Chapter XVII: Part 17

They spent the days of Ninian's leave in visiting all the familiar places about Boveyhayne. It seemed almost that Ninian could not see enough of them. He would rise early, rousing them with insistent shouts, and urge them to make haste and prepare for a long walk; and all day they tramped along the roads, up the combes and down the combes, over commons, through woods, lingering in the lanes to pluck the wildflowers that grew profusely in the hedgerows, or listening to the mating birds that flew continually about them. They walked along the Roman Road to Lyme Regis in the east, and along the Roman Road again to Sidmouth in the west, returning in the dark, tired and hungry; and sometimes they went into the roadside public-houses because of the warm, comfortable smell they had, and because they liked to listen to the slow, burring voices of the labourers as they drank their beer and cider and talked of the day's doings. There was a corner of the Common, near the edge of the cliff, where they could lie when the sun was warm, and look out over the Channel to where the Brixham trawlers lay in a line along the horizon. Westwards, the red clay cliffs ran up and down in steeply undulating lines as far as they could see, and near at hand, in a wide valley beyond the gloomy combe that leads to Salcombe Regis, they could very plainly see the front of Sidmouth. In the east, they could look up the wooded valley of the Axe, and, beyond the vari-coloured Haven Cliff, see the Dorset Hills that huddled Charmouth and Bridport, and further out, like an island in mist, the high reach of Portland Bill....

In this corner of the Common, they spent the last day of Ninian's leave. Behind them was a great stretch of gorse in bloom, and brown bracken, mingled with new green fronds, from which larks sprang up, singing and soaring. They had eaten sandwiches on the Common, and in the afternoon, had climbed down the steep side of the combe to a farm to tea, and, then they had climbed up the combe again, and had sat in their corner, watching the Boveyhayne trawlers blowing home; and as they sat there, they became very quiet. In this solitude and peace, the outrage of war seemed to have no meaning....

Ninian stirred slightly. He raised himself on his elbow and looked about him....

"Let's go home," he said quickly, getting up as he spoke. He went to his mother and helped her to rise, and when she was standing up, he took her arm and drew it through his, and led her towards the village; and when they had gone up the grassy path through the bracken, and were well on the way home, Mary and Henry followed after them.

"Ninian feels things more than he admits," Henry whispered to her.

9

They made poor attempts at gaiety that night, and Ninian tried to make oratory about Engineers. He divided his discourse into two parts: one insisting that the war would be won by engineering feats; the other insisting that it might be lost because of the contempt of most of the military men for Engineers, which, Ninian said, was another word for Brains. "They don't think we're gentlemen," he said. "I met a 'dug-out' last week, and he was snorting about the Engineers ... hadn't a happorth of brains in his skull, the ass ... and I asked him why it was that he thought so little of them. Do you know what he said? 'Oh,' says he, 'they're always readin' books an' ... an' inventin' things!' That's the kind of chap we've got to endure! Isn't he priceless? I very nearly told him he ought to be embalmed ... only I thought to myself he'd think that was the sort of remark an engineer would make. Plucky old devil, of course, but nothing in his head. If you shook it, it wouldn't rattle!... He seemed to think he'd only got to say, 'Now, then, boys, give 'em hell!' and the Germans 'ud just melt away. As I said afterwards, it's all very well, to say 'Give 'em hell,' but you can't give it to 'em, if you don't know what it's like!..."

But the oratory failed, and the gaiety fizzled out, and after a while Mrs. Graham, finding the silence and her thoughts insupportable, left them and went to bed.

"Come and say 'Good-night' to me," she said to Ninian as she left the room.

"All right, mother!" he answered.

He tried to take up the theme of engineering again. "It's no good trying to chivy Germans in the way you chivy foxes. You've got to think, and think hard. That's where we come in!..." But it was a poor effort, and he abandoned it quickly.

"I think," he said, "I'll go up and say 'Good-night' to mother. You two'll see to things!..."

"Righto, Ninian," Henry answered.

Mary came and sat beside him when Ninian had gone.

"I'm trying to feel proud," she said, "but...."

"Don't you feel proud?" he asked, fondling her.

"No. I'm anxious. It would hurt mother terribly if anything were to happen to Ninian," she answered.

"Nothing will happen to him...."

One said that just because it was comforting.

"Quinny," she said, drawing herself up to him and leaning her elbows on his knees, "do you love me really and truly?..."

He put his arms quickly about her, and drew her close to him, and kissed her passionately.

"But you haven't loved only me," she said, freeing herself.

He did not answer.

"I've never loved any one but you," she went on. "I haven't been able to love any one but you. I've tried to love some one else ... tried very hard!"

"Who was it?" he asked.

"No one you knew. It was after I'd seen you with Lady Cecily Jayne. I was jealous, Quinny!..."

"My dear," he said, flattered by the oneness of her love for him.

"But I couldn't. I just couldn't. I suppose I'm rather limited!" She made a wry smile as she spoke. "I felt stupid beside her. She talked so easily, and I couldn't think of anything to say. You must have thought I was a fool, Quinny!"

"No, Mary!..."

"Oh, but I was. I got stupider and stupider, and the more I thought of how stupid I was, the stupider I got. I could have cried with vexation. Do you remember Gilbert's party ... I mean when it was over and we were going home?"

