A few days afterwards Sylvester received an invitation to the wedding, accompanied by a despairing note from Lady Milmo. Ella would do it, and who could prevent her? When a woman was bent on a thing, especially matrimony, no mule in the world was so obstinate. Lady Milmo italicised freely, “obstinate” being doubly underlined. She hoped, however, that the lovers would be happy, explained that the wedding would be as quiet as her enormous circle of acquaintance would allow, and besought Sylvester to come and support her as the only soul that sympathised with her in this disastrous occurrence. Sylvester read the letter through somewhat grimly. Then he glanced at the silver-printed card. The conjuncture of the names caused him a sudden feeling of repugnance, and with an impulse he did not seek to explain, he threw the card into the fire. As for the invitation, he declined it on the score of professional engagements; also because he disapproved of marriage in the abstract. If all the race for one generation, he wrote, passed a self-denying ordinance of celibacy, there would be an end of this miserable thing that was called humanity.

On receipt of this letter, Lady Milmo smiled astutely and took advantage of a confidential hour before bedtime to tread upon delicate ground.

“I shall always wonder why you refused Sylvester Lanyon, Ella,” she said meditatively.

The blood flew angrily into Ella's cheeks, and she turned away her head.

“I never refused him because he never did me the honour to ask me to marry him.”

“Perhaps he needed a little encouragement, dear,” said Lady Milmo, somewhat taken aback.

“He needs a lot to make a man of him that only his Maker could give him,” replied Ella, turning round vindictively. “His blood is a kind of Condy's Fluid, and his heart is a glass retort. He's just a piece of sentient mechanism. How do you think a man like that could ask a girl to marry him?”

“Well, he did once,” murmured Lady Milmo.

“He was different then,” said Ella, with a queer little shock of pain. “I used to like him. But now—now there is no one in the whole wide world I dislike so much. Sometimes when he comes here and talks to me in that cold, emotionless voice of his, I absolutely hate him. And if it wasn't for my dear old Uncle Matthew—” she broke off and rang the bell for her maid. “It's about time to go to bed, auntie.”

Lady Milmo made no response. A flash of the truth occurred to her; but the whole matter of Ella's state of mind was very complicated. She yawned behind gracefully lifted Angers.

“I think so too, my dear,” she said.

They bade each other good-night, and Ella fell asleep while cataloguing the infirmities of the man whom she was not about to marry.

The man whom she was to marry in ten days' time was meanwhile passing through a period of sweet delight alternating with the most poignant anxiety. Ready money for the ordinary expenses of the wedding he had in plenty. Some overdue royalties on prints from a couple of pictures came in most opportunely, and these, added to an advance made by a friendly editor for whose weekly he wrote the art article, put him beyond the fear of embarrassment. But the thought of the £3,000 which he could not restore, haunted him night and day. Urquhart had twice asked casually for a cheque for the amount of his deposit, and he had promised in his off-hand way. A third demand had been made somewhat threateningly; he had laughed airily, apologised for his forgetfulness, and undertaken to send him a cheque for £2000 by return of post. After that Roderick avoided his club and the haunts where he was likely to meet Urquhart.

That was three days ago. Roderick hoped that Urquhart would not renew his request till after his marriage. Then he could obtain a large sum from Ella, who would be no longer under Matthew Lanyon's trusteeship, but would be free to dispose of her money as she chose. Besides, no man would pester another for money during his honeymoon. He would have ample time to arrange things. He had been rather sore at Matthew's absolute refusal to allow Ella to make any marriage settlements. Not that he had taken the initiative in the matter. Matthew himself had done so, in a friendly letter in which he referred to the greater dignity and feeling of independence of the man upon whom none of his wife's fortune had been settled. Roderick had acquiesced with good grace, and in his heart wished that he really possessed the delicacy of sentiment that would have made his deprecation of such things as marriage settlements genuine. For he had grown to love Ella genuinely, and he hated himself for counting on her money.

“Just one week more, dear, and then we shall begin our new life together.” So ran a sentence of a letter from Ella, which Roderick was reading at breakfast. He sighed, rested his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands, his yellow beard protruding over his fingers, and gazed sadly over the elegantly set meal. Their new life! He was past forty, past the age of fresh ideals. Hitherto his had been the gratification of the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh. At times he deceived himself, an exuberant mood carrying its own persuasiveness. But there were hours, and they had been very frequent of late, when he saw himself as he was and hated the picture. A poseur, a sham, a creature of imperfect moral sense; gifted, it is true, with certain artistic faculties, wherewith he imposed upon a superficial world and so made his living; but insincere, devoid of real enthusiasms, cynically despising the gospel that he preached. For the first time he had touched a fervent and earnest soul, and the sense of his responsibility overwhelmed him. He rose and looked into the Empire mirror over the fireplace. He was middle-aged, puffed, wrinkled, worn out. There could be no new ideals,—only a reattiring of the old shams that had peopled his life. He threw himself down in an armchair and read Ella's letter through again.

