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- 8. The life cycle of a component
- 10. Blazor in Action CHRIS SAINTY To comment go to liveBook Manning Shelter Island For more information on this and other Manning titles go to www.manning.com
- 12. Copyright For online information and ordering of these and other Manning books, please visit www.manning.com. The publisher offers discounts on these books when ordered in quantity. For more information, please contact Special Sales Department Manning Publications Co. 20 Baldwin Road PO Box 761 Shelter Island, NY 11964 Email: orders@manning.com ©2022 by Manning Publications Co. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in the book, and Manning Publications was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in initial caps or all caps. ♾ Recognizing the importance of preserving what has been written, it is Manning’s policy to have the books we publish printed on acid-free paper, and we exert our best efforts to
- 13. that end. Recognizing also our responsibility to conserve the resources of our planet, Manning books are printed on paper that is at least 15 percent recycled and processed without the use of elemental chlorine. Manning Publications Co. 20 Baldwin Road Technical PO Box 761 Shelter Island, NY 11964 Development editors: Toni Arritola and Kristen Watterson Technical development editor: Andrew West
- 14. Review editor: Aleksandar Dragosavljević Production editor: Andy Marinkovich Copyeditor: Carrie Andrews Proofreader: Keri Hales Technical proofreader: Karthikeyarajan Rajendran Typesetter and cover designer: Marija Tudor
- 16. dedication This book is dedicated to my son, Archie.
- 17. contents front matter preface acknowledgments about this book about the author about the cover illustration 1 Starting your Blazor journey 1.1 Why choose Blazor for new applications? 1.2 Components, a better way to build UI What is a component? The benefits of a component-based UI Anatomy of a Blazor component 1.3 Blazor, a platform for building modern UIs with C# Understanding hosting models Blazor WebAssembly Blazor Server Other hosting models 16 2 Your first Blazor app
- 18. 2.1 Setting up the application Blazor WebAssembly template configurations Creating the application 2.2 Building and running the application 2.3 Key components of a Blazor application Index.html Program.cs App.razor wwwroot folder and _Imports.razor 30 2.4 Writing your first components Organizing files using feature folders Setting up styling Defining the layout The Blazing Trails home page 3 Working with Blazor’s component model
- 19. 3.1 Structuring components Single file Partial class 3.2 Component life cycle methods The first render The life cycle with async Dispose: The extra life cycle method 60 3.3 Working with parent and child components Passing values from a parent to a child Passing data from a child to a parent 3.4 Styling components Global styling Scoped styling Using CSS preprocessors 4 Routing 4.1 Introducing client-side routing Blazor’s router Defining page components 4.2 Navigating between pages programmatically 4.3 Passing data between pages using route parameters 4.4 Handling multiple routes with a single component 4.5 Working with query strings Setting query-string values Retrieving query-string values using SupplyParameterFromQuery 5 Forms and validation—Part 1: Fundamentals
- 20. 5.1 Super-charging forms with components Creating the model Basic EditForm configuration Collecting data with input components Creating inputs on demand 120 5.2 Validating the model Configuring validation rules with Fluent Validation Configuring Blazor to use Fluent Validation 125 5.3 Submitting data to the server Adding MediatR to the Blazor project Creating a request and handler to post the form data to the API Setting up the endpoint 136 6 Forms and validation—Part 2: Beyond the basics
- 21. 6.1 Customizing validation CSS classes Creating a FieldCssClassProvider Using custom FieldCssClassProviders with EditForm 6.2 Building custom input components with InputBase Inheriting from InputBase<T> Styling the custom component Using the custom input component 6.3 Working with files Configuring the InputFile component Uploading files when the form is submitted 6.4 Updating the form to allow editing Separating the trail form into a standalone component Refactoring AddTrailPage.razor Adding the edit trail feature Testing the edit functionality 177 7 Creating more reusable components 7.1 Defining templates 7.2 Enhancing templates with generics 7.3 Sharing components with Razor class libraries 8 Integrating with JavaScript libraries
- 22. 8.1 Creating a JavaScript module and accessing it via a component Testing out the RouteMap component Calling JavaScript functions from C# and returning a response 8.2 Calling C# methods from JavaScript 8.3 Integrating the RouteMap component with the TrailForm 8.4 Displaying the RouteMap on the TrailDetails drawer 9 Securing Blazor applications 9.1 Integrating with an identity provider: Auth Registering applications with Auth Customizing tokens from Auth Configuring Blazor WebAssembly to use Auth Configuring ASP.NET Core WebAPI to use Auth 9.2 Displaying different UI fragments based on authentication status Updating the Home feature 9.3 Prevent unauthorized users accessing a page Securing API endpoints Calling secure API endpoints from Blazor 9.4 Authorizing users by role Adding roles in Auth Consuming Auth0 roles in Blazor WebAssembly Implementing role-based logic 10 Managing state
- 23. 10.1 Simple state management using an in-memory store Creating and registering a state store Saving data entered on the form to AppState 10.2 Improving the AppState design to handle more state 10.3 Creating persistent state with browser local storage Defining an additional state store Adding and removing trails from the favorites list Displaying the current number of favorite trails Reorganizing and refactoring Showing favorited trails on the favorite trails page Initializing AppState 11 Testing your Blazor application 11.1 Introducing bUnit 11.2 Adding a bUnit test project 11.3 Testing components with bUnit Testing rendered markup Triggering event handlers Faking authentication and authorization Emulating JavaScript interactions Testing multiple components 287 appendix A Adding an ASP.NET Core backend to a Blazor WebAssembly app appendix B Updating existing areas to use the API index
- 24. front matter preface I’ve been an ASP.NET developer for over 17 years now. I love working with ASP.NET Core and the C# language. But there was always an element missing for me. . . . Since I was young, I’ve enjoyed building web UIs. When I was 15, my best friend and I decided to build a website about the Quake games we enjoyed playing. He built the backend while I built the UI. I remember spending hours and days creating nested tables and inline styles to create the look we wanted for the site. This seems torturous now, but I really loved it at the time. Throughout my resulting career, I’ve really enjoyed building the client-side experience, but this has always taken me away from C# and ASP.NET Core. Instead, I’ve learned JavaScript and various frameworks and tooling that are popular in that ecosystem. While I enjoyed JavaScript, I really wanted to be using my favorite language, C#, when building client- side web applications. Then one day in February 2018, I stumbled across a video of Steve Sanderson at NDC Oslo 2017 (https://youtu.be/MiLAE6HMr10). In this talk, he presented an experiment he had built that took a portable .NET run time called Dot Net Anywhere and compiled it to a format called
- 25. WebAssembly. He used this as a base to create a framework that allowed client-side web applications to be built using Razor (a mix of C#, HTML, and CSS) that ran entirely in the browser. He called it Blazor. The first experimental preview of Blazor was released by Microsoft on March 22, 2018, with new previews almost every month. I followed along with each preview, trying out the new features and writing blog posts about my experiences. On April 18, 2019, Daniel Roth published a blog post announcing that it was moving out of the experimental phase and Microsoft had committed to ship it as a supported web UI framework. Finally, the missing element! Since that blog post, Blazor has gone from strength to strength. Additional hosting models have been added, allowing Blazor to run in more places. With .NET 6, we’ve seen some of the biggest leaps forward with the framework. AOT (ahead-of-time) mode has been introduced, producing huge performance improvements for Blazor WebAssembly applications. The evolution of Xamarin, .NET MAUI, allows Blazor to move out of the browser and be used to create cross-platform desktop and mobile applications. This book is the result of my journey with Blazor from that first time watching Steve’s NDC Oslo presentation to building production applications today. To date, I’ve published over 75 blog posts about Blazor on my personal blog and have written many for other publications. Blazor also gave me a passion for public speaking, first at .NET
