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British Diplomacy in Turkey,
1583 to the present
 Diplomatic Studies

Series Editor
Jan Melissen
Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’

VOLUME 3
 British Diplomacy in Turkey,
1583 to the present

A study in the evolution of the

resident embassy

By
G. R. Berridge
Senior Fellow, DiploFoundation
Emeritus Professor of International Politics, University of Leicester

LEIDEN • BOSTON
2009
On the cover: Pera House: garden front, May 1987 (with kind permission of Patricia
Daunt) and the Ankara Embassy: south front of the Residence, late 1980s (with kind
permission of Timothy Daunt)

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Berridge, Geoff.
British diplomacy in Turkey, 1583 to the present : a study in the evolution of the
resident embassy / by G.R. Berridge.
p. cm. — (Diplomatic studies, ISSN 1872-8863 ; v. 3)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-17639-3 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Great Britain—Foreign relations—Turkey. 2. Turkey—Foreign relations—
Great Britain. 3. Diplomatic and consular service—Great Britain—History. I. Title.
II. Series.

DA47.9.T8B469 2009
327.410561—dc22
2009017066

ISSN 1872-8863
ISBN 978 90 04 17639 3

Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission
from the publisher.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by

Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to
The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910,
Danvers, MA 01923, USA.
Fees are subject to change.

printed in the netherlands

For Cathy and Will, with love
 CONTENTS

List of illustrations ............................................................................. xi

Preface ................................................................................................. xiii
Acknowledgements ............................................................................ xv
List of abbreviations .......................................................................... xvii
Maps ..................................................................................................... xix
Illustrations

Introduction ........................................................................................ 1

PART A

EVOLUTION

Chapter One ‘The English Palace’ ................................................ 7

The early embassy ......................................................................... 8
Home ownership—and its woes ................................................. 12
The difficult birth of the Smith-Barry embassy ........................ 14
Mixed reviews and another fire .................................................. 18
The embassy ‘fleet’ ......................................................................... 22

Chapter Two Diplomats ................................................................ 24

The ambassador ............................................................................. 24
The domestic family ...................................................................... 36
The official family .......................................................................... 38
The importance of size ................................................................. 46

Chapter Three Dragomans ............................................................ 49

Raising the cry for ‘natural-born Englishmen’ ......................... 52
Oriental secretary and first dragoman: “two bad public
servants instead of one good one” ......................................... 55
The weakening of the dragomanate ........................................... 58
Levantine rearguard ...................................................................... 64
No career for the dragomans ...................................................... 67

Chapter Four Consuls .................................................................... 75

Creation of the network ............................................................... 75
viii contents

Trading consuls, and Levantines ................................................ 78

Hornby’s Supreme Consular Court ........................................... 81
The founding of the Levant Service ........................................... 84
Political consuls ............................................................................. 86
The consulate-general: controversy and contraction .............. 90
“The step-child of the Foreign Office” ....................................... 93

Chapter Five Communications ..................................................... 98

“Ye surest, and most speedy conveyance you can” ................. 99
The consequences of poor communications ............................ 103
Reducing the need for good communications ......................... 105
Searching for improvements ....................................................... 108
“The telegraph frenzy” .................................................................. 109

PART B

TWENTIETH CENTURY ROLE

Introduction to Part B ...................................................................... 121

Chapter Six Foreigners and Sailors, 1914–24 ............................. 123

The British Section, 1914–18 ....................................................... 123
The British High Commission, 1918–24 ................................... 128

Chapter Seven Reluctantly to Ankara, 1924–38 ........................ 140

A dragomanate by any other name . . . ....................................... 140
An ‘embassy’ in spite of everything ........................................... 142
Ankara in spite of everything ...................................................... 143
Mosul 1926—“disposing of the Turk” ....................................... 145
Two-centre embassy ..................................................................... 151
Making bricks without straw ....................................................... 156
Political reporting and intelligence gathering .......................... 159
Losing the monopoly of bilateral agreements .......................... 163

Chapter Eight Embassy at War, 1939–44 ................................... 168

Negotiating the Anglo-Turkish alliance .................................... 171
Following up the treaty ................................................................ 175
Militarization of the embassy ...................................................... 177
Frustrating SOE ............................................................................. 182
Struggling to coordinate propaganda ........................................ 193
Juggling high-level visitors ........................................................... 197
Scripting a spy film: the ‘Cicero’ affair ...................................... 200
 contents ix

Chapter Nine Business as Usual, 1945–74 .................................. 204

Return to peacetime mode .......................................................... 204
NATO, payments, and planes ..................................................... 209
A typical medium-sized post ....................................................... 217
Cyprus: “the main preoccupation of the Embassy” ................ 224
Still juggling high-level visitors ................................................... 233

Chapter Ten Business above all? 1974–2008 .............................. 237

Trouble with trucks ...................................................................... 240
Still a ‘comprehensive post’ ......................................................... 249
Drugs and immigrants ................................................................. 255
Two-centre embassy once more ................................................. 261

Conclusion .......................................................................................... 273

Appendices
1 British ambassadors to Turkey, 1583–2008 ........................ 283
2 Turkish ambassadors to Britain, 1793–2008 ...................... 287
3 Royal instructions to Lord Chandos, 29 December 1680 289
4 British consular posts and consular officers in the
Ottoman Empire, 1852 .......................................................... 292
5 Comparative statement of extraordinary expenses of HM
Embassy at Constantinople, 1857–69 .................................. 295
6 Cumberbatch’s letter to Waugh from the US Embassy
in Constantinople, March 1915 ............................................ 296
7 Non-career staff employed at the British Consulate-
General, Istanbul, 1946 .......................................................... 298
8 British consuls-general at Istanbul, 1806–2008 ................. 300
9 Anglo-Turkish bilateral agreements (with place of
signing) presented to the House of Commons,
1945–2000 ................................................................................ 302

List of works cited ............................................................................. 311

Index .................................................................................................... 323

 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. The Grand Vizir giving Audience to the English Ambassador

(© Trustees of the British Museum)
2. Early ambassador: Sir Paul Pindar (unknown engraver and artist)
3. Early eighteenth century ambassadress: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
(photograph by Dawson of a portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller)
4. Summer embassy: Therapia, late nineteenth century (unknown
photographer)
5. Judge of the British Supreme Consular Court at Constantinople:
Sir Edmund Hornby (Elliott and Fry, Ltd.)
6. The embassy ruins after the great fire of 1870 (Illustrated London
News, 2 July 1870)
7. Constantinople firemen (Illustrated London News, 18 June 1870)
8. Mid-nineteenth century ambassador: Lord Stratford de Redcliffe
(photogravure by Walker & Cockerell from a portrait by G. F. Watts)
9. Oriental attaché: Percy Smythe (later 8th Viscount Strangford)
(unknown photographer)
10. Late nineteenth century ambassador: Sir Henry Layard (photo-
gravure by Walker & Cockerell from a photograph by Fradelle &
Young)
11. Late nineteenth century ambassador: Sir Henry Elliot (Vanity Fair,
17 March 1877)
12. Levantine dragoman: Hugo Marinitch in the embassy’s slave depart-
ment (unknown photographer)
13. Levant consul: Ardern G. Hulme-Beaman (unknown photographer)
14. Queen’s Messenger: Captain Philip Wynter (photograph by
W. Forshaw)
15. Early twentieth century ambassador: Sir Gerard Lowther (unknown
photographer)
16. Early twentieth century ambassadress: Alice Lady Lowther (unknown
photographer)
17. “The cramped and inconvenient cottage . . . now only a standing
challenge to the prestige of the British Empire” (Sir George Clerk,
29 June 1927): The first British Embassy building at Ankara, 1926
(unknown photographer)
xii list of illustrations

