PART II

The great hall was emptying apace as the clocks struck two, and we

passed out through double doors into a huge reading and smoking room,

blue with tobacco and buzzing with voices.

“We’re quieter as a rule,” said the Boy. “But we’re filling up

vacancies to-day. Hence the anxious faces of the Line and Militia.

Look!” There were four tables against the walls, and at each stood a

crowd of uniforms. The centres of disturbance were noncommissioned

officers who, seated, growled and wrote down names.

“Come to my table,” said Burgard. “Well, Purvis, have you ear-marked

our little lot?”

“I’ve been tellin’ ’em for the last hour we’ve only twenty-three

vacancies,” was the sergeant’s answer. “I’ve taken nearly fifty for

Trials, and this is what’s left.” Burgard smiled.

“I’m very sorry,” he said to the crowd, “but C Company’s full.”

“Excuse me, Sir,” said a man, “but wouldn’t sea-time count in my

favour? I’ve put in three months with the Fleet. Small quick-firers,

Sir? Company guns? Any sort of light machinery?”

“Come away,” said a voice behind. “They’ve chucked the best farrier

between Hull and Dewsbury. Think they’ll take _you_ an’ your potty

quick-firers?”

The speaker turned on his heel and swore.

“Oh, damn the Guard, by all means!” said Sergeant Purvis, collecting

his papers. “D’you suppose it’s any pleasure to _me_ to reject chaps of

your build and make? Vote us a second Guard battalion and we’ll

accommodate you. Now, you can come into Schools and watch Trials if you

like.”

Most of the men accepted his invitation, but a few walked away angrily.

I followed from the smoking-room across a wide corridor into a

riding-school, under whose roof the voices of the few hundred assembled

wandered in lost echoes.

“I’ll leave you, if you don’t mind,” said Burgard. “Company officers

aren’t supposed to assist at these games. Here, Matthews!” He called to

a private and put me in his charge.

In the centre of the vast floor my astonished eyes beheld a group of

stripped men; the pink of their bodies startling the tan.

“These are our crowd,” said Matthews. “They’ve been vetted, an’ we’re

putting ’em through their paces.”

“They don’t look a bit like raw material,” I said.

“No, we don’t use either raw men or raw meat for that matter in the

Guard,” Matthews replied. “Life’s too short.”

Purvis stepped forward and barked in the professional manner. It was

physical drill of the most searching, checked only when he laid his

hand over some man’s heart.

Six or seven, I noticed, were sent back at this stage of the game. Then

a cry went up from a group of privates standing near the line of

contorted figures. “White, Purvis, white! Number Nine is spitting

white!”

“I know it,” said Purvis. “Don’t you worry.”

“Unfair!” murmured the man who understood quick-firers. “If I couldn’t

shape better than that I’d hire myself out to wheel a perambulator.

He’s cooked.”

“Nah,” said the intent Matthews. “He’ll answer to a month’s training

like a horse. It’s only suet. _You’ve_ been training for this, haven’t

you?”

“Look at me,” said the man simply.

“Yes. You’re overtrained,” was Matthews’ comment. “The Guard isn’t a

circus.”

“Guns!” roared Purvis, as the men broke off and panted. “Number off

from the right. Fourteen is one, three is two, eleven’s three, twenty

and thirty-nine are four and five, and five is six.” He was giving them

their numbers at the guns as they struggled into their uniforms. In

like manner he told off three other guncrews, and the remainder left at

the double, to return through the further doors with four light

quick-firers jerking at the end of man-ropes.

“Knock down and assemble against time!” Purvis called.

The audience closed in a little as the crews flung themselves on the

guns, which melted, wheel by wheel, beneath their touch.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” I whispered.

“Huh!” said Matthews scornfully. “They’re always doin’ it in the Line

and Militia drill-halls. It’s only circus-work.”

The guns were assembled again and some one called the time. Then

followed ten minutes of the quickest firing and feeding with dummy

cartridges that was ever given man to behold.

“They look as if they might amount to something—this draft,” said

Matthews softly.

“What might you teach ’em after this, then?” I asked.

“To be Guard,” said Matthews.

“Spurs,” cried Purvis, as the guns disappeared through the doors into

the stables. Each man plucked at his sleeve, and drew up first one heel

and then the other.

“What the deuce are they doing?” I asked.

“This,” said Matthews. He put his hand to a ticket-pocket inside his

regulation cuff, showed me two very small black box-spurs: drawing up a

gaitered foot, he snapped them into the box in the heel, and when I had

inspected snapped them out again.

“That’s all the spur you really need,” he said.

Then horses were trotted out into the school barebacked, and the

neophytes were told to ride.

Evidently the beasts knew the game and enjoyed it, for they would not

make it easy for the men.

A heap of saddlery was thrown in a corner, and from this each man, as

he captured his mount, made shift to draw proper equipment, while the

audience laughed, derided, or called the horses towards them.

It was, most literally, wild horseplay, and by the time it was finished

the recruits and the company were weak with fatigue and laughter.

“That’ll do,” said Purvis, while the men rocked in their saddles. “I

don’t see any particular odds between any of you. C Company! Does

anybody here know anything against any of these men?”

“That’s a bit of the Regulations,” Matthews whispered. “Just like

forbiddin’ the banns in church. Really, it was all settled long ago

when the names first came up.”

There was no answer.

“You’ll take ’em as they stand?”

There was a grunt of assent.

“Very good. There’s forty men for twenty-three billets.” He turned to

the sweating horsemen. “I must put you into the Hat.”

With great ceremony and a shower of company jokes that I did not

follow, an enormous Ally Sloper top-hat was produced, into which

numbers and blanks were dropped, and the whole was handed round to the

riders by a private, evidently the joker of C Company.

Matthews gave me to understand that each company owned a cherished

receptacle (sometimes not a respectable one) for the papers of the

final drawing. He was telling me how his company had once stolen the

Sacred Article used by D Company for this purpose and of the riot that

followed, when through the west door of the schools entered a fresh

detachment of stripped men, and the arena was flooded with another

company.

Said Matthews as we withdrew, “Each company does Trials their own way.

B Company is all for teaching men how to cook and camp. D Company keeps

’em to horse-work mostly. We call D the circus-riders and B the cooks.

They call us the Gunners.”

“An’ you’ve rejected _me_,” said the man who had done sea-time, pushing

out before us. “The Army’s goin’ to the dogs.”

I stood in the corridor looking for Burgard.

“Come up to my room and have a smoke,” said Matthews, private of the

Imperial Guard.

We climbed two flights of stone stairs ere we reached an immense

landing flanked with numbered doors.

Matthews pressed a spring-latch and led me into a little cabin-like

room. The cot was a standing bunk, with drawers beneath. On the bed lay

a brilliant blanket; by the bed head was an electric light and a shelf

of books: a writing table stood in the window, and I dropped into a low

wicker chair.

“This is a cut above subaltern’s quarters,” I said, surveying the

photos, the dhurri on the floor, the rifle in its rack, the field-kit

hung up behind the door, and the knicknacks on the walls.

“The Line bachelors use ’em while we’re away; but they’re nice to come

back to after ‘heef.’” Matthews passed me his cigarette-case.

“Where have you ‘heefed’?” I said.

“In Scotland, Central Australia, and North-Eastern Rhodesia and the

North-West Indian front.”

“What’s your service?”

“Four years. I’ll have to go in a year. I got in when I was

twenty-two—by a fluke—from the Militia direct—on Trials.”

“Trials like those we just saw?”

“Not so severe. There was less competition then. I hoped to get my

stripes, but there’s no chance.”

“Why?”

“I haven’t the knack of handling men. Purvis let me have a half-company

for a month in Rhodesia—over towards Lake N’Garni. I couldn’t work ’em

properly. It’s a gift.”

“Do colour-sergeants handle half-companies with you?”

“They can command ’em on the ‘heef.’ We’ve only four company

officers—Burgard, Luttrell, Kyd, and Harrison. Pigeon’s our swop, and

he’s in charge of the ponies. Burgard got his company on the ‘heef.’

You see Burgard had been a lieutenant in the Line, but he came into the

Guards on Trials like the men. _He_ could command. They tried him in

India with a wing of the battalion for three months. He did well so he

got his company. That’s what made me hopeful. But it’s a gift, you

see—managing men—and so I’m only a senior private. They let ten per

cent of us stay on for two years extra after our three are finished—to

polish the others.”

“Aren’t you even a corporal?”

“We haven’t corporals, or lances for that matter, in the Guard. As a

senior private I’d take twenty men into action; but one Guard don’t

tell another how to clean himself. You’ve learned that before you

apply. … Come in!”

There was a knock at the door, and Burgard entered, removing his cap.

“I thought you’d be here,” he said, as Matthews vacated the other chair

and sat on the bed. “Well, has Matthews told you all about it? How did

our Trials go, Matthews?”

“Forty names in the Hat, Sir, at the finish. They’ll make a fairish

lot. Their gun-tricks weren’t bad; but D company has taken the best

horsemen—as usual.”

“Oh, I’ll attend to that on ‘heef.’ Give me a man who can handle

company-guns and I’ll engage to make him a horse-master. D company will

end by thinkin’ ’emselves Captain Pigeon’s private cavalry some day.”

I had never heard a private and a captain talking after this fashion,

and my face must have betrayed my astonishment, for Burgard said:

“These are not our parade manners. In our rooms, as we say in the

Guard, all men are men. Outside we are officers and men.”

“I begin to see,” I stammered. “Matthews was telling me that sergeants

handled half-companies and rose from the ranks—and I don’t see that

there are any lieutenants—and your companies appear to be two hundred

and fifty strong. It’s a shade confusing to the layman.”

