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bankers, on whom they were drawn, consisted mainly of the funds
of the Walden Art Colony.
Yet what could he have done? To-morrow the bills, once renewed,
with a foolish youngster's name at the back of them, would fall due.
His father, to whom he had trusted, had refused help. The forcing of
the youngster to pay would at the least create scandal, and scandal
would mean loss of reputation, loss of Ella, and general downfall.
Misappropriation of the funds saved his credit for a season. It would
give him time to urge on his marriage, whilst he cunningly arrested
the progress of the Colony. Once married, he was practically master
of Ella's fortune. A pretext for obtaining a few thousands, so as to
replace the misappropriated sum with his bankers, would easily be
found by a man of his resource. Before posting the letters he had
felt the half-contemptuous exhilaration of the gambler who bets on a
certainty. But now that the bet was entered and made final, doubts
and fears began to assail him. He looked two years older as he
walked down St. James's Street to his club.
A whisky and apollinaris restored his nerves, so that when young
Lathrop, who had backed the bills, came up to him with a long face,
he was able to assume his southern manner.
“Dearest of friends—” he began.
“It strikes me, Usher, you'll be the dearest of friends to-morrow,”
broke in the young man,—“those confounded bills, you know.”
“Bills!” cried Roderick. “What are you talking to me of bills for? Do
you think I am going to let the bloodsuckers feast upon your young
and beauteous form? My child, put aside that pessimism which is
sapping your youth. Behold, Israel is satisfied.”
He drew his cheque-book from his pocket and showed the
counterfoils to the two cheques. Lathrop looked intensely relieved.
Then he blushed and stammered. He was devilish sorry; but the
time was getting so close. Would Usher have a drink? Roderick
assented and drank another whisky and apollinaris.
 “You needn't noise abroad the fact of my astounding solvency,” he
said, before they parted. “I hope you haven't told any one about the
bills.”
“Only Urquhart. I saw him last night,” said the young man.
“You'll be a Metternich yet, Willie,” replied Roderick. As young
Lathrop belonged to the diplomatic service, he was dimly conscious
that his friend's remark was in some fashion ironical. But Roderick
waved him a flourishing adieu and swaggered out of the club.
A man met him on the steps.
“Seen Willie Lathrop lately?”
Roderick looked him squarely between the eyes.
“He 's a braying jackass,” he said.
Having thus conveyed an answer to the implied question and
given vent to his anger at the same time, he hailed a cab and drove
to Pont Street. It was a foggy, murky day. Already the lights had
appeared in shop windows, and, where they streamed, the
pavement and roadway glistened in brown slime. Impressionable to
external surroundings, Roderick shivered and drew his fur coat
closer round him. The world wore an air of hopeless depression. On
such a day no human undertaking could prosper. It was only his
intellectual contempt for superstition that restrained him from
turning round and driving back to his club. The dreary stretch of
Sloane Street seemed interminable. At last he arrived and was
shown up to the drawing-room. Lady Milmo, Ella, and a lady visitor
were having afternoon tea. He exerted himself to amuse in his usual
way, but his efforts resulted in failure. When should he be able to
see Ella alone? The lady visitor seemed resolved to outstay him. She
plied him with questions concerning the Colony. He replied vaguely.
Realisation of the project was a long way off. To start such a concern
otherwise than on a sound financial basis was magnificent, but it
was not business. He was thinking of a last appeal to the public. Ella
listened, somewhat out of spirits. Roderick's pessimistic utterances
argued loss of faith in the Colony. He caught her glance fixed upon
him with perturbed questioning, and his depression deepened.
At last they were alone. He cleared his throat and plunged into the
midst of things. Speech restored his confidence. He made an
eloquent appeal. He loved her, worshipped her; the deferring of their
marriage to an indefinite date was making his heart sick, robbing
him of energy and the joy of life. Christmas it must be. He hinted at
personages waiting for their marriage to subscribe largely to the
fund. What had the marriage to do with it? Well, he was an artist, a
Bohemian; his very class did not inspire confidence. But his marriage
would set upon him the seal of irreproachable responsibility. He
pleaded desperately, the restoration of the three thousand pounds
being his paramount and imperative aim. His heart sank at the
coldness with which she received his fervour. His ear detected the
note of insincerity, to which he felt conscious she, too, was sensitive.
“I can't marry you yet, Roderick,” she said, at length, wearily. “I
can't. It means too much.”
“Then you don't love me,” he exclaimed, starting to his feet. The
old dramatic device did not succeed.
“Sometimes I do,” she said. “At others—I don't know—I shall love
you wholly when we realise our dreams.”
