They sat and talked and talked, and gloom settled on them. What was to be the end of this horrible thing which no one had desired, but no one was able to prevent.

"I believe they all lost their nerve at the last," Roger said, "and they just ... just let things rip. They call it a brain-storm in America. They lost their heads ... and they let things rip. My God, what a thing to have happened!"

They sat in silence, full of foreboding, and then the girl who had come from Finland went home.

"It's all up with the Bar, I suppose!" said Roger, when he had let her out. "Whatever else people want to do, they won't want to go to law. Having a youngster makes things awkward!..."

"If you should need any money, Roger," said Gilbert, "you might let me know!"

"And me, Roger!" said Henry.

"Thanks awfully!" Roger replied. "I won't forget. I've got some, of course, and Rachel has a little. I daresay we'll manage. It can't last long. A couple of months, perhaps!..."

"I can't see how it can last longer. It's too big, and ... oh, it can't last longer!"

"Kitchener says three years!..."

"He wants to be on the safe side, I suppose, but my God, three years of ... of that!..."

2

Rachel got up suddenly. "You haven't seen my baby yet," she said.

"So we haven't," Gilbert exclaimed. "Where is it?"

"She's upstairs asleep. You must come quietly!..."

"It's a girl, then?" said Henry.

Rachel nodded, and led the way upstairs to the bedroom where the baby lay in her cot.

"Isn't she a darling?" she said, bending over the child.

They did not answer, afraid, as men are in the presence of a sleeping child, that they might disturb her; and while they stood looking at the cot, Rachel bent closer to her baby, and lightly kissed her cheek.

They moved away on tiptoe.

"What do you call her?" Henry whispered to Roger, as they left the bedroom.

"Eleanor," he answered. "That was my mother's name. Jolly little kid, isn't she?"

Gilbert turned and went back to the bedroom. Rachel was still bending over the baby, and she looked up at him warningly. He went up to the cot and, leaning towards Rachel, whispered, "Do you mind if I kiss her, too, Rachel? I'm going to enlist to-morrow, and perhaps I won't get so good a chance as this!..."

She stood up quickly and put her arms round him. "Oh, Gilbert!" she said, and then she drew him down, so that he could kiss the baby easily.

3

Henry told Roger of Gilbert's intention, while Rachel and Gilbert were in the bedroom with the baby.

"Enlist?" said Roger.

Henry nodded his head.

"Well, of course!..." Roger began, and then he stopped. "I suppose so," he said, moving towards the tray which Rachel had brought into the room earlier in the evening. "Whisky?" he said.

"No, thanks, Roger!" Henry answered. "He's going down to-morrow!"

"He'd better wait a few days. There's been a hell of a scrum already to join. Queues and queues of chaps, standing outside Scotland Yard all day. He'd better wait 'til the rush is over...."

"I think he'd rather like to be in the rush," Henry said.

Then Rachel came into the room, followed by Gilbert.

"Roger," she said, "Gilbert's going to enlist!..."

"So Quinny's just been telling me. Have a whisky, Gilbert?"

"No, thanks, old chap," said Gilbert, "but if you have a cigarette!..."

"I'll get them," Rachel exclaimed.

She brought the box of cigarettes to him, and while he was choosing one, she said to Roger, "I was so excited when he told me, that I got up and hugged him!"

"Good!" said Roger.

4

They walked home to Bloomsbury, where they had easily obtained rooms, for the sudden withdrawal of Germans and Austrians had left Bloomsbury in a state of vacancy. As they went down Haverstock Hill towards Chalk Farm, an old man lurched against them.

"All the young chaps," he mumbled thickly. "Thash wot sticks in my gizzard! All the young chaps! Gawblimey, why don't they tyke the ole ones!..."

"Steady on," Gilbert exclaimed, catching his arm and holding him up. "You'll fall, if you're not careful!"

"Don't marrer a damn wherrer I do or not!" He reeled a little, and Gilbert caught hold of him again. "I woul'n be a young chap," he muttered, "not for ... not for nothink. You ... you're a young chap, ain't you? Yesh you are! You needn't tell me you ain't! I can see as wellsh anythink! You're a young chap ri' enough. Well ... well, Gawd, 'elp you, young feller! Thash all I got to sy ... subjec!' Goo-ni', gen'lemen!" He staggered off the pavement, and went half way across the deserted street. Then he turned and looked at them for a few moments. "Ain't it a bloody treat, eih?" he shouted to them. "Ain't it a bloody treat?"

"Drunk," said Gilbert.

Henry did not reply, and they walked on through Chalk Farm, through Camden Town, into the tangle of mean streets by Euston, and then across the Euston Road to Bloomsbury. They did not speak to each other until they were almost at their destination.

"It's awfully quiet," said Henry, turning and looking about him.

"I don't see any one," Gilbert answered, "except that old fellow ahead of us!..."

"No!"

They walked on, and when they came up to the old man, who walked slowly, and heavily in the same direction, they called "Good-night!" to him. He looked round at them, an old, tired, bewildered man, and he made a gesture with his hands, a gesture of despair. "Ach, mein freund!" he said brokenly, and again he made the suppliant motion with his hands.

"Poor old devil!" Gilbert muttered almost to himself.

5

They went to their rooms at once, too tired to talk to each other, and Henry, hurriedly undressing, got into bed. But he could not sleep. "I suppose I ought to join, too!" he said to himself, as he lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. "Gilbert and I could go together!..."

But what would be the good of that? The war would be over quite soon. Even Roger thought it would be over in a couple of months, and if that were so, there would be no need for him to throw up his work and take to soldiering. "It'll be over before Gilbert's got through his training. Long before!..."

"Anyhow, I can wait until the rush is over. I might as well go on working as stand outside Scotland Yard all day, waiting to be taken on.... Or I could apply for a commission!..."

He lay very still, hoping that he would fall asleep soon, but sleep would not come to him. He sat up in bed, and glanced about the room.

"I suppose," he said aloud, "they're fighting now!"

He lay down again quickly, thrusting himself well under the bedclothes and shut his eyes tightly. "Oh, my God, isn't it horrible!" he groaned.

He saw again that crowd of hurried soldiers detraining at Holyhead, thinking that perhaps they were going to Ireland, but not quite sure ... and he could see them stumbling up the gangways of the transport, each man heavily accoutred; and sometimes a man would laugh, and sometimes a man would swear ... and then the ship sailed out of the harbour, rounding the pier and the breakwater, churning the sea into a long white trail of foam as she set her course past the South Stack.... They could see the lights on her masthead diminishing as she went further away, and then, as the cold sea wind blew about them, they shivered and went home.... Now, lying here in this stillness, warm and snug, Henry could see those soldiers, huddled together on the ship. He could imagine them, murmuring to one another, "I say, d'ye think we are goin' to Ireland?" and hear one answering, "You'll know in three hours. We'll be there then, if we are!" and slowly there would come to each man the knowledge that their journey was not to Ireland, but to France, and there would be a tightening of the lips, an involuntary movement here and there and then.... "Well, o' course, we're goin' to France! 'Oo the 'ell thought we was goin' anywhere else?" The ship would carry them swiftly down the Irish Sea and across the English Channel ... and after that!...

"Some of them may be dead already," he murmured to himself.

Torn up suddenly from their accustomed life, hurried through the darkness along the length of England, and then, after long, cold nights on the sea, landed in France and set to slaying....

"And they won't know what's it for?"

But did that matter? Would it be any better if they were aware of the cause of the fight? One lived in a land and loved it. Surely, that was sufficient?

In his mind, he could still see the soldiers, but always they were moving in the dark. He could see very vividly the man who had asked Perkins to write to his wife ... and it seemed to him that he was still demanding of passers-by that they should write to her. "Tell 'er I'm all right," he kept on saying. "So far, any'ow!..."

He turned over on his side, dragging the clothes about his head, and tried to shut out the vision of the soldiers marching through the fields of France, but he could not shut it out. They still marched, endlessly, ceaselessly marched....

