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John F. Dooley

Software Development, Design and

Coding
With Patterns, Debugging, Unit Testing,
and Refactoring
2nd ed.
John F. Dooley
Galesburg, Illinois, USA

Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the

author in this book is available to readers on GitHub via the book’s
product page, located at www.apress.com/9781484231524 . For
more detailed information, please visit www.apress.com/source-
code .

ISBN 978-1-4842-3152-4 e-ISBN 978-1-4842-3153-1

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3153-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017961306

© John F. Dooley 2017

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively
licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material
is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms
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For Diane, who is always there, and for Patrick, the best son a guy
could have.
Preface
What’s this book all about? Well, it’s about how to develop software
from a personal perspective. We’ll look at what it means for you to
take a problem and produce a program to solve it from beginning to
end. That said, this book focuses a lot on design. How do you design
software? What things do you take into account? What makes a
good design? What methods and processes are there to help you
design software? Is designing small programs different from
designing large ones? How can you tell a good design from a bad
one? What general patterns can you use to help make your design
more readable and understandable?
It’s also about code construction. How do you write programs
and make them work? “What?” you say. “I’ve already written eight
gazillion programs! Of course I know how to write code!” Well, in
this book, we’ll explore what you already do and investigate ways to
improve on that. We’ll spend some time on coding standards,
debugging, unit testing, modularity, and characteristics of good
programs. We’ll also talk about reading code, what makes a program
readable, and how to review code that others have written with an
eye to making it better. Can good, readable code replace
documentation? How much documentation do you really need?
And it’s about software engineering, which is usually defined as
“the application of engineering principles to the development of
software.” What are engineering principles ? Well, first, all
engineering efforts follow a defined process . So we’ll be spending a
bit of time talking about how you run a software development
project and what phases there are to a project. We’ll talk a lot about
agile methodologies, how they apply to small development teams
and how their project management techniques work for small- to
medium-sized projects. All engineering work has a basis in the
application of science and mathematics to real-world problems. So
does software development. As I’ve said already, we’ll be spending a
lot of time examining how to design and implement programs that
solve specific problems.
By the way, there’s at least one other person (besides me) who
thinks software development is not an engineering discipline. I’m
referring to Alistair Cockburn, and you can read his paper, “The End
of Software Engineering and the Start of Economic-Cooperative
Gaming,” at
http://alistair.cockburn.us/The+end+of+software+en
gineering+and+the+start+of+economic-
cooperative+gaming .
Finally, this book is about professional practice, the ethics and
the responsibilities of being a software developer, social issues,
privacy, how to write secure and robust code, and the like. In short,
those fuzzy other things that one needs in order to be a professional
software developer.
This book covers many of the topics described for the ACM/IEEE
Computer Society Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree
Programs in Computer Science (known as CS2013). 1 In particular, it
covers topics in a number of the Knowledge Areas of the Guidelines,
including Software Development Fundamentals, Software
Engineering, Systems Fundamentals, Parallel and Distributed
Computing, Programming Languages, and Social Issues and
Professional Practice. It’s designed to be both a textbook for a
junior-level undergraduate course in software design and
development and a manual for the working professional. Although
the chapter order generally follows the standard software
development sequence, one can read the chapters independently
and out of order. I’m assuming that you already know how to
program and that you’re conversant with at least one of these
languages: Java, C, or C++. I’m also assuming you’re familiar with
basic data structures, including lists, queues, stacks, maps, and
trees, along with the algorithms to manipulate them.
In this second edition, most of the chapters have been updated,
some new examples have been added, and the book discusses
modern software development processes and techniques. Much of
the plan-driven process and project-management discussions from
the first edition have been removed or shortened, and longer and
new discussions of agile methodologies, including Scrum, Lean
Software Development, and Kanban have taken their place. There
are new chapters on parallel programming and parallel design
patterns, and a new chapter on ethics and professional practice.
I use this book in a junior-level course in software development.
It’s grown out of the notes I’ve developed for that class over the
past 12 years. I developed my own notes because I couldn’t find a
book that covered all the topics I thought were necessary for a
course in software development, as opposed to one in software
engineering. Software engineering books tend to focus more on
process and project management than on design and actual
development. I wanted to focus on the design and writing of real
code rather than on how to run a large project. Before beginning to
teach, I spent nearly 18 years in the computer industry, working for
large and small companies, writing software, and managing other
people who wrote software. This book is my perspective on what it
takes to be a software developer on a small- to medium-sized team
and help develop great software.
I hope that by the end of the book you’ll have a much better idea
of what the design of good programs is like, what makes an effective
and productive developer, and how to develop larger pieces of
software. You’ll know a lot more about design issues. You’ll have
thought about working in a team to deliver a product to a written
schedule. You’ll begin to understand project management, know
some metrics and how to review work products, and understand
configuration management. I’ll not cover everything in software
development—not by a long stretch—and we’ll only be giving a
cursory look at the management side of software engineering, but
you’ll be in a much better position to visualize, design, implement,
and test software of many sizes, either by yourself or in a team.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank Todd Green of Apress for encouraging me and
making this book possible. The staff at Apress, especially Jill Balzano
and Michael Thomas, have been very helpful and gracious. The book
is much better for their reviews, comments, and edits.
Thanks also to all my students in CS 292 over the last 12 years,
who have put up with successive versions of the course notes that
became this book, and to my CS department colleagues David Bunde
and Jaime Spacco, who put up with me for all these years. And my
thanks also go to Knox College for giving me the time and resources
to finish both editions of this book.
Finally, I owe everything to Diane, who hates that I work nights,
but loves that I can work at home.
Contents
Chapter 1:​Introduction to Software Development

What We’re Doing

So, How to Develop Software?​

Conclusion

References

Chapter 2:​Software Process Models

The Four Variables

A Model That’s not a Model At All:​Code and Fix

Cruising over the Waterfall

Iterative Models

Evolving the Iterative Model

Risk:​The Problem with Plan-Driven Models

Agile Methodologies

Agile Values and Principles

eXtreme Programming (XP)

XP Overview

The Four Basic Activities

Implementing XP:​The 12 Practices

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 Scrum

Scrum Roles

The Sprint

Scrum Artifacts

Sprint Flow

Lean Software Development

Principle 1:​Eliminate Waste

Principle 2:​Build Quality In

Principle 3:​Create Knowledge

Principle 4:​Defer Commitment

Principle 5:​Deliver Fast

Principle 6:​Respect People

Principle 7:​Optimize the Whole

Kanban

The Kanban board, WIP, and Flow

Lead Time

Conclusion

References

Chapter 3:​Project Management Essentials

Project Planning
 Project Organization

Risk Analysis

Resource Requirements

Task Estimates

Project Schedule

Velocity

Project Oversight

Status Reviews and Presentations

Defects

The Retrospective

Conclusion

References

Chapter 4:​Requirements

What Types of Requirements Are We Talking About?​

User Requirements

Domain Requirements

Non-Functional Requirements

Non-Requirements

Requirements Gathering in a Plan-Driven Project

But I Don’t Like Writing!

 Outline of a Functional Specification

Design and New Feature Ideas

One More Thing

Requirements Gathering in an Agile Project

The Three Cs

INVEST in Stories

Product Backlog

SMART Tasks

Sprint/​Iteration Backlog

Requirements Digging

Why Requirements Digging Is Hard

Analyzing the Requirements

Conclusion

References

Chapter 5:​Software Architecture

General Architectural Patterns

The Main Program—Subroutine Architectural Pattern

Pipe-and-Filter Architecture

An Object-Oriented Architectural Pattern

An MVC Example:​Let’s Hunt!