- 26. user groups and eventually at international conferences. I even got to give a talk on Blazor at NDC Oslo in room 7, the same room that Steve was in when he first presented his experiment a few years earlier. acknowledgments This book has been one of the hardest projects of my life, and while it has my name on the cover, it was only possible with the help of many other people. I’d like to take this opportunity to say a huge thank-you to those people. First and foremost, I want to thank my wife, Robyn. You have been my rock throughout the last year and a half. You have had to deal with me at my worst during this time, but your unwavering support and encouragement made me believe that I could finish this. I will always be grateful for that, and I love you very much. I’d also like to thank my whole family for their support and encouragement—especially my dad, who talked me out of quitting at one point when I completely lost faith. Next, I’d like to thank some amazing people at Manning without whom this book would not exist. Brian Sawyer recruited me, convinced me to write a proposal, and that I could pull it off! Kristen Watterson, my developmental editor for almost the entire project, helped shape the book into what it is today. Toni Arritola stepped in at the eleventh hour to get the book over the line. Andrew West, my
- 27. technical developmental editor, made sure my code made sense and actually worked. Finally, Karthikeyarajan Rajendran did a great job with the final technical proofread of the book. Thanks also to the production team at Manning for all their hard work in producing this book. Also, a special thanks to all the reviewers for their comments and feedback: Al Pezewski, Alberto Acerbis, Ashwini Gupta, Bruno Sonnino, Grant Colley, Jason Hales, Jeff Smith, Jim Wilson, John Rhodes, Kalyan Chanumolu, Marcin Sęk, Mark Chalkley, Mike Ted, Pedro Seromenho, Richard Michaels, Rohit Sharma, Ron Lease, Rui Ribeiro, Steve Goodman, Tanya Wilke, Thomas Gueth, and Wayne Mather—you made this a better book. Finally, I’d like to thank Steve Sanderson, Daniel Roth, and the whole ASP.NET Core team at Microsoft. You’ve created something really special with Blazor, and it’s literally changed my life. I’m now an author, international speaker, and Microsoft MVP all because of Blazor. Thank you. about this book Blazor in Action has been written to take you from being a beginner to being proficient and confident building Blazor applications. Initially, the book covers high-level concepts such as hosting models and components before drilling down into specific features of the framework, such as routing, forms and validation, and templated components.
- 28. To help imbed the various concepts and features, you’ll build a real application—Blazing Trails—chapter by chapter. By the end of the book, you’ll have a complete reference app you can refer to anytime. Who should read this book This book is aimed at developers who have a basic understanding of .NET, C#, and web technologies (HTML, JavaScript, and CSS). If you’ve been building web applications using Razor Pages or MVC, then the learning curve will feel quite shallow. If you’ve been building apps using ASP.NET Core Web APIs and a JavaScript framework such as React, Vue.js, or Angular, then you’ll be in an even better position. How this book is organized: A road map This book is organized into 11 chapters and 2 appendices. Chapter 1 introduces Blazor, component-based UIs, and hosting models. It covers what Blazor is and the reasons why you might choose to use it, as well as how components are a better way to build UIs and how Blazor has embraced this approach. It also covers what hosting models are and discusses the advantages and tradeoffs they each have.
- 29. Chapter 2 begins the journey of building the Blazing Trails application. Initially it covers choosing the right project template for a new Blazor application, as well as how to build and run it. Then it walks through the key parts of a Blazor application. It concludes by talking about file organization using feature folders and how to write your first components. Chapter 3 dives deeper into Blazor’s component model. It discusses how to structure components, what life cycle methods are and what order they execute in, and how to work with parent and child components. It also covers styling components and using CSS preprocessors with Blazor. Chapter 4 looks at client-side routing, showing how to define page components and navigate between them. It also tackles more advanced topics such as passing data in the URL and navigating programmatically. Chapter 5 is the first of two chapters covering forms and validation. In this chapter, fundamentals such as using Blazor’s built-in form components, validating user input, and submitting data to a server are tackled. Chapter 6 builds on the previous chapter, covering more advanced topics such as creating custom form components, working with files, and adapting a form to handle editing existing data. Chapter 7 explores how to make components more reusable. It introduces templated components and how they can be further enhanced using generics.
- 30. Chapter 8 shows how to use JavaScript interop to integrate existing JavaScript libraries into a Blazor application. It also covers techniques that allow C# code to call into JavaScript code and JavaScript code to call into C#. Chapter 9 tackles securing Blazor applications by showing how to integrate with an identity provider called Auth0. Chapter 10 looks at state management and implements an in-memory state store. It tackles state store design and how to store state using the browser’s local storage APIs. Chapter 11 covers testing components using the bUnit testing framework. Five key scenarios are covered: testing rendered markup, triggering event handlers from test code, faking authentication and authorization, emulating JavaScript interop, and testing multiple components together. Appendices A and B cover code refactoring required as the example application grows. Appendix A covers adding a ASP.NET Core Web API to the solution. If you’re building the example app along with book, appendix A should be completed between chapters 4 and 5. Appendix B walks through refactoring the rest of the application to use the Web API introduced in appendix A. Appendix B should be followed after completing chapter 6 and before starting chapter 7.
- 31. About the code This book contains many examples of source code, both in numbered listings and in line with normal text. In both cases, source code is formatted in a fixed-width font like this to separate it from ordinary text. Sometimes code is also in bold to highlight code that has changed from previous steps in the chapter, such as when a new feature adds to an existing line of code. In many cases, the original source code has been reformatted. We’ve added line breaks and reworked indentation to accommodate the available page space in the book. In rare cases, even this was not enough, and listings include line-continuation markers (➥). Additionally, comments in the source code have often been removed from the listings when the code is described in the text. Code annotations accompany many of the listings, highlighting important concepts. You can get executable snippets of code from the liveBook (online) version of this book at https://livebook.manning.com/book/blazor-in-action. Source code is also available for chapters 2-11 in my GitHub repository at https://github.com/chrissainty/blazor-in-action. The code added in the two appendices are incorporated into the chapters they precede. All the code in this book was built using the .NET 6 SDK and Visual Studio 2022. However, other tools such as Visual
- 32. Studio Code and the .NET CLI or JetBrains Rider will run the code as well. liveBook discussion forum Purchase of Blazor in Action includes free access to liveBook, Manning’s online reading platform. Using liveBook’s exclusive discussion features, you can attach comments to the book globally or to specific sections or paragraphs. It’s a snap to make notes for yourself, ask and answer technical questions, and receive help from the author and other users. To access the forum, go to https://livebook.manning.com/book/blazor-in-action/discussion. You can also learn more about Manning’s forums and the rules of conduct at https://livebook.manning.com/discussion. Manning’s commitment to its readers is to provide a venue where a meaningful dialogue between individual readers and between readers and the author can take place. It is not a commitment to any specific amount of participation on the part of the author, whose contribution to the forum remains voluntary (and unpaid). We suggest you try asking the author some challenging questions lest his interest stray! The forum and the archives of previous discussions will be accessible from the publisher’s website as long as the book is in print.
