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Which shows once more how unexpectedly much, and how wonderfully little, everybody knows about everybody else.

CHAPTER XIX

If Andy had been a woman, gall would have been added to his sorrow by the sympathetic package of sandwiches which Mrs. Jebb put into the pony-cart, and by the carelessly careful remark which Sam Petch made, glancing after the departing flutter of her skirts, that women seemed to have no sense, even the best of them, but that there was one comfort, nobody need grieve over any of them, because there were always as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.

However, being a man, Andy did not notice these indications of a knowledge that he had gone fishing on the matrimonial shore to come back with an empty basket. And he watched some apples being placed in the cart for his friend the Millsby joiner, whom he had once fought, without any of the intense, nervous irritation which must have followed a woman’s intuitive discovery that she was being pitied and watched by those about her.

The piebald pony went off, as gay as a little pony can be who has a comfortable stable and plenty to eat and very little to do; but deep within his heart lurked the memory of past excitements, and he was trotting decorously through Millsby, every inch the parson’s pony, when he heard a brass band playing the Ancient Order of Buffaloes into their annual festivities, and he forgot everything but that he was an artiste with a suppressed talent for dancing on his hind legs.

And as the artistic temperament – even in ponies – always brings inconveniences upon those nearest the gifted one, it is not surprising that Andy found himself in the road among a heap of apples with a few ham-sandwiches across his face.

Neither was it surprising that Elizabeth should be passing down the village street on her way from a visit to Miss Banks, because she constantly went there; but Andy, removing a ham-sandwich from his eyes, and jumping up unhurt, did feel it to be a particular irony of fate that she should be passing at that moment.

It really seemed as if fate, not content with depriving him of her, was making faces at him afterwards. But as the pony continued to execute a pas seul to the wonder of all beholders and the imminent detriment of the shafts, he was obliged to run to the little animal’s head, and to hold it until the band was safely housed in the Public Hall opposite. By that time Elizabeth had entered the grocer’s shop, where she remained until the apples were restored to the cart, and Andy departed, leaving only Mrs. Jebb’s sandwiches on the road to show what had taken place.

He went on his way, feeling peculiarly miserable. Though he had dreaded the next meeting with Elizabeth, he had vaguely pictured it as something heroic – on his side, at any rate. Now nothing was left but the intense and bitter realisation that he was no more to her than any other man who passed her on the road.

He had wished, instinctively, to appear like those renouncing heroes on the stage who always wring the heart of the audience to soft music when they are having the first interview with the Beloved after she is Lost for Ever. And he had appeared among a heap of apples with a disordered ham-sandwich over his eyes.

But one advantage of it all was, nothing now seemed to matter. When he came downstairs that morning, he had dreaded keeping his appointment with Mrs. Atterton about a church window as a hurt man dreads the touch of a sore finger on an open wound; now, he jogged up the long drive feeling sure that nothing could happen at Millsby Hall which would make the slightest difference to him.

“Mrs. Atterton?” he said at the door, with as little anxiety as if he were asking for Mrs. Thorpe. And he followed a servant into the big morning-room all full of light and people and flowers and sunshine – a sort of temple to the jolly spirit of the Atterton family – with no more sense that he was standing on holy ground than as if he had found Mr. Thorpe smoking a pipe in his leather-covered arm-chair.

“No, please don’t send my pony round to the stables – I must only stay a few minutes – I am on my way to Marshaven.”

“Often on your way to Marshaven,” chuckled the irrepressible Bill. “But your cousins aren’t the ordinary sort, more kin than kind. These are more kind than kin, aren’t they?”

“They are the daughters of the first husband of my aunt by marriage,” said the Vicar of Gaythorpe, who was in no mood for jesting.

But he and Bill had been such good friends that the young gentleman failed to realise this; and, taking Andy’s dignified reply for a joke, he laughed uproariously.

“Ha-ha! ‘If Peter’s mother married’ – ”

“Hush,” interrupted Mrs. Atterton, but smiling too, “it’s a lucky thing you go back to Cambridge to-morrow. You need toning down a little. Now, Mr. Deane, as we have not much time, perhaps we ought to begin about the window at once.”

Andy rose, supposing she would lead him to a more retired room, but that was not the Attertons’ way; so she only beckoned him into a corner, while Bill continued to laugh and talk with Norah by the window.

