← catalogue

Mufti

by H. C. McNeile · English · Gutenberg #24945 · 460,866 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mufti
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Mufti

Author: H. C. McNeile


        
Release date: March 29, 2008 [eBook #24945]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24945

Credits: E-text prepared by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUFTI ***


E-text prepared by Al Haines



MUFTI

by

HERMAN CYRIL McNEILE

("Sapper")

Author of

  "No Man's Land," "Men, Women and Guns,"
  "The Human Touch," "The Lieutenant and Others,"
  "Sergeant Michael Cassidy," etc.







Hodder and Stoughton
London -- New York -- Toronto
MCMXIX





To P. B. D.




MUFTI


PROLOGUE

I

The officer lying back in the home-made chair tilted the peak of his
cap over his eyes and let his book slip gently to the ground.  A few
moments later, after various unavailing waves of the hand, he pulled
out a handkerchief of striking design and carefully adjusted it over
his face.  Then, with his hands dug deep in his pockets to remove even
a square inch of skin from the ubiquitous fly, he prepared to slumber.
And shortly afterwards a gentle rise and fall of the centre bulldog, so
wonderfully portrayed on the bandana, announced that he had succeeded.

To anyone fresh from England who desired to see War the scene would
have been disappointing.  There were no signs of troops swinging down a
road, singing blithely, with a cheery smile of confidence on their
faces and demanding to be led back forthwith to battle with the Huns.
There were no guns belching forth: the grim Panoply of War, whatever it
may mean, was conspicuous by its absence.  Only a very fat
quartermaster-sergeant lay asleep in the sun and snored, while an
ancient and dissolute old warrior, near by, was engaged in clearing out
a drain as part of his Field Punishment, and had just discovered a dead
dog in it.  He was not singing blithely: he had no cheery smile of
confidence on his face: he was just talking--gently to himself.

The field was on a slight ridge.  Above the camp there floated one of a
line of sausage balloons, and the cable to which it was attached
stretched up taut from some point near the farmhouse behind.  A
triangular flag, like a burgee, flew straight out in the breeze from
half-way up the cable, and the basket, looking absurdly small, hung
down like a black dot below the balloon.

Peace was the keynote of the whole situation.  In front the country lay
stretched out, with its hedges and trees, its fields and farmhouses.
In certain places there ran long rows of poles with strips of brown
material stretched between them, which a spectator would rightly
conclude was camouflage erected to screen the roads.  Only from what?
Where was the Boche in this atmosphere of sleep and quiet?

Beyond the silent countryside rose a line of hills.  They seemed to
start and finish abruptly--an excrescence in the all-pervading
flatness.  On the top of the near end of the line, clear cut against
the sky, the tower and spires of a great building; at the far end, on a
hill separated--almost isolated--from the main ridge, a line of stumps,
gaunt tooth-pick stumps standing stiffly in a row.  There was no sign
of life on the hills, no sign of movement.  They were dead and cold
even in the warm glow of the afternoon sun.  Especially the isolated
one at the far end with its row of sentinel trees.  There was something
ghostly about it--something furtive.

And then suddenly a great column of yellow smoke rose slowly from its
centre and spread like a giant mushroom.  Another and another appeared,
and the yellow pall rolled down the side twisting and turning, drifting
into the air and eddying over the dark, grim slope.  Gradually it
blotted out that isolated hill, like fog reeking round a mountain top,
and as one watched it, fascinated, a series of dull booms came lazily
through the air.

"Jerry gettin' it in the neck on Kemmel."  Two men passing by were
regarding the performance with perfunctory interest, while the purple
bulldog still rose and fell, and the dissolute old warrior did not
cease talking to himself.

"Derek scooped the bally lot as usual."  An officer appeared at the
entrance of a tin structure in one corner of the field with a bundle of
letters in his hand.  "Look at the dirty dog there--sleeping like a
hog--in the only decent chair."

He disappeared inside to emerge again in a moment with a badminton
racket and a shuttlecock.  "On the bulldog--one round rapid fire."  He
fired and with a loud snort the sleeper awoke.

"You are charged with conduct to the prejudice, etc.," said the
marksman severely, "in that you did spread alarm and despondency
amongst the troops by disguising yourself as a disease and making
noises indicative of pain."

Derek Vane stretched himself and stood up.  "We are feeling well, thank
you--and require nourishment.  Does tea await me, and if not--why not?"
He took his mail and glanced through it.  "How they love me, dear old
boy!  What it is to be young and good looking, and charm. . . ."

There was a loud shout and the deck chair became the centre of a
struggling mob.  Shortly afterwards a noise of ripping canvas announced
that it had acted as deck chairs have acted before when five people sit
on them at the same moment.

"Look out, you mugs, you've broken it."  Vane's voice came dimly from
the ground.  "And my face is in an ants' nest."

"Are you good looking and charming?" demanded an inexorable voice.

"No.  Get off, Beetle; you've got bones on you like the human skeleton
at Barnum's."

"What are you like?" pursued the same inexorable voice.

"Horrible," spluttered Vane.  "A walking nightmare; a loathly dream."

"It is well--you may arise."

The mass disintegrated, and having plucked the frame of the chair from
the body of an officer known to all and sundry as the Tank--for obvious
reasons--they moved slowly towards the mess for tea.

In all respects an unwarlike scene, and one which would disappoint the
searcher after sensation.  Save for the lorries which bumped
ceaselessly up and down the long straight road below, and the
all-pervading khaki it might have been a scene at home before the war.
The yellow fog had cleared away from Kemmel, and over the flat country
the heat haze rose, shimmering and dancing in the afternoon sun.  In
the field next to the camp an ancient Belgian was ploughing, his two
big Walloon horses guided by a single cord, while from behind the farm
there came the soft thud-thud of a football.

And then it came.  In a few seconds the air was filled with the
thumping of Archie and the distant crackle of machine-guns.

"By Jove! there he is," cried the Tank.  "He's got him too."

The officers halted and stared over the dead town of Poperinghe, where
flash after flash of bursting shrapnel proclaimed a Boche aeroplane.
They saw him dive at a balloon--falling like a hawk; then suddenly he
righted and came on towards the next.  From the first sausage two black
streaks shot out, to steady after a hundred feet or so, and float down,
supported by their white parachutes.  But the balloon itself was
finished.  From one end there glowed for an instant a yellow furnace of
fire.  Then a flame shot up, followed by clouds of black smoke.  Like a
stone, the basket crashed down, passing the two white, drifting specks
on the way, and leaving behind it a long streak of black.

Rolling from side to side like a drunken man, the aeroplane was coming
towards its next quarry.  Lewis guns, machine-guns, Archies were now
all firing full blast, but the pilot continued on his course.  Tracer
bullets shot up like lines of light, but so far he had come through
untouched.  From the balloons the observers dived out until at one
moment there were ten in the air.  And each balloon in turn followed
its owners, a flaming, smoking remnant . . .

Then came the end--as suddenly as it had begun.  A tracer bullet seemed
to pass right through the aeroplane.  Like a tiny ball of fire the
bullet struck it, and then went out.  The plane swerved violently,
righted and swerved again.  Then it spun down, rocking from side to
side, while a burst of white flame roared all round it.  And, falling a
little faster than the plane, two black spots, which did not steady
after a hundred feet.  They crashed fifty yards from the tin hut, and
almost before they reached the ground the officers were on the spot.  A
little distance away the aeroplane was blazing, and they could feel the
heat as they bent over the pilot and his observer.  They were both
dead, and the pilot was unrecognisable; a bullet had entered the base
of his skull from behind.  But the observer was not much damaged
outwardly.  He lay--arms outstretched--looking up at the sky, on the
ground that the farmer had just ploughed.  He seemed to smile cynically
at the hoarse cheering now spreading from field to field, from camp to
camp.  Perhaps even then he had realised the futility of it all . . .

For a few seconds Derek Vane looked at him gravely, while close by two
excited men from different units argued raucously as to which battalion
had brought the aeroplane down.

"I tell yer I saw the ruddy bullet hit the perisher right in the
middle," cried one claimant.  "It were old Ginger's gun, I tell yer.
E's a fair corker is Ginger with a Lewis."

The smile spread till it was almost a grin on the dead man's face.
Muscular contraction, of course, but. . . .  With a sudden movement
Vane stooped down and covered the face.

"Sergeant-Major."  He turned to the N.C.O. beside him.  "Armed guard
round the plane at once till the Flying Corps arrive.  Bring these two
bodies into the camp on stretchers."


Five minutes later they sat down to tea and an unopened mail.  The
farmer had resumed his ploughing--the football enthusiasts their game.
Twenty-five Lewis guns and twelve Vickers sections were all composing
reports stating that their particular weapon had done the deed, and
somebody was putting another fog cloud on Kemmel.

In fact, the only real difference in the scene after those ten short
minutes was that by the ruins of a deck chair two German airmen with
their faces covered lay very still on stretchers. . . .



II

Two hours later.  Vane handed his steel helmet to his batman and swung
himself into the saddle on his old grey mare.  There was touch of Arab
in her, and she had most enormous feet.  But she fulfilled most of the
requirements a man looks for in a war horse, which are not of necessity
those he requires in a mount with the Grafton.  She scorned guns--she
repudiated lorries, and he could lay the reins on her neck without her
ceasing to function.  She frequently fell down when he did so;
but--_c'est la guerre_.  The shadows were beginning to lengthen as he
hacked out of the camp, waving a farewell hand at a badminton four, and
headed for Poperinghe.

Poperinghe lay about a mile up the road towards his destination, and
Vane had known it at intervals for over three years.  He remembered it
when it had been shelled in April '15 at the time of the first gas
attack, and the inhabitants had fled in all directions.  Then gradually
it had become normal again, until, after the Passchendaele fighting of
1917, it had excelled itself in gaiety.  And now in May 1918 it was
dead once more, with every house boarded up and every window shuttered.
The big cobbled square; the brooding, silent churches, the single
military policeman standing near his sand-bagged sentry-box--and in the
distance the rumble of a wagon going past the station--such was
Poperinghe as Vane saw it that evening.

A city of ghosts--deserted and empty, and as the old grey mare walked
sedately through the square.  Vane felt that he understood the dead
airman's smile.

Sometimes a random shot would take effect, but the bag was soon
removed.  That very afternoon a driver with his two horses had been hit
direct.  The man, or what was left of him, had been removed--only the
horses remained, and a red pool coated with grey dust.  The mare edged
warily around them, and a swarm of flies, bloated, loathsome
brutes--buzzed angrily up as she passed.

"It's not fair, old girl," said Vane bending over and patting her neck;
"but I s'pose it's only in keeping with everything else these
days--it's not fairness that counts; it's just luck--fatuous idiotic
luck.  It's not even a game; it's a wild-cat gamble all over the world.
And may Heaven help us all when the bottom does drop out of the market."

The grey mare ambled placidly on up the main Ypres road undisturbed by
his philosophy.  The dead of her kind were already forgotten, and the
nose-bag on the saddle would be all the better for emptying.  On each
side of the road were gun positions, and Vane kept a sharp look out as
he trotted on.  If there was one thing he loathed above all others it
was the gunner humorist who, with malice aforethought, deliberately
waited to fire his gun until some helpless passer by was about a yard
from the muzzle.  But at the moment everything seemed quiet.  The
evening hate was not due yet; and Vane reached Brandhoek cross roads
without having his eardrums burst.

On the Decauville track close by stood eight trains, stacked with rows
and rows of cylinders, and he contemplated them grimly.  Each train was
drawn by an ugly-looking petrol electric engine.  The whole eight would
shortly run at close intervals to the nearest point to the front line.
Then Vane, with a large pushing party, could man-handle the trains into
the position decided on--a few hundred yards behind the outpost line.
And as a method of fighting it struck him as poor.

Whatever may be said about Might and Right, there is an element which
must appeal to every normal being in the triumph of strength and
hardihood over weakness.  It may be wrong; it happens, however, to be
natural.  But there is nothing whatever to appeal to the average man in
the ability of some professor of science, working in his laboratory
miles away, to produce a weapon which strikes down alike the strong and
the weakling with an agony which makes death a blessed relief.
Gas--just a refinement of modern war introduced by the brains of many
eminent gentlemen.  And it must be in the nature of a personal triumph
for them to realise that their exhaustive experiments with guinea pigs
and rabbits have caused thousands to fear at first they were going to
die, and later to fear still more that they were not. . . .

Vane nodded to the gas officer and got on board the little tractor
which was to take him to the front trenches.

Chugging along through screen after screen of brown camouflage which
hid the little railway line from the watchful gaze of Kemmel, he seemed
to be passing through some mysterious land.  By day it was hideous
enough; but in the dusk the flat dullness of it was transfigured.  Each
pond with the shadows lying black on its unruffled surface seemed a
fairy lake; each gaunt and stunted tree seemed to clothe itself again
with rustling leaves.  The night was silent; only the rattle of the
little train, as it rumbled over bridges which spanned some sluggish
brook or with a warning hoot crossed a road--broke the stillness.
Great shell-holes filled with rotting debris flashed by, the mouldering
ruins of an old château frowned down as they twisted and turned through
the grounds where once men had flirted and women had sighed.  Now the
rose garden was used as a rubbish heap for tins; and by the over-grown
sundial, chipped and scarred by a stray shell, two wooden crosses stuck
out of the long rank grass.  At last they reached the Canal, and the
engine stopped near the Lille road.

Close by, the flares lobbed up, green against the night; and a white
mist covered the low-lying ground.  Across the road lay trees in all
directions, while, through the few that remained standing, a cold
bright moon threw fantastic shadows.  On each side of the road,
screened by the embankment from machine-gun fire, sat groups of men
waiting for the trains.

At last Vane heard the first one--faintly in the distance.  It loomed
up suddenly out of the mist and crept across the road.  Without a word
the men detailed to push it seemed to rise out of the ground.  Silently
they disappeared with it, like ghouls at some mysterious ceremony.
With muffled couplings it made no sound; and in a few minutes it was
ready in position, with its leading truck where once the owner of a
farm had sat before the fire, after the day's work.

And so they came--eight in all.  Any noise--any suspicion on the part
of the Boche, a bare quarter of a mile away, and a machine-gun would
have swept the ground.  But the night was silent, the flares still went
peacefully up, and the wind had not changed.  It blew gently and
steadily towards the German lines.  Only there was now just a faint
smell of pineapple in the air; one of the cylinders was leaking. . . .

Figures loomed up unexpectedly out of the mist; occasionally a low
curse could be heard as a man stumbled into a shell hole. . . .

"Everything all right; everybody clear?"  The gas expert peered at Vane
in the darkness.  "Right! well, let her go."

A series of reports sounded deafeningly loud, as the detonators of the
cylinders were fired by electricity; a steady, hissing noise as a great
wall of white vapour mingled with the mist and rolled forward towards
the Germans.  The gas attack had begun.  To an airman returning from a
bombing raid, who circled for a moment above, it looked like a sheet
being slowly spread over the country below; a beautiful--an
eerie--picture.  To those on the ground who watched it, it seemed as a
solid wall of dense fog moving relentlessly forward--like the mist that
comes creeping over the Downs till those caught in it can scarce see
their hand in front of their face.  To the Boche it was death. . . .

Patrols going out the next night found men twisted and blackened with
the smell of pineapple still on their swollen lips; in the hospitals
behind, men writhed and muttered hoarsely, struggling for breath and
struggling in vain.  The attack had been successful--and all was as it
should be.  Undoubtedly the Germans started gas in a country where the
prevalent wind was south-west--and it doesn't pay in war to be a fool.
. . .

Vane wished that one or two German men of science had been occupying
the Boche outpost line instead of. . . .  War--modern war!

"It will go clean through their helmets," said the gas expert.  "One
hour in most cases, and when it gets weaker, twenty-four--or even more.
That's the stuff to give 'em."

At last the performance was over, and the trains having delivered the
goods returned to their own place.

"Most successful."  The gas expert, rubbing his hands together, came up
to Vane as he stood on the Lille road.  "I think we've got quite a
number of the blighters.  And not a single casualty!"

"Good," said Vane.  "But what a filthy method of fighting."

"The Germans started it," returned the other.

"I know they did," laughed Vane.  "That's probably why it's so filthy."

The gas officer looked thoughtful.  "I'm not certain that I agree with
you, Vane.  War is such a filthy business, however you look at it, that
one would be a fool not to harness science in every possible way . . ."

"Don't you believe it," scoffed Vane.  "Science has harnessed us.
We've started the bally motor with the gear in, and now we're running
after it trying to catch up.  Can I give you a lift back on my private
stink machine? . . ."

They strolled up the road together to where the tractor was waiting.

"Man no longer the master of his destiny, you mean?" said his companion.

"Don't make me laugh too loud," returned Vane, "or the Boche might
hear; unless you've killed 'em all . . ."

"You're wrong, my friend--utterly wrong."  They came to where the
railway track crossed the road and he halted to pull out his pipe,
before getting on to the little engine.

"I tell you, Vane . . ."

And at that moment a flight of cockchafers seemed to sweep down the
road.  Vane felt the stinging pain in his right shoulder, and then he
looked foolishly at the gas expert . . .

"You were saying," he began . . .

But his late companion had taken a machine-gun bullet through his heart.




CHAPTER I

The beach at Paris Plage is associated in the minds of most people who
went there before the war with a certain amount of gaiety.  There were
bands, and fair ladies, and various other delights generally connected
with popular French watering-places.  Incidentally the beach is a
beach--not a collection of sharp boulders.  There is real sand--lots of
it; the sort that gets hot and comforting in the sun, and invites
people who have eaten too much luncheon to sleep.  And during the war,
though the bands and other delights have departed, the sand has
remained a source of pleasure to hundreds of people in need of a
temporary rest cure.  They have come from the big hospitals at Etaples;
they have come from the officers' rest-house.  Some have even come in
motor cars from the trenches just for the day, and one and all they
have lain on the beach and slept and then departed the better for it.

On a certain afternoon during the height of the German offensive in the
spring of 1918 a girl was sitting on the beach staring out to sea.  On
the horizon a black smudge of smoke stood up against the vivid blue of
the sky; while, close in shore, a small sailing boat was barely making
headway in the faint breeze.

The girl was a V.A.D., and the large French family which had planted
itself close by cast little curious glances at her from time to time.
And she was worth looking at, with her fair hair, deep blue eyes and
that wonderful complexion which seems to be the exclusive property of
the British.  Madame remarked on it to Monsieur, glancing at the white
faces of her own daughters three, and Monsieur grunted an assent.
Personally he was more occupied with the departed glories of Paris
Plage than with a mere skin of roses and milk; at least the worthy man
may have deemed it desirable to appear so.

"Pauvre petite," went on the kindly matron, "but she looks tired . . .
so tired."  She heaved a deep sigh.  "Mais que voulez-vous? c'est la
guerre."  She watched her offspring preparing to paddle, and once again
she sighed.  There was no band, no amusement--"Mon Dieu! but it was
triste.  This accursed war--would it never end?"

Margaret Trent's looks did not lie; she was tired.  The rush of work
just lately had almost broken her physical endurance, and there seemed
but little chance of any slackening in the near future.  She felt that
all she wanted was rest--utter, complete rest, where such things as
bandages and iodine were unknown.  And even as the longing came to her
she knew that a week of it would be all that she could stand.  She
could see beyond the craving ache to stop--the well-nigh irresistible
cry of her body for rest.  She could feel the call of spirit dominating
mere bodily weariness.  And it drove her on--though every muscle cried
a halt.

Before the war she had been in that set which drifted pleasantly
through life, and yet she had not been of it.  She danced perfectly;
she played tennis and golf and went to the proper places at the proper
times--but she was different.  She had in her a certain idealistic
dreaminess, an intense love of the beautiful in life.  Sordid things
filled her with a kind of horror, and when the war came she tried to
banish it from her mind like a dreadful nightmare.  But there were
stories in the papers, and there were letters from friends telling of
losses and unspeakable sufferings.  There was war all round her and one
day the great unrest got hold of her, and would not be put aside.  She
felt she had to do something . . .

And so she became a V.A.D. and in the fulness of time arrived in
France.  Her friends prophesied that she would last a month--that she
would never stand the sight of blood and wounds.  Her answer had been
two years at Etaples.  And to those who know, that is an answer
conducive of many things.

At times she tried to recall her outlook on life four years ago.  She
had enjoyed herself up to a point, but all the time she had been
groping towards something she did not possess.  She had read carefully
and with discrimination, and the reading had only filled her with an
added sense of her own futility.  She felt that she wanted to do
something--but what was there for her to do?

Marriage, naturally, had come into her mental horizon.  But there had
only been one man who had ever attracted her sufficiently to make it
anything but an idle speculation.  There had been a time, one season in
London, when this man had been her constant companion, and she had been
far from disliking it.  At times he had seemed to be serious, and as a
matter of fact the subtle difference between her and the stock pattern
crowd had interested him more than he admitted even to himself.  Then
one day she discovered that a certain flat and its occupant were very
closely connected with his bank account.  It was by pure accident that
she found it out.  A chance remark which she overheard at a dinner
party. . . .  And the night before at the Grafton Galleries she had
allowed him to kiss her as she had never before allowed a man . . .