 The Client-Server Architectural Pattern

The Layered Approach

Conclusion

References

Chapter 6:​Design Principles

The Design Process

Desirable Design Characteristics (Things Your Design

Should Favor)

Design Heuristics

Designers and Creativity

Conclusion

References

Chapter 7:​Structured Design

Structured Programming

Stepwise Refinement

Example of Stepwise Refinement:​The Eight-Queens

Problem

Modular Decomposition

Example:​Keyword in Context

Conclusion

References
Chapter 8:​Object-Oriented Overview

An Object-Oriented Analysis and Design Process

Requirements Gathering and Analysis

Design

Implementation and Testing

Release/​Maintenance/​Evolution

Doing the Process

The Problem Statement

The Feature List

Use Cases

Decompose the Problem

Class Diagrams

Code Anyone?​

Conclusion

References

Chapter 9:​Object-Oriented Analysis and Design

Analysis

An Analytical Example

Design

Change in the Right Direction

 Recognizing Change

Songbirds Forever

A New Requirement

Separating Analysis and Design

Shaping the Design

Abstraction

Conclusion

References

Chapter 10:​Object-Oriented Design Principles

List of Fundamental Object-Oriented Design Principles

Encapsulate Things in Your Design That Are Likely to

Change

Code to an Interface Rather Than to an Implementation

The Open-Closed Principle

The Don’t Repeat Yourself Principle

The Single Responsibility Principle

The Liskov Substitution Principle

The Dependency Inversion Principle

The Interface Segregation Principle

The Principle of Least Knowledge

 Class Design Guidelines

Conclusion

References

Chapter 11:​Design Patterns

Design Patterns and the Gang of Four

The Classic Design Patterns

Patterns We Can Use

Creational Patterns

Structural Patterns

Behavioral Patterns

Conclusion

References

Chapter 12:​Parallel Programming

Concurrency vs.​Parallelism

Parallel Computers

Flynn’s Taxonomy

Parallel Programming

Scalability

Performance

Obstacles to Performance Improvement

 How to Write a Parallel Program

Parallel Programming Models

Designing Parallel Programs

Parallel Design Techniques

Programming Languages and APIs (with examples)

Parallel Language Features

Java Threads

OpenMP

The Last Word on Parallel Programming

References

Chapter 13:​Parallel Design Patterns

Parallel Patterns Overview

Parallel Design Pattern Design Spaces

A List of Parallel Patterns

Embarrassingly Parallel

Master/​Worker

Map and Reduce

MapReduce

Divide &​Conquer

Fork/​Join
 A Last Word on Parallel Design Patterns

References

Chapter 14:​Code Construction

A Coding Example

Functions and Methods and Size

Formatting, Layout, and Style

General Layout Issues and Techniques

White Space

Block and Statement Style Guidelines

Declaration Style Guidelines

Commenting Style Guidelines

Identifier Naming Conventions

Refactoring

When to Refactor

Types of Refactoring

Defensive Programming

Assertions Are Helpful

Exceptions

Error Handling

Exceptions in Java
 The Last Word on Coding

References

Chapter 15:​Debugging

What Is an Error, Anyway?​

What Not To Do

An Approach to Debugging

Reproduce the Problem Reliably

Find the Source of the Error

Fix the Error (Just That One)!

Test the Fix

Look for More Errors

Source Code Control

The Collision Problem

Source Code Control Systems

One Last Thought on Coding and Debugging:​Pair

Programming

Conclusion

References

Chapter 16:​Unit Testing

The Problem with Testing

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 That Testing Mindset

When to Test?​

Testing in an Agile Development Environment

What to Test?​

Code Coverage:​Test Every Statement

Data Coverage:​Bad Data Is Your Friend?​

Characteristics of Tests

How to Write a Test

The Story

The Tasks

The Tests

JUnit:​A Testing Framework

Testing Is Good

Conclusion

References

Chapter 17:​Code Reviews and Inspections

Walkthroughs, Reviews, and Inspections

Walkthroughs

Code Reviews

Code Inspections
 Inspection Roles

Inspection Phases and Procedures

Reviews in Agile Projects

How to Do an Agile Peer Code Review

Summary of Review Methodologies

Defect Tracking Systems

Defect Tracking in Agile Projects

Conclusion

References

Chapter 18:​Ethics and Professional Practice

Introduction to Ethics

Ethical Theory

Deontological Theories

Consequentialism​(Teleological Theories)

Ethical Drivers

Legal Drivers

Professional Drivers

Ethical Discussion and Decision Making

Identifying and Describing the Problem

Analyzing the Problem

 Case Studies

#1 Copying Software

#2 Who’s Computer Is It?​

#3 How Much Testing Is Enough?​

#4 How Much Should You Tell?​

The Last Word on Ethics?​

References

The ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct

Preamble

Contents &​Guidelines

The ACM/​IEEE-CS Software Engineering Code of Ethics

PREAMBLE

PRINCIPLES

Chapter 19:​Wrapping It all Up

What Have You Learned?​

What to Do Next?​

References

Index
About the Author and About the
Technical Reviewer
About the Author
John F. Dooley
is the William and Marilyn Ingersoll Emeritus
Professor of Computer Science at Knox
College in Galesburg, Illinois. Before
returning to teaching in 2001, Professor
Dooley spent nearly 18 years in the software
industry as a developer, designer, and
manager working for companies such as Bell
Telephone Laboratories, McDonnell Douglas,
IBM, and Motorola, along with an obligatory
stint as head of development at a software
startup. He has more than two dozen professional journal and
conference publications and four books to his credit, along with
numerous presentations. He has been a reviewer for the Association
for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer
Science Education (SIGCSE) Technical Symposium for the last 36
years and reviews papers for the IEEE Transactions on Education,
the ACM Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
(ITiCSE) Conference, and other professional conferences. He has
developed short courses in software development and created three
separate software engineering courses at the advanced
undergraduate level.

About the Technical Reviewer

Michael Thomas
has worked in software development for more than 20 years as an
individual contributor, team lead, program manager, and vice
president of engineering. Michael has more than ten years
experience working with mobile devices. His current focus is in the
medical sector using mobile devices to accelerate information
transfer between patients and healthcare providers.
Random documents with unrelated
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 “Ah, I tell you sir,” said Punch, stroking one of Toby’s ears,
“there’s no place like it. . . . I’ve been in every town in this kingdom,
and some of them are good enough. But this!”
He looked at Maradick a moment and then he said, “Forgive my
mentioning it, sir, but you’ve got the feeling of the place; you’ve
caught the spirit, as one might say. We watch, folks down here, you
strangers up there at the ‘Man at Arms.’ For the most part they miss
it altogether. They come for the summer with their boxes and their
bags, they bathe in the sea, they drive on the hill, and they’re gone.
Lord love you, why they might have been sleepin’.” He spat
contemptuously.
“But you think that I have it?” said Maradick.
“You’ve got it right enough,” said Punch. “But then you’re a friend
of young Mr. Gale’s, and so you couldn’t help having it; ’e’s got it
more than anyone I ever knew.”
“And what exactly is—It?” asked Maradick.
“Well, sir,” said Punch, “it’s not exactly easy to put it into words,
me bein’ no scholar.” He looked at the old woman, but she was
intent over her knitting. The light of the sun had faded from the
tower and left it cold and grey against the primrose sky. “It’s a kind
of Youth; seeing things, you know, all freshly and with a new colour,
always caring about things as if you’d met ’em for the first time. It
doesn’t come of the asking, and there are places as well as people
that ’ave got it. But when a place or a person’s got it, it’s like a
match that they go round lighting other people’s candles with.” He
waved his arm in a comprehensive sweep. “It’s all here, you know,
sir, and Mr. Gale’s got it like that . . . ’e’s lit your candle, so to speak,
sir, if it isn’t familiar, and now you’ve got to take the consequences.”
“The consequences?” said Maradick.
“Oh, it’s got its dangers,” said Punch, “specially when you take it
suddenly; it’s like a fever, you know. And when it comes to a
gentleman of your age of life and settled habits, well, it needs
watchin’. Oh, there’s the bad and good of it.”
Maradick stared in front of him.
“Well, sir, I must be going,” said Punch. “Excuse me, but I always
must be talking. Good night, sir.”
 “Good night,” said Maradick. He watched the square, stumpy
figure pass, followed by the dog, across the misty twilight of the
market-place. Violet shadows lingered and swept like mysterious
creeping figures over the square. He said good night to the old
woman and struck up the hill to the hotel.
“Consequence? Good and bad of it?” Anyhow, the man hadn’t
expressed it badly. That was his new view, that strange new
lightness of vision as though his pack had suddenly been rolled from
off his back. He was suddenly enjoying every minute of his life, his
candle had been lighted. For a moment there floated across his mind
his talk with his wife that afternoon. Well, it could not be helped. If
she would not join him he must have his fun alone.
At the top of the hill he met Mrs. Lester. He had seen something
of her during the last two days and liked her. She was amusing and
vivacious; she had something of Tony’s quality.
“Hullo, Mr. Maradick,” she cried, “hurrying back like me to dinner?
Isn’t it wicked the way that we leave the most beautiful anything for
our food?”
“Well, I must confess,” he answered, laughing, “that I never
thought of dinner at all. I just turned back because things had, as it
were, come to an end. The sun set, you know.”
“I heard it strike seven,” she answered him, “and I said Dinner.
Although I was down on the beach watching the most wonderful sea
you ever saw, nothing could stop me, and so back I came.”
“Have you been down here before?” he asked her. “To stay, I
mean.”
“Oh yes. Fred likes it as well as anywhere else, and I like it a
good deal better than most. He doesn’t mind so very much, you
know, where he is. He’s always living in his books, and so real places
don’t count.” She gave a little sigh. “But they do count with me.”
“I’m enjoying it enormously,” he said, “it’s flinging the years off
from me.”
“Oh, I know,” she answered, “but I’m almost afraid of it for that
very reason. It’s so very—what shall I say—champagney, that one
doesn’t know what one will do next. Sometimes one’s spirits are so
high that one positively longs to be depressed. Why, you’d be
amazed at some of the things people, quite ordinary respectable
people, do when they are down here.”
As they turned in at the gate she stopped and laughed.
“Take care, Mr. Maradick,” she said, “I can see that you are
caught in the toils; it’s very dangerous for us, you know, at our time
of life.”
And she left him, laughing.
 CHAPTER VIII
THEY ALL EAT CHICKEN IN THE GORSE AND
FLY BEFORE THE STORM