Then Mr. Atterton looked in to say he was just off to a meeting of county justices, and when Mrs. Atterton indicated the subject of her discussion with Andy, he said in a rather less breezy tone, “Ah yes. The window, of course. It must be attended to at once. My poor aunt wanted one with birds in, if possible, Mr. Deane. She owned William, you know. Left instructions in her will about the window. I suppose – ” he paused, eyed Andy dubiously – “I can’t recall to mind any Biblical parrot – but if there were – ”

Now Andy was as miserable as a man well could be, but he was also one of those whom the deepest sorrow cannot blind to the blessed funniness that is always shining out, like stars in a dark sky, to help travellers for whom life’s road would otherwise become impassable; and when he saw Mr. Atterton’s face – reverent yet annoyed – while that gentleman searched mentally the pages of Holy Writ with an inward, “Deuce take it! why isn’t there a parrot?” he could no more help smiling inwardly than he could help breathing. However, he replied, with a gravity befitting the subject —

“There are other birds – something can easily be arranged.”

“That’s all right. That’s all right,” said Mr. Atterton. “Of course, it’s of no real importance, but when you know what people would have liked and they’re not there to speak for themselves, you know – ”

He left it at that and went off with a brisk farewell, to encounter Elizabeth in the doorway, who half turned to go when she saw Andy, but came on after all and shook hands.

“May I offer you my heartiest congratulations – Mrs. Atterton has been telling me – ”

“Thank you, very much.”

There, the impossible had happened, and the world went on just the same; so one sort of youth was past for Andy, by the time Mrs. Atterton added —

“We are so delighted, Mr. Deane.”

But she did not look at him as she said it, because of what Norah had once told her, and because the poor boy might have had a passing fancy for Elizabeth. So many young men had suffered in that way.

“You will be glad to have your daughter near,” replied Andy, with so much calmness that Mrs. Atterton felt greatly relieved. It would be highly unpleasant if there were anything – with Elizabeth at the Manor and Mr. Deane at the Vicarage – so inconvenient at Mothers’ Meetings and Christmases.

She looked up at her girl with tears of joy in her eyes because they were not to be parted farther than the next parish.

As Elizabeth looked back at her mother, the colour started under her eyes and slowly crept under her whole face. It was like watching a rose open softly; and her tremulous mouth that she pursed up to keep firm, was like the heart of a rose.

Andy put out his hand hastily.

“Then I’ll be off now, Mrs. Atterton. You shall have the sketches and estimates as soon – ”

“Please, wait a moment,” interrupted Mrs. Atterton. “Oh, here is Edwards with the tray. You must have a sandwich before you start on your drive.”

Andy did not want a sandwich, of course, but it was impossible to refuse being fed by Mrs. Atterton without being boorish, because she made it so the outward and visible sign of that atmosphere which pervaded the Atterton household. So he ate a combination of bread and meat which ought to have been very good, but which tasted like chaff to him at that moment.

The others came round and took a cup of tea or a glass of milk and sweet cakes or sandwiches, with no appearance of wanting them particularly, but rather as a further expression of the family sentiment: “If there is anything pleasant going let’s be in it!”

Elizabeth’s cake, in fact, crumbled in her saucer, while she drank the tea thirstily enough; and Bill remarked with a chuckle —

“I say – no breakfast – and now leaving her cake! Our Elizabeth ‘wants to willow,’ now she’s an engaged young woman, but banting won’t do it.” He clapped his sister on the back: “You’re not made that way, my girl.”

The Attertons all laughed – not because there was anything to laugh at – but because the schoolmaster’s saying had passed into one of those family jokes which are so dear and silly. For this is age – when there is no one left who knows the family jokes – when there is nobody in all the world to whom an idiotic remark means youth and hope and the golden days gone by.

“Oh, well,” said Norah, coming to the rescue with the freemasonry that exists between sisters, “one lamp-post is enough in any family, isn’t it?”

She stood near the window, erect, smiling, alert, so exceedingly able to take care of herself and other people too, if necessary. And she continued, after looking out at some one passing, “I forgot – we’re going to have another in the family soon – here she is!”

A moment later Mrs. Stamford was ushered in, or rather she did not wait for that, but hurried on ahead of the panting Edwards and across the expanse of carpet that separated her from Mrs. Atterton.

