"Young people," said I, "must arrange their own lives." And we left it at that. Now and then, afterwards, she enquired politely after Betty's health, and when Willie Connor was killed, she spoke to me very feelingly and begged me to convey to Betty the expression of her deep sympathy. In the unhappy circumstances, she explained, she was naturally precluded from writing.

So Betty's letter was the first direct communication that had passed between them for nearly two years. That is why to my meddlesome-minded self it appeared to have some significance.

"You did, did you?" said I. Then I looked at her quickly, with an idea in my head. "What did Mrs. Boyce say in reply?"

"She has had no time to answer. Didn't I tell you I only posted the letter to-day?"

"Then you've heard nothing more about Leonard Boyce except that he has got the V.C.?"

"No. What more is there to hear?"

Even Bettys are sly folk. It behooved me to counter with equal slyness. I wondered whether she had known all along of Boyce's mishap, or had been informed of it by his mother. Knowledge might explain her unwonted outburst. I looked at her fixedly.

"What's the matter?" she asked, bending slightly down to me.

"You haven't heard that he is wounded?"

She straightened herself. "No. When?"

"Five days ago."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I haven't seen you."

"I mean—this evening."

I reached for her hand. "Will you forgive me, my dear Betty, for remarking that for the last twenty minutes you have done all the talking?"

"Is he badly hurt?"

She ignored my playful rejoinder. I noted the fact. Usually she was quick to play Beatrice to my Benedick. Had I caught her off her guard?

I told her all that I knew. She seated herself again on the piano-stool.

"I hope Mrs. Boyce did not think me unfeeling for not referring to it," she said calmly. "You will explain, won't you?"

Marigold entered, announcing dinner. We went into the dining-room. All through the meal Bella, my parlour-maid, flitted about with dishes and plates, and Marigold, when he was not solemnly pouring claret, stood grim behind my chair, roasting, as usual, his posterior before a blazing fire, with soldierly devotion to duty. Conversation fell a little flat. The arrival of the evening newspapers, half an hour belated, created a diversion. The war is sometimes subversive of nice table decorum. I read out the cream of the news. Discussion thereon lasted us until coffee and cigarettes were brought in and the servants left us to ourselves.

One of the curious little phenomena of human intercourse is the fact that now and again the outer personality of one with whom you are daily familiar suddenly strikes you afresh, thus printing, as it were, a new portrait on your mind. At varying intervals I had received such portrait impressions of Betty, and I had stored them in my memory. Another I received at this moment, and it is among the most delectable. She was sitting with both elbows on the table, her palms clasped and her cheek resting on the back of the left hand. Her face was turned towards me. She wore a low-cut black chiffon evening dress—the thing had mere straps over the shoulders—an all but discarded vanity of pre-war days. I had never before noticed what beautiful arms she had. Perhaps in her girlhood, when I had often seen her in such exiguous finery, they had not been so shapely. I have told you already of the softening touch of her womanhood. An exquisite curve from arm to neck faded into the shadow of her hair. She had a single string of pearls round her neck. The fatigue of last week's night duty had cast an added spirituality over her frank, sensitive face.

We had not spoken for a while. She smiled at me.

"What are you thinking of?"

"I wasn't thinking at all," said I. "I was only gratefully admiring you."

"Why gratefully?"

"Oughtn't one to be grateful to God for the beautiful things He gives us?"

She flushed and averted her eyes. "You are very good to me, Majy."

"What made you attire yourself in all this splendour?" I asked, laughing. The wise man does not carry sentiment too far. He keeps it like a little precious nugget of pure gold; the less wise beats it out into a flabby film.

"I don't know," she said, shifting her position and casting a critical glance at her bodice. "All kinds of funny little feminine vanities. Perhaps I wanted to see whether I hadn't gone off. Perhaps I wanted to try to feel good-looking even if I wasn't. Perhaps I thought my dear old Majy was sick to death of the hospital uniform perfumed with disinfectant. Perhaps it was just a catlike longing for comfort. Anyhow, I'm glad you like me."

"My dear Betty," said I, "I adore you."

"And I you," she laughed. "So there's a pair of us."

She lit a cigarette and sipped her coffee. Then, breaking a short silence:

"I hope you quite understand, dear, what I said about Leonard Boyce. I shouldn't like to leave you with the smallest little bit of a wrong impression."

"What wrong impression could I possibly have?" I asked disingenuously.

"You might think that I was still in love with him."

"That would be absurd," said I.

"Utterly absurd. I should feel it to be almost an insult if you thought anything of the kind. Long before my marriage things that had happened had killed all such feelings outright." She paused for a few seconds and her brow darkened, just as it had done when she had spoken of him in the days immediately preceding her marriage with Willie Connor. Presently it cleared. "The whole beginning and end of my present feelings," she continued, "is that I'm glad the man I once cared for has won such high distinction, and I'm sorry that such a brave soldier should be wounded."

I could do nothing else than assure her of my perfect understanding. I upbraided myself as a monster of indelicacy for my touch of doubt before dinner; also for a devilish and malicious suspicion that flitted through my brain while she was cataloguing her possible reasons for putting on the old evening dress. The thought of Betty's beautiful arm and the man's bull-neck was a shivering offence. I craved purification.

"If you've finished your coffee," I said, "let us go into the drawing-room and have some music."

She rose with the impulsiveness of a child told that it can be excused, and responded startlingly to my thought.

"I think we need it," she said.

In the drawing-room I swung my chair so that I could watch her hands on the keys. She was a good musician and had the well-taught executant's certainty and grace of movement. It may be the fancy of an outer Philistine, but I love to forget the existence of the instrument and to feel the music coming from the human finger-tips. She found a volume of Chopin's Nocturnes on the rest. In fact she had left it there a fortnight before, the last time she had played for me. I am very fond of Chopin. I am an uneducated fellow and the lyrical mostly appeals to me both in poetry and in music. Besides, I have understood him better since I have been a crock. And I loved Betty's sympathetic interpretation. So I sat there, listening and watching, and I knew that she was playing for the ease of both our souls. Once more I thanked God for the great gift of Betty to my crippled life. Peace gathered round my heart as Betty played.

The raucous buzz of the telephone in the corner of the room knocked the music to shatters. I cried out impatiently. It was the fault of that giant of ineptitude Marigold and his incompetent satellites, whose duty it was to keep all upstairs extensions turned off and receive calls below. Only two months before I had been the victim of their culpable neglect, when I was forced to have an altercation with a man at Harrod's Stores, who seemed pained because I declined to take an interest in some idiotic remark he was making about fish.

"I'll strangle Marigold with my own hands," I cried.

Betty, unmoved by my ferocity, laughed and rose from the piano.

"Shall I take the call?"

To Betty I was all urbanity. "If you'll be so kind, dear," said I.

She crossed the room and stopped the abominable buzzing.

"Yes. Hold on for a minute. It's the post-office"—she turned to me—"telephoning a telegram that has just come in. Shall I take it down for you?"

More urbanity on my part. She found pencil and paper on an escritoire near by, and went back to the instrument. For a while she listened and wrote. At last she said:

"Are you sure there's no signature?"

She got the reply, waited until the message had been read over, and hung up the receiver. When she came round to me—my back had been half turned to her all the time—I was astonished to see her looking rather shaken. She handed me the paper without a word.

The message ran:

"Thanks yesterday's telegram. Just got home. Queen Victoria Hospital, Belton Square. Must have talk with you before I communicate with my mother. Rely absolutely on your discretion. Come to-morrow. Forgive inconvenience caused, but most urgent."

"It's from Boyce," I said, looking up at her.

"Naturally."

"I suppose he omitted the signature to avoid any possible leakage through the post-office here."

She nodded. "What do you think is the matter?"

"God knows," said I. "Evidently something very serious."

She went back to the piano seat. "It's odd that I should have taken down that message," she said, after a while.

"I'll sack Marigold for putting you in that abominable position," I exclaimed wrathfully.

"No, you won't, dear. What does it signify? I'm not a silly child. I suppose you're going to-morrow?"

"Of course—for Mrs. Boyce's sake alone I should have no alternative."

She turned round and began to take up the thread of the Nocturne from the point where she had left off; but she only played half a page and quitted the piano abruptly.

"The pretty little spell is broken, Majy. No matter how we try to escape from the war, it is always shrieking in upon us. We're up against naked facts all the time. If we can't face them we go under either physically or spiritually. Anyhow—" she smiled with just a little touch of weariness,—"we may as well face them in comfort."

She pushed my chair gently nearer to the fire and sat down by my side. And there we remained in intimate silence until Marigold announced the arrival of her car.



