If Winter Comes

"Isn't that terrific? Isn't it tremendous? By Jove, it—"

For the first time in her married life she looked at him, in this humour, not distastefully but curiously. His flushed face and shining eyes! Whatever about? He was perfectly incomprehensible to her. She got up. She said, "Yes—but 'Ride on'—of course you're not going in the cavalry, are you?"

He said, "Oh, well. Sorry. It's just a thing, you know. Yes, it's your bedtime, I'm afraid. I've kept you up, gassing. Well, dream good luck for me to-morrow."

His thoughts, when she had gone from the room, went, "A better evening! That's the way! I can do it, you see, if I try. That other thing doesn't matter. I was a fool to drag that in. She doesn't understand. Yes, that's the way!"

He sat late, happily. If only he could get past the doctor to-morrow!

VI

That's the way! But on the following evening the way was not to be recaptured. The old way was restored. He was enormously cast down by his rejection. When he got back that night he went straight in to her. "I say, they've rejected me. They won't have me." His face was working. "It's that cursed heart."

She slightly puckered her brows. "Oh—d'you know, for the minute I couldn't think what on earth you were talking about. Were you rejected? Well, I must say I'm glad. Up at the Knitting League Mrs. Turner was saying her son saw you at the recruiting office after you were rejected and that it was into the ranks you were going. You never told me that. I must say I don't think you ought to have thought about the ranks without telling me. And I wouldn't have liked it. I wouldn't have liked it at all. I think you ought to be very thankful you were rejected. I'm sure I am."

He said flatly, "Why are you? Thankful—good lord—you don't know—what do you mean, I ought to be thankful?"

"Because you ought to be an officer, if you go at all. It's not the place for you in your position. And apart from anything else—" She gave her sudden burst of laughter.

He felt arise within him violent and horrible feelings about her. "What are you laughing at?"

"Well, do just imagine what you'd look like in private soldier's clothing!" She laughed very heartily again.

He turned away.

CHAPTER VII

I

Up in his room he began a long letter to Nona, pouring out to her all his feelings about this second rejection. He was writing to her—and hearing from her—regularly and frequently now. It was his only vent in the oppression of these frightful days. She said that it was hers, too.

After that letter of hers, at the outbreak of the war, in which she had said that she thanked God for him that he had delayed her decision to unchain their chains and to join their lives, no further reference had been made by either to that near touch of desire's wand. It was, as he had said it should be, as though her letter had never been written. And in her letters she always mentioned Tony. She wrote to Tony every day, she told him; and there were few of her letters but mentioned a parcel of some kind sent to her husband. Tony never wrote. Sometimes, she said, there came a scrap from him relative to some business matter she must see to; but never any response to her daily budget of gossip—"the kind of news I know he likes to hear"—or any news of himself and his doings.

She once or twice said, without any comment, "But he is writing often to Mrs. Stanley and Lady Grace Heddon and Sophie Basildon and I hear bits of him from them and know he is keeping well. Of course, I pretend to them that their news is stale to me." Another time, "I've just finished my budget to Tony," she wrote, "and have sent him two sets of those patent rubber soles for his boots. Do you think he can get them put on? Every day I try to think of some new trifle he'd like; and you'd be shocked, and think I care nothing about the war, at the number of theatres I make time to go to. You see, it makes something bright and amusing to tell him, describing the plays. I feel most frightfully that, although of course my canteen work is useful, the real best thing every woman can do in this frightful time is to do all she can for her man out there; and Tony's mine. When this is all over—oh, Marko, is it ever going to be over?—things will hurt again; but while he's out there the old things are dead and Tony's mine and England's—my man for England: that is my thought; that is my pride; that is my prayer."

And a few lines farther on, "And he's so splendid. Of course you can imagine how utterly splendid he is. Lady King-Warner, his colonel's wife, told me yesterday her husband says he's brave beyond anything she could imagine. He said—she's given me his letter—'the men have picked up from home this story about angels at Mons and are beginning to believe they saw them. Tybar says he hopes the angels were near him, because he thought he was in hell, the particular bit he got into, and he thinks it must be good for angels, enlarging for their minds, to know what hell is like! As a matter of fact, Tybar himself is nearer to the superhuman than anything I saw knocking about at Mons. His daring and his coolness and his example are a byword in a battalion composed, my dear, with the solitary exception of the writer, entirely of heroes. In sticky places Tybar is the most wonderful thing that ever happened. I like to be near him because his immediate vicinity is unquestionably a charmed circle; and I shudder to be near him because his is always the worst spot.'

"Can't you imagine him, Marko?"

II

And always her letters breathed to Sabre his own passionate love of England, his own poignant sense of possession in her and by her, his own intolerable aching at the heart at his envisagement of her enormously beset. They reflected his own frightful oppression and they assuaged it, as his letters, she told him, assuaged hers, as burdens are assuaged by mingling of distress. "There is no good news," he told her, "and for me who can do nothing—and sometimes things are a little difficult with me here and I suppose that makes it worse—there seems to be no way out. But your letters are more than good news and more than rescue; they are courage. Courage is like love, Nona: it touches the spirit; and the spirit, amazing essence, is like a spring: it is never touched but it—springs!"

She was working daily at a canteen at Victoria station. She had been on the night shift "but I can't sleep, I simply cannot sleep nowadays"; and so, shortly before he wrote to her of his second rejection, she had changed on to the day shift and at night took out the car to run arriving men from one terminus to another. "And about twice a week I get dog-tired and feel sleepy and send the chauffeur with the car and stay at home and do sleep. It's splendid!"

Northrepps had been handed over to the Red Cross as a military hospital. Her answer to his letter telling of his second rejection at the recruiting office—most tender words from her heart to his heart, comforting his spirit as transfusion of blood from health to sickness maintains the exhausted body—her reply told him that on that day fortnight she was coming down to say of his disappointment what she could so inadequately express in writing. She was going out to war work in France—in Tony's name she had presented a fleet of ambulance cars to a Red Cross unit and she was going out to drive one—and she was coming down to look at things at Northrepps before she left.

On the following day Tidborough, opening its newspapers, shook hands with itself in all its houses, shops and offices on its own special and most glorious V.C.,—Lord Tybar.

III

Tybar's V.C. was the first thing Sabre spoke of to Nona when, a fortnight later, she came down and he went up to her at Northrepps in the afternoon. Its brilliant gallantry, rendered so vivid to him by the intimacy with which he could see that thrice attractive figure engaged in its performance, stirred him most deeply. He had by heart every line of its official record in the restrained language of the Gazette.

Oh, rare and splendid spirit! Fortune's darling thrice worthy of her dowry!

Nona had written of it in ringing words. She flushed in beautiful ardour of the enthusiasm she joined with Sabre's at his opening words of their meeting; but she ended with a sad little laugh. "And then!" she said.

"What do you mean, Nona, 'And then'?"

