INTO THE WAY OF PEACE
The King's Messenger thrust a bundle of sealed envelopes into his black
leather despatch-case and closed the lock with a snap.
"Any orders?" he asked. "I go North at eleven to-night."
The civilian clerk seated at the desk in the dusty Whitehall office
leaned back in his chair and passed his hand over his face. He looked
tired and pallid with overwork and lack of exercise.
"Yes," he said, and searched among the papers with which the desk was
littered. "There was a telephone message just now----" He found and
consulted some pencilled memoranda. "You are to call at Sir William
Thorogood's house at nine o'clock. There may be a letter or a message
for you to take up to the Commander-in-Chief." The speaker picked up a
paper-knife and examined it with the air of one who saw a paper-knife
for the first time and found it on the whole disappointing. "The Sea
Lords are dining there," he added after a pause.
The King's Messenger was staring through the window into the well of a
dingy courtyard. He received his instructions with a rather absent nod
of the head.
"The house," continued the civilian in his colourless tones, "is in
Queen Anne's Gate, number----"
"I know the house," said the King's Messenger quietly. He turned and
looked at the clock. "Is that all?" he asked. "If so, I'll go along
there now."
"That's all," replied the other, and busied himself with his papers.
"Good night."
Despatch-case in hand, d'Auvergne, the King's Messenger, emerged from
the Admiralty by one of the small doors opening on to the Mall. He
paused on the step for a moment, meditating. The policeman on duty
touched his helmet.
"Taxi, sir?"
"No, thanks," replied d'Auvergne. "I think I'll walk; I've not far to
go."
Dusk was settling down over the city as he turned off into St. James's
Park, but the afterglow of the sunset still lingered above the Palace
and in the soft half-light the trees and lawns held to their vivid
green. A few early lamps shone with steady brilliance beyond the
foliage.
On one of the benches sat a khaki-clad soldier and a girl,
hand-in-hand; they stared before them unsmiling, in ineffable
speechless contentment. The King's Messenger glanced at the pair as he
limped past, and for an instant the girl's eyes met his
disinterestedly; they were large round eyes of china blue, limpid with
happiness.
The passer-by smiled a trifle grimly. "Bless 'em!" he said to himself
in an undertone. "They don't care if it snows ink.... And all the
world's their garden...."
Podgie d'Auvergne had fallen into a habit of talking aloud to himself.
It is a peculiarity of men given to introspective thought who spend
much time alone. Since the wound early in the war that cost him the
loss of a foot he had found himself very much alone, though the role of
"Cat that walked by Itself" was of his own choosing. It is perhaps the
inevitable working of the fighting male's instinct, once maimed
irrevocably, to walk thenceforward a little apart from his
fellows--that gay company of two-eyed, two-legged, two-armed favourites
of Fate for whom the world was made.
For a while he pursued the train of thought started by the lovers on
the bench. The distant noises of the huge city filled his ears with a
murmur like a far-off sea, and abruptly, all unbidden, Hope the
Inextinguishable flamed up within him. Winged fancy soared and flitted
above the conflagration.
"But supposing," said Podgie d'Auvergne to the pebbles underfoot,
returning to his hurt like a sow to her wallow, "supposing I was
sitting there with her on that seat and some fellow came along and
insulted her!" He considered unhinging possibilities with a brow of
thunder. "Damn it!" said the King's Messenger, "I couldn't even thrash
the blighter."
He made a fierce pass in the air with his walking-stick, dispelling
imaginary Apaches, and brought himself under the observation of a
policeman in Birdcage Walk.
"Any way, I'm not likely to find myself sitting on a bench with her in
St. James's Park, or anywhere else," concluded the soliloquist. High
Fancy, with scorched wings, fluttered down to mundane levels.
He turned into Queen Anne's Gate, but on the steps leading up to the
once familiar door he paused and looked up at the front of the old
house.
"That's her window," said the King's Messenger, and added sternly, "but
I'm here on duty, and even if she----" He rang the bell and stood
listening to the preposterous thumping of his heart.
The door opened while he was framing an imaginary sentence that had
nothing to do with the duty in hand.
"Hullo, Haines!" he said. "Where's Sir William?"
