Download the full version of the ebook at ebookname.

com

Exploratory Data Analysis with MATLAB Second

Edition Chapman Hall CRC Computer Science Data
Analysis Wendy L. Martinez

https://ebookname.com/product/exploratory-data-analysis-
with-matlab-second-edition-chapman-hall-crc-computer-
science-data-analysis-wendy-l-martinez/

OR CLICK BUTTON

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Download more ebook instantly today at https://ebookname.com

Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

Think Stats Exploratory Data Analysis Second Edition Allen

B. Downey

https://ebookname.com/product/think-stats-exploratory-data-analysis-
second-edition-allen-b-downey/

ebookname.com

Computational Statistics Handbook with MATLAB 3rd Edition

Wendy L. Martinez

https://ebookname.com/product/computational-statistics-handbook-with-
matlab-3rd-edition-wendy-l-martinez/

ebookname.com

Environmental Data Analysis with MatLab 1st Edition

William Menke

https://ebookname.com/product/environmental-data-analysis-with-
matlab-1st-edition-william-menke/

ebookname.com

Politics and Parentela in Paraiba A Case Study of Family

Based Oligarchy in Brazil Linda Lewin

https://ebookname.com/product/politics-and-parentela-in-paraiba-a-
case-study-of-family-based-oligarchy-in-brazil-linda-lewin/

ebookname.com
The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism 1st Edition
Marilyn Martin-Jones

https://ebookname.com/product/the-routledge-handbook-of-
multilingualism-1st-edition-marilyn-martin-jones/

ebookname.com

Ecological Consequences of Climate Change Mechanisms

Conservation and Management 1st Edition Erik A. Beever

https://ebookname.com/product/ecological-consequences-of-climate-
change-mechanisms-conservation-and-management-1st-edition-erik-a-
beever/
ebookname.com

Setting Priorities for HIV AIDS Interventions A Cost

Benefit Approach 1st Edition Robert J. Brent

https://ebookname.com/product/setting-priorities-for-hiv-aids-
interventions-a-cost-benefit-approach-1st-edition-robert-j-brent/

ebookname.com

Smith s General Urology 17th Edition Emil Tanagho

https://ebookname.com/product/smith-s-general-urology-17th-edition-
emil-tanagho/

ebookname.com

Advances in Astronomy From the Big Bang to the Solar

System 2005 en 417s J. M. T. Thompson

https://ebookname.com/product/advances-in-astronomy-from-the-big-bang-
to-the-solar-system-2005-en-417s-j-m-t-thompson/

ebookname.com
The Arizona state constitution First Edition Leshy

https://ebookname.com/product/the-arizona-state-constitution-first-
edition-leshy/

ebookname.com
 Exploratory Data Analysis
with MATLAB®
Second Edition

K10616_FM.indd 1 11/15/10 11:50 AM

 Chapman & Hall/CRC
Computer Science and Data Analysis Series

The interface between the computer and statistical sciences is increasing, as each discipline
seeks to harness the power and resources of the other. This series aims to foster the integration
between the computer sciences and statistical, numerical, and probabilistic methods by
publishing a broad range of reference works, textbooks, and handbooks.

SERIES EDITORS
David Blei, Princeton University
David Madigan, Rutgers University
Marina Meila, University of Washington
Fionn Murtagh, Royal Holloway, University of London

Proposals for the series should be sent directly to one of the series editors above, or submitted to:

Chapman & Hall/CRC

4th Floor, Albert House
1-4 Singer Street
London EC2A 4BQ
UK

Published Titles

Bayesian Artificial Intelligence, Second Edition Introduction to Data Technologies

Kevin B. Korb and Ann E. Nicholson Paul Murrell
Clustering for Data Mining: A Data Recovery Introduction to Machine Learning
Approach and Bioinformatics
Boris Mirkin Sushmita Mitra, Sujay Datta,
Computational Statistics Handbook with Theodore Perkins, and George Michailidis
®
MATLAB , Second Edition Microarray Image Analysis:
Wendy L. Martinez and Angel R. Martinez An Algorithmic Approach
Correspondence Analysis and Data Karl Fraser, Zidong Wang, and Xiaohui Liu
Coding with Java and R Pattern Recognition Algorithms for
Fionn Murtagh Data Mining
Design and Modeling for Computer Sankar K. Pal and Pabitra Mitra
Experiments R Graphics
Kai-Tai Fang, Runze Li, and Agus Sudjianto Paul Murrell
Exploratory Data Analysis with MATLAB ,
®
R Programming for Bioinformatics
Second Edition Robert Gentleman
Wendy L. Martinez, Angel R. Martinez, Semisupervised Learning for Computational
and Jeffrey L. Solka Linguistics
Exploratory Multivariate Analysis by Steven Abney
Example Using R Statistical Computing with R
François Husson, Sébastien Lê, and Maria L. Rizzo
Jérôme Pagès

K10616_FM.indd 2 11/15/10 11:50 AM

 Exploratory Data Analysis
with MATLAB®
Second Edition

Wendy L. Martinez
Angel R. Martinez
Jeffrey L. Solka

K10616_FM.indd 3 11/15/10 11:50 AM

 MATLAB® and Simulink® are trademarks of The MathWorks, Inc. and are used with permission. The Math-
Works does not warrant the accuracy of the text or exercises in this book. This book’s use or discussion
of MATLAB® and Simulink® software or related products does not constitute endorsement or sponsorship
by The MathWorks of a particular pedagogical approach or particular use of the MATLAB® and Simulink®
software.

CRC Press
Taylor & Francis Group
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300
Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

No claim to original U.S. Government works

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

International Standard Book Number: 978-1-4398-1220-4 (Hardback)

This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources. Reasonable efforts
have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and publisher cannot assume
responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences of their use. The authors and publishers
have attempted to trace the copyright holders of all material reproduced in this publication and apologize to
copyright holders if permission to publish in this form has not been obtained. If any copyright material has
not been acknowledged please write and let us know so we may rectify in any future reprint.

Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmit-
ted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without written permission from the publishers.

For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, please access www.copyright.
com (http://www.copyright.com/) or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood
Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. CCC is a not-for-profit organization that provides licenses and
registration for a variety of users. For organizations that have been granted a photocopy license by the CCC,
a separate system of payment has been arranged.

Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used
only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data

Martinez, Wendy L.
Exploratory data analysis with MATLAB / Wendy L. Martinez, Angel Martinez,
Jeffrey Solka. -- 2nd ed.
p. cm. -- (Chapman & Hall/CRC computer science and data analysis series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4398-1220-4 (hardback)
1. Multivariate analysis. 2. MATLAB. 3. Mathematical statistics. I. Martinez, Angel
R. II. Solka, Jeffrey L., 1955- III. Title.

QA278.M3735 2010
519.5’35--dc22 2010044042

Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at

http://www.taylorandfrancis.com

and the CRC Press Web site at

http://www.crcpress.com

K10616_FM.indd 4 11/15/10 11:50 AM

EDA2ed.book Page i Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

Angel and Wendy dedicate this book to their children:

Deborah,
Jeffrey,
Robbi (the middle child),
and Lisa (Principessa)

Jeffrey dedicates this book to his wife Beth,

sons Stephen and Rob, and
future daughter-in-law Rebecca
EDA2ed.book Page vii Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition...........................................................................xiii

Preface to the First Edition...............................................................................xvii

Part I
Introduction to Exploratory Data Analysis

Chapter 1
Introduction to Exploratory Data Analysis
1.1 What is Exploratory Data Analysis ............................................................. 3
1.2 Overview of the Text ..................................................................................... 6
1.3 A Few Words about Notation ...................................................................... 8
1.4 Data Sets Used in the Book ........................................................................... 9
1.4.1 Unstructured Text Documents ........................................................ 9
1.4.2 Gene Expression Data ..................................................................... 12
1.4.3 Oronsay Data Set ............................................................................. 18
1.4.4 Software Inspection ......................................................................... 19
1.5 Transforming Data ....................................................................................... 20
1.5.1 Power Transformations .................................................................. 21
1.5.2 Standardization ................................................................................ 22
1.5.3 Sphering the Data ............................................................................ 24
1.6 Further Reading ........................................................................................... 25
Exercises .............................................................................................................. 27

Part II
EDA as Pattern Discovery

Chapter 2
Dimensionality Reduction — Linear Methods
2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 31
2.2 Principal Component Analysis — PCA .................................................... 33
2.2.1 PCA Using the Sample Covariance Matrix ................................. 34
2.2.2 PCA Using the Sample Correlation Matrix ................................. 37
2.2.3 How Many Dimensions Should We Keep? ................................. 38
2.3 Singular Value Decomposition — SVD .................................................... 42
2.4 Nonnegative Matrix Factorization ............................................................ 47

vii
EDA2ed.book Page viii Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

viii Exploratory Data Analysis with MATLAB® , 2nd Edition

2.5 Factor Analysis ............................................................................................. 51

2.6 Fisher’s Linear Discriminant ...................................................................... 56
2.7 Intrinsic Dimensionality .............................................................................. 61
2.7.1 Nearest Neighbor Approach ......................................................... 63
2.7.2 Correlation Dimension ................................................................... 67
2.7.3 Maximum Likelihood Approach .................................................. 68
2.7.4 Estimation Using Packing Numbers ............................................ 70
2.8 Summary and Further Reading ................................................................. 72
Exercises .............................................................................................................. 73

Chapter 3
Dimensionality Reduction — Nonlinear Methods
3.1 Multidimensional Scaling — MDS ............................................................ 79
3.1.1 Metric MDS ...................................................................................... 81
3.1.2 Nonmetric MDS ............................................................................... 91
3.2 Manifold Learning ....................................................................................... 99
3.2.1 Locally Linear Embedding ............................................................. 99
3.2.2 Isometric Feature Mapping — ISOMAP .................................... 101
3.2.3 Hessian Eigenmaps ....................................................................... 103
3.3 Artificial Neural Network Approaches .................................................. 108
3.3.1 Self-Organizing Maps ................................................................... 108
3.3.2 Generative Topographic Maps .................................................... 111
3.3.3 Curvilinear Component Analysis ............................................... 116
3.4 Summary and Further Reading ............................................................... 121
Exercises ............................................................................................................ 122

Chapter 4
Data Tours
4.1 Grand Tour ................................................................................................. 126
4.1.1 Torus Winding Method ................................................................ 127
4.1.2 Pseudo Grand Tour ....................................................................... 129
4.2 Interpolation Tours .................................................................................... 132
4.3 Projection Pursuit ....................................................................................... 134
4.4 Projection Pursuit Indexes ........................................................................ 142
4.4.1 Posse Chi-Square Index ................................................................ 142
4.4.2 Moment Index ................................................................................ 145
4.5 Independent Component Analysis ......................................................... 147
4.6 Summary and Further Reading ............................................................... 151
Exercises ............................................................................................................ 152

Chapter 5
Finding Clusters
5.1 Introduction ................................................................................................ 155
5.2 Hierarchical Methods ................................................................................ 157
EDA2ed.book Page ix Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

