XII

Up till now Frances had taken a quiet interest in Women's Suffrage. It had got itself into the papers and thus become part of the affairs of the nation. The names of Mrs. Palmerston-Swete and Mrs. Blathwaite and Angela Blathwaite had got into the papers, where Frances hoped and prayed that the name of Dorothea Harrison might not follow them. The spectacle of a frantic Government at grips with the Women's Franchise Union had not yet received the head-lines accorded to the reports of divorce and breach of promise cases and fires in paraffin shops; still, it was beginning to figure, and if Frances's Times ignored it, there were other papers that Dorothy brought home.

But for Frances the affairs of the nation sank into insignificance beside Nicky's Cambridge affair.

There could be no doubt that Nicky's affair was serious. You could not, Anthony said, get over the letters, the Master's letter and the Professor's letter and Michael's. They had arrived one hour after Nicky, Nicky so changed from his former candour that he refused to give any account of himself beyond the simple statement that he had been sent down. They'd know, he had said, soon enough why.

And soon enough they did know.

To be sure no details could be disentangled from the discreet ambiguities of the Master and the Professor. But Michael's letter was more explicit. Nicky had been sent down because old "Booster" had got it into his head that Nicky had been making love to "Booster's" wife when she didn't want to be made love to, and nothing could get it out of "Booster's" head.

Michael was bound to stand up for his brother, and it was clear to Anthony that so grave a charge could hardly have been brought without some reason. The tone of the letters, especially the Professor's, was extraordinarily restrained. That was what made the thing stand out in its sheer awfulness. The Professor, although, according to Michael, he conceived himself to be profoundly injured, wrote sorrowfully, in consideration of Nicky's youth.

There was one redeeming circumstance, the Master and the Professor both laid stress on it: Anthony's son had not attempted to deny it.

"There must," Frances said wildly, "be some terrible mistake."

But Nicky cut the ground from under the theory of the terrible mistake by continuing in his refusal to deny it.

"What sort of woman," said Anthony, "is the Professor's wife?"

"Oh, awfully decent," said Nicky.

"You had no encouragement, then, no provocation?"

"She's awfully fascinating," said Nicky.

Then Frances had another thought. It seemed to her that Nicky was evading.

"Are you sure you're not screening somebody else?"

"Screening somebody else? Do you mean some other fellow?"

"Yes. I'm not asking you to give the name, Nicky."

"I swear I'm not. Why should I be? I can't think why you're all making such a fuss about it. I don't mean poor old 'Booster.' He's got some cause, if you like."

"But what was it you did—really did, Nicky?"

"You've read the letters, Mother."

Nicky's adolescence seemed to die and pass from him there and then; and she saw a stubborn, hard virility that frightened and repelled her, forcing her to believe that it might have really happened.

To Frances the awfulness of it was beyond belief. And the pathos of her belief in Nicky was unbearable to Anthony. There were the letters.

"I think, dear," Anthony said, "you'd better leave us."

"Mayn't I stay?" It was as if she thought that by staying she could bring Nicky's youth back to life again.

"No," said Anthony.

She went, and Nicky opened the door for her. His hard, tight man's face looked at her as if it had been she who had sinned and he who suffered, intolerably, for her sin. The click of the door as he shut it stabbed her.

"It's a damnable business, father. We'd better not talk about it."

But Anthony would talk about it. And when he had done talking all that Nicky had to say was: "You know as well as I do that these things happen."

---

For Nicky had thought it out very carefully beforehand in the train. What else could he say? He couldn't tell them that "Booster's" poor little wife had lost her head and made hysterical love to him, and had been so frightened at what she had done that she had made him promise on his word of honour that, whatever happened, he wouldn't give her away to anybody, not even to his own people.

He supposed that either Peggy had given herself away, or that poor old "Booster" had found her out. He supposed that, having found her out, there was no other line that "Booster" could have taken. Anyhow, there was no other line that he could take; because, in the world where these things happened, being found out would be fifty times worse for Peggy than it would be for him.

He tried to recall the scene in the back drawing-room where she had asked him so often to have tea with her alone. The most vivid part was the end of it, after he had given his promise. Peggy had broken down and put her head on his shoulder and cried like anything. And it was at that moment that Nicky thought of "Booster," and how awful and yet how funny it would be if he walked into the room and saw him there. He had tried hard not to think what "Booster's" face would look like; he had tried hard not to laugh as long as Peggy's head was on his shoulder, for fear of hurting her feelings; but when she took it off he did give one half-strangled snort; for it really was the rummest thing that had ever happened to him.

