I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
PART II
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
PART III
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
PART IV
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
PART I
I
Such a day made glad the heart. All the flags of July were waving; the
sun and the poppies flaming; white butterflies spiring up and twining,
and the bees busy on the snapdragons. The lime-trees were coming
into flower. Tall white lilies in the garden beds already rivaled the
delphiniums; the York and Lancaster roses were full-blown round their
golden hearts. There was a gentle breeze, and a swish and stir and hum
rose and fell above the head of Edward Pierson, coming back from his
lonely ramble over Tintern Abbey. He had arrived at Kestrel, his brother
Robert's home on the bank of the Wye only that morning, having stayed
at Bath on the way down; and now he had got his face burnt in that
parti-coloured way peculiar to the faces of those who have been too long
in London. As he came along the narrow, rather overgrown avenue, the
sound of a waltz thrummed out on a piano fell on his ears, and he
smiled, for music was the greatest passion he had. His dark grizzled
hair was pushed back off his hot brow, which he fanned with his straw
hat. Though not broad, that brow was the broadest part of a narrow oval
face whose length was increased by a short, dark, pointed beard—a
visage such as Vandyk might have painted, grave and gentle, but for its
bright grey eyes, cinder-lashed and crow's-footed, and its strange
look of not seeing what was before it. He walked quickly, though he was
tired and hot; tall, upright, and thin, in a grey parsonical suit, on
whose black kerseymere vest a little gold cross dangled.
Above his brother's house, whose sloping garden ran down to the
railway line and river, a large room had been built out apart. Pierson
stood where the avenue forked, enjoying the sound of the waltz, and
the cool whipping of the breeze in the sycamores and birches. A man of
fifty, with a sense of beauty, born and bred in the country, suffers
fearfully from nostalgia during a long unbroken spell of London; so
that his afternoon in the old Abbey had been almost holy. He had let his
senses sink into the sunlit greenery of the towering woods opposite; he
had watched the spiders and the little shining beetles, the flycatchers,
and sparrows in the ivy; touched the mosses and the lichens; looked
the speedwells in the eye; dreamed of he knew not what. A hawk had been
wheeling up there above the woods, and he had been up there with it in
the blue. He had taken a real spiritual bath, and washed the dusty fret
of London off his soul.
For a year he had been working his parish single-handed—no joke—for
his curate had gone for a chaplain; and this was his first real holiday
since the war began, two years ago; his first visit, too, to his
brother's home. He looked down at the garden, and up at the trees
of the avenue. Bob had found a perfect retreat after his quarter of a
century in Ceylon. Dear old Bob! And he smiled at the thought of his
elder brother, whose burnt face and fierce grey whiskers somewhat
recalled a Bengal tiger; the kindest fellow that ever breathed! Yes,
he had found a perfect home for Thirza and himself. And Edward Pierson
sighed. He too had once had a perfect home, a perfect wife; the wound of
whose death, fifteen years ago, still bled a little in his heart. Their
two daughters, Gratian and Noel, had not “taken after” her; Gratian
was like his own mother, and Noel's fair hair and big grey eyes always
reminded him of his cousin Leila, who—poor thing!—had made that sad
mess of her life, and now, he had heard, was singing for a living, in
South Africa. Ah! What a pretty girl she had been!
Drawn by that eternal waltz tune he reached the doorway of the
music-room. A chintz curtain hung there, and to the sound of feet
slipping on polished boards, he saw his daughter Noel waltzing slowly
in the arms of a young officer in khaki: Round and round they went,
circling, backing, moving sideways with curious steps which seemed to
have come in recently, for he did not recognise them. At the piano sat
his niece Eve, with a teasing smile on her rosy face. But it was at his
young daughter that Edward Pierson looked. Her eyes were half-closed,
her cheeks rather pale, and her fair hair, cut quite short, curled into
her slim round neck. Quite cool she seemed, though the young man in
whose arms she was gliding along looked fiery hot; a handsome boy,
with blue eyes and a little golden down on the upper lip of his sunny
red-cheeked face. Edward Pierson thought: 'Nice couple!' And had
a moment's vision of himself and Leila, dancing at that long-ago
Cambridge May Week—on her seventeenth birthday, he remembered, so that
she must have been a year younger than Nollie was now! This would be the
young man she had talked of in her letters during the last three weeks.
Were they never going to stop?
He passed into view of those within, and said:
“Aren't you very hot, Nollie?”
She blew him a kiss; the young man looked startled and self-conscious,
and Eve called out:
“It's a bet, Uncle. They've got to dance me down.”
Pierson said mildly:
“A bet? My dears!”
Noel murmured over her shoulder:
“It's all right, Daddy!” And the young man gasped:
“She's bet us one of her puppies against one of mine, sir!”
Pierson sat down, a little hypnotized by the sleepy strumming, the slow
giddy movement of the dancers, and those half-closed swimming eyes of
his young daughter, looking at him over her shoulder as she went by. He
sat with a smile on his lips. Nollie was growing up! Now that Gratian
was married, she had become a great responsibility. If only his dear
wife had lived! The smile faded from his lips; he looked suddenly very
tired. The struggle, physical and spiritual, he had been through, these
fifteen years, sometimes weighed him almost to the ground: Most men
would have married again, but he had always felt it would be sacrilege.
Real unions were for ever, even though the Church permitted remarriage.
He watched his young daughter with a mixture of aesthetic pleasure and
perplexity. Could this be good for her? To go on dancing indefinitely
with one young man could that possibly be good for her? But they looked
very happy; and there was so much in young creatures that he did
not understand. Noel, so affectionate, and dreamy, seemed sometimes
possessed of a little devil. Edward Pierson was naif; attributed those
outbursts of demonic possession to the loss of her mother when she was
such a mite; Gratian, but two years older, had never taken a mother's
place. That had been left to himself, and he was more or less conscious
of failure.
He sat there looking up at her with a sort of whimsical distress. And,
suddenly, in that dainty voice of hers, which seemed to spurn each word
a little, she said:
“I'm going to stop!” and, sitting down beside him, took up his hat
to fan herself.
Eve struck a triumphant chord. “Hurrah I've won!”
The young man muttered:
“I say, Noel, we weren't half done!”
“I know; but Daddy was getting bored, weren't you, dear? This is
Cyril Morland.”
Pierson shook the young man's hand.
“Daddy, your nose is burnt!”
“My dear; I know.”
“I can give you some white stuff for it. You have to sleep with it on
all night. Uncle and Auntie both use it.”
“Nollie!”
“Well, Eve says so. If you're going to bathe, Cyril, look out for
that current!”
The young man, gazing at her with undisguised adoration, muttered:
“Rather!” and went out.
Noel's eyes lingered after him; Eve broke a silence.
“If you're going to have a bath before tea, Nollie, you'd better
hurry up.”
“All right. Was it jolly in the Abbey, Daddy?”
“Lovely; like a great piece of music.”