Burgard leaned forward didactically. “The Regulations lay down that

every man’s capacity for command must be tested to the uttermost. We

construe that very literally when we’re on the ‘heef.’ F’r instance,

any man can apply to take the command next above him, and if a man’s

too shy to ask, his company officer must see that he gets his chance. A

sergeant is given a wing of the battalion to play with for three

weeks—a month, or six weeks—according to his capacity, and turned

adrift in an Area to make his own arrangements. That’s what Areas are

for—and to experiment in. A good gunner—a private very often—has all

four company-guns to handle through a week’s fight, acting for the time

as the major. Majors of Guard battalions (Verschoyle’s our major) are

supposed to be responsible for the guns, by the way. There’s nothing to

prevent any man who has the gift working his way up to the experimental

command of the battalion on ‘heef.’ Purvis, my colour-sergeant,

commanded the battalion for three months at the back of Coolgardie, an’

very well he did it. Bayley ’verted to company officer for the time

being an’ took Harrison’s company, and Harrison came over to me as my

colour-sergeant. D’you see? Well, Purvis is down for a commission when

there’s a vacancy. He’s been thoroughly tested, and we all like him.

Two other sergeants have passed that three months’ trial in the same

way (just as second mates go up for extra master’s certificate). They

have E.C. after their names in the Army List. That shows they’re

capable of taking command in event of war. The result of our system is

that you could knock out every single officer of a Guard battalion

early in the day, and the wheels ’ud still go forward, _not_ merely

round. We’re allowed to fill up half our commissioned list from the

ranks direct. _Now_ d’you see why there’s such a rush to get into a

Guard battalion?”

“Indeed I do. Have you commanded the regiment experimentally?”

“Oh, time and again,” Burgard laughed. “We’ve all had our E.C. turn.”

“Doesn’t the chopping and changing upset the men?”

“It takes something to upset the Guard. Besides, they’re all in the

game together. They give each other a fair show you may be sure.”

“That’s true,” said Matthews. “When I went to N’Gami with my—with the

half-company,” he sighed, “they helped me all they knew. But it’s a

gift—handling men. I found _that_ out.”

“I know you did,” said Burgard softly. “But you found it out in time,

which is the great thing. You see,” he turned to me, “with our limited

strength we can’t afford to have a single man who isn’t more than up to

any duty—in reason. Don’t you be led away by what you saw at Trials

just now. The Volunteers and the Militia have all the monkey-tricks of

the trade—such as mounting and dismounting guns, and making fancy

scores and doing record marches; but they need a lot of working up

before they can pull their weight in the boat.”

There was a knock at the door. A note was handed in. Burgard read it

and smiled.

“Bayley wants to know if you’d care to come with us to the Park and see

the kids. It’s only a Saturday afternoon walk-round before the

taxpayer…. Very good. If you’ll press the button we’ll try to do the

rest.”

He led me by two flights of stairs up an iron stairway that gave on a

platform, not unlike a ship’s bridge, immediately above the barrelled

glass roof of the riding-school. Through a ribbed ventilator I could

see B Company far below watching some men who chased sheep. Burgard

unlocked a glass-fronted fire-alarm arrangement flanked with dials and

speaking-tubes, and bade me press the centre button.

Next moment I should have fallen through the riding-school roof if he

had not caught me; for the huge building below my feet thrilled to the

multiplied purring of electric bells. The men in the school vanished

like minnows before a shadow, and above the stamp of booted feet on

staircases I heard the neighing of many horses.

“What in the world have I done?” I gasped.

“Turned out the Guard—horse, foot, and guns!”

A telephone bell rang imperiously. Burgard snatched up the receiver:

“Yes, Sir…. _What_, Sir?… I never heard they said that,” he laughed,

“but it would be just like ’em. In an hour and a half? Yes, Sir.

Opposite the Statue? Yes, Sir.”

He turned to me with a wink as he hung up.

“Bayley’s playing up for you. Now you’ll see some fun.”

“Who’s going to catch it?” I demanded.

“Only our local Foreign Service Corps. Its C.O. has been boasting that

it’s _en état de partir_, and Bayley’s going to take him at his word

and have a kit-inspection this afternoon in the Park. I must tell their

drill-hall. Look over yonder between that brewery chimney and the

mansard roof!”

He readdressed himself to the telephone, and I kept my eye on the

building to the southward. A Blue Peter climbed up to the top of the

flagstaff that crowned it and blew out in the summer breeze. A black

storm-cone followed.

“Inspection for F.S. corps acknowledged, Sir,” said Burgard down the

telephone. “Now we’d better go to the riding-school. The battalion

falls in there. I have to change, but you’re free of the corps. Go

anywhere. Ask anything. In another ten minutes we’re off.”

I lingered for a little looking over the great city, its huddle of

houses and the great fringe of the Park, all framed between the open

windows of this dial-dotted eyrie.

When I descended the halls and corridors were as hushed as they had

been noisy, and my feet echoed down the broad tiled staircases. On the

third floor, Matthews, gaitered and armed, overtook me smiling.

“I thought you might want a guide,” said he. “We’ve five minutes yet,”

and piloted me to the sunsplashed gloom of the riding-school. Three

companies were in close order on the tan. They moved out at a whistle,

and as I followed in their rear I was overtaken by Pigeon on a rough

black mare.

“Wait a bit,” he said, “till the horses are all out of stables, and

come with us. D Company is the only one mounted just now. We do it to

amuse the taxpayer,” he explained, above the noise of horses on the

tan.

“Where are the guns?” I asked, as the mare lipped my coat-collar.

“Gone ahead long ago. They come out of their own door at the back of

barracks. We don’t haul guns through traffic more than we can help…. If

Belinda breathes down your neck smack her. She’ll be quiet in the

streets. She loves lookin’ into the shop-windows.”

The mounted company clattered through vaulted concrete corridors in the

wake of the main body, and filed out into the crowded streets.

When I looked at the townsfolk on the pavement, or in the double-decked

trams, I saw that the bulk of them saluted, not grudgingly or of

necessity, but in a light-hearted, even flippant fashion.

“Those are Line and Militia men,” said Pigeon. “That old chap in the

top-hat by the lamp-post is an ex-Guardee. That’s why he’s saluting in

slow-time. No, there’s no regulation governing these things, but we’ve

all fallen into the way of it somehow. Steady, mare!”

“I don’t know whether I care about this aggressive militarism,” I

began, when the company halted, and Belinda almost knocked me down.

Looking forward I saw the badged cuff of a policeman upraised at a

crossing, his back towards us.

“Horrid aggressive, ain’t we?” said Pigeon with a chuckle when we moved

on again and overtook the main body. Here I caught the strains of the

band, which Pigeon told me did not accompany the battalion on ‘heef,’

but lived in barracks and made much money by playing at parties in

town.

“If we want anything more than drums and fifes on ‘heef’ we sing,” said

Pigeon. “Singin’ helps the wind.”

I rejoiced to the marrow of my bones thus to be borne along on billows

of surging music among magnificent men, in sunlight, through a crowded

town whose people, I could feel, regarded us with comradeship,

affection—and more.

“By Jove,” I said at last, watching the eyes about us, “these people

are looking us over as if we were horses.”

“Why not? They know the game.”

The eyes on the pavement, in the trams, the cabs, at the upper windows,

swept our lines back and forth with a weighed intensity of regard which

at first seemed altogether new to me, till I recalled just such eyes, a

thousand of them, at manœuvres in the Channel when one crowded

battleship drew past its sister at biscuit-toss range. Then I stared at

the ground, overborne by those considering eyes.

Suddenly the music changed to the wail of the Dead March in “Saul,” and

once more—we were crossing a large square—the regiment halted.

“Damn!” said Pigeon, glancing behind him at the mounted company. “I

believe they save up their Saturday corpses on purpose.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“A dead Volunteer. We must play him through.” Again I looked forward

and saw the top of a hearse, followed by two mourning-coaches, boring

directly up the halted regiment, which opened out company by company to

let it through.

“But they’ve got the whole blessed square to funeralise in!” I

exclaimed. “Why don’t they go round?”

“Not so!” Pigeon replied. “In this city it’s the Volunteer’s perquisite

to be played through by any corps he happens to meet on his way to the

cemetery. And they make the most of it. You’ll see.”

I heard the order, “Rest on your arms,” run before the poor little

procession as the men opened out. The driver pulled the black Flanders

beasts into a more than funeral crawl, and in the first mourning-coach

I saw the tearful face of a fat woman (his mother, doubtless), a

handkerchief pressed to one eye, but the other rolling vigilantly,

alight with proper pride. Last came a knot of uniformed men—privates, I

took it—of the dead one’s corps.

Said a man in the crowd beside us to the girl on his arm, “There,

Jenny! That’s what I’ll get if I ’ave the luck to meet ’em when my time

comes.”

“You an’ your luck,” she snapped. “’Ow can you talk such silly

nonsense?”

“Played through by the Guard,” he repeated slowly. “The undertaker ’oo

could guarantee _that_, mark you, for all his customers—well, ’e’d

monopolise the trade, is all I can say. See the horses passagin’

sideways!”

“She done it a purpose,” said the woman with a sniff.

“An’ I only hope you’ll follow her example. Just as long as you think

I’ll keep, too.”

We reclosed when the funeral had left us twenty paces behind. A small

boy stuck his head out of a carriage and watched us jealously.

“Amazing! Amazing!” I murmured. “Is it regulation?”

“No. Town-custom. It varies a little in different cities, but the

people value being played through more than most things, I imagine.

Duddell, the big Ipswich manufacturer—he’s a Quaker—tried to bring in a

bill to suppress it as unchristian.” Pigeon laughed.

“And?”

“It cost him his seat next election. You see, we’re all in the game.”

We reached the Park without further adventure, and found the four

company-guns with their spike teams and single drivers waiting for us.

Many people were gathered here, and we were halted, so far as I could

see, that they might talk with the men in the ranks. The officers broke

into groups.

“Why on earth didn’t you come along with me?” said Boy Bayley at my

side. “I was expecting you.”

“Well, I had a delicacy about brigading myself with a colonel at the

head of his regiment, so I stayed with the rear company and the horses.

It’s all too wonderful for any words. What’s going to happen next?”

“I’ve handed over to Verschoyle, who will amuse and edify the school

children while I take you round our kindergarten. Don’t kill any one,

Vee. Are you goin’ to charge ’em?”

Old Verschoyle hitched his big shoulder and nodded precisely as he used

to do at school. He was a boy of few words grown into a kindly taciturn

man.