- 33. about the author Chris Sainty is a web developer with over 17 years of experience. He has been using Blazor since the first experimental preview back in March 2018 and was one of the first people to start blogging about it. Chris has published over 75 blog posts on Blazor on his own blog, while also writing guest posts for Visual Studio Magazine, Progress Telerik, and Stack Overflow. He is also an active open source developer and currently maintains some of the
- 34. most popular Blazor NuGet packages covering integration with browser local storage APIs to UI components such as modals and toasts. Away from the keyboard, Chris is a seasoned conference speaker and has talked about Blazor at events all over the world. These contributions have also earned him the Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) Award. about the cover illustration The figure on the cover of Blazor in Action is “Homme de Oonolaska,” or “Oonolaska Man,” taken from a collection by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur, published in 1797. Each illustration is finely drawn and colored by hand. In those days, it was easy to identify where people lived and what their trade or station in life was just by their dress. Manning celebrates the inventiveness and initiative of the computer business with book covers based on the rich diversity of regional culture centuries ago, brought back to life by pictures from collections such as this one.
- 35. 1 Starting your Blazor journey This chapter covers Reasons to choose Blazor for your next application Why components are a better way to build UIs Hosting models for Blazor We live in exciting times, as .NET developers’ lives have never been better. We can create apps for any operating system, be it Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, or macOS, and of course, we can build amazing web-based applications with ASP.NET MVC, Razor Pages, and Web API, which have allowed us to create robust scalable and reliable systems for years. However, there has long been a missing piece to the puzzle. One thing all of ASP.NET’s web solutions have in common is that they are server based. We’ve never been able to leverage the power of C# and .NET to write client-side web applications; this has always been the domain of JavaScript —but not anymore. In this chapter, I’m going to introduce you to a revolutionary client-side framework called Blazor. Built on web standards, Blazor allows us to write rich, engaging user interfaces using C# and .NET. We’ll explore how Blazor can make your development process more efficient and raise your productivity levels, especially if you’re using .NET on the
- 36. server as well. We’ll cover hosting models, an important concept to understand when starting out with Blazor. Next, we’ll begin to explore components and the benefits of using them to build UIs. Finally, we’ll discuss the reasons why you should consider Blazor for your next project. 1.1 Why choose Blazor for new applications? Arguably, the hardest part of starting a new project in recent times has been selecting the tech stack—there are just so many choices available. This is especially true in the frontend world. We must pick a framework (Angular, React, Vue.js), pick a language (TypeScript, CoffeeScript, Dart), and pick a build tool (webpack, Parcel, Browserify). If a team is new to this ecosystem, it can seem an almost impossible task to try and work out which combination of technologies will help make the project a success; it’s even hard for teams with experience! Let’s cover some of the top reasons for choosing Blazor for your next project and how Blazor can help you avoid some of the issues I’ve just mentioned.
- 37. C#, a modern and feature-rich language—Blazor is powered by C#, the eighth most popular language, according to the 2021 Stack Overflow Developer Survey (http://mng.bz/p240). It’s powerful, easy to learn, and versatile. While C# is an object-oriented language, it’s adopting more and more abilities to enable a more functional approach, if you prefer. Static typing helps developers catch errors at build time, making the development life cycle faster and more efficient. It’s also been around for a long time, currently in its tenth version. It’s stable, well designed, and well supported. Great tooling—The .NET community has been fortunate to have some amazing tooling. Visual Studio is an extremely powerful, feature-rich, and extensible IDE (integrated development environment). It’s also 100% free for individuals, open source work, or non-enterprise teams of up to five people. If you prefer something more lightweight, then there is Visual Studio Code (VS Code), one of the most popular code editors today. Both Visual Studio and VS Code are available cross-platform. Visual Studio is available on Windows and macOS, and VS Code is available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. There is also a great third-party IDE by JetBrains called Rider, which is cross-platform running on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
- 38. .NET Ecosystem—While many new frameworks need to wait for an ecosystem to build up around them, Blazor can tap into the existing .NET ecosystem. At the time of writing, Blazor applications target .NET 6 and can, in theory, use any compatible NuGet package. I say “in theory,” as some packages perform actions that aren’t allowed in a WebAssembly scenario, such as modifying the filesystem. Unopinionated—While other frameworks stipulate how applications must be written, Blazor does not. There are no preferred patterns or practices for Blazor development; you can write applications using the ones you’re familiar and comfortable with. If you like MVVM (model-view-viewmodel), go for it. If you prefer using Redux, have at it. The choice is yours. Shallow learning curve—If you’re an existing .NET developer, then the learning curve for Blazor is quite shallow. Razor, C#, dependency injection, and project structure will all look familiar to you, and with Blazor being unopinionated around patterns, you can just use what you’re familiar and productive with. All this means you can focus on writing features more quickly, rather than learning the framework.
- 39. Code sharing—If you’re using C# on the server, then Blazor makes an excellent pairing. One of the most frustrating problems with different client and server languages is the inability to reuse code. Models or data transfer objects (DTOs) must be duplicated between server and client; they need to be kept updated, in sync. This could be a manual process or automated using some kind of code generation, but this is just another thing to set up and maintain. With Blazor, everything is C#. Any shared code can be placed in a common .NET class library and shared easily between server and client. Open source—As with many projects at Microsoft, Blazor is fully open source and the code is freely available on GitHub for you to browse, download, or fork your own copy. The team works in the open and is guided by developer requests and feedback. You can even contribute if you wish. 1.2 Components, a better way to build UI Blazor, as with many modern frontend frameworks, uses the concept of components to build the UI. Everything is a component—pages, parts of a page, layouts. There are various types of components in Blazor, as well as multiple ways to design them, all of which will be explored in future chapters. But learning to think in terms of components is essential for writing Blazor applications.
- 40. 1.2.1 What is a component? Think of a component as a building block. You put these building blocks together to form your application. These building blocks can be as big or as small as you decide; however, building an entire UI as a single component isn’t a good idea. Components really show their benefit when used as a way to divide up logical areas of a UI. Let’s look at an example of a user interface structured as components (figure 1.1). Figure 1.1 Example of a layout divided into components Each area of the interface is a component, and each one has a certain responsibility. You may also notice that there is a hierarchy forming. The layout component sits at the top of
- 41. the tree; the menu, header, home page, and footer are all child components of the layout component. These child components could, and probably would, have child components of their own. For example, the header component could contain a logo component and a search component (figure 1.2). Figure 1.2 Example of nesting components to form a component tree 1.2.2 The benefits of a component-based UI Many UIs have repeating elements in them. A great advantage to using components is that you can define an element in a component and then reuse the component wher-ever the element repeats. This can drastically cut down on the amount of repeated code in an application. It also makes the maintainability of the application much better—if the design of that element changes, you need only to update it in a single place. To cater to more advanced scenarios, components can define their own APIs, allowing data and events to be passed in and out. Imagine a line-of-business application. It’s probably safe to assume that within that app there are many places data is displayed in table format. One approach is to create each table as its own component; however, this means we
- 42. would end up with a lot of components that display data in a table. A better approach is to define a single component that takes in a data set as a parameter and then displays it in a table. Now we have a single component for displaying data in a table that we can reuse all over the application. We can also add features to this component, such as sorting or paging. As we do, this functionality is automatically available to all the tables in the application, as they are all reusing the same component. While often self-contained, it’s possible to have components work together to create a more complex UI. For example, let’s take the data table scenario we just talked about, which could be a single component but could potentially be quite large. Another approach is to divide it into several smaller components, each performing a certain job. We could have a table header component, a table body component, and even a table cell component. Each of these components is performing a specific job, but they are still part of the overall table component. 1.2.3 Anatomy of a Blazor component Now that we have a better idea of what components are in a general sense, let’s look at an example of a component in Blazor. For this, we’ll grab a component from the Blazor project template. Figure 1.3 shows an example of a component from Blazor’s standard project template, Counter.razor.
