When Vane opened his eyes on reality again, he found himself in a
strange room. For a few moments he lay very still, groping back into a
half-world of grey shadows. He remembered the first torpedo, and then
the second one; but after that things seemed confused. A man opened
the door, and came over to his bed.
"Feeling better?" he remarked with a smile.
"As far as I can make out at the moment," said Vane, "I'm feeling
perfectly well. Where am I, and what happened? . . ."
"You're in a private hospital not far from Liverpool," answered the
man. "You were very nearly drowned in the 'Connaught,' and you've had
a nasty knock on the head as well. . . . Feel at all muzzy now?"
"Not a bit," said Vane, raising himself on his elbow. "I hope they
caught the swine."
"There was a rumour three or four days ago that they had."
Vane stared at the speaker. "What did you say?" he remarked at length.
"There was a rumour three or four days ago that the submarine was
sunk," repeated the other.
"May I ask how long I've been here?"
"Ten days," answered the doctor. "But I wired to your depot that you
were safe, so you needn't worry."
"With regard to the depot," remarked Vane grimly, "you may take it from
me that I don't. . . . Ten days . . . twelve--fourteen." He was
counting on his fingers. "Oh! Hell. . . ."
"They forwarded some letters for you," said the doctor. "I'll get them
for you. . . ."
"Thanks," said Vane. "When is the next train to London?"
"In about four days' time as far as you're concerned," laughed the
other.
He went out of the room, and Vane lay very still. Fourteen days. . . .
Fourteen days. . . .
The doctor returned and handed him about a dozen letters.
"They've been coming at intervals," he remarked. "I'm going to send
you up a cup of bovril in a minute. . . ."
Vane turned them over rapidly in his hand, and found that there were
only two that counted. He looked at the postmarks to get them in the
right sequence, and eagerly pulled out the contents of the first. It
had been written four days after he left Melton.
"Dear lad, I'm leaving here to-morrow, and am going back to Blandford;
but before I go I want to tell you something. A man is not a very good
judge of a woman's actions at any time; he's so apt to see them through
his own eyes. He reasons, and becomes logical, . . . and perhaps he's
right. But a woman doesn't want reasons or logic--not if she's in
love. She wants to be whirled up breathlessly and carried away, and
made to do things; and it doesn't matter whether they're right or
wrong--not if she's in love. Maybe you were right, Derek, to go away;
but oh! my dear, I would to God you hadn't."
A nurse came in with a cup of bovril, and put it on the table by his
bed, and Vane turned to her abruptly.
"Where are my clothes, Nurse?"
"You'll not be wanting clothes yet awhile," she answered with a smile.
"I'm coming back shortly to tidy you up," and Vane cursed under his
breath as she left the room.
Then he picked up the second letter and opened it. At first he thought
it was a blank sheet of paper, and then he saw that there were a few
words in the centre of the page. For a moment they danced before his
eyes; then he pulled himself together and read them.
"''Tis well for those who have the gift
To seize him even as he flies. . . .'
"Oh! you fool--you fool! Why didn't you?"
That was all, and for a long while he lay and stared at the bare wall
opposite.
"Why didn't you?" The words mocked him, dancing in great red letters
on the pale green distemper, and he shook his feet at them childishly.
"It's not fair," he raved. "It's simply not fair."
And the god in charge took a glance into the room, though to the man in
bed it was merely a ray from a watery sun with the little specks of
dust dancing and floating in it.
"Of no more account than a bit of dirt," he muttered cynically. "It
wasn't my fault. . . . I never asked to be torpedoed. I only did what
I thought was right." He buried his head in his hands with a groan.
The nurse came once more into the room, and eyed him reproachfully.
"The bovril is quite cold," she said picking it up. "That's very
naughty of you. . . ."
He looked at her and started to laugh. "I'm a very naughty man, Nurse.
But for all that you've got to do something for me. No--take away that
awful basin and sponge. . . . I don't mind if I am dirty. . . .
You've got to go and bring the doctor here, and you've got to get my
clothes. And between us, Nurse, we'll cheat 'em yet."
"Cheat whom?" she asked soothingly.
"The blind, malignant imps that control us wretched humans," he
answered. "For Heaven's sake! my dear woman, do what I say. I'm not
light-headed, believe me."
And the nurse being a stoical and unimaginative lady, it was just as
well that, at that moment, the doctor entered the room. For had she
murmured in her best bedside manner. . . . "That's quite all right.
