XXV

The days and weeks drifted into months, and John remained in London. His circle of friends and his interests had widened. It was only his relations with Louise which remained still unchanged. Always charming to him, giving him much of her time, favoring him, beyond a doubt, more than any of her admirers, there was yet about her something elusive, something which seemed intended to keep him so far as possible at arm's length.

There was nothing tangible of which he could complain, and this probationary period was of his own suggestion. He bore it grimly, holding his place, whenever it was possible, by her side with dogged persistence. Then one evening there was a knock at his door, and Stephen Strangewey walked in.

After all, this meeting, of which John had often thought, and which sometimes he had dreaded a little, turned out to be a very ordinary affair. Stephen, although he seemed a little taller and gaunter than ever, though he seemed to bring into the perhaps overwarmed atmosphere of John's little sitting room something of the cold austerity of his own domain, had evidently come in no unfriendly spirit. He took both his brother's hands in his and gripped them warmly.

"I can't tell you how glad I am to see you, Stephen!" John declared.

"It has been an effort to me to come," Stephen admitted. "But I had it in my mind, John, that we parted bad friends. I have come to see how things are with you."

"Well enough," John answered evasively. "Sit down."

Stephen held his brother away from him, gripping his shoulders with both hands. He looked steadily into his face.

"Well enough you may be, John," he said, "but your looks tell a different story. There's a look in your eyes already that they all get here, sooner or later."

"Nonsense!" John protested cheerfully. "No one pretends that the life here is quite as healthy as ours, physically, but that isn't everything. I am a little tired to-day, perhaps. One spends one's time differently up here, you know, and there's a little more call upon the brain, a little less upon the muscles."

"Give me an example," Stephen suggested. "What were you doing last night, for instance?"

John rang the bell for some tea, took his brother's hat and stick from his hand, and installed him in an easy chair.

"I went to a political meeting down in the East End," he replied. "One of the things I am trying to take a little more interest in up here is politics."

"No harm in that, anyway," Stephen admitted. "That all?"

"The meeting was over about eleven," John continued. "After that I came up here, changed my clothes, and went to a dance."

"At that time of night?"

John laughed.

"Why, nothing of that sort ever begins until eleven o'clock," he explained. "I stayed there for about an hour or so, and afterward I went round to a club I belong to, with the Prince of Seyre and some other men. They played bridge, and I watched."

"So that's one of your evenings, is it?" Stephen remarked. "No great harm in such doings—nor much good, that I can see. With the Prince of Seyre, eh?"

"I see him occasionally."

"He is one of your friends now?"

"I suppose so," John admitted, frowning. "Sometimes I think he is, sometimes I am not so sure. At any rate, he has been very kind to me."

"He is by way of being a friend of the young woman herself, isn't he?" Stephen asked bluntly.

"He has been a friend of Miss Maurel since she first went on the stage," John replied. "It is no doubt for her sake that he has been so kind to me."

"And how's the courting getting on?" Stephen demanded, his steely eyes suddenly intent.

"None too well," John confessed.

"Are you still in earnest about it?"

"Absolutely! More than ever!"

Stephen produced his pipe from his pocket, and slowly filled it.

"She is keeping you dangling at her heels, and giving you no sort of answer?"

"Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that," John declared, good-humoredly. "I asked her to marry me as soon as I came up, and we both agreed to wait for a time. You see, her life has been so extraordinarily different from mine. I have only half understood the things which to her are like the air she breathes. She is a great artist, and I scarcely ever leave her without feeling appallingly ignorant. Our life down in Cumberland, Stephen, is well enough in its way, but it leaves us outside many of the great things of life."

"That may be true enough, boy," Stephen admitted, blowing out dense volumes of smoke from his pipe; "but are you sure that it's toward those great things that she is pointing you?"

"I am sure of it," John answered earnestly. "I appreciate that in my heart. Let us talk together, Stephen, as we used. I will admit that I have found most of the time up here wearisome. On the other hand, I am beginning to understand that I have been, and still am, very ignorant. There is so much in the world that one can only learn by experience."

"And what are you willing to pay for the knowledge?" Stephen asked. "Your health, I suppose, your simple life, your love of the pure ways—all these are to go into the melting-pot?"

"There's no such payment demanded for the things I am thinking of," John assured his brother. "Take art, for instance: We reach the fringe of it with our books. There are pictures, even here in London, which when you look at them, especially with one who understands, give a new vigor to your understanding, a new resource to living. You become conscious of a new beauty in the world, a new garden, as it were, into which one can wander every day and yet not explore it in a lifetime. I have seen enough, Stephen, to make me want to go to Italy. It's a shameful thing to keep one's brain and taste unemployed!"

"Who takes you to see the pictures?" Stephen demanded.

"Miss Maurel, generally. She understands these things better than any one I have ever talked with."

"Pictures, eh?" Stephen grunted.

"I mentioned pictures as an example," John continued; "but the love of them includes many other things."

"Theaters?"

"Of course," John assented. "It's no good being narrow about theaters, Stephen. You read books readily enough, and theaters are only living books, after all. There is no real difference."

"There is a difference in plays, though, as there is a difference in books," Stephen reminded him. "What about the play Miss Maurel is acting in now? She's a man's mistress in it, isn't she, and glories in it?"

John, who had been walking about the room, came and sat down opposite to his brother. He leaned a little forward.

