EFFIE and Sam knew that they ought to be happy in the weeks which followed, because to be good is, theoretically, to be happy: but they were not happy. Sam, indeed, was less unhappy than Effie because he had sunk into one of those leaden, numbed moods of his which he knew of old as the stage preliminary to his brightest inspirations, and he could wait resignedly if not happily for the inspiration to emerge.

Decidedly, he thought, he needed inspiration, He had to discover Ada, to search for her reality, and, having found it, to drag it out and set it in the forefront of her being. A big task: one whose success he must not jeopardize again by rushing at her prematurely without distinct plan. He had only made her suspicious of him by his first impulsive attempt, and time must undo the mischief before a return to the attack was either discreet or opportune.

He waited, but he did not savour life. When he had quickened Ada, life would, no doubt, be worth the living, but, meantime, it dragged. He told himself that he was too young yet at this new business of giving to feel the joy of it. Certainly, he was not joyful, but he was resolute. There was a grim tightening of the lips and a dogged look in the eyes which proclaimed that this was Samuel, the son of Anne. In this mood he could eat Dead Sea apples and feel they were a proper diet. Politics had gone, and with them any interest in the Council. And he did not know what to do about his business. He wanted to ask Effie, and Effie was not there to be asked.

It was not that she did not want to be there or that she did not suffer for her absence. Effie was not numb, and she suffered keenly, but she thought her absence strengthened Sam. When he came down from Hartle Pike with his resolution formed she took it that her scheme, as she had planned it, was complete and that she could forget her weak concession to return to the office. She was to be there in spirit, and spirit is strong though flesh is weak. Effie at the office in the flesh would have wanted to hug Sam and to kiss him, things which it is unbefitting to do in well-conducted offices. And, of course, she suffered. She had always known that she would suffer, but not that it would be as bad as this.

The office was a temptation every day: to go there was to be with him, it was to find alleviation for her fever, it was to be at peace: but it was also to fling away hard-won success, and she resisted. That resistance engrossed her. It was all that she was capable of doing; it demanded all her strength.

The obvious, the practical thing, if she was not to go to Sam’s office, was to go to someone else’s, to work, both as an antidote and as a means of livelihood, and she could not rouse herself to do it. She pawned some of the jewellery which remained to her, memorials of her father’s lavish past, sent the weekly dole to her mother and lived upon the rest. She had sunk to this, Effie the crusader, Effie the advocate of courage! With MÉlisande, she told herself she was not happy. She was not happy, she was not well, and she wanted, wanted Sam. She stayed at home lest she should go to him and ruin all that she had done. It could not last and she knew it could not last, but neither did she see the end of it.

Then began the game of consequences: the moves of two pieces, one a pawn, the other the knight called Dubby Stewart.

It is a frumpish world, a world where the Frumps, of one or other sex or of neither sex, in one or other of their manifestations, have a great deal to do with the ordering of things. That is why it is politic, for one’s ease, never to ignore the Frumps and never, never to challenge them by an act of gallant defiance such as shying an imitation wedding ring into the waters of Blea Tarn.

Effie held, of course, that since she was in any case defying the Frumps it was honest to defy them in form as well as in substance, but it is only certain kinds of honesty which are the best policy.

The Frump who sat behind Effie at meals at the Inn (her name was Miss Entwistle) had doubted the genuineness of that ring, and when it disappeared her doubts went with it. The hussy, she saw, had realized that her ring deceived nobody, and was brazening it out in the shameless way of hussies.

Women are wicked, but men are only weak; so that, though Miss Entwistle faced Sam at dinner from the next table, it was some days before she could spare her attention from the back of the greater sinner and transfer it to the face of the lesser. She could stare to her heart’s content; it did not matter to Sam, who had only eyes for Effie: and the stare of Miss Entwistle was very persistent indeed. It was rude, but it was also pensive. It seemed to be looking for something it could not find.

She could not place him and was annoyed because she felt certain she had seen him before. She got up early more than once to read the names on the morning’s letters, but did not find one which she could associate with Sam, and came home to Manchester a disappointed woman. Her failure to identify him spoiled her holiday.

But all things come to her who waits, especially, as the world is made, to Frumps, and Miss Entwistle came by the knowledge she craved one afternoon when her friend Mrs. Grandage took her to Ada Branstone’s “At Home.”

The two photographs of Sam in Ada’s drawing-room were intended to sustain her reputation for perfect domesticity. She couldn’t live without him; she drew her very breath from him when he was there, and from his photographs when he was not. And since one was full-face and the other profile, they supplied Miss Entwistle with reliable identification of the sinner of Marbeck.

It was heavenly. Hers was the power and the glory of initiating a scandal, of exploding a bomb—which would certainly disturb the peace of quite a number of people, of figuring in a maelstrom of backbiting tea-parties as the one authentic eyewitness. It was irresistible, besides plain duty to her injured hostess.

The drop of gall in her brimming honey-pot was that she did not know Ada well enough to tell her the secret by herself, but must share the excitement of that first surprise with Mrs. Grandage. She whispered with her friend for some close-packed, hectic moments, and the two ladies stubbornly outstayed the rest of the callers.