It revolted her; and the man, astonished at first at her sudden change
of manner, finally became annoyed, and the episode ceased.  They still
met; there was no quarrel--but they met only as casual acquaintances.

It was at that stage of her reflections that a shadow fell across her
and she looked up.  For a moment the coincidence failed to strike her,
and then with a surprised little laugh she held out her hand.

"Why, Derek," she said, "I was just thinking of you."

Vane, his right arm tightly bound in a sling, sat down beside her.

"I thought you looked pretty weary," he laughed.  "Jove! but it's great
seeing you again, Margaret . . .!  And the peace of it all."  He waved
his left hand round the deserted beach.  "Why, it's like old
times--before the world went mad" . . .  He fumbled with his cigarette
case, until she took it out of his hand, and struck a match for him.

"What ward are you in?" she asked, when he had made himself comfortable.

"Number 13; got here yesterday."

"I come on night duty there to-night.  What's your trouble?"

"Machine-gun," he answered briefly.  "A nice clean one through the
shoulder.  And the man beside me took the next bullet through his
heart."  He laughed shortly.  "What a gamble--what a dam silly gamble,
isn't it?"

She looked thoughtfully out to sea.  The train of ideas his sudden
appearance had interrupted was still half consciously occupying her
mind.

"Four years, isn't it, since we met?" she said after a while.

"Four centuries, you mean.  Four wasted centuries.  Nothing will ever
be the same again."

"Of course it won't.  But don't you think it's just as well?"  She
faced him smilingly.  "There was so much that was all wrong, Derek; so
much that was rotten."

"And do you think that four years' insanity is going to prove the
remedy?"  Vane laughed cynically.  "Except that there are a few million
less men to carry on the rottenness"--

Margaret shook her head.  "We wanted something to wake us up; it's been
drastic, but we're awake."

"And what most of us want is to go to sleep again.  Don't you feel
tired, Margaret, sometimes?"

"Yes--I suppose I do.  But it's the tiredness that comes with
doing--not drifting. . . .  It's we who have got to make the new Heaven
and the new Earth, Derek . . ."

Again Vane laughed.  "Still as idealistic as ever, I see.  Six months
after peace we shall be scrambling and fighting and snarling
again--after jobs and money and work."

Margaret Trent was silent, tracing a pattern in the sand with her
finger.  "The worry of scrambling after a job is not likely to hit you
very hard," she said at length.

"Which is perhaps as well," he returned lightly; "for I'm certainly too
weary to take the trouble.  I shall go away, if I'm alive to do it, to
the South Sea Islands and live on fruit.  The only proviso is that it
should be sufficiently ripe to drop into my mouth, and save me the
trouble of picking it."

The girl turned and looked at him suddenly.  "You've got it rather bad,
old boy, haven't you?"

"Got what?" he asked slowly.

"Mental jaundice," she answered.  "Your world askew."

"Do you wonder?" he returned grimly.  "Isn't the world askew?"

"And if it is, someone has got to put it back."

"That's what the little boy said when he pulled the chest of drawers
over on top of him and lay struggling under it.  But he couldn't do it
himself.  It's got beyond us, Margaret--and God seems to have
forgotten.  There is just a blind, malignant Fate running the show."

She looked at him gravely.  "You're wrong, Derek--utterly wrong.  The
game is still in our hands, and we've got to keep it there.  What are
you smiling at?"

"I was wondering," he answered, "whether the last time I was told I was
wrong, the sentence would have been concluded similarly.
Unfortunately, the speaker died in the middle, thereby proving his
contention."

"Oh! but you're little," she cried, striking her hands together.
"Don't you see that you've got to look beyond the individual--that
you've got to think Big?"

"We leave that to the newspaper men," he retorted cynically.  "Our
smiling heroes; our undaunted soldiers!  They are heroes, those
Tommies; they are undaunted, but it's because they've got to be.
They're up against it--and the Juggernaut of Fate knows he's got 'em.
And they know he's got 'em.  They just eat and drink and are merry for
to-morrow they. . . .  Ah! no; that's wrong.  We never die out here,
Margaret; only the other fellow does that.  And if we become the other
fellow, it's so deuced unexpected I don't suppose it matters much."

"But, we've got to go through with it, haven't we?" she said quietly.

"Of course we have," he answered with a laugh; "and the knowledge of
that fact cuts about as much ice with the men in the mud holes up there
as brave little Belgium or suffering little Serbia.  I tell you we're
all dazed, Margaret--just living in a dream.  Some of us take it worse
than others, that's all.  You want the constitution of an elephant
combined with the intelligence of a cow to fight these days."

"And yet," she said with a grave little smile, "under-lying it all,
there's the big ideal surely. . . .  If I didn't think that, if I
didn't know that, I . . . I couldn't go on."

"To which particular ideal do you allude?" he asked cynically.  "The
League of Nations; or the triumph of Democracy, or the War to end War.
They all sound so topping, don't they? received with howls of applause
by the men who haven't had their boots off for a week."  He thumped the
sand savagely.  "Cut the cackle, my dear girl; cut the cackle.  This
little performance was started by a few of the puppets who thought they
had a winning hand, and the other puppets called a show down.  And then
the game passed out of their hands.  They write books about it, and
discover new Gods, and pass new Acts of Parliament--but the thing takes
no notice.  It just goes on--inexorably.  Man has been dabbling with
stakes that are too big for him, Margaret.  And the trouble is that the
cards up in the trenches are getting mighty tattered."

She looked at him curiously.  "I'd never have thought it would have
taken you like that, Derek . . .  Not quite as badly."

"You formed your opinion in the bad old days, didn't you?" he said
lightly.  "When we danced and made love at the Grafton Galleries."  She
flushed a little, but did not lower her eyes.  "Such a serious girl you
were too, Margaret; I wonder how you ever put up with a brainless sort
of ass like me."

"Because I liked you," she answered quietly, and suddenly it struck
Vane, almost with a feeling of surprise, that the girl sitting beside
him was more than attractive.  He wondered why he had let her slip so
easily out of his life.  And the train of thought once started seemed a
not unpleasant one. . . .  "You'll get it back soon, Derek--your sense
of proportion.  You've got to."

"So that I can help build the new Heaven and the new Earth," he laughed.

"So that you may help build the new Heaven and the new Earth," she
repeated gravely rising to her feet.  "I must go back or I'll miss my
tea."

"Have a cup with me in the village."  Vane scrambled up and fell into
step beside her.  They passed Monsieur still snoring, and Madame
nodding peacefully over her knitting, and crossed the deserted
promenade.  Then in silence they walked up into the main street of the
little town in search of a tea shop.

"Do you realise, Margaret," he remarked as they sat down at a small
marble-topped table, "that I haven't seen or spoken to a woman for six
months? . . .  Heaven help us!  Aren't there any cakes?"

"Of course not," laughed Margaret, "nor milk, nor sugar.  There's a war
on up the road.  You want about ten drops of that liquid saccharine."
In the sunny street outside, soldiers in various stages of
convalescence, strolled aimlessly about.  An occasional motor car,
containing officers--on duty, of course--slowed down at the corner
opposite and disgorged its load.  A closer inspection of one of them
might have revealed a few suspicious looking gashes in the upholstery
and holes in the mud-guards.  Of course--shrapnel--but, then shrapnel
did not occur by the sea.  And on what duty could officers from the
shrapnel area be engaged on at Paris Plage? . . .  However, let us be
discreet in all things.

In a few hours that shrapnel scarred car would be carrying its freight
back to Boulogne, where a table at the restaurant Mony had already been
secured for dinner.  Then back through the night, to call at various
dilapidated farms and holes in the ground, in the area where shrapnel
and crumps are not unknown. . . .  But just for a few brief hours the
occupants of the car were going to soak themselves in the Waters of
Forgetfulness; they were going to live--even as the tripper from the
slums lives his little span at Margate.  And they were no whit less
excited at the thought . . .

They did not show it by an excessive consumption of indigestible fruit,
or by bursting into unmelodious song.  True, the greatest of all the
"Q" men, who had come officially from a Nissen hut near Poperinghe to
study the question of salvaged materials at the base, had waved a
friendly hand at all the ladies--beautiful and otherwise--whom they
met.  But then save for salvage he was much as other men.  And with
that exception they just lay back in the car and thought; while the
trees that were green rushed past them, and war was not.

Thus had they come to the sea.  To-morrow once more the flat, dusty
country with the heat haze shimmering over it and every now and then
the dull drone of some bursting crump, or the vicious crack of high
explosive.  Behind, the same old row of balloons; in front, the same
old holes in the ground. . . .  But to-day--peace. . . .

Vane thoughtfully stirred the pale straw-coloured concoction reputed to
be tea on the table in front of him.  The remark Margaret had made to
him on the beach was running through his mind--"The new Heaven and the
new Earth."  Yes, but on what foundations?  And would they be allowed
to anyway?  Reconstruction is work for the politician--not for the
soldier. . . .  Most certainly not. . . .  The soldier's ignorance on
every subject in the world except fighting is complete.  And even over
that he's not all he might be: he requires quite a lot of help from
lawyers, doctors, and successful grocers. . . .  In fact, the only
thing he is allowed to do quite on his own is to die . . .

Vane smiled a little bitterly, and Margaret leaned across the table
towards him.  "You'll get it back soon, Derek--believe me, old boy."

"That's very possible.  But will the people at home?  I'm jangled,
Margaret, I know it--just for the time. . . .  However, don't let's
talk about me.  Tell me about yourself. . . ."

The girl shrugged her shoulders slightly.  "I don't know that there's
much to tell.  I've never been so happy in my life as I am at
present . . ."

"In spite of all that?"  He pointed out of the window to two soldiers
limping painfully by on sticks.

"Yes--in spite of all that.  One gets accustomed to that--and one's
doing something.  After all, Derek, you get accustomed to death and
mutilation up there in front.  It doesn't affect you. . . ."

"No, not to the same extent as it did.  In a way, I suppose not at all.
But you--you were so different."  He thoughtfully drained his tea cup,
and set it down again, and for a space neither of them spoke.

"I can't help laughing at the comparison," said Margaret suddenly.
"Five years ago you and I were sitting in Rumpolmayer's, surrounded by
sugar cakes, being smart."

"They're doing that now in London except for the sugar cakes."

"We shouldn't have been silent for a moment, and we should have enjoyed
ourselves thoroughly . . .  I wonder--"

"It was our only standard, wasn't it?"

"And now we can sit over a cup of weak and nasty tea--without milk and
not talk for effect. . . .  What's going to happen, Derek, to you and
me afterwards?  We can never go back to it?"

"No--you can't put back the clock--and we've grown, Margaret, years and
years older.  So have thousands of others--the boys up yonder, their
people at home.  But what about the business train to Brighton, and the
occupants thereof? . . .  Have they felt this war, except to make a bit
more boodle out of it?"

"They're only a small minority."

"Are they?  They're a damned powerful one."  He laughed a little
bitterly.  "And they're artificial--just like we were before the war."

"That's why it's we who have got to do the rebuilding.  Even if it's
only the rebuilding the house in our own little tiny circle, with
simplicity and reality as the keystones. . . .  You see, if you get
enough tiny circles sound and good, in time the others may
follow. . . ."

"Dear lady, you've become very optimistic."  Vane's eyes smiled at her.
"Let's hope you're right."  He paused and looked at her quietly.
"Margaret.  I've never asked you before--but you're different now--so
different.  Incidentally so am I.  What was it, that made you alter so
suddenly?"

Margaret rose to her feet, and shook her head.  "I'll tell you some
day, Derek, perhaps.  Not just now.  I must be getting back to the
hospital."

"Will you come out and have tea with me to-morrow?"  For a few moments
she looked at him as if undecided, and then suddenly she seemed to make
up her mind.

"All right," she said with a smile.  "I'll come, I want to deal with
this jaundice of yours.  One must live up to a professional reputation."




CHAPTER II

A hospital is much the same anywhere, and number 13 General at Etaples
was no exception.  On each side of the big marquee ran a row of beds in
perfect dressing.  The sheets were turned down on the design so ably
portrayed in the War Office Sealed Pattern X.B.451.--"Method of turning
down sheets on Beds Hospital."  On "Beds Barrack" the method is
slightly different and is just as ably shown on Sealed pattern X.B.452.
During moments of intense depression one is apt to fear the war-winning
properties of X.B.451 and 452 have not been sufficiently appreciated by
an unintelligent public.

The period of strain incurred on entrance was over as far as Vane was
concerned.  For the sixth time since leaving his battalion he had, in a
confidential aside, informed a minion of the B.A.M.O. that he was a Wee
Free Presbyterian Congregationalist; and for the sixth time the worthy
recipient of this news had retired to consult War Office Sealed List of
Religions A.F.31 to find out if he was entitled to be anything of the
sort.  In each case the answer had been in the negative, and Vane had
been entered as "Other Denominations" and regarded with suspicion.  One
stout sergeant had even gone so far as to attempt to convert him to
Unitarianism; another showed him the list, and asked him to take his
choice.

In the bed next to him was a young Gunner subaltern, with most of his
right leg shot away, and they talked spasmodically, in the intervals of
trying to read month old magazines.

"Wonderful sight," remarked the Gunner, interrupted for a moment in his
story by the eternal thermometer.  "Firing at 'em over open sights:
shrapnel set at 0.  Seemed to cut lanes through 'em; though, God be
praised, they came on for a bit, and didn't spoil our shooting."

Vane, sucking a thermometer under his tongue, nodded sympathetically.

"A bit better than sitting in a bally O.P. watchin' other fellows poop
at the mud."

"How did you get yours?" he queried, as the Sister passed on.

"Crump almost at my feet, just as I was going into my dug-out. . . .
Mouldy luck, and one splinter smashed the last bottle of whisky."  The
gunner relapsed into moody silence at the remembrance of the tragedy.

Two beds further along the Padre was playing a game of chess with a
Major in the Devons; and on the opposite side of the tent another
chaplain, grey haired and clean shaven, was talking and laughing with a
boy, whose face and head were swathed in bandages.

The R.C. and the C. of E. exponents hunting in couples as these two
always did. . . .  They are not the only two who before the war would
have relegated the other to the nethermost depths of the deepest Hell;
but whose eyes have been opened to wisdom now.

Vane was no theologian--no more than are the thousands of others across
the water.  Before the war he had been in the habit of dismissing any
religious question by the comforting assertion that if all one's pals
are in Hell, one might as well join them.  But in the Game of Death the
thoughts of many men have probed things they passed over lightly
before.  It is not doctrine they want; faith and belief in beautiful
formulas have become less and less satisfying.  They are beginning to
think for themselves, which is anathema to the Church.  Of old she
prevented such a calamity by a policy of terrorising her followers; of
later years she has adopted the simpler one of boring them.  And yet it
is only simplicity they want; the simple creeds of helping on the other
fellow and playing the game is what they understand.  But they will
have to be reminded of it from time to time.  One wonders whether the
Church will be big enough to seize the opportunity that stares her in
the face.

Vane nodded to the grey-haired Roman Catholic as he paused at the foot
of his bed.

"Shoulder painful?"  The priest held out a lighted match for Vane's
cigarette.

"Throbs a bit, Padre; but it might be worse."  He smiled and lay back
on his pillows.  "An arm makes one feel so helpless."

"I think I'd sooner lose an arm than a leg," remarked the Gunner from
the next bed.  For a while they pursued this debatable point, much as
men discuss politics, and incidentally with far less heat. . . .  It
was a question of interest, and the fact that the Gunner _had_ lost his
leg made no difference to the matter at all.  An onlooker would have
listened in vain for any note of complaint. . . .

"Time you were getting to sleep--both of you."  Margaret's voice
interrupted the conversation, and Vane looked up with a smile.  She was
shaking an admonitory finger at Father O'Rourke, and with a sudden
quickening of the pulse he realised how perfectly charming she looked.

"Sister, dear," said the Gunner, "you're on my side, aren't you?  It's
better to lose an arm than a leg, isn't it?"

For a moment she affected to consider the point.  Then suddenly she
smiled, and came between their beds.  "Unless you both of you go to
sleep at once I'll come and wash you again."

With a groan of horror the Gunner hid himself under the bed-clothes,
and Margaret, still smiling, turned to Vane.

"Good night, Derek," she said very low.  "Sometimes I just want to sit
down and howl. . . ."  And Vane, looking up into her face, saw that her
eyes were a little misty. . . .

Gradually the ward settled down into silence.  Right at the other end a
man was groaning feebly; while just opposite, looking ghastly in the
dim light, a boy was staring round the tent with eyes that did not see.
For hours on end he lay unconscious, breathing the rattling breath of
the badly gassed; then suddenly he would lift his head, and his eyes,
fixed and staring, would slowly turn from bed to bed.  He looked as a
man looks who is walking in his sleep, and Vane knew he was very near
the Great Divide.  He had been hit in the chest by a piece of shell,
and a bit of his coat impregnated with mustard gas had been driven into
his lungs. . . .  Every now and then Margaret passed noiselessly down
the centre between the two rows of beds.  Once she lent over Vane and
he closed his eyes pretending to be asleep.  But every time as she came
to the boy opposite she stopped and looked at him anxiously.  Once she
was joined by a doctor, and Vane heard their muttered conversation . . .

"I can't get him to take his medicine, Doctor.  He doesn't seem able to
do anything."

"It doesn't much matter, Nurse," he whispered--why is it that the
sick-room whisper seems to travel as far as the voice of the
Sergeant-Major on parade?  "He won't get through to-night, and I'm
afraid we can't do anything."

The doctor turned away, and Margaret went to the end of the tent and
sat down at her table.  A reading lamp threw a light on her face, and
for a while Vane watched her.  Then his eyes came back to the boy
opposite, and rested on him curiously.  He was unconscious once again,
and it suddenly struck Vane as strange that whereas, up in front, he
had seen death and mutilation in every possible and impossible
form--that though he had seen men hit by a shell direct, and one man
crushed by a Tank--yet he had never been impressed with the same sense
of the utter futility of war as now, in face of this boy dying in the
bed opposite.  To have come so far and then to pay the big price; it
was so hard--so very pitiful; and Vane turned over to shut out the
sight.  He felt suddenly frightened of the thing that was coming nearer
and nearer to the dying boy; furious at the inability of the science
which had struck him down to save him. . . .

Vane closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but sleep was far away that
night.  Whenever he opened them he saw Margaret writing at her table;
and once there came to him an irresistible temptation to speak to her.
He felt that he wanted her near him, if only for a moment; he wanted to
lean on her--he wanted to be taken in her arms like a little child.
Angrily he closed his eyes again.  It was ridiculous, absurd,
weak. . . .  But there have been times in this war when the strongest
man has sobbed like a child in his weakness. . . .

"Sister!"  Vane hardly recognised it as his own voice calling.
"Sister!"  Margaret came towards him down the ward.  "Could you get me
something to drink?"

In a moment she had returned with some lemonade.  "I thought you were
asleep, Derek," she whispered.  "Are you feeling feverish?"

She put a cool hand on his forehead, and with a sigh of relief Vane lay
back.  "I'm frightened, Margaret," he said so low that she scarce could
hear him.  "Just scared to death . . . of that boy opposite.  Ain't I a
damned fool?"

Her only answer was the faintest perceptible pressure on his forehead.
Then his hand came up and took hers, and she felt the touch of his lips
on it.  For a moment she let it rest there, and then gently withdrew
it, while with a tired sigh Vane closed his eyes. . . .

He slept maybe for two hours, and then he found himself wide awake
again--every nerve intent, like a man aroused by a sudden noise.
Margaret was reading at her table; the man at the other end still
groaned feebly in his sleep; the boy was staring dazedly at nothing in
particular--but there was something else.  He knew it.

Suddenly Margaret put down her book, and half rose from her chair, as
if listening; and at the same moment the Gunner woke up.  Then they all
heard it together--that high pitched, ominous drone which rises and
falls in a manner there is no mistaking.

"Boche," said the Gunner, "Boche, for a tanner.  And lots of them."

"Damn the swine," muttered Vane.  "Can't they even leave a hospital
alone?"  The next minute any lingering hope was destroyed.  Both men
heard it--the well-known whistling whooce of the bomb--the vicious
crack as it burst; both men felt the ground trembling through their
beds.  That was the overture . . . the play was about to commence. . . .

All around them bombs rained down till the individual bursts merged
into one continuous roar.  The earth shook and palpitated, and, to make
matters worse, the lights suddenly went out.  The last thing Vane saw
was Margaret as she made her way, calmly and without faltering, to the
boy's bed.  He had a picture, printed indelibly on his brain, of a girl
with a sweet set face, of a gaping boy, stirred into some semblance of
remembrance by the familiar noise around him.  And then, in the
darkness, he made his way towards her.

There was a deafening crash close to him, and a fragment tore through
the side of the tent.  He could see the blinding flash, and
involuntarily he ducked his head.  Then, running and stumbling, he
reached her.  He felt her standing rigid in the darkness, and even at
such a moment he felt a sudden rush of joy as her hands come out to
meet him.

"Lie down," he shouted, "lie down at once. . . ."

"The boy," she cried.  "Help me with him, Derek."

Together they picked him up, fumbling in the darkness, and laid him on
the ground beside his bed.  Then Vane took her arm, and shouted in her
ear, "Lie down, I tell you, lie down . . . quite flat."  Obediently she
lay down, and he stretched himself beside her on the ground.  To the
crashing of the bombs were now added the shouts and curses of men
outside; and once Margaret made an effort to rise.

