{"id":4215,"date":"2019-03-27T03:19:47","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:19:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.incirliseviye.com\/?p=4215"},"modified":"2019-03-27T03:19:47","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:19:47","slug":"the-refugees-by-edith-wharton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/?p=4215","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Refugees\u201d by Edith Wharton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edith Wharton is known best as an author who wrote about high society: her novel The Age of Innocence<\/em> made her the first female recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921. However, Wharton was also involved in refugee relief during World War I. Her story \u201cThe Refugees\u201d was published in the Post in 1919, and it proposes a situation in which two well-meaning caregivers mistake one another for Belgian refugees in 1914 London.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

On September 8, 1914, Charley Durand stood helplessly blinking through his spectacles at the throng of fugitives which the Folkestone train had just poured out on the platform of Charing Cross.<\/p>\n

He was aware of a faint haze on the spectacles, which he usually kept clear of the slightest smirch. It had been too prolonged, too abominable, too soul-searching, the slow torture of his hours of travel with the stricken multitude in which he had found himself entangled on the pier at Boulogne.<\/p>\n

Charley Durand, professor of Romance languages in a Western university, had been spending the first weeks of a hard-earned sabbatical holiday in wandering through Flanders and Belgium, and on the fatal second of August had found himself at Louvain, whose university a year or two previously had honored him with a degree.<\/p>\n

He had left Belgium at once and, deeply disturbed by the dislocation of his plans, had carried his shaken nerves to a lost corner of Normandy, where he had spent the ensuing weeks in trying to think the war would soon be over.<\/p>\n

It was not that he was naturally hard or aloof about it, or wanted to be; but the whole business was so contrary to his conception of the universe and his fagged mind at the moment was so incapable of prompt readjustment that he needed time to steady himself. Besides, his conscience told him that his first duty was to get back unimpaired to the task which just enabled him to keep a mother and two sisters above want. His few weeks on the continent had cost much more than he had expected, and most of his remaining francs had gone to the various relief funds whose appeals penetrated even to his lost corner; and he therefore decided that the prudent course, now that everybody said the horror was certainly going to last till November, would be to slip over to cheap lodgings in London and bury his nose in the British Museum.<\/p>\n

This decision, as it chanced, had coincided with the annihilation of Louvain and Malines. News of the rapid German advance had not reached him; but at Boulogne he had found himself caught in the central eddy of fugitives, tossed about among them like one of themselves, pitched on the boat with them, dealt with compassionately but firmly by the fagged officials at Folkestone, jammed into a cranny of the endless train, had chocolate and buns thrust on him by ministering angels with high heels and powdered noses, and shyly passed these refreshments on to the fifteen dazed fellow travelers packed into his compartment.<\/p>\n

His first impulse had been to turn back and fly the sight at any cost. But his luggage had already passed out of his keeping, and he had not the courage to forsake it. Moreover, a slight congenital lameness made flight in such circumstances almost impossible. So after a fugitive had come down heavily on his lame foot he resigned himself to keeping in the main current and letting it sweep him onto the boat.<\/p>\n

Once on board he had hastened to isolate himself behind a funnel, in an airless corner reeking of oil and steam, while the refugees, abandoned to unanimous seasickness, became for the time an indistinguishable animal welter. But the run to London had brought him into closer contact with them. It was impossible to sit for three mortal hours with an unclaimed little boy on one\u2019s lap, opposite a stony-faced woman holding a baby that never stopped crying, and not give them something more than what remained of one\u2019s chocolate and buns. The woman with the child was bad enough; though perhaps less perversely moving than the little blond thing with long soiled gloves who kept staring straight ahead and moaning \u201cMy furs! Oh, my furs!\u201d But worst of all was the old man at the other end of the compartment, the motionless old man in a frayed suit of professorial black, with a face like a sallow bust on a bracket in a university library.<\/p>\n

It was the face of Durand\u2019s own class and of his own profession, and it struck him as something not to be contemplated without dire results to his nervous system. He was glad the old man did not speak to him, but only waved away with a silent bow the sandwich he awkwardly offered; and glad that he himself was protected by a slight stammer, which agitation always increased, from any attempt at sustained conversation with the others. But in spite of these safeguards the run to London was dreadful.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the platform at Charing Cross he stood motionless, trying to protect his lame leg and yet to take up as little room as possible, while he waited for the tide to flow by and canalize itself. There was no way in which he could help the doomed wretches; he kept repeating that without its affording him the least relief. He had given away his last available penny, keeping barely enough to pay for a few frugal weeks in certain grimy lodgings he knew of off Bedford Square; and he could do nothing for the moment but take up as little space as possible till a break in the crowd should let him hobble through to freedom. But that might not be for another hour; and meanwhile helplessly he gazed at the scene through misty spectacles.<\/p>\n

The refugees were spread out about him in a stagnant mass, through which, over which almost, there squeezed, darted, skimmed and criss-crossed the light battalions of the benevolent. People with badges were everywhere, philanthropists of both sexes and all ages, sorting, directing, exhorting, contradicting, saying \u201cWee, wee,\u201d and \u201cOh, no,\u201d and \u201cThis way, please. Oh, dear, what is \u2018this way\u2019 in French?\u201d and \u201cI beg your pardon, but that bed warmer belongs to my old woman\u201d; and industriously adding, by all the means known to philanthropy, to the distress and bewilderment of their victims.<\/p>\n

Durand saw the old professor slip by alone, as if protected by his silent dignity. He saw other stricken faces that held benevolence at bay. One or two erect old women with smooth hair and neat black bonnets gave him a sharper pang than the disheveled; and he watched with positive anguish a mother pausing to straighten her little boy\u2019s collar.<\/p>\n

Suddenly he was aware of a frightened touch on his arm.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, monsieur, je <\/i>vous<\/i> en<\/i> prie<\/i>, <\/i>venez<\/i>!<\/i> Do come!\u201d<\/p>\n

The voice was a reedy pipe, the face that of a little elderly lady so frail and dry and diaphanous that she reminded him in her limp, dust-colored garments of a last year\u2019s moth shaken out of the curtains of an empty room.<\/p>\n

\u201cJe <\/i>vous<\/i> en<\/i> prie<\/i>!<\/i>\u201d she repeated, with a plaintive stress on the last word. Her intonation was not exactly French, but he supposed it was some variety of provincial Belgian, and wondered why it sounded so unlike anything he had been hearing. Her face was as wild as anything so small and domesticated could be. Tears were running down her thin cheeks, and the hand on his sleeve twitched in its cotton glove. \u201cMais<\/i> oui<\/i>, <\/i>mais<\/i> oui<\/i>,\u201d he found himself reassuring her. Her look of anxiety disappeared, and as he drew the cotton glove through his arm the tears seemed to be absorbed into her pale wrinkles.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many of them obviously want to be left alone; here\u2019s one who wants to be looked after,\u201d he thought to himself, with a whimsical satisfaction in the discovery, as he yielded to the gentle pull on his arm.<\/p>\n

