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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Planet, by William J. Locke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Red Planet
+
+Author: William J. Locke
+
+Release Date: July, 2003 [EBook #4287]
+First Posted: December 30, 2001
+Last Updated: September 3, 2018
+
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED PLANET ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RED PLANET
+
+
+BY
+
+WILLIAM J. LOCKE
+
+
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE WONDERFUL YEAR," "JAFFERY," "THE BELOVED VAGABOND," ETC.
+
+
+
+   Not only over death strewn plains,
+      Fierce mid the cold white stars,
+   But over sheltered vales of home,
+      Hides the Red Planet Mars.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RED PLANET
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"Lady Fenimore's compliments, sir, and will you be so kind as to step
+round to Sir Anthony at once?"
+
+Heaven knows that never another step shall I take in this world again;
+but Sergeant Marigold has always ignored the fact. That is one of the
+many things I admire about Marigold. He does not throw my poor
+paralysed legs, so to speak, in my face. He accepts them as the normal
+equipment of an employer. I don't know what I should do without
+Marigold.... You see we were old comrades in the South African War,
+where we both got badly knocked to pieces. He was Sergeant in my
+battery, and the same Boer shell did for both of us. At times we join
+in cursing that shell heartily, but I am not sure that we do not hold
+it in sneaking affection. It initiated us into the brotherhood of
+death. Shortly afterwards when we had crossed the border-line back into
+life, we exchanged, as tokens, bits of the shrapnel which they had
+extracted from our respective carcases. I have not enquired what he did
+with his bit; but I keep mine in a certain locked drawer.... There were
+only the two of us left on the gun when we were knocked out.... I
+should like to tell you the whole story, but you wouldn't listen to me.
+And no wonder. In comparison with the present world convulsion in which
+the slaughtered are reckoned by millions, the Boer War seems a trumpery
+affair of bows and arrows. I am a back-number. Still, back-numbers have
+their feelings--and their memories.
+
+I sometimes wonder, as I sit in this wheel-chair, with my abominable
+legs dangling down helplessly, what Sergeant Marigold thinks of me. I
+know what I think of Marigold. I think him the ugliest devil that God
+ever created and further marred after creating him. He is a long, bony
+creature like a knobbly ram-rod, and his face is about the colour and
+shape of a damp, mildewed walnut. To hide a bald head into which a
+silver plate has been fixed, he wears a luxuriant curly brown wig, like
+those that used to adorn waxen gentlemen in hair-dressing windows. His
+is one of those unhappy moustaches that stick out straight and scanty
+like a cat's. He has the slit of a letter-box mouth of the Irishman in
+caricature, and only half a dozen teeth spaced like a skeleton company.
+Nothing will induce him to procure false ones. It is a matter of
+principle. Between the wearing of false hair and the wearing of false
+teeth he makes a distinction of unfathomable subtlety. He is an
+obstinate beast. If he wasn't he would not, with four fingers of his
+right hand shot away, have remained with me on that gun. In the same
+way, neither tears nor entreaties nor abuse have induced him to wear a
+glass eye. On high days and holidays, whenever he desires to look smart
+and dashing, he covers the unpleasing orifice with a black shade. In
+ordinary workaday life he cares not how much he offends the aesthetic
+sense. But the other eye, the sound left eye, is a wonder--the precious
+jewel set in the head of the ugly toad. It is large, of ultra-marine
+blue, steady, fearless, humorous, tender--everything heroic and
+beautiful and romantic you can imagine about eyes. Let him clap a hand
+over that eye and you will hold him the most dreadful ogre that ever
+escaped out of a fairy tale. Let him clap a hand over the other eye and
+look full at you out of the good one and you will think him the
+Knightliest man that ever was--and in my poor opinion, you would not be
+far wrong.
+
+So, out of this nightmare of a face, the one beautiful eye of Sergeant
+Marigold was bent on me, as he delivered his message.
+
+I thrust back my chair from the writing-table.
+
+"Is Sir Anthony ill?"
+
+"He rode by the gate an hour ago looking as well as either you or me,
+sir."
+
+"That's not very reassuring," said I.
+
+Marigold did not take up the argument. "They've sent the car for you,
+sir."
+
+"In that case," said I, "I'll start immediately."
+
+Marigold wheeled my chair out of the room and down the passage to the
+hall, where he fitted me with greatcoat and hat. Then, having trundled
+me to the front gate, he picked me up--luckily I have always been a
+small spare man--and deposited me in the car. I am always nervous of
+anyone but Marigold trying to carry me. They seem to stagger and fumble
+and bungle. Marigold's arms close round me like an iron clamp and they
+lift me with the mechanical certainty of a crane.
+
+He jumped up beside the chauffeur and we drove off.
+
+Perhaps when I get on a little further I may acquire the trick of
+telling a story. At present I am baffled by the many things that
+clamour for prior record. Before bringing Sir Anthony on the scene, I
+feel I ought to say something more about myself, to explain why Lady
+Fenimore should have sent for me in so peremptory a fashion. Following
+the model of my favourite author Balzac--you need the awful leisure
+that has been mine to appreciate him--I ought to describe the house in
+which I live, my establishment--well, I have begun with Sergeant
+Marigold--and the little country town which is practically the scene of
+the drama in which were involved so many bound to me by close ties of
+friendship and affection.
+
+I ought to explain how I come to be writing this at all.
+
+Well, to fill in my time, I first started by a diary--a sort of War
+Diary of Wellingsford, the little country town in question. Then things
+happened with which my diary was inadequate to cope. Everyone came and
+told me his or her side of the story. All through, I found thrust upon
+me the parts of father-confessor, intermediary, judge, advocate, and
+conspirator.... For look you, what kind of a life can a man lead
+situated as I am? The crowning glory of my days, my wife, is dead. I
+have neither chick nor child. No brothers or sisters, dead or alive.
+The Bon Dieu and Sergeant Marigold (the latter assisted by his wife and
+a maid or two) look after my creature comforts. What have I in the
+world to do that is worth doing save concern myself with my country and
+my friends?
+
+With regard to my country, in these days of war, I do what I can. Until
+finally flattened out by the War Office, I pestered them for such
+employment as a cripple might undertake. As an instance of what a
+paralytic was capable I quoted Couthon, member of the National
+Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. You can see his chair,
+not very unlike mine, in the Musee Carnavalet in Paris. Perhaps that is
+where I blundered. The idea of a shrieking revolutionary in Whitehall
+must have sent a cold shiver down their spines. In the meanwhile, I
+serve on as many War Committees in Wellingsford as is physically
+possible for Sergeant Marigold to get me into. I address recruiting
+meetings. I have taken earnest young Territorial artillery officers in
+courses of gunnery. You know they work with my own beloved old fifteen
+pounders, brought up to date with new breeches, recoils, shields, and
+limbers. For months there was a brigade in Wellings Park, and I used to
+watch their drill. I was like an old actor coming once again before the
+footlights.... Of course it was only in the mathematics of the business
+that I could be of any help, and doubtless if the War Office had heard
+of the goings on in my study, they would have dropped severely on all
+of us. Still, I taught them lots of things about parabolas that they
+did not know and did not know were to be known--things that,
+considering the shells they fired went in parabolas, ought certainly to
+be known by artillery officers; so I think, in this way, I have done a
+little bit for my country.
+
+With regard to my friends, God has given me many in this quiet market
+town--once a Sleepy Hollow awakened only on Thursdays by bleating sheep
+and lowing cattle and red-faced men in gaiters and hard felt hats; its
+life flowing on drowsily as the gaudily painted barges that are towed
+on the canal towards which, in scattered buildings, it drifts
+aimlessly; a Sleepy Hollow with one broad High Street, melting
+gradually at each end through shops, villas, cottages, into the King's
+Highway, yet boasting in its central heart a hundred yards or so of
+splendour, where the truculent new red brick Post Office sneers across
+the flagged market square at the new Portland-stone Town Hall, while
+the old thatched corn-market sleeps in the middle and the Early English
+spire of the Norman church dreams calmly above them. Once, I say, a
+Sleepy Hollow, but now alive with the tramp of soldiers and the rumble
+of artillery and transport; for Wellingsford is the centre of a
+district occupied by a division, which means twenty thousand men of all
+arms, and the streets and roads swarm with men in khaki, and troops are
+billeted in all the houses. The War has changed many aspects, but not
+my old friendships. I had made a home here during my soldiering days,
+long before the South African War, my wife being a kinswoman of Sir
+Anthony, and so I have grown into the intimacy of many folks around.
+And, as they have been more than good to me, surely I must give them of
+my best in the way of sympathy and counsel. So it is in no spirit of
+curiosity that I have pried into my friends' affairs. They have become
+my own, very vitally my own; and this book is a record of things as I
+know them to have happened.
+
+My name is Meredyth, with a "Y," as my poor mother used proudly to say,
+though what advantage a "Y" has over an "I," save that of a swaggering
+tail, I have always been at a loss to determine; Major Duncan Meredyth,
+late R.F.A., aged forty-seven; and I live in a comfortable little house
+at the extreme north end of the High Street, standing some way back
+from the road; so that in fine weather I can sit in my front garden and
+watch everybody going into the town. And whenever any of my friends
+pass by, it is their kindly habit to cast an eye towards my gate, and,
+if I am visible, to pass the time of day with me for such time as they
+can spare.
+
+Years ago, when first I realised what would be my fate for the rest of
+my life, I nearly broke my heart. But afterwards, whether owing to the
+power of human adaptability or to the theory of compensation, I grew to
+disregard my infirmity. By building a series of two or three rooms on
+to the ground floor of the house, so that I could live in it without
+the need of being carried up and down stairs, and by acquiring skill in
+the manipulation of my tricycle chair, I can get about the place pretty
+much as I choose. And Marigold is my second self. So, in spite of the
+sorrow and grief incident to humanity of which God has given me my
+share, I feel that my lot is cast in pleasant places and I am thankful.
+
+The High Street, towards its southern extremity, takes a sudden bend,
+forming what the French stage directions call a pan coupe. On the inner
+angle are the gates of Wellings Park, the residence of Sir Anthony
+Fenimore, third baronet, and the most considerable man in our little
+community. Through these gates the car took me and down the long avenue
+of chestnut trees, the pride of a district braggart of its chestnuts
+and its beeches, but now leafless and dreary, spreading out an infinite
+tracery of branch and twig against a grey February sky. Thence we
+emerged into the open of rolling pasture and meadow on the highest
+ground of which the white Georgian house was situated. As we neared the
+house I shivered, not only with the cold, but with a premonition of
+disaster. For why should Lady Fenimore have sent for me to see Sir
+Anthony, when he, strong and hearty, could have sent for me himself,
+or, for the matter of that, could have visited me at my own home? The
+house looked stark and desolate. And when we drew up at the front door
+and Pardoe, the elderly butler, appeared, his face too looked stark and
+desolate.
+
+Marigold lifted me out and carried me up the steps and put me into a
+chair like my own which the Fenimores have the goodness to keep in a
+hall cupboard for my use.
+
+"What's the matter, Pardoe?" I asked.
+
+"Sir Anthony and her ladyship will tell you, sir. They're in the
+morning room."
+
+So I was shewn into the morning room--a noble square room with French
+windows, looking on to the wintry garden, and with a log fire roaring
+up a great chimney. On one side of the fire sat Sir Anthony, and on the
+other, Lady Fenimore. And both were crying. He rose as he saw me--a
+short, crop-haired, clean-shaven, ruddy, jockey-faced man of
+fifty-five, the corners of his thin lips, usually curled up in a cheery
+smile, now piteously drawn down, and his bright little eyes now dim
+like those of a dead bird. She, buxom, dark, without a grey hair in her
+head, a fine woman defying her years, buried her face in her hands and
+sobbed afresh.
+
+"It's good of you to come, old man," said Sir Anthony, "but you're in
+it with us."
+
+He handed me a telegram. I knew, before reading it, what message it
+contained. I had known, all along, but dared not confess it to myself.
+
+"I deeply regret to inform you that your son, Lieutenant Oswald
+Fenimore, was killed in action yesterday while leading his men with the
+utmost gallantry."
+
+I had known him since he was a child. By reason of my wife's kinship, I
+was "Uncle Duncan." He was just one and twenty, but a couple of years
+out of Sandhurst. Only a week before I had received an exuberant letter
+from him extolling his men as "super-devil-angels," and imploring me if
+I loved him and desired to establish the supremacy of British arms, to
+send him some of Mrs. Marigold's potted shrimp.
+
+And now, there he was dead; and, if lucky, buried with a little wooden
+cross with his name rudely inscribed, marking his grave.
+
+I reached out my hand.
+
+"My poor old Anthony!"
+
+He jerked his head and glance towards his wife and wheeled me to her
+side, so that I could put my hand on her shoulder.
+
+"It's bitter hard, Edith, but--"
+
+"I know, I know. But all the same--"
+
+"Well, damn it all!" cried Sir Anthony, in a quavering voice, "he died
+like a man and there's nothing more to be said."
+
+Presently he looked at his watch.
+
+"By George," said he, "I've only just time to get to my Committee."
+
+"What Committee?" I asked.
+
+"The Lord Lieutenant's. I promised to take the chair."
+
+For the first time Lady Fenimore lifted her stricken face.
+
+"Are you going, Anthony?"
+
+"The boy didn't shirk his duty. Why should I?"
+
+She looked at him squarely and the most poignant simulacrum of a smile
+I have ever seen flitted over her lips.
+
+"Why not, darling? Duncan will keep me company till you come back."
+
+He kissed his wife, a trifle more demonstratively than he had ever done
+in alien presence, and with a nod at me, went out of the room.
+
+And suddenly she burst into sobbing again.
+
+"I know it's wrong and wicked and foolish," she said brokenly. "But I
+can't help it. Oh, God! I can't help it."
+
+Then, like an ass, I began to cry, too; for I loved the boy, and that
+perhaps helped her on a bit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. The tag has been all but outworn
+during these unending days of death; it has become almost a cant phrase
+which the judicious shrink from using. Yet to hundreds of thousands of
+mourning men and women there has been nothing but its truth to bring
+consolation. They are conscious of the supreme sacrifice and thereby
+are ennobled. The cause in which they made it becomes more sacred. The
+community of grief raises human dignity. In England, at any rate, there
+are no widows of Ashur. All are silent in their lamentations. You see
+little black worn in the public ways. The Fenimores mourned for their
+only son, the idol of their hearts; but the manifestation of their
+grief was stoical compared with their unconcealed desolation on the
+occasion of a tragedy that occurred the year before.
+
+Towards the end of the preceding June their only daughter, Althea, had
+been drowned in the canal. Here was a tragedy unrelieved, stupid,
+useless. Here was no consoling knowledge of glorious sacrifice; no
+dying for one's country. There was no dismissing it with a heroic word
+that caught in the throat.
+
+I have not started out to write this little chronicle of Wellingsford
+in order to weep over the pain of the world. God knows there is in it
+an infinity of beauty, fresh revelations of which are being every day
+unfolded before my eyes.
+
+If I did not believe with all my soul that out of Darkness cometh
+Light, I would take my old service revolver from its holster and blow
+out my brains this very minute. The eternal laughter of the earth has
+ever since its creation pierced through the mist of tears in which at
+times it has been shrouded. What has been will be. Nay, more, what has
+been shall be. It is the Law of what I believe to be God.... As a
+concrete instance, where do you find a fuller expression of the divine
+gaiety of the human spirit than in the Houses of Pain, strewn the
+length and breadth of the land, filled with maimed and shattered men
+who have looked into the jaws of Hell? If it comes to that, I have
+looked into them myself, and have heard the heroic jests of men who
+looked with me.
+
+For some years up to the outbreak of the war which has knocked all
+so-called modern values silly, my young friends, with a certain
+respectful superciliousness, regarded me as an amiable person
+hopelessly out of date. Now that we are at grip with elementals, I find
+myself, if anything, in advance of the fashion. This, however, by the
+way. What I am clumsily trying to explain is that if I am to make this
+story intelligible I must start from the darkness where its roots lie
+hidden. And that darkness is the black depths of the canal by the lock
+gates where Althea Fenimore's body was found.
+
+It was high June, in leafy England, in a world at peace. Can one
+picture it? With such a wrench of memory does one recall scenes of
+tender childhood. In the shelter of a stately house lived Althea
+Fenimore. She was twenty-one; pretty, buxom, like her mother, modern,
+with (to me) a pathetic touch of mid-Victorian softness and
+sentimentality; independent in outward action, what we call "open-air";
+yet an anomaly, fond at once of games and babies. I have seen her in
+the morning tearing away across country by the side of her father, the
+most passionate and reckless rider to hounds in the county, and in the
+evening I have come across her, a pretty mass of pink flesh and
+muslin--no, it can't be muslin--say chiffon--anyhow, something white
+and filmy and girlish--curled up on a sofa and absorbed in a novel of
+Mrs. Henry Wood, borrowed, if one could judge by the state of its
+greasy brown paper cover, from the servants' hall. I confess that,
+though to her as to her brother I was "Uncle Duncan," and loved her as
+a dear, sweet English girl, I found her lacking in spirituality, in
+intellectual grasp, in emotional distinction. I should have said that
+she was sealed by God to be the chaste, healthy, placid mother of men.
+She was forever laughing--just the spontaneous laughter of the gladness
+of life.
+
+On the last afternoon of her existence she came to see me, bringing me
+a basket of giant strawberries from her own particular bed. We had tea
+in the garden, and with her young appetite she consumed half the fruit
+she had brought. At the time I did not notice an unusual touch of
+depression. I remember her holding by its stalk a great half-eaten
+strawberry and asking me whether sometimes I didn't find life rather
+rotten. I said idly:
+
+"You can't expect the world to be a peach without a speck on it. Of
+such is the Kingdom of Heaven. The wise person avoids the specks."
+
+"But suppose you've bitten a specky bit by accident?"
+
+"Spit it out," said I.
+
+She laughed. "You think you're like the wise Uncle in the Sunday School
+books, don't you?"
+
+"I know I am," I said.
+
+Whereupon she laughed again, finished the strawberry, and changed the
+conversation.
+
+There seemed to be no foreshadowing of tragedy in that. I had known her
+(like many of her kind) to proclaim the rottenness of the Universe when
+she was off her stroke at golf, or when a favourite young man did not
+appear at a dance. I attributed no importance to it. But the next day I
+remembered. What was she doing after half-past ten o'clock, when she
+had bidden her father and mother goodnight, on the steep and lonely
+bank of the canal, about a mile and a half away? No one had seen her
+leave the house. No one, apparently, had seen her walking through the
+town. Nothing was known of her until dawn when they found her body by
+the lock gate. She had been dead some hours. It was a mysterious
+affair, upon which no light was thrown at the inquest. No one save
+myself had observed any sign of depression, and her half-bantering talk
+with me was trivial enough. No one could adduce a reason for her
+midnight walk on the tow-path. The obvious question arose. Whom had she
+gone forth to meet? What man? There was not a man in the neighbourhood
+with whom her name could be particularly associated. Generally, it
+could be associated with a score or so. The modern young girl of her
+position and upbringing has a drove of young male intimates. With one
+she rides, with another she golfs, with another she dances a two-step,
+with another she Bostons; she will let Tom read poetry to her,
+although, as she expresses it, "he bores her stiff," because her sex
+responds to the tribute; she plays lady patroness to Dick, and tries to
+intrigue him into a soft job; and as for Harry she goes on telling him
+month after month that unless he forswears sack and lives cleanly she
+will visit him with her high displeasure. Meanwhile, most of these
+satellites have affaires de coeur of their own, some respectable,
+others not; they regard the young lady with engaging frankness as a
+woman and a sister, they have the run of her father's house, and would
+feel insulted if anybody questioned the perfect correctness of their
+behaviour. Each man has, say, half a dozen houses where he is welcomed
+on the same understanding. Of course, when one particular young man and
+one particular young woman read lunatic things in each other's eyes,
+then the rest of the respective quasi-sisters and quasi-brothers have
+to go hang. (In parenthesis, I may state that the sisters are more
+ruthlessly sacrificed than the brothers.) At any rate, frankness is the
+saving quality of the modern note.
+
+In the case of Althea, there had been no sign of such specialisation.
+She could not have gone forth, poor child, to meet the twenty with whom
+she was known to be on terms of careless comradeship. She had gone from
+her home, driven by God knows what impulse, to walk in the
+starlight--there was no moon--along the banks of the canal. In the
+darkness, had she missed her footing and stepped into nothingness and
+the black water? The Coroner's Jury decided the question in the
+affirmative. They brought in a verdict of death by misadventure. And up
+to the date on which I begin this little Chronicle of Wellingsford,
+namely that of the summons to Wellings Park, when I heard of the death
+of young Oswald Fenimore, that is all I knew of the matter.
+
+Throughout July my friends were like dead people. There was nothing
+that could be said to them by way of consolation. The sun had gone out
+of their heaven. There was no light in the world. Having known Death as
+a familiar foe, and having fought against its terrors; having only by
+the grace of God been able to lift up a man's voice in my hour of awful
+bereavement, and cry, "O Death, where is thy sting, O Grave, thy
+Victory?" I could suffer with them and fear for their reason. They
+lived in a state of coma, unaware of life, performing, like automata,
+their daily tasks.
+
+Then, in the early days of August, came the Trumpet of War, and they
+awakened. In my life have I seen nothing so marvellous. No broken spell
+of enchantment in an Arabian tale when dead warriors spring into life
+was ever more instant and complete. They arose in their full vigour;
+the colour came back to their cheeks and the purpose into their eyes.
+They laughed once more. Their days were filled with work and
+cheerfulness. In November Sir Anthony was elected Mayor. Being a
+practical, hard-headed little man, loved and respected by everybody, he
+drove a hitherto contentious Town Council into paths of high patriotism
+like a flock of sheep. And no less energy did Lady Fenimore exhibit in
+the sphere of her own activities.
+
+A few days after the tidings came of Oswald's death, Sir Anthony was
+riding through the town and pulled up before Perkins' the fishmonger's.
+Perkins emerged from his shop and crossed the pavement.
+
+"I hear you've had bad news."
+
+"Yes, indeed, Sir Anthony."
+
+"I'm sorry. He was a fine fellow. So was my boy. We're in the same
+boat, Perkins."
+
+Perkins assented. "It sort of knocks one's life to bits, doesn't it?"
+said he. "We've nothing left."
+
+"We have our country."
+
+"Our country isn't our only son," said the other dully.
+
+"No. She's our mother," said Sir Anthony.
+
+"Isn't that a kind of abstraction?"
+
+"Abstraction!" cried Sir Anthony, indignantly. "You must be imbibing
+the notions of that poisonous beast Gedge."
+
+Gedge was a smug, socialistic, pacifist builder who did not hold with
+war--and with this one least of all, which he maintained was being
+waged for the exclusive benefit of the capitalist classes. In the eyes
+of the stalwarts of Wellingsford, he was a horrible fellow, capable of
+any stratagem or treason.
+
+Perkins flushed. "I've always voted conservative, like my father before
+me, Sir Anthony, and like yourself I've given my boy to my country.
+I've no dealings with unpatriotic people like Gedge, as you know very
+well."
+
+"Of course I do," cried Sir Anthony. "And that's why I ask you what the
+devil you mean by calling England an abstraction. For us, she's the
+only thing in the world. We're elderly chaps, you and I, Perkins, and
+the only thing we can do to help her is to keep our heads high. If
+people like you and me crumple up, the British Empire will crumple up."
+
+"That's quite true," said Perkins.
+
+Sir Anthony bent down and held out his hand.
+
+"It's damned hard lines for us, and for the women. But we must keep our
+end up. It's doing our bit."
+
+Perkins wrung his hand. "I wish to God," said he, "I was young enough--"
+
+"By God! so do I!" said Sir Anthony.
+
+This little conversation (which I afterwards verified) was reported to
+me by my arch-gossip, Sergeant Marigold.
+
+"And I tell you what, sir," said he after the conclusion, "I'm of the
+same way of thinking and feeling."
+
+"So am I."
+
+"Besides, I'm not so old, sir. I'm only forty-two."
+
+"The prime of life," said I.
+
+"Then why won't they take me, sir?"
+
+If there had been no age limit and no medical examination Marigold
+would have re-enlisted as John Smith, on the outbreak of war, without a
+moment's consideration of the position of his wife and myself. And Mrs.
+Marigold, a soldier's wife of twenty years' standing, would have taken
+it, just like myself, as a matter of course. But as he could not
+re-enlist, he pestered the War Office (just as I did) and I pestered
+for him to give him military employment. And all in vain.
+
+"Why don't they take me, sir? When I see these fellows with three
+stripes on their arms, and looking at them and wondering at them as if
+they were struck three stripes by lightning, and calling themselves
+Sergeants and swanking about and letting their men waddle up to their
+gun like cows--and when I see them, as I've done with your eyes--watch
+one of their men pass by an officer in the street without saluting, and
+don't kick the blighter to--to--to barracks--it fairly makes me sick.
+And I ask myself, sir, what I've done that I should be loafing here
+instead of serving my country."
+
+"You've somehow mislaid an eye and a hand and gone and got a tin head.
+That's what you've done," said I. "And the War Office has a mark
+against you as a damned careless fellow."
+
+"Tin head or no tin head," he grumbled, "I could teach those mother's
+darlings up there the difference between a battery of artillery and a
+skittle-ally."
+
+"I believe you've mentioned the matter to them already," I observed
+softly.
+
+Marigold met my eye for a second and then looked rather sheepish. I had
+heard of a certain wordy battle between him and a Territorial Sergeant
+whom he had set out to teach. Marigold encountered a cannonade of
+blasphemous profanity, new, up-to-date, scientific, against which the
+time-worn expletives in use during his service days were ineffectual.
+He was routed with heavy loss.
+
+"This is a war of the young," I continued. "New men, new guns, new
+notions. Even a new language," I insinuated.
+
+"I wish 'em joy of their language," said Marigold. Then seeing that I
+was mildly amusing myself at his expense, he asked me stiffly if there
+was anything more that he could do for me, and on my saying no, he
+replied "Thank you, sir," most correctly and left the room.
+
+On the 3d of March Betty Fairfax came to tea.
+
+Of all the young women of Wellingsford she was my particular favourite.
+She was so tall and straight, with a certain Rosalind boyishness about
+her that made for charm. I am not yet, thank goodness, one of the
+fossils who hold up horror-stricken hands at the independent ways of
+the modern young woman. If it were not for those same independent ways
+the mighty work that English women are doing in this war would be left
+undone. Betty Fairfax was breezily independent. She had a little money
+of her own and lived, when it suited her, with a well-to-do and
+comfortable aunt. She was two and twenty. I shall try to tell you more
+about her, as I go on.
+
+As I have said, and as my diary tells me, she came to tea on the 3d of
+March. She was looking particularly attractive that afternoon. Shaded
+lamps and the firelight of a cosy room, with all their soft shadows,
+give a touch of mysterious charm to a pretty girl. Her jacket had a
+high sort of Medici collar edged with fur, which set off her shapely
+throat. The hair below her hat was soft and brown. Her brows were wide,
+her eyes brown and steady, nose and lips sensitive. She had a way of
+throwing back her head and pointing her chin fearlessly, as though in
+perpetual declaration that she cared not a hang either for
+black-beetles or Germans. And she was straight as a dart, with the
+figure of a young Diana--Diana before she began to worry her head about
+beauty competitions. A kind of dark hat stuck at a considerable angle
+on her head gave her the prettiest little swaggering air in the
+world.... Well, there was I, a small, brown, withered, grizzled,
+elderly, mustachioed monkey, chained to my wheel-chair; there were the
+brave logs blazing up the wide chimney; there was the tea table on my
+right with its array of silver and old china; and there, on the other
+side of it, attending to my wants, sat as brave and sweet a type of
+young English womanhood as you could find throughout the length and
+breadth of the land. Had I not been happy, I should have been an
+ungrateful dog.
+
+We talked of the war, of local news, of the wounded at the hospital.
+
+And here I must say that we are very proud of our Wellingsford
+Hospital. It is the largest and the wealthiest in the county. We owe it
+to the uneasy conscience of a Wellingsford man, a railway speculator in
+the forties, who, having robbed widows and orphans and, after trial at
+the Old Bailey, having escaped penal servitude by the skin of his
+teeth, died in the odour of sanctity, and the possessor of a colossal
+fortune in the year eighteen sixty-three. This worthy gentleman built
+the hospital and endowed it so generously that a wing of it has been
+turned into a military hospital with forty beds. I have the honour to
+serve on the Committee. Betty Fairfax entered as a Probationer early in
+September, and has worked there night and day ever since. That is why
+we chatted about the wounded. Having a day off, she had indulged in the
+luxury of pretty clothes. Of these I had duly expressed my admiration.
+
+Tea over, she lit a cigarette for me and one for herself and drew her
+chair a trifle nearer the fire. After a little knitting of the brow,
+she said:--
+
+"You haven't asked me why I invited myself to tea."
+
+"I thought," said I, "it was for my beaux yeux."
+
+"Not this time. I rather wanted you to be the first to receive a
+certain piece of information."
+
+I glanced at her sharply. "You don't mean to say you're going to be
+married at last?"
+
+In some astonishment she retorted:--
+
+"How did you guess?"
+
+"Holy simplicity!" said I. "You told me so yourself."
+
+She laughed. Suddenly, on reflection, her face changed.
+
+"Why did you say 'at last'?"
+
+"Well--" said I, with a significant gesture.
+
+She made a defiant announcement:--
+
+"I am going to marry Willie Connor."
+
+It was my turn to be astonished. "Captain Connor?" I echoed.
+
+"Yes. What have you to say against him?"
+
+"Nothing, my dear, nothing."
+
+And I hadn't. He was an exemplary young fellow, a Captain in a
+Territorial regiment that had been in hard training in the
+neighbourhood since August. He was of decent family and upbringing, a
+barrister by profession, and a comely pink-faced boy with a fair
+moustache. He brought a letter or two of introduction, was billeted on
+Mrs. Fairfax, together with one of his subs, and was made welcome at
+various houses. Living under the same roof as Betty, it was natural
+that he should fall in love with her. But it was not at all natural
+that she should fall in love with him. She was not one of the kind that
+suffer fools gladly.... No; I had nothing against Willie Connor. He was
+merely a common-place, negative young man; patriotic, keen in his work,
+an excellent soldier, and, as far as I knew, of blameless life; but
+having met him two or three times in general company, I had found him a
+dull dog, a terribly dull dog,--the last man in the world for Betty
+Fairfax.
+
+And then there was Leonard Boyce. I naturally had him in my head, when
+I used the words "at last."
+
+"You don't seem very enthusiastic," said Betty.
+
+"You've taken me by surprise," said I. "I'm not young enough to be
+familiar with these sudden jerks."
+
+"You thought it was Major Boyce."
+
+"I did, Betty. True, you've said nothing about it to me for ever so
+long, and when I have asked you for news of him your answers have
+shewed me that all was not well. But you've never told me, or anyone,
+that the engagement was broken off."
+
+Her young face was set sternly as she looked into the fire.
+
+"It's not broken off--in the formal sense. Leonard thought fit to let
+it dwindle, and it has dwindled until it has perished of inanition."
+She flashed round. "I'm not the sort to ask any man for explanations."
+
+"Boyce went out with the first lot in August," I said. "He has had
+seven awful months. Mons and all the rest of it. You must excuse a man
+in the circumstances for not being aux petits soins des dames. And he
+seems to be doing magnificently--twice mentioned in dispatches."
+
+"I know all that," she said. "I'm not a fool. But the war has nothing
+to do with it. It started a month before the war broke out. Don't let
+us talk of it."
+
+She threw the end of her cigarette into the fire and lit a fresh one. I
+accepted the action as symbolical. I dismissed Boyce, and said:--
+
+"And so you're engaged to Captain Connor?"
+
+"More than that," she laughed. "I'm going to marry him. He's going out
+next week. It's idiotic to have an engagement. So I'm going to marry
+him the day after to-morrow."
+
+Now here was a piece of news, all flung at my head in a couple of
+minutes. The day after to-morrow! I asked for the reason of this
+disconcerting suddenness.
+
+"He's going out next week."
+
+"My dear," said I, "I have known you for a very long time--and I
+suppose it's because I'm such a very old friend that you've come to
+tell me all about it. So I can talk to you frankly. Have you considered
+the terrible chances of this war? Heaven knows what may happen. He may
+be killed."
+
+"That's why I'm marrying him," she said.
+
+There was a little pause. For the moment I had nothing to say, as I was
+busily searching for her point of view. Then, with pauses between each
+sentence, she went on:--
+
+"He asked me two months ago, and again a month ago. I told him to put
+such ideas out of his head. Yesterday he told me they were off to the
+front and said what a wonderful help it would be to him if he could
+carry away some hope of my love. So I gave it to him."--She threw back
+her head and looked at me, with flushed cheeks. "The love, not the
+hope."
+
+"I don't think it was right of him to press for an immediate marriage,"
+said I, in a grandfatherly way--though God knows if I had been mad for
+a girl I should have done the same myself when I was young.
+
+"He didn't" said Betty, coolly. "It was all my doing. I fixed it up
+there and then. Looked up Whitaker's Almanack for the necessary
+information, and sent him off to get a special license."
+
+I nodded a non-committal head. It all seemed rather mad. Betty rose and
+from her graceful height gazed down on me.
+
+"If you don't look more cheerful, Major, I shall cry. I've never done
+so yet, but I'm sure I've got it in me."
+
+I stretched out my hand. She took it, and, still holding it, seated
+herself on a footstool close to my chair.
+
+"There are such a lot of things that occur to me," I said. "Things that
+your poor mother, if she were alive, would be more fitted to touch on
+than myself."
+
+"Such as--"
+
+She knelt by me and gave me both her hands. It was a pretty way she
+had. She had begun it soon after her head overtopped mine in my eternal
+wheelbarrow. There was a little mockery in her eyes.
+
+"Well--" said I. "You know what marriage means. There is the question
+of children."
+
+She broke into frank laughter.
+
+"My darling Majy--" That is the penalty one pays for admitting
+irresponsible modern young people into one's intimacy. They miscall one
+abominably. I thought she had outgrown this childish, though
+affectionate appellation of disrespect. "My darling Majy!" she said.
+"Children! How many do you think I'm going to have?"
+
+I was taken aback. There was this pure, proud, laughing young face a
+foot away from me. I said in desperation:--
+
+"You know very well what I mean, young woman. I want to put things
+clearly before you--" It is the most difficult thing in the world for a
+man--even without legs--to talk straight about the facts of life to a
+young girl. He has no idea how much she knows about them and how much
+she doesn't. To tear away veils and reveal frightening starkness is an
+act from which he shrinks with all the modesty of a (perhaps) deluded
+sex. I took courage. "I want," I repeated, "to put things clearly
+before you. You are marrying this young man. You will have a week's
+married life. He goes away like a gallant fellow to fight for his
+country. He may be killed in the course of the next few weeks. Like a
+brave girl you've got to face it. In the course of time a child may be
+born--without a father to look after him. It's a terrific
+responsibility."
+
+She knelt upright and put both her hands on my shoulders, almost
+embracing me, and the laughter died away from her eyes, giving place to
+something which awakened memories of what I had seen once or twice in
+the eyes of the dearest of all women. She put her face very close to
+mine and whispered:
+
+"Don't you see, dear, it's in some sort of way because of that? Don't
+you think it would be awful for a strong, clean, brave English life
+like his to go out without leaving behind him someone to--well, you
+know what I mean--to carry on the same traditions--to be the same clean
+brave Englishman in the future?"
+
+I smiled and nodded. Quite a different kind of nod from the previous
+one.
+
+"Thousands of girls are doing it, you dear old Early Victorian, and
+aren't ashamed to say so to those who really love and can understand
+them. And you do love and understand, don't you?"
+
+She set me off at arm's length, and held me with her bright unflinching
+eyes.
+
+"I do, my dear," said I. "But there's only one thing that troubles me.
+Marriage is a lifelong business. Captain Connor may win through to a
+green old age. I hope to God the gallant fellow will. Your present
+motives are beautiful and heroic. But do you care for him sufficiently
+to pass a lifetime with him--after the war--an ordinary, commonplace
+lifetime?"
+
+With the same clear gaze full on me she said:--
+
+"Didn't I tell you that I had given him my love?"
+
+"You did."
+
+"Then," she retorted with a smile, "my dear Major Didymus, what more do
+you want?"
+
+"Nothing, my dear Betty."
+
+I kissed her. She threw her arms round my neck and kissed me again.
+Sergeant Marigold entered on the sentimental scene and preserved a face
+of wood. Betty rose to her feet slowly and serenely and smiled at
+Marigold.
+
+"Miss Fairfax's car," he announced.
+
+"Marigold," said I, "Miss Fairfax is going to be married the day after
+to-morrow to Captain Connor of the--"
+
+"I know, sir," interrupted my one-eyed ramrod. "I'm very glad, if I may
+be permitted to say so, Miss. I've made it my duty to inspect all the
+troops that have been quartered hereabouts during the last eight
+months. And Captain Connor is one of the few that really know their
+business. I shouldn't at all mind to serve under him. I can't say more,
+Miss. I wish you happiness."
+
+She flushed and laughed and looked adorable, and held out her hand,
+which he enclosed in his great left fist.
+
+"And you'll come to my wedding, Sergeant?"
+
+"I will, Miss," said he. "With considerable pleasure."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+When I want to shew how independent I am of everybody, I drive abroad
+in my donkey carriage. I am rather proud of my donkey, a lithe-limbed
+pathetically eager little beast, deep bay with white tips to his ears.
+Marigold bought him for me last spring, from some gipsies, when his
+predecessor, Dan, who had served me faithfully for some years, struck
+work and insisted on an old-age pension. He is called Hosea, a name
+bestowed on him, by way of clerical joke, and I am sure with a profane
+reminiscence of Jorrocks, by the Vicar, because he "came after Daniel."
+At first I thought it rather silly; but when I tried to pull him up I
+found that "Whoa-Ho-sea!" came in rather pat; so Hosea he has remained.
+He has quite a fast, stylish little trot, and I can square my elbows
+and cock my head on one side as I did in the days of my youth when the
+brief ownership of a tandem and a couple of thoroughbreds would have
+landed me in the bankruptcy court, had it not mercifully first landed
+me in the hospital.
+
+The afternoon after Betty's visit, I took Hosea to Wellings Park. The
+Fenimores shewed me a letter they had received from Oswald's Colonel,
+full of praise of the gallant boy, and after discussing it, which they
+did with brave eyes and voices, Sir Anthony said:--
+
+"I want your advice, Duncan, on a matter that has been worrying us
+both. Briefly it is this. When Oswald came of age I promised to allow
+him a thousand a year till I should be wiped out and he should come in.
+Now I'm only fifty-five and as strong as a horse. I can reasonably
+expect to live, say, another twenty years. If Oswald were alive I
+should owe him, in prospectu, twenty thousand pounds. He has given his
+life for his country. His country, therefore, is his heir, comes in for
+his assets, his twenty years' allowance--"
+
+"And the whole of your estate at your death?" I interposed.
+
+"No. Not at all," said he. "At my death, it would have been his to
+dispose of as he pleased. Up to my death, he would have had no more
+claim to deal with it than you have. Look at things from my point of
+view, and don't be idiotic. I am considering my debt to Oswald, and
+therefore, logically, my debt to the country. It is twenty thousand
+pounds. I'm going to pay it. The only question is--and the question has
+kept Edith and myself awake the last two nights--is what's the best
+thing to do with it? Of course I could give it to some fund,--or
+several funds,--but it's a lot of money and I should like it to be used
+to the best advantage. Now what do you say?"
+
+"I say," said I, "that you Croesuses make a half-pay Major of
+Artillery's head reel. If I were like you, I should go into a shop and
+buy a super-dreadnought, and stick a card on it with a drawing pin, and
+send it to the Admiralty with my compliments."
+
+"Duncan," said Lady Fenimore, severely, "don't be flippant."
+
+Heaven knows I was in no flippant mood; but it was worth a foolish jest
+to bring a smile to Sir Anthony's face. Also this grave, conscientious
+proposition had its humorous side. It was so British. It reminded me of
+the story of Swift, who, when Gay and Pope visited him and refused to
+sup, totted up the cost of the meal and insisted on their accepting
+half-a-crown apiece. It reminded me too of the rugged old Lancashire
+commercial blood that was in him--blood that only shewed itself on the
+rarest and greatest of occasions--the blood of his grandfather, the
+Manchester cotton-spinner, who founded the fortunes of his house. Sir
+Anthony knew less about cotton than he did about ballistics and had
+never sat at a desk in a business office for an hour in his life; but
+now and again the inherited instinct to put high impulses on a
+scrupulously honest commercial basis asserted itself in the quaintest
+of fashions.
+
+"There's some sense in what he says, Edith," remarked Sir Anthony.
+"It's only vanity that prompted us to ear-mark this sum for something
+special."
+
+"Vanity!" cried Lady Fenimore. "You weren't by any chance thinking of
+advertising our gift or contribution or whatever you like to call it in
+the Daily Mail?"
+
+"Heaven forbid, my dear," Sir Anthony replied warmly; and he stood, his
+hands under his coat-tails and his gaitered legs apart, regarding her
+with the air of a cock-sparrow accused of murdering his young, or a
+sensitive jockey repudiating a suggestion of crooked riding. "Heaven
+forbid!" he repeated. "Such an idea never entered my head."
+
+"Then where does the vanity come in?" asked Lady Fenimore.
+
+They had their little argument. I lit a cigarette and let them argue.
+In such cases, every married couple has its own queer and private and
+particular and idiosyncratic way of coming to an agreement. The third
+party who tries to foist on it his own suggestion of a way is an
+imbecile. The dispute on the point of vanity, charmingly conducted,
+ended by Sir Anthony saying triumphantly:--
+
+"Well, my dear, don't you see I'm right?" and by his wife replying with
+a smile:--
+
+"No, darling, I don't see at all. But since you feel like that, there's
+nothing more to be said."
+
+I was mildly enjoying myself. Perhaps I'm a bit of a cynic. I broke in.
+
+"I don't think it's vanity to see that you get your money's worth.
+There's lots of legitimate fun in spending twenty thousand pounds
+properly. It's too big to let other people manage or mis-manage.
+Suppose you decided on motor-ambulances or hospital trains, for
+instance, it would be your duty to see that you got the best and most
+up-to-date ambulances or trains, with the least possible profits, to
+contractors and middle-men."
+
+"As far as that goes, I think I know my way about," said Sir Anthony.
+
+"Of course. And as for publicity--or the reverse, hiding your light
+under a bushel--any fool can remain anonymous."
+
+Sir Anthony nodded at me, rubbed his hands, and turned to his wife.
+
+"That's just what I was saying, Edith."
+
+"My dear, that is just what I was trying to make you understand."
+
+Neither of the two dear things had said, or given the other to
+understand, anything of the kind. But you see they had come in their
+own quaint married way to an agreement and were now receptive of
+commonsense.
+
+"The motor ambulance is a sound idea," said Sir Anthony, rubbing his
+chin between thumb and forefinger.
+
+"So is the hospital train," said Lady Fenimore.
+
+What an idiot I was to suggest these alternatives! I looked at my
+watch. It was getting late. Hosea, like a silly child, is afraid of the
+dark. He just stands still and shivers at the night, and the more he is
+belaboured the more he shivers, standing stock-still with ears thrown
+back and front legs thrown forward. As I can't get out and pull, I'm at
+the mercy of Hosea. And he knows it. Since the mount of Balaam, there
+was never such an intelligent idiot of an ass.
+
+"What do you say?" asked Sir Anthony. "Ambulance or train?"
+
+"Donkey carriage," said I. "This very moment minute."
+
+I left them and trotted away homewards.
+
+Just as I had turned a bend of the chestnut avenue near the Park gates,
+I came upon a couple of familiar figures--familiar, that is to say,
+individually, but startlingly unfamiliar in conjunction. They were a
+young man and girl, Randall Holmes and Phyllis Gedge. Randall had
+concluded a distinguished undergraduate career at Oxford last summer.
+He was a man of birth, position, and, to a certain extent, of fortune.
+Phyllis Gedge was the daughter, the pretty and attractive daughter, of
+Daniel Gedge, the socialistic builder who did not hold with war. What
+did young Randall mean by walking in the dark with his arm round
+Phyllis's waist? Of course as soon as he heard the click-clack of
+Hosea's hoofs he whipped his arm away; but I had already caught him.
+They tried to look mighty unconcerned as I pulled up. I took off my hat
+politely to the lady and held out my hand to the young man.
+
+"Good evening, Randall," said I. "I haven't seen you for ages."
+
+He was a tall, clean-limbed, clear-featured boy, with black hair, which
+though not long, yet lacked the military trimness befitting the heads
+of young men at the present moment. He murmured something about being
+busy.
+
+"It will do you good to take a night off," I said; "drop in after
+dinner and smoke a pipe with an old friend."
+
+I smiled, bowed again politely, whipped up Hosea and trotted off. I
+wondered whether he would come. He had said: "Delighted, I'm sure," but
+he had not looked delighted. Very possibly he regarded me as a
+meddlesome, gossiping old tom-cat. Perhaps for that reason he would
+deem it wise to adopt a propitiatory attitude. Perhaps also he retained
+a certain affectionate respect for me, seeing that I had known him as a
+tiny boy in a sailor suit, and had fed him at Harrow (as I did poor
+Oswald Fenimore at Wellington) with Mrs. Marigold's famous potted
+shrimp and other comestibles, and had put him up, during here and there
+holidays and later a vacation, when his mother and aunts, with whom he
+lived, had gone abroad to take inefficacious cures for the tedium of a
+futile life. Oxford, however, had set him a bit off my plane.
+
+As an ordinary soldierman, trained in the elementary virtues of
+plain-speaking and direct dealing, love of country and the sacredness
+of duty, I have had no use for the metaphysician. I haven't the
+remotest notion what his jargon means. From Aristotle to William James,
+I have dipped into quite a lot of them--Descartes, Berkeley, Kant,
+Schopenhauer (the thrice besotted Teutonic ass who said that women
+weren't beautiful), for I hate to be thought an ignorant duffer--and I
+have never come across in them anything worth knowing, thinking, or
+doing that I was not taught at my mother's knee. And as for her, dear,
+simple soul, if you had asked her what was the Categorical Imperative
+(having explained beforehand the meaning of the words), she would have
+said, "The Sermon on the Mount."
+
+Of course, please regard this as a criticism not of the metaphysicians
+and the philosophers, but of myself. All these great thinkers have
+their niches in the Temple of Fame, and I'm quite aware that the
+consensus of human judgment does not immortalise even such an ass as
+Schopenhauer, without sufficient reason. All I want to convey to you is
+that I am only a plain, ordinary God-fearing, law-abiding Englishman,
+and that when young Randall Holmes brought down from Oxford all sorts
+of highfalutin theories about everything, not only in God's Universe,
+but in the super-Universe that wasn't God's, and of every one of which
+he was cocksure, I found my homely self very considerably out of it.
+
+Then--young Randall was a poet. He had won the Newdigate. The subject
+was Andrea del Sarto, one of my favourite painters--il pittore senza
+errore--and his prize poem--it had, of course, to be academic in
+form--was excellent. It said just the things about him which Browning
+somehow missed, and which I had always been impotently wanting to say.
+And a year or so afterwards--when I praised his poem--he would shrink
+in a more than deprecating attitude: I might just as well have extolled
+him for seducing the wife of his dearest friend. His later poems, of
+which he was immodestly proud--"Sensations Captured on the Wing," he
+defined them--left me cold and unsympathetic. So, for these reasons,
+the boy and I had drifted apart. Until I had caught him in flagrante
+delicto of walking with his arm round the waist of pretty Phyllis
+Gedge, I had not seen him to speak to for a couple of months.
+
+He came, however, after dinner, looking very sleek and handsome and
+intellectual, and wearing a velvet dinner jacket which I did not like.
+After we had gossiped awhile:--
+
+"You said you were very busy?" I remarked.
+
+He flicked off his cigarette ash and nodded.
+
+"What at?"
+
+"War poetry," he replied. "I am trying to supply the real note. It is
+badly wanted. There are all kinds of stuff being written, but all
+indifferent and valueless. If it has a swing, it's merely vulgar, and
+what isn't vulgar is academic, commonplace. There's a crying need for
+the high level poetry that shall interpret with dignity and nobility
+the meaning of the war."
+
+"Have you written much?"
+
+"I have an ode every week in the Albemarle Review. I also write the
+political article. Didn't you know? Haven't you seen them?"
+
+"I don't take in that periodical," said I. "The omniscience of the last
+copy I saw dismayed me. I couldn't understand why the Government were
+such insensate fools as not to move from Downing Street to their
+Editorial offices."
+
+Randall, with a humouring smile, defended the Albemarle Review.
+
+"It is run," said he, "by a little set of intellectuals--some men up
+with me at Oxford--who must naturally have a clearer vision than men
+who have been living for years in the yellow fog of party politics."
+
+He expounded the godlike wisdom of young Oxford at some length,
+replying vividly to here and there a Socratic interpolation on my part.
+After a while I began to grow irritated. His talk, like his verse,
+seemed to deal with unrealities. It was a negation of everything, save
+the intellectual. If he and his friends had been in power, there would
+never have been a war; there never would have been a German menace; the
+lamb would have lain down in peace, outside the lion. He had an airy
+way of dismissing the ruder and more human aspects of the war. Said I:--
+
+"Anyone can talk of what might have been. But that's all over and done
+with. We're up against the tough proposition of the present. What are
+you doing for it?"
+
+He waved a hand. "That's just the point. The present doesn't
+matter--not in the wide conception of things. It is the past and the
+future that count. The present is mere fluidity."
+
+"The poor devils up to their waists in water in the trenches would
+agree with you," said I.
+
+"They would also agree with me," he retorted, "if they had time to go
+into the reconstruction of the future that we are contemplating."
+
+At this juncture Marigold came in with the decanters and syphons. I
+noticed his one eye harden on the velvet dinner-jacket. He fidgeted
+about the room, threw a log on the fire, drew the curtains closer,
+always with an occasional malevolent glance at the jacket. Then
+Randall, like a silly young ass, said, from the depths of his easy
+chair, a very silly thing.
+
+"I see you've not managed to get into khaki yet, Sergeant."
+
+Marigold took a tactical pace or two to the door.
+
+"Neither have you, sir," he said in a respectful tone, and went out.
+
+Randall laughed, though I saw his dark cheek flush. "If Marigold had
+his way he would have us all in a barrack square."
+
+"Preferably in those fluid trenches of the present," said I. "And he
+wouldn't be far wrong."
+
+My eyes rested on him somewhat stonily. People have complained
+sometimes--defaulters, say, in the old days--that there can be a
+beastly, nasty look in them.
+
+"What do you mean, Major?" he asked.
+
+"Sergeant Marigold," said I, "is a brave, patriotic Englishman who has
+given his country all he can spare from the necessary physical
+equipment to carry on existence; and it's making him hang-dog miserable
+that he's not allowed to give the rest to-morrow. You must forgive his
+plain speaking," I continued, gathering warmth as I went on, "but he
+can't understand healthy young fellows like you not wanting to do the
+same. And, for the matter of that, my dear Randall, neither do I. Why
+aren't you serving your country?"
+
+He started forward in his chair and threw out his arms, and his dark
+eyes flashed and a smile of conscious rectitude overspread his
+clear-cut features.
+
+"My dear Major--serving my country? Why, I'm working night and day for
+it. You don't understand."
+
+"I've already told you I don't."
+
+The boy was my guest. I had not intended to hold a pistol to his head
+in one hand and dangle a suit of khaki before his eyes in the other. I
+had been ill at ease concerning him for months, but I had proposed to
+regain his confidence in a tactful, fatherly way. Instead of which I
+found myself regarding him with my beastly defaulter glare. The blood
+sometimes flies to one's head.
+
+He condescended to explain.
+
+"There are millions of what the Germans call 'cannon fodder' about. But
+there are few intellects--few men, shall I say?--of genius, scarcely a
+poet. And men like myself who can express--that's the whole vital
+point--who can EXPRESS the higher philosophy of the Empire, and can
+point the way to its realisation are surely more valuable than the
+yokel or factory hand, who, as the sum-total of his capabilities, can
+be trained merely into a sort of shooting machine. Just look at it, my
+dear Major, from a commonsense point of view--" He forgot, the amazing
+young idiot, that he was talking not to a maiden aunt, but to a
+hard-bitten old soldier. "What good would it serve to stick the
+comparatively rare man--I say it in all modesty--the comparatively rare
+man like myself in the trenches? It would be foolish waste. I assure
+you I'm putting all my talents at the disposal of the country." Seeing,
+I suppose, in my eyes, the maintained stoniness of non-conviction, he
+went on, "But, my dear sir, be reasonable." ... Reasonable! I nearly
+choked. If I could have stood once more on my useless legs, I should
+have swung my left arm round and clouted him on the side of the head.
+Reasonable indeed! This well-fed, able-bodied, young Oxford prig to
+tell me, an honourable English officer and gentleman, to be reasonable,
+when the British Empire, in peril of its existence, was calling on all
+its manhood to defend it in arms! I glared at him. He continued:--
+
+"Yes, be reasonable. Everyone has his place in this World conflict. We
+can't all be practical fighters. You wouldn't set Kitchener or Grey or
+Lord Crewe to bayonet Germans--"
+
+"By God, sir," I cried, smiting one palm with the fist of the other
+hand. "By God, sir, I would, if they were three and twenty." I had
+completely lost my temper. "And if I saw them doing nothing, while the
+country was asking for MEN, but writing rotten doggerel and messing
+about with girls far beneath them in station, I should call them the
+damnedest skunks unskinned!"
+
+He had the decency to rise. "Major Meredyth," said he, "you're under a
+terrible misapprehension. You're a military man and must look at
+everything from a military point of view. It would be useless to
+discuss the philosophy of the situation with you. We're on different
+planes."
+
+Just what I said.
+
+"You," said I, "seem to be hovering near Tophet and the Abyss."
+
+"No, no," he answered with an indulgent smile. "You are quoting
+Carlyle. You must give him up."
+
+"Damned pro-German, I should think I do," I cried. I had forgotten
+where my phrase came from.
+
+"I'm glad to hear it. He's a back-number. I'm a modern. I represent
+equilibrium--" He made a little rocking gesture with his graceful hand.
+"I am out for Eternal Truth, which I think I perceive."
+
+"In poor little Phyllis Gedge, I suppose?"
+
+"Why not? Look. I am the son, grandson, great-grandson, of English
+Tories. She is the daughter of socialism, syndicalism, pacifism,
+internationalism--everything that is most apart from my traditions. But
+she brings to me beauty, innocence, the feminine solution of all
+intellectual concepts. She, the woman, is the soul of conflicting
+England. She is torn both ways. But as she has to breed men, some day,
+she is instinctively on our side. She is invaluable to me. She inspires
+my poems. You may not believe it, but she is at the back of my
+political articles. You must really be a little more broad-minded,
+Major, and look at these things from the right point of view. From the
+point of view of my work, she is merely a symbol."
+
+"And you?" said I, wrathfully. "What are you to her? Do you suppose she
+takes you for a symbol? I wish to Heaven she did. A round cipher of
+naught, the symbol of inanity. She takes you for an honourable
+gentleman. I've known the child since she was born. As good a little
+girl as you could wish to meet."
+
+He drew himself up. "That's the opinion of her I am endeavouring to
+express."
+
+"Quite so. You win a good decent girl's affection,--if you hadn't, she
+would never have let you walk about with her at nightfall, with your
+arm round her waist,--and you have the cynical audacity to say that
+she's only a symbol."
+
+"When you asked me to come in this evening," said he, "I naturally
+concluded you would broach this subject. I came prepared to give you a
+complete explanation of what I am ready to admit was a compromising
+situation."
+
+"There is only one explanation," said I angrily. "What are your
+intentions regarding the girl?"
+
+He smiled. "Quite honourable."
+
+"You mean marriage?"
+
+"Oh, no," said he, emphatically.
+
+"Then the other thing? That's not honourable."
+
+"Of course not. Certainly not the other thing. I'm not a blackguard."
+
+"Then what on earth are you playing at?"
+
+He sighed. "I'm afraid you will never understand."
+
+"I'm afraid I won't," said I. "By your own confession you are neither a
+lusty blackguard nor an honourable gentleman. You're a sort of
+philanderer, somewhere in between. You neither mean to fight like a man
+nor love like a man. I'm sorry to say it, but I've no use for you. As I
+can't do it myself, will you kindly ring the bell?"
+
+"Certainly," said he, white with anger, which I was glad to see, and
+pressed the electric button beside the mantelpiece. He turned on me,
+his head high. There was still some breeding left in him.
+
+"I'm sorry we're at such cross-purposes, Major. All my life long I've
+owed you kindnesses I can't ever repay. But at present we're hopelessly
+out of sympathy!"
+
+"It seems so," said I. "I had hoped your father's son would be a better
+man!"
+
+"My father," said he, "was a successful stockbroker, without any ideas
+in his head save the making of money. I don't see what he has got to do
+with my well-considered attitude towards life."
+
+"Your callow attitude towards life, my poor boy," said I, "is a matter
+of profound indifference to me. But I shall give orders that you are no
+longer admitted to this house except in uniform."
+
+"That's absurd," said he.
+
+"Not at all," said I.
+
+In obedience to the summons of the bell Sergeant Marigold appeared and
+stood in his ramrod fashion by the door.
+
+Randall came forward to my wheel-chair, with hand outstretched.
+
+"I'm desperately sorry, Major, for this disastrous misunderstanding."
+
+I thrust my hands beneath the light shawl that covered my legs.
+
+"Don't be such a self-sufficient fool, Randall," I said, "as to think I
+don't understand. In the present position there are no subtleties and
+no complications. Good-night."
+
+Marigold, with a wooden face, opened wide the door, and Randall, with a
+shrug of the shoulders, went out.
+
+I stayed awake the whole of that livelong night.
+
+When I learned the death of young Oswald Fenimore, whom I loved far
+more dearly than Randall Holmes, I went to bed and slept peacefully. A
+gallant lad died in battle; there is nothing more to be said, nothing
+more to be thought. The finality, heroically sublime, overwhelms the
+poor workings of the brain. But in the case of a fellow like Randall
+Holmes--well, as I have said, I did not get a wink of sleep the whole
+night long.
+
+Someone, a few months ago, told me of a young university man--Oxford or
+Cambridge, I forget--who, when asked why he was not fighting, replied;
+"What has the war to do with me? I disapprove of this brawling."
+
+Was that the attitude of Randall, whom I had known all his life long? I
+shivered, like a fool, all night. The only consolation I had was to
+bring commonsense to my aid and to meditate on the statistical fact
+that the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were practically empty.
+
+But my soul was sick for young Randall Holmes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+On the wedding eve Betty brought the happy young man to dine with me.
+He was in that state of unaccustomed and somewhat embarrassed bliss in
+which a man would have dined happily with Beelzebub. A fresh-coloured
+boy, with fair crisply set hair and a little moustache a shade or two
+fairer, he kept on blushing radiantly, as if apologising in a gallant
+sort of fashion for his existence in the sphere of Betty's affection.
+As I had known him but casually and desired to make his closer
+acquaintance, I had asked no one to meet them, save Betty's aunt, whom
+a providential cold had prevented from facing the night air. So, in the
+comfortable little oak-panelled dining-room, hung round with my beloved
+collection of Delft, I had the pair all to myself, one on each side;
+and in this way I was able to read exchanges of glances whence I might
+form sage conclusions. Bella, spruce parlour-maid, waited deftly.
+Sergeant Marigold, when not occupied in the mild labour of filling
+glasses, stood like a guardian ramrod behind my chair--a self-assigned
+post to which he stuck grimly like a sentinel. As I always sat with my
+back to the fire there must have been times when, the blaze roaring
+more fiercely than usual up the chimney, he must have suffered
+martyrdom in his hinder parts.
+
+As I talked--for the first time on such intimate footing--with young
+Connor, I revised my opinion of him and mentally took back much that I
+had said in his disparagement. He was by no means the dull dog that I
+had labelled him. By diligent and sympathetic enquiry I learned that he
+had been a Natural Science scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, where
+he had taken a first-class degree--specialising in geology; that by
+profession (his father's) he was a mining-engineer, and, in pursuit of
+his vocation, had travelled in Galicia, Mexico and Japan; furthermore,
+that he had been one of the ardent little band who of recent years had
+made the Cambridge Officers Training Corps an effective school.
+Hitherto, when I had met him he had sat so agreeably smiling and
+modestly mumchance that I had accepted him at his face value.
+
+I was amused to see how Betty, in order to bring confusion on me, led
+him to proclaim himself. And I loved the manner in which he did so. To
+hear him, one would have thought that he owed everything in the world
+to Betty--from his entrance scholarship at the University to the word
+of special commendation which his company had received from the General
+of his Division at last week's inspection. Yes, he was the modest,
+clean-bred, simple English gentleman who, without self-consciousness or
+self-seeking, does his daily task as well as it can be done, just
+because it is the thing that is set before him to do. And he was over
+head and ears in love with Betty.
+
+I took it upon myself to dismiss her with a nod after she had smoked a
+cigarette over her coffee. Mrs. Marigold, as a soldier's wife, I
+announced, had a world of invaluable advice to give her. Willie Connor
+opened the door. On the threshold she said very prettily:
+
+"Don't drink too much of Major Meredyth's old port. It has been known
+before now to separate husbands and wives for years and years."
+
+He looked after her for a few seconds before he closed the door.
+
+Oh, my God! I've looked like that, in my time, after one dear woman....
+Humanity is very simple, after all. Every generation does exactly the
+same beautiful, foolish things as its forerunner. As he approached the
+table, I said with a smile:--
+
+"You're only copying your great-great-grandfather."
+
+"In what way, sir?" he asked, resuming his place.
+
+I pushed the decanter of port. "He watched the disappearing skirt of
+your great-great-grandmother."
+
+"She was doubtless a very venerable old lady," said he, flushing and
+helping himself to wine. "I never knew her, but she wasn't a patch on
+Betty!"
+
+"But," said I, "when your great-great-grandfather opened the door for
+her to pass out, she wasn't venerable at all, but gloriously young."
+
+"I suppose he was satisfied, poor old chap." He took a sip. "But those
+days did not produce Betty Fairfaxes." He laughed. "I'm jolly sorry for
+my ancestors."
+
+Well--that is the way I like to hear a young man talk. It was the
+modern expression of the perfect gentle knight. In so far as went his
+heart's intention and his soul's strength to assure it, I had no fear
+for Betty's happiness. He gave it to her fully into her own hands;
+whether she would throw it away or otherwise misuse it was another
+matter.