“Now!” Bayley slid his arm through mine and led me across a riding road

towards a stretch of rough common (singularly out of place in a park)

perhaps three-quarters of a mile long and half as wide. On the

encircling rails leaned an almost unbroken line of men and women—the

women outnumbering the men. I saw the Guard battalion move up the road

flanking the common and disappear behind the trees.

As far as the eye could range through the mellow English haze the

ground inside the railings was dotted with boys in and out of uniform,

armed and unarmed. I saw squads here, half-companies there; then three

companies in an open space, wheeling with stately steps; a knot of

drums and fifes near the railings unconcernedly slashing their way

across popular airs; and a batch of gamins labouring through some

extended attack destined to be swept aside by a corps crossing the

ground at the double. They broke out of furze bushes, ducked over

hollows and bunkers, held or fell away from hillocks and rough

sandbanks till the eye wearied of their busy legs.

Bayley took me through the railings, and gravely returned the salute of

a freckled twelve-year-old near by.

“What’s your corps?” said the Colonel of that Imperial Guard battalion

to that child.

“Eighth District Board School, fourth standard, Sir. We aren’t out

to-day.” Then, with a twinkle, “I go to First Camp next year.”

“What are those boys yonder—that squad at the double?”

“Jewboys, Sir. Jewish Voluntary Schools, Sir.”

“And that full company extending behind the three elms to the

south-west?”

“Private day-schools, Sir, I think. Judging distance, Sir.”

“Can you come with us?”

“Certainly, Sir.”

“Here’s the raw material at the beginning of the process,” said Bayley

to me.

We strolled on towards the strains of “A Bicycle Built for Two,”

breathed jerkily into a mouth-organ by a slim maid of fourteen. Some

dozen infants with clenched fists and earnest legs were swinging

through the extension movements which that tune calls for. A stunted

hawthorn overhung the little group, and from a branch a dirty white

handkerchief flapped in the breeze. The girl blushed, scowled, and

wiped the mouth-organ on her sleeve as we came up.

“We’re all waiting for our big bruvvers,” piped up one bold person in

blue breeches—seven if he was a day.

“It keeps ’em quieter, Sir,” the maiden lisped. “The others are with

the regiments.”

“Yeth, and they’ve all lots of blank for _you_,” said the gentleman in

blue breeches ferociously.

“Oh, Artie! ’Ush!” the girl cried.

“But why have they lots of blank for _us_?” Bayley asked. Blue Breeches

stood firm.

“’Cause—’cause the Guard’s goin’ to fight the Schools this afternoon;

but my big bruvver says they’ll be dam-well surprised.”

“_Artie!_” The girl leaped towards him. “You know your ma said I was to

smack——”

“Don’t. Please don’t,” said Bayley, pink with suppressed mirth. “It was

all my fault. I must tell old Verschoyle this. I’ve surprised his plan

out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.”

“What plan?”

“Old Vee has taken the battalion up to the top of the common, and he

told me he meant to charge down through the kids, but they’re on to him

already. He’ll be scuppered. The Guard will be scuppered!”

Here Blue Breeches, overcome by the reproof of his fellows, began to

weep.

“I didn’t tell,” he roared. “My big bruvver _he_ knew when he saw them

go up the road…”

“Never mind! Never mind, old man,” said Bayley soothingly. “I’m not

fighting to-day. It’s all right.”

He rightened it yet further with sixpence, and left that band loudly at

feud over the spoil.

“Oh, Vee! Vee the strategist,” he chuckled. “We’ll pull Vee’s leg

to-night.”

Our freckled friend of the barriers doubled up behind us.

“So you know that my battalion is charging down the ground,” Bayley

demanded.

“Not for certain, Sir, but we’re preparin’ for the worst,” he answered

with a cheerful grin. “They allow the Schools a little blank ammunition

after we’ve passed the third standard; and we nearly always bring it on

to the ground of Saturdays.”

“The deuce you do! Why?”

“On account of these amateur Volunteer corps, Sir. They’re always

experimentin’ upon us, Sir, comin’ over from their ground an’

developin’ attacks on our flanks. Oh, it’s chronic ’ere of a Saturday

sometimes, unless you flag yourself.”

I followed his eye and saw white flags fluttering before a drum and

fife band and a knot of youths in sweaters gathered round the dummy

breech of a four-inch gun which they were feeding at express rates.

“The attacks don’t interfere with you if you flag yourself, Sir,” the

boy explained. “That’s a Second Camp team from the Technical Schools

loading against time for a bet.”

We picked our way deviously through the busy groups. Apparently it was

not etiquette to notice a Guard officer, and the youths at the

twenty-five pounder were far too busy to look up. I watched the cleanly

finished hoist and shove-home of the full-weight shell from a safe

distance, when I became aware of a change among the scattered boys on

the common, who disappeared among the hillocks to an accompaniment of

querulous whistles. A boy or two on bicycles dashed from corps to

corps, and on their arrival each corps seemed to fade away.

The youths at loading practice did not pause for the growing hush round

them, nor did the drum and fife band drop a single note. Bayley

exploded afresh. “The Schools are preparing for our attack, by Jove! I

wonder who’s directin’ ’em. Do _you_ know?”

The warrior of the Eighth District looked up shrewdly.

“I saw Mr. Cameron speaking to Mr. Levitt just as the Guard went up the

road. ’E’s our ’ead-master, Mr. Cameron, but Mr. Levitt, of the Sixth

District, is actin’ as senior officer on the ground this Saturday. Most

likely Mr. Levitt is commandin’.”

“How many corps are there here?” I asked.

“Oh, bits of lots of ’em—thirty or forty, p’r’aps, Sir. But the

whistles says they’ve all got to rally on the Board Schools. ’Ark!

There’s the whistle for the Private Schools! They’ve been called up the

ground at the double.”

“Stop!” cried a bearded man with a watch, and the crews dropped beside

the breech wiping their brows and panting.

“Hullo! there’s some attack on the Schools,” said one. “Well, Marden,

you owe me three half-crowns. I’ve beaten your record. Pay up.”

The boy beside us tapped his foot fretfully as he eyed his companions

melting among the hillocks, but the gun-team adjusted their bets

without once looking up.

The ground rose a little to a furze-crowned ridge in the centre so that

I could not see the full length of it, but I heard a faint bubble of

blank in the distance.

“The Saturday allowance,” murmured Bayley. “War’s begun, but it

wouldn’t be etiquette for us to interfere. What are you saying, my

child?”

“Nothin’, Sir, only—only I don’t think the Guard will be able to come

through on so narrer a front, Sir. They’ll all be jammed up be’ind the

ridge if _we_’ve got there in time. It’s awful sticky for guns at the

end of our ground, Sir.”

“I’m inclined to think you’re right, Moltke. The Guard is hung up:

distinctly so. Old Vee will have to cut his way through. What a

pernicious amount of blank the kids seem to have!”

It was quite a respectable roar of battle that rolled among the

hillocks for ten minutes, always out of our sight. Then we heard the

“Cease Fire” over the ridge.

“They’ve sent for the Umpires,” the Board School boy squeaked, dancing

on one foot. “You’ve been hung up, Sir. I—I thought the sand-pits ’ud

stop you.”

Said one of the jerseyed hobbledehoys at the gun, slipping on his coat:

“Well, that’s enough for this afternoon. I’m off,” and moved to the

railings without even glancing towards the fray.

“I anticipate the worst,” said Bayley with gravity after a few minutes.

“Hullo! Here comes my disgraced corps!”

The Guard was pouring over the ridge—a disorderly mob—horse, foot, and

guns mixed, while from every hollow of the ground about rose small boys

cheering shrilly. The outcry was taken up by the parents at the

railings, and spread to a complete circle of cheers, handclappings, and

waved handkerchiefs.

Our Eighth District private cast away restraint and openly capered. “We

got ’em! We got ’em!” he squealed.

The grey-green flood paused a fraction of a minute and drew itself into

shape, coming to rest before Bayley. Verschoyle saluted.

“Vee, Vee,” said Bayley. “Give me back my legions. Well, I hope you’re

proud of yourself?”

“The little beasts were ready for us. Deuced well posted too,”

Verschoyle replied. “I wish you’d seen that first attack on our flank.

Rather impressive. Who warned ’em?”

“I don’t know. I got my information from a baby in blue plush breeches.

Did they do well?”

“Very decently indeed. I’ve complimented their C.O. and buttered the

whole boiling.” He lowered his voice. “As a matter o’ fact, I halted

five good minutes to give ’em time to get into position.”

“Well, now we can inspect our Foreign Service corps. We sha’n’t need

the men for an hour, Vee.”

“Very good, Sir. Colour-sergeants!” cried Verschoyle, raising his

voice, and the cry ran from company to company. Whereupon the officers

left their men, people began to climb over the railings, and the

regiment dissolved among the spectators and the school corps of the

city.

“No sense keeping men standing when you don’t need ’em,” said Bayley.

“Besides, the Schools learn more from our chaps in an afternoon than

they can pick up in a month’s drill. Look at those Board-schoolmaster

captains buttonholing old Purvis on the art of war!”

“Wonder what the evening papers’ll say about this,” said Pigeon.

“You’ll know in half an hour,” Burgard laughed. “What possessed you to

take your ponies across the sand-pits, Pij?”

“Pride. Silly pride,” said the Canadian.

We crossed the common to a very regulation paradeground overlooked by a

statue of our Queen. Here were carriages, many and elegant, filled with

pretty women, and the railings were lined with frockcoats and top hats.

“This is distinctly social,” I suggested to Kyd.

“Ra-ather. Our F.S. corps is nothing if not correct, but Bayley’ll

sweat ’em all the same.”

I saw six companies drawn up for inspection behind lines of long

sausage-shaped kit-bags. A band welcomed us with “A Life on the Ocean

Wave.”

“What cheek!” muttered Verschoyle. “Give ’em beans, Bayley.”

“I intend to,” said the Colonel, grimly. “Will each of you fellows take

a company, please, and inspect ’em faithfully. ‘_En état de partir_’ is

their little boast, remember. When you’ve finished you can give ’em a

little pillow-fighting.”