“My God,” said he, from his heart, as a million futile men have said, “if only I had ordered my life differently!”

A trim maid-servant, one of the staff of the mansions in which his chambers were situated, entered with the announcement of a visitor. A moment afterwards Bevis Urquhart came in, languid, supercilious, with an ugly expression on his flabby face. Roderick rose, assumed at once his jaunty manner.

“Sit down, my dear friend. You come like a ray of morning sunshine piercing through the fog.”

Urquhart put his hat on the table and unbuttoned his gloves. “No, I won't sit down, thank you,” he drawled. “My brougham is at the door, and I'm in a hurry. I rather want that subscription back.”

“Why, my dear fellow, you 're worse than a bankrupt bootmaker,” cried Roderick, pleasantly.

“Perhaps I am, but I want the money,” replied the young man.

“I'll send you a cheque this afternoon, 'pon my soul,” said Roderick.

“You've told me that before, Usher. I want you to write the cheque now.”

Roderick looked him between the eyes, and threw off his mask of cordiality.

“Suppose I say I don't like your tone, and will see you damned before I do otherwise than suit my own convenience?”

“Then I shall conclude you have bagged the money and can't repay.”

“You are insulting,” said Roderick.

“I believe I am stating facts. It was rather odd your meeting those bills that Willie Lathrop backed, just at that time, wasn't it?” Roderick again cursed Willie Lathrop under his breath. He turned aside and lit a cigarette, so as to gain time. Then he forced a laugh.

“Come, come, Urquhart. This is all nonsense. It was too large a sum to leave idle at my bankers,—besides, there's always a risk, you know,—so I invested it,—in Trust Funds, of course. One can't buy and sell stock over a counter. There are delays of correspondence. And I've been so devilish busy with wedding preparations, you know, that I haven't attended to it. I'll write at once to my broker. There.”

Urquhart listened with an incredulous smile. He gathered up his hat and gloves.

“Sometimes it pleases me to act the Godforsaken fool you did yourself the pleasure to call me. Sometimes it doesn't. I'll give you till to-morrow night to send me your cheque for £2,000 with the per cent interest. If you don't—”

“Well, my dear friend, what if I don't?”

“I'll publish it all over London that you have bagged the money—and make sure that Miss Defries hears it.”

“And what if I kick you down the ten flights of stairs of these mansions?” snarled Roderick, his hands clenched and the sweat standing on his forehead through the effort to maintain self-control.

“I'll publish it at once,” said the young man, languidly. “Good day, Usher. Till tomorrow evening, then?” He nodded superciliously and disappeared, leaving his enemy impotent with wrath and fear.

“Revengeful devil!” he exclaimed stupidly.

The servant came in to clear away the breakfast things. Roderick pushed aside the portiere and went into his studio. The great window was open. He stood by it, heedless of the raw, damp air. From beneath the veil of fog came the uncanny rumbling of the traffic in the street. Everything was hidden. He seemed to be an immeasurable height from the earth. All below was abysmal, inscrutable.

A thought shuddered through his being. One plunge into the unknown, and the sordid fears of living would be at an end. But the fog made him cough, and the tiny check threw him back again, like a wheel, into his normal groove. He shut the window and walked moodily to the studio fire.

Two thousand pounds had to be obtained by to-morrow night. Otherwise, social disaster and loss of Ella. He had not the faith to trust her with his wretched story. “I promised to marry a gentleman, and not a thief,” he heard her saying. The tone of her voice stabbed him with a greater pain than he had thought himself capable of feeling. There was only one way out of it,—another appeal to his father. He would go down to Ayresford at once. It was characteristic of him that he shivered at the thought of the comfortless journey.

A few hours later he stood, white and haggard, in the porch of Mr. Usher's house, bidding his father good-bye. It was fresh and clear at Ayresford, and the gathering twilight deepened the country hush of things.

“I've always looked upon myself as a bad lot, but compared with you I'm an innocent babe,” said Roderick, in a queer, low voice.

The old man put out a deprecatory hand and looked at his son out of expressionless blue eyes.

