PRELUDE

When an unnatural idea possesses a woman bitterness flows from her tongue.—Euripides.

The silence upon the river was broken by a vivacious voice,—

“My lady, out of the depths of your wisdom define for me the word asymptote.”

“Spell it,” murmured beauty in laziness, from a heap of pink cushions.

The vivacious voice did so, inaccurately.

“Never heard of the thing,” said indolence.

“Then I must search in the dictionary,” answered vivacity.

A moment later the punt lurched violently, there was a splash of water under the bank, a nodding of tall rushes; and beauty in pink closed her pretty eyes and tried to forget she was Maude Juxon, wife of a rich stockbroker, and mother of a three year old child whom she had not seen for more than six months.

Some evening clouds were reflected in the smooth river. Swallows darted to and fro, and fish were splashing after ambrosial gnats. The atmosphere was languorous. A single jarring note, necessary to make the surroundings earthly, was supplied by an impatient owl hooting from an elm before its time. Down to the river sloped the garden of widowed Mrs. Neill, burning with the flowers of June. The sleepy occupant of the punt heard far-away the snip of the gardener’s iron scissors. This, the only, sound of human labour made her more contented with the lot which had fallen to her in an easy ground.

The punt lurched still more violently and Mrs. Juxon was again awakened to the troublesome world. Flora Neill, the widow’s only child, and bosom friend of the little lady in pink, settled herself, at the other end of the boat, and balanced a drab volume upon her knees.

“Will you be pleased to refrain from sleep for a few minutes, my lady?” she asked. “Because I have a desire to talk.”

“Don’t call me my lady,” said Mrs. Juxon irritably. “If you do I will go to sleep at once. Have you found out what that thing is?”

“I am just going to,” said Flora, who was a tall fair-haired girl, endowed with more than average good looks, but unmistakably “narrow atween the eyen,” and possessing a chin which her bluff old uncle, the vicar of Kingsmore, had described as a walnut-cracker. “Before I begin you may look into this letter which has just come. And, Maude, I found mother reading an incoherent epistle from uncle. It appears I am expected to make my annual appearance at Kingsmore, the week after next, to criticise pigs and bring the scent of the footlights over the hay for the benefit of my reverend relative who is about as much at home in London as you or I would be in Timbuctoo. Here! catch your letter.” Flora tossed the missive across the punt, and her indolent friend was sufficiently curious to lift her head and glance at the handwriting.

“Only from Herbert,” she sighed disappointedly. “What a ridiculous thing it is to have a husband who writes to you every day! I know exactly what he says,” she droned, pulling the envelope open.

“When are you coming home? I find the evenings very dull without you. Couldn’t you have Peggy at home now? I don’t like the idea of her being farmed out. She isn’t farmed out,” cried Mrs. Juxon indignantly. “What a nasty objectionable phrase to use! Peggy is with a very good nurse, who will bring her up much better than I ever should. What is the good of being a rich woman if you are to be bothered with your baby? And as for going home—well, I’m quite happy here.”

“You would rush into matrimony and motherhood, my child,” said the fair-haired girl, who was not more than four years Maude’s junior. “I warned you, and now—”

“I’m driving my husband to drink, prophetess,” laughed the pink lady.

“Or to some other woman.”

Mrs. Juxon tore the letter into fragments which she snowed daintily over the water with a tiny white hand.

“I couldn’t have worked for my living,” she said. “And nice men are poor. What’s that you are reading?”

“An asymptote,” read Flora, “is a line which approaches nearer and nearer to a given curve, but does not meet it within a finite distance. It is an astronomical phrase. Now do you know what an asymptote is, Maude?”

“It is a line,” recited the pink lady, in her frivolous way, “which—which does something or other to a curve.”

“Don’t worry that little head,” said the maiden. “I won’t ask you to repeat the definition. I wanted to see if you would be personal. My dear, I have been called an asymptote, and no longer ago than yesterday.”

“I can’t think out things,” said Maude pettishly. “It makes my head ache. Who ever called you that thing? I can’t pronounce it.”