"The patients, Derek.  Let me go."

With his one sound arm he kept her down by force.  "You can do
nothing," he said roughly.  He felt her trembling against him, and a
wave of fury against the airmen above took hold of him.  He was no
novice to bombing; there had been weeks on end when the battalion had
been bombed nightly.  But then it had been part of the show--what they
expected; here it was so different.

A sense of utter impotence filled his mind, coupled with a raging
passion at the danger to the girl beside him.  And suddenly his lips
sought hers.

"It's all right, my dear," he kept on saying, "quite all right.  It'll
be over soon."  And so almost unconscious of what they said or did,
they lay and listened to the tornado of Death around them. . . .

It is on record that one man once said that he thought it was rather
amusing to be in a raid.  That man was a liar.  He was also a
fool. . . .  To be bombed is poisonous, rather more poisonous than to
be shelled.  If there are no dug-outs there is only one thing to be
done, and that is what Vane was doing.

To lie flat on the ground minimises the danger except from a direct
hit; and a direct hit is remarkably sudden.  And so--since every
occupant of Number 13 was well aware of this fact, approximately five
seconds elapsed after the light went out before all the patients who
could move, and most of those who couldn't, were lying on the floor
beside their beds.

Gradually the explosions became fewer and fewer; though the earth still
shook and throbbed like a living thing, and at last it seemed to Vane
that the raid was over.  He was lifting himself on his elbow
preparatory to going outside and exploring, when an ominous whistling
noise seemed to pierce his very brain.  He had just time to throw
himself on to the girl beside him so that he partially covered her,
when the last bomb came.  He heard the top of the marquee rip: there
was a deafening roar in his ears: a scorching flame enveloped him.  He
lay stiff and rigid, and the thought flashed through him that this was
the end.  The next moment he knew he was safe, and that it was merely
another close shave such as he had not been unaccustomed to in the
past.  The bomb had burst in the tent, but the Fate which ordained
things had decided it should miss him.  It had done so before, and Vane
laughed to himself . . .

"Close, my lady, very close," he whispered--"but not quite close
enough."  With a quick, savage movement he turned Margaret's face
towards him, and kissed her on the lips.  For a while she clung to him,
and then he felt her relax in his arms.  She had fainted, and as he
realised this, he felt something pressing down on him.  With his sound
arm he fumbled above his head, and found it was the canvas of the tent.

Tugging and scrambling, he half dragged, half carried Margaret through
the entrance which still remained intact, and laid her down on the
grass outside.  Men and nurses were moving about in the darkness,
stumbling over guy ropes and tent pegs.  For the moment every one was
too intent on his own affairs to bother over a mere faint, and Vane
left her lying against the side of the tent.  Then he cautiously felt
his way round to investigate the damage.  A great crater midway between
Number 13 and the next tent showed where the first close one had
fallen, but he had no wish to explore that any further.  He stumbled
round the edge and went on.  Then in the faint light given by the moon,
he saw what had happened when the last bomb had burst.  It was nothing
worse than many similar sights he had seen, but Vane as he looked at
the wreckage cursed bitterly and fluently.  And then of a sudden he
stopped cursing, and drew a deep breath. . . .  Staring up at him in
the cold white light was what was left of the Gunner subaltern.  The
bomb had burst at the foot of his bed . . .  A cheery soul . . .  A
bitter end . . .

Opposite, the bed blown in half, the boy who would not have lasted
through the night sprawled uncouthly on to the floor.  God knows! a
merciful release. . . .  A few hours sooner--that's all. . . .  And to
both--Kismet.

All around lay fragments and debris.  For a few seconds he stood there
motionless, while every now and then the canvas heaved where it lay on
the ground, and someone crawled out into the open.  Then he felt a
touch on his arm, and, turning, he saw Margaret.  Dry-eyed, she watched
with him, while the wounded dragged themselves painfully past the still
smoking crater, and the acrid smell of high explosive tainted the air.

In the far distance the drone of aeroplanes was getting fainter and
fainter.  Success had crowned the raider's daring exploit; they were
entitled to their well-earned rest.  And so for a space did Vane and
Margaret stand. . . .  It was only when very gently he slipped his arm
round her waist that a hard dry sob shook her.

"Oh! the devils," she whispered--"the vile devils."




CHAPTER III

The following afternoon Vane turned his steps once again towards the
beach at Paris Plage.  The wreckage in the hospital had been cleared
away, and there were rows laid side by side in the mortuary.  Over
everyone there breathed a sense of restless excitement and fierce
anger, and Vane wanted to get away by himself.  He felt that he had to
think.

For suddenly and quite unexpectedly Margaret Trent had become a factor
in his life.  After long years their paths had touched again, and Vane
found that he could not turn away with the same careless indifference
as he had in the past.  Though she had always attracted him, he had
never seriously contemplated the final step; he had had far too good a
time as a bachelor.  And then when she had so unaccountably cooled
towards him, he had shrugged his shoulders and sought distraction
elsewhere.

Before the war Derek Vane had been what is generally described as a
typical Englishman.  That is to say, he regarded his own
country--whenever he thought about it at all--as being the supreme
country in the world.  He didn't force his opinion down anyone's
throat; it simply was so.  If the other fellow didn't agree, the
funeral was his, not Vane's.  He had to the full what the uninitiated
regard as conceit; on matters connected with literature, or art, or
music his knowledge was microscopic.  Moreover, he regarded with
suspicion anyone who talked intelligently on such subjects.  On the
other hand, he had been in the eleven at Eton, and was a scratch
golfer.  He had a fine seat on a horse and rode straight; he could play
a passable game of polo, and was a good shot.  Possessing as he did
sufficient money to prevent the necessity of working, he had not taken
the something he was supposed to be doing in the City very seriously.
He had put in a periodical appearance at a desk and drawn pictures on
the blotting paper; for the remainder of the time he had amused
himself.  He belonged, in fact, to the Breed; the Breed that has always
existed in England, and will always exist till the world's end.  You
may meet its members in London and in Fiji; in the lands that lie
beyond the mountains and at Henley; in the swamps where the stagnant
vegetation rots and stinks; in the great deserts where the night air
strikes cold.  They are always the same, and they are branded with the
stamp of the breed.  They shake your hand as a man shakes it; they meet
your eye as a man meets it.  Just now a generation of them lie around
Ypres and La Bassée; Neuve Chapelle and Bapaume.  The graves are
overgrown and the crosses are marked with indelible pencil.  Dead--yes;
but not the Breed.  The Breed never dies. . . .

We have it on reliable evidence that the breed has its faults; its
education is rotten.  Men of great learning and understanding have
fulminated on the subject; women with their vast experience have looked
upon the Breed with great clarity of vision and have written as their
eyes have seen; even boys themselves who doubtless must be right, as
the question concerns them most, have contributed to current literature
one or two damning indictments.

It may well be that hunting butterflies or dissecting rats are more
suitable pursuits for young Percival Johnson than doing scram practice
up against the playground wall.  It may well be that it would be a far,
far better thing for mob adoration to be laid at the feet of the
composer of the winning Greek Iambic rather than at the cricketing
boots of the Captain of the Eleven.  It may be so, but, then, most
assuredly it may not. . . .

The system which has turned out hundreds of the Breed, and whose object
is to mould all who pass through it on the model of the Breed, is not
one to be dismissed lightly.  Doubtless it has its faults; a little
more latitude both in games and work might be allowed; originality
encouraged more.  But let us be very certain before we gaily pull the
system to pieces that the one we erect in its place will stand the
strain, and produce the one great result beside which everything else
is as nothing.  For if, at the price of team work and playing for the
side, we can only buy two or three more years of individualism--at an
age when the value of individualism is, at best, a doubtful blessing
and, at worst, sheer blatant selfishness--we shall indeed have messed
things up.  The cranks will be delighted; but the Empire will gnash its
teeth.


And now after nearly four years in the fiercest forcing house of
character Derek Vane found himself trying to take an inventory of his
own stock.  And since the material question of money did not come in to
cloud the horizon, he felt he could do it impartially.  There are many
now who, having sacrificed every prospect, find their outlook haunted
by the spectre of want; there are many more, formerly engaged in
skilled trades such as engineering or mining, who find that they have
four years of leeway to make up in their profession--four years of
increased knowledge and mechanical improvements--unknown to them, but
not to their competitors, who remained behind.  But such prospects did
not trouble him.  The future, as far as money was concerned, was
assured.

Vane thoughtfully lit a cigarette.  It seemed to him that he had wasted
four of the best years of his life, sitting, save for brief intervals,
on the same filthy piece of ground, with the sole object of killing
complete strangers before they killed him.  In this laudable pastime he
had succeeded to the extent of two for certain and one doubtful.  The
only man whom he had really wanted to slaughter--a certain brother
subaltern who offended him daily--he had been forced to spare owing to
foolish regulations. . . .  And now this youth was at home as a
Temporary Lieutenant-Colonel in sole control of an ante-chamber in one
of the large hotels, with a staff of four flappers, who presented
papers for his signature every other Tuesday from 2.30 to 4.

With a short laugh he got up and shook himself.  In the distance some
sand dunes beckoned invitingly--sand dunes which reminded him of the
width of Westward Ho! and a certain championship meeting there long
ago.  Slowly he strolled towards them, going down nearer the sea where
the sand was finer.  And all the time he argued it out with himself.
Four years wasted!  But had they been wasted?  What had he got out of
them anyway?  Wasn't he twice the man that he had been four years ago?
Or had it all been futile and useless? . . .

No man who has been through the rapids can find his feet in an hour's
self-analysis.  It takes time; and during that time much may happen,
good or ill, according to the manner of the finder.  The great unrest
of the world is not felt by the men in the trenches.  It seethes and
boils outside, and only when a man comes back to so-called peace does
he reach the whirlpool, which lies at the end of the rapids.  Then, if
he be of the type of Vane, is the time of danger.  To lose one's sense
of proportion in France is dangerous; to lose it in England may be
fatal.  One has so much more freedom.

At intervals during the War Vane had sampled the whirlpool, while on
leave, and the effect it had produced in him had been transitory.  The
contrast was so immense that it had failed to move him permanently.
The time that he had been in its clutches was too short.  He retained
just a fleeting picture of feverish gaiety which seemed out of
perspective; of profound bores who discussed the mistakes of the Higher
Command in the arm chairs of the Club; of universal chatter concerning
rations and meat coupons.  Then he had left, and in a few short hours
had been back once more in the mud holes.  A good leave?  Oh!
undoubtedly, just as it should have been, where the one thing necessary
was contrast.  But even then it had irritated him at times to realise
how completely they failed to understand.  He would not have had them
understand--true.  If the alternative had been put to him; if he had
been told that it was in his power to make these people see the things
that he had seen, and hear the things that he had heard, he would not
have done so.  They were better as they were--affording the contrast;
enabling men to forget.

But leave is one thing, permanence is another.  And at the moment Vane
was faced with the latter.  The doctor had talked airily of three or
four months, and after that in all probability a spell of light duty,
and to Vane that seemed like a permanency.  It is one thing to drug
oneself in the waters of Lethe for a fortnight of one's own free will:
it is altogether different to be drugged by others for good.  And dimly
he felt that either he or they would have to go under.  Two totally
incompatible people cannot sit next one another at dinner for long
without letting some course get cold.  Unless one of them happens to be
dumb. . . .

But were they totally incompatible?  That seemed to be the crux of the
whole matter.  To the soldiers, pulling together, unselfishness,
grinning when the sky is black, that is the new philosophy.  One
hesitates to call it new.  It existed once, we are given to
understand--or at any rate it was preached and practised in days gone
by.  Since then it has become unfashionable. . . .

And what about _les autres_--who have kept the home fires burning?  For
a moment Vane stopped and stared in front of him; then he laughed
aloud.  As has been said, he was jangled--so perhaps he may be forgiven.


It was on the other side of the dunes that he suddenly found Margaret.
She had her back towards him as he came over the top, and in the sand
his footsteps made no noise.  And so she continued her pursuit of
throwing stones at a bottle a few yards away, in ignorance of the fact
that she had an audience.  It is a lazy occupation at the best of times
and her rendering of it was no exception to the rule.  For whole
minutes on end she would sit quite still gazing out to sea; and then,
as if suddenly realising her slackness, she would continue the
bombardment furiously.

For a while Vane watched her thoughtfully.  Was she the answer?  To go
right away with her somewhere--right away from the crowd and the strife
of existence: to be with her always, watching her grow from the wife to
the mother, seeing her with his children, feeling that she was his and
no one else's.  God! but to think of the peace of it. . . .

He watched the soft tendrils of hair curling under the brim of her hat;
the play of her body as she picked up the stones and threw them.
Around him the coarse grass bent slightly in the breeze and the murmur
of the sea came faintly over the dunes.  Away in front of him stretched
the sand, golden in the warm sun, the surface broken every now and then
by the dark brown wooden groins.  Not a soul was in sight, and save for
some gulls circling round they two seemed the only living things. . . .
With a sudden smile he stooped down and picked up a stone--several, in
fact, and fired a volley.  There was a tinkling noise, and the bottle
fell.  Then he waited for her to look round.  For just a little while
there was silence, and then she turned towards him with a smile. . . .
And in that moment it seemed to him that he had found the answer he
sought.  Surely it was just a dream, and in a moment he would wake up
and see the dreadful face of the mess waiter appearing down the dug-out
steps.  It is impossible to stumble over sand dunes and find Margarets
in France.  These things simply do not happen.  One merely stumbles
over the cobbles and sees the woman who keeps the estaminet round the
corner washing the floor.  And her lips do not part in the dawn of a
smile--mercifully; her eyes are not big and blue.  It was all a dream!
last night was all a dream.  Just one of those pictures he had seen
sometimes in the candle light, when it guttered in the draught, as the
big crump burst outside. . . .

"Derek, that wasn't fair."  With an effort he pulled himself together
and regarded her gravely.  Then he scrambled down the sandy bank to her
side.

"Do you mind pinching me?" he remarked, holding out his hand.
"Hard--very hard. . . .  I want to make certain I'm not dreaming."

"Why should you be?"  Her voice was faintly tremulous.  "And why have
you got your eyes shut?"

"Pinch me, please, at once."  Vane's hand was still held out, and she
gave it a gentle nip.  "Go on, harder . . .  Ah! that's better.  Now
promise me you won't disappear if I open my eyes."

"I promise," she answered solemnly, but struggling to withdraw her hand
from both of his, where he had caught it. . . .

"Oh! my dear, my dear," he whispered.  "It's just too wonderful to be
true.  The peace of it, and the glory, and you. . . .  I'll be waking
up in a minute, my lady, and find myself crawling round the outpost
line."

He laughed gently and triumphantly, and drew her towards him.  Only
when his arm was round her, did he pause. . . .  And then it was the
look in her eyes, as much as her two hands pressed against his chest,
that stopped him.  "What is it, Margaret, my lady?  Aren't you going to
kiss me?"

"No, Derek--not yet.  Perhaps once before we go. . . .  Please, take
your arm away."

For a moment he hesitated.  "Even after last night."

She nodded.  "Principally because of last night."

With a little lift of his eyebrows Vane did as he was bid.  "I knew
there was a catch somewhere," he murmured plaintively.  "You don't want
me to go away and leave you, do you?"

She shook her head and smiled.  Then she patted the ground beside her.
"Come and sit down; I want to talk to you.  No--not too near."

"Don't you trust me?" he demanded half sullenly, as he took a seat
somewhat further removed from temptation.

"My dear Derek, it would take more than a mere European war to make
some leopards I know of change their spots."

In spite of himself Vane laughed.  "Well, dash it, Margaret, there was
a distinct flavour of the pre-war about you last night."

She closed her eyes, and her hands clenched.  "Oh! don't, Derek; don't,
please.  As long as I live I shall never forget it.  It was too
horrible."  She turned away from him shuddering.

"Dear--I'm sorry."  He leaned forward and took her hand.  "I didn't
realise quite what it must mean to you.  You see it was that poor boy
who was dying in the bed opposite mine that made me jumpy . . .
frightened . . .  God knows what!  The smash up of the raid itself left
me almost cold by comparison. . . .  I suppose it was the other way
round with you. . . .  It's just a question of what one is used
to--anyway, don't let's talk about it."

For a while they sat in silence, and then Vane spoke again.  "You know
I'm crossing to-morrow, I suppose?"

"Yes."  Margaret nodded.  "I didn't think you'd stop long."

"Are you sorry I'm going?"

"Of course I am," she answered simply.  "You know that. . . .  But I
think perhaps it's just as well."

"Just as well!" repeated Vane.  "Why?"

"Because . . . oh! because of a lot of things.  You'd interfere with my
work for one."

"How dreadful," said Vane with mock gravity.  "You'd mix the medicines
and all that, I suppose." Then he turned to her impulsively.
"Margaret, my dear, what does it matter?  This work of yours won't go
on for ever.  And after the War, what then?"

"That's just it," she said slowly.  "What then?"

"Well, as a preliminary suggestion--why not marry me?"

She laughed--a low, rippling laugh.

"Do you remember what you said to me in the tea shop yesterday about
not having seen a girl for six months?"

"What on earth has that got to do with it?" said Vane frowning.  "I'm
not a child or a callow boy.  Do you suppose at my age I don't know my
own mind?  Why, my dear girl. . . ."  Her eyes met his, and the words
died away on his lips.

"Don't, dear, don't.  You're insulting both our intelligences."  With a
slight laugh she leaned over and rested her hand on his.  "You know
perfectly well what I mean."

Vane grunted non-committally.  He undoubtedly did know what she meant,
but at that moment it was annoying to find she knew it too. . . .

"Listen, Derek; I want to put things before you as I see them."  With
her elbows on her knee, and her chin cupped in the palms of her hand,
she was staring across the stretch of tumbled, grass-grown hillocks.

"We know one another too well not to be perfectly frank.  How much of
last night was just--what shall I say--nervous tension?  Supposing some
other girl had been in my place?"

Impetuously he started to speak, but once again the words died away on
his lips as he saw the half-tender, half-humorous look in her eyes.

"Dear," she went on after a moment.  "I don't want to hurt you.  I know
you think you're in love with me to-day; but will you to-morrow?  You
see, Derek, this war has given a different value to things. . . .
Whether one likes it or not, it's made one more serious.  It hasn't
destroyed our capacity for pleasure, but it's altered the things we
take pleasure in.  My idea of a good time, after it's over, will never
be the same as it was before."

Vane nodded his head thoughtfully.  "I'm not certain, dear, that that's
anything to worry about."

"Of course it isn't--I know that.  But don't you see, Derek, where that
leads us to?  One can't afford to fool with things once they have
become serious. . . .  And to kiss a man, as I kissed you last night,
seems to mean very much more to me than it did once upon a time.
That's why I want to make sure. . . ."  She hesitated, and then,
seeming to make up her mind, she turned and faced him.  "I would find
it easier now to live with a man I really loved--if that were the only
way--than to be kissed by two or three at a dance whom I didn't care
about.  Do you understand?"

"My dear, I understand perfectly," answered Vane.  "The one is big--the
other is petty.  And when we live through an age of big things we grow
ourselves."

"I gave you that as a sort of example of what I feel, Derek," Margaret
continued after a time.  "I don't suppose there is anything novel in
it, but I want you so frightfully to understand what I am going to say.
You have asked me to marry you--to take the biggest step which any
woman can take.  I tell you quite frankly that I want to say 'Yes.'  I
think all along that I've loved you, though I've flirted with other
men. . . .  I was a fool five years ago. . . ."

He looked at her quickly.  "Tell me; I want to know."

"I found out about that girl you were keeping."

Vane started slightly.  "Good Lord!  But how?"

"Does it matter, old man?"  Margaret turned to him with a smile.  "A
chance remark by Billy Travers, if you want to know.  And then I asked
a few questions, and put two and two together.  It seemed a deliberate
slight to me.  It seemed so sordid.  You see I didn't understand--then."

"And now?  Do you understand now?"  He leaned towards her eagerly.

"Should I have said to you what I have if I didn't?"  She held out her
hand to him, and with a quick movement he put it to his lips.  "I've
grown, you see . . . got a little nearer the true value of things.
I've passed out of the promiscuous kissing stage, as I told you. . . .
And I think I realise rather more than I did what men are. . . .  One
doesn't make them up out of books now.  All this has taught one to
understand a man's temptations--to forgive him when he fails."  Then a
little irrelevantly--"They seem so petty, don't they--now?"

Vane gently dropped the hand he was holding, and his face as he looked
at her was inscrutable.  Into his mind there had flashed Lear's
question: "And goes thy _heart_ with this?"  Then irritably he banished
it. . . .  God bless her!  She was all heart: of course she was.

"Will you tell me where exactly you have arrived at?" he asked quietly.

"At the certainty that there lies in front of you and me work to be
done.  I don't know what that work will prove to be--but, Derek, we've
got to find out.  It may be that we shall do it together.  It may be
that my work is just to be with you.  And it may be that it isn't that
you won't want me.  Ah! yes, dear," as he made a quick, impatient
movement.  "There is always the possibility.  I want you to go and find
out, Derek, and I want you to make sure that you really want me--that
it isn't just six months in Flanders.  Also," she added after a pause,
"I want to be quite sure about myself."  For a while Vane stared out to
sea in silence.