Just a nice wash, and then we'll go to sleep," there is but little
doubt that a cup of cold bovril would have deluged her ample form. As
it was the catastrophe was averted, and Vane turned to the doctor with
a sigh of relief.
"May I have a word with you alone, Doctor?" he said. "And, Nurse,
would you get my clothes for me?"
"Doctor," he went on as the door closed behind her. "I've got to
go--at once."
"My dear fellow," began the other, but Vane silenced him with a wave of
his hand.
"I may have had concussion; I may have been nearly drowned. I may be
the fool emperor for wanting to get up," he continued quietly. "But
it's got to be done. You see, I'm having a bit of a tussle with . . ."
he paused for a moment as if at a loss for a word, and then added
whimsically, "with the Powers that run things. And," savagely, "I'll
be damned if they're going to have a walk over. . . ."
The doctor eyed him gravely for a few moments without replying.
"You oughtn't to get up yet," he said at length.
"But you'll let me," cried Vane.
"There's a good train in two hours," replied the other briefly. "And
the result be upon your own head. . . ."
Vane opened the remainder of his letters on the way up to London. He
felt a little dazed and weak, though otherwise perfectly fit, and when
he had glanced through them, he stared out of the window at the
landscape flashing past. They were passing through the Black Country,
and it seemed to him to be in keeping with his thoughts--dour,
relentless, grim. The smouldering blast-furnaces, the tall, blackened
chimneys, the miles of dingy, squalid houses, all mocked the efforts of
their makers to escape.
"You fashioned us," they jeered; "out of your brains we were born, and
now you shall serve us evermore. . . . You cannot--you shall not
escape. . . ."
To Vane it was all the voice of Fate. "You cannot--you shall not
escape. What is to be--is to be; and your puny efforts will not alter
a single letter in the book. . . ."
And yet of his own free will he had left Joan; he had brought it on
himself.
"What if I had done as she wished?" he demanded aloud. "What would you
have done then, you swine?"
But there is no answer in this world to the Might-have-been; only
silence and imagination, which, at times, is very merciless.
He stepped out of the train at Euston and drove straight to his rooms.
For the first time in his life he took no notice of Binks, and that
worthy, knowing that something was wrong, just sat in his basket and
waited. Perhaps later he'd be able to help somehow. . . .
"The young lady who came to tea was round here four or five days ago,
Mr. Vane," said Mrs. Green, when she had set a match to the fire.
Vane sat very still. "And what did she want, Mrs. Green?"
"To see you, sir. She said that she had rung up the depot, and the man
who answered said you were on leave. . . ."
"He would," said Vane, grimly.
"So she came here," Mrs. Green paused, and watched him with a motherly
eye; then she busied herself needlessly over the fire. "I found her
with Binks in her arms--and she seemed just miserable. 'Oh! can't you
tell me where he is, Mrs. Green?' she said. 'I can't, my dear,' said
I, 'for I don't know myself . . . .' And then she picked up a piece of
paper and wrote a few words on it, and sealed it up, and addressed it
to you at Murchester. . . ."
"Ah!" said Vane quietly. "She wrote it here, did she?" He laughed a
short, bitter laugh. "She was right, Mrs. Green. I had the game in my
hands, and I chucked it away." He rose and stared grimly at the houses
opposite. "Did she say by any chance where she was staying?"
"Ashley Gardens, she said; and if you came in, I was to let you know."
"Thank you, Mrs. Green." He turned round at length, and took up the
telephone book. "You might let me have some tea. . . ."
The worthy woman bustled out of the room, shaking her head. Like
Binks, she knew that something was very wrong; but the consolation of
sitting in a basket and waiting for the clouds to roll by was denied
her. For the Humans have to plot and contrive and worry, whatever
happens. . . .
"Is that Lady Auldfearn's?" Vane took the telephone off the table.
"Oh! Lady Auldfearn speaking? I'm Captain Vane. . . . Is Miss
Devereux stopping with you? Just left yesterday, you say. . . .
Yes--I rather wanted to see her. Going to be where? At the
Mainwarings' dance to-night. Thank you. But you don't know where she
is at present. . . ."
He hung up the receiver, and sat back in his chair, with a frown. Then
suddenly a thought struck him, and he pulled the letters he had
received that morning out of his pocket. He extracted one in Nancy
Smallwood's sprawling handwriting, and glanced through it again to make
sure.