He didn't know, and he couldn't possibly have guessed, that as soon as the door had shut on him Peggy's passion had turned to rage and utter detestation of Nicky (for she had heard the snort); and that she had gone straight to her husband's study and put her head on his shoulder, and cried, and told him a lie; and that it was Peggy's lie and not the Professor's imagination that had caused him to be sent down. And even if Peggy had not been Lord Somebody's daughter and related to all sorts of influential people she would still have been capable of turning every male head in the University. For she was a small, gentle woman with enchanting manners and the most beautiful and pathetic eyes, and she had not yet been found out. Therefore it was more likely that an undergraduate with a face like Nicky's should lose his head than that a woman with a face like Peggy's should, for no conceivable reason, tell a lie. So that, even if Nicky's word of honour had not been previously pledged to his accuser, it would have had no chance against any statement that she chose to make. And even if he had known that she had lied, he couldn't very well have given it against poor pretty Peggy who had lost her head and got frightened.

As Nicky packed up his clothes and his books he said, "I don't care if I am sent down. It would have been fifty times worse for her than it is for me."

He had no idea how bad it was, nor how much worse it was going to be. For it ended in his going that night from his father's house to the house in St. John's Wood where Vera and Mr. Lawrence Stephen lived.

And it was there that he met Desmond.

---

Nicky congratulated himself on having pulled it off so well. At the same time he was a little surprised at the ease with which he had taken his father and mother in. He might have understood it if he had known that Vera had been before him, and that she had warned them long ago that this was precisely the sort of thing they would have to look out for. And as no opinion ever uttered on the subject of their children was likely to be forgotten by Frances and Anthony, when this particular disaster came they were more prepared for it than they would have believed possible.

But there were two members of his family whom Nicky had failed altogether to convince, Michael and Dorothy. Michael luckily, Nicky said to himself, was not on the spot, and his letter had no weight against the letters of the Master and the Professor, and on this also Nicky had calculated. He reckoned without Dorothy, judging it hardly likely that she would be allowed to know anything about it. Nobody, not even Frances, was yet aware of Dorothy's importance.

And Dorothy, because of her importance, blamed herself for all that happened afterwards. If she had not had that damned Suffrage meeting, Rosalind would not have stayed to dinner; if Rosalind had not stayed to dinner she would not have gone with her to the tram-lines; if she had not gone with her to the tram-lines she would have been at home to stop Nicky from going to St. John's Wood. As it was, Nicky had reached the main road at the top of the lane just as Dorothy was entering it from the bottom.

At first Frances did not want Dorothy to see her father. He was most horribly upset and must not be disturbed. But Dorothy insisted. Her father had the letters, and she must see the letters.

"I may understand them better than you or Daddy," she said. "You see, Mummy, I know these Cambridge people. They're awful asses, some of them."

And though her mother doubted whether attendance at the Professor's lectures would give Dorothy much insight into the affair, she had her way. Anthony was too weak to resist her. He pushed the letters towards her without a word. He would rather she had been left out of it. And yet somehow the sight of her, coming in, so robust and undismayed and competent, gave him a sort of comfort.

Dorothy did not agree with Michael. There was more in it than the Professor's imagination. The Professor, she said, hadn't got any imagination; you could tell from the way he lectured. But she did not believe one word of the charge against her brother. Something had happened and Nicky was screening somebody.

"I'll bet you anything you like," said Dorothy, "it's 'Booster's' wife. She's made him give his word."

Dorothy was sure that "Booster's" wife was a bad lot.

"Nicky said she was awfully decent."

"He'd have to. He couldn't do it by halves."

"They couldn't have sent him down, unless they'd sifted the thing to the bottom."

"I daresay they've sifted all they could, the silly asses."

She could have killed them for making her father suffer. The sight of his drawn face hurt her abominably. She had never seen him like that. She wasn't half so sorry for her mother who was sustained by a secret, ineradicable faith in Nicky. Why couldn't he have faith in Nicky too? Was it because he was a man and knew that these things happened?

"Daddy—being sent down isn't such an awful calamity. It isn't going to blast his career or anything. It's always touch and go. I might have been sent down any day. I should have been if they'd known about me half what they don't know about Nicky. Why can't you take it as a rag? You bet he does."

Anthony removed himself from her protecting hand. He got up and went to bed.

But he did not sleep there. Neither he nor Frances slept. And he came down in the morning looking worse than ever.