He was of a retiring nature, and compassion, far from making him expansive, usually contracted his faculties to the point of cowardice; but the scenes he had traversed were so far beyond any former vision of human wretchedness that all the defenses of his gentle egotism had broken down and he found himself suddenly happy and almost proud at having been singled out as a rescuer. He understood the passionate wish of all the rescuers to secure a refugee and carry him or her away in triumph against all competitors; and while his agile mind made a rapid sum in division his grasp tightened on the little old lady\u2019s arm and he muttered to himself: \u201cThey shan\u2019t take her from me if I have to live on dry bread!\u201d<\/p>\n

With a victim on his arm \u2014 and one who looked the part so touchingly \u2014 it was easier to insinuate his way through the crowd, and he fended off all the attempts of fair highwaymen to snatch his prize from him with an energy in which the prize ably seconded him.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no, no!\u201d she repeated in soft, piping English, tightening her clutch as he tightened his; and presently he discovered that she had noticed his lameness, and with her free hand was making soft fierce dabs at the backs and ribs that blocked their advance.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re lame too. Did they do it?\u201d she whispered, falling into French again; and he said chivalrously: \u201cOh, yes \u2014 but it wasn\u2019t their fault.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe savages! I shall never feel in that way about them \u2014 though it\u2019s noble of you,\u201d she murmured; and the inconsequence of this ferocity toward her fellow sufferers struck him as rather refreshingly feminine. Like most shy men he was dazzled by unreasonable women.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you in very great pain?\u201d she continued as they reached the street.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, no \u2014 not at all. I beg you won\u2019t \u2014 The trouble is \u2014 \u201d he broke off, confronted by an unforeseen difficulty.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is your trouble?\u201d she sighed, leaning her little head toward him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy \u2014 I \u2014 the fact is I don\u2019t know London; or England; jamais<\/i> \u00e9<\/i>t<\/i>\u00e9<\/i>,\u201d he confessed, merging the two languages in a vain effort at fluency.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut of course \u2014 why should you? Only trust me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAh, you do know it, then?\u201d<\/p>\n

What luck to have found a refugee who could take care of him! He vowed her half his worldly goods on the spot.<\/p>\n

She was busy signaling a hansom, and did not answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs all this your luggage?\u201d<\/p>\n

A porter had followed with it. He felt that he ought to have been asking her for hers, but dared not, fearing a tragic answer. He supposed she had been able to bring away nothing but her shabby cloak and the little knobby bag that had been prodding his ribs ever since they had linked arms.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow lucky to have been able to save so much!\u201d she sighed as his bags and boxes were laboriously hoisted to the hansom.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes \u2014 in such a struggle,\u201d he agreed; and wondered if she was a little flighty as she added: \u201cI suppose you didn\u2019t bring your mattress? Not that it matters in the very least. Quick, get in!\u201d she shrieked out abruptly, pushing him past her into the hansom, and adding as she scrambled in and snapped the doors shut: \u201cMy sister-in-law \u2014 she\u2019s so grasping \u2014 I don\u2019t want her to see us.\u201d<\/p>\n

She pushed up the lid and cried out a name unfamiliar to her companion, but to which horse and driver instantly responded.<\/p>\n

Durand sank back without speaking. He was bewildered and disconcerted, and her last words had shocked him. \u201cMy sister-in-law \u2014 she\u2019s so grasping.\u201d The refugees, then, poor souls, were torn by the same family jealousies as more prosperous mortals. Affliction was supposed to soften, but apparently in such monstrous doses it had the opposite effect. He had noticed on the journey symptoms of this reciprocal distrust among the herded creatures. It was no doubt natural; but he wished his little refugee had not betrayed the weakness.<\/p>\n

The thought of the sister-in-law they were deserting \u2014 perhaps as helpless and destitute as his own waif \u2014 brought a protest to his stammering tongue.<\/p>\n

\u201cOught \u2014 oughtn\u2019t we to take her with us? Hadn\u2019t we better turn back?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Caroline? Oh, no, non<\/i>, no!\u201d She screamed it in every tongue. \u201cCher monsieur<\/i>, please! She\u2019s sure to have her own. Such heaps of them!\u201d<\/p>\n

Ah \u2014 it was jealousy then; jealousy of the more favored sister-in-law, who was no doubt younger and handsomer, and had been fought over by rival rescuers, while she, poor pet, had had to single one out for herself. Well, Durand felt he would not have exchanged her for a beauty \u2014 so frail, fluttered, plaintive did she seem, so small a vessel to contain so great a woe.<\/p>\n

Suddenly it struck him that it was she who had given the order to the driver. He was more and more bewildered and ashamed of his visible incompetence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere are we going?\u201d he faltered.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor tea \u2014 there\u2019s plenty of time, I do assure you; and I\u2019m fainting for a little food.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo am I,\u201d he admitted; adding to himself: \u201cI\u2019ll feed the poor thing, and then we\u2019ll see what\u2019s to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n

How he wished he hadn\u2019t given away all but his last handful of shillings! His poverty had never been so humiliating to him. What right had he to be pretending to help a refugee? It was as much as he could do to pay the hansom and give her her tea. And then? A dampness of fear broke over him, and he cursed his cowardice in not having told her at once to make another choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut supposing nobody else had taken her?\u201d he thought, stealing a look at her small pointed profile and the pale wisps of hair under her draggled veil. Her insignificance was complete, and he decided that he had probably been her last expedient.<\/p>\n

It would be odd if it proved that she was also his. He remembered hearing that some of the rich refugees had been able to bring their money with them, and his mind strayed away to the whimsical possibility of being offered a post with emoluments by the frightened creature who was so determined not to let him go.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf only I knew London,\u201d he thought regretfully, \u201cI might be worth a good salary to her. The queer thing is that she seems to know it herself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both sat silent, absorbed in their emotions.<\/p>\n

It was certainly an odd way to be seeing London for the first time; but he was glad to be traveling at horse pace instead of whirling through his thronged sensations in a motor cab.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrafalgar Square \u2014 yes. How clever of you! Les Lions de Milord Nelson<\/i>!\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

They drove on, past palaces and parks.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaison<\/i> du Grand Due. Arc de, <\/i>Triomphe<\/i> de <\/i>marbre<\/i>,\u201d she successively enlightened him, sounding like a gnat in a megaphone. He leaned and gazed, forgetting her and himself in an ecstasy of assimilation. In the golden autumn haze London loomed mightier and richer than his best dreams of it.<\/p>\n

II<\/p>\n

The hansom stopped and they entered a modest tea room not too densely crowded.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to get away from that awful mob,\u201d she explained, pushing back her veil as they seated themselves at a table with red-and-white napkins and a britannia sugar bowl.<\/p>\n

\u201cCrumpets \u2014 lots of crumpets and jam,\u201d she instructed a disdainful girl in a butterfly cap, who languished away with the order to the back of the shop.<\/p>\n

Durand sat speechless, overwhelmed by his predicament. Tea and crumpets were all very well \u2014 but afterward, what?<\/p>\n

He felt that his silence was becoming boorish, and leaned forward over the metal teapot. At the same instant his prot\u00e9g\u00e9e leaned, too, and simultaneously they brought out the question:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere were you when it broke out?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt Louvain,\u201d he answered; and she shuddered.<\/p>\n

