1
He changed his mind at Liverpool. "I'll go to London first," he said,
"and see Roger and Rachel. I might as well hear anything there is to
hear!" And so he had telegraphed to Roger who met him at Euston.
"Gilbert's going out in a few days," Roger said, when they had greeted
each other.
"Out?"
"Yes. He's going to the Dardanelles!... This job's serious, Quinny!" he
added grimly. "Our two months' estimate was a bit out, wasn't it? I
suppose you haven't heard from Ninian lately? He hasn't written to me
for a good while."
"Not lately," Henry answered, "but I shall hear of him to-morrow when I
get to Boveyhayne. I'll write and let you know!"
"My Big Army book's gone to pot, of course!" Roger went on. "At present
anyhow!..."
"The War's done for the Improved Tories, I suppose?"
"Absolutely. They've all enlisted. Ashley Earls is in the R.A.M.C. He
went in last week. He couldn't go before ... he was ill. You remember
Ernest Carr. He tried to enlist when the War began, but he was so
crippled with rheumatism that they hoofed him out. Well, he's been
living like a hermit ever since to get himself cured, and he says he's
going on splendidly. He thinks he'll be able to join before long...."
"I wonder if I ought to join," he went on, more to himself than to
Henry. "I've thought and thought about it ... but I can't make up my
mind. I've got a decent connexion at the Bar now, and if I go into the
Army, I shall lose it. The fellows who don't go will get my work. And if
the War lasts as long as Kitchener reckons, I shall be forgotten by the
time I get back ... and I shall have to begin again at an age when most
men have either established themselves or cleared out of the profession
altogether. I want to do what's right, but I can't reconcile my two
duties, Quinny. I've a duty to England, of course, but I think I have a
bigger duty to Rachel and Eleanor. If they'd only conscript us all, this
problem wouldn't arise ... not so acutely anyhow. I suppose the
Government is having a pretty hard time, but they do seem to act the
goat rather! There's a great deal of talk about a man's duty to England,
but very little talk about England's duty to the man. However!..." He
did not finish his sentence, but shrugged his shoulders and looked away.
"I don't feel happy," he went on after a while, "when I see other men
joining up, but I've got to think of Rachel and Eleanor.... When I was
going to meet you, Quinny, I passed a chap on crutches. His leg was
off!... He made me feel damned ashamed. I suppose that's why they let
the wounded go about in uniform so freely; to make you feel ashamed of
yourself. That's what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid I shall rush off to the
recruiting office in a burst of emotion ... and I must think of Rachel
and Eleanor!..."
"I don't see why you should go before I do, Roger," Henry interjected.
"Are you going, Quinny?"
Henry flushed. It hurt him that there should be any question about it.
"Yes," he said.
"I don't think of you as a soldier, Quinny!"
"I don't think of myself as one!" He paused for a moment, and then,
impetuously, he turned to Roger.
"Roger," he said, "do you think I'm ... neurotic? Would you say I'm ...
well, degenerate?"
"Don't be an ass, Quinny!"
"I'm serious, Roger. I'm not just talking about myself, and slopping
over!"
"You're highly strung, of course, but I shouldn't say you were neurotic.
You're healthy enough, aren't you!"
"Oh, yes, I'm healthy enough, but I'm such a damned coward, Roger, and
sometimes some perfectly uncontrollable fear seizes me ... silly
frights. I never told you, did I, how scared I was when Mrs. Clutters
died!..." He told Roger how he had trembled outside the door of the dead
woman's room. "Things like that have happened to me ever since I was a
kid. I make up my mind to join the Army, and then I suddenly get
panicky, and I can almost feel myself being killed. I'm continually
seeing the War ... me in it, crouching in a trench waiting for the order
to go over, and trembling with fright ... so frightened that I can't do
anything but get killed ... and it's worse when I think of myself
killing other people ... I feel sick at the thought of thrusting a
bayonet into a man's body ... squelching through his flesh ... My
God!..."
"Yes, I know, Quinny!" Roger said. "One does feel like that. But when
you're there, you don't think of it ... you're more or less off your
head ... you couldn't do it if you weren't. They work you up to a kind
of frenzy, and then you ... just let yourself go!"
