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 The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Cornhill
Magazine (vol. XLII, no. 247 new series, January
1917)
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
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eBook.

Title: The Cornhill Magazine (vol. XLII, no. 247 new series,
January 1917)

Author: Various

Release date: February 29, 2024 [eBook #73073]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Smith, Elder and Co, 1860

Credits: hekula03 and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from
images made available by the HathiTrust Digital
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE (VOL. XLII, NO. 247 NEW SERIES,
JANUARY 1917) ***
 [All rights, including the right of publishing Translations of
Articles in the Magazine are reserved.]
Registered for Transmission to Canada and Newfoundland by
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THE
CORNHILL MAGAZINE.
JANUARY 1917.
 UNCONQUERED: AN EPISODE OF
1914.
by maud diver.
Copyright, 1917, by Mrs. Diver, in the United States of America.

‘The stars are threshed and the souls are threshed from their
husks.’

Blake.

CHAPTER I.

‘Whom does love concern save the lover and the beloved?
Yet its impact deluges a thousand shores.’
E. M. Forster.

Sir Mark Forsyth pushed back his chair, left the dinner-table, and
strolled over to the bay window. He drew out his cigarette-case, but
apparently forgot to open it. He stood there, looking out across the
garden, that merged into rocky spaces of heather and bracken, and
culminated in an abrupt descent to the loch. Low above the
darkening hills the sunset splendour flamed along the horizon, and
all the waters beneath were alight with the transient glory. But the
man’s face wore the abstracted air of one who dwells upon an inner
vision. Though the subdued flow of talk behind him entered his ears,
it did not seem to reach his brain. ‘Bobs,’ his devoted Irish terrier,
crept out from under the table and, joining his master, made sundry
infallible bids for attention, without success.
 Presently alluring whiffs of cigarette smoke, intruding on his
dreams, reminded Sir Mark of the unopened case in his hand.
‘I vote for coffee on the terrace, Mother,’ he said, turning his eyes
from the glory without to the dimness of the unlighted dining room.
‘Then we’ll have the boats out. There’s going to be an afterglow and
a half presently.’
‘I told Grant about the coffee two minutes ago, dear,’ Lady Forsyth
answered, smiling; but her eyes dwelt a little anxiously on the
silhouetted view of her son’s profile, as he set a match to his
cigarette. The straight, outstanding nose and square chin vividly
recalled his dead father. But the imaginative brow was of her
bestowing, and a splash of light on his hair showed the reddish
chestnut tint of her own people: the tint she loved.
‘Come along, children,’ she added, including in that category four
out of her five guests—two girls, unrelated to herself, Ralph Melrose,
a Gurkha subaltern, and Maurice Lenox, an artist friend of Mark’s.
Keith Macnair, professor of philosophy—his rugged face lined with
thought, his dark hair lightly frosted at the temples—was the only
genuine grown-up of her small house-party. A connection of her own,
and devoted to both mother and son, he was so evenly placed
between them in the matter of age that he could play elder brother to
Mark or younger brother to Lady Forsyth as occasion required. And,
whenever professional claims permitted, occasion usually did require
his presence, in some capacity, either at Wynchcombe Friars or
Inveraig. Between times, he lived and lectured and wrote
philosophical books in Edinburgh, having been a Fellow of the
University since his graduate days: and never, if he could help it, did
he fail to spend most of the long vacation at Inveraig.
When the party rose from the table he joined Mark in the window:
and as the two girls stood back to let Lady Forsyth pass out, she
slipped an arm round each. Her love of youth and young things
seemed to deepen with her own advancing years. But she had her
preferences; and it was the arm round Sheila Melrose that tightened
as they passed through the long drawing-room to the terrace, where
coffee was set upon a low stone table in full view of the illumined
