1

In the autumn of 1918, Jane, when she went home for week-ends, frequently
found one Oliver Hobart there. Oliver Hobart was the new editor of Lord
Pinkerton's chief daily paper, and had been exempted from military
service as newspaper staff. He was a Canadian; he had been educated at
McGill University, admired Lord Pinkerton, his press, and the British
Empire, and despised (in this order) the Quebec French, the Roman
Catholic Church, newspapers which did not succeed, Little Englanders, and
Lord Lansdowne.

'A really beautiful face,' said Lady Pinkerton, and so he had. Jane had seen it, from time to time during the last year, when she had called to see her father in the office of the Daily Haste.

One hot Saturday afternoon in August, 1918, she found him having tea with her family, in the shadow of the biggest elm. Jane looked at them in her detached way; Lord Pinkerton, neat and little, his white-spatted feet crossed, his head cocked to one side, like an intelligent sparrow's; Lady Pinkerton, tall and fair and powdered, in a lilac silk dress, her large white hands all over rings, amethysts swinging from her ears; Clare (who had given up nursing owing to the strain, and was having a rest), slim and rather graceful, a little flushed from the heat, lying in a deck chair and swinging a buckled shoe, saying something ordinary and Clare-ish; Hobart sitting by her, a pale, Gibson young man, with his smooth fair hair brushed back, and lavender socks with purple clocks, and a clear, firm jaw. He was listening to Clare with a smile. You could not help liking him; his was the sort of beauty which, when found in either man or woman, makes so strong an appeal to the senses of the sex other than that of the possessor that reason is all but swamped. Besides, as Lord Pinkerton said, Hobart was a dear, nice fellow.

He was at Sherards for that week-end because Lord Pinkerton was just making him editor of the Daily Haste. Before that, he had been on the staff, a departmental editor, and a leader-writer. ('Mr. Hobart will go far,' said Lady Pinkerton sometimes, when she read the leaders. 'I hope, on the contrary,' said Lord Pinkerton, 'that he will stay where he is. It is precisely the right spot. That was the trouble with Carruthers; he went too far. So he had to go altogether.' He gave his thin little snigger).

Anyhow, here was Hobart, this Saturday afternoon, having tea in the garden. Jane saw him through the mellow golden sweetness of shadow and light.

'Here is Jane,' said Lady Pinkerton.

Jane's dark hair fell in damp waves over her hot, square, white forehead; her blue cotton dress was crumpled and limp. How neat, how cool, was this Hobart! Could a man have a Gibson face like that, like a young man on the cover of an illustrated magazine, and not be a ninny? Did he take the Pinkerton press seriously, or did he laugh? Both, probably, like most journalists. He wouldn't laugh to Lord Pinkerton, or to Lady Pinkerton, or to Clare. But he might laugh to Jane, when she showed him he might. Jane, eating jam sandwiches, looking like a chubby school child, with her round face and wide eyes and bobbed hair and cotton frock, watched the beautiful young man with her solemn unwinking stare that disconcerted self-conscious people, while Lady Pinkerton talked to him about some recent fiction.

On Sunday, people came over to lunch, and they played tennis. Clare and Hobart played together. 'Oh, well up, partner,' Jane could hear him say, all the time. Or else it was 'Well tried. Too bad.' Clare's happy eyes shone, brown and clear in her flushed face, like agates. Rather a pretty thing, Clare, if dull.

The Franks were there, too.

'Old Clare having a good time,' said Mrs. Frank to Jane, during a set they weren't playing in. Her merry dark eyes snapped. Instinctively, she usually said something to disparage the good time of other girls. This time it was, 'That Hobart thinks he's doing himself a good turn with pater, making up to Clare like that. Oh, he's a cunning fellow. Isn't he handsome, Jane? I hate these handsome fellows, they always know it so well. Nothing in his face really, if you come to look, is there? I'd rather have old Frank's, even if he does look like a half-starved bird.'

2

Jane was calmly rude to Hobart, showing him she despised his paper, and him for editing it. She let him see it all, and he was imperturbably, courteously amused, and, in turn, showed that he despised her for belonging to the 1917 Club.

'You don't,' he said, turning to Clare.

'Gracious, no. I don't belong to a club at all. I go with mother to the Writers' sometimes, though; that's not bad fun. Mother often speaks there, you know, and I go and hear. Jolly good she is, too. She read a ripping paper last week on the "Modern Heroine."'