“It’s the most ripping rag,” said Tony, as he watched people climb
into the wagonette. “Things,” he added, “will probably happen.” Lady
Gale herself, as she watched them arrange themselves, had her
doubts; she knew, as very few women in England knew, how to
make things go, and no situation had ever been too much for her,
but the day was dreadfully hot and there were, as she vaguely put it
to herself, “things in the air.” What these things were, she could not,
as yet, decide; but she hoped that the afternoon would reveal them
to her, that it would, indeed, show a good deal that this last week
had caused her to wonder about.
The chief reasons for alarm were the Maradicks and Mrs.
Lawrence, without them it would have been quite a family party;
Alice, Rupert, Tony, and herself. She wondered a little why she had
asked the others. She had wanted to invite Maradick, partly because
she liked the man for himself and partly for Tony’s sake; then, too,
he held the key to Tony now. He knew better than any of the others
what the boy was doing; he was standing guard.
And so then, of course, she had to ask Mrs. Maradick. She didn’t
like the little woman, there was no question about that, but you
couldn’t ask one without the other. And then she had to give her
some one with whom to pair off, and so she had asked Mrs.
Lawrence; and there you were.
But it wasn’t only because of the Maradicks that the air was
thundery; the Lesters had quarrelled again. He sat in the wagonette
with his lips tightly closed and his eyes staring straight in front of
him right through Mrs. Maradick as though she were non-existent.
And Mrs. Lester was holding her head very high and her cheeks
were flushed. Oh! they would both be difficult.
 She relied, in the main, on Tony to pull things through. She had
never yet known a party hang fire when he was there; one simply
couldn’t lose one’s temper and sulk with Tony about the place, but
then he too had been different during this last week, and for the first
time in his life she was not sure of him. And then, again, there was
Alice. That was really worrying her very badly. She had come down
with them quite obviously to marry Tony; everyone had understood
that, including Tony himself. And yet ever since the first evening of
arrival things had changed, very subtly, almost imperceptibly, so that
it had been very difficult to realise that it was only by looking back
that she could see how great the difference had been. It was not
only, she could see, that he had altered in himself, but that he had
altered also with regard to Alice. He struck her as being even on his
guard, as though he were afraid, poor boy, that they would drive
him into a position that he could not honourably sustain. Of this she
was quite sure, that whereas on his coming down to Treliss he had
fully intended to propose to Alice within the fortnight, now, in less
than a week after his arrival, he did not intend to propose at all, was
determined, indeed, to wriggle as speedily as might be out of the
whole situation. Now there could be only one possible explanation of
such a change: that he had, namely, found some one else. Who was
it? When was it? Maradick knew and she would trust him.
And what surprised her most in the whole affair was her feeling
about it all, that she rather liked it. That was most astonishing,
because, of course, Tony’s marriage with Alice was from every point
of view a most suitable and admirable business; it was the very
thing. But she had looked on it, in spite of herself, as a kind of chest
into which Tony’s youth and vitality were inevitably going; a splendid
chest with beautiful carving and studded with golden nails, but
nevertheless a chest. Alice was so perfectly right for anybody that
she was perfectly wrong for Tony; Lady Gale before the world must
approve and even further the affair, but Lady Gale the mother of
Tony had had her doubts, and perhaps this new something,
whatever it might be, was romantic, exciting, young and
adventurous. Mr. Maradick knew.
 But it is Mrs. Maradick’s view of the drive that must be recorded,
because it was, in fact, round her that everything revolved. The
reason for her prominence was Rupert, and it was he who, quite
unconsciously and with no after knowledge of having done anything
at all, saved the afternoon.
He was looking very cool and rather handsome; so was Mrs.
Maradick. She was indeed by far the coolest of them all in very pale
mauve and a bunch of carnations at her breast and a broad grey hat
that shaded her eyes. He had admired her from the first, and to-day
everyone else seemed hot and flustered in comparison. Neither Alice
nor Mrs. Lester were at their best, and Mrs. Lawrence was obviously
ill at ease, but Mrs. Maradick leaned back against the cushions and
talked to him with the most charming little smile and eyes of the
deepest blue. He had expected to find the afternoon boring in the
extreme, but now it promised to be amusing, very amusing.
Mrs. Maradick had come out in the spirit of conquest. She would
show these people, all of them, what they had missed during these
last two weeks. They should compare her husband and herself, and
she had no fear of the result; this was her chance, and she meant to
seize it. She never looked at him, and they had not, as yet, spoken,
but she was acutely conscious of his presence. He was sitting in a
grey flannel suit, rather red and hot, next to Mrs. Lester. He would
probably try and use the afternoon as the means for another abject
apology.
She was irritated, nevertheless, with herself for thinking about
him at all; she had never considered him before. Why should she do
so now? She glanced quickly across for a moment at him. How she
hated that Mrs. Lester! There was a cat for you, if ever there was
one!
They had climbed the hill, and now a breeze danced about them;
and there were trees, tall and shining birch, above their heads. On
their right lay the sea, so intensely blue that it flung into the air a
scent as of a wilderness of blue flowers, a scent of all the blue things
that the world has ever known. No breeze ruffled it, no sails crossed
its surface; it was so motionless that one would have expected, had
one flung a pebble, to have seen it crack like ice. Behind them ran
the road, a white, twisting serpent, down to the town.
The town itself shone like a jewel in a golden ring of corn; its
towers and walls gleamed and flashed and sparkled. The world lay
breathless, with the hard glazed appearance that it wears when the
sun is very hot. The colour was so intense that the eye rested with
relief on a black clump of firs clustered against the horizon. Nothing
moved save the carriage; the horses crawled over the brow of the
hill.
“Well, that’s awfully funny,” said Mrs. Maradick, leaning over and
smiling at Rupert. “Because I feel just as you do about it. We can’t
often come up, of course, and the last train to Epsom’s so dreadfully
late that unless it’s something really good, you know——”
“It’s dreadfully boring anyhow,” said Rupert, “turning out at night
and all that sort of rot, and generally the same old play, you
know. . . . Give me musical comedy—dancing and stuff.”
“Oh! you young men!” said Mrs. Maradick, “we know you’re all
the same. And I must say I enjoyed ‘The Girl and the Cheese’ the
other day, positively the only thing I’ve seen for ages.”
From the other side Mrs. Lawrence could be heard making attack
on Mr. Lester. “It was really too awfully sweet of you to put it that
way, Mr. Lester. It was just what I’d been feeling, but couldn’t put
into words; and when I came across it in your book I said to myself,
‘There, that’s just what I’ve been feeling all along.’ I simply love your
book, Mr. Lester. I feel as if it had been written specially for me, you
know.”
Mr. Lester flushed with annoyance. He hated, beyond everything,
that people should talk to him about his books, and now this silly
woman! It was such a hot day, and he had quarrelled with his wife.
“But what I’ve really always so often wanted to ask you,” pursued
Mrs. Lawrence, “is whether you took Mrs. Abbey in ‘To Paradise’
from anyone? I think you must have done; and I know some one so
exactly like her that I couldn’t help wondering—Mrs. Roland
Temmett—she lives in Hankin Street, No. 3 I think it is. Do you know
her? If you don’t you must meet her, because she’s the very image,
exactly like. You know in that chapter when she goes down to poor
Mr. Elliot——”
But this was too much for Mr. Lester.
“I have never met her,” he said brusquely, and his lips closed as
though he never meant to open them again. Mrs. Lester watched
them and was amused. She knew how her husband hated it; she
could even sympathise with him, but it would punish him for having
been so horrid to her.
She herself was rapidly recovering her temper. It was such a