“Daddy always puts everything into music. You ought to see it by
moonlight; it's gorgeous then. All right, Eve; I'm coming.” But
she did not get up, and when Eve was gone, cuddled her arm through her
father's and murmured:
“What d'you think of Cyril?”
“My dear, how can I tell? He seems a nice-looking young man.”
“All right, Daddy; don't strain yourself. It's jolly down here,
isn't it?” She got up, stretched herself a little, and moved away,
looking like a very tall child, with her short hair curling in round her
head.
Pierson, watching her vanish past the curtain, thought: 'What a lovely
thing she is!' And he got up too, but instead of following, went to
the piano, and began to play Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue in E
minor. He had a fine touch, and played with a sort of dreamy passion.
It was his way out of perplexities, regrets, and longings; a way which
never quite failed him.
At Cambridge, he had intended to take up music as a profession, but
family tradition had destined him for Holy Orders, and an emotional
Church revival of that day had caught him in its stream. He had always
had private means, and those early years before he married had passed
happily in an East-End parish. To have not only opportunity but power to
help in the lives of the poor had been fascinating; simple himself, the
simple folk of his parish had taken hold of his heart. When, however, he
married Agnes Heriot, he was given a parish of his own on the borders
of East and West, where he had been ever since, even after her death had
nearly killed him. It was better to go on where work and all reminded
him of one whom he had resolved never to forget in other ties. But he
knew that his work had not the zest it used to have in her day, or even
before her day. It may well be doubted whether he, who had been in Holy
Orders twenty-six years, quite knew now what he believed. Everything had
become circumscribed, and fixed, by thousands of his own utterances; to
have taken fresh stock of his faith, to have gone deep into its roots,
would have been like taking up the foundations of a still-standing
house. Some men naturally root themselves in the inexpressible—for
which one formula is much the same as another; though Edward Pierson,
gently dogmatic, undoubtedly preferred his High-Church statement of
the inexpressible to that of, say, the Zoroastrians. The subtleties of
change, the modifications by science, left little sense of inconsistency
or treason on his soul. Sensitive, charitable, and only combative deep
down, he instinctively avoided discussion on matters where he might hurt
others or they hurt him. And, since explanation was the last thing which
o could be expected of one who did not base himself on Reason, he had
found but scant occasion ever to examine anything. Just as in the old
Abbey he had soared off into the infinite with the hawk, the beetles,
and the grasses, so now, at the piano, by these sounds of his own
making, he was caught away again into emotionalism, without realising
that he was in one of his, most religious moods.
“Aren't you coming to tea, Edward?”
The woman standing behind him, in a lilac-coloured gown, had one of
those faces which remain innocent to the end of the chapter, in spite of
the complete knowledge of life which appertains to mothers. In days of
suffering and anxiety, like these of the great war, Thirza Pierson was
a valuable person. Without ever expressing an opinion on cosmic matters,
she reconfirmed certain cosmic truths, such as that though the whole
world was at war, there was such a thing as peace; that though all
the sons of mothers were being killed, there remained such a thing as
motherhood; that while everybody was living for the future, the present
still existed. Her tranquil, tender, matter-of-fact busyness, and the
dew in her eyes, had been proof against twenty-three years of life on a
tea-plantation in the hot part of Ceylon; against Bob Pierson; against
the anxiety of having two sons at the front, and the confidences of
nearly every one she came across. Nothing disturbed her. She was like a
painting of “Goodness” by an Old Master, restored by Kate Greenaway.
She never went to meet life, but when it came, made the best of it. This
was her secret, and Pierson always felt rested in her presence.
He rose, and moved by her side, over the lawn, towards the big tree at
the bottom of the garden.
“How d'you think Noel is looking, Edward?”
“Very pretty. That young man, Thirza?”
“Yes; I'm afraid he's over head and ears in love with her.”
At the dismayed sound he uttered, she slipped her soft round arm within
his. “He's going to the front soon, poor boy!”
“Have they talked to you?”
“He has. Nollie hasn't yet.”
“Nollie is a queer child, Thirza.”
“Nollie is a darling, but rather a desperate character, Edward.”
Pierson sighed.
In a swing under the tree, where the tea-things were set out, the
“rather desperate character” was swaying. “What a picture she
is!” he said, and sighed again.
The voice of his brother came to them,—high and steamy, as though
corrupted by the climate of Ceylon:
“You incorrigible dreamy chap, Ted! We've eaten all the raspberries.
Eve, give him some jam; he must be dead! Phew! the heat! Come on, my
dear, and pour out his tea. Hallo, Cyril! Had a good bathe? By George,
wish my head was wet! Squattez-vous down over there, by Nollie; she'll
swing, and keep the flies off you.”
“Give me a cigarette, Uncle Bob—”
“What! Your father doesn't—”
“Just for the flies. You don't mind, Daddy?”
“Not if it's necessary, my dear.”
Noel smiled, showing her upper teeth, and her eyes seemed to swim under
their long lashes.
“It isn't necessary, but it's nice.”
“Ah, ha!” said Bob Pierson. “Here you are, Nollie!”
But Noel shook her head. At that moment she struck her father as
startlingly grown-up-so composed, swaying above that young man at her
feet, whose sunny face was all adoration. 'No longer a child!' he
thought. 'Dear Nollie!'
II
1
Awakened by that daily cruelty, the advent of hot water, Edward Pierson
lay in his chintz-curtained room, fancying himself back in London. A
wild bee hunting honey from the bowl of flowers on the window-sill, and
the scent of sweetbrier, shattered that illusion. He drew the curtain,
and, kneeling on the window-seat thrust his head out into the morning.
The air was intoxicatingly sweet. Haze clung over the river and the
woods beyond; the lawn sparkled with dew, and two wagtails strutted in
the dewy sunshine. 'Thank God for loveliness!' he thought. 'Those
poor boys at the front!' And kneeling with his elbows on the sill, he
began to say his prayers. The same feeling which made him beautify his
church, use vestments, good music, and incense, filled him now. God was
in the loveliness of His world, as well as in His churches. One could
worship Him in a grove of beech trees, in a beautiful garden, on a
high hill, by the banks of a bright river. God was in the rustle of the
leaves, and the hum of a bee, in the dew on the grass, and the scent of
flowers; God was in everything! And he added to his usual prayer this
whisper: “I give Thee thanks for my senses, O Lord. In all of us, keep
them bright, and grateful for beauty.” Then he remained motionless,
prey to a sort of happy yearning very near, to melancholy. Great beauty
ever had that effect on him. One could capture so little of it—could
never enjoy it enough! Who was it had said not long ago: “Love of
beauty is really only the sex instinct, which nothing but complete union
satisfies.” Ah! yes, George—Gratian's husband. George Laird! And
a little frown came between his brows, as though at some thorn in
the flesh. Poor George! But then, all doctors were materialists at
heart—splendid fellows, though; a fine fellow, George, working himself
to death out there in France. One must not take them too seriously. He
plucked a bit of sweetbrier and put it to his nose, which still retained
the shine of that bleaching ointment Noel had insisted on his using. The
sweet smell of those little rough leaves stirred up an acute aching. He
dropped them, and drew back. No longings, no melancholy; one ought to be
out, this beautiful morning!
