"I'll tell her. Did you see her driving away as you arrived? If you'll adopt me, I'll introduce you."

"I've arranged that already. Whitsuntide will be spent at Brandon Court improving my acquaintance with her."

Gladys regarded me with frank admiration.

"You haven't wasted much time. But if you're going there, you may just as well adopt me. I shall be down there too, and if you're my guardian...."

"It'll save all trouble with the luggage. Well, it's for your parents to decide. You can guess my feelings."

I waited till after six in the hopes of seeing my brother, and was then only allowed to depart on the plea of my engagement with Aintree and a promise to dine and arrange details of my stewardship the following night.

"Write it down!" Gladys implored me as I hastened downstairs. "You'll only forget it if you don't. Eight-fifteen to-morrow. Haven't you got a book?"

I explained that on the fringe of the desert where I had lived of late, social engagements were not too numerous to be carried in the head.

"That won't do for London," she said with much firmness, and I was incontinently burdened with a leather pocket-diary.

Dressing for dinner that night, the little leather diary made me reflective. As a very young man I used to keep a journal: it belonged to a time when I was not too old to give myself unnecessary trouble, nor too disillusioned to appreciate the unimportance of my impressions or the ephemeral character of the names that figured in its pages. For a single moment I played with the idea of recording my experiences in England. Now that the last chapter is closed and the little diary is one of the bare half-dozen memorials of my checkered sojourn in England, I half wish I had not been too lazy to carry my idea into effect. After a lapse of only seven months I find there are many minor points already forgotten. The outline is clear enough in my memory, but the details are blurred, and the dates are in riotous confusion.

It is fruitless to waste regrets over a lost opportunity, but I wish I had started my journal on the day Gladys presented me with my now shabby little note-book. I should have written "Prologue" against this date--to commemorate my meetings with Roden and Joyce Davenant, Aintree and Mrs. Wylton, Gladys and Philip. To commemorate, too, my first glimpse of Sylvia....

Yes, I should have written "Prologue" against this date: and then natural indolence would have tempted me to pack my bag and wander abroad once more, if I could have foreseen for one moment the turmoil and excitement of the following six months.

I can only add that I am extremely glad I did no such thing.

CHAPTER I

WAR a OUTRANCE

"RIDGEON: I have a curious aching; I dont know where; I cant localise it. Sometimes I think it's my heart; sometimes I suspect my spine. It doesn't exactly hurt me, but it unsettles me completely. I feel that something is going to happen....

SIR PATRICK: You are sure there are no voices?

RIDGEON: Quite sure.

SIR PATRICK: Then it's only foolishness.

RIDGEON: Have you ever met anything like it before in your practice?

SIR PATRICK: Oh yes. Often. It's very common between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two. It sometimes comes on again at forty or thereabouts. You're a bachelor, you see.

It's not serious--if you're careful.

RIDGEON: About my food?

SIR PATRICK: No; about your behaviour.... Youre not going to die; but you may be going to make a fool of yourself."

BERNARD SHAW: "The Doctor's Dilemma."

I was a few minutes late for dinner, as a guest should be. Aintree had quite properly arrived before me, and was standing in the lounge of the Ritz talking to two slim, fair-haired women, with very white skin and very blue eyes. I have spent so much of my time in the East and South that this light colouring has almost faded from my memory. I associated it exclusively with England, and in time began to fancy it must be an imagination of my boyhood. The English blondes you meet returning from India by P & O are usually so bleached and dried by the sun that you find yourself doubting whether the truly golden hair and forget-me-not eyes of your dreams are ever discoverable in real life. But the fascination endures even when you suspect you are cherishing an illusion.

I had been wondering, as I drove down, whether any trace survived of the two dare-devil, fearless, riotous children I had seen by flashlight glimpses, when an invitation from old Jasper Davenant brought me to participate in one of his amazing Cumberland shoots. I was twenty or twenty-one at the time; Elsie must have been seven, and Joyce five. Mrs. Davenant was alive in those days, and Dick still unborn. My memory of the two children is a misty confusion of cut hands, broken knees, torn clothes, and daily whippings. Jasper wanted to make fine animals of his children, and set them to swim as soon as they could walk, and to hunt as soon as their fingers were large enough to hold a rein.