She took a letter from her bag. "I only got this this morning just as I was coming away. It's in reply to the one I wrote him about his V.C. Oh, Marko, so splendid, so utterly splendid as he is, and then to be like this. Look, he says he's just got leave and he's going to spend it in Paris! One of his women is there. That Mrs. Winfred. He's taken up with her again. He says, 'Poor thing. She's all alone in Paris. I know how sorry you will feel for her, and I feel I ought to go and look after her. I know you will agree with me. I'll tell her you sent me. That will amuse and please her so.'"

She touched her eyes with her handkerchief. "It rather hurts, Marko. It's not that I mind his going. It's just what he would do. But it's the way he tells me. He just says it like that deliberately to be cruel because he knows it will hurt. So utterly splendid, Marko, and so utterly graceless." She gave her little note of sadness again. "Utterly splendid! Look, this is all he says about his V.C. Isn't this fine and isn't it like him? He says, 'P.S. Yes, that V.C. business. You know why I got it, don't you? It stands for Very Cautious, you know.'"

They laughed together. Yes, like him! Tybar exactly! Sabre could see him writing the letter. Delighting in saying words that would hurt; delighting in his own whimsicality that would amuse. Splendid; airy, untouched by fear; untouched by thought; fearless, faithless, heedless, graceless. Fortune's darling; invested in her robe of mockery.

Nona's laughter ended in a little catch at her breath. He touched her arm. "Let's walk, Nona."

IV

He thought she was looking thin and done up. Her face had rather a drawn look, its soft roundness gone. He thought she never had looked so beautiful to him. She spoke to him of what she had tried to say in her letters of his disappointments in offering himself for service. Never had her sweet voice sounded so exquisitely tender to him. They spoke of the war. Never, but in their letters, had he been able thus to give his feelings and receive them, touched with the same perceptions, kindled and enlarged, back into his sympathies again. With others the war was all discussion of chances and circumstances, of this that had happened and that that might happen, of this that should be done and that that ought not to have been done. Laboratory examination of means and remedies. The epidemic everything and the patient upstairs nothing. The wood not seen for the trees. With Nona he talked of how he felt of England:

Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand.

He told her that.

She nodded. "I know. I know. Say it all through, Marko."

He stumbled through it. At the end, a little abashed, he smiled at her and said, "Of course, no one else would think it applies. Richard was saying it in Wales where he'd just landed, and it's about civil war, not foreign; but where it comes to me is the loving of the soil itself, as if it were a living thing that knew it was being loved and loved back in return. Our England, Nona. You remember Gaunt's thing in the same play:

She nodded again. He saw that her dear eyes were brimming. She said, "Yes—yes.—Our England. Rupert Brooke said it just perfectly, Marko:

She touched his hand. "Dear Marko—" She made approach to that which lay between them. "'This heart, all evil shed away.' Marko, in this frightful time we couldn't have given back the thoughts by England given if we had.—And that was you, Marko."

He shook his head, not trusting himself to look at her. He said, "You. Not I. Any one can know the right thing. But strength to do it—Strength flows out of you to me. It always has. I want it more and more. I shall want it. Things are difficult. Sometimes I've a frightful feeling that things are closing in on me. There's Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind.' It makes me—I don't know—wrought up. And sometimes I've the feeling that I'm being carried along like that and towards that frightful cry at the end, 'O Wind, if winter comes-'"

He stopped. He said, "Give me your handkerchief to keep, Nona. Something of your own to keep. There will be strength in it for me—to help me hold on to the rest—to believe it—'If Winter comes—Can Spring be far behind?'"

She touched her handkerchief to her lips and gave it to him.

V

After October, especially, he spent never less than two evenings a week with old Mrs. Perch. In October Young Perch went to France and on his draft-leave took from Sabre the easy promise to "keep an eye on my mother." Military training, which to most gave robustness, gave to Young Perch, Sabre thought, a striking enhancement of the fine-drawn expression that always had been his. About his eyes and forehead Sabre apprehended something suggestive of the mystic, spiritually-occupied look that paintings of the Huguenots and the old Crusaders had; and looking at him when he came to say good-by, and while he spoke solely and only of his mother, Sabre remembered that long-ago thought of Young Perch's aspect,—of his spirit being alighted in his body as a bird on a twig, not engrossed in his body; a thing death would need no more than to pluck off between finger and thumb.

But unthinkable, that. Not Young Perch....

Old Mrs. Perch was very broken and very querulous. She blamed Sabre and she blamed Effie that Freddie had gone to the war. She said they had leagued with him to send him off. "Freddie I could have managed," she used to say; "but you I cannot manage, Mr. Sabre; and as for Effie, you might think I was a child and she was mistress the way she treats me."

Bright Effie used to laugh and say, "Now, you know, Mrs. Perch, you will insist on coming and tucking me up at night. Now does that look as if she's the child, Mr. Sabre?"

Mrs. Perch in her dogged way, "If Mr. Sabre doesn't know that you only permit me to tuck you up one night because I permit you to tuck me up the next night, the sooner he does know how I'm treated in my own establishment the better for me."

Thus the initial cause of querulousness would bump off into something else; and in an astonishing short number of moves Bright Effie would lead Mrs. Perch to some happy subject and the querulousness would give place to little rays of animation; and presently Mrs. Perch would doze comfortably in her chair while Sabre talked to Effie in whispers; and when she woke Sabre would be ready with some reminiscence of Freddie carefully chosen and carefully carried along to keep it hedged with smiles. But all the roads where Freddie was to be found were sunken roads, the smiling hedges very low about them, the ditches overcharged with water, and tears soon would come.

She used to doze and murmur to herself, "My boy's gone to fight for his country. I'm very proud of my boy gone to fight for his country."

Effie said Young Perch had taught her that before he went away.

While they were talking she used to doze and say, "Good morning, Mrs. So-and-So. My boy's gone to fight for his country. I'm very proud of my boy gone to fight for his country. Good morning, Mr. So-and-So. My boy's gone to—He didn't want to go, but I said he must go to fight for his country.... But that's not true, Freddie.... Oh, very well, dear. Good morning, Mrs. So-and-So.—"

She used to wake up with a start and say, "Eh, Freddie? Oh, I thought Freddie was in the room." Tears.

She said she always looked forward to the evenings when Sabre came. She liked him to sit and talk to Effie and to smoke all the time and knock out his pipe on the fender. She said it made her think Freddie was there. Effie said that every night she went into Young Perch's room and tucked up the bed and set the alarm clock and put the candle and the matches and one cigarette and the ash-tray by the bed; and every night in this performance said, "He said he's certain to come in quite unexpectedly one night, and he will smoke his one cigarette before he goes to sleep. It's no good my telling him he'll set the house on fire one night. He never listens to anything I tell him." And every morning, when Effie took her in a cup of tea very early (as Freddie used to), she always said, "Has Freddie come home in the night, Effie, dear? Now just go and knock on his door very quietly and then just peep your head in."