“That will be the Great Never Never,” he replied tragically, “for
when did man ever realise his dreams?”
The dressing gong sounded through the house. She rose and put
out her hand.
“You must be patient with me, Roderick. Usually you understand
so finely; can't you understand now?”
“I understand that you are a woman of an imperious will, to which
it will always be my pride to bow,” he responded.
 There was no help for it. No more pleading could move her that
afternoon. He had to take his leave. When the drawing-room door
shut behind him, his expression changed, and he descended the
stairs cursing the Colony and all who were concerned therein. He
went back to his club, dined, lost fifty pounds at cards, and went to
bed morose and miserable.
The next morning he was greatly surprised by a visit from
Sylvester. He was sitting in the well-lit corner room of his chambers,
which he had converted into a studio, in front of the new picture he
was painting from Ella's conception. His heart was not in it. No good
could ever come from such tame propriety. And there he sat in an
armchair, his legs extended compass-wise, glowering at the picture,
when Sylvester came in.
“What fog has driven you here, camarado?” he cried. “You have
arrived in season. This beastly world is standing on its head, and I
don't know what to make of it. Sit down and have some absinthe,
the only true comfort the devil has vouchsafed us.”
He pointed to a glass of the opalescent liquid by his side. Sylvester
declined the consolation.
“I want to have a little talk with you about your marriage,” said he.
“Oh, damn my marriage!” exclaimed Roderick, irritably. “I tell you
the idiot world is gyrating indecently on its occiput; my engagement
with the rest of things.”
“Is it broken off?” inquired Sylvester, hopefully.
“The same thing. Postponed to the Millennium.”
“The Colonial Millennium—?”
“Yes. You are quite right, fratello mio, to keep clear of women and
their works. No man can ever fathom their infinite
incomprehensibility. Look here—” He rose and marched about the
studio, burning with a sense of his wrongs and led by the instinct of
his temperament to give vent to his grievances. “I love that girl with
an imbecile passion. Art is great, but love is greater. I would make a
holocaust of all that is dear to me in the world in the sacred name of
Art. Am I not ready to expatriate myself? Have I not been working
like Sisyphus for months? But I can't throw my elemental sex into
the blaze. Six months' waiting is enough for all but anchorites. Do I
look like an anchorite? I urge her to fix the marriage at Christmas.
She's as hard as your Philistine's head. We must wait until the
Colony is a fait accompli. How is it going to be accomplished without
money?”
“I thought the scheme was getting along famously,” interposed
Sylvester.
“So did I, but it isn't. It hasn't appealed to the imagination of this
haggis-brained public, and so funds remain stationary. As if this
worry and disappointment isn't enough for a man! Point d'argent,
point de Suisse. No money, no colony. No colony, no marriage. The
two things could never be connected save in the ineffable
convolutions of the feminine brain.”
“I see,” said Sylvester. “It is hard lines on you.”
He was intensely relieved by Roderick's confidences; could afford
even to be magnanimous. Since his avowal to Ella of hostile
intentions, he had felt it his duty to inform Roderick of his attitude.
He had come this morning prepared to make a declaration of war.
There were several little things he had learned incidentally of
Roderick's past career, with which he had intended to confront him.
The memory of Mr. Snodgrass informing the small boy that he was
going to begin came into his mind as he mounted the stairs, and he
smiled grimly. But, after all, no one had ever questioned the chivalry
of Mr. Snodgrass's motives. His first words on entering were an
announcement of the object of his visit. Roderick had implicitly
declared that object to be futile. To proceed further would be to
attack a fallen man. To express satisfaction would be to triumph over
a foe's discomfiture. He therefore expressed conventional sympathy.
It was hard lines.
Roderick caught up the phrase and wove it into a fugue of
indignant lamentation. Luck never came his way. The stars in their
courses had fought against him since his cradle.
“Some men's touch turns everything to gold; mine to brass and
deuced gimcrack brass at that. I've never loved a dear gazelle; but if
I had, the disastrous animal would have got mange or delirium
tremens and turned round and bitten me and given me hydrophobia.
I suppose it's because of my general nefariousness. I wish I had
been an austere embodiment of the seven deadly virtues like you,
amigo. Then I should have waxed fat and prosperous. But there,” he
added, lighting a cigar, “that's enough. I don't know why I'm
washing you in this torrent of my discontent.”
“If it has done you any good, I am not sorry to have heard it,” said
Sylvester. “As for the Colony, I never did think much of the idea, you
know. It is outside the sphere of practical affairs altogether. Besides,
you could never stay more than a month away from Piccadilly.”
“It meant a means of livelihood for this profitless child of nature,
anyway,” said Roderick, watching the wreaths of his cigar-smoke.