"Supposing," he said slowly, "the work in front of me is back to
Flanders again, as it probably will be.  And supposing I'm not so lucky
next time.  What then?"

She turned and faced him.  "Why then, dear, Fate will have decided for
us, won't she?"

"A deuced unsatisfactory decision," grumbled Vane.  "Margaret, I don't
want to worry you; I don't want to force myself on you . . . but won't
you give me some sort of a promise?"

She shook her head.  "I'll give you no promise at all, Derek.  You've
got to find yourself, and I've got to find myself; and when we've both
done that we shall know how we stand to one another.  Until then . . .
well just give it a miss in baulk, old man."

Vane regarded her curiously.  "If last night and this afternoon had
happened before the war, I wonder what your decision would have been?"

"Does it matter?" she answered gently.  "Before the war is just a
different age."  For a while she was silent; then she drew a deep
breath.  "Don't you feel it as I feel it?" she whispered.  "The bigness
of it, the wonder of it.  Underneath all the horror, underlying all the
vileness--the splendour of it all.  The glory of human endurance. . . .
People wondered that I could stand it--I with my idealism.  But it
seems to me that out of the sordid brutality an ideal has been born
which is almost the greatest the world has ever known.  Oh!  Derek,
we've just got to try to keep it alive."

"It's the devil," said Vane whimsically.  "Jove! lady dear, isn't the
blue of the sky and the sea and the gold of the sand just crying out to
be the setting of a lovers' paradise?  Aren't we here alone just hidden
from the world, while the very gulls themselves are screaming: 'Kiss
her, kiss her?'  And then the fairy princess, instead of being the
fairy princess to the wounded warrior, orders him to go back and look
for work.  It's cruel.  I had hoped for tender love and pity, and
behold I have found a Labour Bureau."

Margaret laughed.  "You dear!  But you understand?"  She knelt beside
him on the sand, and her face was very tender.

"I understand," answered Vane gravely.  "But, oh! my lady, I hope
you're not building fairy castles on what's going to happen after the
war.  I'm afraid my faith in my brother man is a very, very small
flame."

"All the more reason why we should keep it alight," she cried fiercely.
"Derek, we can't let all this hideous mutilation and death go for
nothing afterwards."

"You dear optimist," Vane smiled at her eager, glowing face so close to
his own.  "Do you suppose that we and others like us will have any say
in the matter?"

She beat her hands together.  "Derek, I hate you when you talk like
that.  You've got it in you to do big things--I feel it.  You mustn't
drift like you did before the war.  You've got to fight, and others
like you have got to fight, for everything that makes life worth living
in our glorious, wonderful England."

"Would the staff be a little more explicit in their Operation Orders,
please?" murmured Vane.  "Whom do you propose I should engage in mortal
combat?"  He saw the slight frown on her face and leant forward
quickly.  "My dear, don't misunderstand me.  I don't want to be
flippant and cynical.  But I'm just a plain, ordinary man--and I'm
rather tired.  When this show is over I want peace and rest and
comfort.  And I rather feel that it's up to the damned fools who let us
in for it to clear up the mess themselves for a change."

"But you won't later, old boy," said the girl; "not after you've found
yourself again.  You'll have to be up and doing; it will stifle you to
sit still and do nothing."  She looked thoughtfully out to sea and
then, as he kept silent, she went on slowly, "I guess we all sat still
before this war; drifted along the line of least resistance.  We've got
to cut a new way, Derek, find a new path, which will make for the good
of the show.  And before we can find the path, we've got to find
ourselves."

She turned towards him and for a long minute they looked into one
another's eyes, while the gulls circled and screamed above them.  Then
slowly she bent forward and kissed him on the mouth. . . .  "Go and
find yourself, my dear," she whispered.  "Go and make good.  And when
you have, if you still want me, I'll come to you."

      *      *      *      *      *

At the touch of her lips Vane closed his eyes.  It seemed only a few
seconds before he opened them again, but Margaret was gone.  And then
for a while he sat, idly throwing stones at the overturned bottle.
Just once he laughed, a short, hard laugh with no humour in it, before
he turned to follow her.  But when he reached the top of the sand dune,
Margaret was almost out of sight in the distance.

Next day he crossed to England in the _Guildford Castle_.




CHAPTER IV

Derek Vane did not remain long in hospital.  As soon as the dressings
for his shoulder had become quite straightforward, the machine, in the
shape of two doctors from Millbank who formed the Board, took him in
its clutches once more and deposited him at a convalescent home.  Not
one of the dreary, routine-like places which have been in the past
associated with convalescence, but a large country house, kindly placed
at the disposal of the War Office by its owner.

"Rumfold Hall for you, Vane," said the senior of the two doctors.  "A
charming house; Lady Patterdale--a charming woman."

"Rumfold Hall!" echoed Vane.  "Good Heavens!  I know it well.  Danced
there often during the old _régime_."

"The old régime?"  The doctor looked puzzled.

"Yes.  It used to belong to the Earl of Forres.  He couldn't afford to
keep it up and his other places as well, so he sold it to Sir John
Patterdale. . . .  Made his money in hardware, did Sir John. . . .
Surely you know Patterdale's Patent Plate."

The Board opined that it did not, and departed to the next case.  It
even seemed to regard such flippancy with a certain amount of
suspicion; but then Medical Boards are things of some solemnity. . . .

And so in the course of two or three days Vane drove up to the historic
gates of Rumfold Hall in an ambulance.  The house, situated in the
heart of Surrey, was surrounded by extensive grounds.  The view from it
was magnificent, stretching away for miles and miles to the south, and
terminating in the purple downs: and Vane, as the car waited for the
gates to be opened, felt that indefinable thrill of pride that comes to
every man when he looks on some glorious stretch of his own country.
He noticed that the lodge-keeper had changed since he was there last,
and not, it struck him, for the better.  How well he remembered old
John, with his sweet old wife, and their perfectly kept patch of garden
and spotless little kitchen. . . .  He had had two sons, both in the
Grenadiers, magnificent, strapping fellows--and Vane wondered what had
become of them. . . .

Somehow he couldn't quite imagine old John not touching his hat as the
ambulance came in; whereas his successor merely gazed curiously at the
occupants, and then slouched back into the lodge. . . .  Of course
hat-touching is a relic of feudalism, and, as such, too hideous to
contemplate in this age of democracy; but still--like a smile--it costs
little and gives much pleasure.

From the condition of the grounds it did not seem that the present
owner had been very greatly troubled by the labour shortage.  The
flower beds were a riot of colour; the grass was short and beautifully
kept.  And as the ambulance rounded a corner of the drive and the house
opened up in front Vane saw that tennis was in full swing on the lawns.

"Say--what sort of a guy is this fellow?" asked a New Zealander
opposite him suddenly.  "It seems to me to be some house."

Vane looked at him thoughtfully for a moment before replying, and the
car was already slowing down before he finally spoke.  "He's a
substitute for the old order of things.  And according to the labels of
all substitutes, they are the last word in modern efficiency."

The car pulled up at that moment, and they stepped out to find Lady
Patterdale standing on the steps to welcome them.

Let it be said at once that Lady Patterdale was a perfect dear.  One
lost sight of her incredible vulgarity in view of the charming
kindliness of her heart.  And, after all, vulgarity is only
comparative.  In the sanctity of the little shop in Birmingham where
Sir John had first laid the foundations of his fortune, aspirates could
drop unheeded.  What mattered then, as always, was whether the heart
was in the right place.  With Lady Patterdale it was. . . .

And because _au fond_, she was such a dear, it made it all the more
pathetic to see her in such surroundings.  One felt, and one felt that
in the bottom of her heart she felt, that she would have been far more
happy in the kitchen.  Except that in the kitchen her lost aspirates
would probably have been handed back to her on a salver, whereas in the
drawing-room they were ground into the carpet. . . .  The spread of
education has made the kitchen a very dangerous place.

In appearance Lady Patterdale was short and stout; eminently the type
of woman who, if clothed according to the dictates of common sense,
would be called a "comfortable old party."  One could imagine her in a
cotton dress, with her sleeves rolled up above her elbows, displaying a
pair of plump forearms and wielding a rolling pin in front of a good
hot fire.  Covered with flour--her face very red--she would have been
in her element. . . .  As it was, the dictates of fashion had cast
their blight over the proceedings.

The name of her dressmaker is immaterial.  Originally Smith & Co. in
all probability, it had now become Smythe et Cie, and advertised in all
the most exclusive papers.  Unfortunately, in the case of Lady
Patterdale they did not stop at advertising.  They carried out their
dreadful threats and clothed her.  The result was incredible.  She
resembled nothing so much as a bursting melon.  Onlookers shuddered at
times when they thought of the trust reposed by Providence and Lady
Patterdale in a few paltry hooks and eyes.  The strain appeared so
terrific--the consequences of a disaster so appalling.

As Vane stepped out of the ambulance Lady Patterdale, supported on
either side by one of the nursing staff, advanced to meet him.  Her
jolly old face was wreathed in smiles; cordiality and kindliness oozed
from her.

"Welcome, both of you," she cried.  "Welcome to Rumfold 'all."

The Sister on her left started as if a serpent had stung her, and Vane
decided that he did not like her.  Then he turned to the kindly old
woman, and smiled.

"Thank you, Lady Patterdale," he said, taking her outstretched hand.
"I'm sure it's going to be topping."

"You're just in nice time for luncheon," she continued, as she turned
to welcome the New Zealander.  "And after that you'll be able to find
your way about the 'ouse."

Lunch was the only meal where all the convalescents met, as, generally,
some of them had retired before dinner.  It was served in the old
banqueting hall, which, when Vane remembered it, had been used for
dancing.  The officers had it to themselves, the nursing staff feeding
elsewhere. . . .

The contrast struck Vane forcibly as he sat down at the long table.
The last time he had been in the room he and three or four kindred
spirits had emptied a fruit salad into a large wind instrument just
before the band played the final gallop. . . .

"Beer, sir, or cider?"  He half turned to answer, when suddenly the
voice continued, "Why, but surely, sir, it's Mr. Vane?"

He looked up and saw the same butler who had been at the Hall in the
old days.

"Why, Robert," he said delightedly, "you still here?  Jove! but I'm
glad to see you.  I thought Sir John had made a clean sweep of all the
staff."

The butler nodded his head sadly.  "All except me, sir--me and Mrs.
Hickson.  She was the housekeeper, if you remember.  And she couldn't
stand it--that is, she had to leave after a year."

"Ah!"  Vane's tone was non-committal.  "And what's become of old
John--at the Lodge?"

"He went, sir.  Sir John found him too slow."  Robert poured out a
glass of beer.  "He's in the village, sir.  One of his sons was killed
at Noove Chappel."

"I'm sorry about that.  I must go and see him."

"He'd be proud, sir, if you'd be so kind.  I often goes down there
myself for a bit of a chat about the old days."  With a sigh the old
butler passed on, and Vane returned to his lunch. . . .

"You seem to know our archaic friend," remarked the officer sitting
next him.  "He's a dear old thing. . . ."

"He's one of a dying breed," said Vane shortly.  "I would trust old
Robert with everything in the world that I possessed. . . ."

"That so?" returned the other.  "Has he been here long?"

"To my certain knowledge for twenty-five years, and I believe longer.
It almost broke his heart when he heard that Lord Forres was going to
sell the place."  Vane continued his lunch in silence, and suddenly a
remark from the other side of the table struck his ears.

"I say, old Side-whiskers hasn't given me my fair whack of beer."  It
was a youngster speaking, and the remark was plainly audible to the old
butler two places away.  For a moment his face quivered, and then he
returned to the speaker.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he remarked quietly.  "Let me fill your
glass."

"Thanks, old sport.  That's a bit better looking."  Vane turned to his
neighbour with an amused smile.

"Truly the old order changeth," remarked the other thoughtfully.  "And
one's inclined to wonder if it's changing for the better."

"Unfortunately in any consideration of that sort one is so hopelessly
biassed by one's own personal point of view," returned Vane.

"Do you think so?"  He crumbled the bread beside him.  "Don't you think
one can view a little episode like that in an unbiassed way?  Isn't it
merely in miniature what is going on all over the country? . . .  The
clash of the new spirit with the one that is centuries old."

"And you really regard that youth as being representative of the new
spirit?"

"No one man can be.  But I regard him as typical of a certain phase of
that spirit.  In all probability a magnificent platoon commander--there
are thousands like him who have come into being with this war.  The
future of the country lies very largely in their hands.  What are they
going to make of it?"

The same question--the same ceaseless refrain.  Sometimes expressed,
more often not.  ENGLAND in the melting pot--what was going to happen?
Unconsciously Vane's eyes rested on the figure of the old butler
standing at the end of the room.  There was something noble about the
simplicity of the old man, confronted by the crashing of the system in
which he and his father, and his father's father had been born.  A
puzzled look seemed ever in his eyes: the look of a dog parted from a
beloved master, in new surroundings amongst strange faces.  And
officially, at any rate, the crash was entirely for the benefit of him
and his kind . . . . wherein lay the humour.

Vane laughed shortly as he pushed back his chair.  "Does anything
matter save one's own comfort?  Personally I think slavery would be an
admirable innovation."


Sir John Patterdale was everything that his wife was not.  The
unprecedented success of his Patent Plate had enabled him to pay the
necessary money to obtain his knighthood and blossom into a county
magnate.  At one time he had even thought of standing for Parliament as
an old and crusted Tory; but up to date the War had prevented the
realisation of such a charming idyll.  Instead he sat on the bench and
dispensed justice.

In appearance he was an exact counterpart of his wife--short and fat;
and his favourite attitude was standing with his legs wide apart and
his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat.  Strong men had been
known to burst into tears on seeing him for the first time arrayed as
the sporting squire; but the role was one which he persistently tried
to fill, with the help of a yellow hunting waistcoat and check
stockings.  And when it is said that he invariably bullied the
servants, if possible in front of a third person, the picture of Sir
John is tolerably complete.  He was, in short, a supreme cad, with not
a single redeeming feature.  Stay--that is wrong.  He still retained
the love of his wife, which may perhaps--nay, surely shall--be
accounted to him for righteousness. . . .

To her he was never the vain, strutting little bounder, making himself
ridiculous and offensive by turn.  She never got beyond the picture of
him when, as plain John Patterdale, having put up the shutters and
locked the door of the shop, he would come through into their little
living-room behind for his supper.  First he would kiss her, and then
taking off his best coat, he would put on the old frayed one that
always hung in readiness behind the door.  And after supper, they would
draw up very close together, and dream wonderful dreams about the
future.  All sorts of beautiful things danced in the flames; but the
most beautiful thing of all was the reality of her John, with his arm
round her waist, and his cheek touching hers.

Sometimes now, when the real truth struck her more clearly than
usual--for she was a shrewd old woman for all her kindness of
heart--sometimes when she saw the sneers of the people who ate his salt
and drank his champagne her mind went back with a bitter stab of memory
to those early days in Birmingham.  What had they got in exchange for
their love and dreams over the kitchen fire--what Dead Sea Fruit had
they plucked?  If only something could happen; if only he could lose
all his money, how willingly, how joyfully would she go back with him
to the niche where they both fitted.  They might even be happy once
again. . . .

He had needed her in those days: turned to her for comfort when
business was bad, taken her out on the burst--just they two alone--when
things looked up and there had been a good day's takings.  The
excitement over choosing her best hat--the one with the bunches of
fruit in it. . . .  As long as she lived she would never forget the
morning she tried it on, when he deserted the shop and cheered from the
bedroom door, thereby losing a prospective customer.

But now, all he cared about was that she should go to the best people
and spare no expense.

"We can afford it, my dear," he was wont to remark, "and I want you to
keep your end up with the best of 'em.  You must remember my position
in the county."

Even alone with her he kept up the pretence, and she backed him
loyally.  Was he not still her man; and if he was happy, what else
mattered?  And she would call herself a silly old woman. . . .

But there was just once when he came back to her, and she locked away
the remembrance of that night in her secret drawer--the drawer that
contained amongst other things a little bunch of artificial grapes
which had once adorned the hat. . . .

There had been a big dinner of the no-expense-spared type; and to it
had been invited most of the County.  Quite a percentage had accepted,
and it was after dinner, just before the guests were going, that the
owner of a neighbouring house had inadvertently put his thoughts into
words, not knowing that his host was within hearing.

"It makes me positively sick to see that impossible little bounder
strutting about round Rumfold."

"Impossible little bounder."  It hit the little man like a blow between
the eyes, and that night, in bed, a woman with love welling over in her
heart comforted her man.

"It wasn't him that had been meant. . . .  Of course not . . . .  Why
the dinner had been a tremendous success. . . .  Lady Sarah Wellerby
had told her so herself. . . .  Had asked them over in return. . . .
And had suggested that they should give a dance, to which she and her
six unmarried daughters would be delighted to come."

But she didn't tell him that she had overheard Lady Sarah remark to the
wife of Admiral Blake that "the atrocious little cook person had better
be cultivated, she supposed.  One never knows, my dear.  The ballroom
is wonderful and men will come anywhere for a good supper. . . ."  No,
she didn't tell him that: nor mention the misery she had suffered
during dinner.  She didn't say how terrified she was of the
servants--all except old Robert, who looked at her sometimes with his
kindly, tired eyes as if he understood.  She didn't even take the
opportunity of voicing the wish that was dearest to her heart; to give
it all up and go right away.  She just coaxed him back to
self-confidence, and, in the morning, Sir John was Sir John once
more--as insufferable as ever.  And only a tired old woman knew quite
how tired she felt. . ..


One of Sir John's pet weaknesses was having his wife and the staff
photographed.  Sometimes he appeared in the group himself, but on the
whole he preferred impromptu snap-shots of himself chatting with
wounded officers in the grounds.  For these posed photographs Lady
Patterdale arrayed herself in a light grey costume, with large red
crosses scattered over it: and as Vane was strolling out into the
gardens after lunch, he ran into her in this disguise in the hall.

"We're 'aving a little group taken, Captain Vane," she said as she
passed him.  "You must come and be in it."

"Why, certainly, Lady Patterdale; I shall be only too delighted.  Is
that the reason of the war paint?"

She laughed--a jolly, unaffected laugh.  "My 'usband always likes me to
wear this when we're took.  Thinks it looks better in a 'ospital."

As Vane stepped through the door with her he caught a fleeting glimpse
of officers disappearing rapidly in all directions.  Confronting them
was a large camera, and some servants were arranging chairs under the
direction of the photographer.  Evidently the symptoms were well known,
and Vane realised that he had been had.

This proved to be one of the occasions on which Sir John did not
appear, and so the deed did not take quite as long as usual.  To the
staff it was just a matter of drill, and they arranged themselves at
once.  And since they were what really mattered, and the half-dozen
patients merely appeared in the nature of a make weight, in a very
short time, to everyone's profound relief, the group had been
taken. . . .  Vane, who had been sitting on the ground, with his legs
tucked under him to keep them in focus, silently suffering an acute
attack of cramp, rose and stretched himself.  On the lawn, tennis had
started again; and she could see various officers dotted about the
ground in basket chairs.  He was turning away, with the idea of a
stroll--possibly even of seeking out old John in the village, when from
just behind his shoulder came a musical laugh.

"Delightful," said a low, silvery voice; "quite delightful."

Vane swung round in time to catch the glint of a mocking smile--a pair
of lazy grey eyes--and then, before he could answer, or even make up
his mind if it had been he who was addressed, the girl who had spoken
moved past him and greeted Lady Patterdale. . . .

He waited just long enough to hear that worthy woman's, "My dear Joan,
'ow are you?" and then with a faintly amused smile on his lips turned
towards the cool, shady drive.  Margaret's remark in the sand dunes at
Etaples anent leopards and their spots came back to him; and the
seasoned war horse scents the battle from afar. . . .




CHAPTER V

It was under the shade of a great rhododendron bush that Vane was first
privileged to meet Sir John.  The bush was a blaze of scarlet and purple,
which showed up vividly against the green of the grass and the darker
green of the shrubs around.  Through the trees could be seen glimpses of
the distant hills, and Vane, as he stumbled unexpectedly into this sudden
bit of fairyland, caught his breath with the glory of it.  Then with
drastic suddenness he recalled that half-forgotten hymn of childhood, of
which the last line runs somewhat to the effect that "only man is vile."

Sir John was in full possession, with an unwilling audience of one bored
cavalryman.  It was one of his most cherished sentiments that nothing
aided convalescence so much as a little bright, breezy conversation on
subjects of general interest--just to cheer 'em up, and make 'em feel at
home. . . .

At the moment of Vane's arrival he was discoursing fluently on the
problem of education.  The point is really immaterial, as Sir John
discussed all problems with equal fluency, and the necessity for
answering was rare.  He had a certain shrewd business-like efficiency,
and in most of his harangues there was a good deal of what, for want of a
better word, might be termed horse sense.  But he was so completely
self-opinionated and sure of himself that he generally drove his audience
to thoughts of poisons that left no trace or even fire-arms.  Especially
when he was holding forth on strategy.  On that subject he considered
himself an expert, and regularly twice a week he emptied the smoking-room
at Rumfold by showing--with the aid of small flags--what he would have
done had he been in charge of the battle of the Somme in 1916.  He was
only silenced once, and that was by a pessimistic and saturnine Sapper.

