, and Onoria says local renderings of oratorios should be put down by law."

"Well," said Mr. Gubbins, with unflinching courage, "opinions differ about oratories, of course. How would it be if I took you myself? I dare say we could arrange something about it."

Elsie looked at him as if he had suggested ah expedition to central Africa. It was a most inspiriting look. Mr. Gubbins found it so; a lukewarm desire to do something desperate took possession of him. But he meant to be very careful about it. He stage-managed this plunge into the forbidden land with vast precaution. As human plans go, it was perfect; there was nothing unarranged for except Fate, Mr. and Mrs. Andrews were to be told part of the truth. Elsie was to break to them that she was going to hear "The Messiah" at Mellingham, Mr. Gubbins did not suggest a downright lie to Elsie, but when he said, "I dare say they 'll suppose it means with Onoria," he paved the way for a leakage in accuracy of which Elsie took full advantage. Onoria was not to be told anything at all.

Elsie was to leave the station of Little Ticklington by a one o'clock train, and Mr. Gubbins by a one-thirty, and the journey took half an hour.

Elsie was to wait for him in a baker's shop opposite the cathedral. They were to come back in the same train, but in different compartments.

Short of an unfavorable interposition on the part of Providence, they were safe; but those who rely upon Providence to remain inactive in their favor should not tempt it by displaying any activity of their own. Miss Bretherton, without consulting Onoria beforehand, arranged for her to take six pupils to "The Messiah," whether she liked it or not.

Forty girls, in white dresses with blue sashes, upon one side, and forty men, in a variety of semi-evening clothes, upon the other, had scarcely sung through the first chorus before Elsie and Peter became aware of Onoria's eyes.

They knew they were Onoria's eyes, although she was sitting at some distance to the right of them, much as those who looked upon the Medusa's head must have been aware that it was her head before they turned into stone. No fate so happy awaited Peter and Elsie: if they had been turned into stone, they could have stared back. As it was, they twitched and trembled under Onoria's ruthless gaze, aware, with a cowering intensity, of their flesh and blood.

Peter sank from terror to terror, till from the lowest depth of cowardice, in which he contemplated leaving Elsie to her fate, he rose to a state of rage. He became as savage and determined as a very timid animal at bay. He would not be caught—that was what it came to. He set his lips firmly together. Onoria or no Onoria, he would simply not be caught. Of course there was Elsie; Elsie wept.

"Stop crying!" he hissed at Elsie with a snarl.

Elsie swallowed a sob abruptly and retreated into a large pocket handkerchief. The people sitting next to her thought she had a sensitive musical temperament and admired her for it. They did not know what Peter had, but they did not admire him nearly so much.

The six girls, followed by Onoria with the face of an awakened Fury, advanced down the aisle.

"We must get out of this!" said Peter, hurriedly.

He grasped Elsie firmly by the arm and dragged her after him.

Onoria saw the action, and said, "Elsie," out loud in the cathedral over the six girls' heads. Several people turned round. Elsie stiffened into instant obedience, but Peter's clutch of manly terror was greater than Elsie's power of womanly resistance. He had her out of the cathedral and half-way to the railway station before she could turn round. Onoria could not run after them. She had her dignity to preserve and the six girls to return intact.

Peter and Elsie had nothing to think of but their personal safety. They preserved this by the skin of their teeth, and by getting without tickets into a train destined for London.

They sat staring wild-eyed at each other, incapable of further speech, even if they had dared to give utterance to what was in their hearts in the presence of a clergyman, a market-gardener, and two elderly ladies who looked at them as if they thought that people in such a hurry must have done something wrong. When Elsie had got her breath again, she began to cry. Peter stared desperately out of the window. He was trying to make up his mind to the idea of never going back to his home, and he was remembering Samson and the sweet-peas.

Every one in the railway carriage was sorry for Elsie. No one was sorry for Mr. Gubbins. Indeed, the clergyman was beginning to be highly suspicious of him. He was not at all sure that he was not, for the first time in his well-chosen career, confronted by a social evil.

Mr. Gubbins looked ferocious; Elsie sobbed on. The clergyman leaned forward and said tentatively, as it was surely his duty to do:

"I am afraid this young lady is somewhat distressed?"