lake and sky.
‘It’s splendid to have you safe back again, child,’ she said,
releasing Monica Videlle and drawing Sheila down to the seat beside
her. ‘India’s monopolised you quite long enough. There’s some
mysterious magnetism about that country. People seem to catch it
like a disease. And I was getting alarmed lest you might succumb to
the infection.’
Miss Melrose smiled thoughtfully at the sunset. ‘I’m not sure that I
haven’t succumbed already!’ she said in her low, clear-cut voice. ‘I
have vague tempting dreams of going back with Ralph when his
furlough is up; or with Mona, to help doctor her Indian women. But
probably they’ll never materialise⸺’
‘More than probably, if I have any say in the matter!’
Lady Forsyth spoke lightly, but under the lightness lurked a note of
decision. She had her own private dreams concerning this girl with
the softly shining eyes under level brows, and the softly resolute lips
that never seemed quite to leave off smiling even in repose.
At mention of India Miss Videlle’s thoughtful face came suddenly
to life. ‘It would be just lovely for me,’ she said. ‘Too good to be true!’
‘Never mind, Miss Videlle,’ Maurice consoled her almost tenderly.
‘This ripping evening’s not too good to be true. And I can put you up
to some tips for squaring Lady Forsyth—in strict confidence of
course!’
He bent towards her with a slightly theatrical offer of his arm, and
they moved off to a seat near the ivy-covered wall, looking towards
the distant rapids.
Lady Forsyth glanced after them with a passing twinge of concern.
The girl—a fairly recent acquisition of Sheila’s—was shy and
clever, with a streak of dark blood in her veins. She had done
brilliantly at Oxford, and was now qualified to take up the medical
work in India on which she had set her heart. Sheila had acquired
her while going through a course of massage and magnetic healing,
for which she showed so distinct a gift that she had serious thoughts
of taking it up in earnest. A vague idea of going out with Monica had
been simmering in her brain for the past week; but she had not
spoken of it till to-night.
‘Wonder what’s come to old Mark,’ mused Ralph pensively, stirring
his coffee. ‘Thought this picnic arrangement was all for his benefit
⸺’
‘Rather so!’ Mark’s voice answered him, as he and Macnair
strolled round the corner of the house. ‘Hurry up with the coffee,
Mums. I love dabbling my oars in the sunset. Lenox, old chap, you
two might go on ahead and give the word.’
They went on readily enough; and the rest soon followed them
through the wilder spaces of the garden, down rocky steps to the
bay, where sand and rough grass shelved gently to the water’s edge.
Here they found two boats already afloat, with Maurice and Monica
—she was commonly called Mona—established in one of them.
Lady Forsyth, nothing if not prompt, privately consigned Ralph to
that boat, Mark and Keith to her own. It was a heavenly evening, and
she thanked goodness they were going to have it to themselves:
quite a rare event since Maurice Lenox had discovered that
superfluous Miss Alison.
‘Coming to row stroke for us?’ she asked as Mark handed her in.
He shook his head, smiling down at her.
‘That’s to be Keith’s privilege! I’m for the other boat.’ But neither
his smile nor the light pressure of her arm could atone for the refusal.
‘Pointed and purposeless,’ she denounced it mentally; but within a
very few moments his purpose was revealed.
‘Down stream a bit first, Keith,’ he called out, as he pushed off his
own boat and sprang lightly in. ‘I want to run up to the village. Miss
Alison and her friend might like to join us.’
So they rowed down stream at his command: and for Lady Forsyth
the pleasure of the outing was gone; the peace and beauty of the
evening spoilt by fierce resentment against these intrusive strangers
who had no authorised position in the scheme of things. And her
natural vexation was intensified by concern for Sheila: though
whether the girl took Mark’s sudden and strange defection seriously
it was impossible to tell. She wore that smiling, friendly graciousness
of hers like a bright veil, that seemed to baffle attempts at intimacy,
while it enhanced her charm. Even with Lady Forsyth, who loved her
as a daughter, she had her reserves, notably on matters nearest her
heart.