“My dear – I’m so glad – I’m so glad – ”

It was significant that her unusual outburst of emotion did not culminate, as would have been natural, upon Elizabeth’s shoulder, but upon that of the girl’s mother. For once the ideas and traditions of a lifetime were in abeyance, and she came straight, swept along by an overwhelming tide of relief and thankfulness, to the one person in the world who would understand.

“You’ve walked all the way?” said Mrs. Atterton, patting the hard, slim hand of her visitor. “How sweet of you to come like this.”

Mrs. Stamford half turned to Elizabeth.

“I’m so delighted, Elizabeth, my dear, I can never say how delighted – ”

Then she somehow became aware of the other people in the room, and sat up straight, remarking hastily, “Cold coming on. Been taking quinine. Always makes me so excitable. Only thing that does. I could drink a hogshead of port – but quinine!”

“I expect the capacity for unlimited port is hereditary. Weren’t all our ancestors, three-bottle men?” said Norah, composedly, tiding over the situation.

“The doctors all say my back is owing to that – gouty tendencies, you know,” assisted Mrs. Atterton.

And everybody felt immensely relieved to get down to Mrs. Atterton’s back from the emotional heights where they had stood during the past three minutes.

For it had been evident, even to young Bill, that Mrs. Stamford was saying a Magnificat as plainly as ever a Hebrew woman did in the days of old. And no mother ever rejoiced in the birth of a new life with a greater ecstasy of joy and thankfulness, than did Mrs. Stamford, in this beginning of a new life for her son. It seemed, after all the hidden suspense and agony of mind, as if he had been born again to her. She was so certain he would settle down to be all she had hoped and dreamed, when he was once married to Elizabeth.

And Mrs. Atterton had never known any harm of Dick save that he was, at one time, like other young fellows, a little wild. So his exemplary behaviour of late had quite disarmed both her and Mr. Atterton, and they were inclined to admire the honourable way in which he had kept the spirit as well as the letter of the arrangement come to a year ago.

And Norah was glad for her sister to be mistress of such a fine historical place as Gaythorpe Manor, and greatly relieved that there was now no danger of her becoming the wife of a country parson; while Bill was pleased to think ‘good old Elizabeth’ would remain, as it were, a part of home, with excellent shooting to offer in addition to her present virtues, and a five-pound note ever at the service of a brother who always seemed to run short of money at critical moments.

So everybody was pleased, and there was so much unspoken congratulation in the atmosphere that poor Andy felt rather choked with it by the time he got away.

But before he was really out of the house he encountered Dick Stamford, who had motored round by Bardswell, and who bore in his hands a bunch of flowers and an immense box of chocolates tied with pink ribbons.

The two young men passed with a nod and a muttered “Good morning,” but Stamford stopped a second later, turned back, and said with some effort, “Jolly morning. Cold, though. Frost in the air.”

“Yes. Beautiful flowers you’ve got,” said Andy, equally uncomfortable, and speaking at random. “Chocolates, too.”

“Oh, I know what girls like,” said Stamford with an uneasy laugh. “Something pretty to look at and something good to eat. All alike.”

But Andy did not pause to discuss this view of the feminine nature, and they parted with another constrained nod.

However, on the way to Marshaven, Andy began to wonder if he could stay on at Gaythorpe when Elizabeth came to the Manor, and Mr. and Mrs. Stamford had retired to the Dower Lodge, as they intended to do upon their son’s marriage. He began to think he could not endure it. Then he turned a corner and felt on his face the cold, salt air that blows across the flat country near Marshaven, and all the sane manliness in him was stirred into activity again.

Give up his work because the girl he wanted was going to marry some one else and live next door!

Ya-a-a-h! howled the winds in contemptuous protest, across autumn fields where men, all bent with age and toil, were following the plough.

Andy whipped up Tommy and sat very straight in the little cart as the wheels twinkled, merry green and red, through the streets of Marshaven.

Mrs. Dixon with her daughters, the Webster girls, was living in a large bow-windowed house facing the sea, and from her post in an arm-chair on the sunny side of the window she waved to Andy as he went in. He felt how elegant and fashionable she was, when she rose in her tight bodice with her tight curls in perfect order and a bluish bloom upon her nose – just as he had always felt when he came home from school or college and she received him kindly. For women gain the same hold on men by being always in full regimentals as soldiers do upon savages.

“My dear Andy,” – she had always been kind, but now she was doubly kind – “how pleased I am to see you.”