6

When they got to Scotland Yard, there was a great crowd of men waiting to be enlisted.

"You'd better come again, Gilbert," Henry said. "You'll have to hang about here all day, and then perhaps you won't be reached!"

"I think I'll hang about anyhow," Gilbert answered.

He had become queerly quiet since the beginning of the War. The old, light-hearted, exaggerated speech had gone from him, and when he spoke, his words were abrupt and colourless. He took his place at the end of the file of men, and as he did so, the man in front of him, a fringe-haired, quick-eyed youth with a muffler round his neck, turned and greeted him. "'Illoa, myte!" he said with the cheery friendliness of the East End. "You come too, eih?"

Gilbert answered, "Yes, I thought I might as well!"

"Well 'ave to wyte a 'ell of a time," the Cockney went on. "Some of 'em's bin 'ere since six this mornin'. Gawblimey, you'd think they was givin' awy prizes. I dunno wot the 'ell I come for. I jus' did, sort of!..."

Some one standing by, turned to a recruiting sergeant and whispered something to him, pointing to the guttersnipes in the queue.

"Fight!" said the recruiting sergeant. "Gawd love you, guv'nor, they'd fight 'ell's blazes, them chaps would!"

Henry tried again to induce Gilbert to fall out of the queue and wait until there was more likelihood of being enlisted quickly, but Gilbert would not be persuaded.

"You'll have to get something to eat," Henry urged. "They'll never get near you until this evening, and if you've got to fall out to get food, you might as well fall out now!"

"I think I'll wait," Gilbert repeated. "Perhaps," he went on, "you'll get me some sandwiches. Get a lot, will you. This chap in front of me doesn't look as if he'd brought anything!"

"You could get a commission, Gilbert, easily," Henry said.

"I don't think I should be much good as an officer, Quinny.... Go and get the sandwiches like a decent chap!"

Henry went away to do as Gilbert had bidden him, and after a while, he returned with a big packet of sandwiches and apples.

"I shan't wait, Gilbert," he said. "I can't stand about all day. I'll come back when the rush is over...."

"But why, Quinny?"

"I'm going to join, too, with you!..."

"You're going to join?... That's awf'lly decent of you, Quinny!"

"Decent! Why? It isn't any more decent than your joining is!"

"P'raps not, but I always think it's very decent of an Irishman to fight for England. If there doesn't seem any chance of my getting in to-day, I'll come back to tea. There's a fellow here says this is the second day he's been waiting!"

Henry went away. He walked along the Embankment towards Blackfriars, and when he had reached the Temple, he turned up one of the steep streets that link the Embankment to Fleet Street.

"I'll go and see Delap," he said to himself.

Delap was the editor of a weekly paper for which Henry had sometimes written articles. Delap, however, was not at the office, but Bundy, the manager of the paper, who was also the financier, was there.

"It's all up with us," said Bundy. "We're closing down next week!"

"Closing down!"

"Yes. We're bust. Damn it, we're getting on splendidly, too. Just turning the corner! We should have had a magnificent autumn if it hadn't been for this...."

He came away from Bundy, and walked aimlessly down Fleet Street. "Lots of other people would have had a fine autumn if it hadn't been for this," he thought to himself, and then he saw Leadenham and Crowborough, who worked on the Cottenham Guardian. They were very pale and tired-looking.

"Hilloa!" he said, slapping Leadenham on the back.

Leadenham jumped ... startled! "Oh, it's you," he said, smiling weakly.

"Yes. What's up? You look frightened!" He turned to greet Crowborough.

"Well, we're all rather jiggered by this," Leadenham replied. "We're going to get something to eat. Come with us?"

They went into a tea-shop and sat down. "Is the Guardian all right?" Henry asked.

"Oh, yes," said Leadenham wearily, "as right as anything is. Nobody in Fleet Street knows how long his job'll last. Half the men on the Daily Circle have had the sack. Some of our chaps have gone! Fleet Street's full of men looking for jobs. About fifty papers have smashed up since the thing began ... sporting papers mostly. It frightens you, this sort of thing!..."

He came away from Fleet Street as quickly as possible. The nervous, hectic state of the journalists made him feel nervous too.

"I'd better get among less jumpy people," he said to himself, and he hurried towards Charing Cross. And there he met Jimphy. He did not recognise him at first, for Jimphy was in khaki, and he would have passed on without seeing him, had Jimphy not caught hold of his arm and stopped him.

"Cutting a chap, damn you!" said Jimphy....

"Good Lord, I didn't know you!"

"Thought you didn't. Where you going?"

"Oh, nowhere. Just loafing about. Gilbert's down at Scotland Yard trying to enlist."

"Is he, begad? Everybody seems to be trying to enlist. He'd much better try to get a commission. I'm going home now. You come with me, Quinny. Hi, hi!..." He hailed a taxi-cab, and, without waiting to hear what Henry had to say, bundled him into it.

"Lord," he exclaimed, as he leant back in the cab, "it's years an' years an' years since I saw you. Well, what do you think of this for a bally war, eh? Millions of 'em ... all smackin' each other. I'm going out soon!" He leant out of the window and shouted at the driver, "Hi, you chap, hurry up, will you!

"I don't seem able to get anywhere quick enough nowadays," he said as he sat back again in his seat. "You know," he went on, "we've never been to the Empire yet, you an' me. Damned if we have! Never mind! We'll go when the War's over!"

7

There were half a dozen women in the drawing-room with Cecily when Henry and Jimphy entered it. In addition to the women, there were a photographer and Boltt. The photographer had finished his work and was preparing to depart, and Boltt was talking in his nice little clipped voice about the working-class. It appeared that the working-class had not realised the seriousness of the situation. The other classes had been quick to understand and to offer themselves, but the working-class.... No! Oo, noo! Boltt had written an article in the Evening Gazette full of gentle reproach to the working-class, but without effect. The working-class had taken no notice. "Democracy, dear ladies," said Boltt, with a downward motion of his fingers. "Democracy!" A newspaper, a Labour newspaper, had been rather rude to Boltt. It had put some intimate, he might say, impertinent, questions to Boltt, but Boltt had borne this impertinent inquisition with fortitude. He had not made any answer to it....

"Hilloa, Paddy!" Lady Cecily called across the room to Henry. "Aren't you at the war?"

"Well, no, I only got to London...."

"Oh, but everybody's going. Jimphy and everybody! Except Mr. Boltt, of course. He's unfit or something. Aren't you, Mr. Boltt?"

"Ah, if I were only a young man again, Lady Cecily!..."

"But he's writing to the papers, and that's something, isn't it?" Cecily interrupted. "And I'm making mittens for the soldiers. We're all making mittens. Except Mr. Boltt, of course."

"Who was the johnny who's just gone out?" Jimphy demanded. "Was he the chap who sells the stuff you make the mittens out of?..."

"Oh, no, Jimphy, he was a photographer. We're all to have our photographs in the Daily Reflexion...."

"Except Mr. Boltt?" Henry asked maliciously.

"No, Mr. Boltt's to be in it too. Holding wool. I've been photographed in three different positions ... beginning to knit a mitten, half-way through a mitten, and finishing a mitten. I was rather anxious to be taken with a pile of socks, but I can't knit socks!..."

"You can't knit mittens either," said Jimphy.

It appeared that Lady Cecily's maid was allowed to undo her mistress's false stitches and finish the mittens properly....

"Well, of course, I'm not really a knitter," Cecily admitted, "but I feel I must do something for the country. I've a good mind to take up nursing. I met Jenny Customs this morning, and she says it's quite easy, and the uniform is rather nice...."

"But don't you require to be trained?" Henry asked dubiously.

"Oh, yes, if you're a professional. But I'm not. I'm doing it for the country. Jenny Customs went to a First Aid Class, and learnt quite a lot about bandaging. She can change sheets while the patient is in bed, and she says he can scarcely tell that she's doing it. I should love to be able to do that. She told me a lot of things, and I really know the first lesson already. I can shake a bottle of medicine the proper way!..."