Dorothy thought, "It must be awful to have children if it makes you feel like that." She thought, "It's a lucky thing they're not likely to cut up the same way about me." She thought again, "It must be awful to have children." She thought of the old discussions in her room at Newnham, about the woman's right to the child, and free union, and easy divorce, and the abolition of the family. Her own violent and revolutionary speeches (for which she liked to think she might have been sent down) sounded faint and far-off and irrelevant. She did not really want to abolish Frances and Anthony. And yet, if they had been abolished, as part of the deplorable institution of parentage, it would have been better for them; for then they would not be suffering as they did.

It must be awful to have children. But perhaps they knew that it was worth it.

And as her thoughts travelled that way they were overtaken all of a sudden by an idea. She did not stop to ask herself what business her idea had in that neighbourhood. She went down first thing after breakfast and sent off two wires; one to Captain Drayton at Croft House, Eltham; one to the same person at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.

"Can I see you? It's about Nicky.

"DOROTHY HARRISON."

Wires to show that she was impersonal and businesslike, and that her business was urgent. "Can I see you?" to show that he was not being invited to see her. "It's about Nicky" to justify the whole proceeding. "Dorothy Harrison" because "Dorothy" by itself was too much.

---

As soon as she had sent off her wires Dorothy felt a sense of happiness and well-being. She had no grounds for happiness; far otherwise; her great friendship with Rosalind Jervis was disintegrating bit by bit owing to Rosalind's behaviour; the fiery Suffrage meeting had turned into dust and ashes; her darling Nicky was in a nasty scrape; her father and mother were utterly miserable; yet she was happy.

Half-way home her mind began to ask questions of its own accord.

"Supposing you had to choose between the Suffrage and Frank Drayton?"

"But I haven't got to."

"You might have. You know you might any minute. You know he hates it. And supposing—"

But Dorothy refused to give any answer.

His wire came within the next half hour.

"Coming three sharp. FRANK."

Her sense of well-being increased almost to exaltation.

---

He arrived with punctuality at three o'clock. (He was in the gunners and had a job at Woolwich.) She found him standing on the hearth-rug in the drawing-room. He had blown his nose when he heard her coming, and that meant that he was nervous. She caught him stuffing his pocket-handkerchief (a piece of damning evidence) into his breast-pocket.

With her knowledge of his nervousness her exaltation ceased as if it had not been. At the sight of him it was as if the sentence hidden somewhere in her mind—"You'll have to choose. You know you'll have to"—escaping thought and language, had expressed itself in one suffocating pang. Unless Nicky's affair staved off the dreadful moment.

"Were you frightfully busy?"

"No, thank goodness."

The luck she had had! Of course, if he had been busy he couldn't possibly have come.

She could look at him now without a tightening in her throat. She liked to look at him. He was made all of one piece. She liked his square face and short fine hair, both the colour of light-brown earth; his eyes, the colour of light brown earth under clear water; eyes that looked small because they were set so deep. She liked their sudden narrowing and their deep wrinkles when he smiled. She liked his jutting chin, and the fine, rather small mouth that jerked his face slightly crooked when he laughed. She liked that slender crookedness that made it a face remarkable and unique among faces. She liked his brains. She liked all that she had ever seen or heard of him.

Vera had told them that once, at an up-country station in India, he had stopped a mutiny in a native battery by laughing in the men's faces. Somebody that Ferdie knew had been with him and saw it happen. The men broke into his office where he was sitting, vulnerably, in his shirt-sleeves. They had brought knives with them, beastly native things, and they had their hands on the handles, ready. They screamed and gesticulated with excitement. And Frank Drayton leaned back in his office chair and looked at them, and burst out laughing, because, he said, they made such funny faces. When they got to fingering their knives, he tilted back his chair and rocked with laughter. His sudden, incredible mirth frightened them and stopped the mutiny. She could see him, she could see his face jerked crooked with delight.

That was the sort of thing that Nicky would have done. She loved him for that. She loved him because he was like Nicky.

She was not able to recall the process of the states that flowered in that mysterious sense of well-being and exaltation. A year ago Frank Drayton had been only "that nice man we used to meet at Cheltenham." First of all he had been Ferdie's and Vera's friend. Then he became Nicky's friend; the only one who took a serious interest in his inventions and supported him when he wanted to go into the Army and consoled him when he was frustrated. Then he had become the friend of the family. Now he was recognized as more particularly Dorothea's friend.

At Cheltenham he had been home on leave; and it was not until this year that he had got his job at Woolwich teaching gunnery, while he waited for a bigger job in the Ordnance Department. Ferdie Cameron had always said that Frank Drayton would be worth watching. He would be part of the brains of the Army some day. Nicky watched him. His brains and their familiarity with explosives and the machinery of warfare had been his original attraction for Nicky. But it was Dorothea who watched him most.