"But afterwards! Don't you think a man 'ud go mad afterwards when he
thought of it? I should. I know I should. I'd lie awake at night and see
the men I'd killed!..."
A passenger in the train had told a story of the trenches to Henry, who
now repeated it to Roger.
"One of our men got hold of a German in a German trench, and he
bayonetted him, but he did it clumsily. There wasn't enough room to kill
him properly ... he couldn't withdraw the bayonet and stick it in again
and finish the man ... and there they were, jammed together ... and the
German was squealing, oh, horribly ... and our men had to come and haul
the British soldier out of the trench. He'd gone off his head!..."
"One oughtn't to think of things like that, Quinny!"
"But if you can't help it? What terrifies me is that I might turn funk
... let my lot down!..."
"You wouldn't. You're the sort that imagines the worst and does the
best. I shouldn't think of it any more if I were you. A month at
Boveyhayne'll pull you all right again...."
"It's dying that I'm most afraid of. Some of these papers write columns
and columns of stuff about 'glorious deaths' at the front, but it
doesn't seem very glorious to me to be dead before you've had a chance
to do your job ... killed like that ... blown to bits, perhaps ... so
that they can't tell which is you and which is some one else!..."
Roger nodded his head. "Our journalists contrive to see a great deal of
glory in war ... from Fleet Street, don't they, Quinny!"
"Sometimes," Henry proceeded, "I think that the worst kind of cowardice
is to love life too much. That's the kind of coward I am. I love living.
I used to cry when I was a kid at the thought that I might die and not
be able to run about and look at things that I liked! And that makes you
funky. You're afraid to take risks, for fear you should lose your life
and have to give up the pleasure of living. I suppose that's what the
Bible means when it says that 'whosoever shall lose his life, shall find
it.' This hunt for security melts the marrow in your backbone!..."
"Perhaps," said Roger. "Where you go wrong, I think, is in imagining
that courage consists in hurling yourself recklessly on things ... in
not caring a damn. I don't think that that's courage ... it's simply
insensibility ... a sort of permanent imperceptiveness. Really, Quinny,
if you don't feel fear, there's not much of the heroic in your acts.
That kind of man isn't much braver when he's plunging at Germans than
he is when he's plunging at a motor-omnibus or getting into a 'scrum' at
Rugger. He simply doesn't see any difference. It's something to plunge
at, and so he plunges. I haven't much faith in the Don't-Care-a-Damn
Brigade. They're more anxious to get V. C's than to get victories. Their
courage is just egoism ... they're thinking, not of their country, but
of themselves. The real hero, I think, is the man who makes himself do
something that he's afraid to do, who goes into a thing, trembling with
fright, but nevertheless goes into it. Did you ever meet Leon
Lorthiois?" he said quickly.
"You mean the French painter who used to hang about the Cafe Royal?"
Henry replied.
"Yes. He was killed the other day in France."
"I hadn't heard. Poor chap!"
"I think he showed extraordinary courage. He started off from London to
join the French Army ... all his friends dined him jolly well ... and
wished him good-luck, and so on, and then he went off. And a week later,
he turned up again with a cock-and-bull story about having been arrested
as a deserter. He said he'd escaped from prison and, after a lot of
difficulty and hardship, got back to England. But he hadn't done
anything of the sort. He'd funked it at the last. He got as far as
Dover, and then he turned back ... frightened. He stayed in London for a
while ... and then he tried again ... and this time he didn't funk it!
They say he was fighting splendidly when he was killed. Men have got the
V.C. for less heroic behaviour than that. He'd conquered himself. I used
to despise that fellow because he wore eccentric clothes and had his
hair cut in a silly fashion ... but I feel proud now of having known
him!"
2
Mary met him at Whitcombe, and they walked home, sending his trunk and
portmanteau on in the carriage with Widger. He had anticipated their
meeting with strange emotion, feeling as if he were returning to her
after a time of misunderstanding, richer in knowledge, more capable of
sympathy. He had not seen her since the first performance of "The Magic
Casement," and very much had happened to them since then. His desire for
Cecily seemed to have died. He had not troubled to visit her in London
... he could have found time to do so, had he been anxious to see her
... but he had not the wish. He had not written to her about Jimphy ...
he could not bring himself to do that ... and the thought that she might
wish to see him did not stir his mind. He felt for her what a man feels
for a woman he has loved, but now loves no more: neither like nor
dislike, but, occasionally, curiosity that did not last long. She moved
him as little as Sheila Morgan had done when he saw her in the field at
Ballymartin, big with child, watching her husband drilling.