VI

Sabre had always thought Bright Effie would be wonderful with old Mrs. Perch. He wrote long letters to Young Perch, telling him how much more than wonderful Bright Effie was. Effie mothered Mrs. Perch and managed her and humoured her in a way that not even Young Perch himself could have bettered. In that astounding fund of humour of hers, reflected in those sparkling eyes, even Mrs. Perch's most querulously violent attacks were transformed into matter for whimsical appreciation, delightfully and most lovingly dealt with. When the full, irritable, inconsequent flood of one of Mrs. Perch's moods would be launched upon her in Sabre's presence, she would turn a dancing eye towards him and immediately she could step into the torrent and would begin, "Now, look here, Mrs. Perch, you know perfectly well—"; and in two minutes the old lady would be mollified and happy.

Marvellous Effie! Sabre used to think; and of course it was because her astounding fund of humour was based upon her all-embracing capacity for love. That was why it was so astounding in its depth and breadth and compass. Sabre liked immensely the half-whispered talks with her while Mrs. Perch dozed in her chair. Effie was always happy. Nothing of that wanting something look was ever to be seen in Effie's shining eyes. She had the secret of life. Watching her face while they talked, he came to believe that the secret, the thing missing in half the faces one saw, was love. But—the old difficulty—many had love; himself and Nona; and yet were troubled.

One evening he asked her a most extraordinary question, shot out of him without intending it, discharged out of his questing thoughts as by a hidden spring suddenly touched by groping fingers.

"Effie, do you love God?"

Her surprise seemed to him to be more at the thing he had asked than at its amazing unexpectedness and amazing irrelevancy. "Why, of course I do, Mr. Sabre."

"Why do you?"

She was utterly at a loss. "Well, of course I do."

He said rather sharply, "Yes, but why? Have you ever asked yourself why? Respecting, fearing, trusting, that's understandable. But love, love, you know what love is, don't you? What's love got to do with God?"

She said in simple wonderment, as one asked what had the sun to do with light, or whether water was wet, "Why, God is love."

He stared at her.

VII

The second Christmas of the war came. The evening before the last day of the Old Year was to have given Sabre a rare pleasure to which he had been immensely looking forward. He was to have spent it with Mr. Fargus. The old chess and acrostic evenings hardly ever happened now. Mr. Fargus, most manifestly unfitted for the exposures of such a life, had become a special constable. He did night duty in the Garden Home. He chose night duty, he told Sabre, because he had no work to do by day and could therefore then take his rest. Younger men who were in offices and shops hadn't the like advantage. It was only fair he should help in the hours help was most wanted. Sabre said it would kill him in time, but Mrs. Fargus and the three Miss Farguses still at home replied, when Sabre ventured this opinion to them, that Papa was much stronger than any one imagined, also that they agreed with Papa that one ought to do in the war, not what one wanted to do, but what was most required to be done; finally that, being at home by day, Papa could help, and liked helping, in the many duties about the house now interfered with by the enlistment of the entire battalion of female Farguses in work for the war. One detachment of female Farguses had leapt into blue or khaki uniforms and disappeared into the voracious belly of the war machine; the remainder of the battalion thrust their long legs into breeches and boots and worked at home as land girls. Little old Mr. Fargus in his grey suit, and the startled child Kate with one hand still up her back in search of the errant apron string "did" what the battalion used to do and were nightly, on the return of the giant land girls, shown how shockingly they had done it.

Rare, therefore, the old chess and acrostic evenings and most keenly anticipated, accordingly, this—the first for a fortnight—on the eve of New Year's Eve. It was to have been a real long evening; but it proved not very long. It was to have been one in which the war should be shut out and forgotten in the delights of mental twistings and slowly puffed pipes; it proved to be one in which "this frightful war!" was groaned out of Sabre's spirit in emotion most terrible to him.

At ten o'clock profound gymnastics of the mind in search of a hidden word beginning with e and ending with l were interrupted by the entry of the startled Kate. One hand writhed between her shoulders for the apron string, the other held a note. "Please, Mr. Sabre, I think it's for you, Mr. Sabre. A young boy took it to your house and said you was to have it most particular, and please, your Rebecca sent him on here, please."

"For me? Who on earth—?"

He opened it. He did not recognise the writing on the envelope. He had not the remotest idea—It was a jolly evening.... could Enamel be that word in e and l? He unfolded it. Ah!

"Freddie's killed. Please do come at once. I think she's dying.—E.B."

CHAPTER VIII

I

He was alone in the room where Mrs. Perch lay,—not even Effie. One o'clock. This war! He had thought to shut it away for a night, and here was the inconceivable occupation to which it had brought him: alone in here—

The doctor had been and was coming again in the morning. There was nothing to be done, he had said; just watch her.

Watch her? How long had he been standing at the foot of the huge bed—the biggest bed he had ever seen—and what was there to watch? She gave no sign. She scarcely seemed to breathe. He would not have recognised her face. It had the appearance of a mask. "Sinking," the doctor had said. In process here before his eyes, but not to be seen by them, awful and mysterious things. Death with practised fingers about his awful and mysterious surgery of separating the spirit from the flesh, the soul from the body, the incorruptible from the corruptible.

It could not be! There was not a sign; there was not a sound; and what should he be doing to be alone here, blind watcher of such a finality? It was not real. It was an hallucination. He was not really here. The morning—and days and weeks and years—would come, and he would know that this never had really happened.

But Young Perch was dead. Young Perch was killed. It was real. He was here. This war!

II

He had gone downstairs with the doctor and had remained there some little time after his departure. Effie had been left kneeling by the bed. When he came back she was sound asleep where she knelt, worn out. The news had come on the previous evening. This was Effie's second night without sleep. Now she was overcome; collapsed; suffocated and bound and gagged in the opiates and bonds she had for thirty hours resisted. He touched her. She did not stir. He shook her gently; still no response. He lifted her up and carried her along the passage to the room he knew to be hers; laid her on her bed and covered her with a quilt. Inconceivable occupation. Was all this really happening?

Two o'clock. He went to look at Effie, still in profound slumber. Why awaken her? Nothing could be done; only watch. He returned to his vigil.

Yes, Mrs. Perch was sinking. More pronounced now that masklike aspect of her face. Yes, dying. He spoke the word to himself. "Dying." As of a fire in the grate gone to one dull spark among the greying ashes.—It is out; it cannot burn again. So life here too far retired, too deeply sunk to struggle back and vitalise again that hue, those lips, that masklike effigy.

Profound and awful mystery. Within that form was in process a most dreadful activity. The spirit was preparing to vacate the habitation it had so long occupied. It gave no sign. The better to hide its preparations it had drawn that mask about the face. Seventy years it had sojourned here; now it was bound away. Seventy years it had been known to passers-by through the door and windows of this its habitation; now, deeply retired within the inner chambers, it set its house in order to be gone. Profound and awful mystery. Dreadful and momentous activity. From the windows of her eyes turning off the lights; from the engines of her powers cutting off its forces; drawing the furnaces; dissevering the contacts. A lifetime within this home; now passenger into an eternity. A lifetime settled; now preparing to be away on a journey inconceivably tremendous, unimaginably awful. Did it shrink? Did it pause in its preparations to peer and peep and shudder?

III

He felt very cold. He moved from the bed and replenished the fire and crouched beside it.