‘After all, she knows the real Mark almost as well as I do,’ Mark’s
mother reflected by way of consolation. ‘And she’s wiser than I am,
in many ways, though she is nearly thirty years younger. I’m
probably racing on miles too fast. He’s barely known the girl a
fortnight. He couldn’t be so crazy⸺All the same, he’s no business
to—it’s distracting!’ she concluded, her irritation flaming up again at
sight of the two figures that were now approaching the shore,
escorted by Mark.
Miss Alison, the taller one, had unquestionably height and grace to
recommend her. Mark, who stood six feet in his socks, could barely
give her a couple of inches; and the languid deliberation of her
movements had, on Lady Forsyth, the same maddening effect as a
drawl in speech. Her own brain and body were too quick, in the
original sense of the word, not to make her a trifle intolerant towards
the ‘half-alive’; and, rightly or wrongly, Miss Alison was apt to
produce that impression even on her admirers, though no doubt they
expressed it differently.
Personal prejudice apart, Lady Forsyth preferred the girl’s
companion, Miss O’Neill, in spite of her wrong-headed zeal for the
Suffrage and Home Rule. Had Bel Alison been out in search of a foil,
she could have discovered none better than this big-hearted,
fanatical woman of five-and-thirty, shortish and squarely built, with an
upward nose, an ugly, humorous mouth, and a quantity of rough
brown hair in a chronic state of untidiness. Lady Forsyth gathered
that she was an active philanthropist, and that the incongruous pair
shared a flat somewhere in Earl’s Court. To outward seeming they
had certainly nothing beyond the same address in common.
 If Bel’s movements were over-deliberate, Miss O’Neill’s were apt
to be sudden; and she strode into the boat with the decision of one
given to putting her foot down to some purpose.
‘Steady on! You evidently don’t do things by halves!’ Sir Mark
remonstrated, laughing, and consigning her to a cushion in the bows.
Bel had already usurped Maurice’s seat astern, and Mark rowed
stroke—this time without need of invitation. Then they turned about
and moved slowly up the loch, dabbling their oars in the sunset fires
and shivering the purple shadows of the hills.
And if for Helen Forsyth the pleasure of the evening was over, for
Mark it had but just begun. And she knew it. Therein lay the sting.
Though ‘the boy’ was now very much a man, she could honestly
have said, two weeks ago, that nothing beyond minor differences
and mutual flashes of temper had marred the deep essential unity of
their relation—a unity the more inestimably precious since he was
now all she had left of her nearest and dearest on earth. Husband,
daughter and younger son had all passed on before her into the
Silence, and of her own people one brother alone remained. At the
moment he was Governor of New Zealand, and seemed disposed to
stay on there indefinitely when his term of office expired. The
Empire, he wrote, was a saner, sweeter, more spacious place of
abode than twentieth-century England, which seemed temporarily
given over to the cheap-jack, the specialist, and the party politician.
And she—while loving every foot of her husband’s country and her
own—understood too well the frequent disappointment of those who
came, on rare and hardly earned leave, from the ends of the earth
and failed to find, in picture-palaces and music-halls, in the jargon of
Futurists and demagogues, the England of their dreams.
For this cause, her sole remaining brother had become little more
than a memory and a monthly letter. Yet could she never account
herself a lonely woman, while she had Keith for friend and mentor,
Mark for son, and Sheila for—more than possible—daughter. What
business had this unknown girl to step into their charmed circle and
unsettle the very foundation of things? Never, till to-night, had it
seemed possible to Mark’s mother that she could arrive at dreading
the fulfilment of his heart’s desire. Yet that was what it amounted to.
Dread lurked behind her surface irritation. The touch of second sight
in her composition made her vaguely conscious of danger in the air.
Small wonder if she anathematised Maurice Lenox for his knack of
picking up promiscuous strangers, and, in this case, aggravating his
offence by failing to appropriate his own discovery.

