"There's a third," said Kitty. "And the only important one. There's the look of the thing. I don't care how many people we murder, the secret will leak out. Things always do leak out. Never, in the course of twenty-nine years of endeavour, have I been able to keep anything shady from coming to light sooner or later. It isn't done. You ought to know that, as a government servant. Has any government ever succeeded in keeping its own dark doings secret for long? No; they come out like--like flowers pushing up towards daylight; and then there's the devil to pay. All our shadiest departmental transactions emerge one by one; nothing is hid that shall not be revealed. And our marriage would be the same. Be sure our sin would find us out. And that would be the end of your career, and probably of the Ministry as well; I believe the Ministry will stand or fall with you; and it's already pretty tottery.... It's a pity you can't get exemption; but of course your case is one in which it's absolutely never given.... No, we can't do this thing. You're the Minister of Brains first, and poor Nicky Chester, who would like to marry his girl, a long, long way behind. And the poor girl who would like to marry Nicky Chester--she's not got to count at all....

I don't want to be high-falutin and to talk about principles, only to have a little sense."

He was watching her moodily from under bent brows, leaning back against a beech-trunk and pulling up little handfuls of damp moss with his thin, unusual fingers.

"Sense," he repeated. "It is sense, to have what one wants, if it doesn't harm anything or anyone. And I'll tell you another thing--not having it is rotting me up altogether--me and my work. I didn't want to fall in love again; I hoped I'd done with all that; I tried not to take any notice of you. But it was no go, and I can't fall out again, and I'm dead sick of going on like this. And my experience of life, both private and public, has been longer than yours, and, as it happens, I've known of several transactions which haven't come to light and never will; I've perpetrated some myself in the Ministry, which even that clear light which beats upon a hotel hasn't yet exposed, and, heaven helping us, won't. You don't suppose all the dark secrets of the war ever came out?

Of course they didn't. There are some that will wait till ... well, till the next war, let's say.... Kitty, let's try it. It's worth the risk, surely. Let's be sporting. We're missing--we're missing the best thing in the world, just out of funk. I thought you always did things, just for the sake of doing them. I thought you never turned your back on life. It isn't like you."

"Oh," murmured Kitty. "Life.... There's so much of that. This is just one thing out of it."

"While you want it," he returned, indubitably correct as to this, "it seems a long way the most important thing."

"It does," she agreed. "There's no comparison at all.... It's queer, isn't it, how strong it is, this odd, desperate wanting of one person out of all the world. It's an extraordinary, enormously strong thing....

But there _are_ other things. There are jokes, and shops, and music, and plays, and pictures, and nice clothes, and Russian politics, and absurd people, and Greek poetry, and the world's failures caged together on one island, and things to eat and to drink, and our careers, and primroses in woods, and the censor.... Good gracious, it's all like an idiotic, glorified revue. We mustn't let the one thing, just because it matters most, matter alone. It's so commonplace. Our hearts aren't broken, and won't break. We're out to have a good time, and we'll let love and marriage go to the--anywhere they like, if we can't have them.... By the way, if it's any comfort to you (it is to me) I shouldn't make at all a good wife; I'm much nicer as a friend. I want too much out of life. I'm grasping and selfish. You'd find me tiring."

"I do," he returned. "You're tiring me to death now. I've plenty of friends already, thank you. And what does it matter to me what sort of a wife you'd make? You talk as if you were refusing a secretarial appointment. I want _you_, not a wife."

"You've got me," said Kitty, "only not as a wife.... If that's no use to you, we'll give it up. Nicky, I suppose we'd _better_ give it up. It isn't working. I'll go right away. I'll get another job."

"No," he said gloomily. "There's no need for that. Why should you mess up your career? We needn't meet. We shouldn't naturally meet, unless we made opportunities. I think you're right, that we'd better not meet.

What's the good of meeting, just to repeat this sort of scene again and again, and hurt each other? We've reached the breaking point; I can't bear any more.... I think we'd better leave it that you let me know when you change your mind and will marry me. You will, won't you, when you do?"

"Yes," said Kitty, and could say no more than that because she was on the edge of tears.

For a moment they clung together, holding each other close. He said, "My dearest dear, I love you. Can't you?... can't you?..." and she whispered, very pale, "I love you. I think I worship you," and laid her cheek on his hand, so that he felt her tears.

They walked on together through the April afternoon, and it cried to them like a child whom they were betraying and forsaking. There would not be another day like this day, through all the lovely awakening spring and summer.