+
+Though I have ever loved women, en tout bien et tout honneur, their
+ways have never ceased from causing me mystification. I think I can
+size up a man, especially given such an opportunity as I had in the
+case of Willie Connor--I have been more or less trained in the business
+all my man's life; but Betty Fairfax, whom I had known intimately for
+as many years as she could remember, puzzled me exceedingly. I defy
+anyone to have picked a single fault in her demeanour towards her
+husband of to-morrow. She lit a cigarette for him in the most charming
+way in the world, and when he guided the hand that held the match, she
+touched his crisp hair lightly with the fingers of the other. She was
+all smiles. When we met in the drawing-room, she retailed with a spice
+of mischief much of Mrs. Marigold's advice. She had seated herself on
+the music stool. Swinging round, she quoted:
+
+"'Even the best husband,' she said, 'will go on swelling himself up
+with vanity just because he's a man. A sensible woman, Miss, lets him
+go on priding of himself, poor creature. It sort of helps his dignity
+when the time comes for him to eat out of your hand, and makes him
+think he's doing you a favour.'"
+
+"When are you going to eat out of my hand, Willie?" she asked.
+
+"Haven't I been doing it for the past week?"
+
+"Oh, they always do that before they're married--so Mrs. Marigold
+informed me. I mean afterwards."
+
+"Don't you think, my dear," I interposed, "it depends on what your
+hands hold out for him to eat?"
+
+Her eyes wavered a bit under mine.
+
+"If he's good," she answered, "they'll be always full of nice things."
+
+She sat, flushed, happy, triumphant, her arms straight down, her
+knuckles resting on the leathern seat, her silver-brocaded, slender
+feet, clear of the floor, peeping close together beneath her white
+frock.
+
+"And if he isn't good?"
+
+"They'll be full of nasty medicine."
+
+She laughed and pivoted round and, after running over the keys of the
+piano for a second or two, began to play Gounod's "Death March of a
+Marionette." She played it remarkably well. When she had ended, Connor
+walked from the hearth, where he had been standing, to her side. I
+noticed a little puzzled look in his eyes.
+
+"Delightful," said he. "But, Betty, what put that thing suddenly into
+your head?"
+
+"We had been talking nonsense," she replied, picking out a chord or
+two, without looking at him. "And I thought we ought to give all past
+vanities and frivolities and lunacies a decent burial."
+
+He put both hands very tenderly on her shoulders.
+
+"Requiescat," said he.
+
+She spread out her fingers and struck the two resonant chords of an
+"Amen," and then glanced up at him, laughing.
+
+After a while, Marigold announced her car, or, rather, her aunt's car.
+They took their leave. I gave them my benediction. Presently, Betty,
+fur-coated, came running in alone. She flung herself down, in her
+impetuous way, beside my wheel-chair. No visit of Betty's would have
+been complete without this performance.
+
+"I haven't had a word with you all the evening, Majy, dear. I've told
+Willie to discuss strategy with Sergeant Marigold in the hall, till I
+come. Well--you thought I was a damn little fool the other day, didn't
+you? What do you think now?"
+
+"I think, my dear," said I, with a hand on her forehead, "that you are
+marrying a very gallant English gentleman of whose love any woman in
+the land might be proud."
+
+She clutched me round the neck and brought her young face near
+mine--and looked at me--I hesitate to say it,--but so it
+seemed,--somewhat haggardly.
+
+"I love to hear you say that, it means so much to me. Don't think I
+haven't a sense of proportion. I have. In all this universal slaughter
+and massacre, a woman's life counts as much as that of a mosquito." She
+freed an arm and snapped her fingers. "But to the woman herself, her
+own life can't help being of some value. Such as it is, I want to give
+it all, every bit of it, to Willie. He shall have everything,
+everything, everything that I can give him."
+
+I looked into the young, drawn, pleading face long and earnestly. No
+longer was I mystified. I remembered her talk with me a couple of days
+before, and I read her riddle.
+
+She had struck gold. She knew it. Gold of a man's love. Gold of a man's
+strength. Gold of a man's honour. Gold of a man's stainless past. Gold
+of a man's radiant future. And though she wore the mocking face and
+talked the mocking words of the woman who expected such a man to "eat
+out of her hand," she knew that never out of her hand would he eat save
+that which she should give him in honourable and wifely service. She
+knew that. She was exquisitely anxious that I should know it too.
+Floodgates of relief were expressed when she saw that I knew it. Not
+that I, personally, counted a scrap. What she craved was a decent human
+soul's justification of her doings. She craved recognition of her
+action in casting away base metal forever and taking the pure gold to
+her heart.
+
+"Tell me that I am doing the right thing, dear," she said, "and
+to-morrow I'll be the happiest woman in the world."
+
+And I told her, in the most fervent manner in my power.
+
+"You quite understand?" she said, standing up, looking very young and
+princess-like, her white throat gleaming between her furs and up-turned
+chin.
+
+"You will find, my dear," said I, "that the significance of your Dead
+March of a Marionette will increase every day of your married life."
+
+She stiffened in a sudden stroke of passion, looking, for the instant,
+electrically beautiful.
+
+"I wish," she cried, "someone had written the Dead March of a Devil."
+
+She bent down, kissed me, and went out in a whirr of furs and draperies.
+
+Of course, all I could do was to scratch my thin iron-grey hair and
+light a cigar and meditate in front of the fire. I knew all about
+it--or at any rate I thought I did, which, as far as my meditation in
+front of the fire is concerned, comes to the same thing.
+
+Betty had cast out the base metal of her love for Leonard Boyce in
+order to accept the pure gold of the love of Willie Connor. So she
+thought, poor girl. She had been in love with Boyce. She had been
+engaged to Boyce. Boyce, for some reason or the other, had turned her
+down. Spretae injuria formae--she had cast Boyce aside. But for all her
+splendid surrender of her womanhood to Willie Connor, for the sake of
+her country, she still loved Leonard Boyce. Or, if she wasn't in love
+with him, she couldn't get him out of her head or her senses. Something
+like that, anyhow. I don't pretend to know exactly what goes on in the
+soul or nature, or whatever it is, of a young girl, who has given her
+heart to a man. I can only use the crude old phrase: she was still in
+love (in some sort of fashion) with Leonard Boyce, and she was going to
+marry, for the highest motives, somebody else.
+
+"Confound the fellow," said I, with an irritable gesture and covered
+myself with cigar ash.
+
+She had called Boyce a devil and implied a wish that he were dead. For
+myself I did not know what to make of him, for reasons which I will
+state. I never approved of the engagement. As a matter of fact, I
+knew--and was one of the very few who knew--of a black mark against
+him--the very blackest mark that could be put against a soldier's name.
+It was a puzzling business. And when I say I knew of the mark, I must
+be candid and confess that its awful justification lies in the
+conscience of one man living in the world to-day--if indeed he be still
+alive.
+
+Boyce was a great bronzed, bull-necked man, with an overpowering
+personality. People called him the very model of a soldier. He was
+always admired and feared by his men. His fierce eye and deep, resonant
+voice, and a suggestion of hidden strength, even of brutality,
+commanded implicit obedience. But both glance and voice would soften
+caressingly and his manner convey a charm which made him popular with
+men--brother officers and private soldiers alike--and with women. With
+regard to the latter--to put things crudely--they saw in him the
+essential, elemental male. Of that I am convinced. It was the open
+secret of his many successes. And he had a buoyant, boyish, disarming,
+chivalrous way with him. If he desired a woman's lips he would always
+begin by kissing the hem of her skirt.
+
+Had I not known what I did, I, an easy-going sort of Christian
+temperamentally inclined to see the best in my fellow-creatures, and,
+as I boastingly said a little while ago, a trained judge of men, should
+doubtless have fallen, like most other people, under the spell of his
+fascination. But whenever I met him, I used to look at him and say to
+myself: "What's at the back of you anyway? What about that business at
+Vilboek's Farm?"
+
+Now this is what I knew--with the reservation I have made above--and to
+this day he is not aware of my knowledge.
+
+It was towards the end of the Boer War. Boyce had come out rather late;
+for which, of course, he was not responsible. A soldier has to go when
+he is told. After a period of humdrum service he was sent off with a
+section of mounted infantry to round up a certain farm-house suspected
+of harbouring Boer combatants. The excursion was a mere matter of
+routine--of humdrum commonplace. As usual it was made at night, but
+this was a night of full dazzling moon. The farm lay in a hollow of the
+veldt, first seen from the crest of a kopje. There it lay below,
+ramshackle and desolate, a rough wall around; flanked by
+outbuildings--barn and cowsheds. The section rode down. The stoep led
+to a shuttered front. There was no sign of life. The moonlight blazed
+full on it. They dismounted, tethered their horses behind the wall, and
+entered the yard. The place was deserted, derelict--not even a cat.
+
+Suddenly a shot rang out from somewhere in the main building, and the
+Sergeant, the next man to Boyce, fell dead, shot through the brain. The
+men looked at Boyce for command and saw a hulking idiot paralysed by
+fear.
+
+"His mouth hung open and his eyes were like a silly servant girl's
+looking at a ghost." So said my informant.
+
+Two more shots and two men fell. Boyce still stood white and gasping,
+unable to move a muscle or utter a sound. His face looked ghastly in
+the moonlight. A shot pierced his helmet, and the shock caused him to
+stagger and lose his legs. A corporal rushed up, thinking he was hit,
+and, finding him whole, rose, in order to leave him there, and, in
+rising, got a bullet through the neck. Thus there were four men killed,
+and the Commanding Officer, of his own accord, put out of action. It
+all happened in a few confused moments. Then the remaining men did what
+Boyce should have commanded as soon as the first shot was fired--they
+rushed the house.
+
+It contained one solitary inmate, an old man with a couple of Mauser
+rifles, whom they had to shoot in self-defence.
+
+Meanwhile Boyce, white and haggard-eyed, had picked himself up;
+revolver in hand he stood on the stoep. His men came out, cursed him to
+his face while giving him their contemptuous report brought the dead
+bodies of their comrades into the house and laid them out decently,
+together with the body of the white-bearded Boer. After that they
+mounted their horses without a word to him and rode off. And he let
+them ride; for his authority was gone; and he knew that they justly
+laid the deaths of their comrades at the door of his cowardice.
+
+What he did during the next few awful hours is known only to God and to
+Boyce himself. The four dead men, his companions, have told no tales.
+But at last, one of his men--Somers was his name--came riding back at
+break-neck speed. When he had left the moon rode high in the heavens;
+when he returned it was dawn--and he had a bloody tunic and the face of
+a man who had escaped from hell. He threw himself from his horse and
+found Boyce, sitting on the stoep with his head in his hands. He shook
+him by the shoulder. Boyce started to his feet. At first he did not
+recognise Somers. Then he did and read black tidings in the man's eyes.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"They're all wiped out, sir. The whole blooming lot."
+
+He told a tale of heroic disaster. The remnant of the section had
+ridden off in hot indignation and had missed their way. They had gone
+in a direction opposite to safety, and after a couple of hours had
+fallen in with a straggling portion of a Boer Commando. Refusing to
+surrender, they had all been killed save Somers, who, with a bullet
+through his shoulder, had prudently turned bridle and fled hell for
+leather.
+
+Boyce put his hands up to his head and walked about the yard for a few
+moments. Then he turned abruptly and stood toweringly over the scared
+survivor--a tough, wizened little Cockney of five foot six.
+
+"Well, what's going to happen now?" he asked, in his soft, dangerous
+voice.
+
+Somers replied, "I must leave that to you, sir."
+
+Boyce regarded him glitteringly for a long time. A scheme of salvation
+was taking vivid shape in his mind....
+
+"My report of this occurrence will be that as soon as, say, three men
+dropped here, the rest of the troop got into a panic and made a bolt of
+it. Say the Sergeant and myself remained. We broke into the house and
+did for the old Boer, who, however, unfortunately did for the Sergeant.
+Then I alone went out in search of my men and following their track
+found they had gone in a wrong direction, and eventually scented
+danger, which was confirmed by my meeting you, with your bloody tunic
+and your bloody tale."
+
+"But good God! sir," cried the man, "You'd be having me shot for
+running away. I could tell a damned different story, Captain Boyce."
+
+"Who would believe you?"
+
+The Cockney intelligence immediately appreciated the situation. It also
+was ready for the alternative it guessed at the back of Boyce's mind.
+
+"I know it's a mess, sir," he replied, with a straight look at Boyce.
+"A mess for both of us, and, as I have said, I'll leave it to you, sir."
+
+"Very well," said Boyce. "It's the simplest thing in the world. There
+were four killed at once, including Sergeant Oldham. You remained
+faithful when the others bolted. You and I tackled the old Boer and you
+got wounded. You and I went on trek for the rest of the troop. We got
+within breathing distance of the Commando--how many strong?"
+
+"About a couple of hundred, sir."
+
+"And of course we bolted back without knowing anything about the troop,
+except that we are sure that, dead or alive, the Boers have accounted
+for them. If you'll agree to this report, we can ride back to
+Headquarters and I think I can promise you sergeant's stripes in a very
+short time!"
+
+"I agree to the report, sir," said Somers, "because I don't see that I
+can do anything else. But to hell with the stripes under false
+pretences and don't you try playing that sort of thing off on me."
+
+"As you like," replied Boyce, unruffled. "Provided we understand each
+other on the main point."
+
+So they left the farm and rode to Headquarters and Boyce made his
+report, and as all save one of his troop were dead, there were none,
+save that one, to gainsay him. On his story no doubt was cast; but an
+officer who loses his whole troop in the military operation of storming
+a farm-house garrisoned by one old man does not find peculiar favour in
+the eyes of his Colonel. Boyce took a speedy opportunity of
+transference, and got into the thick of some fighting. Then he served
+with distinction and actually got mentioned in dispatches for pluckily
+rescuing a wounded man under fire.
+
+For a long time Somers kept his mouth shut; but at last he began to
+talk. The ugly rumour spread. It even reached my battery which was a
+hundred miles away; for Johnny Dacre, one of my subs, had a brother in
+Boyce's old regiment. For my own part I scouted the story as soon as I
+heard it, and I withered up young Dacre for daring to bring such
+abominable slander within my Rhadamanthine sphere. I dismissed the
+calumny from my mind. Providentially, (as I heard later), the news came
+of Boyce's "mention," and Somers was set down as a liar. The poor devil
+was had up before the Colonel and being an imaginative and nervous man
+denied the truth of the rumour and by dexterous wriggling managed to
+exculpate himself from the charge of being its originator.
+
+I must, parenthetically, crave indulgence for these apparently
+irrelevant details. But as, in this chronicle, I am mainly concerned
+with the career of Leonard Boyce, I have no option but to give them.
+They are necessary for a conception of the character of a remarkable
+man to whom I have every reason and every honourable desire to render
+justice. It is necessary, too, that I should state clearly the manner
+in which I happened to learn the facts of the affair at Vilboek's Farm,
+for I should not like you to think that I have given a credulous ear to
+idle slander.
+
+It was in Cape Town, whither I had been despatched, on a false alarm of
+enteric. I was walking with Johnny Dacre up Adderley Street, dun with
+kahki, when he met his brother Reginald, who was promptly introduced to
+Johnny's second in command. Reggie was off to hospital to see one of
+his men who had been badly hurt.
+
+"It's the chap," he said to his brother, "who was with Boyce through
+that shady affair at Vilboek's Farm."
+
+"I don't know why you call it a shady affair," said I, somewhat acidly.
+"I know Captain Boyce--he is a near neighbour of mine at home--and he
+has proved himself to be a gallant officer and a brave man."
+
+The young fellow reddened. "I'm awfully sorry, sir. I withdraw the word
+'shady.' But this poor chap has something on his mind, and everyone has
+a down on him. He led a dog's life till he was knocked out, and he has
+been leading a worse one since. I don't call it fair." He looked at me
+squarely out of his young blue eyes--the lucky devil, he is commanding
+his regiment now in Flanders, with the D.S.O. ribbon on his tunic.
+"Will you come with me and see him, sir?"
+
+"Certainly," said I, for I had nothing to do, and the boy's earnestness
+impressed me.
+
+On our way he told me of such mixture of rumour and fact as he was
+acquainted with. It was then that I heard the man Somers's name for the
+first time. We entered the hospital, sat by the side of the man's bed,
+and he told us the story of Vilboek's Farm which I have, in bald terms,
+just related. Shortly afterwards I returned to the front, where the
+famous shell knocked me out of the Army forever.
+
+What has happened to Somers I don't know. He was, I learned, soon
+afterwards discharged from the Army. He either died or disappeared in
+the full current of English life. Perhaps he is with our armies now. It
+does not matter. What matters is my memory of his nervous, sallow,
+Cockney face, its earnestness, its imprint of veracity, and the damning
+lucidity of his narrative.
+
+I exacted from my young friends a promise to keep the unsavoury tale to
+themselves. No good would arise from a publicity which would stain the
+honour of the army. Besides, Boyce had made good. They have kept their
+promise like honest gentlemen. I have never, personally, heard further
+reference to the affair, and of course I have never mentioned it to
+anyone.
+
+Now, it is right for me to mention that, for many years, I lived in a
+horrible state of dubiety with regard to Boyce. There is no doubt that,
+after the Vilboek business, he acted in an exemplary manner; there is
+no doubt that he performed the gallant deed for which he got his
+mention. But what about Somers's story? I tried to disbelieve it as
+incredible. That an English officer--not a nervous wisp of a man like
+Somers, but a great, hulking, bull-necked gladiator--should have been
+paralysed with fear by one shot coming out of a Boer farm, and thereby
+demoralised and incapacitated from taking command of a handful of men;
+that, instead of blowing his brains out, he should have imposed his
+Mephistophelian compact upon the unhappy Somers and carried off the
+knavish business successfully--I could not believe it. On the other
+hand, there was the British private. I have known him all my life, God
+bless him! Thank God, it is my privilege to know him now, as he lies
+knocked to bits, cheerily, in our hospital. It was inconceivable that
+out of sheer funk he could abandon a popular officer. And his was not
+even a scratch crowd, but a hard-bitten regiment with all sorts of
+glorious names embroidered on its colours....
+
+I hope you see my difficulty in regard to my Betty's love affairs. I
+had nothing against Boyce, save this ghastly story, which might or
+might not be true. Officially, he had made an unholy mess of such a
+simple military operation as rounding up a Boer farm, and the prize of
+one dead old Boer had covered him with ridicule; but officially, also,
+he had retrieved his position by distinguished service. After all, it
+was not his fault that his men had run away. On the other hand...well,
+you cannot but appreciate the vicious circle of my thoughts, when
+Betty, in her frank way, came and told me of her engagement to him.
+What could I say? It would have been damnable of me to hint at scandal
+of years gone by. I received them both and gave them my paralytic
+blessing, and Leonard Boyce accepted it with the air of a man who might
+have been blessed, without a qualm of conscience, by the Third Person
+of the Trinity in Person.
+
+This was in April, 1914. He had retired from the Army some years before
+with the rank of Major, and lived with his mother--he was a man of
+means--in Wellingsford. In the June of that year he went off salmon
+fishing in Norway. On the outbreak of war he returned to England and
+luckily got his job at once. He did not come back to Wellingsford. His
+mother went to London and stayed there until he was ordered out to the
+front. I had not seen him since that June. And, as far as I am aware,
+my dear Betty had not seen him either.
+
+Marigold entered.
+
+"Well?" said I.
+
+"I thought you rang, sir."
+
+"You didn't," I said. "You thought I ought to have rung, But you were
+mistaken."
+
+I have on my mantelpiece a tiny, corroded, wooden Egyptian bust, of so
+little value that Mr. Hatoun of Cairo (and every visitor to Cairo knows
+Hatoun) gave it me as Baksheesh; it is, however, a genuine bit from a
+poor humble devil's tomb of about five thousand years ago. And it has
+only one positive eye and no expression.
+
+Marigold was the living replica of it--with his absurd wig.
+
+"In a quarter of an hour," said I, "I shall have rung."
+
+"Very good, sir," said Marigold.
+
+But he had disturbed the harmonical progression of my reflections. They
+all went anyhow. When he returned, all I could say was:
+
+"It's Miss Betty's wedding to-morrow. I suppose I've got a morning coat
+and a top hat."
+
+"You have a morning coat, sir," said Marigold. "But your last silk hat
+you gave to Miss Althea, sir, to make a work-bag out of the outside."
+
+"So I did," said I.
+
+It was an unpleasant reminiscence. A hat is about as symbolical a
+garment as you may be pleased to imagine. I wanted to wear at the live
+Betty's wedding the ceremonious thing which I had given, for purposes
+of vanity, to the dead Althea. I was cross with Marigold.
+
+"Why did you let me do such a silly thing? You might have known that I
+should want it some day or other. Why didn't you foresee such a
+contingency?"
+
+"Why," asked Marigold woodenly, "didn't you or I, sir, or many wiser
+than us, foresee the war?"
+
+"Because we were all damned fools," said I.
+
+Marigold approached my chair with his great inexorable tentacles of
+arms. It was bed time.
+
+"I'm sorry about the hat, sir," said he.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+In due course Captain Connor's regiment went off to France; not with
+drums beating and colours flying--I wish to Heaven it had; if there had
+been more pomp and circumstance in England, the popular imagination
+would not have remained untouched for so long a time--but in the cold
+silent hours of the night, like a gang of marauders. Betty did not go
+to bed after he had left, but sat by the fire till morning. Then she
+dressed in uniform and resumed her duties at the hospital. Many a
+soldier's bride was doing much the same. And her days went on just as
+they did before her marriage. She presented a smiling face to the
+world; she said:
+
+"If I'm as happy as can be expected in the circumstances, I think it my
+duty to look happier."
+
+It was a valiant philosophy.
+
+The falling of a chimney-stack brought me up against Daniel Gedge, who
+before the war did all my little repairs. The chimney I put into the
+hands of Day & Higgins, another firm of builders.
+
+A day or two afterwards Hosea shied at something and I discovered it
+was Gedge, who had advanced into the roadway expressing a desire to
+have a word with me. I quieted the patriotic Hosea and drew up by the
+kerb. Gedge was a lean foxy-faced man with a long, reddish nose and a
+long blunt chin from which a grizzled beard sprouted aggressively
+forwards. He had hard, stupid grey eyes.
+
+"I hope you 'll excuse the liberty I take in stopping you, sir," he
+said, civilly.
+
+"That's all right," said I. "What's the matter?"
+
+"I thought I had given you satisfaction these last twenty years."
+
+I assented. "Quite correct," said I.
+
+"Then, may I ask, sir, without offence, why you've called in Day &
+Higgins?"
+
+"You may," said I, "and, with or without offence, I'll answer your
+question. I've called them in because they're good loyal people.
+Higgins has joined the army, and so has Day's eldest boy, while you
+have been going on like a confounded pro-German."
+
+"You've no right to say that, Major Meredyth."
+
+"Not when you go over to Godbury"--the surging metropolis of the County
+some fifteen miles off--"and tell a pack of fools to strike because
+this is a capitalists' war? Not when you go round the mills here, and
+do your best to stop young fellows from fighting for their country? God
+bless my soul, in whose interests are you acting, if not Germany's?"
+
+He put on his best platform manner. "I'm acting in the best interests
+of the people of this country. The war is wrong and incredibly foolish
+and can bring no advantage to the working man. Why should he go and be
+killed or maimed for life? Will it put an extra penny in his pocket or
+his widow's? No. Oh!"--he checked my retort--"I know everything you
+would say. I see the arguments every day in all your great newspapers.
+But the fact remains that I don't see eye to eye with you, or those you
+represent. You think one way, I think another. We agree to differ."
+
+"We don't," said I. "I don't agree at all."
+
+"At any rate," he said, "I can't see how a difference of political
+opinion can affect my ability now to put a new chimney-stack in your
+house, any more than it has done in the past."
+
+"In the past," said I, "political differences were parochial squabbles
+in comparison with things nowadays. You're either for England, or
+against her."
+
+He smiled wryly. "I'm for England. We both are. You think her salvation
+lies one way. I think another. This is a free country in which every
+man has a right to his own opinion."
+
+"Exactly so," said I. "Therefore you'll admit that I've a right to the
+opinion that you ought to be locked up either in a gaol or a lunatic
+asylum as a danger to the state, and that, having that rightful
+opinion, I'm justified in not entrusting the safety of my house to one
+who, in my aforesaid opinion, is either a criminal or a lunatic."
+
+Dialectically, I had him there. It afforded me keen enjoyment. Besides
+being a John Bull Englishman, I am a cripple and therefore ever so
+little malicious.
+
+"It's all very well for you to talk, Major Meredyth," said he, "but
+your opinions cost you nothing--mine are costing me my livelihood. It
+isn't fair."
+
+"You might as well say," I replied, "that I, who have never dared to
+steal anything in my life, live in ease and comfort, whereas poor Bill
+Sykes, who has devoted all his days to burglary, has seven years' penal
+servitude. No, Gedge," said I, gathering up the reins, "it can't be
+done. You can't have it both ways."
+
+He put a detaining hand on Hosea's bridle and an evil flash came into
+his hard grey eyes.
+
+"I'll have it some other way, then," he said. "A way you've no idea of.
+A way that'll knock all you great people of Wellingsford off your high
+horses. If you drive me to it, you'll see. I'll bide my time and I
+don't care whether it breaks me."
+
+He stamped his foot and tugged at the bridle. Two or three passers-by
+halted wonderingly and Prettilove, the hairdresser, moved across the
+pavement from his shop door where he had been taking the air.
+
+"My good fellow," said I, "you have lost your temper and are talking
+drivel. Kindly unhand my donkey."
+
+Prettilove, who has a sycophantic sense of humour, burst into a loud
+guffaw. Gedge swung angrily away, and Hosea and I continued our
+interrupted progress down the High Street. Although I had called his
+dark menaces drivel, I could not help wondering what it meant. Was he
+going to guide a German Army to Wellingsford? Was he, a modern Guy
+Fawkes, plotting to blow up the Town Hall while Mayor and Corporation
+sat in council? He was not the man to utter purely idle threats. What
+the dickens was he going to do? Something mean and dirty and underhand.
+I knew his ways, He was always getting the better of somebody. The wise
+never let him put in a pane of glass without a specification and
+estimate, and if he had not been by far the most competent builder in
+the town--perhaps the only one who thoroughly knew his business in all
+its branches--no one would have employed him.
+
+When I next saw Betty, it was in one of the corridors of the hospital,
+after a committee meeting; she stopped by my chair to pass the time of
+day. Through the open doorway of a ward I perceived a well-known figure
+in nurse's uniform.
+
+"Why," said I, "there's Phyllis Gedge."
+
+Betty nodded. "She has just come in as a probationer."
+
+"I thought her father wouldn't let her. I've heard--Heaven knows
+whether it's true, but it sounds likely--that he said if men were such
+fools as to get shot he didn't see why his daughter should help to mend
+them."
+
+"He has consented now," said Betty, "and Phyllis is delighted."
+
+"No doubt it's a bid for popular favour," said I. And I told her of his
+dwindling business and of my encounter with him. When I came to his
+threat Betty's brows darkened.
+
+"I don't like that at all," she said.
+
+"Why? What do you think he means?"
+
+"Mischief." She lowered her voice, for, it being visiting day at the
+hospital, people were passing up and down the corridor. "Suppose he has
+some of the people here in his power?"
+
+"Blackmail--?" I glanced up at her sharply. "What do you know about it?"
+
+"Nothing," she replied abruptly. Then she looked down and fingered her
+wedding-ring. "I only said 'suppose.'"
+
+A Sister appeared at the door of the ward and seeing us together paused
+hoveringly.
+
+"I rather think you're wanted," said I.
+
+I left the hospital somewhat disturbed in mind. Summons to duty had cut
+our conversation short; but I knew that no matter how long I had
+cross-questioned Betty I should have got nothing further out of her.
+She was a remarkably outspoken young woman. What she said she meant,
+and what she didn't want to say all the cripples in the British Army
+could not have dragged out of her.
+
+I tried her again a few days later. A slight cold, aided and abetted by
+a dear exaggerating idiot of a tyrannical doctor, confined me to the
+house and she came flying in, expecting to find me in extremis. When
+she saw me clothed and in my right mind and smoking a big cigar, she
+called me a fraud.
+
+"Look here," said I, after a while. "About Gedge--" again her brow
+darkened and her lips set stiffly--"do you think he has his knife into
+young Randall Holmes?"
+
+I had worried about the boy. Naturally, if Gedge found the relations
+between his daughter and Randall unsatisfactory, no one could blame him
+for any outbreak of parental indignation. But he ought to break out
+openly, while there was yet time--before any harm was done--not nurse
+some diabolical scheme of subterraneous vengeance. Betty's brow
+cleared, and she laughed. I saw at once that I was on a wrong track.
+
+"Why should he have his knife into Randall? I suppose you've got
+Phyllis in your mind."
+
+"I have. How did you guess?"
+
+She laughed again.
+
+"What other reason could he have? But how did you come to hear of
+Randall and Phyllis?"
+
+"Never mind," said I, "I did. And if Gedge is angry, I can to some
+extent sympathize with him."
+
+"But he's not. Not the least little bit in the world," she declared,
+lighting a cigarette. "Gedge and Randall are as thick as thieves, and
+Phyllis won't have anything to do with either of them."
+
+"Now, my dear," said I. "Now that you're married, become a real womanly
+woman and fill my empty soul with gossip."
+
+"There's no gossip at all about it," she replied serenely. "It's all
+sordid and romantic fact. The two men hold long discussions together at
+Gedge's house, Gedge talking anti-patriotism and Randall talking rot
+which he calls philosophy. You can hear them, can't you? Their
+meeting-ground is the absurdity of Randall joining the army."
+
+"And Phyllis?"
+
+"She is a loyal little soul and as miserable as can be. She's
+deplorably in love with Randall. She has told me so. And because she's
+in love with a man whom she knows to be a slacker she's eaten up with
+shame. Now she won't speak to him. To avoid meeting him she lives
+entirely at the hospital--a paying probationer."
+
+"That must be since the last Committee Meeting," I said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And Daniel Gedge pays a guinea a week?"
+
+"He doesn't," said Betty. "I do."
+
+I accepted the information with a motion of the head. She went on after
+a minute or so. "I have always been fond of the child"--there were only
+three or four years difference between them!--"and so I want to protect
+her. The time may come when she'll need protection. She has told me
+things--not now--but long ago--which frightened her. She came to me for
+advice. Since then I've kept an eye on her--as far as I could. Her
+coming into the hospital helps me considerably."
+
+"When you say 'things which frightened her,' do you mean in connection
+with her father?"
+
+Again the dark look in Betty's eyes.
+
+"Yes," she said. "He's an evil, dangerous man."
+
+That was all I could get out of her. If she had meant me to know the
+character of Gedge's turpitude, she would have told me of her own
+accord. But in our talk at the hospital she had hinted at
+blackmail--and blackmailers are evil, dangerous men.
+
+I went to see Sir Anthony about it. Beyond calling him a damned
+scoundrel, a term which he applied to all pro-Germans, pacifists and
+half the Cabinet, he did not concern himself about Gedge. Young Randall
+Holmes's intimacy with the scoundrel seemed to him a matter of far
+greater importance. He strode up and down his library, choleric and
+gesticulating.
+
+"A gentleman and a scholar to hob-nob with a traitorous beast like
+that! I know that he writes for a filthy weekly paper. Somebody sent me
+a copy a few days ago. It's rot--but not actually poisonous like that
+he must hear from Gedge. That's the reason, I suppose, he's not in the
+King's uniform. I've had my eye on him for some time. That's why I've
+not asked him to the house."
+
+I told Sir Anthony of my interview with the young man. He waxed wroth.
+In a country with a backbone every Randall Holmes in the land would
+have been chucked willy-nilly into the army. But the country had spinal
+disorders. It had locomotor ataxy. The result of sloth and
+self-indulgence. We had the Government we deserved ... I need not quote
+further. You can imagine a fine old fox-hunting Tory gentleman, with
+England filling all the spaces of his soul, blowing off the steam of
+his indignation.
+
+When he had ended, "What," said I, "is to be done?"
+
+"I'll lay my horsewhip across the young beggar's shoulders the next
+time I meet him."
+
+"Capital," said I. "If I were you I should never ride abroad except in
+my mayor's gown and chain, so that you can give an official character
+to the thrashing."
+
+He glanced swiftly at me in his bird-like fashion, his brow creased
+into a thousand tiny horizontal lines--it always took him a fraction of
+a second to get clear of the literal significance of words--and then he
+laughed. Personal violence was out of the question. Why, the young
+beggar might summon him for assault. No; he had a better idea. He would
+put in a word at the proper quarter, so that every recruiting sergeant
+in the district should have orders to stop him at every opportunity.
+
+"I shouldn't do that," said I.
+
+"Then, I don't know what the deuce I can do," said Sir Anthony.
+
+As I didn't know, either, our colloquy was fruitless. Eventually Sir
+Anthony said:
+
+"Perhaps it's likely, after all, that Gedge may offend young Oxford's
+fastidiousness. It can't be long before he discovers Gedge to be
+nothing but a vulgar, blatant wind-bag; and then he may undergo some
+reaction."
+
+I agreed. It seemed to be the most sensible thing he had said. Give
+Gedge enough rope and he would hang himself. So we parted.
+
+I have said before that when I want to shew how independent I am of
+everybody I drive abroad in my donkey carriage. But there are times
+when I have to be dependent on Marigold for carrying me into the houses
+I enter; on these helpless occasions I am driven about by Marigold in a
+little two-seater car. That is how I visited Wellings Park and that is
+how I set off a day or two later to call on Mrs. Boyce.
+
+As she took little interest in anything foreign to her own inside, she
+was not to most people an exhilarating companion. She even discussed
+the war in terms of her digestion. But we were old friends. Being a bit
+of a practical philosopher I could always derive some entertainment
+from her serial romance of a Gastric Juice, and besides, she was the
+only person in Wellingsford whom I did not shrink from boring with the
+song of my own ailments. Rather than worry the Fenimores or Betty or
+Mrs. Holmes with my aches and pains I would have hung on, like the
+idiot boy of Sparta with the fox, until my vitals were gnawed
+out--parenthetically, it has always worried me to conjecture why a boy
+should steal a fox, why it should have been so valuable to the owner,
+and to what use he put it. In the case of all my other friends I
+regarded myself as too much of an obvious nuisance, as it was, for me
+to work on their sympathy for infirmities that I could hide; but with
+Mrs. Boyce it was different. The more I chanted antistrophe to her
+strophe of lamentation the more was I welcome in her drawing-room. I
+had not seen her for some weeks. Perhaps I had been feeling remarkably
+well with nothing in the world to complain about, and therefore
+unequipped with a topic of conversation. However, hearty or not, it was
+time for me to pay her a visit. So I ordered the car.
+
+Mrs. Boyce lived in a comfortable old house half a mile or so beyond
+the other end of the town, standing in half a dozen well-wooded acres.
+It was a fair April afternoon, all pale sunshine and tenderness. A
+dream of fairy green and delicate pink and shy blue sky melting into
+pearl. The air smelt sweet. It was good to be in it, among the trees
+and the flowers and the birds.
+
+Others must have also felt the calls of the spring, for as we were
+driving up to the house, I caught a glimpse of the lawn and of two
+figures strolling in affectionate attitude. One was that of Mrs. Boyce;
+the other, khaki-clad and towering above her, had his arm round her
+waist. The car pulled up at the front door. Before we had time to ring,
+a trim parlour-maid appeared.
+
+"Mrs. Boyce is not at home, sir."
+
+Marigold, who, when my convenience was in question, swept away social
+conventions like cobwebs, fixed her with his one eye, and before I
+could interfere, said:
+
+"I'm afraid you're mistaken. I've just seen Major Boyce and Madam on
+the lawn."
+
+The maid reddened and looked at me appealingly.
+
+"My orders were to say not at home, sir."
+
+"I quite understand, Mary," said I. "Major Boyce is home on short
+leave, and they don't want to be disturbed. Isn't that it?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Marigold," said I. "Right about turn."
+
+Marigold, who had stopped the car, got out unwillingly and went to the
+starting-handle. That I should be refused admittance to a house which I
+had deigned to honour with my presence he regarded as an intolerable
+insult. He also loved to have tea, as a pampered guest, in other folks'
+houses. When he got home Mrs. Marigold, as like as not, would give him
+plain slabs of bread buttered by her economical self. I knew my
+Marigold. He gave a vicious and ineffectual turn or two and then stuck
+his head in the bonnet.
+
+The situation was saved by the appearance from the garden of Mrs. Boyce
+herself, a handsome, erect, elegantly dressed old lady in the late
+sixties, pink and white like a Dresden figure and in her usual
+condition of resplendent health. She held out her hand.
+
+"I couldn't let you go without telling you that Leonard is back. I
+don't want the whole town to know. If it did, I should see nothing of
+him, his leave is so short. That's why I told Mary to say 'not at
+home.' But an old friend like you--Would you like to see him?"
+
+Marigold closed the bonnet and stood up with a grimace which passed for
+a happy smile.
+
+"I should, of course," said I, politely. "But I quite understand. You
+have everything to say to each other. No. I won't stay"--Marigold's
+smile faded into woodenness--"I only turned in idly to see how you were
+getting on. But just tell me. How is Leonard? Fit, I hope?"
+
+"He's wonderful," she said.
+
+I motioned Marigold to start the car.
+
+"Give him my kind regards," said I. "No, indeed. He doesn't want to see
+an old crock like me." The engine rattled. "I hope he's pleased at
+finding his mother looking so bonny."
+
+"It's only excitement at having Leonard," she explained earnestly. "In
+reality I'm far from well. But I wouldn't tell him for worlds."
+
+"What's that you wouldn't tell, mother?" cried a soft, cheery voice,
+and Leonard, the fine flower of English soldiery, turned the corner of
+the house.
+
+There he stood, tall, deep-chested, clear-eyed, bronzed, his heavy chin
+in the air, his bull-neck not detracting from his physical
+handsomeness, but giving it a seal of enormous strength.
+
+"My dear fellow," he cried, grasping my hand heartily, "how glad I am
+to see you. Come along in and let mother give you some tea. Nonsense!"
+he waved away my protest. "Marigold, stop that engine and bring in the
+Major. I've got lots of things to tell you. That's right."
+
+He strode boyishly to the front door, which he threw open wide to admit
+Marigold and myself and followed us with Mrs. Boyce into the
+drawing-room, talking all the while. I must confess that I was just a
+little puzzled by his exuberant welcome. And, to judge by the blank
+expression that flitted momentarily over her face, so was his mother.
+If he were so delighted by my visit, why had he not crossed the lawn at
+once as soon as he saw the car? Why had he sent his mother on ahead? I
+was haunted by an exchange of words overheard in imagination:
+
+"Confound the fellow! What has he come here for?"
+
+"Mary will say 'not at home.'"
+
+"But he has spotted us. Do go and get rid of him."
+
+"Such an old friend, dear."
+
+"We haven't time for old fossils. Tell him to go and bury himself."
+
+And (in my sensitive fancy) she had delivered the import of the
+message. I had gathered that my visit was ill-timed. I was preparing to
+cut it short, when Leonard himself came up and whisked me against my
+will to the tea-table. If my hypothesis were correct he had evidently
+changed his mind as to the desirability of getting rid, in so summary a
+fashion, of what he may have considered to be an impertinent and
+malicious little factor in Wellingsford gossip.
+
+At any rate, if he was playing a part, he played it very well. It was
+not in the power of man to be more cordial and gracious. He gave me a
+vivid account of the campaign. He had been through everything, the
+retreat from Mons, the Battle of the Aisne, the great rush north, and
+the Battle of Neuve Chapelle on the 17th of March. I listened,
+fascinated, to his tale, which he told with a true soldier's impersonal
+modesty.
+
+"I was glad," said I, after a while, "to see you twice mentioned in
+dispatches."
+
+Mrs. Boyce turned on me triumphantly. "He is going to get his D. S. O."
+
+"By Jove!" said I.
+
+Leonard laughed, threw one gaitered leg over the other and held up his
+hands at her.
+
+"Oh, you feminine person!" He smiled at me. "I told my dear old mother
+as a dead and solemn secret."
+
+"But it will be gazetted in a few days, dear."
+
+"One can never be absolutely sure of these things until they're in
+black and white. A pretty ass I'd look if there was a hitch--say
+through some fool of a copying clerk--and I didn't get it after all.
+It's only dear, silly understanding things like mothers that would
+understand. Other people wouldn't. Don't you think I'm right, Meredyth?"
+
+Of course he was. I have known, in my time, of many disappointments. It
+is not every recommendation for honours that becomes effective. I
+congratulated him, however, and swore to secrecy.
+
+"It's all luck," said he. "Just because a man happens to be spotted. If
+my regiment got its deserts, every Jack man would walk about in a suit
+of armour made of Victoria Crosses. Give me some more tea, mother."
+
+"The thing I shall never understand, dear," she said, artlessly,
+looking up at him, while she handed him his cup, "is when you see a lot
+of murderous Germans rushing at you with guns and shells and bayonets,
+how you are not afraid."
+
+He threw back his head and laughed in his debonair fashion; but I
+watched him narrowly and I saw the corners of his mouth twitch for the
+infinitesimal fraction of a second.
+
+"Oh, sometimes we're in an awful funk, I assure you," he replied gaily.
+"Ask Meredyth."
+
+"We may be," said I, "but we daren't shew it--I'm speaking of officers.
+If an officer funks he's generally responsible for the death of
+goodness knows how many men. And if the men funk they're liable to be
+shot for cowardice in the face of the enemy."
+
+"And what happens to officers who are afraid?"
+
+"If it's known, they get broke," said I.
+
+Boyce swallowed his tea at a gulp, set down the cup, and strode to the
+window. There was a short pause. Presently he turned.
+
+"Physical fear is a very curious thing," he said in a voice
+unnecessarily loud. "I've seen it take hold of men of proved courage
+and paralyse them. It's just like an epileptic fit--beyond a man's
+control. I've known a fellow--the most reckless, hare-brained daredevil
+you can imagine--to stand petrified with fear on the bank of a river,
+and let a wounded comrade drown before his eyes. And he was a good
+swimmer too."
+
+"What happened to him?" I asked.
+
+He met my gaze for a moment, looked away, and then met it again--it
+seemed defiantly.
+
+"What happened to him? Well--" there was the tiniest possible pause--a
+pause that only an uneasy, suspicious repository of the abominable
+story of Vilboek's Farm could have noticed--"Well, as he stood there he
+got plugged--and that was the end of him. But what I--"
+
+"Was he an officer, dear?"
+
+"No, no, mother, a sergeant," he answered abruptly, and in the same
+breath continued. "What I was going to say is this. No one as far as I
+know has ever bothered to work out the psychology of fear. Especially
+the sudden thing that hits a man's heart and makes him stand
+stock-still like a living corpse--unable to move a muscle--all his
+willpower out of gear--just as a motor is out of gear. I've seen a lot
+of it. Those men oughtn't to be called cowards. It's as much a fit,
+say, as epilepsy. Allowances ought to made for them."
+
+It was a warm day, the windows were closed, my valetudinarian hostess
+having a horror of draughts, and a cheery fire was blazing up the
+chimney. Boyce took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead.
+
+"Dear old mother," said he, "you keep this room like an oven."
+
+"It is you who have got so excited talking, dear," said Mrs. Boyce.
+"I'm sure it can't be good for your heart. It is just the same with me.
+I remember I had to speak quite severely to Mary a week--no, to-day's
+Tuesday--ten days ago, and I had dreadful palpitations afterwards and
+broke out into a profuse perspiration and had to send for Doctor Miles."
+
+"Now, that's funny," said I. "When I'm excited about anything I grow
+quite cold."
+
+Boyce lit a cigarette and laughed. "I don't see where the excitement in
+the present case comes in. Mother started an interesting hare, and I
+followed it up. Anyhow--" he threw himself on the sofa, blew a kiss to
+his mother in the most charming way in the world, and smiled on
+me--"anyhow, to see you two in this dearest bit of dear old England is
+like a dream. And I'm not going to think of the waking up. I want all
+the cushions and the lavender and the neat maid's caps and aprons--I
+said to Mary this morning when she drew my curtains: 'Stay just there
+and let me look at you so that I can realise I'm at home and not in my
+little grey trench in West Flanders'--she got red and no doubt thought
+me a lunatic and felt inclined to squawk--but she stayed and looked
+jolly pretty and refreshing--only for a minute or two, after which I
+dismissed her--yes, my dears, I want everything that the old life
+means, the white table linen, the spring flowers, the scent of the air
+which has never known the taint of death, and all that this beautiful
+mother of England, with her knitting needles, stands for. I want to
+have a debauch of sweet and beautiful things."
+
+"As far as I can give them you shall have them. My dear--" she dropped
+her knitting in her lap and looked over at him tragically--"I quite
+forgot to ask. Did Mary put bath-salts, as I ordered, into your bath
+this morning?"
+
+Leonard threw away his cigarette and slapped his leg.
+
+"By George!" he cried. "That explains it. I was wondering where the
+Dickens that smell of ammonia came from."
+
+"If you use it every day it makes your skin so nice and soft," remarked
+Mrs. Boyce.
+
+He laughed, and made the obvious jest on the use of bath-salts in the
+trenches.
+
+"I wonder, mother, whether you have any idea of what trenches and
+dug-outs look like."
+
+He told her, very picturesquely, and went on to a general sketch of
+life at the front. He entertained me with interesting talk for the rest
+of my visit. I have already said that he was a man of great personal
+charm.
+
+He accompanied me to the car and saw me comfortably tucked in.
+
+"You won't give me away, will you?" he said, shaking hands.
+
+"How?" I asked.
+
+"By telling any one I'm here."
+
+I promised and drove off. Marigold, full of the tea that is given to a
+guest, strove cheerfully to engage me in conversation. I hate to snub
+Marigold, excellent and devoted fellow, so I let him talk; but my mind
+was occupied with worrying problems.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Leonard Boyce had received me on sufferance. I had come upon him while
+he was imprudently exposing himself to view. There had been no way out
+of it. But he made it clear that he desired no other Wellingsfordian to
+invade his privacy. Secretly he had come to see his mother and secretly
+he intended to go. I remembered that before he went to the front he had
+not come home, but his mother had met him in London. He had asked me
+for no local news. He had inquired after the welfare of none of his old
+friends. Never an allusion to poor Oswald Fenimore's gallant death--he
+used to run in and out of Wellings Park as if it were his own house.
+What had he against the place which for so many years had been his home?
+
+With regard to Betty Fairfax, he had loved and ridden away, it is true,
+leaving her disconsolate. But though everyone knew of the engagement,
+no one had suspected the defection. Betty was a young woman who could
+keep her own counsel and baffle any curiosity-monger or purveyor of
+gossip in the country. So when she married Captain Connor, a little
+gasp went round the neighbourhood, which for the first time remembered
+Leonard Boyce. There were some who blamed her for callous treatment of
+Boyce, away and forgotten at the front. The majority, however, took the
+matter calmly, as we have had to take far more amazing social
+convulsions. The fact remained that Betty was married, and there was no
+reason whatever, on the score of the old engagement, for Boyce to
+manifest such exaggerated shyness with regard to Wellingsford society.
+
+If it had been any other man than Boyce, I should not have worried
+about the matter at all. Save that I was deeply attached to Betty, what
+had her discarded lover's attitude to do with me? But Boyce was Boyce,
+the man of the damnable story of Vilboek's Farm. And he, of his own
+accord, had revived in my mind that story in all its intensity. A
+chance foolish question, such as thousands of gentle, sheltered women
+have put to their suddenly uncomprehended, suddenly deified sons and
+husbands, had obviously disturbed his nervous equilibrium. That little
+reflex twitch at the corner of his lips--I have seen it often in the
+old times. I should like to have had him stripped to the waist so that
+I could have seen his heart--the infallible test. At moments of mighty
+moral strain men can keep steady eyes and nostrils and mouth and
+speech; but they cannot control that tell-tale diaphragm of flesh over
+the heart. I have known it to cause the death of many a Kaffir spy....
+But, at any rate, there was the twitch of the lips ... I deliberately
+threw weight into the scale of Mrs. Boyce's foolish question. If he had
+not lost his balance, why should he have launched into an almost
+passionate defence of the physical coward?
+
+My memory went back to the narrative of the poor devil in the Cape Town
+hospital. Boyce's description of the general phenomenon was a deadly
+corroboration of Somers's account of the individual case. They had used
+the same word--"paralysed." Boyce had made a fierce and definite
+apologia for the very act of which Somers had accused him. He put it
+down to the sudden epilepsy of fear for which a man was irresponsible.
+Somers's story had never seemed so convincing--the first part of it, at
+least--the part relating to the paralysis of terror. But the second
+part--the account of the diabolical ingenuity by means of which Boyce
+rehabilitated himself--instead of blowing his brains out like a
+gentleman--still hammered at the gates of my credulity.
+
+Well--granted the whole thing was true--why revive it after fifteen
+years' dead silence, and all of a sudden, just on account of an idle
+question? Even in South Africa, his "mention" had proved his courage.
+Now, with the D. S. O. a mere matter of gazetting, it was established
+beyond dispute.
+
+On the other hand, if the Vilboek story, more especially the second
+part, was true, what reparation could he make in the eyes of honourable
+men?--in his own eyes, if he himself had succeeded to the status of an
+honourable man? Would not any decent soldier smite him across the face
+instead of grasping him by the hand? I was profoundly worried.
+
+Moreover Betty, level-headed Betty, had called him a devil. Why?
+
+If the second part of Somers's story were true, he had acted like a
+devil. There is no other word for it. Now, what concrete diabolical
+facts did Betty know? Or had her instinctive feminine insight pierced
+through the man's outer charm and merely perceived horns, tail, and
+cloven hoof cast like a shadow over his soul?
+
+How was I to know?
+
+She came to dine with me the next evening: a dear way she had of coming
+uninvited, and God knows how a lonely cripple valued it. She was in
+uniform, being too busy to change, and looked remarkably pretty. She
+brought with her a cheery letter from her husband, received that
+morning, and read me such bits as the profane might hear, her eyes
+brightening as she glanced over the sections that she skipped. Beyond
+doubt her marriage had brought her pleasure and pride. The pride she
+would have felt to some extent, I think, if she had married a grampus;
+for when a woman has a husband at the front she feels that she is
+taking her part in the campaign and exposing herself vicariously to
+hardship and shrapnel; and in the eyes of the world she gains thereby a
+little in stature, a thing dear to every right-minded woman. But
+Betty's husband was not a grampus, but a very fine fellow, a mate to be
+wholly proud of: and he loved her devotedly and expressed his love
+beautifully loverwise, as her tell-tale face informed me. Gratefully
+and sturdily she had set herself out to be happy. She was
+succeeding.... Lord bless you! Millions of women who have married, not
+the wretch they loved, but the other man, have lived happy ever after.
+No: I had no fear for Betty now. I could not see that she had any fear
+for herself.
+
+After dinner she sat on the floor by my side and smoked cigarettes in
+great content. She had done a hard day's work at the hospital; her
+husband had done a hard day's work--probably was still doing it--in
+Flanders. Both deserved well of their country and their consciences.
+She was giving a poor lonely paralytic, who had given his legs years
+ago to the aforesaid country, a delightful evening. ... No, I'm quite
+sure such a patronising thought never entered my Betty's head. After
+all, my upper half is sound, and I can talk sense or nonsense with
+anybody. What have one's legs to do with a pleasant after-dinner
+conversation? Years ago I swore a great oath that I would see them
+damned before they got in the way of my intelligence.
+
+We were getting on famously. We had put both war and Wellingsford
+behind us, and talked of books. I found to my dismay that this fair and
+fearless high product of modernity had far less acquaintance with
+Matthew Arnold than with the Evangelist of the same praenomen. She had
+never heard of "The Forsaken Merman," one of the most haunting romantic
+poems in the English language. I pointed to a bookcase and bade her
+fetch the volume. She brought it and settled down again by my chair,
+and, as a punishment of ignorance, and for the good of her soul, I
+began to read aloud. She is an impressionable young person and yet one
+of remarkable candour. If she had not been held by the sea-music of the
+poem, she would not have kept her deep, steady brown eyes fixed on me.
+I have no hesitation in repeating that we were getting on famously and
+enjoying ourselves immensely. I got nearly to the end:
+
+"... Here came a mortal, But faithless was she, And alone dwell forever
+The Kings of the sea. But, children at midnight--"
+
+The door opened wide. Topping his long stiff body, Marigold's ugly
+one-eyed head appeared, and, as if he was tremendously proud of
+himself, he announced:
+
+"Major Boyce."
+
+Boyce strode quickly past him and, suddenly aware of Betty by my side,
+stopped short, like a private suddenly summoned to attention. Marigold,
+unconscious of the blackest curses that had ever fallen upon him during
+his long and blundering life, made a perfect and self-satisfied exit.
+Betty sprang to her feet, held her tall figure very erect, and faced
+the untimely visitor, her cheeks flushing deep red. For an appreciable
+time, say, thirty seconds, Boyce stood stock still, looking at her from
+under heavy contracted brows. Then he recovered himself, smiled, and
+advanced to her with outstretched hand, But, on his movement, she had
+been quick to turn and bend down in order to pick up the book that had
+fallen from my fingers on the further side of my chair. So, swiftly he
+wheeled to me with his handshake. It was very deft manoeuvring on both
+sides.
+
+"The faithful Marigold didn't tell me that you weren't alone,
+Meredyth," he said in his cordial, charming way. "Otherwise I shouldn't
+have intruded. But my dear old mother had an attack of something and
+went to bed immediately after dinner, and I thought I'd come round and
+have a smoke and a drink in your company."
+
+Betty, who had occupied herself by replacing Matthew Arnold's poems in
+the bookcase, caught up the box of cigars that lay on the brass tray
+table by my side, and offered it to him.
+
+"Here is the smoke," she said.
+
+And when, after a swift, covert glance at her, he had selected a cigar,
+she went to the bell-push by the mantelpiece.
+
+"The drinks will be here in a minute."
+
+In order to do something to save this absurd situation, I drew from my
+waistcoat pocket a little cigar-cutter attached to my watch-chain, and
+clipped the end of his cigar. I also lit a match from my box and handed
+it up to him. When he had finished with the match he threw it into the
+fireplace and turned to Betty.
+
+"My congratulations are a bit late, but I hope I may offer them."
+
+She said, "Thank you." Waved a hand. "Won't you sit down?"
+
+"Wasn't it rather sudden?" he asked.
+
+"Everything in war time is sudden--except the action of the British
+Government. Your own appearance to-night is sudden."
+
+He laughed at her jest and explained, much as he had done to me, his
+reasons for wishing to keep his visit to Wellingsford a secret.
+Meanwhile Marigold had brought in decanters and syphons. Betty attended
+to Boyce's needs with a provoking air of nonchalance. If a notorious
+German imbrued in the blood of babes had chanced to be in her hospital,
+she would have given him his medicine with just the same air. Although
+no one could have specified a lack of courtesy towards a guest--for in
+my house she played hostess--there was an indefinable touch of cold
+contumely in her attitude. Whether he felt the hostility as acutely as
+I did, I cannot say; but he carried it off with a swaggering grace. He
+bowed to her over his glass.
+
+"Here's to the fortunate and gallant fellow over there."
+
+I saw her knuckles whiten as, with an inclination of the head, she
+acknowledged the toast.
+
+"By the way," said he, "what's his regiment? My good mother told me his
+name. Captain Connor, isn't it? But for the rest she is vague. She's
+the vaguest old dear in the world. I found out to-day that she thought
+there was a long row of cannons, hundreds of them, all in a line, in
+front of the English Army, and a long row in front of the German Army,
+and, when there was a battle, that they all blazed away. So when I
+asked her whether your husband was in the Life Guards or the Army
+Service Corps, she said cheerfully that it was either one or the other
+but she wasn't quite sure. So do give me some reliable information."
+
+"My husband is in the 10th Wessex Fusiliers, a Territorial battalion,"
+she replied coldly.
+
+"I hope some day to have the pleasure of making his acquaintance."
+
+"Stranger things have happened," said Betty. She glanced at the clock
+and rose abruptly. "It's time I was getting back to the hospital."
+
+Boyce rose too. "How are you going?" he asked.
+
+"I'm walking."
+
+He advanced a step towards her. "Won't you let me run you round in the
+car?"
+
+"I prefer to walk."
+
+Her tone was final. She took affectionate leave of me and went to the
+door, which Boyce held open.
+
+"Good-night," she said, without proffering her hand.
+
+He followed her out into the hall.
+
+"Betty," he said in a low voice, "won't you ever forgive me?"
+
+"I have no feelings towards you either of forgiveness or resentment,"
+she replied.
+
+They did not mean to be overheard, but my hearing is unusually acute,
+and I could not help catching their conversation.
+
+"I know I seem to have behaved badly to you."
+
+"You have behaved worse to others," said Betty. "I don't wonder at your
+shrinking from showing your face here." Then, louder, for my benefit.
+"Good-night, Major Boyce. I really can walk up to the hospital by
+myself."
+
+Evidently she walked away and Boyce after her, for I heard him say:
+
+"You shan't go till you've told me what you mean."
+
+What she replied I don't know. To judge by the slam of the front door
+it must have been something defiant. Presently he entered debonair,
+with a smile on his lips.
+
+"I'm afraid I've left you in a draught," he said, shutting the door. "I
+couldn't resist having a word with her and wishing her happiness and
+the rest of it. We were engaged once upon a time."
+
+"I know," said I.
+
+"I hope you don't think I did wrong in releasing her from the
+engagement. I don't consider a man has a right to go on active
+service--especially on such service as the present war--and keep a girl
+bound at home. Still less has he a right to marry her. What happens in
+so many cases? A fortnight's married life. The man goes to the front.
+Then ping! or whizz-bang! and that's the end of him, and so the girl is
+left."
+
+"On the other hand," said I, "you must remember that the girl may hold
+very strong opinions and take pings and whizz-bangs very deliberately
+into account."
+
+Boyce helped himself to another whisky and soda. "It's a matter for the
+individual conscience. I decided one way. Connor obviously decided
+another, and, like a lucky fellow, found Betty of his way of thinking.
+Perhaps I have old-fashioned notions." He took a long pull at his
+drink. "Well, it can't be helped," he said with a smile. "The other
+fellow has won, and I must take it gracefully. ... By George! wasn't
+she looking stunning to-night--in that kit? ... I hope you didn't mind
+my bursting in on you--"
+
+"Of course not," said I, politely.
+
+He drained his glass. "The fact is," said he, "this war is a
+nerve-racking business. I never dreamed I was so jumpy until I came
+home. I hate being by myself. I've kept my poor devoted mother up till
+one o'clock in the morning. To-night she struck, small blame to her;
+but, after five minutes on my lones, I felt as if I should go off my
+head. So I routed out the car and came along. But of course I didn't
+expect to see Betty. The sight of Betty in the flesh as a married woman
+nearly bowled me over. May I help myself again?" He poured out a very
+much stiffer drink than before, and poured half of it down his throat.
+"It's not a joyous thing to see the woman one has been crazy over the
+wife of another fellow."
+
+"I suppose it isn't," said I.
+
+Of course I might have made some subtle and cunning remark, suavely put
+a leading question which would have led him on, in his unbalanced mood,
+to confidential revelations. But the man was a distinguished soldier
+and my guest. To what he chose to tell me voluntarily I could listen. I
+could do no more. He did not reply to my last unimportant remark, but
+lay back in his armchair watching the blue spirals of smoke from the
+end of his cigar. There was a fairly long silence.
+
+I was worried by the talk I had overheard through the open door. "You
+have behaved worse to others. I don't wonder at your shrinking from
+showing your face here." Betty had, weeks ago, called him a devil. She
+had treated him to-night in a manner which, if not justified, was
+abominable. I was forced to the conclusion that Betty was fully aware
+of some discreditable chapter in the man's life which had nothing to do
+with the affair at Vilboek's Farm, which, indeed, had to do with
+another woman and this humdrum little town of Wellingsford. Otherwise
+why did she taunt him with hiding from the light of Wellingsfordian day?
+
+Now, please don't think me little-minded. Or, if you do think so,
+please remember the conditions under which I have lived for so many
+years and grant me your kind indulgence for a confession I have to
+make. Besides being worried, I felt annoyed. Wellingsford was my little
+world. I knew everybody in it. I had grown to regard myself as the
+repository of all its gossip. The fraction of it that I retailed was a
+matter of calculated discretion. I made a little hobby--it was a
+foible, a vanity, what you will--of my omniscience. I knew months ahead
+the dates of the arrivals of young Wellingsfordians in this world of
+pain and plenitude. I knew of maidens who were wronged and youths who
+were jilted; of wives who led their husbands a deuce of a dance, and of
+wives who kept their husbands out of the bankruptcy court. When young
+Trexham, the son of the Lord Lieutenant of the county, married a minor
+light of musical comedy at a registrar's office, I was the first person
+in the place to be told; and I flatter myself that I was instrumental
+in inducing a pig-headed old idiot to receive an exceedingly charming
+daughter-in-law. I loved to look upon Wellingsford as an open book. Can
+you blame me for my resentment at coming across, so to speak, a couple
+of pages glued together? The only logical inference from Betty's remark
+was that Boyce had behaved abominably and even notoriously to a woman
+in Wellingsford. To do him justice, I declare I had never heard his
+name associated with any woman or girl in the place save Betty herself.
+I felt that, in some crooked fashion, or the other, I had been done out
+of my rights.
+
+And there, placidly smoking his cigar and watching the wreaths of blue
+smoke with the air of an idle seraph contemplating a wisp of cirrus in
+Heaven's firmament, sat the man who could have given me the word of the
+enigma.
+
+He broke the silence by saying:
+
+"Have you ever seriously considered the real problems of the Balkans?"
+
+Now what on earth had the Balkans to do with the thoughts that must
+have been rolling at the back of the man's mind? I was both
+disappointed and relieved. I expected him to resume the personal talk,
+and I dreaded lest he should entrust me with embarrassing confidences.
+After three strong whiskies and sodas a man is apt to relax hold of his
+discretion.... Anyhow, he jerked me back to my position of host. I made
+some sort of polite reply. He smiled.
+
+"You, my dear Meredyth, like the rest of the country, are half asleep.
+In a few months' time you'll get the awakening of your life."
+
+He began to discourse on the diplomatic situation. Months afterwards I
+remembered what he had said that night and how accurate had been his
+forecast. He talked brilliantly for over an hour, during which, keenly
+interested in his arguments, I lost the puzzle of the man in admiration
+of the fine soldier and clear and daring thinker. It was only when he
+had gone that I began to worry again.
+
+And before I went to sleep I had fresh cause for anxious speculation.
+
+"Marigold," said I, when he came in as usual to carry me to bed,
+"didn't I tell you that Major Boyce particularly wanted no one to know
+that he was in the town?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Marigold. "I've told nobody."
+
+"And yet you showed him in without informing him that Mrs. Connor was
+here. Really you ought to have had more tact."