Peter Gubbins rose to the occasion; a flash of inspiration shot through him.

"She's just had a tooth out," he explained with unswerving duplicity.

Elsie stopped crying; she could not believe that Peter Gubbins had told a lie like that at a moment's notice. With the natural depravity of women, she had never admired him so much before. She gave the clergyman a watery smile of affirmation.

Miss Strickland had great self-control, and she needed it. When her amazed eyes rested upon Elsie and Peter Gubbins, she could hardly believe them. Disobedience and deceit united for purposes of pleasure had never so flaunted themselves before her in the whole course of her career. For a week she had believed Elsie and Peter to be crushed.

For a moment she was almost too astonished to be angry. But her surprise was swiftly reinforced by anger. She was in a consecrated building, and the oratorio had begun, so she remained perfectly still, although her figure became charged like an electric battery. All the six pupils of Miss Bretherton received small invigorating shocks from it.

They knew something was wrong and not with them. After all, "The Messiah" was not going to be such a frightful bore as they had feared. They followed the direction of Miss Strickland's eyes and arrived at Elsie and Peter. The opening chorus might have been a salute to adventurers, for all the pupils heard of it. Solemnly and gloatingly they gazed at the desperate couple. Peter and Elsie felt all these hostile eyes converging upon them, and they also heard nothing of the opening chorus.

At the close, the girls knelt for a respectful and non-committal moment in the direction of the altar, and then proceeded to bear down upon the delinquents through the easy-going crowd that blocked the main aisle of the cathedral, ripe for slaughter.

They thrilled with ecstasy at the resonant and piercing voice of Miss Strickland when she said aloud in the sacred building, "Elsie!" In another moment they would have been upon the victims had not a remorseless family of nine interfered between them and their prey. Breathless, they hacked their way to the door, only to see Elsie and Peter arm in arm disappearing round a corner. Then Miss Strickland reined them in, saying with perfect self-control and extreme unfairness:

"I don't know what you girls are hurrying for. There is plenty of time to catch the train. Please walk at your usual pace and in your usual order."

Miss Strickland had only once said, "Elsie." When this command failed, her lips and her heart had simultaneously closed.

Onoria pulled herself together when she reached the street. Her duty was to her pupils, and she did it.

Methodically, though with a heart on fire, she arranged their return tickets and marshaled them into the train. If Elsie and Peter had been at the station, Onoria would have seen them, but she would not have noticed them. She put her charges into a third-class carriage marked "Ladies only," took a corner seat by the window, and proceeded to bone "The Messiah" for the delectation of her pupils. She had no great passion for Handel at the best of times, but on this occasion she was vitriolic.

The girls heard her with awe. Somebody was catching it, even if they were great and dead. They would have preferred to see Elsie and Peter catching it, because they were alive and lived at Little Ticklington, but they could not have everything.

Miss Strickland saw them safely back to their respective homes, and then returned to her own. Samson was at her door. He was a gloomy and outraged cat, wet by the autumn mist and deprived of his invariable tea, with Mr. Gubbins's share of cream, and a fire-warmed knee to rest up against afterward. Miss Strickland subdued a temptation to hit him sharply on the head with her umbrella.

It was quite open to her to hit him and it would serve Peter right; but Miss Strickland was a just woman. She reminded herself that the soul that sinneth it shall die. She opened the door, and Samson flew past her and consumed loudly and without hesitation Prendergast's neglected dinner. Prendergast had not wanted his dinner, and he did not want it now, but still less did he wish to see a low cat indulging itself with his sacred rites. There had always been a state of armed neutrality between the two animals. Neither was strong enough wholly to destroy the other, so they wisely avoided combat; but they were not friends.

Prendergast growled feebly from his basket, and gazed at his mistress, expecting her instant and effectual intervention; hut Miss Strickland sank down on a chair beside him with all her things on and her hands in her lap.