This war! He said beneath his breath, "Young Perch! Young Perch!" Young Perch was killed. Realise the thing! He was never going to see Young Perch again. He was never going to see old Mrs. Perch again. He was never to come into Puncher's again. Another place of his life was to be walled up. His home like an empty house; the office like an empty house; now no refuge here. Things were crowding in about him, things were closing in upon him. And he was just to live on here, out of the war, yet insupportably beset by the war. Beset by the war yet useless in the war. Young Perch! How in pity was he to go on living out of the war, now that the war had taken Young Perch and killed old Mrs. Perch and shut this refuge from its oppression? He must get in. He could not endure it. He could not, could not....

Ten minutes past three. There was perceptible to him no change in that face upon the pillow. He brought a lamp from the dressing table and looked at her, shading the light with his hand. Impenetrable mask! Profound and awful mystery. Much more than a house that dreadfully engrossed spirit was preparing to leave. This meagre form, scarcely discernible beneath the coverlet, had been its fortress, once new, once strong, once beautiful, once by its garrison proudly fought, splendidly defended, added to, enlarged, adorned. Then past its glory, past attention. Then crumbling, then decaying. Now to be abandoned. It had known great stresses and abated them; sieges and withstood them; assaults and defeated them. O vanity! It had but temporised with conquest. Time's hosts had camped these many years about its walls, in ceaseless investment, with desultory attacks, but with each attack investing closer. Now a most terrible assault had breached the citadel. The garrison was stricken amain. The fortress no longer could be defended. Its garrison was withdrawing from that place and handing it over to destruction.

IV

There was some strange sound in the room. He had dozed in a chair. Some strange sound, or had he imagined it? He sat up tensely and listened. It was her breathing, a harsh and laboured sound. He stepped quickly to the bed and looked and then ran into the passage and called loudly, "Effie! Effie!"

Frightening, terrible, agonising. He was kneeling on one side of the bed, Effie at the other. The extreme moment was come to her that lay between them. She was moaning. He bowed his face into his hands. The sound of her moaning was terrible to him. That inhabitant of this her body had done its preparations and now stood at the door in the darkness, very frightened. It wanted to go back. It had been very accustomed to being here. It could not go back. It did not want to shut the door. The door was shutting. It stood and shrank and whimpered there.

Oh, terrible! Beyond endurance, agonising. It was old Mrs. Perch that stood there whimpering, shrinking, upon the threshold of that huge abyss, wide as space, dark as night. It was no spirit. It was just that very feeble Mrs. Perch with her fumbling hands and her moving lips. Look here, Young Perch would never allow her even to cross a road without him! How in pity was she to take this frightful step? He twisted up all his emotions into an appeal of tremendous intensity. "Young Perch! Come here! Your mother! Young Perch, come here!"

Telling it, once, to Nona, he said, "I don't know what happened. They talk about self-hypnotism. Perhaps it was that. I know I made a most frightful effort saying 'Young Perch.' I had to. I could see her—that poor terrified thing. Something had to be done. Some one had to go to her. I said it like in a nightmare, bursting to get out of it, 'Young Perch. Come here.' Anyway, there it is, Nona. I heard them. It was imagination, of course. But I heard them."

He heard, "Now then, Mother! Don't be frightened. Here I am, Mother. Come on, Mother. One step, Mother. Only one. I can't reach you. You must take just one step. Look, Mother, here's my hand. Can't you see my hand?"

"It's so dark, Freddie."

"It's not, Mother. It's only dark where you are. It's light here. Don't cry, Mother. Don't be frightened. It's all right. It's quite all right."

That tall and pale young man, with his face like one of the old Huguenots! That very frail old woman with her fumbling hands and moving lips!

"It's so cold."

"Now, Mother, I tell you it isn't. Do just trust me. Do just come."

"I daren't, Freddie. I can't, Freddie. I can't. I can't."

"You must. Mother, you must. Look, look, here I am. It's I, Freddie. Don't cry, Mother. Just trust yourself entirely to me. You know how you always can trust me. Look, here's my hand. Just one tiny step and you will touch it. I know you feel ill, darling Mother. You won't any, any more, once you touch my hand. But I can't come any nearer, dearest. You must. You—. Ah, brave, beloved Mother—now!"

He heard Effie's voice, "Oh, she's dead! She's dead!"

Dead? He stared upon her dead face. Where was gone that mask? Whence had come this glory? That inhabitant of this her body, in act of going had looked back, and its look had done this thing. It had closed the door upon a ruined house, and looked, and left a temple. It had departed from beneath a mask, and looked, and that which had been masked now was beatified.

Young Perch!

V

In the morning a mysterious man with a large white face, crooked spectacles and a crooked tie, and a suggestion of thinking all the time of something else, or of nothing at all, mysteriously drifted into the house, drifted about it with apparent complete aimlessness of purpose, and presently showed himself to Sabre as about to drift out of it again. This was the doctor, a stranger, one of those new faces which the war, removing the old, was everywhere introducing, and possessed of a mysterious and astounding faculty of absorbing, resolving, and subjugating all matters without visibly attending to any matter. "Leave everything to me," it was all he seemed to say. He did nothing yet everything seemed to come to his hand with the nicety and exactness of a drawing-room conjurer. He bewildered Sabre.

His car left and returned during his brief visit. Sabre, who had thought him upstairs, and who had a hundred perplexities to inquire of him, found him in the hall absorbed in adjusting the weights of a grandfather's clock.

He remarked to Sabre, "I thought you'd gone. You'd better get off and get a bath and some breakfast. Nothing you can do here. Leave everything to me."

"But, look here, I can't leave—"

"That's all right. Just leave everything to me. I'm taking Miss Bright back to my wife for breakfast and a rest. After lunch I'll run her to her home. She can't stay here. Have you any idea how this thing hooks on?"

"But what about—"

The extraordinary man seemed to know everything before it was said. "That's all right. I've sent for a woman and her daughter. Leave everything to me. Here's the car. Here they are."

Two women appeared.

"But about—"

"Yes, that's all right. The poor old lady's brother is coming down. He'll take charge. I found his name in her papers last night. Telegraphed." He was looking through the door. "Here's the answer."

A telegraph messenger appeared.

Astounding man!

He read the telegram. "Yes, that's all right. He'll be here by the eleven train at Tidborough. I'll take Miss Bright now."

Effie appeared.

Sabre had the feeling that if he opened the next thought in his mind, an undertaker would rise out of the ground with a coffin. This astonishing man, coming upon his overwrought state, made him feel hysterical. He turned to Effie and gave her both his hands. "The doctor's taking you, Effie. It's been dreadful for you. It's all over now. Try to leave it out of your mind for a bit."

She smiled sadly. "Good-by, Mr. Sabre. Thank you so much, so very much, for coming and staying. What I should have done without you I daren't think. I've never known any one so good as you've been to me."

"I've done nothing, Effie, except feel sorry for you."

He saw her into the car. No, he would not take a lift.

"Well, leave everything to me," said the doctor. The chauffeur spoke to him about some engine trouble. "Yes, I'll see to that. Leave everything to me, Jenkins."

Even his car!