"There are permanent things in one's life, and there are impermanent
things ... and you can't turn the one into the other," he thought to
himself, as the little branch railway drove down the Axe Valley. "I
wanted Cecily ... and then I didn't want her. There's no more to be said
about it than that!"
There were very few people waiting on the platform when the train drew
into Whitcombe, and so Henry and Mary saw each other immediately, and
when he saw her, standing on the windy platform, with her hand to her
hat, he felt more powerfully than he had ever felt it, his old love for
her surging through him. Nothing could ever divert him from her for very
long ... inevitably he would return to her ... whatever of permanence
there was in his life was centred in her. He led her out of the station
and they walked along the road at the top of the shingle ... and as they
walked, suddenly he turned to her and, drawing her arm in his, told her
that he loved her.
"I haven't much to offer you, Mary ... I'm a poor sort of fellow at the
best ... but I need you, and!..."
She did not answer, but she looked up at him with shining eyes....
"My dear!" he said, and drew her very close to him.
3
They went up the path over the red cliffs and then climbed the steep
steps that led to the top of the White Cliff. The night was beginning to
gather her clouds about her, but still they did not hurry homewards. Far
out, they could see the trawlers returning to the Bay, dipping and
rising and plunging and reeling before the wind as from a heavy blow,
and then, when it seemed that they must fall, righting themselves and
moving swiftly homewards. Beneath them, the sea splashed in great thick
waves that tossed their spray high in the air, and the gulls and
jackdaws spun round and up and down or huddled themselves in the shelter
of the cliffs.
"Mary!" he said, putting his arm about her.
"Yes, Quinny!" she answered so quietly that he could not hear her above
the noise of the sea and the wind.
He raised her lips to his and kissed her.
"My dear!" he said again.
4
There was news of Ninian for them when they reached the Manor. Mrs.
Graham, with his letter in her hand, met them at the door.
"He's coming home on leave," she said. "He'll be here to-morrow night.
Then he's going out!..."
She turned away quickly, after she had spoken, and they followed her
silently into the drawing-room. She stood for a while at the window,
gazing down the avenue where the oaks and the chestnuts mingled their
branches and made a covering for passers-by.
"I'll just go upstairs," Henry began, but before he could leave the
room, Mrs. Graham turned away from the window and went to him.
"I've put you in your old room, Henry," she said. "How are you! You
don't look well!"
"I'm tired ... but I shall be all right presently. I'll just go upstairs
now!..."
He left her hurriedly, for Mary was anxious to tell her mother of their
betrothal, and he wished her to know as quickly as possible. He dallied
in his room so that she might have plenty of time in which to learn
Mary's news. He sat on the wide window-seat and let his mind roam over
his memories. It was in this room that he had first told himself that he
loved Mary ... it was at this very window he had stood while he resolved
that he would marry Sheila Morgan, and again had considered what Ninian
and Gilbert had said about men who marry out of their class. Almost he
expected to hear the door opening as Gilbert walked in, just as he had
done then....
"It's no good mooning like this," he said to himself, and then he went
downstairs again.
Mary was sitting beside her mother, holding her hand, and as he entered
she turned to look at him, and smiled so that he knew what he must do,
and so, without hesitation, he crossed the room to Mrs. Graham and
kissed her.
"I'm very glad, Henry!" she said. "Sit down here!"
She moved so that he could sit beside her, and when he had settled
himself, she put her hand on his shoulder. "It's nice to have you back
again," she said.
They spent the time until dinner in desultory talk that sometimes lapsed
into lengthy silence. A high wind was blowing up from the sea, and when
they had dined, they drew their chairs close to the fire, and sat
quietly in the warmth of it. They could hear the heavy rustle of the
leaves as the trees swayed in the wind, and now and then raindrops fell
down the chimney and sizzled in the hot coals. The lamps were left
unlit, and the firelight made long shadows round the room, flickering
over the old polished furniture and the silverware and the dim
portraits of dead Grahams....