Samson finished the last mouthful of Prendergast's meal, wiped his whiskers ostentatiously in front of the basket, and disappeared lightly through a back window. Miss Strickland did not notice the defection of Samson; she did not for a long while notice anything. There was an inward drama in her heart that held her whole attention. Something implored her to let her pride go and keep her friends. It told her that she was getting old and had few earthly ties, that Elsie was dearer to her than she knew, that even Peter was a treasured habit left over from the richer years, and that, if she used her anger too ruthlessly against them, she would be condemning herself to perpetual loneliness.

Onoria really wanted Elsie to be happy. She did n't want her to grow up into a dull, lonely old woman with a pet animal; but it was hard to give her up to Peter.

If Peter had only been a man. It was n't, Onoria assured herself, that she minded about her old relation to Peter. After all, she never had valued it; still he was the only man it would have been any use in Onoria's minding.

She despised Peter, and the worst of it was that Elsie, whom she loved, cared more for this Peter that Onoria despised than she did for Onoria's opinion of him. That was the sting of stings.

Miss Strickland looked facts in the face. If she gave in, Elsie and Peter would come back to her. There would be no bitterness and no reproaches. But there would be one difference, one fatal difference to Onoria's pride: both would know that they had got the better of her. If they wanted something else that Onoria disapproved of their having, they would combine to get it. That was what she winced at.

Love ignored Peter Gubbins and how necessary it was to give him a lesson, it made specious excuses for Elsie's flagrant treachery. It said: "She deceived you only because she did n't want to hurt you. She disobeyed you only to be happy, and after all, that is what you want, is n't it? You want Elsie to be happy?"

Miss Strickland wavered under the pressure of love; but she only wavered. Righteousness and self-respect rose up afresh in her—self-respect at the touch of which love always dwindles out of sight, and righteousness, which so often consists in carrying out our own will in an imagined connection with the Deity.

"I shall do right, whatever it costs me," Onoria said to herself at last, and she did not know that she might as well have said, "I shall do what I like, whatever it costs anybody else." It would have meant precisely the same thing.

It was at this point in her meditations that Prendergast moved. He wanted attention and at last he received it. Miss Strickland made up the fire, and brought him a little warm milk with a dash of brandy in it. Prendergast responded to the stimulant and began to wander restlessly about the room. He could not make up his mind what he wanted. He moved about vaguely and stiffly as one who is practising the art of walking. His desires broke in him, and Miss Strickland, on the ground beside him, with a divine patience gratified in turn and without hurry each of his passing fancies.

No one who knew Onoria Strickland as she was to the world, to her pupils, or even to her friends could have believed in this tender, ministering Onoria, carrying out with anxious solicitude the whims of an old dog.

She did not leave Prendergast till he had finally decided on a return to his basket. She sat beside him and watched until his feeble snores told her that he was at rest. Then she groped her way to the mantelpiece for matches, and tidied herself for going out once more. She had decided to make an appeal to Elsie's parents.

Miss Strickland did not know the Andrews very well. She often said that they were like glass to her and that she could read them like a book; but their intercourse had been limited. Mrs. Andrews came to tea with Miss Strickland only once a year and Miss Strickland returned her call within a fortnight. She had met Mr. Andrews twice, and they had had on both occasions acrimonious disputes on politics.

Mr. and Mrs. Andrews were eating their supper when Miss Strickland was announced. They were not surprised that Elsie was late, as neither of them knew how long oratorios lasted; but they were frightened when they saw that Miss Strickland was alone.

Mrs. Andrews exclaimed at once:

"Where's Elsie? Has she been run over?" and Mr. Andrews said:

"Nonsense, Mother! Of course not. Where is the child, Miss Strickland?"

"I don't know," said Onoria, firmly. She took an arm-chair and faced the questioning parents with her usual deliberate self-assurance. "That is what I came to ask you."

"But surely—" Mrs. Andrews began, "surely you took Elsie to the oratorio? She said, did n't she, she was going this afternoon over to Mellingham?"

"I was," said Miss Strickland, "at the oratorio in Mellingham, and so was Elsie, but she was not with me."

"Well, I never!" said Mr. Andrews. "Fancy her going off like that all by herself! It's certainly time she was back. Girls are so independent nowadays."

"She was not alone," Miss Strickland said significantly.