“I thought I must run over to say good-bye, as you were off to-morrow,” said Andy, shaking hands with the girls, who seemed, in this strong morning light off the sea, more especially endowed with eyes and hair and neck than ever.

“We’re not going until the end of the month, now. We’ve changed our minds,” said Phyllis. And she closed her lips in a way which intimated that she was in the habit of making up the family mind.

“Such nice people about, and so kind,” said Irene. “Ridiculous idea that we had before about county society being sidey. Of course they can be – you can see that – even your Elizabeth has it in her.”

Andy took a breath like a man going for a big ditch; then he said with a laugh —

“Haven’t you heard? She is Mr. Stamford’s Elizabeth.”

There – it could not have been done in a worse or more tasteless way, he knew, but it was done.

“What!” cried Mrs. Dixon.

“Mr. Stamford engaged – you can’t mean it!” said Irene.

“Oh!” said Phyllis. Nothing else. But she wore Eastern beads that morning, with a flimsy blouse, and her expression now matched her toilet – she looked somehow like a chorus girl who had strayed accidentally into melodrama.

After a good deal more conversation on the subject, during which Andy really felt as if he were walking with bare feet on red-hot cinders, he rose to depart, in spite of an urgent invitation to remain for luncheon.

“Then you must have a sandwich,” urged Mrs. Dixon.

He replied most truly that he would rather not.

“Oh, if you won’t stay to lunch we shall insist,” said Irene.

“We should really consider it quite unkind,” said Mrs. Dixon.

So he was obliged to masticate another sandwich, and that seemed to add the last touch to his desolation. For though it is a dignified and even heroic thing to be dogged through misfortune by dragons, there is only plain annoyance in being dogged by ham-sandwiches.

But the climax was reached when Andy, long after luncheon time, arrived home and awaited tea in his study, where the maid appeared bearing the tray, while Mrs. Jebb fluttered after with a plate in her hand.

“I thought,” said she, signing to her underling to depart, “that you would be glad of a few sandwiches after your drive. We had nothing but ham in the – ”

She stopped short with her mouth open, for Andy had seized the plate from her and flung the sandwiches upon the fire.

“Bread and butter,” he said thickly.

It was atrocious. It was everything that can possibly be said against such an action. But it did Andy good.

The only drawback was that he had to spend quite an hour, later in the evening, in talking to Mrs. Jebb about Mr. Jebb and the glories of the past.

When they parted, Mrs. Jebb, having forgiven him, eye-cornered him from the doorway and said, very softly —

“I understand. I know what” – she made a pause – “what tooth-ache is, myself.”

She felt sure he would also understand that by “tooth” she meant “heart.” Only a woman can put these things delicately enough.

But Andy stared after her in heavy amazement as the door closed.

“Toothache!” he thought to himself. “Surely I haven’t been telling her I had toothache, have I? Oh, well, it doesn’t matter.”

For a few minutes he sat staring into the fire, then he got up and went to his desk, and his work gained strength, no doubt, as work always does, from love and sorrow decently borne.

CHAPTER XX

Real jollity is as antiseptic as sunshine, and when Andy sat in a leather chair opposite Mr. Thorpe, with Mrs. Thorpe presiding over an immense batch of the first mince-pies which had been brought out for his refreshment, he unconsciously felt the bitterness of his grief being sweetened and purified. It had been a lonely and disappointing time lately, and he had watched the autumn leaves hanging thick on the trees ready to fall at the first gale, with a leaden dulness of heart that was sapping his vitality.

When he trudged back and forth to the little church past the resting-place of Brother Gulielmus he thought often that so he would lie, his little day’s work done, and he had an intense consciousness of the futility of life, though he worked hard and tried to fight against it.

To-night, he had come down to the Thorpes’, because Mrs. Thorpe asked him, with a heavy sense of all places being alike; and now, though they had discussed nothing but the crops and the weather, his bitterness was already changing into that good grief which never yet harmed a man, in a wholesome atmosphere of mince-pies and blazing autumn logs – or rather, in the atmosphere of sane and strong acceptance of life as it is which emanated from the Thorpes present, and the generations of Thorpes who had gone before. They – those older Thorpes – and the Will Ford who was afterwards Gulielmus had doubtless sat through long evenings after harvest-time in exactly the same atmosphere as surrounded Andy at present – and a sturdy sense of a man’s right to work and gain strength by working – and of a man’s right to suffer and grow fine by suffering – took hold of Andy’s soul to the exclusion of that weak dream of universal ease which had been, unconsciously, the outcome of a modern education.