They told Ada with a wonderful tenderness, watching her the while as cats watch mice, and Ada did not disappoint them. She cast no doubt on Miss Entwistle’s story; she did not tell her that she knew Sam was in London at the time because she had had letters from him. Though she had nothing in the world but her marriage, she made no effort to protect its reputation. She exhibited herself to them in all the fury of her jealous rage, so that naturally, seeing her instant belief in what they told her, the ladies formed their own conclusion.

“It is not the first time,” is what the eyes of Mrs. Grandage said, and the eyes of the spinster looked back at her sepulchrally and said, “It never is.”

Ada was married. She had the title of wife, and unfaithfulness on her part was as far removed from her imagination as from her opportunity. She was married to Sam; she was the woman in possession, with the title-deeds in her desk and the seal upon her finger, and this was flagrant outrage. It struck at the roots of her complacency, and complacency was life. Yet she hadn’t the wits to confound these iconoclasts with one little uninventive lie. It needed only that to abash Miss Entwistle—men’s faces are often alike, she knew perfectly well that he was in London: anything would have done, anything would have been better than this abject, immediate betrayal of her citadel. She struck her flag without firing a shot, and lapsed into a slough of inarticulate anger.

“What shall I do? What shall I do?” she wailed as soon as she was able to speak coherently.

“That,” said Miss Entwistle, “that, you poor dear, is your business.”

She had announced the glad tidings, she had found a titillating pleasure in watching Ada’s reception of them and now she was eager to be off, to spread the news, to be the first that ever burst into her friends’ drawing-rooms with word of a glorious scandal. She pleaded another call and escaped to her orgy.

“I’ll make him pay for this,” said Ada viciously.

“My dear,” advised Mrs. Grandage, who had a husband of her own, “I hope you will be tactful.”

“Tactful:” blazed Ada. “Tactful, when—oh! oh!” She screamed her sense of Sam’s enormity.

“Yes, but you know, men will be men.”

“It isn’t men. It’s Sam. After all I’ve done for him! Oh!” and this was a different “oh” from the others. It made Mrs. Grandage look up sharply. “The beast! The beast! This explains it all. Ethel, that man came home to me and asked me to adopt his child. He had the face. Of course I didn’t know it was his own he was speaking of, but I see it now. Ethel, what shall I do?”

They seemed to Mrs. Grandage to be drifting into deeper waters than she had skill to swim in. “I should take advice,” she said, meaning nothing except that neither by advising nor anything else was she going to be entangled in this affair.

“A solicitor’s?” asked Ada, catching at the phrase. “Yes. Naturally. Sam shall be made to pay to the uttermost farthing.” Her idea of legal obligations were, perhaps, not vaguer than other people’s.

“Not a solicitor’s,” said Mrs. Grandage in despair. “At least, my dear, not yet. Your father’s.”

“Yes. My father made me marry Sam. He brought Sam home and threw him at me. I will go to my father. Of course, in any case, I can’t stay here.”

Mrs. Grandage made a last rally for wordly-wisdom. “Couldn’t you bring yourself to see your husband first?” she asked.

“See him!” said Ada heroically. “I will never see him again as long as I live.”

The visitor buttoned her glove. After all, if Ada chose to make a fool of herself it was no business of hers, and she had tried her best, if a resolutely non-committal attempt can be a best. She kissed Ada with real sympathy.

“My dear,” she said, “I’d give a great deal to undo this.” And by “this” she did not mean the peccadillo of Sam Branstone, but the pruriency of Miss Entwistle. She was an experienced woman, and angry with herself for having listened to the temptress and for aiding and abetting her.

When Mrs. Grandage referred in after years to “that woman,” it was understood that she was thinking of Miss Entwistle.

Ada saw her to the door, and went straight to the kitchen.

“Kate,” she said to her cook, “Mr. Branstone has disgraced himself, he’s been unfaithful. I am going to my father’s. Please tell him that I know everything and that I shall not return.” She had no reticence.

“Very well, mum,” said the Capable cook.

The result was that when Sam went into the drawing-room that night, he found Anne Branstone sitting there, darning his socks, and perhaps it was because she was happy that she did not look a day older than when he saw her last; perhaps charring suited her; or perhaps living for an idea had kept her young. The idea was that, some day, Sam would need her.

It wasn’t a miracle: there was nothing more wonderful about it than the fact that Anne was a very good friend of the cook, Kate Earwalker: but Sam stood gaping helplessly. In his own house, at his age, and after all these years he stood before his mother, the intruder, like a schoolboy who knows himself at fault. She lacked nothing of the old ascendancy.

“Well,” she said, “you’re nobbut happy when you’ve got folks talking of you. But you don’t look thriving on it, neither.”

“Mother,” he gasped, “what’s this?”

“It’s you that will tell me that,” said Anne.

“Where’s Ada?”

“Gone to her father’s, and none coming back, she says. Says you’re unfaithful and told Kate she knows everything. What is it, Sam? What’s everything?”

“Who brought you here?”