"Extraordinary," he murmured.  "I congratulate you, Sir John.  The plan
you have outlined is exactly in every detail the one which the
Commander-in-Chief discussed with me when overlooking the charming little
village of Gueudecourt.  'Johnson,' he said, 'that is what we will do,'
and he turned to the Chief of Staff and ordered him to make a note of
it."  The Sapper paused for a moment to relight his pipe.  Then he turned
impressively to Sir John.  "There was no Chief of Staff.  The Chief of
Staff had gone: only a few bubbles welling out of the mud remained to
show his fate.  And then, before my very eyes, the C.-in-C.  himself
commenced to sink.  To my fevered brain it seemed to be over in a minute.
His last words as he went down for the third time were 'Johnson, carry
on.' . . .  Of course it was kept out of the papers, but if it hadn't
been for a Tank going by to get some whisky for the officers' mess,
which, owing to its pressure on neighbouring ground squeezed them all out
again one by one--you know, just like you squeeze orange pips from your
fingers--the affair might have been serious."

"I did hear a rumour about it," said the still small voice of a
machine-gunner from behind a paper.

"Of course," continued the Sapper, "the plan had to be given up.  The
whole of G.H.Q. sat for days in my dug-out with their feet in hot water
and mustard. . . .  A most homely spectacle--especially towards the end
when, to while away the time, they started sneezing in unison. . . ."

A silence settled on the smoking-room, a silence broken at last by the
opening and shutting of the door.  Sir John had retired for the
night. . . .


At the moment that Vane paused at the entrance to his bit of fairyland
Sir John was in full blast.

"What, sir, is the good of educating these people?  Stuffing their heads
with a lot of useless nonsense.  And then talking about land
nationalisation.  The two don't go together, sir.  If you educate a man
he's not going to go and sit down on a bare field and look for
worms. . . ."  He paused in his peroration as he caught sight of Vane.

"Ah! ha!" he cried.  "Surely a new arrival.  Welcome, sir, to my little
home."

Restraining with a great effort his inclination to kick him, Vane shook
the proffered hand; and for about ten minutes he suffered a torrent of
grandiloquence in silence.  At the conclusion of the little man's first
remark Vane had a fleeting vision of the cavalry-man slinking hurriedly
round two bushes and then, having run like a stag across the open, going
to ground in some dense undergrowth on the opposite side.  And Vane, to
his everlasting credit be it said, did not even smile. . . .

After a while the flood more or less spent itself, and Vane seized the
occasion of a pause for breath to ask after old John.

"I see you've got a new lodge-keeper, Sir John.  Robert tells me that the
old man who was here under Lord Forres is in the village."

"Yes.  Had to get rid of him.  Too slow.  I like efficiency, my boy,
efficiency. . . .  That's my motto."  Sir John complacently performed
three steps of his celebrated strut.  "Did you know the Hearl?"  Though
fairly sound on the matter, in moments of excitement he was apt to
counterbalance his wife with the elusive letter. . . .

Vane replied that he did--fairly well.

"A charming man, sir . . . typical of all that is best in our old English
nobility.  I am proud, sir, to have had such a predecessor.  I number the
Hearl, sir, among my most intimate friends. . . ."

Vane, who remembered the graphic description given him by Blervie--the
Earl's eldest son--at lunch one day, concerning the transaction at the
time of the sale, preserved a discreet silence.

"A horrible-looking little man, old bean," that worthy had remarked.
"Quite round, and bounces in his chair.  The governor saw him once, and
had to leave the room.  'I can't stand it,' he said to me outside, 'the
dam fellow keeps hopping up and down, and calling me His Grace.  He's
either unwell, or his trousers are coming off.'"  Lord Blervie had helped
himself to some more whisky and sighed.  "I've had an awful time," he
continued after a while.  "The governor sat in one room, and Patterdale
bounced in the other, and old Podmore ran backwards and forwards between,
with papers and things.  And if we hadn't kept the little blighter back
by force he was going to make a speech to the old man when it was all
fixed up. . . ."

At last Sir John left Vane to himself, and with a sigh of relief he sank
into the chair so recently vacated by the cavalryman.  In his hand he
held a couple of magazines, but, almost unheeded, they slipped out of his
fingers on to the grass.  He felt supremely and blissfully lazy.  The
soft thud of tennis balls, and the players' voices calling the score,
came faintly through the still air, and Vane half closed his eyes.  Then
a sudden rustle of a skirt beside him broke into his thoughts, and he
looked up into the face of the girl whom Lady Patterdale had greeted as
Joan.

"Why it's my bored friend of the photograph!"  She stood for a moment
looking at him critically, rather as a would-be purchaser looks at a
horse.  "And have they all run away and left you to play by yourself?"
She pulled up another chair and sat down opposite him.

"Yes.  Even Sir John has deserted me."  As he spoke he was wondering what
her age was.  Somewhere about twenty-two he decided, and about ten more
in experience.

"For which relief much thanks, I suppose?"

"One shouldn't look a gift host in the stockings," returned Vane lightly.
"I think it's very charming of him and his wife to have us here."

"Do you?  It's hopelessly unfashionable not to do war work of some sort,
and this suits them down to the ground. . . .  Why the Queen visited
Rumfold the other day and congratulated Lady Patterdale on her
magnificent arrangements."  There was a mocking glint in her eyes,
otherwise her face was perfectly serious.

"You don't say so."  Vane gazed at her in amazement.  "And did you dress
up as a nurse for the occasion?"

"No, I watched from behind a gooseberry bush.  You see, I'm a very busy
person, and my work can't be interrupted even for a Royal visit."

"Would it be indiscreet," murmured Vane, "to inquire what your work is?"

"Not a bit."  The girl looked solemnly at him.  "I amuse the poor wounded
officers."

"And do you find that very hard?" asked Vane with becoming gravity.

"Frightfully.  You see, they either want to make love to me, or else to
confide that they love another.  My chief difficulty as I wander from
bush to bush is to remember to which class the temporary occupant
belongs.  I mean it's a dreadful thing to assure a man of your own
undying devotion, when the day before you were sympathising with him over
Jane not having written.  It makes one appear of undecided intellect."

"Why don't you institute a little system of labels?" asked Vane.  "Blue
for those who passionately adore you--red for those who love someone
else.  People of large heart might wear several."

"I think that's quite wonderful."  She leaned back in her chair and
regarded Vane with admiration.  "And I see that you're only a
Captain. . . .  How true it is that the best brains in the Army adorn the
lower positions.  By the way--I must just make a note of your name."  She
produced a small pocketbook from her bag and opened it.  "My duties are
so arduous that I have been compelled to make lists and things."

"Vane," he answered, "Christian--Derek."

She entered both in her book, and then shut it with a snap.  "Now I'm
ready to begin.  Are you going to amuse me, or am I going to amuse you?"

"You have succeeded in doing the latter most thoroughly," Vane assured
her.

"No--have I really?  I must be in good form to-day.  One really never can
tell, you know.  An opening that is a scream with some people falls as
flat as ditch-water with others."  She looked at him pensively for a
moment or two, tapping her small white teeth with a gold pencil.

Suddenly Vane leaned forward.  "May I ask your age, Joan?"

Her eyebrows went up slightly.  "Joan!" she said.

"I dislike addressing the unknown," remarked Vane, "and I heard Lady
Patterdale call you Joan.  But if you prefer it--may I ask your age, Miss
Snooks?"

She laughed merrily.  "I think I prefer Joan, thank you; though I don't
generally allow that until the fourth or fifth performance.  You see, if
one gets on too quickly it's so difficult to fill in the time at the end
if the convalescence is a long one."

"I am honoured," remarked Vane.  "But you haven't answered my question."

"I really see no reason why I should.  It doesn't come into the rules--at
least not my rules. . . .  Besides I was always told that it was rude to
ask personal questions."

"I am delighted to think that something you were taught at your mother's
knee has produced a lasting effect on your mind," returned Vane.
"However, at this stage we won't press it. . . .  I should hate to
embarrass you."  He looked at her in silence for a while, as if he was
trying to answer to his own satisfaction some unspoken question on his
mind.

"I think," she said, "that I had better resume my official duties.  What
do you think of Rumfold Hall?"

"It would be hard in the time at my disposal, my dear young lady, to give
a satisfactory answer to that question."  Vane lit a cigarette.  "I will
merely point out to you that it contains a banqueting chamber in which
Bloody Mary is reported to have consumed a capon and ordered two more
Protestants to be burned--and that the said banqueting hall has been used
of recent years by the vulgar for such exercises as the fox trot and the
one step.  Further, let me draw your attention to the old Elizabethan
dormer window from which it is reported that the celebrated Sir Walter
Raleigh hung his cloak to dry, after the lady had trodden on it.  On the
staircase can be seen the identical spot where the dog basket belonging
to the aged pug dog of the eighteenth Countess of Forres was nightly
placed, to the intense discomfiture of those ill-behaved and rowdy guests
who turned the hours of sleep into a time for revolting debauches with
soda water syphons and flour.  In fact it is commonly thought that the
end of the above-mentioned aged pug dog was hastened by the excitable
Lord Frederick de Vere Thomson hurling it, in mistake for a footstool, at
the head of his still more skittish spouse--the celebrated Tootie Rootles
of the Gaiety.  This hallowed spot has been roped off, and is shown with
becoming pride by the present owner to any unfortunate he can inveigle
into listening to him.  Finally I would draw your attention. . . ."

"For Heaven's sake, stop," she interrupted weakly.  "The answer is
adjudged incorrect owing to its length."

"Don't I get the grand piano?" he demanded.

"Not even the bag of nuts," she said firmly.  "I want a cigarette.
They're not gaspers, are they?"

"They are not," he said, holding out his case.  "I am quite ready for the
second question."

She looked at him thoughtfully through a cloud of smoke.  "Somehow I
don't think I will proceed along the regular lines," she remarked at
length.  "Your standard seems higher."

"Higher than whose?" Vane asked.

"Than most of the others."  Her smile was a trifle enigmatic.  "There is
a cavalryman here and one or two others--but . . . well! you know what I
mean."

"I do know what you mean--exactly," he remarked quietly.  "And, Joan,
it's all wrong."

"It's all natural, anyway.  Their ways are not our ways; their thoughts
are not our thoughts. . . .  I can't help whether I'm being a poisonous
snob or not; it's what I feel.  Take Sir John.  Why, the man's an offence
to the eye.  He's a complete outsider.  What right has he got to be at
Rumfold?"

"The right of having invented a patent plate.  And if one looks at it
from an unbiassed point of view it seems almost as good a claim as that
of the descendant of a really successful brigand chief."

"Are you a Socialist?" she demanded suddenly.

"God knows what I am," he answered cynically.  "I'm trying to find out.
You see something has happened over the water which alters one's point of
view.  It hasn't happened over here.  And just at the moment I feel
rather like a stranger in a strange land."  He stared thoughtfully at a
thrush which was dealing with a large and fat worm.  Then he
continued--"You were talking about outsiders.  Lord! my dear girl, don't
think I don't know what you mean.  I had a peerless one in my
company--one of the first and purest water--judged by our standards.  He
was addicted to cleaning his nails, amongst other things, with a prong of
his fork at meals. . . .  But one morning down in the Hulluch sector--it
was stand to.  Dawn was just spreading over the sky--grey and sombre; and
lying at the bottom of the trench just where a boyau joined the front
line, was this officer.  His face was whiter than the chalk around him,
but every now and then he grinned feebly.  What was left of his body had
been covered with his coat: because you see a bit of a flying pig had
taken away most of his stomach."

The girl bit her lip--but her eyes did not leave Vane's face.

"He died, still lying in the wet chalky sludge, still grinning, and
thanking the stretcher bearers who had carried him."  He paused for a
moment--his mind back in the Land over the Water.  "There are thousands
like him," he went on thoughtfully, "and over there, you see, nothing
much matters.  A man, whether he's a duke or a dustman, is judged on his
merits in the regimental family.  Everyone is equally happy, or equally
unhappy--because everyone's goal is the same."

"And over here," put in the girl, "everyone's goal is different.  How
could it be otherwise?  It's when you get a man trying to kick the ball
through the wrong goal--and succeeding--that the trouble comes."

"Quite right," agreed Vane.  "Personally I'm trying to find out what my
own goal is."

"What was it before the war?"

"Soda water syphons and flour; hunting, cricket and making love."

"And you don't think that would still fill the bill?"

"The Lord knows!" laughed Vane.  "In the fulness of time probably I shall
too."

"And how do you propose to find out?" persisted
 the girl.

Once again Vane laughed.  "By the simple process of doing nothing," he
answered.  "I shall--as far as my arduous military duties allow me--carry
on. . . .  I believe everyone is carrying on. . . .  It's the phase,
isn't it?  And in the process, as far as it progresses before I have to
return to France--I may get some idea as to whether I am really a
pronounced Pacifist or a Last Ditcher."

For a while she looked at him curiously without speaking.  "You're
somewhat different from most of my patients," she announced at last.

He bowed ironically.  "I trust that in spite of that, I may find favour
in your sight.  It's something, at any rate, not to be labelled G.S., as
we say in the Army."

"Frankly and honestly, you despise me a little?"

Vane considered her dispassionately.  "Frankly and honestly, I do.  And
yet . . .  I don't know.  Don't you see, lady, that I'm looking at your
life through my spectacles; you look at it through your own.  For all I
know you may be right, and I may be wrong.  In fact," he continued after
a short pause, "it's more than likely it is so.  You at any rate have not
been qualifying for a lunatic asylum during the past four years."

She rose from her chair, and together they strolled towards the lawn.
Tennis was still in full swing, and for a time they watched the game in
silence.

"Do those men think as you think?" she asked him suddenly.  "Are they all
asking the why and the wherefore--or is it enough for them to be just out
of it?"

"It's enough for us all for the time," he answered gravely.  "And then it
tugs and it pulls and we go back to it again. . . .  It's made everyone a
bit more thoughtful; it's made everyone ask the why and the wherefore,
insistently or casually, according to the manner of the brute.  But Hell
will come if we don't--as a whole--find the same answer. . . ."

She idly twisted her parasol, and at that moment the cavalryman lounged
up.  "Thought you'd deserted us, Miss Devereux."  He glanced at Vane and
grinned.  "I appeal to you," he cried, "as an infantry soldier to state
publicly whether you have ever seen a more masterly bit of scouting than
mine when the old man buttonholed you.  Jove! you should have seen it.
Purple face caught him by the rhododendron bush, where he'd been
inflicting himself on me for a quarter of an hour; and in one minute by
the clock I'd got to ground in the parsley bed."

They all laughed, and for a few minutes the two men chatted with her;
then Vane disappeared into the house to write letters.  It was a slow and
laborious process, and, as a rule, he wrote as few as possible.  But
there was one he had to get off his conscience, though he dreaded doing
so.  A promise to a dead pal is sacred. . . .

At length the scrawl was finished, and looking up from the writing table
he saw Joan Devereux passing through the hall.  He got up and hurried
after her.  "Would you mind addressing this for me?"  He held out the
envelope.  "I've managed to spoil the paper inside, but I don't want to
tax the postman too highly."

With a smile she took the letter from him, and picked up a pen.  "Well,"
she said after a moment, "I'm waiting."

She looked up into his face as he stood beside her at the table, and a
glint of mischief came into her eyes as they met his.  He was staring at
her with a thoughtful expression, and, at any rate for the moment he
seemed to find it a pleasant occupation.

"And what may the seeker after truth be thinking of now?" she remarked
flippantly.  "Condemning me a second time just as I'm trying to be useful
as well as ornamental?"

"I was thinking. . . ." he began slowly, and then he seemed to change his
mind.  "I don't think it matters exactly what I was thinking," he
continued, "except that it concerned you.  Indirectly, perhaps--possibly
even directly . . . you and another. . . ."

"So you belong to the second of my two classes, do you?" said the girl.
"Somehow I thought you were in the first. . . ."

"The class you embrace?" asked Vane drily.

With a quick frown she turned once more to the table.  "Supposing you
give me the address."

"I beg your pardon," said Vane quietly.  "The remark was vulgar, and
quite uncalled for.  After four years in the Army, one should be able to
differentiate between official and unofficial conversation."

"May I ask what on earth you mean?" said the girl coldly.

"I take it that your preliminary remarks to me in the garden were in the
nature of official patter--used in your professional capacity. . . .
When off duty, so to speak, you're quite a normal individual. . . .
Possibly even proper to the point of dulness."  He was staring idly out
of the window.  "In the States, you know, they carry it even
further. . . .  I believe there one can hire a professional female
co-respondent--a woman of unassailable virtue and repulsive aspect--who
will keep the man company in compromising circumstances long enough for
the wife to establish her case."

The girl sprang up and confronted him with her eyes blazing, but Vane
continued dreamily.  "There was one I heard of who was the wife of the
Dissenting Minister, and did it to bolster up her husband's
charities. . . ."

"I think," she said in a low, furious voice, "that you are the most
loathsome man I ever met."

Vane looked at her in surprise.  "But I thought we were getting on so
nicely.  I was just going to ask you to have lunch with me one day in
town--in your official capacity, of course. . . ."

"If you were the last man in the world, and I was starving, I wouldn't
lunch with you in any capacity."  Her breast was rising and falling
stormily.

"At any rate, it's something to know where we stand," said Vane
pleasantly.

"If I'd realised that you were merely a cad--and an outsider of the worst
type--do you suppose that I would have talked--would have allowed. . . ."
The words died away in her throat, and her shoulders shook.  She turned
away, biting furiously at her handkerchief with her teeth.  "Go away--oh!
go away; I hate you."

But Vane did not go away; he merely stood there looking at her with a
faint, half-quizzical smile on his lips.

"Joan," he said, after a moment, "I'm thinking I have played the deuce
with your general routine.  All the earlier performances will be in the
nature of an anti-climax after this.  But--perhaps, later on, when my
abominable remarks are not quite so fresh in your mind, you won't regard
them as quite such an insult as you do now.  Dreadful outsider though I
am--unpardonably caddish though it is to have criticised your war
work--especially when I have appreciated it so much--will you try to
remember that it would have been far easier and pleasanter to have done
the other thing?"

Slowly her eyes came round to his face, and he saw that they were
dangerously bright.  "What other thing?" she demanded.

"Carried on with the game; the game that both you and I know so well.
Hunting, cricket and making love. . . .  Is it not written in 'Who's
Who'--unless that interesting publication is temporarily out of print?"

"It strikes me," the girl remarked ominously, "that to your caddishness
you add a very sublime conceit."

Vane grinned.  "Mother always told me I suffered from swelled
head. . . ."  He pointed to the envelope still unaddressed, lying between
them on the writing table.  "After which slight digression--do you mind?"

She picked up the pen, and sat down once again.  "I notice your tone
changes when you want me to help you."

Vane made no answer.  "The address is Mrs. Vernon, 14, Culman Terrace,
Balham," he remarked quietly.

"I trust she is doing war work that pleases you," sneered the girl.  She
handed him the envelope, and then, as she saw the blaze in his eyes, she
caught her breath in a little quick gasp.

"As far as I know," he answered grimly, "Mrs. Vernon is endeavouring to
support herself and three children on the large sum of one hundred and
fifty pounds a year.  Her husband died in my arms while we were
consolidating some ground we had won."  He took the envelope from her
hand.  "Thank you; I am sorry to have had to trouble you."

He walked towards the door, and when he got to it, he paused and looked
back.  Joan Devereux was standing motionless, staring out of the window.
Vane dropped his letter into the box in the hall, and went up the stairs
to his room.




CHAPTER VI

There was no objection to Vane going to London, it transpired.  He had
merely to write his name in a book, and he was then issued a half-fare
voucher.  No one even asked him his religion, which seemed to point to
slackness somewhere.

It was with feelings the reverse of pleasant that Vane got into the
first-class carriage one morning four days after he had written to Mrs.
Vernon.  She would be glad to see him, she had written in reply, and
she was grateful to him for taking the trouble to come.  Thursday
afternoon would be most convenient; she was out the other days, and on
Sundays she had to look after the children. . . .

Vane opened the magazine on his knees and stared idly at the pictures.
In the far corner of the carriage two expansive looking gentlemen were
engaged in an animated conversation, interrupted momentarily by his
entrance.  In fact they had seemed to regard his intrusion rather in
the light of a personal affront.  Their general appearance was not
prepossessing, and Vane having paused in the doorway, and stared them
both in turn out of countenance, had been amply rewarded by hearing
himself described as an impertinent young puppy.

He felt in his blackest and most pugilistic mood that morning.  As a
general rule he was the most peaceful of men; but at times, some strain
inherited from a remote ancestor who, if he disliked a man's face hit
it hard with a club, resurrected itself in him.  There had been the
celebrated occasion in the Promenade at the Empire, a few months before
the war, when a man standing in front of him had failed to remove his
hat during the playing of "The King."  It was an opera hat, and Vane
removed it for him and shut it up.  The owner turned round just in time
to see it hit the curtain, whence it fell with a thud into the
orchestra. . . .  Quite inexcusable, but the fight that followed was
all that man could wish for.  The two of them, with a large
chucker-out, had finally landed in a heap in Leicester Square--with the
hatless gentleman underneath.  And Vane--being fleet of foot, had
finally had the supreme joy of watching from afar his disloyal opponent
being escorted to Vine Street, in a winded condition, by a very big
policeman. . . .