Table of Contents ix

5.3 Optimization Methods — k-Means ......................................................... 163

5.4 Spectral Clustering ..................................................................................... 167
5.5 Document Clustering ................................................................................ 171
5.5.1 Nonnegative Matrix Factorization — Revisited ....................... 173
5.5.2 Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis ...................................... 177
5.6 Evaluating the Clusters ............................................................................. 182
5.6.1 Rand Index ..................................................................................... 182
5.6.2 Cophenetic Correlation ................................................................ 185
5.6.3 Upper Tail Rule .............................................................................. 186
5.6.4 Silhouette Plot ................................................................................ 189
5.6.5 Gap Statistic .................................................................................... 191
5.7 Summary and Further Reading ............................................................... 197
Exercises ............................................................................................................ 200

Chapter 6
Model-Based Clustering
6.1 Overview of Model-Based Clustering .................................................... 205
6.2 Finite Mixtures ........................................................................................... 207
6.2.1 Multivariate Finite Mixtures ........................................................ 210
6.2.2 Component Models — Constraining the Covariances ............ 211
6.3 Expectation-Maximization Algorithm .................................................... 217
6.4 Hierarchical Agglomerative Model-Based Clustering ......................... 222
6.5 Model-Based Clustering ............................................................................ 224
6.6 MBC for Density Estimation and Discriminant Analysis .................... 231
6.6.1 Introduction to Pattern Recognition ........................................... 231
6.6.2 Bayes Decision Theory .................................................................. 232
6.6.3 Estimating Probability Densities with MBC .............................. 235
6.7 Generating Random Variables from a Mixture Model ......................... 239
6.8 Summary and Further Reading ............................................................... 241
Exercises ............................................................................................................ 244

Chapter 7
Smoothing Scatterplots
7.1 Introduction ................................................................................................ 247
7.2 Loess ............................................................................................................. 248
7.3 Robust Loess ............................................................................................... 259
7.4 Residuals and Diagnostics with Loess .................................................... 261
7.4.1 Residual Plots ................................................................................. 261
7.4.2 Spread Smooth ............................................................................... 265
7.4.3 Loess Envelopes — Upper and Lower Smooths ....................... 268
7.5 Smoothing Splines ..................................................................................... 269
7.5.1 Regression with Splines ................................................................ 270
7.5.2 Smoothing Splines ......................................................................... 272
7.5.3 Smoothing Splines for Uniformly Spaced Data ........................ 278
7.6 Choosing the Smoothing Parameter ....................................................... 281
EDA2ed.book Page x Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

x Exploratory Data Analysis with MATLAB® , 2nd Edition

7.7 Bivariate Distribution Smooths ................................................................ 285

7.7.1 Pairs of Middle Smoothings ......................................................... 285
7.7.2 Polar Smoothing ............................................................................ 287
7.8 Curve Fitting Toolbox ............................................................................... 291
7.9 Summary and Further Reading ............................................................... 293
Exercises ............................................................................................................ 294

Part III
Graphical Methods for EDA

Chapter 8
Visualizing Clusters
8.1 Dendrogram ................................................................................................ 301
8.2 Treemaps ..................................................................................................... 303
8.3 Rectangle Plots ........................................................................................... 306
8.4 ReClus Plots ................................................................................................ 312
8.5 Data Image .................................................................................................. 317
8.6 Summary and Further Reading ............................................................... 323
Exercises ............................................................................................................ 324

Chapter 9
Distribution Shapes
9.1 Histograms .................................................................................................. 327
9.1.1 Univariate Histograms ................................................................. 327
9.1.2 Bivariate Histograms .................................................................... 334
9.2 Boxplots ....................................................................................................... 336
9.2.1 The Basic Boxplot .......................................................................... 337
9.2.2 Variations of the Basic Boxplot .................................................... 342
9.3 Quantile Plots ............................................................................................. 347
9.3.1 Probability Plots ............................................................................ 347
9.3.2 Quantile-Quantile Plot .................................................................. 349
9.3.3 Quantile Plot .................................................................................. 352
9.4 Bagplots ....................................................................................................... 354
9.5 Rangefinder Boxplot .................................................................................. 356
9.6 Summary and Further Reading ............................................................... 359
Exercises ............................................................................................................ 361

Chapter 10
Multivariate Visualization
10.1 Glyph Plots ................................................................................................ 365
10.2 Scatterplots ................................................................................................ 366
10.2.1 2-D and 3-D Scatterplots ............................................................. 368
10.2.2 Scatterplot Matrices ..................................................................... 371
10.2.3 Scatterplots with Hexagonal Binning ....................................... 372
EDA2ed.book Page xi Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

Table of Contents xi

10.3 Dynamic Graphics ................................................................................... 374

10.3.1 Identification of Data .................................................................. 376
10.3.2 Linking ......................................................................................... 378
10.3.3 Brushing ........................................................................................ 381
10.4 Coplots ....................................................................................................... 384
10.5 Dot Charts ................................................................................................. 387
10.5.1 Basic Dot Chart ............................................................................ 387
10.5.2 Multiway Dot Chart .................................................................... 388
10.6 Plotting Points as Curves ........................................................................ 392
10.6.1 Parallel Coordinate Plots ............................................................ 393
10.6.2 Andrews’ Curves ......................................................................... 395
10.6.3 Andrews’ Images ......................................................................... 399
10.6.4 More Plot Matrices ...................................................................... 400
10.7 Data Tours Revisited ............................................................................... 403
10.7.1 Grand Tour ................................................................................... 404
10.7.2 Permutation Tour ........................................................................ 405
10.8 Biplots ........................................................................................................ 408
10.9 Summary and Further Reading ............................................................. 411
Exercises ............................................................................................................ 413

Appendix A
Proximity Measures
A.1 Definitions .................................................................................................. 417
A.1.1 Dissimilarities ............................................................................... 418
A.1.2 Similarity Measures ..................................................................... 420
A.1.3 Similarity Measures for Binary Data ......................................... 420
A.1.4 Dissimilarities for Probability Density Functions ................... 421
A.2 Transformations ........................................................................................ 422
A.3 Further Reading ........................................................................................ 423

Appendix B
Software Resources for EDA
B.1 MATLAB Programs .................................................................................. 425
B.2 Other Programs for EDA .......................................................................... 429
B.3 EDA Toolbox .............................................................................................. 431

Appendix C
Description of Data Sets ................................................................................... 433

Appendix D
Introduction to MATLAB
D.1 What Is MATLAB? .................................................................................... 439
D.2 Getting Help in MATLAB ....................................................................... 440
D.3 File and Workspace Management .......................................................... 440
EDA2ed.book Page xii Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

xii Exploratory Data Analysis with MATLAB® , 2nd Edition

D.4 Punctuation in MATLAB ......................................................................... 443

D.5 Arithmetic Operators ............................................................................... 444
D.6 Data Constructs in MATLAB .................................................................. 444
Basic Data Constructs ............................................................................ 444
Building Arrays ...................................................................................... 445
Cell Arrays ............................................................................................... 445
Structures ................................................................................................. 447
D.7 Script Files and Functions ........................................................................ 447
D.8 Control Flow .............................................................................................. 448
for Loop ................................................................................................. 448
while Loop ............................................................................................. 449
if-else Statements ............................................................................... 449
switch Statement .................................................................................. 449
D.9 Simple Plotting .......................................................................................... 450
D.10 Where to get MATLAB Information .................................................... 452

Appendix E
MATLAB Functions
E.1 MATLAB ..................................................................................................... 455
E.2 Statistics Toolbox ....................................................................................... 457
E.3 Exploratory Data Analysis Toolbox ........................................................ 458
E.4 EDA GUI Toolbox ..................................................................................... 459

References ......................................................................................................... 475

Author Index .................................................................................................... 497
Subject Index..................................................................................................... 503
EDA2ed.book Page xiii Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

Preface to the Second Edition

In the past several years, many advancements have been made in the area of
exploratory data analysis, and it soon became apparent that it was time to
update this text. In particular, many innovative approaches have been
developed for dimensionality reduction, clustering, and visualization.
We list below some of the major changes and additions in the second
edition.

• We added significant content to the chapter on linear dimension-

ality reduction. The new methods we discuss are nonnegative
matrix factorization and linear discriminant analysis. We also
expanded the set of methods that are available for estimating the
intrinsic dimensionality of a data set.
• Curvilinear component analysis is a nonlinear dimensionality
reduction method that is now described in Chapter 3. Curvilinear
component analysis was developed as an improvement to self-
organizing maps.
• A description of independent component analysis has been added
to the chapter on data tours.
• Several new clustering methods are not included in the text. These
include nonnegative matrix factorization, probabilistic latent
semantic analysis, and spectral-based clustering.
• We included a discussion of smoothing splines, along with a fast
spline method that works with uniformly spaced data.
• Several visualization methods have been added to the text. These
are a rangefinder boxplot for bivariate data, scatterplots with mar-
ginal histograms, biplots, and a new method called Andrews’
images.
• Many of the methods in the text are available via a GUI interface.
This free EDA GUI Toolbox is described in Appendix E.

In a spirit similar to the first edition, this text is not focused on the
theoretical aspects of the methods. Rather, the main focus of this book is on
the use of the EDA methods. So, we do not dwell so much on implementation
and algorithmic details. Instead, we show students and practitioners how the

xiii
EDA2ed.book Page xiv Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

xiv Exploratory Data Analysis with MATLAB® , 2nd Edition

methods can be used for exploratory data analysis by providing examples

and applications.
The MATLAB® code for the examples, the toolboxes, the data sets, and
color versions of most figures are available for download. They can be
downloaded from the Carnegie Mellon StatLib site found here:

http://lib.stat.cmu.edu

or from the book’s website:

http://pi-sigma.info

Please review the readme file for installation instructions and information
on any changes.
For MATLAB product information, please contact:

The MathWorks, Inc.

3 Apple Hill Drive
Natick, MA, 01760-2098 USA
Tel: 508-647-7000
Fax: 508-647-7001
E-mail: info@mathworks.com
Web: www.mathworks.com

We would like to acknowledge the invaluable help of those researchers

who wrote MATLAB code for methods described in this book and also made
it available for free. In particular, the authors would like to thank Michael
Berry for helpful discussions regarding nonnegative matrix factorization and
Ata Kaban for allowing us to use her PLSI code. We are also very grateful to
Mia Hubert and Sabine Verboven for granting us permission to use their
bagplot function and for their patience with our emails.
We thank the editors of the book series in Computer Science and Data
Analysis for including this text. We greatly appreciate the help and patience
of those at CRC press: David Grubbs, Bob Stern, and Michele Dimont. As
always, we are indebted to Naomi Fernandes and Tom Lane at The
MathWorks, Inc. for their special assistance with MATLAB.

