He laughed gently and triumphantly, and drew her towards him. Only when his arm was round her, did he pause. . . . And then it was the look in her eyes, as much as her two hands pressed against his chest, that stopped him. "What is it, Margaret, my lady? Aren't you going to kiss me?"
"No, Derek—not yet. Perhaps once before we go. . . . Please, take your arm away."
For a moment he hesitated. "Even after last night."
She nodded. "Principally because of last night."
With a little lift of his eyebrows Vane did as he was bid. "I knew there was a catch somewhere," he murmured plaintively. "You don't want me to go away and leave you, do you?"
She shook her head and smiled. Then she patted the ground beside her."Come and sit down; I want to talk to you. No—not too near."
"Don't you trust me?" he demanded half sullenly, as he took a seat somewhat further removed from temptation.
"My dear Derek, it would take more than a mere European war to make some leopards I know of change their spots."
In spite of himself Vane laughed. "Well, dash it, Margaret, there was a distinct flavour of the pre-war about you last night."
She closed her eyes, and her hands clenched. "Oh! don't, Derek; don't, please. As long as I live I shall never forget it. It was too horrible." She turned away from him shuddering.
"Dear—I'm sorry." He leaned forward and took her hand. "I didn't realise quite what it must mean to you. You see it was that poor boy who was dying in the bed opposite mine that made me jumpy . . . frightened . . . God knows what! The smash up of the raid itself left me almost cold by comparison. . . . I suppose it was the other way round with you. . . . It's just a question of what one is used to—anyway, don't let's talk about it."
For a while they sat in silence, and then Vane spoke again. "You knowI'm crossing to-morrow, I suppose?"
"Yes." Margaret nodded. "I didn't think you'd stop long."
"Are you sorry I'm going?"
"Of course I am," she answered simply. "You know that. . . . But I think perhaps it's just as well."
"Just as well!" repeated Vane. "Why?"
"Because . . . oh! because of a lot of things. You'd interfere with my work for one."
"How dreadful," said Vane with mock gravity. "You'd mix the medicines and all that, I suppose." Then he turned to her impulsively. "Margaret, my dear, what does it matter? This work of yours won't go on for ever. And after the War, what then?"
"That's just it," she said slowly. "What then?"
"Well, as a preliminary suggestion—why not marry me?"
She laughed—a low, rippling laugh.
"Do you remember what you said to me in the tea shop yesterday about not having seen a girl for six months?"
"What on earth has that got to do with it?" said Vane frowning. "I'm not a child or a callow boy. Do you suppose at my age I don't know my own mind? Why, my dear girl. . . ." Her eyes met his, and the words died away on his lips.
"Don't, dear, don't. You're insulting both our intelligences." With a slight laugh she leaned over and rested her hand on his. "You know perfectly well what I mean."
Vane grunted non-committally. He undoubtedly did know what she meant, but at that moment it was annoying to find she knew it too. . . .
"Listen, Derek; I want to put things before you as I see them." With her elbows on her knee, and her chin cupped in the palms of her hand, she was staring across the stretch of tumbled, grass-grown hillocks.
"We know one another too well not to be perfectly frank. How much of last night was just—what shall I say—nervous tension? Supposing some other girl had been in my place?"
Impetuously he started to speak, but once again the words died away on his lips as he saw the half-tender, half-humorous look in her eyes.
"Dear," she went on after a moment. "I don't want to hurt you. I know you think you're in love with me to-day; but will you to-morrow? You see, Derek, this war has given a different value to things. . . . Whether one likes it or not, it's made one more serious. It hasn't destroyed our capacity for pleasure, but it's altered the things we take pleasure in. My idea of a good time, after it's over, will never be the same as it was before."
Vane nodded his head thoughtfully. "I'm not certain, dear, that that's anything to worry about."
