Chapter II: Part 2

"Isn't it wonderful?" Griselda said, not knowing that her voice had dropped and lost its shrillness. "I never thought there could be such a place."

She spoke the truth, if in hackneyed and unthinking phrase; in her busy and crowded little mind, the reflection of her busy little life, there had been no room for visions of a deep and solitary peace. Involuntarily, as they walked they drew nearer together and went closely side by side; the sweet aloofness of the valley not only amazed them, it awed them; they were dimly conscious of being in contact with something which in its silent, gracious way was disquieting as well as beautiful. Their theory and practice of life, so far, was the theory and practice of their purely urban environment, of crowds, committees and grievances and cocksure little people like themselves--and lo, out of an atmosphere of cocksureness and hustle they had stepped, as it seemed without warning, into one of mystery and the endless patience of the earth. Out here, in this strange overpowering peace, it was difficult to be conscious of grievances political or ethical; instead came a new, undefined and uneasy sense of personal inadequacy and shrinkage, a sense of the unknown and hitherto unallowed-for, a fear of something undreamed of in their rabid and second-hand philosophy.... Not that they reasoned after this fashion, or were capable of analysing the source of the tremor that mingled with their physical pleasure, their sheer delight of the eye; but before they had been in the valley many hours they sympathized in secret (they did not know why) with Madame Amberg's consistent avoidance of its loveliness, saw hazily and without comprehension why, for all her praise of its beauties, she was so loth to dwell there. The place, though they knew it not, was a New Idea to them--and therefore a shadow of terror to their patterned and settled convictions. As such their organized and regulated minds shrank from it at once and instinctively--cautiously apprehensive lest the New Idea should tamper with accepted beliefs, disturb established views and call generally for the exercise of faculties hitherto unused. They had an uneasy foreboding--never mentioned aloud by either, though troublous to both--that long contact with solitude and beauty might end by confusing issues that once were plain, and so unfitting them for the work of Progress and Humanity--for committees, agitations, the absorbing of pamphlets and the general duty of rearranging the universe.

There was something, probably, in the frame of mind in which they approached the valley; they came of a migratory, holiday race, and had seen green beauty before, if only fleetingly and at intervals. What they had lacked before was the insight into beauty born of their own hearts' content, the wonder created by their own most happy love.... They followed their guide for the most part in silence, relieved that he had ceased his well-meaning attempts to make them understand his jargon, and speaking, when they spoke at all, in voices lowered almost to a whisper.

"What's that?" Griselda queried, still under her breath. "That" was a flash of blue fire ahead of them darting slantwise over the stream. Later they learned to understand that a flash of blue fire meant kingfisher; but for the moment William shook his head, nonplussed, and hazarded only, "It's a bird."

For half-an-hour or so it was only the birds and themselves; then at a turn in the narrowing valley they came in sight of cows nuzzling the pastures. Several cows, parti-coloured black and white like the cows of a Noah's Ark; and, further on, a tiny farm house standing close up to the trees in its patch of vegetable garden. They knew from Madame Amberg of the existence of the tiny farmhouse; it was an old woman living there who would "do" for them during their stay at the neighbouring cottage--cook and clean and make tidy in return for a moderate wage. The barking of a kennelled nondescript brought the old woman shuffling to the door--to welcome them (presumably) in her native tongue and to take their measure from head to heel with a pair of shrewd, sunken eyes. Of her verbal greetings they understood nothing but the mention of Madame Amberg; but, having looked them up and down enough, the old lady shuffled back into her kitchen for the key of the revolutionist's property. She reappeared with the key in one hand and a copper stewpan in the other--wherewith she waved the signal to advance, and shuffled off in guidance, ahead of her grandson and the visitors. A quarter of an hour's more walking on a dwindling path brought them in sight of their sylvan honeymoon abode; it had originally been built for the use of a woodman, and was a four-roomed cottage on the edge of the wood overlooking the stream and the pasture of the black-and-white cows. Madame Peys (they knew at least her name) unlocked the door and ushered them into the kitchen, where the boy deposited their bags.

*CHAPTER IV*

The cottage was what any one who know Madame Amberg might have expected her cottage to be. It was sparsely furnished, except with explosive literature; there were very few chairs, and those few verging on decrepitude, but numerous tracts and pamphlets in divers civilized languages. Kitchen utensils were conspicuous chiefly by their absence, and presumably the owner relied consistently on the loan of the copper stewpan which had accompanied her guests from the farm. On the other hand, the kitchen walls were adorned by photographs, more or less fly-blown, of various political extremists, and a signed presentment of Rosa Luxemburg adorned a bedroom mantelpiece.