“I overheard the compliment,” Flora answered. “So I went up to the culprit, a wicked old clergyman who dabbles in astronomy, and demanded an explanation. He laughed, and said, ‘It is a mathematical way of calling a lady a flirt.’ ”

“Do explain,” said a voice which suggested slumber.

“I will, if you listen,” said Flora. “Are you awake, Maude?”

“I will be, if it is not going to be too hard,” said the pink lady.

“It is quite easy,” said Flora. Then she began to read,—

“The asymptote is more than a mere scientific expression. It is a term which may be applied to many of Eve’s daughters. The human asymptote has her being amongst us both in country and in town. The observer is made to feel her presence, as she may be seen approaching nearer and nearer the man who is her given curve for the time being, he prepared to respond to the influence, and she equally determined never to meet him until they reach infinity together. She is no beautiful figure, despite all her surface charms. Her blood never responds to the natural call of sex. But admiration is to her as the breath of life, and she will beguile as wantonly as any of the Sirens of old. Equipped with a ready brain, which has never been dulled by the mastery of love, her power of seduction is complete. She throws down a cold heart and a scheming brain to challenge a true nature and real affection. But so soon as the human curve leaps out of hyperbola to meet his asymptote repulsion assuredly must follow.

“Our asymptote may be graceless, but she is never a fool. She knows indeed all that a girl can know. She has opened all the books of dangerous knowledge and loves to indulge in unrestrained speech. She will discuss the tenderest relations flippantly, because they are nothing to her. She will converse upon matrimonial matters with the carelessness of the child blowing soap bubbles. She passes through life lonely, though to an outsider she may appear the centre of a crowd. She is happy enough to all outward seeming, and finds a vast deal to interest her. She is not often dangerous, because when all is said she remains little more than a rattle, and if she marries at all it is late in life, and then not because she has met her curve—for that is scientifically impossible—but rather because she finds she must have a man of her own to plague. When thus settled she may still, if the fates be kind, happen upon some foolish youth ready to play the curve to her asymptote. One does not pity her; but a sigh may well be spared for her husband.”

Flora gazed thoughtfully along the river, her mouth determined, and a strong light in her eyes. Her companion, who was by this time wide awake, had no imagination; but she could not help feeling that behind that face there was a will which might carry its owner rather too far.

“Are you really like that?” Maude demanded, nodding in the direction of the book of knowledge.

Flora nodded seriously.

“Then I think you are a wicked person,” said Mrs. Juxon virtuously.

“My dear little Maude! Do you really believe what I have just read?” laughed the fair-haired girl. “It is rubbish. It’s a fairy-tale written, as a warning for very young men, by some snuffy old philosopher who never found a woman with whom he could agree. You needn’t stare at me with those big blue baby eyes. I am a far better girl than you will ever be. I don’t meet my curves, but you have become hopelessly entangled in yours.”

“I am not an—I can’t pronounce it,” protested the pink lady. “It’s nonsense to rail against matrimony. A girl without money must either earn her own living, which is altogether disgusting and impossible, or she must marry.”

“Suppose she shrinks from the idea, as you would from a cold bath on a winter’s morning?”

“Flora, a girl must marry if she wants comfort and liberty. Of course it’s silly to marry for love. That doesn’t last long after marriage anyhow. You may say what you like, but matrimony will always be a girl’s one aim in life, besides it is nice and proper. Really,” little Mrs. Juxon concluded, “I am quite clever this evening.”

“Your wisdom has not supplied you with an answer to my question,” Flora went on. “It’s true I shrink from the thought of matrimony, but I won’t be called an incomplete woman, though I have my one little antipathy. I cannot touch or smell a rose. But that’s a matter of temperament. In other things I am as complete as you are. I love admiration, but what girl does not? Perhaps my blood is a little bit cold, but then men and women no longer meet only on the ground of sex. Thank Heaven for that. I really think that in time I might love—in a spiritual sense.”

“Men don’t appreciate that kind of love,” said Mrs. Juxon decisively.