"Of course it isn't—I know that. But don't you see, Derek, where that leads us to? One can't afford to fool with things once they have become serious. . . . And to kiss a man, as I kissed you last night, seems to mean very much more to me than it did once upon a time. That's why I want to make sure. . . ." She hesitated, and then, seeming to make up her mind, she turned and faced him. "I would find it easier now to live with a man I really loved—if that were the only way—than to be kissed by two or three at a dance whom I didn't care about. Do you understand?"
"My dear, I understand perfectly," answered Vane. "The one is big—the other is petty. And when we live through an age of big things we grow ourselves."
"I gave you that as a sort of example of what I feel, Derek," Margaret continued after a time. "I don't suppose there is anything novel in it, but I want you so frightfully to understand what I am going to say. You have asked me to marry you—to take the biggest step which any woman can take. I tell you quite frankly that I want to say 'Yes.' I think all along that I've loved you, though I've flirted with other men. . . . I was a fool five years ago. . . ."
He looked at her quickly. "Tell me; I want to know."
"I found out about that girl you were keeping."
Vane started slightly. "Good Lord! But how?"
"Does it matter, old man?" Margaret turned to him with a smile. "A chance remark by Billy Travers, if you want to know. And then I asked a few questions, and put two and two together. It seemed a deliberate slight to me. It seemed so sordid. You see I didn't understand—then."
"And now? Do you understand now?" He leaned towards her eagerly.
"Should I have said to you what I have if I didn't?" She held out her hand to him, and with a quick movement he put it to his lips. "I've grown, you see . . . got a little nearer the true value of things. I've passed out of the promiscuous kissing stage, as I told you. . . . And I think I realise rather more than I did what men are. . . . One doesn't make them up out of books now. All this has taught one to understand a man's temptations—to forgive him when he fails." Then a little irrelevantly—"They seem so petty, don't they—now?"
Vane gently dropped the hand he was holding, and his face as he looked at her was inscrutable. Into his mind there had flashed Lear's question: "And goes thyheartwith this?" Then irritably he banished it. . . . God bless her! She was all heart: of course she was.
"Will you tell me where exactly you have arrived at?" he asked quietly.
"At the certainty that there lies in front of you and me work to be done. I don't know what that work will prove to be—but, Derek, we've got to find out. It may be that we shall do it together. It may be that my work is just to be with you. And it may be that it isn't that you won't want me. Ah! yes, dear," as he made a quick, impatient movement. "There is always the possibility. I want you to go and find out, Derek, and I want you to make sure that you really want me—that it isn't just six months in Flanders. Also," she added after a pause, "I want to be quite sure about myself." For a while Vane stared out to sea in silence.
"Supposing," he said slowly, "the work in front of me is back to Flanders again, as it probably will be. And supposing I'm not so lucky next time. What then?"
She turned and faced him. "Why then, dear, Fate will have decided for us, won't she?"
"A deuced unsatisfactory decision," grumbled Vane. "Margaret, I don't want to worry you; I don't want to force myself on you . . . but won't you give me some sort of a promise?"
She shook her head. "I'll give you no promise at all, Derek. You've got to find yourself, and I've got to find myself; and when we've both done that we shall know how we stand to one another. Until then . . . well just give it a miss in baulk, old man."
Vane regarded her curiously. "If last night and this afternoon had happened before the war, I wonder what your decision would have been?"
"Does it matter?" she answered gently. "Before the war is just a different age." For a while she was silent; then she drew a deep breath. "Don't you feel it as I feel it?" she whispered. "The bigness of it, the wonder of it. Underneath all the horror, underlying all the vileness—the splendour of it all. The glory of human endurance. . . . People wondered that I could stand it—I with my idealism. But it seems to me that out of the sordid brutality an ideal has been born which is almost the greatest the world has ever known. Oh! Derek, we've just got to try to keep it alive."
"It's the devil," said Vane whimsically. "Jove! lady dear, isn't the blue of the sky and the sea and the gold of the sand just crying out to be the setting of a lovers' paradise? Aren't we here alone just hidden from the world, while the very gulls themselves are screaming: 'Kiss her, kiss her?' And then the fairy princess, instead of being the fairy princess to the wounded warrior, orders him to go back and look for work. It's cruel. I had hoped for tender love and pity, and behold I have found a Labour Bureau."