"Stephen," he confessed, "I loathed that play the first night I saw it. I sha'n't forget how miserable I was. Louise was so wonderful that I could see how she swayed all that audience just by lifting or dropping her voice; but the story was a horror to me. The next day—well, she talked to me. She was very kind and very considerate. She explained many things. I try my best, now, to look at the matter from her point of view."

Stephen's eyes were filled for a moment with silent scorn. Then he knocked out the ashes from his pipe.

"You're content, then, to let the woman you want to make your wife show herself on the stage and play the wanton for folks to grin at?" he asked.

John rose once more to his feet.

"Look here, Stephen," he begged, a little wistfully, "it isn't any use talking like that, is it? If you have come here with evil things in your mind about the woman I love, we had better shake hands and part quickly. She'll be my wife some day, or I shall count my life a failure, and I don't want to feel that words have passed between us—"

"I'll say no more, John," Stephen interrupted. "I was hoping, when I came, that there might be a chance of seeing you back home again soon. It's going to be an early spring. There was June sunshine yesterday. It lay about the hillsides all day and brought the tender greens out of the earth. It opened the crocuses, waxy yellow and white, all up the garden border. The hedgerows down in the valley smelled of primrose and violets. Art and pictures! I never had such schooling as you, John, but there was old Dr. Benson at Clowmarsh—I always remember what he said one day, just before I left. I'd been reading Ruskin, and I asked him what art was and what it meant. 'My boy,' he answered, 'art simply represents man's passionate desire to drag the truth out of life in half a dozen different ways. God does it for you in the country!' They called him an ignorant man, old Benson, for a schoolmaster, but when I'd struggled through what I could of Ruskin, I came to the conclusion that he and I were something of the same mind."

"It's good to hear you talk like that, Stephen," John said earnestly. "You're making me homesick, but what's the sense of it? For good or for evil, I am here to wrestle with things for a bit."

"It's no easy matter for me to open out the things that are in my heart," Stephen answered. "I am one of the old-fashioned Strangeweys. What I feel is pretty well locked up inside. The last time you and I met perhaps I spoke too much; so here I am!"

"It's fine of you," John declared. "I remember nothing of that day. We will look at things squarely together, even where we differ. I'm—"

He broke off in the middle of his sentence. The door had been suddenly opened, and Sophy Gerard made a somewhat impetuous entrance.

"I'm absolutely sick of ringing, John," she exclaimed. "Oh, I beg your pardon! I hadn't the least idea you had any one with you."

She stood still in surprise, a little apologetic smile upon her lips. John hastened forward and welcomed her.

"It's all right, Sophy," he declared. "Let me introduce my brother, may I? My brother Stephen—Miss Sophy Gerard."

Stephen rose slowly from his place, laid down his pipe, and bowed stiffly to Sophy. She held out her hand, however, and smiled up at him delightfully.

"How nice of you to come and see your poor, lonely brother!" she said. "We have done our best to spoil him, but I am afraid he is very homesick sometimes. I hope you've come to stay a long time and to learn all about London, as John is doing. If you are half as nice as he is, we'll give you such a good time!"

From his great height, Stephen looked down upon the girl's upturned face a little austerely. She chattered away, entirely unabashed.

"I do hope you're not shocked at my bursting in upon your brother like this! We really are great pals, and I live only just across the way. We are much less formal up here, you know, than you are in the country. John, I've brought you a message from Louise."

"About to-night?"

She nodded.

"Louise is most frightfully sorry," she explained, "but she has to go down to Streatham to open a bazaar, and she can't possibly be back in time to dine before the theater. Can you guess what she dared to suggest?"

"I think I can," John replied, smiling.

"Say you will, there's a dear," she begged. "I am not playing to-night. May Enser is going on in my place. We arranged it a week ago. I had two fines to pay on Saturday, and I haven't had a decent meal this week. But I had forgotten," she broke off, with a sudden note of disappointment in her tone. "There's your brother. I mustn't take you away from him."

"We'll all have dinner together," John suggested. "You'll come, of course, Stephen?"

Stephen shook his head.

"Thank you," he said, "I am due at my hotel. I'm going back to Cumberland to-morrow morning, and my errand is already done."

"You will do nothing of the sort!" John declared.

"Please be amiable," Sophy begged. "If you won't come with us, I shall simply run away and leave you with John. You needn't look at your clothes," she went on. "We can go to a grill-room. John sha'n't dress, either. I want you to tell me all about Cumberland, where this brother of yours lives. He doesn't tell us half enough!"

John passed his arm through his brother's and led him away.

"Come and have a wash, old chap," he said.

They dined together at Luigi's, a curiously assorted trio—Sophy, between the two men, supplying a distinctly alien note. She was always gay, always amusing, but although she addressed most of her remarks to Stephen, he never once unbent. He ate and drank simply, seldom speaking of himself or his plans, and firmly negativing all their suggestions for the remainder of the evening. Occasionally he glanced at the clock. John became conscious of a certain feeling of curiosity, which in a sense Sophy shared.

"Your brother seems to me like a man with a purpose," she said, as they stood in the entrance-hall on their way out of the restaurant. "Like a prophet with a mission, perhaps I should say."

John nodded. In the little passage where they stood, he and Stephen seemed to dwarf the passers-by. The men, in their evening clothes and pallid faces, seemed suddenly insignificant, and the women like dolls.

"For the last time, Stephen," John said, "won't you come to a music-hall with us?"

"I have made my plans for the evening, thank you," Stephen replied, holding out his hand. "Good night!"

He left them standing there and walked off down the Strand. John, looking after him, frowned. He was conscious of a certain foreboding.