18. Early twentieth century ambassador: Sir Horace Rumbold (unknown

photographer)
19. The only British general who could speak Turkish: General Sir James
Marshall-Cornwall (unknown photographer, with kind permission
of the Lady Middleton)
20. Mid-twentieth century ambassador with his staff: Sir Bernard Burrows,
Ankara, 29 October 1960 (unknown photographer)
21. Pera House: garden front, May 1987 (with kind permission of
Patricia Daunt)
22. The Ankara Embassy: south front of the Residence, late 1980s (with
kind permission of Timothy Daunt)
 PREFACE

This book has been my default research project for the last twelve years.
It has, in other words, been picked up and set aside depending on the
pressure of other demands, though for about the last 18 months I have
worked on it virtually non-stop. If I had realised how much labour it
would entail I would probably never have started it but I have no regrets.
The late Christopher Hughes, brilliant and eccentric, whose influence
was still present in the Department of Politics at Leicester when I
arrived 30 years ago, used to maintain that in order to challenge their
own thinking political theorists should also study a particular govern-
ment in depth; and it is for this reason that, though chiefly interested
in Hegel, he was possibly better known for his work on Switzerland.
Something of this approach must have rubbed off on me because when
I developed a general interest in diplomacy I thought that I had better
study one embassy in depth. I chose the British Embassy in Turkey, I
think (it was a long time ago) because of its colourful history, and it
has certainly challenged and—I hope—enriched my general thinking
in countless ways.
In 1968 the Foreign Office became the ‘Foreign and Commonwealth
Office’ but it is now commonly referred to once more as the ‘Foreign
Office’. For the sake of simplicity it is this name that I use throughout
the book. Occasionally I also employ terms now current rather than
those in use at the relevant time, such as ‘prenegotiations’ rather than
‘preliminaries’. This may make some retired diplomats wince but should
make it easier for scholars and students searching this book for illustra-
tions to find what they are looking for.
As to proper names, I have in general relied on the British usage that
was current at the time being discussed; hence for example ‘Constan-
tinople’ until the late 1920s and ‘Istanbul’ thereafter.