“Pardon me if I take a liberty,” said Sylvester, “but I was under the
impression that your father made you a good allowance.”
Roderick stared at him for a moment and then laughed loud.
“You don't know Usher senior. How much the old man has, or
where the devil it all came from, I have no idea; but I don't get any
of it. And when he descends to realms below, he'll bequeath it all to
a home for decayed postage-stamp collectors. No; I get what I earn.
The Colony was a fixed income.”
“Well, you'll have to settle down to something else,” said Sylvester,
consolingly.
 “And meanwhile you can go and persuade our fair enthusiast that
the Colony is all a fizzle and that she must shed happiness upon the
head of your devoted friend at Christmas!”
“I don't think I can do that,” said Sylvester, drily. He pulled out his
watch, announced his departure. Roderick shook his hand effusively.
“But, by the way,” said he, “you haven't told me what you came
for—my marriage—?”
“Oh, after what you've said about the matter that can wait,”
replied Sylvester, hurriedly, and he left his friend to his artistic
solitude.
Roderick felt somewhat ashamed and somewhat relieved after his
burst of confidence. To cry defeat after the first reverse seemed the
part of a craven. Thus were women not won. He determined to
return to the attack, to choose his time more wisely. A week later he
caught Ella in a brighter mood. He had exerted himself to please, to
kindle her enthusiasms, which shone from cheeks and eyes. He
struck the personal chord, watched eagerly, seemed to perceive it
vibrate through her. Then he urged once more. She changed
suddenly, held out a warning hand.
“Not that again, Roderick,” she said. “You must not make me
dread your coming. Some women yield to insistence; it only hardens
me. I thought you knew me better.”
“Then the Colony shall start at Christmas; I swear it,” he cried
magniloquently, and the remainder of the interview flowed more
smoothly.
It is all very well to command events. But whether they will obey
is a different matter. During the last few weeks Roderick had
succeeded in his design to quash the Colony in so far as to alienate
several hesitating supporters. To win these back was no easy matter.
Moreover, his old power of persuasion seemed to have failed him.
There was a period when he had deluded himself into the belief that
the Colony was a practicable scheme. But the moment it had
appeared contrary to his own interest and he had regarded it
dispassionately, he despised it from the depths of his soul as an
inane chimera. To have to simulate a burnt out enthusiasm was
irksome; he failed to carry conviction. And meanwhile he was a prey
to gnawing anxiety. How was he to replace the three thousand
pounds? He anathematised the feminine temperament.
The feminine temperament, however, was not in that state of
dispassionate, yet unreasoning decision in which he imagined it to
be. These were unhappy days for Ella. She seemed to have become
to herself a vague entity wandering in a land of shadows, forced by
some unknown power therein to wander, and finding her only hope
of salvation in one elusive light that gleamed fitfully in the distance.
Her aunt, being a practical woman, was quick to notice the habitual
contraction of her brow and the wearied preoccupation in her eyes.
Nowadays she openly mocked at the Colony. On such occasions Ella
fired up, defended it with the fierceness of a forlorn hope. Lady
Milmo was puzzled. She even went the length of consulting
Sylvester, surprising him considerably by a morning call in Weymouth
Street.
“The Colony's a fraud, and she knows it's a fraud,” she said, in the
vernacular of her class. “And yet she pins her immortal soul to it.
Why doesn't she marry the man and be done with it? But no—she
won't do that. She's making herself ill because the Colony isn't likely
to come off, which is distinctly good business, and what on earth she
can find to interest her in the rubbishy scheme, goodness only
knows. If she only painted, or wrote poetry, or out-Wagnered
Wagner in immortal tunelessness, one could perhaps understand.
But she's no more artistic than you are.”
“I know I'm a Philistine,” smiled Sylvester, at the tribute of the
artless lady. “Is that why you 've come to me?”
“Oh, you know what I mean,” returned Lady Milmo. “Now can't
you put some sense into her, or get that dear Mr. Lanyon to do so?
It's my impression she isn't in love with him one little bit.”
“Then, for Heaven's sake, my dear Lady Milmo,” said Sylvester,
earnestly, “do all you can to impress that fact upon him!”
“I should be glad if the engagement were broken off,” said Lady
Milmo, reflectively.
“So would all the true friends of Ella Defries,” replied Sylvester.
Lady Milmo arched her eyebrows. She looked at him for a moment
quizzically.
“Is that purely a disinterested remark, Dr. Lanyon?”
“I would not marry one single woman that is now living on this
earth,” said Sylvester.