It was Sunday; but he had not to take three Services and preach at least
one sermon; this day of rest was really to be his own, for once. It was
almost disconcerting; he had so long felt like the cab horse who could
not be taken out of the shafts lest he should fall down. He dressed with
extraordinary deliberation, and had not quite finished when there came a
knock on his door, and Noel's voice said: “Can I come in, Daddy?”
In her flax-blue frock, with a Gloire de Dijon rose pinned where it met
on her faintly browned neck, she seemed to her father a perfect vision
of freshness.
“Here's a letter from Gratian; George has been sent home ill, and
he's gone to our house. She's got leave from her hospital to come
home and nurse him.”
Pierson read the letter. “Poor George!”
“When are you going to let me be a nurse, Daddy?”
“We must wait till you're eighteen, Nollie.”
“I could easily say I was. It's only a month; and I look much
more.”
Pierson smiled.
“Don't I?”
“You might be anything from fifteen to twenty-five, my dear, according
as you behave.”
“I want to go out as near the front as possible.”
Her head was poised so that the sunlight framed her face, which was
rather broad—the brow rather too broad—under the waving light-brown
hair, the nose short and indeterminate; cheeks still round from youth,
almost waxen-pale, and faintly hollowed under the eyes. It was her lips,
dainty yet loving, and above all her grey eyes, big and dreamily alive,
which made her a swan. He could not imagine her in nurse's garb.
“This is new, isn't it, Nollie?”
“Cyril Morland's sisters are both out; and he'll be going soon.
Everybody goes.”
“Gratian hasn't got out yet: It takes a long time to get trained.”
“I know; all the more reason to begin.”
She got up, looked at him, looked at her hands, seemed about to speak,
but did not. A little colour had come into her cheeks. Then, obviously
making conversation, she asked:
“Are you going to church? It's worth anything to hear Uncle Bob read
the Lessons, especially when he loses his place. No; you're not to put
on your long coat till just before church time. I won't have it!”
Obediently Pierson resigned his long coat.
“Now, you see, you can have my rose. Your nose is better!” She
kissed his nose, and transferred her rose to the buttonhole of his short
coat. “That's all. Come along!” And with her arm through his, they
went down. But he knew she had come to say something which she had not
said.
2
Bob Pierson, in virtue of greater wealth than the rest of the
congregation, always read the Lessons, in his high steamy voice, his
breathing never adjusted to the length of any period. The congregation,
accustomed, heard nothing peculiar; he was the necessary gentry with the
necessary finger in the pie. It was his own family whom he perturbed. In
the second row, Noel, staring solemnly at the profile of her father in
the front row, was thinking: 'Poor Daddy! His eyes look as if they
were coming out. Oh, Daddy! Smile! or it'll hurt you!' Young Morland
beside her, rigid in his tunic, was thinking: 'She isn't thinking of
me!' And just then her little finger crooked into his. Edward Pierson
was thinking: 'Oh! My dear old Bob! Oh!' And, beside him, Thirza
thought: 'Poor dear Ted I how nice for him to be having a complete
rest! I must make him eat he's so thin!' And Eve was thinking:
'Oh, Father! Mercy!' But Bob Pierson was thinking: 'Cheer oh! Only
another three verses!' Noel's little finger unhooked itself, but
her eyes stole round to young Morland's eyes, and there was a light in
them which lingered through the singing and the prayers. At last, in
the reverential rustle of the settling congregation, a surpliced figure
mounted the pulpit.
“I come not to bring Peace, but a sword.”
Pierson looked up. He felt deep restfulness. There was a pleasant light
in this church; the hum of a country bluebottle made all the difference
to the quality of silence. No critical thought stirred within him, nor
any excitement. He was thinking: 'Now I shall hear something for my
good; a fine text; when did I preach from it last?' Turned a little
away from the others, he saw nothing but the preacher's homely face
up there above the carved oak; it was so long since he had been preached
to, so long since he had had a rest! The words came forth, dropped
on his forehead, penetrated, met something which absorbed them, and
disappeared. 'A good plain sermon!' he thought. 'I suppose I'm
stale; I don't seem—' “Let us not, dear brethren,” droned the
preacher's earnest voice, “think that our dear Lord, in saying that
He brought a sword, referred to a physical sword. It was the sword of
the spirit to which He was undoubtedly referring, that bright sword of
the spirit which in all ages has cleaved its way through the fetters
imposed on men themselves by their own desires, imposed by men on other
men in gratification of their ambitions, as we have had so striking an
example in the invasion by our cruel enemies of a little neighbouring
country which had done them no harm. Dear brethren, we may all bring
swords.” Pierson's chin jerked; he raised his hand quickly
and passed it over his face. 'All bring swords,' he thought,
'swords—I wasn't asleep—surely!' “But let us be sure that
our swords are bright; bright with hope, and bright with faith, that
we may see them flashing among the carnal desires of this mortal life,
carving a path for us towards that heavenly kingdom where alone is
peace, perfect peace. Let us pray.”
Pierson did not shut his eyes; he opened them as he fell on his knees.
In the seat behind, Noel and young Morland had also fallen on their
knees their faces covered each with a single hand; but her left hand
and his right hung at their sides. They prayed a little longer than any
others and, on rising, sang the hymn a little louder.
3
No paper came on Sundays—not even the local paper, which had so
long and so nobly done its bit with headlines to win the war. No news
whatever came, of men blown up, to enliven the hush of the hot July
afternoon, or the sense of drugging—which followed Aunt Thirza's
Sunday lunch. Some slept, some thought they were awake; but Noel and
young Morland walked upward through the woods towards a high common of
heath and furze, crowned by what was known as Kestrel rocks. Between
these two young people no actual word of love had yet been spoken. Their
lovering had advanced by glance and touch alone.
Young Morland was a school and college friend of the two Pierson boys
now at the front. He had no home of his own, for his parents were dead;
and this was not his first visit to Kestrel. Arriving three weeks ago,
for his final leave before he should go out, he had found a girl sitting
in a little wagonette outside the station, and had known his fate
at once. But who knows when Noel fell in love? She was—one
supposes—just ready for that sensation. For the last two years she had
been at one of those high-class finishing establishments where, in
spite of the healthy curriculum, perhaps because of it, there is ever an
undercurrent of interest in the opposing sex; and not even the gravest
efforts to eliminate instinct are quite successful. The disappearance
of every young male thing into the maw of the military machine put a
premium on instinct. The thoughts of Noel and her school companions were
turned, perforce, to that which, in pre-war freedom of opportunity they
could afford to regard as of secondary interest. Love and Marriage
and Motherhood, fixed as the lot of women by the countless ages, were
threatened for these young creatures. They not unnaturally pursued what
they felt to be receding.
