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Solution Manual for Small Business Management: Launching and Growing Entrepreneurial Ventures, 19th Edition, Justin G. Longenecker,

Solution Manual for Small Business Management: Launching and Growing Entrepreneurial Ventures, 19th Edition, Justin G. Longenecker, Solution Manual for Small Business Management: Launching and Growing Entrepreneurial Ventures, 19th Edition, Justin G. Longenecker, Solution Manual for Small Business Management: Launching and Growing Entrepreneurial Ventures, 19th Edition, Justin G. Longenecker,

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Chapter 1: The Entrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 1 Solution Manual for Small Business Management: Launching and Growing Entrepreneurial Ventures, 19th Edition, Justin G. Longenecker, FULL CHAPTER AT: HTTPS://TESTBANKBELL.COM/PRODUCT/SOLUTION-MANUAL- FOR-SMALL-BUSINESS-MANAGEMENT-LAUNCHING-AND- GROWING-ENTREPRENEURIAL-VENTURES-19TH-EDITION- JUSTIN-G-LONGENECKER/ CHAPTER 1: THE ENTREPRENEURIAL LIFE CHAPTER OUTLINE Introduction i) Owning a business is a noble profession—especially if it’s done well. ii) The richest rewards of owning a small business come from offering goods or services that improve the lives of others and developing an organizational culture that supports employees. 1-1 Small Size, Great Significance LO1: Explain the importance of small businesses and entrepreneurship in our society. U.S. Small Business Administration reports the following: i) There are 27.8 million businesses in the United States with fewer than 500 employees. Small companies account for 99.7% of all businesses; 90% have fewer than 20 employees. ii) Fifty-five million people work in small businesses, representing 49% of all employees and 42% of all salaries paid to employees. iii) Small enterprises hire 43% of all high-tech employees (scientists, engineers, computer programmers, and others). iv) Many small companies have gone global, representing 97% of all exporters. v) The number of college students enrolling in small business and entrepreneurship classes has increased. 1-2 Small Business and Entrepreneurship Go Together LO2: Describe what it means to be a small entrepreneurial firm. 1-2a What Is a Small Business? i) To distinguish between small and large businesses, we naturally consider their relative size, but it is also helpful to think about a small firm’s potential to grow. (a) Size – Can be determined based on such criteria as the number of employees, sales volume, amount of profit, and the size of the company’s assets, but size standards are arbitrary and frequently adopted to serve a purpose. (b) Growth Potential
Chapter 1: The Entrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 2 1. Microbusinesses (lifestyle businesses) – Businesses that provide modest returns to their owners but permit an owner to follow a desired lifestyle. 2. Attractive small firms – Businesses that offer substantial financial rewards for their owners. 3. High-potential ventures (gazelles) – Businesses that have phenomenal prospects for growth. ii) For the purposes of this textbook, a small business meets the following criteria, at least in spirit: (a) Compared to the largest firms in the industry, the business is small; in most instances, it has fewer than 100 employees. (b) Except for its marketing function, operations are geographically localized. (c) Financing for the business is provided by no more than a few individuals. (d) The business may begin with a single individual, but it has the potential to become more than a “one-person-show” and may eventually grow to be a mid-sized company or even a large firm. 1-2b What Is Entrepreneurship? i) Entrepreneur – A person who relentlessly pursues an opportunity, in either a new or an existing enterprise, to create value while assuming both significant risks and the rewards for her or his efforts. ii) Entrepreneurship involves four stages: (a) Identifying an attractive opportunity. (b) Acquiring the critical resources needed for growing the business. 1. Bootstrap – Efforts made by entrepreneurs such as resorting to bartering, generating income from other sources, or using a personal credit card. (c) Executing the plan. (d) Harvesting the business. 1-2c Entrepreneurs: Born or Made? i) In their research on entrepreneurial characteristics on “desirable and acquirable attitudes and behaviors,” Spinelli and Adams uncovered six descriptions: • Leadership abilities • Opportunity obsession • Commitment and determination • Motivation to excel • Courage • Tolerance of risk, ambiguity, and uncertainty • Creativity, self-reliance, and adaptability ii) Attitudes and behaviors entrepreneurs should avoid: • Overestimate what you can do. • Lack an understanding of the market. • Hire mediocre people. • Fail to be a team player. • Be a domineering manager. • Fail to share ownership in the business in an equitable way. iii) Entrepreneurs are not cut out of a single mold, and their success generally arises from having a clear mission, a desire to lead, and the recognition that business success requires hard work and long hours.
Chapter 1: The Entrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 3 1-2d Types of Entrepreneurs i) Second-Stage Entrepreneurs (a) Helpful to distinguish between entrepreneurs who start or substantially change companies and those who direct the continuing operations of established businesses. ii) Franchisees (a) Franchisees differ from other business owners due to having less independence. Because of the guidance and standardized systems provided by contractual arrangements with franchising organizations, franchisees function within the boundaries set by franchisors.
Chapter 1: The Entrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 4 iii) Social Entrepreneurs (a) Social entrepreneurship – Entrepreneurial activity with an embedded social purpose. In other words, social entrepreneurs come up with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing needs, problems, and opportunities. iv) Intrapreneurs (a) Intrapreneurship – A person who has characteristics similar to those of an entrepreneur, but who works within an existing, usually larger, corporation as an employee. v) Entrepreneurial Teams (a) Two or more people who work together as entrepreneurs on one endeavor. (b) Able to use talents, skills, and resources of team. 1-3 Can a Small Company Really Compete with Big Companies? LO3: Identify how small businesses can compete against the giants. 1-3a Integrity and Responsibility: In order to maintain a strong competitive advantage, it is essential that you add to good customer service and excellent product quality a solid reputation for honesty and dependability. 1-3b Customer Focus: Business opportunities exist for those who can produce products and services desired by customers. Having a small number of customers and a close relationship with them makes customer service a powerful tool for entrepreneurial businesses. 1-3c Quality Performance: Quality is mostly independent of firm size, but if there is an advantage, it most often goes to the smaller business. 1-3d Innovation: Innovation, both in products or services and in competitive strategies, is within reach of the small business in ways that were not thought possible a few years ago. 1-3e Niche Markets: Almost all small businesses try to shield themselves from competition by targeting a specific group of customers who have an identifiable but very narrow range of product or service interests and comprise what is called a niche market. 1-4 Motivations for Owning a Business LO4: Understand what might motivate you to be a small business owner with all its risks and uncertainties. i) Before you choose to enter the small business game, you need to think carefully about who you want to be and how owning a business will help make you that person. ii) Understanding clearly why you want to own a small business and what motivates you is vital to eventually achieving fulfillment through your business. 1-4a Types of Entrepreneurial Motivations i) Personal Fulfillment (a) Making a difference in others’ lives, particularly customers, employees, and in the community. (b) Having a sense of belonging and working with others in a common cause. ii) Personal Satisfaction (a) They feel rewarded in working with a product or providing a service and being good at it. (b) Entrepreneurs are energized by enjoyable associations within their businesses.
Chapter 1: The Entrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 5 (c) Entrepreneurs enjoy friendships with other business owners, frequently learning from one another. (d) If they are visible within the community, small business owners can garner the respect of those who live there. iii) Independence (a) Being my own boss where I can make things happen. (b) Controlling my own future. iv) Financial Rewards (a) Creating personal financial wealth based on sound decisions and hard work. When businesses are profitable, everyone benefits. (b) In general, self-employed individuals are more likely to create greater personal wealth than persons who work for others. 1-4b Influencers in Deciding to Own a Business i) Family and Friends ii) The Desire to Leave a Difficult Situation (a) Those who started or acquired small businesses because of financial hardship or other severely negative conditions have appropriately been called reluctant entrepreneurs. (b) Corporate refugees – Individuals who flee the bureaucratic environment of a corporation that seems stifling or oppressive to them. 1-4c Why Your Perceptions Matter? i) Knowing your motivation is important, but it’s not enough. You also need to understand if your perceptions of what it takes to be successful in business are accurate. ii) According to Stephen Covey, having a positive attitude or working harder is not enough. Instead, we have to change how we fundamentally see a situation, or what he calls a paradigm shift. iii) Michael Gerber describes three paradigms (personalities): (a) The Technician Personality – A steady worker, experiences at doing what he or she knows best. (b) The Manager Personality – Pragmatic, assuming responsibility for the planning, order, and predictability of the business. (c) The Entrepreneur Personality – Does not look at the work that a business does, but instead examines how the business does what it is intended to do. 1-5 What Do You Want Your Legacy to Be? LO5: Discuss ways to build a successful business as part of your life legacy. i) When an entrepreneur exits the business, he or she faces questions of reflection. An entrepreneurial legacy is established. ii) Entrepreneurial legacy – Includes both tangible items and intangible qualities passed on not only to heirs, but also to the broader society. iii) Structure of textbook material: (a) Part 1 discusses the fundamental values of the entrepreneur. (b) Parts 2 and 3 look at a firm’s basic strategy, the various types of entrepreneurial ventures, and initial planning required for startups. (c) Parts 4 through 6 deal with the marketing and management of a growing business, including its human resources, operations, and finances.
Chapter 1: The Entrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 6 ADDITIONAL DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. What is meant by the term entrepreneur? Entrepreneur is a French term that dates back to the early eighteenth century. It refers to an individual who founds or starts a business firm. (The term also includes partnerships and entrepreneurial teams.) In this text, we extend the definition to include owner- managers who operate firms started by others. The characteristics of risk-taking and innovation are associated with the image of the entrepreneur. 2. Consider an entrepreneur you know personally. What was the most significant reason for his or her following an independent business career? If you don’t already know the reason, discuss it with that person. Answers will vary, of course. Students should know some entrepreneurs—parents, friends, or employers—quite well. The instructor might ask students first to explain the basis of their relationship with the entrepreneur and then to discuss their perceptions of that person’s motivations. 3. What do you believe would be the two most desirable and undesirable qualities of an entrepreneur? Answers will vary, of course. 4. The motivators/rewards of profit, independence, and personal fulfillment are the reasons that individuals enter entrepreneurial careers. What problems might be anticipated if an entrepreneur were to become obsessed with one of these rewards—for example, if he or she had an excessive desire for profit, independence, or a particular lifestyle? A balanced perspective is needed. While each reward can give a strong motivation to build a good business, each also has some potential for creating havoc in an unbalanced life. An excessive desire for profit can lead to attempts to make short-run gains at the expense of long-run customer or employee relationships. It may also tempt one to lower ethical standards and to neglect family relationships. An excessive desire for independence may make one difficult to deal with in interpersonal relationships. Some degree of perceived interdependence between employer and employee contributes to mutual respect and cooperative relationships. An excessive desire for a satisfying way of life may dull one’s sensitivity to cost and profit issues. An entrepreneur must achieve a profit goal in order to be able to afford a life satisfaction goal. 5. How do different personalities affect our effectiveness in running our own small business? Our personalities and desires shape our callings. There is something embedded in each of us that, without robbing us of our freedom, nonetheless prods or tugs us in the optimal direction. 6. What do you believe would be the advantage of having an entrepreneurial team when starting a business? Individual entrepreneurs frequently have weak spots in education or experience. An entrepreneurial team makes it possible to cover such weaknesses by using individuals with varied talents and backgrounds. 7. Explain how customer focus and innovation can be special strengths of small businesses.
Chapter 1: The Entrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 7 Small businesses are generally less bound by bureaucracy and corporate policies and usually maintain closer relationships with their customers. In other words, their flexibility affords them the ability to focus on their customers and meet their needs, which naturally generates customer loyalty. At the same time, small firms often grow out of the innovative ideas of their entrepreneurial founders; therefore, this mindset is likely to prevail in the small business. 8. Explain the concept of an entrepreneurial legacy. A legacy is what one leaves behind or passes on to one’s heirs and to others. An entrepreneurial legacy refers to the entrepreneurial aspect, the business side, of one’s legacy, and thus is concerned with what the business experience has meant to all those affected. This includes the tangible elements such as financial resources passed on to heirs and others and also the intangible elements such as the impact of the entrepreneurial experience on family relationships and the example of entrepreneurial integrity or avarice given to the community. 9. Explain the following statement: “One can climb the ladder to success only to discover it is leaning against the wrong wall.” Entrepreneurial achievements are varied, and the way we measure them also varies. For example, if an entrepreneur concentrates too much on achieving financial goals, that person may fail dismally in other areas of life such as family relationships. The statement points to the need to have one’s goals properly defined and to have one’s efforts properly forecasted. SUGGESTED ANSWERS TO YOU MAKE THE CALL EXERCISES Situation 1 1. Should this venture be regarded as entrepreneurial? Is the owner a true entrepreneur? Whether this is entrepreneurial depends on one’s definition. The owner may or may not be a founder—the key issue in some definitions of a “true” entrepreneur. In this text, we use a looser definition of entrepreneur, which could include this owner-manager regardless of whether he or she founded the business. The venture is apparently not the high-growth, high-potential type. It may well be what we have called an “attractive small company.” 2. Do you agree with the philosophy expressed here? Is the owner really doing what is best for his family? This question calls for opinions and permits some discussion of the conflicting values and rewards in business. Some may feel the owner is insufficiently motivated to grow and even to serve his own family properly. Others will determine the family values and careful growth to be appropriate. The question permits the instructor to discern the general orientation of students in a class. How many, after discussion, will give a vote of commendation to this owner? You might ask students to guess the owner’s age.
Chapter 1: The Entrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 8 3. What kinds of problems is this owner trying to avoid? The owner is apparently avoiding or reducing problems related to inadequate customer service and product/service quality—areas of difficulty in a rapidly growing business. Also, the personnel and management functions (e.g., delegation, finding qualified key people) are simplified by slow growth. Slow growth may either postpone a transition to professional management or permit a more orderly transition to it. Situation 2 1. What do you like and not like about the Simple Bills concept? This is a win-win situation for everyone. The utility companies win because they get paid in a timely fashion and don’t have to incur the cost of collecting past due utility bills. The apartment owners win because the utility bills remain in the tenants’ names, and the owners don’t incur the risk of incurring past due utility bills. The tenants win because they don’t have to take on the task of collecting payment from their roommates. The owners of Simple Bills win because they make money by providing a low-cost, low-overhead service to their customers. 2. Would you recommend raising funds from outside investors and growing faster or continuing to bootstrap the operations to conserve ownership? Why? While these entrepreneurs may not want to give away ownership of their business for fear of losing profits, they fail to see the bigger picture. By bringing in investor capital, they will be able to grow the business into something much bigger. By growing the business bigger (from, say, a $1 million company to a $100 million company), their profits will be bigger. If the owners retain 60% control of the business, wouldn’t it be better to have 60% of $100 million rather than 100% of $1 million? Indeed, by including investors, the company has the opportunity to grow into something much larger, and more quickly, rather than by bootstrapping this operation. 3. What strategy would you suggest for growing the business, assuming new investors are brought in? As a high-potential venture, this company may want to seek out angel capital financing. How large Simple Bills wants to grow (statewide versus nationwide) will determine the type of financing these owners will pursue. A nationwide growth plan would require venture capital financing, while a smaller growth plan could utilize angel capital. 4. If you choose to raise funds, whom might you seek as investors? Have students think outside the box and consider contemporary fund-raising sources such as Kickstarter.com or other types of online investor resource networks. Situation 3 1. Is work-life balance for everyone? No it is not. Work-life balance is an individual preference and a value. People are spurred into action by what motivates them. Whatever that driving force is will chart the course for how they balance their passion (work, exercise, education) with their other life obligations.
Chapter 1: The Entrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 9 2. Is work-life balance simply a preference, or is it a necessity? Answers will vary as this is based on opinion. Most will argue that it’s a preference. Health professionals would largely argue that it should be a necessity. Balance is always the best course of action. 3. As an entrepreneur, would there be areas in your life that you would place at a higher priority than growing a business? Explain. Answers will vary as this is based on individual preferences. SUGGESTED SOLUTION TO CASE 1: DASHLOCKER 1. How did Hennessy’s background prepare him for starting a business? What entrepreneurial qualities did he embody? Hennessy’s background as a research analyst for a hedge fund certainly would not have directly prepared him to operate a dry cleaning company, especially knowing what works and what does not work. However, his research skills probably served him well in researching the opportunity. This experience also would have contributed to his ability to analyze financial statements. He spent a year studying customers’ laundry habits by operating a traditional dry cleaning business in East New York. In thinking about Hennessy’s entrepreneurial qualities, the instructor might have students return to the important qualities listed in Chapter 1 of the text for entrepreneurs to possess, namely: • Commitment and determination—tenacious, decisive, and persistent in problem solving • Leadership abilities—self-starters and team builders who focus on honesty in their business relationships • Opportunity obsession—aware of market and customer needs • Tolerance of risk, ambiguity, and uncertainty—risk takers, risk minimizers, and uncertainty tolerators • Creativity, self-reliance, and adaptability—open-minded, flexible, uncomfortable with the status quo, and quick learners • Motivation to excel—goal-oriented and aware of personal strengths and weaknesses • Courage—have strong moral convictions and a willingness to experiment While the case does not provide much in the way of Hennessy’s qualities, it does give you a sense that he was opportunity driven. To be successful, an entrepreneur must clearly identify a problem needing a solution and how he or she can solve the problem at a price enough customers are willing to pay to make the opportunity profitable. Hennessy also demonstrated tenacity in spending a year to convince Laundry Locker, a similar firm in San Francisco, to license its technology to DashLocker. Finally, Hennessy gave up a career that in most cases has large financial rewards, which suggests that he has the capacity to tolerate risk.