“Why, whatever have we poor creatures done to you? There are
some men, I know, who look upon women as a disease, but I'm sure
you 're not one.”
Sylvester scanned his finger nails,—a trick he had caught from his
father.
“One marriage is enough for a man, Lady Milmo,” he said in a low
voice.
Lady Milmo was conscious of an indiscretion. She escaped adroitly
and led the talk back to Roderick.
“I think we'd better get this silly affair of Ella's broken off, don't
you?” she said at parting.
“If you could manage it, my father and myself would be
exceedingly grateful to you,” he replied.
Lady Milmo was driving away, her kind head filled with schemes
for Ella's extrication, when, at the block at Oxford Circus, she caught
sight of a news-vendor wearing as an apron the coloured bill of an
early edition of an evening paper. Across it in enormous capitals ran
the startling legend, “Sudden Death of Sir Decimus Bland.”
“The best thing the pompous old idiot has ever done in his life!”
said Lady Milmo.
 CHAPTER XIII—THE USES OF
ADVERSITY

I
t was the music-room in Mr. Bevis Urquhart's mansion in Park
Street. The floor was polished, the walls panelled in white and
gold, the ceiling painted in the Watteau style. About forty
fashionably dressed people sat on gilded chairs in the body of the
room. High in front of them towered the organ; beneath it stretched
a low platform containing a white and gold grand piano pushed into
a corner, and a Louis XV. table, at which sat half a dozen men.
Among these was Roderick, looking worn and jaded, and from the
front row of the chairs Ella Defries viewed him in some concern. The
committee of the Walden Art Colony had called a general meeting of
those interested in the project, and Mr. Bevis Urquhart had lent his
music-room for the purpose.
Mr. Redmayne, R. A., had been voted into the chair. He was a
business-like looking little man, clean-shaven and precise in attire,
and he spoke in a dry, sharp way like a barrister. He announced to
the meeting what Roderick had heard some days before,—that Sir
Decimus Bland had died suddenly and had made no testamentary
provision for the Colony. They all had looked to him for the payment
of the Director's salary and for the guaranteeing of any pecuniary
deficit that might occur in working the concern. Their chief support
gone, it was for the meeting to decide whether the scheme should
be continued or abandoned. From a memorandum supplied by
Roderick he read a statement of accounts. Three thousand and
twenty pounds at Mr. Usher's bankers; two thousand promised. Was
there any person or combination of persons willing to fill Sir Decimus
Bland's place? He sat down. No one responded. Lord Eglington, a
withered gentleman with a cracked voice, rose from the committee
table, and after expounding the aim of the Colony regretfully
proposed the entire abandonment of the scheme. Mr. Bevis Urquhart
seconded the resolution.
Roderick caught an appealing glance from Ella and sprang to his
feet. He pleaded eloquently. He had worked with heart and soul to
organise the Colony; was ready to devote his existence to it. The
future of Art was at stake. Here was the one glorious chance the
century had offered to free Art from the shackles that had degraded
it and through its inexorable influence had degraded modern life.
Never had he felt such pain as when he had heard Lord Eglington
and Mr. Urquhart propose to dismiss the scheme to that unutterable
horror of desolation, the limbo of forsaken ideals. He adjured them
to weigh the vast responsibility they had taken upon themselves. He
urged those present to respond generously to his appeal for funds to
carry on the work.
“I speak as a man,” said he, “fighting for dear life, for all that is
sacred and holy to me in existence. I have pledged myself to bring
this boon upon the world, and I will do it ere I die.”
He sat down, flushed and excited. The company, moved by his
enthusiasm, applauded encouragingly. Ella rose.
“It will be a disgrace to us all if the motion is carried,” she said,
turning round to the general body. “Let us fill up a subscription list
now. I will head it with five thousand pounds.” She sat down. There
was a cold silence. Her heart sank with a feeling of shame at her
outburst. Qui m'aime me suive is sometimes an excellent battle-cry.
When no one follows, it falls deadly flat. She realised that most of
the people there knew her personal interest in the affair, and her
cheek grew hotter. Roderick stepped boldly down to her, and
whispered in her ear.
“You have the worshipping gratitude of all my life,” said he.