Jane's considering eyes weighed Hobart, whose courtesy was still impregnable. How far was he the complete Potterite, identified with his absurd press? Did he even appreciate Leila Yorke? She would have liked to know. But, it seemed, she was not to know from him.

3

The Armistice came.

Then the thing was to get to Paris somehow. Jane had, unusually, not played her cards well. She had neglected the prospect of peace, which, after all, must come. When she had, in May, at last taken thought for the morrow, and applied at the Foreign Office for one of those secret jobs which could not be mentioned because they prepared the doers to play their parts after the great unmentionable event, she was too late. The Foreign Office said they could not take over people from other government departments.

So, when the unmentionable took place, Jane was badly left. The Foreign Office Library Department people, many of them Jane's contemporaries at Oxford and Cambridge, were hurried across the Channel into Life, for which they had been prepared by a course of lectures on the Dangers of Paris. There also went the confidential secretaries, the clerks and shorthand typists, in their hundreds; degreeless, brainless beings, but wise in their generation.

'I wish I was a shorthand typist,' Jane grumbled, brooding with Katherine over their fire.

'Paris,' Katherine turned over the delightful word consideringly, finding it wanting. 'The last place in the world I should choose to be in just now. Fuss and foolishness. Greed and grabbing. The centre of the lunacies and crimes of the next six months. Politicians assembled together…. It's infinitely common to go there. All the vulgarest people…. You'd be more select at Southend or Blackpool.'

'History is being made there,' said Jane, quoting from her father's press.

'Thank you; I'd rather go to Birmingham and make something clean and useful, like glass.'

But Jane wanted to make history in Paris. She felt out of it, left, as she had felt when other people went to the war and she stayed at home.

On a yellow, foggy day just before Christmas, Lord Pinkerton, with whom Jane was lunching at his club (Lord Pinkerton was quite good to lunch with; you got a splendid feed for nothing), said, 'I shall be going over to Paris next month, Babs.' (That was what he called her). 'D'you want to come?'

'Well, I should say so. Don't rub it in, dad.'

Lord Pinkerton looked at her, with his whimsical, affectionate paternity.

'You can come if you like, Babs. I want another secretary. Must have one. If you'll do some of the shorthand typing and filing, you can come along. How about it?'

Jane thought for exactly thirty seconds, weighing the shorthand typing against Paris and the Majestic and Life. Life had it, as usual.

'Right-o, daddy. I'll come along. When do we go over?'

That afternoon Jane gave notice to her department, and in the middle of January Lord Pinkerton and his bodyguard of secretaries and assistants went to Paris.

4

That was Life. Trousseaux, concerts, jazzing, dinners, marble bathrooms, notorious persons as thick as thieves in corridors and on the stairs, dangers of Paris surging outside, disappointed journalists besieging proud politicians in vain, the Council of Four sitting in perfect harmony behind thick curtains, Signor Orlando refusing to play, but finding they went on playing without him and coming back, Jugo-Slavs walking about under the aegis of Mr. Wickham Steed, smiling sweetly and triumphantly at the Italians, going to the theatre and coming out because the jokes seemed to them dubious, Sir George Riddell and Mr. G.H. Mair desperately controlling the press, Lord Pinkerton flying to and fro, across the Channel and back again, while his bodyguard remained in Paris. There also flew to and fro Oliver Hobart, the editor of the Daily Haste. He would drop in on Jane, sitting in her father's outer office, card-indexing, opening and entering letters, and what not.

'Good-morning, Miss Potter. Lord Pinkerton in the office this morning?'

'He's in the building somewhere. Talking to Sir George, I think…. Did you fly this time?'

Whether he had flown or whether he had come by train and boat, he always looked the same, calm, unruffled, tidy, the exquisite nut.

'Pretty busy?' he would say, with his half-indulgent smile at the round-faced, lazy, drawling child who was so self-possessed, sometimes so impudent, often so sarcastic, always so amusingly different from her slim, pretty and girlish elder sister.

'Pretty well,' Jane would reply. 'I don't overwork, though.'

'I don't believe you do,' Hobart said, looking down at her amusedly.

'Father does, though. That's why he's thin and I'm fat. What's the use?
It makes no difference.'

