He stammered as even the most audacious young warrior must do when making so astounding a proposal. But I bade him not be an ass, but send her along when he had to finish with her; with the result that for some months my pretty little Phyllis has been an inmate of my house. Marigold keeps a sort of non-commissioned parent's eye on her. To him she seems to be still the child whom he fed solicitously but unemotionally with Mrs. Marigold's cakes at tea parties years ago. She gives me a daughter's dainty affection. Thank God for it!

There have been other little changes in Wellingsford. Mrs. Boyce left the town soon after Leonard's death, and lives with her sister in London. I had a letter from her this morning—a brave woman's letter. She has no suspicion of the truth. God still tempereth the wind.... Out of the innocent generosity of her heart she sent me also, as a keepsake, "a little heavy cane, of which Leonard was extraordinarily fond." She will never know that I put it into the fire, and with what strange and solemn thoughts I watched it burn.

It is Christmas Day. Dr. Cliffe, although he has washed his hands of me, tyrannically keeps me indoors of winter nights, so that I cannot, as usual, dine at Wellings Park. To counter the fellow's machinations, however, I have prepared a modest feast to which I have bidden Sir Anthony and Lady Fenimore and my dearest Betty.

As to Betty—

Phyllis comes in radiant, her pretty face pink above an absurd panoply of furs. She has had a long letter from Randall from the Lord knows where. He will be home on leave in the middle of January. In her excitement she drops prayer-books and hymn-books all over me. Then, picking them up, reminds me it is time to go to church. I am an old-fashioned fogey and I go to church on Christmas Day. I hope our admirable and conscientious Vicar won't feel it his duty to tell us to love Germans. I simply can't do it.

New Year's Day, 1917.

I must finish off this jumble of a chronicle.

Before us lies the most eventful year in all the old world's history. Thank God my beloved England is strong, and Great Britain and our great Empire and immortal France. There is exhilaration in the air; a consciousness of high ideals; an unwavering resolution to attain them; a thrilling faith in their ultimate attainment. No one has died or lost sight or limbs in vain. I look around my own little circle. Oswald Fenimore, Willie Connor, Reggie Dacre, Leonard Boyce—how many more could I not add to the list? All those little burial grounds in France—which France, with her exquisite sense of beauty, has assigned as British soil for all time—all those burial grounds, each bearing its modest leaden inscription—some, indeed, heart-rendingly inscribed "Sacred to the memory of six unknown British soldiers killed in action"—are monuments not to be bedewed with tears of lamentation. From the young lives that have gone there springs imperishable love and strength and wisdom—and the vast determination to use that love and strength and wisdom for the great good of mankind. If there is a God of Battles, guiding, in His inscrutable omniscience, the hosts that fight for the eternal verities—for all that man in his straining towards the Godhead has striven for since the world began—the men who have died will come into their glory, and those who have mourned will share exultant in the victory. From before the beginning of Time Mithra has ever been triumphant and his foot on the throat of Ahriman.

It was in February, 1915, that I began to expand my diary into this narrative,—nearly two years ago. We have passed through the darkness. The Dawn is breaking. Sursum corda.

I was going to tell you about Betty when Phyllis, with her furs and happiness and hymn-books, interrupted me. I should like to tell you now. But who am I to speak of the mysteries in the soul of a great woman? But I must try. And I can tell you more now than I could on Christmas Day.

Last night she insisted on seeing the New Year in with me. If I had told Marigold that I proposed to sit up after midnight, he would have come in at ten o'clock, picked me up with finger and thumb as any Brobdingnagian might have picked up Gulliver, and put me straightway to bed. But Betty made the announcement in her airily imperious way, and Marigold, craven before Betty and Mrs. Marigold, said "Very good, madam," as if Dr. Cliffe and his orders had never existed. At half past ten she packed off the happy and, I must confess, the somewhat sleepy Phyllis, and sat down, in her old attitude by the side of my chair, in front of the fire, and opened her dear heart to me.

I had guessed what her proud soul had suffered during the last six months. One who loved her as I did could see it in her face, in her eyes, in the little hardening of her voice, in odd little betrayals of feverishness in her manner. But the outside world saw nothing. The steel in her nature carried her through. She left no duty unaccomplished. She gave her confidence to no human being. I, to whom she might have come, was carried off to the sepulchre above mentioned. Letters were forbidden. But every day, for all her bleak despair, Betty sent me a box of fresh flowers. They would not tell me it was Betty who sent them; but I knew. My wonderful Betty.

When they took off my cerecloths and sent me back to Wellingsford, Betty was the first to smile her dear welcome. We resumed our old relations. But Betty, treating me as an invalid, forbore to speak of Leonard Boyce. Any approach on my part came up against that iron wall of reserve of which I spoke to you long ago.

But last night she told me all. What she said I cannot repeat. But she had divined the essential secret of the double tragedy of the canal. It had become obvious to her that he had made the final reparation for a wrong far deeper than she had imagined. She was very clear-eyed and clear-souled. During her long companionship with pain and sorrow and death, she had learned many things. She had been purged by the fire of the war of all resentments, jealousies, harsh judgments, and came forth pure gold.... Leonard had been the great love of her life. If you cannot see now why she married Willie Connor, gave him all that her generous heart could give, and after his death was irresistibly drawn back to Boyce, I have written these pages in vain.