Margaret laughed. "You dear! But you understand?" She knelt beside him on the sand, and her face was very tender.
"I understand," answered Vane gravely. "But, oh! my lady, I hope you're not building fairy castles on what's going to happen after the war. I'm afraid my faith in my brother man is a very, very small flame."
"All the more reason why we should keep it alight," she cried fiercely. "Derek, we can't let all this hideous mutilation and death go for nothing afterwards."
"You dear optimist," Vane smiled at her eager, glowing face so close to his own. "Do you suppose that we and others like us will have any say in the matter?"
She beat her hands together. "Derek, I hate you when you talk like that. You've got it in you to do big things—I feel it. You mustn't drift like you did before the war. You've got to fight, and others like you have got to fight, for everything that makes life worth living in our glorious, wonderful England."
"Would the staff be a little more explicit in their Operation Orders, please?" murmured Vane. "Whom do you propose I should engage in mortal combat?" He saw the slight frown on her face and leant forward quickly. "My dear, don't misunderstand me. I don't want to be flippant and cynical. But I'm just a plain, ordinary man—and I'm rather tired. When this show is over I want peace and rest and comfort. And I rather feel that it's up to the damned fools who let us in for it to clear up the mess themselves for a change."
"But you won't later, old boy," said the girl; "not after you've found yourself again. You'll have to be up and doing; it will stifle you to sit still and do nothing." She looked thoughtfully out to sea and then, as he kept silent, she went on slowly, "I guess we all sat still before this war; drifted along the line of least resistance. We've got to cut a new way, Derek, find a new path, which will make for the good of the show. And before we can find the path, we've got to find ourselves."
She turned towards him and for a long minute they looked into one another's eyes, while the gulls circled and screamed above them. Then slowly she bent forward and kissed him on the mouth. . . . "Go and find yourself, my dear," she whispered. "Go and make good. And when you have, if you still want me, I'll come to you."
* * * * *
At the touch of her lips Vane closed his eyes. It seemed only a few seconds before he opened them again, but Margaret was gone. And then for a while he sat, idly throwing stones at the overturned bottle. Just once he laughed, a short, hard laugh with no humour in it, before he turned to follow her. But when he reached the top of the sand dune, Margaret was almost out of sight in the distance.
Next day he crossed to England in theGuildford Castle.
Derek Vane did not remain long in hospital. As soon as the dressings for his shoulder had become quite straightforward, the machine, in the shape of two doctors from Millbank who formed the Board, took him in its clutches once more and deposited him at a convalescent home. Not one of the dreary, routine-like places which have been in the past associated with convalescence, but a large country house, kindly placed at the disposal of the War Office by its owner.
"Rumfold Hall for you, Vane," said the senior of the two doctors. "A charming house; Lady Patterdale—a charming woman."
"Rumfold Hall!" echoed Vane. "Good Heavens! I know it well. Danced there often during the oldrégime."
"The old régime?" The doctor looked puzzled.
"Yes. It used to belong to the Earl of Forres. He couldn't afford tokeep it up and his other places as well, so he sold it to Sir JohnPatterdale. . . . Made his money in hardware, did Sir John. . . .Surely you know Patterdale's Patent Plate."
The Board opined that it did not, and departed to the next case. It even seemed to regard such flippancy with a certain amount of suspicion; but then Medical Boards are things of some solemnity. . . .
And so in the course of two or three days Vane drove up to the historic gates of Rumfold Hall in an ambulance. The house, situated in the heart of Surrey, was surrounded by extensive grounds. The view from it was magnificent, stretching away for miles and miles to the south, and terminating in the purple downs: and Vane, as the car waited for the gates to be opened, felt that indefinable thrill of pride that comes to every man when he looks on some glorious stretch of his own country. He noticed that the lodge-keeper had changed since he was there last, and not, it struck him, for the better. How well he remembered old John, with his sweet old wife, and their perfectly kept patch of garden and spotless little kitchen. . . . He had had two sons, both in the Grenadiers, magnificent, strapping fellows—and Vane wondered what had become of them. . . .