'You're getting reconciled, then,' said Hobart, 'to working for the
Pinkerton press?'

Jane secretly approved his discernment. But all she said was, with her cool lack of stress, 'It's not so bad.'

Usually when Hobart was in Paris he would dine with them.

5

Lady Pinkerton and Clare came over for a week. They stayed in rooms, in the Avenue de l'Opera. They visited shops, theatres, and friends, and Lady Pinkerton began a novel about Paris life. Clare had been run down and low-spirited, and the doctor had suggested a change of scene. Hobart was in Paris for the week-end; he dined with the Pinkertons and went to the theatre with them. But on Monday he had to go back to London.

On Monday morning Clare came to her father's office, and found Jane taking down letters from Lord Pinkerton's private secretary, a young man who had been exempted from military service through the war on the grounds that he was Lord Pinkerton's right hand.

Clare sat and waited, and looked round the room for violets, while this young gentleman dictated. His letters were better worded than Lord Pinkerton's, because he was better at the English language. Lord Pinkerton would fall into commercialisms; he would say 're' and 'same' and 'to hand,' and even sometimes 'your favour of the 16th.' His secretary knew that that was not the way in which a great newspaper chief should write. Himself he dictated quite a good letter, but annoyed Jane by putting in the punctuation, as if she was an imbecile. Thus he was saying now, pacing up and down the room, plunged in thought:—

'Lord Pinkerton is not comma however comma averse to' (Jane wrote 'from') 'entertaining your suggestions comma and will be glad if you can make it convenient to call to-morrow bracket Tuesday close the bracket afternoon comma between three and five stop.'

He could not help it; one must make allowances for those who dictate. But Clare saw Jane's teeth release her clenched tongue to permit it to form silently the word 'Ninny.'

The private secretary retired into his chief's inner sanctum.

'Morning, old thing,' said Jane to Clare, uncovering her typewriter without haste and yawning, because she had been up late last night.

'Morning,' Clare yawned too. She was warm and pretty, in a spring costume, with a big bunch of sweet violets at her waist. She touched these.

'Aren't they top-hole. Mr. Hobart left them this morning before he went. Jolly decent of him to think of it, getting off in a hurry like he was…. He's not a bad young thing, do you think.'

'Not so bad.' Jane extracted carbons from a drawer and fitted them to her paper. Then she stretched, like a cat.

'Oh, I'm sleepy…. Don't feel like work to-day. For two pins I'd cut it and go out with you and mother. The sun's shining, isn't it?'

Clare stood by the window, and swung the blind-tassel. They had five days of Paris before them, and Paris suddenly seemed empty….

'We're going to have a topping week,' she said.

Then Lord Pinkerton came in.

'Hobart gone?' he asked Jane.

'Yes.'

'Majendie in my room?'

'Yes.'

Lord Pinkerton patted Clare's shoulder as he passed her.

'Send Miss Hope in to me when she comes, Babs,' he said, and disappeared through the farther door.

Jane began to type. It bored her, but she was fairly proficient at it.
Her childhood's training stood her in good stead.

'Mr. Hobart must have run his train pretty fine, if he came in here on the way,' said Clare, twirling the blind-tassel.

'He wasn't going till twelve,' said Jane, typing.

'Oh, I see. I thought it was ten…. I suppose he found he couldn't get that one, and had to see dad first. What a bore for him…. Well, I'm off to meet mother. See you this evening, I suppose.'

Clare went out into Paris and the March sunshine, whistling softly.

That night she lay awake in her big bed, as she had lain last night. She lay tense and still, and stared at the great gas globe that looked in through the open window from the street. Her brain formed phrases and pictures.

'That day on the river…. Those Sundays…. That lunch at the Florence…. "What attractive shoes those are."… My gray suedes, I had…. "I love these Sunday afternoons."… "You're one of the few girls who are jolly to watch when they run."… "Just you and me; wouldn't it be rather nice? I should like it, anyhow."… He kept looking…. Whenever I looked up he was looking…. his eyes awfully blue, with black edges to them…. Peggy said he blacked them…. Peggy was jealous because he never looked at her…. I'm jealous now because … No, I'm not, why should I be? He doesn't like fat girls, he said…. He watches her…. He looks at her when there's a joke…. He bought me violets, but he went to see her…. He keeps coming over to Paris…. I never see him…. I don't get a chance…. He cared, he did care…. He's forgetting because I don't get a chance…. She's stealing him…. She was always a selfish little cad, grabbing, and not really caring. She can't care as I do, she's not made that way…. She cares for nothing but herself…. She gets everything, just by sitting still and not bothering…. College makes girls awful…. Peggy says men don't like them, but they do. They seem not to care about men, but they care just the same. They don't bother, but they get what they want…. Pig…. Oh, I can't bear it. Why should I?… I love him, I love him, I love him…. Oh, I must go to sleep. I shall go mad if I have another night like last night.'

