![of Chinese. The populations of Spain, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Canada
have embraced smartphones with similar enthusiasm. The revolution took place
seemingly overnight. Today, almost all of us carry mobile computers, and we do so
almost all the time.4
The Digital Revolution created vast social change. It has been responsible, for
instance, for the massive shift of employment in the United States. Automation
corresponded to a 250 percent gain in manufacturing productivity—and a simultaneous
46 percent decline in jobs—between 1980 and 2014. As a result, it takes half as many
people to produce two-and-a-half times as many goods. Computer control and robots
took these jobs away, not China.5
This revolution changed our daily lives in innumerable ways. The stolid black
rotary-dial telephones that were in our parents’ homes have been replaced by mobile
devices that are with us twenty-four hours a day. The US president can reach out and
tweet his message to followers, ignoring the press that previously dominated the
transmission of news. Whole swathes of industries and businesses—including brick-
and-mortar stores, manufacturers, even law firms—have been upended.
These transformations have tremendous implications for security and privacy, but
most members of the public didn’t grasp the extent of the changes until the Snowden
revelations. In 2013, Edward Snowden’s disclosure of the surveillance capabilities of
the National Security Agency (NSA) revealed how much information was on
computerized networks, and how valuable that information was to government
authorities. In response to the public outcry over the surveillance, the US computer
industry began taking the issue of securing users’ information far more seriously.
Communications are best secured with end-to-end encryption, cryptography that permits
only the sender and recipient to see the unencrypted form of the message. Encryption can
also secure the contents of a device, so if a smartphone or laptop is stolen, its encrypted
files remain confidential. But the same techniques that provide security complicate law
enforcement and national security investigations.
Encryption on its own will not solve the cybersecurity problem, but it is
nonetheless a crucial technology for doing so. Indeed, the most technically sophisticated
part of the US government—the intelligence agencies—agrees. A leaked 2009
cybersecurity document from the US National Intelligence Council warned that
government and private-sector computers were vulnerable to attacks from other nations
and criminals because encryption technologies were being deployed too slowly, while
an accompanying table described encryption as the “[b]est defense to protect data”
especially when combined with multifactor authentication, in which a user must input an
additional credential after a password. The report concluded that the steps being taken
by the US tech companies in increasing their use of encryption to protect
communications and devices “would prevent the vast majority of intrusions.”6](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/3488316-250621211208-28c55ae4/85/Listening-In-Cybersecurity-In-An-Insecure-Age-Susan-Landau-19-320.jpg)
Listening In Cybersecurity In An Insecure Age Susan Landau
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- 7. Listening In
- 8. Listening In Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age SUSAN LANDAU Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS New Haven and London
- 9. Copyright © 2017 by Susan Landau. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Minion type by Integrated Publishing Solutions, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944412 ISBN 978-0-300-22744-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
- 10. Dedicated to my walking buddies—both two- and four-legged— without whom this book would not have been written.
- 11. Contents Preface ONE. Racing into the Digital Revolution TWO. We’re All Connected Now THREE. Dangers Lurking Within FOUR. How Do We Protect Ourselves? FIVE. Investigations in the Age of Encryption SIX. There’s No Turning Back Notes Acknowledgments Index
- 12. Preface In February 2016 the Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives invited me to testify on encryption. Cryptography protects data in motion—communications— and data at rest—particularly data stored on smartphones, laptops, and other digital devices—from prying eyes. The encryption issue has bedeviled US law enforcement since the early 1990s. Because encryption was becoming a default on consumer devices, law enforcement’s worst fears were finally coming true. Not only were smart criminals and terrorists using encryption to hide their plans, as they had been doing so for quite some time, but now the less savvy ones were as well.1 FBI director James Comey was pressing Congress to require that “exceptional access” be built into encryption systems, enabling law enforcement to access communications or open devices with legal authorization. But the FBI’s seemingly simple request was anything but. If you make it easier to break into a communication system or a phone, it’s not just government agents with a court order who will get in. Bad guys, including criminals and other sophisticated attackers, will also take advantage of the system. Weakening security is exactly the wrong move for a world fully dependent on digital communications and devices to conduct personal, business, and government affairs. This argument is not new; for quite some time my colleagues and I have been saying that security—personal, business, and national security—requires widespread use of strong encryption systems. That means encryption systems without back doors, front doors, or any other form of easy access. But while encryption undoubtedly makes investigations harder to conduct, law enforcement has alternative tools at its disposal. This was the message I was bringing to Congress. The congressional hearing played out against the background of a dispute between Apple and the FBI involving a locked iPhone. In December 2015, two terrorists in San Bernardino, California, killed fourteen members of the county Health Department. The terrorists themselves were killed in a shootout, but the FBI recovered extensive evidence related to their plans, including an Apple iPhone issued by the county to one of the perpetrators, who had been employed by the Health Department. The FBI sought to have Apple write software to unlock the phone’s security protections. When the company refused to do so, the law enforcement agency took Apple to court, which initially ruled in the government’s favor. At the Judiciary Committee hearing, James Comey railed against “warrant-proof” spaces and the difficulties locked devices presented to keeping Americans safe.
- 13. Apple’s general counsel and I presented a different narrative: in a world of increasing cyberattacks, communications and data required stronger protections. Weakening them is the last thing we should be doing. Surely the FBI could find other ways to open the phone—essentially hacking in under a court order (a practice known as “lawful hacking”)—without making Apple undo its security protections, thus putting other phones at risk.2 Discussion raged for weeks. Which approach offers more security? Forcing Apple to undo the protections the company had carefully designed for the iPhone? Or leaving these protections in place, potentially not accessing the terrorists’ communications, but leaving everyone else’s phone secure? Then, after having testified in court and in Congress that only Apple could undo the phone’s security protections, the FBI had a surprise announcement. Law enforcement didn’t need Apple’s help after all; a contractor had found a way to unlock the phone. The immediate problem of Apple’s secure phone went away. The problem of that particular iPhone had been resolved, but the FBI’s fear of “going dark”—of losing the ability to listen in or collect data when this information was encrypted—remained. As spring turned to summer, I found myself explaining over and over the complexities of our digital world—how much we stored on our devices, how much data was at risk, how easy it was to break into systems, and how useful phones might be for authenticating ourselves and thus preventing that theft. Our cybersecurity risks have intensified over the last two decades as the Internet has become an integral part of people’s personal and business lives. In the wake of the Judiciary Committee hearing, I spoke on this topic in Washington, DC, California, South Korea, and Germany; at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum; and on NPR and the BBC. But it was clear that many more people needed to understand the complexities and risks of the situation than I could reach with my talks. I decided to write this book. That was August 2016. But even as I was writing, the story was changing in remarkable ways. For decades policymakers believed the main cyberthreats were the theft of data from business and the government and possible attacks on computer systems controlling critical infrastructure. In September 2015 a low-level FBI operative called the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to alert them that their network had been hacked. His message was given low priority. Although he called again and again, the FBI agent was essentially ignored. By the time the DNC and US intelligence agencies woke up to the seriousness of the problem, it was too late.3 The Russians, who have long used disinformation as a technique for influencing events, turned the tools of cyberexploitation against the Democratic Party and, in particular, Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy. Using common forms of cyberattack, the Russians stole emails from the DNC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and from the private account of John Podesta (chair of Clinton’s
- 14. presidential campaign). The email leak, combined with false news stories that were favorable to Republican candidate Donald Trump and unfavorable to Clinton—and Twitter bots that brought them much attention—were new forms of disruption. The leaks and false news drove US press stories and attention, creating a very negative effect for Clinton in the waning days of the 2016 election. This Russian attack was different from anything the United States had anticipated when the military had practiced cyberwar games.4 The issue of cybersecurity was no longer only about preventing Chinese hackers from stealing fighter plane plans to use for their own military, or about the US military’s use of sophisticated cyberattack weapons to destroy centrifuges at an Iranian nuclear facility (as discussed in the chapters that follow). Now it was about protecting vastly larger swathes of society—the press, universities, research organizations (the latter two had been targeted by Russia during the campaign). Now cybersecurity was about extending strong forms of security to everyone.5 When the FBI supports exceptional access, and tech companies resist it, the FBI is not weighing the demands of security versus privacy. Rather, it is pitting questions about the efficiency and effectiveness of law enforcement against our personal, business, and national security. Instead of security versus privacy, this is an argument of security versus security. And although the FBI’s goals are to improve law enforcement’s ability to conduct investigations, the proposed means—weakening encryption and the security of phones—risk a far greater harm. The encryption debate, a subject that previously occupied only techies and policy wonks, has now become critically important to national security. How do we secure ourselves in the face of the Digital Revolution, in which our world is increasingly being controlled through bits? This revolution has brought humanity tremendous economic, technological, scientific, and cultural benefits. But it also provides bad actors with the ability to steal and disrupt at a distance, performing serious mischief at scale. We’ve lived with these risks since the 1980s, but the cyberthreats are now far more serious—and cybersecurity protections, including encrypted communications and secured communications, are far more critical now than they were even a half-decade ago. We have the option to press companies to develop secure and private systems, or to provide systems that make it easier for law enforcement and national security to conduct investigations. However, the latter increases the risk that others will take advantages of the weaknesses present in such “exceptional access.” We need to make the right decision, for our safety, long-term security, and humanity. To help readers understand what’s at stake, I begin this account with two chapters that explore how and why the Digital Revolution has progressed faster than society’s ability to keep up with the changes. These changes have produced new kinds of threats, which I explore in detail in Chapter 3. In Chapter 4, I discuss different ways by which
- 15. we can secure both our data and the networked systems that depend on it. But that very security complicates investigators’ jobs—that’s the whole fight right there—so in Chapter 5, I look at how law enforcement investigations can work even when encrypted communications and locked devices are ubiquitous. The concluding chapter takes a hard look at the challenges cyberthreats present to open, dynamic societies—and the decisions we must make to preserve them.