lovely day that it was impossible to be cross for long, and then her
husband had often been cross and disagreeable before, it wasn’t as
though it were anything new. What a dreadful woman that Mrs.
Maradick was! Why had Lady Gale invited her? Poor Mr. Maradick!
She rather liked him, his size and strength and stolidity, but how
dreadful to be tied to such a woman for life! Even worse, she
reflected, than to be tied for life to a man such as her own special
treasure! Oh! our marriage system.
She turned round to Maradick.
“It’s better, thank you,” she said.
“What is?” he asked her.
“My temper,” she answered. “It was just the Devil when we
started. I was positively fuming. You must have noticed——”
“You have been perfectly charming,” he said.
“Well, it’s very nice of you to say so, but I assure you it was
through my clenched teeth. My hubby and I had a tiff before we
started, and it was hot, and my maid did everything wrong. Oh! little
things! but all enough to upset me. But it’s simply impossible to stay
cross with a view and a day like this. I don’t suppose you know,” she
said, looking up at him, “what it is to be bad-tempered.”
“I?” He laughed. “Don’t I? I’m always in a bad temper all the
year round. One has to be in business, it impresses people; it’s the
only kind of authority that the office-boy understands.”
“Don’t you get awfully tired of it all?” she asked him. “Blotting-
paper, I mean, and pens and sealing-wax?”
“No. I never used to think about it. One lived by rule so. There
were regular hours at which one did things and always every day the
same regular things to do. But now, after this fortnight, it will, I
think, be hard. I shall remember things and places, and it will be
difficult to settle down.”
She looked at him critically. “Yes, you’re not the sort of man to
whom business would be enough. Some men can go on and never
want anything else at all. I know plenty of men like that, but you’re
not one of them.” She paused for a moment and then said suddenly,
“But oh, Mr. Maradick, why did you come to Treliss?”
“Why?” he said, vaguely echoing her.
“Yes, of all places in the world. There never was a place more
unsettling; whatever you’ve been before Treliss will make you
something different now, and if anything’s ever going to happen to
you it will happen here. However, have your holiday, Mr. Maradick,
have it to the full. I’m going to have mine.”
They had arrived. The wagonette had drawn up in front of a little
wayside inn, “The Hearty Cow,” having for its background a
sweeping moor of golden gorse; the little brown house stood like a
humble penitent on the outskirts of some royal crowd.
Everyone got down and shovelled rugs and baskets and kettles;
everyone protested and laughed and ran back to see if there was
anything left behind, and ran on in front to look at the view. At the
turn of the brow of the hill Maradick drew a deep breath. He did not
think he had ever seen anything so lovely before. On both sides and
behind him the gorse flamed; in front of him was the sea stretching,
a burning blue, for miles; against the black cliffs in the distance it
broke in little waves of hard curling white. They had brought with
them a tent that was now spread over their heads to keep off the
sun, they crowded round the unpacking of the baskets. Conversation
was general.
“Oh, paté de foie gras, chicken, lobster salad, that’s right. No,
Tony, wait a moment. Don’t open them yet, they’re jam and things.
Oh! there’s the champagne. Please, Mr. Lester, would you mind?”
“So I said to him that if he couldn’t behave at a dance he’d better
not come at all—yes, look at the view, isn’t it lovely?—better not
come at all; don’t you think I was perfectly right, Mr. Gale? Too
atrocious, you know, to speak——”
 “The bounder! Can’t stand fellows that are too familiar, Mrs.
Maradick. I knew a chap once——”
“Oh Lord! Look out! It’s coming! My word, Lester, you nearly let
us have it. It’s all right, mother, the situation’s saved, but it was a
touch and go. I say, what stuff! Look out, Milly, you’ll stick your boot
into the pie. No, it’s all right. It was only my consideration for your
dress, Milly, not a bit for the pie; only don’t put your foot into it.
Hullo, Alice, old girl, where have you been all this time?”
This last was Tony, his face red with his exertions, his collar off
and his shirt open at the neck. When he saw Alice, however, he
stopped unpacking the baskets and came over to her. “I say,” he
said, bending down to her, “come for a little stroll while they’re
unpacking the flesh-pots. There’s a view just round the corner that
will fairly make you open your eyes.”
They went out together. He put his arm through hers. “What is
the matter, Miss Alice Du Cane?” he said. Then as she gave no
answer, he said, “What’s up, old girl?”
“Oh! nothing’s up,” she said, looking down and digging her
parasol into the ground. “Only it’s hot and, well, I suppose I’m not
quite the thing. I don’t think Treliss suits me.”
“Oh! I say, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’d noticed these last few days
that you were a bit off colour. I’d been wondering about it.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said, driving her parasol into the path still
more furiously. “Only—I hate Treliss. I hate it. You’re all awfully good
to me, of course, but I think I’d better go.”
“Go?” he said blankly.
“Yes, up to Scotland or somewhere. I’m not fit company for
anyone as I am.”
“Oh! I say, I’m sorry.” He looked at her in dismay. “You said
something before about it, but I thought it was only for the moment.
I’ve been so jolly myself that I’ve not thought about other people.
But why don’t you like the place?”
“I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you. I know it’s awfully ungrateful of
me to complain when Lady Gale has given me such a good time. . . .
I’ve no explanation at all. . . . It's silly of me."
 She stared out to sea, and she knew quite well that the
explanation was of the simplest, she was in love with Tony.
When it had come upon her she did not know. She had certainly
not been in love with him when she had first come down to Treliss.
The idea of marrying him had been entertained agreeably, and had
seemed as pleasant a way of settling as any other. One had to be
fixed and placed some time, and Tony was a very safe and
honourable person to be placed with. There were things that she
would have altered, of course; his very vitality led him into a kind of
indiscriminate appreciation of men and things that meant change
and an inability to stick to things, but she had faced the whole
prospect quite readily and with a good deal of tolerance.
Then, within the week, everything had changed. She wondered,
hating herself for the thought, whether it had been because he had
shown himself less keen; he hadn’t sought her out in quite the way
that he had once done, he had left her alone for days together. But
that could not have been all; there was something else responsible.
There was some further change in him, something quite apart from
his relation to her, that she had been among the first to recognise.
He had always had a delightful youth and vitality that people had
been charmed by, but now, during the last week, there had been
something more. It was as though he had at last found the thing for
which he had so long been looking. There had been something or
some one outside all of them, their set, that he had been seeing and
watching all the time; she had seen his eyes sparkle and his mouth
smile at some thought or vision that they most certainly had not
given him. And this new discovery gave him a strength that he had
lacked before; he seemed to have in her eyes a new grandeur, and
perhaps it was this that made her love him. But no, it was something
more, something that she could only very vaguely and mistily put
down to the place. It was in the air, and she felt that if she could
only get away from Treliss, with its sea and its view and its crooked
town, she would get straight again and be rid of all this contemptible
emotion.
She had always prided herself on her reserve, on the control of
her emotions, on her contempt for animal passion, and now she
could have flung her arms round Tony’s neck and kissed his eyes, his
hair, his mouth. She watched him, his round curly head, his brown
neck, the swing of his shoulders, his splendid stride.
“Let’s sit down here,” he said; “they can’t see us now. I’m not
going to help ’em any more. They’ll call us when they’re ready.”
She sat down on a rock and faced the sweep of the sea, curved
like a purple bow in the hands of some mighty archer. He flung
himself down on to his chest and looked up at her, his face propped
on his hands.
“I say, Alice, old girl,” he said, “this is the first decent talk we’ve
had for days. I suppose it’s been my fault. I’m awfully sorry, and I