CHAPTER XVIII

I shrink morbidly from visiting strange houses. I shrink from the unknown discomforts and trivial humiliations they may hold for me. I hate, for instance, not to know what kind of a chair may be provided for me to sit on. I hate to be carried up many stairs even by my steel-crane of a Marigold. Just try doing without your legs for a couple of days, and you will see what I mean. Of course I despise myself for such nervous apprehensions, and do not allow them to influence my actions—just as one, under heavy fire, does not satisfy one's simple yearning to run away. I would have given a year's income to be able to refuse Boyce's request with a clear conscience; but I could not. I shrank all the more because my visit in the autumn to Reggie Dacre had shaken me more than I cared to confess. It had been the only occasion for years when I had entered a London building other than my club. To the club, where I was as much at home as in my own house, all those in town with whom I now and then had to transact business were good enough to come. This penetration of strange hospitals was an agitating adventure. Apart, however, from the mere physical nervousness against which, as I say, I fought, there was another element in my feelings with regard to Boyce's summons. If I talk about the Iron Hand of Fate you may think I am using a cliche of melodrama. Perhaps I am. But it expresses what I mean. Something unregenerate in me, some lingering atavistic savage instinct towards freedom, rebelled against this same Iron Hand of Fate that, first clapping me on the shoulder long ago in Cape Town, was now dragging me, against my will, into ever thickening entanglement with the dark and crooked destiny of Leonard Boyce.

I tell you all this because I don't want to pose as a kind of apodal angel of mercy.

I was also deadly anxious as to the nature of the communication Boyce would make to me, before his mother should be informed of his arrival in London. In spite of his frank confession, there was still such a cloud of mystery over the man's soul as to render any revelation possible. Had his hurt declared itself to be a mortal one? Had he summoned me to unburden his conscience while yet there was time? Was it going to be a repetition, with a difference, of my last interview with Reggie Dacre? I worried myself with unnecessary conjecture.

After a miserable drive through February rain and slush, I reached my destination in Belton Square, a large mansion, presumably equipped by its owner as a hospital for officers, and given over to the nation. A telephone message had prepared the authorities for my arrival. Marigold, preceded by the Sister in charge, carried me across a tesselated hall and began to ascend the broad staircase.

I uttered a little gasp and looked around me, for in a flash I realised where I was. Twenty years ago I had danced in this house. I had danced here with my wife before we were married. On the half landing we had sat out together. It was the town house of the late Lord Madelow, with whose wife I shared the acquaintance of a couple of hundred young dancing men inscribed on her party list. Both were dead long since. To whom the house belonged now I did not know. But I recognised pictures and statuary and a conservatory with palms. And the place shimmered with brilliant ghosts and was haunted by hot perfumes and by the echo of human voices and by elfin music. And the cripple forgot that he was being carried up the stairs in the grip of the old soldier. He was mounting them with heart beating high and the presence of a beloved hand on his arm.... You see, it was all so sudden. It took my breath away and sent my mind whirling back over twenty years.

It was like awaking from a dream to find a door flung open in front of me and to hear the Sister announce my name. I was on the threshold not of a ward, but of a well-appointed private room fairly high up and facing the square, for the first thing I saw was the tops of the leafless trees through the windows. Then I was conscious of a cheery fire. The last thing I took in was the bed running at right angles to door and window, and Leonard Boyce lying in it with bandages about his face. For the dazed second or two he seemed to be Reggie Dacre over again. But he had thrown back the bedclothes and his broad chest and great arms were free. His pleasant voice rang out at once.

"Hallo! Hallo! You are a good Samaritan. Is that you, Marigold? There's a comfortable chair by the bedside for Major Meredyth."

He seemed remarkably strong and hearty; far from any danger of death. Stubs of cigarettes were lying in an ash-tray on the bed. In a moment or two they settled me down and left me alone with him.

As soon as he heard the click of the door he said:

"I've done more than I set out to do. You remember our conversation. I said I should either get the V.C. or never see you again. I've managed both."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I shall never see you or anybody else again, or a dog or a cat, or a tree or a flower."

Then, for the first time the dreadful truth broke upon me.

"Good Heavens!" I cried. "Your eyes—?"

"Done in. Blind. It's a bit ironical, isn't it?" He laughed bitterly.

What I said by way of sympathy and consolation is neither here nor there. I spoke sincerely from my heart, for I felt overwhelmed by the tragedy of it all. He stretched out his hand and grasped mine.

"I knew you wouldn't fail me. Your sort never does. You understand now why I wanted you to come?—To prepare the old mother for the shock. You've seen for yourself that I'm sound of wind and limb—as fit as a fiddle. You can make it quite clear to her that I'm not going to die yet awhile. And you can let her down easy on the real matter. Tell her I'm as merry as possible and looking forward to going about Wellingsford with a dog and string."

"You're a brave chap, Boyce," I said.

He laughed again. "You're anticipating. Do you remember what I said when you asked me what I should do if I won all the pots I set my heart on and came through alive? I said I should begin to try to be a brave man. God! It's a tough proposition. But it's something to live for, anyway."

I asked him how it happened.

"I got sick," he replied, "of bearing a charmed life and nothing happening. The Bosch shell or bullet that could hit me wasn't made. I could stroll about freely where it was death for anyone else to show the top of his head. I didn't care. Then suddenly one day things went wrong. You know what I mean. I nearly let my regiment down. It was touch and go. And it was touch and go with my career. I just pulled through, however. I'll tell you all about it one of these days—if you'll put up with me."

Again the familiar twitch of the lips which looked ghastly below the bandaged eyes. "No one ever dreamed of the hell I went through. Then I found I was losing the nerve I had built up all these months. I nearly went off my head. At last I thought I would put an end to it. It was a small attack of ours that had failed. The men poured back over the parapet into the trench, leaving heaven knows how many dead and wounded outside. I'm not superstitious and I don't believe in premonitions and warnings, and so forth; but in cases of waiting like mine a man suddenly gets to know that his hour has come.... I got in six wounded. Two men were shot while I was carrying them. How I lived God knows. It was cold hell. My clothes were torn to rags. As I was going for the seventh, the knob of my life-preserver was shot away and my wrist nearly broken. I wore it with a strap, you know. The infernal thing had been a kind of mascot. When I realised it was gone I just stood still and shivered in a sudden, helpless funk. The seventh man was crawling up to me. He had a bloody face and one dragging leg. That's my last picture of God's earth. Before I could do anything—I must have been standing sideways on—a bullet got me across the bridge of the nose and night came down like a black curtain. Then I ran like a hare. Sometimes I tripped over a man, dead or wounded, and fell on my head. I don't remember much about this part of it. They told me afterwards. At last I stumbled on to the parapet and some plucky fellow got me into the trench. It was the regulation V.C. business," he added, "and so they gave it to me."

"Specially," said I.

"Consolation prize, I suppose, for losing my sight. They had just time to get me away behind when the Germans counter attacked. If I hadn't brought the six men in, they wouldn't have had a dog's chance. I did save their lives. That's something to the credit side of the infernal balance."

"There can be no balance now, my dear chap," said I. "God knows you've paid in full."

He lifted his hand and dropped it with a despairing gesture.

"There's only one payment in full. That was denied me. God, or whoever was responsible, had my eyes knocked out, and made it impossible for ever. He or somebody must be enjoying the farce."

"That's all very well," said I. "A man can do no more than his utmost—as you've done. He must be content to leave the rest in the hands of the Almighty."

"The Almighty has got a down on me," he replied. "And I don't blame Him. Of course, from your point of view, you're right. You're a normal, honourable soldier and gentleman. Anything you've got to reproach yourself with is of very little importance. But I'm an accursed freak. I told you all about it when you held me up over the South African affair. There were other affairs after that. Others again in this war. Haven't I just told you I let my regiment down?"

"Don't, my dear man, don't!" I cried, in great pain, for it was horrible to hear a man talk like this. "Can't you see you've wiped out everything?"

"There's one thing at any rate I can't ever wipe out," he said in a low voice. Then he laughed. "I've got to stick it. It may be amusing to see how it all pans out. I suppose the very last passion left us is curiosity."

"There's also the unconquerable soul," said I.

"You're very comforting," said he. "If I were in your place, I'd leave a chap like me to the worms." He drew a long breath. "I suppose I'll pull through all right."

"Of course you will," said I.

"I feel tons better, thanks to you, already."

"That's right," said I.

He fumbled for the box of cigarettes on the bed. Instinctively I tried to help him, but I was tied to my fixed chair. It was a trivial occasion; but I have never been so terrified by the sense of helplessness. Just think of it. Two men of clear brain and, to all intents and purposes, of sound bodily health, unable to reach an object a few feet away. Boyce uttered an impatient exclamation.

"Get hold of that box for me, like a good chap," he said, his fingers groping wide of the mark.

"I can't move," said I.

"Good Lord! I forgot."

He began to laugh. I laughed, too. We laughed like fools and the tears ran down my cheeks. I suppose we were on the verge of hysterics.

