She went now to kneel at the beside of the dying woman. Mary's weary eyes lifted, and she smiled faintly at the lady who had been kind to her. Then unconsciousness returned, and the village nurse gave it as her opinion that the end was near.

Elizabeth looked round the room. Thank God the cottage did not belong to the Squire! The bedroom was about ten feet by seven, with a sloping thatched roof, supported by beams three centuries old. The one window was about two feet square. The nurse pointed to it.

'The doctor said no pneumonia case could possibly recover in a room like this. And there are dozens of them, Miss, in this village. Oh, Mary is glad to go. She nursed her mother for years, and then her father for years. She never had a day's pleasure, and she was as good as gold.'

Elizabeth held the clammy, misshapen hand, pressing her lips to it when she rose to go, as to the garment of a saint.

Then she walked quickly back through the fading spring day, her heart torn with prayer and remorse—remorse that such a life as Mary Wilson's should have been possible within reach of her own life and she not know it; and passionate praying for a better world, through and after the long anguish of the war.

'Else for what will these boys have given their lives!—what meaning in the suffering and the agony!—or in the world which permits and begets them?'

Then, at last, it was past seven o'clock. The dusk had fallen, and the stars were coming out in a pure pale blue, over the leafless trees. Elizabeth and Alice Gaddesden stood waiting at the open door of the hall. A motor ambulance was meeting the train. They would soon be here now.

Elizabeth turned to Mrs. Gaddesden.

'Won't you give a last look and see if it is all right?'

Alice's weak, pretty face cleared, as she went off to give a final survey to Desmond's room. She admitted that Elizabeth had been 'nice' that day, and all the days before. Perhaps she had been hasty.

Lights among the distant trees! Elizabeth thought of the boy who had gone out from that door, two months before, in the charm and beauty of his young manhood. What wreck was it they were bringing back?

Then the remembrance stabbed her of that curt note from France—of what Mrs. Gaddesden had said. She withdrew into the background. With all the rest to help, she would not be wanted. Yes, she had been too masterful, too prominent.

Two motors appeared, the ambulance motor behind another. They drew up at the side door leading direct through a small lobby to the library, and the Squire, his eldest son, and Captain Chicksands stepped out—then Pamela.

Pamela ran up to her sister. The girl's eyes were red with crying, but she was composed.

'On the whole, he has borne the journey well. Where is Miss Bremerton?'

Elizabeth, hearing her name, emerged from the shadow in which she was standing. To her astonishment Pamela threw an arm round her neck and kissed her.

'Is everything ready?'

'Everything. Will you come and see?'

'Yes. They won't want us here.'

For the lobby was small; and surgeon and nurses were already standing beside the open door of the ambulance, the surgeon giving directions to the stretcher-bearers of the estate who had been waiting.

Pamela looked at the bed, the nurses' table, the bare boards, the flowers. Her face worked pitifully. She turned to Elizabeth, who caught her in her arms.

'Oh, I am glad you have put the picture away!'

One deep sob, and she recovered herself.

'He's not much disfigured,' she murmured, 'only a cut on the forehead. Most of the journey he has been quite cheerful. That was the morphia. But he's tired now. They're coming in.'

But it was the Squire who entered—asking peremptorily for Miss Bremerton.

The well-known voice struck some profound response in Elizabeth. She turned to him. How changed, how haggard, was the aspect!

'Martin—that's the surgeon we've brought with us—wants something from Fallerton at once. Renshaw's here, but he can't be spared for telephoning. Come, please!'

But before she could pass through the door, it was filled by a procession. The stretcher came through, followed by the surgeon and nurses who had come from France. Elizabeth caught a glimpse of a white face and closed eyes. It was as though something royal and sacred entered the hushed room. She could have fallen on her knees, as in a Breton 'pardon' when the Host goes by.



CHAPTER XVI

The bustle of the arrival was over. The doctors had given their orders, the nurses were at their posts for the night, and, under morphia, Desmond was sleeping. In the shaded library there were only hushed voices and movements. By the light of the one lamp, which was screened from the bed, one saw dimly the fantastic shapes in the glass cases which lined the walls—the little Tanagra figures with their sun-hats and flowing dress—bronzes of Apollo or Hermes—a bronze bull—an ibex—a cup wreathed with acanthus. And in the shadow at the far end rose the great Nike. She seemed to be asking what the white bed and the shrouded figure upon it might mean—protesting that these were not her symbols, or a language that she knew.

Yet at times, as the light varied, she seemed to take another aspect. To Aubrey, sitting beside his brother, the Nike more than once suggested the recollection of a broken Virgin hanging from a fragment of a ruined church which he remembered on a bit of road near Mametz, at which he had seen passing soldiers look stealthily and long. Her piteous arms, empty of the babe, suggested motherhood to boys fresh from home; and there were moments when this hovering Nike seemed to breathe a mysterious tenderness like hers—became a proud and splendid angel of consolation—only, indeed, to resume, with some fresh change in the shadows, its pagan indifference, its exultant loneliness.

The Squire sat by the fire, staring into the redness of the logs. Occasionally nurse or doctor would come and whisper to him. He scarcely seemed to hear them. What was the good of talking? He knew that Desmond was doomed—that his boy's noble body was shattered—and the end could only be a question of days—possibly a week. During the first nights of Desmond's sufferings, the Squire had lived through what had seemed an eternity of torment. Now there was no more agony. Morphia could be freely given—and would be given till all was over. The boy's young strength was resisting splendidly, a vitality so superb was hard to beat; but beaten it would be, by the brutality of the bullet which had inflicted an internal injury past repair, against which the energy of the boy's youth might hold out for a few days—not more. That was why he had been allowed to bring his son home—to die. If there had been a ray, a possibility of hope, every resource of science would have been brought to bear on saving him, there in that casualty clearing-station, itself a large hospital, where the Squire had found him.