really don’t know how the time’s gone; there’s been a lot to do,
somehow, and yet it’s hard to say exactly what one’s done.”
“You’ve been with Mr. Maradick,” she said almost fiercely.
He looked up at her, surprised at her tone. “Why, yes, I suppose I
have. He’s a good chap, Maradick. I have been about with him a
good bit.”
“I can’t quite see,” she said slowly, looking down at the ground,
“what the attraction is. He’s nice enough, of course; a nice old man,
but rather dull.”
“Oh, I don’t know about old, Alice. He’s much younger than you’d
think, and he’s anything but dull. That’s only because you don’t
know him. He is quiet when other people are there; but he’s awfully
true and straight. And you know as one gets older, without being
priggish about it, one chooses one’s friends for that sort of thing, not
for superficial things a bit. I used to think it mattered whether they
cared about the same ideas and were—well, artistic, you know. But
that’s all rot; what really matters is whether they’ll stick to you and
last.”
“One thing I always said about you, Tony,” she answered, “is that
you don’t, as you say, stick. It’s better, you know, to be off with the
old friends before you are on with the new.”
“Oh! I say!” He could scarcely speak for astonishment. “Alice!
what’s the matter? Why, you don’t think I’ve changed about you, do
you? I know—these past few days——”
 “Oh, please don’t apologise, Tony,” she said, speaking very
quickly. “I’m not making complaints. If you would rather be with Mr.
Maradick, do. Make what friends you like; only when one comes
down to stay, one expects to see something of you, just at meals,
you know.”
He had never seen her like this before. Alice, the most self-
contained of girls, reserving her emotions for large and abstract
causes and movements, and never for a moment revealing any hint
of personal likes or dislikes, never, so far as he had seen, showing
any pleasure at his presence or complaining of his absence; and
now, this!
“Oh! I say!” he cried again, “I’m most awfully sorry. It’s only been
a few days—I know it was jolly rude. But the place has been so
ripping, so beautiful, that I suppose I didn’t think about people
much. I’ve been awfully happy, and that makes one selfish, I
suppose. But I say,” he put a hand on her dress, “please don’t be
angry with me, Alice, old girl. We’ve been chums for ages now, and
when one’s known some one a jolly long time it isn’t kind of
necessary to go on seeing them every day, one goes on without
that, takes it on trust, you know. I knew that you were there and
that I was there and that nothing makes any difference.”
The touch of his hand made her cheeks flame. “I’m sorry,” she
said, almost in a whisper, “I don’t know why I spoke like that; of
course we’re chums, only I’ve been a bit lonely; rotten these last few
days, I’m sure I don’t know why.” She paused for a moment and
then went on: “What it really is, is having to change suddenly. Oh,
Tony, I’m such a rotter! You know how I talked about what I’d do if I
were a man and the way I could help and the way you ought to
help, and all the rest of it; well; that’s all gone suddenly—I don’t
know why or when—and there’s simply nothing else there. You won’t
leave me quite alone the rest of the time, Tony, please? It isn’t that I
want you so awfully much, you know, but there isn’t anyone else.”
“Oh! we’ll have a splendid time,” he said. “You must get to know
Maradick, Alice. He’s splendid. He doesn’t talk much, but he’s so
awfully genuine.”
 She got up. “You don’t describe him very well, Tony; all the
same, genuine people are the most awful bores, you never know
where you are. Well, forgive my little bit of temper. We ought to get
back. They’ll be wondering where we are.”
But as they strolled back she was very quiet. She had found out
what she wanted to know. There was some one else. She had
watched his face as he looked at the sea; of course that accounted
for the change. Who was she? Some fisher-girl in the town, perhaps
some girl at a shop. Well, she would be no rival to anyone. She
wouldn’t fight over Tony’s body; she had her pride. It was going to
be a hard time for her; it would be better for her to go away, but
that would be difficult. People would talk; she had better see it out.
“It’s simply too dreadfully hot in the sun,” Tony was conscious of
Mrs. Lawrence saying as he joined them. He took it as a metaphor
that she was sitting with her back to the sea and her eyes fixed
upon the chicken. He wanted to scream, “Look at the gorse, you
fool!” but instead he took a plate and flung himself down beside Mrs.
Maradick.
She nodded at him gaily. “You naughty boy! You left us to
unpack; you don’t deserve to have anything.”
“Indeed, Mrs. Maradick, I stayed until I was in the way. Too many
cooks, you know.”
He watched everyone, and detected an air of cheerfulness that
had certainly not been there before. Perhaps it was the lunch; at any
rate he was hungry.
He talked, waving a piece of bread and butter. “You people don’t
deserve anything. You ought to go and see a view before eating;
grace before meat. Alice and I have done our duty and shall now
proceed to enjoy our food twice as much as the rest of you.”
“Well, I think it’s too bad, that gorse,” said Mrs. Maradick, with a
little pout and a flash of the eye towards Rupert Gale. “It puts all
one’s colours out.” She gave her mauve a self-satisfied pat.
“Oh! Emmy dear! You look perfectly sweet!” ecstatically from
Mrs. Lawrence.
Suddenly Mr. Lester spoke, leaning forward and looking at Mrs.
Maradick very seriously. “Have you thought, Mrs. Maradick, whether
perhaps you don’t put the gorse out?”
“Oh! Mr. Lester! How cruel! Poor little me! Now, Mr. Gale, do
stand up for me.”
Rupert looked at the gorse with a languid air. “It simply don’t
stand a chance,” he said.
“Talking about gorse,” began Mrs. Lawrence. She was always
telling long stories about whose success she was in great doubt. This
doubt she imparted to her audience, with the result that her stories
always failed.
This one failed completely, but nobody seemed to mind. The
highest spirits prevailed, and everyone was on the best of terms with
everyone else. Lady Gale was delighted. She had thought that it
would go off all right, but not quite so well as this.
Of course it was largely due to Tony. She watched him as he
gathered people in, made them laugh, and brought the best out of
them. It was a kind of “Open Sesame” that he whispered to
everyone, a secret that he shared with them.
But what Lady Gale didn’t recognise was that it was all very
much on the surface; nobody really had changed at all. She might
have discovered that fact from her own experience had she thought
about it. For instance, she didn’t care for Mrs. Maradick any more
than before; she liked her, indeed, rather less, but she smiled and
laughed and said “Dear Mrs. Maradick.” Everyone felt the same.
They would have embraced their dearest enemies; it was in the air.
Mrs. Lester even addressed her husband—
“No, Ted dear, no more meringues. You know it’s bad for you,
and you’ll be sorry to-night.”
He looked at her rather gloomily, and then turned and watched
the gorse. Maradick suddenly leaned over and spoke to his wife.
“Emmy dear, do you remember that day at Cragholt? It was just
like this.”
“Of course I do,” she said, nodding gaily back at him. “There was
that funny Captain Bassett. . . . Such a nice man, dear Lady Gale. I
wonder if you know him. Captain Godfrey Bassett. . . . Such fun.”
“I wonder,” said Lady Gale, “if that is one of the Bassetts of
Hindhurst. There was a Captain Bassett——”
 Maradick watched the golden curtain of gorse. The scent came to
him; bees hummed in the air.
“Well, I like being by the sea, you know. But to be on it; I’ve
crossed the Atlantic seven times and been ill every time. There is a
stuff called—Oh! I forget—Yansfs. Yes, you can’t pronounce it—You-
are-now-secure-from-sea-sickness—it wasn’t any good as far as I
was concerned, but then I think you ought to take it before——”
This was his wife.
Mrs. Lester suddenly spoke to him. “You are very silent, Mr.
Maradick. Take me for a stroll some time, won’t you? No, not now.
I’m lazy, but later.”
She turned away from him before he could reply, and leaned over
to her husband. Then he saw that Tony was at his elbow.
“Come down and bathe,” the boy said, “now. No, it isn’t bad for
you, really. That’s all tommy-rot. Besides, we mayn’t be able to get
away later.” They left the tent together.
“Is it champagne?” he asked.
“What?” asked Tony.
“All this amiability. I was as gruff as a—as my ordinary self—
coming, and then suddenly I could have played a penny whistle;
why?”
“Oh! I don’t know!” said Tony, flinging his arms about. “I’m much
too happy to care. Maradick, I’ve been seeing her, here in the gorse