“I only point the way, my son. These reverses on the Stock Exchange have brought me near to penury. I look forward to your marriage, so that you can provide for your poor old father.”

“You could easily have lent me the money,” muttered Roderick.

“I have shown you how to obtain it. Do not fear Matthew Lanyon, my son. We are not friends, and I will meet him no longer. But he is a snake with the fangs drawn; and I have drawn them. I have power over men. It is my way.”

There was a touch of savage exultation in the old man's tone which was new to Roderick.

“You are quite sure about it?” he asked quickly.

“He would not dare to hurt a hair of my dear boy's head.”

“What the devil is this hold you have got over him?”

“I'll leave that to you as your inheritance, my son.”

Roderick watched the old, ignoble figure with a feeling of horrible repulsion. He turned, bidding him an abrupt farewell, and walked fast through the garden and out at the gate on to the road that led to the station. At the refreshment bar he drank a shilling's worth of brandy.

Late that night he went into his club,—not the desolate Hyde Park where he had drunk tea with Ella,—but the little Belvidere in St. James's Street where they talk Art in Gothic capitals and play “bridge” for high stakes. As he had hoped, he found Urquhart in the smoking-room surrounded by half a dozen men who formed the esoteric ring of the club. The young semi-millionaire was holding forth on his newly discovered genius, Pradovitch.

“Thought rapt, deep, unexpressive,—that is the only medium for the soul. The only ideal of life is to express all consciousness in terms of abstract and absolute thought—I don't know if I make myself clear. But that in vulgar language is his doctrine. As for Art, what is it but the scum that rises to the surface of the pure well of thought?”

“Oh, rot!” exclaimed young Willie Lathrop, rising with a yawn. “The Venus of Milo and Beethoven are good enough for me. Let's have a flutter. Hallo, Usher—”

Roderick came forward, elegant in his evening dress and great white bow, and suave in manner.

“Gentlemen,” he said formally, in a voice that commanded attention, “I am glad to find you all here. Urquhart came to my rooms this morning and expressed himself in a manner that I am sure he will see calls for a public apology. I take you all to witness that I hand him my cheque for £2,050, being the amount he deposited with me as his subscription to the funds of the Walden Art Colony, together with the interest on the same.”

And with his grandest gesture he held out the cheque to Urquhart. There was a great silence as every one looked at the young man to see what he would do. He took the cheque, eyed it for a moment, and then met Roderick's mocking glance.

“It is quite correct?”

“Quite,” said Urquhart; and then somewhat desperately, “I have much pleasure in withdrawing anything I said this morning that you may have objected to.”

“Hooray!” cried Lathrop. “Now shake hands, you two, and be friends again. And Urquhart shall stand the crowd supper on the interest.”

And so peace was concluded. But Roderick did not sleep that night, and the next day it was torture to meet a girl's honest eyes.

She noticed his preoccupation, was tenderly solicitous. What were his anxieties?

“If I have any, they are lest any unforeseen disaster should occur between now and Wednesday,” he replied.

“Why, what should come?” she asked.

“It is only a man's inability to realise that such happiness can ever be his.”

He burst into rapturous speech, carrying the girl with him on its flood. For the moment she forgot his troubled look, and when he had gone her attention was absorbed by practical details. In fact, during these days of hurried preparation, the material affairs of life were sufficient for her content. Countless letters had to be written, innumerable purchases to be made, plans for future living to be discussed. At no time does modern civilisation allow sentiment to come less within a woman's spiritual horizon than during the week before her marriage.

As usually happens, the wedding preparations extended far beyond the original design. The guest list swelled day by day. Instead of a mere vicar, Lady Milmo's favourite colonial bishop was engaged for the ceremony. The bridesmaids increased in number from two to six. The meeting of a few intimates at Lady Milmo's to drink the bride and bridegroom's health was gradually magnified into a vast reception for which the house was being turned upside down. On one point Ella remained firm. She would be married in a travelling dress. Then there were after arrangements to be considered. Lady Milmo's old friends, Lord and Lady Greatorex, who were wintering in Cairo, had put their little place in Shropshire at the disposal of the young couple for their honeymoon. When they came back to London, they would take a furnished flat until a house could be found to suit them; but the furnished flat had first to be obtained. The days passed in a whirl of occupation, and when Ella laid her head upon the pillow at night, sheer physical fatigue sent her forthwith to sleep.