\u201cLouvain \u2014 how terrible!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you, madame?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI? At Brussels.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow terrible!\u201d he echoed.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d Her eyes filled with tears. \u201cI had such kind friends there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAh, of course. Naturally.\u201d<\/p>\n

She poured the tea and pushed his cup to him. The haughty girl reappeared with sodden crumpets which looked to him like manna steeped in nectar. He tossed off his tea as if it had been champagne, and courage began to flow through his veins. Never would he desert the simple creature who had trusted him! Let no one tell him that an able-bodied man with brains and education could not earn enough in a city of this size to support himself and this poor sparrow.<\/p>\n

The sparrow had emptied her cup, too, and a soft pink suffused her cheeks, effacing the wrinkles, which had perhaps been only lines of worry. He began to wonder if after all she was much more than forty. Rather absurd for a man of his age to have been calling a woman of forty an old lady!<\/p>\n

Suddenly he saw that the sense of security, combined with the hot tea and the crumpets, was beginning to act on her famished system like a dangerous intoxicant, and that she was going to tell him everything \u2014 or nearly everything. She bent forward, her elbows on the table, the cotton gloves drawn off her thin hands, which were nervously clenched under her chin. He noticed a large sapphire on one of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t tell you \u2014 I can\u2019t tell you how happy I am!\u201d she faltered with swimming eyes.<\/p>\n

He remained silent, through sheer embarrassment, and she went on: \u201cYou see, I\u2019d so completely lost hope \u2014 so completely. I thought no one would ever want me. They all told me at home that no one would \u2014 my nieces did, and everybody. They taunted me with it.\u201d She broke off and glanced at him appealingly. \u201cYou do understand English, don\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n

He assented, still more bewildered, and she went on: \u201cOh, then it\u2019s so much easier \u2014 then we can really talk! No \u2014 our train doesn\u2019t leave for nearly two hours. You don\u2019t mind my talking, do you? You\u2019ll let me make a clean breast of it? I must!\u201d<\/p>\n

She touched with a clawlike finger the narrow interval between her shoulders and added: \u201cFor weeks I\u2019ve been simply suffocating with longing.\u201d<\/p>\n

An uncomfortable redness rose to Charley Durand\u2019s forehead. With these foreign women you could never tell; his brief Continental experiences had taught him that. After all, he was not a monster, and several ladies had already attempted to prove it to him. There had been one adventure \u2014 on the way home to his hotel at Louvain, after dining with the curator of prehistoric antiquities \u2014 one adventure of which he could not think even now without feeling as if he were in a Turkish bath, with no marble slab to cool off on.<\/p>\n

But this poor lady! Of course he was mistaken. He blushed anew at his mistake.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey all laughed at me \u2014 jeered at me; Caroline and my nieces and all of them. They said it was no use trying \u2014 they\u2019d failed, and how was I going to succeed? Even Caroline has failed hitherto \u2014 and she\u2019s so dreadfully determined. And of course for a married woman it\u2019s always easier, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

She appealed to him with anxious eyes, and his own sank behind his protecting spectacles. Easier for a married woman! After all, perhaps he hadn\u2019t been mistaken. He had heard of course that in the highest society the laxity was even worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s true enough\u201d \u2014 she seemed to be answering him \u2014 \u201cthat the young, good-looking women get everything away from us. There\u2019s nothing new in that; they always have. I don\u2019t know how they manage it; but I\u2019m told they were on hand when the very first boatload of refugees arrived. I understand the young Duchess of Bolchester and Lady Ivy Trantham were down at Folkestone with all the Trantham motors \u2014 and from that day to this, though we\u2019ve all had our names down on the government list, not one of us \u2014 not one human being at Lingerfield has had so much as an application from the committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when I couldn\u2019t stand it any longer, and said I was going up to town myself, to wait at the station and seize one of the poor things before any of those unscrupulous women had got him they said it was just like me to make a show of myself for nothing. But, after all, you see Caroline sneaked off after me without saying anything, and was making a show of herself too. And when I saw her she evidently hadn\u2019t succeeded, for she was running about all alone, looking as wild as she does on sales days at Harrod\u2019s. Caroline is very extravagant, and doesn\u2019t mind what she spends; but she never can make up her mind between bargains, and rushes about like a madwoman till it\u2019s too late. But oh, how humiliating for her to go back to the hall without a single refugee!\u201d<\/p>\n

The speaker broke off with a faint laugh of triumph, and wiped away her tears.<\/p>\n

Charley Durand sat speechless. The crumpet had fallen from his fork and his tea was turning gray; but he was unconscious of such minor misfortunes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t \u2014 I don\u2019t understand,\u201d he began; but as he spoke he perceived that he did.<\/p>\n

It was as clear as daylight; he and his companion had taken each other for refugees, and she was passionately pressing upon him the assistance he had been wondering how on earth he should manage to offer her!<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course you don\u2019t, I explain so badly. They\u2019ve always told me that,\u201d she answered eagerly. \u201cFancy asking you if you\u2019d brought your mattress, for instance \u2014 what you must have thought! But the fact is I\u2019d made up my mind you were going to be one of those poor old women in caps who take snuff and spill things, and who have always come away with nothing but their beds and a saucepan. They all said at Lingerfield: \u2018If you get even a deaf old woman you\u2019re lucky.\u2019 And so I arranged to give you \u2014 I mean her \u2014 one of the rooms in the postmistress\u2019 cottage, where I\u2019ve put an old bedstead that the vicar\u2019s coachman\u2019s mother died in, but the mattress had to be burnt. Whereas of course you\u2019re coming to me \u2014 to the cottage, I mean. And I haven\u2019t even told you where it is or who I am! Oh, dear, it\u2019s so stupid of me; but you see Kathleen and Agatha and my sister-in-law all said \u2018Of course poor Audrey\u2019ll never get anybody\u2019; and I\u2019ve had the room standing ready for three weeks \u2014 all but the mattress \u2014 and even the vicar\u2019s wife had begun to joke about it with my brother. Oh, my brother\u2019s Lord Beausedge \u2014 didn\u2019t I tell you?\u201d<\/p>\n

She paused, breathless, and then added with embarrassment: \u201cI don\u2019t think I ever made such a long speech in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was sure she hadn\u2019t, for as she poured out her confession it had been borne in on him that he was listening not to a habitual babbler but to the uncontrollable outburst of a shy woman grown inarticulate through want of listeners. It was harrowing, the arrears of self-confession that one guessed behind her torrent of broken phrases.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t tell you,\u201d she began again, as if she had perceived his sympathy, \u201cthe difference it\u2019s going to make for me at home \u2014 my bringing the first refugee; and its being \u2014 well, someone like you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her blushes deepened, and she lost herself again in the abasing sense of her inability to explain.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, my name at any rate,\u201d she burst out, \u201cis Audrey Rushworth; and I\u2019m not married.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNeither am I,\u201d said her guest, smiling.<\/p>\n

American fashion, he was groping to produce a card. It would really not be decent in him to keep up the pretense a moment longer, and here was an easy way to let her know of her mistake. He pushed the card toward her, and as he did so his eye fell on it and he saw, too late, that it was one of those he had rather fatuously had engraved in French for his Continental travels:<\/p>\n