- 43. Figure 1.3 The sections of a component in Blazor This particular component is known as a routable component, as it has a page directive declared at the top. Routable components are essentially a page in the application. When the user navigates to the /counter route in the application, this component will be loaded by the Blazor router. It displays a simple counter with a button, and when the user clicks the button, the count is incremented by one and the new value displayed to the user. While understanding the code isn’t important at this point, we can understand the structure of the component. Figure 1.3 is divided up into three sections; each has a certain responsibility.
- 44. Section 1—Used to define directives, add using statements, inject dependencies, or any other general configuration that applies to the whole component. Section 2—Defines the markup of the component; this is written using the Razor language, a mix of C# and HTML. Here we define the visual elements that make up the component. Section 3—The code block. This is used to define the logic of the component. It is possible to write any valid C# code into this section. You can define fields, properties, or even entire classes if you wish. We’ll be covering components in much greater detail throughout the rest of this book, so we’ll leave it there for now. But this has given you a taste of what a component in Blazor looks like and how it is composed. 1.3 Blazor, a platform for building modern UIs with C# Blazor is a fully featured framework for building modern client-side applications using the power of C# and .NET. This allows developers to build engaging applications that work across nearly any platform, including web, mobile, and desktop. Blazor is an alternative to JavaScript frameworks and libraries such as Angular, Vue.js, and React. If you’ve had experience working with any of these, then you’ll probably
- 45. Discovering Diverse Content Through Random Scribd Documents
- 46. “You forget, sir, that Mrs. Marjoy, with her quince-jelly eyes and her peony complexion, considers herself the one fascinating woman in Saltire. When I tell you that she has been squinting at us venomously through her spectacles you should be able to foresee the future.” “Need you dread the lady?” “My dear Gabriel, Mrs. Marjoy will relate to all her friends how bored you were by me at your father’s dinner-table. Remember that I am still in the marriage market and must defend myself against the calumnies of my fellow-shes.” “Hence my responsibility.” “To aid me in maintaining an eligible exterior.” Blanche Gusset, Gabriel’s neighbor, was a pert, plump, and slangy young person, very rubicund and very pushful. Her vitality was phenomenal, her vigor Amazonian. She feared neither sun nor freckles, frumps nor fashions. Moreover, she was the one woman in the neighborhood who could attack and rout the redoubtable Mrs. Marjoy, that most Christian Medusa, who attended the eucharist fasting and concocted malignities an hour later over the breakfast- table. Her sister Ophelia, who faced her over the silver and the flowers, proffered a contrast that was peculiar and piquant. The elder sister, a tall and supersensuous blonde, listened with languid frigidity to the banalities of the Reverend Jacob Mince. She was a large woman with eyes of a brilliant blue, supercilious yet pleasurable lips, and a Circassian countenance. A chain of amethysts glittered over the fulness of her broad bosom. Her fair hair was coiled in masses above her forehead, overshadowing her eyes and throwing into evidence the somewhat heavy sensuousness of her face. She talked little, and with an air of luxurious slothfulness that seemed in keeping with her expression of delectable and Lilith-like torpor. Above the blaze of hot-house flowers the eyes of this complacent beauty met those of Gabriel Strong. The pair had seen much of each other that winter in an incidental and desultory fashion. Castle Gabingly had been something of a hermitage, and a Greek-faced youth such as Gabriel had more vivid interest for the lady Ophelia
- 47. than monotonous novels and the society of Lord Gerald her father. Gabriel Strong had fine eyes, a quick tongue, and a certain cynical quaintness in his attitude towards women. Miss Blanche Gusset reverted to the silent being at her elbow. “Are you asleep yet, Moses?” “Why a Semitic title?” “I often call people by the name that slips first off my tongue.” “A dangerous habit.” “Explain.” “For instance, you might greet Mr. Mince as Beelzebub.” “And not a bad thrust either. Gabriel, you are waking up. Please continue to preserve me from Mrs. Marjoy.” “Ophelia is looking well to-night,” said the man. Miss Blanche Gusset’s brown eyes sparkled. She popped an olive between her lips and descended once more to personal topics. “What an arrant humbug you are,” she said. “If I had Mrs. Marjoy’s temper I should conceive some diabolical revenge. Must I apologize for not being my sister?” “On the contrary, I am excellently placed.” “An ambiguous compliment, my dear archangel.” “Flattery is always ambiguous, Miss Gusset. I feel in a sympathetic mood. Please tell me how those fox cubs of yours are progressing.” His neighbor retorted with an ironical twinkle. “You may continue your meditations,” she said; “I shall reserve my remarks on cubs till Mrs. Marjoy begins gabbling in the drawing- room about that dear child of hers.” When the more spiritual element had departed Gabriel discovered himself partnered by that inestimable worthy Jacob Mince. The churchman, unctuously freighted, smacked his lips over a fat Havana. Mr. Mince was a tall and complacent person, with a bald pate, a watery eye, and a receding chin. He was a species of petty pope in his own parish, dogmatizing over pond and pigsty, ploughed fields, and the village pump. There was no imaginative or expansive breadth in Mr. Mince’s opinions. Yet he was nothing of an ascetic, and was wholly Christian towards his own stomach.
- 48. Gabriel, by way of bestirring the churchman’s ardor, referred to certain political questions that were agitating the country. Sectarian squabbles amused Gabriel as a philosopher; they did not inspire him as a partisan. Dissent was an infallible red rag wherewith to inspire Mr. Mince’s temper. Like many sectarians, he was utterly intolerant of adverse criticism. “My dear sir,” he said, in his consequential and litanical tenor, “you will hardly credit it, but I am being bothered most abominably in my own village by a certain vagrant tub-thumper, who has had the insolence to hold open-air services under my very nose.” Gabriel professed a somewhat cynical sympathy. “Such a reflection on your ministrations,” he observed; “as though you neglected your parish! I suppose the man is an agnostic.” Mr. Mince frowned and puffed irritably at his cigar. He did not appreciate such suggestive sympathy. “Not a bit of it,” he retorted; “the fellow is a mere ignorant mechanic who comes over every Sunday from Rilchester to instruct ignorant people in Christian ethics. The fellow has even had the insolence to choose the very hour of even-song for his bawling. I was discussing the matter with your father before dinner.” Apparently Mr. Mince would have preferred rank infidelity in such a rival to the honest profession of Christian principles. In such competition a fellow-believer was more nauseous to him than the blackest atheist who ever blasphemed the Trinity. There was a certain element of personal glory in combating the malignities of a spiritual opponent. Mr. Mince desired to propound the Bible to his own credit. “I suppose it does not matter vastly,” said Gabriel, with tactless magnanimity, “what a man is so long as he preaches Christ in the right spirit.” Mr. Mince elevated his eyebrows. “Not matter?” “No.” “My dear fellow, you do not realize the pressing peril of this astounding phenomenon of dissent. It is the most calamitous
- 49. development arising from the abuse of this modern spirit of socialism.” The topic interested Gabriel enough to inspire in him a mild antagonism. “The very movement would suggest to me,” he said, “that the laboring classes need a living exposition of the creed and that the Church has proved inadequate to the occasion. Am I to understand that you consider a university education essential to those who desire to be the religious instructors of others?” “Most certainly education is essential.” “That depends, sir, does it not, upon what people call education. Classics and theology are out of date; science and the study of human nature are to the fore.” Mr. Mince knocked the ash from his cigar and seemed displeased. “What is science, sir,” he said, “but a blind man grubbing in a ditch. There is no hope in science. You must really rely on me as an expert in these matters. More experience is granted to those whose studies have extended through many years. We churchmen are specialists on religious education.” Gabriel, like many enlightened mortals, demurred at subjecting reason to the dogmas of a clique. He preferred to drink of the cup of spirituality without receiving it from the hands of another. He did not believe that the Light of the World descended only upon those who knelt in a particular pew. “I have a shrewd notion,” he said to Mr. Mince, “that these poor, as we call them, often come nearer the elemental truth than wiseacres steeped in theological learning. The nursing of a sick neighbor is a better thing than the discovering of twenty metaphorical meanings in a single text. A man is wise in proportion to the breadth and sincerity of his beliefs. Nor can I see that it requires much erudition to expound faithfully the philosophy contained in the Sermon on the Mount.” “That does not satisfy the question,” retorted the clergyman. “Ask Dr. Marjoy what he thinks of quacks who profess to practise medicine. The analogy is admirable.” “There—I cannot agree with you.”