+
+Marigold received his reprimand with the stolidity of the old soldier.
+I have known men who have been informed that they would be
+court-martialled and most certainly shot, make the same reply.
+
+"Very good, sir," said he.
+
+I softened. I was not Marigold's commanding officer, but his very
+grateful friend. "You see," said I, "they were engaged before Mrs.
+Connor married--I needn't tell you that; it was common knowledge--and
+so their sudden meeting was awkward."
+
+"Mrs. Marigold has already explained, sir," said he.
+
+I chuckled inwardly all the way to my bedroom.
+
+"All the same, sir," said he, aiding me in my toilet, which he did with
+stiff military precision, "I don't think the Major is as incognighto"
+(the spelling is phonetic) "as he would like. Prettilove was shaving me
+this morning and told me the Major was here. As I considered it my
+duty, I told him he was a liar, and he was so upset that he nicked my
+Adam's apple and I was that covered with blood that I accused him of
+trying to cut my throat, and I went out and finished shaving myself at
+home, which is unsatisfactory when you only have a thumb on your right
+hand to work the razor."
+
+I laughed, picturing the scene. Prettilove is an inoffensive little
+rabbit of a man. Marigold might sit for the model of a war-scarred
+mercenary of the middle ages, and when he called a man a liar he did it
+with accentuaton and vehemence. No wonder Prettilove jumped.
+
+"And then again this evening, sir," continued Marigold, slipping me
+into my pyjama jacket, "as I was starting the Major's car, who should
+be waiting there for him but Mr. Gedge."
+
+"Gedge?" I cried.
+
+"Yes, sir. Waiting by the side of the car. 'Can I have a word with you,
+Major Boyce?' says he. 'No, you can't,' says the Major. 'I think it's
+advisable,' says he. 'Those repairs are very pressing.' 'All right,'
+says the Major, 'jump in.' Then he says: 'That'll do, Marigold.
+Good-night.' And he drives off with Mr. Gedge. Well, if Mr. Gedge and
+Prettilove know he's here, then everyone knows it."
+
+"Was Gedge inside the drive?" I asked. The drive was a small
+semicircular sort of affair, between gate and gate.
+
+"He was standing by the car waiting," said Marigold. "Now, sir." He
+lifted me with his usual cast-iron tenderness into bed and pulled the
+coverings over me. "It's a funny time to talk about house repairs at
+eleven o'clock, at night," he remarked.
+
+"Nothing is funny in war-time," said I.
+
+"Either nothing or everything," said Marigold. He fussed methodically
+about the room, picked up an armful of clothes, and paused by the door,
+his hand on the switch.
+
+"Anything more, sir?"
+
+"Nothing, thank you, Marigold."
+
+"Good-night, sir."
+
+The room was in darkness. Marigold shut the door. I was alone.
+
+What the deuce was the meaning of this waylaying of Boyce by Daniel
+Gedge?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+"Major Boyce has gone, sir," said Marigold, the next morning, as I was
+tapping my breakfast egg.
+
+"Gone?" I echoed. Boyce had made no reference the night before to so
+speedy a departure.
+
+"By the 8.30 train, sir."
+
+Every train known by a scheduled time at Wellingsford goes to London.
+There may be other trains proceeding from the station in the opposite
+direction but nobody heeds them. Boyce had taken train to London. I
+asked my omniscient sergeant:
+
+"How did you find that out?"
+
+It appeared it was the driver of the Railway Delivery Van. I smiled at
+Boyce's ostrich-like faith in the invisibility of his hinder bulk. What
+could occur in Wellingsford without it being known at once to vanmen
+and postmen and barbers and servants and masters and mistresses? How
+could a man hope to conceal his goings and comings and secret actions?
+He might just as well expect to take a secluded noontide bath in the
+fountain in Piccadilly Circus.
+
+"Perhaps that's why the matter of those repairs was so pressing, sir,"
+said Marigold.
+
+"No doubt of it," said I.
+
+Marigold hung about, his finger-tips pushing towards me mustard and
+apples and tulips and everything that one does not eat with egg. But it
+was no use. I had no desire to pursue the conversation. I continued my
+breakfast stolidly and read the newspaper propped up against the
+coffee-pot. So many circumstances connected with Boyce's visit were of
+a nature that precluded confidential discussion with Marigold,--that
+precluded, indeed, confidential discussion with anyone else. The
+suddenness of his departure I learned that afternoon from Mrs. Boyce,
+who sent me by hand a miserable letter characteristically rambling.
+From it I gathered certain facts. Leonard had come into her bedroom at
+seven o'clock, awakening her from the first half-hour's sleep she had
+enjoyed all night, with the news that he had been unexpectedly summoned
+back. When she came to think of it, she couldn't imagine how he got the
+news, for the post did not arrive till eight o'clock, and Mary said no
+telegram had been delivered and there had been no call on the
+telephone. But she supposed the War Office had secret ways of
+communicating with officers which it would not be well to make known.
+The whole of this war, with its killing off of the sons of the best
+families in the land, and the sleeping in the mud with one's boots on,
+to say nothing of not being able to change for dinner, and the way in
+which they knew when to shoot and when not to shoot, was all so
+mysterious that she had long ago given up hope of understanding any of
+its details. All she could do was to pray God that her dear boy should
+be spared. At any rate, she knew the duty of an English mother when the
+country was in danger; so she had sent him away with a brave face and
+her blessing, as she had done before. But, although English mothers
+could show themselves Spartans--(she spelt it "Spartians," dear lady,
+but no matter)--yet they were women and had to sit at home and weep. In
+the meanwhile, her palpitations had come on dreadfully bad, and so had
+her neuritis, and she had suffered dreadfully after eating some fish at
+dinner which she was sure Pennideath, the fishmonger--she always felt
+that man was an anarchist in disguise--had bought out of the condemned
+stock at Billingsgate, and none of the doctor's medicines were of the
+slightest good to her, and she was heartbroken at having to part so
+suddenly from Leonard, and would I spare half an hour to comfort an old
+woman who had sent her only son to die for his country and was ready,
+when it pleased God, if not sooner, to die in the same sacred cause?
+
+So of course I went. The old lady, propped on pillows in an overheated
+room, gave me tea and poured into my ear all the anguish of her simple
+heart. In an abstracted, anxious way, she ate a couple of crumpets and
+a wedge of cake with almond icing, and was comforted.
+
+We continued our discussion of the war--or rather Leonard, for with her
+Leonard seemed to be the war. She made some remark deliciously inept--I
+wish I could remember it. I made a sly rejoinder. She sat bolt upright
+and a flush came into her Dresden-china cheek and her old eyes flashed.
+
+"You may think I'm a silly old woman, Duncan. I dare say I am. I can't
+take in things as I used to do when I was young. But if Leonard should
+be killed in the war--I think of it night and day--what I should like
+to do would be to drive to the Market Square of Wellingsford and wave a
+Union Jack round and round and fall down dead."
+
+I made some sort of sympathetic gesture.
+
+"And I certainly should," she added.
+
+"My dear friend," said I, "if I could move from this confounded chair,
+I would kiss your brave hands."
+
+And how many brave hands of English mothers, white and delicate, coarse
+and toil-worn, do not demand the wondering, heart-full homage of us all?
+
+And hundreds of thousands of them don't know why we are fighting.
+Hundreds of thousands of them have never read a newspaper in their
+lives. I doubt whether they would understand one if they tried, I doubt
+whether all could read one in the literal sense of the word. We have
+had--we have still--the most expensive and rottenest system of primary
+education in the world, the worst that squabbling sectarians can
+devise. Arab children squatting round the courtyard of a Mosque and
+swaying backwards and forwards as they get by heart meaningless bits of
+the Koran, are not sent out into life more inadequately armed with
+elementary educational weapons than are English children. Our state of
+education has nominally been systematised for forty-five years, and yet
+now in our hospitals we have splendid young fellows in their early
+twenties who can neither read nor write. I have talked with them. I
+have read to them. I have written letters for them. Clean-cut, decent,
+brave, honourable Englishmen--not gutter-bred Hooligans dragged from
+the abyss by the recruiting sergeant, but men who have thrown up good
+employment because something noble inside them responded to the Great
+Call. And to the eternal disgrace of governments in this disastrously
+politician-ridden land such men have not been taught to read and write.
+It is of no use anyone saying to me that it is not so. I know of my own
+certain intimate knowledge that it is so.
+
+Even among those who technically have "the Three R's," I have met
+scores of men in our Wellingsford Hospital who, bedridden for months,
+would give all they possess to be able to enjoy a novel--say a volume
+of W. W. Jacobs, the writer who above all others has conferred the
+precious boon of laughter on our wounded--but to whom the intellectual
+strain of following the significance of consecutive words is far too
+great. Thousands and thousands of men have lain in our hospitals
+deprived, by the criminal insanity of party politicians, of the
+infinite consolation of books.
+
+Christ, whom all these politicians sanctimoniously pretend to make such
+a fuss of, once said that a house divided against itself cannot stand.
+And yet we regard this internecine conflict between our precious
+political parties as a sacred institution. By Allah, we are a funny
+people!
+
+Of course your officials at the Board of Education--that beautiful
+timber-headed, timber-hearted, timber-souled structure--could come down
+on me with an avalanche of statistics. "Look at our results," they cry.
+I look. There are certain brains that even our educational system
+cannot benumb. A few clever ones, at the cost of enormously expensive
+machinery, are sent to the universities, where they learn how to teach
+others the important things whereby they achieved their own unimportant
+success. The shining lights are those whom we turn out as syndicalist
+leaders and other kinds of anti-patriotic demagogues. We systematically
+deny them the wine of thought, but give them the dregs. But in the past
+we did not care; they were vastly clever people, a credit to our
+national system. It gave them chances which they took. We were devilish
+proud of them.
+
+On the other hand, the vast mass are sent away with the intellectual
+equipment of a public school-boy of twelve, and, as I have declared, a
+large remnant have not been taught even how to read and write. The
+storm of political controversy on educational matters has centred round
+such questions as whether the story of Joseph and his Brethren and the
+Parable of the Prodigal Son should be taught to little Baptists by a
+Church of England teacher, and what proportion of rates paid by Church
+of England ratepayers should go to giving little Baptists a Baptistical
+training. If there was a Christ who could come down among us, with what
+scorching sarcasm would he not shrivel up the Scribes and Pharisees,
+hypocrites, who in His Name have prevented the People from learning how
+to read and write.
+
+Look through Hansard. There never has been a Debate in the House of
+Commons devoted to the question of Education itself. If the War can
+teach us any lessons, as a nation--and sometimes I doubt whether it
+will--it ought at least to teach us the essential vicious rottenness of
+our present educational system.
+
+This tirade may seem a far cry from Mrs. Boyce and her sister mothers.
+It is not. I started by saying that there are hundreds of thousands of
+British mothers, with sons in the Army, who have never read a line of
+print dealing with the war, who have the haziest notion of what it is
+all about. All they know is that we are fighting Germans, who for some
+incomprehensible reason have declared themselves to be our enemies;
+that the Germans, by hearsay accounts, are dreadful people who stick
+babies on bayonets and drop bombs on women and children. They really
+know little more. But that is enough. They know that it is the part of
+a man to fight for his country. They would not have their sons be
+called cowards. They themselves have the blind, instinctive, and
+therefore sacred love of country, which is named patriotism--and they
+send forth their sons to fight.
+
+I stand up to kiss the white and delicate hand of the gentlewoman who
+sends her boy to the war, for its owner knows as well as I do (or ought
+to) all that is involved in this colossal struggle. But to the
+toil-worn, coarse-handed mother I go on bended knees; nothing
+intellectual comes within the range of her ideas. Her boy is fighting
+for England. She would be ashamed if he were not. Were she a man she
+would fight too. He has gone "with a good 'eart"--the stereotyped
+phrase with which every English private soldier, tongue-tied, hides the
+expression of his unconquerable soul. How many times have I not heard
+it from wounded men healed of their wounds? I have never heard anything
+else. "The man who says he WANTS to go back is a liar. But if they send
+me, I'll go WITH A GOOD 'EART"--The phrase which ought to be
+immortalized on every grave in Flanders and France and Gallipoli and
+Mesopotamia.
+
+
+  17735 P'V'TE THOMAS ATKINS 1ST GOD'S OWN REG'T
+  HE DIED WITH A GOOD 'EART
+
+
+So, you see, I looked at this rather silly malade imaginaire of an old
+lady with whom I was taking tea, and suddenly conceived for her a vast
+respect--even veneration. I say "rather silly." I had many a time
+qualified the adjective much more forcibly. I took her to have the
+intellectual endowment of a hen. But then she flashed out suddenly
+before me an elderly Jeanne d'Arc. That to me Leonard Boyce was suspect
+did not enter at all into the question. To her--and that was all that
+mattered--he was Sir Galahad, Lancelot, King Arthur, Bayard, St.
+George, Hector, Lysander, Miltiades, all rolled into one. The passion
+of her life was spent on him. To do him justice, he had never failed to
+display to her the most tender affection. In her eyes he was
+perfection. His death would mean the wiping out of everything between
+Earth and Heaven. And yet, paramount in her envisagement of such a
+tragedy was the idea of a public proclamation of the cause of England
+in which he died.
+
+In this war the women of England--the women of Great Britain and
+Ireland--the women of the far-flung regions of the British Empire, have
+their part.
+
+Now and then mild business matters call me up to London. On these
+occasions Marigold gets himself up in a kind of yachting kit which he
+imagines will differentiate him from the ordinary chauffeur and at the
+same time proclaim the dignity of the Meredyth-Marigold establishment.
+He loves to swagger up the steps of my Service Club and announce my
+arrival to the Hall Porter, who already, warned by telephone of my
+advent, has my little wicker-work tricycle chair in readiness. I think
+he feels, dear fellow, that he and I are keeping our end up; that,
+although there are only bits of us left, we are there by inalienable
+right as part and parcel of the British Army--none of your Territorials
+or Kitcheners, but the old original British Army whose prestige and
+honour were those of his own straight soul. The Hall Porter is an
+ex-Sergeant-Major, and he and Marigold are old acquaintances, and the
+meeting of the two warriors is acknowledged by a wink and a military
+jerk of the head. I think it is Marigold that impresses Bunworthy with
+a respect for me, for that august functionary never fails to descend
+the steps and cross the pavement to my modest little two-seater; an act
+of graciousness which (so I am given to understand by my friends) he
+will only perform in the case of Royalty Itself. A mere Field-marshal
+has to mount the steps unattended like any subaltern.
+
+These red-letter days when I drive through the familiar (and now
+exciting) hubbub of London, I love (strange taste!) every motor
+omnibus, every pretty woman, every sandwich-man, every fine young
+fellow in khaki, every car-load of men in blue hospital uniform. I love
+the smell of London, the cinematographic picture of London, the thrill
+of London. To understand what I mean you have only got to get rid of
+your legs and keep your heart and nerves and memories, and live in a
+little country town.
+
+Yes, my visits to London are red-letter days. To get there with any
+enjoyment to myself involves such a fussification, and such an
+unauthorised claim on the services of other people, that my visits are
+few and far between.
+
+A couple of hours in a club smoking-room--to the normal man a mere
+putting in of time, a vain surcease from boredom, a vacuous habit--is
+to me, a strange wonder and delight. After Wellingsford the place is
+resonant with actualities. I hear all sorts of things; mostly lies, I
+know; but what matter? When a man tells me that his cousin knows a man
+attached as liaison officer to the staff of General Joffre, who has
+given out confidentially that such and such a thing is going to happen
+I am all ears. I feel that I am sucked into the great whirlpool of Vast
+Events. I don't care a bit about being disillusioned afterwards. The
+experience has done me good, made a man of me and sent me back to
+Wellingsford as an oracle. And if you bring me a man who declares that
+he does not like being an oracle, I will say to his face that he is an
+unblushing liar.
+
+All this is by way of preface to the statement that on the third of May
+(vide diary) I went to the club. It was just after lunch and the great
+smoking-room was full of men in khaki and men in blue and gold, with a
+sprinkling of men, mostly elderly, in mufti; and from their gilt frames
+the full-length portraits of departed men of war in gorgeous uniforms
+looked down superciliously on their more sadly attired descendants. I
+got into a corner by the door, so as to be out of the way, for I knew
+by experience that should there be in the room a choleric general, he
+would inevitably trip over the casually extended front wheel of my
+chair, greatly to the scandal of modest ears and to my own physical
+discomfiture.
+
+Various seniors came up and passed the time of the day with me--one or
+two were bald-headed retired colonels of sixty, dressed in khaki, with
+belts like equators on a terrestrial globe and with a captain's three
+stars on their sleeves. Gallant old boys, full of gout and softness,
+they had sunk their rank and taken whatever dull jobs, such as guarding
+internment camps or railway bridges, the War Office condescendingly
+thought fit to give them. They listened sympathetically to my
+grievances, for they had grievances of their own. When soldiers have no
+grievances the Army will perish of smug content.
+
+"Why can't they give me a billet in the Army Pay and let me release a
+man sounder of wind and limb?" I asked. "What's the good of legs to a
+man who sits on his hunkers all day in an office and fills up Army
+forms? I hate seeing you lucky fellows in uniform."
+
+"We're not a pretty sight," said the most rotund, who was a wag in his
+way.
+
+Then we discussed what we knew and what we didn't know of the Battle of
+Ypres, and the withdrawal of our Second Army, and shook our heads
+dolorously over the casualty lists, every one of which in those days
+contained the names of old comrades and of old comrades' boys. And when
+they had finished their coffee and mild cigars they went off well
+contented to their dull jobs and the room began to thin. Other
+acquaintances on their way out paused for a handshake and a word, and I
+gathered scraps of information that had come "straight from Kitchener,"
+and felt wonderfully wise and cheerful.
+
+I had been sitting alone for a few minutes when a man rose from a far
+corner, a tall soldierly figure, his arm in a sling, and came straight
+towards me with that supple, easy stride that only years of confident
+command can give. He had keen blue eyes and a pleasant bronzed face
+which I knew that I had seem somewhere before. I noticed on his sleeve
+the crown and star of a lieutenant-colonel. He said pleasantly:
+
+"You're Major Meredyth, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes," said I.
+
+"You don't remember me. No reason why you should. But my name's
+Dacre--Reggie Dacre, brother of Johnnie Dacre in your battery. We met
+in Cape Town."
+
+I held out my hand.
+
+"Of course," said I. "You took me to a hospital. Do sit down for a bit.
+You a member here?"
+
+"No. I belong to the Naval and Military. Lunching with old General
+Donovan, a sort of god-father of mine. He told me who you were. I
+haven't seen you since that day in South Africa."
+
+I asked for news of Johnnie, who had been lost to my ken for years.
+Johnnie had been in India, and was now doing splendidly with his
+battery somewhere near La Bassee. I pointed to the sling. Badly hurt?
+No, a bit of flesh torn by shrapnel. Bone, thank God, not touched. It
+was only horny-headed idiots like the British R. A. M. C. that would
+send a man home for such a trifle. It was devilish hard lines to be
+hoofed away from the regiment practically just after he had got his
+command. However, he would be back in a week or two. He laughed.
+
+"Lucky to be alive at all."
+
+"Or not done in for ever like myself," said I.
+
+"I didn't like to ask--" he said. Men would rather die than commit the
+indelicacy of appearing to notice my infirmity.
+
+"You haven't been out there?"
+
+"No such luck," said I. "I got this little lot about a fortnight after
+I saw you. Johnnie was still on sick leave and so was out of that
+scrap."
+
+He commiserated with me on my ill-fortune, and handed me his cigarette
+case. We smoked.
+
+"You've been on my mind for months," he said abruptly.
+
+"I?"
+
+He nodded. "I thought I recognised you. I asked the General who you
+were. He said 'Meredyth of the Gunners.' So I knew I was right and made
+a bee line for you. Do you remember the story of that man in the
+hospital?"
+
+"Perfectly," said I.
+
+"About Boyce of the King's Watch?"
+
+"Yes," said I. "I saw Boyce, home on leave, about a fortnight ago. I
+suppose you saw his D.S.O. gazetted?"
+
+"I did. And he deserves a jolly sight more," he exclaimed heartily.
+"I've come to the conclusion that that fellow in the hospital--I forget
+the brute's name--"
+
+"Somers," said I.
+
+"Yes, Somers. I've come to the conclusion that he was the damn'dest,
+filthiest, lyingest hound that ever was pupped."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it," said I. "It was a horrible story. I remember
+making your brother and yourself vow eternal secrecy."
+
+"You can take it from me that we haven't breathed a word to anybody. As
+a matter of fact, the whole damn thing had gone out of my head for
+years. Then I begin to hear of a fellow called Boyce of the Rifles
+doing the most crazy magnificent things. I make enquiries and find it's
+the same Leonard Boyce of the Vilboek Farm story. We're in the same
+Brigade.
+
+"You don't often hear of individual men out there--your mind's too
+jolly well concentrated on your own tiny show. But Boyce has sort of
+burst out beyond his own regiment and, with just one or two others, is
+beginning to be legendary. He has done the maddest things and won the
+V.C. twenty times over. So that blighter Somers, accusing him of
+cowardice, was a ghastly liar. And then I remembered taking you up to
+hear that damnable slander, and I felt that I had a share in it, as far
+as you were concerned, and I longed to get at you somehow and tell you
+about it. I wanted to get it off my chest. And now," said he with a
+breath of relief, "thank God, I've been able to do so."
+
+"I wish you would tell me of an incident or two," said I.
+
+"He has got a life-preserver that looks like an ordinary cane--had it
+specially made. It's quite famous. Men tell me that the knob is a rich,
+deep, polished vermilion. He'll take on any number of Boches with it
+single-handed. If there's any sign of wire-cutting, he'll not let the
+men fire, but will take it on himself, and creep like a Gurkha and do
+the devils in. One night he got a whole listening post like that. He
+does a lot of things a second in command hasn't any business to do, but
+his men would follow him anywhere. He bears a charmed life. I could
+tell you lots of things--but I see my old General's getting restive."
+He rose, stretched out his hand. "At any rate, take my word for it--if
+there's a man in the British Army who doesn't know what fear is, that
+man is Leonard Boyce."
+
+He nodded in his frank way and rejoined his old General. As I had had
+enough exciting information for one visit to town, I motored back to
+Wellingsford.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+My house, as I have already mentioned, is situated at the extreme end
+of the town on the main road, already called the Rowdon Road, which is
+an extension of the High Street. It stands a little way back to allow
+room for a semicircular drive, at each end of which is a broad gate.
+The semicircle encloses a smooth-shaven lawn of which I am vastly
+proud. In the spandrels by the side of the house are laburnums and
+lilacs and laurels. From gate to gate stretch iron railings, planted in
+a low stone parapet and unencumbered with vegetation, so that the view
+from road to lawn and from lawn to road is unrestricted. Thus I can
+take up my position on my lawn near the railings and greet all
+passers-by.
+
+It was a lovely May morning. My laburnums and lilacs were in flower. On
+the other side of the way the hedge of white-thorn screening the
+grounds of a large preparatory school was in flower also, and
+deliciously scented the air. I sat in my accustomed spot, a table with
+writing materials, tobacco, and books by my side, and a mass of
+newspapers at my feet. There was going to be a coalition Government.
+Great statesmen were going to forget that there was such a thing as
+party politics, except in the distribution of minor offices, when the
+claims of good and faithful jackals on either side would have to be
+considered. And my heart grew sick within me, and I longed for a Man to
+arise who, with a snap of his strong fingers, would snuff out the
+Little Parish-Pump Folk who have misruled England this many a year with
+their limited vision and sordid aspirations, and would take the great,
+unshakable, triumphant command of a mighty Empire passionately yearning
+to do his bidding... I could read no more newspapers. They disgusted
+me. One faction seemed doggedly opposed to any proposition for the
+amelioration of the present disastrous state of affairs. The salvation
+of wrecked political theories loomed far more important in their
+darkened minds than the salvation, by hook or crook, of the British
+Empire. The other faction, more patriotic in theory, cried aloud
+stinking fish, and by scurrilous over-statement defeated their own
+ends. In the general ignoble screech the pronouncements of the one or
+two dignified and thoughtful London newspapers passed unheeded....
+
+I drew what comfort I could from the sight of the continually passing
+troops; a platoon off to musketry training; a battalion, brown and
+dusty, on a route march with full equipment, whistling "Tipperary";
+sections of an Army Service train cursing good-humouredly at their
+mules; a battery of artillery thundering along at a clean, rhythmical
+trot which, considering what they were like in their slovenly jogging
+and bumping three months ago, afforded me prodigious pleasure. On the
+passing of these last-mentioned I felt inclined to clap my hands and
+generally proclaim my appreciation. Indeed, I did arrest a fresh-faced
+subaltern bringing up the rear of the battery who, having acquaintance
+with me, saluted, and I shouted:
+
+"They're magnificent!"
+
+He reared up his horse and flushed with pleasure.
+
+"We've done our best, sir," said he. "We had news last week that we
+should be sent out quite soon, and that has bucked them up enormously."
+
+He saluted again and rode off, and my heart went with him. What a joy
+it would be to clatter down a road once again with the guns!
+
+And other people passed. Townsfolk who gave me a kindly "Morning,
+Major!" and went on, and others who paused awhile and gave me the
+gossip of the day. And presently young Randall Holmes went by on a
+motor bicycle. He caught sight of me, disappeared, and then suddenly
+reappeared, wheeling his machine. He rested it by the kerb of the
+sidewalk and approached the railings. He was within a yard of me.
+
+"Would you let me speak to you for half a minute, Major?"
+
+"Certainly," said I. "Come in."
+
+He swung through the gate and crossed the lawn.
+
+"You said very hard things to me some time ago."
+
+"I did," said I, "and I don't think they were undeserved."
+
+"Up to a certain point I agree with you," he replied.
+
+He looked extraordinarily robust and athletic in his canvas kit. Why
+should he be tearing about aimlessly on a motor bicycle this May
+morning when he ought to be in France?
+
+"I wish you agreed with me all along the line," said I.
+
+He found a little iron garden seat and sat down by my side.
+
+"I don't want to enter into controversial questions," he said.
+
+Confound him! He might have been fifty instead of four-and-twenty.
+Controversial questions! His assured young Oxford voice irritated me.
+
+"What do you want to enter into?" I asked.
+
+"A question of honour," he answered calmly. "I have been wanting to
+speak to you, but I didn't like to. Passing you by, just now, I made a
+sudden resolution. You have thought badly of me on account of my
+attitude towards Phyllis Gedge. I want to tell you that you were quite
+right. My attitude was illogical and absurd."
+
+"You have discovered," said I, "that she is not the inspiration you
+thought she was, and like an honest man have decided to let her alone."
+
+"On the contrary," said he. "I'd give the eyes out of my head to marry
+her."
+
+"Why?"
+
+He met my gaze very frankly. "For the simple reason, Major Meredyth,
+that I love her."
+
+All this natural, matter-of-fact simplicity coming from so artificial a
+product of Balliol as Randall Holmes, was a bit upsetting. After a
+pause, I said:
+
+"If that is so, why don't you marry her?"
+
+"She'll have nothing to do with me."
+
+"Have you asked her?"
+
+"I have, in writing. There's no mistake about it. I'm in earnest."
+
+"I'm exceedingly glad to hear it," said I.
+
+And I was. An honest lover I can understand, and a Don Juan I can
+understand. But the tepid philanderer has always made my toes tingle.
+And I was glad, too, to hear that little Phyllis Gedge had so much
+dignity and commonsense. Not many small builders' daughters would have
+sent packing a brilliant young gentleman like Randall Holmes,
+especially if they happened to be in love with him. As I did not
+particularly wish to be the confidant of this love-lorn shepherd, I
+said nothing more. Randall lit a cigarette.
+
+"I hope I'm not boring you," he said.
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+"Well--what complicates the matter is that her father's the most
+infernal swine unhung." I started, remembering what Betty had told me.
+
+"I thought," said I, "that you were fast friends."
+
+"Who told you so?" he asked.
+
+"All the birds of Wellingsford."
+
+"I did go to see him now and then," he admitted. "I thought he was much
+maligned. A man with sincere opinions, even though they're wrong, is
+deserving of some respect, especially when the expression of them
+involves considerable courage and sacrifice. I wanted to get to the
+bottom of his point of view."
+
+"If you used such a metaphor in the Albemarle," I interrupted, "I'm
+afraid you would be sacrificed by your friends."
+
+He had the grace to laugh. "You know what I mean."
+
+"And did you get to the bottom of it?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"And what did you find?"
+
+"Crass ignorance and malevolent hatred of everyone better born, better
+educated, better off, better dressed, better spoken than himself."
+
+"Still," said I, "a human being can have those disabilities and yet not
+deserve to be qualified as the most infernal swine unhung."
+
+"That's a different matter," said he, unbuttoning his canvas jacket,
+for the morning was warm. "I can talk patiently to a fool--to be able
+to do so is an elementary equipment for a life among men and women--"
+Why the deuce, thought I, wasn't he expending this precious acquirement
+on a platoon of agricultural recruits? The officer who suffers such
+gladly has his name inscribed on the Golden Legend (unfortunately
+unpublished) of the British Army--"but when it comes," he went on, "to
+low-down lying knavery, then I'm done. I don't know how to tackle it.
+All I can do is to get out of the knave's way. I've found Gedge to be a
+beast, and I'm very honourably in love with Gedge's daughter, and I've
+asked her to marry me. I attach some value, Major, to your opinion of
+me, and I want you to know these two facts."
+
+I again expressed my gratification at learning his honourable
+intentions towards Phyllis, and I commended his discovery of Gedge's
+fundamental turpitude. I cannot say that I was cordial. At this period,
+the unmilitary youth of England were not affectionately coddled by
+their friends. Still, I was curious to see whether Gedge's depravity
+extended beyond a purely political scope. I questioned my young visitor.
+
+"Oh, it's nothing to do with abstract opinions," said he, thinning away
+the butt-end of his cigarette. "And nothing to do with treason, or
+anything of that kind. He has got hold of a horrible story--told me all
+about it when he was foully drunk--that in itself would have made me
+break with him, for I loathe drunken men--and gloats over the fact that
+he is holding it over somebody's head. Oh, a ghastly story!"
+
+I bent my brows on him. "Anything to do with South Africa?"
+
+"South Africa--? No. Why?"
+
+The puzzled look on his face showed that I was entirely on the wrong
+track. I was disappointed at the faultiness of my acumen. You see, I
+argued thus: Gedge goes off on a mysterious jaunt with Boyce. Boyce
+retreats precipitately to London. Gedge in his cups tells a horrible
+scandal with a suggestion of blackmail to Randall Holmes. What else
+could he have divulged save the Vilboek Farm affair? My nimble wit had
+led me a Jack o' Lantern dance to nowhere.
+
+"Why South Africa?" he repeated.
+
+I replied with Macchiavellian astuteness, so as to put him on a false
+scent: "A stupid slander about illicit diamond buying in connection
+with a man, now dead, who used to live here some years ago."
+
+"Oh, no," said Randall, with a superior smile "Nothing of that sort."
+
+"Well, what is it?" I asked.
+
+He helped himself to another cigarette. "That," said he, "I can't tell
+you. In the first place I gave my word of honour as to secrecy before
+he told me, and, in the next, even if I hadn't given my word, I would
+not be a party to such a slander by repeating it to any living man." He
+bent forward and looked me straight in the eyes. "Even to you, Major,
+who have been a second father to me."
+
+"A man," said I, "has a priceless possession that he should always
+keep--his own counsel."
+
+"I've only told you as much as I have done," said Randall, "because I
+want to make clear to you my position with regard both to Phyllis and
+her father."
+
+"May I ask," said I, "what is Phyllis's attitude towards her father?" I
+knew well enough from Betty; but I wanted to see how much Randall knew
+about it.
+
+"She is so much out of sympathy with his opinions that she has gone to
+live at the hospital."
+
+"Perhaps she thinks you share those opinions, and for that reason won't
+marry you?"
+
+"That may have something to do with it, although I have done my best to
+convince her that I hold diametrically opposite views, But you can't
+expect a woman to reason."
+
+"The unexpected sometimes happens," I remarked. "And then comes
+catastrophe; in this case not to the woman." I cannot say that my tone
+was sympathetic. I had cause for interest in his artless tale, but it
+was cold and dispassionate. "Tell me," I continued, "when did you
+discover the diabolical nature of the man Gedge?"
+
+"Last night."
+
+"And when did you ask Phyllis to marry you?"
+
+"A week ago."
+
+"What's going to happen now?" I asked.
+
+"I'm hanged if I know," said he, gloomily.
+
+I was in no mood to offer the young man any advice. The poor little
+wretch at the hospital--so Betty had told me--was crying her eyes out
+for him; but it was not for his soul's good that he should know it.
+
+"In heroic days," said I, "a hopeless lover always found a sovereign
+remedy against an obdurate mistress."
+
+He rose and buttoned up his canvas jacket.
+
+"I know what you mean," he said. "And I didn't come to discuss it--if
+you'll excuse my apparent rudeness in saying so."
+
+"Then things are as they were between us."
+
+"Not quite, I hope," he replied in a dignified way. "When last you
+spoke to me about Phyllis Gedge, I really didn't know my own mind. I am
+not a cad and the thought of--of anything wrong never entered my head.
+On the other hand, marriage seemed out of the question."
+
+"I remember," said I, "you talked some blithering rot about her being a
+symbol."
+
+"I am quite willing to confess I was a fool," he admitted gracefully.
+"And I merited your strictures."
+
+His reversion to artificiality annoyed me. I'm far from being of an
+angelic disposition.
+
+"My dear boy," I cried. "Do, for God's sake, talk human English, and
+not the New Oxford Dictionary."
+
+He flushed angrily, snapped an impatient finger and thumb, and marched
+away to the gravel path. I sang out sharply:
+
+"Randall!"
+
+He turned. I cried:
+
+"Come here at once."
+
+He came with sullen reluctance. Afterwards I was rather tickled at
+realizing that the lame old war-dog had so much authority left. If he
+had gone defiantly off, I should have felt rather a fool.
+
+"My dear boy," I said, "I didn't mean to insult you. But can't a clever
+fellow like you understand that all the pretty frills and preciousness
+of a year ago are as dead as last year's Brussels sprouts? We're up
+against elemental things and can only get at them with elemental ideas
+expressed in elemental language."
+
+"I'd have you to know," said Randall, "that I spoke classical English."
+
+"Quite so," said I. "But the men of to-day speak Saxon English, Cockney
+English, slang English, any damned sort of English that is virile and
+spontaneous. As I say, you're a clever fellow. Can't you see my point?
+Speech is an index of mental attitude. I bet you what you like Phyllis
+Gedge would see it at once. Just imagine a subaltern at the front after
+a bad quarter of an hour with his Colonel--'I've merited your
+strictures, sir!' If there was a bomb handy, the Colonel would catch it
+up and slay him on the spot."
+
+"But I don't happen to be at the front, Major," said Randall.
+
+"Then you damned well ought to be," said I, in sudden wrath.
+
+I couldn't help it. He asked for it. He got it.
+
+He went away, mounted his motor bicycle, and rode off.
+
+I was sorry. The boy evidently was in a chastened mood. If I had
+handled him gently and diplomatically, I might have done something with
+him. I suppose I'm an irritable, nasty-tempered beast. It is easy to
+lay the blame on my helpless legs. It isn't my legs. I've conquered my
+damned legs. It isn't my legs. Its ME.
+
+I was ashamed of myself. And when, later, Marigold enquired whether the
+doors were still shut against Mr. Holmes, I asked him what the blazes
+he meant by not minding his own business. And Marigold said: "Very
+good, sir."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+For a week or two the sluggish stream of Wellingsfordian life flowed on
+undisturbed. The chief incident was a recruiting meeting held on the
+Common. Sir Anthony Fenimore in his civic capacity, a staff-officer
+with red tabs, a wounded soldier, an elderly, eloquent gentleman from
+recruiting headquarters in London, and one or two nondescripts,
+including myself, were on the platform. A company of a County
+Territorial Battalion and the O.T.C. of the Godbury Grammar School gave
+a semblance of military display. The Town Band, in a sort of Hungarian
+uniform, discoursed martial music. Old men and maidens, mothers and
+children, and contented young fellows in khaki belonging to all kinds
+of arms, formed a most respectable crowd. The flower of Wellingsfordian
+youth was noticeably absent. They were having too excellent a time to
+be drawn into the temptation of a recruiting meeting, in spite of the
+band and the fine afternoon and the promiscuity of attractive damsels.
+They were making unheard-of money at the circumjacent factories; their
+mothers were waxing fat on billeting-money. They never had so much
+money to spend on moving-picture-palaces and cheap jewellery for their
+inamoratas in their lives. As our beautiful Educational system had most
+scrupulously excluded from their school curriculum any reference to
+patriotism, any rudimentary conception of England as their sacred
+heritage, and as they had been afforded no opportunity since they left
+school of thinking of anything save their material welfare and grosser
+material appetites, the vague talk of peril to the British Empire left
+them unmoved. They were quite content to let others go and fight. They
+had their own comfortable theories about it. Some fellows liked that
+sort of thing. They themselves didn't. In ordinary times, it amused
+that kind of fellow to belong to a Harriers Club, and clad in shorts
+and zephyrs, go on Sundays for twenty-mile runs. It didn't amuse them.
+A cigarette, a girl, and a stile formed their ideal of Sunday
+enjoyment. They had no quarrel with the harrier fellow or the soldier
+fellow for following his bent. They were most broad-minded. But they
+flattered themselves that they were fellows of a superior and more
+intelligent breed. They were making money and living warm, the only
+ideal of existence of which they had ever heard, and what did anything
+else matter?
+
+If a man has never been taught that he has a country, how the deuce do
+you expect him to love her--still less to defend her with his blood?
+Our more than damnable governments for the last thirty years have done
+everything in their power to crush in English hearts the national
+spirit of England. God knows I have no quarrel with Scotland, Ireland,
+and Wales. I speak in no disparagement of them. Quite the reverse. In
+this war they have given freely of their blood. I only speak as an
+Englishman of England, the great Mother of the Empire. Scot, Irishman,
+Welshman, Canadian, Australian are filled with the pride of their
+nationality. It is part of their being. Wisely they have been trained
+to it from infancy. England, who is far bigger, far more powerful than
+the whole lot of them put together--it's a statistical fact--has
+deliberately sunk herself in her own esteem, in her own pride. Only one
+great man has stood for England, as England, the great Mother, for the
+last thirty years. And that man is Rudyard Kipling. And the Little Folk
+in authority in England have spent their souls in rendering nugatory
+his inspired message.
+
+This criminal self-effacement of England is at the root of the peril of
+the British Empire during this war.
+
+I told you at the beginning that I did not know how to write a story.
+You must forgive me for being led away into divagations which seem to
+be irrelevant to the dramatic sequence. But when I remember that the
+result of all the pomp and circumstance of that meeting was seven
+recruits, of whom three were rejected as being physically unfit, my pen
+runs away with my discretion, and my conjecturing as to artistic
+fitness.
+
+Yes, the Major spoke. Sir Anthony is a peppery little person and the
+audience enjoyed the cayenne piquancy of his remarks. The red-tabbed
+Lieutenant-Colonel spoke. He was a bit dull. The elderly orator from
+London roused enthusiastic cheers. The wounded sergeant, on crutches,
+displaying a foot like a bandaged mop, brought tears into the eyes of
+many women and evoked hoarse cheers from the old men. I spoke from my
+infernal chair, and I think I was quite a success with the good fellows
+in khaki. But the only men we wanted to appeal to had studiously
+refrained from being present. The whole affair was a fiasco.
+
+When we got home, Marigold, who had stood behind my chair during the
+proceedings, said to me:
+
+"I think I know personally about thirty slackers in this town, sir, and
+I'm more than a match for any three of them put together. Suppose I was
+to go the rounds, so to speak, and say to each of them, 'You young
+blighter, if you don't come with me and enlist, I 'll knock hell out of
+you!'--and, if he didn't come, I did knock hell out of him--what
+exactly would happen, sir?"
+
+"You would be summoned," said I, "for thirty separate cases of assault
+and battery. Reckoning the penalty at six months each, you would have
+to go to prison for fifteen years."
+
+Marigold's one eye grew pensive and sad.
+
+"And they call this," said he, "a free country!"
+
+I began this chapter by remarking that for a week or two after my
+second interview with Randall Holmes, nothing particular happened. Then
+one afternoon came Sir Anthony Fenimore to see me, and with a view to
+obtaining either my advice or my sympathy, reopened the story of his
+daughter Althea found drowned in the canal eleven months before.
+
+What he considered a most disconcerting light had just been cast on the
+tragedy by Maria Beccles. This lady was Lady Fenimore's sister. A
+deadly feud, entirely of Miss Beccles' initiating and nourishing, had
+existed between them for years. They had been neither on speaking nor
+on writing terms. Miss Beccles, ten years Lady Fenimore's senior, was,
+from all I had heard, a most disagreeable and ill-conditioned person,
+as different from my charming friend Edith Fenimore as the ugly old
+sisters were from Cinderella. Although she belonged to a good old South
+of England family, she had joined, for reasons known only to herself,
+the old Free Kirk of Scotland, found a congenial Calvinistic centre in
+Galloway, and after insulting her English relations and friends in the
+most unconscionable way, cut herself adrift from them for ever. "Mad as
+a hatter," Sir Anthony used to say, and, never having met the lady, I
+agreed with him. She loathed her sister, she detested Anthony, and she
+appeared to be coldly indifferent to the fact of the existence of her
+nephew Oswald. But for Althea, and for Althea alone, she entertained a
+curious, indulgent affection, and every now and then Althea went to
+spend a week or so in Galloway, where she contrived to obtain
+considerable amusement. Aunt Maria did both herself and her visitors
+very well, said Althea, who had an appreciative eye for the material
+blessings of life. Althea walked over the moors and fished and took
+Aunt Maria's cars out for exercise and, except whistle on the Sabbath,
+seemed to do exactly what she liked.
+
+Now, in January 1914, Althea announced to her parents that Aunt Maria
+had summoned her for a week to Galloway. Sir Anthony stuffed her
+handbag with five-pound notes, and at an early hour of the morning sent
+her up in the car to London in charge of the chauffeur. The chauffeur
+returned saying that he had bought Miss Althea's ticket at Euston and
+seen her start off comfortably on her journey. A letter or two had been
+received by the Fenimores from Galloway, and letters they had written
+to Galloway had been acknowledged by Althea. She returned to
+Wellingsford in due course, with bonny cheeks and wind-swept eyes, and
+told us all funny little stories about Aunt Maria. No one thought
+anything more about it until one fine afternoon in May, 1915, when
+Maria Beccles walked unexpectedly into the drawing-room of Wellings
+Park, while Sir Anthony and Lady Fenimore were at tea.
+
+"My dear Edith," she said to her astounded hostess, who had not seen
+her for fifteen years. "In this orgy of hatred and strife that is going
+on in the world, it seems ridiculous to go on hating and fighting one's
+own family. We must combine against the Germans and hate them. Let us
+be friends."
+
+"Mad as Crazy Jane," said Sir Anthony, telling me the story. But I, who
+had never heard Aunt Maria's side of the dispute, thought it very
+high-spirited of the old lady to come and hold out the olive-branch in
+so uncompromising a fashion.
+
+Lady Fenimore then said that she had never wished to quarrel with
+Maria, and Sir Anthony declared that her patriotic sentiments did her
+credit, and that he was proud to receive her under his roof, and in a
+few minutes Maria was drinking tea and discussing the war in the most
+contented way in the world.
+
+"I didn't write to you on the occasion of the death of your two
+children because you knew I didn't like you," said this outspoken lady.
+"I hate hypocrisy. Also I thought that tribulation might chasten you in
+the eyes of the Lord. I've discussed it with our Minister, a poor body,
+but a courageous man. He told me I was unchristian. Now, what with all
+this universal massacre going on and my unregenerate longing, old woman
+as I am, to wade knee-deep in German blood, I don't know what the devil
+I am."
+
+The more Anthony told me of Aunt Maria, the more I liked her.
+
+"Can't I come round and make her acquaintance?" I cried. "She's the
+sort of knotty, solid human thing that I should love. No wonder Althea
+was fond of her."
+
+"This happened a week ago. She only stayed a night," replied Sir
+Anthony. "I wish to God we had never seen her or heard of her."
+
+And then the good, heart-wrung little man, who had been beating about
+the bush for half an hour, came straight to the point.
+
+"You remember Althea's visit to Scotland in January last year?"
+
+"Perfectly," said I.
+
+He rose from his chair and looked at me in wrinkled anguish.
+
+"She never went there," he said.
+
+That was what he had come to tell me. A natural reference to the last
+visit of Althea to her aunt had established the stupefying fact.
+
+"Althea's last visit was in October, 1913," said Miss Beccles.
+
+"But we have letters from your house to prove she was with you in
+January," said Sir Anthony.
+
+Most methodical and correspondence-docketing of men, he went to his
+library and returned with a couple of letters.
+
+The old lady looked them through grimly.
+
+"Pretty vague. No details. Read 'em again, Anthony."
+
+When he had done so, she said: "Well?"
+
+Lady Fenimore objected: "But Althea did stay with you. She must have
+stayed with you."
+
+"All right, Edith," said Maria, sitting bolt upright. "Call me a liar,
+and have done with it. I've come here at considerable dislocation of
+myself and my principles, to bury the hatchet for the sake of unity
+against the enemy, and this is how I'm treated. I can only go back to
+Scotland at once."
+
+Sir Anthony succeeded in pacifying her. The letters were evidence that
+Edith and himself believed that Althea was in Galloway at the time.
+Maria's denial had come upon them like a thunderclap, bewildering,
+stunning. If Althea was not in Galloway, where was she?
+
+Maria Beccles did not reply for some time to the question. Then she
+took the pins out of her hat and threw it on a chair, thus symbolising
+the renunciation of her intention of returning forthwith to Scotland.
+
+"Yes, Maria," said Lady Fenimore, with fear in her dark eyes, "we don't
+doubt your word--but, as Anthony has said, if she wasn't with you,
+where was she?"
+
+"How do I know?"
+
+Maria Beccles pointed a lean finger--she was a dark and shrivelled,
+gipsy-like creature. "You might as well ask the canal in which she
+drowned herself."
+
+"But, my God, Anthony!" I cried, when he had got thus far, "What did
+you think? What did you say?"
+
+I realised that the old lady had her social disqualifications.
+Plain-dealing is undoubtedly a virtue. But there are several virtues
+which the better class of angel keeps chained up in a dog-kennel. Of
+course she was acute. A mind trained in the acrobatics of Calvinistic
+Theology is, within a narrow compass, surprisingly agile. It jumped at
+one bound from the missing week in Althea's life into the black water
+of the canal. It was incapable, however, of appreciating the awful
+horror in the minds of the beholders.
+
+"I don't know what I said," replied Sir Anthony, walking restlessly
+about my library. "We were struck all of a heap. As you know, we never
+had reason to think that the poor dear child's death was anything but
+an accident. We were not narrow-minded old idiots. She was a dear good
+girl. In a modern way she claimed her little independence. We let her
+have it. We trusted her. We took it for granted--you know it, Duncan,
+as well as I do--that, a hot night in June--not able to sleep--she had
+stuck on a hat and wandered about the grounds, as she had often done
+before, and a spirit of childish adventure had tempted her, that night,
+to walk round the back of the town and--and--well, until in the dark,
+she stepped off the tow-path by the lock gates, into nothing--and found
+the canal. It was an accident," he continued, with a hand on my
+shoulder, looking down on me in my chair. "The inquest proved that. I
+accepted it, as you know, as a visitation of God. Edith and I sorrowed
+for her like cowards. It took the war to bring us to our senses. But,
+now, this damned old woman comes and upsets the whole thing."
+
+"But," said I, "after all, it was only a bow at a venture on the part
+of the old lady."
+
+"I wish it were," said he, and he handed me a letter which Maria had
+written to him the day after her return to Scotland.
+
+The letter contained a pretty piece of information. She had summarily
+discharged Elspeth Macrae, her confidential maid of five-and-twenty
+years' standing. Elspeth Macrae, on her own confession, had, out of
+love for Althea, performed the time-honoured jugglery with
+correspondence. She had posted in Galloway letters which she had
+received, under cover, from Althea, and had forwarded letters that had
+arrived addressed to Althea to an accommodation address in Carlisle. So
+have sentimental serving-maids done since the world began.
+
+"What do you make of it?" asked Sir Anthony.
+
+What else could I make of it but the one sorry theory? What woman
+employs all this subterfuge in order to obtain a weeks liberty for any
+other purpose than the one elementary purpose of young humanity?
+
+We read the inevitable conclusion in each other's eyes.
+
+"Who is the man, Duncan?"
+
+"I suppose you have searched her desk and things?"
+
+"Last year. Everything most carefully. It was awful--but we had to. Not
+a scrap of paper that wasn't innocence itself."
+
+"It can't be anyone here," said I. "You know what the place is. The
+slightest spark sends gossip aflame like the fumes of petrol."
+
+He sat down by my side and rubbed his close-cropped grey head.
+
+"It couldn't have been young Holmes?"
+
+The little man had a brave directness that sometimes disconcerted me. I
+knew the ghastly stab that every word cost him.
+
+"She used to make mock of Randall," said I. "Don't you remember she
+used to call him 'the gilded poet'? Once she said he was the most
+lady-like young man of her acquaintance. I don't admire our young
+friend, but I think you're on the wrong track, Anthony."
+
+"I don't see it," said he. "That sort of flippancy goes for nothing.
+Women use it as a sort of quickset hedge of protection." He bent
+forward and tapped me on my senseless knee. "Young Holmes always used
+to be in and out of the house. They had known each other from
+childhood. He had a distinguished Oxford career. When he won the
+Newdigate, she came running to me with the news, as pleased as Punch. I
+gave him a dinner in honour of it, if you remember."
+
+"I remember," said I.
+
+I did not remind him that he had made a speech which sent cold shivers
+down the spine of our young Apollo; that, in a fine rhetorical
+flourish--dear old fox-hunting ignoramus--he declared that the winner
+of the Newdigate carried the bays of the Laureate in his knapsack; that
+Randall, white-lipped with horror, murmured to Betty Fairfax, his
+neighbour at the table: "My God! The Poet-Laureate's unhallowed grave!
+I must burn the knapsack and take to a hod!" It was too tragical a
+conversation for light allusion.
+
+"The poor dear child--Edith and I have sized it up--was all over him
+that evening."
+
+"What more youthfully natural," said I, "than that she should carry off
+the hero of the occasion--her childhood's playfellow?"
+
+"All sorts of apparently insignificant details, Duncan, taken
+together--especially if they fit in--very often make up a whole case
+for prosecution."
+
+"You're a Chairman of Quarter Sessions," I admitted, "and so you ought
+to know."
+
+"I know this," said he, "that Holmes only spent part of that Christmas
+vacation with his mother, and went off somewhere or the other early in
+January." I cudgelled back my memory into confirmation of his
+statement. To remember trivial incidents before the war takes a lot of
+cudgelling. Yes. I distinctly recollected the young man's telling me
+that Oxford being an intellectual hothouse and Wellingsford an
+intellectual Arabia Petrea, he was compelled, for the sake of his
+mental health, to find a period of repose in the intellectual Nature of
+London. I mentioned this to Sir Anthony.
+
+"Yet," I said, "I don't think he had anything to do with it."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It would have been far too much moral exertion--"
+
+"You call it moral?" Sir Anthony burst out angrily.
+
+I pacified him with an analysis, from my point of view, of Randall's
+character. Centripetal forces were too strong for the young man. I
+dissertated on his amours with Phyllis Gedge.
+
+"No, my dear old friend," said I, in conclusion, "I don't think it was
+Randall Holmes."
+
+Sir Anthony rose and shook his fist in my face. As I knew he meant me
+no bodily harm, I did not blench.
+
+"Who was it, then?"
+
+"Althea," said I, "often used to stay in town with your sister. Lady
+Greatorex has a wide circle of acquaintances. Do you know anything of
+the men Althea used to meet at her house?"
+
+"Of course I don't," replied Sir Anthony. Then he sat down again with a
+gesture of despair. "After all, what does it matter? Perhaps it's as
+well I don't know who the man was, for if I did, I'd kill him!"
+
+He set his teeth and glowered at nothing and smote his left palm with
+his right fist, and there was a long silence. Presently he repeated:
+
+"I'd kill him!"
+
+We fell to discussing the whole matter over again. Why, I asked, should
+we assume that the poor child was led astray by a villain? Might there
+not have been a romantic marriage which, for some reason we could not
+guess, she desired to keep secret for a time? Had she not been bright
+and happy from January to June? And that night of tragedy... What more
+likely than that she had gone forth to keep tryst with her husband and
+accidentally met her death? "He arrives," said I, "waits for her. She
+never comes. He goes away. The next day he learns from local gossip or
+from newspapers what has happened. He thinks it best to keep silent and
+let her fair name be untouched...What have you to say against that
+theory?"
+
+"Possible," he replied. "Anything conceivable within the limits of
+physical possibility is possible. But it isn't probable. I have an
+intuitive feeling that there was villainy about--and if ever I get hold
+of that man--God help him!"
+
+So there was nothing more to be said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+I haven't that universal sympathy which is the most irritating
+attribute of saints and other pacifists. When, for instance, anyone of
+the fraternity arguing from the Sermon on the Mount tells me that I
+ought to love Germans, either I admit the obligation and declare that,
+as I am a miserable sinner, I have no compunction in breaking it, or,
+if he is a very sanctimonious saint, I remind him that, such creatures
+as modern Germans not having been invented on or about the year A.D.
+30, the rule about loving your enemies could not possibly apply. At
+least I imagine I do one of these two things (sometimes, indeed, I
+dream gloatfully over acts of physical violence) when I read the
+pronouncements of such a person; for I have to my great good fortune
+never met him in the flesh. If there are any saintly pacifists in
+Wellingsford, they keep sedulously out of my way, and they certainly do
+not haunt my Service Club. And these are the only two places in which I
+have my being. Even Gedge doesn't talk of loving Germans. He just lumps
+all the belligerents together in one conglomerate hatred, for upsetting
+his comfortable social scheme.
+
+As I say, I lack the universal sympathy of the saint. I can't like
+people I don't like. Some people I love very deeply; others, being of a
+kindly disposition, I tolerate; others again I simply detest. Now
+Wellingsford, like every little country town in England, is drab with
+elderly gentlewomen. As I am a funny old tabby myself, I have to mix
+with them. If I refuse invitations to take tea with them, they invite
+themselves to tea with me. "The poor Major," they say, "is so lonely."
+And they bait their little hooks and angle for gossip of which I am
+supposed--Heaven knows why--to be a sort of stocked pond. They don't
+carry home much of a catch, I assure you.... Well, of some of them I am
+quite fond. Mrs. Boyce, for all her shortcomings, is an old crony for
+whom I entertain a sincere affection. Towards Betty's aunt, Miss
+Fairfax, a harmless lady with a passion for ecclesiastical embroidery,
+I maintain an attitude of benevolent neutrality. But Mrs. Holmes,
+Randall's mother, and her sisters, the daughters of an eminent
+publicist who seems to have reared his eminence on bones of talk flung
+at him by Carlisle, George Eliot, Lewes, Monckton Milnes, and is now,
+doubtless, recording their toe-prints on the banks of Acheron, I never
+could and never can abide. My angel of a wife saw good in them, and she
+loved the tiny Randall, of whom I too was fond; so, for her sake, I
+always treated them with courtesy and kindness. Also for Randall's
+father's sake. He was a bluff, honest, stock-broking Briton who fancied
+pigeons and bred greyhounds for coursing, and cared less for literature
+and art than does the equally honest Mrs. Marigold in my kitchen. But
+his wife and her sisters led what they called the intellectual life.
+They regarded it as a heritage from their pompous ass of a father. Of
+course they were not eighteen-sixty, or even eighteen-eighty. They
+prided themselves on developing the hereditary tradition of culture to
+its extreme modern expression. They were of the semi-intellectual type
+of idiot--and, if it destroys it, the great war will have some
+justification--which professes to find in the dull analysis of the drab
+adultery and suicide of a German or Scandinavian rabbit-picker a
+supreme expression of human existence. All their talk was of Hauptmann
+and Sudermann (they dropped them patriotically, I must say, as
+outrageous fellows, on the outbreak of war), Strindberg,
+Dostoievsky--though I found they had never read either "Crime and
+Punishment" or "The Brothers Karamazoff"--Tolstoi, whom they didn't
+understand; and in art--God save the mark!--the Cubist school. That is
+how my poor young friend, Randall, was trained to get the worst of the
+frothy scum of intelligent Oxford. But even he sometimes winced at the
+pretentiousness of his mother and his aunts. He was a clever fellow and
+his knowledge was based on sound foundations. I need not say that the
+ladies were rather feared than loved in Wellingsford.
+
+All this to explain why it was that when Marigold woke me from an
+afternoon nap with the information that Mrs. Holmes desired to see me,
+I scowled on him.
+
+"Why didn't you say I was dead?"
+
+"I told Mrs. Holmes you were asleep, sir, and she said: 'Will you be so
+kind as to wake him?' So what could I do, sir?"
+
+I have never met with an idiot so helpless in the presence of a woman.
+He would have defended my slumbers before a charge of cavalry; but one
+elderly lady shoo'd him aside like a chicken.
+
+Mrs. Holmes was shewn in, a tall, dark, thin, nervous woman wearing
+pince-nez and an austere sad-coloured garment.
+
+She apologised for disturbing me.
+
+"But," she said, sitting down on the couch, "I am in such great trouble
+and I could think of no one but you to advise me."
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked.
+
+"It's Randall. He left the house the day before yesterday, without
+telling any of us good-bye, and he hasn't written, and I don't know
+what on earth has become of him."
+
+"Did he take any luggage?"
+
+"Just a small suit-case. He even packed it himself, a thing he has
+never done at home in his life before."
+
+This was news. The proceedings were unlike Randall, who in his goings
+and comings loved the domestic brass-band. To leave his home without
+valedictory music and vanish into the unknown, betokened some unusual
+perturbation of mind.
+
+I asked whether she knew of any reason for such perturbation.
+
+"He was greatly upset," she replied, "by the stoppage of The Albemarle
+Review for which he did such fine work."
+
+I strove politely to hide my inability to condole and wagged my head
+sadly:
+
+"I'm afraid there was no room for it in a be-bombed and be-shrapnelled
+world."
+
+"I suppose the still small voice of reason would not be heard amid the
+din," she sighed. "And no other papers--except the impossible
+ones--would print Randall's poems and articles."
+
+More news. This time excellent news. A publicist denied publicity is as
+useful as a German Field Marshal on a desert island. I asked what The
+Albemarle died of.
+
+"Practically all the staff deserted what Randall called the Cause and
+dribbled away into the army," she replied mournfully.
+
+As to what this precious Cause meant I did not enquire, having no wish
+to enter into an argument with the good lady which might have become
+exacerbated. Besides, she would only have parroted Randall. I had never
+yet detected her in the expression of an original idea.
+
+"Perhaps he has dribbled away too?" I suggested grimly. She was silent.
+I bent forward. "Wouldn't you like him to dribble into the great flood?"
+
+She lifted her lean shoulders despairingly.
+
+"He's the only son of a widow. Even in France and Germany they're not
+expected to fight. But if he were different I would let him go
+gladly--I'm not selfish and unpatriotic, Major," she said with an
+unaccustomed little catch in her throat--and for the very first time I
+found in her something sympathetic--"but," she continued, "it seems so
+foolish to sacrifice all his intellectual brilliance to such crudities
+as fighting, when it might be employed so much more advantageously
+elsewhere."
+
+"But, good God, my dear lady!" I cried. "Where are your wits? Where's
+your education? Where's your intelligent understanding of the daily
+papers? Where's your commonsense?"--I'm afraid I was brutally rude.
+"Can't you give a minute's thought to the situation? If there's one
+institution on earth that's shrieking aloud for intellectual
+brilliance, it's the British Army! Do you think it's a refuge for
+fools? Do you think any born imbecile is good enough to outwit the
+German Headquarters Staff? Do you think the lives of hundreds of his
+men--and perhaps the fate of thousands--can be entrusted to any
+brainless ass? An officer can't have too much brains. We're clamouring
+for brains. It's the healthy, brilliant-brained men like Randall that
+the Army's yelling for--simply yelling for," I repeated, bringing my
+hand down on the arm of my chair.
+
+Two little red spots showed on each side of her thin face.
+
+"I've never looked at it in that light before," she admitted.
+
+"Of course I agree with you," I said diplomatically, "that Randall
+would be more or less wasted as a private soldier. The heroic stuff of
+which Thomas Atkins is made is, thank God, illimitable. But intellect
+is rare--especially in the ranks of God's own chosen, the British
+officer. And Randall is of the kind we want as officers. As for a
+commission, he could get one any day. I could get one for him myself. I
+still have a few friends. He's a good-looking chap and would carry off
+a uniform. Wouldn't you be proud to see him?"
+
+A tear rolled down her cheek. I patted myself on the back for an artful
+fellow. But I had underrated her wit. To my chagrin she did not fall
+into my trap.
+
+"It's the uncertainty that's killing me," she said. And then she burst
+out disconcertingly: "Do you think he has gone off with that dreadful
+little Gedge girl?"
+
+Phyllis! I was a myriad miles from Phyllis. I was talking about real
+things. The mother, however, from her point of view, was talking of
+real things also. But how did she come to know about her son's amours?
+I thought it useless to enquire. Randall must have advertised his
+passion pretty widely. I replied:
+
+"It's extremely improbable. In the first place Phyllis Gedge isn't
+dreadful, but a remarkably sweet and modest young woman, and in the
+second place she won't have anything to do with him."
+
+"That's nonsense," she said, bridling.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because--"
+
+A gesture and a smile completed the sentence. That a common young
+person should decline to have dealings with her paragon was incredible.
+
+"I can find out in a minute," I smiled, "whether she is still in
+Wellingsford."
+
+I wheeled myself to the telephone on my writing-table and rang up Betty
+at the hospital.
+
+"Do you know where Phyllis Gedge is?"
+
+Betty's voice came. "Yes. She's here. I've just left her to come to
+speak to you. Why do you want to know?"
+
+"Never mind so long as she is safe and sound. There's no likelihood of
+her running away or eloping?"
+
+Betty's laughter rang over the wires. "What lunacy are you talking? You
+might as well ask me whether I'm going to elope with you."
+
+"I don't think you're respectful, Betty," I replied. "Good-bye."
+
+I rang off and reported Betty's side of the conversation to my visitor.
+
+"On that score," said I, "you can make your mind quite easy."
+
+"But where can the boy have gone?" she cried.