- 16. Listening In
- 17. 1 Racing into the Digital Revolution We used to live in a world in which a farmer grabbed a handful of soil to determine whether it was damp, a pedestrian hailed a taxi through a wave of her arm, a tourist traveled by plane to see a foreign city’s streets, and an auto manufacturer mass- produced repair parts. Today, soil sensors report moisture levels via the Internet, apps like Uber allow strangers to “share” rides, Google Street View lets you explore streets of Seoul and Paris on your phone, and 3D printers produce plastic spare parts for Mercedes Benz.1 The Agricultural Revolution transformed human communities from hunter-gathers to an agrarian society. The Industrial Revolution urbanized us. We are now in the midst of a third revolution, the Digital Revolution. We have replaced the world of atoms with the world of bits. Humans take time to absorb change. Our first instinct is to describe new technologies in terms of things we know: trains are iron horses; cars, horseless carriages. These analogies can be useful, such as when a steam train travels twice as fast as a horse. They are misleading if the train travels several hundred miles an hour. The Digital Revolution is moving several thousand miles an hour, and the consequences are profound. But except for a handful of philosophers, futurists, engineers, and venture capitalists, it’s usually only when something goes wrong—when a server fails and an airline cancels hundreds of flights, or when you are driving in a remote region and must rely on a paper map—that the rest of us may stop and realize how rapid this transformation has been. Yet over and over we find it irresistible to grab that shiny new toy—the Uber app that enables us to summon a ride that whisks us to our destination. Only later do we stop to reckon the social consequences—the costs of that action in terms of costs to labor and public transport. We’re letting norms evolve without thinking about the consequences, for our safety or our humanity. Computers have been tied to national security ever since their use in World War II, when their calculations enabled shipboard anti-aircraft weapons to target enemy aircraft. But it was in code breaking that computers first proved critical. The British Colossus machine at Bletchley Park cracked the German Lorenz cipher, providing invaluable insights into the enemy’s thinking. This knowledge enabled the Allies to
- 18. successfully deceive Germany about plans for the D-Day invasion, a deception that was crucial to the mission’s success—and to Germany’s defeat.2 During the 1950s computers lifted the burden of both heavy number crunching— taking months off the design of airplanes, improving the accuracy of weather prediction, modeling atomic weapons—and prosaic business tasks. Britain’s Lyons Tea company, for instance, used its computer to determine its production schedule, including the delivery of tea cakes to its shops. Most businesses, though, still relied on people, adding machines, and typewriters. Computers shouldered more responsibility in the 1960s, when IBM developed its System 360. The IBM 360 performed the calculations that sent men to the moon—and brought them back. Those calculations enabled the lunar landing module to “rendezvous” with an orbiting rocket, essential if the astronauts aboard were to return to earth. Exciting as the moon shot was, the IBM 360’s more mundane applications may have had a larger impact. Because the machine could handle large amounts of data, it was widely adopted by banks and other financial institutions. Prior to the advent of business computing, for instance, borrowers knew best whether they could pay back a loan. Now, using computers and information sharing across financial institutions, banks could carry out their own calculations to assess the risk of default for a potential borrower. Suddenly banks had the upper hand, using increased access to data to decide whom to back and whom to charge higher interest rates. The balance between customers and the banks shifted in favor of financial institutions; one result was the 1970 Fair Credit Reporting Act, which gave consumers access to and rights over their credit reports. This effort to redress the balance between people and lending institutions was the first of a stream of laws and regulations that would seek to protect people as computer technology changed their lives. In the 1970s the price of computers began to drop and the machines moved onto the factory floor. Computer control was introduced into product planning, design, assembly, and delivery. Robots began to replace people for certain simple, highly mechanized tasks. In the 1980s, the arrival of word processing programs and spreadsheets began displacing typewriters and adding machines—and secretaries. By the 1990s, humans were still in charge on the factory floor, but fewer were needed. The opening of the Internet for commercial use that same decade brought yet more transformations for retail, journalism, and virtually every aspect of daily life.3 Over the decades, the Digital Revolution changed factories and offices. A more profound change to society began about ten years ago. With cellphones, we made ourselves accessible at any time, from any place. Facebook became publicly available in 2006; the iPhone, in 2007. The combination of social media and a device that you could carry with you proved irresistible. Ninety percent of South Koreans carry a smartphone, as do 77 percent of Australians, 72 percent of Americans, and 58 percent
- 19. of Chinese. The populations of Spain, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Canada have embraced smartphones with similar enthusiasm. The revolution took place seemingly overnight. Today, almost all of us carry mobile computers, and we do so almost all the time.4 The Digital Revolution created vast social change. It has been responsible, for instance, for the massive shift of employment in the United States. Automation corresponded to a 250 percent gain in manufacturing productivity—and a simultaneous 46 percent decline in jobs—between 1980 and 2014. As a result, it takes half as many people to produce two-and-a-half times as many goods. Computer control and robots took these jobs away, not China.5 This revolution changed our daily lives in innumerable ways. The stolid black rotary-dial telephones that were in our parents’ homes have been replaced by mobile devices that are with us twenty-four hours a day. The US president can reach out and tweet his message to followers, ignoring the press that previously dominated the transmission of news. Whole swathes of industries and businesses—including brick- and-mortar stores, manufacturers, even law firms—have been upended. These transformations have tremendous implications for security and privacy, but most members of the public didn’t grasp the extent of the changes until the Snowden revelations. In 2013, Edward Snowden’s disclosure of the surveillance capabilities of the National Security Agency (NSA) revealed how much information was on computerized networks, and how valuable that information was to government authorities. In response to the public outcry over the surveillance, the US computer industry began taking the issue of securing users’ information far more seriously. Communications are best secured with end-to-end encryption, cryptography that permits only the sender and recipient to see the unencrypted form of the message. Encryption can also secure the contents of a device, so if a smartphone or laptop is stolen, its encrypted files remain confidential. But the same techniques that provide security complicate law enforcement and national security investigations. Encryption on its own will not solve the cybersecurity problem, but it is nonetheless a crucial technology for doing so. Indeed, the most technically sophisticated part of the US government—the intelligence agencies—agrees. A leaked 2009 cybersecurity document from the US National Intelligence Council warned that government and private-sector computers were vulnerable to attacks from other nations and criminals because encryption technologies were being deployed too slowly, while an accompanying table described encryption as the “[b]est defense to protect data” especially when combined with multifactor authentication, in which a user must input an additional credential after a password. The report concluded that the steps being taken by the US tech companies in increasing their use of encryption to protect communications and devices “would prevent the vast majority of intrusions.”6
- 20. Thus, securing communications and devices puts different societal needs—needs that have changed dramatically since the onset of the Digital Revolution—on a collision course. On one side, government investigators need to be able to access some of the information contained in digital communications. On the other, the people need to be able to secure their communications and devices themselves. That conflict—and the need to find security in an age of cyberinsecurity—is the subject of this book. The information that we entrust to digital media and control is increasing at ever more rapid rates, as are the number and sophistication of the attacks. For this reason I believe our society is best served by securing communications and devices even if that choice makes government investigations more difficult—and I will show why in the following pages. Humans are a highly social species. Internationally, 76 percent of Internet users access Facebook, Twitter, and other social applications. A smartphone makes it remarkably easy to respond instantly to calls, emails, and tweets. Social media apps make it hard not to succumb to doing so. Thus smartphones are always with us, and always on. While cellphones made it easy for people to be reached anytime and anyplace, smartphones made it easy to answer a work request from anywhere—the boarding line at an airport, a hotel check-in desk, or a restaurant. A decade ago the line between work and home was relatively clear. Email or a call to a spouse or a friend might be answered during the workday on a work phone or computer, and a dedicated professional might receive a business call or email in the evening or on the weekend. But there were clear boundaries between the two, well worked out over time. Then the smartphone arrived. At first, smartphones just offered phone calls, email, and music, but applications —apps—quickly started arriving. The BlackBerry, the first pocket-sized consumer phone to have email, was an early casualty of the smartphone juggernaut. In the mid- 2000s, high-placed executives and government officials considered BlackBerrys essential. Members of the US defense establishment carried them, as did senior people in industry, including Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt. German chancellor Angela Merkel’s secure phone—the one that was not intercepted by the NSA—was a BlackBerry, as was Pakistani prime minister Nawar Sharif’s. And in 2009, when newly elected President Barack Obama was unwilling to let go of his BlackBerry, the NSA reengineered it to make it more secure (losing lots of functionality along the way). But from its high point in the late 2000s to the mid-2010s, BlackBerry’s share of the smartphone market dropped from 20 to under 1 percent.7 The problem was with what BlackBerrys couldn’t do. You could make phone calls and send and receive email securely, and you could use certain Microsoft applications. But BlackBerrys didn’t run apps: no Angry Birds, Snapchat, or this