All the scenes, incidents, persons of the preceding days were flowing in one continuous medley through the Squire's mind—the great spectacle of the back of the Army, with all its endless movement, its crowded roads and marching men, the hovering aeroplanes, the camouflaged guns, the long trains of artillery waggons and motor-lorries, strange faces of Kaffir boys and Chinese, grey lines of German prisoners. And then, the hospital. Nothing very much doing, so he was told. Yet hour after hour the wounded came in, men shattered by bomb and shell and rifle-bullet, in the daily raids that went on throughout the line. And scarcely a moan, scarcely a word of complaint!—men giving up their turn with the surgeon to a comrade—'Never mind me, sir—he's worse nor me!'—or the elder cheering the younger—'Stick it, young'un—this'll get you to Blighty right enough!'—or, in the midst of mortal pain, signing a field postcard for the people at home, or giving a message to a padre for mother or wife. Like some monstrous hand, the grip of the war had finally closed upon the Squire's volatile, recalcitrant soul. It was now crushing the moral and intellectual energy in himself, as it had crushed the physical life of his son. For it was as though he were crouching on some bare space, naked and alone, like a wounded man left behind in a shell-hole by his comrades' advance. He was aware, indeed, of a mysterious current of spiritual force—patriotism, or religion, or both in one—which seemed to be the support of other men. He had seen incredible, superhuman proofs of it in those few hospital days. But it was of no use to him.

There was only one dim glimmer in his mind—towards which at intervals he seemed to be reaching out. A woman's face—a woman's voice—in which there seemed to be some offer of help or comfort. He had seen her—she was somewhere in the house. But there seemed to be insuperable barriers—closed doors, impassable spaces—between himself and her. It was a nightmare, partly the result of fatigue and want of sleep.

When he had first seen his son, Desmond was unconscious, and the end was hourly expected. He remembered telegraphing to a famous surgeon at home to come over; he recalled the faces of the consultants round Desmond's bed, and the bald man with the keen eyes, who had brought him the final verdict:

'Awfully sorry!—but we can do nothing! He may live a little while—and he has been begging and praying us to send him home. Better take him—the authorities will give leave. I'll see to that—it can't do much harm. The morphia will keep down the pain—and the poor lad will die happy.' And then there was much talk of plaster bandages, and some new mechanical appliance to prevent jolting—of the surgeon going home on leave who would take charge of the journey—of the nurses to be sent—and other matters of which he only retained a blurred remembrance.

The journey had been one long and bitter endurance. And now Desmond was here—his son Desmond—lying for a few days in that white bed—under the old roof. And afterwards a fresh grave in Fallerton churchyard—a flood of letters which would be burnt unread—and a world without Desmond.

Meanwhile, in a corner of the hall, Chicksands and Pamela were sitting together—hand in hand. From the moment when he had gone down to Folkestone to meet them, and had seen Pamela's piteous and beautiful face, as she followed the stretcher on which Desmond lay, across the landing-stage of the boat, Chicksands' mind had been suddenly clear. No words, indeed, except about the journey and Desmond had passed between them. But she had seen in his dark eyes a sweetness, a passion of protection and help which had thawed all the ice in her heart, and freed the waters of life. She was ashamed of herself, but only for a little while! For in Desmond's presence all that concerned herself passed clean out of sight and mind. It was not till she saw Elizabeth that remorse lifted its head again; and whatever was delicate and sensitive in the girl's nature revived, like scorched grass after rain.

Since the hurried, miserable meal, in which Elizabeth had watched over them all, Pamela had followed Elizabeth about, humbly trying to help her in the various household tasks. Then when at last Elizabeth had gone off to telephone some final orders to Captain Dell at Fallerton for the morning Pamela and Arthur were left alone.

He came over to where she sat, and drew a chair beside her.

'Poor child!' he said, under his breath—'poor child!'

She lifted her eyes, swimming in tears.

'Isn't it marvellous, how she's thought of everything—done everything?'

Elizabeth had not been in his mind, but he understood the amende offered and was deeply touched.

'Yes, she's a wonderful creature. Let her care for you, Pamela, dear Pamela!'

He lifted her hand to his lips, and put his arm round her. She leant against him, and he gently kissed her cheek. So Love came to them, but in its most tragic dress, veiled and dumb, with haggard eyes of grief.

Then Pamela tried to tell him all that she herself had understood of the gallant deed, the bit of 'observation work' in the course of which Desmond had received his wound. He had gone out with another subaltern, a sergeant, and a telephonist, creeping by night over No Man's Land to a large shell-hole, close upon an old crater where a German outpost of some thirty men had found shelter. They had remained there for forty-eight hours—unrelieved—listening and telephoning. Then having given all necessary information to the artillery Headquarters which had sent them out, they started on the return journey. But they were seen and fired on. Desmond might have escaped but for his determined endeavours to bring in the Sergeant, who was the first of them to fall. A German sniper hidden in a fragment of ruin caught the boy just outside the British line; he fell actually upon the trench.

Desmond had been the leader all through, said Pamela; his Colonel said he was 'the pluckiest, dearest fellow'—he failed 'in nothing you ever asked him for.'

Just such a story as comes home, night after night, and week after week, from the fighting line! Nothing remarkable in it, except, perhaps, the personal quality of the boy who had sacrificed his life. Arthur Chicksands, with three years of the war behind him, felt that he knew it by heart—could have repeated it, almost in his sleep, and each time with a different name.