Sometimes he wondered if other people ever felt like that; if they were
ever overcome with an irresistible desire to be offensive.  It struck
him that the war had not cured this failing; if anything it had made it
stronger.  And the sight of these two fat, oily specimens complacently
discussing business, while a woman--in some poky house in Balham--was
waiting to hear the last message from her dead, made him gnash his
teeth.

Of course it was all quite wrong.  No well-brought-up and decorous
Englishman had any right to feel so annoyed with another man's face
that he longed to hit it with a stick.  But Vane was beginning to doubt
whether he had been well brought up; he was quite certain that he was
not decorous.  He was merely far more natural than he had ever been
before; he had ceased to worry over the small things.

And surely the two other occupants of the carriage were very small.  At
least they seemed so to him.  For all he knew, or cared, they might
each of them be in control of a Government Department; that failed to
alter their littleness.

Fragments of their conversation came to him over the rattle of the
wheels, and he became more and more irate.  The high price of whisky
was one source of complaint--it appeared, according to one of them,
that it was all going to France, which caused a shortage for those at
home.  Then the military situation. . . .  Impossible, grotesque. . . .
Somebody ought to be hanged for having allowed such a thing to happen.
After four years to be forced back--inexcusable.  What was wanted was
somebody with a business brain to run the Army. . . .  In the meantime
their money was being wasted, squandered, frittered away. . . .

Vane grew rampant in his corner as he listened; his mental language
became impossibly lurid.  He felt that he would willingly have given a
thousand or two to plant them both into that bit of the outpost line,
where a month before he had crawled round on his belly at dawn to see
his company.  Grey-faced and grey-coated with the mud, their eyes had
been clear and steady and cheerful, even if their chins were covered
with two days' growth.  And their pay was round about a shilling a
day. . . .

It was just as the train was slowing down to enter Victoria that he
felt he could contain himself no longer.  The larger and fatter of the
two, having concluded an exhaustive harangue on the unprecedented
wealth at present being enjoyed by some of the soldiers' wives in the
neighbourhood--and unmarried ones, too, mark you!--stood up to get his
despatch case.

"It seems a pity, gentlemen, you bother to remain in the country,"
remarked Vane casually.  "You must be suffering dreadfully."

Two gentlemen inferred icily that they would like to know what he meant.

"Why not return to your own?" he continued, still more casually.
"Doubtless the Egyptian Expeditionary Force will soon have it swept and
garnished for you."

The train stopped; and Vane got out.  He was accompanied to the barrier
by his two late travelling companions, and from their remarks he
gathered that they considered he had insulted them; but it was only
when he arrived at the gate that he stopped and spoke.  He spoke at
some length, and the traffic was unavoidably hung up during the
peroration.

"I have listened," said Vane in a clear voice, "to your duologue on the
way up, and if I thought there were many like you in the country I'd
take to drink.  As it is, I am hopeful, as I told you, that Jerusalem
will soon be vacant.  Good morning. . . ."

And the fact that two soldiers on leave from France standing close by
burst into laughter did not clear the air. . . .

"Jimmy," said Vane half an hour later, throwing himself into a chair in
his club next to an old pal in the smoking-room, "I've just been a
thorough paced bounder; a glorious and wonderful cad.  And, Jimmy!  I
feel so much the better for it."

Jimmy regarded him sleepily from the depths of his chair.  Then his
eyes wandered to the clock, and he sat up with an effort.  "Splendid,
dear old top," he remarked.  "And since it is now one minute past
twelve, let's have a spot to celebrate your lapse from virtue."

With the conclusion of lunch, the approaching ordeal at Balham began to
loom large on his horizon.  In a vain effort to put off the evil hour,
he decided that he would first go round to his rooms in Half Moon
Street.  He had kept them on during the war, only opening them up
during his periods of leave.  The keys were in the safe possession of
Mrs. Green, who, with her husband, looked after him and the other
occupants of the house generally.  As always, the worthy old lady was
delighted to see him. . . .

"Just cleaned them out two days ago, Mr. Vane, sir," she remarked.
New-fangled Army ranks meant nothing to her: Mr. Vane he had
started--Mr. Vane he would remain to the end of the chapter.

"And, Binks, Mrs. Green?"  But there was no need for her to answer that
question.  There was a sudden scurry of feet, and a wire-haired
fox-terrier was jumping all over him in ecstasy.

"My son, my son," said Vane, picking the dog up.  "Are you glad to see
your master again?  One lick, you little rascal, as it's a special
occasion.  And incidentally, mind my arm, young fellow-me-lad."

He put Binks down, and turned with a smile to Mrs. Green.  "Has he been
good, Mrs. Green?"

"Good as good, sir," she answered.  "I'm sure he's a dear little dog.
Just for the first week after you went--the same as the other
times--he'd hardly touch a thing.  Just lay outside your door and
whined and whined his poor little heart out. . . ."

The motherly old woman stooped to pat the dog's head, and Binks licked
her fingers once to show that he was grateful for what she'd done.
But--and this was a big but--she was only a stop-gap.  Now--and with
another scurry of feet, he was once again jumping round the only one
who really mattered.  A series of short staccato yelps of joy too great
to be controlled; a stumpy tail wagging so fast that the eye could
scarcely follow it; a dog. . . .

"I believe, Mrs. Green," said Vane quietly, "that quite a number of
people in England have lately been considering whether it wouldn't be a
good thing to kill off the dogs. . . ."

"Kill off the dogs, sir!"  Mrs. Green's tone was full of shrill
amazement.  "Kill Binks?  I'd like to see anyone try." . . .  Vane had
a momentary vision of his stalwart old landlady armed with a poker and
a carving knife, but he did not smile.

"So would I, Mrs. Green. . . .  So would I. . . ."  And with a short
laugh he took the key from her and went upstairs.

The room into which he went first was such as one would have expected
to find in the abode of a young bachelor.  Into the frame of the mirror
over the fireplace a score of ancient invitations were stuck.  Some
heavy silver photo frames stood on the mantel-piece, while in the
corner a bag of golf clubs and two or three pairs of boxing gloves gave
an indication of their owner's tastes.  The room was spotlessly clean,
and with the sun shining cheerfully in at the window it seemed
impossible to believe that it had been empty for six months.  A few
good prints--chiefly sporting--adorned the walls; and the books in the
heavy oak revolving bookcase which stood beside one of the big leather
chairs were of the type generally described as light. . . .

For a time Vane stood by the mantelpiece thoughtfully staring out of
the window; while Binks, delirious with joy, explored each
well-remembered corner, and blew heavily down the old accustomed cracks
in the floor.  Suddenly with a wild scurry, he fled after his principal
joy--the one that never tired.  He had seen Vane throw it into the
corner, and now he trotted sedately towards this wonderful master of
his, who had so miraculously returned, with his enemy in his mouth.  He
lay down at Vane's feet; evidently the game was about to begin.

The enemy was an indiarubber dog which emitted a mournful whistling
noise through a hole in its tummy.  It was really intended for the use
of the very young in their baths--to enable them to squirt a jet of
water into the nurse's eye; but it worried Binks badly.  The harder he
bit, the harder it whistled.  It seemed impossible to kill the damn
thing. . . .

For a while he bit the whistling atrocity to his heart's content; then
with it still between his fore paws he looked up into Vane's face.
Surely his master had not forgotten the rules of the game.  Really--it
was a little steep if it was so.  But Vane, as far as Binks could see,
was looking at one of the photographs on the mantelpiece with a slight
smile on his face.  One or two mournful whistles produced no apparent
result.  So Binks decided it was time for desperate measures.  He stood
up; and, with his head on one side, he contemplated his hated
adversary, prone on the carpet.  Then he gave a short sharp bark--just
as a reminder. . . .

It was quite sufficient, and Vane apologised handsomely.  "Beg your
pardon, old man," he remarked.  "For the moment I was thinking of
trivialities."  He moved his foot backwards and forwards close to the
indiarubber dog, and Binks, with his ears pricked up, and his head
turning slightly as he followed the movement of his master's foot,
waited.  Shortly, he knew that this hereditary enemy of his would fly
to one side of the room or the other.  The great question was--which?
It would hit the wall, and rebound on to the floor, where it would be
seized, and borne back with blood curdling growls for the process to be
repeated . . .  The game, it may be said, was not governed by any
foolish time limit. . . .

Suddenly the swinging leg feinted towards the left, and Binks dashed in
that direction.  Curse it--he was stung again.  His adversary flew to
the right, and was comfortably settled on the floor before Binks
appeared on the scene.  However, his tail was still up, as he brought
it back, and he gave it an extra furious bite, just to show that he
would tolerate no uppishness on account of this preliminary
defeat. . . .  Vane laughed.  "You funny old man," he said.  He stopped
and picked up the toy, replacing it on the mantelpiece.  "That ends the
game for to-day, Binks, for I've got to go out.  Would you like to
come, too?"  The brown eyes looked adoringly up into his.  Binks failed
to see why the first game after such a long time should be so short;
but--his not to reason why on such matters.  Besides his master was
talking and Binks liked to have his opinion asked.

Once again Vane's eyes went back to the photograph he had been
studying.  It was one of Margaret--taken years ago. . . .  And as he
looked at it, a pair of grey eyes, with the glint of a mocking smile in
them, seemed to make the photo a little hazy.

"Come on, old man.  We're going to Balham.  And I need you to support
me."


Culman Terrace was not a prepossessing spectacle.  A long straight road
ran between two rows of small and dreary houses.  Each house was
exactly the same, with its tiny little plot of garden between the front
door and the gate.  In some of the plots there were indications that
the owner was fond of gardening; here a few sweet peas curled lovingly
up the sticks put in for them--there some tulips showed signs of
nightly attention.  But in most the plot was plain and drab as the
house--a dead thing; a thing without a soul.  Individuality,
laughter--aye, life itself--seemed crushed in that endless road, with
its interminable rows of houses.

As Vane walked slowly up it looking for No. 14, the sun was shining.
For the moment it seemed clothed in some semblance of life; almost as
if it was stirring from a long sleep, and muttering to itself that love
and the glories of love were abroad to-day. . . .  And then the sun
went behind a cloud, and everything was grey and dead once more.

Vane pictured it to himself on damp dark mornings in the winter--on
evenings when the days were shortening, and the gas lamps shone through
the gloom.  He saw the doors opening, and each one disgorging some
black coated, pallid man, who passed through the gate, and then with
quick nervous steps walked towards the station.  The 8.30 was their
train; though in some very rare cases the 9.3 was early enough. . . .
But as a rule the 9.3 crowd did not live in Culman Terrace.  Just a few
only, who had come there young and eager, and had died there.  True,
they caught the 9.3, but they were dead.  And the pretty laughing girls
who had married them when the lamp was burning with the divine fire of
hope, had watched them die . . . hopelessly, helplessly. . . .  Love
will stand most things; but the drab monotony of the successful
failure--the two hundred pound a year man who has to keep up
appearances--tries it very high. . . .

Some of them turned into shrews and nagged; some of them ran to fat and
didn't care; but most of them just sank quietly and imperceptibly into
the dreariness and smallness of their surroundings.  At rare intervals
there flashed across their horizon something of the great teeming world
outside; they went to a bargain sale, perhaps, and saw the King drive
past--or they went to the movies and for a space lived in the Land of
Make Believe. . . .  But the coils of Culman Terrace had them fast, and
the excitement was only momentary--the relapse the more complete.  And,
dear Heavens, with what high ideals they had all started. . . .  It
struck Vane as he walked slowly along the road that here, on each side
of him, lay the Big Tragedy--bigger far than in the vilest slum.  For
in the slum they had never known or thought of anything better. . . .

Odd curtains were pulled aside as he walked, and he felt conscious of
people staring at him.  He pictured them getting up from their chairs,
and peering at him curiously, wondering where he was going--what he was
doing--who he was. . . .  It was the afternoon's excitement--a wounded
officer passing the house.

A familiar singing noise behind him made him look round and whistle.
Long experience left no doubt as to what was happening, and when he saw
Binks on his toes, circling round a gate on which a cat was spitting
angrily, he called "Binks" sharply once, and walked on again.  It was
the greatest strain Binks was ever called on to face, but after a
moment of indecision he obeyed as usual.  Cats were his passion; but
ever since he had carried the Colonel's wife's prize Persian on to
parade and deposited it at Vane's feet he was discreet in the matter.
The infuriated pursuit by the lady in question on to the parade ground,
armed with an umbrella in one hand and a poker in the other, had not
tended towards steadiness in the ranks.  In fact, something like alarm
and despondency had been caused amongst all concerned--especially
Binks. . . .

"Lord! old man," muttered his master, "here we are."  Vane turned in at
the gate of No. 14 and rang the bell.  There was an unpleasant sinking
feeling in the pit of his stomach and he nervously dried his left hand
on his handkerchief.

"Pray Heaven she doesn't cry," he said to himself fervently, and at
that moment the door opened.  A pale, grave-eyed woman in black
confronted him, and after a moment or two she smiled very slightly and
held out her hand.  Vane took it awkwardly.

"It is good of you to take the trouble to come, Captain Vane," she said
in a singularly sweet voice.  "Won't you come inside?"

He followed her into the small drawing-room and sat down.  It was
scrupulously clean, and it was more than that--it was homely. . . .  It
was the room of a woman who loved beautiful things, and who had with
perfect taste banished every single object which might jar on the
fastidious mind.  It struck Vane that it was probably a unique room in
Culman Terrace; he felt certain that the rest of the house was in
keeping. . . .

"What a charming room," he said involuntarily, and it was only when she
looked at him with a little lift of her eyebrows that he realised she
might regard the remark as impertinent.  Why shouldn't the room be
charming? . . .

But Mrs. Vernon quickly removed his embarrassment.  "It's always been a
passion of mine--my house," she said quietly.  "And now--more than
ever. . . .  It's a duty, even, though a pleasant one----  After all,
whatever may go on outside, whatever wretchedness worries one--it's
something to have a real sanctuary to come to.  I want the children to
feel that--so much.  I want them to love the beautiful things in life,"
she went on passionately, "even though they live in these
surroundings."  She stared out of the window for a moment, and then she
turned with a sudden quick movement to Vane.  "But, forgive me.  I
don't know why I should inflict my ideas on you.  Will you tell me
about Philip?"

It was the moment he had been dreading, and yet, now that it had come,
he found it easier than he had expected.  There was something about
this quiet, steadfast woman which told him that she would not make a
scene.  And so, gently and quietly, with his eyes fixed on the empty
fireplace, he told her the story.  There are thousands of similar
stories which could be told in the world to-day, but the pathos of each
one is not diminished by that.  It was the story of the ordinary man
who died that others might live.  He did not die in the limelight; he
just died and was buried and his name, in due course appeared in the
casualty list. . . .

Not that Vane put it that way.  He painted his picture with the touch
of glamour; he spoke of a charge, of Vernon cheering his men on, of
success.  Into the peaceful drawing-room he introduced the atmosphere
of glory--unwittingly, perhaps, he fell back on the popular conception
of war.  And the woman, who hung on every word, silent and tearless,
thrilled with the pride of it.  Her man, running at the head of
others--charging--dying at the moment of victory. . . .  It would be
something to tell her two boys, when their turn came to face the battle
of life; something which would nerve them to the success which her man
would have won except for. . . .

Vane's voice died away.  He had finished his story, he had painted his
picture.  No suspicion had he given that a stray bit of shell had torn
Vernon to bits long after the tumult and the shouting had ceased.
After all, he was dead . . . it was the living who counted.  No man
could have done more.  Surely he deserved the white lie which pictured
his death more vividly--more grandly. . . .

"He died in my arms," went on Vane after a little pause, "and his last
words were about you."  He told her the few simple sentences, repeated
to her the words which a man will say when the race is run and the tape
is reached.  God knows they are commonplace enough--those short
disjointed phrases; but God knows also that it is the little things
which count, when the heart is breaking. . . .

And, then, having told her once, perforce he had to tell her
again--just the end bit. . . .  With the tears pouring down her cheeks
she listened; and though each word stabbed her to the heart
afresh--woman-like, she gloried in her pain.

"'God bless you, Nell,' and then he died," she said softly to herself,
repeating Vane's last sentence.  "Ah! but you made good, my man.  I
always knew you would some day. . . ."

It seemed to the man staring into the fireplace that he was very near
to holy ground; and suddenly he rose and strode to the window.  With
eyes that were a trifle dim he saw the beautifully kept little
garden--a mass of colour; he saw the name plate, "Sea View," on the
gate, glinting bravely in the sun.  Something of the hopeless tragedy
of that "Some day" was getting him by the throat. . . .  "Made
good"--dear Lord! and he thought of his two travelling companions in
the morning. . . .

For perhaps five minutes he stood there silently, and then he turned
back into the room.  It had come to him quite clearly that Philip
Vernon had indeed made good; that the real tragedy would have been his
return to "Sea View."  By his death he had justified himself; in his
life he would have failed. . . .  For he had been branded with the
brand of Culman Terrace, and there is no need to say more.  He was
relieved to see that Mrs. Vernon was quite composed again.  He had
performed the first part of his mission, and now the second required
tackling.  And something warned him that he would have to tread very
delicately; any suspicion of the word charity would be fatal to
success. . . .

"About your eldest boy, Mrs. Vernon," he began; "your husband often
spoke about him to me.  Let me see--what age is he?"

"Jack is fifteen, Captain Vane," she said quietly.

"Fifteen!  Couldn't be better.  Now I was wondering, Mrs. Vernon,
whether you would care in a year or two, to let him come to me.  I'm in
a very big business in the City, and my boss is always on the look out
for bright boys.  I know your boy is clever--but so much depends on
getting a good start these days.  Of course he'd be judged entirely on
his merits . . . but he'd start with a real good chance of making the
best of his talents."  He looked quickly at her, and found she was
watching him gravely.  "It's part of the privilege of the brotherhood
of the trenches, Mrs. Vernon, to be allowed to make such an
offer. . . ."  He was finding it easier now.  "To do anything for your
husband's son would be a real pleasure; though, I need hardly say that,
beyond giving him the chance, I could offer nothing else.  It would be
up to him to make good."

For a while Mrs. Vernon was silent, and he flashed a quick look at her.
Had he put it well?  Had he kept every suspicion of patronage out of
his offer?

"Thank you very much, Captain Vane," she said at last, "for your offer.
I hope you won't think me ungrateful when I refuse.  Four years ago I
think I should have accepted it with gratitude; but now . . ."  She
shook her head  "A lot of the shams have gone; we see clearer--some of
us. . . .  And I tell you that I would not willingly condemn Jack to
such a life as his father led--even if I was penniless.  Wait--let me
finish"--as Vane started to speak--"Of course with you he would have
better chances than his father had before him--but the city life would
kill him--even as it has killed thousands of others. . . .  I wonder if
you can realise the hideous tragedy of the poor clerk.  He can't strike
for higher wages, like the British working man.  He just goes on and on
and suffers in silence. . . .  In Jack's case it would be the
same. . . .  What--four hundred a year?"  She laughed a little
scornfully.  "It's not much to bring up a family on, Captain
Vane. . . .  Four hundred a year, and Acacia Avenue--two streets
up. . . .  Acacia Avenue doesn't call on Culman Terrace, you
know. . . ."  Again she laughed.  "No, Jack isn't made for that sort of
life, thank God.  He aches for the big spaces in his boyish way, for
the lands where there are big things to be done. . . .  And I've
encouraged him.  There'll be nobody there to sneer if his clothes get
frayed and he can't buy any more--because of the children's boots.
There'll be no appearances to keep up there.  And I'd a thousand times
rather that Jack should stand--or fall--in such surroundings, than that
he should sink slowly . . . here."

She paused for a moment, and then stood up and faced him.  "It's
emigration, Captain Vane, that I and people like me have got to turn to
for our boys.  For ourselves--it doesn't much matter; we've had our
day, and I don't want you to think the sun never shined on us, for it
did. . . .  Just wonderfully at times. . . ."  She gave a quick sigh.
"Only now . . . things are different. . . .  And up till now, Culman
Terrace hasn't considered emigration quite the thing.  It's not quite
respectable. . . .  Only aristocratic ne'er-do-wells and quite
impossibly common men emigrate.  It's a confession of failure. . . .
And so we've continued to swell the ranks of the most pitiful class in
the country--the gentleman and his family with the small fixed income.
The working man regards him with suspicion because he wears a black
coat--or, with contempt because he doesn't strike; the Government
completely ignores him because they know he's too much a slave to
convention to do anything but vote along so-called gentlemanly lines.
What do you suppose would be the result if the enormous body of middle
class slaves in this country did, one day, combine and refuse to be
bled by every other class?   We're bled by the people on top for their
own advantage; and then we're bled again for the advantage of the dear
workman. . . ."  She laughed a little.  "Forgive me talking so much;
but not for Jack, thank you."