- 21. week’s version of Pokémon Go. (The apps that were available were often locked out by the issuing company’s information technology, or IT, department, which managed the devices.) Users who didn’t need a secure phone opted for a smartphone that could load apps. And because these same users didn’t want to carry two phones, they brought both their iPhones and Androids to work. They added their business email accounts and calendars to their personal phones, and forgot about their BlackBerrys. Androids and iPhones became the repositories of crucial day-to-day information, including emails, contact information; private intimate details, including photos, texts, and health data; and personal security information, for instance, bank accounts. The phones carried essential work information as well. This was a social transformation that caught many people, both average users and security experts, by surprise. It created a serious new risk for companies, allowing proprietary data to escape the company’s control. Now, employees accessed crucial, private data on unsecured personal phones that could easily go missing. This was just one more step on the trajectory that had begun when networks enabled people to easily move data from the workplace to home. But 1980s-style dialup modems at home were a far cry in speed and convenience from our current ability to connect. And that availability not only meant a new way of working anytime, anywhere, but a new way of removing data from corporations, governments, and even private individuals. Peril and ease were there in equal measure. Security experts saw the risk and started offering solutions. Companies such as Cisco, for instance, began offering services that would put security software on smartphones, providing a managed space that kept corporate data secure even if the phone was taken. But such solutions only work if properly implemented, and often they are not. Apple and the FBI would never have come to blows if the San Bernardino Health Department had implemented the mobile device management system it was paying for. The terrorists had smashed their personal phones, but the police found terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook’s Health Department–issued iPhone. Six weeks before the shootings, Farook had manipulated the controls of this phone to shut off backups to Apple’s iCloud. The department, meanwhile, had also been paying for a device management service, but it wasn’t turned on. With neither of these systems in place, there was no automatic system working to ensure the information on the phone could be obtained. Investigators were particularly interested in obtaining information related to an unaccounted-for eighteen-minute gap between the time of the shootings and when police found the terrorists. The FBI wanted to know where Farook had been and whether he had communicated with anyone during that time.8 Apple’s iOS 9 operating system enables encryption by default. Unless the phone is open and unlocked—and Farook’s work iPhone was not—the data on the device is
- 22. Exploring the Variety of Random Documents with Different Content
- 23. mobile; and, though she had grey hair, she bore herself erect. Her gaze widened at him; there was even a tinge of apprehension in it. "Good morning," he said; "I'm looking for rooms—or for one room if I can't get any more. Have you any to let?" "Y-e-s," answered the woman, hesitatingly. "Can I see them?" "Well, I'm not quite sure," she faltered. He understood that it was his appearance that made her doubtful. "I don't know whether— Might I ask 'oo it was that recommended you?" He pointed airily. "The postman directed me here. I've just come down from town; my luggage is at the station." "I'm not sure whether my husband 'd care to take in any more people this year. We've got two ladies staying with us already, and If you'll wait a minute I'll see what 'e says about it." He waited in suspense. She returned after a consultation in the kitchen, her husband with her. Though the man came fully informed of what was wanted, David felt sure that it would be necessary to begin at the beginning again, and in this he wasn't mistaken. The couple stood contemplating him curiously, waiting for him to speak. "Good morning," he said. "I'm looking for two rooms, or for one room if I can't get any more. Have you any to let?" "Well, we 'ave got two rooms," admitted the man. "Can I see them?" The householder scratched his head. "Well, I don't know," he said slowly. "My wife 'ere she's not quite sure whether she could manage with anybody else this summer. Are you, Emma? There's two ladies staying 'ere now, and it makes a bit o' work for her. Don't it, Emma? You might get a room a bit lower down, very likely. What was it you were wanting?" "Oh, anything would suit me!" exclaimed David, with an ingratiating smile, and suppressed rage. "I'm not particular at all—only I should have liked to go to a house where I could be sure of being
- 24. comfortable. Yours looks so pretty, and so clean; it's the only place I've seen round here that I should care to pay much in." He had been struggling to recall their name—trying to see it mentally in one of Bee's letters—and it flashed upon him now. "Cold meat and cleanliness, Mrs. Kemp——It is 'Mrs. Kemp,' I think?" He made her a bow. "Cold meat and cleanliness are worth more than late dinners and—er——" The sentence would not round itself; he forced another smile for climax. "You might eat off any floor in this 'ouse!" she declared, deciding he was human. "I'm sure you might," he replied. "In London we don't often see a house like it, I can tell you!" "You've not been in London long, I suppose?" she said. "You come from abroad, don't you?" "No, I've lived in London all my life—my business is there. That's why I go to the country when I get a holiday." "Ah," said Mr. Kemp reflectively, "it's a great place, London—room for all sorts in it!" "Yes," said David. "What lovely roses you have, Mrs. Kemp, and how sweet the pinks smell! What flowers are those in the corner—the high, purple flowers against the wall?" "Them?" she said. "Lor! I'm a poor one at flowers. What do you call 'em, John?" "I dunno," said John. "Well, I don't wonder you think twice about taking lodgers, but I"— he laughed feebly—"I'm a very honest person; I wouldn't steal so much as a leaf." There was a pause. They all looked at one another. "What do you say, John?" she murmured. "We might manage to take the young man in, perhaps, eh?"
- 25. "You won't find me any trouble if you do. You'll give me a first-rate character when I leave you!" cried David with geniality that exhausted him. "About rent," said Mr. Kemp. "What did you think of paying?" "What do you want?" The couple exchanged anxious glances. Mr. Kemp breathed heavily. "Well, we have had as much as a pound for those two rooms, for a lady and three children through the summer," he said. "Of course," added the woman, "for only one person——" "Call it a pound!" said David, whipping out his purse. "And I suppose it's fairest to pay in advance. My name is Tremlett. I'll just look round, and then I'll go to the station, and get my bag." And so it was accomplished. The same roof sheltered him and Her! He smiled now naturally in savouring the fact. His little sitting-room was at the back, overlooking the cabbages and a red, rose-bordered path that led to the hennery and the field. Its old-fashioned shabbiness was not without a charm, and, having yielded consent, Mrs. Kemp adopted a solicitous manner with a strong flavour of wondering compassion in it. She still seemed to him in moments to be marvelling silently that he was able to talk her language. When he came in from the station he found that she had brightened his table with a bowl of poppies and elder-blossom. Gathering the poppies had robbed them of their sprightliness, and they hung shrivelled, like pricked airballs, but the delicacy of the elder-blossom was exquisite, and he liked the tone of what she called the old "crock." Because wild-flowers pleased him less in his coat than anywhere else, he put those that he was wearing into a mug preserved on the mantelshelf. On the front of the mug he saw a view described as "Rickmansworth Church from the East," and on the base he saw the inscription "Made in Germany." His mind began to misgive him about the sister—perhaps she would prove a dragon, in the way? He half hoped that Mrs. Kemp would let
- 26. fall some particulars when she brought in his chop. She said nothing to the point, however, nor did he hear any voice about the premises to wake sensations. When his dinner was eaten he went out to the path, and threw eager-glances round the field; but the two chairs under the trees were empty, and there was nobody in sight; so he came back and smoked a pipe on the sofa. A young girl entered with his tea; he judged her rightly to be the Kemps' daughter. She evidently came to ascertain how a mulatto looked, and she was not disinclined to hear one talk. He felt that he was enlarging his circle of acquaintances amazingly; in a day here he had spoken to more people than he addressed at home in a month. From Miss Kemp he learnt in conversation that she had just been getting tea ready for "the ladies" too. She coupled the information with a reference to "one pair of hands"; he waited for her to add the companion phrase about "her head never saving her legs," but she did not. She was a nice girl, and not uneducated, though she did say "one pair of hands" when she meant "one person"; and when he bewailed the fact that it had begun to rain, and she brought him some novels to pass the time, he was surprised to find what novels she read. However, they entertained him very little. His soul was divided between dejection at the weather and gratitude for her kindness. He was so unused to kindness that the landlady's daughter offering to lend him books seemed to him a tender and a touching thing. The chairs had been brought indoors; the rain rattled on the laurels, and strewed the petals of the roses on the path. Through the long twilight a pair of heavy hands in a neighbouring cottage laboured a hymn—the village pianist always chooses hymns—with mournful persistence. David stood at the window, recognising despondently that "the ladies" would remain in their parlour all the evening. The field of his expectations would be void and profitless—it might even be too wet for them to-morrow.