I pulled myself together and gave him a cigarette from my case. And then, stretch as I would, I could not reach far enough to apply the match to the end of the cigarette between his lips. He was unable to lift his head. I lit another match and, like an idiot, put it between his fingers. He nearly burned his moustache and his bandage, and would have burned his fingers had not the match—a wooden one—providentially gone out. Then I lit a cigarette myself and handed it to him.

The incident, as I say, was trivial, but it had deep symbolic significance. All symbols in their literal objectivity are trivial. What more trivial than the eating of a bit of bread and the sipping from a cup of wine? This trumpery business with the cigarette revolutionised my whole feelings towards Boyce. It initiated us into a sacred brotherhood. Hitherto, it had been his nature which had reached out towards me tentacles of despair. My inner self, as I have tried to show you, had never responded. It was restrained by all kinds of doubts, suspicions, and repulsions. Now, suddenly, it broke through all those barriers and rushed forth to meet him. My death in life against which I had fought, I hope like a brave man (it takes a bit of fighting) for many years, would henceforth be his death in life, at whose terrors he too would have to snap a disdainful finger. I had felt deep pity for him; but if pity is indeed akin to love, it is a very poor relation. Now I had cast pity and such like superior sentiment aside and accepted him as a sworn brother. The sins, whatever they were, that lay on the man's conscience mattered nothing. He had paid in splendid penance and in terrible penalty.

I should have liked to express to him something of this surge of emotion. But I could find no words. As a race, our emotions are not facile, and therefore we lack the necessary practice in expressing them. When they do come, they come all of a heap and scare us out of our wits and leave us speechless. So the immediate outcome of all this psychological upheaval was that we went on smoking and said nothing more about it. As far as I remember we started talking about the recruiting muddle, as to which our views most vigorously coincided.

We parted cheerily. It was only when I got outside the room that the ghastly irony of the situation again made my heart as lead. We passed by the conservatory and the statuary and down the great staircase, but the ghosts had gone. Yet I cast a wistful glance at the spot—it was just under that Cuyp with the flashing white horse—where we had sat twenty years ago. But the new tragedy had rendered the memory less poignant.

"It's a dreadful thing about the Colonel, sir," said Marigold as we drove off.

"More dreadful than anyone can imagine," said I.

"What he's going to do with himself is what I'm wondering," said Marigold.

What indeed? The question went infinitely deeper than the practical dreams of Marigold's philosophy. My honest fellow saw but the outside—the full-blooded man of action cabined in his lifelong darkness. I, to whom chance had revealed more, trembled at the contemplation of his future. The man, goaded by the Furies, had rushed into the jaws of death. Those jaws, by some divine ordinance, had ruthlessly closed against him. The Furies meanwhile attended him unrelenting. Whither now would they goad him? Into madness? I doubted it. In spite of his contradictory nature, he did not seem to be the sort of man who would go mad. He could exercise over himself too reasoned a control. Yet here were passions and despairs seething without an outlet. What would be the end? It is true that he had achieved glory. To the end of his life, wherever he went, he would command the honour and admiration of men. Greater achievement is granted to few mortals. In our little town he would be the Great Hero. But would all that human sympathy and veneration could contrive keep the Furies at bay and soothe the tormented spirit?

I tried to eat a meal at the club, but the food choked me. I got into the car as soon as possible and reached Wellingsford with head and heart racked with pain. But before I could go home I had to execute Boyce's mission.

If I accomplished it successfully, my heart and not my wearied mind deserves the credit. At first Mrs. Boyce broke down under the shock of the news, for all the preparation in the world can do little to soften a deadly blow; but breed and pride soon asserted themselves, and she faced things bravely. With charming dignity she received Marigold's few respectful words of condolence. And she thanked me for what I had done, beyond my deserts. To show how brave she was, she insisted on accompanying us downstairs and on standing in the bleak evening air while Marigold put me in the car.

"After all, I have my son alive and in good strong health. I must realise how merciful God has been to me." She put her hand into mine. "I shan't see you again till I bring him home with me. I shall go up to London early to-morrow morning and stay with my old friend Lady Fanshawe—I think you have met her here—the widow of the late Admiral Fanshawe. She has a house in Eccleston Street, which is, I think, in the neighbourhood of Belton Square. If I haven't thanked you enough, dear Major Meredyth, it is that, when one's heart is full, one can't do everything all at once."

She waved to me very graciously as the car drove off—a true "Spartian" mother, dear lady, of our modern England.

Oh! the humiliation of possessing a frail body and a lot of disorganized nerves! When I got home Marigold, seeing that I was overtired, was all for putting me to bed then and there. I spurned the insulting proposal in language plain enough even to his wooden understanding. Sometimes his imperturbability exasperated me. I might just as well try to taunt a poker or sting a fire-shovel into resentment of personal abuse.

"I'll see you hanged, drawn, and quartered before I'll go to bed," I declared.

"Very good, sir." The gaunt wretch was carrying me. "But I think you might lie down for half an hour before dinner."

He deposited me ignominiously on the bed and left the room. In about ten minutes Dr. Cliffe, my inveterate adversary who has kept life in me for many a year, came in with his confounded pink smiling face.

"What's this I hear? Been overdoing it?"

"What the deuce are you doing here?" I cried. "Go away. How dare you come when you're not wanted?"

He grinned. "I'm wanted right enough, old man. The good Marigold's never at fault. He rang me up and I slipped round at once."

"One of these days," said I, "I'll murder that fellow."

He replied by gagging me with his beastly thermometer. Then he felt my pulse and listened to my heart and stuck his fingers into the corners of my eyes, so as to look at the whites; and when he was quite satisfied with himself—there is only one animal more self-complacent than your medical man in such circumstances, and that is a dog who has gorged himself with surreptitious meat—he ordained that I should forthwith go properly to bed and stay there and be perfectly quiet until he came again, and in the meanwhile swallow some filthy medicine which he would send round.

"One of these days," said he, rebukingly, "instead of murdering your devoted Sergeant, you'll be murdering yourself, if you go on such lunatic excursions. Of course I'm shocked at hearing about Colonel Boyce, and I'm sorry for the poor lady, but why you should have been made to half kill yourself over the matter is more than I can understand."

"I happen," said I, "to be his only intimate friend in the place."

"You happen," he retorted, "to be a chronic invalid and the most infernal worry of my life."

"You're nothing but an overbearing bully," said I.

He grinned again. That is what I have to put up with. If I curse Marigold, he takes no notice. If I curse Cliffe, he grins. Yet what I should do without them, Heaven only knows.

"God bless 'em both," said I, when my aching body was between the cool sheets.

Although it was none of his duties, Marigold brought me in a light supper, fish and a glass of champagne. Never a parlour-maid would he allow to approach me when I was unwell. I often wondered what would happen if I were really ill and required the attendance of a nurse. I swear no nurse's touch could be so gentle as when he raised me on the pillows. He bent over the tray on the table by the bed and began to dissect out the back-bone of the sole.

"I can do that," said I, fretfully.

He cocked a solitary reproachful eye on me. I burst out laughing. He looked so dear and ridiculous with his preposterous curly wig and his battered face. He went on with his task.

"I wonder, Marigold," said I, "how you put up with me."

He did not reply until he had placed the neatly arranged tray across my body.

"I've never heard, sir," said he, "as how a man couldn't put up with his blessings."

A bit of sole was on my fork and I was about to convey it to my mouth, but there came a sudden lump in my throat and I put the fork down.

"But what about the curses?"

A horrible contortion of the face and a guttural rumble indicated amusement on the part of Marigold. I stared, very serious, having been profoundly touched.

"What are you laughing at?" I asked.

The idiot's merriment increased in vehemence. He said: "You're too funny, sir," and just bolted, in a manner unbecoming not only to a sergeant, but even to a butler.

As I mused on this unprecedented occurrence, I made a discovery,—that of Sergeant Marigold's sense of humour. To that sense of humour my upbraidings, often, I must confess, couched in picturesque and figurative terms so as not too greatly to hurt his feelings, had made constant appeal for the past fifteen years. Hitherto he had hidden all signs of humorous titillation behind his impassive mask. To-night, a spark of sentiment had been the match to explode the mine of his mirth. It was a serious position. Here had I been wasting on him half a lifetime's choicest objurgations. What was I to do in the future to consolidate my authority?

I never enjoyed a fried sole and a glass of champagne more in my life.

He came in later to remove the tray, as wooden as ever.

"Mrs. Connor called a little while ago, sir."

"Why didn't you ask her to come in to see me?"

"Doctor's orders, sir."

After the sole and champagne, I felt much better. I should have welcomed my dear Betty with delight. That, at any rate, was my first impulsive thought.