"Dine 8 o'clock--and go on to Mainwarings' dance afterwards. . . . Do
come, if you can. . . ."
Vane, placing it on the table in front of him, bowed to it profoundly.
"We might," he remarked to Binks, "almost have it framed."
And Binks' quivering tail assented, with a series of thumps against his
basket.
"I hope you won't find your dinner partner too dreadful." Nancy
Smallwood was shooting little bird-like glances round the room as she
greeted Vane that evening. "She has a mission . . . or two. Keeps
soldiers from drinking too much and getting into bad hands.
Personally, anything--_anything_ would be better than getting into
hers."
"I seem," murmured Vane, "to have fallen on my feet. She isn't that
gargantuan woman in purple, is she?"
"My dear boy! That's George's mother. You know my husband. No, there
she is--the wizened up one in black. . . . And she's going on to the
Mainwarings' too--so you'll have to dance with her."
At any other time Vane might have extracted some humour from his
neighbour, but to-night, in the mood he was, she seemed typical of all
that was utterly futile. She jarred his nerves till it was all he
could do to reply politely to her ceaseless "We are doing this, and we
decided that." To her the war had given an opportunity for
self-expression which she had hitherto been denied. Dreadful as she
undoubtedly thought it with one side of her nature, with another it
made her almost happy. It had enabled her to force herself into the
scheme of things; from being a nonentity, she had made herself a person
with a mission. . . .
True, the doings and the decisions on which she harped continually were
for the benefit of the men he had led. But to this woman it was not
the men that counted most. They had to fit into the decisions; not the
decisions into them. . . .
They were inexorable, even as the laws of the Medes and Persians. And
who was this wretched woman, to lay down the law? What did she know;
what did she understand?
"And so we decided that we must really stop it. People were beginning
to complain; and we had one or two--er--regrettable scandals."
With a start Vane woke up from his reverie and realised he had no idea
what she was talking about.
"Indeed," he murmured. "Have a salted almond?"
"Don't you think we were right, Captain Vane?" she pursued inexorably.
"The men are exposed to so many temptations that the least we can do is
to remove those we can."
"But are they exposed to any more now than they were before?" he
remarked wearily. "Why not let 'em alone, dear lady, let 'em alone?
They deserve it."
At length the ladies rose, and with a sigh of relief Vane sat down next
a lawyer whom he knew well.
"You're looking pretty rotten, Derek," he said, looking at Vane
critically.
"I've been dining next a woman with a mission," he answered. "And I
was nearly drowned in the 'Connaught.'"
The lawyer looked at him keenly. "And the two combined have finished
you off."
"Oh! no. I'm reserving my final effort for the third. I'll get that
at the Mainwarings'." He lifted his glass and let the ruby light glint
through his port. "Why do we struggle, Jimmy? Why, in Heaven's name,
does anybody ever do anything but drift? Look at that damned
foolishness over the water. . . . The most titanic struggle of the
world. And look at the result. . . . Anarchy, rebellion, strife.
What's the use; tell me that, my friend, what's the use? And the
little struggles--the personal human struggles--are just as
futile. . . ."
The lawyer thoughtfully lit a cigarette. "It's not only you fellows
out there, Derek," he said, "who are feeling that way. We're all of us
on the jump, and we're all of us bottling it up. The result is a trial
such as we had the other day, with witnesses and judge screaming at
each other, and dignity trampled in the mud. Every soul in England
read the case--generally twice--before anything else. You could see
'em all in the train--coming up to business--with the sheet on which it
was reported carefully taken out of its proper place and put in the
centre of the paper so that they could pretend they were reading the
war news."
Vane laughed. "We were better than that. We took it, naked and
unashamed, in order of seniority. And no one was allowed to read any
tit-bit out loud for fear of spoiling it for the next man."
Jimmy Charters laughed shortly. "We're just nervy, and sensationalism
helps. It takes one out of one's self for a moment; one forgets."
"And the result is mud flung at someone, some class. No matter whether
it's true; no matter whether it's advisable--it's mud. And it sticks
alike to the just and the unjust; while the world looks on and sneers;
and over the water, the men look on and--die."
George Smallwood was pushing back his chair. "Come on, you fellows.
The Cuthberts will advance from their funk-holes." . . . He led the
way towards the door, and Vane rose.
"Don't pay any attention to what I've been saying, Jimmy." The lawyer
was strolling beside him. "It's liver; I'll take a dose of salts in
the morning."