- 27. CHAPTER XVII But it was not. When he woke, the day was radiant. A guileless sky denied its misdemeanour merrily. Mrs. Kemp, in clattering the china, asked him "how he lay last night." He thanked her, and took a mental note of the locution, inquiring in his turn when the rain had ceased. For answer she snorted "Rain?" and frowned reproof at the sunshine, and he attributed her manner to crops. His pouch was empty. She told him that tobacco could be obtained at the grocer's; so he went across the road presently and bought some at a little shop that proclaimed itself "Renowned for its breakfast-eggs," and "Celebrated for its bacon." As he came out, a woman passed him, laden with a canvas, and a sketching box, a camp-stool, and what looked like a bunch of rods. She was pale and slight. He saw that she was deformed as he hurried by. He didn't take much notice of her. A chair had been put back in the shade of the boughs, and he waited feverishly where it was well in view. Soon a girl strolled down the path between the roses. She wore a white frock, and had a book in her hand. Her face dazzled him; his heart leapt to greet her. She entered the field, and sat down under the tree. The photograph had come to life. He leant, gazing at her, unnoticed. CHAPTER XVIII This was the event of his second day here. This was all. He had seen her; the knowledge sang in his senses. Momentarily he felt that if his visit yielded no more, it would have been bountiful enough. When her glance lighted on him, he read her thought in it, and drew back ashamed. He turned away ashamed, and afraid of seeming to intrude. In town he had dared to picture himself sitting near her,
- 28. watching her movements, breaking the ice. In Godstone self- consciousness confounded him. She appeared to him unapproachable; he had even been humiliated by her look. Hilda said to Bee that afternoon: "There's another lodger here; he's a nigger—or something of the sort. Isn't it a nuisance? I wonder the Kemps take that kind of people in, with us in the house!" "Oh, is he staying here?" said Bee; "I saw him coming out of Peters'. Perhaps he is only down for the week-end. I don't suppose he'll be in our way. If he does make himself objectionable, you had better come out with me in the morning while he stops." "I think I could keep him at a distance without that," returned Hilda scornfully. "Besides, he would never have the impudence. What horrid luck, though! If it had been a man come to stay here now, it would have been rather nice." But they had no reason to complain of his being "in their way"; the new lodger did not attempt to scrape acquaintance with them, although in the next two days they often passed him, idling in the garden, or sauntering along the road. He refrained so punctiliously from staring at them, that they were able to steal a few glances themselves. Bee observed that he looked unhappy, and was fond of flowers; and Hilda remarked that he wore a well-cut suit, and had a nice taste in neckties. "Evidently not a common 'nigger,'" she said; "a medical student, or something!" She was not concerned, though it was clear that he had come for longer than the week-end. On Tuesday she was obliged to acknowledge his existence. It was a stupid incident—to happen with a "nigger." It might as easily have happened with somebody worth meeting; say, with one of the young men who bowled into the station-yard in dog-carts and looked as if they wished they knew her. She had gone out to get a daily paper, and the lodger was in the shop buying foolscap. She was told that the last of the newspapers had just been sold to him. As soon as he heard that, he stammered something about "not depriving" her of it. He stood before her with his straw-hat in one hand, and the paper
- 29. extended in the other. She thanked him, but said that it really had no interest for her at all. He persisted. She was firm—and left him overwhelmed by his gaucherie in not persuading her to take it. Ten minutes later—Mrs. Kemp to Miss Hilda Sorrenford: "Mr. Tremlett has done with this paper, so 'e says you can 'ave it now if you like." Miss Hilda Sorrenford, understanding that the message has suffered in delivery: "Tell Mr. Tremlett I am much obliged to him." And in the evening, when she saw him in the garden, she bowed and said that she thought the weather was a little cooler. David went back to his foolscap, having discovered that it is sometimes much easier to write poetry about a girl than to talk to her. And already he was reconciled to her voice because it was hers. Prose was still a crutch that he couldn't afford to drop, and he had hoped to transfer some of an essay from his head to the foolscap by bedtime. His subject was before him, nothing less than an acorn, sprouting a slender stem and a handful of leaves, in a tumbler of water. Spying it in the woods, he had brought it home, and given it honour, to Mrs. Kemp's diversion. He had enthroned it on the table, that little acorn bursting with the ambition to be a tree, and as he sat wondering at it, the slip of a stalk had grown to be gnarled and old, and the bunch of leaves had towered above the centuries. Children came to play beneath it who were chided for forgetting whether Elizabeth or Victoria had reigned first over England in the long ago, and generations of lovers had flitted past its shade, prattling of eternity. The story of the acorn had clamoured in him to be written, but now he was too excited and unhappy to work. Besides, how could he say it all in two or three thousand words? It asked to be a book. How clumsy he had been in the shop, stuttering and blundering like a schoolboy; how absurd in the garden, with his fatuous mono- syllable! Why couldn't he disguise his shyness? he had disguised it well enough from the landlady when he paid her compliments on the doorstep; nobody would have suspected how turbulent his nerves
- 30. were then. At the time he had been proud of his fluency—are not shy people always proud of being fluent, even when they hear themselves saying things they don't mean?—now he remembered it wistfully, jealous of himself. And his letters! his letters mocked him. To write to a girl like that, and be tongue-tied in her presence. The thing was laughable. But he had learnt her name at last, for when he made Mrs. Kemp his messenger, she had said: "Oh! you mean Miss 'Ilda." Estimated by emotion it was ages before it happened, before their relations advanced beyond "good-morning," or "good-evening," with a platitude dropped in passing, and a commonplace returned with the lifting of his hat. Yes, estimated by emotion it was ages before it happened, but according to the almanac he had been here exactly nine days. She was under the same tree, in the same chair. He had seen her settle herself there half an hour ago, and for half an hour he had been questioning how she would receive him if he joined her. What should he say first; could he give to the indulgence a sufficiently casual air; in fine, what sort of figure would he cut? He ruffled his manuscript irresolutely. In a yard close by somebody was hammering at a fence. It appeared to him that somebody began to hammer at a fence as often as he tried to work. There was no possibility of his writing even if he made another attempt, and inclination pulled him hard towards the field. He gathered the papers up, and put them cautiously away, as a criminal removes clues. When he gained the path, she had risen from the chair, and was running bareheaded in his direction. He did not for an instant see more than that, more than that she was running; and he wondered. Then he saw her face, and her voice reached him, and he realised that she was running for help. So they ran towards each other for five, perhaps ten seconds, she as if pursued, and he seeking the cause. "A wasp," she panted, "in my hair! A wasp! Get it out!"
- 31. "A wasp?" Why must one always echo in emergencies? He called himself a fool. "Don't be frightened. Keep still. I'll get it out in a minute." "Quick, quick!" she said, pulling at her hair frantically; "I shall go mad!" "Keep still," he repeated. "Take your hands down—it'll sting you." He could hear the angry buzzing of the thing, but it was entangled, hidden, and her hair dizzied him. She found the diffidence of his touches exasperating. "Take the pins out," she cried; "yes, yes, take them out. Oh! not like that, be quick!" Her impatience showed his breathlessness the way. He fought reverence down, and tore them out as fast as she. Her hair rained over his hands, and swept his arms. The wasp gave a last buzz venomously. "Oh, thank you so much! I hope, I do hope, you aren't stung?" she said. "Stung?" He was faint, shaken by a hurricane of new and strange emotion. "It's all right, thanks." "I've given you a lot of trouble," she said apologetically. "It was silly of me to make such a fuss, I suppose; but I can't tell you what it felt like." "I can imagine." "I've always been afraid it would happen one day; the place swarms with them, doesn't it?" "They come from the shops across the road," he said. He was being stupid; he felt it. His little minute of authority was over, and he was self-conscious again. She began to pick up the hairpins from the grass. David stooped too. As she looked at his hands she thought of the service they had rendered, and shuddered slightly. Absorbed, he watched her lift her
- 32. hair, and twist it in a hasty coil, and stab it thrice with unconcern. In "The People of the Dream Street" there is a line that was born at this moment, though it was not written till long afterwards. "You have been staying here for some time, haven't you?" he blurted. "Yes, nearly a month," she said. "How pretty it is!" "Isn't it? We came here for my sister's work—she paints, you know." "Yes, I know; I saw her before I saw you, though I didn't know she was your sister then. She seems to work hard—I mean she is out a great deal." "Yes, it's just the sort of country she likes; I think she's sorry we're going. She talks about coming back in the autumn to make some more studies here." "You're going?" he said blankly. "Are you? When?" "Our month is up the day after to-morrow; we only came for a month." There was the slightest pause, while he cursed himself for wasted weeks. "And you," he asked, "do you paint too?" "I? Oh no." She smiled her foolish smile, complacent in the consciousness of youth and a profile. His eyes allayed her misgivings about her hair. "I don't do anything; I'm quite ordinary," she said. David smiled with her. There was a fascination in pretending to know nothing of her mind when he believed he knew so much. "It's original to be ordinary now that everybody is a genius." "Is everybody a genius?" She looked a shade vacant. "Perhaps you live in London? Our home is in Beckenhampton; in the provinces, I am afraid, we are rather out of it."