“Because they have never been properly educated. We shall train them to higher things in time. Why, Maude, the spiritual union is the perfect state. We are not animals, to increase and multiply, at this stage of the world’s history. We are nervous sympathetic beings, and love properly developed should be a reaching out of the soul for larger and wider sympathies. And a man will hold and squeeze a girl, and call her idiotic names, if she will let him. Call that spiritual love! The state of the man and woman in the garden was the sympathy I crave for.”

“And they fell from it at once,” cried the other joyously.

“Because they were ignorant. The world is older now and we are wiser. We shall advance to platonic marriage. Matrimony, as it exists to-day, deadens the sympathies. The state of the soul which demands a perfect union cannot under present circumstances be attained. In your case, my dear, nature, after attaining her end, has snatched away the veil which hid the coarse reality, and you know you don’t love your husband. As a matter of fact you never did love him.”

“Herbert has always been good to me,” argued the pink lady. “And he is so well off that I should have been very silly if I had refused him. Mother assured me love would come after marriage. It didn’t, but that is not my fault. I am quite a model wife; I don’t quarrel with my husband, I let him kiss me sometimes, and I never interfere with his business. When he gives a dinner he shows me off with ridiculous pride. And when he is unreasonable I come away and visit my friends, while he writes every day for me to go back. You see it is not a bad marriage.”

“What has the soul got to do with it?” demanded Flora.

“Nothing,” Mrs. Juxon laughed lazily. “This little body is quite enough for me. I don’t worry about souls or sympathies.”

“The sympathies will not be ignored,” the fair-haired girl threatened. “If you are married without love some state of the soul will assert itself. That is always the punishment for a marriage of convenience.”

“I won’t sit here and be persecuted,” said Mrs. Juxon with some spirit. But, while she rebelled, her face became sad and her eyes full of thought; because she could not help recalling the memory of one in particular with whom she had once experienced, as she thought, that state of the soul, and in whose arms she had cried to say farewell. “Why have you such a rooted objection to matrimony?” she went on quickly.

“Because it is abominable and tyrannic,” said Flora. “Because the wretched girl becomes completely absorbed by her husband, if she gives herself up to him entirely as she is supposed to do. She has not even her identity left. She is compelled to think as the inferior half of somebody else’s mind. She actually grows to resemble her husband in face and manner. The man takes everything from her, not only her name and her individuality, but her health and her beauty—”

“Flora, I won’t listen. You are horrid and coarse. You’ll be saying it is wicked to have children next.”

“It is sometimes,” the out-spoken young woman retorted. “You remember what a beauty Gertrude Norton was, and how everyone used to rave over her?”

“Yes,” admitted the stockbroker’s wife.

“She has been married only three years, but who would rave over her now? Nobody would call her even nice-looking. Only a few seasons ago she won a tennis championship, or something equally good, and she would think nothing of cycling fifty miles or more in one day. Now she is the mother of twins, and a confirmed invalid. She is a model wife, I daresay, and a perfect pattern of motherhood, but her dancing days and her tennis playing are over. And she is not twenty-five.”

“Her husband is very fond of her,” said Mrs. Juxon pathetically.

“I know a man who says he is very fond of me,” replied the fair-haired girl. “But I do not intend to spoil my life while I retain my senses.”

“He wouldn’t be fond of you if he could hear you now. I declare,” shivered the little lady, “I’m getting quite afraid of you. I wonder what you really think of me. Am I falling off at all, Flora?”

“Horribly,” said the girl, rising and swaying the punt. “It is nearly dinner time and it is getting chilly. Let us go in.”

“I am beginning to feel not only cold but old,” said the pink lady, as she gathered in her skirts to step ashore. “But I cannot be ugly. Whatever may happen I cannot be ugly. It is heavenly to feel upon coming into a drawing-room that men cannot take their eyes off you. What is the secret of preserving beauty, Flora?”

“You must be spiritual,” said Miss Neill.

“I have Peggy,” murmured Mrs. Juxon, as she stepped upon the bank with her studied daintiness of motion. “I really have done my duty as a wife and a mother.”

“Do you hear the owl?” exclaimed Flora, as they walked away from the lazy river.

“Yes, the beast!” replied Maude spitefully. “I am always superstitious when I hear owls!”

