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ERGE DETLOFF never used the title of “Prince,” though it was still given to him by some of his Russian friends, and Katherine was always known in England as Mrs. Detloff.

Her house in South Kensington was a rendezvous for amusing and eccentric characters who came to see her husband, rather alarming at times to conventional young men, her old admirers, now establishing their careers in Harley Street, the Temple, and other highways of professional youth. I was one of those who took tea with her sometimes, and more than once I fancied that the glamour of hero-worship had worn off a little in regard to her husband. That was inevitable. She treated him as a private joke to test her sense of humour, which came back as the remembrance of Hugh Evesham faded. Not that she regretted her marriage with any passionate self-pity. On the contrary they were good comrades, extremely attached to one another, and it was pleasant to see the courtesy and chivalry of Detloff to his young wife. I noticed that he kissed her hand in the Russian style whenever they met or parted, and was always tenderly attentive to her.

But he must have been a trial to her sometimes because of his slovenly habits and absentmindedness. His ink-stained fingers and disordered hair were a strange contrast to the daintiness of Katherine. He spilt his food down the front of his frock coat when excited conversationally on the subject of Liberty, or the relation of the ancient Egyptian language to Arabic and Hebrew, or the influence of Dostoievsky on European literature. He suffered her rebukes as meekly as a child, with a smiling contrition in his luminous eyes, but his untidiness was incurable.

His study upstairs was a horror, according to Katherine, and often when I went there to listen to his conversation, which was always illuminating, and rather thrilling to a young man like me, the room was littered with papers as though a gale had blown them about. He could seldom find his pens, tobacco-pouch, or foulest and best beloved pipe without a prolonged search and agonised complaints that the servants had been “tidying up” again. He needed careful watching from Katherine, lest he should plunge forth to King’s College without a hat, or with his boots unlaced, or with crumbs on his beard after a hurried breakfast. There must have been times when Katherine, so sensitive and delicate, was distressed by her husband’s lofty indifference to personal appearance. And yet she loved and respected him, I know, for his real nobility of soul, his humane outlook on life, his warm-hearted pity for all suffering people, his adoration of her.

It was those qualities, and the remembrance of what he had suffered as a young man in the cause of Russian liberty, which brought a continual succession of visitors to the house in Cromwell Road. Young English authors came to pay their homage, eager to listen to his ideals and hopes for the progress of mankind. Peace propagandists came to enlist his name on their committees. Russian exiles, newly escaped from Siberia, shabbier than himself, less familiar with brush and comb, haggard and hollow-eyed, rang at the front door bell, after cold scrutiny from the watchful eyes of the policeman on point duty.

They were the professors, poets, painters, and patriots of Czarist Russia, exiled for conscience sake, and inspired with the dream of liberty for which they were ready to dare all things and suffer all things. They all seemed heroes to me then, but I fancy now that some of them must have been rather desperate fellows, ready to be as cruel to their political opponents as the Czarist police. The majority, however, were the intellectual liberals whose idealism seemed ridiculous to a later type of revolutionary.

Before Michael came, Katherine used to listen to the conversations of these men with her husband, learning Russian, excited by pity and indignation because of their sufferings, and identifying herself with her husband’s passionate hopes for the future liberty of his people. But she never lost her humour, nor her abiding common sense. When Michael was born, giving her a new interest and purpose in life, she used to listen from afar to all that talk, and smile at any visitor who might be astonished by all the uproar in Detloff’s study.

“Dreamers!” she said to me one day. “Hark at them! All with different ideas about the Ideal State, all at sixes and sevens about the meaning of Liberty, all ready to talk for ever and ever and ever! Meanwhile, I’ve got to give Michael his tub.”

Paul, now a serious bacteriologist at the Pasteur Institute, used to breeze in at tea-time pretty often, with or without Clare, who was beginning to think that bacteriology was a dreadful bore and wished Paul would become a fashionable doctor in Harley Street, so that she might wear pretty frocks and live a decent sort of life instead of having to “smug” in Prince of Wales Mansions, Battersea Park. Perhaps that is why Paul came alone as a rule to tea with Katherine. She showed an intelligent interest in his work, and believed in his genius.

He had quite reconciled himself to her marriage, and was great friends with “old Bluebeard,” as he called Serge Detloff, though he never ceased to chaff Katherine about her choice. He would enquire after her husband as “that old anarchist of yours,” or ask with a roar of laughter whether the Prince still wore false cuffs.

The arrival of Michael appeared to him as the crowning joke.

“Good old Bluebeard! Who’d have thought it?”

But he prophesied dire things to tease his sister.