G. R. B., Leicester, February 2009

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rather than of Lucy) a pleasant and comfortable one—that is, if
those children——
A step descending the stair, a whispering of silk—and Mr.
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have been warranted by the vision that appeared there.
She came quickly toward him and gave him her hand. “How kind
of you to remember me and come to see me!” she said. “And how
inhospitable you’re thinking me to have kept you waiting so long in
such a stuffy room!” She turned to the nearest window as she
spoke, and began to struggle delicately with the catch of the old-
fashioned “inside shutters.” “We’ll let some air in and some light,
too; so that we can both see how little we’ve changed. The children
were the reason I was so long: they were washed and dressed like
little clean angels, but they’re in rather high spirits—you know how
children are for the first few days after coming to a new place—and
they slipped down into the cellar, which we haven’t had time to get
put in order yet, and they found an old air-passage to the furnace,
and crawled through it, and so they had to be all washed and
dressed over again; and when I got through doing it, I had to be all
washed and dressed over again! I hope they didn’t annoy you, Mr.
Thompson: I thought I heard them romping down here, somewhere.
They’re really not so wild as they must seem; it’s only that coming to
a place altogether strange to them has upset them a little, and
—— There!” The catch yielded, and she spread the shutters wide.
“Now we can have a little more li——”
She paused in the middle of the word, gazing fixedly out of the
window.
But the caller did not follow the direction of Mrs. Ricketts’s gaze;
he was looking at her with concentrated approval, and mentally
preparing the invitation it was his purpose to extend. After coughing
rather formally, “I have called,” he said, “or, rather, I have stopped
by on my way to take a drive, because I thought, perhaps, as the
weather was warm, it might be cooler than sitting indoors to take a
turn around the Square first and then drive out toward the Athens
City Pike, and return by way of——”
“Mercy!” exclaimed Mrs. Ricketts in a tone so remarkable that he
stopped short; and then his eyes followed the direction of hers.
He uttered a stricken cry.
All four of General’s legs had been conscientiously painted, and
Maud, standing directly under his stomach, so to speak, was holding
the can of paint clasped in her arms, while the older artist began
work on the under side of General’s ribs. General’s expression was
one of dreamy happiness, though his appearance, and that of the
children’s clothes, hands, cheeks, and noses suggested a busy day
at the abattoir.
“Don’t move!” Mrs. Ricketts called suddenly, but not alarmingly,
as she raised the window. “Stand still, Maud! Now walk straight this
way—walk toward me. Instantly!”
And as Maud obeyed, her mother jumped out of the window, a
proceeding that both children recognized as extraordinary and ill-
omened. Bill instinctively began to defend himself.
“You never told us we couldn’t paint horses!” he said hotly. “We
haven’t painted him much, we’ve only——”
“March!” said his mother in the tone that meant the worst.
“Round to the kitchen—not through the house! Both of you! Quick!”
Bill opened his mouth to protest further, but, almost to his own
surprise, a wail came forth instead of an argument, and at that
sound, Maud dropped the sanguinary can and joined him in loud
dole. Shouting with woe, holding their unspeakable hands far from
them, with fingers spread wide, they marched. Round the corner of
the house went the dread pageant, and the green grass looked like
murder where it passed. But when Mrs. Ricketts returned, after
delivering Maud and Bill into the hands of a despairing servitress,
General and the phaeton were gone.
“Oh, oh, oh!” she murmured, and, overcome by the dreadful
picture that rose before her imagination, she went droopingly into
the house. In her mind’s eye she saw Mr. Thompson in all his special
dressiness and lemon-yellow tie, driving through the streets and
explaining to people: “Yes, Lucy Ricketts has come back and her
children did this!” She saw him telling Lucius—and she remembered
what Lucius had said: “I’m afraid to meet Maud and Bill!”
She began to feel strickenly sure that Lucius would return her
parasol by a messenger. If he did that (she thought) what was the
use of coming all the way from California to live in a town like
Marlow!
But the parasol was not sent, nor did Lucius bring it. It remained,
as did Mr. Allen himself, obscured from her sight and from her
knowledge. Nor was there brought to her any account of P.
Borodino’s making a dreadful progress through the town as she had
imagined. Mr. Thompson had, in fact, led General as hastily as
possible into the nearest alley—so Mortimer Fole explained to Lucius
one week later, almost to the hour.
Mortimer had dropped into Mr. Allen’s office and had expressed
surprise at finding its tenant in town. “I been up here two three
times a day fer a week, Lu,” he said, seating himself. “Where on
earth you been?”
“Argument before the Federal court in Springfield,” Lucius
answered. “What did you want to see me about, Mortimer?”
“Well, they’s been some talk about our pension goin’ out the
family,” said Mortimer, “in case it happened my wife’s stepmother
was to die. It comes through that branch, you know, Lu.”
“Is she ailing?”
“No,” said Mortimer. “She gits the best of care. We were only
talkin’ it over, and some of ’em says, ‘Suppose she was to go, what
then?’ ”
“I wouldn’t worry about it until she did,” his legal adviser
suggested. “Anything else?”
Mortimer removed his hat, and from the storage of its inner band
took half of a cigar, which, with a reflective air, he placed in the
corner of his mouth. Then he put his hat on again, tilted back
against the wall, and hooked his heels over a rung of his chair.
“Heard about Henry Ledyard yet?” he inquired.
“No.”
“Well, sir, he went up there,” said Mortimer. “He only went
oncet!”
“What was the trouble?”
Mr. Fole cast his eyes high aloft, an ocular gesture expressing
deplorable things.
“Maud and Bill,” he said.
“What did they do?”
“Henry was settin’ in the parlour talkin’ to their mother, and, the
way I heard it, all of a sudden they heard somep’n go ‘Pop!’ outside,
in the hall, and when they come to look, it was that new, stiff, high-
crowned straw hat he went and ordered from New York and had
shipped out here by express. They got a woman up there cookin’
and a Norwegian lady to do extra work, and I hear this here
Norwegian tells some that the way it happened was Maud was
settin’ on it, kind of jouncin’ around to see if it wouldn’t bounce her
up and down. Seems this Norwegian she says spankin’ and shuttin’
up in the closet don’t do neither of ’em one little bit o’ good. Says
there ain’t nothin’ in the world’ll take it out of ’em. Them two
chuldern have just about got this town buffaloed, Lu!”
“Oh, only breaking a straw hat,” said Lucius. “I don’t see how
that’s——”
“The two of ’em come up-town,” Mortimer interrupted firmly.
“They come up-town to the Square, the next afternoon after they
busted Henry’s twelve-dollar hat, and they went into E. J. Fuller’s
store and Ed says they come mighty near drivin’ him crazy, walkin’
up and down behind him singin’ ‘Gran’-mammy Tipsytoe.’ Then they
went on over to Milo Carter’s, and they had a dollar and forty cents
with ’em that they’d went and got out of their little bank. They et
seven big ice-cream sodies apiece and got sick right in the store.
Milo had to telephone fer their mother, and her and the Norwegian
come and had to about carry ’em home. And that ain’t half of it!”
 “What’s the other half?” Lucius asked gravely.
“Well, you heard about Bore, of course.”
“No, I haven’t.”
Mortimer again removed his hat, this time to rub his head. “I
reckon that might be so,” he admitted. “I guess you must of left
town by the time it leaked out.”
“By the time what leaked out?”
“Well, you remember how he started off, that day,” Mortimer
began, “to git her to go out buggy-ridin’ in his phaeton with ole
General?”
“Yes.”
“Well, sir, you know he was goin’ to drive back here and around
the Square to win that bet off o’ Rolfo, and he never come. ’Stead o’
that he turned up at the hardware store about two hours later and
settled the bet. Says he lost it because she wasn’t feelin’ too well
when he got there, and so they just set around and talked, instead
of ridin’. But Bore never went back there, and ain’t goin’ to, you bet,
any more than what Henry Ledyard is! There ain’t hardly a man in
town but what Maud and Bill’s got buffaloed, Lu.”
Mr. Allen occupied himself with the sharpening of a pencil. “What
did they do to Thompson?” he asked casually.
“Well, sir, fer the first few days I expect I was the only man in
town knowed what it was.” Mr. Fole spoke with a little natural pride.
“You see, after he went up there and wasn’t no sign of him on the
Square fer awhile, why I didn’t have nothin’ much to do just then,
and thinks I, ‘Why not go see what’s come of him?’ thinks I. So I
walked around there the back way, by Copes’s alley, and just as I
was turnin’ in one end the alley, by Glory! here come P. Borodino
Thompson leadin’ ole General and the phaeton in at the other end,
and walkin’ as fur away from him as he could and yet still lead him.
“Well, sir, I almost let out a holler: first thing I thought was they
must of been in the worst accident this town had ever saw. Why,
pore ole General—honest, he looked more like a slaughter-house
than he did like a horse, Lu! ‘What in the name of God is the matter,
Bore!’ I says, and you never hear a man take on the way he done.
“Seems Maud and Bill had painted ole General red, and they
painted him thick, too, while Bore was in the house fixin’ to take
their mother out on this here buggy-ride. And, well, sir, to hear him
take on, you’d of thought I was responsible for the whole business!
Says it might as well be all over town, now he’d ran into me! Truth
is, he talked like he was out of his mind, but I kind o’ soothed him
down, and last I fixed it up with him to give me credit fer a little
insurance my wife’s been wantin’ to take out on her stepmother, if
I’d put General and the phaeton in George Coles’s empty barn, there
in the alley, until after dark, and not say nothin’ to George or
anybody about it, and then drive him over to Bore’s and unhitch him
and wash him off with turpentine that night.
“Well, sir, we got it all fixed up, and I done everything I said I
would, but of course you can’t expect a thing like that not to leak
out some way or other; so I’m not breakin’ any obligation by tellin’
you about it, because it got all over town several days ago. If I’ve
told Bore Thompson once I’ve told him a hunderd times, what’s the
use his actin’ the fool about it! ‘What earthly good’s it goin’ to do,’ I
says, ‘to go around mad,’ I says, ‘and abusin’ the very ones,’ I says,
‘that done the most to help you out? The boys are bound to have
their joke,’ I says to him, ‘and if it hadn’t been you, why, like as not
they might of been riggin’ somep’n on Lu Allen or Cal Burns, or even
me,’ I says, ‘because they don’t spare nobody! Why, look,’ I says.
‘Ain’t they goin’ after Milo Carter almost as much as they are you
and Henry,’ I says, ‘on account of what happened to Milo’s store?’ I
says, ‘And look at E. J. Fuller,’ I says. ‘Ain’t the name o’ Gran’-
mammy Tipsytoe perty near fastened on him fer good? He don’t go
all up and down pickin’ at his best friend,’ I says. ‘E. J. Fuller’s got a
little common sense!’ I says. Yes, sir, that’s the way I look at it, Lu.”
Mortimer unhooked his heels, and, stretching himself, elevated
his legs until the alternation thus effected in the position of his
centre of gravity brought his tilted chair to a level—whereupon he
rose, stretched again, sighed, and prepared to conclude the
interview.
“Speakin’ o’ the devil, Lu,” he said, as he moved to the door
—“yes, sir, them two chuldern, Maud and Bill, have perty much got
our whole little city buffaloed! They’s quite some talk goin’ on about
the brain work you been showin’ Lu. I expect your reputation never
did stand no higher in that line than what it does right to-day. I
shouldn’t wonder it’d bring you a good deal extry law-practice, Lu:
Mrs. Rolfo Williams says she always did know you were the smartest
man in this town!”
“Now what are you talking about?” Lucius demanded sharply, but
he was growing red to the ears, and over them.
“Goin’ out o’ town,” said Mortimer admiringly. “Keepin’ out the
way o’ them chuldern and lettin’ other fellers take the brunt of ’em.
Yes, sir; there isn’t a soul raises the question but what their mother
is the finest-lookin’ lady that ever lived here, or but what she does
every last thing any mortal could do in the line o’ disciplinn; but
much as everybody’d enjoy to git better acquainted with her and
begin to see somep’n of her, they all think she’s liable to lead kind of
a lonesome life in our community unless—” Mortimer paused with
his hand upon the door-knob—“unless somep’n happens to Maud
and Bill!”
He departed languidly, his farewell coming back from the
stairway: “So long, Lu!”
But the blush that had extended to include Mr. Allen’s ears, at the
sound of so much praise of himself, did not vanish with the caller; it
lingered and for a time grew even deeper. When it was gone, and its
victim restored to his accustomed moderate pink, he pushed aside
his work and went to a locked recess beneath his book-shelves.
Therefrom he took the blue parasol, and a small volume in
everything dissimilar to the heavy, calf-bound legal works that
concealed all the walls of the room; and, returning to his swivel-
chair, placed the parasol gently upon the desk. Then, allowing his
left hand to remain lightly upon the parasol, he held the little book in
his right and read musingly.
 He read, thus, for a long time—in fact, until the setting in of
twilight; and, whatever the slight shiftings of his position, he always
kept one hand in light contact with the parasol. Some portions of the
book he read over and over, though all of it was long since familiar
to him; and there was one part of it in which his interest seemed
quite unappeasable. Again and again he turned back to the same
page; but at last, as the room had grown darker, and his eye-glasses
tired him, he let the book rest in his lap, took off the glasses and
used them to beat time to the rhythm of the cadences, as he
murmured, half-aloud:
 “The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise,
As I turn it low to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes.
And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke
Its fate with my tobacco and to vanish with the smoke.
’Tis a fragrant retrospection—for the loving thoughts that start
Into being are like perfume from the blossoms of the heart:
And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine——
When my truant fancy wanders with that old sweet-heart of mine.”