Mary moved from her chair and, placing a cushion on the floor between
Henry and her mother, she sat down and leant her head against him. He
bent forward slightly, and placed his hand on her shoulder, and as he
did so, she put hers up and took hold of it and so they sat in exquisite
peace and quietness until the rising wind, gathering itself together in
greater strength, flung itself heavily on the house and shook it
roughly. In the lull, they could hear the rain beating sharply on the
windows ... and as they listened to the noise of the storm, their minds
wandered away, and in their imagination they could see the soldiers in
France, crouching in the dark trenches, while the wind and rain beat
about them without pity; and in the mind of each of them, probing
painfully, was this persistent thought: Here we are in this comfort ...
and there they are _in that_!
5
When Mary had gone to bed, Mrs. Graham began to talk of her to Henry.
"I always knew that she and you would marry, Henry," she said, "even
when you seemed to have forgotten about her. You ... you were very fond
of Lady Cecily Jayne, weren't you, Henry?" He nodded his head. He wanted
to explain that that was over now, that it had been a passing thing that
had no durability, but he could not make the explanation, and so he did
not say anything. "I thought her a very beautiful woman," Mrs. Graham
went on. "If I'd been a boy I think I should have loved her, too. Boys
are like that!"
She was so gentle and kind and understanding that he lost his shyness,
and he confided in her as he would like to have confided in his mother
if she had been alive.
"Inside me," he said, "I always loved Mary, even when I was obsessed by
... by some one else. I can't tell you how happy I am, Mrs. Graham. I
feel as if I'd got home after a long and bitter journey ... and I don't
want to go away again ever. Just to look at Mary seems sufficient ... to
know that she's there ... that I can put out my hand and touch her...."
"Ninian will be glad, too," she said, speaking quickly to cover up the
difficulty he had in finishing his speech.
"We've been awfully good friends, we four," he replied, "Ninian and
Roger and Gilbert and I. I've always felt about them that we could go on
with our friendship just where we left off, even if we were separated
from each other for years. We're all proud of each other. I used to
think, when we first lived in that house in Bloomsbury, that we'd never
separate ... that we'd form a sort of brotherhood of work and friendship
... Roger always preached about The Job Well Done ... but, of course
that was impossible. We were bound to diverge and separate ... all sorts
of things compel men to do that. Roger married, and now Gilbert and
Ninian are soldiers...."
"I feel proud and afraid," Mrs. Graham said. "I'm glad that Ninian has
joined ... I think I should hate it if he hadn't ... and yet I wish too
that ... that he weren't in it. I'm not much of a patriot, Henry. I love
my son more than I love my country. I've never been able to understand
those women one reads about who offer their sons gladly. I don't offer
Ninian gladly. I offer him ... that's all. I know that men have to
defend their country, and I love England and I'm proud to be English ...
but when I've said all that, it's very little when I remember that I
love Ninian. I suppose that that's a selfish thing to say ... but I
don't care whether it is or not!..." She stopped for a moment or two,
and then, with a change of voice, she said, "Do you think the war will
last long, Henry?"
"I don't know," he replied. "Nobody seems able to form any estimate.
When it began I thought it couldn't possibly last for longer than two
months, but it looks like going on for a very long time yet. We move
forward and we move back ... and more men are killed. That's the only
result of anything at present!"
"It's strange," she murmured, "how indifferent one becomes to the death
lists. I thought my heart would break when I saw the first Devon
casualties, but now one simply doesn't feel anything ... just a vague
regret. Sometimes I think I'm growing callous. I can't feel anything
when I read that thousands of men have been killed and wounded. It's
almost as if I were saying to myself, 'Is that all? Weren't there
more?...' I'm not the only one like that. People don't like to admit it,
but I've heard people confessing ... I confess myself ... that I get a
... kind of shocked pleasure out of a big casualty list! ... Oh, isn't
it disgusting, Henry? One gets more and more coarse every day, less
sensitive!..."
"Yes," he said, nodding his head and staring into the fire which was now
burning down.