"Yes."

"I _prayed_ that you'd come with mother and me. I thought Ninian would go with mother, and you'd go with me ... but you didn't!"

"I remember," he answered. "I wanted to go with you...."

"Why didn't you?"

"Some one came up ... I've forgotten ... something happened, and so I didn't. I wanted to, Mary!"

"I thought then that you and I would never! ... Why did you ask me to marry you, Quinny?"

"Because I love you, Mary...."

"But ... did you mean to marry me or did you just ... sort of ... not thinking, I mean!... Oh, it's awf'lly hard to say what's in my mind, but I want to know whether you love me really and truly, Quinny, or only just asked me to marry you impulsively ... when you weren't thinking?"

"I came here loving you, Mary. I didn't mean to tell you about it so soon as I did ... that was impulse ... I couldn't help it ... the moment I saw you as the train came into the station, I felt that I must ask you at once. It would have been rather awkward if you'd said, 'No.' I suppose I should have had to go straight back to London again!... But I came here loving you. I've loved you all the time ... even when I wasn't thinking of you, but of some one else. I've come back to you always in my thoughts!..."

"Do you remember," she said, "the first time you asked me to marry you, Quinny?"

"Yes."

"I've meant it ever since then. You hurt me when you went to Ireland and didn't answer my letter...."

"I know!" he exclaimed.

"How do you know?"

"I just know. And when I talked to you about it, that time in Bloomsbury when you and Mrs. Graham and Rachel came to dine with us...."

"I made fun of it, didn't I? But I had to, Quinny. You'd been unkind, and I had to make some sort of a show, hadn't I? I had to keep my pride if I couldn't keep anything else."

"We've been stupid, both of us."

"You have," she retorted.

"I have," he said. "I've been frightfully stupid. That's what puzzles me. I'm clear-sighted enough about the people I make up in my books. The critics insist on my understanding of human motives, and I know that I have that understanding. I can get right inside my characters, and I know them through and through ... but I'm as stupid as a sheep about myself and about you and ... living people. I suppose I exhaust all my understanding on my books!"

"Well, it doesn't matter, Quinny, dear," she said. "I'll understand for the two of us!..."

10

In the morning, Ninian went away. They drove to Whitcombe Station with him and saw him off. They had been anxious about Mrs. Graham and dubious of her endurance at the moment of parting ... but she had insisted on going to the station, and so they had not persisted in their persuasions. And she had held herself proudly.

"Good-bye, my dear," she said, hugging Ninian tightly, and smiling at him. "You'll write to me ... often!"

"Every day," he replied. "If I can!"

It had been difficult to fill in the few moments between their arrival at the station and the departure of the train. They said little empty things ... repeated them ... and then were silent....

Then the train began to move, and Mrs. Graham, snatching quickly at him, had kissed him as he was carried off. They stood at the end of the platform, watching the train driving quickly up the valley until it stopped at Coly. Then they heard the whistle of the engine, and saw the smoke curling up, and again the train moved on, and then they could see it no more.

"We'll walk home," Mary whispered to Henry. "She'd much better go back by herself!"

And so they left her, still smiling, though now and then, her hands trembled.

THE EIGHTH CHAPTER

1

A month after Gilbert and Ninian had left England, Henry went to London for a couple of days on business connected with his books. Mrs. Graham had asked him to return to Boveyhayne instead of going to Ireland, until he was fully well again, and he had gladly accepted her invitation. He had written a few pages of a new book that pleased him, and he was anxious to complete the story before he entered the Army. Writing irked him, but he could not abstain from writing ... some demon drove him to it, forcing him to his desk when all his desire was to be out in the lanes with Mary or sailing about the bay with Tom Yeo and Jim Rattenbury. There were times when he loathed this labour of writing which came between him and the pleasure of living, so that he sometimes saw foxgloves and bluebells and primroses and violets and wild daffodils, not as the careless beauty of a Devonshire lane, but as picturesque material for a description in one of his chapters. And his beastly creatures would not lie still in his study until he returned to attend to them, but insisted on following him wherever he went, thrusting themselves upon his notice continually, whether the time was opportune or not. He would walk with Mary, perhaps to Hangman's Stone, and suddenly he would hear her saying, "What are you thinking of, Quinny?" and he would come out of his silence with a start, and say, "Oh, my book, Mary!" and find that he had been walking by her side, unaware of her, unaware of anything but these abominable paper people who deluged his mind with their being ... and when they got to Hangman's Stone, he thought always, "What a good title for a story!"

"But I can't leave it alone," he would say to himself, and then he would compare himself to a drunkard, eager to be quit of his drink, but unable to conquer his craving. And he had pride in it, too. That was what distinguished him from the drunkard and the drug-taker. They had no pride in their drunkenness or their drugged senses, but he had pride in his books, and constantly in his mind was the desire that before he joined the Army, he should leave another book behind him, that his life should be expressed substantially in a number of novels, so that if he should die in battle, he would have left something by which men might remember him.

He had talked to Mary about his position, but she had insisted that this was a decision he must make for himself. Her view, and the view of her mother, was that a woman ought not to take the responsibility of urging a man to endure the horror and danger of such a war as this. "Women can't go into the trenches themselves," Mrs. Graham said, "and they've no right to ask any one else to go!" That was what his father had said.

