she can spare Bertie."
"What does she want Bertie for?" said Chesterford.
"Oh, I expect she'll let him come," remarked Dodo; "she's really busy this morning. She's been composing since a quarter past eight."
Dodo went across the hall and opened the drawing-room door. Edith was completely absorbed in her work. The grilled bone lay untouched on a small table by the piano. Bertie was sitting before the fire.
"Bertie," said Dodo, "are you coming shooting?"
This woke Edith up.
"Oh, it's splendid," she said. "Dodo, listen to this."
She ran her hands over the piano, and then broke out into a quick, rippling scherzo. The music flew on, as if all the winds of heaven were blowing it; then it slowed down, halted a moment, and repeated itself till Dodo burst out: "Oh, Edith, it's lovely! I want to dance." She wheeled a table out of the way, kicked a chair across the room, and began turning and twisting with breathless rapidity. Her graceful figure looked admirable in the quick movements of her impromptu dance. Bertie thought he had never seen anything so deliciously fresh. Dodo danced with peculiar abandon. Every inch of her moved in perfect time and harmony to the music.
She had caught up a thin, Indian shawl from one of the sofas, and passed it behind her back, round her head, this way and that, bending, till at one moment it swept the ground in front of her, at another flew in beautiful curves high above her head, till at last the music stopped, and she threw herself down exhausted in an arm-chair.
"Oh, that was glorious," she panted. "Edith, you are a genius. I never felt like that before. I didn't dance at all, it was the music that danced, and pulled me along with it."
"That was the best compliment my music has ever received," said Edith. "That scherzo was meant to make you want to dance. Now, Dodo, could I have done that after eating two poached eggs?"
"You may have grilled bones seven times a day," said Dodo, "if you'll compose another scherzo."
"I wanted a name for the symphony," said Edith, "and I shall call it the 'Dodo.' That's a great honour, Dodo. Now, if you only feel miserable during the 'Andante,' I shall be satisfied. But you came about something else, I forget what."
"Oh, about Bertie. Is he coming shooting?".
"I wish it was right for women to shoot," said Edith. "I do shoot when I'm at home, and there's no one there. Anyhow I couldn't to-day. I must finish this. Dodo, if you are going to take lunch with them, I'll come with you, if you don't go too early. You know this music makes me perfectly wild, but it can't be done on poached eggs. Now set me down at the Handel Festival, and I'll be content with high, tea—cold meat and muffins, you know. Handel always reminds me of high tea, particularly the muffins. He must have written the 'Messiah' between tea and dinner on Sunday evening, after an afternoon service in summer. I've often thought of taking the Salvation Army hymn-book and working the tunes up into fugual choruses, and publishing them as a lost work of Handel's, Noah, or Zebedee's children, or the Five Foolish Virgins. I don't believe anyone would know the difference."
Dodo was turning over the leaves of Edith's score book.
"I give it up," she said at last; "you are such a jumble of opposites. You sit down and write a Sanctus, which makes one feel as if one wants to be a Roman Catholic archbishop, and all the time you are smoking cigarettes and eating grilled bone."
"Oh, everyone's a jumble of opposites," said Edith, "when you come to look at them. It's only because my opposites are superficial, that you notice them. A Sanctus is only a form of expression for thoughts which everyone has, even though their tastes appear to lie in the music-hall line; and music is an intelligible way of expressing these thoughts. Most people are born dumb with regard to their emotions, and you therefore conclude that they haven't got any, or that they are expressed by their ordinary actions."
"No, it's not that," said Dodo. "What I mean is that your Sanctus emphasises an emotion I should think you felt very little."
"I!" said Edith with surprise. "My dear Dodo, you surely know me better than that. Just because I don't believe that grilled bones are necessarily inconsistent with deep religious feeling, you assume that I haven't got the feeling."
Dodo laughed.
"I suppose one associates the champions of religion with proselytising," she said. "You don't proselytise, you know."
"No artist does," said Edith; "it's their business to produce—to give the world an opportunity of forming conclusions, not to preach their own conclusions to the world."
"Yes; but your music is the expression of your conclusions, isn't it?"
"Yes, but I don't argue about it, and try to convert the world to it. If someone says to me, 'I don't know what you mean! Handel seems to me infinitely more satisfactory, I can understand him,' I simply say, 'For Heaven's sake, then, why don't you go to hear Handel? Why leave a creed that satisfies you?' Music is a conviction, but Handel's music has nothing to do with my convictions, nor mine with Handel's."
Edith sat down sternly, and buried herself in heir convictions.
Chapter Five
It was a perfect winter's day, and when, two hours afterwards, Dodo and the others drove off to meet the shooting-party, the grass in the shadow was still crisp with the light, hoar frost, but where the sun had touched it, the fields were covered with a moist radiance. It had just begun to melt the little pieces of ice that hung from the bare, pendulous twigs of the birch-trees, and send them, shivering to the ground. Through the brown bracken you could hear the startled scuttle of the rabbit, or the quick tapping of a pheasant, who had realised that schemes were on foot against him. A night of hard frost had turned the wheel-ruts into little waves and billows of frozen mud, which the carriage wheels levelled as they passed over them.
They caught up the shooting party shortly before lunch, and, as it was cold, Edith and Dodo got out, leaving Miss Grantham, who preferred being cold to walking under any circumstances, to gather up the extra rugs round her.
"See that there's a good fire, Grantie," called Dodo after her, "and tell them to have the champagne opened."
The sight of abundant game was too much for Edith, and, as Lord Chesterford fell out of line to join Dodo, she asked him if she might have a couple of shots.
The keeper's face expressed some reasonable surprise when he observed Edith snapping the cartridges into her gun with a practised hand. His previous views with regard to women in connection with guns were based upon the idea that most women screamed, when they saw a gun, and considered it a purely unaccountable weapon, which might go off without the least encouragement or warning, and devastate the country for miles round. He was still more surprised when he saw her pick off a couple of pheasants with precision and deadliness of aim. She gave her gun back to Lord Chesterford as they neared the lodge, and volunteered to join them after lunch for an hour, if they didn't mind. Chesterford stole an appealing glance, at Dodo, who, however, only gave him a half-amused, half-pitying look, and nodded assent.
"The worst of it is," said Edith, "I care for such lots of things. There's my music, and then there's any sort of game—have you ever seen me play tennis?—and there isn't time for everything.