"Can't we have tea or something?" said Jimphy. "Oh, by the way, Cecily, Quinn says that chap Gilbert Farlow's hanging about Scotland Yard...."

"Goodness me, what for?" Cecily demanded in a startled voice. "He hasn't done anything, has he?"

"No, of course he hasn't. He's trying to enlist!"

"Enlist!" she said.

"Yes. Silly ass not to ask for a commission!" said Jimphy.

Boltt burbled about the priceless privilege of youth. If only he were a youngster once again!...

They drank their tea, while Jimphy discoursed on the war. Henry had entered Cecily's house with a feeling of alarm, wondering whether she would be friendly to him, wondering whether he would be able to look into her eyes and not care ... and now he knew that he did not care. There was something incredibly unfeeling and trivial about Cecily, something ... vulgar. While the world was still reeling from the shock of the War, she was arranging to be photographed with mittens that she had not made and could not make. The portrait would be reproduced in the Daily Reflexion under the title of "Lady Cecily Jayne Does Her Bit." ... But she was beautiful, undeniably she was beautiful. As he looked at her, she raised her eyes, conscious perhaps of his stare, and smiled at him....

"She'd smile at anybody," he said to himself. "If she had any feeling at all for me, she'd be angry with me!"

She came to him. "I wish you'd tell Gilbert to come and see me," she said, sitting down beside him.

"Very well," he answered, "I will!"

"I'm sure he'll look awfully nice in khaki. And I should love to see him saluting Jimphy. He'll have to do that, you know, if he's a private...."

8

He got away as soon as he could decently do so, and went back to Bloomsbury. "That isn't England," he told himself, "that mitten-making, posturing crew!" and he remembered the great queues of men, standing outside Scotland Yard, struggling to get into the Army, and suffering much discomfort in the effort.

"Perhaps," he said to himself, "Gilbert's at home now. I wonder if he managed to get in!"

A man and a woman were standing at the corner of a street, talking, and he overheard them as he passed.

"'Illoa, Sarah," the man said, "w'ere you goin', eih?"

"Goin' roan' the awfices," she answered, "to see if I kin get a job o' charin'!"

"Gawblimey!" said the man, laughing at her.

"Well, you got to do somethink, 'aven't you? No good sittin' on your be'ind an' 'owlin' because there's a war on, is there?"

There was more of the spirit of England in that, Henry thought, than in Cecily's mitten-making....

Gilbert was not at home when he reached the Bloomsbury boarding-house. "Still trying, I suppose," Henry thought.

There was a telegram for him. His father was ill again, "seriously ill" was the message, and he was needed at home.

He hurriedly wrote a note to be given to Gilbert when he returned, in case he should not see him again, but before he had begun his packing, Gilbert came in.

"It's all right," he said. "I've joined. I've had a week's leave.... I'm damned tired!"

"My father's ill again, Gilbert. I've just had a telegram, and I'm going back to-night!..."

"I'm awf'lly sorry, Quinny!" Gilbert said, quickly sympathetic.

"I met Jimphy at Charing Cross. He's in khaki. He took me back to tea. Cecily's making mittens!..."

"She would," said Gilbert.

"She told me to tell you to go and see her!"

"Did she, indeed?"

"You'll stay here, I suppose," Henry went on, "until you're called up?" Gilbert nodded his head. "Let me know what happens to you afterwards, will you?"

"Righto!"

"I'll come back as soon as I can, Gilbert!"



THE SIXTH CHAPTER

1

Mr. Quinn died at Christmas. The old man, weakened by his long illness, had been stunned by the War, and when his second illness seized him, he made no effort to resist it. He would lie very quietly for a long while, and then a paroxysm of fury would possess him, and he would shake his fist impotently in the air. "If they wanted a war," he shouted once, "why didn't they go and fight it themselves. They were paid to keep the peace, and ... and!..."

He fell back on his pillow, exhausted, and when Henry, hurrying up the stairs to him the moment he heard the shout, reached him, he was gasping for breath. "It's all right, son!" he said when he had recovered himself. "It's all right!..."

"It's foolish of you, father, to agitate yourself like that," Henry said to him, putting his arms round him and lifting him into a more comfortable position.

"I can't help it, Henry, when I think of ... of all the young lads!... By God, they'd no right to do it!..."

"Hush, father!..."

"They'd no right to do it! You'd think they were greedy for blood ... young men's blood!" He pointed to an English newspaper lying on the floor. "Did you read that paper?" he said.

"Yes."

"Houndin' them into it," the old man went on. "Yellin' for young men! By God, I'd be ashamed ... parsons an' women an' old men that can't fight themselves, houndin' young men into it! If they'd any decency, they'd shut up...."

"All right, father!"

"The man that owns this paper ... whatshisname!..."

"It doesn't matter, does it? Lie still and be quiet!"

"I can't be quiet. Like a damned big monster, yellin' for boys to eat. Has he any childher, will you tell me?..."

"I don't know, father!"

"Of course he hasn't. An' here he is, yelpin' in his damned rag every day, 'Fee-fo-fum, I smell the blood of a young man!' Why don't they shove him at the Front ... the very front!"

"You must keep quiet, father!"

"All right, Henry, all right!"

He was silent for a few minutes, and then he began again, in a quieter voice. "I'd have put the men that made it, the whole lot of them, in the front rank, and let them blow themselves to blazes. Old men sittin' in offices, an' makin' wars, an' then biddin' young men to pay the price of them! By God, that's mean! By God, that's low!..."

"But old men couldn't bear the strain of it, father!" Henry interjected, and he recalled some of the horrors of the trenches where the soldiers had stood with the water reaching to their waists; but Mr. Quinn insisted that the old men should have fought the war they made.

"Who cares a damn whether they can bear it or not," he said. "Let 'em die, damn 'em! They're no good!" He turned quickly to Henry, and demanded, "What good are they? Tell me that now!" but before Henry could make an answer to him, he went off insistently, "They're no good, I tell you. I know well what they're like ... sittin' in their clubs, yappin' an' yappin' an' demandin' this an' demandin' that, an' gettin' on one another's nerves; an' whatever happens it's not them that suffers for it: it's the young lads that pays for everything. Look at the way the old fellows go on in Parliament, Henry! By God, I want to vomit when I read about them! Yappin' an' yappin' when they should be down on their knees beggin' God's forgiveness...."

He spoke as if he were not himself an old man, and it did not seem strange to Henry that he should speak in that fashion, for Mr. Quinn's spirit had always been a young spirit.

"An' these wee bitches with their white feathers," he went on, "ought to be well skelped. If I had a daughter, an' she did a thing like that, by God, I'd break her skull for her!"

"I suppose they think they're doing their duty, father, and they're young!..."

"There's women at it, too. I read in the paper yesterday mornin' that there was grown women doin' it. There's nobody has any right to bid a man go to that except them that's been to it themselves. If the women an' the parsons an' the old men can't fight for their country, they can hold their tongues for it, an' by God they ought to be made to hold them...."

He asked continually after Gilbert.

"He's a sergeant now, father. He's been offered a commission, but he won't take it!..."

"Why?"

"Oh, one of his whimsy-whamsies, I suppose. He says the non-commissioned officers are the backbone of the Army, and he prefers to be part of the backbone. You remember Ninian Graham, father?"

"I do, rightly!..."

"He's come home to join. He's in the Engineers!"

Mr. Quinn did not make any answer to Henry. He slipped a little further into the bed, and lay for a long while with his eyes closed, so long that Henry thought he had fallen asleep; but, just when Henry began to tiptoe from the room, he opened his eyes again, and suddenly they were full of tears.

"The fine young fellows," he said. "The fine young lads!"

2

And at Christmas, he died. He had called Henry to him that morning, and had enquired about "The Fennels," which had lately been published after a postponement and much hesitation, and about the new book on which Henry was now working.