"But somebody must go, and there are people who have to be told about things," he objected.

"I think," Mrs. Graham answered, "I'd rather be killed than be defended by a man who was white-feathered into doing it, and I know I should never be happy again if I'd nagged at a man until he joined the Army, and he was killed.... I think that some women will have haunted minds after this War!"

"It's the Government's job to say who shall go and who shall stay," Mary added. "That's what they're there for, and it's mean of them to shuffle out of their responsibility and let a lot of flappers and old maids do their work for them!"

Then their talk had taken a new turn, and in the end it was settled that Mary and he were to be married when the new book was finished, and then he would join the Army. There had been a difficulty with Mrs. Graham, but Mary over-ruled her.

"I won't let him go until he marries me," she said, shutting her lips firmly and looking very resolutely at her mother.

"Roger and I might go in together," Henry suggested. "I had a letter from him saying he thought he would join soon. Rachel's going to live in the country...."

"She can come here if she likes," Mrs. Graham interjected. "You'd better tell her that when you go to town. She can stay with us until the war's over...."

"There's the baby, of course!" Henry reminded her.

"I know," she answered. "I'd like to hear a baby in this house again...."

2

London was strangely sensitive, easily exalted, easily depressed, listening avidly to rumours, even when they were clearly absurd. It was the least English of the cities, far, far less English than the villages and country towns. London's nerves were often jangled, but the nerves of Boveyhayne were never jangled. London jumped up and down like a Jack-in-the-box, but Boveyhayne moved steadily on. There were times when London was so un-English as to believe that England might be beaten ... but Boveyhayne never imagined that for a moment. Boveyhayne did not think of the defeat of England, because it had never occurred to Boveyhayne that England could be beaten. Old Widger would sometimes say, "They Germans be cunning!" or "Us'll 'ave to 'it a bit 'arder avore us knocks 'un out!" but Old Widger never imagined for a moment that "'un," as he always called the Kaiser, would not sooner or later get knocked out, and so he went on with his work, pausing now and then to say, "'Er's a reg'lar cunnin' old varmint, 'er be!" almost with as much admiration as if he were talking of a fox or an otter that had eluded the hounds many times. But the cunningest fox falls to the hounds in the end of some chase, and Widger did not doubt that "Keyser" would fall, too. Boveyhayne, was very English in its reserves and its dignity. London might squeal for reprisals, but Boveyhayne never squealed. When the Germans torpedoed a merchant ship, Old Widger said, "It hain't very manly, be it, sir?" and that was all. Old Widger was not indifferent or without imagination ... but he had self-respect, and he could not squeal like a frantic rabbit even when he was in pain. He could hit, and he could hit hard, but he did not care to claw and scratch and bite!...

Henry disliked London then, but he comforted himself with the thought that it resembled all capital cities, that its population was not a native population, but one that shifted and changed and had no tradition. Old Widger had lived in the same cottage all his life: his father had lived there too; and his family, for several generations before his father, had lived and worked in Boveyhayne. They had habits and customs so old that no one knew the meaning of them. When Widger's wife died, Widger and his family had gone to church on the Sunday after her burial, as all the Boveyhayne bereaved do, and had sat through the service, taking no part in it, neither kneeling to pray nor rising to sing nor responding to the invocations. But Old Widger did not know why he had behaved in that fashion, nor did any one in Boveyhayne. "Don't seem no sense in it," he said, but nevertheless he did it, and nothing on earth would have prevented him from doing it. It was the custom....

But there was no custom in London. There were no habits, no traditions, nothing to hold on to in times of crisis or distress. There was no one in London who had been born and had spent all his life in one house, in a house, too, in which his father had been born and had lived and had died. People took a house for three years ... and then moved to another one. Locality had no meaning for them ... they hardly knew the names of their neighbours ... they were not surrounded by cousins ... the roads and streets had no meaning or memories for them ... they were just thoroughfares, passages along which one walked or drove to a railway station or a shopping centre....

And while Old Widger, if the thought had been put into his mind, would stoutly have answered, "Us ain't never been beat!" a Londoner would have answered, "My God, supposing we are beaten?..." Victory might be long in being won. Widger would admit that. But "us ain't never been beat" he would maintain. The Londoner would admit that victory might never be won ... and in making the admission, de-nationalised himself. Widger, obstinate, immovable, imperturbable, kindly, unvengeful and resolute, was English to the marrow ... and when Henry thought of England as a conquering country, he thought of it as a nation of Widgers, not as a nation of Cockneys.

"And it _is_ a nation of Widgers," he said to himself. "The Cockneys shout more, print more, and they squeal a lot, but the Widgers are in the majority!"

It was not until night fell that Henry's love of London was restored. When the sky-signs were put out, and the shop-lights were diminished, and the running flames announcing the merits of this one's whisky and that one's tea were quenched, London became again an ancient city that a man could love....

"It's worth fighting for?" Henry murmured to himself as he stood on the terrace of Trafalgar Square, before the National Gallery, and looked about him at the dusk-softened outlines and the rich highways of shadows. One would not fight for the England that squealed through the ha'penny papers ... one would gladly throttle that England ... one would not fight for the England of the Stock Broker and the Mill Owner ... but one would fight hard, fight until death, for the England of Old Widger and the England of this darkened, dignified and beautiful London.