And everywhere, it seemed to him, that coarsening process was going on,
a persistent blunting of the feelings, an itching desire for more and
grimmer and bloodier details. One saw it operating in kindly women who
visited soldiers in hospital or took them for drives ... an
uncontrollable wish to hear the ghastlier things, a greedy anxiety for
"experiences." ... And the soldiers loathed these prying women in whom
lust had taken a new turn: the love lust had turned to blood lust, and
those who had formerly itched for men (and even those who had not)
itched now for horrors, more and more horrors.... "Tell me, now," they
would say, "did you kill any Germans? I suppose you saw some awful
things...."
One saw this coarsening process operating on men with incredible
swiftness. Their tastes became edgeless ... they entertained themselves
with big, splashy things, asking for noise and glare and an inchoate
massing of colour, and crowds and crowds of bare girls. There was a
demand for Nakedness, not the nakedness of cleanly, natural things, but
the Nakedness that is partly covered, the Nakedness that hints at
Nakedness....
"That's inevitable, I suppose," Henry thought to himself.
The sloppier journalists made a cult of blasphemy and foul speech. The
drill-sergeant was regarded as the most entertaining of humourists, and
decent men who had never done more than the normal and healthy amount of
swearing, began to believe that it was impossible to be manly unless one
bloodied every time one spoke: and swearing, which is a good and
wholesome and manly and picturesque thing, suddenly became like the
gibbering of an idiot.... One was led to believe that the drill-sergeant
spent his time in ordering men to "bloody well form bloody fours!" It
was immaterial to the sloppier journalists that the drill-sergeant did
not do anything of the sort ... and so the legend grew, of a great Army
going into battle, not with the old English war-cries on their lips or
with new cries as noble, but with "Bloody!" for their watch-word, and
"Who were you With Last Night!" for their war-song....
6
"I often wonder what things will be like when the war is over," Mrs.
Graham said. "Men can't live like that without some permanent effect.
Their habits will be rougher, more elementary, I suppose, and they'll
value life less highly. I don't see how they can help it. You can't see
men killed in that careless way ... and feel any sanctity about life. I
think life will be harsher for women after the war than it was
before...."
She remembered that Ninian's father had always declared that the
Franco-German War had brutalised Germany.
"He'd lived in Germany for a long while," she said, "and people
admitted that Germany had changed after the War ... grown coarser and
leas kindly!..."
They talked on in this strain until the clock chimed twelve. The storm
still blew over the house, but the rain had ceased, and when they looked
out of the window, they could see a rift in the clouds, through which
the moon tore her way.
"Good-night, Henry," she said, bending towards him, and he kissed her
cheek and then opened the door for her.
"Good-night!" he said.
7
Ninian came home on the next day, and when they had told him the news of
Henry's engagement to Mary, he was full of cheers. "Good!" he said. "Now
I shall be able to keep you in order, young fellow. I shall be a
Relation!..."
"Oh, I've a note for you," he exclaimed, as they drove home. "It's from
Gilbert. I met him in town. He'll be on his way out before I get back.
He'd like to have come down here, but he couldn't manage it. He sent his
love to you, Mary, and you, mother! He looks jolly fit ... never seen
him look fitter!"
He handed Gilbert's note to Henry who put it in his pocket. He would
read it, he told himself, when he was alone.
"We're hopping off to France next week," Ninian said. "I suppose," he
added, turning again to Henry, "you saw that Jimphy Jayne was killed.
Rough luck, wasn't it? I met a fellow who was in his regiment ... home
on sick-leave ... and he says Jimphy fought like fifty. Gilbert says
Cecily's bearing up wonderfully!"
"He's seen her then?" Henry asked.
"Yes. She met him in the street ... and as he says, she's bearing up
wonderfully. He didn't say a great deal, but I imagine he didn't admire
the attitude much. Rum woman, Cecily!" He had grown together more since
he had been to South America, and his figure, that was always
loose-looking and a little hulking, had been tightened up by his
training.
"I don't like your moustache, Ninian," his mother said, looking with
disfavour at the "tooth-brush" on his upper lip.
"Nor do I," he replied, "but you have to wear something on your face ...
they don't think you can fight if you don't ... and this sort of thing
is the least a chap can do for his king and country. When are you two
going to get married?"
His conversation jumped about like a squib.
"Oh, not yet," Mrs. Graham hurriedly exclaimed. "There's plenty of
time...."
