"BUT STILL A RUBY KINDLES IN THE VINE"
Between the North and South Downs in the east of Sussex lies a wide
tract of pleasant homely country which, during certain months of those
years, was subject to a strange phenomenon. Listen on a still day when
the clouds were low, or at night when the birds were all asleep, and you
heard a faint, soft thud, so very faint that it was rather a convulsion
of the air than an actual sound. Fancy might paint it as the tap of an
enormous muffled drum beaten at a giant's funeral leagues and leagues
away. It was not the roll of thunder. There was no crash, however
distant, along the sky. It was just the one soft impact with a
suggestion of earth-wide portentous force; and an interval followed; and
the blurred sound again. The dwellers in those parts, who had sons and
husbands at the war, made up no fancies to explain it. They listened
with a sinking of the heart; for what they heard was the roar of the
British guns at Ypres.
Into this country Martin Hillyard drove a small motor-car on a day of
October two years afterwards. Until this week he had not set foot in his
country of the soft grey skies since he had left Rackham Park. He had
hurried down to Rackham as soon as he had reported to his Chief, but not
with the high anticipation of old days. In what spirit would he find his
friends? How would Joan meet him? For sorrow had marked her cross upon
the door of that house as upon so many others in the land.
Martin had arrived before luncheon.
"Joan is hunting to-day," said Millie, "on the other side of the county.
She will catch a train back."
"I can fetch her," Hillyard returned. "She is well?"
"Yes. She was overworked and ordered a rest. She has been with us a
fortnight and is better. She was very grateful for your letters. She
sent you a telegram because she could not bear to write."
Martin had understood that. He had had little news of her during the two
years--a few lines about Harry in the crowded obituaries of the
newspapers after the attack in 1917 on the Messines Ridge, where he met
his death, and six months afterwards the announcement that a son was
born.
"Joan's distress was terrible," said Millie. "At first she refused to
believe that Harry was killed. He was reported as 'missing' for weeks;
and during those weeks Joan, with a confident face--whatever failings of
the heart beset her during the night vigils none ever knew--daily sought
for news of him at the Red Cross office at Devonshire House. There had
been the usual rumours. One officer in one prison camp had heard of
Harry Luttrell in another. A sergeant had seen him wounded, not
mortally. A bullet had struck him in the foot. Joan lived upon these
rumours. Finally proof came--proof irrefutable.
"Joan collapsed then," said Millie Splay. "We brought her down here and
put her to bed. She cried--oh, day and night!--she who never cried! We
were afraid for her--afraid for the child that was coming."
Millie Splay smiled wistfully. "She had just two weeks with Harry. They
were married before he left for France in 'sixteen, and then had another
week together in the January of 'seventeen at his house in the Clayford
country. That was all." Millie Splay was silent for a few minutes. Then
she resumed cheerfully:
"But she is better now. She will talk of him, indeed, likes at times to
talk of him; she is comforted by it, and the boy"--Millie's face became
radiant--"the boy is splendid. You shall see him."
Martin was shown the boy. He seemed to him much like any other boy of
his age, but such remarkable things in the way of avoirdupois poundage
and teething, serenity of temper and quickness of apprehension were
explained to him that he felt that he must be in the presence of a
prodigy.
"Chichester will want to see you. He is in the library. He is Chairman
of our Food Committee. You may have seen it in the papers," said Millie
with a smile. "He is back in the papers again, you know."
"Good. Then he won't object to me smoking a cigarette," said Martin.
He motored over in the afternoon to the house on the other side of
Sussex where he was to find Joan. He drove her away with him, and as
they came to the top of a little crest in the flat country, Martin
stopped the car and looked about him.
"I never cease to be surprised by the beauty of this country when I come
home to it."
"Yes, but I wish _that_ would stop."
_That_ was the dull and muffled boom of the great guns across the sea.
They sat and listened to it in silence.
"There it comes again!" said Joan in a quiet voice. "Oh, I do wish it
would stop! What has happened to me, has happened to enough of us."
As Millie had said, she was glad to talk of Harry Luttrell to his
friends; and she talked simply and naturally, with a little note of
wistfulness heard in all the words.
"We were going to have a small house in London and spend our time
between it and the old Manor at Clayford.... Harry had seen the
house.... He was always writing that I must watch for it to come into
the market.... It had a brass front door. There we should be. We could
go out when we wished, and when we wished we could be snug behind our
own brass door." Joan laughed simply and lovingly as she spoke. Hillyard
had never seen her more beautiful than she was at this moment. If grief
had taken from her just the high brilliancy of her beauty, it had added
to it a most appealing tenderness.
"After all," she said again, "Harry fulfilled himself. I love to think
of that. The ambition of his life--young as he was he saw it realised
and helped--more than all others, except perhaps one old Colonel--to
realise it. And he left me a son ... to carry on.... There will be no
stigma on the Clayfords when my boy gets his commission. Won't I tell
him why? Won't I just tell him!"
And the soft October evening closed in upon them as they drove.
THE END