Fraternity | Page 6

and Cecilia made her way towards the
studio. It was a large high room, full of people.
Motionless, by himself, close to the door, stood an old man, very thin
and rather bent, with silvery hair, and a thin silvery beard grasped in his

transparent fingers. He was dressed in a suit of smoke-grey cottage
tweed, which smelt of peat, and an Oxford shirt, whose collar, ceasing
prematurely, exposed a lean brown neck; his trousers, too, ended very
soon, and showed light socks. In his attitude there was something
suggestive of the patience and determination of a mule. At Cecilia's
approach he raised his eyes. It was at once apparent why, in so full a
room, he was standing alone. Those blue eyes looked as if he were
about to utter a prophetic statement.
"They have been speaking to me of an execution," he said.
Cecilia made a nervous movement.
"Yes, Father?"
"To take life," went on the old man in a voice which, though charged
with strong emotion, seemed to be speaking to itself, "was the chief
mark of the insensate barbarism still prevailing in those days. It sprang
from that most irreligious fetish, the belief in the permanence of the
individual ego after death. From the worship of that fetish had come all
the sorrows of the human race."
Cecilia, with an involuntary quiver of her little bag, said:
"Father, how can you?"
"They did not stop to love each other in this life; they were so sure they
had all eternity to do it in. The doctrine was an invention to enable men
to act like dogs with clear consciences. Love could never come to full
fruition till it was destroyed."
Cecilia looked hastily round; no one had heard. She moved a little
sideways, and became merged in another group. Her father's lips
continued moving. He had resumed the patient attitude which so
slightly suggested mules. A voice behind her said: "I do think your
father is such an interesting man, Mrs. Dallison."
Cecilia turned and saw a woman of middle height, with her hair done in

the early Italian fashion, and very small, dark, lively eyes, which
looked as though her love of living would keep her busy each minute of
her day and all the minutes that she could occupy of everybody else's
days.
"Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace? Oh! how do you do? I've been meaning to
come and see you for quite a long time, but I know you're always so
busy."
With doubting eyes, half friendly and half defensive, as though
chaffing to prevent herself from being chaffed, Cecilia looked at Mrs.
Tallents Smallpeace, whom she had met several times at Bianca's house.
The widow of a somewhat famous connoisseur, she was now secretary
of the League for Educating Orphans who have Lost both Parents,
vice-president of the Forlorn Hope for Maids in Peril, and treasurer to
Thursday Hops for Working Girls. She seemed to know every man and
woman who was worth knowing, and some besides; to see all
picture-shows; to hear every new musician; and attend the opening
performance of every play. With regard to literature, she would say that
authors bored her; but she was always doing them good turns, inviting
them to meet their critics or editors, and sometimes--though this was
not generally known--pulling them out of the holes they were prone to
get into, by lending them a sum of money--after which, as she would
plaintively remark; she rarely saw them more.
She had a peculiar spiritual significance to Mrs. Stephen Dallison,
being just on the borderline between those of Bianca's friends whom
Cecilia did not wish and those whom she did wish to come to her own
house, for Stephen, a barrister in an official position, had a keen sense
of the ridiculous. Since Hilary wrote books and was a poet, and Bianca
painted, their friends would naturally be either interesting or queer; and
though for Stephen's sake it was important to establish which was
which, they were so very often both. Such people stimulated, taken in
small doses, but neither on her husband's account nor on her daughter's
did Cecilia desire that they should come to her in swarms. Her attitude
of mind towards them was, in fact, similar-a sort of pleasurable
dread-to that in which she purchased the Westminster Gazette to feel

the pulse of social progress.
Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's dark little eyes twinkled.
"I hear that Mr. Stone--that is your father's name, I think--is writing a
book which will create quite a sensation when it comes out."
Cecilia bit her lips. "I hope it never will come out," she was on the
point of saying.
"What will it be called?" asked Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace. "I gather that
it's a book of Universal Brotherhood. That's so nice!"
Cecilia made