He fell silent; then his lips moved again:

“And I thrill beneath the glances of a pair of azure eyes
As glowing as the summer and as tender as the skies.
I can see——”

Suddenly he broke off, and groaned aloud: “My Lord!” he said all
in a breath. “And thirty-five years old—blame near thirty-six!”
He needs interpretation, this unfortunate Lucius. He meant that it
was inexplicable and disgraceful for a man of his age to be afraid of
a boy of seven and a girl of five. He had never been afraid of
anybody else’s children. No; it had to be hers! And that was why he
was afraid of them; he knew the truth well enough: he was afraid of
them because they were hers. He was a man who had always “got
on” with children beautifully; but he was afraid of Maud and Bill. He
was afraid of what they would do to him and of what they would
think of him.
There, in brief, is the overwhelming part that children can play in
true romance!
“Lordy, Lordy!” sighed Lucius Brutus Allen. “Oh, Lordy!”
But at last he bestirred himself. He knew that Saruly, his elderly
darky cook, must be waiting for him with impatience; she would
complain bitterly of dishes overcooked because of his tardiness.
Having glanced down into the Square and found it virtually devoid of
life, for this was the universal hour of supper, he set his brown straw
hat upon his head, and took the parasol under his arm—not because
he meant to return it. He took it with him merely for the pleasure of
its society.
 Upon the bottom step of the flight of stairs that led down to the
street, he found seated a small figure in a white “sailor suit.” This
figure rose and spoke politely.
“How do you do?” it said. “Are you Uncle Lucius?”
“Who—— What’s your name?”
“Bill. Bill Ricketts,” said Bill.
Lucius made a hasty motion to reascend the stairs, but Bill
confidingly proffered a small, clean hand that Mr. Allen was
constrained to accept. Once having accepted it, he found himself
expected to retain it.
“Mamma lef’ me sittin’ here to wait till you came downstairs,” Bill
explained. “That man that came out said he couldn’t say but he was
pretty sure you were up there. She told me to wait till either you
came downstairs or she came back for me. She wants her parasol.
Come on!”
“Come on where?”
“Up to your house,” said Bill. “She lef’ Maud waitin’ up there for
you.”
It was the truth. And after a rather hurried walk, during which
the boy spoke not once unless spoken to, but trotted contentedly at
Lucius’s side, confidingly hand-in-hand with him, when they came in
sight of the small brick house in the big yard, where Lucius lived, a
tiny white figure was discernible through the dusk, rocking patiently
in a wicker rocking-chair on the veranda.
At sight of them she jumped up and came running to the gate to
meet them. But there she paused, gravely.
She made a curtsey, formal but charming.
“How do do, Uncka Wucius?” she said. “Mamma would wike her
paraso’.”
Saruly, looming dark and large behind her, supplemented this
information: “Miz Ricketts done lef’ the little girl here to wait fer you,
Mist’ Allen. She tell me ask you please be so kine as to bring the
chillun along home with you, an’ her parasol with ’em. She tell me
the chillun been a little upset, jest at first, ’count o’ movin’ to a new
place, but they all quieted down now, an’ she think it’ll be safe fer
you to stay to dinnuh. An’ as ev’ything in my kitchen’s plum done to
a crisp ’count o’ you bein’ so late, Mist’ Allen, if you leave it to me I
think you bettuh.”
“I’ll leave it to you, Saruly,” said Lucius, gently. “I think I’d better.”
And then, with the parasol under his arm, and the hand of a child
resting quietly in each of his, he turned with Bill and Maud, and,
under the small, bright stars of the May evening, set forth from his
own gate on his way to Lucy’s.
 “YOU”