'The other lieutenant who was with him,' said Pamela, 'told us he was in splendid spirits the day before; and then at night, just before they started, Desmond was very quiet, and they said to each other that whatever happened that night they never expected to see England again; and each promised the other that the one who survived, if either did, would take messages home. Desmond told him he was to tell me, if he was killed—that he'd "had a splendid life"—and lived it "all out." "She's not to think of it as cut short. I've had it all. One lives here a year in a day." And he'd only been seven weeks at the front! He said it was the things he'd seen—not the horrible things—but the glorious things that made him feel like that. Now he did believe there was a God—and I must believe it too.'

The tears ran down her face. Arthur held the quivering hands close in his; and through his soldier's mind, alive with the latest and innermost knowledge of the war, there flashed a terrible pre-vision of the weeks to come, the weeks of the great offensive, the storm of which might break any day—was certain, indeed, to break soon, and would leave behind it, trampled like leaves into a mire of blood, thousands of lives like Desmond's—Britain's best and rarest.

* * * * *

An hour later the hall was deserted, except for Elizabeth, who, after seeing Pamela to bed, came down to write some household letters by the only fire. Presently the surgeon who was sitting up with Desmond appeared, looking worried. His countenance brightened at sight of Elizabeth, with whom he had already had much practical consultation.

'Could you persuade Mr. Mannering to go to bed?'

Elizabeth rose with some hesitation and followed him into the library. The great room, once so familiar, now so strange, the nurses in their white uniforms, moving silently, one standing by the bed, watch in hand—Major Mannering on the farther side, motionless—the smell of antiseptics, the table by the bed with all its paraphernalia of bandages, cups, glasses, medicine bottles—the stillness of brooding death which held it all—seemed to dash from her any last, blind, unreasonable hope that she might have cherished.

The Squire standing by the fire, where he had been opposing a silent but impatient opposition to the attempt of doctor and nurses to make him take some rest, saw Elizabeth enter. His eyes clung to her as she approached him. So she was near him—and he was not cut off from her.

Then the surgeon watched with astonishment the sudden docility of a man who had already seemed to him one of the most unmanageable of persons. What spell had this woman exercised? At any rate, after a few whispered words from her, the Squire bowed his white head and followed her out of the room.

In the hall Elizabeth offered him a candle, and begged him to go to bed. He shook his head, and pointed to a chair by the dying fire.

'That will do. Then I shall hear—'

He threw himself into it. She brought him a rug, for the night was chilly, and he submitted.

Then she was going away, for it was past midnight, but something in his fixed look, his dull suffering, checked her. She took an old stool and sat down near him. Neither spoke, but his eyes gradually turned to hers, and a strange communion arose between them. Though there were no words, he seemed to be saying to her—'My boy!—my boy!'—over and over again—and then—'Stay there!—for God's sake, stay!'

And she stayed. The failing lamp showed her upturned face, with its silent intensity of pity, her hands clasped round her knees, and the brightness of her hair. The long minutes passed. Then suddenly the Squire's eyelids fell, and he slept the sleep of a man physically and mentally undone.

Aubrey Mannering sat by his brother all night. With the first dawn Desmond awoke, and there was an awful interval of pain. But a fresh morphia injection eased it, and Aubrey presently saw a smile—a look of the old Desmond. The nurse washed the boy's hands and face, brought him a cup of tea, took pulse and temperature.

'He's no worse,' she said in a whisper to Aubrey, as she passed him.

Aubrey went up to the bed.

'Aubrey, old chap!' said the boy, and smiled at him. Then—'It's daylight. Can't I look out?'

The nurse and Mannering wheeled his bed to the window, which opened to the ground. A white frost was on the grass, and there was a clear sky through which the sunrise was fast mounting. Along an eastern wood ran a fiery rose of dawn, the fine leaf-work of the beeches showing sharply upon it. There was a thrush singing, and a robin came close to the window, hopped on the ledge, and looked in.

'Ripping!' said Desmond softly. 'There were jolly mornings in France too.' Then his clear brow contracted. Aubrey stooped to him.

'Any news?' said the blanched lips.

'None yet, old man. We shan't get the papers till eight.'

'What's the date?'

'March 18th.'

Desmond gave a long sigh.

'I would have liked to be in it!'

'In the big battle?' Aubrey's lip trembled. 'You have done your bit, old man.'

'But how is it going to end?' said the boy, moving his head restlessly. 'Shall we win?—or they? I shall live as long as ever I can—just to know. I feel quite jolly now—isn't it strange?—and yet I made the doctors tell me—'

He turned a bright look on his brother, and his voice grew stronger. 'I had such a queer dream last night, Aubrey,—about you—and that friend of yours—do you remember?—you used to bring him down—to stay here—when Pam and I were little—Freddy Vivian—'

The boy looking out into the woods and the morning did not see the change—the spasm—in his brother's face. He continued—'We kids liked him awfully. Well, I saw him! I actually did. He stood there—by you. He was talking a lot—I didn't understand—but—'

A sudden movement. Aubrey fell on his knees beside the bed. His deep haggard eyes stared at his brother. There was in them an anguish, an eagerness, scarcely human.

'Desmond!—can't you remember?'

The words were just breathed—panted.

Desmond, whose eyes had closed again, smiled faintly.

'Why, of course I can't remember. He had his hand on your shoulder. I just thought he was cheering you up—about something.'

'Desmond!—it was I that killed him—I could have saved him!'

The boy opened his eyes. His startled look expressed the question he had not strength to put.

Aubrey bent over the bed, speaking hurriedly—under possession. 'It was at Neuve Chapelle. I had gone back for help—he and ten or twelve others who had moved on too fast were waiting in a bit of shelter till I could get some more men from the Colonel. The Germans were coming on thick. And I went back. There was a barrage on—and on the way—I shirked—my nerve went. I sat down for twenty minutes by my watch—I hid—in a shell-hole. Then I went to the Colonel, and he gave me the men. And when we got up to the post, I was just a quarter of an hour too late. Vivian was lying there dead—and the others had been mopped up—prisoners—by a German bombing party. It was I who killed Vivian. No one knows.'