“What does the single cannon on those men’s sleeves mean?” I asked.

“That they’re big gun-men, who’ve done time with the Fleet,” Bayley

returned. “Any F.S. corps that has over twenty per cent big-gun men

thinks itself entitled to play ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave’—when it’s out

of hearing of the Navy.”

“What beautiful stuff they are! What’s their regimental average?”

“It ought to be five eight, height, thirty-eight, chest, and

twenty-four years, age. What is it?” Bayley asked of a Private.

“Five nine and half, Sir, thirty-nine, twenty-four and a half,” was the

reply, and he added insolently, “_En état de partir_.” Evidently that

F.S. corps was on its mettle ready for the worst.

“What about their musketry average?” I went on.

“Not my pidgin,” said Bayley. “But they wouldn’t be in the corps a day

if they couldn’t shoot; I know _that_ much. Now I’m going to go through

’em for socks and slippers.”

The kit-inspection exceeded anything I had ever dreamed. I drifted from

company to company while the Guard officers oppressed them. Twenty per

cent, at least, of the kits were shovelled out on the grass and gone

through in detail.

“What have they got jumpers and ducks for?” I asked of Harrison.

“For Fleet work, of course. _En état de partir_ with an F. S. corps

means they are amphibious.”

“Who gives ’em their kit—Government?”

“There is a Government allowance, but no C. O. sticks to it. It’s the

same as paint and gold-leaf in the Navy. It comes out of some one’s

pockets. How much does your kit cost you?”—this to the private in front

of us.

“About ten or fifteen quid every other year, I suppose,” was the

answer.

“Very good. Pack your bag—quick.”

The man knelt, and with supremely deft hands returned all to the bag,

lashed and tied it, and fell back.

“Arms,” said Harrison. “Strip and show ammunition.”

The man divested himself of his rolled greatcoat and haversack with one

wriggle, as it seemed to me; a twist of a screw removed the side plate

of the rifle breech (it was not a bolt action). He handed it to

Harrison with one hand, and with the other loosed his clip-studded

belt.

“What baby cartridges!” I exclaimed. “No bigger than bulletted

breech-caps.”

“They’re the regulation .256,” said Harrison. “No one has complained of

’em yet. They expand a bit when they arrive…. Empty your bottle,

please, and show your rations.”

The man poured out his water-bottle and showed the two-inch emergency

tin.

Harrison passed on to the next, but I was fascinated by the way in

which the man re-established himself amid his straps and buckles,

asking no help from either side.

“How long does it take you to prepare for inspection?” I asked him.

“Well, I got ready this afternoon in twelve minutes,” he smiled. “I

didn’t see the storm-cone till half-past three. I was at the Club.”

“Weren’t a good many of you out of town?”

“Not _this_ Saturday. We knew what was coming. You see, if we pull

through the inspection we may move up one place on the roster for

foreign service…. You’d better stand back. We’re going to

pillow-fight.”

The companies stooped to the stuffed kit-bags, doubled with them

variously, piled them in squares and mounds, passed them from shoulder

to shoulder like buckets at a fire, and repeated the evolution.

“What’s the idea?” I asked of Verschoyle, who, arms folded behind him,

was controlling the display. Many women had descended from the

carriages, and were pressing in about us admiringly.

“For one thing, it’s a fair test of wind and muscle, and for another it

saves time at the docks. We’ll suppose this first company to be drawn

up on the dock-head and those five others still in the troop-train. How

would you get their kit into the ship?”

“Fall ’em all in on the platform, march ’em to the gangways,” I

answered, “and trust to Heaven and a fatigue party to gather the

baggage and drunks in later.”

“Ye-es, and have half of it sent by the wrong trooper. I know _that_

game,” Verschoyle drawled. “We don’t play it any more. Look!”

He raised his voice, and five companies, glistening a little and

breathing hard, formed at right angles to the sixth, each man embracing

his sixty-pound bag.

“Pack away,” cried Verschoyle, and the great bean-bag game (I can

compare it to nothing else) began. In five minutes every bag was passed

along either arm of the T and forward down the sixth company, who

passed, stacked, and piled them in a great heap. These were followed by

the rifles, belts, greatcoats, and knapsacks, so that in another five

minutes the regiment stood, as it were, stripped clean.

“Of course on a trooper there’d be a company below stacking the kit

away,” said Verschoyle, “but that wasn’t so bad.”

“Bad!” I cried. “It was miraculous!”

“Circus-work—all circus-work!” said Pigeon. “It won’t prevent ’em bein’

sick as dogs when the ship rolls.” The crowd round us applauded, while

the men looked meekly down their self-conscious noses.

A little grey-whiskered man trotted up to the Boy.

“Have we made good, Bayley?” he said. “Are we _en état de partir_?”

“That’s what I shall report,” said Bayley, smiling.

“I thought my bit o’ French ’ud draw you,” said the little man, rubbing

his hands.

“Who is he?” I whispered to Pigeon.

“Ramsay—their C.O. An old Guard captain. A keen little devil. They say

he spends six hundred a year on the show. He used to be in the Lincolns

till he came into his property.”

“Take ’em home an’ make ’em drunk,” I heard Bayley say. “I suppose

you’ll have a dinner to celebrate. But you may as well tell the

officers of E company that I don’t think much of them. I sha’n’t report

it, but their men were all over the shop.”

“Well, they’re young, you see,” Colonel Ramsay began.

“You’re quite right. Send ’em to me and I’ll talk to ’em. Youth is the

time to learn.”

“Six hundred a year,” I repeated to Pigeon. “That must be an awful tax

on a man. Worse than in the old volunteering days.”

“That’s where you make your mistake,” said Verschoyle. “In the old days

a man had to spend his money to coax his men to drill because they

weren’t the genuine article. You know what I mean. They made a favour

of putting in drills, didn’t they? And they were, most of ’em, the

children we have to take over at Second Camp, weren’t they? Well, now

that a C. O. is sure of his _men_, now that he hasn’t to waste himself

in conciliating an’ bribin’, an’ beerin’ _kids_, he doesn’t care what

he spends on his corps, because every pound tells. Do you understand?”

“I see what you mean, Vee. Having the male material guaranteed——”

“And trained material at that,” Pigeon put in. “Eight years in the

schools, remember, as well as——”

“Precisely. A man rejoices in working them up. That’s as it should be,”

I said.

“Bayly’s saying the very same to those F. S. pups,” said Verschoyle.

The Boy was behind us, between two young F. S. officers, a hand on the

shoulder of each.

“Yes, that’s all doocid interesting,” he growled paternally. “But you

forget, my sons, now that your men are bound to serve, you’re trebly

bound to put a polish on ’em. You’ve let your company simply go to

seed. Don’t try and explain. I’ve told all those lies myself in my

time. It’s only idleness. _I_ know. Come and lunch with me to-morrow

and I’ll give you a wrinkle or two in barracks.” He turned to me.

“Suppose we pick up Vee’s defeated legion and go home. You’ll dine with

us to-night. Good-bye, Ramsay. Yes, you’re _en état de partir_, right

enough. You’d better get Lady Gertrude to talk to the Armity if you

want the corps sent foreign. I’m no politician.”

We strolled away from the great white statue of the Widow, with

sceptre, orb, and crown, that looked toward the city, and regained the

common, where the Guard battalion walked with the female of its species

and the children of all its relatives. At sight of the officers the

uniforms began to detach themselves and gather in companies. A Board

School corps was moving off the ground, headed by its drums and fifes,

which it assisted with song. As we drew nearer we caught the words, for

they were launched with intention:—

’Oo is it mashes the country nurse?

The Guardsman!

’Oo is it takes the lydy’s purse?

The Guardsman!

Calls for a drink, and a mild cigar,

Batters a sovereign down on the bar,

Collars the change and says “Ta-ta!”

The Guardsman!

“Why, that’s one of old Jemmy Fawne’s songs. I haven’t heard it in

ages,” I began.

“Little devils!” said Pigeon. “Speshul! Extra speshul! Sports Edition!”

a newsboy cried. “’Ere y’are, Captain. Defeat o’ the Guard!”

“I’ll buy a copy,” said the Boy, as Pigeon blushed wrathfully. “I must,

to see how the Dove lost his mounted company.” He unfolded the flapping

sheet and we crowded round it.

“‘_Complete Rout of the Guard,_’” he read. “‘_Too Narrow a Front._’

That’s one for you, Vee! ‘_Attack Anticipated by Mr. Levitt, B. A._’

Aha! ‘_The Schools Stand Fast._’”

“Here’s another version,” said Kyd, waving a tinted sheet. “‘_To your

tents, O Israel! The Hebrew Schools stop the Mounted Troops._’ Pij,

were you scuppered by Jewboys?”

“‘_Umpires Decide all Four Guns Lost,_’” Bayley went on. “By Jove,

there’ll have to be an inquiry into this regrettable incident, Vee!”

“I’ll never try to amuse the kids again,” said the baited Verschoyle.

“Children and newspapers are low things…. And I was hit on the nose by

a wad, too! They oughtn’t to be allowed blank ammunition!”

So we leaned against the railings in the warm twilight haze while the

battalion, silently as a shadow, formed up behind us ready to be taken

over. The heat, the hum of the great city, as it might have been the

hum of a camped army, the creaking of the belts, and the well-known

faces bent above them, brought back to me the memory of another

evening, years ago, when Verschoyle and I waited for news of guns

missing in no sham fight.

“A regular Sanna’s Post, isn’t it?” I said at last. “D’you remember,

Vee—by the market-square—that night when the wagons went out?”

Then it came upon me, with no horror, but a certain mild wonder, that

we had waited, Vee and I, that night for the body of Boy Bayley; and

that Vee himself had died of typhoid in the spring of 1902. The

rustling of the papers continued, but Bayley, shifting slightly,

revealed to me the three-day old wound on his left side that had soaked

the ground about him. I saw Pigeon fling up a helpless arm as to guard

himself against a spatter of shrapnel, and Luttrell with a foolish

tight-lipped smile lurched over all in one jointless piece. Only old

Vee’s honest face held steady for awhile against the darkness that had

swallowed up the battalion behind us. Then his jaw dropped and the face

stiffened, so that a fly made bold to explore the puffed and scornful

nostril.

