John’s request to leave the Service did not find his mother wholly unprepared. Her realization of the mistake he had made had been earlier than his own, and for many months now she had considered the possibility of obtaining his release should he demand it. The difficulties were, as John knew, wholly financial. She could afford to pay the sum which the Admiralty would require as the price of his liberty, but she could not re-educate him as she felt it was essential he should be re-educated. If he abandoned the Service he would have to earn his living as an unqualified man. Journalism? She had heard enough from Wingfield Alter to teach her the meaning of life in the lower ranks of provincial journalism. And the alternatives for the unqualified were a clerkship in a City office or manual labour.

To Wingfield Alter, from whom she might have sought the advice and assistance she so badly needed, she would not go. On the evening after the arrival of John’s letter her resolution on this point nearly gave way. The need was imperative. It was her son’s need, not her own. And Wingfield Alter would help abundantly and willingly—she knew that. Yet, it was impossible to approach him. If it had been no more than advice she needed she might not have hesitated; but it was money—money. No fair words, no tact of his or hers could disguise that fact. And before he helped her son he would ask her to marry him. She foresaw that quite clearly. Her request for help would, in effect, be a request for a proposal.

She closed her eyes, pressing the lids tightly together.

When she opened them her mind was made up. Years ago, when it was impossible that they should marry, she and Alter had cared for each other too well and with too much silent restraint for her to spoil it all now. Because she had been married no word of love had passed between them. When the strain became unendurable, he had gone away with his wife, leaving her to dream through a few months, and then to marry John’s father. And now, John’s father being dead and Alter’s wife too, they met again. She knew he loved her still, but he had said nothing. Why she could not imagine. He must know; he must have seen. She had no doubt of him—why should he have doubt of her? Why? Heaven knew! She would do no more. She would not go to him.

She could not go to him.

Meanwhile, Alter was waiting for signs and failing to recognize them. He was not, he told himself, the man he had once been, and to his eye she seemed to have changed very little in all the years. Moreover, the fact that there had been real affection between her and her husband made her seem difficult to approach. He was by no means convinced that her old love for himself had survived. It was natural that their present friendship should have taken its place, and any attempt on his part to insist upon love might sever the friendship for which now he chiefly lived.

Then came Hartington’s letter. John needed help. It gave Alter his chance, his opening. But he could not be blind to the fact that, if he offered to help the son, the mother, in accepting, would feel that she had placed herself under some obligation; and, whether the offer of marriage were coincident with or subsequent to the offer of assistance, the acceptance of one would at least be a powerful argument for the acceptance of the other. And he wanted her choice to be free. He wanted her to accept him for his own sake, not for that of her son. Yet, apart from all other considerations, he was eager to help John because he felt that John was worth assistance. Alter had reached the point in the lives of successful men at which the highest good and the most intense personal satisfaction seem to spring from the help it is possible to give to others.

Far into the night he sat with Hartington’s letter on his knee, considering how best to help, and cursing the impossibility of frankness in this instance. It would have been so easy could he have gone to John’s mother and have said: “You can count on me. Have the boy out. I’ll see him through Oxford. I’ll give him the start which, as I understand him, is all he needs. And all this you will please regard as a side issue. It has nothing whatever to do with our relations with each other. There’s no kind of obligation on you.” But that was impossible. This, by the evil decree of Fate, was a question of money, and money set up an obligation which, where man and woman were concerned, no good-will or friendship could nullify. Hartington said that John had written home. The letter must have arrived. If he went straight to her now, making no mention of his knowledge, she would inevitably look upon him as the man who was able to solve the problem with which her son had confronted her. Her decision would be influenced one way or the other. And, what was more, she would tell him about John; she would feel bound to tell him. He would have to confess foreknowledge, and unending complications would ensue.

No; there was one thing to be done, one thing only. He went to his table and wrote to Hartington.

Having finished his letter, Wingfield Alter returned to those words he had written, “break free.” They implied more than he had meant to imply; but, as he considered them, he had no desire to weaken his phrase.

“My God!” he said aloud, “the younger generation is in a hell of a mess!”

He picked up an envelope and laid it face downwards on the mantelpiece. On its back he wrote:

He tore up the envelope.

“But that’s the coming of the Kingdom,” he thought. Did he himself believe, with absolute belief, that force was barren? It was easier to compromise, to risk nothing, to wait; safer to go slowly. Everything would right itself in time. That was a comfortable thought—but a lie.

He shifted his feet on the carpet, and, turning, peered beyond the soft blur of his reading-lamp into the dark room. And a phrase came upon him suddenly, like galloping hoofs ringing close in the dark against a frost-bit road. Its strange rhythm startled him as if it had been the clatter of horses riding him down.

“... Finally to beat down Satan under our feet ... finally to beat down Satan under our feet....”