Somehow he couldn't quite imagine old John not touching his hat as the ambulance came in; whereas his successor merely gazed curiously at the occupants, and then slouched back into the lodge. . . . Of course hat-touching is a relic of feudalism, and, as such, too hideous to contemplate in this age of democracy; but still—like a smile—it costs little and gives much pleasure.
From the condition of the grounds it did not seem that the present owner had been very greatly troubled by the labour shortage. The flower beds were a riot of colour; the grass was short and beautifully kept. And as the ambulance rounded a corner of the drive and the house opened up in front Vane saw that tennis was in full swing on the lawns.
"Say—what sort of a guy is this fellow?" asked a New Zealander opposite him suddenly. "It seems to me to be some house."
Vane looked at him thoughtfully for a moment before replying, and the car was already slowing down before he finally spoke. "He's a substitute for the old order of things. And according to the labels of all substitutes, they are the last word in modern efficiency."
The car pulled up at that moment, and they stepped out to find LadyPatterdale standing on the steps to welcome them.
Let it be said at once that Lady Patterdale was a perfect dear. One lost sight of her incredible vulgarity in view of the charming kindliness of her heart. And, after all, vulgarity is only comparative. In the sanctity of the little shop in Birmingham where Sir John had first laid the foundations of his fortune, aspirates could drop unheeded. What mattered then, as always, was whether the heart was in the right place. With Lady Patterdale it was. . . .
And becauseau fond, she was such a dear, it made it all the more pathetic to see her in such surroundings. One felt, and one felt that in the bottom of her heart she felt, that she would have been far more happy in the kitchen. Except that in the kitchen her lost aspirates would probably have been handed back to her on a salver, whereas in the drawing-room they were ground into the carpet. . . . The spread of education has made the kitchen a very dangerous place.
In appearance Lady Patterdale was short and stout; eminently the type of woman who, if clothed according to the dictates of common sense, would be called a "comfortable old party." One could imagine her in a cotton dress, with her sleeves rolled up above her elbows, displaying a pair of plump forearms and wielding a rolling pin in front of a good hot fire. Covered with flour—her face very red—she would have been in her element. . . . As it was, the dictates of fashion had cast their blight over the proceedings.
The name of her dressmaker is immaterial. Originally Smith & Co. in all probability, it had now become Smythe et Cie, and advertised in all the most exclusive papers. Unfortunately, in the case of Lady Patterdale they did not stop at advertising. They carried out their dreadful threats and clothed her. The result was incredible. She resembled nothing so much as a bursting melon. Onlookers shuddered at times when they thought of the trust reposed by Providence and Lady Patterdale in a few paltry hooks and eyes. The strain appeared so terrific—the consequences of a disaster so appalling.
As Vane stepped out of the ambulance Lady Patterdale, supported on either side by one of the nursing staff, advanced to meet him. Her jolly old face was wreathed in smiles; cordiality and kindliness oozed from her.
"Welcome, both of you," she cried. "Welcome to Rumfold 'all."
The Sister on her left started as if a serpent had stung her, and Vane decided that he did not like her. Then he turned to the kindly old woman, and smiled.
"Thank you, Lady Patterdale," he said, taking her outstretched hand."I'm sure it's going to be topping."
"You're just in nice time for luncheon," she continued, as she turned to welcome the New Zealander. "And after that you'll be able to find your way about the 'ouse."
Lunch was the only meal where all the convalescents met, as, generally, some of them had retired before dinner. It was served in the old banqueting hall, which, when Vane remembered it, had been used for dancing. The officers had it to themselves, the nursing staff feeding elsewhere. . . .
The contrast struck Vane forcibly as he sat down at the long table. The last time he had been in the room he and three or four kindred spirits had emptied a fruit salad into a large wind instrument just before the band played the final gallop. . . .