"That's right," he said, when he heard that Henry was working steadily on it. "It'll keep your mind from broodin'. How's the Ulster book goin'?"

"'The Fennels'?"

"Ay. You had hard luck, son, in bringing out your best book at a time like this, but never matter, never matter!..."

"I don't know how it's doing. It's too soon to tell yet. The reviews have been good, but I don't suppose people are buying books at present!"

"You've done a good few now, Henry!"

"Five, father."

"Ay, I have the lot there on that ledge so's I can take them down easily an' look at them. I feel proud of you, son ... proud of you!"

He began to remind Henry of things that had happened when he was a boy. His mind became flooded with memories. "Do you mind Bridget Fallon?" he would say, and then he would recall many incidents that were connected with her. "Do you mind the way you wanted to go to Cambridge, an' I wouldn't let you," and "Do you mind the time you took the woollen balls from Mr. Maginn's house?...."

Henry remembered. Mr. Maginn, the vicar of Ballymartin, had invited Henry to spend the afternoon with his nephew and niece and some other children. They had played a game with balls made of coloured wool, and while they were playing, Henry, liking the pattern of one of them, had put it into his pocket. It had been missed, and there had been a search for it, in which Henry had joined. He was miserable, and he wanted to confess that he had the ball, but every time he opened his lips to say that he had it, he felt afraid, and so he had refrained from speaking. He felt, too, that every one knew that he had taken it, but still he could not confess that he had it, and when they said, "Isn't it queer? I wonder where it's gone!" he had answered, "Yes, isn't it queer?" They had abandoned the search, and had played another game, but all the pleasure of the party was lost for Henry. He kept saying to himself, "You've got it. You've got it!..."

He had hurried home after the party was over, and when he reached the shrubbery, he dug a hole and buried the ball in it. He had closed his eyes as he took it out of his pocket, so that he should not see the bright colours of it, and had heaped the earth on to it as if he could not conceal it quickly enough ... but burying it had not quieted his mind. He felt, whenever he met Mr. Maginn, that the vicar looked at him as if he were saying to himself, "You stole the woollen ball!...." At the end of the month, he had gone to his father and told him of it, and Mr. Quinn had cocked his eye at him for a moment and considered the subject.

"If I were you, Henry," he had said, "I'd dig up that ball and take it back to Mr. Maginn and just tell him about it!"

Henry could remember how hard it had been to do that, how he had loitered outside the gates of the vicarage for an hour, trying to force himself to go up to the door and ask for the vicar ... and how kind Mr. Maginn had been when, at last, he had made his confession!

Oh, yes, he remembered!...

"You were a funny wee lad, Henry," Mr. Quinn said, taking his son's hand in his. "Always imaginin' things!" He thought for a second or two. "I suppose," he went on, "that's what makes you able to write books ... imaginin' things! Ay, that's it!"

They sat in quietness for a while, and then Mr. Quinn fell asleep, and Henry went down to the library and worked again on his new novel, for which he had not yet found a title; and in his sleep, Mr. Quinn died.

3

Henry had finished a chapter of the book, and he put down his pen, and yawned. He was tired, and he thought gratefully of tea. Hannah would bring a tray to his father's room. There would be little soda farls and toasted barn-brack, and perhaps she would have made "slim-jim," and there would be newly-churned butter and home-made jam, which Hannah, in her Ulster way, would call "Preserve." ...

He got up from the table and went into the hall.

"Will tea be long, Hannah?" he called down the stairs, leading to the kitchens.

"Haven't I it near ready?" she answered.

He had gone up the staircase at a run, and had entered his father's room, expecting to see him sitting up....

"Hilloa," he said, stopping sharply, "still asleep!" and he went out of the room and called softly to Hannah, now coming up the stairs, to take the tray to the library. "He's asleep, Hannah!" he said almost in a whisper.

"He's never asleep at this hour," she answered.

And somehow, as she said that, he knew. He went back into the room and leant over his father, listening....

"Is he dead, Master Henry?" Hannah said, as she came into the room. She had left the tray on a table on the landing.

Henry straightened himself and turned to her. "Yes, Hannah!" he said quietly.

The old woman threw her apron over her head and let a great cry out of her. "Och, ochanee!" she moaned, "Och, och, ochanee!..."

4

He had none of the terror he had had when Mrs. Clutters lay dead in the Bloomsbury house. He went into the room and stood beside his father's body. The finely moulded face had a proud look and a great look of peace. "I don't feel that he's dead," Henry murmured to himself. "I shall never feel that he's dead!"

"I wasn't with him enough," he went on. "I left him alone too often...."

Extraordinarily, they had loved each other. Underneath all that roughness of speech and violence of statement, there was great tenderness and understanding. He spoke his mind, and more than his mind, but he was generous and quick to retract and quicker to console. "I'm an Ulsterman," he said once. "Ulster to the marrow, an' begod I'm proud of it!"

"But I'm Irish too," he added, turning to John Marsh as he said it, fearful lest he should have hurt John's feelings. "Begod, it's gran' to be Irish. I pity the poor devils that aren't!..."

He was a great lover of life, exulting in his strength and vigour, shouting sometimes for the joy of hearing himself shout. "And shy, too," Henry murmured to himself, "shy as a wren about intimate things!"

The sight of his father's placid face comforted him. One might cry over other people, but not over him. Henry felt that if he were to weep for his father, and the old man, regaining life for a moment were to open his eyes and see him, he would shout at him, "Good God, Henry, what are you cryin' about? Go out, man, an' get the fresh air about you!..."

He put his hand out and touched the dead man.

"All right, father!" he said aloud....

5

There was much to do after the burial, and it was not until the beginning of the Spring that Henry left Ballymartin. He had completed his sixth novel, and had asked that the proofs should be sent to him as speedily as possible so that he might correct them before he left Ireland, and while he was waiting for them, he had travelled to Dublin for a few days, partly on business connected with his estate and partly to see his friends. Mr. Quinn had spent a great deal of money on his farming experiments, the more freely as he found that Henry's books brought him an increasing income, and so Henry had decided to let the six hundred acres which Mr. Quinn himself had farmed. At first, he had thought of selling the land, but it seemed to him that his father would have liked him to keep it, and so he did not do so. He settled his affairs with his solicitors, and then returned to Ballymartin; but before he did so, he spent an evening with John Marsh, whom he found still keenly drilling.

"But why are you drilling now?" he asked. "This hardly seems the time to be playing at soldiers, John!"

"I'm not playing, Henry. I am a soldier!"

It was difficult to remember how many armies there were in Ireland. The Ulster Volunteers still sulked in the North. The National Volunteers had split. The politicians, alarmed at the growth of the Volunteer Movement among their followers, had swooped down on the Volunteers and "captured" them. John Marsh and Galway and their friends had seceded, and, under the presidency of a professor of the National University, John MacNeill, had formed a new body, called the Irish Volunteers. The politicians, failing to understand the temper of their time, worked to discourage the growth of the Volunteer Movement, and the result of their efforts was that the more enthusiastic and courageous of the National Volunteers seceded to the Irish Volunteers.

"We're growing rapidly," John said to Henry. "They're flocking out of the Nationals into ours as hard as they can. We've got Thomas MacDonagh and Patrick Pearse and a few others with us, and we're trying to link up with Larkins' Citizen Army. Mineely's urging Connolly on to our side, but Connolly's more interested in the industrial fight than in the national fight. But I think we'll get him over!"

Their objects were to defend themselves from attack by the Ulster Volunteers if attack were made, to raise a rebellion if the Home Rule Bill were not passed into law, and to resist the enactment of conscription in Ireland. The burden of their belief was still the fear of betrayal. "But you're going to get Home Rule," Henry would say to them, and they would answer, "We'll believe it when we see the King opening the Parliament in College Green. Not before. We know what the English are like...."