3

He had attended to his business with his publishers, and was walking along the Strand towards Charing Cross, when he became aware of a thrill of emotion running through the crowd that stood on either side of the road.

"What is it?" he said to a bystander.

"The wounded!" was the answer.

He pressed forward, and stood on the edge of the pavement, and as he did so, the ambulances came put of the station. There was a moment of deep, hurting silence, and then came cheers and waving handkerchiefs and sobs. ... There was a parson standing at Henry's elbow, and he cheered as if he were intoning ... little sterilised hurrahs ... and there was a woman who murmured continually, "Oh, God bless them! God bless them all!" while she cried openly, unrestrainedly. Unceasingly, the ambulances seemed to pass on to the hospitals, and the soldiers, pale from their wounds and tired after their journey by sea and train, lay back in queer disregard of the crowd that cheered them. Now and then, one moved his hand in greeting or smiled ... but most of them were irresponsive, dazed, perhaps hearing still the sound of the smashing artillery and the cries of the maimed and dying, unable to believe that they were back again in a place where there was no fighting, where men and women walked and talked and did their work and took their pleasure in disregard of death and a bloody and abrupt end.... There was a private motor-car in the middle of the procession of ambulances, and inside it was a wounded officer with his wife ... and she did not care who looked on nor what was said, she held him in her arms and kissed him and would not let him go....

"Oh, my God," Henry murmured to himself, as the cars went by, "I can't bear this!..."

He wanted to kill Germans ... it seemed to him then that nothing else mattered but to kill Germans ... that one must put aside the generous beliefs, the kindly intentions, one's work, one's faith, everything ... and kill Germans; unceasingly, without relenting ... kill Germans; that for every wound these men bore, for every drop of blood they had lost, for every pang they had endured, for every tear that their women had shed ... one must kill Germans.

He withdrew from the crowd. Somewhere near at hand, there was a recruiting office. He remembered to have seen a large guiding sign outside St. Martin's Church. He would go there!...

He had to wait until the procession of motor-ambulances had passed by, and then he crossed the street and went to find the recruiting office. "I'm excited," he said to himself. "I'm full of emotion. That's what I am. I'm over-wrought. Those soldiers!..."

In his mind, he could see the woman in the motor-car, hugging her wounded husband ... and a soldier, lying on a stretcher in an ambulance, with his head swathed in bandages, near a little window ... feebly trying to wave his hand to the crowd....

"It's no good being sloppy," he told himself. "One can't win a war by ... spilling over. One's got to keep one's head!"

He turned the corner of the Church and saw the recruiting office, covered with posters, in a narrow lane. He walked towards it, slackening his pace as he did so ... and then he walked past it.

"I can't go in now," he thought. "I must see Roger first ... and there's the book to finish ... and Mary!..."

4

He had seen Roger and Rachel, and was now on his way back to Boveyhayne.... Roger had agreed that he would not join without Henry. "I can't go yet," he had said. "When I've saved a little more, I'll go in. I want to leave Rachel and Eleanor as secure as I can!"

There was another boom in recruiting just then, following on another German outrage.

"It'll take them some time to shape the crowd they're getting now," Roger had said, "so that we won't be hindering them if we hang back for a while. I should have thought you'd want to go into an Irish regiment, Quinny!"

"It doesn't very much matter, does it, what the regiment is?" Henry had answered. "The labels are more or less meaningless now. And I'd like to be with some one I know!"

He had given Mrs. Graham's invitation to Rachel, and Rachel had sent her thanks to Mrs. Graham. She would be glad to go to Boveyhayne when everything was settled.

Things were clearer now. In a little while, Mary and he would be married. Then he could go with Roger. He would have to see his lawyers in Dublin ... there would be a marriage settlement to make and business connected with the estate to settle ... and that done, and his book ready for the printers, he would be free.

"I wish the next two months were over," he said to himself.

He had to change at Salisbury, and while he was waiting for the slow train to Exeter, he met Mullally. He had looked at him, vaguely wondering who he was and why his face should seem familiar, until recollection had come to him, and then, with a return of the old aversion, he had turned away, hoping that Mullally had not seen or recognised him. But Mullally had recognised him, and, unable as ever to understand that his acquaintance was not wanted, he came to Henry and held out his hand.

"I thought it was you," he said. "I wasn't sure at first, but when you turned away ... there was something about your back that was familiar ... I knew it was you. _How_ are you? I haven't seen you since you left Rumpell's, though I've heard of you, of course, and read of you, too! You've become quite well-known, haven't you?"

Henry smiled feebly, an unfriendly, unresponsive, mirthless smile, as was his wont when he was in the presence of people whom he disliked.

"I've often wondered about you," Mullally went on, unembarrassed by Henry's obvious wish to get away from him.

"Oh, yes," Henry replied, saying to himself, "I wish to God my train would come in!"