Vane bowed.  "Mrs. Vernon, I think you're perfectly right--and I wish
you and him the very best of luck."  He shook hands gravely and a few
moments later he was walking back towards the station with Binks
trotting sedately at his heels.  In all probability he would never see
Mrs. Vernon again; war and its aftermath had brought their paths
together for a space, and now they were diverging again.  But that
short space had been enough to make him feel ashamed and proud.
Ashamed of himself for his cynicism and irritability; proud of the
woman who, with her faith clear and steadfast, could face the future
without faltering.  Her man's job had been laid upon her; she would
never fail him till the time came for her to join him. . . .  And by
then she would have earned her reward--rest. . . .  She will deserve
every moment of it. . . .  Surely the Lord of True Values will not
grudge it to her. . . .

And though he had said nothing to her of his thoughts--men when deeply
moved are so hopelessly inarticulate--somehow he wished going up in the
train that he had.  Falteringly, crudely, he might have said something,
which would have helped her.  If only a man had the power of expressing
sympathy without words.  He needn't have worried, had he known . . .
and Binks, who was looking out of the window with interest, could not
tell him.  Anyway, it was not anything to make a song or dance
about--putting a cold wet nose into a hand that hung down from a chair,
and letting it rest there--just for a while. . . .  But it was not the
first time, and it will not be the last, that the Peace that passeth
all understanding has been brought to the human heart by the touch of a
dog. . . .  Binks had justified his inclusion in the trip. . . .




CHAPTER VII

The days that followed passed pleasantly enough.  Gradually the
jaundice was disappearing, and Vane was becoming normal again.  The war
seemed very far away from Rumfold; though occasionally a newcomer
brought some bit of intimate gossip about Crucifix Alley or Hell Fire
Corner, or one of the little places not shown on any map, which mean so
much more to the actual fighting man than all the big towns rolled
together.  Pipes would come out and men would draw together in the
smoking-room--while in imagination the green flares would go hissing up
again, silhouetted against the velvet of the night.  But for the most
part the war had ceased to count; tennis and golf, with a visit now and
then to London, filled the days.

Vane's arm prevented him playing any game, but the country around was
admirably suited for walking, and most afternoons he found himself
strolling out past the lodge gates for a ramble.  Sometimes one of the
other officers accompanied him; but more often he went alone.  And on
those long lonely walks he found himself obeying Margaret's
injunctions, given to him at Paris Plage--"Go and find out. . . ."

In common with many others who were beginning, almost unconsciously, to
think for the first time, he found considerable difficulty in knowing
where to start the quest.  Vane was no fool, but in days gone by he had
accepted a certain order of things as being the only possible
order--just as England had been the only possible country.  But now it
seemed to him that if England was to remain the only possible country
an alteration would have to be made in the order.  Before, any danger
to her supremacy had come from without--now the trouble lay within.

Each day, alongside the war news, he read of strikes and rumours of
strikes, and when he came to ask himself the reason why, he was
appalled at his own ignorance.  Something was wrong somewhere;
something which would have to be put right.  And the trouble was that
it did not seem a matter of great ease to put it right.  He felt that
the glib phrases about Capital and Labour pulling together, about
better relations between employers and men, about standing shoulder to
shoulder, failed to hit the point.  They were rather like offering a
hungry lion a halfpenny bun.  They could always be relied on to raise a
cheer from a political platform provided the right audience was
present; but it seemed doubtful whether even such a far-reaching result
as that was quite enough.

At times his natural indolence made him laugh inwardly.  "What on earth
is the use?" he would mutter, throwing pebbles into the pond below him.
"What has to be--has to be."  It was a favourite haunt of his--that
pond; in the heart of a wood, with a little waterfall trickling over
some rounded stones and falling musically into the pond a few feet
below.  The afternoon sun used to shine through the branches of some
great beech trees, and the dense undergrowth around screened him from
the observation of any chance passer by walking along the path
behind. . . .  "You can't do anything," the mocking voice would
continue.  "So why worry?"

But the mental jaundice was passing--and the natural belief of man in
himself was coming back.  Ho felt the gas expert had been right, even
though he had died.  And so Vane became a reader of books of a type
which had not formerly been part of his daily programme.  He was
groping towards knowledge, and he deliberately sought every help for
the way.  He tried some of H. G. Wells's to start with. . . .
Previously he had read the "First Men in the Moon," because he'd been
told it was exciting; and "Ann Veronica," because he had heard it was
immoral.  Now he tried some of the others.

He was engaged thus when Joan Devereux found him one afternoon in his
favourite haunt.  She had stumbled on his hiding place by mistake, and
her first instinct was to retire as quickly as she had come.  Since
their first meeting, their conversation, on the rare occasions they had
met at Rumfold Hall, had been confined to the most commonplace remarks,
and those always in the presence of someone else.  Any possibility of a
_tête-à-tête_ she had avoided; and the necessary mental effort had
naturally caused her to think all the more about him.  Now, just as she
halted in her tracks and prepared to back out through the undergrowth,
Vane looked up at her with his slow lazy smile.

"Discovered!" he remarked scrambling to his feet, and saluting her.
"Joan, you have come in the nick of time."

"I would prefer you not to call me Joan," she answered coldly.  "And
after your abominable rudeness last time we were alone together, I
don't want to talk to you at all."

"I suppose I was rather rude," answered Vane reflectively.  "Though, if
it's any comfort to you to know, I was much ruder to two men going up
in the train a few days later. . . ."

"It isn't of the slightest interest to me," she returned, "whom you're
rude to, or how you spend your spare time.  The habits of an
ill-mannered boor are not of great importance, are they?"  She turned
her back on him, and parted the undergrowth with her hands, preparatory
to leaving.

"Don't go."  His voice close behind her made her pause.  "I need
you--officially."

She looked round at him, and despite herself the corners of her lips
began to twitch.  "You really are the most impossible person," she
remarked.  "What do you need me for?"

He stepped back to his usual seat, and pointed to a small mossy bank
beside him.  "Come and sit down there, and let's think. . . ."

After a moment's hesitation she did as he said.

"It's rather a knotty problem, isn't it?" he continued after a moment.
"I might want you to flirt with me in order to avert my suicide in the
pond through boredom. . . ."

"You may want," she retorted.

"But it's in the official programme?"

"You're not on the official list," she flashed back.

"Worse and worse," he murmured.  "I begin to despair.  However, I won't
try you as highly as that.  I will just ask you a plain, honest
question.  And I rely on you to answer me truthfully. . . .  Do you
think I should be a more attractive being; do you think I should be
more capable of grappling with those great problems which--ah--surround
us on all sides, if I could dissect rats--or even mice?" he added
thoughtfully after a pause.

The girl looked at him in amazement.  "Are you trying to be funny?" she
asked at length.

"Heaven forbid!" he said fervently.  "I was never more serious in my
life.  But, in that book,"--he pointed to one lying between
them--"everybody, who is anybody dissects rodents."

She picked up the book and gazed at the title.  "But this is the book
everybody's talking about," she said.

"I am nothing if not fashionable," returned Vane.

"And do they dissect rats in it?"

"Don't misunderstand me, and take too gloomy a view of the situation,"
said Vane reassuringly.  "They do other things besides. . . .
Brilliant things, all most brilliantly written about; clever things,
all most cleverly told.  But whenever there's a sort of gap to be
filled up, a _mauvais quart d'heure_ after luncheon, the hero runs off
and deals with a mouse.  And even if he doesn't, you know he
could. . . .  And the heroine!  It's a fundamental part of all their
educations, their extraordinary brilliance seems to rest on it as a
foundation."

She looked at him curiously.  "I'm not particularly dense," she said
after a while, "but I must admit you rather defeat me."

"Joan," answered Vane seriously, and she made no protest this time at
the use of her name, "I rather defeat myself.  In the old days I never
thought at all--but if I ever did I thought straight.  Now my mind is
running round in circles.  I chase after it; think I'm off at last--and
then find myself back where I started.  That's why I've put up the
S.O.S., and am trying to get help."  He laid his hand on the book
beside him.

"Are you reading all the highbrows?" she asked.

"Most of 'em," he answered.  "In the first place they're all so
amazingly well written that it's a pleasure to read them for that
alone; and, secondly--I'm hoping . . . still hoping. . . ."  He took
out his cigarette case and offered it to her.  "I feel that it's I who
am wrong--not they--that it's my lack of education that huffs me.  I
expect it's those damned rats. . . ."

Joan laughed, and lit a cigarette.  "They're all so frightfully clever,
Joan," went on Vane blowing out a cloud of smoke.  "They seem to me to
be discussing the world of men and women around them from the pure cold
light of reason. . . .  Brain rules them, and they make brain rule
their creations.  Instead of stomach--stomach really rules the world,
you know."  For a while they sat in silence, watching a dragon-fly
darting like a streak of light over the pond below them.

"I wouldn't bother if I were you," said the girl after a while.  "After
all, if one is happy oneself, and tries to make other people happy too,
it's bound to help things along a bit, isn't it?  It strikes me that
whatever people write, or say, everything will go on much the same.
Besides--it's so impertinent.  You don't want to be reconstructed; nor
does anybody else.  So why worry?"

"But, my dear girl," said Vane feebly, "don't you think one
ought. . . ."

"No, I don't," she interrupted.  "You listen to me for a bit, my
friend; and you can take it or leave it, just as you like.  It strikes
me you're a great deal too occupied about other people, and you don't
pay sufficient attention to yourself.  You've got to live your own
life--not the man's next door.  And you'll do most good by living that
life, as you want to live it.  If you really want to reform other
people--well go and do it, and get a thick ear. . . .  It's part of
your job.  But if you don't want to, there's no earthly use trying to
pretend you do; you're merely a hypocrite.  There's no good telling me
that everybody can be lumped into classes and catered for like so many
machines.  We're all sorts and conditions, and I suppose you'd say I
was one of the supremely selfish sort.  In fact, you have said so," she
said defiantly.

"All right--we'll leave it at that," she went on before he could speak.
"But I'm happy--and I'm sincere.  I do the most awful things at
times--because I like doing them.  I should loathe to be a nurse, and
the W.A.A.C. uniform makes me look a fright.  I may not realise the
horrors over the water; I don't want to.  And do you suppose half these
women who talk about them so glibly do either? . . . .  Of course they
don't; they're just posing.  They pretend it's awful and horrible to
dance and play the fool; and all the while their teeth are chattering
with envy and malice. . . ."

"We seem," remarked Vane, taking advantage of a temporary lull in the
flood, "to have arrived at rather a personal discussion."

"Of course we have," she took him up.  "Isn't it I--I--I everywhere?
Only a lot of people aren't sufficiently truthful to admit it.  It's
Number One first all the way through, right from the people up at the
top down to the poor brutes in the slums.  All the wonderful schemes of
reform are for the glory of the schemer first, with the happy
recipients amongst the also rans."  She paused a moment, and a sudden
tender look came into her eyes.  "Of course there are exceptions.
There's a boy I know--he's a cousin of mine--with weak lungs.  Rejected
for the Army three times as totally unfit.  For the last four years
he's been living in a slum off Whitechapel and the people there love
him. . . .  He just walks in and planks down a pork chop in the back
room; or a bottle of Basa, or something and has a talk to the
woman . . . he's dying . . . but he's dying happy. . . .  I couldn't do
that; no more could you. . . .  We should loathe it, and so we should
be fools to attempt it. . . ."

"I wonder," said Vane slowly. . . .  "I wonder."

"No, you don't," she cried.  "You don't wonder. . . .  You know I'm
right. . . .  If you loved such a life you'd just do it. . . .  And
you'd succeed.  The people who fail are the people who do things from a
sense of duty."

"What a very dangerous doctrine," smiled Vane.

"Perhaps it is," she answered.  "Perhaps in my own way I'm groping too;
perhaps," and she laughed a little apologetically, "I've fitted my
religion to my life.  At any rate it's better than fitting other
peoples' lives to one's religion.  But it seems to me that God," she
hesitated, as if at a loss for words to express herself--"that God--and
one's surroundings--make one what one is. . . .  And unless one is very
certain that either God or the surroundings are wrong, it's asking for
trouble to go on one's own beaten track. . . .  I suppose you think I'm
talking out of my turn."  She turned and faced him with a slight smile.

"On the contrary," answered Vane, "you have interested me immensely.
But you've dodged the one vital question--for me, at any rate.  What is
the beaten track?  Just at present I can't find it?"

"You'll not find it any easier by looking for it too hard," she said
thoughtfully.  "I'm certain of that. . . .  It'll come in a flash to
you, when you least expect it, and you'll see it as clear as daylight."

For a while they sat in silence, both busy with their own thoughts.
Then the girl laughed musically.

"To think of me," she gurgled, "holding forth like this. . . .  Why,
I've never done such a thing before that I can remember."  Then of a
sudden she became serious.  The big grey eyes looked steadily, almost
curiously, at the face of the man beside her.  "I wonder why," she
whispered almost below her breath.  "You've been most poisonously rude
to me, and yet . . . and yet here am I talking to you as I've never
talked to any other man in my life."

Vane stared at the pool for a few moments before he answered.  He was
becoming uncomfortably aware that grey eyes with a certain type of chin
were attractive--very attractive.  But his tone was light when he spoke.

"A quarrel is always a sound foundation."  He looked up at her with a
smile, but her eyes still held that half speculative look. . . .

"I wonder what you would have thought of me," she continued after a
moment, "if you'd met me before the war. . . ."

"Why, that children of fifteen should be in bed by ten," he mocked.

"Yes, but supposing I was what I am now, and you were what you were
then--and you weren't filled with all these ideas about duty and
futures and things. . . ."

"You would have added another scalp to the collection, I expect," said
Vane drily.

They both laughed, then she bent slightly towards him.  "Will you
forgive me for what I said about--about that woman you were going to
see?"

"Why--sure," answered Vane.  "I guess you owed me one."

Joan laughed.  "We'll wash the first lesson out.  Except, of course,
for that one thing you said.  I mean about--the other. . . .  I'd just
hate to forget that there's a wedding coming on, and do anything that
would make it awkward for me to be asked to the church. . . ."

"You little devil, Joan," said Vane softly, "you little devil."

She laughed lightly and sprang to her feet.  "I must be going," she
said.  "At least three Colonials are waiting for my ministrations."
She stood looking down at him. . . .  "Are you going to walk back with
me, or to resume your study of rodents?"

Vane slipped the book in his pocket.  "I'm afraid," he remarked, "that
I should not be able to bring that undivided attention to bear on the
subject which is so essential for my education.  Besides--perhaps
you'll have a few minutes to spare after you have dealt with the
Colonials. . . ."  He parted the branches for her.

"My dear man," she retorted, "You've had far more than your fair
official share already. . . ."  She scrambled on to the path and Vane
fell into step beside her.  "And don't forget that you've only just
been forgiven. . . ."

"Which makes it all the more essential for me to have continual
evidence of the fact," retorted Vane.

"It strikes me," she looked at him suddenly, "that you're not quite as
serious as you make out.  You've got all the makings of a very pretty
frivoller in you anyway."

"I bow to your superior judgment," said Vane gravely.  "But I've been
commissioned to--er--go and find myself, so to speak, by one who must
be obeyed.  And in the intervals between periods of cold asceticism
when I deal with the highbrows, and other periods when I tackle
subjects of national importance first hand, I feel that I shall want
relaxation. . . ."

"And so you think you'd like me to fill the role of comic relief," she
said sweetly.  "Thanks a thousand times for the charming compliment."

"It doesn't sound very flattering put that way, I must admit," conceded
Vane with a grin.  "And yet the pleasures of life fill a very important
part.  I want to find myself in them too. . . ."

"I'm glad to see traces of comparative sanity returning," she said, as
they turned into the Lodge Gates.  "Do you think it's safe to trust
yourself to such an abandoned character as I am?  What would She who
must be obeyed say?"

She looked at him mockingly, and involuntarily Vane frowned slightly.
At the moment he felt singularly unwilling to be reminded of Margaret.
And he was far too old a stager not to realise that he was heading
directly for waters which, though they ran amongst charming scenery,
contained quite a number of hidden rocks.

She saw the sudden frown, and laughed very gently.  "Poor young man,"
she murmured; "poor serious young man.  Dare you risk it?"

Then Vane laughed too.  They had come to the lawn, and her three
Colonial patients were approaching.  "Put that way," he said, "I feel
that it is my bounden duty to take a prolonged course of those
pleasures."

"Splendid," she cried, and her eyes were dancing merrily.  "Come over
and lunch to-morrow.  You can have Father and Aunt Jane first.  You'll
like Aunt Jane, she's as deaf as a post and very bloodthirsty--and then
you can begin the course afterwards.  One o'clock, and it's about half
an hour's walk. . . ."

With a nod she turned and left him.  And if those of her friends who
knew Joan Devereux well had seen the look in her eyes as she turned to
her three Canadians, they would have hazarded a guess that there was
trouble brewing.  They would further have hazarded a second guess as to
the form it was likely to take.  And both guesses would have been
right.  A young man, remarked Joan to herself, who would be all the
better for a fall; a young man who seemed very much too sure of
himself.  Joan Devereux was quite capable of dealing with such cases as
they deserved, and she was a young woman of much experience.




CHAPTER VIII

It was the following morning that Vane received a second letter from
Margaret.  He had written her once--a letter in which he had made no
allusion to their last meeting--and she had answered it.  Cases were
still pouring in and she was very busy.  When she did have a moment to
herself she was generally so tired that she lay down and went to sleep.
It was the letter of a girl obsessed with her work to the exclusion of
all outside things.

Of course he admired her for it--admired her intensely.  It was so
characteristic of her, and she had such a wonderful character.
But--somehow . . . he had wished for something a little more basely
material.  And so with this second one.  He read it through once at
breakfast, and then, with a thoughtful look in his eyes, he took it
with him to a chair on the big verandah which ran along the whole of
the front of Rumfold Hall.  The awning above it had been specially
erected for the benefit of the patients and Vane pulled one of the
lounge chairs back from the stone balustrade, so that his face was
shaded from the sun.  It was a favourite spot of his, and now, with
Margaret's letter outspread beside him, and his pipe held between his
knees, he commenced to fill the bowl.  He was becoming fairly quick at
the operation, but long after it was well alight he was still staring
at the misty line of distant hills.  Away, out there, beyond, the thing
called war was in full swing--the game was at its height.  And the
letter beside him had taken him back in spirit. . . .  After a while he
picked it up again and commenced to re-read the firm, clear
handwriting. . . .


No. 24, STATIONARY HOSPITAL.

MONDAY.

Derek, dear, I've been moved as you see from No. 13.  I'm with the men
now, and though I hated going at first--yet, now, I think I almost
prefer it.  With the officers there must always be a little
constraint--at least, I have never been able to get rid of the feeling.
Perhaps with more experience it would vanish _je ne sais pas_ . . . but
with the men it's never there.  They're just children, Derek, just dear
helpless kiddies; and so wonderfully grateful for any little thing one
does.  Never a whimper; never the slightest impatience. . . . they're
just wonderful.  One expects it from the officers; but somehow it
strikes one with a feeling almost of surprise when one meets it in the
men.  There's one of them, a boy of eighteen, with both his legs blown
off above the knee.  He just lies there silently, trying to understand.
He never worries or frets--but there's a look in his eyes--a puzzled,
questioning look sometimes--which asks as clearly as if he spoke--"Why
has this thing happened to _me_?"  He comes from a little Devonshire
fishing village, he tells me; and until the war he'd never been away
from it!  Can you imagine the pitiful, chaotic, helplessness in his
mind?  Oh! doesn't it all seem too insensately brutal? . . .  It's not
even as if there was any sport in it; it's all so utterly ugly and
bestial. . . .  One feels so helpless, so bewildered, and the look in
some of their eyes makes one want to scream, with the horror of
it. . . .

But, old man, the object of this letter is not to inflict on you my
ideas on war.  It is in a sense a continuation, and a development, of
our talk on the beach at Paris Plage.  I have been thinking a good deal
lately about that conversation, and now that I have almost definitely
made up my mind as to what I propose to do myself after the war, I
consider it only fair to let you know.  I said to you then that perhaps
my job might only be to help you to fulfil your own destiny, and
nothing which I have decided since alters that in any way.  If you
still want me after the war--if we find that neither of us has made a
mistake--I can still help you, Derek, I hope.  But, my dear, it won't
be quite a passive help, if you understand what I mean.  I've got to be
up and doing myself--actively; to be merely any man's echo--his
complement--however much I loved him, would not be enough.  I've come
to that, you see.

And so I've decided--not quite definitely as I said, but almost so--to
read for Medicine.  I'm a little old, perhaps, though I'm only
twenty-four: but these years in France have at any rate not been
wasted.  The question of money does not come in luckily, and the work
attracts me immensely.  Somehow I feel that I might be helping to
repair a tiny bit of the hideous destruction and mutilation which we're
suffering from now.

And that's enough about myself.  I want to suggest something to you.
You may laugh, old boy--but I'm in earnest.  I remember you're telling
me once that, when you were up at the 'Varsity, you used to scribble a
bit.  I didn't pay much attention; in those days one didn't pay
attention--ever.  But now your words have come back to me once or
twice, during the night, when I've been seeing dream pictures in my
reading lamp and the ward has been asleep.  Have you thought that
possibly that is the line along which you might develop?  Don't you
think it's worth trying, Derek?  And then, perhaps--this is my wildest
dream, the raving of a fevered brain--the day will come when you and I
can stand together and realise that each of us in our own way has made
good--has done something to help on--_les autres_.  Oh!  Derek--it's
worth trying, old man--surely it's worth trying.  We've just got to do
something that's worth while, before we come to the end--if only to
balance a little of the hideous mass of worthlessness that's being
piled up to-day. . . .