Aubrey's eyes searched those of the boy.

The next moment Mannering was torn with poignant remorse that, under the sudden shock of that name, he should have spoken at last—after three years—to this dying lad. Crime added to crime!

'Don't think of it any more, Desmond,' he said hurriedly, raising himself and laying his hand on his brother's. 'I oughtn't to have told you.'

But Desmond showed no answering agitation.

'I did see him!' he whispered. 'He stood there—' His eyes turned towards the window. He seemed to be trying to remember—but soon gave up the effort. 'Poor old Aubrey!' His feeble hand gave a faint pressure to his brother's. 'Why, it wasn't you, old fellow!—it was your body.'

Aubrey could not reply. He hid his face in his hands. The effort of his own words had shaken him from top to toe. To no human being had he ever breathed what he had just told his young brother. Life seemed broken—disorganized.

Desmond was apparently watching the passage of a flock of white south-westerly clouds across the morning sky. But his brain was working, and he said presently—

'After I was struck, I hated my body. I'd—I'd like to commit my spirit to God—but not my body!'

Then again—very faintly—

'It was only your body, Aubrey—not your soul. Poor old Aubrey!' Then he dozed off again, with intervals of pain.

At eight o'clock Pamela came in—a vision of girlish beauty in spite of watching and tears, in her white dressing-gown, the masses of her hair loosely tied.

She sat down by him, and the nurse allowed her to give him milk and brandy. Paralysis in the lower limbs was increasing, but the brain was clear, and the suffering less.

He smiled at her, after the painful swallowing was over.

'Why!—you're so like mother, Pamela!'

He was thinking of the picture in the 'den.' She raised his hand, and kissed it—determined to be brave, not to break down.

'Where's Broomie?' he whispered.

'She'd like to come and see you, Dezzy. Dezzy, darling!—I was all wrong. She's been so good—good to father—good to all of us.'

The boy's eyes shone.

'I thought so!' he said triumphantly. 'Is she up?'

'Long ago. Shall I tell her? I'll ask Nurse.'

And in a few more minutes Elizabeth was there.

Desmond had been raised a little on his pillows, and flushed at sight of her. Timidly, he moved his hand, and she laid hers on it. Then, stirred by an impulse that seemed outside her will, she stooped over him, and kissed his forehead.

'That was nice!' he murmured, smiling, and lay for a little with his eyes shut. When he opened them again, he said—

'May I call you Elizabeth?'

Elizabeth's tender look and gesture answered. He gazed at her in silence, gathering strength for some effort that was evidently on his mind.

'Father minds awfully,' he said at last, his look clouding. 'And there's no one—to—to cheer him up.'

'He loves you so,' said Elizabeth, with difficulty, 'he always has loved you so.'

The furrow on his brow grew a little deeper.

'But that doesn't matter now—nothing matters but—'

After a minute he resumed, in a rather stronger voice—'Tell me about the woods—and the ash trees. I did laugh over that—old Hull telling you there were none—and you—Why, I could have shown him scores.'

She told him all the story of the woods, holding his hot hand in her cool ones, damping his brow with the eau-de-cologne the nurses gave her, and smiling at him. Her voice soothed him. It was so clear and yet soft, like a song,—not a song of romance or passion, but like the cheerful crooning songs that mothers sing. And her face reminded him even more of his mother than Pamela's. She was not the least like his mother, but there was something in her expression that first youth cannot have—something comforting, profound, sustaining.

He wanted her always to sit there. But his mind wandered from what she was saying after a little, and returned to his father.

'Is father there?' he asked, trying to turn his head, and failing.

'Not yet.'

'Poor father! Elizabeth!' he spoke the name with a boyish shyness.

'Yes!' She stooped over him.

'You won't go away?'

Elizabeth hesitated a moment, and he looked distressed.

'From Mannering, I mean. Do stay, Broomie!'—the name slipped out, and in his weakness he did not notice it—'Pamela knows—that she was horrid!'

'Dear Desmond, I will do everything I can for Pamela.'

'And for father?'

'Yes, indeed—I will be all the help I can,' repeated Elizabeth.

Desmond relapsed into silence and apparent sleep. But Elizabeth's heart smote her. She felt she had not satisfied him.

* * * * *

But before long by the mere natural force of her personality, she seemed to be the leading spirit in the sick-room. Only she could lead or influence the Squire, whose state of sullen despair terrified the household. The nurses and doctors depended on her for all those lesser aids that intelligence and love can bring to hospital service. The servants of the house would have worked all night and all day for her and Mr. Desmond. Yet all this was scarcely seen—it was only felt—'a life, a presence like the air.' Most of us have known the same experience—how, when human beings come to the testing, the values of a house change, and how men and women, who have been in it as those who serve, become naturally and noiselessly its rulers, and those who once ruled, their dependents. It was so at Mannering. A tender, unconscious sovereignty established itself; and both the weak and the strong grouped themselves round it.

Especially did Elizabeth seem to understand the tragic fact that as death drew nearer the boy struggled more painfully to live, that he might know what was happening on the battlefield. He would have the telegrams read to him night and morning. And he would lie brooding over them for long afterwards. The Rector came to see him, and Desmond accepted gratefully his readings and his prayers. But they were scarcely done before he would turn to Elizabeth, and his eager feverish look would send her to the telephone to ask Arthur Chicksands at the War Office if Haig's mid-day telegram was in—or any fresh news.

On the 20th of March, Chicksands, who had been obliged to go back to his work, came down again for the night. Desmond lay waiting for him, and Arthur saw at once that death was much nearer. But the boy had himself insisted on strychnine and morphia before the visit, and talked a great deal.

The military news, however, that Chicksands brought him disappointed him greatly.