M
URIEL ELIOT’S friends and contemporaries were in the habit
of describing her as “the most brilliant girl in town.” She was
“up on simply everything,” they said, and it was customary to
add the exclamation: “How on earth she finds the time!” And since
Muriel also found time to be always charmingly dressed, in harmony
with her notable comeliness, the marvel of so much upness in her
infant twenties may indeed need a little explaining.
Her own conception was that she was a “serious” person and
cared for “serious reading”—that is to say, after she left college, she
read, not what is acceptably called literature, but young journalists’
musings about what aspires to be called that; she was not at all
interested in buildings or pictures or statues themselves, but thought
she was, read a little of what is printed about such things in reviews,
and spoke of “art” and “literature” with authoritative conviction. She
was a kind-hearted girl, and she believed that “capitalism” was the
cunning device of greedy men to keep worthy persons under heel;
hence it followed that all “capital” should be taken away from the
“capitalist class” by the “people;” and, not picturing herself as in any
way uncomfortably affected by the process of seizure, she called
herself a “socialist.”
In addition to all this, Muriel’s upness included “the new
psychology” and the appropriate humorous contempt for the
Victorian Period, that elastic conception of something-or-other
which, according to the writing young ladies and gentlemen who
were her authorities, seemed to extend from about the time of
Custer’s Last Fight to the close of President Wilson’s first
administration. Muriel, like her original sources of information, was
just becoming conscious of herself as an authority at about the latter
date—she was sixteen then; and at twenty she began to speak of
having spent her youth in the Late Victorian Period. That obscure
decade before her birth, that time so formless and dark between the
years of our Lord 1890 and 1900, was Mid-Victorian; people still
mistook Tennyson and Longfellow for poets.
Sometimes older women thought Muriel a little hard; she was
both brilliant and scholarly, they admitted; but the papers she wrote
for the women’s clubs were so “purely intellectual,” so icily scientific,
so little reticent in the discussion of love, marriage and children, that
these ladies shook their heads. The new generation, as expressed by
Muriel, lacked something important, they complained; for nothing
less than maidenliness itself had been lost, and with it the rosebud
reveries, the twilight half-dreams of a coming cavalier, the
embowered guitar at moonrise. In a word, the charm of maidenhood
was lost because romance was lost. Muriel lacked the romantic
imagination, they said, a quality but ill replaced by so much “new
thought.”
They made this mistake the more naturally because Muriel
herself made it, though of course she did not think of her supposed
lack of romance as a fault. She believed herself to be a severely
practical person, and an originally thinking person, as a quotation
from one of her essays may partly explain. “I face the actual world
as it is; I face it without superstition, and without tradition.
Despising both the nonsense and the misery into which former
generations have been led by romance, I permit no illusions to guide
my thinking. I respect nothing merely because it is established; I
examine mathematically; I think mathematically; I believe nothing
that I do not prove. I am a realist.”
When she wrote this, she was serious and really thought it true;
but as a matter of fact, what she believed to be her thinking was the
occasional mulling over of scattered absorptions from her reading.
Her conception of her outward appearance, being somewhat aided
by mirrors, came appreciably near the truth, but her conception of
her mind had no such guide. Her mind spent the greater part of its
time adrift in half-definite dreaming, and although she did not even
suspect such a thing, her romantic imagination was the abode in
which she really dwelt.
 There is an astronomer who knows as much about the moon as
can yet be known; but when that moon is new in the sky, each
month, he will be a little troubled if he fails to catch his first glimpse
of it over the right shoulder. When he does fail, his disappointment is
so slight that he forgets all about it the next moment, and should
you ask him if he has any superstition he will laugh disdainfully, with
no idea that he deceives both his questioner and himself. This is the
least of the mistakes he makes about his own thoughts; he is
mistaken about most of them; and yet he is a great man, less given
to mistakes than the rest of us. Muriel Eliot’s grandmother, who used
to sing “Robin Adair,” who danced the Spanish Fandango at the
Orphan Asylum Benefit in 1877, and wrote an anonymous love-letter
to Lawrence Barrett, was not actually so romantic as Muriel.
The point is that Muriel’s dreaminess, of which she was so little
aware, had a great deal more to do with governing her actions than
had her mathematical examinings and what she believed to be her
thinking. Moreover, this was the cause of her unkindness to young
Renfrew Mears, who lived across the street. Even to herself she gave
other reasons for rejecting him; but the motive lay deep in her
romanticism; for Muriel, without knowing it, believed in fairies.
Had she been truly practical, she would have seen that young Mr.
Mears was what is called an “ideal match” for her. His grandfather, a
cautious banker, had thought so highly of the young man’s good
sense as to leave him the means for a comfortable independence;
yet Renfrew continued to live at home with his family and was
almost always in bed by eleven o’clock. He was of a pleasant
appearance; he was kind, modest, thoughtfully polite, and in
everything the perfect material from which the equerry or
background husband of a brilliant woman is constructed. No wonder
her mother asked her what on earth she did want! Muriel replied
that she despised the capitalistic institution of marriage, and she
believed that she meant what she said; but of course what she really
wanted was a fairy-story.
In those wandering and somewhat shapeless reveries that
controlled her so much more than she guessed, there were various
repetitions that had become rather definite, though never quite so.
One of these was the figure of her Mate. Her revery-self never
showed her this mystery clearly in contours and colours, but rather
in shadowy outlines, though she was sure that her Mate had dark
and glowing eyes. He was somewhere, and sometime she would see
him. When she did see him, she would recognize him instantly; the
first look exchanged would bring the full revelation to both of them—
they would ever have little need of spoken words. But her most
frequent picture of this mystic encounter was a painful one: she saw
herself a bride upon the bridegroom’s arm and coming down the
steps of the church;—a passing stranger, halting abruptly upon the
pavement, gave her one look from dark and glowing eyes, a look
fateful with reproach and a tragic derision, seeming to say: “You did
not wait till I came, but took that fool!”
Then he passed on, forever; and it was unfortunate for young Mr.
Mears that the figure of the bridegroom in these foreshadowings
invariably bore a general resemblance to his own. Renfrew had more
to overcome than appeared upon the surface; he had shadows to
fight; and so have other lovers—more of them than is guessed—
when ladies are reluctant. For that matter, the thing is almost
universal; and rare is the girl, however willing, who says “Yes,”
without giving up at least some faint little tremulous shadow of a
dream—though she may forget it and deny it as honestly as that
astronomer forgets and denies the moon and his right shoulder.
Renfrew’s case with his pretty neighbour was also weakened by
the liking and approval of her father and mother, who made the
mistake of frequently praising him to her; for when parents do this,
with the daughter adverse, the poor lover is usually ruined—the
reasons being obvious to everybody except the praising parents.
Mrs. Eliot talked Renfrew Mears and his virtues at her daughter till
the latter naturally declared that she hated him. “I do!” she said one
morning. “I really do hate him, mamma!”
“What nonsense!” her mother exclaimed. “When I heard the two
of you chatting together on the front porch for at least an hour, only