+
+"Into the world somewhere to learn wisdom," I said, and in order to
+show that I did not speak ironically, I wheeled myself to her side and
+touched her hand. "I think his swift brain has realised at last that
+all his smart knowledge hasn't brought him a little bit of wisdom worth
+a cent. I shouldn't worry. He's working out his salvation somehow,
+although he may not know it."
+
+"Do you really think so?"
+
+"I do," said I. "And if he finds that the path of wisdom leads to the
+German trenches--will you be glad or sorry?"
+
+She grappled with the question in silence for a moment or two. Then she
+broke down and, to my dismay, began to cry.
+
+"Do you suppose there's a woman in England that, in her heart of
+hearts, doesn't want her men folk to fight?"
+
+I only allow the earlier part of this chapter to stand in order to show
+how a man quite well-meaning, although a trifle irascible, may be
+wanting in Christian charity and ordinary understanding; and of how
+many tangled knots of human motive, impulse, and emotion this war is a
+solvent. You see, she defended her son to the last, adopting his own
+specious line of argument; but at the last came the breaking-point....
+
+The rest of our interview was of no great matter. I did my best to
+reassure and comfort her; and when I next saw Marigold, I said affably:
+
+"You did quite well to wake me."
+
+"I thought I was acting rightly, sir. Mr. Randall having bolted, so to
+speak, it seemed only natural that Mrs. Holmes should come to see you."
+
+"You knew that Mr. Randall had bolted and you never told me?"
+
+I glared indignantly. Marigold stiffened himself--the degree of
+stiffness beyond his ordinary inflexibility of attitude could only have
+been ascertained by a vernier, but that degree imparted an appreciable
+dignity to his demeanour.
+
+"I beg pardon, sir, but lately I've noticed that my little bits of
+local news haven't seemed to be welcome."
+
+"Marigold," said I, "don't be an ass."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"My mind," said I, "is in an awful muddle about all sorts of things
+that are going on in this town. So I should esteem it a favour if you
+would tell me at once any odds and ends of gossip you may pick up. They
+may possibly be important."
+
+"And if I have any inferences to draw from what I hear," said he
+gravely, fixing me with his clear eye, "may I take the liberty of
+acquainting you with them?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Very good, sir," said Marigold.
+
+Now what was Marigold going to draw inferences about? That was another
+puzzle. I felt myself being drawn into a fog-filled labyrinth of
+intrigue in which already groping were most of the people I knew. What
+with the mysterious relations between Betty and Boyce and Gedge, what
+with young Dacre's full exoneration of Boyce, what with young Randall's
+split with Gedge and his impeccable attitude towards Phyllis, things
+were complicated enough; Sir Anthony's revelations regarding poor
+Althea and his dark surmises concerning Randall complicated them still
+more; and now comes Mrs. Holmes to tell me of Randall's mysterious
+disappearance.
+
+"A plague on the whole lot!" I exclaimed wrathfully.
+
+I dined that evening with the Fenimores. My dear Betty was there too,
+the only other guest, looking very proud and radiant. A letter that
+morning from Willie Connor informed her that the regiment, by holding a
+trench against an overwhelming German attack, had achieved glorious
+renown. The Brigadier-General had specially congratulated the Colonel,
+and the Colonel had specially complimented Willie on the magnificent
+work of his company. Of course there was a heavy price in
+casualties--poor young Etherington, whom we all knew, for instance,
+blown to atoms--but Willie, thank God! was safe.
+
+"I wonder what would happen to me, if Willie were to get the V.C. I
+think I should go mad with pride!" she exclaimed with flushed cheeks,
+forgetful of poor young Etherington, a laughter-loving boy of twenty,
+who had been blown to atoms. It is strange how apparently callous this
+universal carnage has made the noblest and the tenderest of men and
+women. We cling passionately to the lives of those near and dear to us.
+But as to those near and dear to others, who are killed--well--we pay
+them the passing tribute not even of a tear, but only of a sign. They
+died gloriously for their country. What can we say more? If we--we
+survivors, not only invalids and women and other stay-at-homes, but
+also comrades on the field--were riven to our souls by the piteous
+tragedy of splendid youth destroyed in its flower, we could not stand
+the strain, we should weep hysterically, we should be broken folk. But
+a merciful Providence steps in and steels our hearts. The loyal hearts
+are there beating truly; and in order that they should beat truly and
+stoutly, they are given this God-sent armour.
+
+So, when we raised our glasses and drank gladly to the success of
+Willie Connor the living, and put from our thoughts Frank Etherington
+the dead, you must not account it to us as lack of human pity. You must
+be lenient in your judgment of those who are thrown into the furnace of
+a great war.
+
+Lady Fenimore smiled on Betty. "We should all be proud, my dear, if
+Captain Connor won the Victoria Cross. But you mustn't set your heart
+on it. That would be foolish. Hundreds of thousands of men deserve the
+V.C. ten times a day, and they can't all be rewarded."
+
+Betty laughed gaily at good Lady Fenimore's somewhat didactic reproof.
+"You know I'm not an absolute idiot. Fancy the poor dear coming home
+all over bandages and sticking-plaster. 'Where's your V. C?' 'I haven't
+got it.' 'Then go back at once and get it or I shan't love you.' Poor
+darling!" Suddenly the laughter in her eyes quickened into something
+very bright and beautiful. "There's not a woman in England prouder of
+her husband than I am. No V.C. could possibly reward him for what he
+has done. But I want it for myself. I'd like my babies to cut their
+teeth on it."
+
+
+When I went out to the Boer War, the most wonderful woman on earth said
+to me on parting:
+
+"Wherever you are, dear, remember that I am always with you in spirit
+and soul and heart and almost in body."
+
+And God knows she was. And when I returned a helpless cripple she
+gathered me in her brave arms on the open quay at Southampton, and
+after a moment or two of foolishness, she said:
+
+"Do you know, when I die, what you'll find engraven on my heart?"
+
+"No," said I.
+
+"Your D.S.O. ribbon."
+
+So when Betty talked about her babies and the little bronze cross, my
+eyes grew moist and I felt ridiculously sentimental.
+
+Not a word, of course, was spoken before Betty of the new light, or the
+new darkness, whichsoever you will, that had been cast on the tragedy
+of Althea. I could not do otherwise than agree with the direct-spoken
+old lady who had at once correlated the adventure in Carlisle with the
+plunge into the Wellingsford Canal. And so did Sir Anthony. They were
+very brave, however, the little man and Edith, in their dinner-talk
+with Betty. But I saw that the past fortnight had aged them both by a
+year or more. They had been stabbed in their honour, their trust, and
+their faith. It was a secret terror that stalked at their side by day
+and lay stark at their side by night. It was only when the ladies had
+left us that Sir Anthony referred to the subject.
+
+"I suppose you know that young Randall Holmes has bolted."
+
+"So his mother informed me to-day."
+
+He pricked his ears. "Does she know where he has gone to?"
+
+"No," said I.
+
+"What did I tell you?" said Sir Anthony.
+
+I held up my glass of port to the light and looked through it.
+
+"A lot of damfoolishness, my dear old friend," said I.
+
+He grew angry. A man doesn't like to be coldly called a damfool at his
+own table. He rose on his spurs, in his little red bantam way. Was I
+too much of an idiot to see the connection? As soon as the Carlisle
+business became known, this young scoundrel flies the country. Couldn't
+I see an inch before my blind nose? Forbearing to question this
+remarkable figure of speech, I asked him how so confidential a matter
+could have become known.
+
+"Everything gets known in this infernal little town," he retorted.
+
+"That's where you're mistaken," said I. "Half everything gets
+known--the unimportant half. The rest is supplied by malicious or
+prejudiced invention."
+
+We discussed the question after the futile way of men until we went
+into the drawing-room, where Betty played and sang to us until it was
+time to go home.
+
+Marigold was about to lift me into the two-seater when Betty, who had
+been lurking in her car a little way off, ran forward.
+
+"Would it bore you if I came in for a quarter of an hour?"
+
+"Bore me, my dear?" said I. "Of course not."
+
+So a short while afterwards we were comfortably established in my
+library.
+
+"You rang me up to-day about Phyllis Gedge."
+
+"I did," said I.
+
+She lit a cigarette and seated herself on the fender-stool. She has an
+unconscious knack of getting into easy, loose-limbed attitudes. I said
+admiringly:
+
+"Do you know you're a remarkably well-favoured young person?"
+
+And as soon as I said it, I realised what a tremendous factor Betty was
+in my circumscribed life. What could I do without her sweet intimacy?
+If Willie Connor's Territorial regiment, like so many others, had been
+ordered out to India, and she had gone with him, how blank would be the
+days and weeks and months! I thanked God for granting me her
+graciousness.
+
+She smiled and blew me a kiss. "That's very gratifying to know," she
+said. "But it has nothing to do with Phyllis."
+
+"Well, what about Phyllis?"
+
+"I'll tell you," she replied.
+
+And she told me. Her story was not of world-shaking moment, but it
+interested me. I have since learned its substantial correctness and am
+able to add some supplementary details.
+
+You see, things were like this.... In order to start I must go back
+some years.... I have always had a warm corner in my heart for little
+Phyllis Gedge, ever since she was a blue-eyed child. My wife had a
+great deal to do with it. She was a woman of dauntless courage and
+clear vision into the heart of things. I find many a reflection of her
+in Betty. Perhaps that is why I love Betty so dearly.
+
+Some strange, sweet fool feminine of gentle birth and deplorable
+upbringing fell in love with a vehemently socialistic young artisan by
+the name of Gedge and married him. Her casual but proud-minded family
+wiped her off the proud family slate. She brought Phyllis into the
+world and five years afterwards found herself be-Gedged out of
+existence. They were struggling people in those days, and before her
+death my wife used to employ her, when she could, for household sewing
+and whatnot. And tiny Phyllis, in a childless home, became a petted
+darling. When my great loneliness came upon me, it was a solace to have
+the little dainty prattling thing to spend an occasional hour in my
+company. Gedge, an excellent workman, set up as a contractor. He took
+my modest home under his charge. A leaky tap, a broken pane, a new set
+of bookshelves, a faulty drainpipe--all were matters for Gedge. I
+abhorred his politics but I admired his work, and I continued, with
+Mrs. Marigold's motherly aid, to make much of Phyllis.
+
+Gedge, for queer motives of his own, sent her to as good a school as he
+could afford, as a matter of fact an excellent school, one where she
+met girls of a superior social class and learned educated speech and
+graceful manners. Her holidays, poor child, were somewhat dreary, for
+her father, an anti-social creature, had scarce a friend in the town.
+Save for here and there an invitation to tea from Betty or myself, she
+did not cross the threshold of a house in Wellingsford. But to my
+house, all through her schooldays and afterwards, Phyllis came, and on
+such occasions Mrs. Marigold prepared teas of the organic lusciousness
+dear to the heart of a healthy girl.
+
+Now, here comes the point of all this palaver. Young Master Randall
+used also to come to my house. Now and then by chance they met there.
+They were good boy and girl friends.
+
+I want to make it absolutely clear that her acquaintance with Randall
+was not any vulgar picking-up-in-the-street affair.
+
+When she left school, her father made her his book-keeper, secretary,
+confidential clerk. Anybody turning into the office to summon Gedge to
+repair a roof or a burst boiler had a preliminary interview with
+Phyllis. Young Randall, taking over the business of the upkeep of his
+mother's house, gradually acquired the habit of such preliminary
+interviews. The whole imbroglio was very simple, very natural. They had
+first met at my own rich cake and jam-puff bespread tea-table. When
+Randall went into the office to speak, presumably, about a defective
+draught in the kitchen range, and really about things quite different,
+the ethics of the matter depended entirely on Randall's point of view.
+Their meetings had been contrived by no unmaidenly subterfuge on the
+part of Phyllis. She knew him to be above her in social station. She
+kept him off as long as she could. But que voulez-vous? Randall was a
+very good-looking, brilliant, and fascinating fellow; Phyllis was a
+dear little human girl. And it is the human way of such girls to fall
+in love with such fascinating, brilliant fellows. I not only hold a
+brief for Phyllis, but I am the judge, too, and having heard all the
+evidence, I deliver a verdict overwhelmingly in her favour. Given the
+circumstances as I have stated them, she was bound to fall in love with
+Randall, and in doing so committed not the little tiniest speck of a
+peccadillo.
+
+My first intimation of tender relations between them came from my sight
+of them in February in Wellings Park. Since then, of course, I have
+much which I will tell you as best I may.
+
+So now for Betty's story, confirmed and supplemented by what I have
+learned later. But before plunging into the matter, I must say that
+when Betty had ended I took up my little parable and told her of all
+that Randall had told me concerning his repudiation of Gedge. And Betty
+listened with a curiously stony face and said nothing.
+
+When Betty puts on that face of granite I am quite unhappy. That is why
+I have always hated the statues of Egypt. There is something beneath
+their cold faces that you can't get at.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Gedge bitterly upbraided his daughter, both for her desertion of his
+business and her criminal folly in abandoning it so as to help mend the
+shattered bodies of fools and knaves who, by joining the forces of
+militarism, had betrayed the Sacred Cause of the International
+Solidarity of Labour. His first ground for complaint was scarcely
+tenable; with his dwindling business the post of clerk had dwindled
+into a sinecure. To sit all day at the receipt of imaginary custom is
+not a part fitted for a sane and healthy young human being. Still, from
+Gedge's point of view her defection was a grievance; but that she could
+throw in her lot openly with the powers of darkness was nothing less
+than an outrage.
+
+I suppose, in a kind of crabbed way, the crabbed fellow was fond of
+Phyllis. She was pretty. She had dainty tricks of dress. She flitted,
+an agreeable vision, about his house. He liked to hear her play the
+piano, not because he had any ear for music, but because it tickled his
+vanity to reflect that he, the agricultural labourer's son and
+apprentice to a village carpenter, was the possessor both of a Broadway
+Grand and of a daughter who, entirely through his efforts, had learned
+to play on it. Like most of his political type, he wallowed in his own
+peculiar snobbery. But of anything like companionship between father
+and daughter there had existed very little. While railing, wherever he
+found ears into which to rail, against the vicious luxury and sordid
+shallowness of the upper middle classes, his instinctive desire to
+shine above his poorer associates had sent Phyllis to an upper middle
+class school. Now Gedge had a certain amount of bookish and political
+intelligence. Phyllis inheriting the intellectual equipment of her
+sentimental fool of a mother, had none, Oh! she had a vast fund of
+ordinary commonsense. Of that I can assure you. A bit of hard brain
+fibre from her father had counteracted any over-sentimental folly in
+the maternal heritage. And she came back from school a very ladylike
+little person. If pressed, she could reel off all kinds of artificial
+scraps of knowledge, like a dear little parrot. But she had never heard
+of Karl Marx and didn't want to hear. She had a vague notion that
+International Socialism was a movement in favour of throwing bombs at
+monarchs and of seizing the wealth of the rich in order to divide it
+among the poor--and she regarded it as abominable. When her father gave
+her Fabian Society tracts to read, he might just as well, for all her
+understanding of the argument, set her down to a Treatise on the
+Infinitesimal Calculus. Her brain stood blank before such abstract
+disquisitions. She loved easily comprehended poetry and novels that
+made her laugh or cry and set her mind dancing round the glowing
+possibilities of life; all disastrous stuff abhorred by the
+International Socialist, to whom the essential problems of existence
+are of no interest whatever. So, after a few futile attempts to darken
+her mind, Gedge put her down as a mere fool woman, and ceased to bother
+his head about her intellectual development. That came to him quite
+naturally. There is no Turk more contemptuous of his womankind's
+political ideas than the Gedges of our enlightened England. But on
+other counts she was a distinct asset. He regarded her with immense
+pride, as a more ornamental adjunct to his house than any other county
+builder and contractor could display, and, recognising that she was
+possessed of some low feminine cunning in the way of adding up figures
+and writing letters, made use of her in his office as general clerical
+factotum.
+
+When the war broke out, he discovered, to his horror, that Phyllis
+actually had political ideas--unshakable, obstinate ideas opposed to
+his own--and that he had been nourishing in his bosom a viperous
+patriot. Phyllis, for her part, realised with equal horror the
+practical significance of her father's windy theories. When Randall,
+who had stolen her heart, took to visiting the house, in order, as far
+as she could make out, to talk treason with her father, the strain of
+the situation grew more than she could bear. She fled to Betty for
+advice. Betty promptly stepped in and whisked her off to the hospital.
+
+It was on the morning on which Randall interviewed me in the garden,
+the morning after he had broken with Gedge, that Phyllis, having a
+little off-time, went home. She found her father in the office making
+out a few bills. He thrust forward his long chin and aggressive beard
+and scowled at her.
+
+"Oh, it's you, is it? Come at last where your duty calls you, eh?"
+
+"I always come when I can, father," she replied.
+
+She bent down and kissed his cheek. He caught her roughly round the
+waist and, leaning back in his chair, looked up at her sourly.
+
+"How long are you going on defying me like this?"
+
+She tried to disengage herself, but his arm was too strong. "Oh,
+father," she said, rather wearily, "don't let us go over this old
+argument again."
+
+"But suppose I find some new argument? Suppose I send you packing
+altogether, refuse to contribute further to your support. What then?"
+
+She started at the threat but replied valiantly: "I should have to earn
+my own living."
+
+"How are you going to do it?"
+
+"There are heaps of ways."
+
+He laughed. "There ain't; as you'd soon find out. They don't even pay
+you for being scullery-maid to a lot of common soldiers."
+
+She protested against that view of her avocation. In the perfectly
+appointed Wellingsford Hospital she had no scullery work. She was a
+probationer, in training as a nurse. He still gripped her.
+
+"The particular kind of tomfoolery you are up to doesn't matter. We
+needn't quarrel. I've another proposition to put before you--much more
+to your fancy, I think. You like this Mr. Randall Holmes, don't you?"
+
+She shivered a little and flushed deep red. Her father had never
+touched on the matter before. She said, straining away:
+
+"I don't want to talk about Mr. Holmes."
+
+"But I do. Come, my dear. In this life there must be always a certain
+amount of give and take. I'm not the man to drive a one-sided bargain.
+I'll make you a fair offer--as between father and daughter. I'll wipe
+out all that's past. In leaving me like this, when misfortune has come
+upon me, you've been guilty of unfilial conduct--no one can deny it. But
+I'll overlook everything, forgive you fully and take you to my heart
+again and leave you free to do whatever you like without interfering
+with your opinions, if you'll promise me one thing--"
+
+"I know what you're going to say." She twisted round on him swiftly.
+"I'll promise at once. I'll never marry Mr. Holmes. I've already told him
+I won't marry him."
+
+Surprise relaxed his grip. She took swift advantage and sheered away to
+the other side of the table. He rose and brought down his hand with a
+thump.
+
+"You refused him? Why, you silly little baggage, my condition is that
+you should marry him. You're sweet on him aren't you?"
+
+"I detest him," cried Phyllis. "Why should I marry him?"
+
+Her eyes, young and pure, divined some sordid horror behind eyes crafty
+and ignoble. Once before she had had such a fleeting, uncomprehended
+vision into the murky depths of the man's soul. This was some time ago.
+In the routine of her secretarial duties she had, one morning, opened
+and read a letter, not marked "Private" or "Personal," whose tenor she
+could scarcely understand. When she handed it to her father, he smiled,
+vouchsafed a specious explanation, and looked at her in just the same
+crafty and ignoble fashion, and she shrank away frightened. The matter
+kept her awake for a couple of nights. Then, for sheer easing of her
+heart, she went to her adored Betty Fairfax, her Lady Patroness and
+Mother Confessor, who, being wise and strong, and possessing the power
+of making her kind eyes unfathomable, laughed, bade her believe her
+father's explanation, and sent her away comforted. The incident passed
+out of her mind. But now memory smote her, as she shrank from her
+father's gaze and the insincere smile on his thin lips.
+
+"For one thing," he replied after a pause, pulling his straggly beard,
+"your poor dear mother was a lady, and if she had lived she would have
+wanted you to marry a gentleman. It's for her sake I've given you an
+education that fits you to consort with gentlefolk--just for her
+sake--don't make any mistake about it, for I've always hated the breed.
+If I've violated my principles in order to meet her wishes, I think you
+ought to meet them too. You wouldn't like to marry a small tradesman or
+a working man, would you?"
+
+"I'm not going to marry anybody," cried Phyllis. She was only a pink
+and white, very ordinary little girl. I have no idealisations or
+illusions concerning Phyllis. But she had a little fine steel of
+character running through her. It flashed on Gedge.
+
+"I don't want to marry anybody," she declared. "But I'd sooner marry a
+bricklayer who was fighting for his country than a fine gentleman like
+Mr. Holmes who wasn't. I'd sooner die," she cried passionately.
+
+"Then go and die and be damned to you!" snarled Gedge, planting himself
+noisily in his chair. "I've no use for khaki-struck drivelling idiots.
+I've no use for patriots. Bah! Damn patriots! The upper classes are out
+for all they can get, and they befool the poor imbecile working man
+with all their highfalutin phrases to get it for them at the cost of
+his blood. I've no use for them, I tell you. And I've no use either for
+undutiful daughters. I've no use for young women who blow hot and cold.
+Haven't I seen you with the fellow? Do you think I'm a blind dodderer?
+Do you think I haven't kept an eye on you? Haven't I seen you blowing
+as hot as you please? And now because he refuses to be a blinking idiot
+and have his guts blown out in this war of fools and knaves and
+capitalists, you blast him like a three-farthing iceberg."
+
+Everything in her that was tender, maidenly, English, shrank lacerated.
+But the steel held her. She put both her hands on the table and bent
+over towards him.
+
+"But, father, except that he's a gentleman, you haven't told me why you
+want me to marry Mr. Holmes."
+
+He fidgeted with his fingers. "Haven't you a spark of affection for me
+left?"
+
+She said dutifully, "Yes, father."
+
+"I want you to marry him. I've set my heart on it. It has been the one
+bright hope in my life for months. Can't you marry him because you love
+me?"
+
+"One generally marries because one loves the man one's going to marry,"
+said Phyllis.
+
+"But you do love him," cried Gedge. "Either you're just a wanton little
+hussy or you must care for the fellow."
+
+"I don't. I hate him. And I don't want to have anything more to do with
+him." The tears came. "He's a pro-German and I won't have anything to
+do with pro-Germans."
+
+She fled precipitately from the office into the street and made a blind
+course to the hospital; feeling, in dumb misery, that she had committed
+the unforgivable sin of casting off her father and, at the same time,
+that she had made stalwart proclamation of her faith. If ever a good,
+loyal little heart was torn into piteous shreds, that little heart was
+Phyllis's.
+
+In the bare X-ray room of the hospital, which happened to be vacant,
+Betty sat on the one straight-backed wooden chair, while a weeping
+damsel on the uncarpeted floor sobbed in her lap and confessed her sins
+and sought absolution.
+
+Of course Gedge was a fool. If I, or any wise, diplomatic, tactful
+person like myself, had found it necessary to tackle a young woman on
+the subject of a matrimonial alliance, we should have gone about the
+business in quite a different way. But what could you expect from an
+anarchical Turk like Gedge?
+
+Phyllis, not knowing whether she were outcast and disinherited or not,
+found, of course, a champion in Betty, who, in her spacious manner,
+guaranteed her freedom from pecuniary worries for the rest of her life.
+But Phyllis was none the less profoundly unhappy, and it took a whole
+convoy of wounded to restore her to cheerfulness. You can't attend to a
+poor brave devil grinning with pain, while a surgeon pokes a six-inch
+probe down a sinus in search of bits of bone or shrapnel, and be
+acutely conscious of your own two-penny-half-penny little miseries.
+Many a heartache, in this wise, has been cured in the Houses of Pain.
+
+Now, nothing much would have happened, I suppose, if Phyllis, driven
+from the hospital by superior decree that she should take fresh air and
+exercise, had not been walking some days afterwards across the common
+by the canal. Bordering the latter, Wellingsford has an avenue of
+secular chestnuts of which it is inordinately proud. Dispersed here and
+there are wooden benches sanctified by generations of lovers. Carven
+thereon are the presentments, often interlaced, of hearts that have
+long since ceased to beat; lonely hearts transfixed by arrows, which in
+all probability survived the wound and inspired the owner to the
+parentage of a dozen children; initials once, individually, the record
+of many a romance, but now, collectively, merely an alphabet run mad.
+
+Phyllis entered the avenue, practically deserted at midday, and rested,
+a pathetically lonely little grey-uniformed figure on one of the
+benches. On the common, some distance behind her, stretched the lines
+of an Army Service train, with mules and waggons, and here and there a
+tent. In front of her, beyond the row of trees, was the towing-path; an
+old horse in charge of a boy jogged by, pulling something of which only
+a moving stove pipe like a periscope was visible above the bank.
+Overhead the chestnuts rioted in broad leaf and pink and white blossom,
+showing starry bits of blue sky and admitting arrow shafts of spring
+sunshine. A dirty white mongrel dog belonging to the barge came up to
+her, sniffed, and made friends; then, at last obeying a series of
+whistles from the boy, looked at her apologetically and trotted off.
+Her gaze followed him wistfully, for he was a very human dear dog, and
+with a sympathetic understanding of all her difficulties in his deep
+topaz eyes. After that she had as companions a couple of butterflies
+and a bumble-bee and a perky, portly robin who hopped within an inch of
+her feet and looked up at her sideways out of his hard little eye (so
+different from the dog's) with the expression of one who would say:
+"The most beauteous and delectable worm I have ever encountered. If I
+were a bit bigger, say the size of the roc of the Arabian Nights, what
+a dainty morsel you would make! In the meantime can't you shed
+something of yourself for my entertainment like others, though grosser,
+of your species?" She laughed at the cold impudence of the creature,
+just as she had smiled at the butterflies and the bumble-bee. She
+surrendered herself to the light happiness of the moment. It was good
+to escape for an hour from the rigid lines of beds and the pale
+suffering faces and the eternal faint odour of disinfectants, into all
+this greenery and the fellowship of birds and beasts unconscious of
+war. She remembered that once, in the pocket of her cloak, there had
+been a biscuit or two. Very slowly and carefully, her mind fixed on the
+robin, she fished for crumbs and very carefully and gently she fed the
+impudent, stomach-centred fellow. She had attracted him to the end of
+the seat, when, whizz and clatter, came a motor cycle down the avenue,
+and off in a terrible scare flew the robin; the idyll of tree and beast
+and birds suffered instant disruption and Randall Holmes, in his canvas
+suit, stood before her.
+
+He said:
+
+"Good morning, Phyllis."
+
+She said, with cold politeness: "Good morning." But she asked the
+spring morning in dumb piteousness, "Oh, why has he come? Why has he
+come to spoil it all?"
+
+He sat down by her side. "This is the luckiest chance I've ever
+had--finding you here," he said. "You've had all my letters, haven't
+you?"
+
+"Yes," she answered, "and I've torn them all up."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I didn't want them," she flashed on him: "I've destroyed them
+without reading them."
+
+He flushed angrily. Apart from the personal affront, the fact that the
+literary products of a poet, precious and, in this case, sincere,
+should have been destroyed, unread, was an anti-social outrage.
+
+"If it didn't please a woman to believe in God," he said, "and God came
+in Person and stood in front of her, she would run out of the room and
+call upon somebody to come and shoot Him for a burglar, just to prove
+she was right."
+
+Phyllis was shocked. Her feminine mind pounced on the gross literalness
+of his rhetorical figure.
+
+"I've never heard anything more blasphemous and horrible," she
+exclaimed, moving to her end of the bench. "Putting yourself in the
+position of the Almighty! Oh!" she flung out her hand. "Don't speak to
+me."
+
+In spite of the atheistical Gedge, Phyllis believed in God and Jesus
+Christ and the Ten Commandments. She also believed in a host of other
+simple things, such as Goodness and Truth, Virtue and Patriotism. The
+arguments and theories and glosses that her father and Randall wove
+about them appeared to her candid mind as meaningless arabesques. She
+could not see how all the complications concerning the elementary
+canons of faith and conduct could arise. She appreciated Randall's
+intellectual gifts; his power of weaving magical words into rhyme
+fascinated her; she was childlike in her wonder at his command of the
+printed page; when he revealed to her the beauty of things, as the
+rogue had a pretty knack of doing, her nature thrilled responsive. He
+gave her a thousand glimpses into a new world, and she loved him for
+it. But when he talked lightly of sacred matters, such as God and Duty,
+he ran daggers into her heart. She almost hated him.
+
+He had to expend much eloquence and persuasion to induce her to listen
+to him. He had no wish to break any of the Commandments, especially the
+Third. He professed penitence. But didn't she see that her treatment of
+him was driving him into a desperate unbelief in God and man? When a
+woman accepted a man's love she accepted many responsibilities.
+
+Phyllis stonily denied acceptance.
+
+"I've refused it. You've asked me to marry you and I told you I
+wouldn't. And I won't."
+
+"You're mixing up two things," he said, with a smile. "Love and
+marriage. Many people love and don't marry, just as many marry and
+don't love. Now once you did tell me that you loved me, and so you
+accepted my love. There's no getting out of it. I've given you
+everything I've got, and you can't throw it away. The question is--what
+are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with me?"
+
+His sophistries frightened her; but she cut through them.
+
+"Isn't it rather a question of what you're going to do with yourself?"
+
+"If you give me up I don't care a hang what becomes of me." He came
+very near and his voice was dangerously soft. "Phyllis dear, I do love
+you with all my heart. Why won't you marry me?"
+
+But a hateful scene rushed to her memory. She drew herself up.
+
+"Why are my father and you persecuting me to marry you?"
+
+"Your father?" he interrupted, in astonishment. "When?"
+
+She named the day, Wednesday of last week. In desperation she told him
+what had happened. The poor child was fighting for her soul against
+great odds.
+
+"It's a conspiracy to get me round to your way of thinking. You want me
+to be a pro-German like yourselves, and I won't be a pro-German, and I
+think it wicked even to talk to pro-Germans!"
+
+She rose, all sobs, fluster, and heroism, and walked away. He strode a
+step or two and stood in front of her with his hands on her shoulders.
+
+"I've never spoken to your father in that way about you. Never. Not a
+word has passed my lips about my caring for you. On my word of honour.
+On Tuesday night I left your father's house never to go there again. I
+told him so."
+
+She writhed out of his grasp and spread the palms of her hands against
+him. "Please don't," she said, and seeing that she stood her ground, he
+made no further attempt to touch her. The austerity of her grey nurse's
+uniform gave a touch of pathos to her childish, blue-eyed comeliness
+and her pretty attitude of defiance.
+
+"I suppose," she said, "he was too pro-German even for you."
+
+He looked at her for a long time disconcertingly: so disconcertingly
+and with so much pain and mysterious hesitation in his eyes as to set
+even Phyllis's simple mind a-wondering and to make her emphasize it, in
+her report of the matter to Betty, as extraordinary and frightening. It
+seemed, so she explained, in her innocent way, that he had discovered
+something horrible about her father which he shrank from telling her.
+But if they had quarrelled so bitterly, why had her father the very
+next day urged her to marry him? The answer came in a ghastly flash.
+She recoiled as though in the presence of defilement. If she married
+Randall, his lips would be closed against her father. That is what her
+father had meant. The vague, disquieting suspicions of years that he
+might not have the same standards of uprightness as other men, attained
+an awful certainty. She remembered the incident of the private letter
+and the look in her father's eyes.... Finally she revolted. Her soul
+grew sick. She took no heed of Randall's protest. She only saw that she
+was to be the cloak to cover up something unclean between them. At a
+moment like this no woman pretends to have a sense of justice. Randall
+had equal share with her father in an unknown baseness. She hated him
+as he stood there so strong and handsome. And she hated herself for
+having loved him.
+
+At last he said with a smile:
+
+"Yes, That's just it."
+
+"What?"
+
+She had forgotten the purport of her last remark.
+
+"He was a bit too--well, not too pro-German--but too anti-English for
+me. You have got hold of the wrong end of the stick all the time,
+Phyllis dear. I'm no more pro-German than you are. Perhaps I see things
+more clearly than you do. I've been trained to an intellectual view of
+human phenomena."
+
+Her little pink and white face hardened until it looked almost ugly.
+The unpercipient young man continued:
+
+"And so I take my stand on a position that you must accept on trust. I
+am English to the backbone. You can't possibly dream that I'm not.
+Come, dear, let me try to explain."
+
+His arm curved as if to encircle her waist. She sprang away.
+
+"Don't touch me. I couldn't bear it. There's something about you I
+can't understand."
+
+In her attitude, too, he found a touch of the incomprehensible. He
+said, however, with a sneer:
+
+"If I were swaggering about in a cheap uniform, you'd find me
+simplicity itself."
+
+She caught at his opening, desperately.
+
+"Yes. At any rate I'd find a man. A man who wasn't afraid to fight for
+his country."
+
+"Afraid!"
+
+"Yes," she cried, and her blue eyes blazed. "Afraid. That's why I can't
+marry you. I'd rather die than marry you. I've never told you. I
+thought you'd guess. I'm an English girl and I can't marry a coward--a
+coward--a coward--a coward."
+
+Her voice ended on a foolish high note, for Randall, very white, had
+seized her by the wrist.
+
+"You little fool," he cried. "You'll live to repent what you've said."
+
+He released her, mounted his motor bicycle, and rode away. Phyllis
+watched him disappear up the avenue; then she walked rather blindly
+back to the bench and sat down among the ruins of a black and
+abominable world. After a while the friendly robin, seeing her so
+still, perched first on the back of the bench and then hopped on the
+seat by her side, and cocking his head, looked at her enquiringly out
+of his little hard eye, as though he would say:
+
+"My dear child, what are you making all this fuss about? Isn't it early
+June? Isn't the sun shining? Aren't the chestnuts in flower? Don't you
+see that bank of dark blue cloud over there which means a nice
+softening rain in the night and a jolly good breakfast of worms in the
+morning? What's wrong with this exquisitely perfect universe?"
+
+And Phyllis--on her own confession--with an angry gesture sent him
+scattering up among the cool broad leaves and cried:
+
+"Get away, you hateful little beast!"
+
+And having no use for robins and trees and spring and sunshine and such
+like intolerable ironies, a white little wisp of a nurse left them all
+to their complacent riot and went back to the hospital.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+A few days after this, Mrs. Holmes sent me under cover a telegram which
+she had received from her son. It was dispatched from Aberdeen and ran:
+"Perfectly well. Don't worry about me. Love. Randall." And that was all
+I heard of him for some considerable time. What he was doing in
+Aberdeen, a city remote from his sphere of intellectual, political, and
+social activities, Heaven and himself alone knew. I must confess that I
+cared very little. He was alive, he was well, and his mother had no
+cause for anxiety. Phyllis had definitely sent him packing. There was
+no reason for me to allow speculation concerning him to keep me awake
+of nights.
+
+I had plenty to think about besides Randall. They made me Honorary
+Treasurer of the local Volunteer Training Corps which had just been
+formed. The members not in uniform wore a red brassard with "G.R." in
+black. The facetious all over the country called them "Gorgeous
+Wrecks." I must confess that on their first few parades they did not
+look very military. Their composite paunchiness, beardedness,
+scragginess, spectacledness, impressed me unfavourably when, from my
+Hosea-carriage, I first beheld them. Marigold, who was one of the first
+to join and to leap into the grey uniform, tried to swagger about as an
+instructor. But as the little infantry drill he had ever learned had
+all been changed since the Boer War, I gathered an unholy joy from
+seeing him hang like a little child on the lips of the official
+Sergeant Instructor of the corps. In the evenings he and I mugged up
+the text-books together; and with the aid of the books I put him
+through all the new physical exercises. I was a privileged person. I
+could take my own malicious pleasure out of Marigold's enforced
+humility, but I would be hanged if anybody else should. Sergeant
+Marigold should instruct those volunteers as he once instructed the
+recruits of his own battery. So I worked with him like a nigger until
+there was nothing in the various drills of a modern platoon that he
+didn't know, and nothing that he could not do with the mathematical
+precision of his splendid old training.
+
+One night during the thick of it Betty came in. I waved her into a
+corner of the library out of the way, and she smoked cigarettes and
+looked on at the performance. Now I come to think of it, we must have
+afforded an interesting spectacle. There was the gaunt, one-eyed,
+preposterously wigged image clad in undervest and shrunken yellow
+flannel trousers which must have dated from his gym-instructor days in
+the nineties, violently darting down on his heels, springing up,
+kicking out his legs, shooting out his arms, like an inspired
+marionette, all at the words of command shouted in fervent earnest by a
+shrivelled up little cripple in a wheel-chair.
+
+When it was over--the weather was warm--he passed a curved forefinger
+over his dripping forehead, cut himself short in an instinctive action
+and politely dried his hand on the seat of his trousers. Then his one
+eye gleamed homage at Betty and he drew himself up to attention.
+
+"Do you mind, sir, if I send in Ellen with the drinks?"
+
+I nodded. "You'll do very well with a drink yourself, Marigold."
+
+"It's thirsty work and weather, sir."
+
+He made a queer movement of his hand--it would have been idiotic of him
+to salute--but he had just been dismissed from military drill, so his
+hand went up to the level of his breast and--right about turn--he
+marched out of the room. Betty rose from her corner and threw herself
+in her usual impetuous way on the ground by my chair.
+
+"Do you know," she cried, "you two dear old things were too funny for
+words."
+
+But as I saw that her eyes were foolishly moist, I was not as offended
+as I might have been by her perception of the ludicrous.
+
+When I said that I had plenty to think about besides Randall, I meant
+to string off a list. My prolixity over the Volunteer Training Corps
+came upon me unawares. I wanted to show you that my time was fairly
+well occupied. I was Chairman of our town Belgian Relief Committee. I
+was a member of our County Territorial Association and took over a good
+deal of special work connected with one of our battalions that was
+covering itself with glory and little mounds topped with white crosses
+at the front. If you think I lived a Tom-tabby, tea-party sort of life,
+you are quite mistaken. If the War Office could have its way, it would
+have lashed me in red tape, gagged me with Regulations, and
+sealing-waxed me up in my bed-room. And there are thousands of us who
+have shaken our fists under the nose of the War Office and shouted,
+"All your blighting, Man-with-the-Mudrake officialdom shan't prevent us
+from serving our country." And it hasn't! The very Government itself,
+in spite of its monumental efforts, has not been able to shackle us
+into inertia or drug us into apathy. Such non-combatant francs-tireurs
+in England have done a power of good work.
+
+And then, of course, there was the hospital which, in one way or
+another, took up a good deal of my time.
+
+I was reposing in the front garden one late afternoon in mid-June,
+after a well-filled day, when a car pulled up at the gate, in which
+were Betty (at the wheel) and a wounded soldier, in khaki, his cap
+perched on top of a bandaged head. I don't know whether it is usual for
+young women in nurse's uniform to career about the country driving
+wounded men in motor cars, but Betty did it. She cared very little for
+the usual. She came in, leaving the man in the car, and crossed the
+lawn, flushed and bright-eyed, a refreshing picture for a tired man.
+
+"We're in a fix up at the hospital," she announced as soon as she was
+in reasonable speaking distance, "and I want you to get us out of it."
+
+Sitting on the grass, she told me the difficulty. A wounded soldier,
+discharged from some distant hospital, and home now on sick furlough
+before rejoining his depot, had been brought into the hospital with a
+broken head. The modern improvements on vinegar and brown paper having
+been applied, the man was now ready to leave. I interrupted with the
+obvious question. Why couldn't he go to his own home? It appeared that
+the prospect terrified him. On his arrival, at midday, after eight
+months' absence in France, he found that his wife had sold or pawned
+practically everything in the place, and that the lady herself was in
+the violent phase of intoxication. His natural remonstrances not being
+received with due meekness, a quarrel arose from which the lady emerged
+victorious. She laid her poor husband out with a poker. They could not
+keep him in hospital. He shied at an immediate renewal of conjugal
+life. He had no relations or intimate friends in Wellingsford. Where
+was the poor devil to go?
+
+"I thought I might bring him along here and let the Marigolds look
+after him for a week or two."
+
+"Indeed," said I. "I admire your airy ways."
+
+"I know you do," she replied, "and that's why I've brought him."
+
+"Is that the fellow?"
+
+She laughed. "You're right first time. How did you guess?" She
+scrambled to her feet. "I'll fetch him in."
+
+She fetched him in, a haggard, broad-shouldered man with a back like a
+sloping plank of wood. He wore corporal's stripes. He saluted and stood
+at rigid attention.
+
+"This is Tufton," said Betty.
+
+I despatched her in search of Marigold. To Tufton I said, regarding him
+with what, without vanity, I may term an expert eye:
+
+"You're an old soldier."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Guards?"
+
+His eyes brightened. "Yes, sir. Seven years in the Grenadiers. Then two
+years out. Rejoined on outbreak of war, sir."
+
+I rubbed my hands together in satisfaction. "I'm an old soldier too,"
+said I.
+
+"So Sister told me, sir."
+
+A delicate shade in the man's tone and manner caught at my heart.
+Perhaps it was the remotest fraction of a glance at my rug-covered
+legs, the pleased recognition of my recognition, ... perhaps some queer
+freemasonry of the old Army.
+
+"You seem to be in trouble, boy," said I. "Tell me all about it and
+I'll do what I can to help you."
+
+So he told his story. After his discharge from the Army he had looked
+about for a job and found one at the mills in Wellingsford, where he
+had met the woman, a mill-hand, older than himself, whom he had
+married. She had been a bit extravagant and fond of her glass, but when
+he left her to rejoin the regiment, he had had no anxieties. She did
+not write often, not being very well educated and finding difficult the
+composition of letters. A machine gun bullet had gone through his
+chest, just missing his lung. He had been two months in hospital. He
+had written to her announcing his arrival. She had not met him at the
+station. He had tramped home with his kit-bag on his back--and the
+cracked head was his reception. He supposed she had had a lot of easy
+money and had given way to temptation--and----
+
+"And what's a man to do, sir?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know, Corporal," said I. "It's damned hard lines on
+you. But, at any rate, you can look upon this as your home for as long
+as you like to stay."
+
+"Thank you kindly, sir," said he.
+
+I turned and beckoned to Betty and Marigold, who had been hovering out
+of earshot by the house door. They approached.
+
+"I want to have a word with Marigold," I said.
+
+Tufton saluted and went off with Betty. Sergeant Marigold stood stiff
+as a ramrod on the spot which Tufton had occupied.
+
+"I suppose Mrs. Connor," said I, "has told you all about this poor
+chap?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Marigold.
+
+"We must put him up comfortably. That's quite simple. The only thing
+that worries me is this--supposing his wife comes around here raising
+Cain--?"
+
+Marigold held me with his one glittering eye--an eye glittering with
+the pride of the gunner and the pride (more chastened) of the husband.
+
+"You can leave all that, sir, to Mrs. Marigold. If she isn't more than
+a match for any Grenadier Guardsman's wife, then I haven't been married
+to her for the last twenty years."
+
+Nothing more was to be said. Marigold marched the man off, leaving me
+alone with Betty.
+
+"I'm going to get in before Mrs. Marigold," she remarked, with a smile.
+"I'm off now to interview Madam Tufton and bring back her husband's
+kit."
+
+In some ways it is a pity Betty isn't a man. She would make a splendid
+soldier. I don't think such a thing as fear, physical, moral, or
+spiritual, lurks in any recess of Betty's nature. Not every young woman
+would brave, without trepidation, a virago who had cracked a
+hard-bitten warrior's head with a poker.
+
+"Marigold and I will come with you," I said.
+
+She protested. It was nonsense. Suppose Mrs. Tufton went for Marigold
+and spoiled his beauty? No. It was too dangerous. No place for men. We
+argued. At last I blew the police-whistle which I wear on the end of my
+watch-chain. Marigold came hurrying out of the house.
+
+"Mrs. Connor is going to take us for a run," said I.
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"Your blood be on your own heads," said Betty.
+
+We talked a while of what had happened. Vague stories of the
+demoralization of wives left alone with a far greater weekly income
+than they had ever handled before had reached our ears. We had read
+them in the newspapers. But till now we had never come across an
+example. The woman in question belonged to a bad type. Various dregs
+from large cities drift into the mills around little country towns and
+are the despair of Mayors, curates, and other local authorities. We
+genteel folk regarded them as a plague-spot in the midst of us.
+
+I remember the scandal when the troops first came in August, 1914, to
+Wellingsford--a scandal put a summary end to, after a fortnight's
+grinning amazement at our country morals, by the troops themselves.
+Tufton had married into an undesirable community.
+
+"We're wasting time," said Betty.
+
+So Marigold put me into the back of the car and mounted into the front
+seat by Betty, and we started.
+
+Flowery End was the poetic name of the mean little row of red-brick
+houses inhabited exclusively by Mrs. Tufton and her colleagues at the
+mills. To get to it you turn off the High Street by the Post Office,
+turn to the right down Avonmore Avenue, and then to the left. There you
+find Flowery End, and, fifty yards further on, the main road to Godbury
+crosses it at right angles. Betty, who lived on the Godbury Road, was
+quite familiar with Flowery End. Mid-June did its best to justify the
+name. Here and there, in the tiny patches of front garden, a tenant
+tried to help mid-June by cultivating wall-flowers and geraniums and
+snapdragon and a rose or two; but the majority cared as much for the
+beauty of mid-June as for the cleanliness of their children,--an
+unsightly brood, with any slovenly rags about their bodies, and the
+circular crust of last week's treacle on their cheeks. In his
+abominable speeches before the war Gedge used to point out these
+children to unsympathetic Wellingsfordians as the Infant Martyrs of an
+Accursed Capitalism.
+
+Betty pulled up the car at Number Seven. Marigold sprang out, helped
+her down, and would have walked up the narrow flagged path to knock at
+the door. But she declined his aid, and he stood sentry by the gap
+where the wicket gate of the garden should have been. I saw the door
+open on Betty's summons, and a brawny, tousled, red-faced woman
+appear--a most horrible and forbidding female, although bearing traces
+of a once blowsy beauty. As in most cottages hereabouts, you entered
+straight from garden-plot into the principal livingroom. On each side
+of the two figures I obtained a glimpse of stark emptiness.
+
+Betty said: "Are you Mrs. Tufton? I've come to talk to you about your
+husband. Let me come in."
+
+The attack was so debonair, so unquestioning, that the woman withdrew a
+pace or two and Betty, following up her advantage, entered and shut the
+door behind her. I could not have done what Betty did if I had had as
+many legs as a centipede. Marigold turned to me anxiously.
+
+"You do think she's safe, sir?"
+
+I nodded. "Anyway, stand by."
+
+The neighbours came out of adjoining houses; slatternly women with
+babies, more unwashed children, an elderly, vacant male or two--the
+young men and maidens had not yet been released from the mills. As far
+as I could gather, there was amused discussion among the gossips
+concerning the salient features of Sergeant Marigold's physical
+appearance. I heard one lady bid another to look at his wicked old eye,
+and receive the humorous rejoinder: "Which one?" I should have liked to
+burn them as witches; but Marigold stood his ground, imperturbable.
+
+Presently the door opened, and Betty came sailing down the path with a
+red spot on each cheek, followed by Mrs. Tufton, vociferous.
+
+"Sergeant Marigold," cried Betty. "Will you kindly go into that house
+and fetch out Corporal Tufton's kit-bag?"
+
+"Very good, madam," said Marigold.
+
+"Sergeant or no sergeant," cried Mrs. Tufton, squaring her elbows and
+barring his way, "nobody's coming into my house to touch any of my
+husband's property...." Really what she said I cannot record. The
+British Tommy I know upside-down, inside-out. I could talk to you about
+him for the week together. The ordinary soldier's wife, good, straight,
+heroic soul, I know as well and and profoundly admire as I do the
+ordinary wife of a brother-officer, and I could tell you what she
+thinks and feels in her own language. But the class whence Mrs. Tufton
+proceeded is out of my social ken. She was stale-drunk; she had,
+doubtless, a vile headache; probably she felt twinges of remorse and
+apprehension of possible police interference. As a counter-irritant to
+this, she had worked herself into an astounding temper. She would give
+up none of her husband's belongings. She would have the law on them if
+they tried. Bad enough it was for her husband to come home after a
+year's desertion, leaving her penniless, and the moment he set eyes on
+her begin to knock her about; but for sergeants suffering under a
+blight and characterless females masquerading as hospital nurses to
+come and ride rough-shod over an honest working woman was past
+endurance. Thus I paraphrase my memory of the lady's torrential speech.
+"Lay your hand on me," she cried, "and I'll summons you for assault."
+
+As Marigold could not pass her without laying hands on her, and as the
+laying of hands on her, no matter how lightly, would indubitably have
+constituted an assault in the eyes of the law, Marigold stiffly
+confronted her and tried to argue.
+
+The neighbours listened in sardonic amusement. Betty stood by, with the
+spots burning on her cheek, clenching her slender capable fingers,
+furious at defeat. I was condemned to sit in the car a few yards off,
+an anxious spectator. In a moment's lull of the argument, Betty
+interposed:
+
+"Every woman here knows what you have done. You ought to be ashamed of
+yourself."
+
+"And you ought to be ashamed of yourself," Mrs. Tufton
+retorted--"taking an honest woman's husband away from her."
+
+It was time to interfere. I called out:
+
+"Betty, let us get back. I'll fix the man up with everything he wants."
+
+At the moment of her turning to me a telegraph boy hopped from his
+bicycle on the off-side of the ear and touched his cap.
+
+"I've a telegram for Mrs. Connor, sir. I recognised the car and I think
+that's the lady. So instead of going on to the house--"
+
+I cut him short. Yes. That was Mrs. Connor of Telford Lodge. He dodged
+round the car and, entering the garden path, handed the orange-coloured
+envelope to Betty. She took it from him absent-mindedly, her heart and
+soul engaged in the battle with Mrs. Tufton. The boy stood patient for
+a second or two.
+
+"Any answer, ma'am?"
+
+She turned so that I could see her face in profile, and impatiently
+opened the envelope and glanced at the message. Then she stiffened,
+seeming in a curious way to become many inches taller, and grew deadly
+white. The paper dropped from her hand. Marigold picked it up.
+
+The diversion of the telegraph boy had checked Mrs. Tufton's eloquence
+and compelled the idle interest of the neighbours. I cried out from the
+car:
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+But I don't think Betty heard me. She recovered herself, took the
+telegram from Marigold, and showed it to the woman.
+
+"Read it," said Betty, in a strange, hard voice. "This is to tell me
+that my husband was killed yesterday in France. Go on your knees and
+thank God that you have a brave husband still alive and pray that you
+may be worthy of him."
+
+She went into the house and in a moment reappeared like a ghost of
+steel, carrying the disputed canvas kit-bag over her shoulder. The
+woman stared open-mouthed and said nothing. Marigold came forward to
+relieve Betty of her burden, but she waved him imperiously away, passed
+him and, opening the car-door, threw the bag at my feet. Not one of the
+rough crowd moved a foot or uttered a sound, save a baby in arms two
+doors off, who cut the silence with a sickly wail and was immediately
+hushed by its mother. Betty turned to the attendant Marigold.
+
+"You can drive me home."
+
+She sat by my side. Marigold took the wheel in front and drove on. She
+sought for my hand, held it in an iron grip, and said not a word. It
+was but a five minutes' run at the pace to which Marigold, time-worn
+master of crises of life and death, put the car. Betty held herself
+rigid, staring straight in front of her, and striving in vain to stifle
+horrible little sounds that would break through her tightly closed lips.
+
+When we pulled up at her door she said queerly: "Forgive me. I'm a
+damned little coward."
+
+And she bolted from the car into the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Thus over the sequestered vale of Wellingsford, far away from the sound
+of shells, even off the track of marauding Zeppelins, rode the fiery
+planet, Mars. There is not a homestead in Great Britain that in one
+form or another has not caught a reflection of its blood-red ray. No
+matter how we may seek distraction in work or amusement, the angry glow
+is ever before our eyes, colouring our vision, colouring our thoughts,
+colouring our emotions for good or for ill. We cannot escape it. Our
+personal destinies are inextricably interwoven with the fate directing
+the death grapple of the thousand miles or so of battle line, and
+arbitrating on the doom of colossal battleships.
+
+Our local newspaper prints week by week its ever-lengthening Roll of
+Honour. The shells that burst and slew these brave fellows spread their
+devastation into our little sheltered town; in a thundering crash
+tearing off from the very trunk of life here a friend, there a son,
+there a father, there a husband. And I repeat, at the risk of wearisome
+insistence, that our sheltered homeland shares the calm, awful fatalism
+of the battlefield; we have to share it because every rood of our
+country is, spiritually, as much a battlefield as the narrow,
+blood-sodden wastes of Flanders and France.
+
+Willie Connor, fine brave gentleman, was dead. My beloved Betty was a
+widow. No Victoria Cross for Betty. Even if there had been one, no
+children to be bred from birth on its glorious legend. The German shell
+left Betty stripped and maimed. With her passionate generosity she had
+given her all; even as his all had been nobly given by her husband. And
+then all of both had been swept ruthlessly away down the gory draught
+of sacrifice.
+
+Poor Betty! "I'm a damned little coward," she said, as she bolted into
+the house. The brave, foolish words rang in my ears all that night. In
+the early morning I wondered what I should do. A commonplace message,
+written or telephoned, would be inept. I shrank from touching her,
+although I knew she would feel my touch to be gentle. You have seen, I
+hope, that Betty was dearer to me than anyone else in the world, and I
+knew that, apart from the stirring emotions in her own young life,
+Betty held me in the closest affection. When she needed me, she would
+fly the signal. Of that I felt assured. Still...
+
+While I was in this state of perplexity, Marigold came in to rouse me
+and get me ready for the day.
+
+"I've taken the liberty, sir," said he, "to telephone to Telford Lodge
+to enquire after Mrs. Connor. The maid said she had Mrs. Connor's
+instructions to reply that she was quite well."
+
+The good, admirable fellow! I thanked him. While I was shaving, he said
+in his usual wooden way:
+
+"Begging your pardon, sir, I thought you might like to send Mrs. Connor
+a few flowers, so I took upon myself to cut some roses, first thing
+this morning, with the dew on them."
+
+Of course I cut myself and the blood flowed profusely.
+
+"Why the dickens do you spring things like that on people while they're
+shaving?" I cried.
+
+"Very sorry, sir," said he, solicitous with sponge and towel.
+
+"All the same, Marigold," said I, "you've solved a puzzle that has kept
+me awake since early dawn. We'll go out as soon as I'm dressed and
+we'll send her every rose in the garden."
+
+I have an acre or so of garden behind the house of which I have not yet
+spoken, save incidentally--for it was there that just a year ago poor
+Althea Fenimore ate her giant strawberries on the last afternoon of her
+young life; and a cross-grained old misanthropist, called Timbs,
+attends to it and lavishes on the flowers the love which, owing, I
+suspect, to blighted early affection, he denies to mankind. I am very
+fond of my garden and am especially interested in my roses. Do you know
+an exquisitely pink rose--the only true pink--named Mrs. George
+Norwood? ... I bring myself up with a jerk. I am not writing a book on
+roses. When the war is over perhaps I shall devote my old age to
+telling you what I feel and know and think about them....
+
+I had a battle with Timbs. Timbs was about sixty. He had shaggy, bushy
+eyebrows over hard little eyes, a shaggy grey beard, and a long,
+clean-shaven, obstinate upper lip. Stick him in an ill-fitting frock
+coat and an antiquated silk hat, and he would be the stage model of a
+Scottish Elder. As a matter of fact he was Hampshire born and a devout
+Roman Catholic. But he was as crabbed an old wretch as you can please.
+He flatly refused to execute my order. I dismissed him on the spot. He
+countered with the statement that he was an old man who had served me
+faithfully for many years. I bade him go on serving me faithfully and
+not be a damned fool. The roses were to be cut. If he didn't cut them,
+Marigold would.
+
+"He's been a-cutting them already," he growled. "Before I came."
+
+Timbs loathed Marigold--why, I could never discover--and Marigold had
+the lowest opinion of Timbs. It was an offence for Marigold to
+desecrate the garden by his mere footsteps; to touch a plant or a
+flower constituted a damnable outrage. On the other side, Timbs could
+not approach my person for the purpose of rendering me any necessary
+physical assistance, without incurring Marigold's violent resentment.
+
+"He'll go on cutting them," said I, "unless you start in at once."
+
+He began. I sent off Marigold in search of a wheelbarrow. Then, having
+Timbs to myself, I summoned him to my side.
+
+"Do you hold with a man sacrificing his life for his country?"
+
+He looked at me for a moment or two, in his dour, crabbed way.
+
+"I've got a couple of sons in France, trying their best to do it," he
+replied.
+
+That was the first I had ever heard of it. I had always regarded him as
+a gnarled old bachelor without human ties. Where he had kept the sons
+and the necessary mother I had not the remotest notion.
+
+"You're proud of them?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"And if one was killed, would you grudge his grave a few roses? For the
+sake of him wouldn't you sacrifice a world of roses?"
+
+His manner changed. "I don't understand, sir. Is anybody killed?"
+
+"Didn't I say that all these roses were for Mrs. Connor?"
+
+He dropped his secateur. "Good God, sir! Is it Captain Connor?"
+
+The block-headed idiot of a Marigold had not told him! Marigold is a
+very fine fellow, but occasionally he manifests human frailties that
+are truly abominable.
+
+"We are going to sacrifice all our roses, Timbs," said I, "for the sake
+of a very gallant Englishman. It's about all we can do."
+
+Of course I ought to have entered upon all this explanation when I
+first came on the scene; but I took it for granted that Timbs knew of
+the tragedy.
+
+"Need we cut those blooms of the Rayon d'Or?" asked Timbs, alluding to
+certain roses under conical paper shades which he had been breathlessly
+tending for our local flower show. "We'll cut them first," said I.
+
+Looking back through the correcting prism of time, I fancy this
+slaughter of the innocents may have been foolishly sentimental. But I
+had a great desire to lay all that I could by way of tribute of
+consolation at Betty's feet, and this little sacrifice of all my roses
+seemed as symbolical an expression of my feelings as anything that my
+unimaginative brain could devise.
+
+During the forenoon I superintended the packing of the baskets of roses
+in Pawling the florist's cart, which I was successful in engaging for
+the occasion,--neither wheelbarrow nor donkey carriage nor two-seater,
+the only vehicles at my disposal, being adequate; and when I saw it
+start for its destination, I wheeled myself, by way of discipline,
+through my bereaved garden. It looked mighty desolate. But though all
+the blooms had gone, there were a myriad buds which next week would
+burst into happy flower. And the sacrifice seemed trivial, almost
+ironical; for in Betty's heart there were no buds left.
+
+After lunch I went to the hospital for the weekly committee meeting. To
+my amazement the first person I met in the corridor was Betty--Betty,
+white as wax, with black rings round unnaturally shining eyes. She
+waited for me to wheel myself up to her. I said severely:
+
+"What on earth are you doing here? Go home to bed at once."
+
+She put her hand on the back of my chair and bent down.
+
+"I'm better here. And so are the dear roses. Come and see them."
+
+I followed her into one of the military wards on the ground floor, and
+the place was a feast of roses. I had no idea so many could have come
+from my little garden. And the ward upstairs, she told me, was
+similarly beflowered. By the side of each man's bed stood bowl or vase,
+and the tables and the window sills were bright with blooms. It was the
+ward for serious cases--men with faces livid from gas-poisoning, men
+with the accursed trench nephritis, men with faces swathed in bandages
+hiding God knows what distortions, men with cradles over them
+betokening mangled limbs, men recovering from operations, chiefly the
+picking of bits of shrapnel and splinters of bone from shattered arms
+and legs; men with pale faces, patient eyes, and with cheery smiles
+round their lips when we passed by. A gramophone at the end of the room
+was grinding out a sentimental tune to which all were listening with
+rapt enjoyment. I asked one man, among others, how he was faring. He
+was getting on fine. With the death-rattle in his throat the wounded
+British soldier invariably tells you that he is getting on fine.
+
+"And ain't these roses lovely? Makes the place look like a garden. And
+that music--seems appropriate, don't it, sir?"
+
+I asked what the gramophone was playing. He looked respectfully shocked.
+
+"Why, it's 'The Rosary,' sir."
+
+After we had left him, Betty said:
+
+"That's the third time they've asked for it to-day. They've got mixed
+up with the name, you see. They're beautiful children, aren't they?"
+
+I should have called them sentimental idiots, but Betty saw much
+clearer than I did. She accompanied me back to the corridor and to the
+Committee Room door. I was a quarter of an hour late.
+
+"I've kept the precious Rayon d'Ors for myself," she said. "How could
+you have the heart to cut them?"
+
+"I would have cut out my heart itself, for the matter of that," said I,
+"if it would have done any good."
+
+She smiled in a forlorn kind of way.
+
+"Don't do that, for I shall want it inside you more than ever now. Tell
+me, how is Tufton?"
+
+"Tufton--?"
+
+"Yes--Tufton."
+
+I must confess that my mind being so full of Betty, I had clean
+forgotten Tufton. But Betty remembered.
+
+I smiled. "He's getting on fine," said I. I reached out my hand and
+held her cold, slim fingers. "Promise me one thing, my dear."
+
+"All right," she said.
+
+"Don't overdo things. There's a limit to the power of bearing strain.
+As soon as you feel you're likely to go FUT, throw it all up and come
+and see me and let us lay our heads together."
+
+"I despise people who go FUT," said Betty.
+
+"I don't," said I.
+
+We nodded a mutual farewell. She opened the Committee Room door for me
+and walked down the corridor with a swinging step, as though she would
+show me how fully she had made herself mistress of circumstance.
+
+Some evenings later she came in, as usual, unheralded, and established
+herself by my chair.
+
+The scents of midsummer came in through the open windows, and there was
+a great full moon staring in at us from a cloudless sky. Letters from
+the War Office, from brother-officers, from the Colonel, from the
+Brigadier General himself, had broken her down. She gave me the letters
+to read. Everyone loved him, admired him, trusted him. "As brave as a
+lion," wrote one. "Perhaps the most brilliant company officer in my
+brigade," wrote the General. And his death--the tragic common story. A
+trench; a high-explosive shell; the fate of young Etherington; and no
+possible little wooden cross to mark his grave.
+
+And Betty, on the floor by my side, gave way.
+
+The proud will bent. She surrendered herself to a paroxysm of sorrow.
+
+She was not in a fit state to return to the hospital, where, I learned,
+she shared a bedroom with Phyllis Gedge. I shrank from sending her home
+to the tactless comforting of her aunts. They were excellent,
+God-fearing ladies, but they had never understood Betty. All her life
+they had worried her with genteel admonitions. They had regarded her
+marriage with disfavour, as an act of foolhardiness--I even think they
+looked on her attitude as unmaidenly; and now in her frozen widowhood
+they fretted her past endurance. On the night when the news came they
+sent for the vicar of their parish--not my good friend who christened
+Hosea--a very worthy, very serious, very evangelistically religious
+fellow, to administer spiritual consolation. If Betty had sat devoutly
+under him on Sundays, there might have been some reason in the summons.