Don't bother to answer this, as I know you find writing difficult.  I
hope to be getting some leave soon: we can have a talk then.  How goes
the arm?  _A toi, mon cheri_.

MARGARET.

PS.--There's rather a dear man living fairly close to Rumfold, old Sir
James Devereux.  His house is Blandford--a magnificent old place;
almost if not quite as fine as Rumfold, and the grounds are bigger.
His wife died when the son was born, and I rather think there is a
daughter, but she was away at a finishing school when I knew them, Go
over and call; from what I heard there's a distinct shortage of
money--at least of enough to keep the place going.

P.PS.--He's not really old--about only fifty.  Say you know Daddy; they
used to shoot together.


With something like a sigh Vane laid down the last sheet, and, striking
a match, relit his pipe.  Then once again his eyes rested on the misty,
purple hills.  Margaret a successful doctor; himself literary educator
of the public taste. . . .  It was so entirely different from any
picture he had previously contemplated, on the rare occasions when he
had thought about matrimony or the future at all, that it left him
gasping.  It was perfectly true that he had scribbled a certain amount
in years gone by, when he was at the 'Varsity: but not seriously. . . .
An essay or two which he had been told showed distinct ability: a short
story, of possible merit but questionable morality, which had been
accepted on the spot by a not too particular periodical and had never
been paid for--that was the extent of his scribbling.  And
yet--Margaret might be right. . . .  One never knows till one tries:
and Vane grinned to himself as that hoary platitude floated through his
mind. . . .  Then his thoughts passed to the other side of the picture.
Margaret, dispensing admonition and pills, in her best professional
manner, to long queues of the great unwashed.  He felt certain that she
would prefer that section of the community to any less odoriferous
one. . . .  And she'd probably never charge anything, and, if she did,
he would have to stand at the door and collect it, probably in penny
stamps.  Vane's shoulders shook a little as this engaging tableau
presented itself. . . .  What about the little hunting box not far from
Melton, where, in the dear long ago, he had always pictured himself and
his wife wintering?  Provided always the mythical She had some money!
There would be stabling for six nags, which, with care, meant five days
a fortnight for both of them.  Also a garage, and a rather jolly squash
racquet court.  Then a month in Switzerland, coming back towards the
end of January to finish the season off.  A small house of course in
Town--some country house cricket: and then a bit of shooting. . . .
One needn't always go to Switzerland either in the winter; Cairo is
very pleasant, and so is Nice. . . .  It was an alluring prospect, no
less now than formerly; but it meant that Margaret's patients would
have to hop around some. . . .  And they'd probably leave her if he
stood at the door in a pink coat and a hunting topper collecting
postage stamps.  They are rather particular over appearances, are the
ragged trousered and shredded skirt brigade. . . .

The thing was grotesque; it was out of the question, Vane told himself
irritably.  After all, it is possible to push altruism too far, and for
Margaret, at her age and with her attractions, to go fooling around
with medicine, with the mistaken idea that she was benefiting humanity,
was nothing more or leas than damned twaddle.  If she wanted to do
something why not take up her music seriously. .. . .

And it was at this point in his deliberations that a sentence vibrated
across his memory.  It was so clear that it might almost have been
spoken in his ear: "If you loved such a life you'd just do it. . . .
And you'd succeed."

Vane folded Margaret's letter, and put it in his pocket.  If she really
loved the thought of such a life she would just do it. . . .  And she
would succeed.  As far as he was concerned there would be nothing more
to say about it; she had a perfect right to decide for herself.  She
left him free--that he knew; he could still carry out his hunting box
programme in full.  Only he would have to play the part alone--or with
someone else. . . .  Someone else.  Abruptly he rose from his chair,
and found himself face to face with Lady Patterdale. . . .

"Good morning, Captain Vane," she remarked affably.  "'Ad a good night?"

"Splendid, thank you, Lady Patterdale."

"Ain't the news splendid?  Marshal Foch seems to be fair making the
'Uns 'um."

Vane laughed.  "Yes, they seem to be sitting up and taking notice,
don't they?"

"Sir John is marking it all up in the 'All on the map, with flags,"
continued the worthy old woman.  "I can't make 'ead or tail of it all
myself--but my 'usband likes to 'ave everything up to date.  'E can't
form any real opinion on the strategy, he says, unless he knows where
everybody is."

Vane preserved a discreet silence.

"But as I tells 'im," rambled on Lady Patterdale, "it doesn't seem to
me to be of much account where the poor fellows are.  You may move a
pin from 'ere to there, and feel all pleased and joyful about it--but
you wouldn't feel so 'appy if you was the pin."

Vane laughed outright.  "You've got a way of putting things, Lady
Patterdale, which hits the nail on the head each time."

"Ah! you may laugh, Captain Vane.  You may think I'm a silly old woman
who doesn't know what she's talking about.  But I've got eyes in my
'ead; and I'm not quite a fool.  I've seen young men go out to France
laughing and cheerful; and I've seen 'em come back.  They laugh just as
much--perhaps a bit more; they seem just as cheerful--but if you love
'em as I do you come to something which wasn't never there before.
They've been one of the pins.  Lots of us 'ave been one of the pins,
Captain Vane; though we ain't been to France you can lose other things
besides your life in this world."

She nodded her head at him solemnly and waddled on, while Vane stood
for a moment looking after her.  Assuredly this common old woman
possessed in her some spark of the understanding which is almost
Divine. . . .  And Vane, with a quick flash of insight, saw the proud
planting of the pin on Rumfold Hall--a strategic advance, but the
casualty list had never been published. . . .

He strolled along the veranda and into the hall.  Sir John with a very
small audience--mostly newcomers--around him was holding forth on the
new developments in France and Vane paused for a moment to listen.

"You mark my words, me boys," he was saying, "this is the big thing.  I
put my trust in Foch: he's the fellow who's got my money on him.  No
nonsense about Foch.  Of course it's going to be costly, but you can't
have omelettes without breaking eggs.  An old proverb, me boys--but a
true one."

"More than true, Sir John," remarked Vane quietly.  "And one that from
time immemorial has proved an immense comfort to the egg."

He went on up to his room.  It was too early yet to start for
Blandford, but Vane was in no mood for his own thoughts.  They had
reached a stage, indeed, whence he preferred not to follow them
further.  Doubtless by the time Margaret returned on leave, the beaten
track would have revealed itself; until then--_cui bono_? . . . .

He looked at his watch, and it occurred to him that he would just have
comfortable time to pay a visit to old John before starting on his walk
through the woods.  From Robert he had found out where the old man was
living in the village, and, a few minutes later, he was strolling down
the drive towards his house.  He found the little garden, just as
perfectly kept as had been the one at the Lodge: the white muslin
curtains in the front rooms were just as spotless.  And old John
himself was watering a row of sweet peas as he came to the little
gate. . . .

"Ah!  Mr. Vane, sir," he remarked, putting down his can and hobbling
forward.  "I'm honoured to see you, sir."  Then as he saw the three
stars on Vane's sleeve, he corrected himself.  "Captain Vane, sir, I
should have said. . . ."

"I don't think we're likely to fall out over that, John," laughed Vane.
"One never knows what anybody is these days.  You're a Colonel one
minute, and a subaltern the next."

Old John nodded his head thoughtfully.  "That's true, sir--very true.
One doesn't seem to know where one is at all.  The world seems
topsy-turvy.  Things have changed, sir--and I'm thinking the missus and
I are getting too old to keep pace with them.  Take young Blake,
sir--down the village, the grocer's son.  Leastways, when I says
grocer, the old man keeps a sort of general shop.  Now the boy, sir, is
a Captain. . . .  I mis'remember what regiment--but he's a Captain."

"And very likely a devilish good one too, John," said Vane smiling.

"He is, sir.  I've seen reports on him--at schools and courses and the
like--which say he's a fine officer.  But what's going to happen
afterwards, sir, that's what I want to know?  Is young Bob Blake going
to put on his white apron again, and hand the old woman her bit of
butter and sugar over the counter?  What about that, sir?"

"I wish to Heaven I could tell you, John," said Vane.  "Bob Blake isn't
the only one, you know."

"Them as is sound, sir," went on the old man, "won't be affected by it.
They won't have their heads turned by having mixed with the gentry as
their equals--like.  And the real gentry won't think no more nor no
less of them when they goes back to their proper station. . . .  But
there'll be some as will want to stop on in a place where they don't
rightly belong.  And it'll make a world of unhappiness, sir, for all
concerned. . . ."

Unconsciously the old man's eyes strayed in the direction of Rumfold
Hall, and he sighed.

"You can't alter the ways of the Lord, sir," continued old John.  "We
read in the Book that He made them richer and poorer, and some of one
class, and some of another.  As long as everybody remembers which class
he's in, he'll get what happiness he deserves. . . ."

Vane did not feel inclined to dispute this from the point of view of
Holy Writ.  The trouble is that it takes a stronger and more level head
than is possessed by every boy of twenty to understand that a khaki
uniform unlocks doors on which a suit of evening clothes bought off the
peg and a made up tie fail to produce any impression.  If only he
realises that those doors are not worth the trouble of trying to
unlock, all will be well for him; if he doesn't, he will be the
sufferer. . . .  Which is doubtless utterly wrong, but such is the Law
and the Prophets.

"I reckons there are troublous times ahead of us, sir," went on the old
man.  "More troublous than any we are going through now--though them's
bad enough, in all conscience.  Why, only the other evening, I was down
at the Fiddlers' Arms, for a glass of what they do call beer--'tis
dreadful stuff, sir, that there Government beer. . . ."  Old John
sighed mournfully at the thought of what had been.  "I was sitting in
there, as I says, when in comes some young feller from Grant's garage,
up the road.  Dressed classy he was--trying to ape his betters--with a
yellow forefinger from smoking them damned stinking fags--and one of
them stuck behind his ear.

"'Hullo, gaffer,'" he says, 'how's the turnips?'

"'Looking worse in France than they do in England,' says I.  'Have you
been to see?'

"That hit him, sir, that did," chuckled old John.  "He fair squirmed
for a moment, while the others laughed.  'Don't you know I'm on work of
national importance?' he says.  'I'm exempted.'

"'The only work of national importance you're ever likely to do, my
lad,' says I, 'won't be done till you're dead.  And not then if you're
buried proper.'

"'What do you mean?' he asks.

"'You might help the turnips you're so anxious about,' says I, 'if they
used you as manure.'"  Old John, completely overcome by the remembrance
of this shaft, laughed uproariously.

"You should have seen his face, sir," he went on when he had partially
recovered.  "He got redder and redder, and then he suddenly says, 'e
says, 'Weren't you the lodge keeper up at Rumfold Hall?'

"'I was,' I answered quiet like, because I thought young Master
Impudence was getting on dangerous ground.

"'One of the poor wretched slaves,' he sneers, 'of a bloated
aristocrat. . . .  We're going to alter all that,' he goes on, and then
for a few minutes I let him talk.  He and his precious friends were
going to see that all that wretched oppression ceased, and then he
finished up by calling me a slave again, and sneering at his Lordship."

Old John spat reflectively.  "Well, sir, I stopped him then.  In my
presence no man may sneer at his Lordship--certainly not a callow pup
like him.  His Lordship is a fine man and a good man, and I was his
servant."  The old man spoke with a simple dignity that impressed Vane.
"I stopped him, sir," he continued, "and then I told him what I thought
of him.  I said to him, I said, 'Young man, I've listened to your
damned nonsense for five minutes--now you listen to me.  When you--with
your face all covered with pimples, and your skin all muddy and
sallow--start talking as you've been talking, there's only one thing
should be done.  Your mother should take your trousers down and smack
you with a hair brush; though likely you'd cry with fright before she
started.  I was his Lordship's servant for forty-two years, and I'm
prouder of that fact than anyone is likely to be over anything you do
in your life.  And if his Lordship came in at that door now, he'd meet
me as a man meets a man.  Whereas you--you'd run round him sniffing
like the lickspittle you are--and if he didn't tread on you, you'd go
and brag to all your other pimply friends that you'd been talking to an
Earl. . . .'"

"Bravo! old John . . . bravo!" said Vane quietly.  "What did the whelp
do?"

"Tried to laugh sarcastic, sir, and then slunk out of the door."  The
old man lit his pipe with his gnarled, trembling fingers.  "It's
coming, sir--perhaps not in my time--but it's coming.  Big
trouble. . . .  All those youngsters with their smattering of
edication, and their airs and their conceits and their 'I'm as good as
you.'"  He fell silent and stared across the road with a troubled look
in his eyes.  "Yes, sir," he repeated, "there be bad days coming for
England--terrible bad--unless folks pull themselves together. . . ."

"Perhaps the Army may help 'em when it comes back," said Vane.

"May be, sir, may be."  Old John shook his head doubtfully.  "Perhaps
so.  Anyways, let's hope so, sir."

"Amen," answered Vane with sudden earnestness.  And then for a while
they talked of the soldier son who had been killed.  With a proud lift
to his tired, bent shoulders old John brought out the letter written by
his platoon officer, and showed it to the man who had penned a score of
similar documents.  It was well thumbed and tattered, and if ever Vane
had experienced a sense of irritation at the exertion of writing to
some dead boy's parents or wife he was amply repaid now.  Such a little
trouble really; such a wonderful return of gratitude even though it be
unknown and unacknowledged. . . .  "You'll see there, sir," said the
old man, "what his officer said.  I can't see myself without my
glasses--but you read it, sir, you read it. . . .  'A magnificent
soldier, an example to the platoon.  I should have recommended him for
the stripe.'  How's that, sir. . . .?  And then there's another
bit. . . .  'Men like him can't be replaced.'  Eh! my boy. . . .  Can't
be replaced.  You couldn't say that, sir, about yon pimply ferret I was
telling you about."

"You could not, old John," said Vane.  "You could not."  He stood up
and gave the letter back.  "It's a fine letter; a letter any parent
might be proud to get about his son."

"Aye," said the old man, "he was a good boy was Bob.  None o' this
new-fangled nonsense about him."  He put the letter carefully in his
pocket.  "Mother and me, sir, we often just looks at it of an evening.
It sort of comforts her. . . .  Somehow it's hard to think of him
dead. . . ."  His lips quivered for a moment, and then suddenly he
turned fiercely on Vane.  "And yet, I tells you, sir, that I'd sooner
Bob was dead over yonder--aye--I'd sooner see him lying dead at my
feet, than that he should ever have learned such doctrines as be flying
about these days."

Thus did Vane leave the old man, and as he walked down the road he saw
him still standing by his gate thumping with his stick on the pavement,
and shaking his head slowly.  It was only when Vane got to the turning
that old John picked up his can and continued his interrupted
watering. . . .  And it seemed to Vane that he had advanced another
step towards finding himself.




CHAPTER IX

Vane, conscious that he was a little early for lunch, idled his way
through the woods.  He was looking forward, with a pleasure he did not
attempt to analyse, to seeing Joan in the setting where she belonged.
And if occasionally the thought intruded itself that it might be
advisable to take a few mental compass bearings and to ascertain his
exact position before going any further, he dismissed them as
ridiculous.  Such thoughts have been similarly dismissed before. . . .
It was just as Vane was abusing himself heartily for being an ass that
he saw her coming towards him through a clearing in the undergrowth.
She caught sight of him at the same moment and stopped short with a
swift frown.

"I didn't know you knew this path," she said as he came up to her.

"I'm sorry--but I do.  You see, I knew Rumfold pretty well in the old
days. . . .  Is that the reason of the frown?"

"I wasn't particularly anxious to see you or anybody," she remarked
uncompromisingly.  "I wanted to try to think something out. . . ."

"Then we are a well met pair," laughed Vane.  "I will walk a few paces
behind you, and we will meditate."

"Don't be a fool," said Joan still more uncompromisingly.  "And anyway
you're very early for lunch."  She looked at her wrist watch. . . .  "I
said one o'clock and it's only half past twelve.  The best people don't
come before they're asked. . . ."

"I throw myself on the mercy of the court," pleaded Vane solemnly.
"I'll sit on this side of the bush and you sit on the other and in a
quarter of an hour we will meet unexpectedly with all the usual
symptoms of affection and joy. . . ."

The girl was slowly retracing her steps, with Vane just behind her, and
suddenly through an opening in the trees Blandford came in sight.  It
was not the usual view that most people got, because the path through
the little copse was not very well known--but from nowhere could the
house be seen to better advantage.  The sheet of placid, unruffled
water with its low red boathouse: the rolling stretch of green sweeping
up from it to the house broken only by the one terrace above the tennis
lawns; the rose garden, a feast of glorious colour, and then the house
itself with its queer turrets and spires and the giant trees beyond it;
all combined to make an unforgettable picture.

Joan had stopped and Vane stood silently beside her.  She was taking in
every detail of the scene, and Vane, glancing at her quickly, surprised
a look of almost brooding fierceness in her grey eyes.  It was a look
of protection, of ownership, of fear, all combined: a look such as a
tigress might give if her young were threatened. . . .  And suddenly
there recurred to his mind that phrase in Margaret's letter about
financial trouble at Blandford.  It had not impressed him particularly
when he read it; now he found himself wondering. . . .

"Isn't it glorious?"  The girl was speaking very low, as if unconscious
that she had a listener.  Then she turned on Vane swiftly.  "Look at
that!" she cried, and her arm swept the whole perfect vista.  "Isn't it
worth while doing anything--anything at all--to keep that as one's own?
That has belonged to us for five hundred years--and now!  . . .  My
God! just think of a second Sir John Patterdale--here"--the brooding
wild mother look was in her eyes again, and her lips were shut tight.

Vane moved restlessly beside her.  He felt that the situation was
delicate; that it was only his unexpected and unwelcome arrival on the
scene that had made her take him into his confidence.  Evidently there
was something gravely the matter; equally evidently it was nothing to
do with him. . . .

"I hope there's no chance of such a tragedy as that," he said gravely.

She turned and faced him.  "There's every chance," she cried fiercely.
"Dad is up against it--I know he is, though he doesn't say much.  And
this morning . . ."  She bit her lip, and once more her eyes rested on
the old house.  "Oh! what's the good of talking?" she went on after a
moment.  "What has to be--has to be; but, oh! it makes me mad to think
of it.  What good does it do, what purpose in the scheme of things you
may talk about, does it serve to turn out a man, who is beloved for
miles around, and put in his place some wretched pork butcher who has
made millions selling cat's meat as sausages?"

She faced Vane defiantly, and he wisely remained silent.

"You may call it what you like," she stormed; "but it's practically
turning him out.  Is it a crime to own land, and a virtue to make a
fortune out of your neighbours in trade?  Dad has never swindled a
soul.  He's let his tenants down easy all through the war when they've
had difficulties over their rent; he's just idolised by them all.  And
now he's got to go--unless. . . ."  She paused and her two hands
clenched suddenly.  Then she continued, and her voice was quite calm.
"I know I'm talking rot--so you needn't pay any attention.  The great
thinkers are all agreed--aren't they?--that the present land system is
wrong--and they must know, of course.  But I'm not a great thinker, and
I can't get beyond the fact that it's not going to increase anybody's
happiness--and there are a good many to be considered--if Dad goes, and
a pork butcher comes in. . . .  And that's that. . . ."

"Supposing," said Vane curiously, "it wasn't a pork butcher?  Suppose
it was someone who--well, let's say whom you wouldn't mind going in to
dinner with."

"It would be just the same," she answered after a moment.  "Just the
same.  It's ours, don't you see?--it's _ours_.  It's always been ours."
And the brooding, animal look had come back into her eyes. . . .

Then with a laugh she turned to him.  "Come on; you've got to make a
bow to Aunt Jane.  Mind you tell her you've killed a lot of Germans.
She'll adore you for ever. . . ."

She threw off her fit of depression and chatted gaily all the way up to
the house.

"I've told Dad you're a very serious young man," she remarked, as they
reached the drive; "so you'd better live up to your reputation."

Vane groaned.  "Your sins be upon your own head," he remarked.  "I've
already had one serious dissertation this morning from old John, who
used to be lodgekeeper at Rumfold."

"I know him well," cried the girl.  "A dear old man. . . ."

"Who shares your views on the land question," said Vane with a smile.

She stopped and faced him.  "Don't you?" she demanded quietly.

"In your own words, Joan--I am a very serious young man; and I am
seeking for knowledge."

For a moment she seemed about to reply, and then, with a short laugh,
she turned on her heel and walked on.  It was just as they were
entering the drawing-room that she looked at him over her shoulder.  "I
hope your search will be successful," she remarked; "and I hope still
more that when it is successful you won't commit suicide.  To have
knowledge, to know to-day what is the truth, would be, I think, the
most terrible burden any man could bear.  Have you ever thought how
tired God must be?"

Before he could answer she was shouting down her aunt's ear-trumpet.
And Vane was left wondering at the strange mixture which went to make
up Joan Devereux.

      *      *      *      *      *

Sir James was cordially delighte

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/24945