“That kid of yours is going to be a peck of trouble later on, if I know anything about natural selection or the laws of heredity. Slav melancholy and English sentiment, Russian passion and British cussedness, the Volga and the Thames, with their blood and mud. Poor little devil.”

Those words scared Katherine, though she pretended to laugh them off. She was already perturbed by the unusual character of her infant son, who, at four years of age—how quickly time passed!—had developed a passionate temper, in spite of adorable sweetness which made it so hard to punish him after evil deeds. What made things more difficult was the aversion of the boy’s father to any form of physical punishment, so that Katherine had to spank her rebel privately, and even then his howls would reveal her severity to her Tolstoyan husband, who suffered far more than the small boy and gazed at Katherine with reproachful eyes, as though she had been guilty of inhuman cruelty. He spoilt his son, or tried to, with inordinate affection, and Russian exiles calling to visit their champion in England, or elderly professors desiring to consult the great authority on the history of language, were amazed to discover him playing bears under the dining-room table, or pretending to be a railway train in that untidy study upstairs.

It was when Michael was four years old that Hugh Evesham came home from Canada. He called first of all on Paul, who was very much impressed by his change of manner, and abandonment of the affected pose which he had adopted as a younger man. He enquired after Katherine, and hoped she was happy in her married life, of which he had heard out in the wilds.

“Has she forgiven me?” he asked. “I should like to think so.”

It was characteristic of Paul—the most tactless fellow in the world—that, without consulting Katherine or giving her any warning, he should have brought round Evesham to tea that day. I happened to be there, as I often was, grateful for the open hospitality of Katherine and her husband. I was also by way of being playmate-in-ordinary to the young Michael, with whom I was on excellent terms. To this day I remember that moment when the door opened noisily and Paul announced:

“An old friend to see you, Kitty!”

A piano-organ was playing in the street “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do!” and a muffin man was ringing his bell from house to house. We had heard the sound of a hansom cab driving up to the front door and stopping with a slither of hoofs on the asphalt pavement, and Katherine had said, “There’s a visitor, and the tea’s cold!”

Then Paul came in with Hugh Evesham.

She had risen from her chair at the table, and at the sight of the man who had been her lover, all the colour faded from her face and then ebbed back with a vivid and painful blush. For a moment there was silence between them, and just for that moment, but no more, there was a look of longing and regret in Hugh Evesham’s eyes. I think Katherine’s beauty, more mature than when he had known her last, unsteadied him for that second. Then he spoke a few words in a natural, unaffected way.

“You’ll forgive me for accepting Paul’s invitation to come along here? I seem to have been away a thousand years! It’s splendid to see old friends again.”

“I’m afraid the tea’s cold,” said Katherine. “I’ll ring for some more.”

She was very nervous for a little while, but Paul’s heartiness, and Hugh Evesham’s quiet talk about his experiences in Canada, put her outwardly at ease. I noticed that her eyes never rested on Evesham’s face, but flitted past him when he talked to her. Once, when I passed her something I touched her hand and knew it was cold.

Presently the nurse brought down young Michael, who was remarkably well behaved for once and was seized with an immediate affection for Evesham.

“Why have you got such blue eyes,” he asked in his candid way.

“Can’t help it,” said Evesham, laughing. “I was born like that.”

“My father’s eyes are black,” said Michael. “That’s because he’s a Russian. My mother’s eyes are blue like yours, but not so tremendously blue. Have you got a little boy like me?”

“No,” said Evesham. “I’m a bachelor.”

“What’s a bachelor?” asked Michael. “Is that the same thing as an exile?”

Even at that early age he was familiar with exiles, those queer people who made such a noise in his father’s study, and interrupted games of bears and things, and taught him to speak Russian.

“Very much the same thing,” said Evesham, with a laugh and a sigh.

It was unfortunate, but almost inevitable, that young Michael should have led the conversation in that direction. He had a special genius for embarrassing questions, beyond even the unusual quality of his age. Fortunately the Professor came downstairs, and Michael’s interest was diverted from Evesham to his chief favourite, at whom he made a rush with a demand for a game of engines. It was the first time Detloff had met Evesham, though he had heard all about him, and for a moment he was startled by his presence. After that he held out his hand very cordially and hoped he would come to lunch one day.

It was unfortunate, that return of Evesham. Looking back upon it, I can see now that Katherine wished to be broadminded, and generous, and forgiving, and felt herself safeguarded by her marriage and her small boy. And I believe also that Hugh Evesham had no evil intent in his heart when he saw more of Katherine than was good for himself or her. He, too, believed that there was no danger in meeting her at every opportunity, now that she was a married woman with a middle-aged husband. It was little Michael who was partly responsible for this renewed intimacy. He developed a passionate affection for Evesham, after a casual meeting in Kensington Gardens, when they had a wonderful game of Red Indians. Evesham bought him an expensive yacht and taught him how to sail it on the Round Pond, and once, with great heroism, rescued it when it was becalmed a few yards from shore, by stepping into the water, regardless of his patent-leather boots, and grappling it with a crooked stick.