—wonderful—divine. We will go back to-morrow; yes, we must. Of
course you’ve got to come. As to everybody’s good temper, that
doesn’t mean anything. The spirits of the place have their games,
you know, and there we are. Everybody will be awfully cross at tea.
And you know it is cheek! For us all to go and plant our tent and eat
our chicken in the middle of a view like this. And they’ll leave paper
bags about, and they’ll pop ginger-beer. I don’t mind betting that the
gods play some games before they’ve done with us.”
They climbed down the rocks to a little cove that lay nestling
under the brow of the hill. The sand was white, with little sparkles in
it where the sun caught the pebbles; everything was coloured with
an intensity that hurt the eye. The cove was hemmed in by brown
rocks; a little bird hopped along the sand, then rose with a little whirl
of pleasure above their heads and disappeared.
They flung off their clothes with an entire disregard of possible
observers. A week ago Maradick would have died rather than do
such a thing; a bathing-machine and a complete bathing-suit had
been absolute essentials, now they really never entered his head. If
he had thought of it at all, they would have seemed to him distinctly
indecent, a kind of furtive winking of the eye, an eager disavowal of
an immorality that was never there at all.
As Maradick felt the water about his body his years fell from him
like Pilgrim’s pack. He sank down, with his eyes for a moment on the
burning sky, and then gazing through depths of green water. As he
cleaved it with his arm it parted and curled round his body like an
embrace; for a moment he was going down and down and down,
little diamond bubbles flying above him, then he was up again, and,
for an instant, the dazzling white of the cove, the brown of the
rocks, the blue of the sky, encircled him. Then he lay on his back
and floated. His body seemed to leave him, and he was something
utterly untrammelled and free; there were no Laws, no Creeds, no
Arguments, nothing but a wonderful peace and contentment, an
absolute union with something that he had been searching for all his
life and had never found until now.
“Obey we Mother Earth . . . Mother Earth.” He lay, smiling, on her
breast. Little waves came and danced beneath him, touching his
body with a caress as they passed him; he rose and fell, a very
gentle rocking, as of some mother with her child. He could not think,
he could remember nothing; he only knew that he had solved a
riddle.
Then he struck out to sea. Before him it seemed to spread
without end or limit; it was veiled in its farthest distance by a thin
purple haze, and out of this curtain the blue white-capped waves
danced in quick succession towards him. He struck out and out, and
as he felt his body cut through the water a great exultation rose in
him that he was still so strong and vigorous. Every part of him, from
the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, seemed clean and
sound and sane. Oh! Life! with its worries and its dirty little secrets
and its petty moralities! and the miserable pessimistic sauntering in
a melancholy twilight through perpetual graveyards! Let them swim,
let them swim!
He shouted to Tony, “It’s great. One could go on for ever!” He
dived for a moment downward, and saw the great white curve of his
body from his foot to the hip, the hard smooth strength of the flesh.
Then he turned slowly back. The white beach, the brown rocks,
and the blue sky held out hands to him.
“All those people,” he shouted to Tony, “up there, eating,
sleeping, when they might be in this!” Mrs. Lester, he knew, would
have liked it. He thought for a moment of his wife, the dresses she
would need and the frills. He could see her stepping delicately from
the bathing-machine; her little scream as her feet touched the water,
“Oh Jim! it’s cold!” He laughed as he waded back on to the beach.
The pebbles burnt hot under his feet, and the sand clung to his toes;
he dug his legs deep into it. The sun curled about his body and
wrapped him, as it were, in a robe of its own glorious colour. He
could feel it burning on his back.
Tony joined him, panting. “Oh! my word! I’ve never had such a
bathe, never! I could have stayed in for ever! But they’d be coming
to look for us, and that wouldn’t do. I say, run round with me! I’ll
beat you five times round.”
They raced round the beach. The sun, the wind, and the waves
seemed to go with them; the water fell from them as they ran, and
at last they flung themselves dry and breathless on to the hot sand.
Whilst they dressed, Tony dealt with the situation more
practically and in detail.
“There are going to be a lot of difficulties, I’m afraid,” he said, as
he stood with his shirt flapping about his legs, and his hands
struggling with his collar. “In the first place, there’s mother. As I told
you, she’s not got to know anything about it, because the minute
she hears anything officially, of course, she’ll have to step in and ask
about it, and then there’ll be no end of trouble with the governor
and everybody. It’s not that she disapproves really, you know—your
being there makes that all right; but she hasn’t got to realise it until
it’s done. She won’t ask anything about it, but of course she can’t
help wondering.”
“Well, I hope it is all right,” said Maradick anxiously. “My being a
kind of moral danger-signal makes one nervous.”
“Oh! she trusts you,” said Tony confidently. “That’s why it’s so
perfectly splendid your being there. And then,” went on Tony, “they
are all of them wondering what we are at. You see, Treliss has that
effect on people, or at any rate it’s having that kind of effect on us
here and now. Everybody is feeling uneasy about something, and
they are most of them putting it down to me. Things always do
happen when you jumble a lot of people together in a hotel, the
gods can’t resist a game; and when you complicate it by putting
them in Treliss! My word!”
“Well, what’s the immediate complication?” asked Maradick. The
water had made his hair curl all over his head, and his shirt was
open at the neck and his sleeves rolled up over his arms.
“Well, the most immediate one,” said Tony slowly, “is Alice, Miss
Du Cane. She was talking to me before lunch. It’s rather caddish to
say anything about it, but I tell you everything, you know. Well, she
seemed to think I’d been neglecting her and was quite sick about it.
She never is sick about anything, because she’s much too solid, and
so I don’t know what’s set her off this time. She suspects a lot.”
Maradick said nothing.
“But the funny thing is that they should worry at all. Before,
when I’ve done anything they’ve always said, ‘Oh! Tony again!’ and
left it at that. Now, when I’ve done nothing, they all go sniffing
round.”
“Yes,” said Maradick, “that’s the really funny thing; that nothing
has been done for them to sniff at, yet. I suppose, as a matter of
fact, people have got so little to do in a hotel that they worry about
nothing just to fill up time.”
He stretched his arms and yawned.
“No,” said Tony, “it’s the place. Whom the gods wish to send mad
they first send to Treliss. It’s in the air. Ask that old fellow, Morelli.”
“Why Morelli?” Maradick asked quickly.
 “Well, it’s absurd of me,” said Tony. “But I don’t mind betting that
he knows all about it. He’s uncanny; he knows all about everything.
It’s just as if he set us all dancing to his tune like the Pied Piper.” He
laughed. “Just think! all of us dancing; you and I, mother, father,
Alice, Rupert, the Lesters, Mrs. Maradick, Mrs. Lawrence—and
Janet!” he added suddenly.
“Janet,” he said, catching Maradick’s arm and walking up the
beach. “Can’t you see her dancing? that hair and those eyes! Janet!”
“I’m sleepy,” said Maradick unsympathetically. “I shall lie with my
head in the gorse and snore.”
He was feeling absolutely right in every part of his body; his
blood ran in his veins like a flame. He hummed a little tune as he
climbed the path.
“Why! that’s Morelli’s tune,” said Tony, “I’d been trying to
remember it; the tune he played that night,” and then suddenly they
saw Mrs. Lester.
She sat on a rock that had been cut into a seat in the side of the
hill. She could not see the beach immediately below because the cliff
projected in a spreading cloud of gorse, but the sea lay for miles in
front of her, and the gold of the hill struck sharp against the blue.
She herself sat perched on the stone, the little wind blowing her hair
about her face. She was staring out to sea and did not see them
until they were right upon her.
Tony shouted “Hullo, Milly,” and she turned.
“We have been bathing,” he said. “It was the most stupendous
bathe that there has ever been.” Then he added, “Why are you
alone?”
“The rest went to see a church on a hill or something, but I
didn’t want anything except the view; but Lady Gale is still there, at