6

Ivy and Betty Delmer, who had been spending the afternoon at Beaconsfield, saw them at Beaconsfield station.

Betty said, "Surely that's your Minister with Miss Grammont."

Ivy looked at them, down the length of the platform. It seemed to her that Miss Grammont's walk with the Minister hadn't been altogether a success; they both looked so pale and tired, and Miss Grammont, surely, had been crying.

Something suddenly pa.s.sed into Ivy's consciousness about these two people whom she admired, and her soft mouth dropped open a little with the amazement of her thoughts. The Minister--and Miss Grammont! It was surely incredible. Ministers didn't; they were too high, too superior.

Besides, what had love to do with this Minister, who was uncertificated for matrimony? Ivy told herself she was mistaken, she had misread the look with which they had looked at each other as they parted.

"Are they thick?" Betty was asking, with careless, inquisitive interest.

Betty wouldn't think it odd; Betty didn't know anything about ministers in general or this minister in particular.

"Oh, I think they know each other quite well," replied Ivy. "Miss Grammont's jolly clever, you know. I shouldn't wonder if he talks about quite important things to her."

"How dull," returned Betty, swinging her primroses. "Don't let's get into the same carriage as her. I never know if I know those End House people or not; Daddy and mother think I don't, and it's awkward.... I'd rather enjoy knowing Miss Ponsonby and that ducky baby, even if they aren't respectable, she looks so sweet, and I'd like to hear all about the stage. But I've no use for your Miss Grammont. Her clothes are all right, but I'm sure she's stuck up.... Fancy going out for Sunday with the Minister of a government department! Rather her than me."

Ivy said, "Don't you worry, my child. No Minister'll ever trouble _you_ to go out with him. As for Chester, I should think he'd have you executed after one talk; he's great on ridding the world of the mentally deficient." But what she was thinking was, "How fearfully interesting if there is anything between them." She wondered what the other people at the office thought about it, or if they had ever thought about it at all.

CHAPTER VIII

ON FIXED HEARTS AND CHANGING SCENES

1

To Kitty it was manifest that the time had come for a change of employment. Such times came frequently in her life; often merely because she got bored, yawned, wanted a change, heard life summoning her to fresh woods and pastures new, and obeyed the call. Many occupations she had thus thrown up lightly; this is one reason why those who regard life as a variety entertainment do not really get on; they forget that life is real, life is earnest, and departing leave behind them no footprints on the sands of time. They do not make a career; they do not make good; they do not, in the long run, even make much money, though that rolls in by fits and starts, and at times plentifully. They do not so much hide their talents in napkins as play ball with them.

This is as much as to say that it was not to Kitty Grammont the effort and the wrench that it would have been to many people to contemplate a change of avocation. And it certainly seemed desirable. Chester had said, "We needn't meet"; but the fact remained that when two people who love each other work in the same building, however remote their spheres, they disturb each other, are conscious of each other's nearness. And Chester's presence pervaded the whole Ministry; he had stamped himself everywhere; there was no getting away from him. His name was constantly on the lips and on the pens of his subordinates, and clicked forth from every typewriter; you could not so much as write an official letter without beginning "I am directed by the Minister of Brains to state,"

and signing it "for the Minister of Brains." Besides which, he was to be seen going out and coming in, to be met in pa.s.sages and lifts, to be observed taking his food in the canteen, and his Personal a.s.sistant demanded continual attention to him on the telephone. No, there was no getting away from the Minister. And that meant no peace of mind, none of the old careless light-hearted living and working; nothing but a continual, disturbing, restless, aching want. Kitty had no intention of facing this, so she told Vernon Prideaux that when she found another job she was going to leave. He looked at her in annoyance and dismay, and said, "Good lord, why?"

Kitty said, "I'm bored. I want a change. I'm tired of working for this autocratic government. I want something with more variety in it, and more soul--a travelling circus, or a companionship to a rich American seeing the world; or any old thing, so long as it amuses me."

"There's going to be quite enough amus.e.m.e.nt in _this_ circus," said Prideaux, "before we're through with it, to satisfy anyone, I should say.... Really, Kitty, I think you're foolish. You're throwing up your chances; you're climbing up, and will climb higher if you stay. Even if the thing founders, as is quite likely, you'll climb out of it into another job, you're good enough. You ought to think of your career. And besides, you can't be spared. Who on earth do you think is going to do your job? I think you ought to see this thing through."