VI

Sabre, passed on from the ordeal of the night to the ordeal of the day by this interlude of the astonishing doctor, did not know how overwrought he was until he was at home again and come to Mabel seated at breakfast. The thought in his mind as he walked had been the thought in his mind as he had sat on after the death, waiting for morning. After this, after the war had done this, how was he to go on enduring the war and refused part in it? He dreaded meeting Mabel. He dreaded going on to the office and meeting Fortune and Twyning. To none of these people, to no one he could meet, could he explain how he felt about Young Perch and what he had gone through with Mrs. Perch, nor why, because of what he felt, more poignant than ever was his need to get into the war. And yet with these feelings he must go on facing these people and go on meeting the war in every printed page, in every sight, in every conversation. Unbearable! He could not.

Mabel looked up from her breakfast. "Well, I do think—"

This was the beginning of it. He felt himself digging his nails into the palms of his hands. "I've been up with old Mrs. Perch—"

"I know you have. I sent around to the Farguses. I must say I do think—"

He felt he could not bear it. "Mabel, look here. For goodness' sake don't say you do think I ought to have let you know. I know I ought but I couldn't. And I'm not in a state to go on niggling about it. Young Perch is killed and his mother's dead. Now for goodness' sake, for pity's sake, let it alone. I couldn't send and there's the end of it."

He went out of the room. He thought, "There you are! Now I've done it!" He went back. "I say, I'm sorry for bursting out like that; but I've had rather a night of it. It's terrible, isn't it, both of them like that? Aren't you awfully sorry about it, Mabel?"

She said, "I'm very sorry. Very sorry indeed. But you can't expect me to say much when you speak in that extraordinary manner."

"I was with her when she died. It's upset me a bit."

"I don't wonder. If you ask me, I think it was very extraordinary your being there. If you ask me, I think it was very funny of that Miss Bright sending for you at that hour of the night. Whyever should she send for you of all people?"

"I was their greatest friend."

"Yes, I know you always liked them. But you couldn't be of any use. I must say I do think people are very funny sometimes. If Miss Bright had done the right thing, as we are their nearest neighbors, she would have sent and asked me if I could let one of the maids go over and be with her. Then you could have gone up too if you'd wished and could have come back again. I don't think she had any right to send for you."

He had sat down and was about to pour himself out some tea. He put down the teapot and got up. "Look here, do me a favour. They're dead, both of them. Don't say anything more about them. Don't mention the subject again. For God's sake."

He went out of the house and got his bicycle and set out for the office. At the top of the Green he passed young Pinnock, the son of Pinnock's Stores. Some patch of colour about young Pinnock caught his eye. He looked again. The colour was a vivid red crown on a khaki brassard on the young man's arm. The badge of the recruits enrolled under the Derby enlistment scheme. He dismounted. "Hullo, Pinnock. How on earth did you get that armlet?"

"I've joined up."

"But I thought you'd been rejected about forty times. Haven't you got one foot in the grave or something?"

Young Pinnock grinned hugely. "Don't matter if you've got both feet in, or head and shoulders neither, over at Chovensbury to-day, Mr. Sabre. It's the last day of this yer Derby scheme, an' there's such a rush of chaps to get in before they make conscripts of 'em they're fair letting anybody through."

Sabre's heart—that very heart!—bounded with an immense hope. "D'you think it's the same at Tidborough?"

"They're saying it's the same everywhere. They say they're passing you through if you can breathe. I reckon that's so at Chovensbury anyway. Why, they didn't hardly look at me."

Sabre turned his front wheel to the Chovensbury road. "I'll go there."

VII

At Chovensbury the recruiting station was in the elementary schools. Sabre entered a large room filled with men in various stages of dressing, odorous of humanity, very noisy. It was a roughish collection: the men mostly of the labouring or artisan classes. At a table in the centre two soldiers with lance corporal's stripes were filling up blue forms with the answers to questions barked out at the file of men who shuffled before them. As each form was completed, it was pushed at the man interrogated with "Get undressed."

Sabre took his place in the chain. In one corner of the room a doctor in uniform was testing eyesight. Passed on from there each recruit joined a group wearing only greatcoat or shirt and standing about a stove near the door. At intervals the door opened and three nude men, coat or shirt in hand, entered, and a sergeant bawled, "Next three!"

Sabre was presently one of the three. Of the two who companioned him one was an undersized little individual wearing a truss, the other appeared to be wearing a suit of deep brown tights out of which his red neck and red hands thrust conspicuously. Sabre realised with a slight shock that the brown suit was the grime of the unbathed. Across the passage another room was entered. The recruits dropped their final covering and were directed, one to two sergeants who operated weights, a height gauge and a measuring tape; another to an officer who said, "Stand on one leg. Bend your toes. Now on the other. Toes. Stretch out your arms. Work your fingers. Squat on your heels." The third recruit went to an officer who dabbed chests with a stethoscope and said, "Had any illnesses?" When the recruit had passed through each performance he walked to two officers seated with enrolment forms at a table, was spoken to, and then recovered his discarded garment and walked out. The whole business took about three minutes. They were certainly whizzing them through.

Sabre came last to the officer with the stethoscope. He was just polishing off the undersized little man with the truss. "Take that thing off. Cough. How long have you had this? Go along." He turned to Sabre, dabbed perfunctorily at his lungs, then at his heart. "Wait a minute." He applied his ear to the stethoscope again. Then he looked up at Sabre's face. "Had any illnesses?" "Not one in my life." "Shortness of breath?" "Not the least. I was in the XV at school." Sabre's voice was tremulous with eagerness. The doctor's eyes appeared to exchange a message with him. They gave the slightest twinkle. "Go along."

He went to the table where sat the two officers with the paper forms. "Name?" "Sabre." The officer nearer him drew a form towards him and poised a fountain pen over it. Sabre felt it extraordinarily odd to be standing stark naked before two men fully dressed. In his rejection at Tidborough the time before this had not happened.

"Any complaints?"

Sabre was surprised at such consideration. He thought the reference was to his treatment during examination. "No."

The officer, who appeared to be short-tempered, glanced again at the form and then looked quickly at him. "Absolutely nothing wrong with you?"

"Oh, I thought you meant—"

The officer was short-tempered. "Never mind what you thought. You hear what I'm asking you, don't you?"

It was Sabre's first experience of a manner with which he was to become more familiar. "Sorry. No, nothing whatever."

The fountain pen made a note. "Get off."

He could have shouted aloud. He thought, "By God!"

In the dressing room a sergeant bawled, "All recruits!"—paused and glared about the room and drew breath for further discharge. This mannerism Sabre was also to become accustomed to: in the Army, always "the cautionary word" first when an order was given. The sergeant then discharged: "All recruits past the doctor proceed to the room under this for swearing in. When sworn, to office adjoining for pay, card and armlet. And get a move on with it!"

VIII

The most stupendously elated man in all England was presently riding to Penny Green on Sabre's bicycle. On his arm blazed the khaki brassard, in the breast pocket of his waistcoat, specially cleared to give private accommodation to so glorious a prize, were a half-crown and two pennies, the most thrillingly magnificent sum he had ever earned,—his army pay. His singing thought was, "I'm in the Army! I'm in the Army! I don't care for anything now. By gad, I can't believe it. I'm in the war at last!" His terrific thought was, "Good luck have thee with thine honour; ride on ... and thy right hand shall show thee terrible things."