"Confound the doctor!" I cried. And I was going to confound Marigold, too, but I caught his steady luminous eye. What was the use of any anathema when he would only take it away, as a dog does a bone, and enjoy it in a solitary corner? I recovered myself.

"Well?" said I, with dignity. "Did Mrs. Connor leave any message?"

"I was to give you her compliments, sir, and say she was sorry you were so unwell and she was shocked to hear of Colonel Boyce's sad affliction."

This was sheer orderly room. Such an expression as "sad affliction" never passed Betty's lips. I, however, had nothing to say. Marigold settled me for the night and left me.

When I was alone and able to consider the point, I felt a cowardly gratitude towards the doctor who had put me to bed like a sick man and forbidden access to my room. I had been spared breaking the news to Betty. How she received it, I did not know. It had been impossible to question Marigold. After all, it was a matter of no essential moment. I consoled myself with the reflection and tried to go to sleep. But I passed a wretched night, my head whirling with the day's happenings.

The morning papers showed me that Boyce, wishing to spare his mother, had been wise to summon me at once. They all published an official paragraph describing the act for which he had received his distinction, and announcing the fact of his blindness. They also gave a brief and flattering sketch of his career. One paper devoted to him a short leading article. The illustrated papers published his photograph. Boyce was on the road to becoming a popular hero.

Cliffe kept me in bed all that day, to my great irritation. I had no converse with the outside world, save vicariously with Betty, who rang up to enquire after my health. On the following morning, when I drove abroad with Hosea, I found the whole town ringing with Boyce. It was a Friday, the day of publication of the local newspaper. It had run to extravagant bills all over the place:

"Wellingsford Hero honoured by the King. Tragic End to Glorious Deeds."

The word—Marigold's, I suppose—had gone round that I had visited the hero in London. I was stopped half a dozen times on my way up the High Street by folks eager for personal details. Outside Prettilove the hairdresser's I held quite a little reception, and instead of moving me on for blocking the traffic, as any of his London colleagues would have done, the local police sergeant sank his authority and by the side of a butcher's boy formed part of the assembly.

When I got to the Market Square, I saw Sir Anthony Fenimore's car standing outside the Town Hall. The chauffeur stopped me.

"Sir Anthony was going to call on you, sir, as soon as he had finished his business inside."

"I'll wait for him," said I. It was one of the few mild days of a wretched month and I enjoyed the air. Springfield, the house agent, passed and engaged me in conversation on the absorbing topic, and then the manager of the gasworks joined us. Everyone listened so reverently to my utterances that I began to feel as if I had won the Victoria Cross myself.

Presently Sir Anthony bustled out of the Town Hall, pink, brisk, full of business. At the august appearance of the Mayor my less civically distinguished friends departed. His eyes brightened as they fell on me and he shook hands vigorously.

"My dear Duncan, I was just on my way to you. Only heard this morning that you've been seedy. Knocked up, I suppose, by your journey to town. Just heard of that, too. Must have thought me a brute not to enquire. But Edith and I didn't know. I was away all yesterday. These infernal tribunals. With the example of men like Leonard Boyce before their eyes, it makes one sick to look at able-bodied young Englishmen trying to wriggle out of their duty to the country. Well, dear old chap, how are you?"

I assured him that I had recovered from Cliffe and was in my usual state of health. He rubbed his hands.

"That's good. Now give me all the news. What is Boyce's condition? When will he be able to be moved? When do you think he'll come back to Wellingsford?"

At this series of questions I pricked a curious ear.

"Am I speaking to the man or the Mayor?"

"The Mayor," said he. "I wish to goodness I could get you inside, so that you and I and Winterbotham could talk things over."

Winterbotham was the Town Clerk. Sir Anthony cast an instinctive glance at his chauffeur, a little withered elderly man. I laughed and made a sign of dissent. When you have to be carried about, you shy at the prospect of little withered, elderly men as carriers. Besides—

"Unless it would lower Winterbotham's dignity or give him a cold in the head," said I, "why shouldn't he come out here?"

Sir Anthony crossed the pavement briskly, gave a message to the doorkeeper of the Town Hall, and returned to Hosea and myself.

"It's a dreadful thing. Dreadful. I never realised till yesterday, when I read his record, what a distinguished soldier he was. A modern Bayard. For the last year or so he seemed to put my back up. Behaved in rather a curious way, never came near the house where once he was always welcome, and when I asked him to dinner he turned me down flat. But that's all over. Sometimes one has these pettifogging personal vanities. The best thing is to be heartily ashamed of 'em like an honest man, and throw 'em out in the dung-heap where they belong. That's what I told Edith last night, and she agreed with me. Don't you?"

I smiled. Here was another typical English gentleman ridding his conscience of an injustice done to Leonard Boyce.

"Of course I do," said I. "Boyce is a queer fellow. A man with his exceptional qualities has to be judged in an exceptional way."

"And then," said Sir Anthony, "it's that poor dear old lady that I've been thinking of. Edith went to see her yesterday afternoon, but found she had gone up to London. In her frail health it's enough to kill her."

"It won't," said I. "A woman doesn't give birth to a lion without having something of the lion in her nature."

"I've never thought of that," said Sir Anthony.

"Haven't you?"

His face turned grave and he looked far away over the red-brick post-office on the opposite side of the square. Then he sighed, looked at me with a smile, and nodded.

"You're right, Duncan."

"I know I am," said I. "I broke the news to Mrs. Boyce. That's why he asked me to go up and see him."

Winterbotham appeared—a tall, cadaverous man in a fur coat and a soft felt hat. He shook hands with me in a melancholy way. In a humbler walk of life, I am sure he would have been an undertaker.

"Now," said Sir Anthony, "tell us all about your interview with Boyce."

"Before I commit myself," said I, "with the Civic Authorities, will you kindly inform me what this conference coram publico is all about?"

"Why, my dear chap, haven't I told you?" cried Sir Anthony. "We're going to give Colonel Boyce a Civic Reception."



CHAPTER XIX

Thenceforward nothing was talked of but the home-coming of Colonel Boyce. He touched the public imagination. All kinds of stories, some apocryphal, some having a basis of truth, some authentic, went the round of the little place. It simmered with martial fervour. Elderly laggards enrolled themselves in the Volunteer Training Corps. Young married men who had not attested under the Derby Scheme rushed out to enlist. The Tribunal languished in idleness for lack of claimants for exemption. Exempted men, with the enthusiastic backing of employers, lost the sense of their indispensability and joined the colours. An energetic lady who had met the Serbian Minister in London conceived the happy idea of organising a Serbian Flag Day in Wellingsford, and reaped a prodigious harvest. We were all tremendously patriotic, living under Boyce's reflected glory.

At first I had deprecated the proposal, fearing lest Boyce might not find it acceptable. The reputation he had sought at the cannon's mouth was a bubble of a different kind from that which the good townsfolk were eager to celebrate. Vanity had no part in it. For what the outer world thought of his exploits he did not care a penny. He was past caring. His soul alone, for its own sore needs, had driven him to the search. Before his own soul and not before his fellow countrymen, had he craved to parade as a recipient of the Victoria Cross. His own soul, as I knew, not being satisfied, he would shrink from obtaining popular applause under false pretences. No unhappy man ever took sterner measure of himself. Of all this no one but myself had the faintest idea. In explaining my opinion I had to leave out all essentials. I could only hint that a sensitive man like Colonel Boyce might be averse from exhibiting in public his physical disabilities; that he had always shown himself a modest soldier with a dislike of self-advertisement; that he would prefer to seek immediate refuge in the quietude of his home. But they would not listen to me. Colonel Boyce, they said, would be too patriotic to refuse the town's recognition. It was part of the game which he, as a brave soldier, no matter how modest, could not fail to play. He would recognise that such public honourings of valour had widespread effect among the population. In face of such arguments I had to withdraw my opposition; otherwise it might have appeared that I was actuated by petty personal motives. God knows I only desired to save Boyce from undergoing a difficult ordeal. For the same reasons I could not refuse to serve on the Reception Committee which was immediately formed under the chairmanship of the Mayor.

Preliminaries having been discussed, the Mayor and the Town Clerk waited on Boyce in Belton Square, and returned with the triumphant tidings that they had succeeded in their mission.

"I can't make out what you were running your head against, Duncan," said Sir Anthony. "Of course, as you say, he's a modest chap and dislikes publicity. So do we all. But I quickly talked him out of that objection. I talked him out of all sorts of objections before he could raise them. At last what do you think he said?"

"I should have told you to go to blazes and not worry me."

"He didn't. He said—now I like the chap for it, it was so simple and honest—he said: 'If I were alone in the world I wouldn't have it, for I don't like it. But I'll accept on one condition. My poor old mother has had rather a thin time and she's going to have a thinner. She never gets a look in. Make it as far as possible her show, and I'll do what you like.' What do you think of that?"