While Madame Peys made play with the stew-pan and a kettle, the honeymoon couple unpacked their bags and examined their new domain: still, to a certain extent, overawed by the silence and loneliness around it; still, unknown to themselves, speaking more gently and with more hesitation than usual. It was the familiar tang of the books and pamphlets, with which the shelves were crammed and the floor was heaped, that first revived their quieted spirits and created a sense of home. Woman and Democracy, even on the backs of books, had power to act as a tonic and trumpet-call, to reflect the atmosphere of noise and controversy where alone they could breathe with comfort. With unconscious relief they turned from the window and the prospect of the valley, green and untenanted, to entrench themselves against the assaults of the unknown behind the friendly and familiar volumes that had overflowed from Madame Amberg's deal book-shelves to Madame Amberg's uncarpeted floor. Conning them, handling them and turning their pages, they were again on the solid ground of impatient intolerance; they were back amongst their own, their cherished certainties. William in the presence of Belfort Bax felt his feet once more beneath him; Griselda, recognizing a pamphlet by Christabel Pankhurst, ceased to be troubled by the loneliness around her, grew animated and raised her voice.... And the savoury mess which Madame produced from her stewpan, combined with the no less excellent coffee that followed, dispelled for the moment the sense of mystery and the shadow of the New Idea.

The shadow obtruded itself more than once during the next three weeks or so; but on the whole they managed with fair success to be in the country and not of it--to create in the heart of their immemorial valley a little refuge and atmosphere of truly advanced suburbia. Their existence in the Ardennes valley was one of mutual affection and study--by which latter term they understood principally the reading of books they agreed with. From the cares and worries of housekeeping they were blissfully and entirely free; Madame Peys did their catering, taking toll, no doubt, of their simplicity and ignorance of French, but taking it with tact and discretion. Her bills were a weekly trouble to Griselda but not on account of their length; what she disliked was the embarrassing moment when she strove to conceal her complete ignorance of the items and difficulty in grasping the total as set forth in un-English-looking ciphers. Their tidying was also done daily and adequately, their cooking more than adequately; Madame Peys called them in the morning, set the house to rights and their various meals going, and looked in at intervals during the day, departing for the last time when supper was cooked and laid. Their daily doings fell naturally into routine; they rose of a morning to coffee steaming on the stove; and, having digested their breakfast, they usually proceeded to walk a little, concluding the exercise by sitting under the trees with a book which William read aloud to Griselda. They lunched sometimes in picnic fashion, sometimes at home; in the afternoon took another stroll or sat at home reading, with happy little interludes of talk. On two or three days they made small excursions to one of the neighbouring villages; on others William, with a pen and a frown of importance, would establish himself at the table after lunch was cleared away; he had a tract in hand on the Woman Question, and Griselda gently but firmly insisted that even in the first ecstasy of their honeymoon he should not lay it aside. Having a due sense of the value of his epoch-making work, he did not require much pressing; and while he frowned and scribbled and frowned and paused, she would sit by reading, and now and again glance up that she might meet his eye and smile. Long afterwards, months afterwards, when he had forgotten the epoch-making work and all he had meant to prove by it, he would remember how she had risen and come behind him, smoothing and fondling his ruffled hair and bending over to kiss him. He would drop his pen and lift his face to hers, sometimes in silence and sometimes murmuring foolishness.

In time, as the peaceful days crept by, they were sorry that, yielding to a romantic impulse, they had directed that neither paper nor letter should be forwarded during their absence. As a result of this prohibition their entire correspondence while they stayed in the valley consisted of one picture-postcard despatched by Madame Amberg from Liverpool at the moment of her embarkation for an extended lecture tour in the States. It was sent three days after their wedding, and expressed exuberant affection, but was singularly lacking in news of the outside world. To remove the prohibition would be to confess failure and suggest boredom, therefore neither ventured to hint at it; all the same, they knew in their secret hearts that they had overrated their resourcefulness. It was not that they palled on each other--far from it; but part at least of their mutual attraction was their mutual interest in certain subjects and limited phases of activity. Madame Amberg's revolutionary library, valuable as it was in distracting their thoughts from the silence and beauty around them and defending them against the unknown, could not entirely supply the place of daily whirl and unceasing snarl and argument; William pined unconsciously for the din and dust of the platform and Griselda missed the weekly temper into which she worked herself in sympathy with her weekly _Suffragette_. She missed it so much that at last she was moved to utterance--late on a still, heavy evening in August, when once or twice there had come up the valley a distant mutter as of thunder.

"Dear," she said gently, as they sat by the window after supper, "I don't know how you feel about it, but I am beginning to think that our life here is almost too peaceful. It is beautiful to sit here together and dream and forget the world--but is it a preparation for the life we are to lead? Is it a preparation for our work?"

William sighed a gentle sigh of relief, and his hand went out to his wife's in a squeeze of agreement and gratitude. As usual, their minds had jumped together and the thought of twain had been uttered by the lips of one.

"I've been thinking the same thing myself," he said. "It has struck me more than once. As you say, it's beautiful here in the heart of the country--nothing could be more beautiful. But I have wondered, especially lately, if it isn't enervating. It is good for some people, perhaps; but when you have an aim in life and the fighting spirit in you----"

"Yes," Griselda flared responsively, "it's the fighting spirit--and the Cause calling to us. I've been hearing the call getting louder and louder; we can't stand aside any longer, we haven't the right to stand aside. How can I--how dare I--rest and enjoy myself when, there are noble women struggling for freedom, suffering for freedom, keeping the flag flying----?"