the tent. She told me to tell you if I saw you to come to her.”
“Right you are.” He passed singing up the hill. Maradick stood in
front of her, his cap in his hand, then she made room for him on her
seat and he sat beside her.
“A view like this,” she said, “makes one want very much to be
good. I don’t suppose that you ever want to be anything else.”
 “There’s some difference between wanting and being,” he
answered sententiously. “Besides, I don’t suppose I’m anything real,
neither good nor bad, just indifferent like three-fourths of the human
race.”
He spoke rather bitterly, and she looked at him. “I think you’re
anything but indifferent,” she said, nodding her head. “I think you’re
delightful. You’re just one of the big, strong, silent men of whom
novels are full; and I’ve never met one before. I expect you could
pick me up with one finger and hurl me into the sea. Women like
that, you know.”
“You needn’t be afraid that I shall do it,” he said, laughing. “I
have been bathing and am as weak as a kitten; and that also
accounts for my untidiness,” he added. He had been carrying his
coat over his shoulder, and his shirt was open at the neck and his
sleeves rolled up over his arms.
They did not speak again for several minutes. She was looking at
the view with wide-open, excited eyes.
Then she turned round and laid her hand upon his arm. “Oh! I
don’t expect you’ve needed it as I have done,” she said, “all this
colour; I’m drinking it in and storing it so that I can fill all the drab
days that are coming with it. Drab, dull, stupid days; going about
and seeing people you don’t want to see, doing things you don’t
want to do, saying things you don’t want to say.”
“Why do you?” he said.
“Oh! one has to. One can’t expect to be at Treliss for ever. It’s
really bad for one to come here, because it always makes one
discontented and unsettles one. Last year,” she smiled at the
recollection, “was most unsettling.”
“Well,” he answered, “I’ve got to go back to the office, you know.
It will do me good to have these days to remember.”
She was silent again; then the grasp on his arm tightened and
she said—
“Oh! Mr. Maradick, I am so unhappy.”
He moved a little away from her. Here were more confidences
coming! Why had all the world suddenly taken it into its incautious
head to trust him with its secrets? He! Maradick! whom no one had
ever dreamt of trusting with anything before?
“No, I don’t want to bother you. It won’t bother you, will it? Only
it is such a rest and a comfort to be able to tell some one.” She
spoke with a little catch in her voice, but she was thinking of the
year before when she had trusted Captain Stanton, “dear old
Reggie,” with similar confidences; and there had been Freddie
Stapylton before that. Well, they had all been very nice about it, and
she was sure that this big man with the brown neck and the curly
hair would be just as nice.
“No, but you will be a friend of mine, won’t you?” she said. “A
woman wants a friend, a good, sensible, strong friend to whom she
can tell things, and I have nobody. It will be such a comfort if I can
talk to you sometimes.”
“Please,” he said.
Providence seemed to have designed him as a kind of general
nursemaid to a lot of irresponsible children.
“Ah! that’s good of you.” She gave a little sigh and stared out to
sea. “Of course, I’m not complaining, other women have had far
worse times, I know that; but it is the loneliness that hurts so. If
there is only one person who understands it all it will make such a
difference.”
Mrs. Lester was not at all insincere. She liked Maradick very
much, and her having liked Captain Stanton and Mr. Stapylton before
him made no difference at all. Those others had been very innocent
flirtations and no harm whatever had come of them, and then Treliss
was such an exciting place that things always did happen. It must
also be remembered that she had that morning quarrelled with her
husband.
“You see,” she said, “I suppose I was always rather a romantic
girl. I loved colour and processions and flowers and the Roman
Catholic Church. I used to go into the Brompton Oratory and watch
the misty candles and listen to them singing from behind the altars
and sniff the incense. And then I read Gautier and Merimée and
anything about Spain. And then I went to Italy, and I thought I could
never leave it with the dear donkeys and Venice and carnivals, but
we had to get back for Ascot. Oh! I suppose it was all very silly and
like lots of other girls, but it was all very genuine, Mr. Maradick.”
He nodded his head.
“It’s so sweet of you to understand,” she said. “Well, like most
girls, I crowded all these dreams into marriage. That was going to
do everything for me. Oh! he was to be such a hero, and I was to be
such a wife to him. Dear me! How old it makes one feel when one
thinks of those girlish days!”
But Maradick only thought that she looked very young indeed,
Tony’s age.
“Then I read some of Fred’s essays; Mr. Lester, you know. They
used to come out in the Cornhill, and I thought them simply
wonderful. They said all that I had been thinking, and they were full
of that colour that I loved so. The more I read them the more I felt
that here was my hero, the man whom I could worship all my days.
Poor old Fred, fancy my thinking that about him.”
Maradick thought of Mr. Lester trailing with bent back and languid
eye over the gorse, and wondered too.
“Well, then I met him at a party; one of those literary parties that
I used to go to. He was at his best that night and he talked
wonderfully. We were introduced, and—well, there it all was. It all
happened in a moment. I couldn’t in the least tell you how; but I
woke one morning and, like Mr. Somebody or other, a poet I think,
found myself married.”
Here there was a dramatic pause. Maradick didn’t know what to
say. He felt vaguely that sympathy was needed, but it was difficult to
find the right words.
“That changed me,” Mrs. Lester went on in a low voice with a
thrill in it, “from an innocent warm-hearted girl into a woman—a
suffering, experienced woman. Oh! Mr. Maradick, you know what
marriage is, the cage that it can be; at least, if you haven’t
experienced it, and I sincerely hope you haven’t, you can imagine
what it is. A year of it was enough to show me how cruel life was.”
Maradick felt a little uncomfortable. His acquaintance with Mrs.
Lester had been a short one, and in a little time he was going back
to have tea with Mr. Lester; he had seemed a harmless kind of man.
 “I am very sorry——” he began.
“Oh, please,” she went on quickly, “don’t think that I’m unhappy.
I don’t curse fate or do anything silly like that. I suppose there are
very few persons who find marriage exactly what they expect it to
be. I don’t complain. But oh! Mr. Maradick, never marry an author.
Of course you can’t—how silly of me!—but I should like you to
understand a little what I have felt about it all.”
He tried clumsily to find words.
“All of us,” he said, “must discover as we get on that things aren’t
quite what we thought they would be. And of marriage especially.
One’s just got to make up one’s mind to it. And then I think there’s a
lot to be grateful for if there’s only one person, man or woman, to
whom one matters; who, well, sticks to one and——”
“Oh! I know,” she sighed reminiscently.
“What I mean is that it doesn’t so much matter what that person
is, stupid or ugly or anything, if they really care. There isn’t so much
of that steady affection going about in the world that we can afford
to disregard it when it comes. Dear me!” he added with a laugh,
“how sentimental I am!”
“I know,” she said eagerly. “That’s just it; if Fred did care like
that, oh dear, how wonderful it would be! But he doesn’t. I don’t
really exist for him at all. He thinks so much about his books and the
people in them that real people aren’t there. At first I thought that I
could help him with his work, read to him and discuss it with him;
and I know that there were a lot of grammatical mistakes, but he
wouldn’t let me do anything. He shut me out. I was no use to him at
all.”
She clenched her hands and frowned. As a matter of fact she got
on with him very well, but they had quarrelled that morning, over
nothing at all, of course. And then it made things more exciting if
you thought that you hated your husband, and Mr. Maradick was a
fine-looking man.
And he thought how young she was and what a dreary stretch of
years was before her. He knew what his own married life had been:
fifteen years of disillusion and misunderstanding and sullen silence.
 “I am so sorry,” he said, and he looked at her very
sympathetically. “I can understand a little how hard it is. We don’t all
of us make lucky shots, but then we have just got to grin and bear
it; cold sort of comfort, I know, and if it really does comfort you to