“I like the man with the blue eyes,” he told his mother. “I want him to play with me. I like him nearly as much as my rocking-horse.”

As he liked his rocking-horse more than anything in the world, it was an expression of high esteem.

I spoke to Paul about the matter.

“Isn’t it rather a mistake for Evesham to see so much of Katherine? Anybody can see he’s still in love with her, poor devil!”

Paul laughed in his careless, tolerant way, and accused me of being a cankered soul with poisonous ideas.

“One can’t write a man off for ever because he makes a gaffe in his green youth. Hugh seems to me one of the best, now that he’s purged himself of that æsthetic pose which used to make me feel sick. Kitty can take care of herself, I guess. You’re not suggesting that she’s an unfaithful wife, or anything like that, I hope?”

“Nothing at all like that,” I answered hotly, “and I don’t know why the deuce you should say such outrageous things.”

And yet my uneasiness was justified. Hugh Evesham discovered one day that there could be no friendship between him and Katherine, because he loved her with a passion that broke down all his self-control.

For some time Katherine had become frightened of this friendship. I could see it as clearly as though I could read her mind like an open book. At tea one day, when Evesham was there, she gave herself away when I said good-bye and told her I had to rush off to the office. Evesham had little Michael on his knees and was telling him about the animals in his picture book. She spoke to me in a low voice.

“Won’t you stay? Please!”

There was something in her eyes, a look of appeal, which scared me a little. I stayed on, missing an important bit of work, until Evesham rose reluctantly, and, with a hostile glance at me, said he must be going, as he was dining out.

“No, you mustn’t go, Mr. Man!” cried Michael. “I want you to tell me about Red Indians.”

“Another time, old lad,” said Evesham.

He spoke to Katherine while Michael clung to his legs and refused to let him go.

“Won’t you let me take you and Michael to the Zoo to-morrow? We could give this youngster a great time!”

“Not to-morrow,” said Katherine.

Michael announced that he wanted to go to-morrow. If she wouldn’t let him go to-morrow he would think out the baddest things he could do. He would tear Nurse’s cap off and throw his sponge out of the bath.

“Not to-morrow,” said Katherine firmly.

“Wednesday, then?” asked Evesham, with his winning smile, as he stroked his little fair moustache.

Katherine found that Wednesday would not suit her either. She had to make some calls.

“Some other day,” she said nervously. “Let’s leave it open.”

I saw a look of dejection overshadow Evesham’s smile.

“Some other day is so far off!” he said. “It would be such a treat for little Michael—and me! I’d love to take you both.”

Little Michael made a disgraceful scene at this postponement of his treat, and I was surprised to see Katherine smack him smartly, with a sudden loss of patience. He was equally surprised, and after one gasp, preliminary to the intention of giving a mighty howl, stood quite quiet, looking at his mother in absolute bewilderment, which made us all laugh.

“I’ll tell Father,” said Michael gloomily. “He doesn’t allow me to be knocked about like that. He’s a pacifist, like me.”

Katherine put her arms about this conscientious objector and pressed his curly head against her side.

“You’re an old-fashioned little monkey,” she said, and did not look at Evesham when she held out her hand and said good-bye. Nor did she refer to that whispered word which had kept me from my office and an urgent job.

But a week or two later, when I met her in Kensington Gardens, she suddenly began to cry, as I sat beside her on a seat under the old tree beyond the Round Pond, where Michael was sailing his boat. I was very much distressed, as may be imagined, especially when she became a little hysterical, trying to check her tears with her handkerchief to her eyes.... I see her now, in that old-fashioned dress of hers, wasp-waisted, with a little flat straw hat on her high crown of hair, ridiculous as we see such things in fashion pictures of that time, but then beautiful to me.

Presently she spoke to me about Hugh Evesham.

“I can’t bear it,” she said. “He’s terribly in love with me, and I—I’m afraid. What will my husband think? He’s so simple and so loyal that he likes me to have companionship with younger men than himself. An old bore, he calls himself, dear heart.”

She thought a little, with her eyes still moist with tears.

“Can’t you speak to him?” she asked presently.

I was puzzled, and asked, “Who? Your husband?”

She said, “No—Hugh. Tell him that he mustn’t see me. There’s no use in it. It’s only—exciting—and bad. He ought to go away again. Paul only laughs at me.”