I waked brushing a fly from my nose, and saw the Club waiter set out

the evening papers on the table.

“THEY”

THE RETURN OF THE CHILDREN

Neither the harps nor the crowns amused, nor the cherubs’ dove-winged races—

Holding hands forlornly the Children wandered beneath the Dome;

Plucking the radiant robes of the passers by, and with pitiful faces

Begging what Princes and Powers refused:—“Ah, please will you let us go home?”

Over the jewelled floor, nigh weeping, ran to them Mary the Mother,

Kneeled and caressed and made promise with kisses, and drew them along to the gateway—

Yea, the all-iron unbribable Door which Peter must guard and none other.

Straightway She took the Keys from his keeping, and opened and freed them straightway.

Then to Her Son, Who had seen and smiled, She said: “On the night that I bore Thee

What didst Thou care for a love beyond mine or a heaven that was not my arm?

Didst Thou push from the nipple, O Child, to hear the angels adore Thee?

When we two lay in the breath of the kine?” And He said:—“Thou hast done no harm.”

So through the Void the Children ran homeward merrily hand in hand,

Looking neither to left nor right where the breathless Heavens stood still;

And the Guards of the Void resheathed their swords, for they heard the Command.

“Shall I that have suffered the children to come to me hold them against their will?”

“THEY”

One view called me to another; one hill top to its fellow, half across

the county, and since I could answer at no more trouble than the

snapping forward of a lever, I let the country flow under my wheels.

The orchid-studded flats of the East gave way to the thyme, ilex, and

grey grass of the Downs; these again to the rich cornland and fig-trees

of the lower coast, where you carry the beat of the tide on your left

hand for fifteen level miles; and when at last I turned inland through

a huddle of rounded hills and woods I had run myself clean out of my

known marks. Beyond that precise hamlet which stands godmother to the

capital of the United States, I found hidden villages where bees, the

only things awake, boomed in eighty-foot lindens that overhung grey

Norman churches; miraculous brooks diving under stone bridges built for

heavier traffic than would ever vex them again; tithe-barns larger than

their churches, and an old smithy that cried out aloud how it had once

been a hall of the Knights of the Temple. Gipsies I found on a common

where the gorse, bracken, and heath fought it out together up a mile of

Roman road; and a little farther on I disturbed a red fox rolling

dog-fashion in the naked sunlight.

As the wooded hills closed about me I stood up in the car to take the

bearings of that great Down whose ringed head is a landmark for fifty

miles across the low countries. I judged that the lie of the country

would bring me across some westward running road that went to his feet,

but I did not allow for the confusing veils of the woods. A quick turn

plunged me first into a green cutting brimful of liquid sunshine, next

into a gloomy tunnel where last year’s dead leaves whispered and

scuffled about my tyres. The strong hazel stuff meeting overhead had

not been cut for a couple of generations at least, nor had any axe

helped the moss-cankered oak and beech to spring above them. Here the

road changed frankly into a carpetted ride on whose brown velvet spent

primrose-clumps showed like jade, and a few sickly, white-stalked

bluebells nodded together. As the slope favoured I shut off the power

and slid over the whirled leaves, expecting every moment to meet a

keeper; but I only heard a jay, far off, arguing against the silence

under the twilight of the trees.

Still the track descended. I was on the point of reversing and working

my way back on the second speed ere I ended in some swamp, when I saw

sunshine through the tangle ahead and lifted the brake.

It was down again at once. As the light beat across my face my

fore-wheels took the turf of a great still lawn from which sprang

horsemen ten feet high with levelled lances, monstrous peacocks, and

sleek round-headed maids of honour—blue, black, and glistening—all of

clipped yew. Across the lawn—the marshalled woods besieged it on three

sides—stood an ancient house of lichened and weather-worn stone, with

mullioned windows and roofs of rose-red tile. It was flanked by

semi-circular walls, also rose-red, that closed the lawn on the fourth

side, and at their feet a box hedge grew man-high. There were doves on

the roof about the slim brick chimneys, and I caught a glimpse of an

octagonal dove-house behind the screening wall.

Here, then, I stayed; a horseman’s green spear laid at my breast; held

by the exceeding beauty of that jewel in that setting.

“If I am not packed off for a trespasser, or if this knight does not

ride a wallop at me,” thought I, “Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth at

least must come out of that half-open garden door and ask me to tea.”

A child appeared at an upper window, and I thought the little thing

waved a friendly hand. But it was to call a companion, for presently

another bright head showed. Then I heard a laugh among the

yew-peacocks, and turning to make sure (till then I had been watching

the house only) I saw the silver of a fountain behind a hedge thrown up

against the sun. The doves on the roof cooed to the cooing water; but

between the two notes I caught the utterly happy chuckle of a child

absorbed in some light mischief.

The garden door—heavy oak sunk deep in the thickness of the wall—opened

further: a woman in a big garden hat set her foot slowly on the

time-hollowed stone step and as slowly walked across the turf. I was

forming some apology when she lifted up her head and I saw that she was

blind.

“I heard you,” she said. “Isn’t that a motor car?”

“I’m afraid I’ve made a mistake in my road. I should have turned off up

above—I never dreamed”—I began.

“But I’m very glad. Fancy a motor car coming into the garden! It will

be such a treat——” She turned and made as though looking about her.

“You—you haven’t seen any one have you—perhaps?”

“No one to speak to, but the children seemed interested at a distance.”

“Which?”

“I saw a couple up at the window just now, and I think I heard a little

chap in the grounds.”

“Oh, lucky you!” she cried, and her face brightened. “I hear them, of

course, but that’s all. You’ve seen them and heard them?”

“Yes,” I answered. “And if I know anything of children one of them’s

having a beautiful time by the fountain yonder. Escaped, I should

imagine.”

“You’re fond of children?”

I gave her one or two reasons why I did not altogether hate them.

“Of course, of course,” she said. “Then you understand. Then you won’t

think it foolish if I ask you to take your car through the gardens,

once or twice—quite slowly. I’m sure they’d like to see it. They see so

little, poor things. One tries to make their life pleasant, but——” she

threw out her hands towards the woods. “We’re so out of the world

here.”

“That will be splendid,” I said. “But I can’t cut up your grass.”

She faced to the right. “Wait a minute,” she said. “We’re at the South

gate, aren’t we? Behind those peacocks there’s a flagged path. We call

it the Peacock’s Walk. You can’t see it from here, they tell me, but if

you squeeze along by the edge of the wood you can turn at the first

peacock and get on to the flags.”

It was sacrilege to wake that dreaming house-front with the clatter of

machinery, but I swung the car to clear the turf, brushed along the

edge of the wood and turned in on the broad stone path where the

fountain-basin lay like one star-sapphire.

“May I come too?” she cried. “No, please don’t help me. They’ll like it

better if they see me.”

She felt her way lightly to the front of the car, and with one foot on

the step she called: “Children, oh, children! Look and see what’s going

to happen!”

The voice would have drawn lost souls from the Pit, for the yearning

that underlay its sweetness, and I was not surprised to hear an

answering shout behind the yews. It must have been the child by the

fountain, but he fled at our approach, leaving a little toy boat in the

water. I saw the glint of his blue blouse among the still horsemen.

Very disposedly we paraded the length of the walk and at her request

backed again. This time the child had got the better of his panic, but

stood far off and doubting.

“The little fellow’s watching us,” I said. “I wonder if he’d like a

ride.”

“They’re very shy still. Very shy. But, oh, lucky you to be able to see

them! Let’s listen.”

I stopped the machine at once, and the humid stillness, heavy with the

scent of box, cloaked us deep. Shears I could hear where some gardener

was clipping; a mumble of bees and broken voices that might have been

the doves.

“Oh, unkind!” she said weariedly.

“Perhaps they’re only shy of the motor. The little maid at the window

looks tremendously interested.”

“Yes?” She raised her head. “It was wrong of me to say that. They are

really fond of me. It’s the only thing that makes life worth

living—when they’re fond of you, isn’t it? I daren’t think what the

place would be without them. By the way, is it beautiful?”

“I think it is the most beautiful place I have ever seen.”

“So they all tell me. I can feel it, of course, but that isn’t quite

the same thing.”

“Then have you never—-?” I began, but stopped abashed.

“Not since I can remember. It happened when I was only a few months

old, they tell me. And yet I must remember something, else how could I

dream about colours. I see light in my dreams, and colours, but I never

see _them_. I only hear them just as I do when I’m awake.”

“It’s difficult to see faces in dreams. Some people can, but most of us

haven’t the gift,” I went on, looking up at the window where the child

stood all but hidden.

“I’ve heard that too,” she said. “And they tell me that one never sees

a dead person’s face in a dream. Is that true?”

“I believe it is—now I come to think of it.”

“But how is it with yourself—yourself?” The blind eyes turned towards

me.

“I have never seen the faces of my dead in any dream,” I answered.

“Then it must be as bad as being blind.”

The sun had dipped behind the woods and the long shades were possessing

the insolent horsemen one by one. I saw the light die from off the top

of a glossy-leaved lance and all the brave hard green turn to soft

black. The house, accepting another day at end, as it had accepted an

hundred thousand gone, seemed to settle deeper into its rest among the

shadows.

“Have you ever wanted to?” she said after the silence.

“Very much sometimes,” I replied. The child had left the window as the

shadows closed upon it.

“Ah! So’ve I, but I don’t suppose it’s allowed. … Where d’you live?”

“Quite the other side of the county—sixty miles and more, and I must be

going back. I’ve come without my big lamp.”

“But it’s not dark yet. I can feel it.”

“I’m afraid it will be by the time I get home. Could you lend me

someone to set me on my road at first? I’ve utterly lost myself.”

“I’ll send Madden with you to the cross-roads. We are so out of the

world, I don’t wonder you were lost! I’ll guide you round to the front

of the house; but you will go slowly, won’t you, till you’re out of the

grounds? It isn’t foolish, do you think?”

“I promise you I’ll go like this,” I said, and let the car start

herself down the flagged path.

