G. B. Lancaster

“ And truth is one of the things the world most wants just now. I despise Maurice. I don't care if you are pledged to him. Break it. He broke our belief in him. A man must be strong enough to practise what he preaches, or he's not worth consideration." He caught her hands. "Janie, you shall listen to me!"
The man standing motionless in the shadows heard that fierce, low pleading go on, heard her oppose to it her steady "No" and "No"; heard young Barton go away at last, head up, all the certainty and splendour of youth in his tread. ”

“ It was at a bridge party that Janie Valentine first met Maurice, and encountered that experience so curious to us all when a person whose printed mind we have intimately known for years looks at us with the shuttered eyes of a stranger. Mrs. Page's party was one of those afternoon gatherings, followed by dancing, which are so common in the Fijis, where somewhat puffed and sallow women in the brightest and thinnest of frocks sit about at small tables under the palms, with fans to keep the flies of! ”

“ For young men especially he had been a flag-bearer, going into life with eyes lit and hair blown back by the ardour of his going. Now——
"Poor old Maurice!" said Waite, breaking the silence.
Young Barton burst out with the cruel sincerity of youth: "Poor! He's a coward, hang him! A coward! Think of all he wrote about sticking it! I had his book in my kit all through the War. It—it helped us." He gulped, staring about with light eyes and chubby face, resentful and bewildered. "He had no right to tell others to do what he couldn't do himself. Don't you see? It takes the meaning out of it all. ”

“ And then she flashed her grey eyes at him.
"That's shameful!" she cried, as young Barton had done. "You've no right to take away what you've given us."
"Perhaps it wasn't worth the giving."
They were walking up a grassy hill away from the bungalow and the palms. The sea came round them on three sides, wrinkled a little under the wisdom of its thousand, thousand years. It seemed to make the conventions of man a paltry thing, a crime before the great loneliness of the soul. Janie Valentine turned quick to Maurice, dropping the flowers she held. ”

“ We don't know what broke Maurice. We might have done worse in his place."
"Can a man do anything worse than give the lie to all the big things he taught us to believe in?" cried young Barton. He went away, leaving the book on the table, and it was Harrington who squeezed it into the shelf on the wall, amongst other buried things of yesterday. Then: "Poor old Maurice!" said he also, and also went away. And it seemed that over Maurice oblivion flowed, leaving on the sounding beaches of the world nothing of his but that one damning phrase of pity. ”

“ Even in that moment the change in young Barton's voice startled Maurice. It seemed to challenge the world. "We love each other, and we did the first minute we met. One can't get away from such things. They are. You love me Maurice. You never loved him."
"But he loves me. He loves me .. . ."
"He thinks he does. He's good thinking and pretending. He preached work, and he's never lifted a hand to help the reconstruction of the world. He preached courage, and he ran away from life the moment it began to hurt him. He preached love, and he has never loved anyone but himself. It's not you he loves. ”

“ To Maurice, after these three days of greater suffering than a man has a right to know more than once in his life, it felt suddenly that he stood off from his tragedy, like a man in the theatre wings, and watched himself go through with what had to be said. ”

“ He gets down to his job and sweats away at it, thanking Heaven if he can scratch out a living for himself and those dependent on him. We're all having a hard time—except Maurice."
"He doesn't have to work. You don't understand. He's—he's not strong in the way you are. He's so sensitive and unhappy, and I pitied him."
"There are too many weak men ready to sponge on other folks' sympathy just now. Because Maurice can't stand on his own feet after all his hot-air talk, does he think he's going to stand on yours? By Heaven, I won't have it, Janie!" ”

“ Two men as different as one could find anywhere, and yet it is through their eyes that one sees the tall, frank, friendly girl with her firm handclasp and the kind grey eyes below the sweep of fair hair. A good port in the storm Maurice found her when first he met her about a week after he had drifted into a casual partnership with Currie, who owned a small sugar-cane estate which he had not sufficient capital to develop. Maurice always had plenty of money, but, because he was looking for the things which money can't buy, he was poorer than Barton. ”

“ But the instinct for sacrifice is very strong in some women, and he needed her. Oh, he needed her so, and hadn't she wanted to give him what he needed?
They were riding in a long jungle road on the evening when he told her, with night-birds fluting clear, sustained notes out of the shadows, and the curve of a young moon laid like a kiss on the crest of the hill ahead. He had spoken of the torments that still racked him occasionally, using picture-words that dazzled her soul. Now they rode silent through the shadows, she visualising with every quivering pitying nerve of her what he had said. ”

“ The peculiarly sensitive quality of creation—it's been murdered in me by many blows. I want to forget that I ever had it. There's something unreal and curiously effortless about this small remote place of gorgeous colour and peace which is resting me as nothing else has done. Don't try to spur me on. I like to look at the moon and stars and forget the struggles of earth."
She remembered his voice, mournful, repressed, the slight shiver of his body, as though he still felt the torment he would not allow. ”

“ This strange comic opera life down here seemed so empty, so little worth—sitting about and watching the dark-skinned servants—ten thousand years apart from her modernity; going with her cousin to dances, bridge parties and teas, helping to make and re-model the little girls' frocks; riding with one man and another; feeling, as all these exiled women did, the days slide useless out of her hands. ”

“ Well, it's all dead and done for, washed away in that flood of war that gutted the clear springs of the world. All is insurrection and incoherence now in me, just as it is throughout the world. I can't believe that anything is worth the doing any more. ”

“ I'm an unsatisfactory sort of chap, Janie—uncertain. I'm grateful—awfully grateful. You've helped me through a hard time. I——"
Her gloved hand was caressing the horse's mane. Her head was bent. "Shall I say it for you? You thought you loved me, and you have found out that you don't. Is that what you want to say, Evan?"
"I thought I loved you greatly, splendidly. I said I did. I have been good at thinking things all my life"—he sought for young Barton's words; they would be the best to convince her with—"thinking and pretending. I'm a poet at heart, even though I don't write now. ”

“ It's we should be honoured, not he. We're better than he." Again he looked round as though imploring contradiction. "Better than Maurice," he said.
The men looked at each other. There was not one had found life easy since the War. Several were shiny about the cuffs and knees, gaunt about the mouth, anxious-eyed. Barton, who had gone straight to France from the University, had lately been driving round in a closed car, delivering dress-goods samples, and his attempt at keeping up appearances was pathetic. Barton was plainly very poor now. ”

“ THERE were a hundred places in which you might have met Maurice during the two years following the War, hut they were not very likely places. The few men who now and again brought word of him to the club always had it from hearsay, and rarely was it less than six months old. ”