of it only with a shudder; a healthy contempt for her morbid weakness and silliness had begun to assert itself. John was not the only one of them who was going through a period of convalescence.
The self-pity and the coquetry with self-destruction had passed away under the stress of new sympathies and interests; the morbid undercurrent was part of Mona’s nature, and was not to be cast out at a moment’s notice. It was the prompting of this undercurrent that led her, one day in the autumn, to pay a visit to the spot where she had toyed so weakly with stupid, evil ideas and temptations. It would be, she felt, a curious sensation to renew acquaintance with the place now that its fascination and potential tragedy had been destroyed. In outward setting it was more desolate and gloom-shrouded than ever; the trees had lost their early autumnal magnificence, and rain had soaked the fallen beech leaves into a paste of dark slush under foot. Amid the nakedness of their neighbours, the yews stood out thick, and black, and forbidding, and the sickly growth of fungoid things showed itself prominently amid the rotting vegetation. Mona peered down at the dark, ugly poo, and shuddered to think that she could ever have contemplated an end so horrible as choking and gasping to death in those foul, stagnant depths, with their floating surface of slime and creeping water insects and rank weed-growth. And then the thing that she recoiled from in disgust seemed to rise up towards her as though to drag her down in a long-deferred embrace. Her fleet had slipped on the slithery surface of sodden leaves and greasy clay, and she was sliding helplessly down the steep bank to where it dropped sheer into the pool. She clutched and clawed frantically at yielding roots and wet, slippery earth, and felt the weight of her body pull her downward with an increasing momentum. The hideous pool, whose fascination she had courted and slighted, was gaping in readiness for her; even if she had been a swimmer there would have been little chance for her in those weed-tangled depths, and John would find her there, as once she had almost wished—John who had loved her and learned to love her better than ever; John whom she loved with all her heart. She raised her voice to call his name again and again, but she knew that he was a mile or two away, busy with the farm life that once more claimed his devoted attention. She felt the bank slide away from her ina dark, ugly smear, and heart the small stones and twigs that she had dislodged fall with soft splashes into the water at her feet; above her, far above her it seemed, the yews spread their sombre branches like the roof-span of a crypt.
“Heavens alive, Mona, where did you get all that mud?” asked John in some pardonable astonishment. “Have you been playing catch-as-catch-can with the pigs? You’re splashed up to the eyes in it.”
“I slipped into a pond,” said Mona.
“What, into the horsepond?” asked John.
“No, a pond out in one of the woods,” she explained.
“I didn’t know there was such a thing for miles round,” said John.
“Well, perhaps it would be an exaggeration to call it a pond,” said Mona, with a faint trace of resentment in her voice; “it’s only about an inch and a half deep.”
The Blind Spot
“You’ve just come back from Adelaide’s funeral, haven’t you?” said Sir Lulworth to his nephew; “I suppose it was very like most other funerals?”
“I’ll tell you all about it at lunch,” said Egbert.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. It wouldn’t be respectful either to your great-aunt’s memory or to the lunch. We begin with Spanish olives, then a borscht, then more olives and a bird of some kind, and a rather enticing Rhenish wine, not at all expensive as wines go in this country, but still quite laudable in its way. Now there’s absolutely nothing in that menu that harmonises in the least with the subject of your great-aunt Adelaide or her funeral. She was a charming woman, and quite as intelligent as she had any need to be, but somehow she always reminded me of an English cook’s idea of a Madras curry.”
“She used to say you were frivolous,” said Egbert. Something in his tone suggested that he rather endorsed the verdict.
“I believe I once considerably scandalised her by declaring that clear soup was a more important factor in life than a clear conscience. She had very little sense of proportion. By the way, she made you her principal heir, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” said Egbert, “and executor as well. It’s in that connection that I particularly want to speak to you.”
“Business is not my strong point at any time,” said Sir Lulworth, “and certainly not when we’re on the immediate threshold of lunch.”
“It isn’t exactly business,” explained Egbert, as he followed his uncle into the dining-room. “It’s something rather serious. Very serious.”
“Then we can’t possibly speak about it now,” said Sir Lulworth; “no one could talk seriously during a borscht. A beautifully constructed borscht, such as you are going to experience presently, ought not only to banish conversation but almost to annihilate thought. Later on, when we arrive at the second stage of olives, I shall be quite ready to discuss that new book on Borrow, or, if you prefer it, the present situation in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. But I absolutely decline to talk anything approaching business till we have finished with the bird.”
For the greater part of the meal Egbert sat in an abstracted silence, the silence of a man whose mind is focused on one topic. When the coffee stage had been reached he launched himself suddenly athwart his uncle’s reminiscences of the Court of Luxembourg.
“I think I told you that great-aunt Adelaide had made me her executor. There wasn’t very much to be done in the way of