CHARLES DURAND<\/p>\n

PROFESSEUR DES LANGUES ROMANES \u00c0 L\u2019UNIVERSIT\u00c9 DE LA SALLE<\/p>\n

DOCTEUR ES LETTRES DE L\u2019UNIVERSIT\u00c9 DE LOUVAIN<\/p>\n

She scanned the inscription and raised a reverent glance to him. \u201cMonsieur le <\/i>Professeur<\/i>? I\u2019d no idea! Though I suppose I ought to have known at once. Oh, I do hope,\u201d she cried, \u201cyou won\u2019t find Lingerfield too unbearably dull!\u201d She added as if it were wrung from her: \u201cSome people think my nieces rather clever.\u201d<\/p>\n

The professor of Romance languages sat fascinated by the consequences of his lag blunder. That card seemed to have been dealt out by the finger of Fate. Supposing he went to Lingerfield with her \u2014 just to see what it was like?<\/p>\n

He had always pined to see what an English countryseat was like; and Lingerfield was apparently important. He shook off the mad notion with an effort. \u201cI\u2019ll drive with her to the station,\u201d he thought, \u201cand just lose myself in the crowd. That will be the easiest way of all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are three of them \u2014 Agatha, Kathleen and Clio. But you\u2019ll find us all hopelessly dull,\u201d he heard her repeating.<\/p>\n

\u201cI shall \u2014 I certainly shan\u2019t \u2014 I mean, of course, how could I?\u201d he stammered.<\/p>\n

It was so much like her own syntax that it appeared to satisfy her.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo \u2014 I pay!\u201d she cried, darting between him and the advancing waitress. \u201cShall we walk? It\u2019s only two steps.\u201d And seeing him look about for the vanished hansom: \u201cOh, I sent the luggage on at once by the cab driver. You see, there\u2019s a good deal of it, and there\u2019s such a hideous rush at the booking office at this hour. He\u2019ll have given it to a porter \u2014 so please don\u2019t worry!\u201d<\/p>\n

Firm and elastic as a girl, she sprang through the doorway, while, limping silently at her side, he stared at the decisive fact that his luggage was once more out of his keeping.<\/p>\n

III<\/p>\n

Charley Durand, his shaving glass told him, was forty-five, decidedly bald, with an awkward limp, scant-lashed blue eyes blinking behind gold spectacles, a brow that he believed to be thoughtful and a chin that he knew to be weak. His height was medium, his figure sedentary, with the hollows and prominences all in the wrong places; and he wore ready-made clothes in protective colors, and square-toed boots with side elastics, and stammered whenever it was all-important to speak fluently.<\/p>\n

But his Sister Mabel, who knew him better than the others, had once taken one of his cards and run a pen through the word \u201cLanguages,\u201d leaving simply \u201cProfessor of Romance\u201d; and in his secret soul Charley Durand knew that she was right.<\/p>\n

He had in truth a dramatic imagination without the power of expression. Instead of writing novels he read them; instead of living adventures he dreamed them. Being naturally modest he had long since discovered his limitations, and decided that all his imagination would ever do for him was to give him a greater freedom of judgment than his neighbors had. Even that was something to be thankful for; but now he began to ask himself if it was enough.<\/p>\n

Professor Durand had read L<\/i>\u2019<\/i>a<\/i>bbesse<\/i> de <\/i>Jouarre<\/i> and knew that in moments of extreme social peril superior persons often felt themselves justified in casting conventional morality to the winds. He had no thought of proceeding to such extremes; but he did wonder if, at the hour when civilization was shaken to its base, he, Charley Durand, might not at last permit himself forty-eight hours of romance.<\/p>\n

His audacity was fortified by the fact that his luggage was out of his control, for he could hardly picture any situation more subversive than that of being separated from his toothbrush and his reading glasses. But the difficulty of explaining himself if he went any farther in the adventure loomed larger as they approached the station; and as they crossed its crowded threshold, and Miss Rushworth said \u201cNow we\u2019ll see about your things,\u201d he saw a fresh possibility of escape, and cried out: \u201cNo, no! Please find places. I\u2019ll look for my luggage.\u201d<\/p>\n

He felt on his arm the same inexorable grasp that had steered him through the labyrinth of Charing Cross.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re quite right. We\u2019ll get our seats first; in such a crowd it\u2019s safer!\u201d she answered gayly, and guided him toward a second-class compartment. He had always heard the aristocracy traveled second class in England. \u201cBesides,\u201d she continued as she pounced on two window seats, \u201cthe luggage is sure to be in the van already. Or if it isn\u2019t you\u2019d never find it. All the refugees in England seem to be traveling by this train!\u201d<\/p>\n

They did indeed \u2014 and how tell her that there was one less in the number than she imagined? A new difficulty had only just occurred to him. It was easy enough to explain to her that she had been mistaken; but if he did, how justify the hours he had already spent in her company? Could he tell the sister of Lord Beausedge that he had taken her for a refugee? The statement would seem too preposterous.<\/p>\n

Desperation nerved him to unconsidered action. The train was not leaving yet \u2014 there was still time for the confession.<\/p>\n

He scrambled to the seat opposite his captor\u2019s and rashly spoke: \u201cI ought to tell you \u2014 I must apologize \u2014 apologize abjectly \u2014 for not explaining sooner \u2014 \u201d<\/p>\n

Miss Rushworth turned pale, and leaning forward caught his wrist in her thin claws.<\/p>\n

\u201cAh, don\u2019t go on!\u201d she gasped.<\/p>\n

He lost his last hold on self-possession.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot go on?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t you suppose I know? Didn\u2019t you guess that I knew all along?\u201d<\/p>\n

He paled, too, and then crimsoned, all his old suspicions rushing back on him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow could I not,\u201d she pursued, \u201cwhen I saw all those heaps of luggage? Of course I knew at once you were rich, and didn\u2019t need\u201d \u2014 her wistful eyes were wet \u2014 \u201cneed anything I could do for you. But you looked so lonely, and your lameness, and the moral anguish. I don\u2019t see, after all, why we should open our houses only to pauper refugees; and anyhow it\u2019s not my fault, is it, if the committee simply wouldn\u2019t send me any?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut \u2014 but\u201d he desperately began; and then all at once his stammer caught him, and an endless succession of b\u2019s issued from his helpless throat.<\/p>\n

With exquisite tact Miss Rushworth smiled away his confusion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI won\u2019t listen to another word; not one! Oh, duck your head \u2014 quick!\u201d she shrieked in another voice, flattening herself back into her corner.<\/p>\n

Durand recognized the same note of terror with which she had hailed her sister-in-law\u2019s approach at Charing Cross. It was needless for her to add faintly: \u201cCaroline.\u201d<\/p>\n

As she did so a plumed and determined head surged up into the window frame and an astonished voice exclaimed: \u201cAudrey!\u201d<\/p>\n

A moment later four ladies, a maid laden with parcels and two bushy Chow dogs had possessed themselves of all that remained of the compartment; and Durand as he squeezed himself into his corner was feeling the sudden relief that comes with the cessation of virtuous effort. He had seen at a glance that there was nothing more to be done.<\/p>\n