CHAPTER II.

Quand on vous voit, on vous aime; quand on vous aime, où

vous voit-on?

For a while the two boats kept in touch, so that talk passed easily
between them. Miss Alison spoke little. Silence rather became the
fair pensive quality of her charm—and probably she knew it. The
uncharitable supposition was Lady Forsyth’s: and she was fain to
confess that pensiveness and silence harmonised well with the fine,
straight nose, the mass of dull gold hair, and eyes of that transparent
blue which lacks warmth and depth, yet has a limpid beauty of its
own, especially where the pupils are large and the lashes noticeably
long.
Mark, too, had fallen silent: the worst possible sign. But Miss
O’Neill atoned for all deficiencies by discoursing vigorously to
Maurice’s swaying shoulders, upon the latest developments of the
suffrage campaign. Maurice, equal to any emergency, had no
difficulty in airing his own views on the subject—as it were, through
the back of his head—to one who had hammered shop windows with
her own hand, though she graciously drew the line at firing churches
and wrecking trains. Yet she was a woman of generous and, at
times, noble impulses. The greater part of her small annuity was
lavished on a very personal form of rescue work—and on Bel.
‘It’s rank injustice, say what you please,’ she declared in her
strong, vibrant tones, ‘to imprison and torture poor misguided girls
who have the courage of the faith that’s in them. The real blame lies
on the heads of those who’ve driven us to extremes.’
 ‘That sounds very fine, Miss O’Neill, but I’m afraid it won’t hold
water,’ Macnair put in quietly from the other boat. ‘It has been the
standing excuse of fanatics and—dare I add?—criminals all down
the ages. Your latest forms of argument will simply harden and justify
opposition to a cause that is not without certain elements of justice
and right.’
His pleasant voice had the clear, leisured enunciation of the
scholar, a quality peculiarly exasperating to the red-hot enthusiast
whose thoughts are, in the main, emotions intellectually expressed.
‘Justice and right indeed!’ Miss O’Neill fairly hurled the words at him.
‘That’s all we’re asking, isn’t it? And precisely what we’ll never be
getting under a man-made Government and man-made laws.’
Macnair smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He had no mind to let
argument and recrimination desecrate the peace and glowing beauty
of a Highland summer evening; and with practised ease he slid into
the calmer waters of generalisation, as much in the hope of weaning
Lady Forsyth from troubled thoughts as for the pleasure of
expressing his own.
‘The truth is,’ he said, resting on his oars, while the boats drifted
into a luminous bay, ‘every age, like every country, has its moral
microbe; and the microbe of this one is “Down with everything”;
“Can’t; won’t; shan’t; don’t; Pass it along the line,” that’s about the
tune of it, in all ranks. Kipling may or may not be a classic poet, but
his “Commissariat Camels” put the present-day spirit into a nutshell.
For nearly a hundred years the world has been fed on a steady diet
of revolt; and now we have the climax, distaste for duties and
clamour for rights. The fine, brave old wisdom of acceptance is
altogether out of court⸺’
Mark, withdrawing his gaze from Miss Alison’s profile, treated him
to a smile of amused approval. ‘Why this sudden access of
eloquence, old man?’ he asked; and Keith deliberately winked over
his shoulder.
‘Miss O’Neill there’s to blame; and the modern world does seem
rather egregiously modern when one’s been living for months in a
backwater with Pindar for company.’
 ‘Oh Keith, have you really found time for your promised translation
of the “Odes”?’ Lady Forsyth—herself a translator of some distinction
—leaned eagerly forward.
‘I’ve been making time for a few of them,’ he answered, pleased
with the success of his diversion, ‘by neglecting my Bergson book.’
‘Have you got them here?’
‘Yes. They’re in type, awaiting your consideration!’
‘Good. You’ll publish them, of course.’
He shook his head. ‘Not even to please you! I’ve simply been
enjoying myself, exploring a little deeper into the heart of an old
friend; one who could look life in the face without feeling convinced
that he personally could have made a better job of it. One suspects
even our poets, these days, of being propagandists in disguise.
Pindar is as sublime and as useless as a snow-peak; and one can
no more convey the essence of him in English than one could
