XI

Came with a rush, and a whisper of silken draperies, straight as an

arrow to his starving heart. The chastened passion of her embrace of

welcome--the guarded flame of ardour in her kisses--the rapture in

her pure eyes told her lover that he was loved as dearly as of old.

Unchanged, O God! She who must learn to-morrow, perhaps to-night, to

loathe the name of Yaill....

She led him in, moving with the elastic step and upright carriage

that gave her, amongst other women, the air of an uncrowned queen.

As they passed the chapel door he saw through the stained glass that

more lights burned there than the ruby star of the Sanctuary Lamp.

She caught his puzzled look, and whispered to him:

"Because my father lies there until his Funeral. Presently you shall

see him, dearest Edward. He always loved you like another son."

Her father.... So he was dead, the fine old General. It was true

that Yaill had been fond of the dear old fellow, in some remote and

shadowy long ago.... Now Katharine was saying, in that blessed voice

of hers:

"I was quite sure that when you got my cable, you would come to me,

if the surgeons said you were fit. Not unless! ... I made that

clear! You understood that, Edward? You would not have been so

cruel as to come if it hurt you, dear?"

He moved his head after a non-committing fashion. He had to hide his

ignorance of this cable, sent to the Convalescent Camp at the B----

Base, announcing the death of which he now first learned. He

realised that he brought with him into this honourable dwelling,

subterfuge, pretence, concealment and evasion.... By use of these he

must make his way, warily, as over duckboards laid on quaking mud.

Presently one would be lying.... Lying to Katharine, the crystal

soul of candour and honesty....

Now he was sitting upon her right at the dinner-table, wondering at

the keen appetite provoked in him by the savour and sight of

well-prepared, well-cooked food. A pink-eyed, silver-haired,

Shetland-shawl-enveloped elderly lady, a Mrs. Bell--once nursery

governess to the Forbis children, and now occupying an indefinable

position in the household,--opposed him upon Katharine's left hand;

the carved oak arm-chair usually occupied by the master of the house,

remaining in its place at the head of the table; a Persian cat, the

dead man's favourite, curled up asleep upon its faded seat.... Nor

did the dogs,--a collie, an old pointer-bitch, and a Scotch

deer-hound--desert their accustomed posts upon the threadbare patches

of the Turkey carpet; though uneasy whimpers testified to their sense

of strangeness, and their wistful eyes were always on the door....

Once their tails drubbed and their jaws slavered a welcome, when a

thin elderly priest came in, and bowing with the formal grace of the

seminary--as Miss Forbis introduced Colonel Yaill to Father

Inghame--made a remark about the bitter weather, and took the cover

evidently laid for him--upon the right of the master's empty chair.

He was fasting, for a dish of spinach with eggs was brought to him,

though Friday's dishes figured on the board. He looked fagged and

ate with evident lack of appetite; admitting in reply to Katharine's

inquiries that the road to Peelston Bridge was uncommonly

trying--even for a cyclist inured to conditions in France. It

transpired presently--for the priestly reserve yielded to the charm

of Yaill's voice, his courtesy and soldierly frankness--that Father

Inghame was not a Secular priest but a Religious of the Order of St.

Gerard; who had served as chaplain attached to a Division of the

First British Expeditionary Force; received a shrapnel-wound in the

First Battle of the Aisne, and had come home in charge of a Hospital

convoy. Further, that he was discharging the easy duties incumbent

on the resident chaplain at Kerr's Arbour, until his health should be

sufficiently re-established, in the opinion of his Superior--to

warrant his return to the Front.

"Which I hope may be soon, very soon!" he ended. "For I think that

Miss Forbis will not misunderstand me, when I say that I want to get

back to real work. To eat the bread of idleness in comfort and

safety while brave men are dying hourly in muddy trenches, is

not--for a priest who is able-bodied and hardy enough--"

"To subsist upon the rocky biscuit, and munch the iron ration of

War!" said Yaill's deep, soft voice with the under-note of

melancholy; "Men who have done far less than yourself, Father," he

went on, "are content with ordinary War-conditions at home. Would

not the charge of a crowded Mission in the East or West End of

London--or possibly in a Hertfordshire village, with the certainty

of--say two bomb-raids per week, be sufficient to satisfy your thirst

for risks?"

Father Inghame returned with a queer hot light burning in each of his

hollow eyes, and a flush rising under his sallow skin:

"Indeed, Colonel, you overrate the small part that I have been

permitted to play in the opening acts of this unfinished drama of

Armageddon." He went on, prompted to pay a genuine tribute of

admiration to the distinguished soldier whose heroism was as

proverbial in the mouths of men as the record of his misfortunes:

"Compared with the experiences that you have passed through, such as

have fallen to my lot are, to say the least of them, trivial. Except

with regard to the conduct of those Catholic soldiers whom it has

been my privilege to confess and communicate. How often when I have

passed through the trenches under heavy shell-fire, carrying the

Blessed Sacrament,--I have seen them take off their

shrapnel-helmets--though shell-splinters were flying about, and

machine-gun bullets whistling overhead. And with what childlike

simplicity and faith they would kneel in the stinking mud to receive

their Saviour! And with what sublime endurance and resignation they

have rendered up their souls to God.... All my life long, I shall be

rich in such memories: bequeathed to me, not only by Catholics, but

by Protestants, Presbyterians, Dissenters, and members of the Church

of England,--whom I have seen die with the light of Faith upon their

blackened faces--whispering the prayer that was made by God for men!"

"The splendid men!" said Katharine's full warm voice. "Oh! how can

we ever be proud enough of these men of ours! Haven't I _hugged_

myself whenever I remembered--'I am your countrywoman, you great

dears!'"