'Not yet?'—he said miserably—'not yet?'—breathing his life into the words, when Chicksands read him a letter from a staff officer in the Intelligence Department describing the enormous German preparations for the offensive, but expressing the view—'It may be some days more before they risk it!'

'I shall be gone before they begin!' he said, and lay sombre and frowning on his pillows, till Chicksands had beguiled him by some letters from men in Desmond's own division which he had taken special trouble to collect for him.

And when the boy's mood and look were calmer, Arthur bent over him and gave him, with a voice that must shake, the news of his Military Cross—for 'brilliant leadership and conspicuous courage' in the bit of 'observation work' that had cost him his life.

Desmond listened with utter incredulity and astonishment.

'It's not me!'—he protested faintly—'it's a mistake!'

Chicksands produced the General's letter—the Cross itself. Desmond looked at it with unwilling eyes.

'I call it silly—perfectly silly! Why, there were fellows that deserved it ten times more than I did!'

And he asked that it should be put away, and did not speak of it again.

In all his talk with him that night, the elder officer was tragically struck by the boy's growth in intelligence. Just as death was claiming it, the young mind had broadened and deepened—had become the mind of a man. And in the vigil which he kept during part of that night with Martin, the able young surgeon who had brought Desmond home, and was spending his own hard-earned leave in easing the boy's death, Chicksands found that Martin's impression was the same as his own.

'It's wonderful how he's grown and thought since he's been out there. But do we ever consider—do we ever realize—enough!—what a marvellous thing it is that young men—boys—like Desmond—should be able to live, day after day, face to face with death—consciously and voluntarily—and get quite used to it? Which of us before the war had ever been in real physical danger—danger of violent death?—and that not for a few minutes—but for days, hours, weeks? It seems to make men over again—to create a new type—by the hundred thousand. And to some men it is an extraordinary intoxication—this conscious and deliberate acceptance—defiance!—of death—for a cause—for their country. It sets them free from themselves. It matures them, all in a moment—as though the bud and the flower came together. Oh, of course, there are those it brutalizes—and there are those it stuns. But Desmond was one of the chosen.'

The night passed. The Squire came in after midnight, and took his place by the bed.

Desmond was then restless and suffering, and the nurse in charge whispered to the Squire that the pulse was growing weaker. But the boy opened his eyes on his father, and tried to smile. The Squire sat bowed and bent beside him, and nurses and doctors withdrew from them a little—out of sight and hearing.

'Desmond!' said the Squire in a low voice.

'Yes.'

'Is there anything I could do—to please you?' It was a humble and a piteous prayer. Desmond's eyes travelled over his father's face.

'Only—love me!' he said, with difficulty. The Squire grew very white. Kneeling down he kissed his son—for the first time since Desmond was a child.

Desmond's beautiful mouth smiled a little.

'Thank you,' he said, so feebly that it could scarcely be heard. When the light began to come in he moved impatiently, asking for the newspapers. Elizabeth told him that old Perley had gone to meet them at the morning train at Fallerton, and would be out with them at the earliest possible moment.

But when they came the boy turned almost angrily from them. 'The Shipping Problem—Attacks on British Ports—Raids on the French Front—Bombardment of German Towns—Curfew Regulations'—Pamela's faltering voice read out the headings.

'Oh, what rot!' he said wearily—'what rot!'

After that his strength ebbed visibly through the morning.

Chicksands, who must return to town in the afternoon, sat with him, Pamela and Elizabeth opposite—Alice and Margaret not far away. The two doctors watched their patient, and Martin whispered to Aubrey Mannering, who had come down by a night train, that the struggle for life could not last much longer.

Presently about one o'clock, Aubrey, who had been called out of the room, came back and whispered something to Chicksands, who at once went away. Elizabeth, looking up, saw agitation and expectancy in the Major's look. But he said nothing.

In a few minutes Chicksands reappeared. He went straight to Desmond, and knelt down by him.

'Desmond!' he said in a clear voice, 'the offensive's begun. The Chief in my room at the War Office has just been telephoning me. It began at eight this morning—on a front of fifty miles. Can you hear me?' The boy opened his eyes—straining them on Arthur.

'It's begun!' he said eagerly—'begun! What have they done?'

'The bombardment opened at dawn—about five—the German infantry attacked about eight. It's been going on the whole morning—and down the whole front from Arras to the Scarpe.'

'And we've held?—we've held?'

'So far magnificently. Our outpost troops have been withdrawn to the battle-zone—that's all. The line has held everywhere. The Germans have lost heavily.'

'Outpost troops!' whispered the boy—'why, that's nothing! We always expected—to lose the first line. Good old Army!'

A pause, and then—so faintly breathed as to be scarcely audible, and yet in ecstasy—'England!—England!'

His joy was wonderful—heart-breaking—while all those around him wept.

He lay murmuring to himself a little while, his hand in Pamela's. Then for a last time he looked at his father, but was now too weak to speak. His eyes, intently fixed on the Squire, kept their marvellous brightness—no one knew how long. Then gently, as though an unseen hand put out a light, the brilliance died away—the lids fell—and with a few breaths Desmond's young life was past.



CHAPTER XVII

It was three weeks after Desmond's death. Pamela was sitting in the 'den' writing a letter to Arthur Chicksands at Versailles. The first onslaught on Amiens was over. The struggle between Bethune and Ypres was in full swing.