"I should like to get married at once," said Henry.
"No, not yet," Mrs. Graham insisted. "I won't be left alone yet
awhile...."
There was a learned discourse from Ninian on lengthy engagements which
filled the time until the carriage drove up to Boveyhayne House, where
it was dropped as suddenly as it was begun.
Indoors, Henry read Gilbert's letter.
* * * * *
"_My dear Quinny_," he wrote, "_I'm writing this in Soho with a pen that
was made in hell._" Then there was a splutter of ink. "_There_," the
letter went on, "_that's the sort of thing it does. I believe this pen
was brought to Soho by the first Frenchman to open a cafe here, and it's
been handed down from proprietor to proprietor ever since. Ninian and I
have been dining together, and as he's going down to Boveyhayne
to-morrow, I thought I might as well write to you because I shan't see
you again for a while. I'm off to Gallipoli in a day or two. I dined
with Roger and Rachel last night, and they told me that you looked
rather pipped before you went to Devonshire. I hope you'll soon be all
right again. I wish we could have met, but it can't be helped. We must
just meet when we can. It seems a very long while, doesn't it, since we
were at Tre'Arrdur together? It'll be jolly to be there again when the
war's over. You've no idea how interested I've become in this job, far
more interested than I ever imagined I should be. And I've changed very
largely in my attitude towards the War. I 'joined up' chiefly because I
felt an uncontrollable love for England that made me want to do things
that were repugnant to me, and also because I thought that the Germans
had behaved very scurvily to the Belgians; but I don't feel those
emotions now particularly. I do, of course, feel proud of England, and
the sight of a hedgerow makes me want to get up on my hindlegs and
cheer, but I've got something else now that had never entered into my
calculations at all ... and that is an extraordinary pride in my
regiment and a strong desire to be worthy of it. I've just been reading
a book about it, a history of the regiment, and it's left me with a
sense of inheritance ... as I should feel if I were the heir of an old
estate. This thing has a history and a tradition which gives me a
feeling of pride and, perhaps more than that, a sense of responsibility.
... 'You mustn't let it down' I keep telling myself, and I feel about
all the men who served in the regiment from the time it was formed, that
they are my forefathers, so to speak. I feel their ghosts about me, not
the alarming sort of spook, but friendly, sympathetic ghosts, and I
imagine them saying to me, 'Sergeant Farlow, you've got to live up to
us!' I've not told any one else about this, because I'm afraid of being
called a sloppy ass ... and perhaps it is sloppy ... but you'll
understand what I feel, so I don't mind telling you. I shall write to
you as often as I can, and you must write to me and tell me what you're
doing. I wish we could have gone out together. Sometimes I get a
creepy-crawly sort of feeling that nearly turns me inside out ... a
feeling that this is good-bye for good, but I suppose most fellows get
that just before they go out. I began another play about a month ago,
and I think it will be good, much better than anything else I've done. I
wish I had time to finish it before leaving home. This is rather a mess
of a letter, and I must chuck it now, for Ninian is getting tied up in
an effort to cultivate a cordial understanding with the waiter, and I
shall have to rescue them both or there'll be a rupture between the
Allies. Give my love to Mary and Mrs. Graham. I'd have gone to
Boveyhayne to see them if I possibly could, tell them. So long, old
chap!_
"_Yours Ever_,
"_Gilbert Farlow_."
* * * * *
He showed the letter to Mary, and as he gave it to her, he felt a new
pleasure in his love for her, the pleasure of sharing things, of having
confidences together.
"Gilbert's a dear," she said, when she had finished reading the letter.
"It would be awfully hard not to be fond of him!"
He took the letter and put it in his pocket, and then he put his arm in
Mary's and led her to the garden where the spring flowers were blowing.
"I've had great luck," he said. "I have Gilbert for my friend and I have
you, Mary, to be my wife, and I don't know that I deserve either!"
"Silly Quinny!" she said affectionately.