She said something then that startled me and made me afraid.

“I ought to have married Hugh in spite of what happened. We were meant for each other, I suppose. That’s why it’s all so—dangerous.”

“Frightfully!” I said in a low voice. I was still hardly more than a boy, but I saw the extremity of her danger, the reason of her fear.

That very night I went round to Evesham’s rooms. He had come in from the theatre and looked splendid in his evening clothes, as he always did. He was surprised to see me at that late hour, but greeted me civilly with a “Hullo, young fellow! Want a drink?”

I told him I wanted to talk about Katherine. I had a message from her.

His face lighted up, and I felt sorry for him.

“Is she coming to that show with me to-morrow?” he asked.

I told him that Katherine didn’t want to go to any show with him. She wanted him to go away and leave her in peace, and never see her again.

“And if you’ll take my advice, Evesham,” I said, “you’ll clear out as soon as possible, for your own sake as well as hers. If you want to play the game, I mean.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” he said fiercely.

For some time he was angry and passionate. He called me a dirty little cad for suggesting that he had anything but the most respectful regard for Katherine. Surely to heaven it was possible for friendship to exist between a married woman and a fellow like himself, without all the curs of London snarling round them? He had a jolly good mind to chuck me downstairs. Then suddenly he dropped all that, and strode about his room, uttering little groans and cries and presently leaned up against the wall with his hands clasped above his head, and sobbed in a broken way.

I was stricken with pity and embarrassment. I had seen Katherine weeping because of this man. Now he was in his agony.

“It’s perfectly true,” he said presently, when he had recovered his control. “Friendship is no use to me. It’s cursed hypocrisy. She belongs to me, and I to her. That damned old man of hers——”

He was silent for some time after that, sitting in a chair by the table with his head down on his arms.

“I shall have to think it out,” he said at last. “It can’t go on like this.”

Something helped him to think straight, at least as far as Katherine was concerned.

It was a chapter of English history of which I saw the beginning outside the Guildhall when the Lord Mayor called for three cheers for the Queen, and then three more, on the declaration of war with the Boer Republics, who had “grossly insulted, provoked, and attacked Her Majesty’s loyal and faithful subjects in Her Majesty’s South African Dominions.”

It was the first time I saw the fever of war take possession of the English people, and at the time, like most Liberals in England, young as I was, I was hostile to its spirit and purpose, believing that the Boers had a perfect right to their independence, and sympathising with the “little peoples,” who would be smashed to pieces, as we thought, in three weeks, by the armed might of the British Empire. Had I not attended the lectures at Romilly Hall, and pledged my faith to Liberty? Was I not a disciple of Serge Detloff? And yet, so strong is the thrill of war calling to old tribal instincts, that, in that mob of top-hatted young men outside the Guildhall that day, I found myself yelling hoarsely with them, until suddenly I was ashamed of this betrayal of my own convictions and slunk away.

I remember that old London of the Boer War days, through which I wandered as a young man, “torn by conflicting emotions,” as my fellow-journalists used to say, carried in the human tides cheering down the Strand, watching the march past of troops ordered to the front, listening to patriotic recitations in the music-halls—the frightful repetition of Kipling’s “Pay, Pay, Pay!”—with flags unfurled, bands blaring the National Anthem, young men shouting wildly, girls laughing and screaming in shrill ecstasy. Something broke loose in the English spirit at this fag end of Queen Victoria’s reign, with its long years of peace—except for little wars on far-off frontiers—its dull respectability, its lack of adventure in suburban life. In the voice of the crowds yelling against the “dirty Boers” there was a note I had never heard before. It was the rising of old primitive passions, the call to the brute in us, and, at its best and highest, the old romance of the fighting spirit. A wave of Imperialism, intolerance, self-conscious patriotism, overwhelmed City clerks, shop-girls, elderly women, working men, most of my own set, my father and sisters. They “killed Kruger with their mouths.”

It was a crowd which filled Trafalgar Square, where the recruiting sergeants were busy, that I came face to face with Hugh Evesham. He greeted me with a friendly smile, and said:

“I’m off on Monday! A commission in the C.I.V. My governor worked it for me. Thank God for the jolly old war!”

He took off his hat, and shouted “Hooray!” with the rest of the mob which was cheering a patriotic speaker on the plinth of Nelson’s Column.

He was badly wounded on some kopje in the Transvaal, some time after Magersfontein and that Black Week which shocked us to the heart because of the list of casualties. It seemed so long, in those days before another war, with its endless columns in small type. “South Africa was a picnic!” said the soldiers of a later day. But women wept, just the same, for those who fell.