And the unconscious little humbug clasped her hands and, from force of habit, rose to her feet, addressing an imaginary audience. William, an equally unconscious humbug, also rose to his feet and kissed her. It was one of those happy and right-minded moments in which inclination agrees with duty, and they were able to admire themselves and each other for a sacrifice which had cost them nothing.

The decision taken, there remained only the details of their speedy departure to settle. Their first impatient impulse was to leave for Brussels on the morrow, but on consideration they decided that the morrow would be too soon. Investigation of a local time-table revealed the fact that the connection with Brussels--the only tolerable connection--meant a start in the very early morning; but an early start meant an overnight warning to the farm-boy, Philippe, that his services would be needful to carry their bags to the station--and the farm-people, all of them, went to bed soon after the sun and were certainly by now asleep. There was, further, the old lady to settle with where financial matters were concerned, and it always took time to make out her illegible bill. On reflection, therefore, they decided for the following day.

"I hope," Griselda meditated, "that I shall be able to make Madame Peys understand that we want the boy the first thing in the morning. I expect she will see what I mean if I show her the train in the time-table and say 'Philippe,' and point to the bags. That ought to make it clear. It rather detracts from the enjoyment of being abroad--not being able to make people understand what you say. Interlaken was much more convenient in that way; all the waiters spoke English quite nicely. And the understanding is even more difficult than the speaking. To-night Madame was talking away hard to me all the time she was cooking our supper, but I couldn't make out one word she said--only that she was very excited. I said, 'Oui, oui,' every now and then, because she seemed to expect it, and I was sorry to see her upset. I thought perhaps one of the people at the farm was ill, but I've seen her son and his wife and the boy since, so it can't be that. Of course, she may have other relations in some other part of the country--or perhaps something has happened to one of the cows. I could see she was worried."

They sat until late side by side by the open window and talked in snatches of the world they were going back to--the dear, familiar, self-important world of the agitated and advanced. Its dust was already in their nostrils, its clamour already in their ears; in three days more they would be in it once again with their own little turbulent folk. The mere thought increased their sense of their own value, and they grew gay and excited as they talked and planned, instinctively turning their backs on the window and shutting out sight and sound of the country peace, the oppressive peace in which they had no part.

"What shall we do to-morrow, darling?" Griselda asked at length. The question was prompted by her longing for to-morrow to be over and her mind was in search of some method for inducing it to pass with swiftness.

They considered the point with that object in view, and decided that should the day prove fine they would spend it away from the cottage, taking their lunch with them. There was a winding path leading up through the woods to the heights which they had not yet explored except for a short distance; they would start out, provisioned, soon after breakfast, to go where the path led them, and eat their meal on the hill-top. Then home to supper, settlement with Madame, and an early departure next morning.... So they planned comfortably and without misgiving, while the world seethed in the melting-pot and the Kaiser battered at Liege.

"If it's fine," William cautioned again as they mounted the stairs to bed. "I've heard thunder several times in the distance, so we may have a storm in the morning."

There was no storm or sign of a storm in the morning. It must have passed over, Griselda said; she had listened to its faint and distant mutterings for half-an-hour before she fell asleep. Their meal of coffee and new-laid eggs was waiting on the stove as usual, and Madame Peys had vanished as usual before they came down to partake of it. They hard-boiled more eggs while they breakfasted, and, the meal disposed of, set to work to cut plentiful sandwiches and otherwise furnish their basket. As their road up the hill did not lead them past the farm, and Madame Peys had not yet put in an appearance for the process of tidying up, William inscribed in large round-hand on an envelope the word "_Sorti_," as a sign to their housekeeper that the preparation of a midday meal was unnecessary; and having placed the announcement on the kitchen table, duly weighted with a saucer, he took the basket on one arm, his wife on the other, and set out.

They met not a soul that morning as they mounted the winding little path--somewhat slowly, for the winding little path was not only longer than they had expected but very steep in places. Further, the day was hot even under the trees, and they rested more than once before they reached their goal, the heights that crowned the valley; rested with their backs against a beech-trunk, and talked of themselves and what interested them--of meetings past and to come, of the treachery of the Labour Party, of the wickedness of the Government and the necessity for terrifying its members by new and astounding tactics. The idea had been to lunch when the heights above them were gained; but the weight of the basket made itself felt in the heat, and they were still some distance from their goal when they decided it was time to lighten it. They did so in the customary fashion, ate well and heartily, and although they allowed an unhurried interval for digestion were even less enthusiastic about their uphill walk than they had been before partaking of lunch. It was a relief to them when at last they emerged from the trees and found themselves high above the valley and entering on a wide stretch of upland; the wide stretch of upland had no particular attraction, but it denoted the limits of their excursion and a consequent return downhill.

"Don't you think we've about been far enough?" Griselda suggested. "There's rather a glare now we're out of the wood, and it's not particularly pretty here."