8
They spent the days of Ninian's leave in visiting all the familiar
places about Boveyhayne. It seemed almost that Ninian could not see
enough of them. He would rise early, rousing them with insistent shouts,
and urge them to make haste and prepare for a long walk; and all day
they tramped along the roads, up the combes and down the combes, over
commons, through woods, lingering in the lanes to pluck the wildflowers
that grew profusely in the hedgerows, or listening to the mating birds
that flew continually about them. They walked along the Roman Road to
Lyme Regis in the east, and along the Roman Road again to Sidmouth in
the west, returning in the dark, tired and hungry; and sometimes they
went into the roadside public-houses because of the warm, comfortable
smell they had, and because they liked to listen to the slow, burring
voices of the labourers as they drank their beer and cider and talked of
the day's doings. There was a corner of the Common, near the edge of the
cliff, where they could lie when the sun was warm, and look out over the
Channel to where the Brixham trawlers lay in a line along the horizon.
Westwards, the red clay cliffs ran up and down in steeply undulating
lines as far as they could see, and near at hand, in a wide valley
beyond the gloomy combe that leads to Salcombe Regis, they could very
plainly see the front of Sidmouth. In the east, they could look up the
wooded valley of the Axe, and, beyond the vari-coloured Haven Cliff, see
the Dorset Hills that huddled Charmouth and Bridport, and further out,
like an island in mist, the high reach of Portland Bill....
In this corner of the Common, they spent the last day of Ninian's leave.
Behind them was a great stretch of gorse in bloom, and brown bracken,
mingled with new green fronds, from which larks sprang up, singing and
soaring. They had eaten sandwiches on the Common, and in the afternoon,
had climbed down the steep side of the combe to a farm to tea, and, then
they had climbed up the combe again, and had sat in their corner,
watching the Boveyhayne trawlers blowing home; and as they sat there,
they became very quiet. In this solitude and peace, the outrage of war
seemed to have no meaning....
Ninian stirred slightly. He raised himself on his elbow and looked about
him....
"Let's go home," he said quickly, getting up as he spoke. He went to his
mother and helped her to rise, and when she was standing up, he took her
arm and drew it through his, and led her towards the village; and when
they had gone up the grassy path through the bracken, and were well on
the way home, Mary and Henry followed after them.
"Ninian feels things more than he admits," Henry whispered to her.
9
They made poor attempts at gaiety that night, and Ninian tried to make
oratory about Engineers. He divided his discourse into two parts: one
insisting that the war would be won by engineering feats; the other
insisting that it might be lost because of the contempt of most of the
military men for Engineers, which, Ninian said, was another word for
Brains. "They don't think we're gentlemen," he said. "I met a 'dug-out'
last week, and he was snorting about the Engineers ... hadn't a happorth
of brains in his skull, the ass ... and I asked him why it was that he
thought so little of them. Do you know what he said? 'Oh,' says he,
'they're always readin' books an' ... an' inventin' things!' That's the
kind of chap we've got to endure! Isn't he priceless? I very nearly told
him he ought to be embalmed ... only I thought to myself he'd think that
was the sort of remark an engineer would make. Plucky old devil, of
course, but nothing in his head. If you shook it, it wouldn't rattle!...
He seemed to think he'd only got to say, 'Now, then, boys, give 'em
hell!' and the Germans 'ud just melt away. As I said afterwards, it's
all very well, to say 'Give 'em hell,' but you can't give it to 'em, if
you don't know what it's like!..."
But the oratory failed, and the gaiety fizzled out, and after a while
Mrs. Graham, finding the silence and her thoughts insupportable, left
them and went to bed.
"Come and say 'Good-night' to me," she said to Ninian as she left the
room.
"All right, mother!" he answered.
He tried to take up the theme of engineering again. "It's no good
trying to chivy Germans in the way you chivy foxes. You've got to think,
and think hard. That's where we come in!..." But it was a poor effort,
and he abandoned it quickly.
"I think," he said, "I'll go up and say 'Good-night' to mother. You
two'll see to things!..."
"Righto, Ninian," Henry answered.
Mary came and sat beside him when Ninian had gone.
"I'm trying to feel proud," she said, "but...."
"Don't you feel proud?" he asked, fondling her.
"No. I'm anxious. It would hurt mother terribly if anything were to
happen to Ninian," she answered.
"Nothing will happen to him...."
One said that just because it was comforting.
"Quinny," she said, drawing herself up to him and leaning her elbows on
his knees, "do you love me really and truly?..."