- 50. Mr. Mince withdrew behind his ecclesiastical dignity. “You are young yet, Mr. Strong,” he said, “and young men are zealots, youth itself too Utopian. Let me advise you not to take your notions from silly novels and superficial magazines. At all events, sir, I caught William Blunt, my gardener, attending one of these outdoor meetings. The man had been my gardener ten years.” “I suppose you reprimanded him.” Mr. Mince’s righteous anger kindled. “Reprimand him, by Jove! I pointed out to the fellow the outrageous ingratitude of his conduct, and discharged him promptly from my service.” “A decisive protest!” “A well-merited lesson.” Gabriel smiled at the blooms of a pink azalea. “Possibly this apostle preaches powerfully,” he said. “The usual jargon, I believe.” “I feel inspired to hear him myself.” Mr. Mince removed his cigar from between his lips, and stared open-mouthed. “My dear sir, as a gentleman, and as a member of my congregation, you will not countenance such an impostor within the bounds of my parish.” Gabriel laughed good-naturedly. “It would be a great breach of etiquette, I suppose,” he said. “Hallo, I see the others are rising. I think it is time we joined the ladies.” In the drawing-room Judith was at the piano, accompanying herself to the quaint measure of an old song. After the gentleman had entered her place was usurped by Miss Blanche Gusset, who dashed volubly into the strenuous sentiment of a plantation ditty. In a panelled “cosey corner” Mrs. Marjoy and Mrs. Mince sat in neighborly isolation, comparing feminine criticisms. Mrs. Marjoy was a lady who possessed no single talent herself and always sneered at the accomplishments of others. Gabriel surrendered himself to Ophelia Gusset. She was seated alone on a sofa to the left of the fire. Ophelia was not a woman’s
- 51. woman in the social sense; her virtues were egotistical and unexpansive. She found men more appreciative, less critical, more sympathetic. “What selfish beings you men are,” she observed. “Why such cynicism?” “You abandon us for tobacco. I am sure you have been talking for forty minutes.” “Politics proved powerful.” “I did not know you were a politician.” “No, I am not patriotic with my tongue. Mr. Mince and I had an argument on street-preaching. How easy it is to offend some people.” Gabriel seated himself on the sofa beside Ophelia Gusset. She was shading her face from the fire with her fan, her shoulders gleaming white through a web of lace. The red flowers at her breast shone like stars to pilot desire. A mesmeric atmosphere seemed to encircle her; her large eyes were languorous and alluring. “You seem in queenly isolation,” said the man, noting almost unconsciously the white sweep of her shoulders. She smiled at him, and seemed none too sorry to surrender her solitude into his keeping. “Elderly ladies are really too trying,” she said to him. “I never met such extraordinary rustics as Saltire produces.” “Mrs. Mince and Mrs. Marjoy have been conversing for your benefit? A lecture on infant underclothing or the darning of stockings?” “Far worse, I assure you. Missionary incidents from The Reaper; a dissertation on pickling onions; certain remarks from Mr. Mince’s last sermon.” “And Mrs. Marjoy?” “What does Mrs. Marjoy usually talk about?” “Herself and her children and the vices of her friends.” “Dear creature! Blanche had a thrust at her before you joined us.” “Your sister is a brave woman.”
- 52. “It was really quite epigrammatic. Blanche declared that a spoiled child was like a spinster’s poodle—an animal that always had the best chair, clawed the visitor’s clothes, and yelped eternally for cake.” “Excellent! excellent!” “Mrs. Marjoy glared.” “Heaven be thanked! I am not the doctor.” They wandered out into the conservatory together, where tulips, red, purple, and gold, blazoned the benches. Azaleas stood starred with color amid the ascetic snow of lilies. Bowls of mignonette and violet dowered the air with odors. Many rich plants were brilliant with bloom. The girl drew her bare arm gently from Gabriel’s. Her movements were sinuous and graceful, mesmeric as a Circe’s. He marked the rare curves of her neck and shoulders, her delicate coloring, the golden profusion of her luxurious hair. The vision of the girl bathing in the pool still burned and glimmered in his brain. He was susceptible to sensations for the moment, too prone to pander to the sensuous in art. “Mrs. Marjoy is a great gardener,” he said, reverting to mundane malice to restrain his thoughts. “If I were Hamlet’s Ophelia,” she answered him, “I should give her a posy of nettles.” The man laughed and touched her hand. “And to me?” She pouted out her lips with a mischievous stare. “Laurel leaves, perhaps, to wear when you are laureate.” “Sarcasm.” “Retort at your leisure.” The sound of music came to them, for Judith was playing one of Schubert’s songs. Gabriel thrust his hand into a bowl of violets and proffered them in his palm. “To be sure, I am modest enough,” she said, setting several in her bosom.
- 53. A IV ZURE and white shone the liveries of heaven. The sun, that gold-tabarded trumpeter, had pealed out the brazen clarion-cry of summer. The pavilions were spread in the woods. The fields bristled their myriad spears, still green and virgin with desirous sap. Rose had clasped rose. The meadows had unfurled their cloth of gold. The red may had bloomed and the lilac had kissed the yew. A punctilious regularity ordered the daily details of the domestic régime. No stranger ever ventured through the rusty gates to disturb the sordid asceticism of Zeus Gildersedge’s privacy. A neighborly anathema had long ago gone forth against the house. Nor had its master troubled to appease the orthodox wrath of a society that he despised. There is a species of vanity of disfavor, and Zeus Gildersedge was a man who could chuckle over public obloquy with a heathenish pride. The miser sat in the garden under the shadow of two yews, whose sculptured boughs arched a natural recess. A table stood before him bearing claret, a phial of opium, a ledger, and a jar of tobacco. The grass grew in feathery rankness wellnigh to Zeus Gildersedge’s knees. Foxgloves purpled the lawns. Roses ran adventurously in red riot over a rotting trellis that was half smothered in the grass. It was a tranquil refuge enough, full of greenness and the calm, clamorless quiet of the trees. Zeus Gildersedge set his pipe aside, gulped down half a glass of claret, covered his face with a red handkerchief, and prepared for sleep. Every afternoon between two and six he would doze away the hours, his brain drugged to a sensuous slumber. Even for this miser opulent visions gleamed through the portals of sleep. His dreams partook of opiated poetry. Mountains of gold poured torrents of jacinth, chrysolite, and sardonyx into an emerald sea. Great trees bore gems for fruit, purple, vermilion, and green. Fountains tossed
- 54. diamonds like spray to a glittering zenith. Each flower of the field had a pearl or a ruby betwixt its lips. A streak of scarlet showed suddenly between the trees. A woman’s figure threaded through the green, passing the lawns knee- deep in grass, brushing the foxgloves with the swing of her coarse, black skirt. The loose strings of her lilac sun-bonnet trailed upon her shoulders. She moved slouchingly, yet with a certain loose-jointed vigor that suggested strength. Coming to the fringe of the lawn where an old dial stood in the sun, she scanned the stretch of grass under a coarse, red hand. Zeus Gildersedge was asleep with his handkerchief over his eyes. She moved silently towards the yews and stood by the table, watching with a grin the man dozing in the chair. As he snored on obliviously she reached for the claret jug, put it to her lips, took a long draught, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. She returned the jug noiselessly to its place, plucked a long spear of grass, and tickled the sleeping man’s chin. Zeus Gildersedge grunted, smote the air, and clawed the handkerchief from his face. He stared about him, saw Rebecca laughing by the table, and promptly swore at her. “What the devil do you want now?” “Tuppence.” “What for?” “The tinker.” “Let him wait for it.” “He ain’t here yet; he’ll call this evening with a saucepan he’s been soldering. Thought I’d get the money while there was a chance of you being sober.” Zeus Gildersedge straightened in his chair, fumbled in his pocket, and produced two coins. He laid them on the table with a melancholy and grudging deliberation as though he were disbursing thousands. “Damn your insolence,” he said. “Be civil yourself, master.” The man’s eyes scanned the glass jug. He gripped it with one claw of a hand and stared at the woman blurred in the sunlight.