- 33. "Oh, one can be quite as much out of it in London. What can be more 'provincial' than the life of the average Londoner? He goes to his business after breakfast, and he goes back to his villa after tea. The few friends he makes are, naturally, in the same groove, and talk about the same things. Why," he went on, overjoyed to have found his tongue, "he has no more acquaintance with artistic London, or political London, or fashionable London than the people with businesses and villas in the other towns. I don't understand the average Londoner's idea that, because his own particular hencoop is in the capital, he must have a wider range of vision than all the other hens in the kingdom; I don't know what it's based on. One would suppose that the sight of the General Post Office from the top of a bus every day converted people into a kind of intellectual aristocracy. The suburbs snigger at the provinces, and Bloomsbury sneers at the suburbs, and the truth is that, outside a few exclusive circles, Londoners get all their knowledge of London from the newspapers—which the provincials are reading at the same time." She was not interested in the subject; it struck her only as a strange one for him to discuss. "I suppose so," she said. "Still in London one sees things and one can get books to read. It's as difficult to get a new book in Beckenhampton as it is to get cream in the country." "Is that difficult?" he asked, thinking of Keats's "tight little fairy." "Oh, you don't know the country very well. Try! They look at you amazed when you ask for it." She laughed. "Last year when we went away we took a new American tinned thing in the shape of a breakfast food with us. I forget what it was called; a sort of porridge. They told you on the tin that it was to be eaten with cream. Carelessly, 'cream'! I believe in America cream isn't a curiosity. Our efforts to get threepennyworth! There was only one place for miles round where there was the slightest chance of it—a dairy belonging to a great lady who supplied the public with milk as a favour. I don't mean that she didn't take their money, but that the customers had to call for the milk and carry it away. We used to go
- 34. there two or three times a week and kow-tow to a consequential dairy woman. We almost thought at first she must be the great lady, but when she accepted our tips we concluded she wasn't. She unbent so far as to promise 'to try to manage it for us one morning.' After about a fortnight we reckoned it would have cost us two shillings by the time it was 'managed.' I daresay it would have cost more, but we decided that we couldn't afford the price of threepennyworth of cream in the country, and we never got any. I can't say I'm very fond of the country on the whole." "Why, I imagined you loved it. That is"—he corrected himself hastily —"you've the air of being so contented out here." "Have I? Oh, I do gush about it sometimes, but"—she shrugged her shoulders—"country walks are rather tiresome after you've got used to them, don't you think so?" He hesitated. "I think they must have been pleasanter before bicycles were invented," he said; "it's difficult to enjoy a stroll along a country lane when you have to keep skipping into a hedge to save yourself from being cut in halves. Men who drive realise their responsibility, but every counter-jumper seems to ride a bicycle, and the cad in power is always dangerous. The most exasperating thing about the country to me is the blindness and deafness of the people to all the beauties round them. I'll except Mr. Kemp because I've discovered that he notices the birds—they steal his grain, and he shoots them—but I've been trying to learn the names of the wild- flowers ever since I've been here, and it's impossible; one might as well inquire at Bethnal Green." "I didn't know that," she said; "I haven't tried to find out. But certainly everybody is very stupid." There was a moment's silence. His glance wandered, and reverted to her. She made a delightful picture; she was as lovely a philistine as ever looked to the main chance with the gaze of a goddess, and for him she had the magic of letters that she had never written, the seduction of thoughts that she had never known. He would not
- 35. admit to himself that a shade of disappointment was clouding his mood. Her name was cried before he spoke again. "Hilda! where are you?" "Hark! my sister's calling," she said; "I expect dinner's ready." She moved towards the house, David beside her, and met Bee coming down the path. "Mr. Tremlett has been saving my life, Bee! I've been attacked while you were out." "Mr. Tremlett was very kind," answered Bee, smiling. "How did he do it?" The three loitered in the doorway, talking, and she thanked him seriously when she understood what had happened. He noted that her tones were grave and sweet, and pitied her; and his gaze kept straying to the beautiful face. After a minute he turned away, and the sisters went inside. "He's quite a gentleman," said the girl; "and I'm sure he must have been stung, though he pretended he wasn't. It would have been quite romantic if he had been another colour." "She loved me for the dangers I had—averted," murmured Bee. "What's that—a quotation?" asked Hilda, CHAPTER XIX The rest of the day was barren, and in the knowledge that their visit was so near its end, David chafed at each empty hour. He had seen Hilda for a moment only since the morning. Standing aside as she came down the stairs, he had asked her if she was going to the field
- 36. again, and she shook her head, saying that she had a letter to write. He thrilled with the fancy that it might be a letter to himself. How queer to think that she might even give it to him to post! Still queerer to reflect that the thoughts which had so often held him captive, and the blithesome chatter that had rung so false were coin from the same mint. If they had been the strangers to each other that she believed, he would never have divined the gold beneath the small change. For that matter he too had been commonplace; the soul wasn't a jack-in-the-box to jump to order. "Oh, Mr. Thackeray, don't!" breathed Charlotte Brontë disillusioned, when he helped himself again to potatoes; and probably he had said nothing to justify her homage by the time the cheese came. He, David Lee, had talked potatoes. More than likely the girl whom he had found trivial had found him trite. Ever recurring, and overthrowing his reverie, was a gust of sensation —in part a perfume, in part a sickness, in which it seemed to him that the scent of her hair was in his throat. Before he left town he had scribbled a few lines expressing his gratitude for the photograph, and now it occurred to him that an answer might be lying at his lodging already. He wished he could read it; he wished he could re-read all the letters here while he was seeing her. He felt that to do so would help him. Without defining his need he felt that the letters, tangible, familiar, would lessen the vague sense of unreality that blew across his mind. During a few seconds he craved more to re-read the letters than to find himself alone with her. Not so in the morning. He rose eagerly. While he dressed, it seemed to him that he had been unreasonable yesterday; he accused himself of having resented circumstances, of having all unconsciously expected her to accord to Tremlett the confidences she made to Lee. That was absurd. Ostensibly a stranger, a mulatto thrown in her path by chance, how could he hope for her to lift her veil? But let her keep it down—it couldn't hide her from him. Let her yield a finger- tip, after she had bared her heart—he knew her even as she knew
- 37. herself. He smiled to think that by a word he could transfigure her. It was too soon, he was afraid to speak it; the complexity of the emotion that he foresaw in her warned him back; but the idea of power was sweet to him. He could tear the veil aside and call the real woman breathless to his view, he the stranger! There was a throb of triumph in his delusion. The day was Sunday, and when he joined her, he found the sisters together. He regretted that the elder had remained at home, although he knew that he had had nothing to hope from a tête-à- tête. "You don't paint to-day, Miss Sorrenford?" "No," she said, "I don't paint on Sunday." "Good gracious!" exclaimed Hilda, "I should think she didn't. What do you suppose the Kemps would say to her? We should be turned out, shouldn't we, Bee?" "Oh yes, I forgot the Kemps," he said; "it would shock them, of course."—"Bee," he assumed, was a diminutive of "Beatrice." "I've only spent one Sunday here. It was rather depressing; everybody looked so out of place—all the villagers seemed to have gone. Why do they dress up and spoil themselves on Sunday? It was as if a lot of supers in a play had come on in the wrong scene." Hilda smiled. "They'd think you had very bad taste if they heard you say so. You might as well try to persuade a servant that she looks smarter in a frilled cap and a muslin apron than when she goes out to meet her young man. Poor people always make frights of themselves on Sunday—and they pride themselves on their boots creaking." "Poor people!" he answered. "And the little children—that was worse still. It made me wretched to see the children; my heart ached for them whenever I went to the door." "Oh, you noticed them," said Bee, "did you? Yes, it's painful. Their hushed voices, and their sad eyes! They mustn't play; they're
- 38. forbidden to be happy. They sit in solemn groups, talking in whispers —cursing Sunday I often think. If one of them forgets and laughs, its mother comes out and shakes it—to teach it to love God." "Bee, don't get on the platform, or we might as well have gone to church. We do go to church, Mr. Tremlett; don't think we never do any better than this, please! But one doesn't feel so religious in the country on Sunday as one does in a town. It must be something in the air." "Perhaps it's because in the country one feels so much more religious every other day of the week," said David. Bee had frowned, discomfited; she sat silent. In her silence David was sorry for the Beauty—her banter had been so innocent; the frown, the tightened lips seemed to him an undeserved reproach. Then he talked to the wrong woman while the right woman listened, and he was even a little piqued that his earnestness couldn't rouse the wrong woman to permit him a glimpse of the poetry that was not in her. But once, when her skirt fluttered against his hand, it was not the thought of the poetry in her that sent a shiver up his arm; and it was not the thought of her sensibility that made his heart gallop, as imagination gave him back the tingle of her hair. That was herself, her pretty flesh-and-blood, the potent pink-and-white reality of her. Something he said, some chance remark, brought a line of "A Celibate's Love Songs" to Bee's mind. Her thoughts darted again to the photograph, and for the thousandth time she wished she could recall her stupid act; for the thousandth time she sought the courage to acknowledge it. The confession from which she had shrunk at the beginning looked by comparison easy: "I am deformed." Well, at least, no one could laugh at that. But "I sent my sister's likeness instead of my own." That was ridiculous, contemptible. And how could she explain the impulse? Wouldn't the man put his own construction on it? Wouldn't he think—wouldn't it be tacitly to admit —that she was in love with him?