Henry had suggested to them that they should offer the services of their volunteers to the Government in return for the immediate enactment of the Bill, but they saw no hope of such an offer being accepted and honoured. "The minute they'd got us out of the way, they'd break their word," said Galway. "Our only hope is to stay here and make ourselves as formidable as we can. You can't persuade the English to do the decent thing ... you can only terrorise them into it. Look at the way the Ulster people have frightened the wits out of them!..."

"But the Ulster people haven't frightened the wits out of them. I can't understand you fellows! You sit here with preconceived ideas in your heads, and you won't check them by going to see the people you're theorising about. You keep on saying the same thing over and over again, and you won't listen to any one who tells you that you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick!..."

"My dear Henry," said John, "our history is enough for us. Even since the war, the English have tried to belittle the Irish. They've done the most inept, small things to annoy us. They'd have got far more men from Ireland than they have done, if they 'd behaved decently; but they couldn't. They simply couldn't do the decent thing to Ireland. That's their nature.... I'd have gone myself!..."

"You?"

"Yes. I think the Germans are in the wrong. I think they've behaved badly, and anyhow, I don't like their theory of life. But the English couldn't treat us properly. We wanted an Irish Division, with Irish officers, and Irish colours, and Irish priests ... but no! They actually stopped some women in the South from making an Irish flag for the Irish regiments!... What are you to do with people like that. If they aren't treacherous, they're so stupid that it's impossible to do anything with them, and we'd much better be separate from them!"

"I should have thought that Belgium showed the folly of that sort of thing," said Henry. "A little country can't keep itself separate from a big one. It'll get hurt if it does."

"Belgium fought, didn't she?" John answered. "I daresay we should get beaten, too, but we could fight, couldn't we?"

Henry went away from them in a state of depression. It seemed impossible to persuade them to behave reasonably. Fixed and immovable in their minds was this belief that England would use them in her need ... and then betray them when her need was satisfied.

He went back to Ballymartin and corrected his proofs.

"I'll go over to England next week," he said to himself when he had revised the final proofs and posted them to his publishers.

6

Mrs. Graham had written to him when his father died. "My dear Henry," she wrote, "I know how you must feel at the death of your father, and I know, too, that you will not wish to have your sorrow intruded on. A letter is a poor thing, but, my dear, I send you all my sympathy. I never saw your father, but Ninian has often spoken of him to me, and I know that his loss must be almost unbearable to you. Perhaps he was glad, as I should be glad, to slip away from the thought and memory of this horrible war, and that may bring comfort to you. If you feel lonely and unhappy at home, come to Boveyhayne for a while. You know how glad we shall be to have you. It is very quiet here now, more than a hundred of our men have gone into the Navy or the Army, and the poor women are full of anxiety about them. Ninian has just been moved to Colchester. I daresay he has written to you before this. If you would like to come to Boveyhayne just send a telegram to me. That will be sufficient. Believe me, my dear Henry, Your sincere friend, Janet Graham."

* * * * *

He remembered Mrs. Graham's letter now, and he went to his writing desk and took it from the notes of condolence he had received. Ninian and Gilbert and Roger had written to him, short, abrupt letters that he knew were full of kindly concern for him, and Rachel had written too. There was a letter from Mary.

* * * * *

Dear Quinny, you don't know how sorry I am. It must be awful to lose your father when you and he have been such chums. I can only just remember my father, and how I cried when he was taken away, and so I know how hard it must be for you. Your friend, Mary.

* * * * *

He read Mrs. Graham's note, and Mary's several times, and as he read them, he had a longing to go to Boveyhayne again. The house at Ballymartin was so lonely, now that his father's heavy footsteps no longer sounded through the hall. Sometimes, forgetting that he was dead, Henry would stop suddenly and listen as if he were listening for his father's voice. Since his return from Dublin, he had felt his loss more poignantly than he had before he went away. In the old days, his father would have been at the station to meet him. There would have been a hearty shout, and....

"I must go," he said to himself, "I must go. I can't bear to be here now."

He went down to the village and telegraphed to Mrs. Graham telling her that he would be with her two days later, and while he was in the post office, the Belfast Evening Telegraph came in.

"I'll take my copy with me," he said to the post-mistress, and he opened it at once to read the news. There was a paragraph in a corner of the paper, which caught his eye at once. It announced the death in action of Lord Jasper Jayne.

"My God!" he said, crumpling the paper as he gaped at the announcement.

"Is it bad news, sir?" the post-mistress asked.

"A friend of mine," he answered, turning to her. "Killed at the Front!"

"Aw, dear," she said. "Aw, dear-a-dear! An' there'll be plenty more, sir. There's young fellas away from the village, sir. My own nephew's away. You mind him, don't you, sir! Peter Logan!..."

"Peter Logan!"

"Ay, he used to keep the forge 'til he married Matt Hamilton's niece, an' then he took to the land. Nothin' would stop him, but to be off. Nothin' at all would stop him. I toul' him myself the Belgians was Catholics an' the Germans was Protestants, but nothin' would stop him...."

"Sheila Morgan's husband," Henry murmured.

"Ay," she answered, "that was her name before she was married. He's trainin' now, an' in a while, I suppose, he'll be off like the rest of them. Och, ochanee, sir, isn't this a terr'ble world, wi' nothin' but fightin' an' wringlin'? Will that be all you're wantin', sir?"

"Yes, thanks," he said.

Poor old Jimphy! They had all been contemptuous of him ... and now!...

Cecily would be free now! Oh, but what of that? Poor Jimphy! He had not wished for much from life ... and sometimes it had seemed that he had got much more than he needed....

"The best of us can't do more than he did," Henry thought as he walked home. "A man can't give more than he's got, and Jimphy's given everything!"

7

He started up, and looked about the room, and while he listened, he could hear the big clock in the hall sounding three times. He was shivering, though he was not cold. In his dream, he had seen Jimphy, all bloody and broken....

"Oh, my God, how horrible!" he groaned.

He got up and went to the window, but he could not see beyond the high trees, which swayed and moaned and took strange shapes in the wind. His dream still held his mind, and as he looked into the darkness and saw the bending branches yielding and rebounding, it seemed to him that he saw the soldiers rushing forward and heard their cries, hoarse with war lust or stifled by the blood that gushed from their mouths as they staggered and fell ... and as he had seen him in his dream, so he saw Jimphy again, running forward and shouting as he ran, until suddenly with a queer wrinkled look of amazement on his face, he stopped, and then, clasping his hands to his head, tumbled in a shapeless heap on the ground ... but now it seemed to him that as Jimphy fell, his face changed: it was no longer Jimphy's face, but his own.

"My God, it's me!" he cried, shrinking away from the window, and clutching at the curtains as if he would cover himself with them. "My God, it's me!"

He shut his eyes tightly and stumbled back to bed. He bruised himself against a chair, but he was afraid to open his eyes, and he rolled into bed, covering himself completely with the clothes, and buried his face in his folded arms. In his mind, one thought hammered insistently: I must live! I must live! I must live!

8

"I'm run down," he said to himself in the morning. "That's what's the matter with me. I'm run down!"

His father's death had affected him, he thought, far more than he had imagined. He would be all right again after a rest in Devonshire. It was natural that he should be in a nervous state ... quite natural. He would go straight to Boveyhayne from Liverpool. He could catch the Bournemouth Express, and change at Templecombe. ... "That's what I'll do," he said, and he hurried downstairs to prepare for his journey.



THE SEVENTH CHAPTER

1

He changed his mind at Liverpool. "I'll go to London first," he said, "and see Roger and Rachel. I might as well hear anything there is to hear!" And so he had telegraphed to Roger who met him at Euston.

"Gilbert's going out in a few days," Roger said, when they had greeted each other.

"Out?"

"Yes. He's going to the Dardanelles!... This job's serious, Quinny!" he added grimly. "Our two months' estimate was a bit out, wasn't it? I suppose you haven't heard from Ninian lately? He hasn't written to me for a good while."

"Not lately," Henry answered, "but I shall hear of him to-morrow when I get to Boveyhayne. I'll write and let you know!"