William agreed whole-heartedly--adding, however, as a rider, that a rest was desirable before they started homeward, and that if they went as far as the rise in the ground a hundred yards to their right they would probably have quite a good view, and he expected there would be a nice breeze. In accordance with these expectations they mounted the knoll, found the breeze and the view they expected, and subsided in the shade of a bush. If they had but known it, they were the last tourists of their race who for many and many a day to come were to look on the scene before them. Had they but known it, they would certainly have scanned it more keenly; as it was, they surveyed the wide landscape contentedly, but with no particular enthusiasm. On every side of them were the rounded uplands--a table-land gently swelling and cleft here and there by wooded valleys. On their right was the deep cleft from which they had mounted through the woods; and before them the ground dropped sharply to the edge of a cliff, the boundary of a wider cleft running at right angles to their own green valley of silence. It was along this wider cleft that the railway ran, the little branch line that to-morrow (so they thought) was to take them on the first stage of their journey. From their perch on the hill-top they could see the three ribbons of dark track, white road and shadowed river which between them filled the valley. The wall of rock jutted forward on their left, hiding, as they knew, the wayside railway station at which they had arrived and the cluster of neat houses beside it; to the right again there was a bend no less sharp--and between the two a stretch of empty road.

"It's very pretty," said Griselda, yawning and fanning herself, "but I wish it wasn't quite so hot. I suppose there's nothing left to drink?"

William was sorry there wasn't--they had finished the last drop at lunch. Griselda sighed, stretched herself out on her elbow, with her face towards the eastern bluff, and saw coming round it a group of three or four horsemen--little toy-like horses, carrying little toy men past trees that looked like bushes. They were moving quickly; the toy-like horses were cantering on the white ribbon of road. Griselda pointed them out to William, and the pair leaned forward to watch them pass, hundreds of feet below.

"They're scampering along," she said; "they must be in a hurry. What funny little things they look from here--like insects! They'll be out of sight in a minute--no, they've stopped.... I believe they're turning back."

The funny little things had halted simultaneously at the foot of the jutting cliff which hid the village and the station from the eyes of William and Griselda. As Griselda had said, in another moment they would have been round it and out of sight, and fifty more yards or so beyond the bend would have brought them to the outskirts of the village. Instead, they halted and drew together for an instant; then one funny little thing, detaching himself from the group, scampered backwards by the road he had come, and continued scampering till he rounded the eastward bluff. His insects of companions remained grouped where he had left them, their horses shifting backwards and forwards on the white surface of the road.

"They're waiting for him to come back," Griselda concluded idly, "I expect they've forgotten something."

What they had forgotten proved to be a column of horsemen curving in swift and orderly fashion round the foot of the eastward bluff. It came on, a supple and decorative line, bending with the bend and straightening as the valley straightened.

"Soldiers," said William, with the orthodox accent of contempt--following with a pleasure he would not for worlds have admitted the sinuous windings of the troop. There is in the orderly movement of men an attraction which few can resist; it appealed even to his elementary sense of the rhythmic, and he, like Griselda, bent forward to watch and to listen to the distant clatter of hoofs echoed back from the walls of the valley. As the horsemen swung out of sight round the westward bluff and the clatter of hoof-beats deadened, he held up a finger, and Griselda asked, "What is it?"

"Guns," he said. "Cannon--don't you hear them?"

She did; a soft, not unpleasing thud, repeated again and again, and coming down the breeze from the northward.

"It must be manoeuvres," he explained. "That's what those soldiers are doing. I expect it's what they call the autumn manoeuvres."

"Playing at murder," Griselda commented, producing the orthodox sigh. She had heard the phrase used by a pacifist orator in the Park and considered it apt and telling. "What a waste of time--and what a brutalizing influence on the soldiers themselves! Ah, if only women had a say in national affairs!" ... and she made the customary glib oration on her loved and familiar text. Before it was quite finished, William held up his finger again--needlessly, for Griselda had stopped short on her own initiative. This time it was a crackle of sharp little shots, not far away and softened like the sound of the heavier guns, but comparatively close at hand and, if their ears did not deceive them, just beyond the westward bluff.

"They're pretending to fight in the village," Griselda said. "How silly! Firing off guns and making believe to shoot people."

"Militarism," William assented, "is always silly." And he, in his turn, enlarged on his favourite text, the impossibility of international warfare, owing to the ever-growing solidarity of the European working-classes--his little homily being punctuated here and there by a further crackle from below. When he had enlarged sufficiently and Griselda had duly agreed, he returned as it were to private life and suggested:

"If you're feeling more rested, shall we make a start? It's cooler under the trees."

They started, accordingly, on their homeward way, which was even longer than the route they had taken in the morning: one little wood path was very like another and they managed to take a wrong turning, bear too much to the right and make a considerable detour. When the cottage came in sight they were both thirsty, and secretly relieved that their last excursion was over.

"We'll put on the spirit-lamp and have some tea," Griselda announced as they pushed open the door. "Oh dear! it's lovely to think we shall be in London so soon. How I would love a strawberry ice! Where's the match-box?"

It was not until the match-box was found and the spirit-lamp kindled that William discovered on the kitchen table a mystery in the shape of a document. It was an unimposing looking document, not over clean, indicted in pencil on the reverse of the half-sheet of paper on which William that morning had written his announcement of "_Sorti_." Like William's announcement, the communication was in French, of a kind--presumably uneducated French if one judged by the writing; and like William the author of the communication (in all likelihood Madame Peys) had placed it in the centre of the table and crowned it with a saucer before leaving.