- 39. Still, did the folly she had committed matter very much? He would never see her, never see her or Hilda either. If he had meant to come, surely he would have come already? Sooner or later the correspondence would die, and she would be alone again. Was it necessary to degrade herself in his sight? He would think she was in love with him! Once more the question that she was always trying to evade flared through her brain. Did it really mean that—in love with a man she had not met? She said the thing was impossible, and felt it was indecent, and knew it was true. The man had needed an appeal to the senses before he repudiated the term of "friendship"; the woman had no such need. She knew that she loved him, although she refused to own it. She loved him for his mind, for all that was herself in him, for all that was kin to her, but beyond her reach. And now, while her reverie might have borne her far from the conversation at her side, she was forced to listen to him, though she had no suspicion that it was he who talked. The mind that she loved compelled her to listen—for David was striving to make the dainty Hilda lift a corner of the veil. And there being no veil, she could not lift it; but the woman, whose presence he had half forgotten, felt her sympathies stirred within her strongly, and could have given him thought for thought, and note for note, while she sat there silent and unheeded. There was no veil. He was straining to clutch a phantasm, surrendering to the temptations of his fancied power. And, whilst the poet, pluming himself on power, put forth his intellect to master the girl that there was not, the indolent pink-and-white girl that there was, was mastering him. "He talks too much, now he has got over his shyness," she murmured, as he moved away. "I'm glad he has gone." "Are you?" said Bee. "Why? I'm not; he interested me." "Really? Well, I wish you had joined in, then, instead of sitting there mum. Why didn't you?" "I don't think he would have been very grateful; he didn't want to talk to me."
- 40. Hilda's admirable eyebrows rose just a shade higher than they would have risen if she had been surprised. Because she knew what was meant, she said, "What do you mean?" "I could see he wanted to talk to you. He always does. I think it's rather a good thing we're going home to-morrow." "Good heavens! don't be so idiotic. Do you suppose for a single moment I could——" "No; I was thinking of him, poor fellow!" said Bee. "I daresay he is unhappy enough without any other trouble." It was not unpleasant to hear that she was esteemed so dangerous. The girl essayed the languid tone of her favourite heroines. "What an imagination you have!" she drawled. "Now, he only struck me as a dull person who didn't know when to get up. When a man looks like that, he ought to be very careful what he talks about; so few subjects go with his complexion." Bee thought—"Oh, the arrogance of beauty! It would even deny to the others the right to have beautiful minds." In the afternoon a thunderstorm broke over Godstone, and rain fell with more or less violence all the evening. It saved Hilda from being bored by him again, for their train next day was an early one, and after breakfast she was upstairs a good deal, watching the trunks being packed. Once or twice as she tripped to Bee from the sitting- room with a book, or a work-basket, or a packet of labels, he met her in the passage, and she threw him the brave smile of one who was sunny in fatigue; but there was no opportunity for conversation. To David the shadow of her departure had fallen across Daisymead already. Already he felt desolate in anticipating its emptiness when she had gone. It seemed to him quite a month ago that he had arrived here, and the few scenes of their brief association, now that the end had come, were as dear to his regret as close companionship. Even the period of his bashfulness and despondence had a tender charm in looking back at it. He was eager to flee with
- 41. his memories to town, instinctively conscious that in no place would he be so forlorn as in the place where she had been; but there would be heavy hours before he was able to go, poignant hours in which to miss her first. It had been in his mind to walk to the station with them both, but she did not seem to wish it, so he bade them good-bye in the front garden while the porter was making the luggage fast on the truck. The landlady and her daughter had come out too, and at the last minute Mr. Kemp appeared. He had a dead bird in his hand; Hilda uttered an exclamation of pity as she saw it, and Bee was mute. "Oh, the dear! What bird is it, Mr. Kemp?" "A green linnet, Miss," he said. "Mischeevious things!" "A linnet? I thought linnets were always brown; I'd no idea they were ever so pretty as this. Why, it's perfectly lovely! What a shame they aren't all made green." "Yes, it's a showy thing," admitted Mr. Kemp; "the brown 'un ain't much to look at alongside it, that's a fact." He rubbed his hand on his coat, and put it out to her in farewell. "But the green linnet has got no song." The sisters went slowly up the road; and David followed the "showy" figure with his eyes until the road swerved. CHAPTER XX "Well, my dears," said the Professor, "and how are you, eh? Got nice and sunburnt, and done yourselves good, have you? Bee, my dear, you might just touch the bell—I told the girl not to make the tea until we rang. Let me have a look at you both now!" He looked at Hilda. "Come, come, that's first rate! And what's the news?"
- 42. "Oh, we're splendid," she replied. "I don't think there's any news; we just did nothing. That is, I did nothing, and Bee worked. You might have come down to us, Dad, if only for a day! We were always expecting a wire to tell us you were coming." "Yes, I know, my dear," he said, "I know; you wrote me. When I read your letter I thought I really would go down; I made up my mind to. 'Now I know what I'll do,' I thought; 'I won't answer her— I'll say nothing about it—and on Saturday I'll pack my bag, and take her by surprise.' But God bless my soul! when Saturday came I couldn't get away, my dear, I couldn't get away." His glance wandered to his other daughter, and rested on her doubtfully. "Or perhaps it was you who wrote, Bee? One of you did, I know; it's all the same." "Just the same, father," she said, "all the same; we both wanted you." The teapot was brought in presently, and half a dozen words were uttered which did more to make her feel at home again than anything that had happened yet. The servant knocked a cup over, put a forefinger inside it, in setting it right, and said in a hoarse whisper, "Can I speak to you, Miss?" When the conference with the servant was over, Bee carried her father's cup to the armchair, and took Hilda's to the sofa; and the Professor murmured in the tone that belongs to after-thoughts: "And did you make your studies, Bee?" "Yes, thanks, father." "That's right. Many?" "Oh, just as many as I hoped to do. I'm rather pleased with one of them." "That's right." "Anything new here, father?"
- 43. "In a way, my dear, in a way; the new man has taken over the Theatre Royal. Mobsby has left the town; I hear he has gone to Nottingham. You might give me another piece of sugar, a very small piece—or break a lump in halves." "The new man taken over the theatre?" said Hilda. "Have you written to him about the opera?" "Have you, father?" asked Bee, searching the sugar-basin. "Yes," he said, "yes, I did write to him. I'm afraid he's not a gentleman. I dropped him a line, explaining matters, and offering to call on him one day when he had an hour to spare, if he would suggest an appointment, and he—er—I got no answer." "Perhaps the letter didn't reach him, dear." "I fancied that might be the reason," said the Professor; "the same idea occurred to me. So I wrote to him again, but——No, I'm afraid both letters reached him. Now Mobsby used to answer—I'll give him credit for that. He wasn't enterprising, but he was civil, at all events; he made excuses for declining my work. This Mr. Jordan seems to have no enterprise, and no politeness either. We don't go to the Royal any more, my dears! I put my foot down about that. For the future when we take tickets for a theatre, they shall be for the Grand." "The Royal always has the best companies, though," pouted Hilda; "and the audience at the Grand is so dirty." "For all that we shall go to the Grand," repeated the Professor; "it's the only dignified protest I can make. While the Royal remains under this fellow's management it will see no money of mine. I am quite firm on that point—unless of course diplomacy effects anything," he added, "unless diplomacy effects anything." "Diplomacy can't effect much with a man who doesn't answer your letters," said Hilda. Her voice was tart. "What more do you think of doing, then, father?" inquired Bee. "Have you a plan?"
- 44. "I never let the grass grow under my feet, you know; when there is an opportunity, I make the most of it. A friend at court may do a great deal, and the other afternoon——" He sipped slowly, and spread his handkerchief across his knee. "It seemed almost providential; I don't do such a thing once in two months, but it was a very hot day, and I was tired and thirsty; it was on my way home from Great Hunby. I turned into the 'George' for something to drink, my dear, and I made the acquaintance of Mr. Jordan's business manager. The thin edge of the wedge, perhaps! though I am never sanguine. Of course I did no more than mention the opera—the merest word—but he seemed interested. The next time we meet I shall refer to it again. It may lead to something. He was intelligent. He may pull the strings. I'm never sanguine, but it stands to reason that the business manager of a theatre has a lot to say in the conduct of affairs. If I cultivate him——" He looked about him impatiently. "You might pass me the tobacco-jar, my dear." She got up, and took it from the mantelpiece, and gave it to him. "Here it is, father. If you cultivate him, you think he might use his influence with Mr. Jordan?" "Just so. But festina lente, my dear—hasten slowly. Don't look too far ahead. It's because people look too far ahead that they trip in reading aloud. The same principle, exactly! The eye travels too fast, and the tongue stumbles. Half the mistakes that the pupils make in reading blank verse are due to the fact that they look too far ahead. In life, as in reading, we should clearly enunciate one word at a time. What was I going to say?... Yes, having made his acquaintance, there's no telling what it may lead to if I show the young man a little hospitality. It's quite on the cards that Mr. Jordan may sing a different tune and ask me to let him hear the opera. If he should do that, I—I am not vindictive—if he should do that, and give the work his honest consideration, we would certainly go to the Royal as usual." The prospect of his showing a new young man a little hospitality smoothed the frown from Hilda's brow. The young men of
- 45. Beckenhampton were mercenary, and girls who had been her schoolfellows and knew her age—girls who had no other attraction than their fathers' incomes—had married in their teens. She was not without a lurking fear of being "left on the shelf," as she phrased it; in which misgiving she resembled a multitude of girls who look equally superior to the fear and the phrase. It is, indeed, an unpleasant comment on our method of bringing up the maiden that in the minds of even the most modest girls, the eagerness to marry should precede the wish to marry any man in particular. To the blunter and less refined sensibilities of the male there seems something a little indelicate in this impartial eagerness. The Professor's intention commended itself to Hilda so warmly, that during the next few days she introduced the subject of the opera more than once. It was not until she had been back from Godstone a week, however, that the growth of the grass to which he had made reference was in any way checked. And then chance was the mower. She had gone but with him, ostensibly to help him to choose a hat, and of a truth to prevent his choosing one, for the years during which man is free to exercise his own judgment about his own clothes are few. As they turned into Market Street, he gave her a nudge, so hard that it hurt her, and waving his hand to a stranger, slackened his pace. The stranger, who had been hurrying past, saw that the elderly bore was accompanied by a bewilderingly pretty girl, and came promptly to a standstill—in his bearing all the deference which a young man can yield to old age under the eyes of beauty. "Oh, how do you do, Professor Sorrenford?" "Ah, pleased to meet you again," exclaimed the Professor. "Let me— er—my daughter; Mr. Harris—my daughter." Vivian made another bow—one far different from the shamefaced bob of the local swains, Hilda thought. It was, indeed, modelled on the obeisance he saw the lovers make to the heroines when he was counting the house in the dress-circle. "Mr. Harris is a new-comer to the town," said the Professor blandly.