- 55. “You’ve been at the claret.” The girl laughed a loud, quaking laugh of coarse merriment. She jerked forward, subsided on the man’s knees, poked her face into his. “Taste my breath—now.” “Get up with you.” “Sha’n’t.” He pushed her away from him, and she slid to the grass at his feet and lay there giggling, with her sun-bonnet fallen back from her hair. Zeus Gildersedge eyed her with mingled approbation and disfavor. He had bartered his dignity long ago, for the woman had made him her equal in dragging him to her own level. They understood each other in a coarse, abusive fashion, and were comrades of a common cult. “Where’s Joan?” said the man, fingering his chin, while his colorless eyes shone out from his bloodless face. “Don’t know. ’Tain’t no business of mine, though you let her gad over the country like a gypsy. You’re a fool, Zeus Gildersedge. Nice sort of father you make.” “Joan can look after herself.” “So can every woman till she lights on a man.” Zeus Gildersedge shifted in his chair. “Balderdash!” he said, with tightened lips. “The girl has pride enough to choke most men. She’s no bib-and-tucker baby.” “A woman’s a woman, bib or no bib,” retorted the servant. Zeus Gildersedge took ten drops of opium in a tumbler of claret, frowning as he sipped it down. “You’re a nice bit of goods to lecture me on education.” Rebecca plucked up a handful of grass and threw it into the man’s lap. “There’s hay for you,” she said, grimacing. “Miss Joan’s worth twenty of me and you. Pity you don’t treat her better. I wouldn’t stand all the grubbing she stands—no, not for nothing. I wouldn’t be your daughter, neither; a fine girl like she is shut up with an old goat to feed on thistles in a tumble-down shanty. You’re too mean to have a daughter. There’s the truth for you.”
- 56. She laughed a reckless, barbaric expression of superabundant vigor, a challenge to the thin, sallow being squatting under the yews. Zeus Gildersedge regarded her with his small, calculating eyes. A slight color had crept into his cheeks. The fingers of his right hand fidgeted the buttons of his coat. “I should like to know why I don’t pack you out of my house with an hour’s notice,” he observed, in tones that were whimsically contemplative. The girl’s eyes glistened; her full lips parted over her large, strong teeth. She was handsome in a coarse, physical fashion. Her hair was black as a raven’s wing, her cheeks red as sun-mellowed apples, her figure profusely Rubenesque in outline. She made a broad furrow in the tall grass where she lay, supporting herself on one arm, with the sunlight glancing on her hair. “Say the word—I’m off,” she said. “Pack your box, then.” “Six months’ wages.” “And a deuced fine character.” They both laughed. The girl gave a pouting smile, reached up, and gripped the man’s knee. Zeus Gildersedge stared into her eyes with a glance that was half critical, half human. They remained so for half a minute before the man swore and dropped back into his chair with a contemptuous chuckle. “Threescore years and yet a fool,” he said. “The carrier will pass at eight.” “Shut up.” The girl wriggled nearer in the grass, looking in the man’s face with a mischievous simper. “I want two new dresses, and—” “You bet.” “I’m going to Rilchester market-day.” “Who’s to stop you?” “And in that little cash-box in the cupboard—” “Hist!” “What’s wrong?” “Get up; she’s coming.”
- 57. “Who?” “Joan.” The girl Rebecca bit her lip, scrambled up, and started away some paces. “I’ll give the tinker tuppence for mending that pan,” she said, with an intentional strenuousness. “Mutton and potatoes at eight, sharp.” Joan Gildersedge drew near under the snow-starred vaults of a tall acacia. Her hair flashed about her shoulders magic gold; her face shone white under the dense, green boughs. A pillar of pure womanliness, pearl-bright and lovely, she moved through the deep ecstasy of the summer silence. Her eyes shone large and lucid as fine glass. An infinite wistfulness dwelt upon her mouth like moonlight on a rose. Divinely human, radiant with an incomprehensible mystery of soul, she stood before her father. Zeus Gildersedge regarded her with a species of unwilling awe. He was man enough to realize the strange charm of this rare being who called him father. To him she was in large measure unintelligible, a denizen of an atmosphere impenetrable to his meagre, goatish vision. Her very unapproachableness, her serene temper, often created in him a rough and petulant antagonism, a strong sense of inferiority that nudged his starved and decrepit pride. She was of him, yet not his, an elusive and scintillant soul, who suffered his interdictions and his barbarisms in silence, retaining beyond his ken a species of intangible freedom that defied his power. “You’re late,” quoth the man in the chair, filling a long, clay pipe and preparing to smoke. “I had forgotten how the hours passed.” Zeus Gildersedge stretched himself in his chair and yawned. He habitually felt ill at ease in his daughter’s presence. She had a queer knack of upsetting the equanimity of his avarice and jarring the mean structure he called his soul. They had nothing in common. Even on the tritest subjects they were out of sympathy. “You seem to be away a good deal,” said the man, remembering the words Rebecca had thrown up at him from the grass.
- 58. “Am I?” “What do you do with yourself all day?” “Wander in the woods, watch the birds, collect flowers, bathe in the sea.” “Bathe—do you!” “Every day.” “Beginning to find your father a dull dog, eh? We don’t do a vast amount of entertaining. Rather a quiet place this,” and he laughed. Joan dangled her hat by the strings and watched her father with a supreme and unconscious gravity. She was ever attempting to understand his mental condition; she had never yet succeeded. “I often wonder why we have no friends,” she said. Zeus Gildersedge enveloped himself in an atmosphere of smoke. He distrusted in particular the developing instincts of this queen, realizing that she had little cause to recompense his authority with any great degree of gratitude. He had begotten and reared her, given her the fundamental necessities of life, but little else. She never displayed discontent in his presence, never reproached his niggard régime. Zeus Gildersedge did not expect love from her, seeing that he was barren of that sentiment himself. “Friendship is an expensive commodity,” he observed, with a sullen yet hypocritical earnestness. “We have to pay for affection in this world; one can get plenty of sympathy by giving dinner-parties. Spend money and people will welcome you. Poverty means isolation and contempt.” The girl’s eyes were still fixed imperturbably upon his face. She seemed to weigh his words upon the balance of a virgin intuition and to find them inadequate. “Are we so poor?” she asked. Zeus Gildersedge grunted. “Pretty much so.” “You find it a miserable experience?” “You think so, eh?” “If loneliness and poverty go together, you must be very poor.” “You’re growing too clever with that tongue of yours.”