Chapter 1: The Entrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 10 2. What were Hennessy’s entrepreneurial motivations for founding DashLocker? Chapter 1 lays out four motivations for becoming an entrepreneur: personal fulfillment, personal satisfaction, independence, and financial rewards. DashLocker potentially offered Hennessy the opportunity to satisfy all four motivations if done well. Specifically, Hennessy’s primary motivation was to solve an unmet need. He saw the opportunity as a way to change how people live. In his own way, he wanted to make meaning for customers. He also wanted to make a difference by reducing the carbon footprint historically caused by laundry businesses. 3. What type of entrepreneurial opportunity did Hennessy identify and how did he capitalize on those opportunities? Hennessy wanted to change the way most New York City residents do their laundry and dry cleaning, primarily 20- to 40-year-old professionals who found current laundry services inconvenient to access. In other words, he provided convenience. He also saw growth potential in apartments, where a customer could pick up laundry while still in slippers. This could benefit landlords as well by providing them a way to have a laundry facility for renters at a much lower cost and without the hassles they would encounter from operating a laundry facility. The landlords would also receive a commission, thus providing a win- win situation for everyone. Furthermore, he was capturing the opportunity with only modest resource requirements and, therefore, smaller amounts of capital for him to invest. For instance, DashLocker owned no laundry and dry cleaning equipment. Instead, all items were sent to a wholesale washing center. He also had a low cost of operations, with few employees, and a minimum in operating expenses, such as rent and overhead, which meant a low profit break-even point. But, to make the opportunity attractive in terms of profits, he had to achieve large sales volumes. Growth is not only beneficial, but also essential. 4. Describe DashLocker’s growth potential. DashLocker had good growth potential. Hennessy had five locations and believed he could grow the business exponentially by adding locations. The opportunity is scalable, which was an essential ingredient for any opportunity to create significant profits. The opportunity to move into apartments and other facilities, along with finding other services such as shoe shining and a drop-off pick-up system for packages, could be met through the same equipment. 5. Describe DashLocker’s competitive advantage. The firm’s competitive advantage would come from two sources: being the first mover in New York City and having the license to use Laundry Locker’s proven technology. 6. What impact does DashLocker have on society? As already noted, DashLocker had the potential to change how a large part of the professional population in New York City lives.
Chapter 1: The Entrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 11 7. What do you think about DashLocker’s social mission? What else could the company do to reduce its footprint? Should businesses be concerned with social entrepreneurship? Hennessy envisioned a social mission for his business by using green, earth-friendly machines in the firm’s operations. Nothing is said about whether this decision imposed higher costs on the business. If not, then the choice is easy. Be environmentally friendly. If Hennessy faced higher costs, then he had to find a way to be competitive while incurring additional costs not faced by competitors. Hopefully, Hennessy found a way to capture attractive profits and at the same time accomplish the stated social mission. Nothing else in the case suggests other ways to fulfill a social mission. But there are always good options for making a difference in a firm’s community. It would require that Hennessy work with his employees to find ways to make the community a better place and touch the lives of others in positive ways. Such a goal is the right thing to do to the extent it is possible for the business. Business owners must have an intentional commitment to such a mission, because there will always be ways for them to rationalize not including a social dimension as part of the firm’s mission.
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“Things will be made poisonously pleasant for you,” he said. “You can without effort capture brilliant success. But remember all that you get without effort is not, from the point of view of art, conceivably worth anything. Remember also that nothing fine ever grew out of what is horrible. More than that, what is horrible sterilizes the soil,—that soil is you. You will never get any more if you spoil it or let it get sour or rancid. Horror gets rooted there, it devours all that might have been good, all that might have been of the best.” There was a long silence. Then Karl stepped back and rang the bell. To Martin the silvery tinkle sounded remote. He certainly was thinking now. “Well, I have done,” said Karl. “Excuse the—the Nonconformist conscience.” Martin got up. “I don’t see how one can care—really care—for music and live grossly,” he said. “Yet people appear to manage it. And mawkishness makes me feel sick,” he added with apparent irrelevance. But Karl understood. “Somebody has been trying to pet him,” he thought to himself. They went upstairs to the music-room, and Martin stood before the fire a few moments smoking in silence. “I like this room,” he said. “It makes me feel clean, like the November morning. I say, how is it that so many people, men and women alike, only think about one subject? Surely it is extraordinarily stupid of them, when there are so many jolly things in the world.” “Ah, if the world was not full of extraordinarily stupid people,” remarked Karl, “it would be an enchanting place.” “Oh, it’s enchanting as it is,” cried Martin, throwing off his preoccupation. “May I begin again at once? I want to get through a lot of work to-night. Heavens, there’s a barrel-organ playing ‘Cavalleria.’ Frank is going to introduce a bill next session, he says, putting ‘Cavalleria’ in public on the same footing as obscene language in public. He says it comes to the same thing.” Stella Plympton about this time was giving a certain amount of anxiety to her parents. The amount, it is true, was not very great, because her father
was a happily constituted man who was really incapable of feeling great anxiety except about large sums of money. Consequently, since the extremely large sums of money, all of which he had made, were most admirably invested, his life was fairly free from care. His wife also was quite as fortunate, her complexion was the only thing capable of moving her really deeply, and as she had lately found a new masseuse who was quite wonderful and obliterated lines with the same soft completeness with which bread-crumb removes the marks of lead-pencil, she also, for the present, stood outside the zone of serious trouble. Between them they occupied, just now, the apex of social as well as most other successes in London, and were a very typically modern couple. Sir Reginald Plympton had in early life invented an oil-cloth of so eminent an excellence that in its manufacture and exploitation he had been too busy to really master the English aspirate, which still bothered him. But to make up for this he had carefully cultivated his aspirations, and had (entirely owing to oil-cloth), while not yet sixty, amassed a colossal fortune, married the daughter of an impecunious duke, won the Derby, and now stood perched on the topmost rung of the ladder of English society. He had a yacht, which never went for long cruises, but always anchored for the night in some harbour. Being a bad sailor, he left it, if there was a chance of bad weather, before it weighed anchor in the morning, and joined it again on the ensuing evening. Similarly he sat in his wife’s opera-box during intervals between the acts, and left his place on the rising of the curtain. He was already a baronet and an M.P., and his peer’s coronet, so to speak, was now being lined. Yet care, though only like a little draught, just stirred the warm air of Lady Monica’s drawing-room and made the palm-trees rattle. She had often talked the matter over with her husband, who had no very practical suggestion to make. He would stand before her, very square and squat, with his hands in his pockets, rattling money in the one and keys in the other, and say: “Well, my lady, you give ’er a good talkin’ to. Tell ’er to be a good girl, and be sensible. And now I must be off.” For the fact was that Stella was now nearly twenty-three. She had refused several very suitable offers, and her mother, extremely anxious, as all good mothers should be, to get her married, had lately begun to be afraid
that she was “being silly.” This in her vocabulary meant that Stella was in love with somebody (Lady Monica thought she knew with whom) and was not clever enough to make him propose to her. What added enormity to her “silliness” was the fact that he was extremely eligible. Lady Monica had no sympathy with this sort of thing; she had never been silly herself, and her own sentimental history had been that some twenty-four years ago she had wooed, proposed to, and wedded her Reginald without any fuss whatever or any delay. She was a woman with a great deal of hard, useful common sense; she always knew exactly what she wanted, and almost always got it. Her only weakness, in fact (with the discovery of the new masseuse, her complexion had become a positive source of strength), was for feeble flirtations with young men of the age which she herself wished to look. These never came to anything at all; and when the young man in question married somebody perfectly different, she told all her friends that she had made him. She had during the last week or two, since the session had brought them to London, done a little vicarious love-making to Martin on Stella’s account, and enjoyed it on her own. She was a perfectly honest woman, and only played with fire as a child plays with matches, lighting them and blowing them out, and she never really set fire to herself, and quite certainly never even scorched anybody else. But anxiety, like a draught, had reached her with regard to Stella’s future, and the next evening, when Lady Sunningdale happened to be giving a menagerie-party, she determined to have a few words with her, for she was looked upon as a sort of book of reference with regard to the twins. The menagerie-party was so called because for a week beforehand Lady Sunningdale drove about London a good deal and screamed an invitation to everybody she saw in the streets. The lions only were fed; the meaner animals and those lions only observed too late to ask to dinner came in afterwards. Lady Monica and Stella belonged to this second category, and Lady Sunningdale hailed them with effusion. “Dearest Monica, so glad to see you,” she cried. “All sorts of people are here, whom I’m sure I don’t know by sight, and I’ve just revoked at Bridge (double no trumps, too; isn’t it too dreadful!), and Suez Canal tried to bite the Prime Minister. Wasn’t it naughty? But, you see, Suez is a Radical,— though he shouldn’t bring politics into private life. Stella, I haven’t seen you for years. Yes; Martin’s going to play, of course. Have you heard his
tune which imitates me talking in a very large hat? Simply heavenly; exactly like. Even Sunningdale awoke the other evening when he played it, and asked me what I was saying. How are you, Frank? No sign of relenting on the part of the obdurate father? How dreadful! Yes. Dearest Monica, how well you are looking, and how young! (“New masseuse,” she thought to herself. “I must worm it out.”) Do let us go and sit down. I’m sure everybody has come. Oh, there is the Spanish Ambassador. He killed his own father, you know,—shot him dead on the staircase, thinking he was a burglar, and came into all that immense property at the age of nineteen! How picturesque, was it not, and such a very Spanish thing to do! Such a good shot, too. How are you, señor? Yes; they are playing Bridge in the next room. And they say there is sure to be a dissolution in the autumn.” Lady Sunningdale poured out this spate of useful information in her usual manner, addressing her remarks indiscriminately to any one who happened to be near, and Lady Monica waited till the flood showed some sign of abating. She had a vague contempt for Lady Sunningdale’s “methods,” considering that she diffused herself too much. She never caught hold of anything and held tight till everybody else who wanted it let go from sheer fatigue, which was a favourite method of her own. On the other hand, Lady Sunningdale certainly managed to pick up a great many bright objects as she went along, even though she did drop them again almost immediately. “Do come away and talk to me, Violet,” said Lady Monica, when for a moment there was silence. “I came here entirely to have a confabulation with you.” “Yes, dear, by all means. I have heard nothing interesting for weeks except the things I’ve made up and told in confidence to somebody, which have eventually come round to me again, also in confidence. What’s it all about?” As soon as they had found a corner, Lady Monica, as her custom was, went quite straight to the point. “It’s about Stella,” she said. “Violet, I am afraid Stella is being silly.” “How, dear? Stella always seems to me so sensible. Such a lovely neck, too; quite like yours. Look, there is poor Harry Bentham. A lion bit his arm off, or was it South Africa?”
Lady Sunningdale cast a roving eye in his direction, kissed the tips of her fingers, and motioned him not to come to her. Lady Monica waited without the least impatience till she had quite finished. Then she went on, exactly where she had left off. “Well, it’s your dreadfully fascinating Martin Challoner,” she said; “and I’m sure I don’t wonder. My dear, really such terribly attractive people ought to be shut up, not allowed to run about loose. They do too much damage.” “Well, dear, Stella is only like all the rest of us,” said Lady Sunningdale. “You remember how we all ran after the twins last summer.” “I know; we all got quite out of breath. But Stella is running still. Now, do you think, you know him so well, that he gives two thoughts to her? They are great friends, they are often together, but if it is all to come to nothing, I shall stop it at once. Stella has no time to waste.” Lady Sunningdale considered this a moment. She knew all about Monica’s little flirtations with Martin; so also did he, and had imitated her, for Lady Sunningdale’s benefit, with deadly accuracy. But she was too good-natured to spoil sport just because Stella’s mother had been a shade too sprightly for her years. Besides, she meant to say a word or two about that later on, a word that would rankle afterwards. “My dear, I can’t really tell whether Martin ever thinks about her or not,” she said. “He is so extraordinary; he is simply a boy yet in many ways, and he plays at life as a boy plays at some absurd game, absorbed in it, but still considering it a game. Then suddenly he goes and does something deadly serious, like joining the Roman Church. Practically, also, you must remember that he thinks almost entirely about one thing,—his music. That child sits down and plays with the experience and the feeling and the fingers which, as Karl Rusoff says, have never yet been known to exist in a boy. He is like radium, something quite new. We’ve got to learn about it before we can say what it will do in given circumstances. It burns, and it is unconsumed. So like Martin! But Karl says he is changing, growing up. I can’t help feeling it’s rather a pity. Yes. Of course he can’t be a bachelor all his life; that is impermissible. But Karl always says, ‘I implore you to leave him alone. Don’t force him; don’t even suggest things to him. He will find his way so long as nobody shews it him.’ Karl is devoted to him,—just like a beautiful old hen in spectacles with one chicken.”
But Lady Monica had not the smallest intention of talking about Karl, and led the conversation firmly back. “Well, Violet, will you try to find out?” she asked. Lady Sunningdale’s eye and attention wandered. “Ah, there is Sunningdale,” she said. “Does he not look lost? He always looks like that at a menagerie. Yes, I will try to sound Martin, if you like. I must make him confide in me somehow, and be rather tender, and he will probably tell me, though he will certainly imitate me and my tendencies afterwards. He imitates people who take an interest in him—that is his phrase—too beautifully. I roared,”—Lady Sunningdale cast a quick, sideways glance at her friend,—“simply roared at some imitation he gave the other day of a somewhat elderly woman who took an interest in him. Yes. Poor Suez Canal! He loves parties; but one can’t let him bite everybody indiscriminately. Let us come back, dear Monica, and make the twin play. There he is sitting with Stella. He asked me particularly if she was coming. They are probably talking about golf or something dreadful. Stella is devoted to it, is she not? Yes. That’s the game where you make runs, is it not? I shall have to sound Martin very carefully. He is so quick. Sunningdale, please take Martin firmly by the arm, and if he tries to bite, by the scruff of the neck, and put him down at the piano. No, dear Monica, you can tell nothing by his face. He always looks absorbed and excited like that. If he was talking to you he would look just the same.” That also was premeditated and vicious, just in case poor Monica’s little love-making, which Martin had imitated so divinely, had not been wholly vicarious. If it had, her remark would pass unnoticed, if it had not—but there was no need to consider whether it had or not, for poor Monica had turned quite red at the mention of Martin’s imitation of the elderly woman who took an interest in him.
CHAPTER XI Martin had been among the lions who were fed to-night at Lady Sunningdale’s, and had eaten of rich and slightly indeterminate food, for his hostess’s vagueness and volubility, like Karl’s love of form, found expression in the dinner. Afterwards he had taken up a strategic position near the head of the stairs when the meaner animals or belated lions began to arrive, in order to watch and wait for Stella’s entrance. Then as soon as her mother and Lady Sunningdale had retired into their corner, he had annexed her—with her complete assent—and plunged into discussions about affairs not in the least private. Had her mother overheard, she would, with her strong, practical common sense, have ordered the conversation to cease at once, so wanting in the right sort of intimacy would she have found it. And in so doing she would have made one of those mistakes which are so often and so inevitably committed by people of great common sense but no imagination, who cannot allow for the possible presence of romance in pursuits which they themselves consider prosaic. Had Martin been talking to her daughter about music, she would have considered that sufficiently promising to allow developments, for that was a thing very real to him,— his heart spoke. As it was, she would have considered that the conversation held not a germ of that disease of which she longed that Martin should sicken. Lady Sunningdale, far less superficial really than the other, not knowing that almost everything under the sun was rich with childish romance in Martin’s eyes, had hazarded the suggestion that they were talking about golf. This was practically correct, because they were talking about skating, and the two to her were indistinguishable,—she supposed you got runs at each,—being objectless exercises for the body. The moment you hunted or shot or played any game you entered that bracket. All these things were of the same genre, and quite unintelligible. “But I can’t get my shoulders round,” said Stella. “It is no earthly use telling me that I must. They won’t go. Can you understand the meaning of those three simple words, or shall I try to express it differently? And if I try to make them get round I fall down.”