OVERTURE

Inasmuch as Nature tells us there are Gods, and we know, by reason, what they must be like, so, with the consent of all rational beings, we believe souls to endure everlastingly; where, however, these spirits exist, and what they are like, we must discover by investigation.—Cicero.

The reverend Doctor Berry concluded to his satisfaction the single paragraph which was the result of a morning’s thought, wiped his pen, fingered the sheet of manuscript tenderly, and placed it carefully in a drawer of his desk, then rose and walked across to the open window.

The sun was setting upon beech woods, and a deep haze flecked with dust and white butterflies shimmered across a strip of garden, bright with poppies and cornflowers, which divided the rectory from the churchyard; the main portion of the garden stretched away behind the house, down a slope which ended in an orchard where a stream ran bounding the glebe in that direction. A crumbling wall, completely covered with ivy, marked the line where the consecrated ground ended; on the rectory side grew docks and nettles and red sorrels among the altar-tombs and mossy slabs, with here and there a black yew striking its roots deeply into the resting places of the dead. An unfrequented road passed beside the church, to become a mere cart-track upon the downs, where the white-thorn was being shed like snow and the shadows of the beech wood were lengthening fast.

“It is a glorious evening,” the rector whispered, “I will go and walk in the garden of the Strath.”

Taking a great key from an oak bracket he walked out of his study, placed a straw hat upon his silvered hair, and stepped into the glories of the failing day.

The ecclesiastical parish of Thorlund, scarcely worthy of being dignified by the title of hamlet, consisted of a wooded valley watered by a stream. Far down and buried amid elms were tiny church and parsonage; and hard by rose the inexplicable house, its garden surrounded by a time-worn wall, known to all as the Strath. A few cottages upon the Kingsmore road were passing into an advanced stage of decay. A few in a more habitable state were dotted singly, or in pairs, beside the grass by-paths or upon the lower ridges of the downs. The entire parish was moribund. Nothing flourished except the trees and strong-scented wayside weeds. No dignitary of the church had entered the valley for hard upon a century. A deadening influence prevailed over the church, pastor, and people. There were not thirty adults in the parish all told, and the nearest school was at Kingsmore four miles distant across the downs. A few peasant farmers clung to the chalky slopes because they lacked the means to go. The labourers were agricultural machines; the wives went out to work afield beside

their husbands; and by day the sun smote across an altogether deserted prospect, where a lone cat slept on the dusty green, and a caged blackbird listened sadly and silently to its free brethren singing in the weird garden of the Strath.

Thorlund had in common with the world the sun which warmed it, the moon which ruled its night, the rain which coursed in milky rivulets down its stony roads, and the storm which broke its beeches and its elms—but nothing more. It was a peaceful, but not a happy valley. Its sleep was not a healthy one. Once, no doubt, Thorlund had lived, and in a sense flourished, then death came, but a spark of vital element had crept back to the body, diffusing itself throughout its entire system, and lending to it a semblance of life. It was from the long abandoned house known as the Strath that this vital and dramatic element proceeded. Dr. Berry served as the intermediary between the incomprehensible spirit of the Strath and those human beings who had their habitations near. He had remained untouched by the noise and trouble of the world. His life had moved smoothly from the cradle, and promised so to continue down to the grave. He had always been happier apart from others, living his own life which consisted in striving to materialize rather than dispel that atmosphere of mysticism which

gathers around a scholar’s solitary existence. At Oxford he had worked for classical honours, not for the sake of reputation, but for the pure love of knowledge; and when at the age of twenty-five he had been offered the living of Thorlund, which nobody else could be induced to accept, he had merely asked, “What is the population of the parish?” The answer, “Fifty at the last census,” which had frightened away every one else, satisfied him. The stipend of forty-five pounds per annum was not a serious consideration, as he possessed means of his own. After passing through the divinity school with his customary display of polished scholarship, he accepted the “benefice”; and thirty years had passed him there, as so many uneventful weeks, while he built up slowly the work which it was his intention to bequeath to posterity as a justification for his existence, an analysis of the lyrical poetry of the Aeolians.