A man rose at the back of the room and began to speak. There
was a rustle of garments as every one turned to look at him. He was
a well-known journalist, the editor of a weekly paper that made a
specialty of diagnosing unsound institutions. Roderick tugged at his
Vandyke beard and watched him narrowly. He began in a light
bantering tone, described with delicate satiric touch the objects of
the Colony. Then he playfully analysed the idyllic conditions under
which the colonists would work. The meeting laughed. He sketched
the boredom, the universal hatred of the minor poet who insisted on
reading his poems aloud to the assembled Colony, the flirtations,
imbroglios, jealousies, the lady who paid nothing and went about
declaring that the food was not fit to eat. One by one he touched off
the types. The meeting was delighted. Then the speaker launched
out into a trenchant indictment of the whole scheme, disclosed its
absurdity, its financial rottenness, its infinite futility. He ended amid
rounds of laughter and applause. Ridicule had killed the scheme
outright. There were cries that the motion should be put. It was
carried almost by acclamation. Thus ended the great Walden Art
Colony.
“I did think you would stand by it, Urquhart,” said Roderick to the
young semimillionaire.
The people were beginning to disperse, among much laughter and
gossip. Ella had lingered on an imploring sign from Roderick.
Urquhart stifled a yawn and buttoned his frock-coat.
“My dear fellow,” said he, from the heights of his superior culture,
“if you would only study Pradovitch,—— the one genius this century
has produced,—study him as I have done, you would not fail to be
convinced that Art is the leprosy of life.”
For once Roderick lost his temper. An evil look came into his face.
“What a God-forsaken fool you are!” he snarled out. And turning
on his heel he joined Ella.
The young man turned to Lord Eglington.
“That's the worst of having to do with such canaille,” he said
languidly. But in spite of his assumption of supercilious indifference,
his face wore a malignant expression as he watched Roderick and
his companion disappear through the doorway. At the door however,
Roderick's indignation evaporated. It is no doubt an immense
satisfaction to tell a posturing imbecile exactly what you, think of
him, but when you have misappropriated a couple of thousands of
that imbecile's money without any reasonable prospect of restoring
it, the satisfaction is apt to be short hved.
Roderick and Ella gained the street without saying a word. A cab
sauntered up.
“Will you—?” began Roderick.
“I would sooner walk part of the way. Do you mind?”
“Delighted,” said Roderick.
“The room was so hot,” she explained, “and it is a beautiful
afternoon.”
They walked down Park Lane in silence, hanging dejected heads,
a new Adam and Eve driven from Eden. Now and then she glanced
sideways at him, to see his brow set and deep lines descending
parallel with his moustache and losing themselves in his beard. His
defeat seemed to have crushed him. Ella felt a pang of pity. She
touched his arm lightly.
“You must not take it too much to heart,” she said.
“I must,” he replied, with a gesture of despair. “To think it should
have all gone down like a house of cards!”
They crossed the road and entered the Park. The grey mists of the
early December afternoon were beginning to gather among the
trees. Far off a great crimson blur announced the setting sun. To
their right the statue of Achilles loomed grimly on its deserted
hillock. Roderick pointed to it with his stick.
 “Do you remember that Sunday afternoon six months ago, when
all was hope and sunshine?”
“Redmayne had just joined,” she remarked.
“And to-day he took the chair, so as to crush us. They had it all
arranged beforehand. A damnable conspiracy! And we were
powerless. It maddens me!”
His tones were those of intense feeling Ella was compelled to
comfort.
“You fought splendidly,” she said. “A man can't do more.”
He stopped abruptly in the path and laid both hands on her wrists
by her muff. A belated nursery maid wheeling a perambulator eyed
them dully.
“Bless you for the words! You cannot tell what your sympathy
means to me now.”
By a happy chance he had struck the right note. Tears came into
the girl's eyes. For the first time she was able to disassociate the
man from his work. She lost her own sense of disappointment in
womanly pity for the man who had been defeated while battling
against great odds.
“And bless you for the tears standing in those eyes!” said
Roderick.
They walked on. Somehow her hand found its way beneath his
arm. They spoke but little. Roderick's pulses fluttered with a new
hope; but his perceptions into the nature of women were too keen
to allow him to force an advantage. He wore his stricken air, yet
subtly conveyed to her the deep comfort of her sympathy. He
pressed her hand against his side and left her to work out the
situation for herself under these excellent conditions.
 Ella had never felt so near him. The unity in their golden dreams
had not bound them so closely as this unity in catastrophe. For even
when the dreams were most golden, she had haunting misgivings
that they were but visions. Outraged by Sylvester's trampling on her
heart, sickened at herself by her years reckless follies, eager, with all
a proud girl's passion, to vindicate herself, to follow some noble
standard, she had caught at the first that flaunted by and compelled
herself imperiously to believe in it. This forced faith had been the
strenuous labour of her inner life. She had armed herself in triple
brass against Lady Milmo's shafts of flippant satire, against Matthew
Lanyon's kindly wisdom, against her own common sense. The Colony
would be merely a paradise of cranks. No serious artist would throw
away his or her career in such a Cloud-cuckoo-land.