last evening!”
 “Chatting!” Muriel repeated scornfully. “Chatting together! That
shows how much you observe, mamma! I don’t think he said more
than a dozen words the whole evening.”
“Well, don’t you like a good listener?”
“Yes,” Muriel replied emphatically. “Indeed, I do! A good listener
is one who understands what you’re saying. Renfrew Mears has just
lately learned enough to keep quiet, for fear if he speaks at all, it’ll
show he doesn’t understand anything!”
“Well, if he doesn’t, why did you talk to him?”
“Good gracious!” Muriel cried. “We can’t always express ourselves
as we wish to in this life, mamma; I should think you’d know that by
this time! I can’t throw rocks at him and say, ‘Go back home!’ every
time he comes poking over here, can I? I have to be polite, even to
Renfrew Mears, don’t you suppose?”
The mother, sighing, gave her daughter one of those little half-
surreptitious glances in which mothers seem to review troubled
scenes with their own mothers; then she said gently: “Your father
and I do wish you could feel a little more kindly toward the poor boy,
Muriel.”
“Well, I can’t, and I don’t want to. What’s more, I wouldn’t marry
him if I did.”
“Not if you were in love?”
“Poor mamma!” Muriel said compassionately. “What has love to
do with marrying? I expect to retain my freedom; I don’t propose to
enter upon a period of child-rearing——”
“Oh, good gracious!” Mrs. Eliot cried. “What a way to talk!”
“But if I did,” Muriel continued, with some sharpness, “I should
never select Renfrew Mears to be my assistant in the task. And as
for what you call ‘love,’ it seems to me a rather unhealthy form of
excitement that I’m not subject to, fortunately.”
“You are so queer,” her mother murmured; whereupon Muriel
laughed.
No doubt her laughter was a little condescending. “Queer?” she
said. “No—only modern. Only frank and wholesome! Thinking people
look at life as it really is, nowadays, mamma. I am a child of the new
age; but more than that, I am not the slave of my emotions; I am
the product of my thinking. Unwholesome excitement and queer
fancies have no part in my life, mamma.”
“I hope not,” her mother responded with a little spirit. “I’m not
exactly urging anything unwholesome upon you, Muriel. You’re very
inconsistent, it seems to me.”
“I!” Muriel said haughtily. “Inconsistent!”
“Why, when I just mention that your father and I’d be glad if you
could feel a little kinder toward a good-looking, fine young man that
we know all about, you begin talking, and pretty soon it sounds as
though we were trying to get you to do something criminal! And
then you go on to say you haven’t got any ‘queer fancies!’ Isn’t it a
queer fancy to think we’d want you to do anything unhealthy or
excited? That’s why I say you’re inconsistent.”
Muriel coloured; her breathing quickened; and her eyes became
threateningly bright. “The one thing I won’t be called,” she said, “is
‘inconsistent!’ ”
“Well, but——”
“I won’t!” she cried, and choked. “You know it makes me furious;
that’s why you do it!”
“Did I understand you to say you never permitted your emotions
to control you?” her mother asked dryly.
In retort, Muriel turned to the closet where she kept her hats; for
her favourite way of meeting these persecutions was to go out of
the house abruptly, leaving her mother to occupy it in full remorse;
but this time Mrs. Eliot forestalled her. A servant appeared in the
doorway and summoned her: “There’s someone downstairs wants to
see you; I took him in the library.”
“I’ll come,” said Mrs. Eliot, and with a single dignified glance at
her daughter, she withdrew, leaving Muriel to digest a discomfiture.
For the art of domestic altercation lies almost wholly in the
withdrawal, since here the field is won by abandoning it. In family
embroilments she proves herself right, and the others wrong, who
adroitly seizes the proper moment to make an unexpected departure
either with dignity or in tears. People under stress of genuine
emotion have been known to practice this art, seeming thereby to
indicate the incompatible presence of a cool dramatist somewhere in
the back of their heads; yet where is there anything that is not
incompatible? Muriel, injured by the word “inconsistent,” had meant
to withdraw in silent pain, thus putting her mother in the wrong;
but, in the sometimes invaluable argot of the race-course, Mrs. Eliot
got away first. Muriel felt severely baffled.
There remained to her, however, a retreat somewhat enfeebled
by her mother’s successful withdrawal: Mrs. Eliot had gone out of
the room; Muriel could still go out of the house. Therefore she put
on a hat, descended the stairs and went toward the front door in a
manner intended to symbolize insulted pride taking a much more
important departure than the mere walking out of a room.
Her mother, of course, was intended to see her pass the open
double doors of the library, but Mrs. Eliot’s back happened to be
toward these doors, and she was denied the moving-picture of the
daughter sweeping through the hall. The caller, however, suffered no
such deprivation; he sat facing the doorway, and although Muriel did
not look directly at him, she became aware of a distinguished
presence. The library was shadowy, the hall much lighter; she
passed the doors quickly; but she was almost startled by the
impression made upon her by this young man whom she had never
before seen. Then, as she went on toward the front door, she had
suddenly a sensation queerly like dizziness; it seemed to her that
this stranger had looked at her profoundly as she passed, and that
the gaze he bent upon her had come from a pair of dark and
glowing eyes.
She went out into the yard, but not, as she had intended, to the
street; and turning the corner of the house, she crossed the sunny
lawn to some hydrangea bushes in blossom, where she paused and
stood, apparently in contemplation of the flowers. She was trembling
a little, so strong was her queer consciousness of the stranger in the
library and of his dark and glowing eyes. Such sensations as hers
have often been described as “unreal;” that is to say, “she seemed
to be in a dream.” Her own eyes had not fully encountered the dark
and glowing ones, but never had any person made so odd and
instantaneous an impression upon her. What else was she to
conclude but that there must have been “something psychic” about
it? And how, except by telepathy, could she have so suddenly found
in her mind the conviction that the distinguished-looking young man
was a painter? For to her own amazement, she was sure of this.
After a time she went back into the house, and again passed
through the hall and by the open doors, but now her bearing was
different. In a sweet, low voice she hummed a careless air from
Naples, while in her arms she bore a sheaf of splendid hydrangea
blossoms, thus offering, in the momentary framing of the broad
doorway, a composition rich in colour and also of no mean
decorative charm in contour, it may be said. “The Girl from the
Garden” might have been the title she wished to suggest to a
painter’s mind, but when she came into the view of her mother’s
caller, consciousness of him increased all at once so overwhelmingly
that she forgot herself. She had meant to pass the doorway with a
cool leisureliness and entirely in profile—a Girl from the Garden with
no other thought than to enliven her room with an armful of
hydrangea blossoms—but she came almost to a halt midway, and,
for the greater part of a second packed with drama, looked full upon
the visitor.
He was one of those black-and-white young men: clothes black,
linen white, a black bow at the collar, thick black hair, the face of a
fine pallor, and black eyes lustrously comprehending. What they
must have comprehended now was at least a little of the significance
of the arrested attitude beyond the doorway, and more than a little
of what was meant by the dark and lustrous eyes that with such
poignant inquiry met his own. For Muriel’s fairly shouted at him the
startled question: “Who are you?”
Time, life and love are made of seconds and bits of seconds:
Muriel had gone on, carrying her question clamouring down the hall
with her, before this full second elapsed. She ran up the stairs and
into her own room, dropped the hydrangeas upon a table, and in
two strides confronted a mirror. A moment later she took up the
hydrangeas again, with a care to hold them as she had held them in