Mr. Andrews leaned forward:

"Who was she with?" he asked truculently.

"She was with Peter Gubbins," said Miss Strickland, leaning back in her chair.

If she had intended to create a sensation, she had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams; but the incredible part of it was the type of sensation she had created. She had expected shame, indignation, and alarm. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews were quite obviously pleased.

They did not wish to show their satisfaction too plainly, but the tone in which Elsie's mother said, "Well, I never!" was one of flattered maternal pride; and Mr. Andrews, when he had drawn a long breath, exclaimed, "I never would have thought it!" in much the way in which he would have greeted a smart trick of the trade.

"You can never tell with the quiet kind," Mrs. Andrews continued reminiscently. "I was like that myself as a girl. I never went out of my way to attract anybody, and as to mentioning it at home—well, I'd have been ashamed. I just let things take their course, as it were, and here I am. Dear me!"

"Should n't you say Peter Gubbins was a warm man?" inquired Mr. Andrews, ignoring this revelation of his wife's tactics. "I 've always understood he had a tidy little sum put by."

"I could n't posibly tell you," said Miss Strickland, who during this outburst of vulgarity had recovered her secret poise.

"To tell the truth, the idea of Elsie's having arrived at any notion of matrimony had not occurred to me. I merely thought it was unfortunate that unchaperoned she should appear in public with a man who is old enough to be her father, but who is not her father."

"Oh, well, you know," said Mr. Andrews, "young people will be young people, won't they, Mother? And we all know Peter Gubbins about here. Peter Gubbins is as safe as the Bank of England. I don't call fifty old for a man."

"Appearances," said Miss Strickland coldly, "are never safe. I had not intended to mention it, but I see I had better put you in command of all the facts. Peter Gubbins has been in the habit of meeting Elsie at my house, in my absence, without my knowledge or consent."

Mr. and Mrs. Andrews looked at each other. Mr. Andrews whistled.

"Dear! dear!" said Mr. Andrews, after an awkward pause. "I'm sure we 're very sorry, Miss Strickland. Elsie ought n't to have done it, I allow; but if you won't mind my saying so, you should have thought of it before. What I mean to say is—it's a little late in the day, is n't it, for you to mind what Peter Gubbins does?"

"It's only natural," interposed Mrs. Andrews, "for him to take to a young girl like Elsie. We each have our turn, you know, Miss Strickland, and then we have to stand aside and let the young ones have theirs. It's hard lines, I know, but there it is—"

"You quite misunderstand me," said Onoria, who had turned a brick-red under this last onslaught of a parent's imagination. "What Peter Gubbins does or what he fancies is, and always has been, a matter of perfect indifference to me. In this case my sole concern has been Elsie and the compromising position to which such clandestine meetings give rise."

It was a good sentence, with a swing that took the wind out of Mr. Andrews' sails. Still, Miss Strickland would have preferred to fling the vulgar truth upon the table. She wanted to say:

"My dear good people, I 've refused Peter Gubbins dozens of times, and Elsie is merely taking my leavings, if she does take them; but that seems to me no good reason for carrying on behind my back."

But education takes from us our most effective weapons. It would have been ill bred to make this statement, and Miss Strickland, though she never minded being rude, did not wish to appear ill bred; and despite the excellence of her sentence, she knew that the Andrews still believed that Elsie had cut her out.

"Since you are not alarmed at Elsie's having failed to return at the termination of the oratorio," she said, rising to her feet, "or at the fact that she has apparently vanished into space with Peter Gubbins at eight o'clock at night, there is nothing further to be said. I can only congratulate you on the strength of your nerves."

"It is a little late," Mrs. Andrews admitted; "still—"

There was a sound at the garden gate; a moment later a loud knock heralded the telegraph boy.

Mr. Andrews put on his glasses and read out loud: "Missed train after oratorio. Too late to return. Staying with Aunt Anne. Elsie."

"Her Aunt Anne," explained Mr. Andrews, with restored satisfaction, "is a clergyman's widow who lives at Clapham. Elsie won't come to any harm staying with her Aunt Anne, Peter Gubbins or no Peter Gubbins."