Disclaimers

1. Any MATLAB programs and data sets that are included with the
book are provided in good faith. The authors, publishers, or dis-
tributors do not guarantee their accuracy and are not responsible
for the consequences of their use.
2. Some of the MATLAB functions provided with the EDA Toolboxes
were written by other researchers, and they retain the copyright.
EDA2ed.book Page xv Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

Preface to the Second Edition xv

References are given in Appendix B and in the help section of

each function. Unless otherwise specified, the EDA Toolboxes are
provided under the GNU license specifications:
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
3. The views expressed in this book are those of the authors and do
not necessarily represent the views of the United States Department
of Defense or its components.

Wendy L. Martinez, Angel R. Martinez, and Jeffrey L. Solka

October 2010
EDA2ed.book Page xvii Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

Preface to the First Edition

One of the goals of our first book, Computational Statistics Handbook with
MATLAB® [2002], was to show some of the key concepts and methods of
computational statistics and how they can be implemented in MATLAB.1 A
core component of computational statistics is the discipline known as
exploratory data analysis or EDA. Thus, we see this book as a complement to
the first one with similar goals: to make exploratory data analysis techniques
available to a wide range of users.
Exploratory data analysis is an area of statistics and data analysis, where
the idea is to first explore the data set, often using methods from descriptive
statistics, scientific visualization, data tours, dimensionality reduction, and
others. This exploration is done without any (hopefully!) pre-conceived
notions or hypotheses. Indeed, the idea is to use the results of the exploration
to guide and to develop the subsequent hypothesis tests, models, etc. It is
closely related to the field of data mining, and many of the EDA tools
discussed in this book are part of the toolkit for knowledge discovery and
data mining.
This book is intended for a wide audience that includes scientists,
statisticians, data miners, engineers, computer scientists, biostatisticians,
social scientists, and any other discipline that must deal with the analysis of
raw data. We also hope this book can be useful in a classroom setting at the
senior undergraduate or graduate level. Exercises are included with each
chapter, making it suitable as a textbook or supplemental text for a course in
exploratory data analysis, data mining, computational statistics, machine
learning, and others. Readers are encouraged to look over the exercises
because new concepts are sometimes introduced in them. Exercises are
computational and exploratory in nature, so there is often no unique answer!
As for the background required for this book, we assume that the reader
has an understanding of basic linear algebra. For example, one should have
a familiarity with the notation of linear algebra, array multiplication, a matrix
inverse, determinants, an array transpose, etc. We also assume that the
reader has had introductory probability and statistics courses. Here one
should know about random variables, probability distributions and density
functions, basic descriptive measures, regression, etc.
In a spirit similar to the first book, this text is not focused on the theoretical
aspects of the methods. Rather, the main focus of this book is on the use of the

1 MATLAB® and Handle Graphics ® are registered trademarks of The MathWorks, Inc.

xvii
EDA2ed.book Page xviii Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

xviii Exploratory Data Analysis with MATLAB® , 2nd Edition

EDA methods. Implementation of the methods is secondary, but where

feasible, we show students and practitioners the implementation through
algorithms, procedures, and MATLAB code. Many of the methods are
complicated, and the details of the MATLAB implementation are not
important. In these instances, we show how to use the functions and
techniques. The interested reader (or programmer) can consult the M-files for
more information. Thus, readers who prefer to use some other programming
language should be able to implement the algorithms on their own.
While we do not delve into the theory, we would like to emphasize that the
methods described in the book have a theoretical basis. Therefore, at the end
of each chapter, we provide additional references and resources; so those
readers who would like to know more about the underlying theory will
know where to find the information.
MATLAB code in the form of an Exploratory Data Analysis Toolbox is
provided with the text. This includes the functions, GUIs, and data sets that
are described in the book. This is available for download at

http://lib.stat.cmu.edu

Please review the readme file for installation instructions and information
on any changes. M-files that contain the MATLAB commands for the
exercises are also available for download.
We also make the disclaimer that our MATLAB code is not necessarily the
most efficient way to accomplish the task. In many cases, we sacrificed
efficiency for clarity. Please refer to the example M-files for alternative
MATLAB code, courtesy of Tom Lane of The MathWorks, Inc.
We describe the EDA Toolbox in greater detail in Appendix B. We also
provide website information for other tools that are available for download
(at no cost). Some of these toolboxes and functions are used in the book and
others are provided for informational purposes. Where possible and
appropriate, we include some of this free MATLAB code with the EDA
Toolbox to make it easier for the reader to follow along with the examples
and exercises.
We assume that the reader has the Statistics Toolbox (Version 4 or higher)
from The MathWorks, Inc. Where appropriate, we specify whether the
function we are using is in the main MATLAB software package, Statistics
Toolbox, or the EDA Toolbox. The development of the EDA Toolbox was
mostly accomplished with MATLAB Version 6.5 (Statistics Toolbox, Version
4); so the code should work if this is what you have. However, a new release
of MATLAB and the Statistics Toolbox was introduced in the middle of
writing th is book; so we also in corp orate information abou t n ew
functionality provided in these versions.
We would like to acknowledge the invaluable help of the reviewers: Chris
Fraley, David Johannsen, Catherine Loader, Tom Lane, David Marchette,
and Jeffrey Solka. Their many helpful comments and suggestions resulted in
a better book. Any shortcomings are the sole responsibility of the authors. We
EDA2ed.book Page xix Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

Preface to the First Edition xix

owe a special thanks to Jeffrey Solka for programming assistance with finite
mixtures and to Rich ard Johnson for allowin g us to use h is Data
Visualization Toolbox and updating his functions. We would also like to
acknowledge all of those researchers who wrote MATLAB code for methods
described in this book and also made it available for free. We thank the
editors of the book series in Computer Science and Data Analysis for
including this text. We greatly appreciate the help and patience of those at
CRC Press: Bob Stern, Rob Calver, Jessica Vakili, and Andrea Demby. Finally,
we are indebted to Naomi Fernandes and Tom Lane at The MathWorks, Inc.
for their special assistance with MATLAB.

Disclaimers

1. Any MATLAB programs and data sets that are included with the
book are provided in good faith. The authors, publishers, or dis-
tributors do not guarantee their accuracy and are not responsible
for the consequences of their use.
2. Some of the MATLAB functions provided with the EDA Toolbox
were written by other researchers, and they retain the copyright.
References are given in Appendix B and in the help section of
each function. Unless otherwise specified, the EDA Toolbox is pro-
vided under the GNU license specifications:
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
3. The views expressed in this book are those of the authors and do
not necessarily represent the views of the United States Department
of Defense or its components.

Wendy L. and Angel R. Martinez

October 2004
EDA2ed.book Page 1 Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

Part I
Introduction to Exploratory Data Analysis
EDA2ed.book Page 3 Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

Chapter 1
Introduction to Exploratory Data Analysis

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” (the last of his Four Quartets)

The purpose of this chapter is to provide some introductory and background

information. First, we cover the philosophy of exploratory data analysis and
discuss how this fits in with other data analysis techniques and objectives.
This is followed by an overview of the text, which includes the software that
will be used and the background necessary to understand the methods. We
then present several data sets that will be employed throughout the book to
illustrate the concepts and ideas. Finally, we conclude the chapter with some
information on data transforms, which will be important in some of the
methods presented in the text.

1.1 What is Exploratory Data Analysis

John W. Tukey [1977] was one of the first statisticians to provide a detailed
description of exploratory data analysis (EDA). He defined it as “detective
work - numerical detective work - or counting detective work - or graphical
detective work” [Tukey, 1977, page 1]. It is mostly a philosophy of data
analysis where the researcher examines the data without any pre-conceived
ideas in order to discover what the data can tell him or her about the
phenomena being studied. Tukey contrasts this with confirmatory data
analysis (CDA), an area of data analysis that is mostly concerned with
statistical hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, estimation, etc. Tukey
[1977] states that “Confirmatory data analysis is judicial or quasi-judicial in
character.” CDA methods typically involve the process of making inferences
about or estimates of some population characteristic and then trying to

3
EDA2ed.book Page 4 Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

4 Exploratory Data Analysis with MATLAB® , 2nd Edition

evaluate the precision associated with the results. EDA and CDA should not
be used separately from each other, but rather they should be used in a
complementary way. The analyst explores the data looking for patterns and
structure that leads to hypotheses and models.
Tukey’s book on EDA was written at a time when computers were not
widely available and the data sets tended to be somewhat small, especially
by today’s standards. So, Tukey developed methods that could be
accomplished using pencil and paper, such as the familiar box-and-whisker
plots (also known as boxplots) and the stem-and-leaf. He also included
discussions of data transformation, smoothing, slicing, and others. Since our
book is written at a time when computers are widely available, we go beyond
what Tukey used in EDA and present computationally intensive methods for
pattern discovery and statistical visualization. However, our philosophy of
EDA is the same - that those engaged in it are data detectives.
Tukey [1980], expanding on his ideas of how exploratory and confirmatory
data analysis fit together, presents a typical straight-line methodology for
CDA; its steps follow:

1. State the question(s) to be investigated.

2. Design an experiment to address the questions.
3. Collect data according to the designed experiment.
4. Perform a statistical analysis of the data.
5. Produce an answer.

This procedure is the heart of the usual confirmatory process. To incorporate

EDA, Tukey revises the first two steps as follows:

1. Start with some idea.

2. Iterate between asking a question and creating a design.

Forming the question involves issues such as: What can or should be asked?
What designs are possible? How likely is it that a design will give a useful
answer? The ideas and methods of EDA play a role in this process. In
conclusion, Tukey states that EDA is an attitude, a flexibility, and some graph
paper.
A small, easily read book on EDA written from a social science perspective
is the one by Hartwig and Dearing [1979]. They describe the CDA mode as
one that answers questions such as “Do the data confirm hypothesis XYZ?”
Whereas, EDA tends to ask “What can the data tell me about relationship
XYZ?” Hartwig and Dearing specify two principles for EDA: skepticism and
openness. This might involve visualization of the data to look for anomalies
or patterns, the use of resistant (or robust) statistics to summarize the data,
openness to the transformation of the data to gain better insights, and the
generation of models.
EDA2ed.book Page 5 Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

Introduction to Exploratory Data Analysis 5

Some of the ideas of EDA and their importance to teaching statistics were
discussed by Chatfield [1985]. He called the topic initial data analysis or
IDA. While Chatfield agrees with the EDA emphasis on starting with the
noninferential approach in data analysis, he also stresses the need for looking
at how the data were collected, what are the objectives of the analysis, and
the use of EDA/IDA as part of an integrated approach to statistical inference.
Hoaglin [1982] provides a summary of EDA in the Encyclopedia of Statistical
Sciences. He describes EDA as the “flexible searching for clues and evidence”
and confirmatory data analysis as “evaluating the available evidence.” In his
summary, he states that EDA encompasses four themes: resistance, residuals,
re-expression, and display.
Resistant data analysis pertains to those methods where an arbitrary
change in a data point or small subset of the data yields a small change in the
result. A related idea is robustness, which has to do with how sensitive an
analysis is to departures from the assumptions of an underlying probabilistic
model.
Residuals are what we have left over after a summary or fitted model has
been subtracted out. We can write this as

residual = data – fit.