"I suppose it must be for us," William remarked doubtfully. "I can't make out a word of it--can you?"

"Of course not," Griselda returned with a spice of irritation--she was tired and her boots hurt her. "I couldn't read that ridiculous writing if it was English. It's that silly old woman, Madame Peys, I suppose; but what is the good of her writing us letters when she knows we can't read them?"

"Perhaps," William suggested, "it's to say she won't be able to cook our supper to-night?"

"Very likely," his wife agreed, the spice of irritation still more pronounced. "If that's it, we shall have to do with eggs--we used up the cold meat for sandwiches at lunch, and there's nothing else in the house. We'd better go round to the farm when we've had our tea and find out what she wants--stupid old thing! Whether she comes here or not, we must see her to get the bill and order the boy for the morning. But I don't mean to move another step till I've had my tea."

*CHAPTER V*

They had their tea, Griselda with her boots off and her aching feet resting on a chair; and after she had lapped up two comfortable cups her irritation subsided and she was once again her pleasant and chattering little self. William, to give her a further rest, volunteered, though with some hesitation, to make the visit to the farm alone; in his mind, as in her own, Griselda was the French scholar of the pair, a reputation due to the fact that it was she to whom Madame Peys preferred, as a rule, to address her unintelligible remarks. Griselda knew what the offer cost him and generously declined to take advantage of it--stipulating only for a few minutes more repose before encasing her weary feet again in boots. The few minutes drew out into half-an-hour or more, and the shadows were lengthening in the valley when they started on their walk to the farm. They started arm-in-arm, the wife leaning on the husband; but when they came in sight of the house Griselda took her arm from William's and they drew a little apart.

They need not have troubled to observe the minor proprieties; not a soul stirred, not a nose showed itself as they opened the little wooden gate of the garden and made for the open door. They were both of them unobservant of country sights and sounds, and it was not until they had knocked in vain on the open door and called in vain on the name of Madame Peys that they were struck by the absence of the usual noises of the farm. There was neither lowing of cows nor crowing and clucking of poultry; and the nondescript of a dog who usually heralded the approach of a visitor by strangling tugs at his chain and vociferous canine curses, for once had allowed their advent to pass unchallenged. They realized suddenly that there was a strange silence from the kennel and turned simultaneously to look at it.

"It's odd," said William. "I suppose they've all gone out, and taken the dog with them."

"Where are the cocks and hens?" said Griselda suddenly. As if in answer to her query, a scraggy pullet at the awkward age appeared on the top of the farmyard gate, flapped groundwards and proceeded to investigate the neighbouring soil with a series of businesslike pecks. Their eyes turned towards the yard whence the pullet had emerged in search of her usual bevy of feathered companions; but the satisfied cluck of the bird as she sampled a seed remained unechoed and unanswered and brought no comrade to the spot. Obviously the family excursion was unlikely to be accompanied by a lengthy procession of poultry; and moved by a common impulse of wonder William and Griselda made for the gate and surveyed the farmyard beyond ... The doors of byre and stable were standing wide, untenanted either by horse or by cow, and the two farm-carts had vanished. There was a small dark square in the corner of the yard marking the spot where yesterday an imprisoned mother had kept watch and ward over a baker's dozen of attractive yellow downlings; now the dark square was the only trace of mother, chicks and cell.

"I wish," said William, "that we could read what's written on that paper. What can have happened to them all?"

"What's happened to them is that they've gone," Griselda returned with decision. "And gone for a good long time--people don't take their cows and chickens and cart-horses with them when they go for a week-end. I suppose they're moving and taking another farm."

"Ye-es?" William agreed doubtfully. "But I shouldn't have thought they'd have moved at such short notice--with all those animals. Of course, if they're moving, they'll come back for what they've left--those spades and the wheelbarrow and the furniture. There are a lot of things still in the kitchen ... they may come to fetch them to-night."

"They're sure to," his wife said hopefully. "Besides, Madame Peys would never leave us without milk or provisions for the morning--she's much too considerate. I daresay the new farm isn't far off, and she'll either come herself or send Philippe. Then we must explain about the train to-morrow morning."

William, still doubtful in spite of Griselda's optimism, paused at the half-open door of the kitchen, pushed it more widely ajar and surveyed the interior in detail.

"They must have started in rather a hurry," he commented.

The comment was justified by the disordered appearance of the room, suggesting a departure anything but leisurely and packing anything but methodical. There was an arm-chair upturned by the hearth where the ashes of the wood fire still glowed and reddened in places, but all the other chairs had vanished. The heavy table was still in the centre of the room, but a smaller one had gone, and several pans were missing from the row that shimmered on the wall opposite the fireplace. The canary's cage and the clock on the mantelpiece had departed; and the china cupboard standing wide open was rifled of part of its contents--apparently a random selection. On the floor in one corner was a large chequered table-cloth knotted into a bundle and containing, judging by its bulges, a collection of domestic objects of every shape known to the housewife. It lay discarded at the foot of the stairs like a bursting and badly cooked pudding; its formidable size and unwieldy contour accounting in themselves for the household's decision to abandon it ... There was about the place--as in all dismantled or partially dismantled rooms--an indefinite suggestion of melancholy; William and Griselda were conscious of its influence as they stood in the centre of the kitchen which they had hitherto known only as a model of orderly arrangement.