A few minutes before midnight Marigold entered with a tray bearing a cake or two, a pint of champagne and a couple of glasses. While he was preparing to uncork the bottle Betty slipped from the room and returned with another glass.

"For Sergeant Marigold," she said.

She opened the French window behind the drawn curtains and listened. It was a still clear night. Presently the clock of the Parish Church struck twelve. She came down to the little table by my side and filled the glasses, and the three of us drank the New Year in. Then Betty kissed me and we both shook hands with Marigold, who stood very stiff and determined and cleared his throat and swallowed something as though he were expected to make a speech. But Betty anticipated him. She put both her hands on his gaunt shoulders and looked up into his ugly face.

"You've just wished me a Happy New Year, Sergeant."

"I have," said he, "and I mean it."

"Then will you let me have great happiness in staying here and helping you to look after the Major?"

He gasped for a moment (as did I) and clutched her arms for an instant in an iron grip.

"Indeed I will, my dear," said he.

Then he stepped back a pace and stood rigid, his one eye staring, his weather-beaten face the colour of beetroot. He was blushing. The beads of perspiration appeared below his awful wig. He stammered out something about "Ma'am" and "Madam." He had never so far forgotten himself in his life.

But Betty sprang forward and gripped his hand.

"It is you who are the dear," she said. "You, the greatest and loyalest friend a man has ever known. And I'll be loyal to you, never fear."

By what process of enchantment she got an emotion-filled Marigold to the door and shut it behind him, I shall never discover. On its slam she laughed—a queer high note. In one swift movement she was by my knees. And she broke into a passion of tears. For me, I was the most mystified man under heaven.

Soon she began to speak, her head bowed.

"I've come to the end of the tether, Majy dear. They've driven me from the hospital—I didn't know how to tell you before—I've been doing all sorts of idiotic things. The doctors say it's a nervous breakdown—I've had rather a bad time—but I thought it contemptible to let one's own wretched little miseries interfere with one's work for the country—so I fought as hard as I could. Indeed I did, Majy dear. But it seems I've been playing the fool without knowing it,—I haven't slept properly for months—and they've sent me away. Oh, they've been all that's kind, of course—I must have at least six months' rest, they say—they talk about nursing homes—I've thought and thought and thought about it until I'm certain. There's only one rest for me, Majy dear." She raised a tear-stained, tense and beautiful face and drew herself up so that one arm leaned on my chair, and the other on my shoulder. "And that is to be with the one human being that is left for me to love—oh, really love—you know what I mean—in the world."

I could only put my hand on her fair young head and say:

"My dear, my dear, you know I love you."

"That is why I'm not afraid to speak. Perfect love casteth out fear—"

I pushed back her hair. "What is it that you want me to do, Betty?" I asked. "My life, such as it is, is at your command."

She looked me full, unflinchingly in the eyes.

"If you would give me the privilege of bearing your name, I should be a proud and happy woman."

We remained there, I don't know how long—she with her hand on my shoulder, I caressing her dear hair. It was a tremendous temptation. To have my beloved Betty in all her exquisite warm loyalty bound to me for the rest of my crippled life. But I found the courage to say:

"My dear, you are young still, with the wonderful future that no one alive can foretell before you, and I am old—"

"You're not fifty."

"Still I am old, I belong to the past—to a sort of affray behind an ant-hill which they called a war. I'm dead, my dear, you are gloriously alive. I'm of the past, as I say. You're of the future. You, my dearest, are the embodiment of the woman of the Great War—" I smiled—"The Woman of the Great War in capital letters. What your destiny is, God knows. But it isn't to be tied to a Prehistoric Man like me."

She rose and stood, with her beautiful bare arms behind her, sweet, magnificent.

"I am a Woman of the Great War. You are quite right. But in a year or so I shall be like other women of the war who have suffered and spent their lives, a woman of the past—not of the future. All sorts of things have been burned up in it." In a quick gesture she stretched out her hands to me. "Oh, can't you understand?"

I cannot set down the rest of the tender argument. If she had loved me less, she could have lived in my house, like Phyllis, without a thought of the conventions. But loving me dearly, she had got it into her feminine head that the sacredness of the marriage tie would crown with dignity and beauty the part she had resolved to play for my happiness.

Well, if I have yielded I pray it may not be set down to me for selfish exploitation of a woman's exhausted hour. When I said something of the sort, she laughed and cried:

"Why, I'm bullying you into it!"

The First of January, 1917—the dawn to me, a broken derelict, of the annus mirabilis. Somehow, foolishly, illogically, I feel that it will be the annus mirabilis for my beloved country.

And come—after all—I am, in spite of my legs, a Man too of the Great War. I have lived in it, and worked in it, and suffered in it—and in it have I won a Great Thing.

So long as one's soul is sound—that is the Great Matter.

Just before we parted last night, I said to Betty:

"The beginning and end of all this business is that you're afraid of Marigold."

She started back indignantly.

"I'm not! I'm not!"

I laughed. "The Lady protests too much," said I.

The clock struck two. Marigold appeared at the door. He approached Betty.

"I think, Madam, we ought to let the Major go to bed."

"I think, Marigold," said Betty serenely, "we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for keeping him up so late."



THE END