This Is the End

by characters blotched, huge and run together, would symbolise the pace at which the thing now goes. There's no procession of the days. Immersed in work or lost in pleasure, there never is pr

next the twenty-fifth; it's next-the month has gone.... The month! It is a season that has flown. Here's Su

the thing now w

re in flight. You're fleeing all the time the reckoning; and he's a sulky savage, forced to halt to gather up what

hich, come up, he w

lightning vehicle that makes to crawl the swiftest agency of man's invention: runs through a lifetime while the electric telegraph is stammering a line; reads memory in twenty volumes b

returned to her career, the thing at frightful pace began to go; and then, from there, away! from scene to scene (the notches cut by reckoning in his st

wn; and, what was more, worn in the persons of those darling joys of hers in signal, almost arrogant in her disdain of precedent to the co

memory is rent,

her off, their lovely, brilliant mother so different from the other rather fussy mothers that come crowding down! All the masters and all the mistresses know the uncommon woman that she is. The childr

ys Huggo, "oh, an awful ass, asked me why the Head had said I must be proud of you, and I told him, and I said, 'I bet you're not proud of your mother.' And he said, 'Of my father, I am. He got the V.

, had across her body a sudden chill, as it were physical. She wanted to say something. But it was the kind

hin-lipped. "Oh, I say, mother, do

med; her baby boy, her tiny manling, her tiny hugging one, her first born! It is in retrospection that she sits and there's expelled for ever from her face that aspect mutinous, intolerant, defiant, that used to visi

ike

ool. She had questioned Harry about a letter in his post and, naming the

ut H

's about

e beginning to have ex

suppose it would inte

you want to know the answer

for it, have

er is that I think what the

ow had had practice in preserving her

s-that Huggo will have to be

t this was only leading up

t, is susceptible of change-apart from that, the boy has now twice failed to keep his place in the school. If he does not get his remove

don't. I mean, don't talk

gree. He said sternl

ly got to talk seriously to Huggo. This coming holi

brains. He can have coaching. It's what he hasn't got an

s it yo

hom

ingers of her hands and d

ond says more tha

. 'Apart from that

'The boy, though young, has not a good influence in his house. If I ma

its envelope. "Does it strike you that

, if your tone made it pos

the blade in his voice: "Our discussions! I a

sombrely,

how the letter i

s. Harry, we're not by any means the only family that doesn't spend the whole of its holidays together. It's r

Tell me this. Is it go

"Oh, you insist, you insist!" she cried. "

e. This is an outsider, a stranger, appreciating how we live.

olmaster's primeval anim

. We are responsible for the child

d just now that I am implicated. It's always I. You say we have a responsibility towards t

, "Becau

on't,

ed. "Because y

as to the same reason and with the same words she'd made bef

ike

ere's Harry having a scene with the boy. There ought to be tears. There are tears.

ways been the day of the year for me. I don't say I've ever done much in life, but every time I've been down to Founders' Day I've thought over, in the train, any little thing I may have pulled out in the year and I've felt, I've felt awfully proud to be taking it down to the old school, so to speak. Old chap, the proudest, far the proudest of all, was the year I went down when first you were there. I was proud. I'd given a son to the place. I'd got a boy there. Another Occleve

look sullen and aggrieved; and sullen and aggrieved his mutter, "W

and down on the table before him and cried out, "Well, keep your mouth shut about it then! Couldn't stick it! What can yo

r! Huggo; Huggo, tell your

le: "I'm sor

ther. You just think over sometimes what I've said, my boy. We're fixing up this tutor's for you. You start in fresh and go like steam. Finest thing in the wor

ike

un with Huggo. Poignantly affecting because Harry, piling upon his love for Huggo and his pride in Huggo, which she shared, his love for his old school and his pride in it, which she could understand but could not share, had been so bravely, cheerfully earnest and assured about the fu

and pressed her hand and looked at h

lass chap. Only took six pupils. Was a clergyman. Understood boys and youths who hadn't quite held their own and wanted special coaching and attention. Huggo was keen on the idea. After all, why shouldn't he have disliked Tidborough? There were such boys who didn't like public-school life. There, there! Perhaps it was

oing to be fine. The rest is just up to us, eh? We know the boy's weaknesses. We know what Hammond's told us abo

only!" cry again in desperation of excuse: "If onl

ave given it up and come home to make home life for the boy and for them all. I don't say I would. I'm only saying how infinitely harder, how impossibly harder, the war conditions made it. There was the understaffing-that alone. There was the cry about releasing a man for the front-that alone. I was releasing half a dozen men. Field said I was. I knew I was. How could I go back and be one of the women sitting at home? That alone! How could I? And there was more than that. It wasn't only the understaffing. It was Sturgiss going. I'd been absorbing the banking business fo

lt; but was not the world, spiritual and material, in conspiracy against her, and against Huggo, and against her other darlings, to make easy her fault? Ah, that war, that war! Didn't it unsettle ev

ly it encroached on, and unfitted for, work hours. "After all," as the tutor wrote, "how can you blame the boys? After all, it's very hard to seem to try to check this patriotic spirit." After all! Oh, why do people say "after all" when they mean quite the contrary? This was before all, this seductive escape from unco

e future, to go away on invitations. That war! He never spent any of his holidays at home. How could the boy be tied down in London with

se of friends. He was found in cottage lodgings living with a friend, a fellow-

cial secret service body dealing with spies. He examined in private arrested suspects. He advised and he directed on criminal matters therewith connected. He was working, under immense pres

lie heard him in the hall and heard that some one was with him. She heard him, by the dining-ro

rd. Who was with him?