'DEAREST—This house is so strange—the world is so strange! Oh, if I hadn't my work to do!—how could one bear it? It seems wrong and hateful even, to let one's mind dwell on the wonderful, wonderful thing, that you love me! The British Army retreating—retreating—after these glorious years—that is what burns into me hour after hour! Thank God Desmond didn't know! And if I feel like this, who am just an ignorant, inexperienced girl, what must it be for you who are working there, at the very centre, the news streaming in on you all the time?—you who know how much there is to fear—but also how much there is to be certain of—to be confident of—that we can't know. Our splendid, splendid men! Every day I watch for the names I know in the death list—and some of them seem to be always there. The boy—the other sub-lieutenant—who was with Desmond when he was wounded, was in the list yesterday. Forest's boy is badly wounded. The old gardener has lost another son. Perley's boy is "missing," and so is the poor Pennington boy. They are heroic—the Penningtons—but whenever I see them I want to cry.... Oh, I can't write this any more. I have been writing letters of sympathy all day.

'Dearest, you would be astonished if you could see me at this moment. I am to-day a full blown group leader. Do you know what that means? I have had a long round among some of our farms to-day—bargaining with the farmers for the land-girls in my group, and looking after their billets. Yesterday I spent half the day in "docking" with six or eight village women to give them a "send off." I don't believe you know what docking means. It is pretty hard work, and at night I have a nightmare—of roots that never come to an end, and won't pull out!

'You were quite right—it is my work. I was born in the country. I know and love it. The farmers are very nice to me. They see I don't try to boss them as the Squire's daughter—that I'm just working as they are. And I can say a good deal to them about the war, because of Desmond. They all knew him and loved him. Some of them tell me stories about his pluck out hunting as a little chap, and though he had been such a short time out in France he had written to two or three of them about their sons in the Brookshires. He had a heavenly disposition—oh, I wish I had!

'At the present moment I am in knee-breeches, gaiters, and tunic, and I have just come in. Six o'clock to five, please sir, with half-an-hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner (I eat it out of a red handkerchief under a hedge). It was wet and nasty, and I am pretty tired. But one does not want to stop—because when one stops one begins to think. And my thoughts, except for that shining centre where you are, are so dark and full of sorrow. I miss Desmond every hour, and some great monstrous demon seems to be clutching at me—at you—at England—everything one loves and would die for—all day long. But don't imagine that I ever doubt for one moment. Not I—

For right is right, since God is God, And right the day must win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin.

I know that's not good poetry. But I just love it—because it's plain and commonplace, and expresses just what ordinary people feel and think.

'Oh, why was I such a fool about Elizabeth! Now that you are at a safe distance—and of course on the understanding that you never, never say a word to me about it—I positively will and must confess that I was jealous of her about you—yes, about you, Arthur—because you talked to her about Greek—and about ash for aeroplanes—and I couldn't talk about them. There's a nice nature for you! Hadn't you better get rid of me while you can? But the thing that torments me is that I can never have it quite out with Desmond. I told him lies, simply. I didn't know they were lies, I suppose; but I was too angry and too unjust to care whether they were or not. On the journey from France I said a few little words to him—just enough, thank Heaven! He was so sweet to her in those last days—and she to him. You know one side of her is the managing woman—and the other (I've only found it out since Desmond's death)—well, she seems to be just asking you to creep under her wings and be mothered! She mothered him, and she has mothered me since he shut his dear eyes for ever. Oh, why won't she mother us all—for good and all!—father first and foremost.

'I told you something about him last time I wrote, but there is a great deal more to tell. The horrible thing is that he seems not to care any more for any of his old hobbies. He sits there in the library day after day, or walks about it for hours and hours, without ever opening a book or looking at a thing. Or else he walks about the woods—sometimes quite late at night. Forest believes he sleeps very little. I told you he never came to Desmond's funeral. All business he hands over to Elizabeth, and what she asks him he generally does. But we all have vague, black fears about him. I know Elizabeth has. Yet she is quite clear she can't stay here much longer. Dear Arthur, I don't know exactly what happened, but I think father asked her to marry him, and she said no. And I am tolerably sure that I counted for a good deal in it—horrid wretch that I am!—that she thought it would make me unhappy.

'Well, I am properly punished. For if or when she goes away—and you and I are married—if there is to be any marrying any more in this awful world!—what will become of my father? He has been a terrifying mystery to me all my life. Now it is not that any longer. I know at least that he worshipped Desmond. But I know also that I mean nothing to him. I don't honestly think it was much my fault—and it can't be helped. And nobody else in the family matters. The only person who does matter is Elizabeth. And I quite see that she can't stay here indefinitely. She told me she promised Desmond she would stay as long as she could. Just at present, of course, she is the mainspring of everything on the estate. And they have actually made her this last week Vice-Chairman of the County War Agricultural Committee. She refused, but they made her. Think of that—a woman—with all those wise men! She asked father's leave. He just looked at her, and I saw the tears come into her eyes.

'As to Beryl and Aubrey, he was here last Sunday, and she spent the day with us. He seems to lean upon her in a new way—and she looks different somehow—happier, I think. He told me, the day after Desmond died, that Dezzy had said something to him that had given him courage—"courage to go on," I think he said. I didn't ask him what he meant, and he didn't tell me. But I am sure he has told Beryl, and either that—or something else—has made her more confident in herself—and about him. They are to be married quite soon. Last week father sent him, without a word, a copy of his will. Aubrey says it is very fair. Mannering goes to him, of course. You know that Elizabeth refused to witness the codicil father wrote last October disinheriting Aubrey, when he was so mad with Sir Henry? It was the first thing that made father take real notice of her. She had only been six weeks here!

'Good-night, my dearest, dearest Arthur! Don't be too much disappointed in me. I shall grow up some day.'

A few days later the Squire came back from Fallerton to find nobody in the house, apparently, but himself. He went through the empty hall and the library, and shut himself up there. He carried an evening paper crumpled in his hand. It contained a detailed report of the breaking of the Portuguese centre near Richebourg St. Vaast on April 10, and the consequent retreat, over some seven miles, since that day of the British line, together with the more recent news of the capture of Armentieres and Merville. Sitting down at his own table he read the telegrams again, and then in the stop-press Sir Douglas Haig's Order of the Day—

'There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight to the end. The safety of our homes and the freedom of mankind depend alike upon the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment.'

