As they passed the copse, he shut his eyes, and so he stumbled over the
rough ground and almost fell.
"What is it, Quinny?" Mary demanded, catching hold of him.
"It's nothing," he said. "I'm tired, that's all...."
7
He shut the door behind him quickly, and fastened the bolts. Mary had
gone into the drawing-room, and when he had secured the door, he
followed her.
"Mother's gone to bed," she said, and then, going to him and putting her
hands on his shoulder, she added, "What is it, Quinny? Something's upset
you. I know it has!"
He looked at her for a few moments without speaking.
"Tell me, please!" she insisted.
He put his arm about her and led her to the armchair by the fire, and
when she was seated, he sat down on the floor beside her.
"I didn't want to tell you until we got home," he said. "I didn't want
to frighten you...."
"What was it? Was there anything there?..."
"I don't know what it was, Mary, but I suddenly felt frightened ... a
queer kind of fright. I was afraid to look round for fear I should see
something ... I don't know what ... on the cliff. I felt that something
wanted me to look round, and I wouldn't. I didn't dare to look round.
All the way up the street, I felt that something wanted me to look
round.... I'm not afraid now!"
"How queer," she said in a low voice.
"I've never felt anything like it before ... half afraid and half not
afraid!..."
He began to talk about Mullally. "He's a toad, that fellow," he said,
"an ... an enlarged toad!"
"I'm going to bed," she interrupted. "Good-night, Quinny!"
She bent her face to his.
"Good-night, my dear!" he said, kissing her fondly.
8
Three days later, when he had almost forgotten his fright on the cliffs,
he went down to the village to get the morning papers.
"What's the news," he said to one of the villagers whom he met on the
way.
"'Bout the same, sir. Don't seem to be much 'appenin' at present," the
man replied.
He went on to the news agency and got the papers, and then, hastily
glancing at the headlines for the more obvious news, he tucked the
papers under his arm and went slowly back to the Manor by another road
than the one by which he had come into the village. There was a field
with a hollow where one could lie in shelter and see the whole of the
bay and the eastern cliffs in one direction, and the Axe Valley in
another, and here he sat for a while, smoking and reading and now and
then trying to follow the tortuous windings of the Axe as it came down
the marsh to the sea.
"If Ninian were here," he said to himself, "he'd start making plans to
straighten it out!..."
He glanced through the war bulletins, with their terrible iteration of
trenches taken and trenches lost. People read the war news carelessly
now, almost wearily, so accustomed had they become to the daily report
of positions evacuated and positions retrieved, forgetting almost that
at the taking or the losing of a trench, men lost their lives.
"There isn't much in the paper this morning," he said, and then he
turned to a page of lesser news, and almost as he did so, his eye caught
sight of Gilbert's name. His grip on the paper was so tight that he tore
it. He stared at the paragraph with startling eyes, reading and
re-reading it, as if he were unable to comprehend the meaning of the
thing he read.... Then, as understanding came to him, he gaped about
with vacant eyes.
"Oh, my God!" he cried, "Gilbert's been killed!"
9
He got up, half choking, and scrambled out of the field. A labourer
greeted him, but he made no answer. He ran up the road, and as he ran,
he cried to himself, "Gilbert's dead ... it isn't true ... it isn't
true!..."
He thrust open the gate and ran swiftly up to the door.
"Mary!" he shouted. "Mary! Mary!!..."
She came running to him, followed by her mother.
"What is it?" she cried, and her heart was full of fear.