Clare got out of bed, stumbled to the washstand, splashed her burning head and face with cold water, then lay shivering.

It may or may not be true that the power to love is to be found in the human being in inverse ratio to the power to think. Probably it is not; these generalisations seldom are. Anyhow, Clare, like many others, could not understand, but loved.

6

Lady Pinkerton said to her lord next day, 'How much longer will the peace take being made, Percy?'

'My dear, I can't tell you. Even I don't know everything. There are many little difficulties, which have to be smoothed down. Allies stand in a curious and not altogether easy relation to one another.'

'Italy, of course….'

'And not only Italy, dearest.'

'Of course, China is being very tiresome.'

'Ah, if it were only China!'

Lady Pinkerton sighed.

'Well, it is all very sad. I do hope, Percy, that after this war we
English will never again forget that we hate all foreigners.'

'I hope not, my dear. I am afraid before the war I was largely responsible for encouraging these fraternisations and discriminations. A mistake, no doubt. But one which did credit to our hearts. One must always remember about a great people like ourselves that the heart leads.'

'Thank God for that,' said Leila Yorke, illogically. Then Lady Pinkerton added, 'But this peace takes too long…. I suppose a lasting and righteous peace must … Shall you have to be running to and fro like this till it's signed, dear?'

'To and fro, yes. I must keep an office going here.'

'Jane is enjoying it,' said Lady Pinkerton. 'She sees a lot of Oliver
Hobart, I suppose, doesn't she?'

'He's in and out, of course. He and the child get on better than they used to.'

'There is no doubt about that,' said Lady Pinkerton. 'If you don't know it, Percy, I had better tell you. Men never see these things. He is falling in love with her.'

Lord Pinkerton fidgeted about the room.

'Rilly. Rilly. Very amusing. You used to think it was Clare, dearest.'

He cocked his head at her accusingly, convicting her of being a woman of fancies.

'Oh, you dear novelists!' he said, and shook a finger at her.

'Nonsense, Percy. It is perfectly obvious. He used to be attracted by Clare, and now he is attracted by Jane. Very strange: such different types. But life is strange, and particularly love. Oh, I don't say it's love yet, but it's a strong attraction, and may easily lead to it. The question is, are we to let it go on, or shall we head him back to Clare, who has begun to care, I am afraid, poor child?'

'Certainly head him back if you like and can, darling. I don't suppose
Babs wants him, anyhow.'

'That is just it. If Jane did, I shouldn't interfere. Her happiness is as dear to me as Clare's, naturally. But Jane is not susceptible; she has a colder temperament; and she is often quite rude to Oliver Hobart. Look how different their views about everything are. He and Clare agree much better.'

'Very well, mother. You're the doctor. I'll do my best not to throw them together when next Hobart comes over. But we must leave the children to settle their affairs for themselves. If he really wants fat little Babs we can't stop him trying for her.'

'Life is difficult,' Lady Pinkerton sighed. 'My poor little Clare is looking like a wilted flower.'

'Poor little girl. M'm yes. Poor little girl. Well, well, we'll see what can be done…. I'll see if I can take Janet home for a bit, perhaps—get her out of the way. She's very useful to me here, though. There are no flies on Jane. She's got the Potter wits all right.'

But Lady Pinkerton loved better Clare, who was like a flower, Clare, whom she had created, Clare, who might have come—if any girl could have come—out of a Leila Yorke novel.

'I shall say a word to Jane,' Lady Pinkerton decided. 'Just to sound her.'

But, after all, it was Jane who said the word. She said it that evening, in her cool, leisurely way.

'Oliver Hobart asked me to marry him yesterday morning. I wrote to-day to tell him I would.'

7

I append now the personal records of various people concerned in this story. It seems the best way.