feel that you have a friend you may count on me.”
She liked his sympathy, the dear old strong thing! and at any rate
she would pull Fred pretty sharply out of his books for once. Captain
Stanton and Mr. Stapylton had had just that effect; she had never
known Fred so charming as he was after their final exit.
He looked down at her with a fatherly smile. “We’ll be friends,”
he said.
“It’s perfectly sweet of you,” she said, her voice trembling a little.
“I felt that you would understand. I cannot tell you how it has
helped me, this little talk of ours. Now I suppose we ought to be
going back or they’ll be wondering where we are.”
And he stood thanking God for a wonderful world. At last there
were people who wanted him, Tony and Mrs. Lester; and at the
same time he had begun to see everything with new eyes. It was his
view! They talked of life being over at forty; why, it had never begun
for him until now!
They walked back to the tent, and he talked to her gravely about
helping others and the real meaning of life. “He can,” she thought,
“be most awfully dull, but he’s a dear old thing.”
The expedition in search of a church had scarcely been a
success, and when one considers the members of it there is little
room to wonder. Tony had been right about the gods. They had seen
fit to play their games round the tent on the gorse, and the smiles
with which they had regarded the luncheon-party speedily changed
to a malicious twinkle. Everyone had been too pleasant to be true,
and, after the meal was over, the atmosphere became swiftly
ominous. For one thing, Tony had departed with Maradick for a
bathe, and his absence was felt. Lady Gale had a sudden longing for
sleep, and her struggles against this entirely precluded any attempt
at keeping her guests pleasantly humoured. Mrs. Maradick was
never at her best after a meal, and now all her former irritation
returned with redoubled force. She had been far too pleasant and
affable to these people; she could not think what had induced her to
chatter and laugh like that at lunch, she must be on her dignity. Mr.
Lester’s remark about her clothes and the gorse also rankled. What
impertinence! but there, these writing people always did think that
they could say anything to anybody! Novelist, forsooth! everyone
was a novelist nowadays. Mrs. Lawrence didn’t make things any
better by an interminable telling of one of her inconclusive stories.
Mrs. Maradick bristled with irritation as she listened. “. . . So there
poor Lady Parminter was, you know—dreadfully stout, and could
scarcely walk at all—with her black poodle and her maid and no
motor and raining cats and dogs. It was somewhere near
Sevenoaks, I think; or was it Canterbury? I think perhaps it was
Canterbury, because I know Mr. Pomfret said something about a
cathedral; although it might have been Sevenoaks, because there
was a number in it, and I remember saying at the time . . .”
Mrs. Maradick stiffened with annoyance.
Mr. Lester gloomily faced the sea and Mrs. Lester chatted rather
hysterically to Lady Gale, who couldn’t hear what she said because
she was so sleepy. Mr. Lester hated quarrelling, because it disturbed
his work so; he knew that there would be a reconciliation later, but
one never knew how long it would be.
It was eventually Rupert who proposed the church. He had found
Mrs. Maradick very amusing at lunch, and he thought a stroll with
the little woman wouldn’t be bad fun. So he interrupted Mrs.
Lawrence’s story with “I say, there’s a rotten old church somewhere
kickin’ around. What d’you say to runnin’ it to earth, what?”
Everyone jumped up with alacrity. Mrs. Lester shook her head. “I
shall stay and keep guard over the tent,” she said.
“No, Milly dear, you go,” said Lady Gale, “I’m much too sleepy to
move.”
“Well, then, I’ll stay to keep guard over you as well,” said Mrs.
Lester, laughing; “I’m lazy.”
So Rupert, Alice Du Cane, Mr. Lester, Mrs. Maradick and Mrs.
Lawrence started off. The expedition was a failure. The church
wasn’t found, and in the search for it the tempers of all concerned
were lost. It was terribly hot, the sun beat down upon the gorse and
there was very little breeze. The gorse passed and they came to
sand dunes, and into these their feet sank heavily, their shoes were
clogged with it. Nobody spoke very much. It was too hot and
everybody had their own thoughts; Mrs. Lawrence attempted to
continue her story, but received no encouragement.
“I vote we give up the church,” said Rupert, and they all trudged
drearily back again.
Mrs. Maradick was wondering why Mrs. Lester hadn’t come with
them. It didn’t make her wonder any the less when, on their arrival
at the tent, she saw Lady Gale and Tony in sole possession. Where
was the woman? Where was her husband? She decided that Rupert
Gale was a nuisance. He had nothing to say that had any sense in it,
and as for Mr. Lester . . .!
Tea was therefore something of a spasmodic meal. Everybody
rushed furiously into conversation and then fled hurriedly out again;
an air of restraint and false geniality hung over the teacups. Even
Tony was quiet, and Lady Gale felt, for once, that the matter was
beyond her; everyone was cross.
Then Mrs. Lester and Maradick appeared and there was a
moment’s pause. They looked very cheerful and contented, which
made the rest of the party only the more irritable and discontented.
Why were they so happy? What right had they to be so happy? They
hadn’t got sand in their shoes and a vague search after an
impossible church under a blazing sun in their tempers.
Mrs. Lester was anything but embarrassed.
“Oh! there you all are! How nice you all look, and I do hope
you’ve left something! No, don’t bother to move, Rupert. There’s
plenty of room here! Here you are, Mr. Maradick! Here’s a place; yes,
we’ve had such a nice stroll, Mr. Maradick and I. It was quite cool
down by the beach. . . . Thanks, dear, one lump and cream. Oh!
don’t trouble, Tony, I can reach it . . . yes, and did you see your
church? Oh! what a pity, and you had all that trouble for
nothing. . . .”
“There’s going to be a storm!” said Mr. Lester gloomily.
A little wind was sighing, up and down, over the gorse. The sun
shone as brilliantly as ever, but on the horizon black, heavy clouds
were gathering. Then suddenly the little breeze fell and there was
perfect stillness. The air was heavy with the scent of the gorse. It
was very hot. Then, very faintly, the noise of thunder came across
the sea.
“The gods are angry,” said Tony.
“Oh! my dear!” said Lady Gale. “And there isn’t a cover to the
wagonette thing! Whatever shall we do? We shall get soaked to the
skin. I never dreamt of its raining.”
“Perhaps,” said Maradick, “if we started at once we might get in
before it broke.”
The things were hurriedly packed and everyone hastened over
the gorse. They clambered into the wagonette. Across the sky great
fleets of black clouds were hurrying and the sound of the thunder
was closer at hand. Everything was still, with the immovability of
something held by an invisible hand, and the trees seemed to fling
black pointing fingers to the black gloomy sky.
For a mile they raced the storm, and then it broke upon them.
The thunder crashed and the lightning flared across their path, and
then the rain came in sheeted floods. What fun for the gods! They
cowered back in their seats and not a word was spoken by anyone;
the driver lashed his horses along the shining road.
Whilst they journeyed, each traveller was asking himself or
herself a question. These questions must be recorded, because they
will all be answered during the course of this history.
Lady Gale’s question. Why did everything go wrong?
Mrs. Maradick’s question. Why had a malevolent providence
invented Mrs. Lester, and, having invented her, what could James
see in her?
Mrs. Lester’s question. At what hour that evening should she
have her reconciliation scene with her husband and for how long
could she manage to spin it out?
Alice Du Cane’s question. What was Tony keeping back?
Tony’s question. Was Janet afraid of thunder?
Maradick’s question. What did it all mean?
Mr. Lester’s question. What was the use of being alive at all?
 Rupert’s question. Why take a new suit to a picnic when it always
rained?
Mrs. Lawrence’s question. Would the horses run away?
The only question that received an immediate answer was Mrs.
Lawrence’s, because they didn’t.

That evening, Maradick went for a moment to the room of the

minstrels. The storm was passing. On the horizon there stole a very
faint band of gold. Out of the black bank of cloud a star shone, and
suddenly there burst from the dark shadows of the fleeing storm a
silver crescent moon. The light of it fell on the boards of the floor
and then touched faintly the grinning face of the carved lion.
THE PROLOGUE IS CONCLUDED

PART II
PUNCH