We skirted the left wing of the house, whose elaborately cast lead

guttering alone was worth a day’s journey; passed under a great

rose-grown gate in the red wall, and so round to the high front of the

house which in beauty and stateliness as much excelled the back as that

all others I had seen.

“Is it so very beautiful?” she said wistfully when she heard my

raptures. “And you like the lead-figures too? There’s the old azalea

garden behind. They say that this place must have been made for

children. Will you help me out, please? I should like to come with you

as far as the cross-roads, but I mustn’t leave them. Is that you,

Madden? I want you to show this gentleman the way to the cross-roads.

He has lost his way but—he has seen them.”

A butler appeared noiselessly at the miracle of old oak that must be

called the front door, and slipped aside to put on his hat. She stood

looking at me with open blue eyes in which no sight lay, and I saw for

the first time that she was beautiful.

“Remember,” she said quietly, “if you are fond of them you will come

again,” and disappeared within the house.

The butler in the car said nothing till we were nearly at the lodge

gates, where catching a glimpse of a blue blouse in a shrubbery I

swerved amply lest the devil that leads little boys to play should drag

me into child-murder.

“Excuse me,” he asked of a sudden, “but why did you do that, Sir?”

“The child yonder.”

“Our young gentleman in blue?”

“Of course.”

“He runs about a good deal. Did you see him by the fountain, Sir?”

“Oh, yes, several times. Do we turn here?”

“Yes, Sir. And did you ’appen to see them upstairs too?”

“At the upper window? Yes.”

“Was that before the mistress come out to speak to you, Sir?”

“A little before that. Why d’you want to know?”

He paused a little. “Only to make sure that—that they had seen the car,

Sir, because with children running about, though I’m sure you’re

driving particularly careful, there might be an accident. That was all,

Sir. Here are the cross-roads. You can’t miss your way from now on.

Thank you, Sir, but that isn’t _our_ custom, not with——”

“I beg your pardon,” I said, and thrust away the British silver.

“Oh, it’s quite right with the rest of ’em as a rule. Goodbye, Sir.”

He retired into the armour-plated conning tower of his caste and walked

away. Evidently a butler solicitous for the honour of his house, and

interested, probably through a maid, in the nursery.

Once beyond the signposts at the cross-roads I looked back, but the

crumpled hills interlaced so jealously that I could not see where the

house had lain. When I asked its name at a cottage along the road, the

fat woman who sold sweetmeats there gave me to understand that people

with motor cars had small right to live—much less to “go about talking

like carriage folk.” They were not a pleasant-mannered community.

When I retraced my route on the map that evening I was little wiser.

Hawkin’s Old Farm appeared to be the survey title of the place, and the

old County Gazetteer, generally so ample, did not allude to it. The big

house of those parts was Hodnington Hall, Georgian with early Victorian

embellishments, as an atrocious steel engraving attested. I carried my

difficulty to a neighbour—a deep-rooted tree of that soil—and he gave

me a name of a family which conveyed no meaning.

A month or so later—I went again, or it may have been that my car took

the road of her own volition. She over-ran the fruitless Downs,

threaded every turn of the maze of lanes below the hills, drew through

the high-walled woods, impenetrable in their full leaf, came out at the

cross roads where the butler had left me, and a little further on

developed an internal trouble which forced me to turn her in on a grass

way-waste that cut into a summer-silent hazel wood. So far as I could

make sure by the sun and a six-inch Ordnance map, this should be the

road flank of that wood which I had first explored from the heights

above. I made a mighty serious business of my repairs and a glittering

shop of my repair kit, spanners, pump, and the like, which I spread out

orderly upon a rug. It was a trap to catch all childhood, for on such a

day, I argued, the children would not be far off. When I paused in my

work I listened, but the wood was so full of the noises of summer

(though the birds had mated) that I could not at first distinguish

these from the tread of small cautious feet stealing across the dead

leaves. I rang my bell in an alluring manner, but the feet fled, and I

repented, for to a child a sudden noise is very real terror. I must

have been at work half an hour when I heard in the wood the voice of

the blind woman crying: “Children, oh children, where are you?” and the

stillness made slow to close on the perfection of that cry. She came

towards me, half feeling her way between the tree boles, and though a

child it seemed clung to her skirt, it swerved into the leafage like a

rabbit as she drew nearer.

“Is that you?” she said, “from the other side of the county?”

“Yes, it’s me from the other side of the county.”

“Then why didn’t you come through the upper woods? They were there just

now.”

“They were here a few minutes ago. I expect they knew my car had broken

down, and came to see the fun.”

“Nothing serious, I hope? How do cars break down?”

“In fifty different ways. Only mine has chosen the fifty first.”

She laughed merrily at the tiny joke, cooed with delicious laughter,

and pushed her hat back.

“Let me hear,” she said.

“Wait a moment,” I cried, “and I’ll get you a cushion.”

She set her foot on the rug all covered with spare parts, and stooped

above it eagerly. “What delightful things!” The hands through which she

saw glanced in the chequered sunlight. “A box here—another box! Why

you’ve arranged them like playing shop!”

“I confess now that I put it out to attract them. I don’t need half

those things really.”

“How nice of you! I heard your bell in the upper wood. You say they

were here before that?”

“I’m sure of it. Why are they so shy? That little fellow in blue who

was with you just now ought to have got over his fright. He’s been

watching me like a Red Indian.”

“It must have been your bell,” she said. “I heard one of them go past

me in trouble when I was coming down. They’re shy—so shy even with me.”

She turned her face over her shoulder and cried again: “Children! Oh,

children! Look and see!”

“They must have gone off together on their own affairs,” I suggested,

for there was a murmur behind us of lowered voices broken by the sudden

squeaking giggles of childhood. I returned to my tinkerings and she

leaned forward, her chin on her hand, listening interestedly.

“How many are they?” I said at last. The work was finished, but I saw

no reason to go.

Her forehead puckered a little in thought. “I don’t quite know,” she

said simply. “Sometimes more—sometimes less. They come and stay with me

because I love them, you see.”

“That must be very jolly,” I said, replacing a drawer, and as I spoke I

heard the inanity of my answer.

“You—you aren’t laughing at me,” she cried. “I—I haven’t any of my own.

I never married. People laugh at me sometimes about them

because—because———”

“Because they’re savages,” I returned. “It’s nothing to fret for. That

sort laugh at everything that isn’t in their own fat lives.”

“I don’t know. How should I? I only don’t like being laughed at about

_them_. It hurts; and when one can’t see…. I don’t want to seem silly,”

her chin quivered like a child’s as she spoke, “but we blindies have

only one skin, I think. Everything outside hits straight at our souls.

It’s different with you. You’ve such good defences in your eyes—looking

out—before anyone can really pain you in your soul. People forget that

with us.”

I was silent reviewing that inexhaustible matter—the more than

inherited (since it is also carefully taught) brutality of the

Christian peoples, beside which the mere heathendom of the West Coast

nigger is clean and restrained. It led me a long distance into myself.

“Don’t do that!” she said of a sudden, putting her hands before her

eyes.

“What?”

She made a gesture with her hand.

“That! It’s—it’s all purple and black. Don’t! That colour hurts.”

“But, how in the world do you know about colours?” I exclaimed, for

here was a revelation indeed.

“Colours as colours?” she asked.

“No. _Those_ Colours which you saw just now.”

“You know as well as I do,” she laughed, “else you wouldn’t have asked

that question. They aren’t in the world at all. They’re in _you_—when

you went so angry.”

“D’you mean a dull purplish patch, like port-wine mixed with ink?” I

said.

“I’ve never seen ink or port-wine, but the colours aren’t mixed. They

are separate—all separate.”

“Do you mean black streaks and jags across the purple?”

She nodded. “Yes—if they are like this,” and zigzagged her finger

again, “but it’s more red than purple—that bad colour.”

“And what are the colours at the top of the—whatever you see?”

Slowly she leaned forward and traced on the rug the figure of the Egg

itself.

“I see them so,” she said, pointing with a grass stem, “white, green,

yellow, red, purple, and when people are angry or bad, black across the

red—as you were just now.”

“Who told you anything about it—in the beginning?” I demanded.

“About the colours? No one. I used to ask what colours were when I was

little—in table-covers and curtains and carpets, you see—because some

colours hurt me and some made me happy. People told me; and when I got

older that was how I saw people.” Again she traced the outline of the

Egg which it is given to very few of us to see.

“All by yourself?” I repeated.

“All by myself. There wasn’t anyone else. I only found out afterwards

that other people did not see the Colours.”

She leaned against the tree-hole plaiting and unplaiting chance-plucked

grass stems. The children in the wood had drawn nearer. I could see

them with the tail of my eye frolicking like squirrels.

“Now I am sure you will never laugh at me,” she went on after a long

silence. “Nor at _them_.”

“Goodness! No!” I cried, jolted out of my train of thought. “A man who

laughs at a child—unless the child is laughing too—is a heathen!”

“I didn’t mean that of course. You’d never laugh _at_ children, but I

thought—I used to think—that perhaps you might laugh about _them_. So

now I beg your pardon…. What are you going to laugh at?”

I had made no sound, but she knew.

“At the notion of your begging my pardon. If you had done your duty as

a pillar of the state and a landed proprietress you ought to have

summoned me for trespass when I barged through your woods the other

day. It was disgraceful of me—inexcusable.”

She looked at me, her head against the tree trunk—long and

steadfastly—this woman who could see the naked soul.

“How curious,” she half whispered. “How very curious.”

“Why, what have I done?”

“You don’t understand … and yet you understood about the Colours. Don’t

you understand?”

She spoke with a passion that nothing had justified, and I faced her

bewilderedly as she rose. The children had gathered themselves in a

roundel behind a bramble bush. One sleek head bent over something

smaller, and the set of the little shoulders told me that fingers were

on lips. They, too, had some child’s tremendous secret. I alone was

hopelessly astray there in the broad sunlight.

“No,” I said, and shook my head as though the dead eyes could note.

“Whatever it is, I don’t understand yet. Perhaps I shall later—if

you’ll let me come again.”

“You will come again,” she answered. “You will surely come again and

walk in the wood.”