- 59. Joan leaned against the trunk of the acacia and smiled at the clouds. A cataract of golden light poured through the delicate foliage, smiting the shadowy grass with green splendor, painting quivering fleur-de-lis upon the girl’s dark dress. “Father,” she said, gently enough, “I often wonder what you live for.” The man in the chair bit his pipe-stem and frowned. “You do, do you!” “I am young, you are old. What pleasures can you find in life?” Zeus Gildersedge eyed her keenly under his drooping lids. “What do most men live for?” he asked her. “How should I know?” she answered him. “Money, gold bags, beer, and bed. You will understand it all well enough some day.” She looked at him with her large, gray eyes, calm and incredulous. “And what, then, of death,” she asked, “if we live for nothing more than this?” The man straightened in his chair. “What’s that?” “Death.” “What’s death to you?” “The falling of leaves and a silence as of snow under a winter sky. I often think of death; nor is it strange to me. Do you fear the grave?” “Stop this nonsense,” said the man, with some symptoms of rebellion. “Are you happy?” Zeus Gildersedge wriggled in his chair. “When I want your sympathy I’ll ask for it,” he said. “You’re a little too forward for your years, my dear. Don’t worry your head about my future. Keep your sentimentalities for the birds and the bees and the twaddling rubbish you read in books. Damn sentiment. Supper at eight.” When the girl had gone Zeus Gildersedge clutched his ledger to him, his brows knitted into a scowl of thought. His hands strained at
- 60. the book with a tremulous intensity, while his eyes stared into space. Overhead a blackbird was pouring a deep torrent of song to join the sunlight. A slight breeze made the boughs oracular with sudden mysterious mutterings. The beneficent eyes of the universe seemed to watch with a scornful pity the vague dreads of infidelity and greed. As though waking from some unflattering dream, Zeus Gildersedge’s hands relaxed and suffered the book to slip slowly into his lap. He breathed an oath under his breath, gulped down a mouthful of claret, and lay back in his chair chuckling.
- 61. "I V DETEST prigs,” said Mrs. Marjoy, as her hands flickered over the tea-tray in the drawing-room of The Hermitage. “And of that tribe commend me to young Strong as the prince of the sect.” Mrs. Marjoy was one of those irreproachably vulgar persons whose mission in life appears to be the distilling of spiritual nostrums for the consciences of their neighbors. She was a born critic, a mercurial being ingrained with prejudice and dowered with an inordinate self-esteem. She had run “to tongue” in a remarkable degree; moreover, she scanned the world through the prisms of a none too generous philosophy. “My dear,” quoth Mrs. Mince, balancing a large slab of cake in her saucer, “young people are naturally irreverent in these days. You would hardly believe me, but Gabriel Strong, a mere boy, had the impudence to argue with my husband on religious matters after dinner the other evening. Poor, dear Jacob came home quite upset.” Mrs. Marjoy’s chair creaked. She was a lady who seemed to extract discords even from things inanimate. The harmonium in the church school-room was her most eloquent disciple. “What had the young cub to say?” “Well, my dear, he contested that he could see no harm in that ignorant nonconformist preaching at the village cross on Sundays. He snubbed poor, dear Jacob most abruptly, and declared that he should go and hear the fellow preach. Think of that—to the vicar of a parish!” Mrs. Marjoy sniffed, a habit of hers when she wished to be expressive. “Abominable!” “Such bad taste!” “Intellectual young men are always objectionable. Strong, Junior, always strikes me as a dissolute person. What do you think, my
- 62. dear?” Mrs. Mince cogitated over her cake. She was not exactly conversant with the characteristics of dissolute young men, but as the vicaress of Saltire she aimed at claiming a mild versatility in the technicalities of vice and virtue. “Jacob declares,” she said, retreating upon an infallible authority, “that he has never met a young fellow so irreverently arrogant towards the opinions of his elders. And Jacob is such a man of the world!” “Exactly,” said Mrs. Marjoy, with a tinge of irony. “It is so ill-bred to argue with people more experienced than one’s self.” The Cassandra of the tray solaced herself with a second cup of anæmic tea. She had an irritable habit of shrugging her shoulders as though troubled—science forgive the expression!—with a chronic urticaria of the brain. Irritability, indeed, was her enshrouding atmosphere. “As for those Gusset girls—” she began. Mrs. Mince held up a horror-stricken hand. “Such underbred young women. Why, I remember one of them coming to church in a red dress on Good Friday. The way they get up, too!” Mrs. Marjoy plunged into detail with the fervor of a scientist. “I told that woman Ophelia once,” she observed, “that I wondered how she could go into a public place with a low-cut blouse and no collar.” “Really!” said Mrs. Mince, rapturously. “She was rude, as usual. Said some necks did need covering up. It is no use giving such girls advice.” “Absolutely useless,” observed Mrs. Mince. The teapot was regarnished and two more slices of cake delivered to martyrdom. Mrs. Marjoy leaned back in her creaking chair and indulged in philosophies. “The aristocracy is rotten to the core,” she remarked, with comprehensive complacency. “The broad-minded and educated middle-class forms the backbone of the country. Any third-rate actress could teach many duchesses manners.”
- 63. “My dear, your opinions are so full of commonsense.” “I am always outspoken.” “An excellent habit.” “I flatter myself that I am a lady, Mrs. Mince, and I like to give people my frank opinion. I never speak wantonly and unjustly of absent neighbors. But as for those simpering and forward young Gussets, well—” A knock at the door cut short Mrs. Marjoy’s unprejudiced diatribe. A servant entered with a letter on a salver and stood waiting. Mrs. Marjoy slit the envelope with the handle of a teaspoon, perused the contents of the note, flicked it away contemptuously into the grate. “No answer.” The girl disappeared. The doctor’s wife flounced back in her chair, shrugged her shoulders viciously, and surveyed her friend irritably through her spectacles. “From those Mallabys,” she said. “Of Catford?” “People I never could stand. An invitation to their garden-party— such garden-parties, too! The ices made me ill there last summer; James was about all night giving me chlorodyne. Let me see, what were we talking about?” “The Gussets,” crowed Mrs. Mince. “Oh yes, those most immoral women. Really, my dear, I wonder John Strong lets his daughter associate with such people, but of course everybody knows that John Strong is a snob and a toady. The way the girl Ophelia flirts with that young Gabriel is absolutely indecent. They are always about fishing together, now, down in the Mallan. Most improper! You should hear James’s views on society women. I’ve just been reading that awful Gosling case in the newspapers.” Mrs. Mince’s interest revived ostensibly. She brushed sundry crumbs from her lap and rearranged her cushions. “A most deplorable case,” she said, with Christian unction. “How a man can run away from his wife passes my comprehension,” said the physician’s mate. “I really do not know
- 64. what we are coming to in these days, what with women like the Gussets taking the lead in society.” Mrs. Mince sighed an orthodox and Protestant sigh. “The young men are so different, too,” she said. “They want discipline, my dear, what with their absurd notions of independence and their revolutionary ideas about the Church and religion. We have had three assistants in a year—such boors! There was Snooks, who fell in love with little Miss Ginge; I soon put my foot on that. Then there was Lily, who talked theosophy and smoked such pipes in the surgery that the whole house stunk. I had to forbid smoking, and Lily left. The man we have now is such a glutton; always has two helpings at dinner and eats half a cake at tea.” “I never see him at church,” said Mrs. Mince, grievedly. “Young men never go to church in these days,” quoth Mrs. Marjoy, with an irascible twist of her mouth. “They are too enlightened, you know. I told young Bailey, the man we had last year, that he ought to be ashamed of himself setting the villagers such a bad example. He had the insolence to say that from his own observations church-going did not improve people’s tempers. Of course, I had to get James to give him a month’s notice.” “Young men must be a great worry in a house,” said Mrs. Mince, sympathetically. Mrs. Marjoy twitched her shoulders. “They are so abominably selfish,” she said. The doctor appeared at this period of the conversation, a kindly and easy-going Briton, artificially cheery and optimistic. He shook hands with Mrs. Mince and sat down on the extreme edge of a chair. His wife gave him the dregs of the teapot, and remarked that he was late. “Met young Strong in the village and had a chat,” he ventured, by way of justification. “Bright young chap; a little too bookish, though.” Mrs. Marjoy sniffed. “The rising generation reads too much,” she said. “Do you remember Bailey, who was always reading novels on a Sunday till I gave him a talking to and he left?”