Jimmy Charters looked at him in silence for a moment.
"I don't know what the particular worry is at the moment, old man," he
said at length, "but don't let go. I'm no sky pilot, but I guess that
somewhere up topsides there's a Big Controller Who understands. . . .
Only at times the pattern is a bit hard to follow. . . ."
Vane laughed hardly. "It's likely to be when the fret-saw slips."
Vane strolled into the ballroom and glanced round, but there was no
sign of Joan; and then he saw that there was another, smaller, room
leading off the principal one where dancing seemed to be in progress
also. He walked towards it, and as he came to the door he stopped
abruptly and his eyes narrowed. In the middle of it Joan was giving an
exhibition dance, supported by a youth in the Flying Corps.
The audience seated round the sides of the room was applauding
vociferously, and urging the dancers on to greater efforts. And then
suddenly Joan broke away from her partner and danced alone, while Vane
leaned against the door with his jaw set in a straight, hard line.
Once his eyes travelled round the faces of the men who were looking on,
and his fists clenched at his sides. There was one elderly man in
particular, with protruding eyes, who roused in him a perfect fury of
rage. . . .
It was a wild, daring exhibition--a mass of swirling draperies and grey
silk stockings. More, it was a wonderful exhibition. She was dancing
with a reckless abandon which gradually turned to sheer devilry, and
she began to circle the room close to the guests who lined the walls.
There were two men in front of Vane, and as she came near the door he
pushed forward a little so that he came in full view. For the moment
he thought she was going to pass without seeing him, and then their
eyes met. She paused and faltered, and then swinging round sank
gracefully to the floor in the approved style of curtsey to show she
had finished.
The spectators clamoured wildly for an encore, but she rose and came
straight up to Vane.
"Where have you been?" she said.
"Unconscious in hospital for ten days," he answered grimly. "I went
down in the 'Connaught.' . . . May I congratulate you on your
delightful performance?"
For a second or two he thought she was going to faint, and
instinctively he put out his arm to hold her. Then the colour came
back to her face again, and she put her arm through his.
"I want something to eat. Take me, please. . . . No, no, my dear
people, no more," as a throng of guests came round her. "I require
food."
Her hand on his arm pushed Vane forward and obediently he led her
across the ballroom.
"If there's any champagne get me a glass," she said, sitting down at a
table. "And a sandwich. . . ."
Obediently Vane fetched what she desired; then he sat down opposite her.
"The fortnight is up," he said quietly. "I have come for my answer."
"Did you get my letters?" she asked slowly.
"Both. When I came to this morning. And I wasn't going to be called a
fool for nothing, my lady--so I got up and came to look for you. What
of the excellent Baxter? Is the date for your wedding fixed?"
She looked at him in silence for a moment, and then she began to laugh.
"The ceremony in church takes place on his return from France in a
week's time."
"Oh! no, it doesn't," said Vane grimly. "However, we will let that
pass. May I ask if your entertainment to-night was indicative of the
joy you feel at the prospect?"
She started to laugh again, and there was an ugly sound in it. A woman
at the next table was looking at her curiously.
"Stop that, Joan," he said in a low, insistent voice. "For God's sake,
pull yourself together. . . ."
She stopped at once, and only the ceaseless twisting of her
handkerchief between her fingers betrayed her.
"I suppose it wouldn't do to go into a fit of high strikes," she said
in a voice she strove vainly to keep steady. "The Mainwarings might
think it was their champagne--or the early symptoms of 'flu--or
unrequited love. . . . And they are so very respectable aren't
they?--the Mainwarings, I mean?"
Vane looked at her gravely. "Don't speak for a bit. I'll get you
another glass of champagne. . . ."
But Joan rose. "I don't want it," she said. "Take me somewhere where
we can talk." She laid the tips of her fingers on his arm. "Talk, my
friend, for the last time. . . ."
"I'm damned if it is," he muttered between his clenched teeth.
She made no answer; and in silence he found two chairs in a secluded
corner behind a screen.
"So you went down in the 'Connaught,' did you?" Her voice was quite
calm.
"I did. Hence my silence."
"And would you have answered my first letter, had you received it?"
Vane thought for a moment before answering. "Perhaps," he said at
length. "I wanted you to decide. . . . But," grimly, "I'd have
answered the second before now if I'd had it. . . ."
"I wrote that in your rooms after I'd come up from Blandford," she
remarked, with her eyes still fixed on him.