+But Betty, holding her own religious views, had only once been inside
+the church--on the occasion of her wedding--and had but the most formal
+acquaintance with the good man.... No, I could not send Betty home,
+unexpectedly, to have her wounds mauled about by unskilful fingers.
+Nothing remained but to telephone to the hospital and put her in Mrs.
+Marigold's charge for the night. So broken was my dear Betty, that she
+allowed herself to be carried off without a word.... Once before, years
+ago, she had behaved with the same piteous docility; and that was when,
+a short-frocked maiden, she had fallen from an apple tree and badly
+hurt herself, and Marigold had carried her into the house and Mrs.
+Marigold had put her to bed....
+
+In the morning I found her calm and sedate at the breakfast table.
+
+"You've been and gone and done for both of us, Majy dear," she
+remarked, pouring out tea.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Our reputations. What a scandal in Wellingsford!"
+
+She looked me clearly in the eyes and smiled, and her hand did not
+shake as she held my cup. And by these signs I knew that she had taken
+herself again in grip and forbade reference to the agony through which
+she had passed.
+
+Quickly she turned the conversation to the Tuftons. What had happened?
+I told her meagrely. She insisted on fuller details. So, flogged by
+her, I related what I had gleaned from Marigold's wooden reports. He
+always conveyed personal information as though he were giving evidence
+against a defaulter. I had to start all over again. Apparently this had
+happened: Mrs. Tufton had arrayed herself, not in sackcloth and ashes,
+for that was apparently her normal attire, but in an equivalent, as far
+as a symbol of humility was concerned; namely, in decent raiment, and
+had sought her husband's forgiveness. There had been a touching scene
+in the scullery which Mrs. Marigold had given up to them for the sake
+of privacy, in which the lady had made tearful promises of reform and
+the corporal had magnanimously passed the sponge over the terrible
+reckoning on her slate. Would he then go home to his penitent wife? But
+the gallant fellow, with the sturdy common-sense for which the British
+soldier is renowned, contrasted the clover in which he was living here
+with the aridness of Flowery End, and declined to budge. High sentiment
+was one thing, snug lying was another. Next time he came back, if she
+had re-established the home in its former comfort, he didn't say as how
+he wouldn't--
+
+"But," she cried--and this bit I didn't tell Betty--"the next time you
+may come home dead!"
+
+"Then," replied Tufton, "let me see what a nice respectable coffin,
+with brass handles and lots of slap-up brass nails and a brass plate,
+you can get ready for me."
+
+Since the first interview, I informed Betty, there had been others
+daily--most decorous. They were excellent friends. Neither seemed to
+perceive anything absurd in the situation. Even Marigold looked on it
+as a matter of course.
+
+"I have an idea," said Betty. "You know we want some help in the
+servant staff of the hospital?"
+
+I did. The matron had informed the Committee, who had empowered her to
+act.
+
+"Why not let me tackle Mrs. Tufton while she is in this beautifully
+chastened and devotional mood? In this way we can get her out of the
+mills, out of Flowery End, fill her up with noble and patriotic
+emotions instead of whisky, and when Tufton returns, present her to him
+as a model wife, sanctified by suffering and ennobled by the
+consciousness of duty done. It would be splendid!"
+
+For the first time since the black day there came a gleam of fun into
+Betty's eyes and a touch of colour into her cheeks.
+
+"It would indeed," said I. "The only question is whether Tufton would
+really like this Red Cross Saint you'll have provided for him."
+
+"In case he does not," said Betty, "you can provide him with a refuge
+as you are doing now."
+
+She rose from the table, announcing her intention of going straight to
+the hospital. I realised with a pang that breakfast was over; that I
+had enjoyed a delectable meal; that, by some sort of dainty miracle,
+she had bemused me into eating and drinking twice my ordinary ration;
+that she had inveigled me into talking--a thing I have never done
+during breakfast for years--it is as much as Marigold's ugly head is
+worth to address a remark to me during the unsympathetic duty--why, if
+my poached egg regards me with too aggressive a pinkiness, I want to
+slap it--and into talking about those confounded Tuftons with a gusto
+only provoked by a glass or two of impeccable port after a good dinner.
+One would have thought, considering the anguished scene of the night
+before, that it would have been one of the most miserably impossible
+tete-a-tete breakfasts in the whole range of such notoriously ghastly
+meals. But here was Betty, serene and smiling, as though she had been
+accustomed to breakfast with me every morning of her life, off to the
+hospital, with a hard little idea in her humorous head concerning Mrs.
+Tufton's conversion.
+
+The only sign she gave of last night's storm was when, by way of
+good-bye, she bent down and kissed my cheek.
+
+"You know," she said, "I love you too much to thank you."
+
+And she went off with her brave little head in the air.
+
+In the afternoon I went to Wellings Park. Sir Anthony was away, but
+Lady Fenimore was in. She showed me a letter she had received from
+Betty in reply to her letter of condolence:
+
+"My dears,
+
+"It is good to realise one has such rocks to lean on. You long to help
+and comfort me. Well, I'll tell you how to do it. You just forget.
+Leave it to me to do all the remembering.
+
+"Yours, Betty."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+On the first of July there was forwarded to me from the club a letter
+in an unknown handwriting. I had to turn to the signature to discover
+the identity of my correspondent. It was Reggie Dacre, Colonel Dacre,
+whom I had met in London a couple of months before. As it tells its own
+little story, I transcribe it.
+
+
+"Dear Major Meredyth:
+
+"I should like to confirm by the following anecdote, which is going the
+round of the Brigade, what I recently told you about our friend Boyce.
+I shouldn't worry you, but I feel that if one has cast an unjustifiable
+slur on a brother-officer's honour--and I can't tell you how the thing
+has lain on my conscience--one shouldn't leave a stone unturned to
+rehabilitate him, even in the eyes of one person.
+
+"There has been a good deal of scrapping around Ypres lately--that
+given away by the communiques; but for reasons which both the Censor
+and yourself will appreciate, I can't be more explicit as to locality.
+Enough to say that somewhere in this region--or sector, as we call it
+nowadays--there was a certain bit of ground that had been taken and
+retaken over and over again. B.'s Regiment was in this fighting, and at
+one particular time we were holding a German front trench section. A
+short distance further on the enemy held a little farm building,
+forming a sort of redoubt. They sniped all day long. They also had a
+machine gun. I can't give you accurate details, for I can only tell you
+what I've heard; but the essentials are true. Well, we got that
+farmhouse. We got it single-handed. Boyce put up the most amazing bluff
+that has ever happened in this war. He crawls out by himself, without
+anybody knowing--it was a pitch-black night--gets through the barbed
+wire, heaven knows how, up to the house; lays a sentry out with his
+life-preserver; gives a few commands to an imaginary company; and
+summons the occupants--two officers and fifteen men--to surrender.
+Thinking they are surrounded, they obey like lambs, come out unarmed,
+with their hands up, officers and all, and are comfortably marched off
+in the dark, as prisoners into our trenches. They say that when the
+German officers discovered how they had been done, they foamed so hard
+that we had to use empty sandbags as strait waistcoats.
+
+"Now, it's picturesque, of course, and being picturesque, it has flown
+from mouth to mouth. But it's true. Verb. sap.
+
+"Hoping some time or other to see you again,
+
+  "Yours sincerely,
+    "R. DACRE,
+    "Lt. Col."
+
+
+I quote this letter here for the sake of chronological sequence. It
+gave me a curious bit of news. No man could have performed such a feat
+without a cold brain, soundly beating heart, and nerves of steel. It
+was not an act of red-hot heroism. It was done in cold blood, a
+deliberate gamble with death on a thousand to one chance. It was
+staggeringly brave.
+
+I told the story to Mrs. Boyce. Her comment was characteristic:
+
+"But surely they would have to surrender if called upon by a British
+Officer."
+
+To the Day of Judgment I don't think she will understand what Leonard
+did. Leonard himself, coming home slightly wounded two or three weeks
+afterwards, pooh-poohed the story as one of no account and only further
+confused the dear lady's ill-conceived notions.
+
+In the meanwhile life at Wellingsford flowed uneventfully. Now and
+again a regiment or a brigade, having finished its training,
+disappeared in a night, and the next day fresh troops arrived to fill
+its place. And this great, silent movement of men went on all over the
+country. Sometimes our hearts sank. A reserve Howitzer Territorial
+Brigade turned up in Wellings Park with dummy wooden guns. The officers
+told us that they had been expecting proper guns daily for the past two
+months. Marigold shook a sad head. But all things, even six-inch
+howitzers, come to him who waits.
+
+Little more was heard of Randall Holmes. He corresponded with his
+mother through a firm of London solicitors, and his address and his
+doings remained a mystery. He was alive, he professed robust health,
+and in reply to Mrs. Holmes's frantically expressed hope that he was
+adopting no course that might discredit his father's name, he twitted
+her with intellectual volte-face to the views of Philistia, but at the
+same time assured her that he was doing nothing which the most
+self-righteous bourgeois would consider discreditable.
+
+"But it IS discreditable for him to go away like this and not let his
+own mother know where he is," cried the poor woman.
+
+And of course I agreed with her. I find it best always to agree with
+mothers; also with wives.
+
+After her own lapse from what Mrs. Boyce would have called
+"Spartianism," Betty kept up her brave face. When Willie Connor's kit
+came home she told me tearlessly about the heartrending consignment.
+Now and then she spoke of him--with a proud look in her eyes. She was
+one of the women of England who had the privilege of being the wife of
+a hero. In this world one must pay for everything worth having. Her
+widowhood was the price. All the tears of a lifetime could not bring
+him back. All the storms of fate could not destroy the glory of those
+few wonderful months. He was laughing, so she heard, when he met his
+death. So would she, in honour of him, go on laughing till she met hers.
+
+"And that silly little fool, Phyllis, is still crying her eyes out over
+Randall," she said. "Don't I think she was wrong in sending him away?
+If she had married him she might have influenced him, made him get a
+commission in the army. I've threatened to beat her if she talks such
+nonsense. Why can't people take a line and stick to it?"
+
+"This isn't a world of Bettys, my dear," said I.
+
+"Rubbish! The outrageous Mrs. Tufton's doing it."
+
+Apparently she was. She followed Betty about as the lamb followed Mary.
+Tufton, after a week or two at Wellington Barracks, had been given
+sergeant's stripes and sent off with a draft to the front. Betty's
+dramatic announcement of her widowhood seemed to have put the fear of
+death into the woman's soul. As soon as her husband landed in France
+she went scrupulously through the closely printed casualty lists of
+non-commissioned officers and men in The Daily Mail, in awful dread
+lest she should see her husband's name. Betty vainly assured her that,
+in the first place, she would hear from the War Office weeks before
+anything could appear in the papers, and that, in the second, his name
+would occur under the heading "Grenadier Guards," and not under "Royal
+Field Artillery," "Royal Engineers," "Duke of Cornwall's Light
+Infantry," "R.A.M.C.," or Australian and Canadian contingents. Mrs.
+Tufton went through the lot from start to finish. Once, indeed, she
+came across the name, in big print, and made a bee-line through the
+wards for Betty--an offence for which the Matron nearly threw her,
+there and then, into the street. It was that of the gallant Colonel of
+a New Zealand Regiment at Gallipoli. Betty had to point to the brief
+biographical note to prove to the distracted woman that the late
+Colonel Tufton of New Zealand could not be identical with Sergeant
+Tufton of the Grenadiers. She regarded Mrs. Tufton as a brand she had
+plucked from the burning and took a great deal of trouble with her. On
+the other hand, I imagine Mrs. Tufton looked upon herself as a very
+important person, a sergeant's wife, and the confidential intimate of a
+leading sister at the Wellingsford Hospital. In fact, Marigold
+mentioned her notorious vanity.
+
+"What does it matter," cried Betty, when I put this view before her,
+"how swelled her head may be, so long as it isn't swollen with drink?"
+
+And I could find no adequate reply.
+
+Towards the end of the month comes Boyce to Wellingsford, this time not
+secretly; for the day after his arrival he drove his mother through the
+town and incidentally called on me. A neglected bullet graze on the
+neck had turned septic. An ugly temperature had sent him to hospital.
+The authorities, as soon as the fever had abated and left him on the
+high road to recovery, had sent him home. A khaki bandage around his
+bull-throat alone betokened anything amiss. He would be back, he said,
+as soon as the Medical Board at the War Office would let him.
+
+On this occasion, for the first time since South African days, I met
+him without any mistrust. What had passed between Betty and himself, I
+did not know. Relations between man and woman are so subtle and
+complicated, that unless you have the full pleadings on both sides in
+front of you, you cannot arbitrate; and, as often as not, if you
+deliver the most soul-satisfying of judgments, you are hopelessly
+wrong, because there are all important, elusive factors of personality,
+temperament, sex, and what not which all the legal acumen in the world
+could not set down in black and white. So half unconsciously I ruled
+out Betty from my contemplation of the man. I had been obsessed by the
+Vilboek Farm story, and by that alone. Reggie Dacre--to say nothing of
+personages in high command--had proved it to be a horrible lie. He had
+Marshal Ney's deserved reputation--le brave des braves--and there is no
+more coldly critical conferrer of such repute than the British Army in
+the field. To win it a man not only has to do something heroic once or
+twice--that is what he is there for--but he has to be doing it all the
+time. Boyce had piled up for himself an amazing record, one that
+overwhelmed the possibility of truth in old slanders. When I gripped
+him by the hand, I felt immeasurable relief at being able to do so
+without the old haunting suspicion and reservation.
+
+He spoke, like thousands of others of his type--the type of the fine
+professional English soldier--with diffident modesty of such personal
+experiences as he deigned to recount. The anecdotes mostly had a
+humorous side, and were evoked by allusion. Like all of us
+stay-at-homes, I cursed the censorship for leaving us so much in the
+dark. He laughed and cursed the censorship for the opposite reason.
+
+"The damned fools--I beg your pardon, Mother, but when a fool is too
+big a fool even for this world, he must be damned--the damned fools
+allow all sorts of things to be given away. They were nearly the death
+of me and were the death of half a dozen of my men."
+
+And he told the story. In a deserted brewery behind the lines the vats
+were fitted up as baths for men from the trenches, and the furnaces
+heated ovens in which horrible clothing was baked. This brewery had
+been immune from attack until an officially sanctioned newspaper
+article specified its exact position. A few days after the article
+appeared, in fact, as soon as a copy of the paper reached Germany, a
+thunderstorm of shells broke on the brewery. Out of it poured a
+helter-skelter stream of stark-naked men, who ran wherever they could
+for cover. From one point of view it was vastly comic. In the meanwhile
+the building containing all their clothes, and all the spare clothing
+for a brigade, was being scientifically destroyed. That was more comic
+still. The bather cut off from his garments is a world-wide joke. The
+German battery, having got the exact range, were having a systematic,
+Teutonic afternoon's enjoyment. But from another point of view the
+situation was desperate. There were these poor fellows, hordes of them,
+in nature's inadequate protection against the weather, shivering in the
+cold, with the nearest spare rag of clothing some miles away. Boyce got
+them together, paraded them instantly under the shell fire, and led
+them at a rush into the blazing building to salve stores. Six never
+came out alive. Many were burned and wounded. But it had to be done, or
+the whole crowd would have perished from exposure. Tommy is fairly
+tough; but he cannot live mother-naked through a March night of driving
+sleet.
+
+"No," said Boyce, "if you suffered daily from the low cunning of
+Brother Bosch, you wouldn't cry for things to be published in the
+newspapers."
+
+At the end of their visit I accompanied my guests to the hall. Marigold
+escorted Mrs. Boyce to the car. Leonard picked up his cap and cane and
+turned to shake hands. I noticed that the knob of the cane was neatly
+cased in wash-leather. Idly I enquired the reason. He smiled grimly as
+he slipped off the cover and exposed the polished deep vermilion butt
+of the life-preserver which Reggie Dacre had described.
+
+"It's a sort of fetish I feel I must carry around with me," he
+explained. "When I've got it in my hand, I don't seem to care a damn
+what I do. When I haven't, I miss it. Remember the story of Sir Walter
+Scott's boy with the butter? Something like that, you know. But in its
+bare state it's not a pretty sight for the mother."
+
+"It ought to have a name," said I. "The poilu calls his bayonet
+Rosalie."
+
+He looked at it darkly for a moment, before refitting the wash-leather.
+
+"I might call it The Reminder," said he. "Good-bye." And he turned
+quickly and strode out of the door.
+
+The Reminder of what? He puzzled me. Why, in spite of all my
+open-heartedness, did he still contrive to leave me with a sense of the
+enigmatic?
+
+Although he showed himself openly about the town, he held himself aloof
+from social intercourse with the inhabitants. He called, I know, on
+Mrs. Holmes, and on one or two others who have no place in this
+chronicle. But he refused all proposals of entertainment, notably an
+invitation to dinner from the Fenimores. Sir Anthony met him in the
+street, upbraided him in his genial manner for neglect of his old
+friends, and pressingly asked him to dine at Wellings Park. Just a few
+old friends. The duties of a distinguished soldier, said he, did not
+begin and end on the field. He must uplift the hearts of those who had
+to stay at home. Sir Anthony had a nervous trick of rattling off many
+sentences before his interlocutor could get in a word. When he had
+finished, Boyce politely declined the invitation.
+
+"And with a damned chilly, stand-offish politeness," cried Sir Anthony
+furiously, when telling me about it. "Just as if I had been Perkins,
+the fish-monger, asking him to meet the Prettiloves at high tea. It's
+swelled head, my dear chap; that's what it is. Just swelled head. None
+of us are good enough for him and his laurels. He's going to remain the
+modest mossy violet of a hero blushing unseen. Oh, damn the fellow!"
+
+I did my best to soothe my touchy and choleric friend. No soldier, said
+I, likes to be made a show of. Why had he suggested a dinner party? A
+few friends. Anyone in Boyce's position knew what that meant. It meant
+about thirty gawking, gaping people for whom he didn't care a hang. Why
+hadn't Anthony asked the Boyces to dine quietly with Edith and
+himself--with me thrown in, for instance, if they wanted exotic
+assistance? Let me try, I said, to fix matters up.
+
+So the next day I called on Boyce and told him, with such tact as I
+have at command, of Sir Anthony's wounded feelings.
+
+"My dear Meredyth," said he. "I can only say to you what I tried to
+explain to the irascible little man. If I accepted one invitation, I
+should have to accept all invitations or give terrible offence all over
+the place. I'm here a sick man and my mother's an invalid. And I merely
+want to be saved from my friends and have a quiet time with the old
+lady. Of course if Sir Anthony is offended, I'm only too sorry, and I
+beg you to assure him that I never intended the slightest discourtesy.
+The mere idea of it distresses me."
+
+The explanation was reasonable, the apology frank. Sir Anthony received
+them both grumpily. He had his foibles. He set his invitations to
+dinner in a separate category from those of the rag-tag and bobtail of
+Wellingsford society. So for the sake of principle he continued to damn
+the fellow.
+
+On the other hand, for the sake of principle, reparation for injustice,
+I continued to like the fellow and found pleasure in his company. For
+one thing, I hankered after the smoke and smell and din of the front,
+and Boyce succeeded more than anyone else in satisfying my appetite.
+While he talked, as he did freely with me alone, I got near to the grim
+essence of things. Also, with the aid of rough military maps, he made
+actions and strategical movements of which newspaper accounts had given
+me but a confused notion, as clear as if I had been a chief of staff.
+Often he went to considerable trouble in obtaining special information.
+He appeared to set himself out to win my esteem. Now a cripple is very
+sensitive to kindness. I could not reject his overtures. What
+interested motive could he have in seeking out a useless hulk like me?
+On the first opportunity I told Betty of the new friendship, having a
+twinge or two of conscience lest it might appear to her disloyal.
+
+"But why in the world shouldn't you see him, dear?" she said,
+open-eyed. "He brings the breath of battle to you and gives you fresh
+life. You're looking ever so much better the last few days. The only
+thing is," she added, turning her head away, "that I don't want to run
+the risk of meeting him again."
+
+Naturally I took precautions against such an occurrence. The
+circumstances of their last meeting at my house lingered unpleasantly
+in my mind. Perhaps, for Betty's sake, I ought to have turned a cold
+shoulder on Boyce. But when you have done a man a foul injustice for
+years, you must make him some kind of secret reparation. So, by making
+him welcome, I did what I could.
+
+Now I don't know whether I ought to set down a trivial incident
+mentioned in my diary under the date of the 15th August, the day before
+Boyce left Wellingsford to join his regiment in France. In writing an
+account of other people's lives it is difficult to know what to put in
+and what to leave out. If you bring in your own predilections or
+prejudices or speculations concerning them, you must convey a distorted
+impression. You lie about them unconsciously. A fact is a fact, and, if
+it is important, ought to be recorded. But when you are not sure
+whether it is a fact or not, what are you to do?
+
+Perhaps I had better narrate what happened and tell you afterwards why
+I hesitate.
+
+Marigold had driven me over to Godbury, where I had business connected
+with a County Territorial Association, and we were returning home. It
+was a moist, horrible, depressing August day. A slimy, sticky day.
+Clouds hung low over the reeking earth. The honest rain had ceased, but
+wet drops dribbled from the leaves of the trees and the branches and
+trunks exuded moisture. The thatched roofs of cottages were dank. In
+front gardens roses and hollyhocks drooped sodden. The very droves of
+steers coming from market sweated in the muggy air. The good slush of
+the once dusty road, broken to bits by military traffic, had stiffened
+into black grease. Round a bend of the road we skidded alarmingly.
+Marigold has a theory that in summer time a shirt next the skin is the
+only wear for humans and square-tread tyres the only wear for
+motor-cars. With some acerbity I pointed out the futility of his
+proposition. With the blandness of superior wisdom he assured me that
+we were perfectly safe. You can't knock into the head of an
+artilleryman who has been trained to hang on to a limber by the
+friction of his trousers, that there can be any danger in the luxurious
+seat of a motor-car.
+
+There is a good straight half mile of the Godbury Road which is known
+in the locality as "The Gut." It is sunken and very narrow, being
+flanked on one side by the railway embankment, and on the other by the
+grounds of Godbury Chase. A most desolate bit of road, half overhung by
+trees and oozing with all the moisture of the country-side. On this day
+it was the wettest, slimiest bit of road in England. We had almost
+reached the end of it, when it entered the head of a stray puppy dog to
+pause in the act of crossing and sit down in the middle and hunt for
+fleas. To spare the abominable mongrel, Marigold made a sudden swerve.
+Of course the car skidded. It skidded all over the place, as if it were
+drunk, and, aided by Marigold, described a series of ghastly
+half-circles. At last he performed various convulsive feats of
+jugglery, with the result that the car, which was nosing steadily for
+the ditch, came to a stand-still. Then Marigold informed me in
+unemotional tones that the steering gear had gone.
+
+"It's all the fault of that there dog," said he, twisting his head so
+as to glare at the little beast, who, after a yelp and a bound, had
+calmly recaptured his position and resumed his interrupted occupation.
+
+"It's all the fault of that there Marigold," I retorted, "who can't see
+the sense of using studded tyres on a greasy surface. What's to be done
+now?"
+
+Marigold thrust his hand beneath his wig and scratched his head. He
+didn't exactly know. He got out and stared intently at the car. If mind
+could have triumphed over matter, the steering gear would have become
+disfractured. But the good Marigold's mind was not powerful enough. He
+gave up the contest and looked at me and the situation. There we were,
+broadside on to the narrow road, and only manhandling could bring us
+round to a position of safety by the side. He was for trying it there
+and then; but I objected, having no desire to be slithered into the
+ditch.
+
+"I would just as soon," said I, "ride a giraffe shod with roller
+skates."
+
+He didn't even smile. He turned his one reproachful eye on me. What was
+to be done? I told him. We must wait for assistance. When I had been
+transferred into the vehicle of a passing Samaritan, it was time enough
+for the manhandling.
+
+Fate brought the Samaritan very quickly. A car coming from Godbury
+tooted violently, then slowed down, stopped, and from it jumped Leonard
+Boyce. As he was to rescue me from a position of peculiar helplessness,
+I regarded his great khaki-clad figure as that of a ministering angel.
+I beamed on him.
+
+"Hallo! What's the matter?" he asked cheerily.
+
+I explained. Being merciful, I spared Marigold and threw the blame on
+the dog and on the County Council for allowing the roads to get into
+such a filthy condition.
+
+"That's all right," said Boyce. "We'll soon fix you up. First we'll get
+you into my car. Then Marigold and I will slue this one round, and then
+we'll send him a tow."
+
+Marigold nodded and approached to lift me out.
+
+Then, what happened next, happened in the flash of a few breathless
+seconds. There was the dull thud of hoofs. A scared bay thoroughbred,
+coming from Godbury, galloping hell for leather, with a dishevelled boy
+in khaki on his back. The boy had lost his stirrups; he had lost his
+reins; he had lost his head. He hung half over the saddle and had a
+death grip on the horse's mane. And the uncontrolled brute was
+thundering down on us. There was my infernal car barring the narrow
+road. I remember bracing myself to meet the shock. An end, thought I,
+of Duncan Meredyth. I saw Boyce leap aside like a flash and appear to
+stand stock-still. The next second I saw Marigold semaphore a few yards
+in front of the car and then swing sickeningly at the horse's bit; and
+then the whole lot of them, Marigold, horse and rider, come down in a
+convulsive heap on the greasy road. To my intense relief I saw Marigold
+pick himself up and go to the head of the plunging, prostrate horse. In
+a moment or two he had got the beast on his feet, where he stood
+quivering. It was a fine, smart piece of work on the part of the old
+artilleryman. I was so intent on his danger that I forgot all about
+Boyce: but as soon as the three crashed down, I saw him run to assist
+the young subaltern who had rolled himself clear.
+
+"By Jove, that was a narrow shave!" he cried cordially, giving him a
+hand.
+
+"It was indeed, sir," said the young man, scraping the mud off his
+face. "That's the second time the brute has done it. He shies and bucks
+and kicks like a regular devil. This time he shied at a steam lorry and
+bucked my feet out of the stirrups. Everybody in the squadron has
+turned him down, and I'm the junior, I've had to take him." He eyed the
+animal resentfully. "I'd just like to get him on some grass and knock
+hell out of him!"
+
+"I'm glad to see you're not hurt," said Boyce with a smile.
+
+"Oh, not a bit, sir," said the boy. He turned to Marigold. "I don't
+know how to thank you. It was a jolly plucky thing to do. You've saved
+my life and that of the gentleman in the car. If we had busted into it,
+there would have been pie." He came to the side of the car. "I think
+you're Major Meredyth, sir. I must have given you an awful fright. I'm
+so sorry. My name is Brown. I'm in the South Scottish Horse."
+
+He had a courteous charm of manner in spite of his boyish desire to
+appear unshaken by the accident. A little bravado is an excellent
+thing. I laughed and held out my hand.
+
+"I'm glad to meet you--although our meeting might have been contrived
+less precipitously. This is Sergeant Marigold, late R.F.A., who does me
+the honour of looking after me. And this is Major Boyce."
+
+Observe the little devil of malice that made me put Marigold first.
+
+"Of the Rifles?"
+
+A quick gleam of admiration showed in the boy's eyes as he saluted. No
+soldier could be stationed at Wellingsford without hearing of the hero
+of the neighbourhood. A great hay waggon came lumbering down the road
+and pulled up, there being no room for it to pass. This put an end to
+social amenities. Brown mounted his detested charger and trotted off.
+Marigold transferred me to Boyce's car. Several pairs of brawny arms
+righted the two-seater and Boyce and I drove off, leaving Marigold
+waiting with his usual stony patience for the promised tow. On the way
+Boyce talked gaily of Marigold's gallantry, of the boy's spirit, of the
+idiotic way in which impossible horses were being foisted on newly
+formed cavalry units. When we drew up at my front door, it occurred to
+me that there was no Marigold in attendance.
+
+"How the deuce," said I, "am I going to get out?"
+
+Boyce laughed. "I don't think I'll drop you."
+
+His great arms picked me up with ease. But while he was carrying me I
+experienced a singular physical revolt. I loathed his grip. I loathed
+the enforced personal contact. Even after he had deposited me--very
+skilfully and gently--in my wheel-chair in the hall, I hated the
+lingering sense of his touch. He owed his whisky and soda to the most
+elementary instinct of hospitality. Besides, he was off the next day,
+back to the trenches and the hell of battle, and I had to bid him
+good-bye and God-speed. But when he went, I felt glad, very glad, as
+though relieved of some dreadful presence. My old distrust and dislike
+returned increased a thousandfold.
+
+It was only when he got my frail body in his arms, which I realized
+were twice as strong as my good Marigold's, that I felt the ghastly and
+irrational revulsion. The only thing to which I can liken it, although
+it seems ludicrous, is what I imagine to be the instinctive recoil of a
+woman who feels on her body the touch of antipathetic hands. I know
+that my malady has made me a bit supersensitive. But my vanity has
+prided itself on keeping up a rugged spirit in a fool of a body, so I
+hated myself for giving way to morbid sensations. All the same, I felt
+that if I were alone in a burning house, and there were no one but
+Leonard Boyce to save me, I should prefer incineration to rescue.
+
+And now I will tell you why I have hesitated to give a place in this
+chronicle to the incident of the broken-down car and the runaway horse.
+
+It all happened so quickly, my mind was so taken up with the sudden
+peril, that for the life of me I cannot swear to the part played by
+Leonard Boyce. I saw him leap aside, and had the fragment of an
+impression of him standing motionless between the radiator of his car
+and the tail of mine which was at right angles. The next time he thrust
+himself on my consciousness was when he was lugging young Brown out of
+reach of the convulsive hoofs. In the meanwhile Marigold,
+single-handed, had rushed into the jaws of death and stopped the horse.
+But as it was a matter of seconds, I had no reason for believing that,
+but for adventitious relative positions on the road, Boyce would not
+have done the same.... And yet out of the corner of my eye I got an
+instantaneous photograph of him standing bolt upright between the two
+cars, while the abominable bay brute, with distended red nostrils and
+wild eyes, was thundering down on us.
+
+On the other hand, the swift pleasure in the boy's eyes when he
+realised that he was in the presence of the popular hero, proved him
+free of doubts such as mine. And when Marigold, having put the car in
+hospital, came to make his report, and lingered in order to discuss the
+whole affair, he said, in wooden deprecation of my eulogy:
+
+"If Major Boyce hadn't jumped in, sir, young Mr. Brown's head would
+have been kicked into pumpkin-squash."
+
+Well, I have known from long experience that there are no more
+untrustworthy witnesses than a man's own eyes; especially in the
+lightning dramas of life.
+
+I was kept awake all night, and towards the dawn I came into thorough
+agreement with Sir Anthony and I heartily damned the fellow.
+
+What had I to do with him that he should rob me of my sleep?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+The next morning he strode in while I was at breakfast, handsome,
+erect, deep-chested, the incarnation of physical strength, with a glad
+light in his eyes.
+
+"Congratulate me, old man," he cried, gripping my frail shoulder. "I've
+three days' extra leave. And more than that, I go out in command of the
+regiment. No temporary business but permanent rank. Gazetted in due
+course. Bannatyne--that's our colonel--damned good soldier!--has got a
+staff appointment. I take his place. I promise you the Fourth King's
+Rifles are going to make history. Either history or manure. History for
+choice. As I say, Bannatyne's a damned good soldier, and personally as
+brave as a lion, but when it comes to the regiment, he's too much on
+the cautious side. The regiment's only longing to make things hum, and
+I'm going to let 'em do it."
+
+I congratulated him in politely appropriate terms and went on with my
+bacon and eggs. He sat on the window-seat and tapped his gaiters with
+his cane life-preserver. He wore his cap.
+
+"I thought you'd like to know," said he. "You've been so good to the
+old mother while I've been away and been so charitable, listening to my
+yarns, while I've been here, that I couldn't resist coming round and
+telling you."
+
+"I suppose your mother's delighted," said I.
+
+He threw back his head and laughed, as though he had never a black
+thought or memory in the world.
+
+"Dear old mater! She has the impression that I'm going out to take
+charge of the blessed campaign. So if she talks about 'my dear son's
+army,' don't let her down, like a good chap--for she'll think either me
+a fraud or you a liar."
+
+He rose suddenly, with a change of expression.
+
+"You're the only man in the world I could talk to like this about my
+mother. You know the sterling goodness and loyalty that lies beneath
+her funny little ways."
+
+He strode to the window which looks out on to the garden, his back
+turned on me. And there he stood silent for a considerable time. I
+helped myself to marmalade and poured out a second cup of tea. There
+was no call for me to speak. I had long realized that, whatever may
+have been the man's sins and weaknesses, he had a very deep and tender
+love for the Dresden china old lady that was his mother. There was
+London of the clubs and the theatres and the restaurants and the
+night-clubs, a war London full and alive, not dead as in Augusts of
+far-off tradition, all ready to give him talk and gaiety and the things
+that matter to the man who escapes for a brief season from the
+never-ending hell of the battlefield; ready, too, to pour flattery into
+his ear, to touch his scars with the softest of its fingers. Yet he
+chose to stay, a recluse, in our dull little town, avoiding even the
+kindly folk round about, in order to devote himself to one dear but
+entirely uninteresting old woman. It is not that he despised London,
+preferring the life of the country gentleman. On the contrary, before
+the war Leonard Boyce was very much the man about town. He loved the
+glitter and the chatter of it. From chance words during this spell of
+leave, I had divined hankering after its various fleshpots. For the
+sake of one old woman he made reckless and gallant sacrifice. When he
+was bored to misery he came round to me. I learned later that in
+visiting Wellingsford he faced more than boredom. All of this you must
+put to the credit side of his ledger.
+
+There he stood, his great broad shoulders and bull-neck silhouetted
+against the window. That broad expanse, a bit fleshy, below the base of
+the skull indicates brutality. Never before, to my eyes, had the sign
+asserted itself with so much aggression. I had often wondered why,
+apart from the Vilboek Farm legend, I had always disliked and
+distrusted him. Now I seemed to know. It was the neck not of a man, but
+of a brute. The curious repulsion of the previous evening, when he had
+carried me into the house, came over me again. From junction of arm and
+body protruded six inches of the steel-covered life-preserver, the
+washleather that hid its ghastly knob staring at me blankly. I hated
+the thing. The gallant English officer--and in my time I have known and
+loved a many of the most gallant--does not go about in private life
+fondling a trophy reeking with the blood of his enemies. It is the
+trait of a savage. That truculent knob and that truculent bull-neck
+correlated themselves most horribly in my mind. And again, with a
+shiver, I had the haunting flash of a vision of him, out of the tail of
+my eye, standing rigid and gaping between the two cars, while my rugged
+old Marigold, in a businesslike, old-soldier sort of way, without
+thought of danger or death, was swaying at the head of the runaway
+horse.
+
+Presently he turned, and his brows were set above unfathomable hard
+eyes. The short-cropped moustache could not hide the curious twitch of
+the lips which I had seen once before. It was obvious that these few
+minutes of silence had been spent in deep thought and had resulted in a
+decision. A different being from the gay, successful soldier who had
+come in to announce his honours confronted me. He threw down cap and
+stick and passed his hand over his crisp brown hair.
+
+"I don't know whether you're a friend of mine or not," he said, hands
+on hips and gaitered legs slightly apart. "I've never been able to make
+out. All through our intercourse, in spite of your courtesy and
+hospitality, there has been some sort of reservation on your part."
+
+"If that is so," said I, diplomatically, "it is because of the defects
+of my national quality."
+
+"That's possibly what I've felt," said he. "But it doesn't matter a
+damn with regard to what I want to say. It's a question not of your
+feelings towards me, but my feelings towards you. I don't want to make
+polite speeches--but you're a man whom I have every reason to honour
+and trust. And unlike all my other brother-officers, you have no reason
+to be jealous--"
+
+"My dear fellow," I interrupted, "what's all this about? Why jealousy?"
+
+"You know what a pot-hunter is in athletics? A chap that is simply out
+for prizes? Well, that's what a lot of them think of me. That I'm just
+out to get orders and medals and distinctions and so forth."
+
+"That's nonsense," said I. "I happen to know. Your reputation in the
+brigade is unassailable."
+
+"In the way of my having done what I'm credited with, it is," he
+answered. "But all the same, they're right."
+
+"What do you mean?" I asked.
+
+"What I say. They're right. I'm out for everything I can get. Now I'm
+out for a V.C. I see you think it abominable. That's because you don't
+understand. No one but I myself could understand. I feel I owe it to
+myself." He looked at me for a second or two and then broke into a
+sardonic sort of laugh. "I suppose you think me a conceited ass," he
+continued. "Why should Leonard Boyce be such a vastly important person?
+It isn't that, I assure you."
+
+I lit a cigarette, having waved an invitation to join me, which with a
+nod he refused.
+
+"What is it, then?"
+
+"Has it ever struck you that often a man's most merciless creditor is
+himself?"
+
+Here was a casuistical proposition thrown at my head by the last person
+I should have suspected of doing so. It was immensely interesting, in
+view of my long puzzledom. I spoke warily.
+
+"That depends on the man--on the nice balance of his dual nature. On
+the one side is the power to demand mercilessly; on the other, the
+instinct to respond. Of course, the criminal--"
+
+"What are you dragging in criminals for?" he said sharply. "I'm talking
+about honourable men with consciences. Criminals haven't consciences.
+The devil who has just been hung for murdering three women in their
+baths hadn't any dual nature, as you call it. Those murders didn't
+represent to him a mountain of debt to God which his soul was summoned
+to discharge. He went to his death thinking himself a most unlucky and
+hardly used fellow."
+
+His fingers went instinctively into the cigarette-box. I passed him the
+matches.
+
+"Precisely," said I. "That was the point I was about to make."
+
+He puffed at his cigarette and looked rather foolish, as though
+regretting his outburst.
+
+"We've got away," he said, after a pause, "from what I was meaning to
+tell you. And I want to tell you because I mayn't have another chance."
+He turned to the window-seat and picked up his life-preserver. "I'm out
+for two things. One is to kill Germans--" He patted the covered
+knob--and there flashed across my mind a boyhood's memory of
+Martin--wasn't it Martin?--in "Hereward the Wake," who had a
+deliciously blood-curdling habit of patting his revengeful axe.--"I've
+done in eighty-five with this and my revolver. That, I consider, is my
+duty to my country. The other is to get the V.C. That's for payment to
+my creditor self."
+
+"In full, or on account?" said I.
+
+"There's only one payment in full," he answered grimly, "and that I've
+been offering for the past twelve months. And it's a thousand chances
+to one it will be accepted before the end of this year. And that, after
+all this palaver, is what I've just made up my mind to talk to you
+about."
+
+"You mean your death?"
+
+"Just that," said he. "A man pot-hunting for Victoria Crosses takes a
+thousand to one chance." He paused abruptly and shot an eager and
+curiously wavering glance at me. "Am I boring you with all this?"
+
+"Good Heavens, no." And then as the insistence of his great figure
+towering over me had begun to fret my nerves--"Sit down, man," said I,
+with an impatient gesture, "and put that sickening toy away and come to
+the point."
+
+He tossed the cane on the window-seat and sat near me on a
+straight-backed chair.
+
+"All right," he said. "I'll come to the point. I shan't see you again.
+I'm going out in command. Thank God we're in the thick of it. Round
+about Loos. It's a thousand to one I'll be killed. Life doesn't matter
+much to me, in spite of what you may think. There are only two people
+on God's earth I care for. One, of course, is my old mother. The other
+is Betty Fairfax--I mean Betty Connor. I spoke to you once about
+her--after I had met her here--and I gave you to understand that I had
+broken off our engagement from conscientious motives. It was an awkward
+position and I had to say something. As a matter of fact I acted
+abominably. But I couldn't help it." The corners of his lips suddenly
+worked in the odd little twitch. "Sometimes circumstances, especially
+if a man's own damn foolishness has contrived them, tie him hand and
+foot. Sometimes physical instincts that he can't control." He narrowed
+his eyes and bent forward, looking at me intently, and he repeated the
+phrase slowly--"Physical instincts that he can't control-"
+
+Was he referring to the incident of yesterday? I thought so. I also
+believed it was the motive power of this strangely intimate
+conversation.
+
+He rose again as though restless, and once more went to the window and
+seemed to seek inspiration or decision from the sight of my roses.
+After a short while he turned and dragged up from his neck a slim chain
+at the end of which hung a round object in a talc case. This he
+unfastened and threw on the table in front of me.
+
+"Do you know what that is?"
+
+"Yes," said I. "Your identification disc."
+
+"Look on the other side."
+
+I took it up and found that the reverse contained the head cut out from
+some photograph of Betty. After I had handed back the locket, he
+slipped it on the chain and dropped it beneath his collar.
+
+"I'm not a damned fool," said he.
+
+I nodded understandingly. No one would have accused him of mawkish
+sentiment. The woman whose portrait he wore night and day next his skin
+was the woman he loved. He had no other way of proving his sincerity
+than by exhibiting the token.
+
+"I see," said I. "What do you propose to do?"
+
+"I've told you. The V.C. or--" He snapped his fingers.
+
+"But if it's the V.C. and a Brigade, and perhaps a Division--if it's
+everything else imaginable except--" I snapped my fingers in
+imitation--"What then?"
+
+Again the hateful twitch of the lips, which he quickly dissimulated in
+a smile.
+
+"I'll begin to try to be a brave man." He lit another cigarette. "But
+all that, my dear Meredyth," he continued, "is away from the point. If
+I live, I'll ask you to forget this rotten palaver. But I have a
+feeling that I shan't come back. Something tells me that my particular
+form of extermination will be a head knocked into slush. I'm absolutely
+certain that I shall never see you again. Oh, I'm not morbid," he said,
+as I raised a protesting hand. "You're an old soldier and know what
+these premonitions are. When I came in--before I had finally made up my
+mind to pan out to you like this--I felt like a boy who has been made
+captain of the school. But all the same, I know I shan't see you again.
+So I want you to promise me two things--quite honourable and easy."
+
+"Of course, my dear fellow," said I rather tartly, for I did not like
+the wind-up of his sentence. It was unthinkable that an officer and a
+gentleman should inveigle a brother-officer into a solemn promise to do
+anything dishonourable. "Of course. Anything you like."
+
+"One is to look after the old mother--"
+
+"That goes without promising," said I.
+
+"The other is to--what shall I say?--to rehabilitate my memory in the
+eyes of Betty Connor. She may hear all kinds of things about me--some
+true, others false--I have my enemies. She has heard things already. I
+didn't know it till our last meeting here. There's no one else on God's
+earth can do what I want but you. Do you think I'm putting you into an
+impossible position?"
+
+"I don't think so," said I. "Go on."
+
+"Well--there's not much more to be said. Try to make her realise that,
+whatever may be my faults--my crimes, if it comes to that--I've done my
+damndest out there to make reparation. By God! I have," he cried, in a
+sudden flash of passion. "See that she realises it. And--" he thumped
+the hidden identification disc, "tell her that she is the only woman
+that has ever really mattered in the whole of my blasted life."
+
+He threw his half-smoked cigarette into the fire-place and walked over
+to the sideboard, where stood decanters and syphon.
+
+"May I help myself to a drink?"
+
+"Certainly," said I.
+
+He gulped down half a whisky and soda and turned on me.
+
+"You promise?"
+
+"Of course," said I.
+
+"She may have reasons to think the worst of me. But whatever I am there
+is some good in me. I'm not altogether a worthless hound. If you
+promise to make her think the best of me, I'll go away happy. I don't
+care a damn whether I die or live. That's the truth. As long as I'm
+alive I can take care of myself. I'm not dreaming of asking you to say
+a word to win her favour. That would be outrageous impudence. You
+clearly understand. I don't want you ever to mention my name unless I'm
+dead. If I feel that I've an advocate in you--advocatus diaboli, if you
+like--I'll go away happy. You've got your brief. You know my life at
+home. You know my record."
+
+"My dear fellow," said I, "I promise to do everything in my power to
+carry out your wishes. But as to your record--are you quite certain
+that I know it?"
+
+You must realise that there was a curious tension in the situation, at
+any rate as far as it affected myself. Here was a man with whom, for
+reasons you know, I had studiously cultivated the most formal social
+relations, claiming my active participation in the secret motives of
+his heart. Since his first return from the front a bluff friendliness
+had been the keynote of our intercourse. Nothing more. Now he came and
+without warning enmeshed me in this intimate net of love and death. I
+promised to do his bidding--I could not do otherwise. I was in the
+position of an executor according to the terms of a last will and
+testament. Our comradeship in arms--those of our old Army who survive
+will understand--forbade refusal. Besides, his intensity of purpose won
+my sympathy and admiration. But I loved him none the more. To my
+cripple's detested sensitiveness, as he stood over me, he loomed more
+than ever the hulking brute. His semi-confessions and innuendoes
+exacerbated my feelings of distrust and repulsion. And yet, at the same
+tune, I could not--nor did I try to--repress an immense pity for the
+man; perhaps less for the man than for the soul in pain. At the back of
+his words some torment burned at red heat, remorselessly. He sought
+relief. Perhaps he sought it from me because I was as apart as a woman
+from his physical splendour, a kind of bodiless creature with just a
+brain and a human heart, the ghost of an old soldier, far away from the
+sphere of poor passions and little jealousies.
+
+I felt the tentacles of the man's nature blindly and convulsively
+groping after something within me that eluded them. That is the best
+way in which I can describe the psychology of these strange moments.
+The morning sun streamed into my little oak-panelled dining-room and
+caught the silver and fruit on the breakfast table and made my frieze
+of old Delft glow blue like the responsive western sky. With his back
+to the vivid window, Leonard Boyce stood cut out black like a
+silhouette. That he, too, felt the tension, I know; for a wasp crawled
+over his face, from cheek-bone, across his temples, to his hair, and he
+did not notice it.
+
+Instinctively I said the words: "Your record. Are you quite certain
+that I know it?"
+
+With what intensity, with what significance in my eyes, I may have said
+them, I know not. I repeat that I had a subconsciousness, almost
+uncanny, that we were souls rather than men, talking to each other. He
+sat down once more, drawing the chair to the table and resting his
+elbow on it.
+
+"My record," said he. "What about it?"
+
+Again please understand that I felt I had the man's soul naked before
+me. An imponderable hand plucked away my garments of convention.
+
+"Some time ago," said I, "you spoke of my attitude towards you being
+marked by a certain reserve. That is quite true. It dates back many
+years. It dates back from the South African War. From an affair at
+Vilboek's Farm."
+
+Again his lips twitched; but otherwise he did not move.
+
+"I remember," he answered. "My men saw me run away. I came out of it
+quite clean."
+
+I said: "I saw the man afterwards in hospital at Cape Town. His name
+was Somers. He told me quite a different story."
+
+His face grew grey. He glanced at me for a fraction of a second. "What
+did he tell you?" he asked quietly.
+
+In the fewest possible words I repeated what I have set down already in
+this book. When I had ended, he said in the same toneless way:
+
+"You have believed that all these years?"
+
+"I have done my best not to believe it. The last twelve months have
+disproved it."
+
+He shook his head. "They haven't. Nothing I can do in this world can
+disprove it. What that man said was true."
+
+"True?"
+
+I drew a deep breath and stared at him hard. His eyes met mine. They
+were very sad and behind them lay great pain. Although I expressed
+astonishment, it proceeded rather from some reflex action than from any
+realised shock to my consciousness. I say the whole thing was uncanny.
+I knew, as soon as he sat down by the table, that he would confess to
+the Vilboek story. And yet, at last, when he did confess and there were
+no doubts lingering in my mind, I gasped and stared at him.
+
+"I was a bloody coward," he said. "That's frank enough. When they rode
+away and left me, I tried to shoot myself--and I couldn't. If the man
+Somers hadn't returned, I think I should have waited until they sent to
+arrest me. But he did come back and the instinct of self-preservation
+was too strong. I know my story about the men's desertion and my
+forcing him to back me up was vile and despicable. But I clung to life
+and it was my only chance. Afterwards, with the horror of the thing
+hanging over me, I didn't care so much about life. In the little
+fighting that was left for me I deliberately tried to throw it away. I
+ask you to believe that."
+
+"I do," I said. "You were mentioned in dispatches for gallantry in
+action."
+
+He passed his hand over his eyes. Looking up, he said:
+
+"It is strange that you of all men, my neighbour here, should have
+heard of this. Not a whisper of its being known has ever reached me.
+How many people do you think have any idea of it?"
+
+I told him all that I knew and concluded by showing him Reggie Dacre's
+letter, which I had kept in the letter-case in my pocket. He returned
+it to me without a word. Presently he broke a spell of silence. All
+this time he had sat fixed in the one attitude--only shifted once, when
+Marigold entered to clear away the breakfast things and was dismissed
+by me with a glance and a gesture.
+
+"Do you remember," he said, "a talk we had about fear, in April, the
+first time I was over? I described what I knew. The paralysis of fear.
+Since we are talking as I never thought to talk with a human being, I
+may as well make my confession. I'm a man of strong animal passions.
+When I see red, I daresay I'm just a brute beast. But I'm a physical
+coward. Owing to this paralysis of fear, this ghastly inhibition of
+muscular or nervous action, I have gone through things even worse than
+that South-African business. I go about like a man under a curse. Even
+out there, when I don't care a damn whether I live or die, the blasted
+thing gets hold of me." He swung himself away from the table and shook
+his great clenched firsts. "By the grace of God, no one yet has seemed
+to notice it. I suppose I have a swift brain and as soon as the thing
+is over I can cover it up. It's my awful terror that one day I shall be
+found out and everything I've gained shall be stripped away from me."
+
+"But what about a thing like this?" said I, tapping Colonel Dacre's
+letter.
+
+"That's all right," he answered grimly. "That's when I know what I'm
+facing. That's deliberate pot-hunting. It's saving face as the Chinese
+say. It's doing any damned thing that will put me right with myself."
+
+He got up and swung about the room. I envied him, I would have given a
+thousand pounds to do the same just for a few moments. But I was stuck
+in my confounded chair, deprived of physical outlet. Suddenly he came
+to a halt and stood once more over me.
+
+"Now you know what kind of a fellow I am, what do you think of me?"
+
+It was a brutal question to fling at my head. It gave me no time to
+co-ordinate my ideas. What was one to make of a man avowedly subject to
+fits of the most despicable cowardice from the consequences of which he
+used any unscrupulous craftiness to extricate himself, and yet was
+notorious in his achievement of deeds of the most reckless courage? It
+is a problem to which I have devoted all the months occupied in writing
+this book. How the dickens could I solve it at a minute's notice? The
+situation was too blatant, too raw, too near bedrock, too naked and
+unashamed, for me to take refuge in platitudinous generalities of
+excuse. The bravest of men know Fear. They know him pretty intimately.
+But they manage to kick him to Hades by the very reason of their being
+brave men. I had to take Leonard Boyce as I found him. And I must admit
+that I found him a tragically miserable man. That is how I answered his
+question--in so many words.
+
+"You're not far wrong," said he.
+
+He picked up cap and stick.
+
+"When I get up to town I shall make my will. I've never worried about
+it before. Can I appoint you my executor?"
+
+"Certainly," said I.
+
+"I'm very grateful. I'll assure you a fireworks sort of finish, so that
+you shan't be ashamed. And--I don't ask impossibilities--I can't hold
+you to your previous promise--but what about Betty Connor?"
+
+"You may count," said I, "on my acting like an officer and a gentleman,
+and, if I may say so, like a Christian."
+
+He said: "Thank you, Meredyth. Good-bye." Then he stuck on his cap,
+brought his fingers to the peak in salute and marched to the door.
+
+"Boyce!" I cried sharply.
+
+He turned. "Yes?"
+
+"Aren't you going to shake hands with me?"
+
+He retraced the few steps to my chair.
+
+"I didn't know whether it would be--" he paused, seeking for a
+word--"whether it would be agreeable."
+
+Then I broke down. The strain had been too great for my sick man's
+nerves. I forgot all about the brutality of his bull-neck, for he faced
+me in all his gallant manhood and there was a damnable expression in
+his eyes like that of a rated dog. I stretched out my hand.
+
+"My dear good fellow," I cried, "what the hell are you talking about?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Boyce left Wellingsford that afternoon, and for many months I heard
+little about him. His astonishing avowal had once more turned
+topsy-turvy my conception of his real nature. I had to reconstruct the
+man, a very complicated task. I had to reconcile in him all kinds of
+opposites--the lusty brute and the sentimental lover; the physical
+coward and the baresark hero; the man with hell in his soul and the
+debonair gentleman. After a vast deal of pondering, I arrived not very
+much nearer a solution of the problem. The fact remained, however, that
+I found myself in far closer sympathy with him than ever before. After
+all that he had said, I should have had a heart of stone if it had not
+been stirred to profound pity. I had seen an instance both of his
+spell-bound cowardice and of his almost degrading craft in extrication.
+That in itself repelled me. But it lost its value in the light that he
+had cast on the never-ceasing torment that consumed him. At any rate he
+was at death-grips with himself, strangling the devils of fear and
+dishonour with a hand relentlessly certain. He appeared to me a tragic
+figure warring against a doom.
+
+At first I expected every day to receive an agonised message from Mrs.
+Boyce announcing his death. Then, as is the way of humans, the keenness
+of my apprehension grew blunted, until, at last, I took his continued
+existence as a matter of course. I wrote him a few friendly letters, to
+which he replied in the same strain. And so the months went on.
+
+Looking over my diary I find that these months were singularly
+uneventful as far as the lives of those dealt with in this chronicle
+were concerned. In the depths of our souls we felt the long-drawn-out
+agony of the war, with its bitter humiliations, its heartrending
+disappointments. In our daily meetings one with another we cried aloud
+for a great voice to awaken the little folk in Great Britain from their
+selfish lethargy--the little folk in high office, in smug burgessdom,
+in seditious factory and shipyard. They were months of sordid
+bargaining between all sections of our national life, in the murk of
+which the glow of patriotism seemed to be eclipsed. And in the
+meantime, the heroic millions from all corners of our far-flung Empire
+were giving their lives on land and sea, gaily and gallantly, too often
+in tragic futility, for the ideals to which the damnable little folk at
+home were blind. The little traitorous folk who gambled for their own
+hands in politics, the little traitorous folk who put the outworn
+shibboleths of a party before the war-cry of an Empire, the little
+traitorous folk who strove with all their power to starve our navy of
+ships, our ships of coal, our men in the trenches of munitions, our
+armies of men, our country of honour--all these will one day be
+mercilessly arraigned at the bar of history. The plains of France, the
+steeps of Gallipoli, the swamps of Mesopotamia, the Seven Seas will
+give up their dead as witnesses.
+
+We spoke bitterly of all these things and thought of them with raging
+impotence; but the even tenor of our life went on. We continued to do
+our obscure and undistinguished work for the country. It became a
+habit, part of the day's routine. We almost forgot why we were doing
+it. The war seemed to make little real difference in our social life.
+The small town was pitch black at night. Prices rose. Small economies
+were practised. Labour was scarce. Fewer young men out of uniform were
+seen in the streets and neighbouring roads and lanes. Groups of wounded
+from the hospital in their uniform of deep blue jean with red ties and
+khaki caps gave a note of actuality to the streets. Otherwise, there
+were few signs of war. Even the troops who hitherto swarmed about the
+town had gradually been removed from billets to a vast camp of huts
+some miles away, and appeared only sporadically about the place. I
+missed them and the stimulus of their presence. They brought me into
+closer touch with things. Marigold, too, pined for more occupation for
+his one critical eye than was afforded by the local volunteers. He grew
+morose, sick of a surfeit of newspapers. If he could have gone to
+France and got through to the firing-line, I am sure he would have dug
+a little trench all to himself and defied the Germans on his own
+account.
+
+In November Colonel Dacre was brought home gravely wounded, to a
+hospital for officers in London. A nurse gave me the news in a letter
+in which she said that he had asked to see me before an impending
+hazardous operation. I went up to town and found him wrecked almost
+beyond recognition. As we were the merest of acquaintances with nothing
+between us save our common link with Boyce, I feared lest he should
+desire to tell me of some shameful discovery. But his gay greeting and
+the brave smile, pathetically grotesque through the bandages in which
+his head was wrapped, reassured me. Only his eyes and mouth were
+visible.
+
+"It's worth while being done in," said he. "It makes one feel like a
+Sultan. You have just to clap your hands and say 'I want this,' and
+you've got it. I've a good mind to say to this dear lady, 'Fetch their
+gracious Majesties from Buckingham Palace,' and I'm sure they'd be here
+in a tick. It's awfully good of you to come, Meredyth."
+
+I signed to Marigold, who had carried me into the ward and set me down
+on a chair, and to the Sister, the "dear lady" of Dacre's reference, to
+withdraw, and after a few sympathetic words I asked him why he had sent
+for me.
+
+"I'm broken to bits all over," he replied. "The doctors here say they
+never saw such a blooming mess-up of flesh pretending to be alive. And
+as for talking, they'd just as soon expect speech from a jellyfish
+squashed by a steam-roller. If I do get through, I'll be a helpless
+crock all my days. I funked it till I thought of you. I thought the
+sight of another fellow who has gone through it and stuck it out might
+give me courage. I've had my wife here. We're rather fond of one
+another, you know ... My God! what brave things women are! If she had
+broken down all over me I could have risen to the occasion. But she
+didn't, and I felt a cowardly worm."
+
+"I had a brave wife, too," said I, and for a few moments we talked
+shyly about the women who had played sacred parts in our lives. Whether
+he was comforted by what I said I don't know. Probably he only listened
+politely. But I think he found comfort in a sympathetic ear.
+
+Presently he turned on to Boyce, the real motive of his summons. He
+repented much that he had told and written to me. His long defamation
+of the character of a brother-officer had lain on his conscience. And
+lately he had, at last, met Boyce personally, and his generous heart
+had gone out to the man's soldierly charm.
+
+"I never felt such a slanderous brute in my life as when I shook him by
+the hand. You know the feeling--how one wants to get behind a hedge and
+kick oneself. Kick oneself," he repeated faintly. Then he closed his
+eyes and his lips contracted in pain.
+
+The Sister, who had been watching him from a distance, came up. He had
+talked enough. It was time to go. But at the announcement he opened his
+eyes again and with an effort recovered his gaiety.
+
+"The whole gist of the matter lies in the postscript. Like a woman's
+letter. I must have my postscript."
+
+"Very well. Two more minutes."
+
+"Merciless dragon," said he.
+
+She smiled and left us.
+
+"The dearest angel, bar one, in the world." said he. "What were we
+talking about?"
+
+"Colonel Boyce."
+
+"Oh, yes. Forgive me. My head goes FUT now and then. It's idiotic not
+to be able to control one's brain.... The point is this. I may peg out.
+I know this operation they're going to perform is just touch and go. I
+want to face things with a clear conscience. I've convinced you,
+haven't I, that there wasn't a word of truth in that South-African
+story? If ever it crops up you'll scotch it like a venomous snake?"
+
+The ethics of my answer I leave to the casuist. I am an old-fashioned
+Church of England person. As I am so mentally constituted that I am
+unable to believe cheerfully in nothing. I believe in God and Jesus
+Christ, and accept the details of doctrine as laid down in the
+Thirty-nine Articles. For liars I have the Apocryphal condemnation. Yet
+I lied without the faintest rippling qualm of conscience.
+
+"My dear fellow," said I, stoutly, "there's not the remotest speck of
+truth in it. You haven't a second's occasion to worry."
+
+"That's all right," he said.
+
+The Sister approached again. Instinctively I stretched out my hand. He
+laughed.
+
+"No good. You must take it as gripped. Goodbye, old chap."
+
+I bade him good-bye and Marigold wheeled me away.
+
+A few days afterwards they told me that this gay, gallant, honourable,
+sensitive gentleman was dead. Although I had known him so little, it
+seemed that I knew him very intimately, and I deeply mourned his loss.
+
+I think this episode was the most striking of what I may term personal
+events during those autumn months.
+
+Of Randall Holmes we continued to hear in the same mysterious manner.
+His mother visited the firm of solicitors in London through whom his
+correspondence passed. They pleaded ignorance of his doings and
+professional secrecy as to the disclosure of his whereabouts. In
+December he ceased writing altogether, and twice a week Mrs. Holmes
+received a formal communication from the lawyers to the effect that
+they had been instructed by her son to inform her that he was in
+perfect health and sent her his affectionate greetings. Such news of
+this kind as I received I gave to Betty, who passed it on to Phyllis
+Gedge.
+
+Of course my intimacy with my dear Betty continued unbroken. If the
+unmarried Betty had a fault, it was a certain sweet truculence, a
+pretty self-assertiveness which sometimes betrayed intolerance of human
+foibles. Her widowhood had, in a subtle way, softened these little
+angularities of her spiritual contour. And bodily, the curves of her
+slim figure had become more rounded. She was no longer the young Diana
+of a year ago. The change into the gracious woman who had passed
+through the joy and the sorrow of life was obvious even to me, to whom
+it had been all but imperceptibly gradual. After a while she rarely
+spoke of her husband. The name of Leonard Boyce was never mentioned
+between us. With her as with me, the weeks ate up the uneventful days
+and the months the uneventful weeks. In her humdrum life the falling
+away of Mrs. Tufton loomed catastrophic.
+
+For four months Mrs. Tufton shone splendid as the wife of the British
+warrior. The Wellingsford Hospital rang with her praises and glistened
+with her scrubbing brush. She was the Admirable Crichton of the
+institution. What with men going off to the war and women going off to
+make munitions, there were never-ending temporary gaps in the staff.
+And there was never a gap that Mrs. Tufton did not triumphantly fill.
+The pride of Betty, who had wrought this reformation, was simply
+monstrous. If she had created a real live angel, wings and all, out of
+the dust-bin, she could not have boasted more arrogantly. Being a
+member of the Hospital Committee, I must confess to a bemused share in
+the popular enthusiasm. And was I not one of the original discoverers
+of Mrs. Tufton? When Marigold, inspired doubtless by his wife, from
+time to time suggested disparagement of the incomparable woman, I
+rebuked him for an arrant scandal-monger. There had been a case or two
+of drunkenness at the hospital. Wounded soldiers had returned the worse
+for liquor, an almost unforgivable offence.... Not that the poor
+fellows desired to get drunk. A couple of pints of ale or a couple of
+glasses of whisky will set swimming the head of any man who has not
+tasted alcohol for months. But to a man with a septic wound or trench
+nephritis or smashed up skull, alcohol is poison and poison is death,
+and so it is sternly forbidden to our wounded soldiers. They cannot be
+served in public houses. Where, then, did the hospital defaulters get
+their drink?
+
+"If I was you, sir," said Marigold, "I'd keep an eye on that there Mrs.
+Tufton."