The young ladies with Lady Beausedge were visibly her daughters. They were of graduated heights, beginning with a very tall one; and were all thin, conspicuous and queerly dressed, suggesting to the bewildered professor bad copies of originals he had never seen. None of them took any notice of him, and the dogs after smelling his ankles contemptuously followed their example.<\/p>\n

It would indeed have been difficult during the first moments for any personality less masterful than Lady Beausedge\u2019s to assert itself in her presence. So prevalent was she that Durand found himself viewing her daughters, dogs and attendant as her mere fringes and attributes, and thinking with terror \u201cShe\u2019s going to choose the seat next to me,\u201d when in reality it was only the youngest and thinnest of the girls who was settling herself at his side with a play of parcels as sharp as elbows.<\/p>\n

Lady Beausedge was already assailing her sister-in-law:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d no idea you meant to run up to town today, Audrey. You said nothing of it when you dined with us last night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miss Rushworth\u2019s eyes fluttered apprehensively from Lady Beausedge\u2019s awful countenance to the timorous face of the professor of Romance languages, who had bought a newspaper and was deep in its inner pages.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeither did you, Caroline \u2014 \u201d Miss Rushworth began with unexpected energy; and the thin girl next to Durand laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeither did I what? What are you laughing at, Clio?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNeither did you say you were coming up to town, mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lady Beausedge glared, and the other girls giggled. Even the maid stooped over the dogs to conceal an appreciative smile. It was evident that baiting Lady Beausedge was a popular if dangerous amusement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs it happens,\u201d said the lady of Lingerfield, \u201cthe committee telephoned only this morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miss Rushworth\u2019s eyes brightened. She grew almost arch. \u201cAh \u2014 then you came up about refugees?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNaturally.\u201d Lady Beausedge shook out her boa and opened the Pall Mall Gazette<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuch a fight!\u201d groaned the tallest girl, who was also the largest, vividest and most expensively dressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes; it was hardly worthwhile. Anything so grotesquely mismanaged!\u201d<\/p>\n

The young lady called Clio remarked in a quiet undertone: \u201cFive people and two dogs to fetch down one old woman with a pipe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAh, you have got one?\u201d murmured Miss Rushworth, with what seemed to the absorbed Durand a fiendish simulation of envy.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d her sister-in-law grudgingly admitted. \u201cBut, as Clio says, it\u2019s almost an insult to have dragged us all up to town. They\u2019d promised us a large family, with a prima donna from the Brussels Opera \u2014 so useful for Agatha\u2019s music; and two orphans besides. I suppose Ivy Trantham got them all, as usual.\u201d She paused, and added more condescendingly: \u201cAfter all, Audrey, you were right not to try to do anything through the committee.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes; I think one does better without,\u201d Miss Rushworth replied with extreme gentleness.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne does better without refugees, you mean? I dare say we shall find it so. I\u2019ve no doubt the Bolchester set has taken all but the utterly impossible ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot all,\u201d said Miss Rushworth.<\/p>\n

Something in her tone caused her nieces to exchange an astonished glance and Lady Beausedge to rear her head from the Pall Mall Gazette<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot all,\u201d repeated Miss Rushworth.<\/p>\n

The eldest girls broke into an excited laugh. \u201cAunt Audrey \u2014 you don\u2019t mean you\u2019ve got an old woman with a pipe too?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo. Not an old woman.\u201d She paused and waved her hand in Durand\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cMonsieur le <\/i>Professeur<\/i> Durand, de <\/i>l<\/i>\u2019<\/i>Universite<\/i> de Louvain<\/i> \u2014 my sister-in-law, my nieces. He speaks English,\u201d she added in a whisper.<\/p>\n

IV<\/p>\n

Charley Durand\u2019s window was very low and wide, and quaintly trellised. There was no mistaking it, it was a \u201clattice\u201d \u2014 a real one, with old bluish panes set in sturdy black moldings, not the stage variety made of plate glass and papier m\u00e2ch\u00e9 that he had seen in the sham cottage of aesthetic suburbs at home.<\/p>\n

When he pushed it open a great branch of yellow roses brushed his face, and a dewy clematis gazed in at him with purple eyes. Below lay a garden, incredibly velvety, flower-filled, and enclosed in yew hedges so high that it seemed, under the low twilight sky, as intimate and shut in as Miss Rushworth\u2019s low-ceilinged drawing room, which, in its turn, was as open to the air and as full of flowers as the garden.<\/p>\n

But all England, that afternoon, as his train traversed it, had seemed like some great rich garden roofed in from storm and dust and disorder. What a wonderful place, and what a miracle to have been thus carried into the very heart of it! All his scruples vanished in the enchantment of this first encounter with the English country.<\/p>\n

When he had bathed and dressed and descended the black-oak stairs he found his hostess waiting in the garden. She was hatless, with a pale scarf over her head, and a pink spot of excitement on each withered cheek.<\/p>\n

\u201cI should have preferred a quiet evening here; but since Caroline made such a point of our dining at the hall \u2014 \u201d she began.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, of course! It\u2019s all so lovely,\u201d said her guest recklessly. He would have dined at Windsor Castle with composure. After the compact and quintessential magic of the cottage nothing could surprise or overwhelm him.<\/p>\n

They left the garden by a dark-green door in a wall of old peach-colored brick, and walked in the deepening twilight across a field and over a stile. A stile! He remembered pictures and ballads about helping girls over stiles, and lowered his eyes respectfully as Miss Rushworth\u2019s hand rested on his in the descent.<\/p>\n

The next moment they were in the spacious shade of a sort of Forest of Arden, with great groups of bossy trees standing apart, and deer flashing by at the end of ferny glades.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it \u2014 are we \u2014 \u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, yes. This is Lingerfield. The cottage is on the edge of the park. It\u2019s not a long walk if we go by the chapel and through the cloisters.\u201d<\/p>\n

The very words oppressed him with their too-crowding suggestions. There was a chapel in the park \u2014 there were cloisters! Lingerfield had an ecclesiastical past \u2014 had been an abbey, no doubt. But even such associations paled in the light of the reality. As they came out of the shadow of the trees they recovered a last glow of daylight. In it lay a gray chapel delicately laced and pinnacled; and beyond the chapel the arcade of the cloister, a lawn with one domed cedar, and a gabled Tudor house, its bricks still rosy in the dusk, and a gleam of sunset caught in its many-windowed front.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow \u2014 how long the daylight lasts in England!\u201d said Professor Durand, choking with emotion.<\/p>\n

The drawing room into which he had followed Miss Rushworth seemed full of people and full of silence. Professor Durand had never had on a social occasion such an impression of effortless quiet. The ladies about the big stone chimney and between the lamp-lit tables, if they had not been so discordantly modern in dress and attitude, might have been a part of the shadowy past.<\/p>\n

Only Lady Beausedge, strongly corseted, many-necklaced, her boa standing out from her bare shoulders like an Elizabethan ruff, seemed to Durand majestic enough for her background. She suggested a composite image of Bloody Mary and the late Queen.<\/p>\n

He was just recovering from the exchange of silences that had greeted his entrance when he discovered another figure worthy of the scene. It was Lord Beausedge, standing in the window and glancing disgustedly over the evening paper.<\/p>\n