Once she was touched to tears. Matthew Lanyon had given her a magnificent present which already stood on the special table in the morning room. But he had also sent her an intimate gift, a little ruby ring, with a letter of tender affection. “It belonged to my dear wife,” he wrote; “and I could give you nothing dearer to me,—perhaps it symbolises a drop of my heart's blood.... I would come to your wedding, my dear, but this old machine is getting cracked and wheezy, and is at present laid up for repairs. I must get Sylvester to come and mend me. But all my love will be with you.” And that night she sat up late in her room writing him a long, long letter, pouring out her heart to him, as she had never done before.

The letter reached him on Monday morning. He had been suffering considerably, and Sylvester was there, having made hasty arrangements for the care of his patients in town. Matthew submitted to confinement to the house, but insisted on getting up for breakfast. Bed was not the proper place for a man to eat in, he declared, and nothing but main force would have kept him there. So he sat down to table and made a valiant pretence at eating, while Miss Lanyon cast appealing glances at Sylvester and suggested arrow-root, and beef-tea, and eggs, and brandy, at intervals.

“If you hint at any more horrors, Agatha,” said the old man, looking up from his letter, “I'll go to the office.”

The white reflected glare from a slight fall of snow that covered the lawn filled the comfortable dining-room. Miss Lanyon glanced through the French window and shivered. Matthew was quite capable of carrying out his threat. She refrained from further suggestions, and meanwhile Matthew finished his letter in peace.

He folded it up when he had read it and put it in his pocket. He felt happier. Ella had revealed to him a Roderick that he had never realised. The girl's early struggles showed that she had mistrusted him. Now she had arrived at the man's heart and found it loyal and worthy. A fluttering at the glass caused him to rise and gather up a handful of breadcrumbs for the birds. Having thrown it out on to the lawn, he closed the window and stood watching the feast, Dorothy by his side. It was a bright morning, the sun shining from a pale blue sky and glinting on the myriad facets of the snow. The red clusters on a holly bush and the breasts of a couple of robins among the fluttering birds made tiny specks of colour against the white. The earth was sweet. Matthew felt a sense of exhilaration. After all, perhaps this was the great reparation that through his indirect agency had been accomplished. Materially, Roderick was relieved for life from the sordid cares of poverty; and spiritually, if ever woman could raise a man's soul to gentler things, that woman was Ella Defries. His life had not been wholly lived in vain.

Soon his managing clerk brought the office letters. They retired to the library, and Matthew threw himself with more spirit into affairs than he had been able to show for some time past. At twelve o'clock Sylvester entered with some medicine. He found his father alone, writing hard amid a sea of papers. A professional rebuke induced him to desist.

“If you write another line, I'll go straight back to London,” said Sylvester.

“You are much more needed there than you are here, I assure you,” said the old man. “I'm as fit as ever I was.”

But he blotted his letter and put his papers by, and pushing his writing-chair away from the table settled himself comfortably for a chat. He was full of small interests this morning. There had been fine doings, he had learned, the evening before, at the Town Council. The idiots had actually voted against the Free Library that he had schemed out in every particular. Hodgkins, the progressive butcher, whose face was like a hollyhock, had said that he blushed to bear the name of Englishman in common with them. Matthew wondered how he did it. All the same, he must get about again and put some sense into the Council.

“I don't quite know why they listen to me, but they do,” he said.

Then there were other matters. Jenkins's wife was laid up. That made the tenth child. Would Sylvester make arrangements for the three youngest children to board with the Jellicoes as usual?

“Can Jenkins afford it?” asked Sylvester.

“Of course not. Otherwise what would be the sense of our arranging things?”

Sylvester assented. The old man launched out into an invective against all the ne'er-do-weels of Ayresford who procreated large families which they could not support and spent their small earnings in drink. The brutes! Boiling oil was too dreamy a death for them. As Sylvester knew that any man of them would, if bidden, have licked his father's boots, he smoked his pipe imperturbably, unaffected by this outburst of ferocity.

“I suppose all this is pretty parochial,” said Matthew, at length, “but it's a bit of the cosmos, anyhow.”

There was a knock at the door, and one of his clerks appeared with a small leather-covered book. Matthew took it from him and laid it on the table.

“Take all this stuff to Mr. Findlay,” he said, indicating a pile of papers. The clerk gathered them up and withdrew.

Matthew continued his parable, but his fingers played with the banker's pass-book.

“Excuse me for a moment, while I see how the balance stands,” he said at last.

Sylvester nodded and stretched himself comfortably behind the morning paper. A few moments passed. Then suddenly he heard a choking sound and the violent creak of a chair. He started to his feet. There was his father fallen limp over the arm of the chair, while from his nerveless fingers a strip of pink paper fluttered to the ground.