the hall below, then walked by the mirror, paused, gave the glass a
deep, questioning look and went on. After that she seated herself
beside an open window that commanded a view of the front gate,
and waited, the great question occupying her tumultuously.
By this time the great question had grown definite, and of course
it was, “Is this He?” Other questions came tumbling after it: How did
she know he was a painter, this young man of whom she had never
heard? It is only in the moving pictures that a doctor must look like a
doctor, a judge like a judge, an anarchist like an anarchist, a painter
like a painter; the age of machines, hygiene and single-type clothing
has so blurred men into indistinguishability that only a few musicians
still look like musicians, a feat accomplished simply by the slight
impoverishment of barbers. The young man in the library was
actually a painter, but Muriel may well have been amazed that she
knew it; for nowadays it is a commonplace that a Major General in
mufti may reasonably be taken for a plumber, while an unimportant
person soliciting alms at the door is shown into the house under the
impression that a Senator is calling.
Why (Muriel asked herself) had her mother not mentioned such
an appointment? But perhaps there had been no appointment;
perhaps he had called without one. What for? To ask permission to
paint the daughter’s portrait? Had he seen her somewhere before to-
day? Where did he live? In Paris?
The front door could be heard closing below, and she looked
down upon a white straw hat with a black band. This hat moved
quickly down the path to the gate, and the young stranger was
disclosed beneath the hat: a manly figure with an elastic step.
Outside the gate he paused, looking back thoughtfully with his
remarkable eyes; and Muriel, who had instantly withdrawn into the
concealment of a window-curtain, marked that this look of his had
the quality of covering the whole front of the house at a glance. It
was a look, moreover, that seemed to comprehend the type of the
house and even to measure its dimensions—a look of the kind that
“takes in everything,” as people say. Muriel trembled again. Did he
say to himself: “This is Her house?” Did he think: “I should like to
set my easel here by the gate and paint this house, because it is the
house where She dwells”?
His pause at the gate was only a momentary one; he turned
toward the region of commerce and hotels and walked quickly away,
the intervening foliage of the trees almost immediately cutting him
off from the observation of the girl at the window. Then she heard
her mother coming up the stairs and through the upper hall;
whereupon Muriel, still tremulous, began hastily to alter the position
of the little silver implements upon her dressing-table, thus sketching
a preoccupation with small housewifery, if Mrs. Eliot should come
into the room. But to the daughter’s acute disappointment, the
mother passed the open door without even looking in, and retired to
her own apartment.
Muriel most urgently wished to follow her and shower her with
questions: “Who is he? Isn’t he a painter? Why did he come to see
you? What were you talking about? When is he coming again? What
did he say when he saw me?” But remembering the terms upon
which she and her mother had so recently parted, and that odious
word “inconsistent,” Muriel could not bend to the intimacy of such a
questioning. In fact, her own thought took the form, “I’d rather die!”
She turned to the window again, looked out at that gate so lately
made significant by the passage of the stranger—and there was
young Mr. Renfrew Mears, just coming in. He was a neat picture of a
summer young gentleman for any girl’s eye; but to Muriel he was a
too-familiar object, and just now about as interesting as a cup of
tepid barley-water. She tried to move away before he saw her, but
Renfrew had always a fatal quickness for seeing her. He called to
her.
“Oh, Muriel!”
“Well—what?” she said reluctantly.
“There’s something I want to ask you about. Will you come down
a few minutes?”
 “Oh, well—I suppose so,” was her not too heartening response;
but on the way downstairs a thought brightened her. Perhaps
Renfrew might know something about a dark young man—a painter
—lately come to town.
He was blank upon this subject, however, as she discovered
when they had seated themselves upon a wicker settee on the
veranda. “No,” he said. “I haven’t heard of any artist that’s come
here lately. Where’d you hear about one?”
“Oh, around,” she said casually. “I’m not absolutely certain he’s
an artist, but I got that idea somewhere. The reason I wanted to
know is because I thought he might be one of the new group that
have broken away, like Matisse and Gaugin.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. Haven’t you heard of anybody at all that’s a
stranger here—visiting somebody, perhaps?”
“Not exactly,” Renfrew replied, thinking it over conscientiously. “I
don’t believe I have, exactly.”
“What do you mean, you don’t think you have ‘exactly’?” she
asked irritably. “Have you, or haven’t you?”
“Well,” he said, “my Aunt Milly from Burnetsville is visiting my
cousins, the Thomases, but she’s an invalid and you probably
wouldn’t——”
“No, I wouldn’t!” Muriel said. “Don’t strain your mind any more,
Renfrew.”
“I could inquire around,” he suggested. “I thought it wouldn’t
likely be my aunt, but you said ‘anybody at all.’ ”
“Never mind! What was it you wanted to ask me?”
“Well, it’s something that’s rather important, but of course maybe
you won’t think so, Muriel. Anyway, though, I hope you’ll think it’s
sort of important.”
“But what is it? Don’t hang fire so, Renfrew!”
“I just wanted to lead up to it a little,” he explained mildly. “I’ve
been thinking about getting a new car, and I wondered what sort
you think I’d better look at. I didn’t want to get one you wouldn’t
like.”
Her lips parted to project that little series of sibilances commonly
employed by adults to make children conscious of error. “Why on
earth should you ask me?” she said sharply. “Is that your idea of an
important question?”
Renfrew’s susceptible complexion showed an increase of colour,
but he was growing more and more accustomed to be used as a
doormat, and he responded, without rancour: “I meant I hoped
you’d sort of think it important, my not wanting to get one you
wouldn’t like.”
“Now, what do you mean by that?”
“Well,” he said, “I mean I hoped you’d think it was important, my
thinking it was important to ask you.”
“I don’t,” she returned as a complete answer.
“You say——”
“I say I don’t,” she repeated. “I don’t. I don’t think it’s important.
Isn’t that clear enough, Renfrew?”
“Yes,” he said, and looked plaintively away from her. “I guess I
don’t need any new car.”
“Is there anything more this morning?” she was cruel enough to
inquire.
“No,” he answered, rising. “I guess that’s all.” Then, having
received another of his almost daily rejections, he went away,
leaving her to watch his departing figure with some exasperation,
though she might well have admired him for his ingenuity: every day
or two he invented a new way of proposing to her. In comparison,
her refusals were commonplace, but of course she neither realized
that nor cared to be brilliant for Renfrew; and also, this was a poor
hour for him, when the electric presence of the black-and-white
stranger was still vibrant in the very air. Muriel returned to her room
and put the hydrangeas in a big silver vase; she moved them gently,
with a touch both reverent and caressing, for they had borne a part
in a fateful scene, and already she felt it possible that in the after
years she would never see hydrangeas in blossom without
remembering to-day and the First Meeting.
Impulsively she went to her desk and wrote:
“Is it true that You have come? My hand trembles, and I know
that if I spoke to my mother about You, my voice would tremble. Oh,
I could never ask her a question about You! A moment ago I sat
upon the veranda with a dull man who wants to marry me. It
seemed a desecration to listen to him—an offense to You! He has
always bored me. How much more terribly he bored me when
perhaps I had just seen You for the first time in my life! Perhaps it is
not for the first time in eternity, though! Was I ever a Queen in
Egypt and were You a Persian sculptor? Did we meet in Ephesus
once?
“It is a miracle that we should meet at all. I might have lived in
another century—or on another planet! Should we then have gone