"Probably he's come home," said Mrs. Andrews, comfortably. "He never was much of a gadabout. I'm sure we 're just as grateful to you, Miss Strickland, for coming in to tell us what you knew. You could n't have been kinder if you'd been a parent yourself."

"Thank God, I'm not!" Miss Strickland energetically and rather shockingly declared, though in a sense it would have been more shocking had she wished to be one. "If I were, I should hardly take my responsibilities as lightly as you do."

"I shall write to my sister to-morrow," said Mr. Andrews, with dignity, "and my wife will write to Elsie."

Miss Strickland walked to the door; her last hope had flickered out with the mention of Aunt Anne at Clapham. A situation occupied by Aunt Anne was impregnable. Onoria knew she had been outwitted by the ponderous stupidity of parents.

It was a cold foggy evening, the streets of Little Ticklington were badly lighted and empty. It seemed a long way home. A curious, stifling sense of dread overtook Onoria. She told herself sharply that when a thing has already happened it is silly to be afraid of its happening again. Nevertheless, she hurried.

Bridget had lit the fire in the hall, and the fire in the drawing-room burned brightly. Prendergast lay a little on one side in his basket.

He was not snoring, as he usually was. Miss Strickland leaned over him, anxiously. He did not open his eyes or turn his head to look at her, and then she saw that he never would again. He had made up his mind what he wanted.

A wild impulse to rush across and tell Peter Gubbins shook Miss Strickland. Nobody else loved Prendergast, but Peter had loved him. He had loved him nearly as much as he loved Samson. Miss Strickland looked down with quivering lips at the obese form of the dead pug. He was all she had in the world, and he had taken this opportunity to slip out of it.

Miss Strickland was a fighter. She was a very fine fighter, and up to this moment no wave of disaster had ever been beyond her power to surmount; but you cannot fight the memory of a dead dog.

Prendergast overwhelmed Miss Strickland completely. She sank on the floor beside his basket, sobbing as if her heart, which was already broken, could break again.

"They might have left me this!" she said between her sobs. She spoke as if Elsie and Peter between them had killed Prendergast, although she knew that this was nonsense.

Peter Gubbins had the type of mind which swiftly and invariably sees danger in the most unlikely places. He apprehended it from every wayside flower and tree. Nothing was too trivial or too transitory for Peter to snatch from it in passing a whiff of disaster. And yet the mere sound of Onoria's voice had driven him frantically, helter-skelter, toward the abyss of matrimony.

He raced from the cathedral to the station as a man flees from a burning building, his one idea being not to be caught by Onoria. Even if he had envisaged Onoria's face at one end of the race and matrimony at the other, it is probable that he would have continued running in the direction of matrimony. The true coward can see only one danger at a time, and falls light-heartedly into any other which lies in the opposite direction. It says a great deal for Peter Gubbins's heart that even in that awful moment of panic he dragged Elsie after him.

It was not till they were safe in the train that he began to wonder how on earth he was going to get rid of her. The chief obstacle to murder has always been the disposal of the body, and the problem of rescues is very similar to it. Peter wished with a burning longing that he could deposit Elsie in the cloak-room at Paddington Station, even if it involved his paying twopence a day for her forever.

After the tooth episode, it was wonderful how Elsie cheered up. She had found in Mr. Gubbins a prop and stay, and that was all she wanted. A flower grows without the support of a stick, but its carriage depends on being tied to it.

Elsie held her head up, and her mind, which was always practical, turned to Aunt Anne at Clapham.

They had a late tea in the station and sent off Elsie's telegram; then they took a taxi to Clapham. They could have gone as conveniently and more cheaply by train, but a taxi appealed to them both as more bucaneerish.

Peter enjoyed feeling bucaneerish until they reached the common; then he began to tremble before the idea of explaining things to Aunt Anne. He knew that he had done right, but he was aware that flight and guilt are to many people synonymous, and few men like to explain that they found it safer to run away.

Elsie, with incredible finesse, relieved him of this difficulty. She said she thought it would be better if he left her at the door and came back next day.

"You 'll have time then," she explained, "to think things over, and I know authors and people think of their plots better alone. Whatever you decide is sure to be wonderful, and Aunt Anne will be more likely to listen to me if you 're not there."