convey the scent of a rose in Parliamentary language! Yet one is fool
enough to try.’
Sheila, who had been listening with her quiet intentness, remarked
softly, ‘Why don’t we all learn Greek?’
‘Because the humanities are out of court in an age of scientific
materialism. Wasn’t there a promise, once, that I should teach you?’
The girl flushed with pleasure. ‘I thought you’d forgotten.’
‘And I thought Miss Videlle had persuaded you to give up
everything for this massage you’re so keen about.’
Their talk took a more personal tone, and Lady Forsyth’s attention
strayed again towards the other boat. It had drifted a little farther off,
and a change of seats was in progress between Mark and Miss
Videlle. One moment his tall figure loomed against the dying
splendour; the next, he sank cautiously down beside Miss Alison,
who vouchsafed him a side-long glance of welcome.
‘We’re moving on a bit, Mother,’ he sang out, seeing her face
turned in their direction.
 They moved on accordingly: and it did not occur to Lady Forsyth
that Miss O’Neill, sitting alone in the bows, obscured from vision of
the disturbing pair, was in much the same mood as herself. Lonely,
passionate, and emotional, her thwarted womanhood had found in
Bel Alison an object on which she could lavish at once the protective
tenderness of a mother and the devoted service of a man.
Unhappily, this last included a consuming jealousy of those who had
a better natural right to the girl than herself. Diligently and skilfully,
therefore, she had scattered seeds of prejudice against the unjust
half of creation—which, by the way, she very much appreciated in
units, while denouncing it in the mass. By way of a more positive
deterrent, her slender means were taxed to the utmost that Bel might
have cushions and flowers and curtains to suit her fastidious taste.
No one, least of all Miss Alison, suspected the extent of her secret
shifts and sacrifices. And, intermittently, she had her reward. But no
skill in self-deception could blind her to the fact that her lavish
devotion was as dust in the balance against the passing attentions of
a baronet, lord of two estates, and a fine-looking fellow to boot. To-
night the conviction rankled with peculiar keenness by reason of her
suppressed irritation with Macnair.
‘Shirking the issue. Just like a man!’ she soliloquised wrathfully.
‘And dragging in his own trumpery translations by the heels. The
conceit of the creatures! And the folly of them. Wasting good abilities
over the vapourings of a musty old Greek poet. Blind as a bat, or
simply not caring a snap that the world’s crammed with evils crying
out to be reformed. Let them cry, so long as he can scribble in
peace....’
At this point her somewhat chaotic thoughts were interrupted by
music from the other end of the boat. Mark was singing Wallace’s
lullaby, ‘Son of Mine’; half crooning it, at first, for the benefit of Miss
Alison, who did not know it. But as the strong swing of the melody
took hold of him, he let out his voice to the full—a true, clear
baritone; music in its every cadence; and something more than
music, for those who had ears to hear.
Harry, raging inwardly, heard, and understood very well that the
days of her own dominion were numbered. Lady Forsyth understood
equally well; but she had passed beyond the raging mood. The song
was an old favourite; every note of it laden with associations; and in
spite of herself tears started to her eyes.
As for Mark, others might understand or not as they pleased. He
was singing to an audience of one; to the girl who sat beside him,
her uncovered head lifted and half turned away toward the dark
sweeping curves of the hills.
When the murmur of applause died down she turned to him with
the slow lift of her lashes that, conscious or no, thrilled him afresh at
each repetition. ‘I didn’t know you could sing like that,’ she said
softly.
‘I can’t always,’ he answered, flushing under her implied praise.
‘Sometimes—it just takes hold of me. Don’t you sing yourself? I’m
sure you’ve got music in you.’
She suppressed a small sigh. ‘Oh yes. It’s one of my poor little
half-fledged talents; useless for want of proper development. My
elder sister’s the clever one, and she got all the chances. She found
me convenient sometimes for duets.’
‘Duets? Good. I know plenty. Let’s have a try. What was her line?’
‘Classical. Mostly German.’
Mark was silent a moment, raking his memory. Then he had an
inspiration. ‘Mendelssohn’s “I would that the love”...? Wasn’t that the
sort of thing?’
‘Yes. Very much so.’