Martin frowned. “Stella, you are really stupid about it,” he said,—they had long ago fallen into Christian names. “For the hundredth time you have to consider your foot as fixed. Then pivot round, head first,—then——“ Stella nodded. “Yes, I understand that,” she said. “It is always head first with me,—on the ice.” “You’re not being serious,” said Martin; “and if you can’t be serious about a game you can’t be serious about anything. That is a universal truth. I discovered it. What do you suppose matters to me most in my life? Music? Not at all. Get along with you, you silly thing. But, oh, if any one would teach me to do back brackets not rather clean, but quite clean. I dreamed I did one once, and I awoke sobbing loudly from sheer happiness. I would sign a pledge never to touch tobacco or a piano again, if I could do that. That’s my real state of mind. Now, will you skate to-morrow at Prince’s? I can be there at ten for an hour.” “Considering I am always there at half-past nine,” remarked Stella, “I don’t think you need ask. And yet you say I am not serious. Oh, Martin, why is it that one really only wants to do the things one can’t do?” “You can if you want enough,” said he. “The deuce is that one can’t always want enough.” “I don’t believe that,” said she promptly,—Lady Monica would have stayed her devastating hand, if she had heard this,—“I want lots of things as much as I possibly can.” “But perhaps even that isn’t enough. What, for instance?” Stella could not help a momentary lifting of her eyes to his. “Why, to skate, silly,” she said. “Yes, I’ll be there by ten, and so be punctual. I will consider my foot whatever you wish, and I’ll fall down as often as you think necessary. But don’t be unkind at once when you pick me up, and tell me I was too much on my heel, or anything of that sort. Wait till the first agony is over. I attend best when the pain is beginning to pass off.” “Well, I only tell you to save trouble in the future,” said he. “I know, but give me a moment. Do you care about the future much, by the way? I don’t. Give me the immediate present. To think much about the future is a sign of age. No one begins to care about the future until he is too
old to have any. Besides, it implies that the present has ceased to be absorbing.” Martin pondered this. “Oh, no; I don’t think that is so at all.” Stella laughed. “You never, by any chance, agree with a word I say,” she remarked. “Well, you haven’t agreed with me since August,” he said. “I made a note of it. But that is why we have no stupid pauses. All conversation runs dry in two minutes if one agrees with the other person. But what you say about age really isn’t so. Look at Karl Rusoff or Lady Sunningdale. They both live intensely in the present.” “Ah, you are shallow,” she said. “Years have got nothing whatever to do with age. That is the most superficial view. People of ninety die young, people of twenty die of senile decay.” Martin stretched his trouser over his crossed knee. “I am a hundred and eleven,” he said, “and whiles—don’t you hate the Scotch—and whiles I am about twelve in an Eton collar.” “Yes, loathe them, laddie. Hoots! That is what is so maddening about you. Half the time I think I am talking to my great-uncle, and the rest of it to my little nephew up from the country.” “Is he a nice boy?” asked Martin. “Or do you like your great-uncle best?” “I don’t like either at all, thank you. You are always being far too wise or far too young. As a man of a hundred, how can you play silly games with such enthusiasm? And as a boy of twelve, how can you play the piano as you do?” “It is because I am so extremely gifted,” said Martin, so gravely and naturally that for an appreciable moment she stared. “Ah! Don’t you find it an awful bore?” she asked. “Dreadful. I can’t really take any pleasure in anything, owing to the sense of responsibility which my talents bring to me.” Stella broke down and laughed. At gravity he always beat her completely. At which period in their conversation Lord Sunningdale did as he was ordered, and, taking him firmly by the arm, led him to the piano.
Karl was always most assiduous in his attendance at houses where Martin played, and he was here to-night. His object was certainly not to flatter or encourage his pupil, for often and often, when Martin had played in his presence the night before, he found but a growling reception waiting for him at his next lesson. “You played well enough for them,” Karl would say; “I grant you that. Any bungling would do for them. But to play ‘well enough for them’ is damnation.” “But it did,” Martin would argue. “I did not want to play at all; but one can’t say no. At least I can’t. I was not playing for you.” “Then you should not have played at all. If you play often enough in a second-rate manner, you will soon become second-rate.” But to-night Martin never suggested the second-rate even to his exacting master. In a sort of boyish protestation at the strictures he had undergone last night concerning the last of the Noveletten, he played it again now. Certainly to-night there was no note of stodginess there; the varied, crisp, masterful moods of the music rang extraordinarily true. Half way through Karl turned to Lady Sunningdale, who was sitting next him. “How has he spent his day?” he asked, suddenly. “Skating, I think. He skated all morning, and was late for lunch, and he went back to Prince’s afterwards. He is terribly idle, is he not? Pray don’t interrupt, Monsieur Rusoff. I never can feel as if I hear a note at all unless I hear them all. Who said that? You, I think. So true. And have you heard his piece on me? He must play it. Delicious this is, isn’t it? I learned it when I was a child. Tum-tum. There is the tune again.” “But with whom did he skate, my dear lady?” asked Karl. There had been a good many notes missed by now. Lady Sunningdale gasped. “Oh, Monsieur Rusoff, how clever of you!” she said. “You are really clairvoyant. So is my maid,—the one like a murderess. Do you know her? No; how should you. Martin was skating with Stella Plympton. And that is important, is it? Don’t tell her mother. She is such a fool, and also she has been trying to pump me. You see, it was I who brought them together. So suitable. I feel dreadfully responsible——“
At this point the Novelette ended, and Lady Sunningdale clapped her hands in a perfunctory manner. “Too heavenly, monster,” she said. “Now play Tum-te-tum. Yes, that one. And is he really going to marry her?” she continued to Karl. “I love being pumped, if I know it. Dear Monica, she pumps like a fire-engine. There is no possibility of mistake. Now, while he is playing this, do tell me all you know.” “My dear lady, you are building on no foundation,” said Karl. “All I know is that he played that to me last night, and played it abominably. To- night he has played it—well, you have heard. And, psychologically, I should like to know what has occurred in the interval.” “Was his playing of it just now very wonderful?” she asked. “Yes; one might venture to say that. And as he has been skating all day, presumably he has not thought much about it. His thinking perhaps has been done for him. And who is Stella Plympton? Wife or maid?” Lady Sunningdale gave a little shriek of laughter. Really people who lived out of the world were much more amusing than those who lived in it. Those who lived in it, it is true, always believed the worst in the absence of definite knowledge; the others, however, made far more startling suggestions. “Next but two on your right,” she whispered. “Dear Monica will have a fit if Stella turns out to be already married.” Karl’s eyes wandered slowly to the right, looking pointedly at many things first, at the cornice of the ceiling, at Martin’s profile, at the slumber of Lord Sunningdale. Then they swept quickly by Stella. She sat there absorbed and radiant, her face flushed with some secret, delicate joy as she watched and listened, hardly knowing whether eyes or ears demanded her attention most. Certainly the music and the musician between them held her in a spell. “She is looking quite her best,” whispered Lady Sunningdale. “How interesting! They have millions, you know—oil-cake, or was it oil-cloth? Oil-something, anyhow, which sounds so rich, and she is the only child. The father is quite impossible, not an ‘h,’ though every one crowds there. One always does if there are millions. So vulgar of one. Dear Monica. We were almost brought up together.”
Karl turned round to her. “Dear Lady Sunningdale,” he said, “you are really quite premature if you build anything on what I have said. He played admirably to-night what he played abominably last night. That is absolutely all I know. I should be so sorry if I had suggested anything to you which proved to be without any sort of foundation.” There certainly seemed to be some new power in Martin’s playing to- night; but new power had constantly shewn itself there during the last month or two, for, as Karl said, he had been growing. To-night, however, he was conscious of it himself, and even as he played, he knew that fresh light of some kind, some fresh spring of inspiration, was his. His hand and his brain were too busy as he played to let him be more than conscious of it. Where it came from, what it was, he could not guess this moment; but as he struck the last chords the tension relaxed, and he knew. Then, looking up, he saw Stella sitting near him, leaning forward, her beautiful mouth a little open. That glorious white column of her neck supported her head like the stem of a flower,—no garden flower, but something wonderful and wild. There were rows of faces behind her, to each side of her,—she was one in a crowd only; but as his eyes caught her gaze, the crowd fell away, became misty to him, vanished as a breath vanishes in a frosty air, and she only, that one face bending a little towards him, remained. For a long moment their eyes dwelt on each other; neither smiled, for the occasion was too grave for that, and they two for all they knew, were alone, in Paradise or in the desert, it was all one. The gay crowd, the applause that merged into a crescendo of renewed conversation, lights, glitter, men and women, were for that one moment obliterated, for in his soul Love had leaped to birth,—no puny weakling, prematurely warped and disfigured by evil practices and parodies of itself, but clean and full-grown it sprang towards her, knowing, seeing that its welcome was already assured. Then the real world, so strangely unreal in comparison to that world in which for a moment their souls had mingled and embraced, reeled into existence again, and Martin rose from the piano, for she had risen, too, and had turned to some phantom on her right that appeared to speak to her. Lady Sunningdale beckoned and screamed to him.
“Martin,” she cried, “you are too deevey! Monsieur Rusoff is really almost—didn’t you say almost—satisfied with the way you played that. And you learned all that exquisite thing—I used to play it years ago—while you were skating to-day, because he says you played it too abominably last night. Really, if I thought I could play it like that to-morrow evening I would go and skate all day. Now, don’t waste time, but play something more instantly.” “Oh, please, Lady Sunningdale, I would rather not,” said he. “I really don’t think I could play any more to-night. I really am—I don’t know what —tired.” Lady Sunningdale looked at his brilliant, vigorous face. “Martin, I don’t believe you will ever learn to tell a decent, passable lie,” she said. “Why not tell me you had got cancer. Oh, there’s Suez Canal come back. Naughty! Monsieur Rusoff, won’t you tell him that he must. Just a scale or two. I adore scales, so satisfactory, are they not—so expected—as if it was a music-lesson. No? How tiresome of you.” Karl laid his hand on Martin’s arm. “No, my dear lady,” he said. “He’s never to play except when he wants to. But if you really want a little more music, and I——“ “Ah, but how enchanting of you. Monsieur Rusoff is going to play. Surely, dear Monica, you will wait. You are not going yet?” “Desolated, Violet, but Stella says she feels a little faint. The hot room, I suppose. She is waiting for me outside. How deliciously you play, Mr. Challoner. I suppose you practise a great deal. Won’t you come some day and——“ She broke off, for Martin had simply turned his back on her, and was firmly edging his way through the crowd to the door. Then Lady Monica’s maternal instinct positively leaped to a conclusion, and Martin’s rudeness was completely forgiven. “But I can’t resist waiting to hear Monsieur Rusoff,” she said. “I thought he never played at private houses. How clever of you, dear Violet. I wonder if you could get him to play for me. Stella will sit down and wait for me, no doubt.” But before Karl struck the first chord, Martin had won (not to say pushed) his way through the hushed crowd, and found Stella sitting outside
in the other drawing-room. Every one had flocked in to hear the music, and they were alone. His foot was noiseless on the thick carpet, and he was but a yard or two from her when she raised her eyes and saw him. Then with a little choking cry, only half articulate, he came close to her. All the excitement and fire in which his life was passed was cold ashes compared to this moment, and his heart thumped riotously against his chest. Twice he tried to speak, but his trembling lips would not form the words, and she waited, her eyes still fixed on his. Then suddenly he threw his arms out. “It is no good trying,” he said. “But I love you! I—I love you!” Oh, the clumsy, bald statement! But Life and Death meant less than that word. “Oh, Martin,” she said, “I have waited—I—I don’t know what I am saying.” “Waited?” he asked, and his eyes glowed like hot coals. Then he laughed. “And you never told me,” he said. “If it was not you, I should never forgive you. And if it was not you, I should not care.” “Isn’t that nonsense?” she asked. “Yes, probably. Who cares? Stella! Oh, my star!” He flung his arms round her. “My star, my star,” he cried again. For one moment she could not but yield to him. “Yes, yes,” she whispered; “but Martin, Martin,” and her mouth wreathed into laughter, “it is an evening party. You must not; you must not.” He paused like a man dying of drought from whose lips the cup of water had been taken away. “Party,” he cried; “what party? It is you and I, that is all.” This was all unknown to her. She had loved him, the boy with the extraordinary eyes, the boy who played so magnificently, who laughed so much. But now there was roused something more than these. The piano- player was gone, he did not laugh, his eyes had never quite glowed like that, and there was in his face something she had never seen yet. The woman had awakened the man; this was his first full moment of consciousness. And,
like all women for the first time face to face with the lover and the beloved, she was afraid. She had not till now seen his full fire. “I am frightened,” she cried. “What have we done?” But his answer came back like an echo to what she had not said, but what was behind her words. “Frightened?” he said. “Oh, Stella, not of me, not of the real me?” She gave a little laugh, still mysteriously nervous. “You were a stranger,” she said. “I never saw you before.” Martin gave a great, happy sigh. “You are quite right,” he said, and the authentic fire leaped to and fro between their eyes. “I was never this before. But you are not frightened now?” This time her eyes did not waver from his. “No, Martin,” she said. But there was no more privacy possible here. Stella had been quite right; there was a party going on, and at the moment a great burst of applause signified the end of Karl Rusoff’s performance. Stella started. “There. I told you so,” she said. “Now take me to my mother; she will be waiting for me.” Martin frowned. “Cannot she wait?” he asked. “I too have never seen the real you before.” “No, dear, we must go. There is to-morrow, all the to-morrows.” “And to think that it has only been yesterday until this evening,” he said. “There is Lady Monica, looking for you.” Lady Monica had a practised eye. She kept everything she had in excellent practise; there was nothing rusty about her. “Stella dear, I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “Are you better? Has Mr. Challoner been taking care of you?” That was sufficient. “Stella says I may,” said he.
Lady Monica checked her exclamation of “Thank God!” as being a shade too business-like. “Ah, dear Mr. Martin,” she said. “How nice, how very, very nice! Stella, my dearest. How secret you have been. Come, darling, we must go. I can’t talk to either of you in this crowd. But how nice! We shall see you to- morrow? Come to lunch, quite, quite quietly.” Stella looked at him. “Yes, do, Martin,” she said. “I will take you back after our skate.” “Ah, I had forgotten,” he said. She laughed divinely. “But I had not. And you will be kind to me, as I asked you?” she added. He dwelt on his answer. “I kind—to you?” he said.
