He walked slowly back to his study. "Phew!" he whispered to himself.

It was like hitting her in the face. He didn't want to be a brute, but short of being a brute there was no way out for him from this entanglement. Why, oh! why the devil had he gone there to lunch?...

He resumed his examination of the waiting letters with a ruffled mind.

The most urgent thing about them was the clear evidence of gathering anger on the part of his mother. He had missed a lunch party at Sir G.o.dfrey's on Tuesday and a dinner engagement at Philip Magnet's, quite an important dinner in its way, with various promising young Liberals, on Wednesday evening. And she was furious at "this stupid mystery.

Of course you're bound to be found out, and of course there will be a scandal."... He perceived that this last note was written on his own paper. "Merkle!" he cried sharply.

"Yessir!"

Merkle had been just outside, on call.

"Did my mother write any of these notes here?" he asked.

"Two, sir. Her ladyship was round here three times, sir."

"Did she see all these letters?"

"Not the telephone calls, sir. I 'ad put them on one side. But.... It's a little thing, sir."

He paused and came a step nearer. "You see, sir," he explained with the faintest flavour of the confidential softening his mechanical respect, "yesterday, when 'er ladyship was 'ere, sir, some one rang up on the telephone--"

"But you, Merkle--"

"Exactly, sir. But 'er ladyship said 'I'LL go to that, Merkle,' and just for a moment I couldn't exactly think 'ow I could manage it, sir, and there 'er ladyship was, at the telephone. What pa.s.sed, sir, I couldn't 'ear. I 'eard her say, 'Any message?' And I FANCY, sir, I 'eard 'er say, 'I'm the 'ousemaid,' but that, sir, I think must have been a mistake, sir."

"Must have been," said Benham. "Certainly--must have been. And the call you think came from--?"

"There again, sir, I'm quite in the dark. But of course, sir, it's usually Mrs. Skelmersdale, sir. Just about her time in the afternoon. On an average, sir...."

7

"I went out of London to think about my life."

It was manifest that Lady Marayne did not believe him.

"Alone?" she asked.

"Of course alone."

"STUFF!" said Lady Marayne.

She had taken him into her own little sitting-room, she had thrown aside gloves and fan and theatre wrap, curled herself comfortably into the abundantly cushioned corner by the fire, and proceeded to a mixture of cross-examination and tirade that he found it difficult to make head against. She was vibrating between distressed solicitude and resentful anger. She was infuriated at his going away and deeply concerned at what could have taken him away. "I was worried," he said. "London is too crowded to think in. I wanted to get myself alone."

"And there I was while you were getting yourself alone, as you call it, wearing my poor little brains out to think of some story to tell people.

I had to stuff them up you had a sprained knee at Chexington, and for all I knew any of them might have been seeing you that morning. Besides what has a boy like you to worry about? It's all nonsense, Poff."

She awaited his explanations. Benham looked for a moment like his father.

"I'm not getting on, mother," he said. "I'm scattering myself. I'm getting no grip. I want to get a better hold upon life, or else I do not see what is to keep me from going to pieces--and wasting existence. It's rather difficult sometimes to tell what one thinks and feels--"

She had not really listened to him.

"Who is that woman," she interrupted suddenly, "Mrs. Fly-by-Night, or some such name, who rings you up on the telephone?"

Benham hesitated, blushed, and regretted it.

"Mrs. Skelmersdale," he said after a little pause.

"It's all the same. Who is she?"

"She's a woman I met at a studio somewhere, and I went with her to one of those Dolmetsch concerts."

He stopped.

Lady Marayne considered him in silence for a little while. "All men,"

she said at last, "are alike. Husbands, sons and brothers, they are all alike. Sons! One expects them to be different. They aren't different.

Why should they be? I suppose I ought to be shocked, Poff. But I'm not.

She seems to be very fond of you."

"She's--she's very good--in her way. She's had a difficult life...."

"You can't leave a man about for a moment," Lady Marayne reflected.

"Poff, I wish you'd fetch me a gla.s.s of water."

When he returned she was looking very fixedly into the fire. "Put it down," she said, "anywhere. Poff! is this Mrs. Helter-Skelter a discreet sort of woman? Do you like her?" She asked a few additional particulars and Benham made his grudging admission of facts. "What I still don't understand, Poff, is why you have been away."

"I went away," said Benham, "because I want to clear things up."

"But why? Is there some one else?"

"No."

"You went alone? All the time?"

"I've told you I went alone. Do you think I tell you lies, mother?"

"Everybody tells lies somehow," said Lady Marayne. "Easy lies or stiff ones. Don't FLOURISH, Poff. Don't start saying things like a moral windmill in a whirlwind. It's all a muddle. I suppose every one in London is getting in or out of these entanglements--or something of the sort. And this seems a comparatively slight one. I wish it hadn't happened. They do happen."

An expression of perplexity came into her face. She looked at him. "Why do you want to throw her over?"

"I WANT to throw her over," said Benham.

He stood up and went to the hearthrug, and his mother reflected that this was exactly what all men did at just this phase of a discussion.

Then things ceased to be sensible.

From overhead he said to her: "I want to get away from this complication, this servitude. I want to do some--some work. I want to get my mind clear and my hands clear. I want to study government and the big business of the world."