‘Right! We’ll give them a treat. You take the air.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re going much too fast. I never said I’d
sing; and—I’ve rather forgotten the words.’
‘You won’t slip out of it that way!’ he told her; and leaning close he
crooned under his breath: ‘“I would that the love I bear thee, My lips
in one word could say; That soft word⸺”’
‘Oh yes, I remember now,’ she cut him short rather abruptly; but a
faint colour showed in her cheeks and this time she did not lift her
lashes. ‘Very pretty, but drenched with sentiment. That’s the worst of
German songs.’
‘Well, you can’t beat the music of ’em,’ he persisted, rebuffed a
little by her tone, and hoping it was assumed for the benefit of Miss
Videlle, who was most vexatiously in the way. ‘I’m set on it anyhow.
Are you ready?’
Taking her smile for consent he moved one hand, beating time in
the air; then, without preliminary, their united voices took up the
song. Bel’s, though sweet and true within its range, proved too slight
an organ to stand the open-air test, and Mark had need to moderate
his full-toned alto accordingly, thereby giving an added effect of
tenderness to words and music already sufficiently expressive.
And again Lady Forsyth—a most unwilling listener—understood
everything far too well. Deliberately she hardened herself against the
appeal of the music. For this time she was simply angry—angry as
she had never yet been with her son; though, needless to say, she
attributed his egregious behaviour entirely to Miss Alison.
‘How can he? How dare he!’ was the cry of her pained heart. ‘So
unlike him. An insult to Sheila. Flinging his folly in her face.’
But Sheila was drawing her finger-tips lightly through the water,
watching the effect with that shadowy smile of hers, and to all
appearances simply enjoying the song. Almost Lady Forsyth found
herself hoping that it was so. In any case, she was thankful when the
‘exhibition’ ended, and Maurice’s cheerful voice was heard calling
out: ‘Your turn, Miss Videlle! Can’t you give us a music-hall
masterpiece by way of diversion?’
But Miss Videlle disowned all knowledge of masterpieces, music-
hall or otherwise, and Maurice himself came nobly to the rescue.
‘I’m not up to Mark’s style; but I’m top-hole at genuine Harry
Lauders,’ he volunteered with becoming modesty. ‘And as you’re all
so pressing, it would be ungracious to hide my light under a bushel.’
‘Good egg!’ sang out Ralph from the second boat. ‘Give us
“Roamin’ in the Gloamin’.”’
 And Maurice, with a deliberate wink at Mark over Miss Videlle’s
shoulder, proceeded to give it for all he was worth, in the broadest of
broad Scotch. But Mark was in no mood to see the joke of a
performance that sounded far too like a travesty of his own chosen
love-song.
‘“I kissed her-r twice and I asked her-r once if she would be my br-
ride,”’ sang Maurice with insolent gusto, burring his r’s like a
policeman’s rattle; and Mark simply wanted to kick him into the loch.
Lady Forsyth, on the other hand, was privately blessing the boy’s
foolery, that seemed to clear the air and sent the boats skimming
homeward to the swing of chorus on chorus; only her son’s voice
being conspicuous by its absence. Keith’s boat was leading now;
and without turning round deliberately she could see nothing of the
two who haunted her mind.
This was perhaps fortunate; for Mark’s arm lay along the back of
the seat, his shoulder was within three inches of Bel’s; and under
cover of the music they had picked up the dropped thread of their
talk in lowered tones that imparted a tender significance to the
simplest remark.
‘I don’t call your singing a half-fledged talent,’ he said with a faint
stress on the pronoun. ‘You’ve the gift, anyway. Why not make more
of it—study, practise?’
She smiled and lifted her shoulders. ‘I’ve tried, but I couldn’t keep
it up. Laziness, perhaps; I don’t know. Vanity, perhaps, a little. I either
want to do things splendidly or else—I can’t be bothered. I need
someone to spur me, to encourage me.’
‘Well, I should have thought Miss O’Neill⸺’
‘Harry? Oh yes, she’d lie down and let me walk over her if I
wanted to. But she’s swamped in “the Cause” and philanthropic
work. As for my talents, when I wanted the helping hand it wasn’t
there; and now—it’s too late. I’ve dabbled first in one thing and then
in another, and frittered away what little ambition I ever had.’
The emotionless quiet of her tone suggested a noble resignation
to the general obstructiveness of life; a resignation that, to the man’s