CHAPTER XII It was a March day of glorious windy brightness, a day that atones and amends with prodigal, open-handed generosity for all the fogs and chilly darknesses of autumn and winter. Heavy rain had fallen during the night before, cold, chilly rain, but an hour before morning it had ceased, and a great warm, boisterous wind came humming up from the southwest. Like some celestial house-clearer it swept the clouds from the face of the sky, and an hour of ivory starlight and setting moon ushered in the day. That same wind had awakened Helen with the sound of the tapping, struggling blind drawn over her open window, and with eyes suffused with sleep she had got out of bed to quiet the rattling calico by the simple process of rolling it up. And having rolled it up, she stood for a moment at the window, her hair stirred by the wind, drinking in the soft cool breath of the huge night that blew her night-dress close to her skin. The clean smell of rain was in the air, but the sky was all clear, and to the east behind the tower of Chartries church the nameless dove-coloured hue of coming dawn was beginning to make dim the stars. Then she went back to bed with a vague but certain sense that some change had come—winter was over; in her very bones she felt that. Gloriously did the morning fulfil her expectations. White fleecy clouds, high in the heavens, bowled along the blue, their shadows racing beneath them across the brown grass of the downs; the wind, warm and pregnant with spring, drove boisterously out of the west, and the sun flooded all that lived in a bath of light. Round the elms in the church-yard there had been wrought that yearly miracle, that mist of green leaf hovering round the trees, and paler and more delicate it hung round the slim purple-twigged birches in the woods that climbed up the hillside beyond to Chartries. Here after breakfast her path lay, for she had a parish errand to an outlying hamlet beyond, and with eye and ear and nostril and open mouth she breathed and was bathed in the revivification of spring. That morning, so it seemed to her, all the birds in the world sang together,—thrushes bubbled with the noise of chuckling water and delicious repeated phrases of melody, as if to show, brave musicians, that the “first fine careless rapture” is perfectly easy to recapture, if you happen to know the way of the thing;
blackbirds with liquid throat and tawny bill scudded through the bushes; above swifts chided in swooping companies, and finches and sparrows poured out staccato notes. One bird alone was silent, for the nightingale waited till summer should come and love. That filled the ear. For the eye there were blue distances, blue shadows of racing clouds, the sun, and more near the budding trees, and in the dingle below the woods of Chartries a million daffodils. Helen had forgotten that they were there, waiting for her, and she came on them suddenly, and stood quite still a moment with a long pause of pure and complete delight. The place was carpeted with them; they all danced and shone and sang together like the morning stars. And as she looked her eyes grew dim with happy tears. “Dear God,” she said, “thank you so much.” Yes, indeed, it was spring; and as she walked on she repeated the word over and over again to herself, finding a magic in it. It was everywhere: the sky and the sun were full of it, it burst in those myriad blossoms from the dark, wholesome soil; it was spring that set this good wind blowing, it bubbled and chuckled in the chalk-stream, with its waving weeds and bright glimmering beds of pebbles. Above all, it was in her own heart on this glorious morning, till she thought it must almost burst, too, so overflowing was it with sheer, unreasoning happiness. Indeed, Martin had been quite right when he had told Karl how happy she was, and though she did not reason to herself about it, the cause was abundantly clear. For the last six months she had lived at home, through days and weeks of ever-recurring difficulties, and with each, as it presented itself, she had dealt smilingly, patiently. She had made up her mind on her visit to Cambridge that her duty was clear and obvious, nothing striking nor picturesque was in the least required, she was neither going to renounce her future happiness, nor, on the other hand, to throw all else aside and grasp at it. No heroic knot-cutting measures of any kind were indicated, except the quiet, unobtrusive heroism of taking up again, quite simply, quietly, and naturally, all the straightforward, familiar little duties of her home life which again and again she had found so tedious. Nor had they been in themselves less tedious. Only here was the difference,—she had ceased to look upon them from any point of view except one, namely, that it was quite distinctly her business to do them. That she had found to be sufficient;
it was enough day by day to get through with them without expenditure of thought as to whether they were distasteful or not, and her work, her daily bread, had somehow been sweet and wholesome and nourishing. Truly, if, as Karl had said, Martin had been growing out of knowledge, his twin also would be scarcely recognisable. And bread, bread of the soul, had come to her; her table had been laid in the wilderness, and happiness, royal inward happiness of a very fine and unselfish sort, in the midst of a thousand things which made for unhappiness, had blossomed in her. A thousand times she had been tempted to say, “It is doing no good. Why should I put off what is waiting for me when my renunciation does not help father in any way?” But a thousand times she had just not said it; and now, at the end of these difficult months, she could without egoism look back and see what infinite good had been done. That her father should in any way alter his own convictions about her marriage she had never expected; but what had been gained was that he saw now, and consciously saw, that she was in the very simplest language “being good.” But it had been difficult enough for all concerned, except perhaps for Aunt Clara, who was scarcely capable of emotion, and often Helen’s heart had bled for her father. It had been most terrible of all when Martin had joined the Roman Church. His letter to his father—Helen winced when she thought of it now—had arrived on Sunday morning, and he had found it on the breakfast-table when he had come back from the early celebration. It was a manly, straightforward letter enough, stating that he had not yet gone over, but had practically determined to. If his father wished he would come down to Chartries, and talk it over with him, and give to his advice and counsel the very fullest possible consideration. And at the end he expressed very bluntly and sincerely, as was his way, the sorrow and the pain that he knew the news would cause his father. The sheet fell from his hand, and Helen, who was making tea, looked up. She saw the colour rise in her father’s face; the arteries in his neck and temples swelled into cords, and his eyes with pupils contracted to pin-pricks looked for the moment like the eyes of a madman. Then he spoke, his voice vibrating with suppressed furious anger. “Martin is going to join the Roman Church,” he said. “From the day he does so, Helen, never speak to me of him again. He is dead to me,
remember.” That was a week before Christmas, and for more than a month after that Martin’s name had literally hardly crossed his father’s lips. The boy had come down to stay with his uncle once, but Mr. Challoner had absolutely refused to see him. He had even wished Helen not to; but on this occasion, for the only time during all that long winter, she had quietly but quite firmly disobeyed him. It was then first, too, as one looking down from barren rocks of a mountain-range, that she saw, though still far off, the harvest that was ripening in these long, patient months of her living here with her father. Before going to Chartries she had thought best to go into his study and tell him that she was doing so. “I am going to see Martin,” she said, wondering and very nervous as to how her father would take it. “And I wanted to tell you, father, before I went, that I was going.” Mr. Challoner was writing his sermon, but on her words his pen paused; then he looked up at her. “Very well, dear,” he said. “You know my feeling about it; but it is a thing in which you must do as you think right. And, Helen,” again he paused, and his eyes wandered away from her and were bent on his paper, “tell me, when you come back, how the lad looks, if he seems well.” She came closer to him. This was the first sign he had shown that he recognised Martin’s existence. “Ah, father, come with me,” she said. But he shook his head. “No, dear; no, dear,” he said, and went on with his work. But, on this March morning of windy brightness, what gave the comble to her happiness was the talk—the first intimate one for all these weeks— which she had had with her father the night before. She had gone to her room as usual after prayers, but finding there some parish-work, concerning outdoor relief, which she ought to have done and taken to him the day before, she sat up for nearly a couple of hours, until she had finished it. Then with the papers in her hand she went down to his study. “I am so sorry, father,” she said. “You told me you wanted these yesterday, and I absolutely forgot to do them. They are finished now.” He looked up in surprise.
“Why, Helen,” he said, “it is after twelve. You ought to have been in bed long ago. Have you been sitting up to do them?” She smiled at him. “Why, yes,” she said. He took them from her. “You have been a very good daughter to me, dear,” he said. He paused, but Helen said nothing, for his tone shewed an unfinished sentence. And the pause was long; it was not at all easy for him to say what followed. “And I have been often and often very difficult and very hard all these months,” he said. “But will you do your best to forget that? Will you try to forgive me?” She went close to him, very much moved, and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Ah, don’t cut me to the heart,” she said. “But promise me, if you can,” he said. Yes, it was true; he had often been difficult and hard. And she answered him. “Yes, dear father,” she said. “I promise you that with my whole heart. And in turn, when May comes, will you try not to think too hardly of me. I have tried to be good.” She sat down by his side, looking rather wistfully at him. “I have been wanting to talk to you often before about that,” he said, “so let me say once and for all what is in my mind. I disagree with you, as you know, vitally, essentially, and I believe that God tells me to disagree. But now I believe also, dear,—and this your goodness and your sweet patience all these months has taught me,—that God tells you to do as you are going to. How that is I do not understand. Perhaps that doesn’t matter so much as I used to think. But He fulfils Himself in many ways. And there, too, I have very often thought that He had to fulfil Himself in my way. It is you who have made me see that, I think.” Helen raised shining eyes to his. “You have made me very happy,” she said.
“And what have you done for me? There were certain days, dear, during this winter which I do not see how I could have got through without you.” Here was an opportunity for which Helen had often sought. “Martin?” she asked. “Oh, father, I wonder if you want Martin as much as I do.” The strength and the tenderness died out of his face, leaving it both helpless and hard. “I can’t see him,” he said, quickly; “I dare not. Some day, perhaps; but if I saw him now I should say—I could not, I know, help saying—what I feel. If that would do any good, I would say it; but it would do none. I should only—I should only frighten him,” he said, with an accent infinitely pathetic. She left him then without more words, for all this winter she had been learning every day and all day long the divine and human gospel of patience in dealing with people,—the patience that teaches us not to pull buds open, however desirable it may be that the flower should unfold, that is content to do its best with them, and wait for results without the desire even that they should come quickly. Till this evening, as has been said, Martin’s name had scarcely been mentioned by his father, and it was something, after this bitterness of long silence, that he should be able to say “Not yet, not now.” Pity also, pity with hands of healing, had entered at last into that stern, upright, God-fearing soul, filtering its way like water through dry and stony soil; a very exiguous trickle it might be, but cool, liquid, refreshing. How hardly it had won its way there Helen but guessed dimly, he alone knew. For day had succeeded day, and week week, and all day and all week he had wrestled blindly, hopelessly with the misery that Martin had brought on him, unable for all his efforts to find any possible justifying cause for what he had done, which seemed to him as wanton and as wicked as violent crime. To his Puritan mind, Martin’s reason,—namely, the craving for and the necessity of beauty and poetry in religion was as unintelligible as a page in an unknown language; not knowing at all what that craving meant, any more than he knew what homicidal mania meant to a maniac, he could not in any degree whatever feel or appreciate its force. And for the sake of this his son had left the mother-church, and embraced the heresies, the abominations, the idolatries of Rome. Such was his sober, literal view: the
Roman Church was idolatrous, and for idolaters was the doom appointed, revealed by God, believed by him. And there stood Martin. For weeks nothing had come to sweeten the bitterness of these dark waters; his suffering was as unintelligible to him as is pain to a dumb animal; he could not guess what it could possibly mean. That fierce anguish, like a flame, had burned up for a time in its withering breath all human affection; he had hated Martin for what he had done. Shocking as that was, he knew it to be true, and his hate seemed somehow justified. There were things, there were actions and passions which he was bound to hate; and so filled was he with this conviction, that human affection, human love could find at first no place in his mind; it was turned out, evicted. But now, like a dog beaten and driven from the house, it was beginning, so Helen thought, to creep noiselessly, stealthily homeward again. So she was content; she did not even want to hurry it. And this morning spring was here, too, and the daffodils danced. From the dance of daffodils the slope rose steeply upward through the hanging woods of Chartries, and her path lay by the bushes in which last summer Frank had found the trapped hare. Here, as always, she went slowly, telling over in her mind, like the beads of a rosary, the history of those hours. Then raising her eyes, she saw him, Frank, standing a little way up the path, looking at her. Involuntarily her heart leaped to him, and, holding out both hands, she quickened her step, as if running to him. That first movement she could no more help than she could help the fresh blood springing to her cheeks. But at once almost she recollected herself and paused. “Ah, Frank,” she cried, “you shouldn’t have come here. You know you shouldn’t.” He came no nearer. “No, my darling,” he said; “but I couldn’t help it. It is not your fault; you have not broken your promise. I only had to see you, just see you. I think it was the spring that made me do it. I am with your uncle for just one night. See, there is this for you from Martin.” He held out a note for her, standing a little aside, so that the path was clear for her to pass on her way. But, as their fingers met, she lingered and hung on her step, still not looking at him. She tried, she tried her best to
pass on, but she could not; her eyelids swept upward and she looked at him. Then which of them moved first neither knew, but next moment his arms were round her, and he kissed her. And, alas! her struggle to get free was very faint; her tongue protested, but not very earnestly. “Ah, let me go, let me go,” it said. “I can’t. Helen, it was here that——“ “I know,” she said. “I come here every day. I knew I should meet you here some day. And this of all days, the first of spring. Oh, Frank, let me go. I love you: is not that enough? And it is not for long now.” “No, my darling, it is not long now.” “And—and it has been so long. And I have wanted you so much.” She disengaged herself quietly from his arms, but in a way that made it impossible for him to hold her. “Good-bye,” she said. “You ought never to have come. And—oh, my darling—I thank you so for coming.” For one infinitesimal moment she looked at him again, then with her quick, light step she went on up the path with Martin’s letter in her hand and never looked back. She did not pause till she reached the top of the wood, but as she walked she listened for and longed for, and yet dreaded, to hear footsteps behind. But none came, she had made her meaning too clear for that (and how she wished she had been less explicit), and having arrived at the top, she slackened her pace and opened Martin’s letter. It was very short, a couple of lines only, announcing his engagement to Stella and asking her to tell his father. And with that spring was complete. Upward again lay her path; no more among trees and sheltered places, but high over the broad swell of the short-turfed downs, where shadows of clouds ran glorious races. Something in the huge view and the large sky chimed in wonderful harmony to the girl’s mood; all was so big, so untainted, so full of light. Beneath her foot the dead autumn turf still stretched in brown tufts and patches, but springing up in between were the myriad shoots of the young grass, and even since yesterday, she thought, the tone of the colour was changed. Till to-day all had been grey and brown, all still pointed backward, winterwards; but this morning it was different, and the million sprouting lives shouted, “Look forward, look forward! For, lo, the winter is past and the time of the singing-bird has come.” “Ah, song of songs,” she thought, “indeed it is so.”
Martin! There were no words into which she could put what she felt, any more than the pervading sunlight could be put into words. It was there, a great, huge, exultant presence that flooded everything. Ah, the beloved twin! Why, it was only a few years ago that he was in Eton jackets and broad white collars and sang treble. And she? Well, yes, she was in short frocks about the same time. Yet had not she, half an hour ago, down in the wood below her, where the young leaves hung like a green mist around the purple branches of the birch, felt a loving arm round her and kisses on her face. Oh, it was very wrong of Frank. No, not wrong of him,—he would have stood aside, he did stand aside to let her pass. It was very wrong of her. But at that moment she could not pass by,—it was as if her power of movement had been paralysed. Yet she was not in the least degree ashamed of herself, and she looked forward with a certain secret glee to telling her father,—for that had to be done,—for so by speaking of it she would live it over again. “No, that was not all,” she said to herself, rehearsing question and answer, “He kissed me.” Sunlight, and larks invisible, and the shadows of clouds that coursed over the downs. And some distance off a tall figure, moving towards her rapidly, a figure she easily recognised. They came nearer and met. Her hat was in her hand, her hair tossed over her forehead, and there was spring and the sure promise of summer in her face. And in her father’s, too, there was something of that infused joy. His hand held a little bunch of primroses, which he had plucked as he walked. They met without words, but with smiles, the unconscious smile that the morning had made. “Well, Helen?” said he. “You look, indeed you look like the morning.” He came close to her and with his neat precision put the primroses into her hat. “You ought to pin them,” he said. “They will fall out.” She laughed. “Ah, nothing can fall out to-day,” she said. “Don’t you feel it, father? Spring, spring—and—oh, the daffodils. And I have news.” Then her face sobered suddenly. “Two pieces of news,” she said, smiling again, unable not to be gay. “The first is of Martin: he is engaged to be married. He asked me to tell
you. Stella Plympton, whom you met here. He wrote me just a line, asking me to tell you.” Her instinct was right to repeat that. Sharp as a knife, a father’s jealousy had pierced him. He should have been told first; whatever his disagreements with Martin, he, his father, ought to have been told first. But that passed in a moment. “Martin?” he said, gently. “The boy?” “Yes; I thought of it like that. But he is really—oh, ever so old. As old as I am.” Mr. Challoner’s face relaxed. “I had forgotten,” he said; “an immense age. What next, Helen?” She looked up at him. “Is that all you have to say?” she asked, feeling suddenly chilly and disappointed. “You think I am hard, Helen,” he said. “I try to be. But what next?” Yes, it was chilly on these upland downs. She put her hat on. “Just this,” she said. “I met Frank half an hour ago. He gave me Martin’s note. I did not expect to see him. As far as I am concerned it was quite accidental. I had no idea he was here. I had promised you not to see him. That I could not help.” She stopped, drew a long breath, and went on. “I suppose I could have helped the rest,” she said. “I suppose it was that I did not choose to help it. He stood aside for me to pass. But—but I did not pass. I went to him. I let him kiss me. He stood there with me. I thought I could not help it. Indeed, I thought that.” For a moment Mr. Challoner’s hardness, his involuntary condemnation of weakness of any sort, of failure to keep a promise, returned to him, mixed with a very ugly thing, suspicion. “And is this the first time you have seen or spoken to him or had any communication with him?” he asked. Helen raised her eyes to him in quiet surprise. No trace of resentment or sense of injustice was in her voice. “Yes, of course,” she said. “I should have told you otherwise.”
He looked at the sweet, patient face, struggling for a moment with this worse self of his, which yet was so upright, so devoted. “I know you would,” he said at last. “I don’t know why I asked you that.” Helen laughed. “Nor do I,” she said. “You and he have been very patient, Helen,” he said. “Yes, till this morning I think we have,” she said. “But to-day, perhaps, the spring was too strong for us both. Is it not in your blood this morning, father? It is in mine.” He smiled at her gravely. “And a very suitable thing,” he said. “And summer comes next for you. For you and Martin.” “Yes, Martin too,” she said, with an appeal in her eyes. “Oh, father, can’t we be all happy together again? We used to be.” Mr. Challoner stood silent a moment, a sort of aching longing for all he had always missed in Martin and a dim, bitter regret for all his own missed opportunities of making the most of the human relation between himself and his son rising suddenly within him. And he spoke with a terrible quiet sincerity. “I don’t think Martin used ever to be happy with me,” he said. “Once he told me he was not happy at home. I don’t think that he ever was. It was perhaps the fault of both of us, but it was certainly mine. I should have done somehow differently. I think we never understood each other. Nor can I understand him now. It is sad. I cannot reconcile what he has done——“ He broke off again. “There, dear, you must be getting on your way,” he said, “and I must be getting home.” But she detained him a moment more. “Won’t you give me a little hope?” she said. “I thought last night that perhaps, perhaps soon—and this news this morning——“ But her father disengaged her hand. “I shall, of course, write to him,” he said, “and congratulate him. She is a very charming girl. I think Martin is most fortunate.”