“Perhaps the children will know me well enough by that time to let me

play with them—as a favour. You know what children are like.”

“It isn’t a matter of favour but of right,” she replied, and while I

wondered what she meant, a dishevelled woman plunged round the bend of

the road, loose-haired, purple, almost lowing with agony as she ran. It

was my rude, fat friend of the sweetmeat shop. The blind woman heard

and stepped forward. “What is it, Mrs. Madehurst?” she asked.

The woman flung her apron over her head and literally grovelled in the

dust, crying that her grandchild was sick to death, that the local

doctor was away fishing, that Jenny the mother was at her wits end, and

so forth, with repetitions and bellowings.

“Where’s the next nearest doctor?” I asked between paroxysms.

“Madden will tell you. Go round to the house and take him with you.

I’ll attend to this. Be quick!” She half-supported the fat woman into

the shade. In two minutes I was blowing all the horns of Jericho under

the front of the House Beautiful, and Madden, in the pantry, rose to

the crisis like a butler and a man.

A quarter of an hour at illegal speeds caught us a doctor five miles

away. Within the half-hour we had decanted him, much interested in

motors, at the door of the sweetmeat shop, and drew up the road to

await the verdict.

“Useful things cars,” said Madden, all man and no butler. “If I’d had

one when mine took sick she wouldn’t have died.”

“How was it?” I asked.

“Croup. Mrs. Madden was away. No one knew what to do. I drove eight

miles in a tax cart for the doctor. She was choked when we came back.

This car ’d ha’ saved her. She’d have been close on ten now.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought you were rather fond of children from

what you told me going to the cross-roads the other day.”

“Have you seen ’em again, Sir—this mornin’?”

“Yes, but they’re well broke to cars. I couldn’t get any of them within

twenty yards of it.”

He looked at me carefully as a scout considers a stranger—not as a

menial should lift his eyes to his divinely appointed superior.

“I wonder why,” he said just above the breath that he drew.

We waited on. A light wind from the sea wandered up and down the long

lines of the woods, and the wayside grasses, whitened already with

summer dust, rose and bowed in sallow waves.

A woman, wiping the suds off her arms, came out of the cottage next the

sweetmeat shop.

“I’ve be’n listenin’ in de back-yard,” she said cheerily. “He says

Arthur’s unaccountable bad. Did ye hear him shruck just now?

Unaccountable bad. I reckon t’will come Jenny’s turn to walk in de wood

nex’ week along, Mr. Madden.”

“Excuse me, Sir, but your lap-robe is slipping,” said Madden

deferentially. The woman started, dropped a curtsey, and hurried away.

“What does she mean by ‘walking in the wood’?” I asked.

“It must be some saying they use hereabouts. I’m from Norfolk myself,”

said Madden. “They’re an independent lot in this county. She took you

for a chauffeur, Sir.”

I saw the Doctor come out of the cottage followed by a draggle-tailed

wench who clung to his arm as though he could make treaty for her with

Death. “Dat sort,” she wailed—“dey’re just as much to us dat has ’em as

if dey was lawful born. Just as much—just as much! An’ God he’d be just

as pleased if you saved ’un, Doctor. Don’t take it from me. Miss

Florence will tell ye de very same. Don’t leave ’im, Doctor!”

“I know. I know,” said the man, “but he’ll be quiet for a while now.

We’ll get the nurse and the medicine as fast as we can.” He signalled

me to come forward with the car, and I strove not to be privy to what

followed; but I saw the girl’s face, blotched and frozen with grief,

and I felt the hand without a ring clutching at my knees when we moved

away.

The Doctor was a man of some humour, for I remember he claimed my car

under the Oath of Æsculapius, and used it and me without mercy. First

we convoyed Mrs. Madehurst and the blind woman to wait by the sick bed

till the nurse should come. Next we invaded a neat county town for

prescriptions (the Doctor said the trouble was cerebro-spinal

meningitis), and when the County Institute, banked and flanked with

scared market cattle, reported itself out of nurses for the moment we

literally flung ourselves loose upon the county. We conferred with the

owners of great houses—magnates at the ends of overarching avenues

whose big-boned womenfolk strode away from their tea-tables to listen

to the imperious Doctor. At last a white-haired lady sitting under a

cedar of Lebanon and surrounded by a court of magnificent Borzois—all

hostile to motors—gave the Doctor, who received them as from a

princess, written orders which we bore many miles at top speed, through

a park, to a French nunnery, where we took over in exchange a

pallid-faced and trembling Sister. She knelt at the bottom of the

tonneau telling her beads without pause till, by short cuts of the

Doctor’s invention, we had her to the sweetmeat shop once more. It was

a long afternoon crowded with mad episodes that rose and dissolved like

the dust of our wheels; cross-sections of remote and incomprehensible

lives through which we raced at right angles; and I went home in the

dusk, wearied out, to dream of the clashing horns of cattle; round-eyed

nuns walking in a garden of graves; pleasant tea-parties beneath shaded

trees; the carbolic-scented, grey-painted corridors of the County

Institute; the steps of shy children in the wood, and the hands that

clung to my knees as the motor began to move.

I had intended to return in a day or two, but it pleased Fate to hold

me from that side of the county, on many pretexts, till the elder and

the wild rose had fruited. There came at last a brilliant day, swept

clear from the south-west, that brought the hills within hand’s reach—a

day of unstable airs and high filmy clouds. Through no merit of my own

I was free, and set the car for the third time on that known road. As I

reached the crest of the Downs I felt the soft air change, saw it glaze

under the sun; and, looking down at the sea, in that instant beheld the

blue of the Channel turn through polished silver and dulled steel to

dingy pewter. A laden collier hugging the coast steered outward for

deeper water and, across copper-coloured haze, I saw sails rise one by

one on the anchored fishing-fleet. In a deep dene behind me an eddy of

sudden wind drummed through sheltered oaks, and spun aloft the first

day sample of autumn leaves. When I reached the beach road the sea-fog

fumed over the brickfields, and the tide was telling all the groins of

the gale beyond Ushant. In less than an hour summer England vanished in

chill grey. We were again the shut island of the North, all the ships

of the world bellowing at our perilous gates; and between their

outcries ran the piping of bewildered gulls. My cap dripped moisture,

the folds of the rug held it in pools or sluiced it away in runnels,

and the salt-rime stuck to my lips.

Inland the smell of autumn loaded the thickened fog among the trees,

and the drip became a continuous shower. Yet the late flowers—mallow of

the wayside, scabious of the field, and dahlia of the garden—showed gay

in the mist, and beyond the sea’s breath there was little sign of decay

in the leaf. Yet in the villages the house doors were all open, and

bare-legged, bare-headed children sat at ease on the damp doorsteps to

shout “pip-pip” at the stranger.

I made bold to call at the sweetmeat shop, where Mrs. Madehurst met me

with a fat woman’s hospitable tears. Jenny’s child, she said, had died

two days after the nun had come. It was, she felt, best out of the way,

even though insurance offices, for reasons which she did not pretend to

follow, would not willingly insure such stray lives. “Not but what

Jenny didn’t tend to Arthur as though he’d come all proper at de end of

de first year—like Jenny herself.” Thanks to Miss Florence, the child

had been buried with a pomp which, in Mrs. Madehurst’s opinion, more

than covered the small irregularity of its birth. She described the

coffin, within and without, the glass hearse, and the evergreen lining

of the grave.

“But how’s the mother?” I asked.

“Jenny? Oh, she’ll get over it. I’ve felt dat way with one or two o’ my

own. She’ll get over. She’s walkin’ in de wood now.”

“In this weather?”

Mrs. Madehurst looked at me with narrowed eyes across the counter.

“I dunno but it opens de ’eart like. Yes, it opens de ’eart. Dat’s

where losin’ and bearin’ comes so alike in de long run, we do say.”

Now the wisdom of the old wives is greater than that of all the

Fathers, and this last oracle sent me thinking so extendedly as I went

up the road, that I nearly ran over a woman and a child at the wooded

corner by the lodge gates of the House Beautiful.

“Awful weather!” I cried, as I slowed dead for the turn.

“Not so bad,” she answered placidly out of the fog. “Mine’s used to

’un. You’ll find yours indoors, I reckon.”

Indoors, Madden received me with professional courtesy, and kind

inquiries for the health of the motor, which he would put under cover.

I waited in a still, nut-brown hall, pleasant with late flowers and

warmed with a delicious wood fire—a place of good influence and great

peace. (Men and women may sometimes, after great effort, achieve a

creditable lie; but the house, which is their temple, cannot say

anything save the truth of those who have lived in it.) A child’s cart

and a doll lay on the black-and-white floor, where a rug had been

kicked back. I felt that the children had only just hurried away—to

hide themselves, most like—in the many turns of the great adzed

staircase that climbed statelily out of the hall, or to crouch at gaze

behind the lions and roses of the carven gallery above. Then I heard

her voice above me, singing as the blind sing—from the soul:—

In the pleasant orchard-closes.

And all my early summer came back at the call.

In the pleasant orchard-closes,

God bless all our gains say we—

But may God bless all our losses,

Better suits with our degree,

She dropped the marring fifth line, and repeated—

Better suits with our degree!

I saw her lean over the gallery, her linked hands white as pearl

against the oak.

“Is that you—from the other side of the county?” she called.

“Yes, me—from the other side of the county,” I answered laughing.

“What a long time before you had to come here again.” She ran down the

stairs, one hand lightly touching the broad rail. “It’s two months and

four days. Summer’s gone!”

“I meant to come before, but Fate prevented.”

“I knew it. Please do something to that fire. They won’t let me play

with it, but I can feel it’s behaving badly. Hit it!”

I looked on either side of the deep fireplace, and found but a

half-charred hedge-stake with which I punched a black log into flame.

“It never goes out, day or night,” she said, as though explaining. “In

case any one comes in with cold toes, you see.”