The idea of examining residuals is common practice today. Residuals should

be looked at carefully for lack of fit, heteroscedasticity (nonconstant
variance), nonadditivity, and other interesting characteristics of the data.
Re-expression has to do with the transformation of the data to some other
scale that might make the variance constant, might yield symmetric
residuals, could linearize the data, or add some other effect. The goal of re-
expression for EDA is to facilitate the search for structure, patterns, or other
information.
Finally, we have the importance of displays or visualization techniques for
EDA. As we described previously, the displays used most often by early
practitioners of EDA included the stem-and-leaf plots and boxplots. The use
of scientific and statistical visualization is fundamental to EDA, because
often the only way to discover patterns, structure, or to generate hypotheses
is by visual transformations of the data.
Given the increased capabilities of computing and data storage, where
massive amounts of data are collected and stored simply because we can do
so and not because of some designed experiment, questions are often
generated after the data have been collected [Hand, Mannila, and Smyth,
2001; Wegman, 1988]. Perhaps there is an evolution of the concept of EDA in
the making and the need for a new philosophy of data analysis.
EDA2ed.book Page 6 Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

6 Exploratory Data Analysis with MATLAB® , 2nd Edition

1.2 Overview of the Text

This book is divided into two main sections: pattern discovery and graphical
EDA. We first cover linear and nonlinear dimensionality reduction because
sometimes structure is discovered or can only be discovered with fewer
dimensions or features. We include some classical techniques such as
principal component analysis, factor analysis, and multidimensional scaling,
as well as some computationally intensive methods. For example, we discuss
self-organizing maps, locally linear embedding, isometric feature mapping,
generative topographic maps, curvilinear component analysis, and more.
Searching the data for insights and information is fundamental to EDA. So,
we describe several methods that ‘tour’ the data looking for interesting
structure (holes, outliers, clusters, etc.). These are variants of the grand tour
and projection pursuit that try to look at the data set in many 2-D or 3-D
views in the hope of discovering something interesting and informative.
Clustering or unsupervised learning is a standard tool in EDA and data
mining. These methods look for groups or clusters, and some of the issues
that must be addressed involve determining the number of clusters and the
validity or strength of the clusters. Here we cover some of the classical
methods such as hierarchical clustering and k-means, as well as an innovative
approach called nonnegative matrix factorization. We also devote an entire
chapter to a lesser-known technique called model-based clustering that
includes a way to determine the number of clusters and to assess the
resulting clusters.
Evaluating the relationship between variables is an important subject in
data analysis. We do not cover the standard regression methodology; it is
assumed that the reader already understands that subject. Instead, we
include a chapter on scatterplot smoothing techniques such as loess and
smoothing splines.
The second section of the book discusses many of the standard techniques
of visualization for EDA. The reader will note, however, that graphical
techniques, by necessity, are used throughout the book to illustrate ideas and
concepts.
In this section, we provide some classic, as well as some novel ways of
visualizing the results of the cluster process, such as dendrograms, silhouette
plots, treemaps, rectangle plots, and ReClus. These visualization techniques
can be used to assess the output from the various clustering algorithms that
were covered in the first section of the book. Distribution shapes can tell us
important things about the underlying phenomena that produced the data.
We will look at ways to determine the shape of the distribution by using
boxplots, bagplots, q-q plots, histograms, and others.
Finally, we present ways to visualize multivariate data. These include
parallel coordinate plots, scatterplot matrices, glyph plots, coplots, dot
EDA2ed.book Page 7 Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

Introduction to Exploratory Data Analysis 7

charts, Andrews’ curves, and Andrews’ images. The ability to interact with
the plot to uncover structure or patterns is important, and we present some
of the standard methods such as linking and brushing. We also connect both
sections by revisiting the idea of the grand tour and show how that can be
implemented with Andrews’ curves and parallel coordinate plots.
We realize that other topics can be considered part of EDA, such as
descriptive statistics, outlier detection, robust data analysis, probability
density estimation, and residual analysis. However, these topics are beyond
the scope of this book. Descriptive statistics are covered in introductory
statistics texts, and since we assume that readers are familiar with this subject
matter, there is no need to provide explanations here. Similarly, we do not
emphasize residual analysis as a stand-alone subject, mostly because this is
widely discussed in other books on regression and multivariate analysis.
We do cover some density estimation, such as model-based clustering
(Chapter 6) and histograms (Chapter 9). The reader is referred to Scott [1992]
for an excellent treatment of the theory and methods of multivariate density
estimation in general or Silverman [1986] for kernel density estimation. For
more information on MATLAB implementations of density estimation the
reader can refer to Martinez and Martinez [2007]. Finally, we will likely
encounter outlier detection as we go along in the text, but this topic, along
with robust statistics, will not be covered as a stand-alone subject. There are
several books on outlier detection and robust statistics. These include
Hoaglin, Mosteller, and Tukey [1983], Huber [1981], and Rousseeuw and
Leroy [1987]. A rather dated paper on the topic is Hogg [1974].
We use MATLAB® throughout the book to illustrate the ideas and to show
how they can be implemented in software. Much of the code used in the
examples and to create the figures is freely available, either as part of the
downloadable toolbox included with the book or on other internet sites. This
information will be discussed in more detail in Appendix B. For MATLAB
product information, please contact:

The MathWorks, Inc.

3 Apple Hill Drive
Natick, MA, 01760-2098 USA
Tel: 508-647-7000
Fax: 508-647-7001
E-mail: info@mathworks.com
Web: www.mathworks.com

It is important for the reader to understand what versions of the software or

what toolboxes are used with this text. The book was written using MATLAB
Version 7.10 (R2010a), and we made some use of the MATLAB Statistics
Toolbox. We will refer to the Curve Fitting Toolbox in Chapter 7, where we
discuss smoothing. However, this particular toolbox is not needed to use the
examples in the book.
EDA2ed.book Page 8 Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

8 Exploratory Data Analysis with MATLAB® , 2nd Edition

To get the most out of this book, readers should have a basic understanding
of matrix algebra. For example, one should be familiar with determinants, a
matrix transpose, the trace of a matrix, etc. We recommend Strang [1988,
1993] for those who need to refresh their memories on the topic. We do not
use any calculus in this book, but a solid understanding of algebra is always
useful in any situation. We expect readers to have knowledge of the basic
concepts in probability and statistics, such as random samples, probability
distributions, hypothesis testing, and regression.

1.3 A Few Words about Notation

In this section, we explain our notation and font conventions. MATLAB code
will be in Courier New bold font such as this: function. To make the book
more readable, we will indent MATLAB code when we have several lines of
code, and this can always be typed in as you see it in the book.
For the most part, we follow the convention that a vector is arranged as a
column, so it has dimensions p × 1. 1 In most situations, our data sets will be
arranged in a matrix of dimension n × p , which is denoted as X. Here n
represents the number of observations we have in our sample, and p is the
number of variables or dimensions. Thus, each row corresponds to a p-
dimensional observation or data point. The ij-th element of X will be
represented by xij. For the most part, the subscript i refers to a row in a matrix
or an observation, and a subscript j references a column in a matrix or a
variable. What is meant by this will be clear from the text.
In many cases, we might need to center our observations before we analyze
them. To make the notation somewhat simpler later on, we will use the
matrix X c to represent our centered data matrix, where each row is now
centered at the origin. We calculate this matrix by first finding the mean of
each column of X and then subtracting it from each row. The following code
will calculate this in MATLAB:
% Find the mean of each column.
[n,p] = size(X);
xbar = mean(X);
% Create a matrix where each row is the mean
% and subtract from X to center at origin.
Xc = X - repmat(xbar,n,1);

1The notation m × n is read “m by n,” and it means that we have m rows and n columns in an
array. It will be clear from the context whether this indicates matrix dimensions or
multiplication.
EDA2ed.book Page 9 Thursday, November 11, 2010 8:51 AM

Introduction to Exploratory Data Analysis 9

1.4 Data Sets Used in the Book

In this section, we describe the main data sets that will be used throughout
the text. Other data sets will be used in the exercises and in some of the
examples. This section can be set aside and read as needed without any loss
of continuity. Please see Appendix C for detailed information on all data sets
included with the text.

1.4.1 Unstructured Text Documents

The ability to analyze free-form text documents (e.g., Internet documents,
intelligence reports, news stories, etc.) is an important application in
computational statistics. We must first encode the documents in some
numeric form in order to apply computational methods. The usual way this
is accomplished is via a term-document matrix, where each row of the matrix
corresponds to a word in the lexicon, and each column represents a
document. The elements of the term-document matrix contain the number of
times the i-th word appears in j-th document [Manning and Schütze, 2000;
Charniak, 1996]. One of the drawbacks to this type of encoding is that the
order of the words is lost, resulting in a loss of information [Hand, Mannila,
and Smyth, 2001].
We now present a novel method for encoding unstructured text documents
where the order of the words is accounted for. The resulting structure is
called the bigram proximity matrix (BPM).