When young Morland showed, by following her about with his eyes, what
was happening to him, Noel was pleased. From being pleased, she became a
little excited; from being excited she became dreamy. Then, about a week
before her father's arrival, she secretly began to follow the young
man about with her eyes; became capricious too, and a little cruel. If
there had been another young man to favour—but there was not; and she
favoured Uncle Bob's red setter. Cyril Morland grew desperate. During
those three days the demon her father dreaded certainly possessed
her. And then, one evening, while they walked back together from the
hay-fields, she gave him a sidelong glance; and he gasped out: “Oh!
Noel, what have I done?” She caught his hand, and gave it a quick
squeeze. What a change! What blissful alteration ever since!
Through the wood young Morland mounted silently, screwing himself up to
put things to the touch. Noel too mounted silently, thinking: 'I will
kiss him if he kisses me!' Eagerness, and a sort of languor, were
running in her veins; she did not look at him from under her shady
hat. Sun light poured down through every chink in the foliage; made the
greenness of the steep wood marvellously vivid and alive; flashed on
beech leaves, ash leaves, birch leaves; fell on the ground in little
runlets; painted bright patches on trunks and grass, the beech mast, the
ferns; butterflies chased each other in that sunlight, and myriads of
ants and gnats and flies seemed possessed by a frenzy of life. The whole
wood seemed possessed, as if the sunshine were a happy Being which had
come to dwell therein. At a half-way spot, where the trees opened and
they could see, far below them, the gleam of the river, she sat down on
the bole of a beech-tree, and young Morland stood looking at her. Why
should one face and not an other, this voice and not that, make a heart
beat; why should a touch from one hand awaken rapture, and a touch from
another awaken nothing? He knelt down and pressed his lips to her foot.
Her eyes grew very bright; but she got up and ran on—she had not
expected him to kiss her foot. She heard him hurrying after her, and
stopped, leaning against a birch trunk. He rushed to her, and, without
a word spoken, his lips were on her lips. The moment in life, which
no words can render, had come for them. They had found their enchanted
spot, and they moved no further, but sat with their arms round
each other, while the happy Being of the wood watched. A marvellous
speeder-up of Love is War. What might have taken six months, was thus
accomplished in three weeks.
A short hour passed, then Noel said:
“I must tell Daddy, Cyril. I meant to tell him something this morning,
only I thought I'd better wait, in case you didn't.”
Morland answered: “Oh, Noel!” It was the staple of his conversation
while they sat there.
Again a short hour passed, and Morland said:
“I shall go off my chump if we're not married before I go out.”
“How long does it take?”
“No time, if we hurry up. I've got six days before I rejoin, and
perhaps the Chief will give me another week, if I tell him.”
“Poor Daddy! Kiss me again; a long one.”
When the long one was over, she said:
“Then I can come and be near you till you go out? Oh, Cyril!”
“Oh, Noel!”
“Perhaps you won't go so soon. Don't go if you can help it!”
“Not if I can help it, darling; but I shan't be able.”
“No, of course not; I know.”
Young Morland clutched his hair. “Everyone's in the same boat, but
it can't last for ever; and now we're engaged we can be together all
the time till I've got the licence or whatever it is. And then—!”
“Daddy won't like our not being married in a church; but I don't
care!”
Looking down at her closed eyes, and their lashes resting on her cheeks,
young Morland thought:
'My God! I'm in heaven!'
Another short hour passed before she freed herself.
“We must go, Cyril. Kiss me once more!”
It was nearly dinner-time, and they ran down. 4
Edward Pierson, returning from the Evening Service, where he had read
the Lessons, saw them in the distance, and compressed his lips. Their
long absence had vexed him. What ought he to do? In the presence of
Love's young dream, he felt strange and helpless. That night, when
he opened the door of his room, he saw Noel on the window-seat, in her
dressing-gown, with the moonlight streaming in on her.
“Don't light up, Daddy; I've got something to say.”
She took hold of the little gold cross on his vest, and turned it over.
“I'm engaged to Cyril; we want to be married this week.”
It was exactly as if someone had punched him in the ribs; and at the
sound he made she hurried on:
“You see, we must be; he may be going out any day.”
In the midst of his aching consternation, he admitted a kind of reason
in her words. But he said:
“My dear, you're only a child. Marriage is the most serious thing in
life; you've only known him three weeks.”
“I know all that, Daddy” her voice sounded so ridiculously calm;
“but we can't afford to wait. He might never come back, you see, and
then I should have missed him.”
“But, Noel, suppose he never did come back; it would only be much
worse for you.”
She dropped the little cross, and took hold of his hand, pressing it
against her heart. But still her voice was calm:
“No; much better, Daddy; you think I don't know my own feelings, but
I do.”
The man in Pierson softened; the priest hardened.
“Nollie, true marriage is the union of souls; and for that, time is
wanted. Time to know that you feel and think the same, and love the same
things.”
“Yes, I know; but we do.”
“You can't tell that, my dear; no one could in three weeks.”
“But these aren't ordinary times, are they? People have to do things
in a hurry. Oh, Daddy! Be an angel! Mother would have understood, and
let me, I know!”
Pierson drew away his hand; the words hurt, from reminder of his loss,
from reminder of the poor substitute he was.
“Look, Nollie!” he said. “After all these years since she left us,
I'm as lonely as ever, because we were really one. If you marry this
young man without knowing more of your own hearts than you can in such
a little time, you may regret it dreadfully; you may find it turn out,
after all, nothing but a little empty passion; or again, if anything
happens to him before you've had any real married life together,
you'll have a much greater grief and sense of loss to put up with
than if you simply stay engaged till after the war. Besides, my child,
you're much too young.”
She sat so still that he looked at her in alarm. “But I must!”
He bit his lips, and said sharply: “You can't, Nollie!”
She got up, and before he could stop her, was gone. With the closing of
the door, his anger evaporated, and distress took its place. Poor child!
What to do with this wayward chicken just out of the egg, and wanting to
be full-fledged at once? The thought that she would be lying miserable,
crying, perhaps, beset him so that he went out into the passage and
tapped on her door. Getting no answer, he went in. It was dark but for
a streak of moonlight, and in that he saw her, lying on her bed, face
down; and stealing up laid his hand on her head. She did not move; and,
stroking her hair, he said gently:
“Nollie dear, I didn't mean to be harsh. If I were your mother, I
should know how to make you see, but I'm only an old bumble-daddy.”
She rolled over, scrambling into a cross-legged posture on the bed. He
could see her eyes shining. But she did not speak; she seemed to know
that in silence was her strength.
He said with a sort of despair:
“You must let me talk it over with your aunt. She has a lot of good
sense.”
“Yes.”
He bent over and kissed her hot forehead.
“Good night, my dear; don't cry. Promise me!”
She nodded, and lifted her face; he felt her hot soft lips on his
forehead, and went away a little comforted.
But Noel sat on her bed, hugging her knees, listening to the night,
to the emptiness and silence; each minute so much lost of the little,
little time left, that she might have been with him.
III
Pierson woke after a troubled and dreamful night, in which he had
thought himself wandering in heaven like a lost soul.