He burst into the house and discharged the torrent of his elation on to Mabel. "I say, I'm in the Army. They've passed me. Look here! Look at my Derby armlet! And look at this. That's my pay! Just look, Mabel—two and eightpence."

He extended the coins to her in his hand. "Look!"

She gave her sudden burst of laughter. "How perfectly ridiculous! Two and eightpence! Whyever did you take it?"

"Take it? Why, it's my pay. My army pay. I've never been so proud of anything in my life. I'll keep these coins forever. Where shall I put them?" He looked around for a shrine worthy enough. "No, I can't put them anywhere yet. I want to keep looking at them. I say, you're glad I'm in, aren't you? Do say something."

She gave her laugh. "But you're not in. You do get so fearfully excited. After all, it's only this Lord Derby thing where they call the men up in age classes, the papers say. Yours can't come for months. You may not go at all."

He dropped the coins slowly into his pocket,—chink, chink, chink. "Oh, well, if that's all you've got to say about it."

"Well, what do you expect? You just come rushing in and telling me without ever having said a word that you were going. And for that matter you seem to forget the extraordinary way in which you went off this morning. I haven't."

"I had forgotten. I was upset. I went off, I know; but I don't remember—"

"No, you only swore at me; that's all."

"Mabel, I'm sure I didn't."

"You bawled out, 'For God's sake.' I call that swearing. I don't mind. It's not particularly nice for the servants to hear, but I'm not saying anything about that."

His brows were puckered up. "What is it you are saying?"

"I'm simply saying that, behaving like that, it's not quite fair to pretend that I'm not enthusiastic enough for you about this Lord Derby thing. It isn't as if you were really in the Army—"

He wished not to speak, but he could not let this go. "But I am in."

"Yes, but not properly in—yet. And perhaps you won't ever be. It doesn't seem like being in to me. That's all I'm saying. Surely there's no harm in that?"

He was at the window staring out into the garden. "No, there's no harm in it."

"Well, then. What are we arguing about it for?"

He turned towards her. "Well, but do understand, Mabel. If you think I was a fool rushing in like that, as you call it. Do understand. It's a Government scheme. It's binding. It isn't a joke."

"No, but I think they make it a joke, and I can't think why you can't see the funny side of it. I think giving you two and eightpence like that—a man in your position—is too lovely for words."

He took the coins from his pocket, and jerked them on the table before her. "Here, pay the butcher with it."

IX

But as he reached the door, his face working, the tremendous and magnificent thought struck into his realisation again. "I'm in the Army! By gad, I'm in the Army. I don't care what happens now." He strode back, smiling, and took up the money. "No, I'm dashed if I can let it go!" He went out jingling it and turned into the kitchen. "I say, High, Low, I'm in the Army! I've got in. I'll be off soon. Look at my badge!"

They chorused, "Well, there now!"

He said delightedly, "Pretty good, eh? Isn't it fine! Look at this—that's my pay. Two and eightpence!"

The chorus, "Oh, if ever!"

High Jinks said, "That armlet, sir, that's too loose. It don't half show down on your elbow, sir. You want it up here."

"Yes, that's the place. Won't it stay?"

"I'll put a safety pin in, sir; and then to-night shift the buttons. That's what it wants."

"Yes, do, High. That's fine."

He held out his arm and the two girls pinned to advantage the splendid sign of his splendid triumph.

"There, sir. Now it shows. And won't we be proud of you, just, in khaki and all!"

He laughed delightedly. "I'm jolly proud of myself, I tell you! Now, then, Thumbs, I don't want bayonets in me yet!"

Glorious! Glorious! And what would not Nona say!

CHAPTER IX

I

Life, when it takes so giant a hand in its puppet show as to upturn a cauldron of world war upon the puppets, may be imagined biting its fingers in some chagrin at the little result in particular instances. As vegetation beneath snow, so individual development beneath universal calamity. Nature persists; individual life persists. The snow melts, the calamity passes; the green things spring again, the individual lives are but approached more nearly to their several destinations.

Sabre was called up in his Derby Class within eight weeks of his enrolment,—at the end of February, 1916. He was nearly two years in the war; but his ultimate encounter with life awaited him, and was met, at Penny Green. It might have been reached precisely as it was reached without agency of the war, certainly without participation in it. Of the interval only those few events ultimately mattered which had connection with his life at home. They seemed in the night of the war transient as falling stars; they proved themselves lodestars of his destiny. They seemed nothing, yet even as they flashed and passed he occupied himself with them as the falling star catches the attention from all the fixed and constant. They were of his own life: the war life was life in exile.

And, caught up at last in the enormous machinery of the war, his feelings towards the war underwent a great change. First in the training camp in Dorsetshire, afterwards, and much more so, in the trenches in Flanders, it was only by a deliberate effort that he would recapture, now and then, the old tremendous emotions in the thought of England challenged and beset. He turned to it as stimulant in moments of depression and of dismay, in hours of intense and miserable loathing of some conditions of his early life in the ranks, and later in hours when fatigue and bodily discomfort reached degrees he had not believed it possible to endure—and go on with. He turned to it as stimulant and it never failed of its stimulation. "I'm in it. What does this matter? This is the war. It's the war. Those infernal devils.... If these frightful things were being done in England! Imagine if this was in England! Thank God I'm in it. There you are! I'm absolutely all right when I remember why I'm here." And enormous exaltation of spirit would lift away the loneliness, remove the loathing, banish the exhaustion, dissipate the fear. The fear—"And thy right hand shall show thee terrible things"—He was more often than once in situations in which he knew he was afraid and held fear away only because, with his old habit of introspection, he knew it for fear,—a horrible thing that sought mastery of him and by sheer force of mental detachment must be held away where it could be looked at and known for the vile thing it was. In such ordeals, in Flanders, he got the habit of saying to himself between his teeth, "Six minutes, six hours, six days, six months, six years. Where the hell will I be?" It somehow helped. The six minutes would go, and one could believe that all the periods would go,—and wonder where they would find one.

But more than that: now, caught up in the enormous machinery of the war, he never could accept it, as other men seemed to accept it, as normal and natural occupation that might be expected to go on for ever and outside of which was nothing at all. His life was not here; it was at home. He got the feeling that this business in which he was caught up was a business apart altogether from his own individual life,—a kind of trance in which his own life was held temporarily in abeyance, a kind of transmigration in which he occupied another and a very strange identity: from whose most strange personality, often so amazingly occupied, he looked wonderingly upon the identity that was his own, waiting his return.

And it was when, in thought or fleeting action, he came in touch with that old, waiting identity, that there happened the things that seemed transient as falling stars but moved into his horoscope as planets,—and remained.

