The Relentless City. Benson Edward Frederic

word! What last word?'

      'A last word with you, Sybil,' he said; 'I shall never bother you again.'

      'Dear Charlie, it is no use. Please don't!' she said.

      'I am sorry to disobey you,' said he; 'but I mean to. It is quite short – just this: if ever you change your mind, you will find me waiting for you. That is all.'

      Sybil frowned.

      'I can't accept that,' she said. 'You have no business to put the responsibility on me like that.'

      'There is no responsibility.'

      'Yes, there is; you practically threaten me. It is like writing a letter to say you will commit suicide unless I do something. You threaten, anyhow, to commit celibacy unless I marry you.'

      'No, I don't threaten,' said he; 'so far from threatening, I only leave the door open in case of Hope wanting to come in. That is badly expressed; a woman would have said it better.'

      Sybil was suddenly touched by his gentleness.

      'No one could have said it better,' she said. 'Charlie, believe me, I am sorry, but – here is the truth of it: I don't believe I can love anybody. This also: if I did not like you so much, I think I would marry you.'

      'Ah, spare me that,' he said.

      'I do spare it you. I will not willingly make you very unhappy. Do you believe that?'

      He stopped, and came close to her.

      'Sybil, if you pointed to the sky and said it was night, I should believe you,' he said.

      She made no reply to that, and they walked on in silence. Everywhere over the broad expanse of swelling downs, looking huge behind the heat-haze, and over the green restfulness of the water-meadows beneath them, even over the blue immensity of the sky, there was spread a sense of quiet and leisure. To Sybil, thinking of the after-lunch conversation, it seemed of value; to her at the moment this contented security was a big factor in life. Economically, no doubt, she was wrong; a score of dynamos utilizing the waste power of the streams below that so hurryingly sought the sea would have contributed much to the utility of the scene, and the noble timber which surrounded them could certainly have been far better employed in some factory than to have merely formed a most wasteful handle, as it were, for the great parasol of leaves which screened them and the idle, cud-chewing cattle. Here, as always, there was that silent deadly war going on between utility and beauty; soon, without a doubt, in a score of years, or a score of days, or a score of centuries, principles of economy would prevail, and the world of men would live in cast-iron mood in extremely sanitary cast-iron dwellings. Already, it seemed to her, the death-knell of beauty was vibrating in the air. The rural heart of the country was bleeding into the towns; instead of beating the swords into sickles, the way of the world now was to beat the elm-trees into faggots and the rivers into electric light. For the faggots would give warmth and the electricity would give light; these things were useful. And in the distance, like a cuttle-fish with tentacles waving and growing every moment nearer, New York, and all that New York stood for, was sucking in whatever came within its reach. She was already sucked in.

      All this passed very quickly through her mind, for it seemed to her that there had been no appreciable pause when Charlie spoke again.

      'Yes, the world is going westwards,' he said. 'I heard a few days ago that Mrs. Emsworth was going to act in New York this autumn. Is it true?'

      'I believe so. Why?'

      'Mere curiosity. Is she going on her own?'

      Sybil laughed.

      'Her own! There isn't any. I don't suppose she could pay for a steerage passage for her company. Bilton is taking her,' She paused a moment. 'Do you know Bilton?' she asked.

      'The impresario? No,'

      'He is a splendid type,' she said, 'of what we are coming to.'

      'Cad, I should think,' said Charlie.

      'Cad – oh yes. Why not? But a cad with a head. So many cads haven't one. I met him the other night.'

      'Where?' asked Charlie, with the vague jealousy of everybody characteristic of a man in love.

      'I forget. At the house of some other cad. It is rather odd, Charlie; he is the image of you to look at. When I first saw him, I thought it was you. He is just about the same height, he has the same – don't blush – the same extremely handsome face. Also he moves like you, rather slowly; but he gets there.'

      'You mean I don't,' said Charlie.

      'I didn't mean it that moment. Your remark again was exactly like an Englishman. But I liked him; he has force. I respect that enormously.'

      On the top of Charlie's tongue was 'You mean I have none,' but he was not English enough for that.

      'Is he going with her?' he asked.

      'No; he has gone. He has three theatres in New York, and he is going to instal Dorothy Emsworth in one of them. Is it true, by the way – '

      She stopped in the middle of her sentence.

      'Probably not,' said Charlie, rather too quickly.

      'You mean it is,' she said – 'about Bertie.'

      Charlie made the noise usually written 'Pshaw!'

      'Oh, my dear Sybil,' he said, 'Queen Anne is dead, the prophets are dead. There are heaps of old histories.'

      Sybil Massington stopped.

      'Now, I am going to ask you a question,' she said. 'You inquired a few minutes ago whether Dorothy Emsworth was going to act in New York. Why did you ask? You said it was from mere curiosity; is that true? You can say yes again, if you wish.'

      'I don't wish,' said he. 'It wasn't true then, and I don't suppose it will be by now. You mean that Bertie saw a good deal of her at one time, but how much neither you nor I know.'

      Sybil turned, and began walking home again rather quickly.

      'How disgusting!' she said.

      'Your fault,' he said – ' entirely your fault.'

      'But won't it be rather awkward for him?' she asked, walking rather more slowly.

      'I asked him that the other night,' said Charlie; 'he said he didn't know.'

      Again for a time they walked in silence. But the alertness of Mrs. Massington's face went bail for the fact that she was not silent because she had nothing to say. Then it is to be supposed that she followed out the train of her thought to her own satisfaction.

      'How lovely the shadows are!' she remarked; 'shadows are so much more attractive than lights.'

      'Searchlights?' asked he.

      'No; shadows and searchlights belong to the same plane. I hope it is tea-time; I am so hungry.'

      This was irrelevant enough; irrelevance, therefore, was no longer a social crime.

      'And I should like to see my double,' said Charlie.

      The only drawback to the charming situation of the house was that a curve of a branch railway-line to Winchester passed not far from the garden. Trains were infrequent on it on weekdays, even more infrequent on Sundays. But at this moment the thump of an approaching train was heard, climbing up the incline of the line.

      'Brut-al-it-é, brut-al-it-é, brut-al-it-é,' said the labouring engine.

      She turned to him.

      'Even here,' she said – 'even here is an elbow, a sharp elbow. "Utility, utility!" Did you not hear the engine say that?'

      'Something of this sort,' said he.

      CHAPTER IV

      A day of appalling heat and airlessness was drawing to its close, and the unloveliest city in the world was beginning to find it just possible to breathe again. For fourteen hours New York had been grilling beneath a September sun in an anticyclone; and though anticyclone is a word that does not seem to matter much when it occurs in an obscure corner of the Herald, under the heading of 'Weather Report,' yet, when it is translated from this fairy-land of print