Lord Beausedge was as much in character as his wife; only he belonged to a later period. He suggested stocks and nankeen trousers, a Lawrence portrait, port wine, fox-hunting, the Peninsular War, the Indian Mutiny, every Englishman doing his duty, and resistance to the Reform Bill. It was portentous that one person, wearing modern clothes and reading a newspaper, should so epitomize a vanished age.<\/p>\n

He made a step or two toward his guest, took him for granted, and returned to the newspaper.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy \u2014 why do we all fidget so at home?\u201d Professor Durand wondered vaguely.<\/p>\n

\u201cGwen and Ivy are always late,\u201d said Lady Beausedge, as though answering a silence.<\/p>\n

Miss Rushworth looked agitated.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre they coming from Trantham?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot him. Only Gwen and Ivy. Agatha telephoned, and Gwen asked if they might.\u201d<\/p>\n

After that everyone sat silent again for a long time without any air of impatience or surprise. Durand had the feeling that they all \u2014 except perhaps Lord Beausedge \u2014 had a great deal to say to him, but that it would be very slow in coming to the surface. Well \u2014 so much the better; time was no consideration, and he was glad not to crowd his sensations.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you know the duchess?\u201d asked Lady Beausedge suddenly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe duchess?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGwen Bolchester. She\u2019s coming. She wants to see you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo see me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Agatha telephoned that you were here she chucked a dinner somewhere else, and she\u2019s rushing over from Trantham with her sister-in-law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Durand looked helplessly at Miss Rushworth and saw that her cheeks were pink with triumph. The Duchess of Bolchester was coming to see her refugee!<\/p>\n

\u201cDo people here just chuck dinners like that?\u201d he asked with a faint facetiousness.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they want to,\u201d said Lady Beausedge simply. The conversation again came to a natural end.<\/p>\n

It revived with feverish vivacity on the entrance of two tall and emaciated young women, who drifted in after Lord Beausedge had decided to ring for dinner, and who wasted none of their volubility in excusing their late arrival.<\/p>\n

These apparitions, who had a kind of limp loveliness totally unknown to the professor of Romance languages, he guessed to be the Duchess of Bolchester and Lady Ivy Trantham, the most successful refugee raiders of the district. They were dressed in pale frail garments and hung with barbaric beads and bangles, and as soon as he saw them he understood why he had thought the daughters of the house looked like bad copies \u2014 all except the youngest, whom he was beginning to single out from her sisters.<\/p>\n

He was not sure whether, during the rapid murmur of talk that followed, someone breathed his name to the newcomers; but certainly no one told him which of the two ladies was which; or indeed made any effort to draw him into the conversation. It was only when the slightly less tall addressed the taller as Gwen that he remembered this name was that of the duchess.<\/p>\n

She had swept him with a smiling glance of her large, sweet, vacant eyes, and he had the impression that she, too, had things to say to him, but that the least strain on her attention was too great an effort, and that each time she was about to remember who he was something else distracted her.<\/p>\n

The thought that a duchess had chucked a dinner to see him had made him slightly giddy; and the humiliation of finding that once they were confronted she had forgotten what she had come for was painful even to his disciplined humility.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

But Professor Durand was not without his modest perspicacity, and little by little he began to guess that this absence of concentration and insistence was part of a sort of leisurely holiday spirit unlike anything he had ever known. Under the low-voiced volubility and restless animation of these young women \u2014 whom the daughters of the house intensely imitated \u2014 he felt a great, central inattention. Their strenuousness was not fatiguing because it did not insist but blew about like thistle down from topic to topic. He saw that his safety lay in this fact, and reassurance began to steal over him as he understood that the last danger he was exposed to was that of being too closely interrogated.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019m an impostor,\u201d he thought, \u201cat least no one here will find it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then just as he had drawn this sage conclusion, he felt the sudden pounce of the duchess\u2019 eye. Dinner was over and the party had regrouped itself in a great book-paneled room, before the carved chimney piece of which she stood lighting her cigarette like a duchess on the cover of a novel.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know I\u2019m going to carry you off presently,\u201d she said gayly.<\/p>\n

Miss Audrey Rushworth was sitting in a sofa corner beside her youngest niece, whom she evidently found less intimidating than the others. Durand instinctively glancing toward them saw the elder lady turn pale, while Miss Clio Rushworth\u2019s swinging foot seemed to twinkle with malice.<\/p>\n

He bowed as he supposed one ought to bow when addressed by a duchess.<\/p>\n

\u201cOff for a talk?\u201d he hazarded playfully.<\/p>\n

\u201cOff to Trantham. Didn\u2019t they tell you? I\u2019m giving a big garden party for the Refugee Relief Fund, and I\u2019m looking for somebody to give us a lecture on Atrocities. That\u2019s what I came for,\u201d she added ingenuously.<\/p>\n

There was a profound silence, which Lord Beausedge, lifting his head from the Times, suddenly broke.<\/p>\n

\u201cDamn bad taste, all that sort of thing,\u201d he remarked, and continued his reading.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Gwen, dear,\u201d Miss Rushworth faltered, \u201cyour garden party isn\u2019t till the nineteenth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The duchess looked surprised. She evidently had no head for dates.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsn\u2019t it, Aunt Audrey? Well, it doesn\u2019t matter, does it? I want him all the same. We want him awfully, Ivy, don\u2019t we?\u201d She shone on Durand. \u201cYou\u2019ll see such lots of your own people at Trantham. The Belgian Minister and the French Ambassador are coming down for the lecture. You\u2019ll feel less lonely there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lady Beausedge intervened with authority: \u201cI think I have a prior claim, my dear Gwen. Of course Audrey was not expecting anyone \u2014 anyone like Professor Durand; and at the cottage he might \u2014 he might \u2014 but here, with your uncle, and the girls all speaking French \u2014 \u201d She turned to Durand with a hospitable smile.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour room\u2019s quite ready; and of course my husband will be delighted if you like to use the library to prepare your lecture in. We\u2019ll send the governess cart for your traps tomorrow.\u201d She fixed her firm eyes on the duchess. \u201cYou see, dear, it was all quite settled.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lady Ivy Trantham spoke up: \u201cIt is not a bit of use, Aunt Carrie. Gwen can\u2019t give him up.\u201d Being apparently unable to master the professor\u2019s name the sisters-in-law continued to designate him by the personal pronoun. \u201cThe committee has given us a prima donna from the Brussels Opera to sing the Marseillaise and the what-ye-may-call-it Belgian anthem, but there are lots of people coming just for the Atrocities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, we must have the Atrocities!\u201d the duchess echoed. She looked musingly at Durand\u2019s pink, troubled face. \u201cHe\u2019ll do them awfully well,\u201d she concluded, talking about him as if he were deaf.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must have somebody who\u2019s accustomed to lecturing. People won\u2019t put up with amateurs,\u201d Lady Ivy reinforced her.<\/p>\n