II

He first went to France, in one of the long string of Service battalions that had sprung out of the Pinks, in the June following his enlistment. Mabel had not wished to make any change in her manner of life while he was still in England in training and she did not wish to when, at home three days on his draft leave, he discussed it with her. She much preferred, she said, to go on living in her own home. She was altogether against any idea of going to be with her father at Tidborough, and there was no cousin "or anybody like that" (her two sisters were married and had homes of their own) that she would care to have in the house with her. Relations were all very well in their right place but sharing the house with you was not their right place. She had plenty to do with her war work and one thing and another; if, in the matter of obviating loneliness, she did make any change at all, it might be to get some sort of paid companion: if you had any one permanently in the house it was much better to have some one in a dependent position, not as your equal, upsetting things.

The whole of these considerations were advanced again in a letter which Sabre received in July and which gave him great pleasure. Mabel had decided to get a paid companion—it was rather lonely in some ways—and she had arranged to have "that girl, Miss Bright." Sabre, reading, exclaimed aloud, "By Jove, that's good. I am glad." And he thought, "Jolly little Effie! That's splendid." He somehow liked immensely the idea of imagining Bright Effie about the house. He thought, "I wish she could have been in long ago, when I was there. It would have made a difference. Some one between us. We used to work on one another's nerves. That was our trouble. Pretty little Effie! How jolly it would have been! Like a jolly little sister."

He puckered his brows a little as he read on to Mabel's further reflections on the new enterprise: "Of course she's not our class but she's quite ladylike and on the whole I think it just as well not to have a lady. It might be very difficult sometimes to give orders to any one of one's own standing."

He didn't quite like that; but after all it was only just Mabel's way of looking at things. It was the jolliest possible idea. He wrote back enthusiastically about it and always after Effie was installed inquired after her in his letters.

But Mabel did not reply to these inquiries.

III

He was writing regularly to Nona and regularly hearing from her. He never could quite make out where she was, addressing her only to her symbol in the Field post-office. She was car driving and working very long hours. There was one letter that he never posted but of the existence of which he permitted himself to tell her. "I carry it about with me always in my Pay-book. It is addressed to you. If ever I get outed it will go to you. In it I have said everything that I have never said to you but that you know without my saying it. There'll be no harm in your hearing it from my own hand if I'm dead. I keep on adding to it. Every time we come back into rest, I add a little more. It all could be said in the three words we have never said to one another. But all the words that I could ever write would never say them to you as I feel them. There! I must say no more of it. I ought not to have said so much."

And she wrote, "Marko, I can read your letter, every line of it. I lie awake, Marko, and imagine it to myself—word by word, line by line; and word by word, line by line, in the same words and in the same lines, I answer it. So when you read it to yourself for me, read it for yourself from me. Oh, Marko—

"That I ever shall have cause to read it in actual fact I pray God never to permit. But so many women are praying for so many men, and daily—. So I am praying beyond that: for myself; for strength, if anything should happen to you, to turn my heart to God. You see, then I can say, 'God keep you—in any amazement.'"

IV

Early in December he wrote to Mabel:

"A most extraordinary thing has happened. I'm coming home! I shall be with you almost on top of this. It's too astonishing. I've suddenly been told that I'm one of five men in the battalion who have been selected to go home to an Officer Cadet battalion for a commission. Don't jump to the conclusion that I'm the Pride of the Regiment or anything like that. It's simply due to two things: one that this is not the kind of battalion with many men who would think of taking commissions; the other that both my platoon officer and the captain of my company happen to be Old Tidburians and, as I've told you, have often been rather decent to me. So when this chance came along the rest was easy. I know you'll be glad. You've never liked the idea of my being in the ranks. But it's rather wonderful, isn't it? I hope to be home on the third and I go to the Cadet battalion, at Cambridge, on the fifth."

Two days later he started, very high of spirit, for England. As he was leaving the village where the battalion was resting—his immediate programme the adventure of "lorry-jumping" to the railhead—the mail came in and brought him a letter from Mabel. It had crossed his own and a paragraph in it somehow damped the tide of his spirits.

"I was very much annoyed with Miss Bright yesterday. I had been kept rather late at our Red Cross Supply Depot owing to an urgent call for accessories and when I came home I found that Miss Bright had actually taken what I consider the great liberty of ordering up tea without waiting for me. I considered it great presumption on her part and told her so. I find her taking liberties in many ways. It's always the way with that class,—once you treat them kindly they turn on you. However, I have, I think, made it quite clear to her that she is not here for the purpose of giving her own orders and being treated like a princess."

It clouded his excitement. His thought was, "Damn it, I hope she isn't bullying Effie."

He had the luck almost at once to jump a lorry that would lift him a long bit on his road, and the driver felicitated him with envious cheerfulness on being off for "leaf." He would have responded with immense heartiness before reading that letter. With Mabel's tart sentences in his mind a certain gloom, a rather vexed gloom, bestrode him. Her words presented her aspect and her attitude and her atmosphere with a reminiscent flavour that took the edge off his eagerness for home. On the road when the lorry had dropped him, on the interminable journey in the train, on the boat, the feeling remained with him. England—England!—merged into view across the water, and he was astonished, as his heart bounded for joy at Folkestone coming into sight, to realise from what depression of mind it bounded away. He was ashamed of himself and perturbed with himself that he had not more relished the journey: the journey that was the most glorious thing in the dreams of every man in France. He thought, "Well, what am I coming home to?"

The train went speeding through the English fields,—dear, familiar, English lands, sodden and bare and unspeakably exquisite to him in their December mood. He gazed upon them, flooding all his heart out to them. He thought, "Why should there be anything to make me feel depressed? Why should things be the same as they used to be? But dash that letter.... Dash it, I hope she's not been bullying that girl."

V

He made rather a boisterous entry into the house on his arrival, arriving in the morning before breakfast. He entered the hall just after eight o'clock and announced himself with a loud, "Hullo, everybody!" and thumped the butt of his rifle on the floor. An enormous crash in the kitchen and a shriek of "It's the master!" heralded the tumultuous discharge upon him of High Jinks and Low Jinks. Effie appeared from the dining room. He was surrounded and enthusiastically shaking hands. "Hullo, you Jinkses! Isn't this ripping? By Jove, High—and Low—it's famous to see you again. Hullo, Effie! Just fancy you being here! How jolly fine, eh? High Jinks, I want the most enormous breakfast you've ever cooked. Got any kippers? Good girl. That's the stuff to give the troops. Where's the Mistress? Not down yet? I'll go up. Low Jinks—Low Jinks, I'm dashed if you aren't crying! Well, it is jolly nice to see you again, Low. How's the old bike? Look here, Low, I want the most boiling bath—"

He broke off. "Hullo, Mabel! Hullo! Did you get my letter? I'm coming up."

Mabel was in a wrapper at the head of the stairs. He ran up. "I'm simply filthy. Do you mind?" He took her hand.

She said, "I never dreamt you'd be here at this hour. How are you, Mark? Yes, I got your letter. But I never expected you till this evening. It's very annoying that nothing is ready for you. Sarah, something is burning in the kitchen. I shouldn't stand there, Rebecca, with so much to be done; and I think you've forgotten your cap. Miss Bright,—oh, she's gone."