The Squire read and re-read the words. He was sitting close to the tall French window where through some fine spring days Desmond had lain, his half-veiled eyes wandering over the woods and green spaces which had been his childhood's companions. There—submissive for himself, but, for England's sake, and so that his mind might receive as long as possible the impress of her fate, an ardent wrestler with Death through each disputed hour—he had waited; and there, with the word England on his lips, he had died. The Squire could still see the marks made on the polished floor by the rolling backward of the bed at night. And on the wall near there was a brown mark on the wall-paper. He remembered that it had been made by a splash from a bowl of disinfectant, and that he had stared at it one morning in a dumb torment which seemed endless, because Desmond had woke in pain and the morphia was slow to act.

England! His boy was dead—and his country had its back to the wall. And he—what had he done for England, all these years of her struggle? His carelessness, his indifference returned upon him—his mad and selfish refusal, day by day, to give his mind, or his body, or his goods, to the motherland that bore him.

'Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?'

No—it had been nothing to him. But Desmond, his boy, had given everything. And the death-struggle was still going on. 'Each one of us must fight on to the end.' Before his eyes there passed the spectacle of the Army, as he had actually seen it—a division, for instance, on the march near the Salient, rank after rank of young faces, the brown cheeks and smiling eyes, the swing of the lithe bodies. And while he sat there in the quiet of the April evening, thousands of boys like Desmond were offering those same lithe bodies to the Kaiser's guns without murmur or revolt because England asked it. Now he knew what it meant—now he knew!

There was a knock at the door, and the sound of something heavy descending. The Squire gave a dull 'Come in.' Forest entered, dragging a large bale behind him. He looked nervously at his master.

'These things have just come from France, sir.'

The Squire started. He walked over in silence to look while Forest opened the case. Desmond's kit, his clothes, his few books, a stained uniform, a writing-case, with a number of other miscellaneous things.

Forest spread them out on the floor, his lips trembling. On several nights before the end Desmond had asked for him, and he had shared the Squire's watch.

'That'll do,' said the Squire presently; 'I'll look over them myself!'

Forest went away. After shutting the door he saw Elizabeth coming along the library passage, and stopped to speak to her.

'The things have just come from France, Miss,' he said in a low voice.

Elizabeth hesitated, and was turning back, when the library door opened and the Squire called her.

'Yes, Mr. Mannering.'

'Will you come here, please, a moment?'

She entered the room, and the Squire closed the door behind her, pointing mutely to the things on the floor.

The tears sprang to her eyes. She knelt down to look at them.

'Do you remember anything about this?' he said, holding out a little book. It was the pocket Anthology she had found for Desmond on the day of his going into camp. As she looked through it she saw a turned-down leaf, and seemed still to hear the boy's voice, as he hung over her shoulder translating the epigram—

'Shame on you, mountains and seas!'

With a swelling throat she told the story. The Squire listened, and when afterwards she offered the book to him again, he put it back into her hand, with some muttered words which she interpreted as bidding her keep it.

She put it away in the drawer of her writing-table, which had been brought back to its old place only that morning. The Squire himself went to his own desk.

'Will you sit there?' He pointed to her chair. 'I want to speak to you.'

Then after a pause he added slowly, 'Will you tell me—what you think I can now do with my time?'

His voice had a curious monotony—unlike its usual tone. But Elizabeth divined a coming crisis. She went very white.

'Dear Mr. Mannering—I don't know what to say—except that the country seems to want everything that each one of us can do.'

'Have you read Haig's Order of the Day?'

'Yes, I have just read it.'

The Squire's eyes, fixed upon her, had a strange intensity.

'You and I have never known—never dreamt—of anything like this.'

'No—never. But England has had her back to the wall before!'

She sat proudly erect, her hands quietly crossed. But he seemed to hear the beating of her heart.

'You mean when Pitt said, "Roll up the map of Europe"? Yes—that too was vital. But the people at home scarcely knew it—and it was not a war of machines.'

'No matter! England will never yield.'

'Till Germany is on her knees?' His long bony face, more lined, more emaciated than ever, seemed to catch a sombre glow from hers.

'Yes—though it last ten years! But the Americans are hurrying.'

'Are all women like you?'

Her mouth trembled into scorn.

'Oh, think of the women whose shoe-strings I am not worthy to unloose!—the nurses, the French peasant-women, the women who have given their husbands—their sons.'

His look showed his agitation.

'So we are to be saved—by boys like Desmond—and women like you?'

'Oh, I am a cypher—a nothing!' There was a passionate humiliation in her voice. 'I should be nursing in France—'

'If it weren't for your mother and your sister?'

She nodded. There was a pause. Then the Squire said, in a different tone,

'But you have not answered my question. I should be obliged if you would answer it. How am I, being I—how is a man of my kind to fill his time—and live his life? If the country is in deadly peril—if the ground is shaking beneath our feet—if we are to go on fighting for years, with "our backs to the wall," even I can't go on cataloguing Greek vases. I acknowledge that now. So much I grant you. But what else am I good for?'

The colour flushed in her fair skin, and her eyes filled again with tears.

'Come and help!' she said simply. 'There is so much to do. And for you—a large landowner—there is everything to do.'

His face darkened.

'Yes, if I had the courage for it. But morally I am a weakling—you know it. Do you remember that I once said to you if Desmond fell, I should go with him—or after him?'

She waited a moment before replying, and then said with energy, 'That would be just desertion!—he would tell you so.'

Their eyes met, and the passion in hers subdued him. It was a strange dialogue, as though between two souls bared and stripped of everything but the realities of feeling.