Lady Beausedge\u2019s countenance was dark with rage.<\/p>\n

\u201cA prima donna from the Brussels Opera! But the committee telephoned me this morning to come up and meet a prima donna! It\u2019s all a mistake her being at Trantham. Gwen!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d said the duchess serenely, \u201cI dare say it\u2019s all a mistake his being here.\u201d She looked more and more tenderly on the professor.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut he\u2019s not here; he\u2019s with me at the cottage!\u201d cried Miss Rushworth, springing up with sudden resolution. \u201cIt\u2019s too absurd and undignified, this \u2014 this squabbling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes; don\u2019t let\u2019s squabble. Come along,\u201d said the duchess, slipping her long arm through Durand\u2019s as Miss Rushworth\u2019s had been slipped through it at Charing Cross.<\/p>\n

The subject of this flattering but agitating discussion had been struggling, ever since it began, with a nervous contraction of the throat. When at length his lips opened only a torrent of consonants rushed from them, finally followed by the cryptic monosyllables: \u201cI\u2019m not!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot a professional? Oh, but you\u2019re a professor \u2014 that\u2019ll do!\u201d cried Lady Ivy Trantham briskly, while the duchess, hugging his arm closer, added in a voice of persuasion: \u201cYou see, we\u2019ve got one at Trantham already, and we\u2019re so awfully afraid of him that we want you to come and talk to him. You must.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, n-n-not a r-r-ref \u2014 \u201d gasped out the desperate Durand.<\/p>\n

Suddenly he felt his other arm caught by Miss Clio Rushworth, who gave it a deep and eloquent pinch. At the same time their eyes met, and he read in hers entreaty, command and the passionate injunction to follow her lead.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoor Professor Durand \u2014 you\u2019ll take us for red Indians on the war trail! Come to the dining room with me and give you a glass of champagne. I saw the curry was too strong for you,\u201d this young lady insinuatingly declared.<\/p>\n

Durand with one of his rare flashes of self-possession had converted his stammer into a strangling cough, and released by the duchess made haste to follow his rescuer out of the room. He kept up his racking cough while they crossed the hall, and by the time they reached the dining room tears of congestion were running down behind his spectacles, and he sank into a chair and rested his elbows despairingly on a corner of the great mahogany table.<\/p>\n

Miss Clio Rushworth disappeared behind a tall screen and returned with a glass of champagne. \u201cAnything in it?\u201d she inquired pleasantly, and smiled at his doleful gesture of negation.<\/p>\n

He emptied his glass and cleared his throat; but before he could speak she held up a silencing hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t \u2014 don\u2019t!\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

He was startled by this odd echo of her aunt\u2019s entreaty, and a little tired of being hurled from one cryptic injunction to another.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t what?\u201d he questioned sharply.<\/p>\n

\u201cMake a clean breast of it. Not yet. Pretend you are, just a little longer, please.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPretend I am \u2014 \u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA refugee.\u201d She sat down opposite him, her sharp chin supported on crossed hands. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you why.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Professor Durand was not listening. A momentary rapture of relief at being found out had been succeeded by a sick dread of the consequences. He tried to read the girl\u2019s thin ironic face, but her eyes and smile were inscrutable.<\/p>\n

\u201cMiss Rushworth, at least let me tell you \u2014 \u201d<\/p>\n

She shook her head kindly but firmly. \u201cThat you\u2019re not a German spy in disguise? Bless you, don\u2019t you suppose I can guess what\u2019s happened? I saw it the moment we got into the railway carriage. I suppose you came over from Boulogne in the refugee train, and when poor dear Aunt Audrey pounced on you you began to stammer and couldn\u2019t explain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh, the blessed balm of her understanding! He drew a deep breath of gratitude, and faltered, smiling back at her smile: \u201cIt was worse than that. Much worse. I took her for a refugee too. We rescued each other!\u201d<\/p>\n

A peal of youthful mirth shook the mighty rafters of the Lingerfield dining room. Miss Clio Rushworth buried her face and sobbed.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, I see \u2014 I see \u2014 I see it all!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo you don\u2019t \u2014 not quite \u2014 not yet!\u201d he gurgled back at her.<\/p>\n

\u201cTell me then; tell me everything!\u201d And he told her; told her quietly, succinctly and without a stammer, because under her cool kindly gaze he felt himself at last in an atmosphere of boundless comprehension.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see, the adventure fascinated me; I won\u2019t deny that,\u201d he ended, laying bare the last fold of his duplicity.<\/p>\n

This, for the first time, seemed to stagger her.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe adventure \u2014 an adventure with Aunt Audrey?\u201d<\/p>\n

They smiled at each other a little. \u201cI meant, the adventure of England \u2014 I\u2019ve never been in England before \u2014 and of a baronial hall. It is baronial? In short, of just exactly what\u2019s been happening to me. The novelty, you see \u2014 but how should you see? \u2014 was irresistible. The novelty, and all the old historic associations. England\u2019s in our blood, after all.\u201d He looked about him at the big, dusky, tapestried room. \u201cFancy having seen this kind of thing only on the stage! Yes, I was drawn on by everything \u2014 by everything I saw and heard from the moment I set foot in London. Of course if I hadn\u2019t been I should have found an opportunity of explaining; or I could have bolted away from her at the station.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so glad you didn\u2019t. That\u2019s what I\u2019m coming to,\u201d said the girl. \u201cYou see, it\u2019s been \u2014 how shall I explain? \u2014 more than an adventure for Aunt Audrey. It\u2019s literally the first thing that\u2019s ever happened to her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Durand blushed to the roots of his hair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d he said feebly.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo. Of course not. Any more, I suppose, than I really understand what Lingerfield represents to an American. And you would have had to live at Lingerfield for generations and generations to understand Aunt Audrey. You see, nothing much ever happened to the unmarried women of her time. Most of them were just put away in cottages covered with clematis and forgotten. Aunt Audrey has always been forgotten \u2014 even the refugee committee forgot her. And my father and mother, and her other brothers and sisters, and my sisters and I \u2014 I\u2019m afraid we\u2019ve always forgotten her too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot you,\u201d said Professor Durand with sudden temerity.<\/p>\n

Miss Clio Rushworth smiled. \u201cI\u2019m very fond of her; and then I\u2019ve been a little bit forgotten myself.\u201d She paused a moment and continued: \u201cAll this would take too long to explain. But what I want to beg of you is this \u2014 let her have her adventure, give her her innings, keep up the pretense a little longer. None of the others have guessed, and I promise to get you away safely before they do. Just let Aunt Audrey have her refugee for a bit, and triumph over Lingerfield and Trantham. . . . The duchess? Oh, I\u2019ll arrange that too. Slip back to the cottage now \u2014 this way, across the lawn, by the chapel \u2014 and I\u2019ll say your cough was so troublesome that you rushed back to put on a mustard plaster. I\u2019ll tell Gwen you\u2019ll be delighted to give the lecture<\/p>\n

Durand raised his hands in protest but she went on gayly: \u201cWhy, don\u2019t you see that the more you hold out the more she\u2019ll want you? Whereas if you accept at once and even let her think you\u2019re going over to stop at Trantham as soon as your cough is better she\u2019ll forget she\u2019s ever asked you. . . Insincere, you say? Yes, of course; a little. But have you considered what would have happened if you hadn\u2019t choked just now and had succeeded in shouting out that you were an impostor?\u201d<\/p>\n