“It’s even lovelier inside than it was out,” I murmured. The red light

poured itself along the age-polished dusky panels till the Tudor roses

and lions of the gallery took colour and motion. An old eagle-topped

convex mirror gathered the picture into its mysterious heart,

distorting afresh the distorted shadows, and curving the gallery lines

into the curves of a ship. The day was shutting down in half a gale as

the fog turned to stringy scud. Through the uncurtained mullions of the

broad window I could see valiant horsemen of the lawn rear and recover

against the wind that taunted them with legions of dead leaves. “Yes,

it must be beautiful,” she said. “Would you like to go over it? There’s

still light enough upstairs.”

I followed her up the unflinching, wagon-wide staircase to the gallery

whence opened the thin fluted Elizabethan doors.

“Feel how they put the latch low down for the sake of the children.”

She swung a light door inward.

“By the way, where are they?” I asked. “I haven’t even heard them

to-day.”

She did not answer at once. Then, “I can only hear them,” she replied

softly. “This is one of their rooms—everything ready, you see.”

She pointed into a heavily-timbered room. There were little low gate

tables and children’s chairs. A doll’s house, its hooked front half

open, faced a great dappled rocking-horse, from whose padded saddle it

was but a child’s scramble to the broad window-seat overlooking the

lawn. A toy gun lay in a corner beside a gilt wooden cannon.

“Surely they’ve only just gone,” I whispered. In the failing light a

door creaked cautiously. I heard the rustle of a frock and the patter

of feet—quick feet through a room beyond.

“I heard that,” she cried triumphantly. “Did you? Children, O children,

where are you?”

The voice filled the walls that held it lovingly to the last perfect

note, but there came no answering shout such as I had heard in the

garden. We hurried on from room to oak-floored room; up a step here,

down three steps there; among a maze of passages; always mocked by our

quarry. One might as well have tried to work an unstopped warren with a

single ferret. There were bolt-holes innumerable—recesses in walls,

embrasures of deep slitten windows now darkened, whence they could

start up behind us; and abandoned fireplaces, six feet deep in the

masonry, as well as the tangle of communicating doors. Above all, they

had the twilight for their helper in our game. I had caught one or two

joyous chuckles of evasion, and once or twice had seen the silhouette

of a child’s frock against some darkening window at the end of a

passage; but we returned empty-handed to the gallery, just as a

middle-aged woman was setting a lamp in its niche.

“No, I haven’t seen her either this evening, Miss Florence,” I heard

her say, “but that Turpin he says he wants to see you about his shed.”

“Oh, Mr. Turpin must want to see me very badly. Tell him to come to the

hall, Mrs. Madden.”

I looked down into the hall whose only light was the dulled fire, and

deep in the shadow I saw them at last. They must have slipped down

while we were in the passages, and now thought themselves perfectly

hidden behind an old gilt leather screen. By child’s law, my fruitless

chase was as good as an introduction, but since I had taken so much

trouble I resolved to force them to come forward later by the simple

trick, which children detest, of pretending not to notice them. They

lay close, in a little huddle, no more than shadows except when a quick

flame betrayed an outline.

“And now we’ll have some tea,” she said. “I believe I ought to have

offered it you at first, but one doesn’t arrive at manners somehow when

one lives alone and is considered—h’m—peculiar.” Then with very pretty

scorn, “would you like a lamp to see to eat by?”

“The firelight’s much pleasanter, I think.” We descended into that

delicious gloom and Madden brought tea.

I took my chair in the direction of the screen ready to surprise or be

surprised as the game should go, and at her permission, since a hearth

is always sacred, bent forward to play with the fire.

“Where do you get these beautiful short faggots from?” I asked idly.

“Why, they are tallies!”

“Of course,” she said. “As I can’t read or write I’m driven back on the

early English tally for my accounts. Give me one and I’ll tell you what

it meant.”

I passed her an unburned hazel-tally, about a foot long, and she ran

her thumb down the nicks.

“This is the milk-record for the home farm for the month of April last

year, in gallons,” said she. “I don’t know what I should have done

without tallies. An old forester of mine taught me the system. It’s out

of date now for every one else; but my tenants respect it. One of

them’s coming now to see me. Oh, it doesn’t matter. He has no business

here out of office hours. He’s a greedy, ignorant man—very greedy or—he

wouldn’t come here after dark.”

“Have you much land then?”

“Only a couple of hundred acres in hand, thank goodness. The other six

hundred are nearly all let to folk who knew my folk before me, but this

Turpin is quite a new man—and a highway robber.”

“But are you sure I sha’n’t be——?”

“Certainly not. You have the right. He hasn’t any children.”

“Ah, the children!” I said, and slid my low chair back till it nearly

touched the screen that hid them. “I wonder whether they’ll come out

for me.”

There was a murmur of voices—Madden’s and a deeper note—at the low,

dark side door, and a ginger-headed, canvas-gaitered giant of the

unmistakable tenant farmer type stumbled or was pushed in.

“Come to the fire, Mr. Turpin,” she said.

“If—if you please, Miss, I’ll—I’ll be quite as well by the door.” He

clung to the latch as he spoke like a frightened child. Of a sudden I

realised that he was in the grip of some almost overpowering fear.

“Well?”

“About that new shed for the young stock—that was all. These first

autumn storms settin’ in … but I’ll come again, Miss.” His teeth did

not chatter much more than the door latch.

“I think not,” she answered levelly. “The new shed—m’m. What did my

agent write you on the 15th?”

“I—fancied p’raps that if I came to see you—ma—man to man like, Miss.

But——”

His eyes rolled into every corner of the room wide with horror. He half

opened the door through which he had entered, but I noticed it shut

again—from without and firmly.

“He wrote what I told him,” she went on. “You are overstocked already.

Dunnett’s Farm never carried more than fifty bullocks—even in Mr.

Wright’s time. And _he_ used cake. You’ve sixty-seven and you don’t

cake. You’ve broken the lease in that respect. You’re dragging the

heart out of the farm.”

“I’m—I’m getting some minerals—superphosphates—next week. I’ve as good

as ordered a truck-load already. I’ll go down to the station to-morrow

about ’em. Then I can come and see you man to man like, Miss, in the

daylight…. That gentleman’s not going away, is he?” He almost shrieked.

I had only slid the chair a little further back, reaching behind me to

tap on the leather of the screen, but he jumped like a rat.

“No. Please attend to me, Mr. Turpin.” She turned in her chair and

faced him with his back to the door. It was an old and sordid little

piece of scheming that she forced from him—his plea for the new cowshed

at his landlady’s expense, that he might with the covered manure pay

his next year’s rent out of the valuation after, as she made clear, he

had bled the enriched pastures to the bone. I could not but admire the

intensity of his greed, when I saw him out-facing for its sake whatever

terror it was that ran wet on his forehead.

I ceased to tap the leather—was, indeed, calculating the cost of the

shed—when I felt my relaxed hand taken and turned softly between the

soft hands of a child. So at last I had triumphed. In a moment I would

turn and acquaint myself with those quick-footed wanderers….

The little brushing kiss fell in the centre of my palm—as a gift on

which the fingers were, once, expected to close: as the all faithful

half-reproachful signal of a waiting child not used to neglect even

when grown-ups were busiest—a fragment of the mute code devised very

long ago.

Then I knew. And it was as though I had known from the first day when I

looked across the lawn at the high window.

I heard the door shut. The woman turned to me in silence, and I felt

that she knew.

What time passed after this I cannot say. I was roused by the fall of a

log, and mechanically rose to put it back. Then I returned to my place

in the chair very close to the screen.

“Now you understand,” she whispered, across the packed shadows.

“Yes, I understand—now. Thank you.”

“I—I only hear them.” She bowed her head in her hands. “I have no

right, you know—no other right. I have neither borne nor lost—neither

borne nor lost!”

“Be very glad then,” said I, for my soul was torn open within me.

“Forgive me!”

She was still, and I went back to my sorrow and my joy.

“It was because I loved them so,” she said at last, brokenly. “_That_

was why it was, even from the first—even before I knew that they—they

were all I should ever have. And I loved them so!”

She stretched out her arms to the shadows and the shadows within the

shadow.

“They came because I loved them—because I needed them. I—I must have

made them come. Was that wrong, think you?”

“No—no.”

“I—I grant you that the toys and—and all that sort of thing were

nonsense, but—but I used to so hate empty rooms myself when I was

little.” She pointed to the gallery. “And the passages all empty. … And

how could I ever bear the garden door shut? Suppose——”

“Don’t! For pity’s sake, don’t!” I cried. The twilight had brought a

cold rain with gusty squalls that plucked at the leaded windows.

“And the same thing with keeping the fire in all night. _I_ don’t think

it so foolish—do you?”

I looked at the broad brick hearth, saw, through tears I believe, that

there was no unpassable iron on or near it, and bowed my head.

“I did all that and lots of other things—just to make believe. Then

they came. I heard them, but I didn’t know that they were not mine by

right till Mrs. Madden told me——”

“The butler’s wife? What?”

“One of them—I heard—she saw. And knew. Hers! _Not_ for me. I didn’t

know at first. Perhaps I was jealous. Afterwards, I began to understand

that it was only because I loved them, not because——… Oh, you _must_

bear or lose,” she said piteously. “There is no other way—and yet they

love me. They must! Don’t they?”

There was no sound in the room except the lapping voices of the fire,

but we two listened intently, and she at least took comfort from what

she heard. She recovered herself and half rose. I sat still in my chair

by the screen.

“Don’t think me a wretch to whine about myself like this, but—but I’m

all in the dark, you know, and _you_ can see.”

In truth I could see, and my vision confirmed me in my resolve, though

that was like the very parting of spirit and flesh. Yet a little longer

I would stay since it was the last time.

“You think it is wrong, then?” she cried sharply, though I had said

nothing.

“Not for you. A thousand times no. For you it is right…. I am grateful

to you beyond words. For me it would be wrong. For me only….”

“Why?” she said, but passed her hand before her face as she had done at

our second meeting in the wood. “Oh, I see,” she went on simply as a

child. “For you it would be wrong.” Then with a little indrawn laugh,

“and, d’you remember, I called you lucky—once—at first. You who must

never come here again!”

She left me to sit a little longer by the screen, and I heard the sound

of her feet die out along the gallery above.

MRS. BATHURST

FROM LYDEN’S “IRENIUS”