Bigram Proximity Matrices

The bigram proximity matrix (BPM) is a nonsymmetric matrix that captures
the number of times word pairs occur in a section of text [Martinez and
Wegman, 2002a; 2002b]. The BPM is a square matrix whose column and row
headings are the alphabetically ordered entries of the lexicon. Each element
of the BPM is the number of times word i appears immediately before word
j in the unit of text. The size of the BPM is determined by the size of the
lexicon created by alphabetically listing the unique occurrences of the words
in the corpus. In order to assess the usefulness of the BPM encoding we had
to determine whether or not the representation preserves enough of the
semantic content to make them separable from BPMs of other thematically
unrelated collections of documents.
We must make some comments about the lexicon and the pre-processing
of the documents before proceeding with more information on the BPM and
the data provided with this book. All punctuation within a sentence, such as
commas, semi-colons, colons, etc., were removed. All end-of-sentence
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
“Oh, but you must have a jam sandwich,” cried Morris with the
pseudo-heartiness characteristic of such occasions.
“Well—if you won’t all think me fearfully, fearfully greedy——”
Minnie hesitated and looked wildly round her, but as no one
appeared in the least aghast at the prospect of her depredations
among the jam sandwiches, she deprecatingly took the smallest one,
murmuring, “Thank you muchly—this is fearful gluttony—‘just one
more crust,’ as the boy said on the burning deck.”
The spasmodic conversation died away.
Presently Hazel said:
“I’ve found the place where we got that white heather last year,
mother. There are some more roots there, if you want to take them
home for the rock garden.”
“Come on and let’s dig then,” said Bertha vigorously, rising as she
spoke.
Morris shot Hazel a glance of gratitude.
He longed to be alone with Rosamund, even while thinking that he
was dreading the pain of bidding her good-bye.
He looked at Miss Blandflower, but Hazel Tregaskis was quicker than
he.
“I shan’t find the way without you,” she declared lightly.
“Come on, Minnie,” shouted Mrs. Tregaskis, already well on ahead.
“There’s no rest for the wicked,” said Minnie mechanically, and went.
Rosamund’s first words were not at all what Morris had expected.
She looked at him sombrely, and remarked almost violently:
“Do you know what’s the matter with Frances? Is Cousin Bertie really
frightened about her?”
“No, not seriously, I don’t think,” he answered, instinctively anxious
to soothe her. “She only said that if Frances wasn’t quite well again
next week she wouldn’t go to Scotland, but would send you and
Hazel alone.”
“I shan’t go if Francie is ill.”
He looked at her, astounded.
“But, Rosamund, what’s the matter? She isn’t ill. Mrs. Tregaskis
herself said that a temperature didn’t mean anything at all with
Frances.”
“Oh, you don’t understand,” she burst out angrily. “Nobody
understands in the least what Frances is to me. Cousin Bertie has
never understood, and never will. You heard what she said just
now.”
He had forgotten.
“That I’m not to go near Frances till to-night. She always treats me
like a child.”
She looked very like one indeed, as she spoke, flushed and
indignant.
“Perhaps Frances was going to sleep, and doesn’t want to be
disturbed.”
“As though I should disturb her! Why, I’ve looked after her ever
since she was a little girl—until we came to live here. Now,” said
Rosamund bitterly, “I’m told to mind my own business and let
Frances mind hers.”
“Never mind,” consoled Morris. “Don’t let’s talk about it. I want to tell
you something, Rosamund.”
Her angry face softened a little, but she seemed unable to dismiss
the subject.
“Nobody has ever understood about Frances and me—ever. I feel
more as though she were my child than my sister.”
Morris was becoming heartily tired of the discussion, and showed
distinct traces of that fatigue in his tone, as he replied perfunctorily:
“Of course I understand—but, really, she’s only three years younger
than you are, isn’t she?”
“Cousin Bertie is always harping on that, and telling Frances not to
be domineered over!”
“Rosamund!” cried Morris, “you really talk as though Mrs. Tregaskis
was always being unkind to you. I can’t understand you. Why, she
simply adores you both—just as though she were your mother.”
He was totally unable to understand why Rosamund, at this, turned
the fury of her eyes full upon him.
“You don’t understand, any more than anyone else.”
“Don’t understand what?” almost shouted Morris. “I don’t
understand you, when you talk like that.”
Nor did he. She seemed to him altogether unbalanced, and as
different as possible from the stately, wonderful Rosamund whom he
had met in the orchard at Porthlew.
“Why do you speak as though Mrs. Tregaskis was unkind, or
unsympathetic?” he asked more gently. “She is devoted to you. You
can’t think how proud she is of you, Rosamund.”
“I’m not her daughter.”
“She feels as though you were. She told me so herself.”
“I wish you hadn’t let her talk to you about me at all,” said
Rosamund unhappily.
“I don’t think you’d say that if you knew how nice and understanding
she was. I—I wish I could explain better.”
Morris felt the impotence of his lame and stammering words before
the deep hostility, which he recognized, although he was at a loss to
account for it, in Rosamund’s silence.
“I haven’t ever told anyone,” she said at last, stammering a little,
“but I’ve always resented being told that Cousin Bertha has done
everything for us and is so fond of us. Of course it’s quite true in a
way, but she’s never made me happy—or Francie either.”
If Morris thought that the fault lay more on Rosamund’s side than on
her guardian’s, he would not say so, but his too expressive face
betrayed him to Rosamund’s quick perceptions.
“You think I’m ungrateful—but I do recognize all the material things
she’s done for us.”
Morris thought her explanation very ungracious, and then chid
himself half-heartedly for criticizing his goddess.
“She’s done more than material things, hasn’t she?” he reminded her
gently. “It’s not as though Porthlew had been an alien atmosphere.
She cares about all the things that matter—books and music and
friendship and other things too. That’s what makes her so wonderful,
I think—that she should have that side to her, as well as the splendid
practical capable side that everyone can see and admire.”
Rosamund looked at him, with a face that seemed to have grown
weary.
“Yes, of course,” she said slowly.
Morris felt, unreasonably, as though he had been weighed and found
wanting, in the balance of that baffled, tired gaze of hers. He
reflected with bewilderment that although she had looked at him like
a child when she had spoken defiantly and angrily of her guardian,
she now looked very much older, and more unhappy.
“What is it, Rosamund?” he asked, half involuntarily, and conscious
of the futility of the question.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said drearily.
It was the discontented child again.
Morris remained silent, plucking at the tough strands of heather all
round him.
He felt injured.
He had come out on the moor prepared to sacrifice himself, to bid
Rosamund a long farewell, and to take away with him only the
memory of that bitter-sweet parting hour. Surely the intuition of love
should have met him more than halfway. But Rosamund, with
childish perversity, had harped upon the string of her own
grievances, grievances which Morris could not but feel to be for the
most part imaginary ones. She was not thinking about him at all,
and all his wealth of love and self-sacrifice had gone unheeded.
Morris began to feel angry, and, worse still, as though he were being
made a fool of in his own eyes.
It did not calm him to reflect that he would probably appear in
exactly the same light to the penetrating gaze of Bertha Tregaskis.
She was even now advancing slowly towards them, stooping every
now and then to prod at some little root or plant and pull it up into
her capacious basket.
Morris got up abruptly.
“Rosamund, do you know that I’m going away?”
She looked almost as much startled as he could have wished.
“When, Morris? Where?”
“At once,” he said gloomily. “I don’t know where—or care.”
He had meant to ask her if she would “wait for him” in the time-
honoured phrase, but he had not reckoned on having to cram the
whole parting scene, as it were, into the last three minutes of his
interview.
Rosamund also looked at Bertha’s advancing form and spoke rapidly.
“I didn’t know you meant to go away, Morris.”
Was her voice trembling a little?
“I didn’t!” he cried passionately.
Bertha hailed them with a prolonged “coo-ee” that might have been
regarded as superfluous in view of the fact that only some rapidly
diminishing hundred yards now lay between them.
“I didn’t,” repeated Morris earnestly, and was unable to resist
adding, “but—it’s the only way.”