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Solution Manual for Small Business Management: Launching and Growing Entrepreneurial Ventures, 19th Edition, Justin G. Longenecker,

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    Chapter 1: TheEntrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 1 Solution Manual for Small Business Management: Launching and Growing Entrepreneurial Ventures, 19th Edition, Justin G. Longenecker, FULL CHAPTER AT: HTTPS://TESTBANKBELL.COM/PRODUCT/SOLUTION-MANUAL- FOR-SMALL-BUSINESS-MANAGEMENT-LAUNCHING-AND- GROWING-ENTREPRENEURIAL-VENTURES-19TH-EDITION- JUSTIN-G-LONGENECKER/ CHAPTER 1: THE ENTREPRENEURIAL LIFE CHAPTER OUTLINE Introduction i) Owning a business is a noble profession—especially if it’s done well. ii) The richest rewards of owning a small business come from offering goods or services that improve the lives of others and developing an organizational culture that supports employees. 1-1 Small Size, Great Significance LO1: Explain the importance of small businesses and entrepreneurship in our society. U.S. Small Business Administration reports the following: i) There are 27.8 million businesses in the United States with fewer than 500 employees. Small companies account for 99.7% of all businesses; 90% have fewer than 20 employees. ii) Fifty-five million people work in small businesses, representing 49% of all employees and 42% of all salaries paid to employees. iii) Small enterprises hire 43% of all high-tech employees (scientists, engineers, computer programmers, and others). iv) Many small companies have gone global, representing 97% of all exporters. v) The number of college students enrolling in small business and entrepreneurship classes has increased. 1-2 Small Business and Entrepreneurship Go Together LO2: Describe what it means to be a small entrepreneurial firm. 1-2a What Is a Small Business? i) To distinguish between small and large businesses, we naturally consider their relative size, but it is also helpful to think about a small firm’s potential to grow. (a) Size – Can be determined based on such criteria as the number of employees, sales volume, amount of profit, and the size of the company’s assets, but size standards are arbitrary and frequently adopted to serve a purpose. (b) Growth Potential
  • 6.
    Chapter 1: TheEntrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 2 1. Microbusinesses (lifestyle businesses) – Businesses that provide modest returns to their owners but permit an owner to follow a desired lifestyle. 2. Attractive small firms – Businesses that offer substantial financial rewards for their owners. 3. High-potential ventures (gazelles) – Businesses that have phenomenal prospects for growth. ii) For the purposes of this textbook, a small business meets the following criteria, at least in spirit: (a) Compared to the largest firms in the industry, the business is small; in most instances, it has fewer than 100 employees. (b) Except for its marketing function, operations are geographically localized. (c) Financing for the business is provided by no more than a few individuals. (d) The business may begin with a single individual, but it has the potential to become more than a “one-person-show” and may eventually grow to be a mid-sized company or even a large firm. 1-2b What Is Entrepreneurship? i) Entrepreneur – A person who relentlessly pursues an opportunity, in either a new or an existing enterprise, to create value while assuming both significant risks and the rewards for her or his efforts. ii) Entrepreneurship involves four stages: (a) Identifying an attractive opportunity. (b) Acquiring the critical resources needed for growing the business. 1. Bootstrap – Efforts made by entrepreneurs such as resorting to bartering, generating income from other sources, or using a personal credit card. (c) Executing the plan. (d) Harvesting the business. 1-2c Entrepreneurs: Born or Made? i) In their research on entrepreneurial characteristics on “desirable and acquirable attitudes and behaviors,” Spinelli and Adams uncovered six descriptions: • Leadership abilities • Opportunity obsession • Commitment and determination • Motivation to excel • Courage • Tolerance of risk, ambiguity, and uncertainty • Creativity, self-reliance, and adaptability ii) Attitudes and behaviors entrepreneurs should avoid: • Overestimate what you can do. • Lack an understanding of the market. • Hire mediocre people. • Fail to be a team player. • Be a domineering manager. • Fail to share ownership in the business in an equitable way. iii) Entrepreneurs are not cut out of a single mold, and their success generally arises from having a clear mission, a desire to lead, and the recognition that business success requires hard work and long hours.
  • 7.
    Chapter 1: TheEntrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 3 1-2d Types of Entrepreneurs i) Second-Stage Entrepreneurs (a) Helpful to distinguish between entrepreneurs who start or substantially change companies and those who direct the continuing operations of established businesses. ii) Franchisees (a) Franchisees differ from other business owners due to having less independence. Because of the guidance and standardized systems provided by contractual arrangements with franchising organizations, franchisees function within the boundaries set by franchisors.
  • 8.
    Chapter 1: TheEntrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 4 iii) Social Entrepreneurs (a) Social entrepreneurship – Entrepreneurial activity with an embedded social purpose. In other words, social entrepreneurs come up with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing needs, problems, and opportunities. iv) Intrapreneurs (a) Intrapreneurship – A person who has characteristics similar to those of an entrepreneur, but who works within an existing, usually larger, corporation as an employee. v) Entrepreneurial Teams (a) Two or more people who work together as entrepreneurs on one endeavor. (b) Able to use talents, skills, and resources of team. 1-3 Can a Small Company Really Compete with Big Companies? LO3: Identify how small businesses can compete against the giants. 1-3a Integrity and Responsibility: In order to maintain a strong competitive advantage, it is essential that you add to good customer service and excellent product quality a solid reputation for honesty and dependability. 1-3b Customer Focus: Business opportunities exist for those who can produce products and services desired by customers. Having a small number of customers and a close relationship with them makes customer service a powerful tool for entrepreneurial businesses. 1-3c Quality Performance: Quality is mostly independent of firm size, but if there is an advantage, it most often goes to the smaller business. 1-3d Innovation: Innovation, both in products or services and in competitive strategies, is within reach of the small business in ways that were not thought possible a few years ago. 1-3e Niche Markets: Almost all small businesses try to shield themselves from competition by targeting a specific group of customers who have an identifiable but very narrow range of product or service interests and comprise what is called a niche market. 1-4 Motivations for Owning a Business LO4: Understand what might motivate you to be a small business owner with all its risks and uncertainties. i) Before you choose to enter the small business game, you need to think carefully about who you want to be and how owning a business will help make you that person. ii) Understanding clearly why you want to own a small business and what motivates you is vital to eventually achieving fulfillment through your business. 1-4a Types of Entrepreneurial Motivations i) Personal Fulfillment (a) Making a difference in others’ lives, particularly customers, employees, and in the community. (b) Having a sense of belonging and working with others in a common cause. ii) Personal Satisfaction (a) They feel rewarded in working with a product or providing a service and being good at it. (b) Entrepreneurs are energized by enjoyable associations within their businesses.
  • 9.
    Chapter 1: TheEntrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 5 (c) Entrepreneurs enjoy friendships with other business owners, frequently learning from one another. (d) If they are visible within the community, small business owners can garner the respect of those who live there. iii) Independence (a) Being my own boss where I can make things happen. (b) Controlling my own future. iv) Financial Rewards (a) Creating personal financial wealth based on sound decisions and hard work. When businesses are profitable, everyone benefits. (b) In general, self-employed individuals are more likely to create greater personal wealth than persons who work for others. 1-4b Influencers in Deciding to Own a Business i) Family and Friends ii) The Desire to Leave a Difficult Situation (a) Those who started or acquired small businesses because of financial hardship or other severely negative conditions have appropriately been called reluctant entrepreneurs. (b) Corporate refugees – Individuals who flee the bureaucratic environment of a corporation that seems stifling or oppressive to them. 1-4c Why Your Perceptions Matter? i) Knowing your motivation is important, but it’s not enough. You also need to understand if your perceptions of what it takes to be successful in business are accurate. ii) According to Stephen Covey, having a positive attitude or working harder is not enough. Instead, we have to change how we fundamentally see a situation, or what he calls a paradigm shift. iii) Michael Gerber describes three paradigms (personalities): (a) The Technician Personality – A steady worker, experiences at doing what he or she knows best. (b) The Manager Personality – Pragmatic, assuming responsibility for the planning, order, and predictability of the business. (c) The Entrepreneur Personality – Does not look at the work that a business does, but instead examines how the business does what it is intended to do. 1-5 What Do You Want Your Legacy to Be? LO5: Discuss ways to build a successful business as part of your life legacy. i) When an entrepreneur exits the business, he or she faces questions of reflection. An entrepreneurial legacy is established. ii) Entrepreneurial legacy – Includes both tangible items and intangible qualities passed on not only to heirs, but also to the broader society. iii) Structure of textbook material: (a) Part 1 discusses the fundamental values of the entrepreneur. (b) Parts 2 and 3 look at a firm’s basic strategy, the various types of entrepreneurial ventures, and initial planning required for startups. (c) Parts 4 through 6 deal with the marketing and management of a growing business, including its human resources, operations, and finances.
  • 10.
    Chapter 1: TheEntrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 6 ADDITIONAL DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. What is meant by the term entrepreneur? Entrepreneur is a French term that dates back to the early eighteenth century. It refers to an individual who founds or starts a business firm. (The term also includes partnerships and entrepreneurial teams.) In this text, we extend the definition to include owner- managers who operate firms started by others. The characteristics of risk-taking and innovation are associated with the image of the entrepreneur. 2. Consider an entrepreneur you know personally. What was the most significant reason for his or her following an independent business career? If you don’t already know the reason, discuss it with that person. Answers will vary, of course. Students should know some entrepreneurs—parents, friends, or employers—quite well. The instructor might ask students first to explain the basis of their relationship with the entrepreneur and then to discuss their perceptions of that person’s motivations. 3. What do you believe would be the two most desirable and undesirable qualities of an entrepreneur? Answers will vary, of course. 4. The motivators/rewards of profit, independence, and personal fulfillment are the reasons that individuals enter entrepreneurial careers. What problems might be anticipated if an entrepreneur were to become obsessed with one of these rewards—for example, if he or she had an excessive desire for profit, independence, or a particular lifestyle? A balanced perspective is needed. While each reward can give a strong motivation to build a good business, each also has some potential for creating havoc in an unbalanced life. An excessive desire for profit can lead to attempts to make short-run gains at the expense of long-run customer or employee relationships. It may also tempt one to lower ethical standards and to neglect family relationships. An excessive desire for independence may make one difficult to deal with in interpersonal relationships. Some degree of perceived interdependence between employer and employee contributes to mutual respect and cooperative relationships. An excessive desire for a satisfying way of life may dull one’s sensitivity to cost and profit issues. An entrepreneur must achieve a profit goal in order to be able to afford a life satisfaction goal. 5. How do different personalities affect our effectiveness in running our own small business? Our personalities and desires shape our callings. There is something embedded in each of us that, without robbing us of our freedom, nonetheless prods or tugs us in the optimal direction. 6. What do you believe would be the advantage of having an entrepreneurial team when starting a business? Individual entrepreneurs frequently have weak spots in education or experience. An entrepreneurial team makes it possible to cover such weaknesses by using individuals with varied talents and backgrounds. 7. Explain how customer focus and innovation can be special strengths of small businesses.
  • 11.
    Chapter 1: TheEntrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 7 Small businesses are generally less bound by bureaucracy and corporate policies and usually maintain closer relationships with their customers. In other words, their flexibility affords them the ability to focus on their customers and meet their needs, which naturally generates customer loyalty. At the same time, small firms often grow out of the innovative ideas of their entrepreneurial founders; therefore, this mindset is likely to prevail in the small business. 8. Explain the concept of an entrepreneurial legacy. A legacy is what one leaves behind or passes on to one’s heirs and to others. An entrepreneurial legacy refers to the entrepreneurial aspect, the business side, of one’s legacy, and thus is concerned with what the business experience has meant to all those affected. This includes the tangible elements such as financial resources passed on to heirs and others and also the intangible elements such as the impact of the entrepreneurial experience on family relationships and the example of entrepreneurial integrity or avarice given to the community. 9. Explain the following statement: “One can climb the ladder to success only to discover it is leaning against the wrong wall.” Entrepreneurial achievements are varied, and the way we measure them also varies. For example, if an entrepreneur concentrates too much on achieving financial goals, that person may fail dismally in other areas of life such as family relationships. The statement points to the need to have one’s goals properly defined and to have one’s efforts properly forecasted. SUGGESTED ANSWERS TO YOU MAKE THE CALL EXERCISES Situation 1 1. Should this venture be regarded as entrepreneurial? Is the owner a true entrepreneur? Whether this is entrepreneurial depends on one’s definition. The owner may or may not be a founder—the key issue in some definitions of a “true” entrepreneur. In this text, we use a looser definition of entrepreneur, which could include this owner-manager regardless of whether he or she founded the business. The venture is apparently not the high-growth, high-potential type. It may well be what we have called an “attractive small company.” 2. Do you agree with the philosophy expressed here? Is the owner really doing what is best for his family? This question calls for opinions and permits some discussion of the conflicting values and rewards in business. Some may feel the owner is insufficiently motivated to grow and even to serve his own family properly. Others will determine the family values and careful growth to be appropriate. The question permits the instructor to discern the general orientation of students in a class. How many, after discussion, will give a vote of commendation to this owner? You might ask students to guess the owner’s age.
  • 12.
    Chapter 1: TheEntrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 8 3. What kinds of problems is this owner trying to avoid? The owner is apparently avoiding or reducing problems related to inadequate customer service and product/service quality—areas of difficulty in a rapidly growing business. Also, the personnel and management functions (e.g., delegation, finding qualified key people) are simplified by slow growth. Slow growth may either postpone a transition to professional management or permit a more orderly transition to it. Situation 2 1. What do you like and not like about the Simple Bills concept? This is a win-win situation for everyone. The utility companies win because they get paid in a timely fashion and don’t have to incur the cost of collecting past due utility bills. The apartment owners win because the utility bills remain in the tenants’ names, and the owners don’t incur the risk of incurring past due utility bills. The tenants win because they don’t have to take on the task of collecting payment from their roommates. The owners of Simple Bills win because they make money by providing a low-cost, low-overhead service to their customers. 2. Would you recommend raising funds from outside investors and growing faster or continuing to bootstrap the operations to conserve ownership? Why? While these entrepreneurs may not want to give away ownership of their business for fear of losing profits, they fail to see the bigger picture. By bringing in investor capital, they will be able to grow the business into something much bigger. By growing the business bigger (from, say, a $1 million company to a $100 million company), their profits will be bigger. If the owners retain 60% control of the business, wouldn’t it be better to have 60% of $100 million rather than 100% of $1 million? Indeed, by including investors, the company has the opportunity to grow into something much larger, and more quickly, rather than by bootstrapping this operation. 3. What strategy would you suggest for growing the business, assuming new investors are brought in? As a high-potential venture, this company may want to seek out angel capital financing. How large Simple Bills wants to grow (statewide versus nationwide) will determine the type of financing these owners will pursue. A nationwide growth plan would require venture capital financing, while a smaller growth plan could utilize angel capital. 4. If you choose to raise funds, whom might you seek as investors? Have students think outside the box and consider contemporary fund-raising sources such as Kickstarter.com or other types of online investor resource networks. Situation 3 1. Is work-life balance for everyone? No it is not. Work-life balance is an individual preference and a value. People are spurred into action by what motivates them. Whatever that driving force is will chart the course for how they balance their passion (work, exercise, education) with their other life obligations.
  • 13.
    Chapter 1: TheEntrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 9 2. Is work-life balance simply a preference, or is it a necessity? Answers will vary as this is based on opinion. Most will argue that it’s a preference. Health professionals would largely argue that it should be a necessity. Balance is always the best course of action. 3. As an entrepreneur, would there be areas in your life that you would place at a higher priority than growing a business? Explain. Answers will vary as this is based on individual preferences. SUGGESTED SOLUTION TO CASE 1: DASHLOCKER 1. How did Hennessy’s background prepare him for starting a business? What entrepreneurial qualities did he embody? Hennessy’s background as a research analyst for a hedge fund certainly would not have directly prepared him to operate a dry cleaning company, especially knowing what works and what does not work. However, his research skills probably served him well in researching the opportunity. This experience also would have contributed to his ability to analyze financial statements. He spent a year studying customers’ laundry habits by operating a traditional dry cleaning business in East New York. In thinking about Hennessy’s entrepreneurial qualities, the instructor might have students return to the important qualities listed in Chapter 1 of the text for entrepreneurs to possess, namely: • Commitment and determination—tenacious, decisive, and persistent in problem solving • Leadership abilities—self-starters and team builders who focus on honesty in their business relationships • Opportunity obsession—aware of market and customer needs • Tolerance of risk, ambiguity, and uncertainty—risk takers, risk minimizers, and uncertainty tolerators • Creativity, self-reliance, and adaptability—open-minded, flexible, uncomfortable with the status quo, and quick learners • Motivation to excel—goal-oriented and aware of personal strengths and weaknesses • Courage—have strong moral convictions and a willingness to experiment While the case does not provide much in the way of Hennessy’s qualities, it does give you a sense that he was opportunity driven. To be successful, an entrepreneur must clearly identify a problem needing a solution and how he or she can solve the problem at a price enough customers are willing to pay to make the opportunity profitable. Hennessy also demonstrated tenacity in spending a year to convince Laundry Locker, a similar firm in San Francisco, to license its technology to DashLocker. Finally, Hennessy gave up a career that in most cases has large financial rewards, which suggests that he has the capacity to tolerate risk.
