Chapter 1 Mother said, dying, "You''ll take care of father, won''t you--" "Always," sobbed her kneeling, heartbroken daughter. "Don''t leave him, Jen." "Oh mother, I promise--I won''t ever. Not ever, ever--" No; one will never leave father. But what if father, not left, meticulously attended to, taken care of, obeyed and cherished, after twelve solid, faithful years of it, without saying a word to a soul comes back to tea one afternoon with a new wife? Ten, isn''t one released? Hasn''t one completed one''s job? Can''t one with a clear conscience, indeed must one not, hand him over, and at last, at last--oh, how glorious!--be free? Father, however, didn''t seem to see it that way. He appeared to take it for granted that his daughter would continue about him as before, side by side with his new wife, on the ground that homes were the natural places for maiden daughters; and when she reminded him that she was thirtythree, he merely inquired with acerbity, for in his heart he was thinking she ought to have been married and out of the way long ago, whether being thirty-three altered the fact that she was a maiden daughter. He was, that is, doing his duty by her; and, as sometimes happens with duty, the doing of it made him cross. Now the last thing father had meant to be on his wedding day was cross, so naturally, when he found himself being it, he became much crosser, and at last, as will presently be told, there was quite a scene.

To begin with, though, all was blandness. There wasn''t a cloud at the tea-table. Father was very pleasant indeed, if faintly apologetic--not- embarrassed, for he was never that, but there was a faint avour of apology in his manner, which was perhaps not to be wondered at, since his new wife was ever so much younger, one could see at once, than his daughter, and he sixty-five. "You mustn''t think, Jennifer," he said after tea, which had been the oddest meal of her life, as he called her into the back diningroom where, protected by folding doors from anything that might be going on in the front one, they had worked together so long--she the obedient handmaid waiting on his thoughts, taking them down as they emerged from him, typing and re-typing them, over and over again with dogged patience typing a single paragraph, a single sentence, sometimes for days working on a single sentence till it was, in father''s eyes, as near perfect as it could humanly be got,--"you mustn''t think, Jennifer," he said, "that I''ve sprung this on you unfairly." Pleasant, he thought, surveying this workroom of his, this back diningroom looking on to the backs of other diningrooms in the parallel street behind, with its cold neatness and sombre, rep-covered furniture, its type-writing table for his daughter between the maroon windowcurtains, its big writing-table for himself, with the revolving chair from which he dictated,--pleasant to leave it for a while. He hadn''t had a holiday for years; not since, now he came to think of it, poor Marian''s death. There had been too much to do to think of holidays. Years slip by remarkably quickly when one is busy.

And Jennifer, too--his eyes came back to the sturdy, heavy, shortlegged figure--pleasant to have a change from Jennifer. She was losing, he had noticed lately--since, that is, he had become acquainted with her who till that morning was Miss Baines--her freshness a good deal, and soon, if she didn''t take care, would be a regular old maid. Father didn''t like old maids; not to be shut up alone with, most of every day, in the back diningroom as well as at meals, and he couldn''t help feeling relieved to think that this stretch of his life was over. Yet he admitted, making the best of things, that if his daughter weren''t an old maid, or weren''t that which would certainly presently become one, neither would she have been living at home, efficiently helping him in his work. She had been very useful. She would still be useful. It cut both ways, he thought, trying to console himself for her continued presence in his house, now that he could do without her. "You mustn''t think, Jennifer," he therefore said, in case it should happen to be exactly what she was thinking, "that I''ve sprung this on you unfairly.

" "No, no," she reassured him, looking at him without seeing him, so much dazzled was she by what she did see; but if ever a thing had been sprung on someone, was it not this on her? As to unfairly, what did she care about unfairly, when she was free? She blinked. Trough and beyond father she saw doors ying open, walls falling at, and herself running unhindered down the steps, along Gower Street, away through London, across suburbs, out, out into great sunlit spaces where the wind, fresh and scented, rushed to meet her, and the birds, and the stars, and those glorious vague beings in the Bible called sons of the morning, sang together for joy. Father, provided for; she, with a clear conscience, free; the twelve years during which youth had been ebbing away, the years shut up in the back diningroom at a typewriter, with no hope that anything would ever be dierent and no thought of anything but sticking to her promise and taking care of the helpless, gifted man, finished and done with--what did they matter now? Not a jot, thought Jen, her wide-open eyes shining with the reection of what she saw through and beyond father. She could feel the wind--she could feel it, the scented fresh wind, blowing up her hair as she ran and ran . "Oh!" she exclaimed, taking a long breath, and clasping her hands; for really she couldn''t help it--she, so quiet always, so careful never to show the least excitement, nor any wish, couldn''t help just that one small cry. Father naturally thought it was a reproach, or the beginning of reproaches. It might well be that it was. Many reproaches, also those in his own writings, began with precisely this exclamation, and he was aware that the occasion was one on which grown-up children are apt to make unpleasant comment.

But he hadn''t brought his daughter into the back diningroom, and left his young bride alone with empty teacups, in order to be reproached. Far from this, his motive in taking her aside had been to assure her, before proceeding on his honeymoon, that what he had done would in no way make a dierence to her, and that her mind might be at rest. This was what decent fathers in the circumstances did. He was a decent father; his intentions towards her, whatever his private wishes might be, were good; and, aware of this, his eye, as he looked at her when she clasped her hands and so ominously exclaimed, grew cold. Of course he knew his marriage was sudden, and also he knew it might be called secretive; but how much better if all marriages were sudden and secretive, and accordingly undiscussed beforehand. These things should be taken simply, considered father. They were not important, except to the two persons concerned, and should be accepted without fuss. Father hated fuss, and the apping of feminine wings.

Also, he long had needed more relaxation in his life of work than the astringent aection a daughter could provide, and latterly had been quietly making up his mind to get it. No one could say he hadn''t properly matured in widowerhood, with twelve years of it, austere and withdrawn, to his credit. Besides, was he not an artist? And should not every side of an artist have its proper outlet? If proper outlets were withheld too long, the need for them inevitably became apparent in the artist''s work, and unbalanced it. Not that father was of those who think they ought to fall in order that they may rise, to wallow in order that they may emerge. He disliked anything violent; his nature was a quiet one; his habits solitary. But, quiet as he was, and solitarily as he preferred to live, from time to time, being human, he had yet a kind of itch, a kind of gnaw, a kind of--who shall describe exactly what father had? Anyhow it got into his work; especially in spring, in the nesting season, when even the sparrows in the sooty backyard seemed to have secured something denied to him. And lately he had been conscious that those parts of his books which had to do with love, from March onwards loomed out of all proportion to the rest, besides becoming steadily more lush, more full, and cons.