'Would it be? That might be argued. But anyway I should have done it—the very night Desmond died—but for you!'

'For me?' she said, shading her eyes with a hand that trembled. 'No, Mr. Mannering, you could not have done such a thing!—for your honour's sake—for your children's sake.'

'Neither would have restrained me. I was held to life by one thread—one hope only—'

She was silent.

'—the hope that if I was to put my whole life to school again—to burn what I had adored, and adore what I had burned—the one human being in the world who could teach me such a lesson—who had begun to teach it me—would stand by me—would put her hand in mine—and lead me.'

His voice broke down. Elizabeth, shaken from head to foot, could only hide her face and wait. Even the strength to protest—'Not now!—not yet!' seemed to have gone from her. He went on vehemently:

'Oh, don't imagine that I am making you an ordinary proposal—or that I am going to repeat to you the things I said to you—like a fool—in Cross Wood. Then I offered you a bargain—and I see now that you despised me as a huckster! You were to help my hobby; I was to help yours. That was all I could find to say. I didn't know how to tell you that all the happiness of my life depended on your staying at Mannering. I was unwilling to acknowledge it even to myself. I have been accustomed to put sentiment aside—to try and ignore it. To feel as I did was itself so strange a thing to me, that I struggled to express it as prosaically as possible. Well, then, you were astonished—and repelled. That I saw—I realized it indeed more and more. I saw that I had perhaps done a fatal thing, and I spent much time brooding and thinking. I felt an acute distress, such as I had never felt in my life before—so much so that I began even to avoid you, because I used to say to myself—"She will go away some day—perhaps soon—and I must accustom myself to it." And yet—'

He lifted the hand that shaded his eyes, and gave her a long touching look.

'Yet I felt sometimes that you knew what was happening in me—and were sorry for me. Then came the news of Desmond. Of those days while he lay here—of the days since—I seem to know now hardly anything in detail. One of the officers at the front said to me that on the Somme he often lost all count of time, of the days of the week, of the sequence of things. It seemed to be all one present—one awful and torturing now. So it is with me. Desmond is always here'—he pointed to the vacant space by the window—'and you are always sitting by him. And I know that if you go away—and I am left alone with my poor boy—though I shall never cease to hear the things he said to me—the things he asked me to do—I shall have no strength to do them. I cannot rise and walk—unless you help me.'

Elizabeth could hardly speak. She was in presence of that tremendous thing in human experience—the emergence of a man's inmost self. That the Squire could speak so—could feel so—that the man whose pupil and bond-slave she had been in those early weeks should be making this piteous claim upon her, throwing upon her the weight of his whole future life, of his sorrow, of his reaction against himself, overwhelmed her. It appealed to that instinctive, that boundless tenderness which lies so deep in the true woman.

But her will seemed paralysed. She did not know how to act—she could find no words that pleased her. The Squire saw it, and began to speak again in the same low measured voice, as though he groped his way along, from point to point. He sat with his eyes on the floor, his hands loosely clasped before him.

'I don't, of course, dare to ask you to say—at once—if you will be my wife. I dread to ask it—for I am tolerably certain that you would still say no. But if only now you would say, "I will go on with my work here—I will help a man who is weak where I am strong—I will show him new points of view—give him new reasons for living—"'

Elizabeth could only just check the sobs in her throat. The sad humility of the words pierced her heart.

The Squire raised himself a little, and spoke more firmly.

'Why should there be any change yet awhile? Only stay with us. Use my land—use me and all I possess—for the country—for what Desmond would have helped in—and done. Show me what to do. I shall do it ill. But what matter? Every little helps. "We have our backs to the wall." I have the power to give you power. Teach me.'

Then reaching out, he took her hand in his. His voice deepened and strengthened.

'Elizabeth!—be my friend—my children's friend. Bring your poor mother here—and your sister—till Pamela goes. Then tell me—what you decide. You shall give me no pledge—no promise. You shall be absolutely free. But together let us do a bit of work, a bit of service.'

She looked up. The emotion, the sweetness in her face dazzled him.

'Yes,' she said gravely—'I will stay.'

He drew a long breath, and stooping over the hands she had given him, he kissed them.

Then he released her and, rising, walked away. The portrait of Desmond had been brought back, but it stood with its face to the wall. He went to it and turned it. It shone out into the room, under the westering sun. He looked at it a little—while Elizabeth with trembling fingers began to re-arrange her table in the old way.

Then he returned to her, speaking in the dry, slightly peremptory voice she knew well.

'I hear the new buildings at the Holme Hill Farm are nearly ready. Come and look at them to-morrow. And there are some woods over there that would be worth examining. The Air Board is still clamouring for more ash.'

Elizabeth agreed. Her smile was a gleam through the mist.

'And, on the way back, Pamela and I must go and talk to the village—about pigs and potatoes!'

'Do you really know anything about either?' he asked, incredulously.

'Come and hear us!'

There was silence. The Squire threw the window open to the April sunset. The low light was shining through the woods, and on the reddening tops of the beeches. There was a sparkle of leaf here and there, and already a 'livelier emerald' showed in the grass. Suddenly a low booming sound—repeated—and repeated.

'Guns?' said the Squire, listening.

Elizabeth reminded him of the new artillery camp beyond Fallerton.

But the sounds had transformed the April evening. The woods, the grass, the wood-pigeons in the park had disappeared. The thoughts of both the on-lookers had gone across the sea to that hell of smoke and fire, in which their race—in which England!—stood at bay. A few days—or weeks—or months, would decide.

The vastness of the issue, as it came flooding in upon the soul of Elizabeth, seemed to strain her very life—to make suspense unbearable.

An anguish seized her, and unconsciously her lips framed the passionate words of an older patriotism—

'Oh! pray—pray for the peace of Jerusalem! They shall prosper that love thee!'

THE END