Yaill's eyes met hers, and an exquisite thrill was interchanged

between them. When they were once more conscious of the outer world,

the Father was saying--with some lack of tactful prevision:

"It is said there were a good many Catholics in the rank and file of

your regiment. In the First and Second Battalions of 'The

Tweedburghs,' in 1914--as in those battalions reconstituted," he

hesitated, "after the disasters of Le Cateau-Cambrésis and Loos--I

have heard the percentage estimated at twenty-five."

"The estimate is correct," Yaill answered, speaking with admirable

composure, though a tell-tale muscle fluttered in his lean brown

cheek, and Katharine drew a quick breath of painful sympathy. He

added, with a curious intonation: "Yet, despite scapulars, medals,

rosaries, badges and other practical life-assurances--the Catholic

men you speak of lie under stinking mud with other fellows now. Ha,

ha, ha!"

And he laughed with such unnaturally loud and mirthless violence,

that Whishaw at the sideboard jumped and dropped a dish-cover, and

Katharine's sweet eyes went to him in grave surprise.

Those eyes of Katharine's, "of gold and bramble-dew," never strayed

long from the face of her dear one. She was nurse as well as lover,

and that strange laughter had filled her with dismay. She wished

that the Father had been wise enough to shun the agonising subject.

Why had it not occurred to her to warn him not to refer to Edward's

terrible experiences, she asked herself, aching in sympathy with

Edward's pain. But thin ice is a lure to some skaters,--these not

the most brilliant performers. Father Inghame pursued, in a tone

that was not untinged with rebuke:

"You would not suggest, I feel sure, Colonel, that the Catholic men

of your own or any other regiment regarded rosaries, scapulars and

medals as charms and mascots--and not as legitimate aids to faith?"

Yaill's face hardened to a mask of pale brown granite. His fine dark

brows drew sternly into line. His grey eyes gleamed, and below the

clipped moustache a faint smile hovered. He played with the stem of

an antique wine-glass of cut green crystal; twirling it in the long

sensitive fingers of a hand as beautifully shaped as strong. And he

returned, while feigning to admire the delicate workmanship of the

long-dead engraver:

"You are right. I intended to convey no such suggestion." He

changed the trend of the conversation by asking the little pink-eyed

Mrs. Bell when she had last heard from her son in India. And his

agreeable, well-bred tones gave no hint of the frenzy of impotent

resentment raging within him against the Supreme Power Who set the

pellet Earth with her sister planets, to follow their orbits round

the white-hot Sun--and modelled the lord of the world--Man, in the

form of the Creator; and set in his breast a spark of Divine

Intelligence; and bade him live, and love, and be loved again--O

anguish!--a finite being with immortal yearnings--condemned to dwell

in the upas-shadow of Death.

To house an immortal Soul in the breast of a pigmy, in the blood of

whose veins armies of microbes make War. Whose tiny gullet can be

blocked by a swallowed fish-bone; whose seeing eye, that miracle of

miracles, by a thorn-prick or a blow can be rendered blind! Whose

brain, that has solved the secrets of Creation; reduced the Universe

to its chemical constituents; made an ally of the once tameless

lightning; abolished Time, and annihilated Distance; set bounds which

Plague and Pestilence may not overpass; made ships to fly in Air and

sail below water--may by a blow be mashed in its eggshell skull. Or

by the detonation of a shell packed with High Explosive, be churned

to merest pap of grey matter, dead to sensation, incapable of

Thought. Or be so thrown out of gear as to order the body to speech,

impulses, acts, in opposition to the Will. Seemingly sane, O

horrible, horrible mockery! until the awakening from trance or

stupor, or whatever the vile bedevilment may be. From the condition

of No. 40, Shell Shock Ward 8, General Casualty Hospital 70--and the

state of No. 80, Convalescent British Officers Camp, B---- Base--to

the present plight of the complainant; captive within the enclosure

of a sacramental vow!

This was the rankling grievance nursed by Edward Yaill against his

Maker. The son of a Catholic house, reared in the Faith, loyal to

the Church, scrupulous in the discharge of religious duties, he had

never for one instant imagined himself at variance with his God.

That he could quit the fold of Catholic Christianity on the grounds

of intellectual doubt, he knew to be impossible. Like the devils, he

believed--even while he revolted. His was the pain of the child who,

loving the father, has discovered him to be unjust. The muscle

twitched in his lean cheek, and a quiver passed over his stern

features as a ripple will traverse the surface of still water. And

to Katharine's tender, watching eyes, it seemed that all was not well

with Edward. She breathed a little silent prayer to Our Lady for

him, and unconsciously her large white hands folded together on the

tablecloth. They were beautifully-modelled hands, with tapering

fingers, and nails that had been exquisite in pre-War days. The

damaged nails that gallant British women were not at all ashamed to

show.

Yaill knew that those fair hands had done distasteful, rough,

laborious tasks with glorious goodwill and cheerfulness. He loved

them and admired them all the more. He could picture them holding up

the drooping head of a wounded man--or offering cool drink to the

parching lips of the dying. He had sipped sparkling burn-water from

their cupped palms many a time on a hot day up yonder on the moors.

He had seen them folded in prayer, he had covered them with kisses by

her sweet permission. When he had bidden her good-bye upon leaving

for the Front--she had taken his head between those hands, and kissed

him solemnly upon the forehead--and traced the sign of the Cross

there--as his mother might have done, had she been alive. And God,

Whom he had served and trusted--had for no fault of his, taken from

Yaill who worshipped her--this pearl and paragon among women. And

upon this count he held himself betrayed.

There would never be "_Nil_" upon Yaill's disc, but he had finished

with prayer, and the Sacraments, and Mass-going for ever....

Unless--by some marvellous--miraculous happening, the Great Wrong

should be set right.