+
+I instantly annihilated him--or should have done so had his
+expressionless face not been made of non-inflammable timber. He said:
+"Very good, sir." But there was a damnably ironical and insubordinate
+look in his one eye.
+
+Gradually the lady lapsed from grace. She got up late and complained of
+spasms. She left dustpan and brush on a patient's bed. She wrongfully
+interfered with the cook, insisting, until she was forcibly ejected
+from the kitchen, on throwing lettuces into the Irish stew. Finally,
+one Sunday afternoon, a policeman wandering through some waste ground,
+a deserted brickfield behind Flowery End, came upon an unedifying
+spectacle. There were madam and an elderly Irish soldier sprawling
+blissfully comatose with an empty flask of gin and an empty bottle of
+whisky lying between them. They were taken to the hospital and put to
+bed. The next morning, the lady, being sober, was summarily dismissed
+by the matron. Late at night she rang and battered at the door,
+clamouring for admittance, which was refused. Then she went away,
+apparently composed herself to slumber in the roadway of the
+pitch-black High Street, and was killed by a motor-car. And that, bar
+the funeral, was the end of Mrs. Tufton.
+
+From her bereaved husband, with whom I at once communicated, I received
+the following reply:
+
+
+"Dear Sir,
+
+"Yours to hand announcing the accidental death of my wife, which I need
+not say I deeply regret. You will be interested to hear that I have
+been offered a commission in the Royal Fusiliers, which I am now able
+to accept. In view of the same, any expense to which you may be put to
+give my late wife honourable burial, I shall be most ready to defray.
+
+"With many thanks for your kindness in informing me of this unfortunate
+circumstance,
+
+"I am,
+
+"Yours faithfully,
+  "JOHN P. TUFTON."
+
+
+"I think he's a horrid, callous, cold-blooded fellow!" cried Betty when
+I showed her this epistle.
+
+"After all," said I, "she wasn't a model wife. If the fatal motor-car
+hadn't come along, the probability is that she would have received poor
+Tufton on his next leave with something even more deadly than a poker.
+Now and again the Fates have brilliant inspirations. This was one of
+them. Now, you see the virago-clogged Tufton is a free man, able to
+accept a commission and start a new life as an officer and a gentleman."
+
+"I think you're perfectly odious. Odious and cynical," she exclaimed
+wrathfully.
+
+"I think," said I, "that a living warrior is better than a dead--
+Disappointment."
+
+"You don't understand," she stormed. "If I didn't love you, I could
+rend you to pieces."
+
+"It is because I do understand, my dear," said I, enjoying the flashing
+beauty of her return to Artemisian attitudes, "that I particularly
+characterised the dear lady as a disappointment."
+
+"I think," she said, in dejected generalisation, "the working out of
+the whole scheme of the universe is a disappointment."
+
+"The High Originators of the scheme seem to bear it pretty
+philosophically," I rejoined; "so why shouldn't we?"
+
+"They're gods and we're human," said Betty.
+
+"Precisely," said I. "And oughtn't it to be our ideal to approximate to
+the divine attitude?"
+
+Again Betty declared that I was odious. From her point of view--No.
+That is an abuse of language. There are mental states in which a woman
+has no point of view at all. She wanders over an ill-defined circular
+area of vision. That is why, in such conditions, you can never pin a
+woman down with a shaft of logic and compel her surrender, as you can
+compel that of a mere man. We went on arguing, and after a time I
+really did not know what I was arguing about. I advanced and tried to
+support the theory that on the whole the progress of humanity as
+represented by the British Empire in general and the about-to-be
+Lieutenant Tufton in particular, was advanced by the opportune demise
+of an unfortunately balanced lady. From her point--or rather her
+circular area of vision--perhaps my dear Betty was right in declaring
+me odious. She hated to be reminded of the intolerable goosiness of her
+swan. She longed for comforting, corroborative evidence of essential
+swaniness for her own justification. In a word, the poor dear girl was
+sore all over with mortification, and wherever one touched her, no
+matter with how gentle a finger, one hurt.
+
+"I would have trusted that woman," she cried tragically, "with a
+gold-mine or a distillery."
+
+"We trusted her with something more valuable, my dear," said I. "Our
+guileless faith in human nature. Anyhow we'll keep the faith undamaged."
+
+She smiled. "That's considerably less odious."
+
+Nothing more could be said. We let the unfortunate subject rest in
+peace for ever after.
+
+These two episodes, the death of poor Reggie Dacre and the Tufton
+catastrophe, are the only incidents in my diary that are worth
+recording here. Christmas came and went and we entered on the new year
+of 1916. It was only at a date in the middle of February, a year since
+I had driven to Wellings Park to hear the tragic news of Oswald
+Fenimore's death, that I find an important entry in my diary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Mrs. Boyce was shown into my study, her comely Dresden china face very
+white and her hands shaking. She held a telegram. I had seen faces like
+that before. Every day in England there are hundreds thus stricken. I
+feared the worst. It was a relief to read the telegram and find that
+Boyce was only wounded. The message said seriously wounded, but gave
+consolation by adding that his life was not in immediate danger. Mrs.
+Boyce was for setting out for France forthwith. I dissuaded her from a
+project so embarrassing to the hospital authorities and so fatiguing to
+herself. In spite of the chivalry and humanity of our medical staff,
+old ladies of seventy are not welcome at a busy base hospital. As soon
+as he was fit to be moved, I assured her, he would be sent home, before
+she could even obtain her permits and passes and passport and make
+other general arrangements for her journey. There was nothing for it
+but her Englishwoman's courage. She held up her hand at that, and went
+away to live, like many another, patiently through the long hours of
+suspense.
+
+For two or three days no news came. I spent as much time as I could
+with my old friend, seeking to comfort her.
+
+On the third morning it was announced in the papers that the King had
+been graciously pleased to confer the Victoria Cross on Lt. Colonel
+Leonard Boyce for conspicuous gallantry in action. It did not occur in
+a list of honours. It had a special paragraph all to itself. Such
+isolated announcements generally indicate immediate recognition of some
+splendid feat. I was thrilled by the news. It was a grand achievement
+to win through death to the greatest of all military rewards
+deliberately coveted. Here, as I had strange reason for knowing, was no
+sudden act of sublime valour. The final achievement was the result of
+months of heroic, almost suicidal daring. And it was repayment of a
+terrible debt, the whole extent of which I knew not, owed by the man to
+his tormented soul.
+
+I rang up Mrs. Boyce, who replied tremulously to my congratulations.
+Would I come over and lunch?
+
+I found a very proud and tearful old lady. She may not have known the
+difference between a platoon and a howitzer, and have conceived the
+woolliest notions of the nature of her son's command, but the Victoria
+Cross was a matter on which her ideas were both definite and correct.
+She had spent the morning at the telephone receiving calls of
+congratulation. A great sheaf of telegrams had arrived. Two or three of
+them were from the High and Mighty of the Military Hierarchy. She was
+in such a twitter of joy that she almost forgot her anxiety as to his
+wounds.
+
+"Do you think he knows? I telegraphed to him at once."
+
+"So did I."
+
+She glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece.
+
+"How long would it take for a telegram to reach him?"
+
+"You may be sure he has it by now," said I, "and it has given him a
+prodigious appetite for lunch."
+
+Her face clouded over. "That horrid tinned stuff. It's so dangerous. I
+remember once Mary's aunt--or was it Cook's aunt--one of them any
+way--nearly died of eating tinned lobster--ptomaine poisoning. I've
+always told Leonard not to touch it.
+
+"They don't give Colonels and V.C.s tinned lobster at Boulogne," I
+answered cheerfully. "He's living now on the fat of the land."
+
+"Let us hope so," she sighed dubiously. "It's no use my sending out
+things for him, as they always go wrong. Some time ago I sent him three
+brace of grouse and three brace of partridges. He didn't acknowledge
+them for weeks, and then he said they were most handy things to kill
+Germans with, but were an expensive form of ammunition. I don't quite
+know what he meant--but at any rate they were not eatable when they
+arrived. Poor fellow!" She sighed again. "If only I knew what was the
+matter with him."
+
+"It can't be much," I reassured her, "or you would have heard again.
+And this news will act like a sovereign remedy."
+
+She patted the back of my hand with her plump palm. "You're always so
+sympathetic and comforting."
+
+"I'm an old soldier, like Leonard," said I, "and never meet trouble
+halfway."
+
+At lunch, the old lady insisted on opening a bottle of champagne, a
+Veuve Clicquot which Leonard loved, in honour of the glorious occasion.
+We could not drink to the hero's health in any meaner vintage, although
+she swore that a teaspoonful meant death to her, and I protested that a
+confession of champagne to my medical adviser meant a dog's rating. We
+each, conscience-bound, put up the tips of our fingers to the glasses
+as soon as Mary had filled them with froth, and solemnly drank the
+toast in the eighth of an inch residuum. But by some freakish chance or
+the other, there was nothing left in that quart bottle by the time Mary
+cleared the table for dessert. And to tell the honest truth, I don't
+think the health of either my hostess or myself was a penny the worse.
+Let no man despise generous wine. Treated with due reverence it is a
+great loosener of human sympathy.
+
+Generous ale similarly treated produces the same effect. Marigold,
+driving me home, cocked a luminous eye on me and said:
+
+"Begging your pardon, sir, would you mind very much if I broke the neck
+of that there Gedge?"
+
+"You would be aiding the good cause," said I, "but I should deplore the
+hanging of an old friend. What has Gedge been doing?"
+
+Marigold sounded his horn and slowed down round a bend, and, as soon as
+he got into a straight road, he replied.
+
+"I'm not going to say, sir, if I may take the liberty, that I was ever
+sweet on Colonel Boyce. People affect you in different ways. You either
+like 'em or you don't like 'em. You can't tell why. And a Sergeant,
+being, as you may say, a human being, has as much right to his private
+feelings regarding a Colonel as any officer."
+
+"Undoubtedly," said I.
+
+"Well, sir, I never thought Colonel Boyce was true metal. But I take it
+all back--every bit of it."
+
+"For God's sake," I cried, stretching out a foolish but instinctive
+hand to the wheel, "for God's sake, control your emotions, or you'll be
+landing us in the ditch."
+
+"That's all right, sir," he replied, steering a straight course. "She's
+a bit skittish at times. I was saying as how I did the Colonel an
+injustice. I'm very sorry. No man who wasn't steel all through ever got
+the V.C. They don't chuck it around on blighters."
+
+"That's all very interesting and commendable," said I, "but what has it
+to do with Gedge?"
+
+"He has been slandering the Colonel something dreadful the last few
+months, sneering at him, saying nothing definite, but insinuatingly
+taking away his character."
+
+"In what way?" I asked.
+
+"Well, he tells one man that the Colonel's a drunkard, another that
+it's women, another that he gambles and doesn't pay, another that he
+pays the newspapers to put in all these things about him, while all the
+time in France he's in a blue funk hiding in his dugout."
+
+"That's moonshine," said I. And as regards the drinking, drabbing, and
+gaming of course it was. But the suggestion of cowardice gave me a
+sharp stab of surprise and dismay.
+
+"I know it is," said Marigold. "But the people hereabouts are so
+ignorant, you can make them believe anything." Marigold was a man of
+Kent and had a poor opinion of those born and bred in other counties.
+"I met Gedge this morning," he continued, and thereupon gave me the
+substance of the conversation. I hardly think the adjectives of the
+report were those that were really used.
+
+"So your precious Colonel has got the V.C.," sneered Gedge.
+
+"He has," said Marigold. "And it's too great an honour for your
+inconsiderable town."
+
+"If this inconsiderable town knew as much about him as I do, it would
+give him the order of the precious boot."
+
+"And what do you know?" asked Marigold.
+
+"That's what all you downtrodden slaves of militarism would like to
+find out," replied Gedge. "The time will come when I, and such as I,
+will tear the veils away and expose them, and say 'These be thy gods, O
+Israel.'"
+
+"The time will come," retorted Marigold, "when if you don't hold your
+precious jaw, I and such as I will smash it into a thousand pieces. For
+twopence I'd knock your ugly head off this present minute."
+
+Whereupon Gedge apparently wilted before the indignant eye of Sergeant
+Marigold and faded away down the High Street.
+
+All this in itself seemed very trivial, but for the past year the
+attitude of Gedge had been mysterious. Could it be possible that Gedge
+thought himself the sole repository of the secret which Boyce had so
+desperately confided to me? But when had the life of Gedge and the
+military life of Leonard Boyce crossed? It was puzzling.
+
+Well, to tell the truth, I thought no more about the matter. The glow
+of Mrs. Boyce's happiness remained with me all the evening. Rarely had
+I seen her so animated, so forgetful of her own ailments. She had taken
+the rosiest view of Leonard's physical condition and sunned herself in
+the honour conferred on him by the King. I had never spent a pleasanter
+afternoon at her house. We had comfortably criticised our neighbours,
+and, laudatores temporis acti, had extolled the days of our youth. I
+went to bed as well pleased with life as a man can be in this
+convulsion of the world.
+
+The next morning she sent me a letter to read. It was written at
+Boyce's dictation. It ran:
+
+"Dear Mother:
+
+"I'm sorry to say I am knocked out pro tem. I was fooling about where a
+C.O. didn't ought to, and a Bosch bullet got me so that I can't write.
+But don't worry at all about me. I'm too tough for anything the Bosches
+can do. To show how little serious it is, they tell me that I'll be
+conveyed to England in a day or two. So get hot-water bottles and bath
+salts ready.
+
+"Your ever loving Leonard."
+
+This was good news. Over the telephone wire we agreed that the letter
+was a justification of our yesterday's little merrymaking. Obviously, I
+told her, he would live to fight another day. She was of opinion that
+he had done enough fighting already. If he went on much longer, the
+poor boy would get quite tired out, to say nothing of the danger of
+being wounded again. The King ought to let him rest on his laurels and
+make others who hadn't worked a quarter as hard do the remainder of the
+war.
+
+"Perhaps," I said light-heartedly, "Leonard will drop the hint when he
+writes to thank the King for the nice cross."
+
+She said that I was laughing at her, and rang off in the best of
+spirits.
+
+In the evening came Betty, inviting herself to dinner. She had been on
+night duty at the hospital, and I had not seen her for some days. The
+sight of her, bright-eyed and brave, fresh and young, always filled me
+with happiness. I felt her presence like wine and the sea wind and the
+sunshine. So greatly did her vitality enrich me, that sometimes I
+called myself a horrid old vampire.
+
+As soon as she had greeted me, she said in her downright way:
+
+"So Leonard Boyce has got his V.C."
+
+"Yes," said I. "What do you think of it?"
+
+A spot of colour rose to her cheek. "I'm very glad. It's no use, Majy,
+pretending that I ignore his existence. I don't and I can't. Because I
+loved and married someone else doesn't alter the fact that I once cared
+for him, does it?"
+
+"Many people," said I, judicially, "find out that they have been
+mistaken as to the extent and nature of their own sentiments."
+
+"I wasn't mistaken," she replied, sitting down on the piano stool, her
+hands on the leathern seat, her neatly shod feet stretched out in front
+of her, just as she had sat on her wedding eve talking nonsense to
+Willie Connor. "I wasn't mistaken. I was never addicted to silly
+school-girl fancies. I know my own mind. I cared a lot for Leonard
+Boyce."
+
+"Eh bien?" said I.
+
+"Well, don't you see what I'm driving at?"
+
+"I don't a bit."
+
+She sighed. "Oh, dear! How dull some people are! Don't you see that,
+when an affair like that is over, a woman likes to get some evidence of
+the man's fine qualities, in order to justify her for having once cared
+for him?"
+
+"Quite so. Yet--" I felt argumentative. The breach, as you know,
+between Betty and Boyce was wrapped in exasperating obscurity. "Yet, on
+the other hand," said I, "she might welcome evidence of his
+worthlessness, so as to justify her for having thrown him over."
+
+"If a woman isn't a dam-fool already," said Betty, "and I don't think
+I'm one, she doesn't like to feel that she ever made a dam-fool of
+herself. She is proud of her instincts and her judgments and the
+sensitive, emotional intelligence that is hers. When all these seem to
+have gone wrong, it's pleasing to realise that originally they went
+right. It soothes one's self-respect, one's pride. I know now that all
+these blind perceptions in me went straight to certain magnificent
+essentials--those that make the great, strong, fearless fighting man.
+That's attractive to a woman, you know. At any rate, to an independent
+barbarian like myself--"
+
+"My dear Betty," I interrupted with a laugh. "You a barbarian? You whom
+I regard as the last word, the last charming and delightful word, in
+modern womanhood?"
+
+"Of course I'm the child of my century," she cried, flushing. "I want
+votes, freedom, opportunity for expansion, power--everything that can
+develop Betty Connor into a human product worthy of the God who made
+her. But how she could fulfil herself without the collaboration of a
+man, has baffled her ever since she was a girl of sixteen, when she
+began to awake to the modern movement. On one side I saw women
+perfectly happy in the mere savage state of wifehood and motherhood,
+and not caring a hang for anything else, and on the other side women
+who threw babies back into limbo and preached of nothing but
+intellectual and political and economic independence. Oh, I worried
+terribly about it, Majy, when I was a girl. Each side seemed to have
+such a lot to say for itself. Then it dawned upon me that the only way
+out of the dilemma was to combine both ideals--that of the savage woman
+in skins and the lady professor in spectacles. That is what, allowing
+for the difference of sex, a man does. Why shouldn't a woman? The
+woman, of course, has to droop a bit more to the savage, because she
+has to produce the babies and suckle them, and so forth, and a man
+hasn't. That was my philosophy of life when I entered the world as a
+young woman. Love came into it, of course. It was a sanctification of
+the savagery. I've gone on like this," she laughed, "because I don't
+want you to protest in your dear old-fashioned way against my calling
+myself an independent barbarian. I am, and I glory in it. That's why,
+as I was saying, I'm deeply glad that Leonard Boyce has made good. His
+honour means a good deal to me--to my self-esteem. I hope," she added,
+rising and coming to me with a caressing touch. "I hope you've got the
+hang of the thing now."
+
+Within myself I sincerely hoped I had. If her sentiments were just as
+she analysed them, all was well. If, on the other hand, the little
+demon of love for Boyce still lurked in her heart, in spite of the
+marriage and widowhood, there might be trouble ahead. I remembered how
+once she had called him a devil. I remembered, too, uncomfortably, the
+scrap of conversation I had overheard between Boyce and herself in the
+hall. She had lashed him with her scorn, and he had taken his whipping
+without much show of fight. Still, a woman's love, especially that of a
+lady barbarian, was a curiously complex affair, and had been known to
+impel her to trample on a man one minute and the next to fall at his
+feet. Now the worm she had trampled on had turned; stood erect as a
+properly authenticated hero. I felt dubious as to the ensuing situation.
+
+"I wrote to old Mrs. Boyce," she added after a while. "I thought it
+only decent. I wrote yesterday, but only posted the letter to-day, so
+as to be sure I wasn't acting on impulse."
+
+The latter part of the remark was by way of apology. The breach of the
+engagement had occasioned a cessation of social relations between Betty
+and Mrs. Boyce. Betty's aunts had ceased calling on Mrs. Boyce and Mrs.
+Boyce had ceased calling on Betty's aunts. Whenever the estranged
+parties met, which now and then was inevitable in a little town, they
+bowed with distant politeness, but exchanged no words. Everything was
+conducted with complete propriety. The old lady, knowing how beloved an
+intimate of mine was Betty, alluded but once to the broken engagement.
+That was when Betty got married.
+
+"It has been a great unhappiness to me, Major," she said. "In spite of
+her daring ways, which an old woman like myself can't quite understand,
+I was very fond of her. She was just the girl for Leonard. They made
+such a handsome couple. I have never known why it was broken off.
+Leonard won't tell me. It's out of the question that it could be his
+fault, and I can't believe it is all Betty Fairfax's. She's a girl of
+too much character to be a mere jilt."
+
+I remember that I couldn't help smiling at the application of the
+old-fashioned word to my Betty.
+
+"You may be quite certain she isn't that," said I.
+
+"Then what was the reason? Do you know?"
+
+I didn't. I was as mystified as herself. I told her so. I didn't
+mention that a few days before she had implied that Leonard was a devil
+and she wished that he was dead, thereby proving to me, who knew
+Betty's uprightness, that Boyce and Boyce only was to blame in the
+matter. It would have been a breach of confidence, and it would not
+have made my old friend any the happier. It would have fired her with
+flaming indignation against Betty.
+
+"Young people," said I, "must arrange their own lives." And we left it
+at that. Now and then, afterwards, she enquired politely after Betty's
+health, and when Willie Connor was killed, she spoke to me very
+feelingly and begged me to convey to Betty the expression of her deep
+sympathy. In the unhappy circumstances, she explained, she was
+naturally precluded from writing.
+
+So Betty's letter was the first direct communication that had passed
+between them for nearly two years. That is why to my meddlesome-minded
+self it appeared to have some significance.
+
+"You did, did you?" said I. Then I looked at her quickly, with an idea
+in my head. "What did Mrs. Boyce say in reply?"
+
+"She has had no time to answer. Didn't I tell you I only posted the
+letter to-day?"
+
+"Then you've heard nothing more about Leonard Boyce except that he has
+got the V.C.?"
+
+"No. What more is there to hear?"
+
+Even Bettys are sly folk. It behooved me to counter with equal slyness.
+I wondered whether she had known all along of Boyce's mishap, or had
+been informed of it by his mother. Knowledge might explain her unwonted
+outburst. I looked at her fixedly.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked, bending slightly down to me.
+
+"You haven't heard that he is wounded?"
+
+She straightened herself. "No. When?"
+
+"Five days ago."
+
+"Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"I haven't seen you."
+
+"I mean--this evening."
+
+I reached for her hand. "Will you forgive me, my dear Betty, for
+remarking that for the last twenty minutes you have done all the
+talking?"
+
+"Is he badly hurt?"
+
+She ignored my playful rejoinder. I noted the fact. Usually she was
+quick to play Beatrice to my Benedick. Had I caught her off her guard?
+
+I told her all that I knew. She seated herself again on the piano-stool.
+
+"I hope Mrs. Boyce did not think me unfeeling for not referring to it,"
+she said calmly. "You will explain, won't you?"
+
+Marigold entered, announcing dinner. We went into the dining-room. All
+through the meal Bella, my parlour-maid, flitted about with dishes and
+plates, and Marigold, when he was not solemnly pouring claret, stood
+grim behind my chair, roasting, as usual, his posterior before a
+blazing fire, with soldierly devotion to duty. Conversation fell a
+little flat. The arrival of the evening newspapers, half an hour
+belated, created a diversion. The war is sometimes subversive of nice
+table decorum. I read out the cream of the news. Discussion thereon
+lasted us until coffee and cigarettes were brought in and the servants
+left us to ourselves.
+
+One of the curious little phenomena of human intercourse is the fact
+that now and again the outer personality of one with whom you are daily
+familiar suddenly strikes you afresh, thus printing, as it were, a new
+portrait on your mind. At varying intervals I had received such
+portrait impressions of Betty, and I had stored them in my memory.
+Another I received at this moment, and it is among the most delectable.
+She was sitting with both elbows on the table, her palms clasped and
+her cheek resting on the back of the left hand. Her face was turned
+towards me. She wore a low-cut black chiffon evening dress--the thing
+had mere straps over the shoulders--an all but discarded vanity of
+pre-war days. I had never before noticed what beautiful arms she had.
+Perhaps in her girlhood, when I had often seen her in such exiguous
+finery, they had not been so shapely. I have told you already of the
+softening touch of her womanhood. An exquisite curve from arm to neck
+faded into the shadow of her hair. She had a single string of pearls
+round her neck. The fatigue of last week's night duty had cast an added
+spirituality over her frank, sensitive face.
+
+We had not spoken for a while. She smiled at me.
+
+"What are you thinking of?"
+
+"I wasn't thinking at all," said I. "I was only gratefully admiring
+you."
+
+"Why gratefully?"
+
+"Oughtn't one to be grateful to God for the beautiful things He gives
+us?"
+
+She flushed and averted her eyes. "You are very good to me, Majy."
+
+"What made you attire yourself in all this splendour?" I asked,
+laughing. The wise man does not carry sentiment too far. He keeps it
+like a little precious nugget of pure gold; the less wise beats it out
+into a flabby film.
+
+"I don't know," she said, shifting her position and casting a critical
+glance at her bodice. "All kinds of funny little feminine vanities.
+Perhaps I wanted to see whether I hadn't gone off. Perhaps I wanted to
+try to feel good-looking even if I wasn't. Perhaps I thought my dear
+old Majy was sick to death of the hospital uniform perfumed with
+disinfectant. Perhaps it was just a catlike longing for comfort.
+Anyhow, I'm glad you like me."
+
+"My dear Betty," said I, "I adore you."
+
+"And I you," she laughed. "So there's a pair of us."
+
+She lit a cigarette and sipped her coffee. Then, breaking a short
+silence:
+
+"I hope you quite understand, dear, what I said about Leonard Boyce. I
+shouldn't like to leave you with the smallest little bit of a wrong
+impression."
+
+"What wrong impression could I possibly have?" I asked disingenuously.
+
+"You might think that I was still in love with him."
+
+"That would be absurd," said I.
+
+"Utterly absurd. I should feel it to be almost an insult if you thought
+anything of the kind. Long before my marriage things that had happened
+had killed all such feelings outright." She paused for a few seconds
+and her brow darkened, just as it had done when she had spoken of him
+in the days immediately preceding her marriage with Willie Connor.
+Presently it cleared. "The whole beginning and end of my present
+feelings," she continued, "is that I'm glad the man I once cared for
+has won such high distinction, and I'm sorry that such a brave soldier
+should be wounded."
+
+I could do nothing else than assure her of my perfect understanding. I
+upbraided myself as a monster of indelicacy for my touch of doubt
+before dinner; also for a devilish and malicious suspicion that flitted
+through my brain while she was cataloguing her possible reasons for
+putting on the old evening dress. The thought of Betty's beautiful arm
+and the man's bull-neck was a shivering offence. I craved purification.
+
+"If you've finished your coffee," I said, "let us go into the
+drawing-room and have some music."
+
+She rose with the impulsiveness of a child told that it can be excused,
+and responded startlingly to my thought.
+
+"I think we need it," she said.
+
+In the drawing-room I swung my chair so that I could watch her hands on
+the keys. She was a good musician and had the well-taught executant's
+certainty and grace of movement. It may be the fancy of an outer
+Philistine, but I love to forget the existence of the instrument and to
+feel the music coming from the human finger-tips. She found a volume of
+Chopin's Nocturnes on the rest. In fact she had left it there a
+fortnight before, the last time she had played for me. I am very fond
+of Chopin. I am an uneducated fellow and the lyrical mostly appeals to
+me both in poetry and in music. Besides, I have understood him better
+since I have been a crock. And I loved Betty's sympathetic
+interpretation. So I sat there, listening and watching, and I knew that
+she was playing for the ease of both our souls. Once more I thanked God
+for the great gift of Betty to my crippled life. Peace gathered round
+my heart as Betty played.
+
+The raucous buzz of the telephone in the corner of the room knocked the
+music to shatters. I cried out impatiently. It was the fault of that
+giant of ineptitude Marigold and his incompetent satellites, whose duty
+it was to keep all upstairs extensions turned off and receive calls
+below. Only two months before I had been the victim of their culpable
+neglect, when I was forced to have an altercation with a man at
+Harrod's Stores, who seemed pained because I declined to take an
+interest in some idiotic remark he was making about fish.
+
+"I'll strangle Marigold with my own hands," I cried.
+
+Betty, unmoved by my ferocity, laughed and rose from the piano.
+
+"Shall I take the call?"
+
+To Betty I was all urbanity. "If you'll be so kind, dear," said I.
+
+She crossed the room and stopped the abominable buzzing.
+
+"Yes. Hold on for a minute. It's the post-office"--she turned to
+me--"telephoning a telegram that has just come in. Shall I take it down
+for you?"
+
+More urbanity on my part. She found pencil and paper on an escritoire
+near by, and went back to the instrument. For a while she listened and
+wrote. At last she said:
+
+"Are you sure there's no signature?"
+
+She got the reply, waited until the message had been read over, and
+hung up the receiver. When she came round to me--my back had been half
+turned to her all the time--I was astonished to see her looking rather
+shaken. She handed me the paper without a word.
+
+The message ran:
+
+"Thanks yesterday's telegram. Just got home. Queen Victoria Hospital,
+Belton Square. Must have talk with you before I communicate with my
+mother. Rely absolutely on your discretion. Come to-morrow. Forgive
+inconvenience caused, but most urgent."
+
+"It's from Boyce," I said, looking up at her.
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"I suppose he omitted the signature to avoid any possible leakage
+through the post-office here."
+
+She nodded. "What do you think is the matter?"
+
+"God knows," said I. "Evidently something very serious."
+
+She went back to the piano seat. "It's odd that I should have taken
+down that message," she said, after a while.
+
+"I'll sack Marigold for putting you in that abominable position," I
+exclaimed wrathfully.
+
+"No, you won't, dear. What does it signify? I'm not a silly child. I
+suppose you're going to-morrow?"
+
+"Of course--for Mrs. Boyce's sake alone I should have no alternative."
+
+She turned round and began to take up the thread of the Nocturne from
+the point where she had left off; but she only played half a page and
+quitted the piano abruptly.
+
+"The pretty little spell is broken, Majy. No matter how we try to
+escape from the war, it is always shrieking in upon us. We're up
+against naked facts all the time. If we can't face them we go under
+either physically or spiritually. Anyhow--" she smiled with just a
+little touch of weariness,--"we may as well face them in comfort."
+
+She pushed my chair gently nearer to the fire and sat down by my side.
+And there we remained in intimate silence until Marigold announced the
+arrival of her car.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+I shrink morbidly from visiting strange houses. I shrink from the
+unknown discomforts and trivial humiliations they may hold for me. I
+hate, for instance, not to know what kind of a chair may be provided
+for me to sit on. I hate to be carried up many stairs even by my
+steel-crane of a Marigold. Just try doing without your legs for a
+couple of days, and you will see what I mean. Of course I despise
+myself for such nervous apprehensions, and do not allow them to
+influence my actions--just as one, under heavy fire, does not satisfy
+one's simple yearning to run away. I would have given a year's income
+to be able to refuse Boyce's request with a clear conscience; but I
+could not. I shrank all the more because my visit in the autumn to
+Reggie Dacre had shaken me more than I cared to confess. It had been
+the only occasion for years when I had entered a London building other
+than my club. To the club, where I was as much at home as in my own
+house, all those in town with whom I now and then had to transact
+business were good enough to come. This penetration of strange
+hospitals was an agitating adventure. Apart, however, from the mere
+physical nervousness against which, as I say, I fought, there was
+another element in my feelings with regard to Boyce's summons. If I
+talk about the Iron Hand of Fate you may think I am using a cliche of
+melodrama. Perhaps I am. But it expresses what I mean. Something
+unregenerate in me, some lingering atavistic savage instinct towards
+freedom, rebelled against this same Iron Hand of Fate that, first
+clapping me on the shoulder long ago in Cape Town, was now dragging me,
+against my will, into ever thickening entanglement with the dark and
+crooked destiny of Leonard Boyce.
+
+I tell you all this because I don't want to pose as a kind of apodal
+angel of mercy.
+
+I was also deadly anxious as to the nature of the communication Boyce
+would make to me, before his mother should be informed of his arrival
+in London. In spite of his frank confession, there was still such a
+cloud of mystery over the man's soul as to render any revelation
+possible. Had his hurt declared itself to be a mortal one? Had he
+summoned me to unburden his conscience while yet there was time? Was it
+going to be a repetition, with a difference, of my last interview with
+Reggie Dacre? I worried myself with unnecessary conjecture.
+
+After a miserable drive through February rain and slush, I reached my
+destination in Belton Square, a large mansion, presumably equipped by
+its owner as a hospital for officers, and given over to the nation. A
+telephone message had prepared the authorities for my arrival.
+Marigold, preceded by the Sister in charge, carried me across a
+tesselated hall and began to ascend the broad staircase.
+
+I uttered a little gasp and looked around me, for in a flash I realised
+where I was. Twenty years ago I had danced in this house. I had danced
+here with my wife before we were married. On the half landing we had
+sat out together. It was the town house of the late Lord Madelow, with
+whose wife I shared the acquaintance of a couple of hundred young
+dancing men inscribed on her party list. Both were dead long since. To
+whom the house belonged now I did not know. But I recognised pictures
+and statuary and a conservatory with palms. And the place shimmered
+with brilliant ghosts and was haunted by hot perfumes and by the echo
+of human voices and by elfin music. And the cripple forgot that he was
+being carried up the stairs in the grip of the old soldier. He was
+mounting them with heart beating high and the presence of a beloved
+hand on his arm.... You see, it was all so sudden. It took my breath
+away and sent my mind whirling back over twenty years.
+
+It was like awaking from a dream to find a door flung open in front of
+me and to hear the Sister announce my name. I was on the threshold not
+of a ward, but of a well-appointed private room fairly high up and
+facing the square, for the first thing I saw was the tops of the
+leafless trees through the windows. Then I was conscious of a cheery
+fire. The last thing I took in was the bed running at right angles to
+door and window, and Leonard Boyce lying in it with bandages about his
+face. For the dazed second or two he seemed to be Reggie Dacre over
+again. But he had thrown back the bedclothes and his broad chest and
+great arms were free. His pleasant voice rang out at once.
+
+"Hallo! Hallo! You are a good Samaritan. Is that you, Marigold? There's
+a comfortable chair by the bedside for Major Meredyth."
+
+He seemed remarkably strong and hearty; far from any danger of death.
+Stubs of cigarettes were lying in an ash-tray on the bed. In a moment
+or two they settled me down and left me alone with him.
+
+As soon as he heard the click of the door he said:
+
+"I've done more than I set out to do. You remember our conversation. I
+said I should either get the V.C. or never see you again. I've managed
+both."
+
+"What do you mean?" I asked.
+
+"I shall never see you or anybody else again, or a dog or a cat, or a
+tree or a flower."
+
+Then, for the first time the dreadful truth broke upon me.
+
+"Good Heavens!" I cried. "Your eyes--?"
+
+"Done in. Blind. It's a bit ironical, isn't it?" He laughed bitterly.
+
+What I said by way of sympathy and consolation is neither here nor
+there. I spoke sincerely from my heart, for I felt overwhelmed by the
+tragedy of it all. He stretched out his hand and grasped mine.
+
+"I knew you wouldn't fail me. Your sort never does. You understand now
+why I wanted you to come?--To prepare the old mother for the shock.
+You've seen for yourself that I'm sound of wind and limb--as fit as a
+fiddle. You can make it quite clear to her that I'm not going to die
+yet awhile. And you can let her down easy on the real matter. Tell her
+I'm as merry as possible and looking forward to going about
+Wellingsford with a dog and string."
+
+"You're a brave chap, Boyce," I said.
+
+He laughed again. "You're anticipating. Do you remember what I said
+when you asked me what I should do if I won all the pots I set my heart
+on and came through alive? I said I should begin to try to be a brave
+man. God! It's a tough proposition. But it's something to live for,
+anyway."
+
+I asked him how it happened.
+
+"I got sick," he replied, "of bearing a charmed life and nothing
+happening. The Bosch shell or bullet that could hit me wasn't made. I
+could stroll about freely where it was death for anyone else to show
+the top of his head. I didn't care. Then suddenly one day things went
+wrong. You know what I mean. I nearly let my regiment down. It was
+touch and go. And it was touch and go with my career. I just pulled
+through, however. I'll tell you all about it one of these days--if
+you'll put up with me."
+
+Again the familiar twitch of the lips which looked ghastly below the
+bandaged eyes. "No one ever dreamed of the hell I went through. Then I
+found I was losing the nerve I had built up all these months. I nearly
+went off my head. At last I thought I would put an end to it. It was a
+small attack of ours that had failed. The men poured back over the
+parapet into the trench, leaving heaven knows how many dead and wounded
+outside. I'm not superstitious and I don't believe in premonitions and
+warnings, and so forth; but in cases of waiting like mine a man
+suddenly gets to know that his hour has come.... I got in six wounded.
+Two men were shot while I was carrying them. How I lived God knows. It
+was cold hell. My clothes were torn to rags. As I was going for the
+seventh, the knob of my life-preserver was shot away and my wrist
+nearly broken. I wore it with a strap, you know. The infernal thing had
+been a kind of mascot. When I realised it was gone I just stood still
+and shivered in a sudden, helpless funk. The seventh man was crawling
+up to me. He had a bloody face and one dragging leg. That's my last
+picture of God's earth. Before I could do anything--I must have been
+standing sideways on--a bullet got me across the bridge of the nose and
+night came down like a black curtain. Then I ran like a hare. Sometimes
+I tripped over a man, dead or wounded, and fell on my head. I don't
+remember much about this part of it. They told me afterwards. At last I
+stumbled on to the parapet and some plucky fellow got me into the
+trench. It was the regulation V.C. business," he added, "and so they
+gave it to me."
+
+"Specially," said I.
+
+"Consolation prize, I suppose, for losing my sight. They had just time
+to get me away behind when the Germans counter attacked. If I hadn't
+brought the six men in, they wouldn't have had a dog's chance. I did
+save their lives. That's something to the credit side of the infernal
+balance."
+
+"There can be no balance now, my dear chap," said I. "God knows you've
+paid in full."
+
+He lifted his hand and dropped it with a despairing gesture.
+
+"There's only one payment in full. That was denied me. God, or whoever
+was responsible, had my eyes knocked out, and made it impossible for
+ever. He or somebody must be enjoying the farce."
+
+"That's all very well," said I. "A man can do no more than his
+utmost--as you've done. He must be content to leave the rest in the
+hands of the Almighty."
+
+"The Almighty has got a down on me," he replied. "And I don't blame
+Him. Of course, from your point of view, you're right. You're a normal,
+honourable soldier and gentleman. Anything you've got to reproach
+yourself with is of very little importance. But I'm an accursed freak.
+I told you all about it when you held me up over the South African
+affair. There were other affairs after that. Others again in this war.
+Haven't I just told you I let my regiment down?"
+
+"Don't, my dear man, don't!" I cried, in great pain, for it was
+horrible to hear a man talk like this. "Can't you see you've wiped out
+everything?"
+
+"There's one thing at any rate I can't ever wipe out," he said in a low
+voice. Then he laughed. "I've got to stick it. It may be amusing to see
+how it all pans out. I suppose the very last passion left us is
+curiosity."
+
+"There's also the unconquerable soul," said I.
+
+"You're very comforting," said he. "If I were in your place, I'd leave
+a chap like me to the worms." He drew a long breath. "I suppose I'll
+pull through all right."
+
+"Of course you will," said I.
+
+"I feel tons better, thanks to you, already."
+
+"That's right," said I.
+
+He fumbled for the box of cigarettes on the bed. Instinctively I tried
+to help him, but I was tied to my fixed chair. It was a trivial
+occasion; but I have never been so terrified by the sense of
+helplessness. Just think of it. Two men of clear brain and, to all
+intents and purposes, of sound bodily health, unable to reach an object
+a few feet away. Boyce uttered an impatient exclamation.
+
+"Get hold of that box for me, like a good chap," he said, his fingers
+groping wide of the mark.
+
+"I can't move," said I.
+
+"Good Lord! I forgot."
+
+He began to laugh. I laughed, too. We laughed like fools and the tears
+ran down my cheeks. I suppose we were on the verge of hysterics.
+
+I pulled myself together and gave him a cigarette from my case. And
+then, stretch as I would, I could not reach far enough to apply the
+match to the end of the cigarette between his lips. He was unable to
+lift his head. I lit another match and, like an idiot, put it between
+his fingers. He nearly burned his moustache and his bandage, and would
+have burned his fingers had not the match--a wooden one--providentially
+gone out. Then I lit a cigarette myself and handed it to him.
+
+The incident, as I say, was trivial, but it had deep symbolic
+significance. All symbols in their literal objectivity are trivial.
+What more trivial than the eating of a bit of bread and the sipping
+from a cup of wine? This trumpery business with the cigarette
+revolutionised my whole feelings towards Boyce. It initiated us into a
+sacred brotherhood. Hitherto, it had been his nature which had reached
+out towards me tentacles of despair. My inner self, as I have tried to
+show you, had never responded. It was restrained by all kinds of
+doubts, suspicions, and repulsions. Now, suddenly, it broke through all
+those barriers and rushed forth to meet him. My death in life against
+which I had fought, I hope like a brave man (it takes a bit of
+fighting) for many years, would henceforth be his death in life, at
+whose terrors he too would have to snap a disdainful finger. I had felt
+deep pity for him; but if pity is indeed akin to love, it is a very
+poor relation. Now I had cast pity and such like superior sentiment
+aside and accepted him as a sworn brother. The sins, whatever they
+were, that lay on the man's conscience mattered nothing. He had paid in
+splendid penance and in terrible penalty.
+
+I should have liked to express to him something of this surge of
+emotion. But I could find no words. As a race, our emotions are not
+facile, and therefore we lack the necessary practice in expressing
+them. When they do come, they come all of a heap and scare us out of
+our wits and leave us speechless. So the immediate outcome of all this
+psychological upheaval was that we went on smoking and said nothing
+more about it. As far as I remember we started talking about the
+recruiting muddle, as to which our views most vigorously coincided.
+
+We parted cheerily. It was only when I got outside the room that the
+ghastly irony of the situation again made my heart as lead. We passed
+by the conservatory and the statuary and down the great staircase, but
+the ghosts had gone. Yet I cast a wistful glance at the spot--it was
+just under that Cuyp with the flashing white horse--where we had sat
+twenty years ago. But the new tragedy had rendered the memory less
+poignant.
+
+"It's a dreadful thing about the Colonel, sir," said Marigold as we
+drove off.
+
+"More dreadful than anyone can imagine," said I.
+
+"What he's going to do with himself is what I'm wondering," said
+Marigold.
+
+What indeed? The question went infinitely deeper than the practical
+dreams of Marigold's philosophy. My honest fellow saw but the
+outside--the full-blooded man of action cabined in his lifelong
+darkness. I, to whom chance had revealed more, trembled at the
+contemplation of his future. The man, goaded by the Furies, had rushed
+into the jaws of death. Those jaws, by some divine ordinance, had
+ruthlessly closed against him. The Furies meanwhile attended him
+unrelenting. Whither now would they goad him? Into madness? I doubted
+it. In spite of his contradictory nature, he did not seem to be the
+sort of man who would go mad. He could exercise over himself too
+reasoned a control. Yet here were passions and despairs seething
+without an outlet. What would be the end? It is true that he had
+achieved glory. To the end of his life, wherever he went, he would
+command the honour and admiration of men. Greater achievement is
+granted to few mortals. In our little town he would be the Great Hero.
+But would all that human sympathy and veneration could contrive keep
+the Furies at bay and soothe the tormented spirit?
+
+I tried to eat a meal at the club, but the food choked me. I got into
+the car as soon as possible and reached Wellingsford with head and
+heart racked with pain. But before I could go home I had to execute
+Boyce's mission.
+
+If I accomplished it successfully, my heart and not my wearied mind
+deserves the credit. At first Mrs. Boyce broke down under the shock of
+the news, for all the preparation in the world can do little to soften
+a deadly blow; but breed and pride soon asserted themselves, and she
+faced things bravely. With charming dignity she received Marigold's few
+respectful words of condolence. And she thanked me for what I had done,
+beyond my deserts. To show how brave she was, she insisted on
+accompanying us downstairs and on standing in the bleak evening air
+while Marigold put me in the car.
+
+"After all, I have my son alive and in good strong health. I must
+realise how merciful God has been to me." She put her hand into mine.
+"I shan't see you again till I bring him home with me. I shall go up to
+London early to-morrow morning and stay with my old friend Lady
+Fanshawe--I think you have met her here--the widow of the late Admiral
+Fanshawe. She has a house in Eccleston Street, which is, I think, in
+the neighbourhood of Belton Square. If I haven't thanked you enough,
+dear Major Meredyth, it is that, when one's heart is full, one can't do
+everything all at once."
+
+She waved to me very graciously as the car drove off--a true "Spartian"
+mother, dear lady, of our modern England.
+
+Oh! the humiliation of possessing a frail body and a lot of
+disorganized nerves! When I got home Marigold, seeing that I was
+overtired, was all for putting me to bed then and there. I spurned the
+insulting proposal in language plain enough even to his wooden
+understanding. Sometimes his imperturbability exasperated me. I might
+just as well try to taunt a poker or sting a fire-shovel into
+resentment of personal abuse.
+
+"I'll see you hanged, drawn, and quartered before I'll go to bed," I
+declared.
+
+"Very good, sir." The gaunt wretch was carrying me. "But I think you
+might lie down for half an hour before dinner."
+
+He deposited me ignominiously on the bed and left the room. In about
+ten minutes Dr. Cliffe, my inveterate adversary who has kept life in me
+for many a year, came in with his confounded pink smiling face.
+
+"What's this I hear? Been overdoing it?"
+
+"What the deuce are you doing here?" I cried. "Go away. How dare you
+come when you're not wanted?"
+
+He grinned. "I'm wanted right enough, old man. The good Marigold's
+never at fault. He rang me up and I slipped round at once."
+
+"One of these days," said I, "I'll murder that fellow."
+
+He replied by gagging me with his beastly thermometer. Then he felt my
+pulse and listened to my heart and stuck his fingers into the corners
+of my eyes, so as to look at the whites; and when he was quite
+satisfied with himself--there is only one animal more self-complacent
+than your medical man in such circumstances, and that is a dog who has
+gorged himself with surreptitious meat--he ordained that I should
+forthwith go properly to bed and stay there and be perfectly quiet
+until he came again, and in the meanwhile swallow some filthy medicine
+which he would send round.
+
+"One of these days," said he, rebukingly, "instead of murdering your
+devoted Sergeant, you'll be murdering yourself, if you go on such
+lunatic excursions. Of course I'm shocked at hearing about Colonel
+Boyce, and I'm sorry for the poor lady, but why you should have been
+made to half kill yourself over the matter is more than I can
+understand."
+
+"I happen," said I, "to be his only intimate friend in the place."
+
+"You happen," he retorted, "to be a chronic invalid and the most
+infernal worry of my life."
+
+"You're nothing but an overbearing bully," said I.
+
+He grinned again. That is what I have to put up with. If I curse
+Marigold, he takes no notice. If I curse Cliffe, he grins. Yet what I
+should do without them, Heaven only knows.
+
+"God bless 'em both," said I, when my aching body was between the cool
+sheets.
+
+Although it was none of his duties, Marigold brought me in a light
+supper, fish and a glass of champagne. Never a parlour-maid would he
+allow to approach me when I was unwell. I often wondered what would
+happen if I were really ill and required the attendance of a nurse. I
+swear no nurse's touch could be so gentle as when he raised me on the
+pillows. He bent over the tray on the table by the bed and began to
+dissect out the back-bone of the sole.
+
+"I can do that," said I, fretfully.
+
+He cocked a solitary reproachful eye on me. I burst out laughing. He
+looked so dear and ridiculous with his preposterous curly wig and his
+battered face. He went on with his task.
+
+"I wonder, Marigold," said I, "how you put up with me."
+
+He did not reply until he had placed the neatly arranged tray across my
+body.
+
+"I've never heard, sir," said he, "as how a man couldn't put up with
+his blessings."
+
+A bit of sole was on my fork and I was about to convey it to my mouth,
+but there came a sudden lump in my throat and I put the fork down.
+
+"But what about the curses?"
+
+A horrible contortion of the face and a guttural rumble indicated
+amusement on the part of Marigold. I stared, very serious, having been
+profoundly touched.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" I asked.
+
+The idiot's merriment increased in vehemence. He said: "You're too
+funny, sir," and just bolted, in a manner unbecoming not only to a
+sergeant, but even to a butler.
+
+As I mused on this unprecedented occurrence, I made a discovery,--that
+of Sergeant Marigold's sense of humour. To that sense of humour my
+upbraidings, often, I must confess, couched in picturesque and
+figurative terms so as not too greatly to hurt his feelings, had made
+constant appeal for the past fifteen years. Hitherto he had hidden all
+signs of humorous titillation behind his impassive mask. To-night, a
+spark of sentiment had been the match to explode the mine of his mirth.
+It was a serious position. Here had I been wasting on him half a
+lifetime's choicest objurgations. What was I to do in the future to
+consolidate my authority?
+
+I never enjoyed a fried sole and a glass of champagne more in my life.
+
+He came in later to remove the tray, as wooden as ever.
+
+"Mrs. Connor called a little while ago, sir."
+
+"Why didn't you ask her to come in to see me?"
+
+"Doctor's orders, sir."
+
+After the sole and champagne, I felt much better. I should have
+welcomed my dear Betty with delight. That, at any rate, was my first
+impulsive thought.
+
+"Confound the doctor!" I cried. And I was going to confound Marigold,
+too, but I caught his steady luminous eye. What was the use of any
+anathema when he would only take it away, as a dog does a bone, and
+enjoy it in a solitary corner? I recovered myself.
+
+"Well?" said I, with dignity. "Did Mrs. Connor leave any message?"
+
+"I was to give you her compliments, sir, and say she was sorry you were
+so unwell and she was shocked to hear of Colonel Boyce's sad
+affliction."
+
+This was sheer orderly room. Such an expression as "sad affliction"
+never passed Betty's lips. I, however, had nothing to say. Marigold
+settled me for the night and left me.
+
+When I was alone and able to consider the point, I felt a cowardly
+gratitude towards the doctor who had put me to bed like a sick man and
+forbidden access to my room. I had been spared breaking the news to
+Betty. How she received it, I did not know. It had been impossible to
+question Marigold. After all, it was a matter of no essential moment. I
+consoled myself with the reflection and tried to go to sleep. But I
+passed a wretched night, my head whirling with the day's happenings.
+
+The morning papers showed me that Boyce, wishing to spare his mother,
+had been wise to summon me at once. They all published an official
+paragraph describing the act for which he had received his distinction,
+and announcing the fact of his blindness. They also gave a brief and
+flattering sketch of his career. One paper devoted to him a short
+leading article. The illustrated papers published his photograph. Boyce
+was on the road to becoming a popular hero.
+
+Cliffe kept me in bed all that day, to my great irritation. I had no
+converse with the outside world, save vicariously with Betty, who rang
+up to enquire after my health. On the following morning, when I drove
+abroad with Hosea, I found the whole town ringing with Boyce. It was a
+Friday, the day of publication of the local newspaper. It had run to
+extravagant bills all over the place:
+
+"Wellingsford Hero honoured by the King. Tragic End to Glorious Deeds."
+
+The word--Marigold's, I suppose--had gone round that I had visited the
+hero in London. I was stopped half a dozen times on my way up the High
+Street by folks eager for personal details. Outside Prettilove the
+hairdresser's I held quite a little reception, and instead of moving me
+on for blocking the traffic, as any of his London colleagues would have
+done, the local police sergeant sank his authority and by the side of a
+butcher's boy formed part of the assembly.
+
+When I got to the Market Square, I saw Sir Anthony Fenimore's car
+standing outside the Town Hall. The chauffeur stopped me.
+
+"Sir Anthony was going to call on you, sir, as soon as he had finished
+his business inside."
+
+"I'll wait for him," said I. It was one of the few mild days of a
+wretched month and I enjoyed the air. Springfield, the house agent,
+passed and engaged me in conversation on the absorbing topic, and then
+the manager of the gasworks joined us. Everyone listened so reverently
+to my utterances that I began to feel as if I had won the Victoria
+Cross myself.
+
+Presently Sir Anthony bustled out of the Town Hall, pink, brisk, full
+of business. At the august appearance of the Mayor my less civically
+distinguished friends departed. His eyes brightened as they fell on me
+and he shook hands vigorously.
+
+"My dear Duncan, I was just on my way to you. Only heard this morning
+that you've been seedy. Knocked up, I suppose, by your journey to town.
+Just heard of that, too. Must have thought me a brute not to enquire.
+But Edith and I didn't know. I was away all yesterday. These infernal
+tribunals. With the example of men like Leonard Boyce before their
+eyes, it makes one sick to look at able-bodied young Englishmen trying
+to wriggle out of their duty to the country. Well, dear old chap, how
+are you?"
+
+I assured him that I had recovered from Cliffe and was in my usual
+state of health. He rubbed his hands.
+
+"That's good. Now give me all the news. What is Boyce's condition? When
+will he be able to be moved? When do you think he'll come back to
+Wellingsford?"
+
+At this series of questions I pricked a curious ear.
+
+"Am I speaking to the man or the Mayor?"
+
+"The Mayor," said he. "I wish to goodness I could get you inside, so
+that you and I and Winterbotham could talk things over."
+
+Winterbotham was the Town Clerk. Sir Anthony cast an instinctive glance
+at his chauffeur, a little withered elderly man. I laughed and made a
+sign of dissent. When you have to be carried about, you shy at the
+prospect of little withered, elderly men as carriers. Besides--
+
+"Unless it would lower Winterbotham's dignity or give him a cold in the
+head," said I, "why shouldn't he come out here?"
+
+Sir Anthony crossed the pavement briskly, gave a message to the
+doorkeeper of the Town Hall, and returned to Hosea and myself.
+
+"It's a dreadful thing. Dreadful. I never realised till yesterday, when
+I read his record, what a distinguished soldier he was. A modern
+Bayard. For the last year or so he seemed to put my back up. Behaved in
+rather a curious way, never came near the house where once he was
+always welcome, and when I asked him to dinner he turned me down flat.
+But that's all over. Sometimes one has these pettifogging personal
+vanities. The best thing is to be heartily ashamed of 'em like an
+honest man, and throw 'em out in the dung-heap where they belong.
+That's what I told Edith last night, and she agreed with me. Don't you?"
+
+I smiled. Here was another typical English gentleman ridding his
+conscience of an injustice done to Leonard Boyce.
+
+"Of course I do," said I. "Boyce is a queer fellow. A man with his
+exceptional qualities has to be judged in an exceptional way."
+
+"And then," said Sir Anthony, "it's that poor dear old lady that I've
+been thinking of. Edith went to see her yesterday afternoon, but found
+she had gone up to London. In her frail health it's enough to kill her."
+
+"It won't," said I. "A woman doesn't give birth to a lion without
+having something of the lion in her nature."
+
+"I've never thought of that," said Sir Anthony.
+
+"Haven't you?"
+
+His face turned grave and he looked far away over the red-brick
+post-office on the opposite side of the square. Then he sighed, looked
+at me with a smile, and nodded.
+
+"You're right, Duncan."
+
+"I know I am," said I. "I broke the news to Mrs. Boyce. That's why he
+asked me to go up and see him."
+
+Winterbotham appeared--a tall, cadaverous man in a fur coat and a soft
+felt hat. He shook hands with me in a melancholy way. In a humbler walk
+of life, I am sure he would have been an undertaker.
+
+"Now," said Sir Anthony, "tell us all about your interview with Boyce."
+
+"Before I commit myself," said I, "with the Civic Authorities, will you
+kindly inform me what this conference coram publico is all about?"
+
+"Why, my dear chap, haven't I told you?" cried Sir Anthony. "We're
+going to give Colonel Boyce a Civic Reception."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Thenceforward nothing was talked of but the home-coming of Colonel
+Boyce. He touched the public imagination. All kinds of stories, some
+apocryphal, some having a basis of truth, some authentic, went the
+round of the little place. It simmered with martial fervour. Elderly
+laggards enrolled themselves in the Volunteer Training Corps. Young
+married men who had not attested under the Derby Scheme rushed out to
+enlist. The Tribunal languished in idleness for lack of claimants for
+exemption. Exempted men, with the enthusiastic backing of employers,
+lost the sense of their indispensability and joined the colours. An
+energetic lady who had met the Serbian Minister in London conceived the
+happy idea of organising a Serbian Flag Day in Wellingsford, and reaped
+a prodigious harvest. We were all tremendously patriotic, living under
+Boyce's reflected glory.
+
+At first I had deprecated the proposal, fearing lest Boyce might not
+find it acceptable. The reputation he had sought at the cannon's mouth
+was a bubble of a different kind from that which the good townsfolk
+were eager to celebrate. Vanity had no part in it. For what the outer
+world thought of his exploits he did not care a penny. He was past
+caring. His soul alone, for its own sore needs, had driven him to the
+search. Before his own soul and not before his fellow countrymen, had
+he craved to parade as a recipient of the Victoria Cross. His own soul,
+as I knew, not being satisfied, he would shrink from obtaining popular
+applause under false pretences. No unhappy man ever took sterner
+measure of himself. Of all this no one but myself had the faintest
+idea. In explaining my opinion I had to leave out all essentials. I
+could only hint that a sensitive man like Colonel Boyce might be averse
+from exhibiting in public his physical disabilities; that he had always
+shown himself a modest soldier with a dislike of self-advertisement;
+that he would prefer to seek immediate refuge in the quietude of his
+home. But they would not listen to me. Colonel Boyce, they said, would
+be too patriotic to refuse the town's recognition. It was part of the
+game which he, as a brave soldier, no matter how modest, could not fail
+to play. He would recognise that such public honourings of valour had
+widespread effect among the population. In face of such arguments I had
+to withdraw my opposition; otherwise it might have appeared that I was
+actuated by petty personal motives. God knows I only desired to save
+Boyce from undergoing a difficult ordeal. For the same reasons I could
+not refuse to serve on the Reception Committee which was immediately
+formed under the chairmanship of the Mayor.
+
+Preliminaries having been discussed, the Mayor and the Town Clerk
+waited on Boyce in Belton Square, and returned with the triumphant
+tidings that they had succeeded in their mission.
+
+"I can't make out what you were running your head against, Duncan,"
+said Sir Anthony. "Of course, as you say, he's a modest chap and
+dislikes publicity. So do we all. But I quickly talked him out of that
+objection. I talked him out of all sorts of objections before he could
+raise them. At last what do you think he said?"
+
+"I should have told you to go to blazes and not worry me."
+
+"He didn't. He said--now I like the chap for it, it was so simple and
+honest--he said: 'If I were alone in the world I wouldn't have it, for
+I don't like it. But I'll accept on one condition. My poor old mother
+has had rather a thin time and she's going to have a thinner. She never
+gets a look in. Make it as far as possible her show, and I'll do what
+you like.' What do you think of that?"
+
+"I think it's very characteristic," said I.
+
+And it was. In my mental survey of the situation from Boyce's point of
+view I had not taken into account the best and finest in the man. His
+reason rang true against my exceptional knowledge of him. I had worked
+myself into so sympathetic a comprehension that I KNEW he would be
+facing something unknown and terrible in the proposed ceremony; I KNEW
+that for his own sake he would have unequivocably declined. But, ad
+majorem matris gloriam, he assented.
+
+The main question, at any rate, was settled. The hero would accept the
+honour. It was for the Committee to make the necessary arrangements. We
+corresponded far and wide in order to obtain municipal precedents. We
+had interviews with the military and railway authorities. We were in
+constant communication with the local Volunteer Training Corps; with
+the Godbury Volunteers and the Godbury School O.T.C., who both desired
+to take a part in the great event. In compliance with the conditions
+imposed, we gave as much publicity as we could to Mrs. Boyce.
+Lieutenant Colonel Boyce, V.C., and Mrs. Boyce were officially
+associated in the programme of the reception. How to disentangle them
+afterwards, when the presentation of the address, engrossed on velluni
+and enclosed in a casket, should be made to the Colonel, was the
+subject of heated and confused discussion. Then the feminine elements
+in town and county desired to rally to the side of Mrs. Boyce. The Red
+Cross and Volunteer Aid Detachment Nurses claimed representation. So
+did the munitions workers of Godbury. The Countess of Laleham, the wife
+of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, a most imposing and masterful
+woman, signified (in genteel though incisive language) her intention to
+take a leading part in the proceedings and to bring along her husband,
+apparently as an unofficial ornament. This, of course, upset our plans,
+which had all to be reconsidered from the beginning.
+
+"Who is giving the reception?" cried Lady Fenimore, who could stand
+upon her dignity as well as anybody. "The County or Wellingsford? I
+presume it's Wellingsford, and, so long as I am Mayoress, that dreadful
+Laleham woman will have to take a back seat."
+
+So, you see, we had our hands full.
+
+All this time I found Betty curiously elusive. Now and then I met her
+for a few fugitive moments at the hospital. Twice she ran in for
+dinner, in uniform, desperately busy, arriving on the stroke of the
+dinner hour and rushing away five minutes after her coffee and
+cigarette, alleging as excuse the epidemic of influenza, consequent on
+the vile weather, which had woefully reduced the hospital staff. She
+seemed to be feverish and ill at ease, and tried to cover the symptoms
+by a reversion to her old offhand manner. As I was so seldom alone with
+her I could find scant opportunity for intimate conversation. I thought
+that she might have regretted the frank exposition of her feelings
+regarding Leonard Boyce. But she showed no sign of it. She spoke in the
+most detached way of his blindness and the coming ceremony. Never once,
+even on the first occasion when I met her--in the hospital
+corridor--after my return from London, did her attitude vary from that
+of any kind-hearted Englishwoman who deplores the mutilation of a
+gallant social acquaintance. Sometimes I wanted to shake her, though I
+could scarcely tell why. I certainly would not have had her weep on my
+shoulder over Boyce's misfortune; nor would I have cared for her to
+exhibit a vindictive callousness. She behaved with perfect propriety.
+Perhaps that is what disturbed me. I was not accustomed to associate
+perfect propriety with my dear Betty.
+
+The days went on. The reception arrangements were perfected. We only
+waited for the date of Boyce's arrival to be fixed. That depended on
+the date of the particular Investiture by the King which Boyce's
+convalescence should allow him to attend. At last the date was fixed.
+
+A few days before the Investiture I went to London and called at Lady
+Fanshawe's in Eccleston Street, whither he had been removed after
+leaving the hospital. I was received in the dining-room on the ground
+floor by Boyce and his mother. He wore black glasses to hide terrible
+disfigurement--he lifted them to show me. One eye had been extracted.
+The other was seared and sightless. He greeted me as heartily as ever,
+made little jests over his infirmity, treating it lightly for his
+mother's sake. She, on her side, deemed it her duty to exhibit equal
+cheerfulness. She boasted of his progress in self-reliance and in the
+accomplishment of various little blind man's tricks. At her bidding he
+lit a cigarette for my benefit, by means of a patent fuse. He said,
+when he had succeeded:
+
+"Better than the last time you saw me, eh, Meredyth?"
+
+"What was that?" asked Mrs. Boyce.
+
+"He nearly burned his fingers," said I, shortly. I had no desire to
+relate the incident.
+
+We talked of the coming ceremony and I gave them the details of the
+programme. Boyce had been right in accepting on the score of his
+mother. Only once had she been the central figure in any public
+ceremony--on her wedding day, in the years long ago. Here was a new
+kind of wedding day in her old age. The prospect filled her with a
+tremulous joy which was to both of them a compensation. She bubbled
+over with pride and excitement at her inclusion in the homage that was
+to be paid to the valour of her only son.