"I think it's very characteristic," said I.

And it was. In my mental survey of the situation from Boyce's point of view I had not taken into account the best and finest in the man. His reason rang true against my exceptional knowledge of him. I had worked myself into so sympathetic a comprehension that I KNEW he would be facing something unknown and terrible in the proposed ceremony; I KNEW that for his own sake he would have unequivocably declined. But, ad najorem matris gloriam, he assented.

The main question, at any rate, was settled. The hero would accept the honour. It was for the Committee to make the necessary arrangements. We corresponded far and wide in order to obtain municipal precedents. We had interviews with the military and railway authorities. We were in constant communication with the local Volunteer Training Corps; with the Godbury Volunteers and the Godbury School O.T.C., who both desired to take a part in the great event. In compliance with the conditions imposed, we gave as much publicity as we could to Mrs. Boyce. Lieutenant Colonel Boyce, V.C., and Mrs. Boyce were officially associated in the programme of the reception. How to disentangle them afterwards, when the presentation of the address, engrossed on velluni and enclosed in a casket, should be made to the Colonel, was the subject of heated and confused discussion. Then the feminine elements in town and county desired to rally to the side of Mrs. Boyce. The Red Cross and Volunteer Aid Detachment Nurses claimed representation. So did the munitions workers of Godbury. The Countess of Laleham, the wife of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, a most imposing and masterful woman, signified (in genteel though incisive language) her intention to take a leading part in the proceedings and to bring along her husband, apparently as an unofficial ornament. This, of course, upset our plans, which had all to be reconsidered from the beginning.

"Who is giving the reception?" cried Lady Fenimore, who could stand upon her dignity as well as anybody. "The County or Wellingsford? I presume it's Wellingsford, and, so long as I am Mayoress, that dreadful Laleham woman will have to take a back seat."

So, you see, we had our hands full.

All this time I found Betty curiously elusive. Now and then I met her for a few fugitive moments at the hospital. Twice she ran in for dinner, in uniform, desperately busy, arriving on the stroke of the dinner hour and rushing away five minutes after her coffee and cigarette, alleging as excuse the epidemic of influenza, consequent on the vile weather, which had woefully reduced the hospital staff. She seemed to be feverish and ill at ease, and tried to cover the symptoms by a reversion to her old offhand manner. As I was so seldom alone with her I could find scant opportunity for intimate conversation. I thought that she might have regretted the frank exposition of her feelings regarding Leonard Boyce. But she showed no sign of it. She spoke in the most detached way of his blindness and the coming ceremony. Never once, even on the first occasion when I met her—in the hospital corridor—after my return from London, did her attitude vary from that of any kind-hearted Englishwoman who deplores the mutilation of a gallant social acquaintance. Sometimes I wanted to shake her, though I could scarcely tell why. I certainly would not have had her weep on my shoulder over Boyce's misfortune; nor would I have cared for her to exhibit a vindictive callousness. She behaved with perfect propriety. Perhaps that is what disturbed me. I was not accustomed to associate perfect propriety with my dear Betty.

The days went on. The reception arrangements were perfected. We only waited for the date of Boyce's arrival to be fixed. That depended on the date of the particular Investiture by the King which Boyce's convalescence should allow him to attend. At last the date was fixed.

A few days before the Investiture I went to London and called at Lady Fanshawe's in Eccleston Street, whither he had been removed after leaving the hospital. I was received in the dining-room on the ground floor by Boyce and his mother. He wore black glasses to hide terrible disfigurement—he lifted them to show me. One eye had been extracted. The other was seared and sightless. He greeted me as heartily as ever, made little jests over his infirmity, treating it lightly for his mother's sake. She, on her side, deemed it her duty to exhibit equal cheerfulness. She boasted of his progress in self-reliance and in the accomplishment of various little blind man's tricks. At her bidding he lit a cigarette for my benefit, by means of a patent fuse. He said, when he had succeeded:

"Better than the last time you saw me, eh, Meredyth?"

"What was that?" asked Mrs. Boyce.

"He nearly burned his fingers," said I, shortly. I had no desire to relate the incident.

We talked of the coming ceremony and I gave them the details of the programme. Boyce had been right in accepting on the score of his mother. Only once had she been the central figure in any public ceremony—on her wedding day, in the years long ago. Here was a new kind of wedding day in her old age. The prospect filled her with a tremulous joy which was to both of them a compensation. She bubbled over with pride and excitement at her inclusion in the homage that was to be paid to the valour of her only son.

"After all," she said, "I did bring him into the world. So I can claim some credit. I only hope I shan't cry and make a fool of myself. They won't expect me to keep on bowing, will they? I once saw Queen Victoria driving through the streets, and I thought how dreadfully her poor old neck must have ached."

On the latter point I reassured her. On the drive from the station Boyce would take the salute of the troops on the line of route. If she smiled charmingly on them, their hearts would be satisfied, and if she just nodded at them occasionally in a motherly sort of way, they would be enchanted. She informed me that she was having a new dress made for the occasion. She had also bought a new hat, which I must see. A servant was summoned and dispatched for it. She tried it on girlishly before the mirror over the mantelpiece, and received my compliments.

"Tell me what it looks like," said Boyce.

You might as well ask a savage in Central Africa to describe the interior of a submarine as the ordinary man to describe a woman's hat. My artless endeavours caused considerable merriment. To hear Boyce's gay laughter one would have thought he had never a care in the world ...

When I took my leave, Mrs. Boyce accompanied Marigold and myself to the front door.

"Did you ever hear of anything so dreadful?" she whispered, and I saw her lips quivering and the tears rolling down her cheeks. "If he weren't so brave and wonderful, I should break my heart."

"What do you suppose you are yourself, my dear old friend," said I over Marigold's shoulder.

I went away greatly comforted. Both of them were as brave as could be. For the first time I took a more cheerful view of Boyce's future.

On the evening before the Reception Betty was shown into the library. It was late, getting on towards my bedtime, and I was nodding in front of the fire.

"I'm just in and out, Majy dear," she said. "I had to come. I didn't want to give you too many shocks." At my expression of alarm, she laughed. "I've only run in to tell you that I've made up my mind to come to the Town Hall tomorrow."

I looked at her, and I suppose my hands moved in a slight gesture.

"By that," she said, "I suppose you mean you can never tell what I'm going to do next."

"You've guessed it, my dear," said I.

"Do you disapprove?"

"I couldn't be so presumptuous."

She bent over me and caught the lapels of my jacket.

"Oh, don't be so dreadfully dignified. I want you to understand. Everybody is going to pay honour to-morrow to a man who has given everything he could to his country. Don't you think it would be petty of me if I stood out? What have the dead things that have passed between us to do with my tribute as an Englishwoman?"

What indeed? I asked her whether she was attending in her private capacity or as one of the representatives of the V.A.D. nurses. I learned for the thousandth time that Betty Connor did not deal in half measures. If she went at all, it was as Betty Connor that she would go. Her aunts would accompany her. It was part of the municipal ordering of things that the Town Clerk should have sent them the special cards of invitation.

"I think it my duty to go," said Betty.

"If you think so, my dear," said I, "then it is your duty. So there's nothing more to be said about it."

Betty kissed the top of my head and went off.

We come now to the morning of the great day. Everything had been finally settled. The Mayor and Aldermen, Lady Fenimore and the Aldermen's wives, the Lord Lieutenant (in unofficial mufti) and Lady Laleham (great though officially obscure lady), the General of the Division quartered in the neighbourhood and officers of his staff, and a few other magnates to meet the three o'clock train by which the Boyces were due to arrive. The station hung with flags and inscriptions. A guard of honour and a band in the station-yard, with a fleet of motor cars in waiting. Troops lining the route from station to Town Hall. More troops in the decorated Market Square, including the Godbury School O.T.C. and the Wellingsford and Godbury Volunteers. I heard that the latter were very anxious to fire off a feu de joie, but were restrained owing to lack of precedent. The local fire-brigade in freshly burnished helmets were to follow the procession of motor cars, and behind them motor omnibuses with the nurses.

Marigold, although his attendance on me precluded him from taking part in the parade of Volunteers, appeared in full grey uniform with all his medals and the black patch of ceremony over his eyeless socket. I must confess to regarding him with some jealousy. I too should have liked to wear my decorations. If a man swears to you that he is free from such little vanities, he is more often than not a mere liar. But a broken-down old soldier, although still drawing pay from the Government, is not allowed to wear uniform (which I think is outrageous), and he can't go and plaster himself with medals when he is wearing on his head a hard felt hat. My envy of the martial looking Marigold is a proof that my mind was not busied with sterner preoccupations. I ate my breakfast with the serene conscience not only of a man who knows he has done his duty, but of an organiser confident in the success of his schemes. The abominable weather of snows and tempests from which we had suffered for weeks had undergone a change. It was a mild morning brightened by a pale convalescent sort of sun, and there was just a little hope of spring in the air. I felt content with everything and everybody.