e door. "Do you know who I've got here with me? Do yo

His face was dark and passionate, menacing. Happened? Things were alway

s Hu

ug

ug

fore had seen passion in his face), he scarcely could speak

re Huggo's been

horntons, h

g with some blackguard friend in room

ing what?

! Loafing!

ing? H

eared for my man. I sat there, waiting. The second case-this is what I've come to-was my son, my boy, Huggo, brought up from the cells where he'd spent the night. My son! Drunk and disorderly. He didn't see me. The police gave him a character. I sat there an

rned

"Harry! Wha

stop him. He'd had the grace-or he'd all the time had the guile-to give an assumed name. Would I have confessed, to save h

bell. "I must ge

s caused this. Do you know what he said to me coming up in the train? I said to him, 'Why are you always away like this? Why, in th

rry, not now. Dear, y

to be. "Well, answer my quest

red, "Oh,

e placated. "Wh

ar

e's D

pirit to move. "St

e's B

ell know. Stayin

e are

her bosom. "Oh, bewa

re you ever in th

e y

stry! I hav

e mi

antelshelf by which he stood

ike

the way and he had pushed her. "The boy's all right," Harry said to Rosalie after, the boy forgiven, he sat and talked with her. "He's got no vice. How could he have? It was wrong, it was deceitful, going off like that to that place without telling us. But he meant no harm. He's explained. He's genuinely sorry. He's just got out of hand a bit. They all have, the young people,

ed his back but mar

ek; this business on the top of it had been a most frightful shock to him. What had he said? Forgive, Rosalie, forgive! Of course she had nothing to forgive. Forgiveness also was for her to ask. As to the point thus violently raised,

lady." He said, "I kno

," and sighing, and from the mute appeal th

ad not come away with the same satisfaction as seemingly had Harry. She put before the boy how terribly his father had felt the sha

atience that was not concealed and he had no contrition to display. "Well, mother, it's all over. What is t

tly said, "And I do wish, mother, especially now I'm going into the army soon, I do wish you'd drop

was the name we

t stick it. M

ike

fighting for his country. You can't be anything but utterly lenient with a boy that's fighting for his country. He went back. Three days after he was supposed to have gone back Rosalie came face to face with him in Piccadilly. He was with some flapper type of girl, in the detestable phrase (as she thought it) by which the detestable products of the war (as she thought them) were called. He was just getting into a cab. She called out to him, astounded. She heard him swear and he jumped into the cab and was driven away. She didn't tell Harry. Harry found out. It came out that the boy fo

e he had got back). He surely, he said, was entitled to a bit of a holiday first, after all he had been through. London seemed to be swarming with thousands of young men who claimed they were entitled to a bit of a holiday first after all they had been through. Huggo was never in the house. He had picked up with a man, Telfer, whom he had met in France, a big business man, Huggo described him as, and he seemed to spend all his time with this man. Telfer was a much older man than Huggo. Huggo brought him to dinner one night. It was rather a shock to Rosalie, meeting the man of whom she had heard so much. Huggo h

," Harry said. "Rosalie, there's been en

he argued, he couldn't go till October, it was only June now; all right, he'd go in October-if he had to. Harry made arrangements for some reading through the summer preparatory to Oxford. It upset plans made by Huggo. He thought it "uncommonly hard" that he should have to spend the whole summer "swotting." Oh, well, if he had to, he had to. He had an invitation for a month for that immedi

w Huggo in the West End. But London was full o

nth, Huggo unexpectedly walked into the house. Rosalie was sitting with Harry in the dining-room over the end of dinner. Doda was upstairs putting last touches to herself before going out to a dance. Doda was e

lation a little odd. When, after greetings, he sat down, he sat down with a c

really can't very well go to Oxford now, father. I really ought to start in some money-maki

e had already taken a glass of por

is, I'm-

he boy. The boy fumbled-he obviously had been drinking-between would

er people? That's a pl

ion. It's a plain enough question. I've come here to be perfectly frank and plain and p

ion that had numbed her. "Huggo, you must

ishing violence, "Well, I tell you I don't. People! What have her people got to do with it? I haven't ma

your mother. I'm not sure you're in a fit state to talk to any-body or to know what you're saying. You'd b

ed for her dance, came running down the stairs. "Hull-o, Hug

ere to go! I'll bet you have! I've seen you jazzing about the place when you haven't seen me, Dods. And heard

n," cried Doda, and turned

n a row. So'll you be one day, if

: "Oh, dry u

ike