seeking, seeking one another always vainly? All my life I have been
waiting for You. Always I have known that I was waiting, but until
to-day I did not know it was for just You. My whole being trembled
when I saw You—if it was You? I am trembling now as I think of
You, as I write of You—write to You! A new life has possibly begun
for me in this hour!
“And some day will I show You this writing? That thought is like
fire and like ice. I burn with it and freeze with it, in terror of You!
See! Here is my heart opened like a book for your reading!
“Oh, is it, is it You? I think that You are a painter; that is all I
know of You—and why do I think it? It came to me as I stood in a
garden, thrilling with my first quick glimpse of You. Was that the
proof of our destiny, yours and mine? Yes, the miracle of my
knowing that You are a painter when I do not even know your name
—that is the answer! It must be You! I tremble with excitement as I
write that word ‘You’ which has suddenly leaped into such fiery life
and meaning: I tremble and I could weep! Oh, You—You—You! Is
it?”
Twice, during the latter phases of this somewhat hasty record of
ardour, she had been summoned to lunch, and after hurrying the
final words upon the page, she put the paper into a notebook and
locked it inside her desk. Then she descended the stairs and went
toward the dining-room, but halted suddenly, unseen, outside the
door. She had caught the word “painter,” spoken by her father.
“Well, I’m glad you liked that painter.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Eliot said. “I talked it over with him, and I’m afraid he
agreed with you instead of with me. Naturally, he would, though! I
was quite interested in him.”
“You were?”
“Yes—such an unexpected type.”
“Well, no,” Mr. Eliot said. “Nobody’s an unexpected type
nowadays. Isn’t Muriel coming down at all?”
“Jennie’s been up for her twice,” his wife informed him. “I
suppose she’ll come eventually. She’s cross this morning.”
“What about?”
“Oh, I just asked her if she couldn’t be a little fairer to a certain
somebody. I suppose I’d better not have mentioned it, because it
made her very peevish.”
Upon this, Muriel made her entrance swiftly enough to let her
mother know that the last words had been overheard, an advantage
the daughter could not forego. She took her place at the table
opposite to her gourmandizing little brother Robert, and in silence
permitted her facial expression alone to mention what she thought
of a mother who called her “peevish” when she was not present to
defend herself.
Only a moment before, she had been thrilled inexpressibly: the
black-and-white stranger, so mysteriously spoken of by her parents,
was indeed a painter. That proved his You-ness, proved everything!
Her whole being (as she would have said) shook with the revelation,
and her anxiety to hear more of him was consuming; but the word
“peevish” brought about an instantaneous reversion. She entered
the dining-room in an entirely different mood, for her whole being
was now that of a daughter embattled with a parent who attacks
unfairly—so intricately elastic are the ways of our whole beings!
 Mrs. Eliot offered only the defense of a patient smile; Mr. Eliot
looked puzzled and oppressed; and for a time there was no
conversation during the further progress of this uncomfortable meal.
Nothing was to be heard in the room except the movements of a
servant and the audible eating of fat little Robert, who was incurably
natural with his food.
It was Muriel who finally decided to speak. “I’m sorry to have
interrupted your conversation,” she said frostily. “Perhaps, though,
you’d prefer not to say any more about me to papa and Robert while
I’m here to explain what really happened, mamma.”
“Oh, nonsense!” Mr. Eliot said. “I suppose even the Pope gets
‘peevish’ now and then; it’s no deadly insult to say a person got a
little peevish. We weren’t having a ‘conversation’ about you at all.
We were talking about other matters, and just barely mentioned
you.”
Muriel looked at him quickly. “What other things were you talking
about?”
He laughed. “My! How suspicious you are!”
“Not at all; I simply asked you what other things you were talking
about.”
Instead of replying, “About a distinguished young painter who
saw you on the street and wants to paint your portrait,” Mr. Eliot
laughed again and rose, having finished his coffee. He came round
the table to her and pinched her ear on his way to the door. “Good
gracious!” he said. “Don’t you suppose your mother and I ever talk
about anything except what a naughty daughter we have?” And with
that he departed. Mrs. Eliot said, “Excuse me,” rather coldly to
Muriel, followed him to the front door, and failed to return.
Muriel did not see her mother again during the afternoon, and in
the evening Mr. and Mrs. Eliot went out to a dinner of their bridge-
club, leaving their daughter to dine in the too audible company of
Robert. She dressed exquisitely, though not for Robert, whose
naturalness at the table brought several annoyed glances from her.
“Can’t you manage it more quietly, Robert?” she asked at last, with
the dessert. “Try!”
“Whaffor?” he inquired.
“Only because it’s so hideous!”
“Oh, hush!” he said rudely, and, being offended, became more
natural than ever, on purpose.
She sighed. With the falling of the dusk, her whole being, not
antagonized by her mother’s presence, had become an uplifted and
mysterious expectation; and the sounds made by the gross child
Robert were not to be borne. She left the table, went out into the
starlight, and stood by the hydrangeas, an ethereal figure in
draperies of mist.
“Oh, You!” she whispered, and let a bare arm be caressed by the
clumps of great blossoms. “When are you coming again, You? To-
night?”
She quivered with the sense of impending drama; it seemed to
her certain that the next moment she would see him—that he would
come to her out of the darkness. The young painter should have
done so; he should have stepped out of the vague night-shadows, a
poetic and wistful figure, melancholy with mystery yet ineffably
radiant. “Mademoiselle, step lightly!” he should have said. “Do you
not see the heart beneath your slipper? It was mine until I threw it
there!”
“Ah, You!” she murmured to the languorous hydrangeas.
At such a moment the sound of peanuts being eaten, shells and
all, could not fail to prove inharmonious. She shivered with the
sudden anguish of a dislocated mood; but she was Robert’s next of
available kin and recognized a duty. She crossed the lawn to the
veranda, where he sat, busy with a small paper sack upon his knee.
“Robert! Stop that!”
“I ain’t doin’ anything,” he said crossly.
“You are. What do you mean, eating peanuts when you’ve just
finished an enormous dinner?”
“Well, what hurt is that?”
 “And with the shells on!” she cried.
“Makes more to ’em,” he explained.
“Stop it!”
“I won’t,” Robert said doggedly. “I’m goin’ to do what I please to-
night, no matter how much trouble I get into to-morrow!”
“What ‘trouble’ do you expect to-morrow?”
“Didn’t you hear about it?” he asked. “Papa and mamma were
talkin’ about it at lunch.”
“I didn’t hear them.”
“I guess it was before you came down,” Robert said; and then he
gave her a surprise. “The painter was here this morning, and they
got it all fixed up.”
Muriel moved back from him a step, and inexplicably a dismal
foreboding took her. “What?” she said.
“Well, the thing that bothers me is simply this,” Robert informed
her: “He told mamma he’d have to bring his little boy along and let
him play around here as long as the work went on. He said he has
to take this boy along with him, because his wife’s a dentist’s ’sistant
and can’t keep him around a dentist office, and they haven’t got any
place to leave him. He’s about nine years old, and I’ll bet anything I
have trouble with him before the day’s over.”
“Do you mean the—the painter is married, Robert?”
“Yes, and got this boy,” Robert said, shaking his head. “I bet I do
have trouble with him, if he’s got to be around here until they get
three coats o’ paint on our house. Mamma thought they only needed
two, but papa said three, and the painter talked mamma into it this
morning.”
“The house?” Muriel said. “We’re going to have the—the house
painted?”
Robert was rather surprised. “Why, don’t you remember how
much papa and mamma were talkin’ about it, two or three weeks
ago? And then they thought not and didn’t say so much about it, but
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