IT might very well have occurred to Sam to retort that he and Effle had not “their silly heads in the clouds” any more fantastically than had Anne her self when she retreated to Madge’s and watched her loved son only through the eyes of Kate Earwalker. But it did not occur to him and, if it had, Effie at least would have disproved the retort. Effle outstripped them all.

The truth was that as soon as Effle knew what was the matter with her she was not appalled, dismayed, ashamed, or any of the things appropriate to a young lady in her situation, but simply and purely exultant. Unhappiness fell from her like a cloak, and left her radiant with joy. And she had called herself a realist!

She was a realist; she was engrossed with fact, not with the circumstantial detail of her fact. She hardly wanted Sam now, she had him, she was miles and leagues from care, alone in a shining world with her transcendant fact. Courage returned in full flood to her and she brimmed with bravery and pride.

She was out of work and must find work quickly which would pay her well. She was going to suffer, she was going (to put it mildly) to be misunderstood. What did it matter, what did anything matter in comparison with her exultant fact? She was going to be the mother of his child. Marbeck was not a dream; Marbeck was coming true, and the truth and the glory of it swept her to a heaven which only women know.

Perhaps she was a trespasser within the gates, but they had opened to her and they would not close. She might be prosecuted for her trespass. Let them try! You cannot hurt invulnerability. She was a world within a world, self-satisfying, self-complete, not so much derisive of the other world as utterly forgetful of it. Her cloud of glory hid it from her eyes, and if she peeped at all through breaches in the cloud she saw people as one sees them on the road beneath a mountain-top, like crawling ants.

A knock came at her door, and she looked bemused through a gap in the clouds into the eyes of Dubby Stewart, but it was not to look at the world which did not understand. It was to look at Dubby, who loved her.

And Dubby knew. It had not been difficult to know. She had refused him, she had let him see why, and Sam and Effie had been away from Manchester at the same time. It was not precise evidence, but he had written leaderettes on evidence not more exact and did not doubt the facts. They had kept him from her till now, but he could keep away no longer. And before he went into her room he knew all there was to know.

“Effie,” he said, “I’m not sure if I’m welcome.”

“Oh, but you are,” she said. “I ought to have written to you long ago. I’ve been home weeks from my holiday.” It was no use trying to see Dubby as a crawling ant, and she gave her hand in friendship.

“That breaks the ice,” he said.

“If there was ice to break.”

“Well,” he reminded her, “I said I didn’t love and run away, and I did more or less run away. I came one Sunday because I said I would, but I couldn’t do it again. The trouble with me is that I ought to be a journalist, and after about twelve years of it I’m still human.”

“Dubby! I’m sorry!”

“All right, Effie; I didn’t come to bleat. That’s only an apology for not coming before. And now I’m here——”

“You’ll have tea,” she said quickly, going to the bell, but he caught her hand before she pulled.

“Do you want to put a table between us? Do, if you must”—he released her hand—“but I’d hoped it would not come to that. Shall I ring the bell, Miss Mannering?”

“You needn’t punish me by calling names. Don’t ring.” She armed herself with courage, and turned to face him.

“Thanks. Really thanks, Effie. I know I’m a bore, but if the old song has a good tune to it I don’t see why I shouldn’t sing twice. It is a good tune,” he went on with a passion which belied his surface flippancy. “It’s the best I have in me, which mayn’t be saying much, because I’ve a rotten ear for music, but this tune’s got me badly, like the diseases they play on the barrel-organs, and I can’t lose it. I get up to it in the morning, and I go to bed to it at night, and it’s ringing in my ears all day. Effie, I’m not much of a cove and I’ve flattered myself that sincerity departed from me when I cut my wisdom teeth. I tried to live up to that belief and it’s only half come off. I’ve tried to make a raree-show of life, to sit outside and watch the puppets play, and life’s won. Life’s got me down, and I’m inside now. I’m where you’ve put me, and a good place too: I’m near the radiator and it warms the cockles of my heart. But I never liked radiators. Mind you, I can do with them and I can be grateful for them. If a season ticket for life for a seat near the radiator is all that you can give me, I can keep a stiff upper lip and thank you for what I’ve got. But I never had a passion for radiators, and I do like fires. There’s life in a fire Must it be just the radiator, or can you make it hearth and home for us?”