About eleven o'clock the buzz of the library telephone disturbed my comfortable perusal of the newspaper. I wheeled towards the instrument. Sir Anthony was speaking.

"Can you come round at once? Very urgent. The car is on its way to you."

"What's the matter?" I asked.

He could not tell me over the wires. I was to take it that my presence was urgently needed.

"I'll come along at once," said I.

Some hitch doubtless had occurred. Perhaps the War Office (whose ways were ever weird and unaccountable) had forbidden the General to take part in such a village-pump demonstration. Perhaps Lady Laleham had insisted on her husband coming down like a uniformed Lord Lieutenant on the fold. Perhaps the hero himself was laid up with measles.

With the lightest heart I drove to Wellings Park. Marigold, straight as a ramrod, sitting in front by the chauffeur. As soon as Pardoe, the butler, had brought out my chair and Marigold had settled me in it, Sir Anthony, very red and flustered, appeared and, shaking me nervously by the hand, said without preliminary greeting:

"Come into the library."

He, I think, had come from the morning room on the right of the hall. The library was on the left. He flung open the door. I steered myself into the room; and there, standing on the white bearskin hearthrug, his back to the fire, his hands in his pockets, his six inches of stiff white beard stuck aggressively outward, I saw Daniel Gedge.

While I gaped in astonishment, Sir Anthony shut the door behind him, drew a straight-backed chair from the wall, planted it roughly some distance away from the fire, and, pointing to it, bade Gedge sit down. Gedge obeyed. Sir Anthony took the hearthrug position, his hands behind his back, his legs apart.

"This man," said he, "has come to me with a ridiculous, beastly story. At first I was undecided whether I should listen to him or kick him out. I thought it wiser to listen to him in the presence of a reputable witness. That's why I've sent for you, Duncan. Now you just begin all over again, my man," said he, turning to Gedge, "and remember that anything you say here will be used against you at your trial."

Gedge laughed—I must admit, with some justification.

"You forget, Sir Anthony, I'm not a criminal and you're not a policeman."

"I'm the Mayor to this town, sir," cried Sir Anthony. "I'm also a Justice of the Peace."

"And I'm a law-abiding citizen," retorted Gedge.

"You're an infernal socialistic pro-German," exclaimed Sir Anthony.

"Prove it. I only ask you to prove it. No matter what my private opinions may be, you just try to bring me up under the Defence of the Realm Act, and you'll find you can't touch me."

I held out a hand. "Forgive me for interrupting," said I, "but what is all this discussion about?"

Gedge crossed one leg over the other and drew his beard through his fingers. Sir Anthony was about to burst into speech, but I checked him with a gesture and turned to Gedge.

"It has nothing to do with political opinions," said he. "It has to do with the death, nearly two years ago, of Miss Althea Fenimore, Sir Anthony's only daughter."

Sir Anthony, his face congested, glared at him malevolently. I started, with a gasp of surprise, and stared at the man who, caressing his beard, looked from one to the other of us with an air of satisfaction.

"Get on," said Sir Anthony.

"You are going to give a civic reception to-day to Colonel Boyce, V.C., aren't you?"

"Yes, I am," snapped Sir Anthony.

"Do you think you ought to do it when I tell you that Colonel Boyce, V.C., murdered Miss Althea Fenimore on the night of the 25th June, two years ago?"

"Yes," said Sir Anthony. "And do you know why? Because I know you to be a liar and a scoundrel."

I can never describe the awful horror that numbed me to the heart. For a few moments my body seemed as lifeless as my legs. The charge, astounding almost to grotesqueness in the eyes of Sir Anthony, and rousing him to mere wrath, deprived me of the power of speech. For I knew, in that dreadful instant, that the man's words contained some elements of truth.

All the pieces of the puzzle that had worried me at odd times for months fitted themselves together in a vivid flash. Boyce and Althea! I had never dreamed of associating their names. That association was the key of the puzzle. Out of the darkness disturbing things shone clear. Boyce's abrupt retirement from Wellingsford before the war; his cancellation by default of his engagement; his morbid desire, a year ago, to keep secret his presence in his own house; Gedge's veiled threat to me in the street to use a way "that'll knock all you great people of Wellingsford off your high horses;" his extraordinary interview with Boyce; his generally expressed hatred of Boyce. Was this too the secret which he let out in his cups to Randall Holmes and which drove the young man from his society? And Betty? Boyce was a devil. She wished he were dead. And her words: "You have behaved worse to others. I don't wonder at your shrinking from showing your face here." How much did Betty know? There was the lost week—in Carlisle?—in poor Althea's life. And then there were Boyce's half confessions, the glimpses he had afforded me into the tormented soul. To me he had condemned himself out of his own mouth.

I repeat that, sitting there paralysed by the sudden shock of it, I knew—not that the man was speaking the literal truth—God forbid!—but that Boyce was, in some degree, responsible for Althea's death.

"Calling me names won't alter the facts, Sir Anthony," said Gedge, with a touch of insolence. "I was there at the time. I saw it."

"If that's true," Sir Anthony retorted, "you're an accessory after the fact, and in greater danger of being hanged than ever." He turned to me in his abrupt way. "Now that we've heard this blackguard, shall we hand him over to the police?"

Being directly addressed, I recovered my nerve.

"Before doing that," said I, "perhaps it would be best for us to hear what kind of a story he has to tell us. We should also like to know his motives in not denouncing the supposed murderer at once, and in keeping his knowledge hidden all this time."

"With regard to the last part of your remarks, I dare say you would," said Gedge. "Only I don't know whether I'll go so far as to oblige you. Anyhow you may have discovered that I don't particularly care about your class. I've been preaching against your idleness and vanity and vices, and the strangling grip you have on the throats of the people, ever since I was a young man. If one of your lot chose to do in another of your lot—a common story of seduction and crime—"

At this slur in his daughter's honour Sir Anthony broke out fiercely, and, for a moment, I feared lest he would throw himself on Gedge and wring his neck. I managed to check his outburst and bring him to reason. He resumed his attitude on the hearthrug.

"As I was saying," Gedge continued, rather frightened, "from my sociological point of view I considered the affair no business of mine. I speak of it now, because ever since war broke out your class and the parasitical bourgeoisie have done your best to reduce me to starvation. I thought it would be pleasant to get a bit of my own back. Just a little bit," he added, rubbing his hands.

"If you think you've done it, you'll find yourself mistaken."

Gedge shrugged his shoulders and pulled his beard. I hated the light in his little crafty eyes. I feel sure he had been looking forward for months to this moment of pure happiness.

"Having given us an insight into your motives, which seem consistent with what we know of your character," said I, judicially, "will you now make your statement of facts?"

"What's the good of listening further to his lies?" interrupted Sir Anthony. "I'm a magistrate. I can give the police at once a warrant for his arrest."

Again I pacified him. "Let us hear what the man has to say."

Gedge began. He spoke by the book, like one who repeats a statement carefully prepared.

"It was past ten o'clock on the night of the 25th June, 1914. I had just finished supper when I was rung up by the landlord of The Three Feathers on the Farfield road—it's the inn about a quarter of a mile from the lock gates. He said that the District Secretary of the Red Democratic Federation was staying there—his brother-in-law, if you want to know—and he hadn't received my report. I must explain that I am the local secretary, and as there was to be an important conference of the Federation at Derby the next day, the District Secretary ought to have been in possession of my report on local affairs. I had drawn up the report. My daughter Phyllis had typed it, and she ought to have posted it. On questioning her, I found she had neglected to do so. I explained this over the wires and said I would bring the report at once to The Three Feathers. I only tell you all this, in which you can't be interested, so that you can't say: 'What were you doing on a lonely road at that time of night?' My daughter and the landlord of The Three Feathers can corroborate this part of my story. I set out on my bicycle. It was bright moonlight. You know that for about two hundred yards before the lock gate, and for about twenty after, the towing-path is raised above the level of the main road which runs parallel with it a few yards away. There are strips of market garden between. When I got to this open bit I saw two persons up on the towing-path. One was a girl with a loose kind of cloak and a hat. The other was a man wearing a soft felt hat and a light overcoat. The overcoat was open and I saw that he was wearing it over evening dress. That caught my attention. What was this swell in evening dress doing there with a girl? I slowed down and dismounted. They didn't see me. I got into the shadow of a whitethorn. They turned their faces so that the moon beat full on them. I saw them as plain as I see you. They were Colonel Boyce, V.C.,—Major then—and your daughter, Mr. Mayor, Miss Althea Fenimore."