"Yes, I've often wondered about you," Mullally went on. "And about Farlow and Graham and Carey. You were great friends, you four, weren't you? I'd have called you 'The Heavenly Twins' only there were four of you, and 'quadruplets' is a difficult word for a nickname, don't you think? I mean to say 'The Heavenly Quadruplets' doesn't sound nearly so neat as 'The Heavenly Twins.' It's funnier, of course! What's become of them all? I saw somewhere that Farlow'd written a play, but I didn't see it. I've read one or two of your books, by the way. Quite good, I thought! What did you say'd become of them?"

"Carey's in London ... at the Bar," Henry answered. "I've just been staying with him. He's married!..."

"Dear me! And has he any ... little ones?"

Oh, that was like Mullally! He would be sure to say "little ones" when he meant "children."

"He has a daughter!"

"Oh, indeed! He must be very gratified. And Farlow and Graham, how are they, and what are they doing?"

"Farlow's in Gallipoli and Graham's in France!..."

"Oh, this dreadful war," Mullally exclaimed, wrinkling his features. "I'm greatly opposed to it. I've been addressing meetings on the subject!"

"Have you?" Henry asked with more interest than he had previously shown.

"Yes, I'm totally opposed to it. All this secret diplomacy and race for armaments ... that's at the bottom of it all. My dear Quinn, some members of the Cabinet have shares in armament works. It's easy enough to see why we're at war!..."

Henry could not prevent himself from laughing.

"Do you mean to say you think they got up the war on purpose so's to get bigger dividends on their armament shares?"

Mullally shrugged his shoulders. "I don't wish to impute motives," he said. "No, I should not care to do that. I believe in the good intentions of my fellow man, but all the same, it's very peculiar. It looks bad!..."

"You always were a bloody fool, Mullally, and you're a bloodier one now. Good afternoon!" said Henry, turning to look at the train which was now entering the station.

He hurried to secure a carriage, and while he was settling his bag on the rack, he heard the voice of Mullally bleating in his ear.

"I'm going to Exeter, too," he said. "I'll just get in with you. I have a third class ticket, but if they ask for the excess, I can pay it!"

"Oh, damn!" said Henry to himself.

5

"I can understand the difficulty you have in believing that people could behave so ... so basely," Mullally said, as the train carried them out of Salisbury.

"I don't believe it at all," Henry answered, "and I think that any one who does believe it is a malicious-minded ass!"

"But they hold the shares ... you can see the list of shareholders at Somerset House for yourself ... and they'll take the profits. I'm quite willing to believe in the goodness of the average man ... in fact, I've denounced the doctrine of Original Sin very forcibly before now ... but I must say that there's something very suspicious about this business. Very suspicious. And you know some of the soldiers are really rather!..."

"Rather what?" said Henry.

"Well, I don't like saying anything about anybody, but some of them are not all that they should be. They should set an example, and they don't. I've heard some very startling things about the behaviour of the soldiers. Very startling things. I don't want to say anything that may sound unpleasant, but I suggest that you should read the Report of the Registrar-General when it comes out. It will cause some consternation, I can promise you. Young women, Quinn, simply can't be kept away from the soldiers, and I've been told ... well!..."

Again he shrugged his shoulders, and turned his palms upwards and raised his eyebrows. A Member of Parliament had written to the _Morning Post_ about it ... a Conservative member of Parliament, not a Liberal or a Socialist, mark you, but a Conservative....

"Two thousand cases expected in one town," Mullally whispered. "Knows it for a fact. Seen the girls!..."

Mullally proposed a calculation. They were to work out the number of unmarried girls who would shortly become mothers, using the Conservative M.P.'s letter as a basis of calculation.

"Thousands and thousands," he prophesied. "Hundreds of thousands. _All_ illegitimate. I believe, of course, that we make too much fuss about the marriage laws, Quinn, but still ... there are limits, don't you think? I mean, we must make changes slowly, not in this ... this drastic fashion. But what are you to expect? When the very Cabinet Ministers are proved to have shares in munition works, is it any wonder that the common soldier runs riot?..."

"I get out at the next station," said Henry.

"Do you?" said Mullally. "But I thought you didn't change until you got to Whitcombe Junction?"

"I don't" said Henry, "but I get out at the next station!"

"I see," said Mullally.

"About time," Henry thought.

6

After dinner, he asked Mary to walk to the village with him.

"Isn't it late?" Mrs. Graham objected.

"Oh, no," he answered. "It's a beautiful moonlight night, and I feel I want to stretch my legs. I've been cooped up in the train best part of the day. Come along, Mary!"

"I'll just get my coat," she said.

When they were ready, he put his arm in hers, and they walked down the long lane, past the copse and through the pine trees, to the village.

"It's very quiet to-night," Mary said.

"Extraordinarily still," he answered.

There was no one in the village street and there were no lights shining from any of the windows, except from the bedroom of a cottage near the sea.

"They've all gone to bed very early, haven't they?" he said, glancing about the deserted street.

"But it isn't early, Quinny," she replied. "It's quite late. It must be nearly ten o'clock. We had dinner much later to-night because your train was so long in getting in!"

"Well, they're missing a gorgeous night, all of them," he exclaimed, holding her tightly.

They walked to the fisherman's shelter and stood against the iron rail on top of the low cliff. The moon had made a broad path of golden light across the bay, from the shingle to the pinnacle on the nearer of the two headlands, and they could see the golden water flowing through the hole in the cliff.