Peter gave a sigh of relief.

"Yes—yes," he agreed, "perhaps the explanation had better come from you direct. I know from personal experience that the way to tackle a difficult situation is easier to me if I am left alone face to face with it, as it were. Perhaps this is merely because I am a man. Onoria would say so; but, roughly speaking, I should say that women have the same gift."

"I don't know if it's a gift," said Elsie, modestly; "but I can't say anything if other people are there, and I can't say much if they are n't. But I 'll do what I can."

Aunt Aime required a good many explanations. She had never received a niece before at seven o'clock in the evening without a tooth-brush. She followed every explanation given by Elsie with:

"Still, I can't quite see, dear, how you have arrived without your night things. I am very glad to see you, of course, but it all sounds so precipitate."

It was on the edge of this precipice that Elsie fell asleep. She wisely kept Mr. Gubbins for breakfast. She then confessed to her Aunt Anne that she had not only run away from the oratorio because Miss Strickland did not like oratorios, but because Mr. Gubbins was with her, and Miss Strickland would have liked his presence even less than an oratorio.

Aunt Anne laid down her knife and fork and gazed at Elsie. The mystery was solved. It had been a mystery; it was now simply a crime. Aunt Anne had not understood before why Miss Strickland should object to certain parts of the Bible set to music. She herself was doubtful of opera, even if it had not been expensive; but sacred music was surely both educational and devout and not even very interesting. It was unreasonable for a high-school teacher to object to such a performance, but a young man!

Her gaze was awful, and Elsie shuddered under it, and, swallowing her tea hurriedly, choked.

When she had stopped choking. Aunt Anne said portentuously: "Is Mr. Gubbins a young man, Elsie?"

Elsie said that that depended on what you meant by young; she had known him for years and years, and he had gray hair and wore spectacles.

"Spectacles," said Aunt Anne, solemnly, "do not prevent youth, though they may disguise it. Gray hair is nothing. Am I to gather that there is some understanding between you and this—this Mr. Gubbins, Elsie, perhaps unknown to your dear parents?"

Elsie wriggled and twisted.

"They would n't mind him," she murmured forlornly; "at least I don't think so. Of course we understand each other in a way. I play his accompaniments."

"Elsie, you are hedging!" exclaimed Aunt Anne, majestically. "I must see this young man for myself."

Elsie was not really hedging. It she had seen a hedge, she would most certainly have taken shelter under it; but she was not aware of the exact danger her aunt supposed her to be avoiding.

The idea of marriage conveyed nothing personal to Elsie. Marriage was merely something that happened to other people, with a cake. She helped herself to marmalade, and hoped that Peter Gubbins would blow over.

Her aunt pursed up her lips and said, "This is dreadful"; but as Elsie refused to fall into the trap of asking what was dreadful, her aunt could not follow it up in any way except by telling Mary, the parlormaid, to show Mr, Gubbins, when he arrived, into her dead husband's study.

The study of a dead clergyman is not usually an invigorating spot. Aunt Anne was a massive lady, and she sat between Peter and the door. All the windows were closed as if on purpose. Even if Peter had had the courage to try to escape, it would have been very difficult. You cannot get out of dead people's rooms briskly without appearing heartless; besides, he had not the courage.

Peter was not as surprised at Aunt Anne's attitude as Elsie would have been, but he was more frightened. He saw in Aunt Anne's eye that matrimony had fallen upon him like a bolt from the blue.

One cannot put bolts back into the blue when they have fallen, and one could not dislodge the idea of matrimony from Aunt Anne's mind when once it had taken root there. If young people would go to oratorios together, they ought to be married. She saw that quite plainly, even without the lawless journey at the other end, which made the prospect, as she explained to Peter, "simply compulsory."

"You see," she explained, "Elsie arrived here literally without a tooth-brush. Need I say more?"

Peter assured her that there really was no need. It contained the case against them in a nutshell.

On the whole, he was not averse into being frightened into marriage with Elsie. One or two things had to be made perfectly plain before he would consent to it. One was that they should not go back to Little Ticklington on any account, and the other that the marriage should take place as quietly as possible without wedding guests. They might have relatives, but not friends. It was all terribly uncertain and disintegrating, but it was not as terrible as having to face Onoria.