He paused as though to point the dramatic effect, and twisted round, sticking out his horrible beard at Sir Anthony. Sir Anthony, his hands thrust deep in his trouser-pockets and his bullet head bent forward, glared at him balefully out of his old blue eyes. But he said never a word. Gedge continued.

"They didn't speak very loud, so I could only hear a scrap or two of their conversation. They seemed to be quarrelling—she wanted him to do something which he wouldn't do. I heard the words 'marriage' and 'disgrace.' They stood still for a moment. Then they turned back. I had overtaken them, you know. I remounted my bicycle and rode to The Three Feathers. I was there about a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. Then I rode back for home. When I came in sight of the lock, there I saw a man standing alone, sharp in the moonlight. As I came nearer I recognised the same man, Major Boyce. There were no lights in the lock-keeper's cottage. He and his wife had gone to bed long before. I was so interested that I forgot what I was doing and ran into the hedge so that I nearly came down. There was the noise of the scrape and drag of the machine which must have sounded very loud in the stillness. It startled him, for he looked all round, but he didn't see me, for I was under the hedge. Then suddenly he started running. He ran as if the devil was after him. I saw him squash down his Trilby hat so that it was shapeless. Then he disappeared along the path. I thought this a queer proceeding. Why should he have taken to his heels? I thought I should like to see him again. If he kept to the towing-path, his shortest way home, he was bound to go along the Chestnut Avenue, where, as you know, the road and the path again come together. On a bicycle it was easy to get there before him. I sat down on a bench and waited. Presently he comes, walking fast, his hat still squashed in all over his ears. I walked my bicycle slap in front of him.

"'Good-night, Major,' I said.

"He stared at me as if he didn't know me. Then he seemed to pull himself together and said: 'Good-night, Gedge. What are you doing out at this time of night?'

"'If it comes to that, sir,' said I, 'what are you?'

"Then he says, very haughty, as if I was the dirt under his feet—I suppose, Sir Anthony Fenimore and Major Meredyth, you think that me and my class are by divine prescription the dirt beneath your feet, but you're damn well mistaken—then he says: 'What the devil do you mean?' and catches hold of the front wheel of the bicycle and swings it and me out of his way so that I had a nasty fall, with the machine on top of me, and he marches off. I picked myself up furious with anger. I am an elderly man and not accustomed to that sort of treatment. I yelled out: 'What have you been doing with the Squire's daughter on the towing-path?' It pulled him up short. He made a step or two towards me, and again he asked me what I meant. And this time I told him. He called me a liar, swore he had never been on any tow-path or had seen any squire's daughter, and threatened to murder me. As soon as I could mount my bicycle I left him and made for home. The next afternoon, if you remember, the unfortunate young lady's body was found at the bottom of three fathoms of water by the lock gates."

He had spoken so clearly, so unfalteringly, that Sir Anthony had been surprised into listening without interruption. The bull-dog expression on his face never changed. When Gedge had come to the end, he said:

"Will you again tell me your object in coming to me with this disgusting story?"

Gedge lifted his bushy eyebrows. "Don't you believe it even now?"

"Not a word of it," replied Sir Anthony.

"I ought to remind you of another point." said Gedge. "Was Major Boyce ever seen in Wellingsford after that night? No. He went off by the first train the next morning. Went abroad and stayed there till the outbreak of war."

"I happen to know he had made arrangements to start for Norway that morning," said Sir Anthony. "He had called here a day or two before to say good-bye."

"Did he write you any letter of condolence?" Gedge asked sneeringly.

I saw a sudden spasm pass over Sir Anthony's features. But he said in the same tone as before:

"I am not going to answer insolent questions."

Gedge turned to me with the air of a man giving up argument with a child.

"What do you think of it, Major Meredyth?"

What could I say? I had kept a grim iron face all through the proceedings. I could only reply:

"I agree entirely with Sir Anthony."

Gedge rose and thrust his hand into his jacket pocket. "You gentlemen are hard to convince. If you want proof positive, just read that." And he held a letter out to Sir Anthony.

Sir Anthony glared at him and abruptly plucked the letter out of his hand; for the fraction of a second he stood irresolute; then he threw it behind him into the blazing fire.

"Do you think I'm going to soil my mind with your dirty forgeries?"

Gedge laughed. "You think you've queered my pitch, I suppose. You haven't. I've heaps more incriminating letters. That was only a sample."

"Publish one of them at your peril," said I.

"Pray, Mister Major Meredyth," said he, "what is to prevent me?"

"Penal servitude for malicious slander."

"I should win my case."

"In that event they would get you, on your own showing, for being an accessory after the fact of murder, and for blackmail."

"Suppose I risk it?"

"You won't," said I.

Sir Anthony turned to the bell-push by the side of the mantelpiece.

"What's the good of talking to this double-dyed scoundrel?" He pointed to the door. "You infamous liar, get out. And if I ever catch you prowling round this house, I'll set the dogs on you."

Gedge marched to the door and turned on the threshold and shook his fist.

"You'll repent your folly till your dying day!"

"To Hell with you," cried Sir Anthony.

The door slammed. We were left alone. An avalanche of silence overwhelmed us. Heaven knows how long we remained speechless and motionless—I in my wheel-chair, he standing on the hearthrug staring awfully in front of him. At last he drew a deep breath and threw up his arms and flung himself down on a leather-covered couch, where he sat, elbows on knees and his head in his hands. After a while he lifted a drawn face.

"It's true, Duncan," said he, "and you know it."

"I don't know it," I replied stoutly, "any more than you do."

He rose in his nervous way and came swiftly to me and clapped both his hands on my frail shoulders and bent over me—he was a little man, as I have told you—and put his face so close to mine that I could feel his breath on my cheek.

"Upon your soul as a Christian you know that man wasn't lying."

I looked into his eyes—about six inches from mine.

"Boyce never murdered Althea," I said.

"But he is the man—the man I've been looking for."

I pushed him away with both hands, using all my strength. It was too horrible.

"Suppose he is. What then?"

He fell back a pace or two. "Once I remember saying: 'If ever I get hold of that man—God help him!'"

He clenched his fists and started to pace up and down the library, passing and repassing my chair. At last my nerves could stand it no longer and I called on him to halt.

"Gedge's story is curiously incomplete," said I. "We ought to have crossexamined him more closely. Is it likely that Boyce should have gone off leaving behind him a witness of his crime whom he had threatened to murder, and who he must have known would have given information as soon as the death was discovered? And don't you think Gedge's reason for holding his tongue very unconvincing? His fool hatred of our class, instead of keeping him cynically indifferent, would have made him lodge information at once and gloat over our discomfiture."

I could not choose but come to the defence of the unhappy man whom I had learned to call my friend, although, for all my trying, I could conjure up no doubt as to his intimate relation with the tragedy. As Sir Anthony did not speak, I went on.

"You can't judge a man with Leonard Boyce's record on the EX PARTE statement of a malevolent beast like Gedge. Look back. If there had been any affair between Althea and Boyce, the merest foolish flirtation, even, do you think it would have passed unnoticed? You, Edith, Betty—I myself—would have cast an uneasy eye. When we were looking about, some months ago, at the time of your sister-in-law's visit, for a possible man, the thought of Leonard Boyce never entered our heads. The only man you could rush at was young Randall Holmes, and I laughed you out of the idea. Just throw your mind back, Anthony, and try to recall any suspicious incident. You can't."

I paused rhetorically, expecting a reply. None came. He just sat looking at me in a dead way. I continued my special pleading; and the more I said, the more was I baffled by his dead stare and the more unconvincing platitudes did I find myself uttering. Some people may be able to speak vividly to a deaf and dumb creature. On this occasion I tried hard to do so, and failed. After a while my words dribbled out with difficulty and eventually ceased. At last he spoke, in the dull, toneless way of a dead man—presuming that the dead could speak:

"You may talk till you're black in the face, but you know as well as I do that the man told the truth—or practically the truth. What he said he saw, he saw. What motives have been at the back of his miserable mind, I don't know. You say I can't recall suspicious incidents. I can. I'll tell you one. I came across them once—about a month before the thing happened—among the greenhouses. I think we were having one of our tennis parties. I heard her using angry words, and when I appeared her face was flushed and there were tears in her eyes. She was taken aback for a second and then she rushed up to me. 'I think he's perfectly horrid. He says that Jingo—' pointing to the dog; you remember Jingo the Sealingham—she was devoted to him—he died last year—'He says that Jingo is a mongrel—a throw back.' Boyce said he was only teasing her and made pretty apologies. I left it at that. Hit a dog or a horse belonging to Althea, and you hit Althea. That was her way. The incident went out of my mind till this morning. Other incidents, too. One thinks pretty quick at times. Again, this scoundrel hit me on the raw. Boyce never wrote to us. Sent us through his mother a conventional word of condolence. Edith and I were hurt. That was one of the things that made me speak so angrily of him when he wouldn't come and dine with us."