A cold chill ran down Charley Durand\u2019s spine as his masterful adviser set forth this forgotten aspect of the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes \u2014 I do see. I see it\u2019s for the best.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell \u2014 rather!\u201d She pushed him toward a window opening on the lawn. \u201cBe off now \u2014 and do play up, won\u2019t you? I\u2019ll promise to stick by you and see you out of it if only you\u2019ll do as I ask.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their hands met in a merry grasp of complicity, and as he fled away through the moonlight he carried with him the vision of her ugly vivid face, and wondered how such a girl could ever think she could be forgotten.<\/p>\n

V<\/p>\n

A good many things had happened before he stood again on the pier at Boulogne.<\/p>\n

It was in April, 1918, and he was buttoned into a too-tight uniform, on which he secretly hoped the Y.M.C.A. initials were not always the first things to strike the eye of the admiring spectator.<\/p>\n

It was not that he was ungrateful to the great organization which had found a task for him in its ranks; but that he could never quite console himself for the accident of having been born a few years too soon to be wearing the real uniform of his country. That would indeed have been romance beyond his dreams; but he had long ago discovered that he was never to get beyond the second-best in such matters. None of his adventures would ever be written with a capital.<\/p>\n

Still, he was very content; and never more so than now that he was actually in France again, in touch and in sound of the mighty struggle that had once been more than his nerves could bear, but that they could bear now with perfect serenity because he and his country, for all they were individually worth, had a stake in the affair and were no longer mere sentimental spectators.<\/p>\n

The scene, novel as it was because of the throngs of English and American troops that animated it, was still in some of its details pathetically familiar. For the German advance in the north had set in movement the native populations of that region, and among the fugitives some forlorn groups had reached Boulogne and were gathered on the pier, much as he had seen them four years earlier. Only in this case they were in dozens instead of hundreds, and the sight of them was harrowing more because of what they symbolized than from their actual numbers.<\/p>\n

Professor Durand was no more in quest of refugees than he had been formerly. He had been dispatched to Boulogne to look after the library of a Y.M.C.A. canteen, and was standing on the pier looking vaguely about him for a guide with the familiar initials on his collar.<\/p>\n

In the general confusion he could discover no one who took the least interest in his problem, and he was waiting resignedly in the sheltered angle formed by two stacks of packing cases when he suddenly remembered that he had always known the face he was looking at was not one to forget.<\/p>\n

It was that of a dark thin girl in khaki, with a slouch hat and leggings, and her own unintelligible initials on her shoulder, who was giving firm directions to a large orderly in a British Army motor.<\/p>\n

As Durand looked at her she looked at him. Their eyes met, and she burst out laughing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, you do have the queerest-looking tunics in your army!\u201d she exclaimed as their hands clasped.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know we do \u2014 and I\u2019m too fat. But you knew me?\u201d the professor cried triumphantly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy, of course! I should know your spectacles anywhere,\u201d said Miss Clio Rushworth gayly. She finished what she was saying to the orderly, and then came back to the professor.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a lark! What are you? Oh, Y.M.C.A., of course. With the British, I suppose?\u201d They perched on the boxes and exchanged confidences, while Durand inwardly hoped that the man who ought to be looking for him was otherwise engaged.<\/p>\n

Apparently he was, for their talk continued to ramble on through a happy labyrinth of reminiscences spangled with laughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when they found out \u2014 weren\u2019t they too awfully horrified?\u201d he asked at last, blushing at the mere remembrance.<\/p>\n

She shook her head with a smile. \u201cThey never did \u2014 nobody found out but father, and he laughed for a week. I wouldn\u2019t have had anyone else know for the world. It would have spoiled all Aunt Audrey\u2019s fun if Lingerfield had known you weren\u2019t a refugee. To this day, you\u2019re her great adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut how did you manage it? I don\u2019t see yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCome round to our canteen tonight and I\u2019ll tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n

She stood up and shoved her cigarette case into the pocket of the tunic that fitted so much better than his.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tell you what \u2014 as your man hasn\u2019t turned up come over to the canteen now and see Aunt Audrey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Durand paled in an unmartial manner.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, is Miss Rushworth here?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRather! She\u2019s my chief. Come along.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYour chief?\u201d He wavered again, his heart failing him.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally \u2014 won\u2019t it be better for me not to? Suppose \u2014 suppose she should remember me?\u201d<\/p>\n

Miss Rushworth\u2019s niece laughed. \u201cI don\u2019t believe she will, she\u2019s so blind. Besides, what if she did? She\u2019s seen a good many refugees since your day. You see, they\u2019ve become rather a drug on the market, poor dears. And Aunt Audrey\u2019s got her head full of other things now.\u201d<\/p>\n

She had started off at her long swift stride, and he was hurrying obediently after her.<\/p>\n

The big brown canteen was crowded with soldiers who were being variously refreshed by young ladies in trig khaki. At the other end of the main room Miss Clio Rushworth turned a corner and entered an office. Durand followed her.<\/p>\n

At the office desk sat a lady with eyeglasses on a sharp nose. She wore a colonel\u2019s uniform, with several decorations, and was bending over the desk busily writing.<\/p>\n

A young girl in a nurse\u2019s dress stood beside her, as if waiting for an order, and flattened against the wall of the room sat a row of limp, disheveled, desolate beings \u2014 too evidently refugees.<\/p>\n

The colonel lifted her head quickly and glanced at her niece with a resolute and almost forbidding eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot another refugee, Clio \u2014 not one! I absolutely refuse. We\u2019ve not a hole left to put them in, and the last family you sent me went off with my mackintosh and my electric lamp.\u201d<\/p>\n

She bent again sternly to her writing. As she looked up her glance strayed carelessly over Professor Durand\u2019s congested countenance, and then dropped to the desk without a sign of recognition.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, Aunt Audrey \u2014 not one, not just one?\u201d the colonel\u2019s niece pleaded.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s no use, my dear. Now don\u2019t interrupt, please\u2026 Here are the bulletins, nurse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colonel Audrey Rushworth shut her lips with a snap and her pen drove on steadily over the sheets of official letter paper.<\/p>\n

When Professor Durand and Clio Rushworth stood outside of the canteen again in the spring sunshine they looked long at each other without speaking.<\/p>\n

Charley Durand, under his momentary sense of relief, was aware of a distinct humiliation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see I needn\u2019t have been afraid!\u201d he said, forcing an artificial laugh.<\/p>\n

\u201cI told you so. The fact is, Aunt Audrey has a lot of other things to think about nowadays. There\u2019s no danger of her being forgotten \u2014 it\u2019s she who does the forgetting now.\u201d She laid a commiserating hand on his arm. \u201cI\u2019m sorry \u2014 but you must excuse her. She\u2019s just been promoted, again and she\u2019s going to marry the Bishop of the Kamerun next month.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edith Wharton is known best as an author who wrote about high society: her novel The Age of Innocence made her the first female recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921. However, Wharton was also involved in refugee relief during World War I. Her story \u201cThe Refugees\u201d was published in the Post in … <\/p>\n

Read more “\u201cThe Refugees\u201d by Edith Wharton”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}