“Dubby,” she said, “I told you before.”

“I know. Nothing doing in second thoughts?” She shook her head.

“All right. I only got drunk last time. This time it will need the binge of my life. I’d cherished hopes of this.”

“Drunk,” she said reproachfully. “With a stiff upper lip?”

“Oh, I dunno,” he said. “It takes a stiff upper lip to get me to the dentist’s, but I make him use an anÆsthetic all the same. Still, if you’d rather I didn’t——”

“I think it would be braver.”

“Right. But I’d like to hit something. There’s nobody you’d like me to hit, is there?”

“Of course not.”

“Sure?” he said. He had it well in mind that somebody ought to hit Sam. “Let’s get back to where we were before I made a stump oration—to when I came in and you looked at me like a friend.”

“I hope I always shall.”

“All right. It’s the privilege of a friend to be impertinent, and I’m rather good at impertinence. You see, Effie old thing, you’re supposed to be one of the world’s workers, and you’re not at the office to-day. You haven’t been at the office for weeks. I know, because I gave Florrie half a crown.” Florrie was the maid. “And it isn’t that you’ve come into money, because Florrie tells me you’ve been starving yourself.”

“I’ve not.” Effie was indignant. She had not starved herself. While all was dreary, food had certainly not attracted her, but neither had anything else; and she expected to take a lively interest in it now. “Really I’ve not.”

“What you say goes,” he said. “And Florrie imagined it, but she didn’t imagine the part about your not going to the office, and if anything’s wrong there, don’t forget that I know Branstone pretty well. I can talk to him like a father.”

“There’s nothing wrong, anywhere,” she said, and, indeed, things were not only not wrong but exuberantly right, only she could not tell him why.

“You’re sure of that?” he persisted. “There’s nothing you can tell a pal? Nothing you can tell me, when you know I’d walk through fire for you? Damn it, I can’t pretend. I’m not a friend. I’m a man in love, and I ask you to be fair.”

“Dubby,” she pleaded, “don’t make things too hard for me.”

“Is it I who make them hard?” he asked, “oris it Sam?”

She looked at him amazed, and certainly Effie was stupid then, or, at least, too wrapped up in her great preoccupation to be alert. “Oh, don’t be petty,” she said. “I didn’t debit you with jealousy.”

“No? No? And yet I have a certain right to be jealous of him. I think you won’t deny it.”

It wasn’t what he said or even the deep bitterness of his tone, it was something in his eyes, like a hurt animal’s, which made her quite suddenly, and as a thing apart from his words, see what had happened. But she did not see even now the whole of Dubby’s love and the beauty of his knightly move.

“You know!” she said. “Dubby, you knew when you spoke just now. You knew that Sam and I——”

“I told you I had a word with Florrie.”

“Florrie?” she asked. “What could Florrie tell you?”

“Nothing,” he said, “that she knew she told. Guessing is another of the things I’m good at.”

She saw it then, to what perceptiveness his love had brought him, to what high action. It had sped her cloud and she saw, clear-eyed as he, his fine, impeccable fidelity.

“Oh! And I called you petty! I told you you were jealous. Dubby, I didn’t know. You’d have done that for me!”

“Well, you see,” he apologized, “I’m in love with you.”

“Why can’t we order love? Why does it come all wrong?” she cried.

“It hasn’t come so wrong but I can put it right for you,” he said, making his offer again.

“I? I didn’t mean myself,” she said, wondering. “Love’s not come wrong to me. It’s you I’m thinking of.”

“But is it right for you?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” she smiled. “Terrifically.”

“Is it? When Sam has not been near you in weeks?” It was wedged in his mind that Sam was playing the villain. “When you are here alone, do you see him, Effie?”