"I'd love to bathe now," Mary said. "I'd love to swim all along that splash of moonlight to the caves and back again...."

A belated sea-gull cried wearily overhead and then flew off to its nest in the cliffs.

"The water's awfully black looking outside the moonlight," Henry exclaimed.

"Ummm!" she answered.

They shivered a little in the cold air, and instinctively they drew closer to each other. Beneath them, lying high on the shingle, were the trawlers, lying ready for the morning when the fishermen would push them down into the sea.

"Tom Yeo and Jim Rattenbury are going to have a motor put into their trawler," Mary said. "It'll make a lot of difference to them. They'll be able to go out even when there isn't any wind."

Henry did not answer. He had a strange sense of fear that was inexplicable to him. He seemed to be outside himself, outside his own fear, looking on at it and wondering what had caused it. He felt as if something were pulling at him, trying to force him to look round ... and he was afraid to look round.... He shuddered violently.

"Are you cold, Quinny?" Mary said anxiously, turning to him.

"Yes," he answered quickly, wishing to account for his sudden shivering in a way that would not alarm her. "We'd better go back!..."

What was the matter? Why was he so suddenly afraid and so strangely afraid? If it had been dark, very dark, and he had been alone ... but it was bright moonlight ... so bright that one could almost see to read ... and Mary was with him ... and yet he was afraid to look round at the White Cliff. Something inside him, apart from him, seemed to feel that if he looked up the long steep path over the White Cliff ... _he would see something_.

"Come on, Mary!" he said, turning to go, and turning in such a way that he could not see the Cliff.

They walked rapidly up the street.... "That'll warm me," he explained to Mary ... and as he walked, he was afraid to look back.

"What the devil's the matter with me?" he kept saying to himself until they reached the end of the lane leading to the Manor.

"You're walking too quickly, Quinny!" Mary said, holding back.

"I'm sorry, dear," he exclaimed, slackening his pace reluctantly.

He had never had this sensation before ... as if a fear had been stuck on to him, a fear that was not part of his nature, a thing outside him trying to get inside him.... He forgot that Mary had complained of the rapidity with which he was walking, and he set off again. The pine trees had a black, ominous look, and the sound of the wind blowing through their needles was like continuous moaning.

"Are you trying to win a race, Quinny?" Mary said.

He laughed nervously. "No. I'm ... I'm sorry!..."

As they passed the copse, he shut his eyes, and so he stumbled over the rough ground and almost fell.

"What is it, Quinny?" Mary demanded, catching hold of him.

"It's nothing," he said. "I'm tired, that's all...."

7

He shut the door behind him quickly, and fastened the bolts. Mary had gone into the drawing-room, and when he had secured the door, he followed her.

"Mother's gone to bed," she said, and then, going to him and putting her hands on his shoulder, she added, "What is it, Quinny? Something's upset you. I know it has!"

He looked at her for a few moments without speaking.

"Tell me, please!" she insisted.

He put his arm about her and led her to the armchair by the fire, and when she was seated, he sat down on the floor beside her.

"I didn't want to tell you until we got home," he said. "I didn't want to frighten you...."

"What was it? Was there anything there?..."

"I don't know what it was, Mary, but I suddenly felt frightened ... a queer kind of fright. I was afraid to look round for fear I should see something ... I don't know what ... on the cliff. I felt that something wanted me to look round, and I wouldn't. I didn't dare to look round. All the way up the street, I felt that something wanted me to look round.... I'm not afraid now!"

"How queer," she said in a low voice.

"I've never felt anything like it before ... half afraid and half not afraid!..."

He began to talk about Mullally. "He's a toad, that fellow," he said, "an ... an enlarged toad!"

"I'm going to bed," she interrupted. "Good-night, Quinny!"

She bent her face to his.

"Good-night, my dear!" he said, kissing her fondly.

8

Three days later, when he had almost forgotten his fright on the cliffs, he went down to the village to get the morning papers.

"What's the news," he said to one of the villagers whom he met on the way.

"'Bout the same, sir. Don't seem to be much 'appenin' at present," the man replied.

He went on to the news agency and got the papers, and then, hastily glancing at the headlines for the more obvious news, he tucked the papers under his arm and went slowly back to the Manor by another road than the one by which he had come into the village. There was a field with a hollow where one could lie in shelter and see the whole of the bay and the eastern cliffs in one direction, and the Axe Valley in another, and here he sat for a while, smoking and reading and now and then trying to follow the tortuous windings of the Axe as it came down the marsh to the sea.

"If Ninian were here," he said to himself, "he'd start making plans to straighten it out!..."

He glanced through the war bulletins, with their terrible iteration of trenches taken and trenches lost. People read the war news carelessly now, almost wearily, so accustomed had they become to the daily report of positions evacuated and positions retrieved, forgetting almost that at the taking or the losing of a trench, men lost their lives.

"There isn't much in the paper this morning," he said, and then he turned to a page of lesser news, and almost as he did so, his eye caught sight of Gilbert's name. His grip on the paper was so tight that he tore it. He stared at the paragraph with startling eyes, reading and re-reading it, as if he were unable to comprehend the meaning of the thing he read.... Then, as understanding came to him, he gaped about with vacant eyes.