  • 14.
    Chapter 1: TheEntrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 10 2. What were Hennessy’s entrepreneurial motivations for founding DashLocker? Chapter 1 lays out four motivations for becoming an entrepreneur: personal fulfillment, personal satisfaction, independence, and financial rewards. DashLocker potentially offered Hennessy the opportunity to satisfy all four motivations if done well. Specifically, Hennessy’s primary motivation was to solve an unmet need. He saw the opportunity as a way to change how people live. In his own way, he wanted to make meaning for customers. He also wanted to make a difference by reducing the carbon footprint historically caused by laundry businesses. 3. What type of entrepreneurial opportunity did Hennessy identify and how did he capitalize on those opportunities? Hennessy wanted to change the way most New York City residents do their laundry and dry cleaning, primarily 20- to 40-year-old professionals who found current laundry services inconvenient to access. In other words, he provided convenience. He also saw growth potential in apartments, where a customer could pick up laundry while still in slippers. This could benefit landlords as well by providing them a way to have a laundry facility for renters at a much lower cost and without the hassles they would encounter from operating a laundry facility. The landlords would also receive a commission, thus providing a win- win situation for everyone. Furthermore, he was capturing the opportunity with only modest resource requirements and, therefore, smaller amounts of capital for him to invest. For instance, DashLocker owned no laundry and dry cleaning equipment. Instead, all items were sent to a wholesale washing center. He also had a low cost of operations, with few employees, and a minimum in operating expenses, such as rent and overhead, which meant a low profit break-even point. But, to make the opportunity attractive in terms of profits, he had to achieve large sales volumes. Growth is not only beneficial, but also essential. 4. Describe DashLocker’s growth potential. DashLocker had good growth potential. Hennessy had five locations and believed he could grow the business exponentially by adding locations. The opportunity is scalable, which was an essential ingredient for any opportunity to create significant profits. The opportunity to move into apartments and other facilities, along with finding other services such as shoe shining and a drop-off pick-up system for packages, could be met through the same equipment. 5. Describe DashLocker’s competitive advantage. The firm’s competitive advantage would come from two sources: being the first mover in New York City and having the license to use Laundry Locker’s proven technology. 6. What impact does DashLocker have on society? As already noted, DashLocker had the potential to change how a large part of the professional population in New York City lives.
  • 15.
    Chapter 1: TheEntrepreneurial Life © 2020 Cengage®. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 1- 11 7. What do you think about DashLocker’s social mission? What else could the company do to reduce its footprint? Should businesses be concerned with social entrepreneurship? Hennessy envisioned a social mission for his business by using green, earth-friendly machines in the firm’s operations. Nothing is said about whether this decision imposed higher costs on the business. If not, then the choice is easy. Be environmentally friendly. If Hennessy faced higher costs, then he had to find a way to be competitive while incurring additional costs not faced by competitors. Hopefully, Hennessy found a way to capture attractive profits and at the same time accomplish the stated social mission. Nothing else in the case suggests other ways to fulfill a social mission. But there are always good options for making a difference in a firm’s community. It would require that Hennessy work with his employees to find ways to make the community a better place and touch the lives of others in positive ways. Such a goal is the right thing to do to the extent it is possible for the business. Business owners must have an intentional commitment to such a mission, because there will always be ways for them to rationalize not including a social dimension as part of the firm’s mission.
  • 16.
    Exploring the Varietyof Random Documents with Different Content
  • 17.
    “Things will bemade poisonously pleasant for you,” he said. “You can without effort capture brilliant success. But remember all that you get without effort is not, from the point of view of art, conceivably worth anything. Remember also that nothing fine ever grew out of what is horrible. More than that, what is horrible sterilizes the soil,—that soil is you. You will never get any more if you spoil it or let it get sour or rancid. Horror gets rooted there, it devours all that might have been good, all that might have been of the best.” There was a long silence. Then Karl stepped back and rang the bell. To Martin the silvery tinkle sounded remote. He certainly was thinking now. “Well, I have done,” said Karl. “Excuse the—the Nonconformist conscience.” Martin got up. “I don’t see how one can care—really care—for music and live grossly,” he said. “Yet people appear to manage it. And mawkishness makes me feel sick,” he added with apparent irrelevance. But Karl understood. “Somebody has been trying to pet him,” he thought to himself. They went upstairs to the music-room, and Martin stood before the fire a few moments smoking in silence. “I like this room,” he said. “It makes me feel clean, like the November morning. I say, how is it that so many people, men and women alike, only think about one subject? Surely it is extraordinarily stupid of them, when there are so many jolly things in the world.” “Ah, if the world was not full of extraordinarily stupid people,” remarked Karl, “it would be an enchanting place.” “Oh, it’s enchanting as it is,” cried Martin, throwing off his preoccupation. “May I begin again at once? I want to get through a lot of work to-night. Heavens, there’s a barrel-organ playing ‘Cavalleria.’ Frank is going to introduce a bill next session, he says, putting ‘Cavalleria’ in public on the same footing as obscene language in public. He says it comes to the same thing.” Stella Plympton about this time was giving a certain amount of anxiety to her parents. The amount, it is true, was not very great, because her father
  • 18.
    was a happilyconstituted man who was really incapable of feeling great anxiety except about large sums of money. Consequently, since the extremely large sums of money, all of which he had made, were most admirably invested, his life was fairly free from care. His wife also was quite as fortunate, her complexion was the only thing capable of moving her really deeply, and as she had lately found a new masseuse who was quite wonderful and obliterated lines with the same soft completeness with which bread-crumb removes the marks of lead-pencil, she also, for the present, stood outside the zone of serious trouble. Between them they occupied, just now, the apex of social as well as most other successes in London, and were a very typically modern couple. Sir Reginald Plympton had in early life invented an oil-cloth of so eminent an excellence that in its manufacture and exploitation he had been too busy to really master the English aspirate, which still bothered him. But to make up for this he had carefully cultivated his aspirations, and had (entirely owing to oil-cloth), while not yet sixty, amassed a colossal fortune, married the daughter of an impecunious duke, won the Derby, and now stood perched on the topmost rung of the ladder of English society. He had a yacht, which never went for long cruises, but always anchored for the night in some harbour. Being a bad sailor, he left it, if there was a chance of bad weather, before it weighed anchor in the morning, and joined it again on the ensuing evening. Similarly he sat in his wife’s opera-box during intervals between the acts, and left his place on the rising of the curtain. He was already a baronet and an M.P., and his peer’s coronet, so to speak, was now being lined. Yet care, though only like a little draught, just stirred the warm air of Lady Monica’s drawing-room and made the palm-trees rattle. She had often talked the matter over with her husband, who had no very practical suggestion to make. He would stand before her, very square and squat, with his hands in his pockets, rattling money in the one and keys in the other, and say: “Well, my lady, you give ’er a good talkin’ to. Tell ’er to be a good girl, and be sensible. And now I must be off.” For the fact was that Stella was now nearly twenty-three. She had refused several very suitable offers, and her mother, extremely anxious, as all good mothers should be, to get her married, had lately begun to be afraid
  • 19.
    that she was“being silly.” This in her vocabulary meant that Stella was in love with somebody (Lady Monica thought she knew with whom) and was not clever enough to make him propose to her. What added enormity to her “silliness” was the fact that he was extremely eligible. Lady Monica had no sympathy with this sort of thing; she had never been silly herself, and her own sentimental history had been that some twenty-four years ago she had wooed, proposed to, and wedded her Reginald without any fuss whatever or any delay. She was a woman with a great deal of hard, useful common sense; she always knew exactly what she wanted, and almost always got it. Her only weakness, in fact (with the discovery of the new masseuse, her complexion had become a positive source of strength), was for feeble flirtations with young men of the age which she herself wished to look. These never came to anything at all; and when the young man in question married somebody perfectly different, she told all her friends that she had made him. She had during the last week or two, since the session had brought them to London, done a little vicarious love-making to Martin on Stella’s account, and enjoyed it on her own. She was a perfectly honest woman, and only played with fire as a child plays with matches, lighting them and blowing them out, and she never really set fire to herself, and quite certainly never even scorched anybody else. But anxiety, like a draught, had reached her with regard to Stella’s future, and the next evening, when Lady Sunningdale happened to be giving a menagerie-party, she determined to have a few words with her, for she was looked upon as a sort of book of reference with regard to the twins. The menagerie-party was so called because for a week beforehand Lady Sunningdale drove about London a good deal and screamed an invitation to everybody she saw in the streets. The lions only were fed; the meaner animals and those lions only observed too late to ask to dinner came in afterwards. Lady Monica and Stella belonged to this second category, and Lady Sunningdale hailed them with effusion. “Dearest Monica, so glad to see you,” she cried. “All sorts of people are here, whom I’m sure I don’t know by sight, and I’ve just revoked at Bridge (double no trumps, too; isn’t it too dreadful!), and Suez Canal tried to bite the Prime Minister. Wasn’t it naughty? But, you see, Suez is a Radical,— though he shouldn’t bring politics into private life. Stella, I haven’t seen you for years. Yes; Martin’s going to play, of course. Have you heard his
  • 20.
    tune which imitatesme talking in a very large hat? Simply heavenly; exactly like. Even Sunningdale awoke the other evening when he played it, and asked me what I was saying. How are you, Frank? No sign of relenting on the part of the obdurate father? How dreadful! Yes. Dearest Monica, how well you are looking, and how young! (“New masseuse,” she thought to herself. “I must worm it out.”) Do let us go and sit down. I’m sure everybody has come. Oh, there is the Spanish Ambassador. He killed his own father, you know,—shot him dead on the staircase, thinking he was a burglar, and came into all that immense property at the age of nineteen! How picturesque, was it not, and such a very Spanish thing to do! Such a good shot, too. How are you, señor? Yes; they are playing Bridge in the next room. And they say there is sure to be a dissolution in the autumn.” Lady Sunningdale poured out this spate of useful information in her usual manner, addressing her remarks indiscriminately to any one who happened to be near, and Lady Monica waited till the flood showed some sign of abating. She had a vague contempt for Lady Sunningdale’s “methods,” considering that she diffused herself too much. She never caught hold of anything and held tight till everybody else who wanted it let go from sheer fatigue, which was a favourite method of her own. On the other hand, Lady Sunningdale certainly managed to pick up a great many bright objects as she went along, even though she did drop them again almost immediately. “Do come away and talk to me, Violet,” said Lady Monica, when for a moment there was silence. “I came here entirely to have a confabulation with you.” “Yes, dear, by all means. I have heard nothing interesting for weeks except the things I’ve made up and told in confidence to somebody, which have eventually come round to me again, also in confidence. What’s it all about?” As soon as they had found a corner, Lady Monica, as her custom was, went quite straight to the point. “It’s about Stella,” she said. “Violet, I am afraid Stella is being silly.” “How, dear? Stella always seems to me so sensible. Such a lovely neck, too; quite like yours. Look, there is poor Harry Bentham. A lion bit his arm off, or was it South Africa?”
  • 21.
    Lady Sunningdale casta roving eye in his direction, kissed the tips of her fingers, and motioned him not to come to her. Lady Monica waited without the least impatience till she had quite finished. Then she went on, exactly where she had left off. “Well, it’s your dreadfully fascinating Martin Challoner,” she said; “and I’m sure I don’t wonder. My dear, really such terribly attractive people ought to be shut up, not allowed to run about loose. They do too much damage.” “Well, dear, Stella is only like all the rest of us,” said Lady Sunningdale. “You remember how we all ran after the twins last summer.” “I know; we all got quite out of breath. But Stella is running still. Now, do you think, you know him so well, that he gives two thoughts to her? They are great friends, they are often together, but if it is all to come to nothing, I shall stop it at once. Stella has no time to waste.” Lady Sunningdale considered this a moment. She knew all about Monica’s little flirtations with Martin; so also did he, and had imitated her, for Lady Sunningdale’s benefit, with deadly accuracy. But she was too good-natured to spoil sport just because Stella’s mother had been a shade too sprightly for her years. Besides, she meant to say a word or two about that later on, a word that would rankle afterwards. “My dear, I can’t really tell whether Martin ever thinks about her or not,” she said. “He is so extraordinary; he is simply a boy yet in many ways, and he plays at life as a boy plays at some absurd game, absorbed in it, but still considering it a game. Then suddenly he goes and does something deadly serious, like joining the Roman Church. Practically, also, you must remember that he thinks almost entirely about one thing,—his music. That child sits down and plays with the experience and the feeling and the fingers which, as Karl Rusoff says, have never yet been known to exist in a boy. He is like radium, something quite new. We’ve got to learn about it before we can say what it will do in given circumstances. It burns, and it is unconsumed. So like Martin! But Karl says he is changing, growing up. I can’t help feeling it’s rather a pity. Yes. Of course he can’t be a bachelor all his life; that is impermissible. But Karl always says, ‘I implore you to leave him alone. Don’t force him; don’t even suggest things to him. He will find his way so long as nobody shews it him.’ Karl is devoted to him,—just like a beautiful old hen in spectacles with one chicken.”
  • 22.
    But Lady Monicahad not the smallest intention of talking about Karl, and led the conversation firmly back. “Well, Violet, will you try to find out?” she asked. Lady Sunningdale’s eye and attention wandered. “Ah, there is Sunningdale,” she said. “Does he not look lost? He always looks like that at a menagerie. Yes, I will try to sound Martin, if you like. I must make him confide in me somehow, and be rather tender, and he will probably tell me, though he will certainly imitate me and my tendencies afterwards. He imitates people who take an interest in him—that is his phrase—too beautifully. I roared,”—Lady Sunningdale cast a quick, sideways glance at her friend,—“simply roared at some imitation he gave the other day of a somewhat elderly woman who took an interest in him. Yes. Poor Suez Canal! He loves parties; but one can’t let him bite everybody indiscriminately. Let us come back, dear Monica, and make the twin play. There he is sitting with Stella. He asked me particularly if she was coming. They are probably talking about golf or something dreadful. Stella is devoted to it, is she not? Yes. That’s the game where you make runs, is it not? I shall have to sound Martin very carefully. He is so quick. Sunningdale, please take Martin firmly by the arm, and if he tries to bite, by the scruff of the neck, and put him down at the piano. No, dear Monica, you can tell nothing by his face. He always looks absorbed and excited like that. If he was talking to you he would look just the same.” That also was premeditated and vicious, just in case poor Monica’s little love-making, which Martin had imitated so divinely, had not been wholly vicarious. If it had, her remark would pass unnoticed, if it had not—but there was no need to consider whether it had or not, for poor Monica had turned quite red at the mention of Martin’s imitation of the elderly woman who took an interest in him.
  • 23.
    CHAPTER XI Martin hadbeen among the lions who were fed to-night at Lady Sunningdale’s, and had eaten of rich and slightly indeterminate food, for his hostess’s vagueness and volubility, like Karl’s love of form, found expression in the dinner. Afterwards he had taken up a strategic position near the head of the stairs when the meaner animals or belated lions began to arrive, in order to watch and wait for Stella’s entrance. Then as soon as her mother and Lady Sunningdale had retired into their corner, he had annexed her—with her complete assent—and plunged into discussions about affairs not in the least private. Had her mother overheard, she would, with her strong, practical common sense, have ordered the conversation to cease at once, so wanting in the right sort of intimacy would she have found it. And in so doing she would have made one of those mistakes which are so often and so inevitably committed by people of great common sense but no imagination, who cannot allow for the possible presence of romance in pursuits which they themselves consider prosaic. Had Martin been talking to her daughter about music, she would have considered that sufficiently promising to allow developments, for that was a thing very real to him,— his heart spoke. As it was, she would have considered that the conversation held not a germ of that disease of which she longed that Martin should sicken. Lady Sunningdale, far less superficial really than the other, not knowing that almost everything under the sun was rich with childish romance in Martin’s eyes, had hazarded the suggestion that they were talking about golf. This was practically correct, because they were talking about skating, and the two to her were indistinguishable,—she supposed you got runs at each,—being objectless exercises for the body. The moment you hunted or shot or played any game you entered that bracket. All these things were of the same genre, and quite unintelligible. “But I can’t get my shoulders round,” said Stella. “It is no earthly use telling me that I must. They won’t go. Can you understand the meaning of those three simple words, or shall I try to express it differently? And if I try to make them get round I fall down.”
  • 24.