After regaining his room last night nothing had struck him more forcibly
than the needlessness of his words: “Don't cry, Nollie!” for he
had realised with uneasiness that she had not been near crying. No;
there was in her some emotion very different from the tearful. He kept
seeing her cross-legged figure on the bed in that dim light; tense,
enigmatic, almost Chinese; kept feeling the feverish touch of her lips.
A good girlish burst of tears would have done her good, and been a
guarantee. He had the uncomfortable conviction that his refusal had
passed her by, as if unspoken. And, since he could not go and make music
at that time of night, he had ended on his knees, in a long search for
guidance, which was not vouchsafed him.
The culprits were demure at breakfast; no one could have told that for
the last hour they had been sitting with their arms round each other,
watching the river flow by, talking but little, through lips too busy.
Pierson pursued his sister-in-law to the room where she did her flowers
every morning. He watched her for a minute dividing ramblers from
pansies, cornflowers from sweet peas, before he said:
“I'm very troubled, Thirza. Nollie came to me last night. Imagine!
They want to get married—those two!”
Accepting life as it came, Thirza showed no dismay, but her cheeks grew
a little pinker, and her eyes a little rounder. She took up a sprig of
mignonette, and said placidly:
“Oh, my dear!”
“Think of it, Thirza—that child! Why, it's only a year or two
since she used to sit on my knee and tickle my face with her hair.”
Thirza went on arranging her flowers.
“Noel is older than you think, Edward; she is more than her age. And
real married life wouldn't begin for them till after—if it ever
began.”
Pierson experienced a sort of shock. His sister-in-law's words seemed
criminally light-hearted.
“But—but—” he stammered; “the union, Thirza! Who can tell what
will happen before they come together again!”
She looked at his quivering face, and said gently:
“I know, Edward; but if you refuse, I should be afraid, in these days,
of what Noel might do. I told you there's a streak of desperation in
her.”
“Noel will obey me.”
“I wonder! There are so many of these war marriages now.”
Pierson turned away.
“I think they're dreadful. What do they mean—Just a momentary
gratification of passion. They might just as well not be.”
“They mean pensions, as a rule,” said Thirza calmly.
“Thirza, that is cynical; besides, it doesn't affect this case. I
can't bear to think of my little Nollie giving herself for a moment
which may come to nothing, or may turn out the beginning of an unhappy
marriage. Who is this boy—what is he? I know nothing of him. How can I
give her to him—it's impossible! If they had been engaged some time
and I knew something of him—yes, perhaps; even at her age. But this
hasty passionateness—it isn't right, it isn't decent. I don't
understand, I really don't—how a child like that can want it. The
fact is, she doesn't know what she's asking, poor little Nollie.
She can't know the nature of marriage, and she can't realise its
sacredness. If only her mother were here! Talk to her, Thirza; you can
say things that I can't!”
Thirza looked after the retreating figure. In spite of his cloth,
perhaps a little because of it, he seemed to her like a child who had
come to show her his sore finger. And, having finished the arrangement
of her flowers, she went out to find her niece. She had not far to go;
for Noel was standing in the hall, quite evidently lying in wait. They
went out together to the avenue.
The girl began at once:
“It isn't any use talking to me, Auntie; Cyril is going to get a
license.”
“Oh! So you've made up your minds?”
“Quite.”
“Do you think that's fair by me, Nollie? Should I have asked him
here if I'd thought this was going to happen?”
Noel only smiled.
“Have you the least idea what marriage means?”
Noel nodded.
“Really?”
“Of course. Gratian is married. Besides, at school—”
“Your father is dead against it. This is a sad thing for him. He's
a perfect saint, and you oughtn't to hurt him. Can't you wait, at
least till Cyril's next leave?”
“He might never have one, you see.”
The heart of her whose boys were out there too, and might also never
have another leave; could not but be responsive to those words. She
looked at her niece, and a dim appreciation of this revolt of life
menaced by death, of youth threatened with extinction, stirred in her.
Noel's teeth were clenched, her lips drawn back, and she was staring
in front of her.
“Daddy oughtn't to mind. Old people haven't to fight, and get
killed; they oughtn't to mind us taking what we can. They've had
their good time.”
It was such a just little speech that Thirza answered:
“Yes; perhaps he hasn't quite realised that.”
“I want to make sure of Cyril, Auntie; I want everything I can have
with him while there's the chance. I don't think it's much to ask,
when perhaps I'll never have any more of him again.”
Thirza slipped her hand through the girl's arm.
“I understand,” she said. “Only, Nollie, suppose, when all this
is over, and we breathe and live naturally once more, you found you'd
made a mistake?”
Noel shook her head. “I haven't.”
“We all think that, my dear; but thousands of mistakes are made by
people who no more dream they're making them than you do now; and then
it's a very horrible business. It would be especially horrible for
you; your father believes heart and soul in marriage being for ever.”
“Daddy's a darling; but I don't always believe what he believes,
you know. Besides, I'm not making a mistake, Auntie! I love Cyril ever
so.”
Thirza gave her waist a squeeze.
“You mustn't make a mistake. We love you too much, Nollie. I wish we
had Gratian here.”
“Gratian would back me up,” said Noel; “she knows what the war is.
And you ought to, Auntie. If Rex or Harry wanted to be married, I'm
sure you'd never oppose them. And they're no older than Cyril. You
must understand what it means to me Auntie dear, to feel that we belong
to each other properly before—before it all begins for him, and—and
there may be no more. Daddy doesn't realise. I know he's awfully
good, but—he's forgotten.”
“My dear, I think he remembers only too well. He was desperately
attached to your mother.”
Noel clenched her hands.
“Was he? Well, so am I to Cyril, and he to me. We wouldn't be
unreasonable if it wasn't—wasn't necessary. Talk, to Cyril,
Auntie; then you'll understand. There he is; only, don't keep him
long, because I want him. Oh! Auntie; I want him so badly!”
She turned; and slipped back into the house; and Thirza, conscious of
having been decoyed to this young man, who stood there with his arms
folded, like Napoleon before a battle, smiled and said:
“Well, Cyril, so you've betrayed me!”
Even in speaking she was conscious of the really momentous change
in this sunburnt, blue-eyed, lazily impudent youth since the day he
arrived, three weeks ago, in their little wagonette. He took her arm,
just as Noel had, and made her sit down beside him on the rustic bench,
where he had evidently been told to wait.
“You see, Mrs. Pierson,” he said, “it's not as if Noel were an
ordinary girl in an ordinary time, is it? Noel is the sort of girl one
would knock one's brains out for; and to send me out there knowing
that I could have been married to her and wasn't, will take all the
heart out of me. Of course I mean to come back, but chaps do get knocked
over, and I think it's cruel that we can't take what we can while we
can. Besides, I've got money; and that would be hers anyway. So, do be
a darling, won't you?” He put his arm round her waist, just as if
he had been her son, and her heart, which wanted her own boys so badly,
felt warmed within her.