He put his arms quickly about her, and drew her close to him, and kissed
her passionately.
"But you haven't loved only me," she said, freeing herself.
He did not answer.
"I've never loved any one but you," she went on. "I haven't been able to
love any one but you. I've tried to love some one else ... tried very
hard!"
"Who was it?" he asked.
"No one you knew. It was after I'd seen you with Lady Cecily Jayne. I
was jealous, Quinny!..."
"My dear," he said, flattered by the oneness of her love for him.
"But I couldn't. I just couldn't. I suppose I'm rather limited!" She
made a wry smile as she spoke. "I felt stupid beside her. She talked so
easily, and I couldn't think of anything to say. You must have thought I
was a fool, Quinny!"
"No, Mary!..."
"Oh, but I was. I got stupider and stupider, and the more I thought of
how stupid I was, the stupider I got. I could have cried with vexation.
Do you remember Gilbert's party ... I mean when it was over and we were
going home?"
"Yes."
"I _prayed_ that you'd come with mother and me. I thought Ninian would
go with mother, and you'd go with me ... but you didn't!"
"I remember," he answered. "I wanted to go with you...."
"Why didn't you?"
"Some one came up ... I've forgotten ... something happened, and so I
didn't. I wanted to, Mary!"
"I thought then that you and I would never! ... Why did you ask me to
marry you, Quinny?"
"Because I love you, Mary...."
"But ... did you mean to marry me or did you just ... sort of ... not
thinking, I mean!... Oh, it's awf'lly hard to say what's in my mind, but
I want to know whether you love me really and truly, Quinny, or only
just asked me to marry you impulsively ... when you weren't thinking?"
"I came here loving you, Mary. I didn't mean to tell you about it so
soon as I did ... that was impulse ... I couldn't help it ... the moment
I saw you as the train came into the station, I felt that I must ask you
at once. It would have been rather awkward if you'd said, 'No.' I
suppose I should have had to go straight back to London again!... But I
came here loving you. I've loved you all the time ... even when I wasn't
thinking of you, but of some one else. I've come back to you always in
my thoughts!..."
"Do you remember," she said, "the first time you asked me to marry you,
Quinny?"
"Yes."
"I've meant it ever since then. You hurt me when you went to Ireland and
didn't answer my letter...."
"I know!" he exclaimed.
"How do you know?"
"I just know. And when I talked to you about it, that time in Bloomsbury
when you and Mrs. Graham and Rachel came to dine with us...."
"I made fun of it, didn't I? But I had to, Quinny. You'd been unkind,
and I had to make some sort of a show, hadn't I? I had to keep my pride
if I couldn't keep anything else."
"We've been stupid, both of us."
"You have," she retorted.
"I have," he said. "I've been frightfully stupid. That's what puzzles
me. I'm clear-sighted enough about the people I make up in my books. The
critics insist on my understanding of human motives, and I know that I
have that understanding. I can get right inside my characters, and I
know them through and through ... but I'm as stupid as a sheep about
myself and about you and ... living people. I suppose I exhaust all my
understanding on my books!"
"Well, it doesn't matter, Quinny, dear," she said. "I'll understand for
the two of us!..."
10
In the morning, Ninian went away. They drove to Whitcombe Station with
him and saw him off. They had been anxious about Mrs. Graham and dubious
of her endurance at the moment of parting ... but she had insisted on
going to the station, and so they had not persisted in their
persuasions. And she had held herself proudly.
"Good-bye, my dear," she said, hugging Ninian tightly, and smiling at
him. "You'll write to me ... often!"
"Every day," he replied. "If I can!"
It had been difficult to fill in the few moments between their arrival
at the station and the departure of the train. They said little empty
things ... repeated them ... and then were silent....
Then the train began to move, and Mrs. Graham, snatching quickly at him,
had kissed him as he was carried off. They stood at the end of the
platform, watching the train driving quickly up the valley until it
stopped at Coly. Then they heard the whistle of the engine, and saw the
smoke curling up, and again the train moved on, and then they could see
it no more.
"We'll walk home," Mary whispered to Henry. "She'd much better go back
by herself!"
And so they left her, still smiling, though now and then, her hands
trembled.