"My Big Army book's gone to pot, of course!" Roger went on. "At present anyhow!..."

"The War's done for the Improved Tories, I suppose?"

"Absolutely. They've all enlisted. Ashley Earls is in the R.A.M.C. He went in last week. He couldn't go before ... he was ill. You remember Ernest Carr. He tried to enlist when the War began, but he was so crippled with rheumatism that they hoofed him out. Well, he's been living like a hermit ever since to get himself cured, and he says he's going on splendidly. He thinks he'll be able to join before long...."

"I wonder if I ought to join," he went on, more to himself than to Henry. "I've thought and thought about it ... but I can't make up my mind. I've got a decent connexion at the Bar now, and if I go into the Army, I shall lose it. The fellows who don't go will get my work. And if the War lasts as long as Kitchener reckons, I shall be forgotten by the time I get back ... and I shall have to begin again at an age when most men have either established themselves or cleared out of the profession altogether. I want to do what's right, but I can't reconcile my two duties, Quinny. I've a duty to England, of course, but I think I have a bigger duty to Rachel and Eleanor. If they'd only conscript us all, this problem wouldn't arise ... not so acutely anyhow. I suppose the Government is having a pretty hard time, but they do seem to act the goat rather! There's a great deal of talk about a man's duty to England, but very little talk about England's duty to the man. However!..." He did not finish his sentence, but shrugged his shoulders and looked away.

"I don't feel happy," he went on after a while, "when I see other men joining up, but I've got to think of Rachel and Eleanor.... When I was going to meet you, Quinny, I passed a chap on crutches. His leg was off!... He made me feel damned ashamed. I suppose that's why they let the wounded go about in uniform so freely; to make you feel ashamed of yourself. That's what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid I shall rush off to the recruiting office in a burst of emotion ... and I must think of Rachel and Eleanor!..."

"I don't see why you should go before I do, Roger," Henry interjected.

"Are you going, Quinny?"

Henry flushed. It hurt him that there should be any question about it.

"Yes," he said.

"I don't think of you as a soldier, Quinny!"

"I don't think of myself as one!" He paused for a moment, and then, impetuously, he turned to Roger.

"Roger," he said, "do you think I'm ... neurotic? Would you say I'm ... well, degenerate?"

"Don't be an ass, Quinny!"

"I'm serious, Roger. I'm not just talking about myself, and slopping over!"

"You're highly strung, of course, but I shouldn't say you were neurotic. You're healthy enough, aren't you!"

"Oh, yes, I'm healthy enough, but I'm such a damned coward, Roger, and sometimes some perfectly uncontrollable fear seizes me ... silly frights. I never told you, did I, how scared I was when Mrs. Clutters died!..." He told Roger how he had trembled outside the door of the dead woman's room. "Things like that have happened to me ever since I was a kid. I make up my mind to join the Army, and then I suddenly get panicky, and I can almost feel myself being killed. I'm continually seeing the War ... me in it, crouching in a trench waiting for the order to go over, and trembling with fright ... so frightened that I can't do anything but get killed ... and it's worse when I think of myself killing other people ... I feel sick at the thought of thrusting a bayonet into a man's body ... squelching through his flesh ... My God!..."

"Yes, I know, Quinny!" Roger said. "One does feel like that. But when you're there, you don't think of it ... you're more or less off your head ... you couldn't do it if you weren't. They work you up to a kind of frenzy, and then you ... just let yourself go!"

"But afterwards! Don't you think a man 'ud go mad afterwards when he thought of it? I should. I know I should. I'd lie awake at night and see the men I'd killed!..."

A passenger in the train had told a story of the trenches to Henry, who now repeated it to Roger.

"One of our men got hold of a German in a German trench, and he bayonetted him, but he did it clumsily. There wasn't enough room to kill him properly ... he couldn't withdraw the bayonet and stick it in again and finish the man ... and there they were, jammed together ... and the German was squealing, oh, horribly ... and our men had to come and haul the British soldier out of the trench. He'd gone off his head!..."

"One oughtn't to think of things like that, Quinny!"

"But if you can't help it? What terrifies me is that I might turn funk ... let my lot down!..."

"You wouldn't. You're the sort that imagines the worst and does the best. I shouldn't think of it any more if I were you. A month at Boveyhayne'll pull you all right again...."

"It's dying that I'm most afraid of. Some of these papers write columns and columns of stuff about 'glorious deaths' at the front, but it doesn't seem very glorious to me to be dead before you've had a chance to do your job ... killed like that ... blown to bits, perhaps ... so that they can't tell which is you and which is some one else!..."

Roger nodded his head. "Our journalists contrive to see a great deal of glory in war ... from Fleet Street, don't they, Quinny!"

"Sometimes," Henry proceeded, "I think that the worst kind of cowardice is to love life too much. That's the kind of coward I am. I love living. I used to cry when I was a kid at the thought that I might die and not be able to run about and look at things that I liked! And that makes you funky. You're afraid to take risks, for fear you should lose your life and have to give up the pleasure of living. I suppose that's what the Bible means when it says that 'whosoever shall lose his life, shall find it.' This hunt for security melts the marrow in your backbone!..."

"Perhaps," said Roger. "Where you go wrong, I think, is in imagining that courage consists in hurling yourself recklessly on things ... in not caring a damn. I don't think that that's courage ... it's simply insensibility ... a sort of permanent imperceptiveness. Really, Quinny, if you don't feel fear, there's not much of the heroic in your acts. That kind of man isn't much braver when he's plunging at Germans than he is when he's plunging at a motor-omnibus or getting into a 'scrum' at Rugger. He simply doesn't see any difference. It's something to plunge at, and so he plunges. I haven't much faith in the Don't-Care-a-Damn Brigade. They're more anxious to get V. C's than to get victories. Their courage is just egoism ... they're thinking, not of their country, but of themselves. The real hero, I think, is the man who makes himself do something that he's afraid to do, who goes into a thing, trembling with fright, but nevertheless goes into it. Did you ever meet Leon Lorthiois?" he said quickly.

"You mean the French painter who used to hang about the Cafe Royal?" Henry replied.

"Yes. He was killed the other day in France."

"I hadn't heard. Poor chap!"

"I think he showed extraordinary courage. He started off from London to join the French Army ... all his friends dined him jolly well ... and wished him good-luck, and so on, and then he went off. And a week later, he turned up again with a cock-and-bull story about having been arrested as a deserter. He said he'd escaped from prison and, after a lot of difficulty and hardship, got back to England. But he hadn't done anything of the sort. He'd funked it at the last. He got as far as Dover, and then he turned back ... frightened. He stayed in London for a while ... and then he tried again ... and this time he didn't funk it! They say he was fighting splendidly when he was killed. Men have got the V.C. for less heroic behaviour than that. He'd conquered himself. I used to despise that fellow because he wore eccentric clothes and had his hair cut in a silly fashion ... but I feel proud now of having known him!"

2

Mary met him at Whitcombe, and they walked home, sending his trunk and portmanteau on in the carriage with Widger. He had anticipated their meeting with strange emotion, feeling as if he were returning to her after a time of misunderstanding, richer in knowledge, more capable of sympathy. He had not seen her since the first performance of "The Magic Casement," and very much had happened to them since then. His desire for Cecily seemed to have died. He had not troubled to visit her in London ... he could have found time to do so, had he been anxious to see her ... but he had not the wish. He had not written to her about Jimphy ... he could not bring himself to do that ... and the thought that she might wish to see him did not stir his mind. He felt for her what a man feels for a woman he has loved, but now loves no more: neither like nor dislike, but, occasionally, curiosity that did not last long. She moved him as little as Sheila Morgan had done when he saw her in the field at Ballymartin, big with child, watching her husband drilling.

"There are permanent things in one's life, and there are impermanent things ... and you can't turn the one into the other," he thought to himself, as the little branch railway drove down the Axe Valley. "I wanted Cecily ... and then I didn't want her. There's no more to be said about it than that!"