    Martin frowned. “Stella, youare really stupid about it,” he said,—they had long ago fallen into Christian names. “For the hundredth time you have to consider your foot as fixed. Then pivot round, head first,—then——“ Stella nodded. “Yes, I understand that,” she said. “It is always head first with me,—on the ice.” “You’re not being serious,” said Martin; “and if you can’t be serious about a game you can’t be serious about anything. That is a universal truth. I discovered it. What do you suppose matters to me most in my life? Music? Not at all. Get along with you, you silly thing. But, oh, if any one would teach me to do back brackets not rather clean, but quite clean. I dreamed I did one once, and I awoke sobbing loudly from sheer happiness. I would sign a pledge never to touch tobacco or a piano again, if I could do that. That’s my real state of mind. Now, will you skate to-morrow at Prince’s? I can be there at ten for an hour.” “Considering I am always there at half-past nine,” remarked Stella, “I don’t think you need ask. And yet you say I am not serious. Oh, Martin, why is it that one really only wants to do the things one can’t do?” “You can if you want enough,” said he. “The deuce is that one can’t always want enough.” “I don’t believe that,” said she promptly,—Lady Monica would have stayed her devastating hand, if she had heard this,—“I want lots of things as much as I possibly can.” “But perhaps even that isn’t enough. What, for instance?” Stella could not help a momentary lifting of her eyes to his. “Why, to skate, silly,” she said. “Yes, I’ll be there by ten, and so be punctual. I will consider my foot whatever you wish, and I’ll fall down as often as you think necessary. But don’t be unkind at once when you pick me up, and tell me I was too much on my heel, or anything of that sort. Wait till the first agony is over. I attend best when the pain is beginning to pass off.” “Well, I only tell you to save trouble in the future,” said he. “I know, but give me a moment. Do you care about the future much, by the way? I don’t. Give me the immediate present. To think much about the future is a sign of age. No one begins to care about the future until he is too
  • 25.
    old to haveany. Besides, it implies that the present has ceased to be absorbing.” Martin pondered this. “Oh, no; I don’t think that is so at all.” Stella laughed. “You never, by any chance, agree with a word I say,” she remarked. “Well, you haven’t agreed with me since August,” he said. “I made a note of it. But that is why we have no stupid pauses. All conversation runs dry in two minutes if one agrees with the other person. But what you say about age really isn’t so. Look at Karl Rusoff or Lady Sunningdale. They both live intensely in the present.” “Ah, you are shallow,” she said. “Years have got nothing whatever to do with age. That is the most superficial view. People of ninety die young, people of twenty die of senile decay.” Martin stretched his trouser over his crossed knee. “I am a hundred and eleven,” he said, “and whiles—don’t you hate the Scotch—and whiles I am about twelve in an Eton collar.” “Yes, loathe them, laddie. Hoots! That is what is so maddening about you. Half the time I think I am talking to my great-uncle, and the rest of it to my little nephew up from the country.” “Is he a nice boy?” asked Martin. “Or do you like your great-uncle best?” “I don’t like either at all, thank you. You are always being far too wise or far too young. As a man of a hundred, how can you play silly games with such enthusiasm? And as a boy of twelve, how can you play the piano as you do?” “It is because I am so extremely gifted,” said Martin, so gravely and naturally that for an appreciable moment she stared. “Ah! Don’t you find it an awful bore?” she asked. “Dreadful. I can’t really take any pleasure in anything, owing to the sense of responsibility which my talents bring to me.” Stella broke down and laughed. At gravity he always beat her completely. At which period in their conversation Lord Sunningdale did as he was ordered, and, taking him firmly by the arm, led him to the piano.
  • 26.
    Karl was alwaysmost assiduous in his attendance at houses where Martin played, and he was here to-night. His object was certainly not to flatter or encourage his pupil, for often and often, when Martin had played in his presence the night before, he found but a growling reception waiting for him at his next lesson. “You played well enough for them,” Karl would say; “I grant you that. Any bungling would do for them. But to play ‘well enough for them’ is damnation.” “But it did,” Martin would argue. “I did not want to play at all; but one can’t say no. At least I can’t. I was not playing for you.” “Then you should not have played at all. If you play often enough in a second-rate manner, you will soon become second-rate.” But to-night Martin never suggested the second-rate even to his exacting master. In a sort of boyish protestation at the strictures he had undergone last night concerning the last of the Noveletten, he played it again now. Certainly to-night there was no note of stodginess there; the varied, crisp, masterful moods of the music rang extraordinarily true. Half way through Karl turned to Lady Sunningdale, who was sitting next him. “How has he spent his day?” he asked, suddenly. “Skating, I think. He skated all morning, and was late for lunch, and he went back to Prince’s afterwards. He is terribly idle, is he not? Pray don’t interrupt, Monsieur Rusoff. I never can feel as if I hear a note at all unless I hear them all. Who said that? You, I think. So true. And have you heard his piece on me? He must play it. Delicious this is, isn’t it? I learned it when I was a child. Tum-tum. There is the tune again.” “But with whom did he skate, my dear lady?” asked Karl. There had been a good many notes missed by now. Lady Sunningdale gasped. “Oh, Monsieur Rusoff, how clever of you!” she said. “You are really clairvoyant. So is my maid,—the one like a murderess. Do you know her? No; how should you. Martin was skating with Stella Plympton. And that is important, is it? Don’t tell her mother. She is such a fool, and also she has been trying to pump me. You see, it was I who brought them together. So suitable. I feel dreadfully responsible——“
  • 27.
    At this pointthe Novelette ended, and Lady Sunningdale clapped her hands in a perfunctory manner. “Too heavenly, monster,” she said. “Now play Tum-te-tum. Yes, that one. And is he really going to marry her?” she continued to Karl. “I love being pumped, if I know it. Dear Monica, she pumps like a fire-engine. There is no possibility of mistake. Now, while he is playing this, do tell me all you know.” “My dear lady, you are building on no foundation,” said Karl. “All I know is that he played that to me last night, and played it abominably. To- night he has played it—well, you have heard. And, psychologically, I should like to know what has occurred in the interval.” “Was his playing of it just now very wonderful?” she asked. “Yes; one might venture to say that. And as he has been skating all day, presumably he has not thought much about it. His thinking perhaps has been done for him. And who is Stella Plympton? Wife or maid?” Lady Sunningdale gave a little shriek of laughter. Really people who lived out of the world were much more amusing than those who lived in it. Those who lived in it, it is true, always believed the worst in the absence of definite knowledge; the others, however, made far more startling suggestions. “Next but two on your right,” she whispered. “Dear Monica will have a fit if Stella turns out to be already married.” Karl’s eyes wandered slowly to the right, looking pointedly at many things first, at the cornice of the ceiling, at Martin’s profile, at the slumber of Lord Sunningdale. Then they swept quickly by Stella. She sat there absorbed and radiant, her face flushed with some secret, delicate joy as she watched and listened, hardly knowing whether eyes or ears demanded her attention most. Certainly the music and the musician between them held her in a spell. “She is looking quite her best,” whispered Lady Sunningdale. “How interesting! They have millions, you know—oil-cake, or was it oil-cloth? Oil-something, anyhow, which sounds so rich, and she is the only child. The father is quite impossible, not an ‘h,’ though every one crowds there. One always does if there are millions. So vulgar of one. Dear Monica. We were almost brought up together.”
  • 28.
    Karl turned roundto her. “Dear Lady Sunningdale,” he said, “you are really quite premature if you build anything on what I have said. He played admirably to-night what he played abominably last night. That is absolutely all I know. I should be so sorry if I had suggested anything to you which proved to be without any sort of foundation.” There certainly seemed to be some new power in Martin’s playing to- night; but new power had constantly shewn itself there during the last month or two, for, as Karl said, he had been growing. To-night, however, he was conscious of it himself, and even as he played, he knew that fresh light of some kind, some fresh spring of inspiration, was his. His hand and his brain were too busy as he played to let him be more than conscious of it. Where it came from, what it was, he could not guess this moment; but as he struck the last chords the tension relaxed, and he knew. Then, looking up, he saw Stella sitting near him, leaning forward, her beautiful mouth a little open. That glorious white column of her neck supported her head like the stem of a flower,—no garden flower, but something wonderful and wild. There were rows of faces behind her, to each side of her,—she was one in a crowd only; but as his eyes caught her gaze, the crowd fell away, became misty to him, vanished as a breath vanishes in a frosty air, and she only, that one face bending a little towards him, remained. For a long moment their eyes dwelt on each other; neither smiled, for the occasion was too grave for that, and they two for all they knew, were alone, in Paradise or in the desert, it was all one. The gay crowd, the applause that merged into a crescendo of renewed conversation, lights, glitter, men and women, were for that one moment obliterated, for in his soul Love had leaped to birth,—no puny weakling, prematurely warped and disfigured by evil practices and parodies of itself, but clean and full-grown it sprang towards her, knowing, seeing that its welcome was already assured. Then the real world, so strangely unreal in comparison to that world in which for a moment their souls had mingled and embraced, reeled into existence again, and Martin rose from the piano, for she had risen, too, and had turned to some phantom on her right that appeared to speak to her. Lady Sunningdale beckoned and screamed to him.
  • 29.
    “Martin,” she cried,“you are too deevey! Monsieur Rusoff is really almost—didn’t you say almost—satisfied with the way you played that. And you learned all that exquisite thing—I used to play it years ago—while you were skating to-day, because he says you played it too abominably last night. Really, if I thought I could play it like that to-morrow evening I would go and skate all day. Now, don’t waste time, but play something more instantly.” “Oh, please, Lady Sunningdale, I would rather not,” said he. “I really don’t think I could play any more to-night. I really am—I don’t know what —tired.” Lady Sunningdale looked at his brilliant, vigorous face. “Martin, I don’t believe you will ever learn to tell a decent, passable lie,” she said. “Why not tell me you had got cancer. Oh, there’s Suez Canal come back. Naughty! Monsieur Rusoff, won’t you tell him that he must. Just a scale or two. I adore scales, so satisfactory, are they not—so expected—as if it was a music-lesson. No? How tiresome of you.” Karl laid his hand on Martin’s arm. “No, my dear lady,” he said. “He’s never to play except when he wants to. But if you really want a little more music, and I——“ “Ah, but how enchanting of you. Monsieur Rusoff is going to play. Surely, dear Monica, you will wait. You are not going yet?” “Desolated, Violet, but Stella says she feels a little faint. The hot room, I suppose. She is waiting for me outside. How deliciously you play, Mr. Challoner. I suppose you practise a great deal. Won’t you come some day and——“ She broke off, for Martin had simply turned his back on her, and was firmly edging his way through the crowd to the door. Then Lady Monica’s maternal instinct positively leaped to a conclusion, and Martin’s rudeness was completely forgiven. “But I can’t resist waiting to hear Monsieur Rusoff,” she said. “I thought he never played at private houses. How clever of you, dear Violet. I wonder if you could get him to play for me. Stella will sit down and wait for me, no doubt.” But before Karl struck the first chord, Martin had won (not to say pushed) his way through the hushed crowd, and found Stella sitting outside
  • 30.
    in the otherdrawing-room. Every one had flocked in to hear the music, and they were alone. His foot was noiseless on the thick carpet, and he was but a yard or two from her when she raised her eyes and saw him. Then with a little choking cry, only half articulate, he came close to her. All the excitement and fire in which his life was passed was cold ashes compared to this moment, and his heart thumped riotously against his chest. Twice he tried to speak, but his trembling lips would not form the words, and she waited, her eyes still fixed on his. Then suddenly he threw his arms out. “It is no good trying,” he said. “But I love you! I—I love you!” Oh, the clumsy, bald statement! But Life and Death meant less than that word. “Oh, Martin,” she said, “I have waited—I—I don’t know what I am saying.” “Waited?” he asked, and his eyes glowed like hot coals. Then he laughed. “And you never told me,” he said. “If it was not you, I should never forgive you. And if it was not you, I should not care.” “Isn’t that nonsense?” she asked. “Yes, probably. Who cares? Stella! Oh, my star!” He flung his arms round her. “My star, my star,” he cried again. For one moment she could not but yield to him. “Yes, yes,” she whispered; “but Martin, Martin,” and her mouth wreathed into laughter, “it is an evening party. You must not; you must not.” He paused like a man dying of drought from whose lips the cup of water had been taken away. “Party,” he cried; “what party? It is you and I, that is all.” This was all unknown to her. She had loved him, the boy with the extraordinary eyes, the boy who played so magnificently, who laughed so much. But now there was roused something more than these. The piano- player was gone, he did not laugh, his eyes had never quite glowed like that, and there was in his face something she had never seen yet. The woman had awakened the man; this was his first full moment of consciousness. And,
  • 31.
    like all womenfor the first time face to face with the lover and the beloved, she was afraid. She had not till now seen his full fire. “I am frightened,” she cried. “What have we done?” But his answer came back like an echo to what she had not said, but what was behind her words. “Frightened?” he said. “Oh, Stella, not of me, not of the real me?” She gave a little laugh, still mysteriously nervous. “You were a stranger,” she said. “I never saw you before.” Martin gave a great, happy sigh. “You are quite right,” he said, and the authentic fire leaped to and fro between their eyes. “I was never this before. But you are not frightened now?” This time her eyes did not waver from his. “No, Martin,” she said. But there was no more privacy possible here. Stella had been quite right; there was a party going on, and at the moment a great burst of applause signified the end of Karl Rusoff’s performance. Stella started. “There. I told you so,” she said. “Now take me to my mother; she will be waiting for me.” Martin frowned. “Cannot she wait?” he asked. “I too have never seen the real you before.” “No, dear, we must go. There is to-morrow, all the to-morrows.” “And to think that it has only been yesterday until this evening,” he said. “There is Lady Monica, looking for you.” Lady Monica had a practised eye. She kept everything she had in excellent practise; there was nothing rusty about her. “Stella dear, I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “Are you better? Has Mr. Challoner been taking care of you?” That was sufficient. “Stella says I may,” said he.
  • 32.
    Lady Monica checkedher exclamation of “Thank God!” as being a shade too business-like. “Ah, dear Mr. Martin,” she said. “How nice, how very, very nice! Stella, my dearest. How secret you have been. Come, darling, we must go. I can’t talk to either of you in this crowd. But how nice! We shall see you to- morrow? Come to lunch, quite, quite quietly.” Stella looked at him. “Yes, do, Martin,” she said. “I will take you back after our skate.” “Ah, I had forgotten,” he said. She laughed divinely. “But I had not. And you will be kind to me, as I asked you?” she added. He dwelt on his answer. “I kind—to you?” he said.
  • 33.