“You see, I don't know Mr. Pierson, but he seems awfully gentle
and jolly, and if he could see into me he wouldn't mind, I know. We
don't mind risking our lives and all that, but we do think we ought to
have the run of them while we're alive. I'll give him my dying oath
or anything, that I could never change towards Noel, and she'll do the
same. Oh! Mrs. Pierson, do be a jolly brick, and put in a word for me,
quick! We've got so few days!”
“But, my dear boy,” said Thirza feebly, “do you think it's fair
to such a child as Noel?”
“Yes, I do. You don't understand; she's simply had to grow up.
She is grown-up—all in this week; she's quite as old as I am,
really—and I'm twenty-two. And you know it's going to be—it's
got to be—a young world, from now on; people will begin doing things
much earlier. What's the use of pretending it's like what it was,
and being cautious, and all that? If I'm going to be killed, I think
we've got a right to be married first; and if I'm not, then what
does it matter?”
“You've known each other twenty-one days, Cyril.”
“No; twenty-one years! Every day's a year when—Oh! Mrs. Pierson,
this isn't like you, is it? You never go to meet trouble, do you?”
At that shrewd remark, Thirza put her hand on the hand which still
clasped her waist, and pressed it closer.
“Well, my dear,” she said softly, “we must see what can be
done.”
Cyril Morland kissed her cheek. “I will bless you for ever,” he
said. “I haven't got any people, you know, except my two sisters.”
And something like tears started up on Thirza's eyelashes. They seemed
to her like the babes in the wood—those two!
IV 1
In the dining-room of her father's house in that old London Square
between East and West, Gratian Laird, in the outdoor garb of a nurse,
was writing a telegram: “Reverend Edward Pierson, Kestrel, Tintern,
Monmouthshire. George terribly ill. Please come if you can. Gratian.”
Giving it to a maid, she took off her long coat and sat down for a
moment. She had been travelling all night, after a full day's work,
and had only just arrived, to find her husband between life and death.
She was very different from Noel; not quite so tall, but of a stronger
build; with dark chestnut-coloured hair, clear hazel eyes, and a broad
brow. The expression of her face was earnest, with a sort of constant
spiritual enquiry; and a singularly truthful look: She was just twenty;
and of the year that she had been married, had only spent six weeks
with her husband; they had not even a house of their own as yet. After
resting five minutes, she passed her hand vigorously over her face,
threw back her head, and walked up stairs to the room where he lay. He
was not conscious, and there was nothing to be done but sit and watch
him.
'If he dies,' she thought, 'I shall hate God for His cruelty. I
have had six weeks with George; some people have sixty years.'
She fixed her eyes on his face, short and broad, with bumps of
“observation” on the brows. He had been sunburnt. The dark lashes of
his closed eyes lay on deathly yellow cheeks; his thick hair grew rather
low on his broad forehead. The lips were just open and showed strong
white teeth. He had a little clipped moustache, and hair had grown on
his clean-cut jaw. His pyjama jacket had fallen open. Gratian drew it
close. It was curiously still, for a London day, though the window
was wide open. Anything to break this heavy stupor, which was not
only George's, but her own, and the very world's! The cruelty of
it—when she might be going to lose him for ever, in a few hours or
days! She thought of their last parting. It had not been very loving,
had come too soon after one of those arguments they were inclined to
have, in which they could not as yet disagree with suavity. George had
said there was no future life for the individual; she had maintained
there was. They had grown hot and impatient. Even in the cab on the way
to his train they had pursued the wretched discussion, and the last kiss
had been from lips on lips yet warm from disagreement.
Ever since, as if in compunction, she had been wavering towards his
point of view; and now, when he was perhaps to solve the problem—find
out for certain—she had come to feel that if he died, she would never
see him after. It was cruel that such a blight should have come on her
belief at this, of all moments.
She laid her hand on his. It was warm, felt strong, although so
motionless and helpless. George was so vigorous, so alive, and
strong-willed; it seemed impossible that life might be going to play him
false. She recalled the unflinching look of his steel-bright eyes, his
deep, queerly vibrating voice, which had no trace of self-consciousness
or pretence. She slipped her hand on to his heart, and began very
slowly, gently rubbing it. He, as doctor, and she, as nurse, had both
seen so much of death these last two years! Yet it seemed suddenly as if
she had never seen death, and that the young faces she had seen, empty
and white, in the hospital wards, had just been a show. Death would
appear to her for the first time, if this face which she loved were to
be drained for ever of light and colour and movement and meaning.
A humblebee from the Square Garden boomed in and buzzed idly round the
room. She caught her breath in a little sob....
2
Pierson received that telegram at midday, returning from a lonely walk
after his talk with Thirza. Coming from Gratian so self-reliant—it
meant the worst. He prepared at once to catch the next train. Noel was
out, no one knew where: so with a sick feeling he wrote:
“DEAREST CHILD,
“I am going up to Gratian; poor George is desperately ill. If it goes
badly you should be with your sister. I will wire to-morrow morning
early. I leave you in your aunt's hands, my dear. Be reasonable and
patient. God bless you.
“Your devoted
“DADDY.”
He was alone in his third-class compartment, and, leaning forward,
watched the ruined Abbey across the river till it was out of sight.
Those old monks had lived in an age surely not so sad as this. They must
have had peaceful lives, remote down here, in days when the Church was
great and lovely, and men laid down their lives for their belief in her,
and built everlasting fanes to the glory of God! What a change to this
age of rush and hurry, of science, trade, material profit, and this
terrible war! He tried to read his paper, but it was full of horrors
and hate. 'When will it end?' he thought. And the train with its
rhythmic jolting seemed grinding out the answer: “Never—never!”
At Chepstow a soldier got in, followed by a woman with a very flushed
face and curious, swimmy eyes; her hair was in disorder, and her lip
bleeding, as if she had bitten it through. The soldier, too, looked
strained and desperate. They sat down, far apart, on the seat opposite.
Pierson, feeling that he was in their way, tried to hide himself behind
his paper; when he looked again, the soldier had taken off his tunic and
cap and was leaning out of the window. The woman, on the seat's edge,
sniffing and wiping her face, met his glance with resentful eyes, then,
getting up, she pulled the man's sleeve.
“Sit dahn; don't 'ang out o' there.”
The soldier flung himself back on the seat and looked at Pierson.
“The wife an' me's 'ad a bit of a row,” he said companionably.
“Gits on me nerves; I'm not used to it. She was in a raid, and 'er
nerves are all gone funny; ain't they, old girl? Makes me feel me
'ead. I've been wounded there, you know; can't stand much now. I
might do somethin' if she was to go on like this for long.”
Pierson looked at the woman, but her eyes still met his resentfully.
The soldier held out a packet of cigarettes. “Take one,” he said.
Pierson took one and, feeling that the soldier wanted him to speak,
murmured: “We all have these troubles with those we're fond of; the
fonder we are of people, the more we feel them, don't we? I had one
with my daughter last night.”
“Ah!” said the soldier; “that's right. The wife and me'll make
it up. 'Ere, come orf it, old girl.”