There were very few people waiting on the platform when the train drew into Whitcombe, and so Henry and Mary saw each other immediately, and when he saw her, standing on the windy platform, with her hand to her hat, he felt more powerfully than he had ever felt it, his old love for her surging through him. Nothing could ever divert him from her for very long ... inevitably he would return to her ... whatever of permanence there was in his life was centred in her. He led her out of the station and they walked along the road at the top of the shingle ... and as they walked, suddenly he turned to her and, drawing her arm in his, told her that he loved her.

"I haven't much to offer you, Mary ... I'm a poor sort of fellow at the best ... but I need you, and!..."

She did not answer, but she looked up at him with shining eyes....

"My dear!" he said, and drew her very close to him.

3

They went up the path over the red cliffs and then climbed the steep steps that led to the top of the White Cliff. The night was beginning to gather her clouds about her, but still they did not hurry homewards. Far out, they could see the trawlers returning to the Bay, dipping and rising and plunging and reeling before the wind as from a heavy blow, and then, when it seemed that they must fall, righting themselves and moving swiftly homewards. Beneath them, the sea splashed in great thick waves that tossed their spray high in the air, and the gulls and jackdaws spun round and up and down or huddled themselves in the shelter of the cliffs.

"Mary!" he said, putting his arm about her.

"Yes, Quinny!" she answered so quietly that he could not hear her above the noise of the sea and the wind.

He raised her lips to his and kissed her.

"My dear!" he said again.

4

There was news of Ninian for them when they reached the Manor. Mrs. Graham, with his letter in her hand, met them at the door.

"He's coming home on leave," she said. "He'll be here to-morrow night. Then he's going out!..."

She turned away quickly, after she had spoken, and they followed her silently into the drawing-room. She stood for a while at the window, gazing down the avenue where the oaks and the chestnuts mingled their branches and made a covering for passers-by.

"I'll just go upstairs," Henry began, but before he could leave the room, Mrs. Graham turned away from the window and went to him.

"I've put you in your old room, Henry," she said. "How are you! You don't look well!"

"I'm tired ... but I shall be all right presently. I'll just go upstairs now!..."

He left her hurriedly, for Mary was anxious to tell her mother of their betrothal, and he wished her to know as quickly as possible. He dallied in his room so that she might have plenty of time in which to learn Mary's news. He sat on the wide window-seat and let his mind roam over his memories. It was in this room that he had first told himself that he loved Mary ... it was at this very window he had stood while he resolved that he would marry Sheila Morgan, and again had considered what Ninian and Gilbert had said about men who marry out of their class. Almost he expected to hear the door opening as Gilbert walked in, just as he had done then....

"It's no good mooning like this," he said to himself, and then he went downstairs again.

Mary was sitting beside her mother, holding her hand, and as he entered she turned to look at him, and smiled so that he knew what he must do, and so, without hesitation, he crossed the room to Mrs. Graham and kissed her.

"I'm very glad, Henry!" she said. "Sit down here!"

She moved so that he could sit beside her, and when he had settled himself, she put her hand on his shoulder. "It's nice to have you back again," she said.

They spent the time until dinner in desultory talk that sometimes lapsed into lengthy silence. A high wind was blowing up from the sea, and when they had dined, they drew their chairs close to the fire, and sat quietly in the warmth of it. They could hear the heavy rustle of the leaves as the trees swayed in the wind, and now and then raindrops fell down the chimney and sizzled in the hot coals. The lamps were left unlit, and the firelight made long shadows round the room, flickering over the old polished furniture and the silverware and the dim portraits of dead Grahams....

Mary moved from her chair and, placing a cushion on the floor between Henry and her mother, she sat down and leant her head against him. He bent forward slightly, and placed his hand on her shoulder, and as he did so, she put hers up and took hold of it and so they sat in exquisite peace and quietness until the rising wind, gathering itself together in greater strength, flung itself heavily on the house and shook it roughly. In the lull, they could hear the rain beating sharply on the windows ... and as they listened to the noise of the storm, their minds wandered away, and in their imagination they could see the soldiers in France, crouching in the dark trenches, while the wind and rain beat about them without pity; and in the mind of each of them, probing painfully, was this persistent thought: Here we are in this comfort ... and there they are in that!

5

When Mary had gone to bed, Mrs. Graham began to talk of her to Henry.

"I always knew that she and you would marry, Henry," she said, "even when you seemed to have forgotten about her. You ... you were very fond of Lady Cecily Jayne, weren't you, Henry?" He nodded his head. He wanted to explain that that was over now, that it had been a passing thing that had no durability, but he could not make the explanation, and so he did not say anything. "I thought her a very beautiful woman," Mrs. Graham went on. "If I'd been a boy I think I should have loved her, too. Boys are like that!"

She was so gentle and kind and understanding that he lost his shyness, and he confided in her as he would like to have confided in his mother if she had been alive.

"Inside me," he said, "I always loved Mary, even when I was obsessed by ... by some one else. I can't tell you how happy I am, Mrs. Graham. I feel as if I'd got home after a long and bitter journey ... and I don't want to go away again ever. Just to look at Mary seems sufficient ... to know that she's there ... that I can put out my hand and touch her...."

"Ninian will be glad, too," she said, speaking quickly to cover up the difficulty he had in finishing his speech.

"We've been awfully good friends, we four," he replied, "Ninian and Roger and Gilbert and I. I've always felt about them that we could go on with our friendship just where we left off, even if we were separated from each other for years. We're all proud of each other. I used to think, when we first lived in that house in Bloomsbury, that we'd never separate ... that we'd form a sort of brotherhood of work and friendship ... Roger always preached about The Job Well Done ... but, of course that was impossible. We were bound to diverge and separate ... all sorts of things compel men to do that. Roger married, and now Gilbert and Ninian are soldiers...."

"I feel proud and afraid," Mrs. Graham said. "I'm glad that Ninian has joined ... I think I should hate it if he hadn't ... and yet I wish too that ... that he weren't in it. I'm not much of a patriot, Henry. I love my son more than I love my country. I've never been able to understand those women one reads about who offer their sons gladly. I don't offer Ninian gladly. I offer him ... that's all. I know that men have to defend their country, and I love England and I'm proud to be English ... but when I've said all that, it's very little when I remember that I love Ninian. I suppose that that's a selfish thing to say ... but I don't care whether it is or not!..." She stopped for a moment or two, and then, with a change of voice, she said, "Do you think the war will last long, Henry?"

"I don't know," he replied. "Nobody seems able to form any estimate. When it began I thought it couldn't possibly last for longer than two months, but it looks like going on for a very long time yet. We move forward and we move back ... and more men are killed. That's the only result of anything at present!"

"It's strange," she murmured, "how indifferent one becomes to the death lists. I thought my heart would break when I saw the first Devon casualties, but now one simply doesn't feel anything ... just a vague regret. Sometimes I think I'm growing callous. I can't feel anything when I read that thousands of men have been killed and wounded. It's almost as if I were saying to myself, 'Is that all? Weren't there more?...' I'm not the only one like that. People don't like to admit it, but I've heard people confessing ... I confess myself ... that I get a ... kind of shocked pleasure out of a big casualty list! ... Oh, isn't it disgusting, Henry? One gets more and more coarse every day, less sensitive!..."

"Yes," he said, nodding his head and staring into the fire which was now burning down.

And everywhere, it seemed to him, that coarsening process was going on, a persistent blunting of the feelings, an itching desire for more and grimmer and bloodier details. One saw it operating in kindly women who visited soldiers in hospital or took them for drives ... an uncontrollable wish to hear the ghastlier things, a greedy anxiety for "experiences." ... And the soldiers loathed these prying women in whom lust had taken a new turn: the love lust had turned to blood lust, and those who had formerly itched for men (and even those who had not) itched now for horrors, more and more horrors.... "Tell me, now," they would say, "did you kill any Germans? I suppose you saw some awful things...."