- 46. "I am afraid Mr. Harris must find it very dull?" murmured the girl. The jeune premier was his exemplar still: "It reveals new attractions every day!" he declared. He looked at her significantly. Her eyelids drooped. The father saw nothing but the opera in his desk.— "Yes, I think, myself, there are many attractions to be found in the place," he said; "though, as an old resident—one of the very oldest residents, in fact—I may be too partial, perhaps. I have been in Beckenhampton now—how many years? I begin to lose count. People will tell you that the name of 'Sorrenford' is as well known here as the name of—ha, ha—the name of the Theatre Royal, itself. Mr. Harris is interested in the Theatre Royal, my dear—the scene of so many of our pleasant evenings." "Oh, indeed?" She was gently surprised. "You're at the theatre, Mr. Harris?" "In the front," he said. "I hope we shall give you some pleasanter evenings still under the new régime, Miss Sorrenford. We mean to make the house one of the most go-ahead theatres in the provinces." His tone was bright, inspiriting. He struck her as likely to succeed in anything that he undertook. "We shall not fail to sample the—er—the bill of fare," said the Professor; "ha, ha, the bill of fare! We shall pay you an early visit. I hope you'll return it. A composer's time is not his own, but we are always glad to see our friends on Sunday nights. If you have nothing better to do one Sunday——" "I shall be charmed." "Mr. Harris is busy on week nights like yourself," put in Hilda with a smile. "To be sure!—like myself. Sunday is really the only day a professional man has a chance to be sociable, isn't it? We have a bond in common. Take us as we are, Mr. Harris. Drop in. Pot luck, and a little music, and a hearty welcome. Now don't forget. Let us be among the first in Beckenhampton to—to make you feel at home in it."
- 47. "I shall be charmed," repeated Vivian, gazing undisguised admiration at Hilda. She gave him her hand. He crossed the road victoriously; the father and daughter continued their way to the hatter's. For some seconds the old man was silent, wrapt in ecstatic reverie. Then he broke out: "Well? Eh? Not bad—what do you think? Did you notice how glad he was I invited him? He's been asking about me since I saw him; he's been turning the opera over in his mind. That's the plain English of it. Very cordial, but he can't take me in! There's the pounds, shillings, and pence interest underneath, my dear! I saw through him." He chuckled. "He's nibbling—the business manager is nibbling! It won't be long before he comes, you'll see!... We'd better have a Perrin's for supper next Sunday, my dear, on the chance of his turning up." Vivian was much pleased to have somewhere to go, and he made no longer delay in presenting himself than he considered that appearances required. Sunday had been dismal enough while he was with a company on tour; here in his new post, without even a game of napoleon on a railway journey to mitigate the tedium, he had found it drearier still. The opportunity for talking to a girl who wasn't a barmaid would have tempted him had the girl been plain; when she was admitted to be the prettiest girl in Beckenhampton— or, as the landlord of the "George" had it, "the belle of our town"— he felt that it was really a matter for rejoicing. And his host's greeting was as warm as his invitation. Certainly his performance on the 'cello after supper was rather a nuisance, but "the belle" made a delightful picture as an accompanist; and when she sang an entirely new ballad about Dead Days and a Garden, with a tune that a fellow could catch, to take away the taste of the classics commanded by her papa, the visitor felt quite a stir of sentiment. And he was given another whisky-and-soda, and another of the six cigars which the Professor had arranged in a cigar-box that had lain
- 48. empty for years. Even when "Father" had been persuaded to let Mr. Harris hear "something from the opera" and Mr. Harris began to realise that the garrulous old gentleman wanted more from him than compliments, the evening was not a disappointment; the younger girl was so enchanting, and the atmosphere of a home was such a novelty. It was impossible for Vivian to be sorry he had come, though he perceived that it would be unwise to define the boundaries of his position in the theatre if he wished to come often. "Do you play or sing yourself, Mr. Harris?" Bee inquired. "No," he said; "no, I'm not musical." In this musical family he regretted to acknowledge it. "Sure?" asked Hilda, swinging round on the stool. "Oh yes, unfortunately—quite sure." He was at the point of adding: "Though I was, brought up in the thick of it all," but to explain that his mother's second husband had been a negro was never agreeable to him. "I'm awfully fond of it, though! I could listen to singing all night. Won't you give us something else? Do, please; don't get up!" "I really don't know what there is." She ruffled the stack beside her listlessly. "I'm afraid there's nothing else for me to sing." "Let me help you find something." "If you can. If you really haven't had enough?" He went across to her, and they bent their heads over the heap together; and he hung at the piano while she sang another entirely new ballad about Days that were No More, and a Stream. When she finished he murmured "Thank you," and threw into his manner the suggestion of being too much moved to say anything more lengthy. "It's rather pretty, isn't it?" she said, lifting her eyes in the candle- light. "Yes; and your voice——" he sighed expressively.
- 49. "Oh!" she looked down again, affording him a good view of her lashes, and stroked the keys. "My voice is really as small as a voice can be." "I've never heard one that carried me away as yours does. Do you know—I suppose you'll be shocked—but I like the drawing-room ballad—sometimes—nearly as well as the classical things." "I like them better," she said archly. "Do you?" He was delighted. "So do I. I hadn't the courage to own that." "I daren't let my father hear. It would be high treason." They both laughed. The pretence of having a secret together was quite charming. "I see there is a concert announced for Thursday fortnight at the Town Hall," remarked the Professor. "Those are pleasures you're unable to enjoy, Mr. Harris, eh? I suppose you can't leave the theatre? But there is a big bill. We shall have some fine artists. We shall have a treat, quite a rare treat." "Yes," said Vivian. "I know. I'm afraid it'll spoil our Thursday night's house; I wish they had fixed it for another evening. Thursday is our best night in the dress-circle as a rule." "How lovely it must be," exclaimed Hilda, "to go to the theatre every evening! Though I suppose you get tired of it, too?" "I should think it was nicer in the country than in London," said Bee, "isn't it? You do see a different piece here every week." "Yes," he answered. "One gets a change. But I never see a piece right through, you know. There's so much to do in front." "The business of a theatre," observed the Professor ponderously, "is naturally enormous. The outsider has no conception of the—er— intricacies of theatrical management. These young ladies look at the stage in the limelight, they know nothing of the commercial element
- 50. of the enterprise. The sea of figures in which the manager wades is to them of course a terra incognita." Vivian stroked his moustache, and hid a smile. "Yes, the figures are a bit of a bore," he said. "I was acting manager to a company on tour before I joined Jordan. That was more bother still, you know." "Acting manager?" said Hilda. "To manage the acting I should have thought was jolly?" "Oh, I had nothing to do with the stage! 'Acting manager' and 'business manager' mean the same thing." "How curious!" "Yes, it is rather odd. No, I had nothing to do with the stage, but there were the journeys to arrange then, and there are always people in a company who grumble at the train call, whatever time it's for. If you take them early they complain because they have to get up so soon; and if you take them late, they say they've never known a tour on which they had to make so many journeys at night. And of course it's always the poor acting manager's fault!" "Why not take them in the afternoon? Wouldn't that get over the difficulty?" "Well, you can't travel from Bristol to Yarmouth in an afternoon, and that was one of the journeys we had to make. The train call was for twelve o'clock Saturday night, after the show, and we didn't get into Yarmouth till the next evening. How cross some of them were!" "So should I have been!" He tried to look as if he couldn't imagine her cross. "It wasn't very pleasant certainly. At four in the morning we were at a standstill. Black dark. And we had to stick in the station till half-past seven. There was no refreshment room open, of course; we all sat shivering in the train. And it rained. Oh! how it rained! About six o'clock, one of the ladies asked two or three of us into her compartment, and
- 51. made tea with a little spirit-lamp that she had brought. I think I enjoyed that tea more than any I've ever drunk, but we didn't get a solid meal till we reached Peterborough—three hours more to wait. It had stopped raining by then, and we had roast mutton at an hotel, and yawned at the cathedral." "I hope you took the good Samaritan who had given you the tea?" said the Professor. "We did, yes. As a matter of fact, the leading man proposed to her during the wait at Peterborough. It was the tea that had done it—he said he hadn't believed any woman could look so nice at 6 A.M. Of course the other ladies declared she had curled her hair before she invited us into the compartment, but that was jealousy; he was a good-looking chap, and getting ten pounds a week.... They were engaged all the tour." "Do you mean that they married then?" Bee asked. "No, they didn't marry, but they were engaged all the tour. They quarrelled at the Grand, Islington. Her father had been a celebrated wit, and she used to say awfully insulting things and think they were funny." It was nearly midnight when he rose to go. He was perhaps less impressionable than most young men of his age, less addicted to wasting time in flirtations that promised nothing more satisfactory than a kiss and a keepsake; but as he strode down the silent road to his apartments he was not quite fancy-free in the moonlight, his reverie was not quite so practical as usual. He resolved to send a box to the Professor at the earliest date that it was desirable to "put a little paper out"; and as he foresaw himself welcoming the party in the foyer, he was gratified to reflect that he looked his best in an evening suit. He was also gratified to reflect that "the belle" must go for walks, and examine the windows in the High Street, and that her sister couldn't be always with her. After he had gone the Professor said—