“No. That’s why it’s all so right.”

He shook his head, perplexed. “It may be good metaphysics, but it sounds bad sense. I’ll be quite honest with you. I’m suffering pretty badly from suppressed desire to horsewhip Sam Branstone. I think he deserves it, I know I’d enjoy it and I think you’re trying to head me off it. I daresay it’s primitive of me, but it will do me good and I don’t mind telling you I need good doing to me. Effie, mayn’t I go and horsewhip Sam?”

“If anybody’s going to horsewhip Sam,” said a voice, “it’s me. I’m in charge of this job, not you, my lad.”

They had not seen Anne come in. They saw her now, a little old woman of the working class in her best clothes, with a bugled cape and cotton gloves, elastic-sided boots and a quaint bonnet tied with ribbon beneath her chin, and, unaccountably, she filled the room. They would have passed her in the street without a second glance as one of the throng, at face value insignificant; but this was not Anne in the street. It was Anne in arms for Sam, and when Effie and Stewart compared notes afterwards they each confessed to having had the same thought: that their eyes were traitors and that what they saw was fantasy and what they felt was real.

“I’m Sam’s mother,” she introduced herself, “and it’s like enough I were overfond of him when he was a lad and didn’t thrash enough, but I’m not too old to start again. You’ll be Effie? Aye, I’ve come round here to put things in their places. They’ve got a bit askew amongst the lot of you, and what I heard when I came in won’t help.” She looked accusingly at Dubby. “You’ll be her brother, I reckon?”

It seemed to him the best way out. Anne had come to “put things in their places,” and she reckoned he was Effie’s brother, which, now he thought of it, was exactly his place. Brotherhood was thrust upon him, but he thought he had achieved it. Plainly, for all Effie’s enigmas, there was nothing else for him, and he let Anne put him in his place.

“Yes,” he said, without a glance at Effie, “her brother.”

“You’re a clean-limbed family,” she complimented them, and Dubby stole a look at Effie, half humorous and half defying her to contradict his brotherhood. “Well, I came to see Effie, but I’ll none gainsay that her brother has a right to stay and listen, if he’ll listen quiet.”

“Yes,” said Dubby, still challenging Effie, “her brother has a right.” And Effie did not deny him. She had her courage, but the unexpectedness of Anne and the force of her, as if for all these years she had been winding up her will, which now came into play like a spring immensely braced in super-tightened coils, caused her to want an ally and she agreed that Dubby had a right if not the one conferred on him by Anne.

“Won’t you sit, Mrs. Branstone?” she said.

“I was wondering when I should hear your voice,” said Anne. “You’re not a talker, lass.”

“No,” said Effie.

“More of a doer.” Effie was wondering whether that was praise or condemnation, when Anne added: “I like you the better for that, though it’s a good voice. I haven’t heard it much, but I’ve heard it. I haven’t seen you much, but I’ve seen enough. I’m on your side, Effie.” She astonished them both by rising as if to go.

“But,” said Dubby, “is that all?”

Anne looked with humorous sympathy at Effie. “That’s men all over, isn’t it?” she said. “They’re fond of calling women talkers, but a man’s not happy till a thing’s been put in words. Me and your sister understand each other now.”

“I’m not quite certain that I do,” said Effie.

“Well, maybe you’re right,” conceded Anne. “It’s a fact that I told Sam last night I was coming round here to give you a piece of my mind, and I don’t notice that I’m doing it. The need seemed to go when I set eyes on you, and I’m pretty full of a thing I want to do, only I’ve not quite got the face to ask.”

“What is it, Mrs. Branstone?”

“I want to kiss you, lass,” said Anne.

Dubby Stewart had for the second time that day the impression that women talked, so to speak, in hieroglyphics.... There seemed to be a kind of feminine shorthand to which only women held the key, and he did not understand the sudden softening of Ellie’s face nor her quick response. And he did not know why, when Anne kissed her, Effie said, “No, no,” nor why Anne said, “It isn’t no. It’s yes.” A kiss, it seemed, had various meanings.