She herself, at the best but a well-taught amateur painter in
water-colours, what was she doing in that galley? She set aside
reason. To believe in Roderick, she must believe in the Colony. To
believe in the Colony, she must believe in Roderick. The two were
inextricably interfused. Realisation of the dreams was her only
justification for marrying the man. The man's personality and
enthusiasm for an ideal had overpowered her. She would not think.
She was young, inexperienced, warm-natured, seeing things out of
proportion. Flight from the self she had deemed dishonoured was
her only chance of salvation; and she mistook the imaginary cries
behind her, hounding her onward, for the voice of inexorable
necessity. If Roderick could accomplish it, the Colony was a glorious
thing. The Colony accomplished, Roderick was the conqueror to
whom she must yield. When the dreams were most golden she saw
him such, and they were near together.
But then had come the days of Roderick's loss of interest in the
scheme. He put her above the Colony, desired her above all things.
She shivered back. For himself alone she could not marry him. Why,
she could not tell. A girl with a mind pure and sweet does not
speculate on that which, traced logically to its source, is simply
elemental sexual repulsion. She clung fiercely to her point. Then
Roderick returned to the scheme with his old ardour. In her heart
she believed him passionately sincere. Misfortune had come with
terrible unexpectedness. He had fought and failed. He was a beaten
man. The dream had been brutally proved to have been the
emptiest of hallucinations. She was miserably cast down. Roderick
seemed broken-hearted. They were at one in an absolute cynical
reality. Both had been pierced by the same shaft. The doors of the
cranks' Eden had clanged behind them, and they were walking
together in the grey, dreary expanse of Hyde Park, with an unknown
world of the most definite prose before them. They seemed alone, to
have nothing in common with the rest of society; to have in common
with each other this all-filling humiliation of defeat. So when he
spoke, the unreasoning woman leaped to comfort the man. She had
never felt so near him. A great and natural revulsion of feeling had
lifted her heart to consolation.
They quitted the Park at Hyde Park Corner, and paused by
common impulse.
“I suppose you will take a cab now,” he said reluctantly.
“I suppose I must,” she said in the same tone. “I would ask you to
come with me, but it's auntie's day at home, and the place will be
full of chattering people.”
“I can't bear leaving you,” said he.
“Nor I you.”
“You look tired, poor child. Let me give you some tea. Will you? I
belong to a club in Piccadilly,—the Hyde Park, where ladies are
admitted to tea. It is the home of all the depressed outcasts of
London, and even they shun it. We are sure to be alone in the tea-
room. Come.”
He hailed a hansom. Ella, in that strange mood of passivity which
is woman's fatalest, entered without remark. He followed, and they
drove to the Hyde Park Club.
 As he had prophesied, the tea-room was empty, save for one
dejected member with his neck-tie riding over the back of his collar,
who stared at them for a moment and then passed out like a ghost.
A blazing fire, however, was burning in the grate, and the maroon
leather chairs and divans added a sense of warmth and comfort to
the room. The despondent ones took their seats in a little recess by
the fireplace, and Roderick ordered tea.
“It's a new club, and no two members are acquainted. It is the
most desolate place in London. A man comes here when he wants to
work out his suicide. There's no one to distract his thoughts. Then
he goes out and commits it.”
“Why did you join?” asked Ella, mechanically.
“Perhaps I foresaw this day. If your worshipped dearness had not
waited for me at Urquhart's, I should have come here—and God
knows what desperate remedies I should have brooded over. But I
never foresaw having you here to strengthen me. Thank Heaven I
did join, so as to have a haven of rest and quietude to bring you to.”
He passed his hand across his forehead wearily, and rested his
elbow on the little table in front of him.
“My God!” he said. “It has been a bitter day for me.”
The waiter brought a tray with tea and delicately baked scones.
Ella filled the cups and tried to cheer her companion, praising the
tea and the arrangements of the club. The warmth, the little sense
of novelty, working an unconscious influence, had brought back
animation to her face. She looked very fresh and winsome in the
man's eyes. They fixed themselves upon her despairingly. Ella
suddenly broke off her trivial chatter.
“Ah you must not,” she said, with a little choke to keep down the
tears. “There are so many great things left in the world to fight for
—. Oh, I wish I could help you!”
 “Bless you!” he replied solemnly—and how much was acting, and
how much was genuine, the man's Maker alone could tell, for the
man himself could not; “there is only one way in which you could
help me, and that must not be. You are rich, I am poor. We are no
longer working in the great common cause in which all such
differences could have been sunk. As a man of honour I must
release you from your engagement with me, for the conditions on
which our engagement was based have lapsed. You are quite free,
Ella, and I must go my way alone.”