For when Mrs. Thorpe said —

“Have another mince-pie —do,” she really voiced, quite without it, the brave and kind thoughts of those who had been strong enough to take life gladly, and urged Andy to follow their example.

And when Mr. Thorpe said —

“We shall pull our damsons to-morrow. We waited until they’d had a touch of frost on them to take the tartness off. Have you pulled yours yet?” he really spoke of all those things, deep hidden, which make a man ready to do his day’s work here and trust in God for the reward.

And as they sat round the fire, their tongues speaking of the unchanging springtime and harvest, and their souls of the unchanging day’s work and faith in the end, they belonged – those three – to no time or place. They were so absolutely unconsciously above and beyond all that, and any man who has ever thought from the far misty dawn of history until now, might have slipped into the fourth empty chair, and talked with them and understood.

At last Mrs. Thorpe began to speak of Elizabeth’s wedding, and wondered what the bridesmaids would wear, and brought out a silver cream-jug which she and Mr. Thorpe were presenting to the young couple.

“I hear the Squire is going to the Little House,” said Mr. Thorpe, for so the Dower Lodge was called in the village. “But he fails a bit, week by week, though he isn’t an old man. He’ll be glad to see his son settled in and managing everything.”

“That’s why they are hurrying the marriage on so. Only five days from now,” added Mrs. Thorpe. “I have heard people say, ‘Short a-doing – long a-rueing!’ but it can’t be so in this case, I think. They do seem to have everything the heart can want.”

“Nice-looking girl,” said Mr. Thorpe, taking the masculine view. “Very.”

“The Stamfords have gold plate, if they like to use it, and no young man ever made a worse husband for having sown his wild oats first,” said Mrs. Thorpe, following with the feminine outlook. “Shall you assist at the ceremony, Mr. Deane?”

“No,” said Andy. Then he added more quietly, “I don’t expect to. They will have Mr. Banks, of course, and probably other old friends.”

“Well, anyway, it’s poor fun marrying a pretty girl to somebody else,” concluded Mr. Thorpe, knocking out his pipe.

Soon after that Andy went home, and he was met in the hall by Mrs. Jebb, who informed him that Mrs. Simpson – with whom she was now on terms of armed neutrality – had been to ask him about fetching her sideboard home. It appeared that an empty removal van would be passing her house early the following morning, and the men had promised to bring the sideboard from the Vicarage, if agreeable to Mr. Deane.

Andy glanced at his watch and saw it was already past eleven.

“I will go round myself and tell her that it is all right,” he said.

“Such a shame for you to turn out again after your hard day,” said Mrs. Jebb sentimentally. “Mrs. Simpson has made more trouble about that hideous sideboard – ”

But Andy was already half-way down the steps, so Mrs. Jebb resumed her candle and went up to bed, leaning awhile from her casement to watch the Hunter’s moon shining splendid over the massed tree-tops, and to dream vaguely of pale-grey satin and orange blossoms. Then she drew down her blind and perused a novel called An Autumn Rose, which had a heroine whose virgin heart had remained untouched until she was well over forty.

Andy ran along with his hands in his pockets, for the night was sharp with a touch of frost, and as he turned out of his own gate he paused for a moment to glance, like Mrs. Jebb, at the extraordinary brilliance of the moonlight.

The little village lay asleep; all the windows with drawn blinds on one side of the houses were glittering and shining in the moonlight like golden windows in some enchanted dream. The sky stretched above them, calm and wide and clear, with little waves of gold around the moon. There was scarcely a breath of wind stirring, and Andy stood in the shadow of the tree, quite still, so that he gave no sign of life to the white empty road. Any one passing would have fancied himself quite alone. Any one coming across the field-path from Gaythorpe Manor and standing on the step of the fence might have looked over the still landscape and fancied himself the only waking soul in all that quiet world.

Elizabeth, standing on that step of the fence and looking at the windows of Andy’s house, which were pale golden in the moonshine, evidently thought she was quite alone; and her face appeared stronger and more reposeful than any one who had seen her laughing in the daytime would have thought possible. The clear, bright light seemed to have drawn away the girlish softness of her features, and her tender colouring, and to have left her as she would be if the joys and passions of life had all gone from her.