"Oh, my God!" he cried, "Gilbert's been killed!"

9

He got up, half choking, and scrambled out of the field. A labourer greeted him, but he made no answer. He ran up the road, and as he ran, he cried to himself, "Gilbert's dead ... it isn't true ... it isn't true!..."

He thrust open the gate and ran swiftly up to the door.

"Mary!" he shouted. "Mary! Mary!!..."

She came running to him, followed by her mother.

"What is it?" she cried, and her heart was full of fear.

Mrs. Graham clutched at him. "It isn't ... it isn't...."

He sank down into a chair and buried his head in his hands. "Gilbert's dead," he said. "He's been killed!..."

Mary knelt beside him, and drew his head on to her shoulder. She did not speak. There was nothing that could be said. She knew that Gilbert and Henry had cared for each other as men seldom care ... and no one, not even she, could bring comfort to the one who was left. So she just held him....

10

Mrs. Graham had left them alone. Her fear had been for Ninian, and when she heard Gilbert's name, her relief was such that she had hurried from the room lest Henry, stricken by the death of his friend, should see her face.

"I know now," he said when he was calmer, "what it was on the White Cliff. He wanted to tell me, Mary. He wanted to tell me ... and I wouldn't look round. Oh, my God, I wouldn't look round!"

THE NINTH CHAPTER

1

It was unbelievable that Gilbert was dead. In his mind, Henry could see him, careless, extravagant, always good-tempered and sometimes strangely wise and understanding ... and he could not believe that he would never see him again, that all that youth and generosity and promise should be turned so untimely to corruption. Gilbert's friends would not even know where his grave was ... they would not have the poor consolation of finding a place that was his, marked out from all the other places.... He had been seen, running forward ... and then he was seen no more....

"Perhaps," Henry said to comfort himself, "he's been taken prisoner. We shall hear later on that he's been taken prisoner!..."

He snatched at any hope. Men had been posted among the dead ... and then, after a time of mourning, had come the news that they still lived. Perhaps Gilbert was lying somewhere ... wounded ... and after a while, news of him would come. Other men might die, but it was incredible that Gilbert should be killed....

He became obsessed with the belief that Gilbert still lived. He went about expecting to see him suddenly turning a corner and shouting, "Hilloa, Quinny!" At any moment, a door might open, and Gilbert would walk in and say, "Well, coves!" There was a printed copy of "The Magic Casement" in the house, and Henry would pick it up, and turn over the pages.... "But he can't be dead," he would say to himself, as he fingered the book. "It's absurd!..." Even when hope died, there came times when the belief in Gilbert's survival thrust itself into his mind. When the _Lusitania_ was torpedoed, he said to himself, "Why, we saw her just after the war began, Gilbert and I, and we cheered!..."

The brutality of the war smote him hard. In less than a year from the day when they had stood on the rocks at Tre'Arrdur Bay, lustily cheering as the great Atlantic liner sailed up the sea to the Mersey, Gilbert was dead and the proud ship was a wreck, sneakily destroyed....

Gilbert had left the beginning of a play behind him. He had regretted that he could not finish it before going out to the peninsula ... had believed that in it he would create something finer and deeper than he had yet done ... and now it would never reach completion. The mind that imagined it was no more than the rubbish of the fields when the harvest is gathered....

His own work became tasteless to him. He turned with disrelish from his manuscript. "What's the good of it," he said to himself, whenever he looked at it. He tried to put himself into communication with Gilbert's spirit, remembering that night below the White Cliff, when, he now believed, Gilbert had tried to tell him of his death. A month before, he would have ridiculed any one who suggested to him that he should attempt to speak to the dead. "Spookery!" he would have said. But now, in his eagerness to atone, as he said, for his failure to respond when Gilbert had tried to speak to him, he put faith in things that, before, would have seemed contemptible to him. But with all his will to believe, he could not call Gilbert to him. There was a blankness, a condemning silence....

"I failed my friend," he groaned to himself once, "When he felt for me most, I ... I failed him!"

2

He had gone up to the Common with Mary, and had lain there, talking of Gilbert ... of what Gilbert had been doing this time a year ago ... of something that Gilbert had said once ... of an escapade at Rumpell's ... and then Mary and he had gone home across the fields. As they walked up the lane to the house, they saw a telegraph messenger ahead of them. They quickened their pace. There was an anxious, strained look on Mary's face, and as the messenger, hearing them behind him, turned and stopped, she made a clutching movement with her hands. "Oh, Quinny!" she said, turning to him with frightened eyes. The boy waited until Henry went up to him, regarding them both with curiosity.

"Is it for us?" Henry asked, knowing that it was, and the boy nodded his head. "I'll take it," he went on. "It'll save you the trouble of going up to the house!"

"Thank you, sir!" the messenger said, and then he handed the telegram to Henry. "Is there any answer, sir?" he asked.

"I don't know," Henry replied. "We'll ... we'll bring it down to the post-office, if there is!"

He knew that there would not be any answer....

The boy went off, looking back at them now and then, over his shoulder.

"Shall I open it, Mary!" Henry said.

"Do you think?..." She did not complete her sentence for she was afraid to utter the thought that was in her mind.