The old butler peered at the visitor irresolutely for an instant.
"Why," he said, "Mr. d'Auvergne, sir, you're a stranger! For a moment
I didn't recognise you standing out on the doorstep----"
The visitor crossed the threshold and was relieved of cap and stick.
"Sir William said an officer from the Admiralty would call at nine,
sir; but he didn't mention no name, and I was to show you into the
library. Sir William is still up in the laboratory, sir"--the butler
lowered his voice to a confidential undertone--"with all the Naval
gentlemen that was dining here--their Lordships, sir." He turned as he
spoke and led the way across the hall. "It's a long time since you was
last here, sir, if I may say so----" There was the faintest tone of
reproach in the old servitor's tones. "I dare say you'll be forgetting
your way about the house." The butler stopped at a door. "This way,
sir--Miss Cecily's in here----"
The King's Messenger halted abruptly, as panic-stricken a young
gentleman as ever wore the King's uniform.
"Haines!" he said. "No! Not--not that room. I'll wait--I----" But
the old man had opened the door and stood aside to allow the visitor to
enter.
D'Auvergne drew a deep breath and stepped forward. As he did so, the
butler spoke again.
"Lieutenant d'Auvergne, Miss," he said, and quietly closed the door.
Save for the light from a shaded electric reading-lamp by the fireplace
the big room was in shadow. A handful of peat smouldered on the wide
brick hearth and mingled its faint aroma with the scent of roses.
An instant's silence was followed by the rustle of silk, and a
white-clad form rose from a low arm-chair beside the reading-lamp.
"I seem to remember the name," said Cecily in her clear, sweet tones,
"but you're in the shadow. Can you find the switch ... by the door..."
An odd, breathless note had caught up in her voice.
The King's Messenger laid the black despatch bag he still carried on a
chair by the door and limped towards her across the carpet.
"I don't think the light would help matters much," he said quietly.
"I'm generally grateful for the dark."
"Ah, Tony ..." said the girl, as if he had countered with a weapon
that somehow wasn't quite fair. "Come and sit down. We'll leave the
lights for a bit, and then we needn't draw the curtains: it's such a
perfect evening." She spoke quite naturally now, standing by the side
of the wide fireplace with one hand resting on the mantel. The soft
evening air strayed in at the open windows, and the little pile of
aromatic embers on the hearth glowed suddenly.
The King's Messenger sat down on the arm of the vacant chair, and
looked up at her as she stood in all her fair loveliness against the
dark panelling. He opened his lips as if to speak, and then apparently
thought better of it. The girl met his gaze a little curiously, as if
waiting for some explanation; none apparently being forthcoming she
shouldered the responsibility for the conversation.
"I'm all alone," she explained, "because Uncle Bill is up in the
laboratory. The air's full of mystery, too; there are five Admirals up
there, and one's a perfect dear..." Cecily paused for breath. "His
eyes go all crinkley when he smiles," she continued.
"Lots of people's do," conceded the visitor.
Cecily shot him a swift glance and looked away again.
"He smiled a good deal," she continued musingly. "And Uncle Bill's
awfully thrilled about something. He was up all night fussing in the
laboratory, and when he came down to breakfast this morning he hit his
egg on the head as if it had been a German and said, '_Got_ it!'"
The King's Messenger nodded sapiently, as if these unusual occurrences
held no mystery for him. Silence fell upon the room again: from a
clock tower in Westminster came the clear notes of a bell striking the
hour. The sound seemed to remind the visitor of something.
"I was told to come here," he announced suddenly, as if answering a
question that the silence held.
The white-clad figure stiffened.
"_Told_ to!" echoed Cecily. "May I ask----"
"They told me at the Admiralty," explained Simple Simon, the King's
Messenger, "I was to call for despatches."
"Oh..." said Cecily, nodding her fair head, "I _see_. I confess I was
a little puzzled ... but that explains ... and it was War-time, and you
couldn't very well refuse, could you?" She surveyed him mercilessly.
"They shoot people who refuse to obey orders in War-time, don't
they--however distasteful or unpleasant the orders may be? You just
had to come, in fact, or be shot ... was that it?"
The victim winced.
"You don't understand," he began miserably. "There's a very
important----"
Cecily interrupted with a little laugh.