He also made use of that excellent phrase, for which he was

beholden to Mrs. Tregaskis, in conversation with his mother that
evening.
It was more than wasted upon her.
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘the only way,’” she returned with a
sudden irritating assumption of common sense, her lack of which
she habitually dwelt upon with pensive complacency.
“If you want to go yachting, Morris, well and good; but don’t talk in
an affected melodramatic style, as though you were making some
great sacrifice in going, please. It doesn’t ring true, and you know
how I hate little insincerities.”
Nina’s assault was perhaps not utterly unprovoked. A certain jutting
forward of her son’s jaw, a tendency to monosyllabic replies
preceded by the slight start of one roused from a profound reverie,
had conveyed to Nina all too accurately that Morris was enacting, in
his own opinion, the rôle of jeune premier in a drama of self-
sacrifice.
“I’ve already told you that you can start on this yachting trip
whenever you please, so why talk as though it were some
tremendous decision which you had just come to?” she demanded
irritably.
Morris smiled with a superior expression.
“You don’t understand, mother,” he told her, with a touch of
compassion.
Few remarks were more calculated to rouse her annoyance.
“My dear boy, it’s perfectly childish to talk like that. How can there
be anything about you which I, your mother, can’t understand? It
makes one realize how very very young you are, when you talk like
that.”
But even allusions to his youth could not disturb Morris’s exalted
mood.
He was unable to resist giving his mother a hint of the heights to
which he had attained.
“I was up at Porthlew this afternoon,” he said in a meaning tone.
“So I supposed. You always come back in this silly, self-satisfied
frame of mind when you’ve been with those girls, who naturally play
up to your vanity. If that’s the effect of the Grantham girl’s influence,
Morris, the less you see of her the better, for your own sake.”
The fatal word “influence,” combined with the preposterous
implication that Nina had slightingly forgotten Miss Grantham’s very
name, roused Morris to anger at last.
“Rosamund Grantham and I have said good-bye, mother. It was the
only way. Some day I shall come back to her, and find her waiting,”
said Morris, considerably worked up by the pathos of his own
eloquence, and momentarily forgetful that he had received no such
pledge. “But you make it impossible that I should tell you anything
of what I am going through, when you speak as you did just now.”
He walked with sorrowful dignity to the door, confident that his
mother would not allow him to leave the room without giving him
further opportunities for rhetoric.
Nina, in effect, finding herself driven to her last resort, with a
readiness born of much experience, began gently to cry.
“Darling, you know I didn’t mean it if I spoke impatiently. I only
want to sympathize with you and comfort you.”
He turned slowly towards her.
She was deeply relieved that the affaire Rosamund should have been
successfully tided over. Morris was far from being as heartbroken at
the idea of parting from his love as he had been before their final
interview, and the evening passed amid a harmonious rendering of a
strong man’s grief and his mother’s tender sympathy.
Preparations for his journey absorbed Morris for the next twenty-four
hours, during which he and his mother enjoyed the sense of perfect
companionship which was always theirs on the rare occasions when
their respective mental tableaux vivants of one another happened to
coincide, and then he was off.
“Good-bye, my darling boy. Enjoy yourself.”
“Thank you, mother dear. Write to me and”—his voice took on the
slightly deeper note consecrated to the strong-man-in-grief attitude
—“tell me any news of her.”
“Yes, dearest, of course,” tenderly replied Nina, but she refrained
from telling him the only piece of news which transpired during the
next few days: that Frances was not well enough for Mrs. Tregaskis
to leave her, and that Rosamund had refused to accompany Hazel to
Scotland, but remained with her guardian at Porthlew.
“It is tiresome of her,” said Bertha, in a tone more nearly resembling
annoyance than she often used.
“Frances isn’t seriously ill at all, and if she were Rosamund would be
the worst possible person for her. She goes about looking like a
tragedy-queen, as though Frances were at death’s door.”
“Why on earth did you let her stay?” said Nina with more derision
than sympathy in her voice.
“She asked Frederick. You know how tiresome and contradictory he
can be, and of course he knew perfectly well that I didn’t want
Rosamund fussing and fretting on my hands, but he said she could
do as she liked. He always takes up an absurd attitude of having no
authority over those two, as you know.”
“I know. So Hazel has gone alone?”
“I’ve had to send my maid with her, though I should have done that
in any case. I don’t approve of young girls travelling about all over
the country by themselves.”
“Lucky for you that you have girls who can be chaperoned! Look at
poor little me—I can’t run after Morris, let alone send a maid with
him, and have to sit here with a trembling heart, wondering all the
time how things are going with him.”
“That’s always the way with a son, my dear, or a husband either,”
said Bertha, determinedly emphasizing the fact that she, although
not the mother of a son, also possessed a male appendage.
“It’s our part just to sit at home and work and wait, while they have
all the fun,” Nina sighed. “A woman’s life is one long self-sacrifice,”
she murmured.
“It is, when one has to mend and make and nurse, and all the rest
of it,” cordially agreed Bertha, with one fleeting glance at Nina’s
exquisite, empty hands, folded in her lap.
The glance was not lost upon Mrs. Severing, who presently said
reflectively that Mr. Bartlett would no doubt call upon her shortly
with some of his interminable business questions, and she must ask
dearest Bertie to forgive her. It was not her way to put off a matter
of business.
“Unpractical, dreamy creature that I am,” said Nina with a sad,
sweet smile, “I have had too many years’ hard training in looking
after this big estate, ever to be unbusinesslike. Mr. Bartlett always
amuses me so much when he will say that I should make a better
agent than he does.”
“I don’t wonder!” exclaimed Bertha, the dryness of her tone making
it abundantly evident that her emphatic assent was directed towards
Nina’s amusement, and not towards Mr. Bartlett’s opinion of his
employer’s abilities. “No, no, dear. You must stick to your charming
songs. They’re your work in the world,” smiled Bertha tolerantly.
“Dear Bertie! How sweet of you to say so. I’m always afraid of being
just some silly, trivial flowery thing—not of any real use in the
world.”
“The world needs its little speedwell flowers just as much as its
sturdy oak-trees,” laughed Bertha tenderly.
“Yes, dear,” said Nina deftly. “There is room for Mary as well as for
Martha. It always comforts me to remember that.”
Comfort, however, was not the predominant expression on the face
of Mrs. Tregaskis as she heard her friend’s favourite Scriptural
parallel once more enunciated.
“If you’re really waiting for Mr. Bartlett, darling, I mustn’t keep you,”
she said rather hastily. “Anyhow, I must get back to my invalid. She’s
much better to-day, and only fretting at the idea of my having
missed the Scotch visits. Of course one had been rather longing for
a breath of Scottish air, this weather, but I dare say I shall manage
without. It’s an economy, at all events.”
She gave her cheery, plucky laugh.
“How is Morris enjoying Norway? Has he got over his love-lornity?”
Nina laughed a little.
“I think he has. I’ve had a very cheery letter from him, raving about
the fiords and things.”
Bertha looked slightly puzzled.
“The——? Oh, you mean the fjords! Yes, of course they must be
perfectly gorgeous at this time of year,” she remarked thoughtfully,
with the air of a connoisseuse.
“They are just the same at any time of year, dear,” sweetly returned
Nina. “Geoffrey and I went there for a fortnight once—it seems oh
so long ago! It somehow made one think of those far-away days
when everything was couleur de rose——”
There were few topics that Bertha enjoyed less than the
retrospective couleur de rose of her friend’s married life, and she
hastily dragged the conversation back into the living present.
“I’m so very glad about Morris. Give the boy my love when you
write. I wish Rosamund was half as sensible as he is. She goes
mooning about the place as though she’d lost her dearest friend.”
Bertha gave a slightly apologetic laugh at her own acerbity, and
Nina, whose regard for Rosamund always waxed in proportion as her
friend’s waned, murmured with the air of a compassionate angel:
“Poor child! One remembers the heartaches of one’s own youth. The
thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts, Bertie!”
“Well, Morris appears to have curtailed his successfully enough, at all
events,” crisply returned Bertha. “I always said there was stuff in the
boy, Nina, although you’ve spoilt him so outrageously.”
Nina laughed, and kissed Mrs. Tregaskis affectionately as they said
good-bye.
It always pleased her to be told that she spoilt Morris. She had
consistently over-indulged him as a little boy, and did so still in all
matters where his personal pleasures were concerned, provided that
they did not interfere with her wishes. The accusation of spoiling
seemed to add colour to her frequently-voiced conviction that youth
was very hard, and that a mother’s sacrifices often went unheeded.
“I’m afraid I have spoilt him,” she sighed in response to Bertha’s
words. “But after all, Morris has been my only thought for so many,
many years....”
Bertha told herself that really poor Nina was sometimes positively
maudlin, and firmly created a diversion by demanding the loan of
Nina’s seldom-used garden scissors.
“At all events,” she told herself, as she walked briskly away, “I
managed to forestall an allusion, for once, to poor Geoffrey. And
now for my little tragedy-queen!”
But Rosamund, though not undeserving of her guardian’s epithet,
gave less trouble than Bertha had anticipated. With characteristic
want of balance, she was absorbed in one thought only: that of her
sister. As long as Frances remained ill, Rosamund gave little thought
to Morris Severing. Perhaps the measure of her undeveloped lack of
proportion might have been probed by that fact. The memory of a
spoilt illusion might come to vex and grieve the youthfulness of her
spirit later, but that would only be when the nearer, and to her
infinitely more real, solicitude had ceased to be.
And Rosamund, her outlook being honest, knew, and was to know
more clearly yet, that her first love had brought her no nearer to
that reality which lies at the back of all wisdom, and which for her
was still typified by her love for Frances.
 VIII
“ROSAMUND!” wrote Hazel from the North. “The most
marvellous things in all the world are happening. I am in
love—with a man who wears an eyeglass—(you know how
I’ve always hated an eyeglass) and he is in love with me.
He is Sir Guy Marleswood, and he’s thirty-four, and quite
six foot, and I don’t think I should mind if he were five
foot nothing. I know I shouldn’t. I’ve known him a
fortnight, and yet we both feel as though we’d known
each other all our lives, and yet it’s new and wonderful all
the time. It’s indescribable. There’s one thing—which I
have to keep reminding myself of, but which will assume
enormous proportions as soon as one begins to do
anything—I mean, write to mother, or wear an
engagement ring. (He’s given me a most beautiful one, a
ruby marquise, only I won’t wear it.) He’s been married
before, and he had to divorce his wife five years ago. I
knew it before we met, because the girls here had been
talking about him, and said that was why their mother had
not asked him to stay in the house, but he came to the
dance, and he is staying at the Ludleys’, a mile away.
That’s where we met, and I’ve seen him nearly every day
since—and the days when I don’t see him are just hell—
only knowing that Heaven may open again at any minute.
“Rosamund dear, I know now that I was a fool ever to let
boys make love to me or propose in the sort of half-and-
half way that a boy does—asking one to wait for him
because he may have enough to marry on in fifteen years’
time, and meanwhile exchange photographs and write
every Sunday afternoon. You know the sort of thing—that
does to tell other girls about, and sentimentalize over
 when a waltz that you used to dance with him is being
played. But when it’s the real thing—when a man tells you
that he cares for you and asks you to be his wife—it’s
absolutely and utterly different. Guy asked me the fifth
time he saw me. He told me about his wife first. The odd
thing is, that I don’t mind. Of course I shouldn’t mind
about the moral part of it, anyhow—I mean whom God
hath joined together and all that—but I don’t seem even
to mind about his having once loved her and married her.
They only cared for one another a very little while, and it’s
all past and over. The present is ours—and more glorious
and wonderful than any words can ever say. As for the
future—he says he is going to marry me before the end of
the year. And I am to put off my other visits and come
home this week, and then he will write to daddy, and
come down to Cornwall. Of course it isn’t daddy that
counts at all, since I can manage him perfectly, but I have
a sort of an idea that Guy will get exactly what he wants,
even out of mother. He’s the sort of person that does.
“We haven’t told anybody anything. I haven’t the slightest
doubt that Lady Alistair has guessed, and the girls too, but
even if she writes to mother it’ll only bring things to a
crisis rather sooner. I’m writing to her myself this evening,
so she’ll know by the time you get this.
“I’m not afraid of anything or anyone in the world. Guy
and I have found one another, and nothing else matters.
Besides, I know he’ll manage everything!
“As ever,
“Your loving
“Hazel.”
If Hazel’s letter brought a strange wondering sense of disquietude to