But Kitty did not think so. "It will go to its own place quite quickly enough without my help. And as for my career--funny word--I'm not sure I've got one. If I have it's such a chequered one that a few more ups and downs won't make much difference to it. And as for being spared, oh anyone can be spared, out of any ministry; there are too many of us.

Anyhow--well anyhow I must go."

Prideaux thought this so frivolous, so foolish, so unworthy, so tiresome, and so like a woman, that he was exasperated. He rang for a shorthand typist, remarking, "If you must you must. Miss Egerton" (Miss Egerton had succeeded Miss Pomfrey, and was better), "send to the Establishment Branch for Miss Grammont's papers sometime," which closed the subject for the present.

Kitty went back to her table and wrote a letter to the A.S.E. about some unfortunate agreement which had been made with them concerning the exemption of some of their members from the Mind Training Course.

Personally Kitty was of the opinion that it was a pity the agreement had not been made as extensive as the A.S.E. desired; she thought that this Union were already too clever by half. She almost went to the length of thinking it was a pity the promises made to them had not been kept; a revolutionary opinion which in itself indicated that it was time she left. Having dealt with the A.S.E. she turned her attention to a file sent down from M.B. 1 and minuted "Pa.s.sed to you to deal with this man's imaginary grievance." The imaginary grievance was that the wife of the man in question had been killed by a motor bus, and he wanted a week's postponement of his Mind Training Course in order that he might arrange about the funeral. M.B. 1 were like that; they did not mean to be unkind, but were a little lacking in flexibility and imagination.

Ivy Delmer, who had answered Prideaux's bell, sat with her pencil ready and her round face bent over her notebook. She had heard Prideaux's order to his secretary, and concluded, correctly, that Miss Grammont was either going to have her pay raised or to leave, and from Prideaux's manner and voice she thought it was the second. She wondered whether this could have anything to do with the Minister, and what he had been saying to Miss Grammont on Sunday. She was curious and interested, even more so than she had been on Sunday, because the people to whom she had mentioned the subject had all noticed the intimacy; everyone seemed to have seen the Minister out with Miss Grammont at one time or another. No one but Ivy thought it was anything more than friendship, but no one else had seen them look at one another on Beaconsfield platform. Ivy had, and said so....

Kitty was right; nothing remained hidden in government departments, or, indeed, anywhere else. Healthily, persistently, inevitably, everything pushed up towards the clear light of day; and quite right, too.

2

In the evenings Kitty, seeking jobs, studied the advertis.e.m.e.nt columns of the daily papers. She had always read them; they, with Mr. Selfridge and the Pelman system, form the lighter and more entertaining part of any daily paper; but now she took to perusing them with care. The personal column of the _Times_ she found peculiarly edifying.

"Quiet, refined gentleman (served in war, musical) would like to get into touch with bright and sympathetic lady." Kitty rejected that; she was not sure that she was sympathetic, and the terms were too vague.

Better was "Lady, high standard of taste and culture and large means, wants capable travelling companion. Knowledge of art essential, good breeding preferred. Must talk continental languages fluently and understand railway guides." Kitty, making a mental note of that (for, with the possible exception of the breeding, she had all these qualifications), ran her eyes down the column, past "Write to me, darling, all is forgiven," "Will the lady in a fur toque riding in a Hammersmith aero on Sat.u.r.day last at 3.30 communicate with A.C.", "No man hath seen G.o.d, at any time," until she came to "Young, accomplished, well-educated War Widow would like position as secretary or confidential clerk to n.o.bleman, member of parliament, or gentleman." She rested her finger on that. "I'll put one in like this," she remarked to her cousin.

"War Widow. That's what I've always wanted to be. It sounds so well.

Elspeth, I shall buy some weeds and commence widow. A war widow...."

"If you want a new job, and a job with travel and life in it," said her cousin, sounding her, "I don't know why you don't go out to the Pacific Islands and join Neil. You may be sure that wherever Neil is there'll be travel enough and life enough." She watched Kitty idly through a little whirl of cigarette smoke. But Kitty looked no more than bored, bending over the _Times_ and manicuring her nails.

"Neil would tire me. I've grown too old for Neil. Besides, it wouldn't be proper; I've broken off my engagement. I've not had the last letter back yet, you know, so he may have got it. Besides..." Kitty paused only for a moment, and added in the same casual tone, "besides, I'm too much in love with Nicky Chester, though I can't have him, to have any use for anyone else just now."

Her cousin nodded. "I knew that, darling, of course. And so you've renounced each other. How silly. But it won't last. It never does. Go and be a Young Accomplished War Widow, then, to pa.s.s the time."

3