From behind his paper he soon became conscious of the sounds of
reconciliation—reproaches because someone had been offered a drink,
kisses mixed with mild slappings, and abuse. When they got out at
Bristol the soldier shook his hand warmly, but the woman still gave him
her resentful stare, and he thought dreamily: 'The war! How it affects
everyone!' His carriage was invaded by a swarm of soldiers, and the
rest of the journey was passed in making himself small. When at last he
reached home, Gratian met him in the hall.
“Just the same. The doctor says we shall know in a few hours now. How
sweet of you to come! You must be tired, in this heat. It was dreadful
to spoil your holiday.”
“My dear! As if—May I go up and see him?”
George Laird was still lying in that stupor. And Pierson stood
gazing down at him compassionately. Like most parsons, he had a wide
acquaintance with the sick and dying; and one remorseless fellowship
with death. Death! The commonest thing in the world, now—commoner than
life! This young doctor must have seen many die in these last two years,
saved many from death; and there he lay, not able to lift a finger to
save himself. Pierson looked at his daughter; what a strong, promising
young couple they were! And putting his arm round her, he led her away
to the sofa, whence they could see the sick man.
“If he dies, Dad—” she whispered.
“He will have died for the Country, my love, as much as ever our
soldiers do.”
“I know; but that's no comfort. I've been watching here all day;
I've been thinking; men will be just as brutal afterwards—more
brutal. The world will go on the same.”
“We must hope not. Shall we pray, Gracie?”
Gratian shook her head.
“If I could believe that the world—if I could believe anything!
I've lost the power, Dad; I don't even believe in a future life. If
George dies, we shall never meet again.”
Pierson stared at her without a word.
Gratian went on: “The last time we talked, I was angry with George
because he laughed at my belief; now that I really want belief, I feel
that he was right.”
Pierson said tremulously:
“No, no, my dear; it's only that you're overwrought. God in His
mercy will give you back belief.”
“There is no God, Dad”
“My darling child, what are you saying?”
“No God who can help us; I feel it. If there were any God who could
take part in our lives, alter anything without our will, knew or cared
what we did—He wouldn't let the world go on as it does.”
“But, my dear, His purposes are inscrutable. We dare not say He should
not do this or that, or try to fathom to what ends He is working.”
“Then He's no good to us. It's the same as if He didn't exist.
Why should I pray for George's life to One whose ends are just His
own? I know George oughtn't to die. If there's a God who can help,
it will be a wicked shame if George dies; if there's a God who can
help, it's a wicked shame when babies die, and all these millions of
poor boys. I would rather think there's no God than a helpless or a
wicked God—”
Her father had suddenly thrown up his hands to his ears. She moved
closer, and put her arm round him.
“Dad dear, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.”
Pierson pressed her face down to his shoulder; and said in a dull voice:
“What do you think would have happened to me, Gracie, if I had lost
belief when your mother died? I have never lost belief. Pray God I never
shall!”
Gratian murmured:
“George would not wish me to pretend I believe—he would want me to
be honest. If I'm not honest, I shan't deserve that he should live.
I don't believe, and I can't pray.”
“My darling, you're overtired.”
“No, Dad.” She raised her head from his shoulder and, clasping her
hands round her knees, looked straight before her. “We can only help
ourselves; and I can only bear it if I rebel.”
Pierson sat with trembling lips, feeling that nothing he could say would
touch her just then. The sick man's face was hardly visible now in the
twilight, and Gratian went over to his bed. She stood looking down at
him a long time.
“Go and rest, Dad; the doctor's coming again at eleven. I'll call
you if I want anything. I shall lie down a little, beside him.”
Pierson kissed her, and went out. To lie there beside him would be the
greatest comfort she could get. He went to the bare narrow little room
he had occupied ever since his wife died; and, taking off his boots,
walked up and down, with a feeling of almost crushing loneliness. Both
his daughters in such trouble, and he of no use to them! It was as
if Life were pushing him utterly aside! He felt confused, helpless,
bewildered. Surely if Gratian loved George, she had not left God's
side, whatever she might say. Then, conscious of the profound heresy of
this thought, he stood still at the open window.
Earthly love—heavenly love; was there any analogy between them?
From the Square Gardens the indifferent whisper of the leaves answered;
and a newsvendor at the far end, bawling his nightly tale of murder. 3
George Laird passed the crisis of his illness that night, and in the
morning was pronounced out of danger. He had a splendid constitution,
and—Scotsman on his father's side—a fighting character. He came
back to life very weak, but avid of recovery; and his first words were:
“I've been hanging over the edge, Gracie!”
A very high cliff, and his body half over, balancing; one inch, the
merest fraction of an inch more, and over he would have gone. Deuced rum
sensation! But not so horrible as it would have been in real life. With
the slip of that last inch he felt he would have passed at once into
oblivion, without the long horror of a fall. So this was what it was for
all the poor fellows he had seen slip in the past two years! Mercifully,
at the end, one was not alive enough to be conscious of what one was
leaving, not alive enough even to care. If he had been able to take in
the presence of his young wife, able to realise that he was looking at
her face, touching her for the last time—it would have been hell;
if he had been up to realising sunlight, moonlight, the sound of the
world's life outside, the softness of the bed he lay on—it would
have meant the most poignant anguish of defraudment. Life was a rare
good thing, and to be squashed out of it with your powers at full, a
wretched mistake in Nature's arrangements, a wretched villainy on
the part of Man—for his own death, like all those other millions of
premature deaths, would have been due to the idiocy and brutality of
men! He could smile now, with Gratian looking down at him, but the
experience had heaped fuel on a fire which had always smouldered in his
doctor's soul against that half emancipated breed of apes, the human
race. Well, now he would get a few days off from his death-carnival!
And he lay, feasting his returning senses on his wife. She made a pretty
nurse, and his practised eye judged her a good one—firm and quiet.
George Laird was thirty. At the opening of the war he was in an East-End
practice, and had volunteered at once for service with the Army. For the
first nine months he had been right up in the thick of it. A poisoned
arm; rather than the authorities, had sent him home. During that leave
he married Gratian. He had known the Piersons some time; and, made
conscious of the instability of life, had resolved to marry her at the
first chance he got. For his father-in-law he had respect and liking,
ever mixed with what was not quite contempt and not quite pity. The
blend of authority with humility, cleric with dreamer, monk with artist,
mystic with man of action, in Pierson, excited in him an interested, but
often irritated, wonder. He saw things so differently himself, and had
little of the humorous curiosity which enjoys what is strange simply
because it is strange. They could never talk together without soon
reaching a point when he wanted to say: “If we're not to trust our
reason and our senses for what they're worth, sir—will you kindly
tell me what we are to trust? How can we exert them to the utmost in
some matters, and in others suddenly turn our backs on them?” Once,
in one of their discussions, which often bordered on acrimony, he had
expounded himself at length.