One saw this coarsening process operating on men with incredible swiftness. Their tastes became edgeless ... they entertained themselves with big, splashy things, asking for noise and glare and an inchoate massing of colour, and crowds and crowds of bare girls. There was a demand for Nakedness, not the nakedness of cleanly, natural things, but the Nakedness that is partly covered, the Nakedness that hints at Nakedness....

"That's inevitable, I suppose," Henry thought to himself.

The sloppier journalists made a cult of blasphemy and foul speech. The drill-sergeant was regarded as the most entertaining of humourists, and decent men who had never done more than the normal and healthy amount of swearing, began to believe that it was impossible to be manly unless one bloodied every time one spoke: and swearing, which is a good and wholesome and manly and picturesque thing, suddenly became like the gibbering of an idiot.... One was led to believe that the drill-sergeant spent his time in ordering men to "bloody well form bloody fours!" It was immaterial to the sloppier journalists that the drill-sergeant did not do anything of the sort ... and so the legend grew, of a great Army going into battle, not with the old English war-cries on their lips or with new cries as noble, but with "Bloody!" for their watch-word, and "Who were you With Last Night!" for their war-song....

6

"I often wonder what things will be like when the war is over," Mrs. Graham said. "Men can't live like that without some permanent effect. Their habits will be rougher, more elementary, I suppose, and they'll value life less highly. I don't see how they can help it. You can't see men killed in that careless way ... and feel any sanctity about life. I think life will be harsher for women after the war than it was before...."

She remembered that Ninian's father had always declared that the Franco-German War had brutalised Germany.

"He'd lived in Germany for a long while," she said, "and people admitted that Germany had changed after the War ... grown coarser and leas kindly!..."

They talked on in this strain until the clock chimed twelve. The storm still blew over the house, but the rain had ceased, and when they looked out of the window, they could see a rift in the clouds, through which the moon tore her way.

"Good-night, Henry," she said, bending towards him, and he kissed her cheek and then opened the door for her.

"Good-night!" he said.

7

Ninian came home on the next day, and when they had told him the news of Henry's engagement to Mary, he was full of cheers. "Good!" he said. "Now I shall be able to keep you in order, young fellow. I shall be a Relation!..."

"Oh, I've a note for you," he exclaimed, as they drove home. "It's from Gilbert. I met him in town. He'll be on his way out before I get back. He'd like to have come down here, but he couldn't manage it. He sent his love to you, Mary, and you, mother! He looks jolly fit ... never seen him look fitter!"

He handed Gilbert's note to Henry who put it in his pocket. He would read it, he told himself, when he was alone.

"We're hopping off to France next week," Ninian said. "I suppose," he added, turning again to Henry, "you saw that Jimphy Jayne was killed. Rough luck, wasn't it? I met a fellow who was in his regiment ... home on sick-leave ... and he says Jimphy fought like fifty. Gilbert says Cecily's bearing up wonderfully!"

"He's seen her then?" Henry asked.

"Yes. She met him in the street ... and as he says, she's bearing up wonderfully. He didn't say a great deal, but I imagine he didn't admire the attitude much. Rum woman, Cecily!" He had grown together more since he had been to South America, and his figure, that was always loose-looking and a little hulking, had been tightened up by his training.

"I don't like your moustache, Ninian," his mother said, looking with disfavour at the "tooth-brush" on his upper lip.

"Nor do I," he replied, "but you have to wear something on your face ... they don't think you can fight if you don't ... and this sort of thing is the least a chap can do for his king and country. When are you two going to get married?"

His conversation jumped about like a squib.

"Oh, not yet," Mrs. Graham hurriedly exclaimed. "There's plenty of time...."

"I should like to get married at once," said Henry.

"No, not yet," Mrs. Graham insisted. "I won't be left alone yet awhile...."

There was a learned discourse from Ninian on lengthy engagements which filled the time until the carriage drove up to Boveyhayne House, where it was dropped as suddenly as it was begun.

Indoors, Henry read Gilbert's letter.

* * * * *

"My dear Quinny," he wrote, "I'm writing this in Soho with a pen that was made in hell." Then there was a splutter of ink. "There," the letter went on, "that's the sort of thing it does. I believe this pen was brought to Soho by the first Frenchman to open a cafe here, and it's been handed down from proprietor to proprietor ever since. Ninian and I have been dining together, and as he's going down to Boveyhayne to-morrow, I thought I might as well write to you because I shan't see you again for a while. I'm off to Gallipoli in a day or two. I dined with Roger and Rachel last night, and they told me that you looked rather pipped before you went to Devonshire. I hope you'll soon be all right again. I wish we could have met, but it can't be helped. We must just meet when we can. It seems a very long while, doesn't it, since we were at Tre'Arrdur together? It'll be jolly to be there again when the war's over. You've no idea how interested I've become in this job, far more interested than I ever imagined I should be. And I've changed very largely in my attitude towards the War. I 'joined up' chiefly because I felt an uncontrollable love for England that made me want to do things that were repugnant to me, and also because I thought that the Germans had behaved very scurvily to the Belgians; but I don't feel those emotions now particularly. I do, of course, feel proud of England, and the sight of a hedgerow makes me want to get up on my hindlegs and cheer, but I've got something else now that had never entered into my calculations at all ... and that is an extraordinary pride in my regiment and a strong desire to be worthy of it. I've just been reading a book about it, a history of the regiment, and it's left me with a sense of inheritance ... as I should feel if I were the heir of an old estate. This thing has a history and a tradition which gives me a feeling of pride and, perhaps more than that, a sense of responsibility. ... 'You mustn't let it down' I keep telling myself, and I feel about all the men who served in the regiment from the time it was formed, that they are my forefathers, so to speak. I feel their ghosts about me, not the alarming sort of spook, but friendly, sympathetic ghosts, and I imagine them saying to me, 'Sergeant Farlow, you've got to live up to us!' I've not told any one else about this, because I'm afraid of being called a sloppy ass ... and perhaps it is sloppy ... but you'll understand what I feel, so I don't mind telling you. I shall write to you as often as I can, and you must write to me and tell me what you're doing. I wish we could have gone out together. Sometimes I get a creepy-crawly sort of feeling that nearly turns me inside out ... a feeling that this is good-bye for good, but I suppose most fellows get that just before they go out. I began another play about a month ago, and I think it will be good, much better than anything else I've done. I wish I had time to finish it before leaving home. This is rather a mess of a letter, and I must chuck it now, for Ninian is getting tied up in an effort to cultivate a cordial understanding with the waiter, and I shall have to rescue them both or there'll be a rupture between the Allies. Give my love to Mary and Mrs. Graham. I'd have gone to Boveyhayne to see them if I possibly could, tell them. So long, old chap!

"Yours Ever,

"Gilbert Farlow."

* * * * *

He showed the letter to Mary, and as he gave it to her, he felt a new pleasure in his love for her, the pleasure of sharing things, of having confidences together.

"Gilbert's a dear," she said, when she had finished reading the letter. "It would be awfully hard not to be fond of him!"

He took the letter and put it in his pocket, and then he put his arm in Mary's and led her to the garden where the spring flowers were blowing. "I've had great luck," he said. "I have Gilbert for my friend and I have you, Mary, to be my wife, and I don't know that I deserve either!"

"Silly Quinny!" she said affectionately.

8

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

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

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

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

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

9

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

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

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

"All right, mother!" he answered.

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

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

"Righto, Ninian," Henry answered.

Mary came and sat beside him when Ninian had gone.

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

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

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

"Nothing will happen to him...."

One said that just because it was comforting.

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

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

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

He did not answer.

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

"Who was it?" he asked.

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

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

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

"No, Mary!..."

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

"Yes."

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

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

"Why didn't you?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes."

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

"I know!" he exclaimed.

"How do you know?"

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

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

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

"You have," she retorted.

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

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

10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



THE EIGHTH CHAPTER

1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2

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