Anne in effect had conveyed to Effie that she thanked her and, more, she honoured her. Effie denied that she merited honour and Anne maintained that she did.

“Aye,” said Anne, “he’s had two dips in the lucky-bag and he’s drawn a prize this time. It’s more than any man deserves, but we’ll not grudge it Sam, will we, Effie?” And to Dubby the thing took on a fresh aspect of bewilderment. If that meant anything, it meant that Anne was welcoming a daughter. Didn’t the woman know that Sam was married?

“I’ve grudged him nothing,” Effie said.

Anne meditated that, then looked at Effie with a touch of what was, for her, shyness. “You’ve grudged him nothing,” she disagreed, “except your pride in giving up. And you can do it, you can give up, but Sam’s nobbut a man, and they’re a weak flesh, men. He looks the shadow of himself,” she exaggerated resolutely.

“Does he?” said Effie anxiously, and Anne nodded a sombre face. “What do you want me to do, Mrs. Branstone?”

“I want you to give up giving up. Sam said a thing to me last night. He said you’d make him find salvation. Well, happen; but what’s certain sure is that you made him find love. He’s found it, lass, and he mustn’t lose it, and he will if you leave things where they are. He’s trying to do a thing that isn’t, possible. He’s trying to live aside of Ada, loving you. He’ll try to love her for the love of you, and kiss her, telling himself he’s kissing you, and it will not be you; and the love he tries to bring her will turn to loathing in his heart. And what’ll happen then, when love goes sour within him? Eh, lass, you took yon lad to heaven and you’re sending him to hell.”

It was not fair to Stewart. It was hardly bearable: he was not her brother and he hadn’t the feelings of a brother. He saw great happiness in Effie’s face, as if two happinesses mingled there, the one of giving up her dream, the other of awakening to a sweet reality. He saw her put out a hand towards Anne, surrendering, consenting, giving all in one swift, heady leap from cloud to earth, and then he saw her sway, and caught her in time to break her fall.

Anne eyed him sharply. “Have you heard of your sister’s fainting before, lately?” she asked, busy on her knees with Effie.

“Yes. Florrie told me. Twice. Can I do anything?”

“I’ll bring her round,” said Anne. “But you can do something. You can go to Sam at his office and tell him he’s wanted here. Tell him I want him, and there’s news for him. Send Florrie up as you go, and you needn’t take that horsewhip with you, neither.”

“No. I needn’t take it now.”

So Dubby, Effie’s brother, went out on an embassy for Anne. “Feeling it? Feeling?” he thought, “you God-abandoned devil, what right have you to feel? A journalist. A looker-on. There’s a story in this for you. There’s the guts of a story given away to you with a cup of tea... on, no, we didn’t have the tea; given neat, and you can’t be decently grateful. What’s the title? ‘The Charwoman’s Son’? No, damned if it is. Something about brother. Brother! Yes, you blighter, brother... brother, and proud of it. ‘Pride of Kin.’ That’ll do, and God help me to live up to it.” He turned into Sam’s office and delivered his message in a cold, unemotional voice. It seemed that Effie, brave herself, was the cause of bravery in others.

“Effie! My mother! What have you to do with them?” asked Sam, amazed.

“I’ve given you a message,” said the taciturn herald.

“But what’s behind it, Dubby? Is Effie ill?”

Stewart was silent.

“Is she—dead?”

Dubby was tempted to say he didn’t know. It; seemed to him that things went too happily with Branstone, that it was fit, if only for the twenty minutes which it would take for him to reach Busholme, to let Sam think that Effie might be dead, to let him taste the flavour of torture. Dubby suffered and would suffer, not for twenty minutes but, he gloomily anticipated, for a lifetime. Let Sam have his minutes of it! Then he remembered he was Effie’s brother, and before Sam had his hat and coat on, malice had left him. “It’s all right, man,” he said. “She’s neither ill nor dead. They’ve got good news for you.”