She plunged abruptly into Nicky's affair, giving names and lineage. "You know all sorts of people, do you know anything about her?"

He looked at her clearly, without smiling. Then he said "Yes. I know a good bit about her. Is that what's wrong with Nicky?"

"Not exactly. But he's been sent down."

His wry smile intimated that such things might be.

Then she told him what the Master had written and what the Professor had written and what Michael had written, and what Nicky had said, and what she, Dorothea thought. Drayton smiled over the Master's and the Professor's letters, but when it came to Michael's letter he laughed aloud.

"It's all very well for us. But Daddy and Mummy are breaking their hearts. Daddy says he's going down to Cambridge to see what really did happen."

Again that clear look. She gathered that he disapproved of "Booster's" wife. He disapproved of so many things: of Women's Suffrage; of revolutions; of women who revolted; of anybody who revolted; of Mrs. Palmerston-Swete and Mrs. Blathwaite and Angela Blathwaite. It was putting it too mildly to say he disapproved of Rosalind Jervis; he detested her. He disapproved of Vera and of her going to see Vera; she remembered that he had even disapproved, long ago, of poor Ferdie, though he liked him. Evidently he disapproved of "Booster's" wife for the same reason that he disapproved of Vera. That was why he didn't say so.

"I believe you think all the time I'm right," she said. "Would you go down if you were he?"

"No. I wouldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because he won't get anything out of them. They can't give her away any more than Nicky can. Or than you can, Dorothy."

"You mean I've done it already—to you. I had to, because of Nicky. I can't help it if you do think it was beastly of me."

"My dear child—"

He got up vehemently, as if his idea was to take her in his arms and stifle her outbreak that way. But something in her eyes, cold, unready, yet aware of him, repelled him.

He thought: "It's too soon. She's all rigid. She isn't alive yet. That's not what she wired for." He thought: "I wish people wouldn't send their children to Newnham. It retards their development by ten years."

And she thought: "No. I mustn't let him do that. For then he won't be able to go back on me when I tell him my opinions. It would be simply trapping him. Supposing—supposing—"

She did not know that that instinctive renunciation was her answer to the question. Her honour would come first.

"Of course. Of course you had to."

"What would you do about it if you were Daddy?"

"I should send them all to blazes."

"No, but really do?"

"I should do nothing. I should leave it. You'll find that before very long there'll be letters of apology and restitution."

"Will you come down to the office with me and tell Daddy that?"

"Yes, if you'll come to tea with me somewhere afterwards."

(He really couldn't be expected to do all this for nothing.)

She sent her mother to him while she put on her hat and coat. When she came down Frances was happy again.

"You see, Mummy, I was right, after all."

"You always were right, darling, all the time."

For the life of her she couldn't help giving that little flick at her infallible daughter.

"She is right—most of the time," said Drayton. His eyes covered and protected her.

Anthony was in his office, sitting before the open doors of the cabinet where he kept his samples of rare and valuable woods. The polished slabs were laid before him on the table in rows, as he had arranged them to show to a customer: wine-coloured mahogany, and golden satinwood; ebony black as jet; tulip-wood mottled like fine tortoiseshell; coromandel wood, striped black and white like the coat of a civet cat; ghostly basswood, shining white on dead white; woods of clouded grain, and woods of shining grain, grain that showed like the slanting, splintered lines of hewn stone, like moss, like the veins of flowers, the fringes of birds' feathers, the striping and dappling of beasts; woods of exquisite grain where the life of the tree drew its own image in its own heart; woods whose surface was tender to the touch like a fine tissue; and sweet-smelling sandalwood and camphor-wood and cedar.

Anthony loved his shining, polished slabs of wood. If a man must have a business, let it be timber. Timber was a clean and fine and noble thing. He had brought the working of his business to such a pitch of smooth perfection that his two elder sons, Michael and Nicholas, could catch up with it easily and take it in their stride.

Now he was like a sick child that has ranged all its toys in front of it and finds no comfort in them.

And, as he looked at them, the tulip-wood and the scented sandalwood and camphor-wood gave him an idea.

The Master and the Professor had both advised him to send his son Nicholas out of England for a little while. "Let him travel for six months and get the whole miserable business out of his head."