When I was climbing with him in Trans-Caucasia, I asked how the young draft was shaping. That was ten years later, and I gathered that Elsie was beginning to be afraid of being described as a tomboy. On such a subject Joyce was quite indifferent. She attended her first hunt ball at twelve, against orders and under threat of castigation; half the hunt broke their backs in bending down to dance with her, as soon as they had got over the surprise of seeing a short-frocked, golden-haired fairy marching into the ball-room and defying her father to send her home. "You know the consequences?" he had said with pathetic endeavour to preserve parental authority. "I think it's worth it," was her answer. That night the Master interceded with old Jasper to save Joyce her whipping, and the next morning saw an attempt to establish order without recourse to the civil hand. "I'll let you off this time," Jasper had said, "if you'll promise not to disobey me again." "Not good enough," was Joyce's comment with grave deliberate shake of the head. "Then I shall have to flog you." "I think you'd better. You said you would, and you'd make me feel mean if you didn't.

I've had my fun."

The words might be taken for the Davenant motto, in substitution of the present "Vita brevis." Gay and gallant, half savage, half moss-rider, lawless and light-hearted, they would stick at nothing to compass the whim of the moment, and come up for judgment with uncomplaining faces on the day of inevitable retribution. Joyce had run away from two schools because the Christmas term clashed with the hunting. I never heard the reason why she was expelled from a third; but I have no doubt it was adequate. She would ride anything that had a back, drive anything that had a bit or steering-wheel, thrash a poacher with her own hand, and take or offer a bet at any hour of the day or night. That was the character her father gave her. I had seen and heard little of the family since his death, Elsie's marriage and Joyce's abrupt, marauding descent on Oxford, where she worked twelve hours a day for three years, secured two firsts, and brought her name before the public as a writer of political pamphlets, and a pioneer in the suffrage agitation.

"We really oughtn't to need introduction," said Mrs. Wylton, as Aintree brought me up to be presented. "I remember you quite well. I shouldn't think you've altered a bit. How long is it?"

"Twenty years," I said. "You have--grown, rather."

She had grown staider and sadder, as well as older; but the bright golden hair, white skin, and blue eyes were the same as I remembered in Cumberland. A black dress clung closely to her slim, tall figure, and a rope of pearls was her only adornment.

I turned and shook hands with Joyce, marvelling at the likeness between the two sisters. There was no rope of pearls, only a thin band of black velvet round the neck. Joyce was dressed in white silk, and wore malmaisons at her waist. Those, you would say, were the only differences--until time granted you a closer scrutiny, and you saw that Elsie was a Joyce who had passed through the fire. Something of her courage had been scorched and withered in the ordeal; my pity went out to her as we met. Joyce demanded another quality than pity. I hardly know what to call it--homage, allegiance, devotion. She impressed me, as not half a dozen people have impressed me in this life--Rhodes, Chamberlain, and one or two more--with the feeling that I was under the dominion of one who had always had her way, and would always have it; one who came armed with a plan and a purpose among straying sheep who awaited her lead.... And with it all she was twenty-eight, and looked less; smiling, soft and childlike; so slim and fragile that you might snap her across your knee like a lath rod.

Aintree and Mrs. Wylton led the way into the dining-room.

"I can't honestly say I remember you," Joyce remarked as we prepared to follow. "I was too young when you went away. I suppose we _did_ meet?"

"The last time I heard of you...." I began.

"Oh, don't!" she interrupted with a laugh. "You must have heard some pretty bad things. You know, people won't meet me now. I'm a.... Wait a bit--'A disgrace to my family,' 'a traitor to my class,' 'a reproach to my upbringing!' I've 'drilled incendiary lawlessness into a compact, organised force,' I'm 'an example of acute militant hysteria.' Heaven knows what else! D'you still feel equal to dining at the same table? It's brave of you; that boy in front--he's too good for this world--he's the only non-political friend I've got. I'm afraid you'll find me dreadfully changed--that is, if we ever did meet."

"As I was saying...."

"Yes, and I interrupted! I'm so sorry. You drop into the habit of interrupting if you're a militant. As you were saying, the last time we met...."

"The last time we met, strictly speaking we didn't meet at all. I came to say good-bye, but you'd just discovered that a pony was necessary to your happiness. It was an _idee fixe_, you were a fanatic, you broke half a Crown Derby dinner-service when you couldn't get it. When I came to say good-bye, you were locked in the nursery with an insufficient allowance of bread and water."

Joyce shook her head sadly.

"I was an awful child."

"Was?"

She looked up with reproach in her blue eyes.

"Haven't I improved?"

"You were a wonderfully pretty child."

"Oh, never mind looks!"

"But I do. They're the only things worth having."