"I wonder how long they will be," Griselda said, as she and her husband came out into the dying sunlight. "It isn't any good hanging about here; if nobody has turned up we can stroll down again after supper ... I wonder if I could make an omelette--I've often watched her do it, and it doesn't seem so very difficult. How lonely that chicken looks poking about by itself."

Her eye followed the gawky pullet as it clucked and pecked in its loneliness about the vegetable garden--and suddenly her hand shot out and caught at her husband's arm.

"William," she said in a queer little whisper, "what's that?"

"What?" William queried, half-startled by the clutch and the whisper.

"Don't you see?--that heap ... beyond the gooseberry bushes!"

He looked where she pointed, and she felt him thrill, as she herself had thrilled when her hand went out to his arm; neither spoke as they went towards the end of the garden, instinctively hushing their footsteps ... The soft earth beyond the gooseberry bushes had been heaped into a long mound, and the solitary pullet was clucking and pecking at the side of a new-made grave.

They stood looking down at it in silence--dumb and uneasily fearful in the presence of a mystery beyond their powers of fathoming. The empty, untidy house behind them was suddenly a threat and a shadow; so was the loneliness and all-enclosing silence of the valley ... The damp garden earth was still fresh and black from its turning; whoever lay under it could have lain but an hour or two; and, lest the unmistakable shape of the mound should fail to indicate what it covered, some one had laid on it a red spray torn from a rose-bush and with a stick and a knot of string had fashioned a cross for the head. Two crossed hazel shoots and a handful of roses betokened that a spirit had returned to the God Who gave it.

As they stood at the graveside in the peace of the evening, the constant mutter of distant guns sent a low-spoken threat along the valley; but they were too much engrossed in their thoughts and surroundings to give it ear or heed, and it was the pullet who roused them from their stupor of dumb astonishment. Encouraged by their stillness, she drew near, surveyed the mound and with a flap of her clipped wings alighted under the cross. William instinctively bent forward to "shoo" her away, and as she fled protesting to a safer neighbourhood the husband and wife for the first time moved and spoke.

"What can have happened?" Griselda whispered. "Do you think---- William, you don't think there has been a murder?"

William shook his head, though not with excess of confidence. "There's the cross," he objected, "and the roses. A murderer would hardly put roses----"

"I don't know," Griselda whispered back. "You hear of criminals doing such strange things--and perhaps it was done hastily, in a quarrel, and the murderer repented at once.... For all we know that paper on our kitchen table may be a confession.... I wonder whose grave it is--if it's one of the Peys. It's so odd their all having gone--there must be something wrong.... You don't suppose they've gone off to hide themselves?"

William reminded her of the absence of the farm-yard stock--and she admitted that a family seeking to elude justice would hardly be so foolish as to attempt to conceal itself from the police in the company of seven cows, two cart-horses and an entire colony of poultry. Nor, when untrodden woods lay around them, would they call attention to the crime by placing the grave of their victim in a prominent position in the garden; while it was difficult to think of the Peys family, as they had known them, as murderers and accomplices of murderers: the old lady so cheery and shrewd, her son and his wife so unintelligibly friendly, and Philippe so loutishly good-natured.

For a while a gruesome fascination held them to the side of the grave--and then Griselda quivered and said suddenly, "Let's go home." They walked away softly and closed the gate softly behind them; and, once they were well beyond it, instinctively quickened their footsteps. They walked arm-in-arm, speaking little, on their way back to the cottage, and it was not until they were almost on the threshold of their solitary homestead that it struck them that perhaps they would only be fulfilling their legal duty by informing the local authorities of the presence of the new-made grave. They discussed the idea, considered it, and after discussion rejected it: for one thing, there was the language difficulty, for another the natural shrinking of the foreigner from entangling himself in unknown processes of law--involving possible detention for the purpose of giving evidence. They decided that it would be better for the present to await events, and hope for the return of some member of the vanished family.

In after days, when after events had given him a clue, William framed his solution to the mystery of the grave and the empty farmhouse--a solution which perhaps was not correct as to detail but was certainly right in substance. Some fleeing Belgian, wounded to death, had found strength to outrun or outride the Uhlan, and seeking a refuge in the hidden valley had brought his news to the farmhouse, and died after giving it utterance. Those who heard it had buried him in haste, and straightway fled from the invader--fled clumsily, with horse and cart and cattle, leaving their scribbled, unreadable warning to the absent tenants of the cottage. Whether they fled far and successfully, or whether they were overtaken and in due course held fast behind the barrier of flesh and iron that shut off the German and his conquests from the rest of the civilized world--that William and Griselda never knew.

In the meantime, unfurnished with any clue, unknowing of the wild fury that in its scathing of the civilized world was shattering their most cherished illusions, they sought in vain for an explanation, and--without putting the fact into words--lit the lamp earlier than usual and took care to bolt the door. Usually it was fastened only on the latch, so that Madame could let herself in with the early morning; but to-night the darkness was unfriendly and the lonely valley held they knew not what of threatening.