"Oh, dear, oh, dear! Tony, if you're going to begin to talk about
important matters"--the white hands made a little gesture in the
gloom--"why, of course, I couldn't understand. And I'm quite sure they
wouldn't ask you to do anything that wasn't really important.... Oh,
Tony, you must have had a lot of _terribly_ important things to do
during the last two years: so many that you haven't had time to look up
your old friends, or--or answer their silly letters even ... at least,"
added Cecily, "so I've heard from people who--knew you well once upon a
time."
The King's Messenger rose to his feet and began to walk slowly to and
fro with his hands behind his back. Cecily watched the halting step of
the man who three years before had been the hero of the Naval
Rugby-football world, and found his outline grow suddenly misty.
"Listen," he said quietly. "I've got to tell you something. It's
something I'd have rather not had to talk about.... And I don't know
whether you'll altogether understand, because you're a woman, and
women----"
"I know," said Cecily quickly. "They're just a pack of silly geese,
aren't they, Tony? They've no intuition or sympathy or power of
understanding.... They only want to be left in peace and not bothered
or have their feelings harrowed.... They're incapable of sharing
another's disappointment or sorrow, or of easing a burden or--or
anything...."
The speaker broke off and crossed swiftly to the vacated chair. For a
moment she searched for something among the cushions and, having found
it, stepped to the window and stood with her back to the visitor,
apparently contemplating the blue dusk deepening into night.
The King's Messenger stopped and stared at her graceful form outlined
against the window. Then he took one step towards her and halted
again. Cecily continued to be absorbed in the row of lights gleaming
like fireflies beyond the Park.
"Cecily," he began, and let his mind return to an earlier train of
thought. "Supposing that I--that you were going for a walk with me."
"We'll suppose it," said Cecily. "I've an idea it has happened before.
But we'll suppose it actually happened again."
"I walk very slowly nowadays," added the King's Messenger.
Cecily amended the hypothesis.
"We'll suppose we were going for a slow walk," she said.
"I can't walk very far, either."
"A short, slow walk."
"And supposing," continued the theorist in sepulchral tones, with his
hands still behind his back, "supposing some fellow came along
and--well, and said 'Yah! Boo!' to you--or--or something like that.
Cecily--would you despise me if I couldn't--er--run after him and kick
him?"
Cecily turned swiftly. "Yah! Boo!" she ejaculated. "_Yah_! _Boo_!
Oh, Tony, how thrilling! I'd say 'Pip! Pip!'"
She, too, had her hands behind her, and stood with her head a little on
one side regarding him. Her face was in shadow, and he saw none of the
tender mirth in her eyes. "Would you let me say 'Pip! Pip!' to a
perfect stranger, Tony?--and me walking-out with you!"
"_Let_ you!" he said with a sort of laugh like a gasp and stepped
towards her.
For an instant Fear peeped out of the two windows of her soul, and she
swiftly raised her hands as if to fend off the inevitable. But the
King's Messenger was swifter still and had them imprisoned, crumpled in
his somewhere between their galloping hearts.
"My dear," he said, "my dear, I love you!"
Her head dropped back in the shelter of his arm, and she searched his
face with eyes like a Madonna on the Judgment Seat.
"I know," she said softly, and surrendered lips and soul as a child
gives itself to Sleep.
Through the closed door came the muffled sound of voices in the hall.
Uncle Bill was talking in tones that were, for him, unusually loud.
Someone fumbling at the handle of the door appeared to be experiencing
some difficulty in opening it.
Cecily, released, turned to the window like a white flash and buried
her hot face among the roses. The King's Messenger remained where he
stood, motionless.
Slowly the door opened, letting in the murmur of voices. Uncle Bill
had his hand on the knob and stood with his shoulder turned to the
interior of the room, apparently listening to something one of his
guests was saying.
In the lighted hall beyond, d'Auvergne caught a glimpse of Naval
uniforms and white shirt-fronts.
"... It ought to go a little way towards 'confounding their knavish
tricks,'" a man's deep voice was saying.
"Yes," said Sir William. He turned as he spoke and took in the
occupants of the room with a swift, keen glance. "'And to guide our
feet into the way of peace!'"