Once more I pleaded. "Your Sealingham incident doesn't impress me. Why not take it at its face value? As for the letter of condolence, that may have twenty explanations."

He passed his hand over his cropped iron-grey head. "What are you driving at, Duncan? You know as well as I do—you know more than I do. I saw it in your face ever since that man opened his mouth."

"If you're so sure of everything," said I foolishly, relaxing grip on my self-control, "why did you hound him out of the place for a liar?"

He leaped to his feet and spread himself into a fighting attitude, for all the world like a half-dead bantam cock springing into a new lease of combative life.

"Do you think I'd let a dunghill beast like that crow over me? Do you think I'd let him imagine for a minute that anything he said could influence me in my public duty? By God, sir, what kind of a worm do you think I am?"

His sudden fury disconcerted me. All this time I had been wondering what kind of catastrophe was going to happen during the next few hours. I am afraid I haven't made clear to you the ghastly racket in my brain. There was the town all beflagged, everyone making holiday, all the pomp and circumstance at our disposal awaiting the signal to be displayed. There was the blind conquering hero almost on his way to local apotheosis. And here were Sir Anthony and I with the revelation of the man Gedge. It was a fantastic, baffling situation. I had been haunted by the dread of discussing it. So in reply to his outburst I simply said:

"What are you going to do?"

He drew himself up, with his obstinate chin in the air, and looked at me straight.

"If God gives me strength, I am going to do what lies before me."

At this moment Lady Fenimore came in.

"Mr. Winterbotham would like to speak to you a minute, Anthony. It's something about the school children."

"All right, my dear. I'll go to him at once," said Sir Anthony. "You'll stay and lunch with us, Duncan?"

I declined on the plea that I should have to nurse myself for a strenuous day. Sir Anthony might play the Roman father, but it was beyond my power to play the Roman father's guest.



CHAPTER XX

How he passed through the ordeal I don't know. If ever a man stood captain of his soul, it was Anthony Fenimore that day. And his soul was steel-armoured. Perhaps, if proof had come to him from an untainted source, it might have modified his attitude. I cannot tell. Without doubt the knavery of Gedge set aflame his indignation—or rather the fierce pride of the great old Tory gentleman. He would have walked through hell-fire sooner than yielded an inch to Gedge. So much would scornful defiance have done. But behind all this—and I am as certain of it as I am certain that one day I shall die—burned even fiercer, steadier, and clearer the unquenchable fire of patriotic duty. He was dealing not with a man who had sinned terribly towards him, but with a man who had offered his life over and over again to his country, a man who had given to his country the sight of his eyes, a man on whose breast the King himself had pinned the supreme badge of honour in his gift. He was dealing, not with a private individual, but with a national hero. In his small official capacity as Mayor of Wellingsford, he was but the mouthpiece of a national sentiment. And more than that. This ceremony was an appeal to the unimaginative, the sluggish, the faint-hearted. In its little way—and please remember that all tremendous enthusiasms are fit by these little fires—it was a proclamation of the undying glory of England. It was impersonal, it was national, it was Imperial. In its little way it was of vast, far-reaching importance.

I want you to remember these things in order that you should understand the mental processes, or soul processes, or whatever you like, of Sir Anthony Fenimore. Picture him. The most unheroic little man you can imagine. Clean-shaven, bullet-headed, close-cropped, his face ruddy and wrinkled like a withered apple, his eyes a misty blue, his big nose marked like a network of veins, his hands glazed and reddened, like his face, by wind and weather; standing, even under his mayoral robes, like a jockey. Of course he had the undefinable air of breeding; no one could have mistaken his class. But he was an undistinguished, very ordinary looking little man; and indeed he had done nothing for the past half century to distinguish himself above his fellows. There are thousands of his type, masters of English country houses. And of all the thousands, every one brought up against the stern issues of life would have acted like Anthony Fenimore. I say "would have acted," but anyone who has lived in England during the war knows that they have so acted. These incarnations of the commonplace, the object of the disdain, before the war, of the self-styled "intellectuals"—if the war sweeps the insufferable term into oblivion it will have done some good—these honest unassuming gentlemen have responded heroically to the great appeal; and when the intellectuals have thought of their intellects or their skins, they have thought only of their duty. And it was only the heroical sense of duty that sustained Sir Anthony Fenimore that day.

I did not see the reception at the Railway Station or join the triumphal procession; but went early to the Town Hall and took my seat on the platform. I glibly say "took my seat." A wheel-chair, sent there previously, was hoisted, with me inside, on to the platform by Marigold and a porter. After all these years, I still hate to be publicly paraded, like a grizzled baby, in Marigold's arms. For convenience' sake I was posted at the front left-hand corner. The hall soon filled. The first three rows of seats were reserved for the recipients of the municipality's special invitation; the remainder were occupied by the successful applicants for tickets. From my almost solitary perch I watched the fluttering and excited crowd. The town band in the organ gallery at the further end discoursed martial music. From the main door beneath them ran the central gangway to the platform. I recognised many friends. In the front row with her two aunts sat Betty, very demure in her widow's hat relieved by its little white band of frilly stuff beneath the brim. She looked unusually pale. I could not help watching her intently and trying to divine how much she knew of the story of Boyce and Althea. She caught my eye, nodded, and smiled wanly.

My situation was uncanny. In this crowded assemblage in front of me, whispering, talking, laughing beneath the blare of the band, not one, save Betty, had a suspicion of the tragedy. At times they seemed to melt into a shadow-mass of dreamland .... Time crawled on very slowly. Anxious forebodings oppressed me. Had Sir Anthony's valiancy stood the test? Had he been able to shake hands with his daughter's betrayer? Had he broken down during the drive side by side with him, amid the hooraying of the townsfolk? And Gedge? Had he found some madman's means of proclaiming the scandal aloud? Every nerve in my body was strained. Marigold, in his uniform and medals and patch and grey service cap plugged over his black wig, stood sentry by the side of the platform next my chair. All of a sudden he pulled out of his side pocket a phial of red liqueur in a medicine glass. He poured out the dose and handed it to me. I turned on him wrathfully.

"What the dickens is that?"

"Dr. Cliffe's orders, sir."

"When did he order it?"

"When I told him what you looked like after interviewing Mister Daniel Gedge. And he said, if you was to look like that again I was to give you this. So I'm giving it to you, sir."

There was no arguing with Marigold in front of a thousand people. I swallowed the stuff quickly. He put the phial and glass back in his pocket and resumed his wooden sentry attitude by my chair. I must own to feeling better for the draught. But, thought I, if the strain of the situation is so great for me, what must it be for Sir Anthony?

Presently the muffled sounds of outside cheering penetrated the hall. The band stopped abruptly, to begin again with "See the Conquering Hero Comes" when the civic procession appeared through the great doors. There was little Sir Anthony in his robes, grave and imposing, and beside him Mrs. Boyce, flushed, bright-eyed, and tearful. Then came Lady Fenimore with Boyce, black-spectacled, soldierly, bull-necked, his little bronze cross conspicuous among the medals on his breast, his elbow gripped by a weatherbeaten young soldier, one of his captains, as I learned afterwards, home on leave, who had claimed the privilege of guiding his blind footsteps. And behind came the Aldermen and the Councillors, and the General and his staff, and the Lord Lieutenant and Lady Laleham and the other members of the Reception Committee. The cheering drowned the strains of the "Conquering Hero." Places were taken on the platform. To the right of the Mayor sat Boyce, to the left his mother. On the table in front were set scrolls and caskets. You see, we had arranged that Mrs. Boyce should have an address and a casket all to herself. The gallery soon was picturesquely filled with the nurses, and the fire-brigade, bright-helmeted, was massed in the doorway.

God gave the steel-hearted little man strength to go through the ordeal. He delivered his carefully prepared oration in a voice that never faltered. The passages referring to Boyce's blindness he spoke with an accent of amazing sincerity. When he had ended the responsive audience applauded tumultuously. From my seat by the edge of the platform I watched Betty. Two red spots burned in her cheeks. The addresses were read, the caskets presented. Boyce remained standing, about to respond. He still held the casket in both hands. His FIDUS ACHATES, guessing his difficulty, sprang up, took it from him, and laid it on the table. Boyce turned to him with his charming smile and said: "Thanks, old man." Again the tumult broke out. Men cheered and women wept and waved wet handkerchiefs. And he stood smiling at his unseen audience. When he spoke, his deep, beautifully modulated voice held everyone under its spell, and he spoke modestly and gaily like a brave gentleman. I bent forward, as far as I was able, and scanned his face. Never once, during the whole ceremony, did the tell-tale twitch appear at the corners of his lips. He stood there the incarnation of the modern knights sans fear and sans reproach.