Rosamund, and that not wholly on her cousin’s account, the much
shorter note which she had sent her mother apparently produced no
such effect. Bertha appeared at luncheon with a brow but slightly
corrugated, and only an added tinge of briskness in her manner to
betray perturbation of spirit.
“I see you’ve had a letter from Hazel by the midday post,
Rosamund,” observed Miss Blandflower in the middle of luncheon,
with a praiseworthy desire to dissipate the slight atmosphere of
constraint which had lately been noticeable at meals, in spite of the
valiant and hearty efforts of Mrs. Tregaskis. “When does she return
to the bosom of her family?” She gave a slight giggle in lieu of
quotation marks.
Rosamund hesitated, felt her cousin Bertha glance sharply at her,
and answered nervously:
“I’m not sure—soon, I think.”
“She has two more visits to pay,” said Mrs. Tregaskis coldly. “You
knew that, Rosamund.”
Her husband looked up suddenly.
“She’s coming back on Friday. You knew that, Bertha,” he said
mockingly. “I understand that our parental sanction is required to an
engagement of marriage. Very gratifying, I’m sure, in these
emancipated days.”
Miss Blandflower turned startled eyes from one to the other of
Hazel’s parents.
“They say one wedding makes another,” she sighed with nervous
inappositeness. “But is it really—who is it...?”
“My dear Minnie, Hazel is a silly little girl who ought never to have
been allowed to pay visits without a chaperoning mamma. It serves
me right for having relaxed my rule—but one can’t be in two places
at once, and really these young ladies require such a lot of looking
after!”
Bertha sighed gustily.
“One only wonders how you can manage in the marvellous way you
do, with so much upon your hands,” said Minnie, feeling that this
remark, although far from being original, came at any rate from a
safe stock, and might be more acceptable than further questions.
At all events it steered the conversation into smoother channels, and
no further allusions were made in public to Hazel’s affairs, until three
days later, when Hazel herself returned to Porthlew.
Rosamund was instantly conscious of an indefinable change in her
cousin.
Self-possessed Hazel Tregaskis had always been, but the youthful
security of her manner had somehow deepened into an impression
of inward assurance that held less of self-confidence, and more of
some larger stability, that would not be easily shaken. When her
mother greeted her with matter-of-fact warmth, and said gaily,
“Well, my little girl, I’m glad to have you under my wing again; I
think it’s the last time we must let you go gallivanting off on your
own for the present,” Rosamund saw that Hazel did not give the
petulant shrug or grimace with which the girl Hazel would have
received such a greeting, but looked at her mother with a strange,
remote look that held something of an almost impersonal
compassion.
It was that same look, Rosamund thought, which angered Mrs.
Tregaskis when her daughter resolutely asked her for an interview
that evening.
“No, my darling; I’m not going to let you stay and chatter now.
You’ve had a long journey, and must pop off to bed early. We’ll have
a long talk to-morrow. Dad and I are not at all angry with you, but
I’ve had a letter from Jessie Alistair, and it’s quite plain that I ought
never to have let you go and stay away without me. Now run along
with Rosamund, my pet.”
“What did Lady Alistair say?”
“I shall talk to you about that to-morrow. I am not at all angry with
you, Hazel, but one thing you and Rosamund may as well
understand, since I suppose you’ve told her all about it. You may flirt
with boys of your own age, if you like, and have all the fun that’s
natural and proper, but——” Bertha Tregaskis paused. She spoke
with a quiet and good-humoured implacability, her hands resting on
her broad hips, and her resolute mouth set firmly. “But—to flirt and
get yourself talked about with a married man, is—a—thing—I—don’t
—allow. See, darling?”
Rosamund caught her breath and looked at her cousin. Hazel, who
seldom or never blushed, had flushed the slow, deep crimson of a
woman who hears herself insulted.
“Sir Guy Marleswood is not a married man,” she said slowly. “At
least, neither he nor I think so, which is what matters, after all. He
divorced his wife five years ago. He has asked me to marry him.”
“Very well, darling. When he writes and asks the permission of your
parents, we shall see. But a man of four- or five-and-thirty, who has
led the sort of life that he has led, does not generally want to marry
a little girl of nineteen, even though he may be dishonourable
enough to play at making love to her.”
But this agreeable theory was shattered next day, when Sir Guy
Marleswood wrote a formal statement of his position, and an almost
equally formal request for his daughter’s hand in marriage, to
Frederick Tregaskis. He also stated unemphatically that the following
day would find him at Porthlew Railway Hotel.
Thereafter, Rosamund watched the storm break over the household
with a strangely aching heart.
Bertha regarded Sir Guy as a married man, and said so staunchly.
Frederick Tregaskis, whom Rosamund had never yet heard to agree
with his wife, declined to view the question from an ethical
standpoint, but declared Hazel too young to enter upon a marriage
which would of necessity be regarded more or less dubiously by the
world in general.
“Wait another five years,” he remarked grimly to his daughter, “and
see if you can’t do better for yourself than a divorced baronet fifteen
years older than yourself.”
“No,” said Hazel, her small face set like a flint. “He wants me to
marry him now.”
“I dare say. And I want you to wait. I suppose you owe something to
your father?”
“Yes,” she said, and began to cry. “But not everything in the world. I
owe something to myself. It’s my life.”
It was the passionate cry for individualism that Rosamund had heard
from Morris Severing.
But Hazel Tregaskis, unlike Morris, was directing all the energies of
her will into one channel. And Rosamund, watching, saw those
energies guided and strengthened day by day by the stronger force
that held steadfast behind her.
Guy Marleswood was not of those who fail.
Before the close of that year, the day came when he extorted from
the exasperated Frederick: “Marry her, then. I see you mean to do it,
both of you, and it may as well be with my consent as without it.
Anything to put an end to the subject.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Sir Guy imperturbably. “I will go and tell Mrs.
Tregaskis that we have your consent to the marriage.”
“You will do nothing of the kind. I shall tell her myself. I may as well
get some satisfaction out of it,” said Frederick viciously.
He sought his wife in the library, where she sat, looking unusually
disheartened, amid a pile of leaflets.
“Bertha, you are about to be relieved of one of your responsibilities.”
“I’m thankful to hear it,” she returned wearily.
“I have decided to give Hazel into Marleswood’s keeping.”
“Frederick! You can’t. You’re mad. A child of nineteen—and a
marriage that’s no marriage—she’ll be no more married in the eyes
of God than if she were openly living as that man’s mistress.”
“I’m not concerned with the eyes of God,” said her husband in
detached tones. “It’s perfectly evident to mine that if we don’t give
our consent they mean to do without it, and I don’t choose to have
my daughter making a runaway match. We had better give in
gracefully while it is still possible, Bertha. Marleswood is not the sort
of man to heal a breach, if it came to that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that we don’t want to be cut off from the little girl for ever
after her marriage,” said Frederick, his voice shaking a very little.
“That’s what it’ll mean if we let her go from under our roof in
defiance, Bertha.”
“Hazel is an infatuated, self-willed child, but she is not heartless,”
cried Bertha.
“I do not intend to put her to the test.” Frederick Tregaskis had
regained his habitual dryness of utterance.
With unwonted consideration, he added a word of consolation for his
wife.
“I may as well tell you that I am perfectly satisfied that Marleswood
is a good fellow in every way, and devoted to her. The whole thing,
after all, amounts to a question of conscience, which she is entitled
to judge for herself.”
“She’s not,” flashed Bertha. “She’s only a child, and ought to accept
the ruling of her parents until she’s old enough to judge for herself.”
“I have no doubt,” said Frederick drily, “that all parents, taken as a
class, would agree with you. Unfortunately for ourselves, however,
we have passed into an era where the individual, and not the class,
will rule.”
He walked out of the room, looking older and more deeply lined than
ever.
Rosamund found Mrs. Tregaskis, who never broke down, weeping
violently among the piles of disordered pamphlets.
“Cousin Bertie! Don’t!” cried Rosamund fearfully. “Is it about Hazel?”
Bertha raised a piteously mottled and disfigured face.
“I’m beaten,” she cried. “Frederick has consented to this iniquitous
marriage, and nothing can stop it now. My little girl, whom I’ve
brought up to be good, and to whom I’ve tried to teach religion—
that she should be willing to break my heart, and rush deliberately
into sin, the first time temptation comes near her!”
“No—no. It’s not that. She doesn’t think it’s sin. She doesn’t believe
it’s sin—not for an instant. Her point of view is different.”
“Her point of view!” cried Bertha bitterly. “How dare you talk to me,
a woman of fifty, of such preposterous nonsense? You and she are
children; you know nothing of life, you’ve had no experience. How
can Hazel judge of what is right or wrong? She’s a child—a child.”
In the vehement repetition of the assertion, it seemed to Rosamund
that she found her clue to Bertha Tregaskis’s impotent suffering. She
would not, could not, admit in her daughter any claim to the rights
of an individual.
Hazel’s judgment, unrecognized by her mother, carried with it no
amazement to Rosamund.
Certain faiths, certain scruples and acceptances inborn in Rosamund
and Frances, had been the veriest lip-service to the child Hazel
always. Rosamund recognized in her the purest and most natural
type of highly-evolved paganism.
“You know, Rosamund, I’m not doing anything wrong, although they
won’t believe it. It isn’t wrong to me, and I don’t believe in an
abstract right and wrong. Each individual case has its own laws.”
“Should you do it if you thought it was wrong?”
“I don’t know,” said Hazel thoughtfully. “I can’t imagine seriously
believing that it would matter to God, one way or the other. Should
you? Frances wouldn’t, one knows.”
“If I did it,” slowly said Rosamund, “it would be as a deliberate
choice between good and evil. I should believe myself to be breaking
God’s law—but I might do it, if I thought it worth while.”
She knew that if, as she said, it seemed to her worth while, no laws
of God or man should bind her. But she would break them of
deliberate intent, whereas to Hazel Tregaskis they were non-
existent, myths designed for the wanton frightening of children.
Rosamund recognized the absolute sincerity of Hazel’s point of view,
and sometimes found herself wondering what Sir Guy’s might be.
One day, very soon before the marriage, she held an odd little
conversation with him, standing in the wintry sunshine of the
terrace. Frederick Tregaskis was ahead of them, grimly poking with a
walking-stick at a little drain that was choked with leaves.
“He’s been very kind to me,” said Sir Guy abruptly, indicating with a
gesture the odd little figure.
“I think that he really likes you very much,” said Rosamund. “And
though he would be very angry at being told so, I have always
known that Cousin Frederick adores Hazel.”
Sir Guy nodded with full comprehension.
“Yes, of course. She knows that, too. It’s been the best thing in her
life so far—that and having you and your sister here.” He paused for
a moment or two. “You know,” he said slowly, “I want to try and
make up to her for everything that she hasn’t had, so far. She ought
to have everything. She seems, somehow, so made for happiness.”
“I have never seen Hazel sad,” said Rosamund, rather surprised. “I
think she is happy by nature.”
“Yes, though an atmosphere which might perhaps seem an
unsympathetic one——”
He left the sentence unfinished, and it required no effort on
Rosamund’s part to conjecture his meaning. Sir Guy resented, none
the less implacably that his resentment was expressed by implication
only, the attitude of Mrs. Tregaskis towards her daughter. That Hazel
herself had never resented it, and had only opposed to it the bright
glancing hardness of her impenetrable self-confidence, did not,
Rosamund felt, in any way diminish his perfectly silent ire. Mrs.
Tregaskis herself would be forced to recognize that in this man
fifteen years her senior, Hazel had found champion as well as lover,
knight as well as comrade.
Rosamund turned away with an aching heart, wondering dimly
whether her need had not been greater than Hazel’s.
After the formal consent given by Frederick Tregaskis, there had
been no further discussions between Sir Guy and Mrs. Tregaskis. She
accepted her defeat with the sort of grim gallantry that would
always be characteristic of her, and, as far as Rosamund knew,
attempted no appeal to Hazel. But she aged more perceptibly in the
weeks before Hazel’s marriage than during all the five years that
Rosamund had passed at Porthlew.
No other indication that her guardian recognized defeat was evident
to Rosamund’s eyes. Her manner to her daughter was what it had
always been—kindly, authoritative, at times possessive. She
admitted Sir Guy’s claims to much of her daughter’s time, and even
seemed disposed, gradually, to concede to him rights which he had
not tried to arrogate for himself.
“You mustn’t let this little person be too much in London,” she
observed, with a hand upon Hazel’s shoulder. “We’re very excitable,
and it knocks us up. I had to be a very strict mamma and bring her
home long before the dances had come to an end last year.”
“If we take the St. James’ Square flat, there is no reason why we