- 52. "Well, he was taken by what he heard of the opera, I think? He'll mention it to Jordan if I'm not very much mistaken. Rome wasn't built in a day, but I've laid the foundation stone. We're getting on!" "Yes, I'm sure he liked it," answered Bee. "I wish it had been Mr. Jordan himself, though. Don't you think Mr. Harris is rather young to have much authority, father?" "Tut, tut," replied the composer tetchily, "what nonsense! He's shrewd, he's a smart fellow. What do you suppose he came for—to smoke a cigar with me? Business men don't run after strangers for nothing. You talk without considering. There's always a motive for these friendly actions, my dear. Women don't look beneath the surface; I could never teach your poor mother, God bless her! to look beneath the surface. I daresay he'll drop in next Sunday again; it wouldn't surprise me at all." He turned to Hilda, as he generally did when he wasn't in trouble. And Hilda nodded—and smiled. CHAPTER XXI The following morning there came to "Miss H. Sorrenford" a letter from David Lee—an urgent letter because he had been so long impatient, demanding an explanation of her silence. The explanation was that each time she had re-read the note of thanks he had written before leaving town her imposture had looked to her more shameful; but after considering a great deal how to say as much in her answer, she did not say it at all. She told him instead something of her feelings in returning to the house that was called her home. It was very sweet, very strange, to David to receive the first of her confessions breathing a familiar presence. Hilda had never seemed so close to him as she did in the hour when he pored over these pages of her sister's. He heard Hilda's voice while he welcomed
- 53. Bee's thoughts; when he replied to Bee, he saw Hilda's face. And it was the face, not the thoughts, that maddened him with longing. It was the face that was dizzying him as he paltered with his conscience and offered prayers to the future. Though he did not discriminate, though he associated the soul of the woman with the form of the girl, the triumph was to the physical. The form, not the soul, tempted him to renounce his father's gospel, even while he proclaimed the soul his justification. The charm of the woman's letters lay no longer in what she said, but in his belief that the girl said it. Hilda's fairness, not Bee's mind, held his love; and in his confidences to Bee there was a cadence that there had not been, a difference which she strove to persuade herself was imaginary, because to admit that it existed would be to realise that the photograph had wrought mischief. There was nothing tangible, no word to point to, but beneath the intimate record of his doings, and the references to his work, underlying the intuition which enabled him to respond, as always, to more than she had spelt, she felt something in her friend's letters that was new, something—she was conscious of it only in moments—something that made them now a man's letters to a woman. When September was nearing its end, David received a few lines from Ownie. She wrote: "I have been meaning to congratulate you oh the success of the book of poems that people are talking about. So you have made a hit? Well, I am very glad. I was always sure when you were a child you would do well at writing—you have all my poor father's talent. Well, I am very glad. Though I haven't had a chance to read it, and never seen anything of you, I am delighted to hear you have done so well. I hope you are well, and don't forget I like to see you whenever you have time to spare." She remained, on paper, his "Affectionate Mother." His conscience pricked him, for his last visit had been paid in the spring. When he sent a copy of the book, which he knew would bore
- 54. her to the verge of extinction, he promised to call on her the next Sunday. He went in the afternoon. The latest of the Swiss lads to be described in the advertisements as "man servant" opened the door while struggling into his coat. His English was as unintelligible as his predecessors', and David had doubts whether she was at home while he waited in the hall. Dinner was over, but the smell of it lingered; she was unlikely to be out, he thought. The Swiss sped back, and delivering himself of strange syllables, led the way to the drawing-room. It was empty, and the smell of dinner was less strong here. After some minutes Ownie came in. Her hair was yellow still, but the yellow of a "restorer," not the yellow of her youth, and under this piteous travesty of the past her aged face looked older. The years had caricatured her defects, and her business had stamped its mark upon her. Ownie was a bulky woman with a long upper lip and a fretful, vulgar mouth. In conversation she had the restless eye and mechanical smile of the boarding-house keeper, who during three meals every day makes an effort at cheerful small-talk—illustrating the advantages of the district in which her boarding-house is situated—while she listens suspensive to the servant inquiring behind a chair whether the occupant will "take any more." Of the girl who had once smiled victoriously in the mirror of a theatre vestibule nothing was left; in her stead was all the pathos of a lifetime. Only to the bulky woman it was given still to discern a likeness to the girl. Nature had yielded that; she did not see herself as she was. To her the rouge on her cheeks was not so palpable, the wrinkles were not so deep. Dyed, painted, dreary, she sank into a chair, and yawned widely, with her hands in her lap. "I thought you were never coming again," she said. He pleaded stress of work: "And I've been in the country since I saw you. Well, how are you, mother?"
- 55. "Oh, nothing to brag about; the heat has been killing, hasn't it? I should have liked a change too.... I haven't been able to read your book yet—I can't read for long, it tries my eyes so; I must get some new glasses. Well, are you making a fortune out of it?" "It's selling splendidly—for poetry. Yes, I shall make a good deal by it, strange to say. If you want a change, why not go to Brighton for a week or two? I"—he was embarrassed—"I can give you the money." "Oh, it isn't that," she explained with another gape; "I can't leave the house. Who's going to look after it while I'm gone? It's an awful drag if you haven't got a house-keeper. And if you have, you can't go away and leave everything to her! Fancy you with money to spare, though! Well, you've got to thank me for that, David—your cleverness comes from my side. You didn't have your father's voice, you know; if you hadn't written, I don't know what you'd have done." He did not know either; his life would have been insupportable if he hadn't written. He looked beyond her vaguely, and nodded. "Is the house full?" he asked. "Pretty full. They're most of them new now—Americans, and people up for a few weeks; the others 'll be coming back at the end of the month.... There's another boarding-house opened round the corner; they keep the gas full up in every room all the evening." "As an advertisement?" "Yes; it's stupid. Not enough people pass here in the evening to make it pay. It isn't as if it were at the seaside. Would you like a cup o' tea or anything?" "No, thanks," he said. "You may as well. I want a cup o' tea myself; it'll wake me up—I was just going to have forty winks when the man told me you were here." "I'm sorry." He rang the bell. "I wish I'd come at another time."
- 56. "Oh, it doesn't matter," she returned; "there's always something.... I suppose you haven't heard from Vivian?" "I never hear from him. I think it's nearly a year since I saw him. What is he doing?" "He's got a first-rate berth. He left the company at the end of the last tour; you knew he was on tour with a theatrical company, didn't you? He's settled in one place now—much nicer for him than travelling all the time, a great improvement in every way." She roused herself to boast feebly about Vivian. "Not many young men of his age get into such a thing; it's a very responsible position, to be business manager of a theatre. And there's the salary all the year round—every week he's sure of so much. That's an advantage you can't hope for, eh? You may be comfortably off one year, and have nothing the next. Writing is so precarious—you never know where you are." "I jog along," said David amiably. "Oh yes," she allowed, "I'm sure it's wonderful, your keeping yourself as you have. And it's nice to have your book talked about. But of course there's no certainty about your profession—you can't depend on that sort of thing." She tittered. "Fame is all very well, but I'm afraid Vivian would say 'Give me a regular income.' ... He'll be up on Sunday, if you'd like to see him." "Yes, I'll come in," he answered. "What town has he gone to?" "Beckenhampton," she said; "the Theatre Royal." "Beckenhampton?" He looked at her wide-eyed. "Do you know it?" "N-no," he said; "no, I don't know it exactly. How long has he been there?" "Oh, two or three months. He's having great times, I believe—he's so popular wherever he goes; he gets asked out to supper parties, and all that." She hesitated, toying with the keeper on her finger, as
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