Peter proposed to Elsie quite easily. He simply said:

"On the whole, I think the best way out for both of us is to be married. For a long time I have been feeling Little Ticklington too restricted for me mentally. One needs to be nearer the great pulse of life. Not too near, of course. I thought somewhere in the suburbs—Chiswick, for instance. There are some nice little houses in that direction, or Turnham Green. I could cultivate sweet-peas there, and yet attend literary causeries in London. Of course it's a great upheaval for both of us, especially at my age; but looking at it all round, it appears to me the wisest course to take. What do you feel about it?"

Elsie nodded. She was n't looking at it all round. She was seeing that it involved her not having to meet Onoria just yet. She said yes; she thought it was the best plan, if Peter did n't mind.

Peter said:

"You must take the rough with the smooth." Of course he had not contemplated such a step for many years, but he thought that if they were very careful and took things quietly they might be able to manage.

He understood from Aunt Anne that one wrote to the bishop's chaplain for a license, and did not have to see the bishop. The conversation came to an abrupt pause. Their eyes met guiltily, and they looked away from each other.

What were they going to do about Onoria? Peter hummed, and Elsie twiddled her fingers. Onoria never allowed these mitigations of self-control to take place. It was a great relief to them. They decided, in silence, to do nothing. It was as if they had been married already.

Peter said he had one or two things to do, and left her. Aunt Anne came in and wept on Elsie's neck and they decided to go out and do a little shopping.

Everything went quite smoothly. Elsie's parents came up to town, and were very pleased when they discovered that Peter had six hundred a year in trust funds, without counting what he made by his articles. They privately thought that marriage from Clapham was absurd, but Peter was unexpectedly firm upon the subject. He quite simply asserted that at Little Ticklington no such marriage would ever take place. He would marry Elsie at Clapham or he would not marry Elsie at all.

Mrs. Binns, Peter's former housekeeper, brought Samson up to town in a basket. Samson would not speak to Peter for several days, but he ate heartily.

It was the night before the wedding that Peter and Elsie heard of the death of Prendergast. Mrs. Binns had bought Peter a china dog as a wedding present, and this had put it into her head. Elsie and Peter concealed their emotion until they were alone; then they gazed at each other in sympathetic anguish. They could no longer keep silence about Onoria.

"Oh," said Elsie, "if only we could give Onoria another pug. Perhaps she would see then that we are n't really doing anything to upset her; and besides she would n't mind so much if she had something—you know what I mean—something of her own to fall back upon?"

"I was thinking the same thing myself," agreed Peter. "Between you and me, Onoria never had quite the subtlety for cats. Samson would never look at her, but dogs she knew through and through. I think she would appreciate our getting her a dog. It might heal any little breach that our—our coming together may have appeared to cause."

They bought a pug puppy directly after the marriage, on the way to Chiswick.

It was an expensive animal, and it relieved their feelings very much. Onoria would have returned it to them had she not discovered, on opening the basket, that with their usual inefficiency they had sent the poor little creature to her in a most deplorable condition.

First it had to be fed, and then a carbolic bath was more than indicated, and after Onoria had spent several hours over the puppy, she began to feel that it would be cruelty to send it back. It was obvious that neither of the Gubbins could take proper care of a dog.

Onoria never altogether lost touch with Peter and Elsie. She told them what she thought of them when she acknowledged the pug; but letters do not carry sound. They became used to the idea of what Onoria thought of them; it seemed less significant at Chiswick.

Onoria spent a night with them every now and then, and once a year they visited her for a week-end at Little Ticklington. Of course it was not the same thing. Onoria was just the same, and the Gubbins were not really very different; but they were more critical of Onoria. They did not stand up to her before her face, but they stood up to her behind her back quite easily. When Onoria got the better of them in argument, as she invariably did, they would wait until she was out of ear-shot. Then they would smile and say to each other with the secret consciousness of superior achievement:

"It stands to reason that an unmarried woman like Onoria can't understand things as we do. She has n't had the experience."