As she stood there, quite still, in the full moonlight, with a white cloak round her and a white scarf over her head, against the luminous darkness of the sky, she was more like some noble abbess come to life again than a young lady who intended to be married in five days.

And it was no chance resemblance, but a strange, momentary impression of a mental state upon the outward appearance – for Elizabeth would have become an abbess if, with her position and her character and her large private means, she had lived a few centuries earlier. She did so fundamentally belong to that type of woman who says to herself, “If I can’t be happy, I will be good,” which is quite illogical, of course, because that type of woman is always good to start with.

And as she paused, motionless, with her hand at her breast holding the close-drawn scarf, it was clear that the mahogany sideboard, in the guise of a harbinger of fate, had been at it again.

Andy ran forward out of the shadow and said breathlessly, in a voice which he scarcely knew to be his own —

“You were looking at my windows!”

Elizabeth gave a great start, and her face was very white in the moonlight.

“Yes,” she said, half whispering.

“What did you come for?” said Andy, pressing nearer to her.

They stood under a sycamore tree in the lane, but they could not see each other because a cloud sailed across the moon: it was very dark and still. Then the cloud passed – a little wind stirred – and immediately a thousand dusky stars of shadow quivered on the white radiance of the moonlit road.

“Why did you come?” repeated Andy a second time.

There was enough light now for them to see into each other’s eyes, and what they saw there changed, for a moment, that white road with the stars of shadow quivering on it, to the floor of heaven. They forgot, for that one moment, that there was anything in earth or heaven but the love they saw in each other’s eyes.

“Why did you come, dear?” whispered Andy with his arms about her.

“To see your home. To say good-bye,” said Elizabeth. “Oh, Andy, I thought you didn’t care for me. I thought you had changed your mind at the last minute. Why did you keep away until it was too late?”

“I promised Stamford,” said Andy. “We both wanted you, and he had to wait until his year was out. I tried to play fair. I didn’t want to make him lose heart when he had done his best to keep straight.”

“How good of you. Dear Andy, how good of you,” said Elizabeth, smoothing the shoulder, of his rough coat with that comforting touch which women keep for their lovers and their children.

“No; it was not good,” said poor Andy, choking a little, “because I never expected to lose you. I thought you loved me.”

Then Elizabeth threw her arms round his neck and sobbed out —

“I do love you. Oh, I do love you!”

So they stood, clasped together, until Andy loosed his arms from about her for a moment; but he took her into them again with a low cry that came from the very depths of his being —

“I can’t let you go!”

Still, in a little while, it became clear to these two foolish – or wise – young people that they must let each other go. Perhaps it was because they stood on the floor of heaven and so saw things beyond the stars, that even their own earthly happiness began to look a small thing beside the destruction of Dick Stamford’s soul.

“What am I to do?” said Elizabeth. “Poor Mrs. Stamford – ”

She broke off, and the memory of that Magnificat in the Attertons’ morning-room swept with desolating conviction across their hearts.

“Why did you accept Stamford when you loved me?” said Andy. “Even if you supposed I didn’t care, you need not have done that.”

“I thought,” said Elizabeth – and here it all came out – “I thought if I could not be happy myself I could make a great many other people happy. I could do some good with my life. I should never have taken Dick Stamford if I had not felt I could do some good with my life in that way. And I knew I could never be happy without you.”

Oh, it was all foolishness, of course; but shadowy generations of good women stood behind Elizabeth as she said that, and the ladder of useless self-sacrifice on which they stood reached very high up: even as far, perhaps, as the dreams of those who know that their first duty is to themselves.

Anyway, there was something rather wonderful about the look of Andy and Elizabeth when they came forth from the shadow of the tree and walked together across the field. Their young faces were a little stern, and the radiance about them seemed in some strange way to be more a white fire of the spirit triumphing over the flesh than any ordinary moonlight.

They walked quietly, and scarcely spoke, but the things which usually seem unreal were near realities, and those things which usually seem real did not matter. Even though they saw the City of Wedded Love, the Enchanted Muddle, in ruins before them, a light streamed from somewhere farther on that made the ruins glorious – a huge altar to the God of Love.

At last they came suddenly, from behind a clump of trees, upon the garden of Gaythorpe Manor. And things began to be real – or unreal – again, according as you may take it.