Just the same Mabel! But he wasn't going to let her be the same! He had made up his mind to that as he had come along with eager strides from the station. She turned to him and they exchanged their greetings and he went on, pursuing his resolution, "Look here, I've got a tremendous idea. When I get through this cadet business I shall have quite a bit of leave and my Sam Browne belt. I thought we'd go up to town and stick up at an hotel—the Savoy or somewhere—and have no end of a bust. Theatres and all the rest of it. Shall we?"

That chilly, vexed manner of hers, caused as he well knew by the uproar of his arrival, disappeared. "Oh, I'd love to. Yes, do let's. Now you want a bath, don't you? I'm annoyed there was all that disturbance just when I was meeting you. I've been having a little trouble lately—"

"Oh, well, never mind that now, Mabel. Come and watch me struggle out of this pack. Yes, look here, as soon as ever I know for certain when the course ends we'll write for rooms at the Savoy. I hear you have to do it weeks ahead. We'll spend pots of money and have no end of a time."

She reflected his good spirits. Ripping! He splashed and wallowed in the bath, singing lustily one of the songs out there:

"Ho, ho, ho, it's a lovely war!"

VI

But the three days at home were not to go on this singing note. They were marred by the discovery that his suspicion was well founded; she was bullying Effie. He began to notice it at once. Effie, with whom he had anticipated a lot of fun, was different: not nearly so bright; subdued; her eyes, not always, but only by occasional flashes, sparkling that intense appreciation of the oddities of life that had so much attracted him in her. Yes, dash it, Mabel was treating her in a rotten way. Bullying. No, it was not exactly bullying, it was snubbing, a certain acid quality always present in Mabel's voice when she addressed her,—that and a manner of always being what he thought of as "at her." The girl seemed to have an astonishing number of quite trivial duties to perform—trivial; there certainly was no suggestion of her being imposed upon as he had always felt Miss Bypass up at the vicarage was imposed upon, but Mabel was perpetually and acidly "at her" over one trivial thing or another. It was forever, "Miss Bright, I think you ought to be in the morning room, oughtn't you?" "Miss Bright, I really must ask you not to leave your door open every time you come out of your room. You know how I dislike the doors standing open." "Miss Bright, if you've finished your tea, there's really no need for you to remain."

He hated it. He said nothing, but it was often on the tip of his tongue to say something, and he showed that he intensely disliked it, and he knew that Mabel knew he disliked it. On the whole it was rather a relief when the three days were up and he went down to the Cadet battalion at Cambridge.

In March he came back, a second lieutenant; and immediately, when in time to come he looked back, things set in train for that ultimate encounter with life which was awaiting him.

The projected visit to town did not come off. While he was at Cambridge Mabel wrote to say that the Garden Home Amateur Dramatic Society was going to do "His Excellency The Governor" in aid of the Red Cross funds at the end of March. She was taking part, she was fearfully excited about it, and as rehearsals began early in the month she naturally could not be away. She was sure he would understand and would not mind.

He did not mind in the least. They were years past the stage when it would have so much as crossed his mind that she might give up this engagement for the sake of spending his leave on a bit of gaiety in town; he had only suggested the idea on her account; personally he much preferred the prospect of doing long walks about his beloved countryside now passing into spring.

VII

Arriving, he began at once to do so. He went over for one visit to the office at Tidborough. Not so much enthusiasm greeted him as to encourage a second. Twyning and Mr. Fortune were immersed in adapting the workshops to war work for the Government. Normal business was coming to a standstill. Now Twyning had conceived the immense, patriotic, and profitable idea of making aeroplane parts, and it was made sufficiently clear to Sabre that, so long away and immediately to be off again, there could be no interest for him in the enterprise.

"You won't want to go into all we are doing, my dear fellow," said Mr. Fortune. "Your hard-earned leave, eh? We mustn't expect you to give it up to business, eh, Twyning?"

And Twyning responded, "No, no, old man. Not likely, old man. Well, it's jolly to see you in the office again"; and he looked at his watch and said a word to Mr. Fortune about "Meeting that man" with an air which quite clearly informed Sabre that it would be jollier still to see him put on his cap and walk out of the office again.

Well, it was only what he had expected; a trifle pronounced, perhaps, but the obvious sequel to their latter-day manner towards him: they had wanted to get him out; he was out and they desired to keep him out.

He rose to go. "Oh, that's all right. I'm not going to keep you. I only called in to show off my officer's uniform."

Twyning said, "Yes, congratulations again, old man." He laughed. "You mustn't think you're going to have Harold saluting you though, if you ever meet. He's getting a commission too." His manner, directly he began to speak of Harold, changed to that enormous affection and admiration for his son which Sabre well remembered on the occasion of Harold joining up. His face shone, his mouth trembled with loving pride at what Harold had been through and what he had done. And he was such a good boy,—wrote twice a week to his mother and once when he was sick in hospital the Padre of his battalion had written to say what a good and sterling boy he was. Yes, he had been recommended for a commission and was coming home that month to a Cadet battalion at Bournemouth.

When Sabre made his congratulations Twyning accompanied him downstairs to the street and warmly shook his hand. "Thanks, old man; thanks most awfully. Yes, he's everything to me, my Harold. And of course it's a strain never knowing.... Well, well, he's in God's hands; and he's such a good, earnest boy."

Extraordinarily different Twyning the father of Harold, and Twyning in daily relations.

VIII

His leave drew on. He might get his orders any day now. Mabel was much occupied with her rehearsals. He spent his time in long walks alone and, whenever they were possible, in the old evenings with Mr. Fargus. In Mabel's absence he and Effie were much thrown together. Mabel frequently came upon them thus together, and when she did she had a mannerism that somehow seemed to suggest "catching" them together. And sometimes she used that expression. It would have been uncommonly jolly to have had Bright Effie as companion on the walks, and once or twice he did. But Mabel showed very clearly that this was very far from having her approval and on the second occasion said so. There was the slightest possible little tiff about it; and thenceforward—the subject having been opened—there were frequent little passages over Effie, arising always out of his doing what Mabel called "forever sticking up for her." How frequent they were, and how much they annoyed Mabel, he did not realise until, in the last week of his leave, and in the midst of a sticking up for her scene, Mabel surprisingly announced, "Well, anyway I'm sick and tired of the girl, and I'm sick and tired of having you always sticking up for her, and I'm going to get rid of her—to-morrow."

He said, "To-morrow? How can you? I don't say it's not the best thing to do. She's pretty miserable, I should imagine, the way you're always picking at her, but you can't rush her off like that, Mabel."

"Well, I'm going to. I'm going to pay her up and let her go."

"But, Mabel—what will her people think?"

"I'm sure I don't care what they think. If you're so concerned about the precious girl, I'll tell her mother that I was going to make other arrangements in any case and that as this was your last week we thought we'd like to be alone together. Will that satisfy you?"

"I hope it will satisfy them. And I hope very much indeed that you won't do it."

IX

But she did do it. On the following day Effie left. Sabre, pretending to know nothing about it, went for a long walk all day. When he returned Effie had gone. He said nothing. Her name was not again mentioned between him and Mabel. It happened that the only reference to her sudden departure in which he was concerned was with Twyning.