shouldn’t spend all the week-ends Hazel likes at Marleswood.”
“Well, I don’t know about week-ends,” said Bertha doubtfully.
“They’re not very restful. I think a home in the country and an
occasional fling in London must be Hazel’s programme.”
She spoke with her customary matter-of-fact assurance and kindly
good sense.
Sir Guy fixed his objectionable monocle more firmly.
“That,” he observed in a detached manner, “is a decision which I
shall leave entirely to my wife.”
If Mrs. Tregaskis found it necessary to readjust her forces after this,
the readjustment was made silently and without delay. But it was
very shortly after that, when it only wanted a week to Hazel’s
wedding-day, that Rosamund again found Cousin Bertha in the
library, struggling with hard, choking sobs. Hazel hung over her,
caressing her with most unwonted demonstrativeness and with tears
in her own pretty eyes. But that they were tears of the merest
surface pity and tenderness was abundantly obvious even without
the gently mournful observation which she made to Rosamund that
evening.
“Poor mother! I hate to see her minding it so, but you know,
Rosamund, I can’t feel as unhappy as I ought.”
“Don’t you wish—sometimes—that you’d waited, as they begged you
to? It would have been the same for you in the end.”
“The same for me, and the same for them,” returned Hazel crisply.
“They wouldn’t have liked it any better ten years hence—at least
mother wouldn’t. I believe daddy’s reconciled already. Mother wants
me to be happy, but in her way.”
“Are you really happy, when you know she is miserable?” spoke
Rosamund with more curiosity than compassion. Hazel coloured, but
faced her cousin with unflinching honesty.
“Yes,” she said, “I am. It’s of no use to pretend, Rosamund. I am
happier than I have ever been in my life. Of course, I should have
preferred it if everything had been straightforward, and there hadn’t
been all this fuss, and having to extort a consent—but it would have
been just the same if they hadn’t given it. Do you know, that’s the
pathos of it, to my mind—they couldn’t do anything. Guy and I
would have married without their consent, just as much as with it.”
“He asked you to, I suppose,” said Rosamund, as though stating a
fact.
Hazel pushed her curling tawny hair from her forehead.
“He asked me if I would, if it came to that, and of course I said yes.
But we both knew it wouldn’t come to that, and that mother would
have to give in. I used to think that if one’s parents forbade a thing,
it became impossible ipso facto, but it doesn’t. They just can’t do
anything at all.”
To Rosamund, Hazel had summed up the situation in that sentence.
They could not do anything at all.
The wedding took place quietly at Porthlew, and they said good-bye
to Hazel, radiant-eyed, and clinging in an unwonted embrace to her
father at the last moment.
Then she drove away with her husband, and Miss Blandflower, in a
piping soprano, remarked to Rosamund:
“It’s like a death in a house, isn’t it? But we must all try and take her
place, now.”
The suggestion drove Frederick, snarling disgustedly, into the study.
Frances went quietly to put away some of the litter in Hazel’s room,
while Rosamund, feeling herself useless and in the way, yet hung
helplessly in the vicinity of Nina Severing, who had remained with
Bertha in the drawing-room after the departure of the few guests.
But no word of Morris reached her.
Nina was murmuring consolation to her friend who, for once
inactive, sat gazing heavily into the fire.
“After all, dearest, the young birds will fly out of the old nest and
leave it desolate. It’s nature.”
Bertha groaned.
“It’s not the selfish loss to myself that I mind, Nina, but the thing
she’s done. If I were giving her to some simple, honest boy of her
own age, how gladly I’d see her go. We mothers don’t ask more
than that, after all—just to see the children happy.”
“I know,” breathed Mrs. Severing. “It’s all one lives for.”
“I’ve no plans or wishes for myself—it’s all for them,” muttered
Bertha disjointedly. “What else has one to care about—an old
gargoyle....”
Nina straightened herself slightly.
“‘Having outlived hope, fear, desire....’” she quoted softly, at the
same time turning her long neck so that the firelight fell upon her
burnished hair and exquisite, appealing profile.
“A man she’s only known a few months,” pursued Bertha bitterly.
“And she’ll disobey her parents, the mother who’s loved and guarded
and cherished her all her life, and break their hearts, for his sake.”
“God grant the poor child may not regret it bitterly one day,”
breathed Nina piously.
There was a long pause.
“Well!” said Bertha, and slowly stood up. “There’s a lot to be done.”
“Do let me help you, dearest.”
“Thanks, Nina, if you would. The girls are somewhere, I suppose.”
“Ah, they’ll be a comfort to you, I hope. They who owe you even
more than Hazel does, if possible.”
“One does what one can. It seems to me that it’s all give, give, give
on our side, and take, take, take on theirs. I feel rather like an
unfortunate pelican feeding its young, sometimes.”
With the words, and the curt laugh that dismissed them, Bertha
Tregaskis regained possession of herself.
 IX
ROSAMUND, though unhappy, was not as unhappy as she would
have liked to think herself. The defection of Morris Severing,
although gaining in poignancy by contrast with Hazel’s serene
happiness, was a sorrow of the emotions only, and a certain fierce
sincerity of outlook prevented Rosamund from rating it otherwise.
But she felt that she could have borne it better had the
disappearance of her quondam lover touched the mainsprings of her
life, and left that life dignified by a lasting grief, instead of merely
rendered unprofitable and savourless from an unrecognized sense of
vague discontent.
“I don’t know what Rosamund’s grievance is!” her guardian was
exasperated into exclaiming, nearly a year after Hazel’s marriage. “I
don’t believe she knows herself.”
And, in so saying, diagnosed the case.
Rosamund Grantham, after the manner of the modern generation,
had yet to find herself, and suffered accordingly.
It need scarcely be added that she did not confine her sufferings to
herself.
Frances, overwhelmed by the difficulties of reconciling
responsiveness to Cousin Bertie’s bracing councils of self-reliance,
with submission to Rosamund’s intensely protective and rather
overpowering solicitude, sought more frequently than ever the
soothing society of Nina Severing.
That gentle soul was passing through a period of storm of which she
presently confided the outline to Frances.
“Sometimes, darling, as I sit here alone through the long evenings, I
wonder if my life might have been different if I’d been a more
religious woman. You see, Francie, I married very, very young. I
wasn’t much older than you are now. My husband was not a man
who believed in any very definite creed, and I was young enough to
be altogether influenced by him.”
It was ever Nina’s custom to lay the errors and omissions of her past
at the door of Geoffrey Severing and her youthful marriage.
“Should you like to be a Roman Catholic?” asked Frances suddenly.
“It’s a very beautiful religion, and of course beauty is a religion in
itself, to an artist,” said Nina thoughtfully. “Why do you ask?”
“I’ve often thought,” said Frances very shyly, “that I should like it
myself. It seems such a thorough-going sort of religion. When we
were little, my mother had a Catholic maid—an Irish girl—and she
used to tell us a lot about it. And she was so particular about not
eating meat on certain days and going to Mass every Sunday. She
had to walk quite a long way, but I don’t believe she ever missed
going. Of course she was very superstitious, and used to want us to
wear medals and charms and things, but some of the prayers she
taught us were nice. My mother was a Catholic by birth, too, though
she never went to church or anything.”
“If I were anything, I should certainly be a Catholic,” said Nina with
extreme conviction in her tone. “It’s the only creed which appeals to
me in the slightest degree. It is so beautiful—all that music and
those touching ideas about the Virgin and everything.”
“But—don’t you believe?—isn’t the Church——?” murmured Frances,
embarrassed.
“Dear child, I am afraid the orthodox forms mean very little to me. I
would never wilfully cause pain to any human being, and I try to
help the sadness of the world with my little songs, but that is all. But
I would never shatter the innocent faith of another soul, although I
have outgrown the need of form and ritual myself.”
“Does one outgrow it?” wistfully asked Frances, whose whole nature
unconsciously craved the discipline which is inseparable from any
creed, faithfully followed out in practice.
“Not all of us,” tenderly said Nina, conscious of the exquisite contrast
between the matured, self-reliant soul, made strong through
suffering, and the innocent, inquiring child at her knee. “Not all of
us, dear. Some plants need a support round which to cling, whilst
others stand alone—always alone.” Her voice deepened slightly as
she mused broodingly for a moment on the pathos and beauty of
this horticultural parable. It came as a slight shock when Frances,
generally the most sympathetic of listeners, observed in
unmistakably self-absorbed accents:
“I think that I shall always want a support. It seems to me that I am
meant to live by rule—not by my own judgment at all. That’s why I
like the Roman Catholic idea of the Church being infallible. It would
be such a guide.”
Nina was aware that to no one else would Frances have spoken so
unreservedly, and the reflection was soothing, but it did not prevent
a slight stiffening of tone in her reply.
“Really, dear? But the surest guide in the world is the golden rule
which I have tried to live up to all my life—Never think of yourself at
all. Somehow, if one gives all one’s thoughts and time to other
people, one finds that God takes care of the rest.”
Nina was herself rather surprised at the beauty of the sentiment as
she put it into words, and it served to restore her not very deeply
ruffled serenity.
“I will lend you some books, Frances, if you really want to know
something about various creeds. The religion of Buddha is, to my
mind, the most beautiful of them all,” reflectively said Nina, who had
once read portions of Sir Edwin Arnold’s translation of the “Light of
Asia,” and was persuaded that she had studied it deeply. “It was the
foundation of the Roman Catholic religion, of course—they borrowed
a great deal from it.”
“I should like to read it very much.”
Frances wanted to read anything which spoke, however indirectly, of
Roman Catholic doctrines. If Nina guessed as much, however, she
did not impart her surmise to the vigorously orthodox Bertha
Tregaskis.
That this discreet reticence had been justified was made
superabundantly evident when Mrs. Tregaskis first became aware of
the Romanistic tendencies of her ward.
“People of seventeen must do what they’re told,” she said serenely,
but with an undercurrent of severity. “When you’re one-and-twenty,
Francie, we’ll talk about it again, and meanwhile I strongly advise
you not to think about the subject. You are much too young to
decide such a matter without knowing a great deal more about it,
and from your own showing all this simply arises from restlessness
and desire for excitement. Religion is too serious a matter to be
played with, my dear little girl.”
A certain look of flintlike impenetrability came over Frances’ young
face as she looked at her guardian, and she said nothing more. But
Mrs. Tregaskis was much too acute to suppose that her silence
denoted submission.
“Take her to London,” growled Frederick, when his wife, in her
perplexity, put the case before him. “You ought to get her away from
that silly woman’s influence.”
Bertha did not ask “What silly woman?” since she rightly recognized
that her husband thus denoted her dearest friend, but she decided
to follow his advice.
“We’ll have a month in London, and see all the sights,” she cried.
“Just you and I and Rosamund, Francie, and be regular country
cousins, and go to the National Gallery and British Museum, and a
theatre or two from the dress-circle. Never mind about planting the
bulbs, dear—no, I don’t mind leaving them to Grant, and the garden
must just get on without me for a week or two.”
She stifled a sigh heroically.
“This trip is absolutely for the sake of the girls,” she told Nina
Severing. “Neither of them takes any natural healthy interest in
gardening or in the animals and things, as Hazel used to do, so I
must try what London will do for them. Really, girls are a problem.”
“Nothing to a boy,” sighed Nina. “There’s Morris wandering half over
Europe, in the most unsatisfactory manner, pretending that he is
studying languages, and really doing nothing at all except loaf. I’ve
told him he ought to come back and look after the place in earnest,
but he makes one excuse after another——”
“It’s too bad,” said Bertha sympathetically. “Perhaps if he came back,
now that he and Rosamund are a little older and have rather more
sense....”
“Oh, my dear! he’s got over that nonsense long ago. I always told
you it wouldn’t last. ‘Weak and unstable as water,’ that’s what my
poor Morris is.”
Bertha did not remind Mrs. Severing that everything had been done
to insure the instability of Morris in this particular case. She only said
affectionately:
“Well, good-bye, Nina darling. Don’t forget to take pity on my old
man, since I can’t drag him to London.”
“He must come and cheer me up some afternoon, if he will,”
cordially responded Nina. Both ladies were perfectly aware that
Frederick Tregaskis would do nothing of the sort, and that there
were few things less conducive to the cheering up of either than an
encounter between him and Mrs. Severing. But they exchanged their
fallacious hopes with an air of affectionately reassuring one another.
“I’ve one comfort,” declared Bertie, “I’m hoping to see a very old
friend of mine in town: Sybil Argent. I believe she and her son are
there for a few weeks.”
“Didn’t she become a Catholic?” asked Nina, with a sudden air of
intense interest, which provoked Bertha to a display of extreme
nonchalance instantly.