- 65. Mr. Marjoy sipped his tea and sighed. He was a suppressed soul, a Prometheus bound upon the rock of matrimony. “Bailey was not half a bad chap,” he said, meekly. Mrs. Marjoy ignored the remark. “What’s Grimes doing?” she asked. “He has been seeing folk all the afternoon.” “James, I believe that fellow’s running after that Ginge girl like Snooks did. I won’t have it, mind. I can never catch Grimes in the surgery. What the man does with himself I can’t think.” “Grimes is all right,” said the doctor. “I must say I like young Strong.” “A prig, my dear—an arrant prig.” The doctor did not contradict her. He had grown wise in season and took his chastenings with reverent patience. It was not his ambition to out-talk his wife. “You take my word for it,” said Mrs. Marjoy, with acrimony, “there will be a scandal here soon. That young Strong is a most dissolute youth; and as for the Gusset girl—well, I will be charitable and conceal my thoughts. I always try to say kind things of people, when they will let me do so by leading decent and respectable lives.” “My dear,” said Mrs. Mince, “you are a model of tact. By-the-way, I hear the church-bell. I must attend vespers. Are you coming to hear Jacob preach?” “I will get my prayer-book,” said the doctor’s dame.
- 66. P VI ERILOUS and fair as Calypso is the imagination to the mind of man. A strong soul girds the elf in tender subjection. Like wine, the imagination fires the senses; they are saffron spray bubbling in an iris bowl, red poppies smothered in an ecstasy of green, stars, diamonds, and the long glimmer of a moonlit sea. Odors beat upon the imaginative brain; colors burn its vision. Like a siren’s voice falls the chant of the wind through the rose-red halls of summer. To the poet the world leaps like a young lover into the bosom of the sunset. Seas clamor and the stars tune their strings. Gabriel was an imaginative man. His heart’s cords were subtle, swift, and mystical. Songs born of the infinite strangeness of beauty were ever throbbing at his ear. His senses were as godly as Apollo’s. The scent of a pinewood smote him from afar. He could watch a hawk hovering a glimmering speck beneath the clouds. He was quick and virile, strung to the tense tones of beauty, red and blithe with the blood of June. With too precocious a wisdom in the vanities of earth, a semi- Byronic cynicism had marred his manhood. Like Joan, he had supped too richly in his April days. Knowledge had bred contempt. To Gabriel women were so many roses, each with a canker under the petals. He had been unfortunate in his experimental philosophy. No superb contradiction had as yet given his shallow pessimism the lie. He had met women, but not a woman. No Shakespearian divinity had shamed the cynicism out of his manhood. To him Sarah Golightly of the Gayety, or Mrs. Marjoy of Saltire, or the numberless worthy daughters of uninteresting neighbors were equally null and unlovable. A melancholy being, he had brought himself to the belief that there were no Britomarts in the woman’s world of the day. He believed in the possibility of womanly loveliness, adored the ideal
- 67. Beatrice devoutly, but never prognosticated the flitting of a goddess athwart his earthly path. On the identical afternoon that Mrs. Marjoy was waxing charitable over the moral deficiencies of her acquaintances, Gabriel and his sister Judith were sessioned in the little red drawing-room at the hall. John Strong had driven into Rilchester, leaving the pair to no unwelcome solitude. Saltire Hall seemed to breathe anew through its quaint casements and antique galleries when its most Victorian master had vanished for a season. Now Judith Strong was the one woman in the world who reclaimed her brother from the charge of callow pessimism. She was one of those grave, lovable, stately beings who shed over the world a lustre of truth. With hair of red gold, eyes dark and contemplative, a complexion delicately pale, she bore upon her face the benign and tender divineness of a young Madonna. Her soul was clear and calm as a crystal sky. A sympathetic wisdom had dowered her with a charm that graced her womanhood like a crown of pearls. To Gabriel she was sister, friend, and mother. The two loved each other with an inseparable tenderness that was, indeed, Christian. Judith had learned to comprehend the subtler instincts of her brother’s nature. He was no ordinary man, in her opinion, and she was jealous for his happiness as for her own faith. But for Judith Saltire would have been a dry desert to the man’s soul. They had been singing together that afternoon certain old ballads and glees that would have kindled the Pepysian ardor. Judith’s long, lithe fingers were magical on the keys. Her whole being begot music. Gabriel had listened to her playing that afternoon with infinite sympathy of soul. She seemed as spiritual to him, as he sat in the window-seat and watched her, as some fair woman stolen from Rossetti’s brain. They partook of tea together by the open window, where roses nodded against a gossamer veil of gold. Gardens stretched below into the wastes of the woods, a dim maze of yews and lilacs, laurels and stately firs. It was like some Tuscan landscape spread in quaint loveliness upon one of Angelico’s frescoes. Mystery brooded on the
- 68. air. The warm hush of the summer noon was unbroken save by the distant sound of reaping in the meadows. Judith and her brother were in a solemn humor. Music had inspired them to still thought and tenderness of mood. Brother and sister, woman and man, they were glad of each other’s sympathy, grateful for solitude and unbroken union of soul. Judith had long been troubled in her heart for her brother’s future. She knew too well the sensitive necessity that watched over such a mind as his. All women are fearful of prophesying pain for those they love. And Judith feared in measure for her brother. “Gabriel,” she said, anon, with her stately and simple directness of expression, “it is strange to me that you do not tire of this place and the sameness of its ways. Small decorums and small circles seem so foreign to your nature. It is a year since you were in Italy. You must chafe at times in Saltire. I should have thought liberty essential to a man of your temper.” Her brother smiled at her with an amused melancholy that often found expression on his face. “You mean that I am too much here?” he said. “Not for us, dear. But you are a man of talent, and—” She hesitated a moment, gazing with an intensity of thought into the blue distance. “Well?” “My words were running over fast.” “My dear girl, say anything you like to me; you are too honest for me to be offended.” Judith drew her chair nearer to his, and, leaning her elbows on its arms, looked into her brother’s face. “It is not good for a man to live always at home,” she said. “Is it my fault?” “No. I know father desires to keep you here. He is proud of you, and ambitious—God pardon me—in a mistaken way. But then, my dear Gabriel, a father must recognize the individual personality of his son. He can only wrong him till he treats him as a fellow-man and not as a child. Both of you may suffer through your amiable apathy.” “Go on.”