Nicky, when he gave up the Army, had told him flatly that he would rather die than spend his life sitting in a beastly office. Nicky had put it to him that timber meant trees, and trees meant forests; why, lots of the stuff they imported came from the Himalaya and the West Indies and Ceylon. He had reminded him that he was always saying a timber merchant couldn't know enough about the living tree. Why shouldn't he go into the places where the living trees grew and learn all about them? Why shouldn't he be a tree-expert? Since they were specializing in rare and foreign woods, why shouldn't he specialize in rare and foreign trees?

And the slabs of tulip-wood and scented camphor-wood and sandalwood were saying to Anthony, "Why not?" Neither he nor Frances had wanted Nicky to go off to the West Indies and the Himalaya; but now, since clearly he must go off somewhere, why not?

Drayton and Dorothy came in just as Anthony (still profoundly dejected) was saying to himself, "Reinstate him. Give him responsibility—curiosity—healthy interests. Get the whole miserable business out of his head."

It seemed incredible, after what they had gone through, that Drayton should be standing there, telling him that there was nothing in it, that there never had been any miserable business, that it was all a storm in a hysterical woman's teacup. He blew the whole dirty nightmare to nothing with the laughter that was like Nicky's own laughter.

Then Anthony and Drayton and Dorothy sat round the table, drafting letters to the Master and the Professor. Anthony, at Drayton's dictation, informed them that he regretted the step they had seen fit to take; that he knew his own son well enough to be pretty certain that there had been some misunderstanding; therefore, unless he received within three days a written withdrawal of the charge against his son Nicholas, he would be obliged to remove his son Michael from the Master's College.

The idea of removing Michael was Anthony's own inspiration.

Drayton's advice was that he should give Nicky his choice between Oxford and Germany, the big School of Forestry at Aschaffenburg. If he chose Germany, he would be well grounded; he could specialize and travel afterwards.

"Now that's all over," Anthony said, "you two had better come and have tea with me somewhere."

But there was something in their faces that made him consult his watch and find that "Oh dear me, no! he was afraid he couldn't." He had an appointment at five.

When they were well out of sight he locked up his toys in his cabinet, left the appointment at five to Mr. Vereker, and went home to tell Frances about the letters he had written to Cambridge and the plans that had been made for Nicky's future.

"He'll choose Germany," Anthony said. "But that can't be helped."

Frances agreed that they could hardly have hit upon a better plan.

So the affair of Nicky and "Booster's" wife was as if it had never been. And for that they thanked the blessed common sense and sanity of Captain Drayton.

And yet Anthony's idea was wrecked by "Booster's" wife. It had come too late. Anthony had overlooked the fact that his son had seventeen hours' start of him. He was unaware of the existence of Nicky's own idea; and he had not allowed for the stiff logic of his position.

When he drove down in his car to St. John's Wood to fetch Nicky, he found that he had left that afternoon for Chelsea, where, Vera told him, he had taken rooms.

She gave him the address. It had no significance for Anthony.

Nicky refused to be fetched back from his rooms in Chelsea. For he had not left his father's house in a huff; he had left it in his wisdom, to avoid the embarrassment of an incredible position. His position, as he pointed out to his father, had not changed. He was as big a blackguard to-day as he was yesterday; the only difference was, that to-morrow or the next day he would be a self-supporting blackguard.

He wouldn't listen to his father's plan. It was a beautiful plan, but it would only mean spending more money on him. He'd be pretty good, he thought, at looking after machinery. He was going to try for a job as a chauffeur or foreman mechanic. He thought he knew where he could get one; but supposing he couldn't get it, if his father cared to take him on at the works for a bit he'd come like a shot; but he couldn't stay there, because it wouldn't be good enough.

He was absolutely serious, and absolutely firm in the logic of his position. For he argued that, if he allowed himself to be taken back as though nothing had happened, this, more than anything he could well think of, would be giving Peggy away.

He sent his love to his mother and Dorothy, and promised to come out and dine with them as soon as he had got his job.

So Anthony drove back without him. But as he drove he smiled. And Frances smiled, too, when he told her.

"There he is, the young monkey, and there he'll stay. It's magnificent, but of course he's an ass."

"If you can't be an ass at twenty," said Frances, "when can you be?"

They said it was so like Nicky. For all he knew to the contrary his career was ruined; but he didn't care. You couldn't make any impression on him. They wondered if anybody ever would.

Dorothy wondered too.

"What sort of rooms has he got, Anthony?" said Frances.

"Very nice rooms, at the top of the house, looking over the river."

"Darling Nicky, I shall go and see him. What are you thinking of, Dorothy?"

Dorothy was thinking that Nicky's address at Chelsea was the address that Desmond had given her yesterday.

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