+
+"After all," she said, "I did bring him into the world. So I can claim
+some credit. I only hope I shan't cry and make a fool of myself. They
+won't expect me to keep on bowing, will they? I once saw Queen Victoria
+driving through the streets, and I thought how dreadfully her poor old
+neck must have ached."
+
+On the latter point I reassured her. On the drive from the station
+Boyce would take the salute of the troops on the line of route. If she
+smiled charmingly on them, their hearts would be satisfied, and if she
+just nodded at them occasionally in a motherly sort of way, they would
+be enchanted. She informed me that she was having a new dress made for
+the occasion. She had also bought a new hat, which I must see. A
+servant was summoned and dispatched for it. She tried it on girlishly
+before the mirror over the mantelpiece, and received my compliments.
+
+"Tell me what it looks like," said Boyce.
+
+You might as well ask a savage in Central Africa to describe the
+interior of a submarine as the ordinary man to describe a woman's hat.
+My artless endeavours caused considerable merriment. To hear Boyce's
+gay laughter one would have thought he had never a care in the world ...
+
+When I took my leave, Mrs. Boyce accompanied Marigold and myself to the
+front door.
+
+"Did you ever hear of anything so dreadful?" she whispered, and I saw
+her lips quivering and the tears rolling down her cheeks. "If he
+weren't so brave and wonderful, I should break my heart."
+
+"What do you suppose you are yourself, my dear old friend," said I over
+Marigold's shoulder.
+
+I went away greatly comforted. Both of them were as brave as could be.
+For the first time I took a more cheerful view of Boyce's future.
+
+On the evening before the Reception Betty was shown into the library.
+It was late, getting on towards my bedtime, and I was nodding in front
+of the fire.
+
+"I'm just in and out, Majy dear," she said. "I had to come. I didn't
+want to give you too many shocks." At my expression of alarm, she
+laughed. "I've only run in to tell you that I've made up my mind to
+come to the Town Hall tomorrow."
+
+I looked at her, and I suppose my hands moved in a slight gesture.
+
+"By that," she said, "I suppose you mean you can never tell what I'm
+going to do next."
+
+"You've guessed it, my dear," said I.
+
+"Do you disapprove?"
+
+"I couldn't be so presumptuous."
+
+She bent over me and caught the lapels of my jacket.
+
+"Oh, don't be so dreadfully dignified. I want you to understand.
+Everybody is going to pay honour to-morrow to a man who has given
+everything he could to his country. Don't you think it would be petty
+of me if I stood out? What have the dead things that have passed
+between us to do with my tribute as an Englishwoman?"
+
+What indeed? I asked her whether she was attending in her private
+capacity or as one of the representatives of the V.A.D. nurses. I
+learned for the thousandth time that Betty Connor did not deal in half
+measures. If she went at all, it was as Betty Connor that she would go.
+Her aunts would accompany her. It was part of the municipal ordering of
+things that the Town Clerk should have sent them the special cards of
+invitation.
+
+"I think it my duty to go," said Betty.
+
+"If you think so, my dear," said I, "then it is your duty. So there's
+nothing more to be said about it."
+
+Betty kissed the top of my head and went off.
+
+We come now to the morning of the great day. Everything had been
+finally settled. The Mayor and Aldermen, Lady Fenimore and the
+Aldermen's wives, the Lord Lieutenant (in unofficial mufti) and Lady
+Laleham (great though officially obscure lady), the General of the
+Division quartered in the neighbourhood and officers of his staff, and
+a few other magnates to meet the three o'clock train by which the
+Boyces were due to arrive. The station hung with flags and
+inscriptions. A guard of honour and a band in the station-yard, with a
+fleet of motor cars in waiting. Troops lining the route from station to
+Town Hall. More troops in the decorated Market Square, including the
+Godbury School O.T.C. and the Wellingsford and Godbury Volunteers. I
+heard that the latter were very anxious to fire off a feu de joie, but
+were restrained owing to lack of precedent. The local fire-brigade in
+freshly burnished helmets were to follow the procession of motor cars,
+and behind them motor omnibuses with the nurses.
+
+Marigold, although his attendance on me precluded him from taking part
+in the parade of Volunteers, appeared in full grey uniform with all his
+medals and the black patch of ceremony over his eyeless socket. I must
+confess to regarding him with some jealousy. I too should have liked to
+wear my decorations. If a man swears to you that he is free from such
+little vanities, he is more often than not a mere liar. But a
+broken-down old soldier, although still drawing pay from the
+Government, is not allowed to wear uniform (which I think is
+outrageous), and he can't go and plaster himself with medals when he is
+wearing on his head a hard felt hat. My envy of the martial looking
+Marigold is a proof that my mind was not busied with sterner
+preoccupations. I ate my breakfast with the serene conscience not only
+of a man who knows he has done his duty, but of an organiser confident
+in the success of his schemes. The abominable weather of snows and
+tempests from which we had suffered for weeks had undergone a change.
+It was a mild morning brightened by a pale convalescent sort of sun,
+and there was just a little hope of spring in the air. I felt content
+with everything and everybody.
+
+About eleven o'clock the buzz of the library telephone disturbed my
+comfortable perusal of the newspaper. I wheeled towards the instrument.
+Sir Anthony was speaking.
+
+"Can you come round at once? Very urgent. The car is on its way to you."
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked.
+
+He could not tell me over the wires. I was to take it that my presence
+was urgently needed.
+
+"I'll come along at once," said I.
+
+Some hitch doubtless had occurred. Perhaps the War Office (whose ways
+were ever weird and unaccountable) had forbidden the General to take
+part in such a village-pump demonstration. Perhaps Lady Laleham had
+insisted on her husband coming down like a uniformed Lord Lieutenant on
+the fold. Perhaps the hero himself was laid up with measles.
+
+With the lightest heart I drove to Wellings Park. Marigold, straight as
+a ramrod, sitting in front by the chauffeur. As soon as Pardoe, the
+butler, had brought out my chair and Marigold had settled me in it, Sir
+Anthony, very red and flustered, appeared and, shaking me nervously by
+the hand, said without preliminary greeting:
+
+"Come into the library."
+
+He, I think, had come from the morning room on the right of the hall.
+The library was on the left. He flung open the door. I steered myself
+into the room; and there, standing on the white bearskin hearthrug, his
+back to the fire, his hands in his pockets, his six inches of stiff
+white beard stuck aggressively outward, I saw Daniel Gedge.
+
+While I gaped in astonishment, Sir Anthony shut the door behind him,
+drew a straight-backed chair from the wall, planted it roughly some
+distance away from the fire, and, pointing to it, bade Gedge sit down.
+Gedge obeyed. Sir Anthony took the hearthrug position, his hands behind
+his back, his legs apart.
+
+"This man," said he, "has come to me with a ridiculous, beastly story.
+At first I was undecided whether I should listen to him or kick him
+out. I thought it wiser to listen to him in the presence of a reputable
+witness. That's why I've sent for you, Duncan. Now you just begin all
+over again, my man," said he, turning to Gedge, "and remember that
+anything you say here will be used against you at your trial."
+
+Gedge laughed--I must admit, with some justification.
+
+"You forget, Sir Anthony, I'm not a criminal and you're not a
+policeman."
+
+"I'm the Mayor to this town, sir," cried Sir Anthony. "I'm also a
+Justice of the Peace."
+
+"And I'm a law-abiding citizen," retorted Gedge.
+
+"You're an infernal socialistic pro-German," exclaimed Sir Anthony.
+
+"Prove it. I only ask you to prove it. No matter what my private
+opinions may be, you just try to bring me up under the Defence of the
+Realm Act, and you'll find you can't touch me."
+
+I held out a hand. "Forgive me for interrupting," said I, "but what is
+all this discussion about?"
+
+Gedge crossed one leg over the other and drew his beard through his
+fingers. Sir Anthony was about to burst into speech, but I checked him
+with a gesture and turned to Gedge.
+
+"It has nothing to do with political opinions," said he. "It has to do
+with the death, nearly two years ago, of Miss Althea Fenimore, Sir
+Anthony's only daughter."
+
+Sir Anthony, his face congested, glared at him malevolently. I started,
+with a gasp of surprise, and stared at the man who, caressing his
+beard, looked from one to the other of us with an air of satisfaction.
+
+"Get on," said Sir Anthony.
+
+"You are going to give a civic reception to-day to Colonel Boyce, V.C.,
+aren't you?"
+
+"Yes, I am," snapped Sir Anthony.
+
+"Do you think you ought to do it when I tell you that Colonel Boyce,
+V.C., murdered Miss Althea Fenimore on the night of the 25th June, two
+years ago?"
+
+"Yes," said Sir Anthony. "And do you know why? Because I know you to be
+a liar and a scoundrel."
+
+I can never describe the awful horror that numbed me to the heart. For
+a few moments my body seemed as lifeless as my legs. The charge,
+astounding almost to grotesqueness in the eyes of Sir Anthony, and
+rousing him to mere wrath, deprived me of the power of speech. For I
+knew, in that dreadful instant, that the man's words contained some
+elements of truth.
+
+All the pieces of the puzzle that had worried me at odd times for
+months fitted themselves together in a vivid flash. Boyce and Althea! I
+had never dreamed of associating their names. That association was the
+key of the puzzle. Out of the darkness disturbing things shone clear.
+Boyce's abrupt retirement from Wellingsford before the war; his
+cancellation by default of his engagement; his morbid desire, a year
+ago, to keep secret his presence in his own house; Gedge's veiled
+threat to me in the street to use a way "that'll knock all you great
+people of Wellingsford off your high horses;" his extraordinary
+interview with Boyce; his generally expressed hatred of Boyce. Was this
+too the secret which he let out in his cups to Randall Holmes and which
+drove the young man from his society? And Betty? Boyce was a devil. She
+wished he were dead. And her words: "You have behaved worse to others.
+I don't wonder at your shrinking from showing your face here." How much
+did Betty know? There was the lost week--in Carlisle?--in poor Althea's
+life. And then there were Boyce's half confessions, the glimpses he had
+afforded me into the tormented soul. To me he had condemned himself out
+of his own mouth.
+
+I repeat that, sitting there paralysed by the sudden shock of it, I
+knew--not that the man was speaking the literal truth--God forbid!--but
+that Boyce was, in some degree, responsible for Althea's death.
+
+"Calling me names won't alter the facts, Sir Anthony," said Gedge, with
+a touch of insolence. "I was there at the time. I saw it."
+
+"If that's true," Sir Anthony retorted, "you're an accessory after the
+fact, and in greater danger of being hanged than ever." He turned to me
+in his abrupt way. "Now that we've heard this blackguard, shall we hand
+him over to the police?"
+
+Being directly addressed, I recovered my nerve.
+
+"Before doing that," said I, "perhaps it would be best for us to hear
+what kind of a story he has to tell us. We should also like to know his
+motives in not denouncing the supposed murderer at once, and in keeping
+his knowledge hidden all this time."
+
+"With regard to the last part of your remarks, I dare say you would,"
+said Gedge. "Only I don't know whether I'll go so far as to oblige you.
+Anyhow you may have discovered that I don't particularly care about
+your class. I've been preaching against your idleness and vanity and
+vices, and the strangling grip you have on the throats of the people,
+ever since I was a young man. If one of your lot chose to do in another
+of your lot--a common story of seduction and crime--"
+
+At this slur in his daughter's honour Sir Anthony broke out fiercely,
+and, for a moment, I feared lest he would throw himself on Gedge and
+wring his neck. I managed to check his outburst and bring him to
+reason. He resumed his attitude on the hearthrug.
+
+"As I was saying," Gedge continued, rather frightened, "from my
+sociological point of view I considered the affair no business of mine.
+I speak of it now, because ever since war broke out your class and the
+parasitical bourgeoisie have done your best to reduce me to starvation.
+I thought it would be pleasant to get a bit of my own back. Just a
+little bit," he added, rubbing his hands.
+
+"If you think you've done it, you'll find yourself mistaken."
+
+Gedge shrugged his shoulders and pulled his beard. I hated the light in
+his little crafty eyes. I feel sure he had been looking forward for
+months to this moment of pure happiness.
+
+"Having given us an insight into your motives, which seem consistent
+with what we know of your character," said I, judicially, "will you now
+make your statement of facts?"
+
+"What's the good of listening further to his lies?" interrupted Sir
+Anthony. "I'm a magistrate. I can give the police at once a warrant for
+his arrest."
+
+Again I pacified him. "Let us hear what the man has to say."
+
+Gedge began. He spoke by the book, like one who repeats a statement
+carefully prepared.
+
+"It was past ten o'clock on the night of the 25th June, 1914. I had
+just finished supper when I was rung up by the landlord of The Three
+Feathers on the Farfield road--it's the inn about a quarter of a mile
+from the lock gates. He said that the District Secretary of the Red
+Democratic Federation was staying there--his brother-in-law, if you
+want to know--and he hadn't received my report. I must explain that I
+am the local secretary, and as there was to be an important conference
+of the Federation at Derby the next day, the District Secretary ought
+to have been in possession of my report on local affairs. I had drawn
+up the report. My daughter Phyllis had typed it, and she ought to have
+posted it. On questioning her, I found she had neglected to do so. I
+explained this over the wires and said I would bring the report at once
+to The Three Feathers. I only tell you all this, in which you can't be
+interested, so that you can't say: 'What were you doing on a lonely
+road at that time of night?' My daughter and the landlord of The Three
+Feathers can corroborate this part of my story. I set out on my
+bicycle. It was bright moonlight. You know that for about two hundred
+yards before the lock gate, and for about twenty after, the towing-path
+is raised above the level of the main road which runs parallel with it
+a few yards away. There are strips of market garden between. When I got
+to this open bit I saw two persons up on the towing-path. One was a
+girl with a loose kind of cloak and a hat. The other was a man wearing
+a soft felt hat and a light overcoat. The overcoat was open and I saw
+that he was wearing it over evening dress. That caught my attention.
+What was this swell in evening dress doing there with a girl? I slowed
+down and dismounted. They didn't see me. I got into the shadow of a
+whitethorn. They turned their faces so that the moon beat full on them.
+I saw them as plain as I see you. They were Colonel Boyce, V.C.,--Major
+then--and your daughter, Mr. Mayor, Miss Althea Fenimore."
+
+He paused as though to point the dramatic effect, and twisted round,
+sticking out his horrible beard at Sir Anthony. Sir Anthony, his hands
+thrust deep in his trouser-pockets and his bullet head bent forward,
+glared at him balefully out of his old blue eyes. But he said never a
+word. Gedge continued.
+
+"They didn't speak very loud, so I could only hear a scrap or two of
+their conversation. They seemed to be quarrelling--she wanted him to do
+something which he wouldn't do. I heard the words 'marriage' and
+'disgrace.' They stood still for a moment. Then they turned back. I had
+overtaken them, you know. I remounted my bicycle and rode to The Three
+Feathers. I was there about a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes.
+Then I rode back for home. When I came in sight of the lock, there I
+saw a man standing alone, sharp in the moonlight. As I came nearer I
+recognised the same man, Major Boyce. There were no lights in the
+lock-keeper's cottage. He and his wife had gone to bed long before. I
+was so interested that I forgot what I was doing and ran into the hedge
+so that I nearly came down. There was the noise of the scrape and drag
+of the machine which must have sounded very loud in the stillness. It
+startled him, for he looked all round, but he didn't see me, for I was
+under the hedge. Then suddenly he started running. He ran as if the
+devil was after him. I saw him squash down his Trilby hat so that it
+was shapeless. Then he disappeared along the path. I thought this a
+queer proceeding. Why should he have taken to his heels? I thought I
+should like to see him again. If he kept to the towing-path, his
+shortest way home, he was bound to go along the Chestnut Avenue, where,
+as you know, the road and the path again come together. On a bicycle it
+was easy to get there before him. I sat down on a bench and waited.
+Presently he comes, walking fast, his hat still squashed in all over
+his ears. I walked my bicycle slap in front of him.
+
+"'Good-night, Major,' I said.
+
+"He stared at me as if he didn't know me. Then he seemed to pull
+himself together and said: 'Good-night, Gedge. What are you doing out
+at this time of night?'
+
+"'If it comes to that, sir,' said I, 'what are you?'
+
+"Then he says, very haughty, as if I was the dirt under his feet--I
+suppose, Sir Anthony Fenimore and Major Meredyth, you think that me and
+my class are by divine prescription the dirt beneath your feet, but
+you're damn well mistaken--then he says: 'What the devil do you mean?'
+and catches hold of the front wheel of the bicycle and swings it and me
+out of his way so that I had a nasty fall, with the machine on top of
+me, and he marches off. I picked myself up furious with anger. I am an
+elderly man and not accustomed to that sort of treatment. I yelled out:
+'What have you been doing with the Squire's daughter on the
+towing-path?' It pulled him up short. He made a step or two towards me,
+and again he asked me what I meant. And this time I told him. He called
+me a liar, swore he had never been on any tow-path or had seen any
+squire's daughter, and threatened to murder me. As soon as I could
+mount my bicycle I left him and made for home. The next afternoon, if
+you remember, the unfortunate young lady's body was found at the bottom
+of three fathoms of water by the lock gates."
+
+He had spoken so clearly, so unfalteringly, that Sir Anthony had been
+surprised into listening without interruption. The bull-dog expression
+on his face never changed. When Gedge had come to the end, he said:
+
+"Will you again tell me your object in coming to me with this
+disgusting story?"
+
+Gedge lifted his bushy eyebrows. "Don't you believe it even now?"
+
+"Not a word of it," replied Sir Anthony.
+
+"I ought to remind you of another point." said Gedge. "Was Major Boyce
+ever seen in Wellingsford after that night? No. He went off by the
+first train the next morning. Went abroad and stayed there till the
+outbreak of war."
+
+"I happen to know he had made arrangements to start for Norway that
+morning," said Sir Anthony. "He had called here a day or two before to
+say good-bye."
+
+"Did he write you any letter of condolence?" Gedge asked sneeringly.
+
+I saw a sudden spasm pass over Sir Anthony's features. But he said in
+the same tone as before:
+
+"I am not going to answer insolent questions."
+
+Gedge turned to me with the air of a man giving up argument with a
+child.
+
+"What do you think of it, Major Meredyth?"
+
+What could I say? I had kept a grim iron face all through the
+proceedings. I could only reply:
+
+"I agree entirely with Sir Anthony."
+
+Gedge rose and thrust his hand into his jacket pocket. "You gentlemen
+are hard to convince. If you want proof positive, just read that." And
+he held a letter out to Sir Anthony.
+
+Sir Anthony glared at him and abruptly plucked the letter out of his
+hand; for the fraction of a second he stood irresolute; then he threw
+it behind him into the blazing fire.
+
+"Do you think I'm going to soil my mind with your dirty forgeries?"
+
+Gedge laughed. "You think you've queered my pitch, I suppose. You
+haven't. I've heaps more incriminating letters. That was only a sample."
+
+"Publish one of them at your peril," said I.
+
+"Pray, Mister Major Meredyth," said he, "what is to prevent me?"
+
+"Penal servitude for malicious slander."
+
+"I should win my case."
+
+"In that event they would get you, on your own showing, for being an
+accessory after the fact of murder, and for blackmail."
+
+"Suppose I risk it?"
+
+"You won't," said I.
+
+Sir Anthony turned to the bell-push by the side of the mantelpiece.
+
+"What's the good of talking to this double-dyed scoundrel?" He pointed
+to the door. "You infamous liar, get out. And if I ever catch you
+prowling round this house, I'll set the dogs on you."
+
+Gedge marched to the door and turned on the threshold and shook his
+fist.
+
+"You'll repent your folly till your dying day!"
+
+"To Hell with you," cried Sir Anthony.
+
+The door slammed. We were left alone. An avalanche of silence
+overwhelmed us. Heaven knows how long we remained speechless and
+motionless--I in my wheel-chair, he standing on the hearthrug staring
+awfully in front of him. At last he drew a deep breath and threw up his
+arms and flung himself down on a leather-covered couch, where he sat,
+elbows on knees and his head in his hands. After a while he lifted a
+drawn face.
+
+"It's true, Duncan," said he, "and you know it."
+
+"I don't know it," I replied stoutly, "any more than you do."
+
+He rose in his nervous way and came swiftly to me and clapped both his
+hands on my frail shoulders and bent over me--he was a little man, as I
+have told you--and put his face so close to mine that I could feel his
+breath on my cheek.
+
+"Upon your soul as a Christian you know that man wasn't lying."
+
+I looked into his eyes--about six inches from mine.
+
+"Boyce never murdered Althea," I said.
+
+"But he is the man--the man I've been looking for."
+
+I pushed him away with both hands, using all my strength. It was too
+horrible.
+
+"Suppose he is. What then?"
+
+He fell back a pace or two. "Once I remember saying: 'If ever I get
+hold of that man--God help him!'"
+
+He clenched his fists and started to pace up and down the library,
+passing and repassing my chair. At last my nerves could stand it no
+longer and I called on him to halt.
+
+"Gedge's story is curiously incomplete," said I. "We ought to have
+crossexamined him more closely. Is it likely that Boyce should have
+gone off leaving behind him a witness of his crime whom he had
+threatened to murder, and who he must have known would have given
+information as soon as the death was discovered? And don't you think
+Gedge's reason for holding his tongue very unconvincing? His fool
+hatred of our class, instead of keeping him cynically indifferent,
+would have made him lodge information at once and gloat over our
+discomfiture."
+
+I could not choose but come to the defence of the unhappy man whom I
+had learned to call my friend, although, for all my trying, I could
+conjure up no doubt as to his intimate relation with the tragedy. As
+Sir Anthony did not speak, I went on.
+
+"You can't judge a man with Leonard Boyce's record on the EX PARTE
+statement of a malevolent beast like Gedge. Look back. If there had
+been any affair between Althea and Boyce, the merest foolish
+flirtation, even, do you think it would have passed unnoticed? You,
+Edith, Betty--I myself--would have cast an uneasy eye. When we were
+looking about, some months ago, at the time of your sister-in-law's
+visit, for a possible man, the thought of Leonard Boyce never entered
+our heads. The only man you could rush at was young Randall Holmes, and
+I laughed you out of the idea. Just throw your mind back, Anthony, and
+try to recall any suspicious incident. You can't."
+
+I paused rhetorically, expecting a reply. None came. He just sat
+looking at me in a dead way. I continued my special pleading; and the
+more I said, the more was I baffled by his dead stare and the more
+unconvincing platitudes did I find myself uttering. Some people may be
+able to speak vividly to a deaf and dumb creature. On this occasion I
+tried hard to do so, and failed. After a while my words dribbled out
+with difficulty and eventually ceased. At last he spoke, in the dull,
+toneless way of a dead man--presuming that the dead could speak:
+
+"You may talk till you're black in the face, but you know as well as I
+do that the man told the truth--or practically the truth. What he said
+he saw, he saw. What motives have been at the back of his miserable
+mind, I don't know. You say I can't recall suspicious incidents. I can.
+I'll tell you one. I came across them once--about a month before the
+thing happened--among the greenhouses. I think we were having one of
+our tennis parties. I heard her using angry words, and when I appeared
+her face was flushed and there were tears in her eyes. She was taken
+aback for a second and then she rushed up to me. 'I think he's
+perfectly horrid. He says that Jingo--' pointing to the dog; you
+remember Jingo the Sealingham--she was devoted to him--he died last
+year--'He says that Jingo is a mongrel--a throw back.' Boyce said he
+was only teasing her and made pretty apologies. I left it at that. Hit
+a dog or a horse belonging to Althea, and you hit Althea. That was her
+way. The incident went out of my mind till this morning. Other
+incidents, too. One thinks pretty quick at times. Again, this scoundrel
+hit me on the raw. Boyce never wrote to us. Sent us through his mother
+a conventional word of condolence. Edith and I were hurt. That was one
+of the things that made me speak so angrily of him when he wouldn't
+come and dine with us."
+
+Once more I pleaded. "Your Sealingham incident doesn't impress me. Why
+not take it at its face value? As for the letter of condolence, that
+may have twenty explanations."
+
+He passed his hand over his cropped iron-grey head. "What are you
+driving at, Duncan? You know as well as I do--you know more than I do.
+I saw it in your face ever since that man opened his mouth."
+
+"If you're so sure of everything," said I foolishly, relaxing grip on
+my self-control, "why did you hound him out of the place for a liar?"
+
+He leaped to his feet and spread himself into a fighting attitude, for
+all the world like a half-dead bantam cock springing into a new lease
+of combative life.
+
+"Do you think I'd let a dunghill beast like that crow over me? Do you
+think I'd let him imagine for a minute that anything he said could
+influence me in my public duty? By God, sir, what kind of a worm do you
+think I am?"
+
+His sudden fury disconcerted me. All this time I had been wondering
+what kind of catastrophe was going to happen during the next few hours.
+I am afraid I haven't made clear to you the ghastly racket in my brain.
+There was the town all beflagged, everyone making holiday, all the pomp
+and circumstance at our disposal awaiting the signal to be displayed.
+There was the blind conquering hero almost on his way to local
+apotheosis. And here were Sir Anthony and I with the revelation of the
+man Gedge. It was a fantastic, baffling situation. I had been haunted
+by the dread of discussing it. So in reply to his outburst I simply
+said:
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+He drew himself up, with his obstinate chin in the air, and looked at
+me straight.
+
+"If God gives me strength, I am going to do what lies before me."
+
+At this moment Lady Fenimore came in.
+
+"Mr. Winterbotham would like to speak to you a minute, Anthony. It's
+something about the school children."
+
+"All right, my dear. I'll go to him at once," said Sir Anthony. "You'll
+stay and lunch with us, Duncan?"
+
+I declined on the plea that I should have to nurse myself for a
+strenuous day. Sir Anthony might play the Roman father, but it was
+beyond my power to play the Roman father's guest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+How he passed through the ordeal I don't know. If ever a man stood
+captain of his soul, it was Anthony Fenimore that day. And his soul was
+steel-armoured. Perhaps, if proof had come to him from an untainted
+source, it might have modified his attitude. I cannot tell. Without
+doubt the knavery of Gedge set aflame his indignation--or rather the
+fierce pride of the great old Tory gentleman. He would have walked
+through hell-fire sooner than yielded an inch to Gedge. So much would
+scornful defiance have done. But behind all this--and I am as certain
+of it as I am certain that one day I shall die--burned even fiercer,
+steadier, and clearer the unquenchable fire of patriotic duty. He was
+dealing not with a man who had sinned terribly towards him, but with a
+man who had offered his life over and over again to his country, a man
+who had given to his country the sight of his eyes, a man on whose
+breast the King himself had pinned the supreme badge of honour in his
+gift. He was dealing, not with a private individual, but with a
+national hero. In his small official capacity as Mayor of Wellingsford,
+he was but the mouthpiece of a national sentiment. And more than that.
+This ceremony was an appeal to the unimaginative, the sluggish, the
+faint-hearted. In its little way--and please remember that all
+tremendous enthusiasms are fit by these little fires--it was a
+proclamation of the undying glory of England. It was impersonal, it was
+national, it was Imperial. In its little way it was of vast,
+far-reaching importance.
+
+I want you to remember these things in order that you should understand
+the mental processes, or soul processes, or whatever you like, of Sir
+Anthony Fenimore. Picture him. The most unheroic little man you can
+imagine. Clean-shaven, bullet-headed, close-cropped, his face ruddy and
+wrinkled like a withered apple, his eyes a misty blue, his big nose
+marked like a network of veins, his hands glazed and reddened, like his
+face, by wind and weather; standing, even under his mayoral robes, like
+a jockey. Of course he had the undefinable air of breeding; no one
+could have mistaken his class. But he was an undistinguished, very
+ordinary looking little man; and indeed he had done nothing for the
+past half century to distinguish himself above his fellows. There are
+thousands of his type, masters of English country houses. And of all
+the thousands, every one brought up against the stern issues of life
+would have acted like Anthony Fenimore. I say "would have acted," but
+anyone who has lived in England during the war knows that they have so
+acted. These incarnations of the commonplace, the object of the
+disdain, before the war, of the self-styled "intellectuals"--if the war
+sweeps the insufferable term into oblivion it will have done some
+good--these honest unassuming gentlemen have responded heroically to
+the great appeal; and when the intellectuals have thought of their
+intellects or their skins, they have thought only of their duty. And it
+was only the heroical sense of duty that sustained Sir Anthony Fenimore
+that day.
+
+I did not see the reception at the Railway Station or join the
+triumphal procession; but went early to the Town Hall and took my seat
+on the platform. I glibly say "took my seat." A wheel-chair, sent there
+previously, was hoisted, with me inside, on to the platform by Marigold
+and a porter. After all these years, I still hate to be publicly
+paraded, like a grizzled baby, in Marigold's arms. For convenience'
+sake I was posted at the front left-hand corner. The hall soon filled.
+The first three rows of seats were reserved for the recipients of the
+municipality's special invitation; the remainder were occupied by the
+successful applicants for tickets. From my almost solitary perch I
+watched the fluttering and excited crowd. The town band in the organ
+gallery at the further end discoursed martial music. From the main door
+beneath them ran the central gangway to the platform. I recognised many
+friends. In the front row with her two aunts sat Betty, very demure in
+her widow's hat relieved by its little white band of frilly stuff
+beneath the brim. She looked unusually pale. I could not help watching
+her intently and trying to divine how much she knew of the story of
+Boyce and Althea. She caught my eye, nodded, and smiled wanly.
+
+My situation was uncanny. In this crowded assemblage in front of me,
+whispering, talking, laughing beneath the blare of the band, not one,
+save Betty, had a suspicion of the tragedy. At times they seemed to
+melt into a shadow-mass of dreamland .... Time crawled on very slowly.
+Anxious forebodings oppressed me. Had Sir Anthony's valiancy stood the
+test? Had he been able to shake hands with his daughter's betrayer? Had
+he broken down during the drive side by side with him, amid the
+hooraying of the townsfolk? And Gedge? Had he found some madman's means
+of proclaiming the scandal aloud? Every nerve in my body was strained.
+Marigold, in his uniform and medals and patch and grey service cap
+plugged over his black wig, stood sentry by the side of the platform
+next my chair. All of a sudden he pulled out of his side pocket a phial
+of red liqueur in a medicine glass. He poured out the dose and handed
+it to me. I turned on him wrathfully.
+
+"What the dickens is that?"
+
+"Dr. Cliffe's orders, sir."
+
+"When did he order it?"
+
+"When I told him what you looked like after interviewing Mister Daniel
+Gedge. And he said, if you was to look like that again I was to give
+you this. So I'm giving it to you, sir."
+
+There was no arguing with Marigold in front of a thousand people. I
+swallowed the stuff quickly. He put the phial and glass back in his
+pocket and resumed his wooden sentry attitude by my chair. I must own
+to feeling better for the draught. But, thought I, if the strain of the
+situation is so great for me, what must it be for Sir Anthony?
+
+Presently the muffled sounds of outside cheering penetrated the hall.
+The band stopped abruptly, to begin again with "See the Conquering Hero
+Comes" when the civic procession appeared through the great doors.
+There was little Sir Anthony in his robes, grave and imposing, and
+beside him Mrs. Boyce, flushed, bright-eyed, and tearful. Then came
+Lady Fenimore with Boyce, black-spectacled, soldierly, bull-necked, his
+little bronze cross conspicuous among the medals on his breast, his
+elbow gripped by a weatherbeaten young soldier, one of his captains, as
+I learned afterwards, home on leave, who had claimed the privilege of
+guiding his blind footsteps. And behind came the Aldermen and the
+Councillors, and the General and his staff, and the Lord Lieutenant and
+Lady Laleham and the other members of the Reception Committee. The
+cheering drowned the strains of the "Conquering Hero." Places were
+taken on the platform. To the right of the Mayor sat Boyce, to the left
+his mother. On the table in front were set scrolls and caskets. You
+see, we had arranged that Mrs. Boyce should have an address and a
+casket all to herself. The gallery soon was picturesquely filled with
+the nurses, and the fire-brigade, bright-helmeted, was massed in the
+doorway.
+
+God gave the steel-hearted little man strength to go through the
+ordeal. He delivered his carefully prepared oration in a voice that
+never faltered. The passages referring to Boyce's blindness he spoke
+with an accent of amazing sincerity. When he had ended the responsive
+audience applauded tumultuously. From my seat by the edge of the
+platform I watched Betty. Two red spots burned in her cheeks. The
+addresses were read, the caskets presented. Boyce remained standing,
+about to respond. He still held the casket in both hands. His FIDUS
+ACHATES, guessing his difficulty, sprang up, took it from him, and laid
+it on the table. Boyce turned to him with his charming smile and said:
+"Thanks, old man." Again the tumult broke out. Men cheered and women
+wept and waved wet handkerchiefs. And he stood smiling at his unseen
+audience. When he spoke, his deep, beautifully modulated voice held
+everyone under its spell, and he spoke modestly and gaily like a brave
+gentleman. I bent forward, as far as I was able, and scanned his face.
+Never once, during the whole ceremony, did the tell-tale twitch appear
+at the corners of his lips. He stood there the incarnation of the
+modern knights sans fear and sans reproach.
+
+I cannot tell which of the two, he or Sir Anthony, the more moved my
+wondering admiration. Each exhibited a glorious defiance.
+
+You may say that Boyce, receiving in his debonair fashion the encomiums
+of the man whom he had wronged, was merely exhibiting the familiar
+callousness of the criminal. If you do, I throw up my brief. I shall
+have failed utterly to accomplish my object in writing this book. I
+want no tears of sensibility shed over Boyce. I want you to judge him
+by the evidence that I am trying to put before you. If you judge him as
+a criminal, it is my poor presentation of the evidence that is at
+fault. I claim for Boyce a certain splendour of character, for all his
+grievous sins, a splendour which no criminal in the world's history has
+ever achieved. I beg you therefore to suspend your judgment, until I
+have finished, as far as my poor powers allow, my unravelling of his
+tangled skein. And pray remember too that I have sought all through to
+present you with the facts PARI PASSU with my knowledge of them. I have
+tried to tell the story through myself. I could think of no other way
+of creating an essential verisimilitude. Yet, even now, writing in the
+light of full knowledge, I cannot admit that, when Boyce in that Town
+Hall faced the world--for, in the deep tragic sense Wellingsford was
+his world--anyone knowing as much as I did would have been justified in
+calling his demeanour criminal callousness.
+
+I say that he exhibited a glorious defiance. He defied the concrete
+Gedge. He defied the more abstract, but none the less real, tormenting
+Furies. He defied remorse. In accepting Sir Anthony's praise he defied
+the craven in his own soul.
+
+After a speech or two more, to which I did not listen, the proceedings
+in the Town Hall ended. I drew a breath of relief. No breakdown by Sir
+Anthony, no scandalous interruption by Gedge, had marred the impressive
+ceremony. The band in the gallery played "God Save the King." The crowd
+in the body of the hall, who had stood for the anthem, sat down again,
+evidently waiting for Boyce and the notables to pass out. The
+assemblage on the platform broke up. Several members, among them the
+General, who paused to shake hands with Boyce and his mother, left the
+hall by the private side door. The Lord Lieutenant and Lady Laleham
+followed him soon afterwards. Then the less magnificent crowded round
+Boyce, each eager for a personal exchange of words with the hero. Sir
+Anthony remained at his post, keeping on the outskirts of the throng,
+bidding formal adieux to those who went away. Presently I saw that
+Boyce was asking for me, for someone pointed me out to his officer
+attendant, who led him down the steps of the platform and round the
+edge to my seat.
+
+"Well, it has gone off all right," said he. "Let me introduce Captain
+Winslow, more than ever my right-hand man--Major Meredyth."
+
+We exchanged bows.
+
+"The old mother's as pleased as Punch. She didn't know she was going to
+get a little box of her own. I should like to have seen her face. I did
+hear her give one of her little squeals. Did you?"
+
+"No," said I, "but I saw her face. It was that of a saint in an
+unexpected beatitude."
+
+He laughed. "Dear old mother," said he. "She has deserved a show." He
+turned away unconsciously, and, thinking to address me, addressed the
+first row of spectators. "I suppose there's a lot of folks here that I
+know."
+
+By chance he seemed to be looking through his black glasses straight at
+Betty a few feet away. She rose impulsively and, before all
+Wellingsford, went up to him with hand outstretched.
+
+"There's one at any rate, Colonel Boyce. I'm Betty Connor--"
+
+"No need to tell me that," said he, bowing.
+
+Winslow, at his elbow, most scrupulous of prompters, whispered:
+
+"She wants to shake hands with you."
+
+So their hands met. He kept hers an appreciable second or two in his
+grasp.
+
+"I hope you will accept my congratulations," said Betty.
+
+"I have already accepted them, very gratefully. My mother conveyed them
+to me. She was deeply touched by your letter. And may I, too, say how
+deeply touched I am by your coming here?"
+
+Betty looked swiftly round and her cheeks flushed, for there were many
+of us within earshot. She laughed off her embarrassment.
+
+"You have developed from a man into a Wellingsford Institution, and I
+had to come and see you inaugurated. My aunts, too, are here." She
+beckoned to them. "They are shyer than I am."
+
+The elderly ladies came forward and spoke their pleasant words of
+congratulation. Mrs. Holmes and others, encouraged, followed their
+example. Mrs. Boyce suddenly swooped from the platform into the middle
+of the group and kissed Betty, who emerged from the excited lady's
+embrace blushing furiously. She shook hands with Betty's aunts and
+thanked them for their presence; and in the old lady's mind the
+reconciliation of the two houses was complete. Then, with cheeks of a
+more delicate natural pink than any living valetudinarian of her age
+could boast of, and with glistening eyes, she made her way to me, and
+reaching up and drawing me down, kissed me, too.
+
+While all this was going on, the body of the hall began to empty. The
+programme had arranged for nothing more by way of ceremonial to take
+place. But a public gathering always hopes for something unexpected,
+and, when it does not happen, takes its disappointment philosophically.
+I think Betty's action must have shown them that the rest of the
+proceedings were to be purely private and informal.
+
+The platform also gradually thinned, until at last, looking round, I
+saw that only Sir Anthony and Lady Fenimore and Winterbotham, the Town
+Clerk, remained. Then Lady Fenimore joined us. We were about a score,
+myself perched on the edge and corner of the platform, the rest
+standing on the floor of the hall in a sector round me, Marigold, of
+course, in the middle of them by my side, like an ill-graven image. As
+soon as she could Lady Fenimore came up to me.
+
+"Don't you think it splendid of Betty Connor to bury the hatchet so
+publicly?" she whispered.
+
+"The war," said I, "is a solvent of many human complications."
+
+"It is indeed." Then she added: "I am going to have a little dinner
+party some time soon for the Boyces. I sounded him to-day and he
+practically promised. I'll ask the Lalehams. Of course you'll come. Now
+that things have shown themselves so topsy-turvy I've been wondering
+whether I should ask Betty."
+
+"Does Anthony know of this dinner party?" I enquired.
+
+"What does it matter whether he does or not?" she laughed. "Dinner
+parties come within my province and I'm mistress of it."
+
+Of course Boyce had half promised. What else could he do without
+discourtesy? But the banquet which, in her unsuspecting innocence she
+proposed, seemed to me a horrible meal. Doubtless it would seem so to
+Sir Anthony. At the moment I did not know whether he intended to tell
+Gedge's story to his wife. At any rate, hitherto, he had not done so.
+
+"All the same, my dear Edith," I replied, "Anthony may have a word to
+say. I happen to know he has no particular personal friendship for
+Boyce, who, if you'll forgive my saying so, has treated you rather
+cavalierly for the past two years. Anthony's welcome to-day was purely
+public and official. It had nothing to do with his private feelings."
+
+"But they have changed. He was referring to the matter only this
+morning at breakfast and suggesting things we could do to lighten the
+poor man's affliction."
+
+"I don't think a dinner party would lighten it," I said. "And if I were
+you, I wouldn't suggest it to Anthony."
+
+"That's rather mysterious." She looked at me shrewdly. "And there's
+another mysterious thing. Anthony's like a yapping sphinx over it. What
+were you two talking to Gedge about this morning?"
+
+"Nothing particular."
+
+"That's nonsense, Duncan. Gedge was making himself unpleasant. He never
+does anything else."
+
+"If you want to know," said I, with a convulsive effort of invention,
+"we heard that he was preparing some sort of demonstration, going to
+bring down some of his precious anti-war-league people."
+
+"He wouldn't have the pluck," she exclaimed.
+
+"Anyhow," said I, "we thought we had better have him in and read him
+the Riot--or rather the Defence of the Realm--Act. That's all."
+
+"Then why on earth couldn't Anthony tell me?"
+
+"You ought to know the mixture of sugar and pepper in your husband's
+nature better than I do, my dear Edith," I replied.
+
+Her laugh reassured me. I had turned a difficult corner. No doubt she
+would go to Sir Anthony with my explanation and either receive his
+acquiescence or learn the real truth.
+
+She was bidding me farewell when Sir Anthony came along the platform to
+the chair. I glanced up, but I saw that he did not wish to speak to me.
+He was looking grim and tired. He called down to his wife:
+
+"It's time to move, dear. The troops are still standing outside."
+
+She bustled about giving the signal for departure, first running to
+Boyce and taking him by the sleeve. I had not noticed that he had
+withdrawn with Betty a few feet away from the little group. They were
+interrupted in an animated conversation. At the sight I felt a keen
+pang of repulsion. Those two ought not to talk together as old friends.
+It outraged decencies. It was all very well for Betty to play the
+magnanimous and patriotic Englishwoman. By her first word of welcome
+she had fulfilled the part. But this flushed, eager talk lay far beyond
+the scope of patriotic duty. How could they thus converse over the body
+of the dead Althea? With both of them was I indignant.
+
+In my inmost heart I felt horribly and vulgarly jealous. I may as well
+confess it. Deeply as I had sworn blood-brotherhood with Boyce,
+regardless of the crimes he might or might not have committed, I could
+not admit him into that inner brotherhood of which Betty and I alone
+were members. And this is just a roundabout, shame-faced way of saying
+that, at that moment, I discovered that I was hopelessly, insanely in
+love with Betty. The knowledge came to me in a great wave of dismay.
+
+"You'll let me see you again, won't you?" he asked.
+
+"If you like."
+
+I don't think I heard the words, but I traced them on their lips. They
+parted. Sir Anthony descended from the platform and gave his arm to
+Mrs. Boyce. Lady Fenimore still clung to Boyce. Winterbotham came next,
+bearing the two caskets, which had been lying neglected on the table.
+The sparse company followed down the empty hall. Marigold signalled to
+the porter and they hoisted down my chair. Betty, who had lingered
+during the operation, walked by my side. Being able now to propel
+myself, I dismissed Marigold to a discreet position in the rear. Betty,
+her face still slightly flushed, said:
+
+"I'm waiting for congratulations which seem to be about as overwhelming
+as snow in August. Don't you think I've been extraordinarily good?"
+
+"Do you feel good?"
+
+"More than good," she laughed. "Christianlike. Aren't we told in the
+New Testament to forgive our enemies?"
+
+"'And love those that despitefully use us?'" I misquoted maliciously. A
+sudden gust of anger often causes us to do worse things than trifle
+with the text of the Sermon on the Mount.
+
+She turned on me quickly, as though stung. "Why not? Isn't the sight of
+him maimed like that enough to melt the heart of a stone?"
+
+I replied soberly enough. "It is indeed."
+
+I had already betrayed my foolish jealousy. Further altercation could
+only result in my betraying Boyce. I did not feel very happy. Conscious
+of having spoken to me with unwonted sharpness, she sought to make
+amends by laying her hand on my shoulder.
+
+"I think, dear," she said, "we're all on rather an emotional edge
+to-day."
+
+We reached the front door of the hall. At the top of the shallow flight
+of broad stairs the little group that had preceded us stood behind
+Boyce, who was receiving the cheers of the troops--soldiers and
+volunteers and the Godbury School Officers' Training Corps--drawn up in
+the Market Square. When the cheers died away the crowd raised cries for
+a speech.
+
+Again Boyce spoke.
+
+"The reception you have given my mother and myself," he said, "we
+refuse to take personally. It is a reception given to the soldiers, and
+the mothers and wives of soldiers, of the Empire, of whom we just
+happen to be the lucky representatives. Whole regiments, to say nothing
+of whole armies, can't all, every jack man, receive Victoria Crosses.
+But every regiment very jealously counts up its honours. You'll hear
+men say: 'Our regiment has two V.C.s, five D.S.O.s, and twenty
+Distinguished Conduct Medals.' and the feeling is that all the honours
+are lumped together and shared by everybody, from the Colonel to the
+drummer-boys. And each individual is proud of his share because he
+knows that he deserves it. And so it happens that those whom chance has
+set aside for distinction, like the lucky winners in a sweepstake, are
+the most embarrassed people you can imagine, because everybody is doing
+everything that they did every day in the week. For instance, if I
+began to tell you a thousandth part of the dare-devil deeds of my
+friend here, Captain Winslow of my regiment, he would bolt like a
+rabbit into the Town Hall and fall on his knees and pray for an
+earthquake. And whether the earthquake came off or not, I'm sure he
+would never speak to me again. And they're all like that. But in
+honouring me you are honouring him, and you're honouring our regiment,
+and you're honouring the army. And in honouring Mrs. Boyce, you are
+honouring that wonderful womanhood of the Empire that is standing
+heroically behind their men in the hell upon God's good earth which is
+known as the front."
+
+It was a soldierlike little speech, delivered with the man's gallant
+charm. Young Winslow gripped his arm affectionately and I heard him
+say--"You are a brute, sir, dragging me into it." The little party
+descended the steps of the Town Hall. The words of command rang out.
+The Parade stood at the salute, which Boyce acknowledged. Guided by
+Winslow and his mother he reached his car, to which he was attended by
+the Mayor and Mayoress. After formal leave-taking the Boyces and
+Winslow drove off amid the plaudits of the crowd. Then Sir Anthony and
+Lady Fenimore. Then Betty and her aunts. Last of all, while the troops
+were preparing to march away and the crowd was dispersing and all the
+excitement was over, Marigold picked me out of my chair and carried me
+down to my little grey two-seater.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Of course, after this (in the words of my young friends) I crocked up.
+The confounded shell that had played the fool with my legs had also
+done something silly to my heart. Hence these collapses after physical
+and emotional strain. I had to stay in bed for some days. Cliffe told
+me that as soon as I was fit to travel I must go to Bournemouth, where
+it would be warm. I told Cliffe to go to a place where it would be
+warmer. As neither of us would obey the other, we remained where we
+were.
+
+Cliffe informed me that Lady Fenimore had called him in to see Sir
+Anthony, whom she described as being on the obstinate edge of a nervous
+breakdown. I was sorry to hear it.
+
+"I suppose you've tried to send him, too, to Bournemouth?"
+
+"I haven't," Cliffe replied gravely. "He has got something on his mind.
+I'm sure of it. So is his wife. What's the good of sending him away?"
+
+"What do you think is on his mind?" I asked.
+
+"How do I know? His wife thinks it must be something to do with Boyce's
+reception. He went home dead-beat, is very irritable, off his food,
+can't sleep, and swears cantankerously that there's nothing the matter
+with him,--the usual symptoms. Can you throw any light on it?"
+
+"Certainly not," I replied rather sharply.
+
+Cliffe said "Umph!" in his exasperating professional way and proceeded
+to feel my pulse.
+
+"I don't quite see how Friday's mild exertion could account for YOUR
+breakdown, my friend," he remarked.
+
+"I'm so glad you confess, at last, not to seeing everything," said I.
+
+I was fearing this physical reaction in Sir Anthony. It was only the
+self-assertion of Nature. He had gone splendidly through his ordeal,
+having braced himself up for it. He had not braced himself up, however,
+sufficiently to go through the other and far longer ordeal of hiding
+his secret from his wife. So of course he went to pieces.
+
+After Cliffe had left me, with his desire for information unsatisfied,
+I rang up Wellings Park. It was the Sunday morning after the reception.
+To my surprise, Sir Anthony answered me; for he was an old-fashioned
+country churchgoer and plague, pestilence, famine, battle, murder and
+sudden death had never been known to keep him out of his accustomed pew
+on Sunday morning. Edith, he informed me, had gone to church; he
+himself, being as nervous as a cat, had funked it; he was afraid lest
+he might get up in the middle of the sermon and curse the Vicar.
+
+"If that's so," said I, "come round here and talk sense. I've something
+important to say to you."
+
+He agreed and shortly afterwards he arrived. I was shocked to see him.
+His ruddy face had yellowed and the firm flesh had loosened and sagged.
+I had never noticed that his stubbly hair was so grey. He could
+scarcely sit still on the chair by my bedside.
+
+I told him of Cliffe's suspicions. We were a pair of conspirators with
+unavowable things on our minds which were driving us to nervous
+catastrophe. Edith, said I, was more suspicious even than Cliffe. I
+also told him of our talk about the projected dinner party.
+
+"That," he declared, "would drive me stark, staring mad."
+
+"So will continuing to hide the truth from Edith," said I. "How do you
+suppose you can carry on like this?"
+
+He grew angry. How could he tell Edith? How could he make her
+understand his reason for welcoming Boyce? How could he prevent her
+from blazing the truth abroad and crying aloud for vengeance? What kind
+of a fool's counsel was I giving him?
+
+I let him talk, until, tired with reiteration, he had nothing more to
+say. Then I made him listen to me while I expounded that which was
+familiar to his obstinate mind--namely, the heroic qualities of his own
+wife.
+
+"It comes to this," said I, by way of peroration, "that you're afraid
+of Edith letting you down, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself."
+
+At that he flared out again. How dared I, he asked, eating his words,
+suggest that he did not trust the most splendid woman God had ever
+made? Didn't I see that he was only trying to shield her from knowledge
+that might kill her? I retorted by pointing out that worry over his
+insane behaviour--please remember that above our deep unchangeable
+mutual affection, a violent surface quarrel was raging--would more
+surely and swiftly kill her than unhappy knowledge. Her quick
+brain--had already connected Gedge, Boyce, and his present condition as
+the main factors of some strange problem. "Her quick brain!" I cried.
+"A half idiot child would have put things together."
+
+Presently he collapsed, sitting hopelessly, nervelessly in his chair.
+At last he lifted a piteously humble face.
+
+"What would you suggest my doing, Duncan?"
+
+There seemed to me to be only one thing he could do in order to
+preserve, if not his reason, at any rate his moral equilibrium in the
+position which he had contrived for himself. To tell him this had been
+my object in seeking the interview, and the blessed opportunity only
+came after an hour's hard wrangle--in current metaphor after an hour's
+artillery preparation for attack. He looked so battered, poor old
+Anthony, that I felt almost ashamed of the success of my bombardment.
+
+"It's not a question of suggesting," said I. "It's a question of things
+that have to be done. You need a holiday. You've been working here at
+high pressure for nearly a couple of years. Go away. Put yourself in
+the hands of Cliffe, and go to Bournemouth, or Biarritz, or Bahia, or
+any beastly place you can fix up with him to go to. Go frankly, for
+three or four months. Go to-morrow. As soon as you're well out of the
+place, tell Edith the whole story. Then you can take counsel and
+comfort together."
+
+He was in the state of mind to be impressed by my argument. I followed
+up my advantage. I undertook to send a ruthless flaming angel of a
+Cliffe to pronounce the inexorable decree of exile. After a few
+faint-hearted objections he acquiesced in the scheme. I fancy he
+revolted against even this apparent surrender to Gedge, although he was
+too proud to confess it. No man likes running away. Sir Anthony also
+regarded as pusillanimous the proposal to leave his wife in ignorance
+until he had led her into the trap of holiday. Why not put her into his
+confidence before they started?
+
+"That," said I, "is a delicate question which only you yourself can
+decide. By following my plan you get away at once, which is the most
+important thing. Once comfortably away, you can choose the opportune
+moment."
+
+"There's something in that," he replied; and, after thanking me for my
+advice, he left me.
+
+I do not defend my plan. I admit it was Machiavellian. My one desire
+was to remove these two dear people from Wellingsford for a season.
+Just think of the horrible impossibility of their maintaining social
+relations with the Boyces ....
+
+By publicly honouring Boyce, Sir Anthony had tied his own hands. It was
+a pledge to Boyce, although the latter did not know it, of condonation.
+Whatever stories Gedge might spread abroad, whatever proofs he might
+display, Sir Anthony could take no action. But to carry on a semblance
+of friendship with the man responsible for his daughter's death--for
+the two of them, mind you, since Lady Fenimore would sooner or later
+learn everything--was, as I say, horribly impossible.
+
+Let them go, then, on their nominal holiday, during which the air might
+clear. Boyce might take his mother away from Wellingsford. She would do
+far more than uproot herself from her home in order to gratify a wish
+of her adored and blinded son. He would employ his time of darkness in
+learning to be brave, he had told me. It took some courage to face the
+associations of dreadful memories unflinchingly, for his mother's sake.
+Should he learn, however, that the Fenimores had an inkling of the
+truth, he would recognise his presence in the place to be an outrage.
+And such inkling--who would give it him? Perhaps I, myself. The Boyces
+would go--the Fenimores could return. Anything, anything rather than
+that the Fenimores and the Boyces should continue to dwell in the same
+little town.
+
+And there was Betty--with all the inexplicable feminine whirring inside
+her--socially reconciled with Boyce. Where the deuce was this
+reconciliation going to lead? I have told you how my lunatic love for
+Betty had stood revealed to me. Had she chosen to love and marry any
+ordinary gallant gentleman, God knows I should not have had a word to
+say. The love that such as I can give a woman can find its only true
+expression in desiring and contriving her happiness. But that she
+should sway back to Leonard Boyce--no, no. I could not bear it. All the
+shuddering pictures of him rose up before me, the last, that of him
+standing by the lock gates and suddenly running like a frightened
+rabbit, with his jaunty soft felt hat squashed shapelessly over his
+ears.
+
+Gedge could not have invented that abominable touch of the squashed hat.
+
+I have said that possibly I myself might give Boyce an inkling of the
+truth. Thinking over the matter in my restless bed, I shrank from doing
+so. Should I not be disingenuously serving my own ends? Betty stepped
+in, whom I wanted for myself. Neither could I go to Boyce and challenge
+him for a villain and summon him to quit the town and leave those dear
+to me at peace. I could not condemn him. I had unshaken faith in the
+man's noble qualities. That he drowned Althea Fenimore I did not, could
+not, believe. After all that had passed between us, I felt my loyalty
+to him irrevocably pledged. More than ever was I enmeshed in the net of
+the man's destiny.
+
+As yet, however, I could not bear to see him. I could not bear to see
+Betty, who called now and then. For the first time in my life I took
+refuge in my invalidity, whereby I earned the commendation of Cliffe.
+Betty sent me flowers. Mrs. Boyce sent me grapes and an infallible
+prescription for heart attacks which, owing to the hopeless mess she
+had made in trying to copy the wriggles indicating the quantities of
+the various drugs, was of no practical use. Phyllis Gedge sent me a few
+bunches of violets with a shy little note. Lady Fenimore wrote me an
+affectionate letter bidding me farewell. They were going to Bude in
+Cornwall, Anthony having put himself under Dr. Cliffe's orders like a
+wonderful lamb. When she came back, she hoped that her two sick men
+would be restored to health and able to look more favourably upon her
+projected dinner party. Marigold also brought into my bedroom a
+precious old Waterford claret jug which I had loved and secretly
+coveted for twenty years, with a card attached bearing the inscription
+"With love from Anthony." That was his dumb, British way of informing
+me that he was taking my advice.
+
+When my self-respect would allow me no longer to remain in bed, I got
+up; but I still shrank from publishing the news of my recovery, in
+which reluctance I met with the hearty encouragement both of Cliffe and
+Marigold. The doctor then informed me that my attack of illness had
+been very much more serious than I realised, and that unless I made up
+my mind to lead the most unruffled of cabbage-like existences, he would
+not answer for what might befall me. If he could have his way, he would
+carry me off and put me into solitary confinement for a couple of
+months on a sunny island, where I should hold no communication with the
+outside world. Marigold heard this announcement with smug satisfaction.
+Nothing would please him more than to play gaoler over me.
+
+At last, one morning, I said to him: "I'm not going to submit to
+tyranny any longer. I resume my normal life. I'm at home to anybody who
+calls. I'm at home to the devil himself."
+
+"Very good, sir," said Marigold.
+
+An hour or two afterwards the door was thrown open and there stood on
+the threshold the most amazing apparition that ever sought admittance
+into a gentleman's library; an apparition, however, very familiar
+during these days to English eyes. From the shapeless Tam-o'-Shanter to
+the huge boots it was caked in mud. Over a filthy sheepskin were slung
+all kinds of paraphernalia, covered with dirty canvas which made it
+look a thing of mighty bulges among which a rifle was poked away. It
+wore a kilt covered by a khaki apron. It also had a dirty and unshaven
+face. A muddy warrior fresh from the trenches, of course. But what was
+he doing here?
+
+"I see, sir, you don't recognise me," he said with a smile.
+
+"Good Lord!" I cried, with a start, "it's Randall."
+
+"Yes, sir. May I come in?"
+
+"Come in? What infernal nonsense are you talking?" I held out my hand,
+and, after greeting him, made him sit down.
+
+"Now," said I, "what the deuce are you doing in that kit?"
+
+"That's what I've been asking myself for the last ten months. Anyhow I
+shan't wear it much longer."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"Commission, sir," he answered.
+
+"Oh!" said I.
+
+His entrance had been so abrupt and unexpected that I hardly knew as
+yet what to make of him. Speculation as to his doings had led me to
+imagine him engaged in some elegant fancy occupation on the fringe of
+the army, if indeed he were serving his country so creditably. I found
+it hard to reconcile my conception of Master Randall Holmes with this
+businesslike Tommy who called me "Sir" every minute.
+
+"I'll tell you about it, sir, if you're interested. But first--how is
+my mother?"
+
+"Your mother? You haven't seen her yet?"
+
+Here, at least, was a bit of the old casual Randall. He shook his head.
+
+"I've only just this minute arrived. Left the trenches yesterday.
+Walked from the station. Not a soul recognised me. I thought I had
+better come here first and report, just as I was, and not wait until I
+had washed and shaved and put on Christian clothes again. He looked at
+me and grinned. "Seeing is believing."
+
+"Your mother is quite well," said I. "Haven't you given her any warning
+of your arrival?"
+
+"Oh, no!" he answered. "I didn't want any brass bands. Besides, as I
+say, I wanted to see you first. Then to look in at the hospital. I
+suppose Phyllis Gedge is still at the hospital?"
+
+"She is. But I think, my dear chap, your mother has the first call on
+you."
+
+"She wouldn't enjoy my present abominable appearance as much as
+Phyllis," he replied, coolly. "You see, Phyllis is responsible for it.
+I told you she refused to marry me, didn't I, sir? After that, she
+called me a coward. I had to show her that I wasn't one. It was an
+awful nuisance, I admit, for I had intended to do something quite
+different. Oh! not Gedging or anything of that sort--but--" he dived
+beneath his sheepskin and brought out a tattered letter case and from a
+mass of greasy documents (shades of superior Oxford!) selected a dirty,
+ragged bit of newspaper--"but," said he, handing me the fragment, "I
+think I've succeeded. I don't suppose this caught your eye, but if you
+look closely into it, you'll see that 11003 Private R. Holmes, 1st
+Gordon Highlanders, a couple of months ago was awarded the
+Distinguished Conduct Medal. I may be any kind of a fool or knave she
+likes to call me, but she can't call me a coward."
+
+I congratulated him with all my heart, which, after the first shock,
+was warming towards him rapidly.
+
+"But why," I asked, still somewhat bewildered, "didn't you apply for a
+commission? A year ago you could have got one easily. Why enlist? And
+the 1st Gordons--that's the regular army."
+
+He laughed and asked permission to help himself to a cigarette. "By
+George, that's good," he exclaimed after a few puffs. "That's good
+after months of Woodbines. I found I could stand everything except
+Tommy's cigarettes. Everything about me has got as hard as nails,
+except my palate for tobacco .... Why didn't I apply for a commission?
+Any fool could get a commission. It's different now. Men are picked and
+must have seen active service, and then they're sent off to cadet
+training corps. But last year I could have got one easily. And I might
+have been kicking my heels about England now."
+
+"Yet, at the sight of a Sam Browne belt, Phyllis would have surely
+recanted," said I.
+
+"I didn't want the girl I intended to marry and pass my life with to
+have her head turned by such trappings as a Sam Browne belt. She has
+had to be taught that she is going to marry a man. I'm not such a fool
+as you may have thought me, Major," he said, forgetful of his humble
+rank. "Suppose I had got a commission and married her. Suppose I had
+been kept at home and never gone out and never seen a shot fired, like
+heaps of other fellows, or suppose I had taken the line I had marked
+out--do you think we should have been assured a happy life? Not a bit
+of it. We might have been happy for twenty years. And then--women are
+women and can't help themselves--the old word--by George, sir, she spat
+it at me from a festering sore in her very soul--the old word would
+have rankled all the time, and some stupid quarrel having arisen, she
+would have spat it at me again. I wasn't taking any chances of that
+kind."
+
+"My dear boy," said I, subridently, "you seem to be very wise." And he
+did. So far as I knew anything about humans, male and female, his
+proposition was incontrovertible. "But where did you gather your
+wisdom?"
+
+"I suppose," he replied seriously, "that my mind is not entirely
+unaffected by a very expensive education."
+
+I looked at the extraordinary figure in sheepskin, bundles and mud, and
+laughed out loud. The hands of Esau and the voice of Jacob. The garb of
+Thomas Atkins and the voice of Balliol. Still, as I say, the fellow was
+perfectly right. His highly trained intelligence had led him to an
+exact conclusion. The festering sore demanded drastic treatment,--the
+surgeon's knife. As we talked I saw how coldly his brain had worked.
+And side by side with that working I saw, to my amusement, the
+insistent claims of his vanity. The quickest way to the front, where
+alone he could re-establish his impugned honour was by enlistment in
+the regular army. For the first time in his life he took a grip on
+essentials. He knew that by going straight into the heart of the old
+army his brains, provided they remained in his head, would enable him
+to accomplish his purpose. As for his choice of regiment, there his
+vanity guided. You may remember that after his disappearance we first
+heard of him at Aberdeen. Now Aberdeen is the depot of the Gordon
+Highlanders.
+
+"What on earth made you go there?" I asked.
+
+"I wanted to get among a crowd where I wasn't known, and wasn't ever
+likely to be known," he replied. "And my instinct was right. I was
+among farmers from Skye and butchers from Inverness and drunken
+scallywags from the slums of Aberdeen, and a leaven of old soldiers
+from all over Scotland. I had no idea that such people existed. At
+first I thought I shouldn't be able to stick it. They gave me a bad
+time for being an Englishman. But soon, I think, they rather liked me.