    CHAPTER XII It wasa March day of glorious windy brightness, a day that atones and amends with prodigal, open-handed generosity for all the fogs and chilly darknesses of autumn and winter. Heavy rain had fallen during the night before, cold, chilly rain, but an hour before morning it had ceased, and a great warm, boisterous wind came humming up from the southwest. Like some celestial house-clearer it swept the clouds from the face of the sky, and an hour of ivory starlight and setting moon ushered in the day. That same wind had awakened Helen with the sound of the tapping, struggling blind drawn over her open window, and with eyes suffused with sleep she had got out of bed to quiet the rattling calico by the simple process of rolling it up. And having rolled it up, she stood for a moment at the window, her hair stirred by the wind, drinking in the soft cool breath of the huge night that blew her night-dress close to her skin. The clean smell of rain was in the air, but the sky was all clear, and to the east behind the tower of Chartries church the nameless dove-coloured hue of coming dawn was beginning to make dim the stars. Then she went back to bed with a vague but certain sense that some change had come—winter was over; in her very bones she felt that. Gloriously did the morning fulfil her expectations. White fleecy clouds, high in the heavens, bowled along the blue, their shadows racing beneath them across the brown grass of the downs; the wind, warm and pregnant with spring, drove boisterously out of the west, and the sun flooded all that lived in a bath of light. Round the elms in the church-yard there had been wrought that yearly miracle, that mist of green leaf hovering round the trees, and paler and more delicate it hung round the slim purple-twigged birches in the woods that climbed up the hillside beyond to Chartries. Here after breakfast her path lay, for she had a parish errand to an outlying hamlet beyond, and with eye and ear and nostril and open mouth she breathed and was bathed in the revivification of spring. That morning, so it seemed to her, all the birds in the world sang together,—thrushes bubbled with the noise of chuckling water and delicious repeated phrases of melody, as if to show, brave musicians, that the “first fine careless rapture” is perfectly easy to recapture, if you happen to know the way of the thing;
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    blackbirds with liquidthroat and tawny bill scudded through the bushes; above swifts chided in swooping companies, and finches and sparrows poured out staccato notes. One bird alone was silent, for the nightingale waited till summer should come and love. That filled the ear. For the eye there were blue distances, blue shadows of racing clouds, the sun, and more near the budding trees, and in the dingle below the woods of Chartries a million daffodils. Helen had forgotten that they were there, waiting for her, and she came on them suddenly, and stood quite still a moment with a long pause of pure and complete delight. The place was carpeted with them; they all danced and shone and sang together like the morning stars. And as she looked her eyes grew dim with happy tears. “Dear God,” she said, “thank you so much.” Yes, indeed, it was spring; and as she walked on she repeated the word over and over again to herself, finding a magic in it. It was everywhere: the sky and the sun were full of it, it burst in those myriad blossoms from the dark, wholesome soil; it was spring that set this good wind blowing, it bubbled and chuckled in the chalk-stream, with its waving weeds and bright glimmering beds of pebbles. Above all, it was in her own heart on this glorious morning, till she thought it must almost burst, too, so overflowing was it with sheer, unreasoning happiness. Indeed, Martin had been quite right when he had told Karl how happy she was, and though she did not reason to herself about it, the cause was abundantly clear. For the last six months she had lived at home, through days and weeks of ever-recurring difficulties, and with each, as it presented itself, she had dealt smilingly, patiently. She had made up her mind on her visit to Cambridge that her duty was clear and obvious, nothing striking nor picturesque was in the least required, she was neither going to renounce her future happiness, nor, on the other hand, to throw all else aside and grasp at it. No heroic knot-cutting measures of any kind were indicated, except the quiet, unobtrusive heroism of taking up again, quite simply, quietly, and naturally, all the straightforward, familiar little duties of her home life which again and again she had found so tedious. Nor had they been in themselves less tedious. Only here was the difference,—she had ceased to look upon them from any point of view except one, namely, that it was quite distinctly her business to do them. That she had found to be sufficient;
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    it was enoughday by day to get through with them without expenditure of thought as to whether they were distasteful or not, and her work, her daily bread, had somehow been sweet and wholesome and nourishing. Truly, if, as Karl had said, Martin had been growing out of knowledge, his twin also would be scarcely recognisable. And bread, bread of the soul, had come to her; her table had been laid in the wilderness, and happiness, royal inward happiness of a very fine and unselfish sort, in the midst of a thousand things which made for unhappiness, had blossomed in her. A thousand times she had been tempted to say, “It is doing no good. Why should I put off what is waiting for me when my renunciation does not help father in any way?” But a thousand times she had just not said it; and now, at the end of these difficult months, she could without egoism look back and see what infinite good had been done. That her father should in any way alter his own convictions about her marriage she had never expected; but what had been gained was that he saw now, and consciously saw, that she was in the very simplest language “being good.” But it had been difficult enough for all concerned, except perhaps for Aunt Clara, who was scarcely capable of emotion, and often Helen’s heart had bled for her father. It had been most terrible of all when Martin had joined the Roman Church. His letter to his father—Helen winced when she thought of it now—had arrived on Sunday morning, and he had found it on the breakfast-table when he had come back from the early celebration. It was a manly, straightforward letter enough, stating that he had not yet gone over, but had practically determined to. If his father wished he would come down to Chartries, and talk it over with him, and give to his advice and counsel the very fullest possible consideration. And at the end he expressed very bluntly and sincerely, as was his way, the sorrow and the pain that he knew the news would cause his father. The sheet fell from his hand, and Helen, who was making tea, looked up. She saw the colour rise in her father’s face; the arteries in his neck and temples swelled into cords, and his eyes with pupils contracted to pin-pricks looked for the moment like the eyes of a madman. Then he spoke, his voice vibrating with suppressed furious anger. “Martin is going to join the Roman Church,” he said. “From the day he does so, Helen, never speak to me of him again. He is dead to me,
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    remember.” That was aweek before Christmas, and for more than a month after that Martin’s name had literally hardly crossed his father’s lips. The boy had come down to stay with his uncle once, but Mr. Challoner had absolutely refused to see him. He had even wished Helen not to; but on this occasion, for the only time during all that long winter, she had quietly but quite firmly disobeyed him. It was then first, too, as one looking down from barren rocks of a mountain-range, that she saw, though still far off, the harvest that was ripening in these long, patient months of her living here with her father. Before going to Chartries she had thought best to go into his study and tell him that she was doing so. “I am going to see Martin,” she said, wondering and very nervous as to how her father would take it. “And I wanted to tell you, father, before I went, that I was going.” Mr. Challoner was writing his sermon, but on her words his pen paused; then he looked up at her. “Very well, dear,” he said. “You know my feeling about it; but it is a thing in which you must do as you think right. And, Helen,” again he paused, and his eyes wandered away from her and were bent on his paper, “tell me, when you come back, how the lad looks, if he seems well.” She came closer to him. This was the first sign he had shown that he recognised Martin’s existence. “Ah, father, come with me,” she said. But he shook his head. “No, dear; no, dear,” he said, and went on with his work. But, on this March morning of windy brightness, what gave the comble to her happiness was the talk—the first intimate one for all these weeks— which she had had with her father the night before. She had gone to her room as usual after prayers, but finding there some parish-work, concerning outdoor relief, which she ought to have done and taken to him the day before, she sat up for nearly a couple of hours, until she had finished it. Then with the papers in her hand she went down to his study. “I am so sorry, father,” she said. “You told me you wanted these yesterday, and I absolutely forgot to do them. They are finished now.” He looked up in surprise.
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    “Why, Helen,” hesaid, “it is after twelve. You ought to have been in bed long ago. Have you been sitting up to do them?” She smiled at him. “Why, yes,” she said. He took them from her. “You have been a very good daughter to me, dear,” he said. He paused, but Helen said nothing, for his tone shewed an unfinished sentence. And the pause was long; it was not at all easy for him to say what followed. “And I have been often and often very difficult and very hard all these months,” he said. “But will you do your best to forget that? Will you try to forgive me?” She went close to him, very much moved, and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Ah, don’t cut me to the heart,” she said. “But promise me, if you can,” he said. Yes, it was true; he had often been difficult and hard. And she answered him. “Yes, dear father,” she said. “I promise you that with my whole heart. And in turn, when May comes, will you try not to think too hardly of me. I have tried to be good.” She sat down by his side, looking rather wistfully at him. “I have been wanting to talk to you often before about that,” he said, “so let me say once and for all what is in my mind. I disagree with you, as you know, vitally, essentially, and I believe that God tells me to disagree. But now I believe also, dear,—and this your goodness and your sweet patience all these months has taught me,—that God tells you to do as you are going to. How that is I do not understand. Perhaps that doesn’t matter so much as I used to think. But He fulfils Himself in many ways. And there, too, I have very often thought that He had to fulfil Himself in my way. It is you who have made me see that, I think.” Helen raised shining eyes to his. “You have made me very happy,” she said.
  • 38.
    “And what haveyou done for me? There were certain days, dear, during this winter which I do not see how I could have got through without you.” Here was an opportunity for which Helen had often sought. “Martin?” she asked. “Oh, father, I wonder if you want Martin as much as I do.” The strength and the tenderness died out of his face, leaving it both helpless and hard. “I can’t see him,” he said, quickly; “I dare not. Some day, perhaps; but if I saw him now I should say—I could not, I know, help saying—what I feel. If that would do any good, I would say it; but it would do none. I should only—I should only frighten him,” he said, with an accent infinitely pathetic. She left him then without more words, for all this winter she had been learning every day and all day long the divine and human gospel of patience in dealing with people,—the patience that teaches us not to pull buds open, however desirable it may be that the flower should unfold, that is content to do its best with them, and wait for results without the desire even that they should come quickly. Till this evening, as has been said, Martin’s name had scarcely been mentioned by his father, and it was something, after this bitterness of long silence, that he should be able to say “Not yet, not now.” Pity also, pity with hands of healing, had entered at last into that stern, upright, God-fearing soul, filtering its way like water through dry and stony soil; a very exiguous trickle it might be, but cool, liquid, refreshing. How hardly it had won its way there Helen but guessed dimly, he alone knew. For day had succeeded day, and week week, and all day and all week he had wrestled blindly, hopelessly with the misery that Martin had brought on him, unable for all his efforts to find any possible justifying cause for what he had done, which seemed to him as wanton and as wicked as violent crime. To his Puritan mind, Martin’s reason,—namely, the craving for and the necessity of beauty and poetry in religion was as unintelligible as a page in an unknown language; not knowing at all what that craving meant, any more than he knew what homicidal mania meant to a maniac, he could not in any degree whatever feel or appreciate its force. And for the sake of this his son had left the mother-church, and embraced the heresies, the abominations, the idolatries of Rome. Such was his sober, literal view: the
  • 39.
    Roman Church wasidolatrous, and for idolaters was the doom appointed, revealed by God, believed by him. And there stood Martin. For weeks nothing had come to sweeten the bitterness of these dark waters; his suffering was as unintelligible to him as is pain to a dumb animal; he could not guess what it could possibly mean. That fierce anguish, like a flame, had burned up for a time in its withering breath all human affection; he had hated Martin for what he had done. Shocking as that was, he knew it to be true, and his hate seemed somehow justified. There were things, there were actions and passions which he was bound to hate; and so filled was he with this conviction, that human affection, human love could find at first no place in his mind; it was turned out, evicted. But now, like a dog beaten and driven from the house, it was beginning, so Helen thought, to creep noiselessly, stealthily homeward again. So she was content; she did not even want to hurry it. And this morning spring was here, too, and the daffodils danced. From the dance of daffodils the slope rose steeply upward through the hanging woods of Chartries, and her path lay by the bushes in which last summer Frank had found the trapped hare. Here, as always, she went slowly, telling over in her mind, like the beads of a rosary, the history of those hours. Then raising her eyes, she saw him, Frank, standing a little way up the path, looking at her. Involuntarily her heart leaped to him, and, holding out both hands, she quickened her step, as if running to him. That first movement she could no more help than she could help the fresh blood springing to her cheeks. But at once almost she recollected herself and paused. “Ah, Frank,” she cried, “you shouldn’t have come here. You know you shouldn’t.” He came no nearer. “No, my darling,” he said; “but I couldn’t help it. It is not your fault; you have not broken your promise. I only had to see you, just see you. I think it was the spring that made me do it. I am with your uncle for just one night. See, there is this for you from Martin.” He held out a note for her, standing a little aside, so that the path was clear for her to pass on her way. But, as their fingers met, she lingered and hung on her step, still not looking at him. She tried, she tried her best to
  • 40.
    pass on, butshe could not; her eyelids swept upward and she looked at him. Then which of them moved first neither knew, but next moment his arms were round her, and he kissed her. And, alas! her struggle to get free was very faint; her tongue protested, but not very earnestly. “Ah, let me go, let me go,” it said. “I can’t. Helen, it was here that——“ “I know,” she said. “I come here every day. I knew I should meet you here some day. And this of all days, the first of spring. Oh, Frank, let me go. I love you: is not that enough? And it is not for long now.” “No, my darling, it is not long now.” “And—and it has been so long. And I have wanted you so much.” She disengaged herself quietly from his arms, but in a way that made it impossible for him to hold her. “Good-bye,” she said. “You ought never to have come. And—oh, my darling—I thank you so for coming.” For one infinitesimal moment she looked at him again, then with her quick, light step she went on up the path with Martin’s letter in her hand and never looked back. She did not pause till she reached the top of the wood, but as she walked she listened for and longed for, and yet dreaded, to hear footsteps behind. But none came, she had made her meaning too clear for that (and how she wished she had been less explicit), and having arrived at the top, she slackened her pace and opened Martin’s letter. It was very short, a couple of lines only, announcing his engagement to Stella and asking her to tell his father. And with that spring was complete. Upward again lay her path; no more among trees and sheltered places, but high over the broad swell of the short-turfed downs, where shadows of clouds ran glorious races. Something in the huge view and the large sky chimed in wonderful harmony to the girl’s mood; all was so big, so untainted, so full of light. Beneath her foot the dead autumn turf still stretched in brown tufts and patches, but springing up in between were the myriad shoots of the young grass, and even since yesterday, she thought, the tone of the colour was changed. Till to-day all had been grey and brown, all still pointed backward, winterwards; but this morning it was different, and the million sprouting lives shouted, “Look forward, look forward! For, lo, the winter is past and the time of the singing-bird has come.” “Ah, song of songs,” she thought, “indeed it is so.”
  • 41.
    Martin! There wereno words into which she could put what she felt, any more than the pervading sunlight could be put into words. It was there, a great, huge, exultant presence that flooded everything. Ah, the beloved twin! Why, it was only a few years ago that he was in Eton jackets and broad white collars and sang treble. And she? Well, yes, she was in short frocks about the same time. Yet had not she, half an hour ago, down in the wood below her, where the young leaves hung like a green mist around the purple branches of the birch, felt a loving arm round her and kisses on her face. Oh, it was very wrong of Frank. No, not wrong of him,—he would have stood aside, he did stand aside to let her pass. It was very wrong of her. But at that moment she could not pass by,—it was as if her power of movement had been paralysed. Yet she was not in the least degree ashamed of herself, and she looked forward with a certain secret glee to telling her father,—for that had to be done,—for so by speaking of it she would live it over again. “No, that was not all,” she said to herself, rehearsing question and answer, “He kissed me.” Sunlight, and larks invisible, and the shadows of clouds that coursed over the downs. And some distance off a tall figure, moving towards her rapidly, a figure she easily recognised. They came nearer and met. Her hat was in her hand, her hair tossed over her forehead, and there was spring and the sure promise of summer in her face. And in her father’s, too, there was something of that infused joy. His hand held a little bunch of primroses, which he had plucked as he walked. They met without words, but with smiles, the unconscious smile that the morning had made. “Well, Helen?” said he. “You look, indeed you look like the morning.” He came close to her and with his neat precision put the primroses into her hat. “You ought to pin them,” he said. “They will fall out.” She laughed. “Ah, nothing can fall out to-day,” she said. “Don’t you feel it, father? Spring, spring—and—oh, the daffodils. And I have news.” Then her face sobered suddenly. “Two pieces of news,” she said, smiling again, unable not to be gay. “The first is of Martin: he is engaged to be married. He asked me to tell
  • 42.
    you. Stella Plympton,whom you met here. He wrote me just a line, asking me to tell you.” Her instinct was right to repeat that. Sharp as a knife, a father’s jealousy had pierced him. He should have been told first; whatever his disagreements with Martin, he, his father, ought to have been told first. But that passed in a moment. “Martin?” he said, gently. “The boy?” “Yes; I thought of it like that. But he is really—oh, ever so old. As old as I am.” Mr. Challoner’s face relaxed. “I had forgotten,” he said; “an immense age. What next, Helen?” She looked up at him. “Is that all you have to say?” she asked, feeling suddenly chilly and disappointed. “You think I am hard, Helen,” he said. “I try to be. But what next?” Yes, it was chilly on these upland downs. She put her hat on. “Just this,” she said. “I met Frank half an hour ago. He gave me Martin’s note. I did not expect to see him. As far as I am concerned it was quite accidental. I had no idea he was here. I had promised you not to see him. That I could not help.” She stopped, drew a long breath, and went on. “I suppose I could have helped the rest,” she said. “I suppose it was that I did not choose to help it. He stood aside for me to pass. But—but I did not pass. I went to him. I let him kiss me. He stood there with me. I thought I could not help it. Indeed, I thought that.” For a moment Mr. Challoner’s hardness, his involuntary condemnation of weakness of any sort, of failure to keep a promise, returned to him, mixed with a very ugly thing, suspicion. “And is this the first time you have seen or spoken to him or had any communication with him?” he asked. Helen raised her eyes to him in quiet surprise. No trace of resentment or sense of injustice was in her voice. “Yes, of course,” she said. “I should have told you otherwise.”
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    He looked atthe sweet, patient face, struggling for a moment with this worse self of his, which yet was so upright, so devoted. “I know you would,” he said at last. “I don’t know why I asked you that.” Helen laughed. “Nor do I,” she said. “You and he have been very patient, Helen,” he said. “Yes, till this morning I think we have,” she said. “But to-day, perhaps, the spring was too strong for us both. Is it not in your blood this morning, father? It is in mine.” He smiled at her gravely. “And a very suitable thing,” he said. “And summer comes next for you. For you and Martin.” “Yes, Martin too,” she said, with an appeal in her eyes. “Oh, father, can’t we be all happy together again? We used to be.” Mr. Challoner stood silent a moment, a sort of aching longing for all he had always missed in Martin and a dim, bitter regret for all his own missed opportunities of making the most of the human relation between himself and his son rising suddenly within him. And he spoke with a terrible quiet sincerity. “I don’t think Martin used ever to be happy with me,” he said. “Once he told me he was not happy at home. I don’t think that he ever was. It was perhaps the fault of both of us, but it was certainly mine. I should have done somehow differently. I think we never understood each other. Nor can I understand him now. It is sad. I cannot reconcile what he has done——“ He broke off again. “There, dear, you must be getting on your way,” he said, “and I must be getting home.” But she detained him a moment more. “Won’t you give me a little hope?” she said. “I thought last night that perhaps, perhaps soon—and this news this morning——“ But her father disengaged her hand. “I shall, of course, write to him,” he said, “and congratulate him. She is a very charming girl. I think Martin is most fortunate.”
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