"So I gathered from Mrs. Green. . . . My dear, surely you must have
known something had happened." He took one of her hands in his, and it
lay there lifeless and inert.
"I thought you were being quixotic," she said. "Trying to do the right
thing--And I was tired . . . my God! but I was tired." She swayed
towards him, and in her eyes there was despair. "Why did you let me
go, my man--why did you let me go?"
"But I haven't, my lady," he answered in a wondering voice.
"To-morrow. . . ." She put her hand over his mouth with a little
half-stifled groan. "Just take me in your arms and kiss me," she
whispered.
And it seemed to Vane that his whole soul went out of him as he felt
her lips on his.
Then she leaned back in her chair and looked at him gravely. "I wonder
if you'll understand. I wonder still more if you'll forgive. Since
you wouldn't settle things for me I had to settle them for
myself. . . ."
Vane felt himself growing rigid.
"I settled them for myself," she continued steadily, "or rather they
settled me for themselves. I tried to make you see I was afraid, you
know . . . and you wouldn't."
"What are you driving at?" he said hoarsely.
"I am marrying Henry Baxter in church in about a week; I married him in
a registry office the day he left for France."
EPILOGUE
A grey mist was blowing up the valley from Cromarty Firth. It hid the
low hills that flanked the little branch railway line, slowly and
imperceptibly drifting and eddying through the brown trees on their
slopes. Down in London a world had gone mad--but the mist took no heed
of such foolishness. Lines of men and women, linked arm-in-arm, were
promenading Piccadilly to celebrate the End of the Madness; shrieking
parties were driving to Wimbledon, or Limehouse, or up and down Bond
Street in overweighted taxis, but the mist rolled on silently and
inexorably. It took account of none of these things.
Since the beginning a mist such as this one had drifted up the valley
from the open sea; until the end it would continue. . . . It was part
of the Laws of Nature, and the man who watched it coming turned with a
little shudder.
In front of him, the moors stretched brown and rugged till they lost
themselves in the snow-capped hills. Here and there the bogland showed
a darker tint, and at his feet, cupped out in the smooth greystone, lay
a sheet of water. It was dark and evil-looking, and every now and then
a puff of wind eddied down from the hills and ruffled the smooth
surface.
The colours of the moors were sombre and dark; and below the snows far
away in the heart of Ross-shire it seemed to the man who watched with
brooding eyes that it was as the blackness of night. A deserted dead
world, with a cold grey shroud, to hide its nakedness.
He shivered again, and wiped the moisture from his face, while a
terrier beside him crept nearer for comfort.
And then came the change. Swiftly, triumphantly, the sun caught the
mist and rolled it away. One by one the rugged lines of hills came
into being again--one by one they shouted, "We are free, behold
us. . . ."
The first was a delicate brown, and just behind it a little peak of
violet loomed up. Away still further the browns grew darker, more
rich--the violets became a wondrous purple. And the black underneath
the snows seemed to be of the richest velvet.
The pond at the man's feet glinted a turquoise blue; the bogland shone
silver in the sunlight. And then, to crown it all, the smooth snow
slopes in the distance glowed pink and orange, where before they had
been white and cold.
For Life had come to a Land of Death.
Gradually the brooding look on the man's face faded, a gleam of
whimsical humour shone in his eyes. He took an old briar out of his
pocket and commenced to fill it; and soon the blue smoke was curling
lazily upwards into the still air. But he still stood motionless,
staring over the moors, his hands deep in the pockets of the old
shooting coat he wore.
Suddenly he threw back his head and laughed; then almost unconsciously
he stretched out his arms to the setting sun.
"Thank you," he cried, and with a swift whirring of wings two grouse
rose near by and shot like brown streaks over the silver tarn. "Sooner
or later the mist always goes. . . ."
He tapped out the ashes of his pipe, and put it back in his pocket.
And as he straightened himself up, of a sudden it seemed to the man
that the mountains and the moors, the tarn and the bogland approved of
the change in him, and, finding him worthy, told him their message.
"The Sun will always triumph," they cried in a mighty chorus. "Sooner
or later the mist will always go."
For a space the man stood there, while the sun, sinking lower and
lower, bathed the world in glory. Then, he whistled. . . .
"Your last walk on the moors, Binks, old man, so come on. To-morrow we
go back."
And with a terrier scurrying madly through the heather around him, the
man strode forward.