+I set my brains to work and made 'em like me. I knew there was
+everything to learn about these fellows and I went scientifically to
+work to learn it. And, by Heaven, sir, when once they accepted me, I
+found I had never been in such splendid company in my life."
+
+"My dear boy," I cried in a burst of enthusiasm, "have you had
+breakfast?"
+
+"Of course I have. At the Union Jack Club--the Tommies' place the other
+side of the river--bacon and eggs and sausages. I thought I'd never
+stop eating."
+
+"Have some more?"
+
+He laughed. "Couldn't think of it."
+
+"Then," said I, "get yourself a cigar." I pointed to a stack of boxes.
+"You'll find the Corona--Coronas the best."
+
+As I am not a millionaire I don't offer these Coronas to everybody. I
+myself can only afford to smoke one or two a week.
+
+When he had lit it he said: "I was led away from what I wanted to tell
+you,--my going to Aberdeen and plunging into the obscurity of a
+Scottish regiment. I was absolutely determined that none of my friends,
+none of you good people, should know what an ass I had made of myself.
+That's why I kept it from my mother. She would have blabbed it all over
+the place."
+
+"But, my good fellow," said I, "why the dickens shouldn't we have
+known?"
+
+"That I was making an ass of myself?"
+
+"No, you young idiot!" I cried. "That you were making a man of
+yourself."
+
+"I preferred to wait," said he, coolly, "until I had a reasonable
+certainty that I had achieved that consummation--or, rather, something
+that might stand for it in the prejudiced eyes of my dear friends. I
+knew that you all, ultimately, you and mother and Phyllis, would judge
+by results. Well, here they are. I've lived the life of a Tommy for ten
+months. I've been five in the thick of it over there. I've refused
+stripes over and over again. I've got my D.C.M. I've got my commission
+through the ranks, practically on the field. And of the draft of two
+hundred who went out with me only one other and myself remain."
+
+"It's a splendid record, my boy," said I.
+
+He rose. "Don't misunderstand me, Major. I'm not bragging. God forbid.
+I'm only wanting to explain why I kept dark all the time, and why I'm
+springing smugly and complacently on you now."
+
+"I quite understand," said I.
+
+"In that case," he laughed, "I can proceed on my rounds." But he did
+not proceed. He lingered. "There's another matter I should like to
+mention," he said. "In her last letter my mother told me that the Mayor
+and Town Council were on the point of giving a civic reception to
+Colonel Boyce. Has it taken place yet?"
+
+"Yes," said I.
+
+"And did it go off all right?"
+
+In spite of wisdom learned at Balliol and shell craters, he was still
+an ingenuous youth.
+
+"Gedge was perfectly quiet," I answered.
+
+He started, as he had for months learned not to start, and into his
+eyes sprang an alarm that was usually foreign to them.
+
+"Gedge? How do you know anything about Gedge and Colonel Boyce? Good
+Lord! He hasn't been spreading that poisonous stuff over the town?"
+
+"That's what you were afraid of when you asked about the reception?"
+
+"Of course," said he.
+
+"And you wanted to have your mind clear on the point before
+interviewing Phyllis."
+
+"You're quite right, sir," he replied, a bit shamefacedly. "But if he
+hasn't been spreading it, how do you know? And," he looked at me
+sharply, "what do you know?"
+
+"You gave your word of honour not to repeat what Gedge told you. I
+think you may be absolved of your promise. Gedge came to Sir Anthony
+and myself with a lying story about the death of Althea Fenimore."
+
+"Yes," said he. "That was it."
+
+"Sit down for another minute or two," said I, "and let us compare
+notes."
+
+He obeyed. We compared notes. I found that in most essentials the two
+stories were identical, although Gedge had been maudlin drunk when he
+admitted Randall into his confidence.
+
+"But in pitching you his yarn," cried Randall, "he left out the
+blackmail. He bragged in his beastly way that Colonel Boyce was worth a
+thousand a year to him. All he had to live upon now that the
+blood-suckers had ruined his business. Then he began to weep and
+slobber--he was a disgusting sight--and he said he would give it all up
+and beg with his daughter in the streets as soon as he had an
+opportunity of unmasking 'that shocking wicked fellow.'"
+
+"What did you say then?" I asked.
+
+"I told him if ever I heard of him spreading such infernal lies abroad,
+I'd wring his neck."
+
+"Very good, my boy," said I. "That's practically what Sir Anthony told
+him."
+
+"Sir Anthony doesn't believe there's any truth in it?"
+
+"Sir Anthony," said I, boldly, "knows there's not a particle of truth
+in it. The man's malignancy has taken the form of a fixed idea. He's
+crack-brained. Between us we put the fear of God into him, and I don't
+think he'll give any more trouble."
+
+Randall got to his feet again. "I'm very much relieved to hear you say
+so. I must confess I've been horribly uneasy about the whole thing." He
+drew a deep breath. "Thank goodness I can go to Phyllis, as you say,
+with a clear mind. The last time I saw her I was half crazy."
+
+He held out his hand, a dirty, knubbly, ragged-nailed hand--the hand
+that was once so irritatingly manicured.
+
+"Good-bye, Major. You won't shut the door on me now, will you?"
+
+I wrung his hand hard and bade him not be silly, and, looking up at
+him, said:
+
+"What was the other thing quite different you were intending to do
+before you, let us say, quarreled with Phyllis?"
+
+He hesitated, his forehead knit in a little web of perplexity.
+
+"Whatever it was," I continued, "let us have it. I'm your oldest
+friend, a sort of father. Be frank with me and you won't regret it. The
+splendid work you've done has wiped out everything."
+
+"I'm afraid it has," said he ruefully. "Wiped it out clean." With a
+hitch of the shoulders he settled his pack more comfortably. "Well,
+I'll tell you, Major. I thought I had brains. I still think I have. I
+was on the point of getting a job in the Secret Service--Intelligence
+Department. I had the whole thing cut and dried--to get at the
+ramifications of German espionage in socialistic and so-called
+intellectual circles in neutral and other countries. It would have been
+ticklish work, for I should have been carrying my life in my hands. I
+could have done it well. I started out by being a sort of
+'intellectual' myself. All along I wanted to put my brains at the
+service of my country. I took some time to hit upon the real way. I hit
+upon it. I learned lots of things from Gedge. If he weren't an arrant
+coward, he might be dangerous. He would be taking German money long
+ago, but that he's frightened to death of it." He laughed. "It never
+occurred to you, I suppose, a year ago," he continued, "that I spent
+most of my days in London working like a horse."
+
+"But," I cried--I felt myself flushing purple--and, when I flush
+purple, the unregenerate old soldier in me uses language of a
+corresponding hue--"But," I cried--and in this language I asked him why
+he had told me nothing about it.
+
+"The essence of the Secret Service, sir," replied this maddening young
+man, "is--well--secrecy."
+
+"You had a billet offered to you, of the kind you describe?"
+
+"The offer reached me, very much belated, one day when I was half dead,
+after having performed some humiliating fatigue duty. I think I had
+persisted in trying to scratch an itching back on parade. Military
+discipline, I need not tell you, Major, doesn't take into account the
+sensitiveness of a recruit's back. It flatly denies such a phenomenon.
+Now I think I can defy anything in God's quaint universe to make me
+itch. But that's by the way. I tore the letter up and never answered
+it. You do these things, sir, when the whole universe seems to be a
+stumbling-block and an offence. Phyllis was the stumbling-block and the
+rest of the cosmos was the other thing. That's why I have reason on my
+side when I say that, all through Phyllis Gedge, I made an ass of
+myself."
+
+He clutched his rude coat with both hands. "An ass in sheep's clothing."
+
+He drew himself up, saluted, and marched out.
+
+He marched out, the young scoundrel, with all the honours of war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+So, in drawing a bow at a venture, I had hit the mark. You may remember
+that I had rapped out the word "blackmail" at Gedge; now Randall
+justified the charge. Boyce was worth a thousand a year to him. The
+more I speculated on the danger that might arise from Gedge, the easier
+I grew in my mind. Your blackmailer is a notorious saver of his skin.
+Gedge had no desire to bring Boyce to justice and thereby incriminate
+himself. His visit to Sir Anthony was actuated by sheer malignity.
+Without doubt, he counted on his story being believed. But he knew
+enough of the hated and envied aristocracy to feel assured that Sir
+Anthony would not subject his beloved dead to such ghastly disinterment
+as a public denunciation of Boyce would necessitate. He desired to
+throw an asphyxiating bomb into the midst of our private circle. He
+reckoned on the Mayor taking some action that would stop the reception
+and thereby put a public affront on Boyce. Sir Anthony's violent
+indignation and perhaps my appearance of cold incredulity upset his
+calculations. He went out of the room a defeated man, with the secret
+load (as I knew now) of blackmail on his shoulders.
+
+I snapped my fingers at Gedge. Randall seemed to do the same,
+undesirable father-in-law IN PROSPECTU as he was. But that was entirely
+Randall's affair. The stomach that he had for fighting with Germans
+would stand him in good stead against Gedge, especially as he had
+formed so contemptuous an estimate of the latter's valour.
+
+I emerged again into my little world. I saw most of my friends. Phyllis
+lay in wait for me at the hospital, radiant and blushing, ostensibly to
+congratulate me on recovery from my illness, really (little baggage!)
+to hear from my lips a word or two in praise of Randall. Apparently he
+had come, in his warrior garb, seen, and conquered on the spot. I saw
+Mrs. Holmes, who, gladdened by the Distinguished Conduct Medallist's
+return, had wiped from her memory his abominably unfilial behaviour. I
+saw Betty and I saw Boyce.
+
+Now here I come to a point in this chronicle where I am faced by an
+appalling difficulty. Hitherto I have striven to tell you no more about
+myself and my motives and feelings than was demanded by my purpose of
+unfolding to you the lives of others. Primarily I wanted to explain
+Leonard Boyce. I could only do it by showing you how he reacted on
+myself--myself being an unimportant and uninteresting person. It was
+all very well when I could stand aside and dispassionately analyse such
+reactions. The same with regard to my dear Betty. But now if I adopted
+the same method of telling you the story of Betty and the story of
+Boyce--the method of reaction, so to speak--I should be merely whining
+into your ears the dolorous tale of Duncan Meredyth, paralytic and
+idiot.
+
+The deuce of it is that, for a long time, nothing particular or
+definite happened. So how can I describe to you a very important period
+in the lives of Betty and Boyce and me?
+
+I had to resume my intimacy with Boyce. The blind and lonely man craved
+it and claimed it. It would be an unmeaning pretence of modesty to
+under-estimate the value to him of my friendship. He was a man of
+intense feelings. Torture had closed his heart to the troops of friends
+that so distinguished a soldier might have had. He granted admittance
+but to three, his mother, Betty and--for some unaccountable
+reason--myself. On us he concentrated all the strength of his
+affection. Mind you, it was not a case of a maimed creature clinging
+for support to those who cared for him. In his intercourse with me, he
+never for a moment suggested that he was seeking help or solace in his
+affliction. On the contrary, he ruled it out of the conditions of
+social life. He was as brave as you please. In his laughing scorn of
+blindness he was the bravest man I have ever known. He learned the
+confidence of the blind with marvellous facility. His path through
+darkness was a triumphant march.
+
+Sometimes, when he re-fought old battles and planned new ones, forecast
+the strategy of the Great Advance, word-painted scenes and places, drew
+character sketches of great leaders and quaint men, I forgot the
+tragedy of Althea Fenimore. And when the memory came swiftly back, I
+wondered whether, after all, Gedge's story from first to last had not
+been a malevolent invention. The man seemed so happy. Of course you
+will say it was my duty to give a hint of Gedge's revelation. It was.
+To my shame, I shirked it. I could not find it in my heart suddenly to
+dash into his happiness. I awaited an opportunity, a change of mood in
+him, an allusion to confidences of which I alone of human beings had
+been the recipient.
+
+Betty visited me as usual. We talked war and hospital and local gossip
+for a while and then she seemed to take refuge at the piano. We had one
+red-letter day, when a sailor cousin of hers, fresh from the North Sea,
+came to luncheon and told us wonders of the Navy which we had barely
+imagined and did not dare to hope for. His tidings gave subject for
+many a talk.
+
+I knew that she was seeing Boyce constantly. The former acquaintance of
+the elders of the two houses flamed into sudden friendship. From a
+remark artlessly let fall by Mrs. Boyce, I gathered that the old ladies
+were deliberately contriving such meetings. Boyce and Betty referred to
+each other rarely and casually, but enough to show me that the old feud
+was at an end. And of what save one thing could the end of a feud
+between lovers be the beginning? What did she know? Knowing all, how
+could she be drawn back under the man's fascination? The question
+maddened me. I suffered terribly.
+
+At last, one evening, I could bear it no longer. She was playing
+Chopin. The music grated on me. I called out to her:
+
+"Betty!"
+
+She broke off and turned round, with a smile of surprise. Again she was
+wearing the old black evening dress, in which I have told you she
+looked so beautiful.
+
+"No more music, dear. Come and talk to me."
+
+She crossed the room with her free step and sat near my chair.
+
+"What shall I talk about?" she laughed.
+
+"Leonard Boyce."
+
+The laughter left her face and she gave me a swift glance.
+
+"Majy dear, I'd rather not," she said with a little air of finality.
+
+"I know that," said I. "I also know that in your eyes I am committing
+an unwarrantable impertinence."
+
+"Not at all," she replied politely. "You have the right to talk to me
+for my good. It's impertinence in me not to wish to hear it."
+
+"Betty dear," said I, "will you tell me what was the cause of your
+estrangement?"
+
+She stiffened. "No one has the right to ask me that."
+
+"A man who loves you very, very dearly," said I, "will claim it. Was
+the cause Althea Fenimore?"
+
+She looked at me almost in frightened amazement.
+
+"Is that mere guesswork?"
+
+"No, dear," said I quietly.
+
+"I thought no one knew--except one person. I was not even sure that
+Leonard Boyce was aware that I knew."
+
+Another bow at a venture. "That one person is Gedge."
+
+"You're right. I suppose he has been talking," she said, greatly
+agitated. "He has been putting it about all over the place. I've been
+dreading it." Then she sprang to her feet and drew herself up and
+snapped her fingers in an heroical way. "And if he has said that Althea
+Fenimore drowned herself for love of Leonard Boyce, what is there in
+it? After all, what has Leonard Boyce done that he can't be forgiven?
+Men are men and women are women. We've tried for tens of thousands of
+years to lay down hard and fast lines for the sexes to walk upon, and
+we've failed miserably. Suppose Leonard Boyce did make love to Althea
+Fenimore--trifle with her affections, in the old-fashioned phrase. What
+then? I'm greatly to blame. It has only lately been brought home to me.
+Instead of staying here while we were engaged, I would have my last
+fling as an emancipated young woman in London. He consoled himself with
+Althea. When she found he meant nothing, she threw herself into the
+canal. It was dreadful. It was tragic. He went away and broke with me.
+I didn't discover the reason till months afterwards. She drowned
+herself for love of him, it's true. But what was his share in it that
+he can't be forgiven for? Millions of men have been forgiven by women
+for passing loves. Why not he? Why not a tremendous man like him? A man
+who has paid every penalty for wrong, if wrong there was? Blind!"
+
+She walked about and threw up her hands and halted in front of my
+chair. "I'll own that until lately I accused him of unforgivable
+sin--deceiving me and making love to another girl and driving her to
+suicide. I tore him out of my heart and married Willie. We won't speak
+of that .... But since he has come back, things seem different. His
+mother has told me that one day when he was asleep she found he was
+still wearing his identification disc ... there was an old faded
+photograph of me on the other side ... it had been there all through
+the war .... You see," she added, after a pause during which her
+heaving bosom and quivering lip made her maddeningly lovely, "I don't
+care a brass button for anything that Gedge may say."
+
+And that was all my clean-souled Betty knew about it! She had no idea
+of deeper faithlessness; no suspicion of Boyce's presence with Althea
+on the bank of the canal. She stood pathetic in her half knowledge. My
+heart ached.
+
+From her pure woman's point of view she had been justified in her
+denunciation of Boyce. He had left her without a word. A wall of
+silence came between them. Then she learned the reason. He had trifled
+with a young girl's affections and out of despair she had drowned
+herself .... But how had she learned? I had to question her. And it was
+then that she told me the story of Phyllis and her father to which I
+have made previous allusion: how Phyllis, as her father's secretary,
+had opened a letter which had frightened her; how her father's crafty
+face had frightened her still more; how she had run to Betty for the
+easing of her heart. And this letter was from Leonard Boyce. "I cannot
+afford one penny more," so the letter ran, according to Betty's
+recollection of Phyllis's recollection, "but if you remain loyal to our
+agreement, you will not regret it. If ever I hear of your coupling my
+name with that of Miss Fenimore, I'll kill you. I am a man of my word."
+I think Betty crystallised Phyllis's looser statement. But the exact
+wording was immaterial. Here was Boyce branding himself with complicity
+in the tragedy of Althea, and paying Gedge to keep it dark. Like Sir
+Anthony, Betty remembered trivial things that assumed grave
+significance. There was no room for doubt. Catastrophe following on his
+villainy had kept Boyce away from Wellingsford, had terrified him out
+of his engagement. And so her heart had grown bitter against him. You
+may ask why her knowledge of the world had not led her to suspect
+blacker wrong; for a man does not pay blackmail because he has led a
+romantic girl into a wrong notion of the extent of his affection. My
+only answer is that Betty was Betty, clean-hearted and clean-souled
+like the young Artemis she resembled.
+
+And now she proclaimed that he had expiated his offence. She proclaimed
+her renewed and passionate interest in the man. I saw that deep down in
+her heart she had always loved him.
+
+After telling me about Phyllis, she returned to the point where she had
+broken off. She supposed that Gedge had been talking all over the place.
+
+"I don't think so, dear," said I. "So far as I know he has only spoken,
+first to Randall Holmes--that was what made him break away from Gedge,
+whose society he had been cultivating for other reasons than those I
+imagined (you remember telling me Phyllis's sorrowful little tale last
+year?)." She nodded. "And secondly to Sir Anthony and myself, a few
+hours before the Reception."
+
+She clenched her fists and broke out again. "The devil! The incarnate
+devil! And Sir Anthony?"
+
+"Pretended to treat Gedge's story as a lie, threw into the fire without
+reading it an incriminating letter--possibly the letter that Phyllis
+saw, ordered Gedge out of the house and, like a great gentleman, went
+through the ceremony."
+
+"Does Leonard know?"
+
+"Not that I'm aware of," said I.
+
+"He must be told. It's terrible to have an enemy waiting to stab you in
+the dark--and you blind to boot. Why haven't you told him?"
+
+Why? Why? Why?
+
+It was so hard to keep to the lower key of her conception of things. I
+made a little gesture signifying I know not what: that it was not my
+business, that I was not on sufficient terms of intimacy with Boyce,
+that it didn't seem important enough .... My helpless shrug suggested,
+I suppose, all of these excuses. Why hadn't I warned him? Cowardice, I
+suppose.
+
+"Either you or I must do it," she went on. "You're his friend. He
+thinks more of you than of any other man in the world. And he's right,
+dear--" she flashed me a proud glance, sweet and stabbing--"Don't I
+know it?"
+
+Then suddenly a new idea seemed to pass through her brain. She bent
+forward and touched the light shawl covering my knees.
+
+"For the last month or two you've known what he has done. It hasn't
+made any difference in your friendship. You must think with me that the
+past is past, that he has purged his sins, or whatever you like to call
+them; that he is a man greatly to be forgiven."
+
+"Yes, dear," said I, with a show of bravery, though I dreaded lest my
+voice should break, "I think he is a man to be forgiven."
+
+Her logic was remorseless.
+
+With her frank grace she threw herself, in her old attitude, by the
+side of my chair.
+
+"I'm so glad we have had this talk, Majy darling. It has made
+everything between us so clear and beautiful. It is always such a grief
+to me to think you may not understand. I shall always be the little
+girl that looked upon you as a wonderful hero and divine dispenser of
+chocolates. Only now the chocolates stand for love and forbearance and
+sympathy, and all kinds of spiritual goodies."
+
+I passed my hand over her hair. "Silly child!"
+
+"I got it into my head," she continued, "that you were blaming me
+for--for my reconciliation with Leonard. But, my dear, my dear, what
+woman's heart wouldn't be turned to water at the sight of him? It makes
+me so happy that you understand. I can't tell you how happy."
+
+"Are you going to marry him?" I think my voice was steady and kind
+enough.
+
+"Possibly. Some day. If he asks me."
+
+I still stroked her hair. "I wouldn't let it be too soon," said I.
+
+Her eyes were downcast. "On account of Willie?" she murmured.
+
+"No, dear. I don't dare touch on that side of things."
+
+Again a whisper. "Why, then?"
+
+How could I tell her why without betrayal of Boyce? I had to turn the
+question playfully. I said, "What should I do without my Betty?"
+
+"Do you really care about me so much?"
+
+I laughed. There are times when one has to laugh--or overwhelm oneself
+in dishonour.
+
+"Now you see my nature in all its vile egotism," said I, and the
+statement led to a pretty quarrel.
+
+But after it was over to our joint satisfaction, she had to return to
+the distressful main theme of our talk. She harked back to Sir Anthony,
+touched on his splendid behaviour, recalled, with a little dismay, the
+hitherto unnoted fact that, after the ceremony he had held himself
+aloof from those that thronged round Boyce. Then, without hint from me,
+she perceived the significance of the Fenimores' retirement from
+Wellingsford.
+
+"Leonard's ignorance," she said, "leaves him in a frightful position.
+More than ever he ought to know."
+
+"He ought, indeed, my dear," said I. "And I will tell him. I ought to
+have done so before."
+
+I gave my undertaking. I went to bed upbraiding myself for cowardice
+and resolved to go to Boyce the next day. Not only Fate, but honour and
+decency forced me to the detested task.
+
+Alas! Next morning I was nailed to my bed by my abominable malady. The
+attacks had become more frequent of late. Cliffe administered
+restoratives and for the first time he lost his smile and looked
+worried. You see until quite lately I had had a very tranquil life,
+deeply interested in other folks' joys and sorrows, but moved by very
+few of my own. And now there had swooped down on me this ravening pack
+of emotions which were tearing me to pieces. I lay for a couple of days
+tortured by physical pain, humiliation and mental anguish.
+
+On the evening of the second day, Marigold came into the bedroom with a
+puzzled look on his face.
+
+"Colonel Boyce is here, sir. I told him you were in bed and seeing
+nobody, but he says he wants to see you on something important. I asked
+him whether it couldn't wait till to-morrow, and he said that if I
+would give you a password, Vilboek's Farm, you'd be sure to see him."
+
+"Quite right, Marigold," said I. "Show him in."
+
+Vilboek's Farm! Fate had driven him to me, instead of me to him. I
+would see him though it killed me, and get the horrible business over
+for ever.
+
+Marigold led him in and drew up a chair for him by the bedside. After
+pulling on the lights and drawing the curtains, for the warm May
+evening was drawing to a close.
+
+"Anything more, sir, for the present?" he asked.
+
+"Could I have materials for a whisky and soda to hand?" said Boyce.
+
+"Of course," said I.
+
+Marigold departed. Boyce said:
+
+"If you're too ill to stand me, send me away. But if you can stand me,
+for God's sake let me talk to you."
+
+"Talk as much as you like," said I. "This is only one of my stupid
+attacks which a man without legs has to put up with."
+
+"But Marigold--"
+
+"Marigold's an old hen," said I.
+
+"Are you sure you're well enough? That's the curse of not being able to
+see. Tell me frankly."
+
+"I'm quite sure," said I.
+
+I have never been able to get over the curious embarrassment of talking
+to a man whose eyes I cannot see. The black spectacles seemed to be
+like a wall behind which the man hid his thoughts. I watched his lips.
+Once or twice the odd little twitch had appeared at the corners.
+
+Even with his baffling black spectacles he looked a gallant figure of a
+man. He was precisely dressed in perfectly fitting dinner jacket and
+neat black tie; well-groomed from the points of his patent leather
+shoes to his trim crisp brown hair. And beneath this scrupulousness of
+attire lay the suggestion of great strength.
+
+Marigold brought in the tray with decanter, siphon and glasses, and put
+them on a table, together with cigars and cigarettes, by his side.
+After a few deft touches, so as to identify the objects, Boyce smiled
+and nodded at Marigold.
+
+"Thanks very much, Sergeant," he said.
+
+If there is one thing Marigold loves, it is to be addressed as
+"Sergeant." "Marigold" might indicate a butler, but "Sergeant" means a
+sergeant.
+
+"Perhaps I might fetch the Colonel a more comfortable chair, sir," said
+he.
+
+But Boyce laughed, "No, no!" and Marigold left us.
+
+Boyce's ear listened for the click of the door. Then he turned to me.
+
+"I was rather mean in sending you in that password. But I felt as if I
+should go mad if I didn't see you. You're the only man living who
+really knows about me. You're the only human being who can give me a
+helping hand. It's strange, old man--the halt leading the blind. But so
+it is. And Vilboek's Farm is the damned essence of the matter. I've
+come to you to ask you, for the love of God, to tell me what I am to
+do."
+
+I guessed what had happened. "Betty Connor has told you something that
+I was to tell you."
+
+"Yes," said he. "This afternoon. And in her splendid way she offered to
+marry me."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"I said that I would give her my answer to-morrow."
+
+"And what will that answer be?"
+
+"It is for you to tell me," said Boyce.
+
+"In order to undertake such a terrible responsibility," said I, "I must
+know the whole truth concerning Althea Fenimore."
+
+"I've come here to tell it to you," said he.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+It was to a priest rather than to a man that he made full confession of
+his grievous sin. He did not attempt to mitigate it or to throw upon
+another a share of the blame. From that attitude he did not vary a
+hair's breadth. Mea culpa; mea maxima culpa. That was the burthen of
+his avowal.
+
+I, knowing the strange mingling in his nature of brutality and
+sensitiveness, of animal and spiritual, and knowing something of the
+unstable character of Althea Fenimore, may more justly, I think, than
+he, sketch out the miserable prologue of the drama. That she was madly,
+recklessly in love with him there can be no doubt. Nor can there be
+doubt that unconsciously she fired the passion in him. The deliberate,
+cold-blooded seducer of his friend's daughter, such as Boyce, in his
+confession, made himself out to be, is a rare phenomenon. Almost
+invariably it is the woman who tempts--tempts innocently and
+unknowingly, without intent to allure, still less with thought of
+wrong--but tempts all the same by the attraction which she cannot
+conceal, by the soft promise which she cannot keep out of her eyes.
+
+That was the beginning of it. Betty, whom he loved, and to whom he was
+engaged, was away from Wellingsford. In those days she was very much
+the young Diana, walking in search of chaste adventures, quite
+contented with the love that lay serenely warm in her heart and
+thinking little of a passionate man's needs--perhaps starting away from
+too violent an expression of them--perhaps prohibiting them altogether.
+The psychology of the pre-war young girl absorbed, even though
+intellectually and for curiosity's sake, in the feminist movement, is
+yet to be studied. Betty, then, was away. Althea, beata possidens, made
+her artless, innocent appeal for victory. Unconsciously she tempted.
+The man yielded. A touch of the lips in a moment of folly, the man
+blazed, the woman helpless was consumed. This happened in January, just
+before Althea's supposed visit to Scotland. Boyce was due at a Country
+House party near Carlisle. In the first flush of their madness they
+agreed upon the wretched plan. She took rooms in the town and he
+visited her there. Whether he or she conceived it, I do not know. If I
+could judge coldly I should say that it was of feminine inspiration. A
+man, particularly one of Boyce's temperament, who was eager for the
+possession of a passionately loved woman, would have carried her off to
+a little Eden of their own. A calm consideration of the facts leads to
+the suggestion of a half-hearted acquiescence on the part of an
+entangled man in the romantic scheme of an inexperienced girl to whom
+he had suddenly become all in all.
+
+Such is my plea in extenuation of Boyce's conduct (if plea there can
+be), seeing that he raised not a shadow of one of his own. You may say
+that my plea is no excuse for his betrayal; that no man, even if he is
+tempted, can be pardoned for non-control of his passions. But I am
+asking for no pardon; I am trying to obtain your understanding.
+Remember what I have told you about Boyce, his great bull-neck, his
+blood-sodden life-preserver, the physical repulsion I felt when he
+carried me in his arms. In such men the animal instinct is stronger at
+times than the trained will. Whether you give him a measure of your
+sympathy or not, at any rate do not believe that his short-lived
+liaison with Althea was a matter of deliberate and dastardly seduction.
+Nor must you think that I am setting down anything in disparagement of
+a child whom I once loved. Long ago I touched lightly on the anomaly of
+Althea's character--her mid-Victorian sentimentality and softness,
+combined with her modern spirit of independence. A fatal anomaly; a
+perilous balance of qualities. Once the soft sentimentality was warmed
+into romantic passion, the modern spirit led it recklessly to a modern
+conclusion.
+
+The liaison was short-lived. The man was remorseful. He loved another
+woman. Very quickly did the poor girl awaken from her dream.
+
+"I was cruel," said Boyce, fixing me with those awful black spectacles,
+"I know it. I ought to have married her. But if I had married her, I
+should have been more cruel. I should have hated her. It would have
+been an impossible life for both of us. One day I had to tell her so.
+Not brutally. In a normal state I think I am as kind-hearted and gentle
+as most men. And I couldn't be brutal, feeling an unutterable cur and
+craving her forgiveness. But I wanted Betty and I swore that only one
+thing should keep me from her."
+
+"One thing?" I asked.
+
+"The thing that didn't happen," said he.
+
+And so it seemed that Althea accepted the inevitable. The placid,
+fatalistic side of her nature asserted itself. Pride, too, helped her
+instinctive feminine secretiveness. She lived for months in her
+father's house without giving those that were dear to her any occasion
+for suspicion. In order to preserve the secrecy Boyce was bound to
+continue his visits to Wellings Park. Now and then, when they met
+alone, she upbraided him bitterly. On the whole, however, he concluded
+that they had agreed to bury an ugly chapter in their lives.
+
+Yes, it was an ugly chapter. From such you cannot get away, bury it, as
+you will, never so deep.
+
+"And all the time remember," he said, "that I was mad for Betty. The
+more shy she was, the madder I grew. I could not rest in Wellingsford
+without her. When she came here, I came. When she went to town, I went
+to town. She was as elusive as a dream. Finally I pinned her down to a
+date for our marriage in August. It was the last time I saw her. She
+went away to stay with friends. That was the beginning of June. She was
+to be away two months. I knew, if I had clamoured, she would have made
+it three. It was the shyness of the exquisite bird in her that
+fascinated me. I could never touch Betty in those days without dreading
+lest I might soil her feathers. You may laugh at a hulking brute like
+me saying such things, but that's the way I saw Betty, that's the way I
+felt towards her. I could no more have taken her into my bear's hug and
+kissed her roughly than I could have smashed a child down with my fist.
+And yet--My God, man! how I ached for her!"
+
+Long as I had loved Betty in a fatherly way, deeply as I loved her now,
+the man's unexpected picture of her was a revelation. You see it was
+only after her marriage, when she had softened and grown a woman and
+come so near me that I felt the great comfort of her presence when she
+was by, the need of it when she was away. How could I have known
+anything of the elusiveness in her maidenhood before which he knelt so
+reverently?
+
+That he so knelt is the keynote of the man's soul untainted by the
+flesh.
+
+It made clear to me the tenderness that lay beneath that which was
+brutal; the reason of that personal charm which had captivated me
+against my will; his defencelessness against the Furies.
+
+So far the narrative has reached the latter part of June. He had spent
+the month with his mother. As Betty had ordained that July should be
+blank, a month during which the moon should know no changes but only
+the crescent of Diana should shine supreme in the heavens, he had made
+his mundane arrangements for his fishing excursion to Norway. On the
+afternoon of the 23rd he paid a farewell call at Wellings Park. Althea,
+in the final settlement of their relations, had laid it down as a
+definite condition that he should maintain his usual social intercourse
+with the family. A few young people were playing tennis. Tea was served
+on the lawn near by the court. Althea gave no sign of agitation. She
+played her game, laughed with her young men, and took casual leave of
+Boyce, wishing him good sport. He drew her a pace aside and murmured:
+"God bless you for forgiving me."
+
+She laughed a reply out loud: "Oh, that's all right."
+
+When he told me that, I recalled vividly the picture of her, in my
+garden, on the last afternoon of her life, eating the strawberries
+which she had brought me for tea. I remembered the little slangy tone
+in her voice when she had asked me whether I didn't think life was
+rather rotten. That was the tone in which she had said to him, "Oh,
+that's all right."
+
+During the early afternoon on the 25th, she rang him up on the
+telephone. Chance willed that he should receive the call at first hand.
+She must see him before he left Wellingsford. She had something of the
+utmost importance to tell him. A matter of life and death. With one
+awful thought in his mind, he placed his time at her disposal. For what
+romantic, desperate or tragic reason she appointed the night meeting at
+the end of the chestnut avenue where the towing-path turns into regions
+of desolate quietude, he could not tell. He agreed without argument,
+dreading the possible lack of privacy in their talk over the wires.
+
+On that afternoon she came to me, as I have told you, with her
+strawberries and her declaration of the rottenness of life.
+
+They met and walked along the towing-path. It was bright moonlight, but
+she could not have chosen a lonelier spot, more free from curious eyes
+or ears. And then took place a scene which it is beyond my power to
+describe. I can only picture it to myself from Boyce's broken,
+self-accusing talk. He was going away. She would never see him again
+until he returned to marry another woman. She was making her last
+frantic bid for happiness. She wept and sobbed and cajoled and
+upbraided--You know what women at the end of their tether can do. He
+strove to pacify her by the old arguments which hitherto she had
+accepted. Suddenly she cried: "If you don't marry me I am disgraced for
+ever." And this brought them to a dead halt.
+
+When he came to this point I remembered the diabolical accuracy of
+Gedge's story.
+
+Boyce said: "There is one usual reason why a man should marry a woman
+to save her from disgrace. Is that the reason?"
+
+She said "Yes."
+
+The light went out of the man's life.
+
+"In that case," said he, "there can be no question about it. I will
+marry you. But why didn't you tell me before?"
+
+She said she did not know. She made the faltering excuses of the driven
+girl. They walked on together and sat on the great bar of the lock
+gates.
+
+"Till then," said he, "I had never known what it was to have death in
+my heart. But I swear to God, Meredyth, I played my part like a man. I
+had done a dastardly thing. There was nothing left for me but to make
+reparation. In a few moments I tore my life asunder. The girl I had
+wronged was to be the mother of my child. I accepted the situation. I
+was as kind to her as I could be. She laid her head on my shoulder and
+cried, and I put my arm around her. I felt my heart going out to her in
+remorse and pity and tenderness. A man must be a devil who could feel
+otherwise.... Our lives were bound up together.... I kissed her and she
+clung to me. Then we talked for a while--ways and means.... It was time
+to go back. We rose. And then--Meredyth--this is what she said:
+
+"'You swear to marry me?'
+
+"'I swear it,' said I.
+
+"'In spite of anything?'
+
+"I gave my promise. She put her arms round my neck.
+
+"'What I've told you is not wholly true. But the moral disgrace is
+there all the time.'
+
+"I took her wrists and disengaged myself and held her and looked at her.
+
+"'What do you mean--not wholly true?' I asked.
+
+"My God! I shall never forget it." He stuck both his elbows on the bed
+and clutched his hair and turned his black glasses wide of me. "The
+child crumpled up. She seemed to shrivel like a leaf in the fire. She
+said:
+
+"'I've tried to lie to you, but I can't. I can't. Pity me and forgive
+me.'
+
+"I started back from her in a sudden fury. I could not forgive her.
+Think of the awful revulsion of feeling. Foolishly tricked! I was mad
+with anger. I walked away and left her. I must have walked ten or
+fifteen yards. Then I heard a splash in the water. I turned. She was no
+longer on the bank. I ran up. I heard a cry. I just saw her sinking.
+AND I COULDN'T MOVE. As God hears me, it is true. I knew I must dive in
+and rescue her--I had run up with every impulse to do so; BUT I COULD
+NOT MOVE. I stood shivering with the paralysis of fear. Fear of the
+deep black water, the steep brick sides of the canal that seemed to
+stretch away for ever--fear of death, I suppose that was it. I don't
+know. Fear irresistible, unconquerable, gripped me as it had gripped me
+before, as it has gripped me since. And she drowned before my eyes
+while I stood like a stone."
+
+There was an awful pause. He had told me the end of the tragedy so
+swiftly and in a voice so keyed to the terror of the scene, that I lay
+horror-stricken, unable to speak. He buried his face in his hands, and
+between the fleshy part of the palms I saw the muscles of his lips
+twitch horribly. I remembered, with a shiver, how I had first seen them
+twitch, in his mother's house, when he had made his strange, almost
+passionate apology for fear. And he had all but described this very
+incident: the reckless, hare-brained devil standing on the bank of a
+river and letting a wounded comrade drown. I remember how he had
+defined it: "the sudden thing that hits a man's heart and makes him
+stand stock-still like a living corpse--unable to move a muscle--all
+his will-power out of gear--just as a motor is out of gear.... It is as
+much of a fit as epilepsy."
+
+The span of stillness was unbearable. The watch on the little table by
+my bedside ticked maddeningly. Marigold put his head in at the door,
+apparently to warn me that it was getting late. I waved him imperiously
+away. Boyce did not notice his entrance. Presently he raised his head.
+
+"I don't know how long I stood there. But I know that when I moved she
+was long since past help. Suddenly there was a sharp crashing noise on
+the road below. I looked round and saw no one. But it gave me a
+shock--and I ran. I ran like a madman. And I thought as I ran that, if
+I were discovered, I should be hanged for murder. For who would believe
+my story? Who would believe it now?"
+
+"I believe it, Boyce," I said.
+
+"Yes. You. You know something of the hell my life has been. But who
+else? He had every motive for the crime, the lawyers would say. They
+could prove it. But, my God! what motive had I for sending all my
+gallant fellows to their deaths at Vilboek's Farm? ... The two things
+are on all fours--and many other things with them.... My one sane
+thought through the horror of it all was to get home and into the house
+unobserved. Then I came upon the man Gedge, who had spied on me."
+
+"I know about that," said I, wishing to spare him from saying more than
+was necessary. "He told Fenimore and me about it."
+
+"What was his version?" he asked in a low tone. "I had better hear it."
+
+When I had told him, he shook his head. "He lied. He was saving his
+skin. I was not such a fool, mad as I was, as to leave him like that.
+He had seen us together. He had seen me alone. To-morrow there would be
+discovery. I offered him a thousand pounds to say nothing. He haggled.
+Oh! the ghastly business! Eventually I suggested that he should come up
+to London with me by the first train in the morning and discuss the
+money. I was dreading lest someone should come along the avenue and see
+me. He agreed. I think I drank a bottle of whisky that night. It kept
+me alive. We met in my chambers in London. I had sent my man up the day
+before to do some odds and ends for me. I made a clear breast of it to
+Gedge. He believed the worst. I don't blame him. I bought his silence
+for a thousand a year. I made arrangements for payment through my
+bankers. I went to Norway. But I went alone. I didn't fish. I put off
+the two men I was to join. I spent over a month all by myself. I don't
+think I could tell you a thing about the place. I walked and walked all
+day until I was exhausted, and got sleep that way. I'm sure I was going
+mad. I should have gone mad if it hadn't been for the war. I suppose
+I'm the only Englishman living or dead who whooped and danced with
+exultation when he heard of it. I think my brain must have been a bit
+touched, for I laughed and cried and jumped about in a pine-wood with a
+week old newspaper in my hands. I came home. You know the rest."
+
+Yes, I knew the rest. The woman he had left to drown had been ever
+before his eyes; the avenging Furies in pursuit. This was the torture
+in his soul that had led him to many a mad challenge of Death, who
+always scorned his defiance. Yes, I knew all that he could tell me.
+
+But we went on talking. There were a few points I wanted cleared up.
+Why should he have kept up a correspondence with Gedge?
+
+"I only wrote one foolish angry letter," he replied.
+
+And I told him how Sir Anthony had thrown it unread into the fire.
+Gedge's nocturnal waylaying of him in my front garden was another
+unsuccessful attempt to tighten the screw. Like Randall and myself, he
+had no fear of Gedge.
+
+Of Sir Anthony he could not speak. He seemed to be crushed by the
+heroic achievement. It was the only phase of our interview during
+which, by voice and manner and attitude, he appeared to me like a
+beaten man. His own bravery at the reception had gone for naught. He
+was overwhelmed by the hideous insolence of it.
+
+"I shall never get that man's voice out of my ears as long as I live,"
+he said hoarsely.
+
+After a while he added: "I wonder whether there is any rest or
+purification for me this side of the grave."
+
+I said tentatively, for we had never discussed matters of religion: "If
+you believe in Christ, you must believe in the promise regarding the
+sins that be as scarlet."
+
+But he turned it aside. "In the olden days, men like me turned monk and
+found salvation in fasting and penance. The times in which we live have
+changed and we with them, my friend. Nos mulamur in illis, as the tag
+goes."
+
+We went on talking--or rather he talked and I listened. Now and again
+he would help himself to a drink or a cigarette, and I marvelled at the
+clear assurance with which he performed the various little operations.
+I, lying in bed, lost all sense of pain, almost of personality. My
+little ailments, my little selfish love of Betty, my little humdrum
+life itself dwindled insignificant before the tragic intensity of this
+strange, curse-ridden being.
+
+And all the time we had not spoken of Betty--except the Betty of long
+ago. It was I, finally, who gave him the lead.
+
+"And Betty?" said I.
+
+He held out his hand in a gesture that was almost piteous.
+
+"I could tear her from my life. I had no alternative. In the tearing I
+hurt her cruelly. To know it was not the least of the burning hell I
+lit for myself. But I couldn't tear her from my heart. When a brute
+beast like me does love a woman purely and ideally, it's a desperate
+business. It means God's Heaven to him, while it means only an earthly
+paradise to the ordinary man. It clutches hold of the one bit of
+immortal soul he has left, and nothing in this world can make it let
+go. That's why I say it's a desperate business."
+
+"Yes, I can understand," said I.
+
+"I schooled myself to the loss of her. It was part of my punishment.
+But now she has come back into my life. Fate has willed it so. Does it
+mean that I am forgiven?"
+
+"By whom?" I asked. "By God?"
+
+"By whom else?"
+
+"How dare man," said I, "speak for the Almighty?"
+
+"How is man to know?"
+
+"That's a hard question," said I. "I can only think of answering it by
+saying that a man knows of God's forgiveness by the measure of the
+Peace of God in his soul."
+
+"There's none of it in mine, my dear chap, and never will be," said
+Boyce.
+
+I strove to help him. For what other purpose had he come to me?
+
+"You think then that the sending of Betty is a sign and a promise? Yes.
+Perhaps it is. What then?"
+
+"I must accept it as such," said he. "If there is a God, He would not
+give me back the woman I love, only to take her away again. What shall
+I do?"
+
+"In what way?" I asked.
+
+"She offered to marry me. I am to give her my answer to-morrow. If I
+were the callous, murdering brute that everyone would have the right to
+believe I am, I shouldn't have hesitated. If I hadn't been a tortured,
+damned soul," he cried, bringing his great fist down on the bed, "I
+shouldn't have come here to ask you what my answer can be. My whole
+being is infected with horror." He rose and stood over the bed and,
+with clenched hands, gesticulated to the wall in front of him. "I'm
+incapable of judging. I only know that I crave her with everything in
+me. I've got it in my brain that she's my soul's salvation. Is my brain
+right? I don't know. I come to you--a clean, sweet man who knows
+everything--I don't think there's a crime on my conscience or a
+foulness in my nature which I haven't confessed to you. You can judge
+straight as I can't. What answer shall I give to-morrow?"
+
+Did ever man, in a case of conscience, have a greater responsibility?
+God forgive me if I solved it wrongly. At any rate, He knows that I was
+uninfluenced by mean personal considerations. All my life I have tried
+to have an honourable gentleman and a Christian man. According to my
+lights I saw only one clear course.
+
+"Sit down, old man," said I. "You're a bit too big for me like that."
+He felt for his chair, sat down and leaned back. "You've done almost
+everything," I continued, "that a man can do in expiation of offences.
+But there is one thing more that you must do in order to find peace.
+You couldn't find peace if you married Betty and left her in ignorance.
+You must tell Betty everything--everything that you have told me.
+Otherwise you would still be hag-ridden. If she learned the horror of
+the thing afterwards, what would be your position? Acquit your
+conscience now before God and a splendid woman, and I stake my faith in
+each that neither will fail you."
+
+After a few minutes, during which the man's face was like a mask, he
+said:
+
+"That's what I wanted to know. That's what I wanted to be sure of. Do
+you mind ringing your bell for Marigold to take me away? I've kept you
+up abominably." He rose and held out his hand and I had to direct him
+how it could reach mine. When it did, he gripped it firmly.
+
+"It's impossible," said he, "for you to realise what you've done for me
+to-night. You've made my way absolutely clear to me--for the first time
+for two years. You're the truest comrade I've ever had, Meredyth. God
+bless you."
+
+Marigold appeared, answering my summons, and led Boyce away. Presently
+he returned.
+
+"Do you know what time it is, sir?" he asked serenely.
+
+"No," said I.
+
+"It's half-past one."
+
+He busied himself with my arrangements for the night, and administered
+what I learned afterwards was a double dose of a sleeping draught which
+Cliffe had prescribed for special occasions. I just remember surprise
+at feeling so drowsy after the intense excitement of the evening, and
+then I fell asleep.
+
+When I awoke in the morning I gathered my wits together and recalled
+what had taken place. Marigold entered on tiptoe and found me already
+aroused.
+
+"I'm sorry to tell you, sir," said he, "that an accident happened to
+Colonel Boyce after he left last night."
+
+"An accident?"
+
+"I suppose so, sir," said Marigold. "That's what his chauffeur says. He
+got out of the car in order to sit by the side of the canal--by the
+lock gates. He fell in, sir. He's drowned."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+It is Christmas morning, 1916, the third Christmas of the war. The
+tragedy of Boyce's death happened six months ago. Since then I have
+been very ill. The shock, too great for my silly heart, nearly killed
+me. By all the rules of the game I ought to have died. But I suppose,
+like a brother officer long since defunct, also a Major, one Joe
+Bagstock, I am devilish tough. Cliffe told me this morning that, apart
+from a direct hit by a 42-centimetre shell, he saw no reason, after
+what I had gone through, why I should not live for another hundred
+years. "I wash my hands of you," said he. Which indeed is pleasant
+hearing.
+
+I don't mind dying a bit, if it is my Maker's pleasure; if it would
+serve any useful purpose; if it would help my country a myriadth part
+of a millimetre on towards victory. But if it would not matter to the
+world any more than the demise of a daddy-long-legs, I prefer to live.
+In fact, I want to live. I have never wanted to live more in all my
+life. I want to see this fight out. I want to see the Light that is
+coming after the Darkness. For, by God! it will come.
+
+And I want to live, too, for personal and private reasons. If I could
+regard myself merely as a helpless incumbrance, a useless jellyfish,
+absorbing for my maintenance human effort that should be beneficially
+exerted elsewhere, I think I should be the first to bid them take me
+out and bury me. But it is my wonderful privilege to look around and
+see great and beautiful human souls coming to me for guidance and
+consolation. Why this should be I do not rightly know. Perhaps my very
+infirmity has taught me many lessons....
+
+You see, in the years past, my life was not without its lonelinesses.
+It was so natural for the lusty and joyous to disregard, through mere
+thoughtlessness, the little weather-beaten cripple in his wheelchair.
+But when one of these sacrificed an hour's glad life in order to sit by
+the dull chair in a corner, the cripple did not forget it. He learned
+in its terrible intensity the meaning of human kindness. And, in his
+course through the years, or as the years coursed by him, he realised
+that a pair of gollywog legs was not the worst disability which a human
+being might suffer. There were gollywog hearts, brains, nerves,
+temperaments, destinies.
+
+Perhaps, in this way, he came to the knowledge that in every human
+being lies the spark of immortal beauty, to be fanned into flame by one
+little rightly directed breath. At any rate, he learned to love his
+kind.
+
+It is Christmas day. I am as happy as a man has a right to be in these
+fierce times in England. Love is all around me. I must tell you little
+by little. Various things have happened during the last six months.
+
+At the inquest on the body of Leonard Boyce, the jury gave a verdict of
+death by misadventure. The story of the chauffeur, an old soldier
+servant devoted to Boyce, received implicit belief. He had faithfully
+carried out his master's orders: to conduct him from the road, across
+the field, and seat him on the boom of the lock gates, where he wanted
+to remain alone in order to enjoy the quiet of the night and listen to
+the lap of the water; to return and fetch him in a quarter of an hour.
+This he did, dreaming of no danger. When he came back he realised what
+had happened. His master had got up and fallen into the canal. What had
+really happened only a few of us knew.
+
+Well, I have told you the man's story. I am not his judge. Whether his
+act was the supreme amende, the supreme act of courage or the supreme
+act of cowardice, it is not for me to say. I heard nothing of the
+matter for many weeks, for they took me off to a nursing home and kept
+me in the deathly stillness of a sepulchre. When I resumed my life in
+Wellingsford I found smiling faces to welcome me. My first public
+action was to give away Phyllis Gedge in marriage to Randall
+Holmes--Randall Holmes in the decent kit of an officer and a gentleman.
+He made this proposition to me on the first evening of my return. "The
+bride's father," said I, somewhat ironically, "is surely the proper
+person."
+
+"The bride's father," said he, "is miles away, and, like a wise and
+hoary villain, is likely to remain there."
+
+This was news. "Gedge has left Wellingsford?" I cried. "How did that
+come about?"
+
+He stuck his hands on his hips and looked down on me pityingly.
+
+"I'm afraid, sir," said he, "you'll never do adequate justice to my
+intelligence and my capacity for affairs."
+
+Then he laughed and I guessed what had occurred. My young friend must
+have paid a stiff price; but Phyllis and peace were worth it; and I
+have said that Randall is a young man of fortune.
+
+"My dear boy," said I, "if you have exorcised this devil of a
+father-in-law of yours out of Wellingsford, I'll do any mortal thing
+you ask."
+
+I was almost ecstatic. For think what it meant to those whom I held
+dear. The man's evil menace was removed from the midst of us. The man's
+evil voice was silenced. The tragic secrets of the canal would be kept.
+I looked up at my young friend. There was a grim humour around the
+corners of his mouth and in his eyes the quiet masterfulness of those
+who have looked scornfully at death. I realised that he had reached a
+splendid manhood. I realised that Gedge had realised it too; woe be to
+him if he played Randall false. I stuck out my hand.
+
+"Any mortal thing," I repeated.
+
+He regarded me steadily. "Anything? Do you really mean it?"
+
+"You dashed young idiot," I cried, "do you think I'm in the habit of
+talking through my hat?"
+
+"Well," said he, "will you look after Phyllis when I'm gone?"
+
+"Gone? Gone where? Eternity?"
+
+"No, no! I've only a fortnight's leave. Then I'm off. Wherever they
+send me. Secret Service. You know. It's no use planking Phyllis in a
+dug-out of her own"--shades of Oxford and the Albemarle Review!--"she'd
+die of loneliness. And she'd die of culture in the mater's highbrow
+establishment. Whereas, if you would take her in--give her a shake-down
+here--she wouldn't give much trouble--"
+
+He stammered as even the most audacious young warrior must do when
+making so astounding a proposal. But I bade him not be an ass, but send
+her along when he had to finish with her; with the result that for some
+months my pretty little Phyllis has been an inmate of my house.
+Marigold keeps a sort of non-commissioned parent's eye on her. To him
+she seems to be still the child whom he fed solicitously but
+unemotionally with Mrs. Marigold's cakes at tea parties years ago. She
+gives me a daughter's dainty affection. Thank God for it!
+
+There have been other little changes in Wellingsford. Mrs. Boyce left
+the town soon after Leonard's death, and lives with her sister in
+London. I had a letter from her this morning--a brave woman's letter.
+She has no suspicion of the truth. God still tempereth the wind.... Out
+of the innocent generosity of her heart she sent me also, as a
+keepsake, "a little heavy cane, of which Leonard was extraordinarily
+fond." She will never know that I put it into the fire, and with what
+strange and solemn thoughts I watched it burn.
+
+It is Christmas Day. Dr. Cliffe, although he has washed his hands of
+me, tyrannically keeps me indoors of winter nights, so that I cannot,
+as usual, dine at Wellings Park. To counter the fellow's machinations,
+however, I have prepared a modest feast to which I have bidden Sir
+Anthony and Lady Fenimore and my dearest Betty.
+
+As to Betty--
+
+Phyllis comes in radiant, her pretty face pink above an absurd panoply
+of furs. She has had a long letter from Randall from the Lord knows
+where. He will be home on leave in the middle of January. In her
+excitement she drops prayer-books and hymn-books all over me. Then,
+picking them up, reminds me it is time to go to church. I am an
+old-fashioned fogey and I go to church on Christmas Day. I hope our
+admirable and conscientious Vicar won't feel it his duty to tell us to
+love Germans. I simply can't do it.
+
+New Year's Day, 1917.
+
+I must finish off this jumble of a chronicle.
+
+Before us lies the most eventful year in all the old world's history.
+Thank God my beloved England is strong, and Great Britain and our great
+Empire and immortal France. There is exhilaration in the air; a
+consciousness of high ideals; an unwavering resolution to attain them;
+a thrilling faith in their ultimate attainment. No one has died or lost
+sight or limbs in vain. I look around my own little circle. Oswald
+Fenimore, Willie Connor, Reggie Dacre, Leonard Boyce--how many more
+could I not add to the list? All those little burial grounds in
+France--which France, with her exquisite sense of beauty, has assigned
+as British soil for all time--all those burial grounds, each bearing
+its modest leaden inscription--some, indeed, heart-rendingly inscribed
+"Sacred to the memory of six unknown British soldiers killed in
+action"--are monuments not to be bedewed with tears of lamentation.
+From the young lives that have gone there springs imperishable love and
+strength and wisdom--and the vast determination to use that love and
+strength and wisdom for the great good of mankind. If there is a God of
+Battles, guiding, in His inscrutable omniscience, the hosts that fight
+for the eternal verities--for all that man in his straining towards the
+Godhead has striven for since the world began--the men who have died
+will come into their glory, and those who have mourned will share
+exultant in the victory. From before the beginning of Time Mithra has
+ever been triumphant and his foot on the throat of Ahriman.
+
+It was in February, 1915, that I began to expand my diary into this
+narrative,--nearly two years ago. We have passed through the darkness.
+The Dawn is breaking. Sursum corda.
+
+I was going to tell you about Betty when Phyllis, with her furs and
+happiness and hymn-books, interrupted me. I should like to tell you
+now. But who am I to speak of the mysteries in the soul of a great
+woman? But I must try. And I can tell you more now than I could on
+Christmas Day.
+
+Last night she insisted on seeing the New Year in with me. If I had
+told Marigold that I proposed to sit up after midnight, he would have
+come in at ten o'clock, picked me up with finger and thumb as any
+Brobdingnagian might have picked up Gulliver, and put me straightway to
+bed. But Betty made the announcement in her airily imperious way, and
+Marigold, craven before Betty and Mrs. Marigold, said "Very good,
+madam," as if Dr. Cliffe and his orders had never existed. At half past
+ten she packed off the happy and, I must confess, the somewhat sleepy
+Phyllis, and sat down, in her old attitude by the side of my chair, in
+front of the fire, and opened her dear heart to me.
+
+I had guessed what her proud soul had suffered during the last six
+months. One who loved her as I did could see it in her face, in her
+eyes, in the little hardening of her voice, in odd little betrayals of
+feverishness in her manner. But the outside world saw nothing. The
+steel in her nature carried her through. She left no duty
+unaccomplished. She gave her confidence to no human being. I, to whom
+she might have come, was carried off to the sepulchre above mentioned.
+Letters were forbidden. But every day, for all her bleak despair, Betty
+sent me a box of fresh flowers. They would not tell me it was Betty who
+sent them; but I knew. My wonderful Betty.
+
+When they took off my cerecloths and sent me back to Wellingsford,
+Betty was the first to smile her dear welcome. We resumed our old
+relations. But Betty, treating me as an invalid, forbore to speak of
+Leonard Boyce. Any approach on my part came up against that iron wall
+of reserve of which I spoke to you long ago.
+
+But last night she told me all. What she said I cannot repeat. But she
+had divined the essential secret of the double tragedy of the canal. It
+had become obvious to her that he had made the final reparation for a
+wrong far deeper than she had imagined. She was very clear-eyed and
+clear-souled. During her long companionship with pain and sorrow and
+death, she had learned many things. She had been purged by the fire of
+the war of all resentments, jealousies, harsh judgments, and came forth
+pure gold.... Leonard had been the great love of her life. If you
+cannot see now why she married Willie Connor, gave him all that her
+generous heart could give, and after his death was irresistibly drawn
+back to Boyce, I have written these pages in vain.
+
+A few minutes before midnight Marigold entered with a tray bearing a
+cake or two, a pint of champagne and a couple of glasses. While he was
+preparing to uncork the bottle Betty slipped from the room and returned
+with another glass.
+
+"For Sergeant Marigold," she said.
+
+She opened the French window behind the drawn curtains and listened. It
+was a still clear night. Presently the clock of the Parish Church
+struck twelve. She came down to the little table by my side and filled
+the glasses, and the three of us drank the New Year in. Then Betty
+kissed me and we both shook hands with Marigold, who stood very stiff
+and determined and cleared his throat and swallowed something as though
+he were expected to make a speech. But Betty anticipated him. She put
+both her hands on his gaunt shoulders and looked up into his ugly face.
+
+"You've just wished me a Happy New Year, Sergeant."
+
+"I have," said he, "and I mean it."
+
+"Then will you let me have great happiness in staying here and helping
+you to look after the Major?"
+
+He gasped for a moment (as did I) and clutched her arms for an instant
+in an iron grip.
+
+"Indeed I will, my dear," said he.
+
+Then he stepped back a pace and stood rigid, his one eye staring, his
+weather-beaten face the colour of beetroot. He was blushing. The beads
+of perspiration appeared below his awful wig. He stammered out
+something about "Ma'am" and "Madam." He had never so far forgotten
+himself in his life.
+
+But Betty sprang forward and gripped his hand.
+
+"It is you who are the dear," she said. "You, the greatest and loyalest
+friend a man has ever known. And I'll be loyal to you, never fear."
+
+By what process of enchantment she got an emotion-filled Marigold to
+the door and shut it behind him, I shall never discover. On its slam
+she laughed--a queer high note. In one swift movement she was by my
+knees. And she broke into a passion of tears. For me, I was the most
+mystified man under heaven.
+
+Soon she began to speak, her head bowed.
+
+"I've come to the end of the tether, Majy dear. They've driven me from
+the hospital--I didn't know how to tell you before--I've been doing all
+sorts of idiotic things. The doctors say it's a nervous breakdown--I've
+had rather a bad time--but I thought it contemptible to let one's own
+wretched little miseries interfere with one's work for the country--so
+I fought as hard as I could. Indeed I did, Majy dear. But it seems I've
+been playing the fool without knowing it,--I haven't slept properly for
+months--and they've sent me away. Oh, they've been all that's kind, of
+course--I must have at least six months' rest, they say--they talk
+about nursing homes--I've thought and thought and thought about it
+until I'm certain. There's only one rest for me, Majy dear." She raised
+a tear-stained, tense and beautiful face and drew herself up so that
+one arm leaned on my chair, and the other on my shoulder. "And that is
+to be with the one human being that is left for me to love--oh, really
+love--you know what I mean--in the world."
+
+I could only put my hand on her fair young head and say:
+
+"My dear, my dear, you know I love you."
+
+"That is why I'm not afraid to speak. Perfect love casteth out fear--"
+
+I pushed back her hair. "What is it that you want me to do, Betty?" I
+asked. "My life, such as it is, is at your command."
+
+She looked me full, unflinchingly in the eyes.
+
+"If you would give me the privilege of bearing your name, I should be a
+proud and happy woman."
+
+We remained there, I don't know how long--she with her hand on my
+shoulder, I caressing her dear hair. It was a tremendous temptation. To
+have my beloved Betty in all her exquisite warm loyalty bound to me for
+the rest of my crippled life. But I found the courage to say:
+
+"My dear, you are young still, with the wonderful future that no one
+alive can foretell before you, and I am old--"
+
+"You're not fifty."
+
+"Still I am old, I belong to the past--to a sort of affray behind an
+ant-hill which they called a war. I'm dead, my dear, you are gloriously
+alive. I'm of the past, as I say. You're of the future. You, my
+dearest, are the embodiment of the woman of the Great War--" I
+smiled--"The Woman of the Great War in capital letters. What your
+destiny is, God knows. But it isn't to be tied to a Prehistoric Man
+like me."
+
+She rose and stood, with her beautiful bare arms behind her, sweet,
+magnificent.
+
+"I am a Woman of the Great War. You are quite right. But in a year or
+so I shall be like other women of the war who have suffered and spent
+their lives, a woman of the past--not of the future. All sorts of
+things have been burned up in it." In a quick gesture she stretched out
+her hands to me. "Oh, can't you understand?"
+
+I cannot set down the rest of the tender argument. If she had loved me
+less, she could have lived in my house, like Phyllis, without a thought
+of the conventions. But loving me dearly, she had got it into her
+feminine head that the sacredness of the marriage tie would crown with
+dignity and beauty the part she had resolved to play for my happiness.
+
+Well, if I have yielded I pray it may not be set down to me for selfish
+exploitation of a woman's exhausted hour. When I said something of the
+sort, she laughed and cried:
+
+"Why, I'm bullying you into it!"
+
+The First of January, 1917--the dawn to me, a broken derelict, of the
+annus mirabilis. Somehow, foolishly, illogically, I feel that it will
+be the annus mirabilis for my beloved country.
+
+And come--after all--I am, in spite of my legs, a Man too of the Great
+War. I have lived in it, and worked in it, and suffered in it--and in
+it have I won a Great Thing.
+
+So long as one's soul is sound--that is the Great Matter.
+
+Just before we parted last night, I said to Betty:
+
+"The beginning and end of all this business is that you're afraid of
+Marigold."
+
+She started back indignantly.
+
+"I'm not! I'm not!"
+
+I laughed. "The Lady protests too much," said I.
+
+The clock struck two. Marigold appeared at the door. He approached
+Betty.
+
+"I think, Madam, we ought to let the Major go to bed."
+
+"I think, Marigold," said Betty serenely, "we ought to be ashamed of
+ourselves for keeping him up so late."
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Planet, by William J. Locke
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