"If it should be bad news," Henry said, "we'd ... we'd better prepare her for it!"

They stood there, holding the telegram still unopened, as if they could not make a decision....

"Open it, Quinny!" Mary said at last, and he opened the buff envelope and took out the form.

_The Secretary for War regretted!..._

He looked up from the telegram, and saw that Mary was standing in a strained attitude, waiting for him to speak.

"Is it ... is it _that_?" she said, almost in a whisper.

He bowed his head. "Yes," he said.

She did not speak. She stood quite still, looking at him as if she were trying to find something, but did not know where to look for it. He moved nearer to her, and took hold of her hand and drew her close to him, and she lay quietly in his arms.... There was a bird singing very clearly over their heads, and suddenly, while they stood there, silently consoling each other, two wood pigeons flew out of the highest tree, making a great beating of wings as they flew off across the fields. There was a robin in the hedge, turning its head this way and that, and regarding them with curiosity....

She stirred, and then withdrew herself from his arms.

"We must go home," she said, "and tell mother!"

3

Mrs. Graham was in the garden, and she came to the gate as she saw them approaching, waving her hand and smiling at them.

"Will you tell her, Quinny," Mary said, and she slackened her pace slightly and dropped behind him.

He turned to look for her. "Come with me," he said. "I can't tell her ... alone!"

There was a chilly fear over both of them. They felt that this blow would strike her down, that she would not survive it. Ninian was the beginning and the end of her life. If Ninian were gone, everything was gone. This house, the farm, the fields were without purpose if Ninian were not there to own them.... They went slowly forward, and as they approached they saw her smile vanish, and a puzzled look come in its place. She had waved her hand and smiled at them, but they had not waved back to her, they had not answered her smile ... and then she saw the telegram in Henry's hand. She made a quick movement, opening the gate and coming rapidly to them.

"What is it?" she said, hoarsely.

He could not think of anything to say....

"It's from the War Office, mother," Mary said.

He stood ready to put his arms about her and support her....

"Give it to me," she said, holding out her hand for the telegram, and he passed it to her.

They stood silently before her while she read it. Then Mary went close to her. "Mother!..." she said.

Mrs. Graham did not make any answer to Mary. She still held the telegram in her hands, and gazed at it, reading it over and over....

"Mother, dear!" Mary reached up, and put her arms about her mother's neck.

"Yes, Mary," she answered very calmly.

But Mary could not say any more. She buried her head on her mother's shoulder, and the tears that she had been holding back, would not be held back any longer, and sobs burst from her that seemed as if they would choke her.

"My dear," said Mrs. Graham, raising Mary's face to hers, "we must ... we must be brave!"

She turned to Henry. "Take her in," she said, "and ... and comfort her!"

He went to them, and put his arm about Mary, and led her to the house. "Won't you come in, too?" he said, turning to Mrs. Graham.

"No, Henry," she answered. "Not yet. I want to be out here. I ... I want to be alone!"

She moved away, going slowly down the avenue of trees until she reached the orchard, and then she went into it, and was hidden by the apple trees....

He led Mary into the house. "We can't do anything, Mary," he said. "We're ... we're all caught in this thing ... and we can't do anything...."

She went to her room, and when he had seen the door close behind her, he turned to go back to the drawing-room. He would have to write to Roger. "First it was Gilbert ... then it was Ninian ... presently, it will be!..."

He shuddered, and tried to shut the thought out of his mind.

There was a servant in the hall. "Tell the others," he said in a cold, toneless voice, "that Mr. Ninian ... has been killed in France!"

"Oh, sir!..." the girl cried, clasping her hands together.

He did not wait to hear, and she hurried down the passage to the kitchens.

"Two of us gone now," he said to himself.

He searched for writing materials, wandering round and round the room until he forgot what it was he wanted. "I'm looking for something," he said aloud, "I'm looking for something, but I don't know what it is!..."

Then he remembered.

"I mustn't let myself go," he said to himself. "I must keep a hold of myself. I've got to look after them ... they'll want some one to ... to lean on!"

He began the letter to Roger. "_Dear Roger_," he wrote, and then he dropped his pen. He sat with his elbows resting on the table, staring in front of him, but seeing nothing. "First there was Gilbert," he was saying to himself, "then there was Ninian ... and presently there will be ... _me_!"

One could not believe it. One could not believe it. Why it was only a little while ago that Ninian was here, in this very room, telling them how clever the Engineers were. They were to win the war, these Engineers, unless stupid people, like the "dug-out," prevented them from doing so. There, in that corner there, over by the fire, that was where he had sat, and told them of the Engineers. He had lain back in his chair, carelessly throwing his leg over the arm of it.... And when Mrs. Graham had risen and left the room, unable to stay any longer, and had called to him to come to her room and say "Good-night!" he had looked anxiously after her, and then, after a little while of fidgetting and poor effort to talk lightly, had gone to her....

How could one believe it! How could any one believe that this hideous nightmare was true!... that this horrible thing which devoured young men was not a creature of a fevered mind.... Presently the blood would cool and the eyes would see clearly ... and Ninian's great shouting voice would roar through the house, and Gilbert would stroll in, and say "Hilloa, coves!..."