Griselda, uneasily pondering on other matters, had no mind to give to the experiment of an omelette, and their supper was plain boiled eggs--boiled hard while she sat with wrinkled brow, unheeding of the flight of minutes. While they supped, their ears were always on the alert for a footstep or a hail from without; and perhaps for that reason they noticed as they had never noticed before the faint ghostly noises of the country--the night-calling bird and the shiver of leaves when the air stirred and sighed. They talked with effort and frequent pause, and with now and again a glance thrown sideways at the open window and the forest blackness behind it; there were no blinds to the windows, and but for the still, heavy heat they would have fastened the shutters and barred out the forest blackness. Perhaps they would have borne with the heat of a closed room had not both been ashamed to confess their fear of the window. In both their minds was the sense of being very far removed from humanity, the knowledge that between them and humanity was a lonely path and a house with its doors set open--a house deserted and half dismantled with a nameless grave before it. Unimaginative as they both were, they pictured the grave in the darkness with its roughly tied cross and its handful of wilting rosebuds.

They went upstairs earlier than usual, chiefly because they felt more comfortable when the windows below were fastened. William, coming last with the candle, took the added precaution of turning the key in the door at the foot of the stairs; and Griselda, though she made no remark, heard the click of the lock with a secret throb of relief. Upstairs they began by a little pretence of undressing--and then Griselda, with her hair down her back, sat close to William, with his coat off, and they held hands and talked in undertones in the intervals of listening for a footstep. The footstep never came; but it was not until close upon midnight that--knowing the early habits of the former tenants of the farm--they gave up all hope of hearing it and began to discuss their plans for the following day, on the presumption that they must leave the cottage and remove their luggage alone. Such unaided removal meant an earlier uprising than they had counted on--since if Madame did not prepare their breakfast they needs must prepare it themselves; and this misfortune realized, they decided to sit up no longer. They went to bed, but left the candle burning--as they said to each other, lest one of the Peys family should knock them up during the night. Neither slept much, partly from nervous uneasiness and partly from fear of oversleeping; but if they had guessed what a day would bring forth, neither would have slept at all.

*CHAPTER VI*

They had left their bedroom windows uncurtained, that the morning light might waken them, and they were hardly later than the August sun in opening their eyes on the world. Though they had slept but little, and by snatches, they turned out of bed without regret; the flood of sunlight brought warmth into their hearts and the shadowy horror of the night before was lifted with the mists of the valley; but all the same the place, once only faintly mysterious, was now actively malicious and distasteful, was tainted with a lurking dread. Thus to their pleasure at the thought of noise and London was added relief at the prospect of escape from a solitude grown fearful since yesterday. They dressed with haste and rising spirits; and it was with undisguised joy that they collected their few possessions and stuffed them into their hold-alls.

William, whose toilet and preparations for the journey were completed in advance of his wife's, descended first to the kitchen, where, in the continued and regretted absence of their housekeeper, he struggled valiantly with the making of breakfast while Griselda finished her packing. The meal so prepared fell short of complete success; coffee as brewed by William was not the same beverage as coffee prepared by Madame Peys, nor were its tepid attractions enhanced by the absence of their usual and plentiful ration of milk. Thanks to the defection of the Peys family, they were not only milkless but eggless; and such remains of bread and butter as they could find in the cupboard were the only accompaniment to William's suggestion of coffee. In the circumstances there was but little temptation to risk the loss of the Brussels train by lingering over the table and less than five minutes sufficed for their simple meal. Having despatched it, they strapped their hold-alls and stepped out briskly on their way to the station and home--the sun still low on the eastward ridge of the valley and the dew still heavy on the grass. They hardly turned to look back at the cottage, so glad were they to leave it behind them; and in the elation of their spirits they sped down the path with a quite unnecessary haste. They were escaping from nature and solitude, and their hearts sang cheerily of Bloomsbury.

When they rounded the bend in the path that brought them within sight of the farm their first thought was that the missing family had returned; for outside the gate were three horses, standing riderless and with heads near together. There was something reassuring in the sight of the beasts as they stood in the sunlight shifting and flicking their tails, something that gave the lie to the terrors of the night before; the presence of horses betokened the presence of men, and the presence of men dissipated the sense of mystery that had brooded over an empty house with a nameless grave in its garden. Griselda drew a comfortable breath of relief as she supposed they had time to call in and settle the last week's bill with Madame Peys.

"I do wish," she pondered regretfully, "that I could understand what she says. I must say I should like to know what the explanation is--about that grave ... I suppose they've come back to fetch away the rest of the furniture, and things--those aren't their horses, though!"

"No," William assented, considering the sleek strong beasts, "they have only got cart-horses ... I wonder." ...

A man stepped suddenly out from behind the shifting horses--so suddenly that they both started. He had been standing by the gate with the bridles gathered in his hand, hidden by his charges from William and Griselda as they had been hidden from him. When, hearing their voices, he stepped into sight, he stood with his heels together, very erect and staring at them--a young man squarely and sturdily built, with under his helmet a reddish face and a budding black moustache. He was clad in a tight-fitting greyish uniform, and a sword hung by his side. He stared and the pair stared back at him--curiously but not quite so openly.