He hid his face in his hands. Ella trifled with her tea-spoon.
“You are generous,” she said in a low voice. “But if your honour is
at stake, so is mine. I could not turn away from you in your hour of
need.”
“I am a defeated man,” he replied brokenly. “You would despise
me.”
The word pierced her like a knife. At that moment she was noble,
with the blind and piteous folly that is so often at the heart of
woman's nobility. She drew herself up proudly, then stretched her
arm impulsively across the table and closed her fresh young fingers
on his hand.
“I will marry you whenever you please, and we will face the world
together and begin a new life,” she said.

“My poor dear child,” said Lady Milmo, kissing Ella affectionately,
when she came home, “I am so sorry for you. Lady Elstree came
here straight after the meeting and told us all about it. But it was
bound to come to smash, darling.”
 “I suppose it was, auntie,” replied Ella, taking off her fur necklet.
She sat down on the fender stool and looked into the fire. Lady
Milmo came up and took one of her hands and petted it in her kindly
fashion.
“I'm very glad it's all over,” she said. “As soon as it became
serious, I never liked it, you know, dear. And now we can start
everything quite fresh, can't we?”
“Yes, quite fresh,” assented Ella.
“You see now,” continued Lady Milmo, “how wise it was to make
that condition about your engagement. I don't want to say anything
against Roderick, but he's an impossible visionary, dear. I always
hated the idea of your marrying him. It is all broken off now, isn't
it?”
To Lady Milmo's great astonishment, the girl suddenly burst into a
fit of miserable crying. She knelt by her and petted her comfortingly.
“It will be quite easy, my child. I will write him a kind little note
about it, and you can go down to Ayresford and take care of that
dear Uncle Matthew of yours.”
“Oh, auntie,” cried Ella at last, “you don't understand. I promised
Roderick this afternoon to marry him in a fortnight's time.”
 CHAPTER XIV—AT AYRESFORD

W
hilst the meeting was taking place that brought the Walden
Art Colony to ludicrous collapse, Sylvester was on his way
to Ayresford to pay one of his periodical Saturday to
Monday visits. Matthew, with Dorothy clinging to his finger, met him
at the station. Sylvester took the child up in his arms and kissed her,
striving hard to respond to her demonstrations of affection. But his
heart had turned from her. She was the embodiment of a perpetual
pain.
Sylvester's bag being taken in charge by the gardener's boy, the
trio walked up to the house, Dorothy skipping between them. The
old man looked proudly and lovingly down at her. Sylvester caught
the glance from time to time, and a pang queerly like jealousy
passed through him. If only he could love the small thing as he had
loved her two years ago! But it was impossible. It was a question of
blood instinct; she came of an alien race. He passed the house
where he had lived with Constance, where Frank Leroux had died
after the confession of his miserable secret. To the man's gloomy
fancy it appeared a lie in brick. Only when he found himself alone
with his father in the familiar library did he put away these
imaginings and wear a clearer brow.
“I hope the marriage is as far off as ever,” said Matthew, warming
his hands before the fire. Sylvester laughed.
“It seems to be postponed to the Greek Kalends. She won't marry
until he takes her to this Colony in the air—and that will be never.
The whole thing will die a natural death.”
“I hope so indeed,” replied Matthew, reflectively. “She ought to
marry a better man.”
 He glanced involuntarily at his son, and their eyes met, and each
saw that the other understood the reference.
“I know you wanted me to marry her,” said Sylvester, awkwardly.
“I couldn't. I'm sorry.”
Matthew raised his hand, as if about to speak; but the habit of
reserve held him back. A word might have unlocked the son's heart,
but the word remained unspoken. Sylvester dismissed the subject by
saying in a lighter manner,—
“It's none of my business, but I often wonder what Roderick lives
on.”
“He is an artist and a literary man. I suppose he sells his wares,”
said Matthew.
“Possibly he does. In fact, I suppose he must. I always was under
the impression that his father made him a handsome allowance.”
“Usher allows him a few hundreds a year,” said the old man, in a
matter-of-fact tone.
“Apparently we are both wrong, then. Usher hasn't allowed him a
penny for years. Roderick told me so himself.”
Matthew started in his chair, and his face wore an expression of
great anxiety.
“Impossible!” he said almost angrily.
“I only quote Roderick's explicit statement. And I fancy for once in
a way he wasn't lying.”
Then he saw his father white and aged, his kind lips quivering, his
breath coming fast. In concern he rose, bent over him.
“Why, you 're ill—” he began.
But Matthew pushed him away gently.