“I grant,” he had said, “that there's a great ultimate Mystery,
that we shall never know anything for certain about the origin of life
and the principle of the Universe; but why should we suddenly shut up
our enquiring apparatus and deny all the evidence of our reason—say,
about the story of Christ, or the question of a future life, or our
moral code? If you want me to enter a temple of little mysteries,
leaving my reason and senses behind—as a Mohammedan leaves his
shoes—it won't do to say to me simply: 'There it is! Enter!' You
must show me the door; and you can't! And I'll tell you why, sir.
Because in your brain there's a little twist which is not in mine,
or the lack of a little twist which is in mine. Nothing more than that
divides us into the two main species of mankind, one of whom worships,
and one of whom doesn't. Oh, yes! I know; you won't admit that,
because it makes your religions natural instead of what you call
supernatural. But I assure you there's nothing more to it. Your eyes
look up or they look down—they never look straight before them. Well,
mine do just the opposite.”
That day Pierson had been feeling very tired, and though to meet
this attack was vital, he had been unable to meet it. His brain had
stammered. He had turned a little away, leaning his cheek on his hand,
as if to cover that momentary break in his defences. Some days later he
had said:
“I am able now to answer your questions, George. I think I can make
you understand.”
Laird had answered: “All right, sir; go ahead.”
“You begin by assuming that the human reason is the final test of all
things. What right have you to assume that? Suppose you were an ant. You
would take your ant's reason as the final test, wouldn't you? Would
that be the truth?” And a smile had fixed itself on his lips above his
little grave beard.
George Laird also had smiled.
“That seems a good point, sir,” he said, “until you recognise that
I don't take, the human reason as final test in any absolute sense.
I only say it's the highest test we can apply; and that, behind that
test all is quite dark and unknowable.”
“Revelation, then, means nothing to you?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“I don't think we can usefully go on, George.”
“I don't think we can, sir. In talking with you, I always feel like
fighting a man with one hand tied behind his back.”
“And I, perhaps, feel that I am arguing with one who was blind from
birth.”
For all that, they had often argued since; but never without those
peculiar smiles coming on their faces. Still, they respected each other,
and Pierson had not opposed his daughter's marriage to this heretic,
whom he knew to be an honest and trustworthy man. It had taken place
before Laird's arm was well, and the two had snatched a month's
honeymoon before he went back to France, and she to her hospital in
Manchester. Since then, just one February fortnight by the sea had been
all their time together....
In the afternoon he had asked for beef tea, and, having drunk a cup,
said:
“I've got something to tell your father.”
But warned by the pallor of his smiling lips, Gratian answered:
“Tell me first, George.”
“Our last talk, Gracie; well—there's nothing—on the other side.
I looked over; it's as black as your hat.”
Gratian shivered.
“I know. While you were lying here last night, I told father.”
He squeezed her hand, and said: “I also want to tell him.”
“Dad will say the motive for life is gone.”
“I say it leaps out all the more, Gracie. What a mess we make of
it—we angel-apes! When shall we be men, I wonder? You and I, Gracie,
will fight for a decent life for everybody. No hands-upping about that!
Bend down! It's good to touch you again; everything's good. I'm
going to have a sleep....”
After the relief of the doctor's report in the early morning Pierson
had gone through a hard struggle. What should he wire to Noel? He longed
to get her back home, away from temptation to the burning indiscretion
of this marriage. But ought he to suppress reference to George's
progress? Would that be honest? At last he sent this telegram: “George
out of danger but very weak. Come up.” By the afternoon post, however,
he received a letter from Thirza:
“I have had two long talks with Noel and Cyril. It is impossible to
budge them. And I really think, dear Edward, that it will be a mistake
to oppose it rigidly. He may not go out as soon as we think. How would
it be to consent to their having banns published?—that would mean
another three weeks anyway, and in absence from each other they might be
influenced to put it off. I'm afraid this is the only chance, for if
you simply forbid it, I feel they will run off and get married somewhere
at a registrar's.”
Pierson took this letter out with him into the Square Garden, for
painful cogitation. No man can hold a position of spiritual authority
for long years without developing the habit of judgment. He judged
Noel's conduct to be headlong and undisciplined, and the vein of
stubbornness in his character fortified the father and the priest within
him. Thirza disappointed him; she did not seem to see the irretrievable
gravity of this hasty marriage. She seemed to look on it as something
much lighter than it was, to consider that it might be left to Chance,
and that if Chance turned out unfavourable, there would still be a way
out. To him there would be no way out. He looked up at the sky, as if
for inspiration. It was such a beautiful day, and so bitter to hurt his
child, even for her good! What would her mother have advised? Surely
Agnes had felt at least as deeply as himself the utter solemnity of
marriage! And, sitting there in the sunlight, he painfully hardened
his heart. He must do what he thought right, no matter what the
consequences. So he went in and wrote that he could not agree, and
wished Noel to come back home at once.
V 1
But on the same afternoon, just about that hour, Noel was sitting on the
river-bank with her arms folded tight across her chest, and by her
side Cyril Morland, with despair in his face, was twisting a telegram
“Rejoin tonight. Regiment leaves to-morrow.”
What consolation that a million such telegrams had been read and
sorrowed over these last two years! What comfort that the sun was daily
blotted dim for hundreds of bright eyes; the joy of life poured out and
sopped up by the sands of desolation!
“How long have we got, Cyril?”
“I've engaged a car from the Inn, so I needn't leave till
midnight. I've packed already, to have more time.”
“Let's have it to ourselves, then. Let's go off somewhere. I've
got some chocolate.”
Morland answered miserably:
“I can send the car up here for my things, and have it pick me up at
the Inn, if you'll say goodbye to them for me, afterwards. We'll
walk down the line, then we shan't meet anyone.”
And in the bright sunlight they walked hand in hand on each side of a
shining rail. About six they reached the Abbey.
“Let's get a boat,” said Noel. “We can come back here when
it's moonlight. I know a way of getting in, after the gate's
shut.”
They hired a boat, rowed over to the far bank, and sat on the stern
seat, side by side under the trees where the water was stained deep
green by the high woods. If they talked, it was but a word of love
now and then, or to draw each other's attention to a fish, a bird, a
dragon-fly. What use making plans—for lovers the chief theme? Longing
paralysed their brains. They could do nothing but press close to each
other, their hands enlaced, their lips meeting now and then. On Noel's
face was a strange fixed stillness, as if she were waiting—expecting!
They ate their chocolates. The sun set, dew began to fall; the river
changed, and grew whiter; the sky paled to the colour of an amethyst;
shadows lengthened, dissolved slowly. It was past nine already; a
water-rat came out, a white owl flew over the river, towards the Abbey.
The moon had come up, but shed no light as yet. They saw no beauty in
all this—too young, too passionate, too unhappy.
Noel said: “When she's over those trees, Cyril, let's go. It'll
be half dark.”
They waited, watching the moon, which crept with infinite slowness up
and up, brightening ever so little every minute.
“Now!” said Noel. And Morland rowed across.
They left the boat, and she led the way past an empty cottage, to a shed
with a roof sloping up to the Abbey's low outer wall.