"It's a soldier," Griselda commented--adding, like William, "I wonder----" They both wondered so much that they hesitated and slackened their pace; the presence of a military man but complicated the problem of the farm. Coupled with the absence of the Peys family, it revived their suspicions of the night before, their suspicions of crime and a hasty flight from justice ... and involuntarily their eyes turned to the garden, and sought the outline of the grave beyond the gooseberry bushes.

"It really does look," Griselda whispered, "as if there was something--not right."

As she whispered the soldier rapped out a loud monosyllable; it was enunciated so curtly and sharply that they started for the second time and came to an involuntary halt. For the space of a second or two they stood open-mouthed and flustered--and then Griselda, recovering from the shock, expressed her indignant opinion.

"How rude!" she said. "What does he shout at us like that for?"

"I suppose," her husband conjectured, "he wants us to stop."

"Well," said Griselda, "we have stopped." Her tone was nettled and embittered. It annoyed her to realize that, involuntarily and instinctively, she had obeyed an official order; it was not, she felt what her Leaders would expect from a woman of her training and calibre. It was that and not fear that disconcerted her--for, after the first shock of surprise at the man's rough manner, neither she nor her husband were in the least overawed; on the contrary, as they stood side by side with their baggage in their hands, gazing into the sunburnt face of the soldier, something of the contempt they felt for his species was reflected in their light-blue eyes. Of the two pairs of light-blue eyes William's perhaps were the more contemptuous: his anti-militarism was more habitual and ingrained than Griselda's.

What William looked at was a creature (the soldier) of whom he knew little and talked much; his experience of the man of war was purely insular, and his attitude towards him would have been impossible in any but a native of Britain. He came of a class--the English lower middle--which the rules of caste and tradition of centuries debarred from the bearing of arms; a class which might, in this connection, have adapted to its own needs the motto of the House of Rohan. "Roi ne puis; prince ne daigne; Rohan je suis," might have been suitably englished in the mouths of William's fellows as, "Officer I cannot be; private I will not be; tradesman or clerk I am." Further, he had lived in surroundings where the soldier was robbed of his terrors; to him the wearer of the king's uniform was not only a person to whom you alluded at Labour meetings with the certainty of raising a jeer, but a target at whom strikers threw brickbats and bottles with energy and practical impunity. Should the target grow restive under these attentions and proceed to return them in kind, it was denounced in Parliament, foamed at by the Press, and possibly court-martialled as a sop to indignant Labour. Thus handicapped it could hardly be looked on as a formidable adversary ... and William, without a thought of fear, stared the field-grey horseman in the eyes.

The field-grey horseman, on his side, stared the pair of civilians up and down--with a glance that matched the courtesy of his recent manner of address--until, having surveyed them sufficiently, he called over his shoulder to some one unseen within the house. There was something in his face and the tone of his loud-voiced hail that made the temper of Griselda stir within her; and for the second time that morning she wished for a command of the language of the country--this time for the purposes of sharp and scathing rebuke. As a substitute she assumed the air of cold dignity with which she had entered the taxi on the night of her protest at the meeting.

"Come on, William," she said. "Don't take any notice of him, dear."

The advice, though well meant, was unfortunate. As William attempted to follow both it and his wife, the soldier moved forward and struck him a cuff on the side of the head that deposited him neatly on the grass. Griselda, who--in order to convey her contempt for official authority and disgust at official insolence--had been pointedly surveying the meeting of hill and horizon, heard a whack and scuffle, a guttural grunt and a gasp; and turned to see William, with a hand to his cheek, lying prone at the feet of his assailant. She rounded on the man like a lion, and perhaps, with her suffragette training behind her, would have landed him a cuff in his turn; but as she raised her arm it was caught from behind and she found herself suddenly helpless in the grasp of a second grey-clad soldier--who, when he heard his comrade's hail, had come running out of the house.

"Let me go," she cried, wriggling in his grasp as she had wriggled aforetime in the hands of a London policeman, and kicking him deftly on the shins as she had been wont to kick Robert on his. For answer he shook her to the accompaniment of what sounded like curses--shook her vehemently, till her hat came off and her hair fell down, till her teeth rattled and the landscape danced about her. When he released her, with the final indignity of a butt with the knee in the rear, she collapsed on the grass by her husband's side in a crumpled, disreputable heap. There for a minute or two she lay gasping and inarticulate--until, as her breath came back and the landscape ceased to gyrate, she dragged herself up into a sitting position and thrust back the hair from her eyes. William, a yard or two away, was also in a sitting position with his hand pressed against his cheekbone; while over him stood the assailants in field-grey, apparently snapping out questions.

"I don't understand," she heard him protest feebly, "I tell you I don't understand. Griselda, can't you explain to them that I don't speak French?"

"Comprends pas," said Griselda, swallowing back tears of rage. "Comprends pas--so it's not a bit of good your talking to us. Parlez pas francais--but that won't prevent me from reporting you for this disgraceful assault. You cowards--you abominable cowards! You're worse than the police at home, which is saying a good deal. I wonder you're not ashamed of yourselves. I've been arrested three times and I've never been treated like this."