 “Nonsense, my boy. It's only one of those confounded pains about
my heart. There, it's all gone now. Don't worry. It's this hot room. I
think I'll go out for a stroll.”
“You had better lie down,” said the physician.
“Yes, and stick out my tongue and chew that thermometer of
yours! No, thank you. There!” He rose to his feet, and held himself
erect. “I'm as strong as a horse.”
“I don't like your going out,” said Sylvester.
The other looked at his watch. “I must, for a bit,” he said. “Go up
and talk to your aunt for an hour before dinner. She's dying to hear
all the gossip.”
It was useless to try to restrain him. He had an imperious will to
which Sylvester had yielded all his life. So the son went upstairs, and
the father put on his overcoat and walked at a brisk pace through
the dark December evening to the house of his enemy.
Mr. Usher put down the “Financial News” and rose from his chair
as Matthew entered the room.
“My dear friend, how great a surprise! You have come for a
reconciliation. It is a Christian thing. I too am a Christian, Matthew.”
“I have come to ask you a question,” said Matthew, ignoring the
other's proffered hand. “Roderick denies that he receives any
allowance from you. Is that true?”
“I am too poor to make my son an allowance,” replied Usher.
“You know what I mean,” replied Matthew, sternly. “I pay £100 a
quarter into your banking account for you to remit, as from yourself,
to Roderick. Does he get it?”
Ushers eyes shifted from Matthew's glance. He shuffled a step
towards the fireplace before replying.
 “You outrage a father's feelings, Matthew. I live for my son. You
yourself have a son.”
Matthew strode up to him and laid a hand on his collar.
“Confound it, sir, answer my question! Roderick states that he
hasn't received a penny from you for years. Have you kept all these
sums back from him? By God! you shall speak.”
Involuntarily he shook him in his angry grasp. Usher was scared.
“No violence, Matthew.”
Matthew released him with a contemptuous exclamation.
“I see by your face you have kept the money. I was a fool to trust
you. You're an infernal mean-spirited hound. I've known that for
years. But I never thought you would rob your son.”
“He's not your son—At least,” he added with an ugly smile, “I
presume not. I have trained him as I have thought judicious. I am a
judicious man.”
“You 're a damned thief,” said Matthew. Usher waved his hand
towards the door.
“I think you had better go. I do not like to see an old man so
carried away by passion. It will shorten your life. I am always calm.”
Matthew regarded him for a moment, astounded. Then he spoke in
blazing anger: “You show me the door? You? Sit down in that chair
at once.” Usher obeyed. “There! I stay in this house as long as I
choose. It is mine,—everything in it paid for with my heart's blood.
By God, if we were younger men, I should thrash you within an ace
of your life! Now then—let me see your passbooks for the last six
years. Give them to me at once, I say.”
Instinctively Usher shrank before Matthew's tone of authority. He
rose, whimpering allusions to his own poverty and Matthew's
domineering ways, and extracted a set of vellum-covered books from
a safe in a corner of the room. Matthew threw his hat and stick upon
a chair, and sat down, by the round table on which Usher had laid
the books. The latter resumed his armchair on the opposite side and
watched him furtively as he scanned the pages with practised eye
and bent brows. When Matthew was dangerous, he had no power to
resist. The craven within him yielded to the stronger personality. But
he hated Matthew with a deadlier hatred. Even now, in the moment
of his humiliation, there was a gleam in his eyes of a revengeful joy
at the imperious man's discovery of the manner in which he had
been fooled for years past. He rubbed his palms softly together
beneath the level of the table.
There was a dead silence, broken only by the faint rustling of the
leaves as Matthew turned them over. At last, when he had looked
through the books, he rose and returned his glasses to their little
leather case. His face was gray and peaked. There on the table lay
incontrovertible proof that his life's atonement had been frustrated,
that instead of smoothing Roderick's path, he had merely been
pandering to Usher's senile vices. A whole fortune had gone in
insane speculations, rotten companies for the exploitation of
imaginary mines, futile inventions, wild-cat schemes. Here and there
were amounts for £100, £200, paid to names which he recognised
as those of great postage-stamp dealers. Not once had a cheque
been drawn payable to Roderick. On the credit side were two large
sums which he himself had paid to extricate Roderick from special
difficulties. On the debit side was nothing to correspond. He felt
stricken with sudden age. But he drew himself up haughtily lest
Usher should see his despair.
“And you have been lying, I perceive,” said he, “when you have
come to me for money to pay Roderick's debts,—or else you haven't
paid them.”
“I have paid them all—all his debts—with securities, Matthew.
That is why nothing is in my pass-book.”
Matthew shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.
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