“Kate did,” said Anne calmly. “Why, Sam, did you think I’ve lived with nothing better than what George Chappie and the papers told me of you? I’d a fancy for the truth, and it’s not a thing to get from men. Kate’s been a spy, like.”

“Has she!” he cried.

“She has, and you’ll bear no grudge for that. You’d have lived in a pig-sty and fed like a pig if I’d none sent Kate to do for you, but I’ve come myself this time. It looks summat beyond Kate.”

“But what’s happened? What is it?”

“You know better than me what it is. You’ve got folks talking of you and they’ve talked to Ada. Unfaithful, she told Kate, and she’s gone home to Peter’s.”

“She must come back,” said Sam.

“And why?” asked Anne. “Because folk talk? To stop their mouths?”

“No. Because I want her here. They’re talking, are they? Well, they can.”

Anne looked at him. “You don’t care if they do?”

“Why should I?”

“And you a politician?”

“Oh, politics!” he said. “That’s gone.” It had, and, as he saw thankfully, at the right time. He tried to imagine how differently this would have affected him if it had come in the midst of the Sandyford election. Electors postulate respectability in a candidate. But that had gone, and gossip did not matter now. The real things mattered. Ada mattered.

“You’ve had a move on, then,” she said, and neither her look nor tone suggested that she found the move displeasing.

“I daresay,” he said carelessly. “But Ada must come back. I’ve got to get her back.”

“Happen she’ll come and happen she won’t, and I’d have a better chance of knowing which if you’d told me what’s upset her.”

“What did she say?” he asked. “Unfaithful? Yes, it’s true. I’ve been unfaithful for ten years. I’ve never been faithful and I’ve never been fair. I’ve thought of the business and politics when I ought to have been thinking of her. I worked at them and I didn’t work at Ada. Don’t blame Ada, mother. I’ll not have that. You never liked her, and you prophesied a failure. It’s been a failure, but I made it one; I let it drift when I ought to have taken hold. But it isn’t going to be a failure now. I’ve given up the other things and I’ve come back to my job, the job I neglected, the job I did not see was there at all until——” He paused.

“Till what?” she asked.

“Till Effie showed it me.”

“Effie?” she asked. “Oh! Then there’s something in their talk.”

“Something? There’s everything, and everything that’s wrong-headed and abominable. That’s where this hurts me, mother. They’ll be saying wrong things of her, of Effie.” He began to see that gossip mattered.

“What would be the right things to say?” asked Anne dryly. “Who’s Effie? And do you mean her when you say you’ve been unfaithful for ten years?”

“I meant what I said. That I’ve put other things in front of Ada.”

“Including Effie?”

“Effie’s a ray from heaven,” he said.

“Oh, aye,” said Anne sceptically.

“Look here, mother, you’re not going to misunderstand?”

“Not if you can make me understand.”

“I can try,” he said, “and the chances are that I shall fail. The only thing that will make you understand Effie is to see her.”

“Try the-other ways first,” said Anne grimly.

“She made me see. She gave me everything. She gave me herself. I found myself because of her and I’m only living in the light she gave me.” It was difficult to find words for what Effie was and meant to him. “I don’t know if I can ever explain,” he faltered.

“Go on. You’re doing very well.” He was—Anne’s insight helping her.

“It’s like rebirth. It’s as if I’d lived till I met her six months ago with crooked eyesight. I didn’t see straight, and then, mother——” He hesitated as a man will hesitate before voicing a profound conviction, afraid lest he be thought absurd. “Then I found salvation, I’ve been a taker and we’re here to give. I took from you———”

“Leave that,” said Anne curtly. “I know it.”

“And I didn’t,” he replied. “It seems to me that I knew nothing till Effie come.”

“Why do you want Ada back?”

“It’s time I gave to her.”

“Did Effie show you that?”

“Yes.”

Anne was silent for a minute. Then: “I’ll have a look at Effie,” she said. “You can take me to her.”

“I can’t do that,” said Sam. “We’re not to meet.”

She pondered it, and him. “Kate told me you were looking ill,” she said with apparent inconsequence. “Well, if you can’t take me to Effie, I must go alone. I’m going, either road. Give me her address and I’ll go to-morrow.”

He wrote it down. “Effie Mannering,” she read. “Aye,” she said grimly, “I’ll give that young woman a piece of my mind.”

“Mother,” he said, alarmed, “you’ll not be rude to her! You’ve not misunderstood?”

“Maybe,” said Anne, “but I don’t think so. I think I understand that you’ve got your silly heads up in the clouds and it’ll do the pair of you a lot of good to have them brought to earth. I’ll know for sure when I’ve set eyes on her.”

“You’ll see the glory of her, then,” he said defiantly.

“Shall I?” she asked. “If you ask me, Sam, there’s been a sight too much glorification about this business. It shapes to me,” she went on, thwarting the protest which was leaping to his lips. “It shapes to me like a plain case of love. Aye, and love’s too rare a thing in this world to be thrown away. I was never one to waste.”

So Anne Branstone took control, and Sam sat staring at her helplessly like a man who dreams.