"Beer, sir, or cider?" He half turned to answer, when suddenly the voice continued, "Why, but surely, sir, it's Mr. Vane?"
He looked up and saw the same butler who had been at the Hall in the old days.
"Why, Robert," he said delightedly, "you still here? Jove! but I'm glad to see you. I thought Sir John had made a clean sweep of all the staff."
The butler nodded his head sadly. "All except me, sir—me and Mrs. Hickson. She was the housekeeper, if you remember. And she couldn't stand it—that is, she had to leave after a year."
"Ah!" Vane's tone was non-committal. "And what's become of oldJohn—at the Lodge?"
"He went, sir. Sir John found him too slow." Robert poured out a glass of beer. "He's in the village, sir. One of his sons was killed at Noove Chappel."
"I'm sorry about that. I must go and see him."
"He'd be proud, sir, if you'd be so kind. I often goes down there myself for a bit of a chat about the old days." With a sigh the old butler passed on, and Vane returned to his lunch. . . .
"You seem to know our archaic friend," remarked the officer sitting next him. "He's a dear old thing. . . ."
"He's one of a dying breed," said Vane shortly. "I would trust oldRobert with everything in the world that I possessed. . . ."
"That so?" returned the other. "Has he been here long?"
"To my certain knowledge for twenty-five years, and I believe longer. It almost broke his heart when he heard that Lord Forres was going to sell the place." Vane continued his lunch in silence, and suddenly a remark from the other side of the table struck his ears.
"I say, old Side-whiskers hasn't given me my fair whack of beer." It was a youngster speaking, and the remark was plainly audible to the old butler two places away. For a moment his face quivered, and then he returned to the speaker.
"I beg your pardon, sir," he remarked quietly. "Let me fill your glass."
"Thanks, old sport. That's a bit better looking." Vane turned to his neighbour with an amused smile.
"Truly the old order changeth," remarked the other thoughtfully. "And one's inclined to wonder if it's changing for the better."
"Unfortunately in any consideration of that sort one is so hopelessly biassed by one's own personal point of view," returned Vane.
"Do you think so?" He crumbled the bread beside him. "Don't you think one can view a little episode like that in an unbiassed way? Isn't it merely in miniature what is going on all over the country? . . . The clash of the new spirit with the one that is centuries old."
"And you really regard that youth as being representative of the new spirit?"
"No one man can be. But I regard him as typical of a certain phase of that spirit. In all probability a magnificent platoon commander—there are thousands like him who have come into being with this war. The future of the country lies very largely in their hands. What are they going to make of it?"
The same question—the same ceaseless refrain. Sometimes expressed, more often not. ENGLAND in the melting pot—what was going to happen? Unconsciously Vane's eyes rested on the figure of the old butler standing at the end of the room. There was something noble about the simplicity of the old man, confronted by the crashing of the system in which he and his father, and his father's father had been born. A puzzled look seemed ever in his eyes: the look of a dog parted from a beloved master, in new surroundings amongst strange faces. And officially, at any rate, the crash was entirely for the benefit of him and his kind . . . . wherein lay the humour.
Vane laughed shortly as he pushed back his chair. "Does anything matter save one's own comfort? Personally I think slavery would be an admirable innovation."
Sir John Patterdale was everything that his wife was not. The unprecedented success of his Patent Plate had enabled him to pay the necessary money to obtain his knighthood and blossom into a county magnate. At one time he had even thought of standing for Parliament as an old and crusted Tory; but up to date the War had prevented the realisation of such a charming idyll. Instead he sat on the bench and dispensed justice.
In appearance he was an exact counterpart of his wife—short and fat; and his favourite attitude was standing with his legs wide apart and his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat. Strong men had been known to burst into tears on seeing him for the first time arrayed as the sporting squire; but the role was one which he persistently tried to fill, with the help of a yellow hunting waistcoat and check stockings. And when it is said that he invariably bullied the servants, if possible in front of a third person, the picture of Sir John is tolerably complete. He was, in short, a supreme cad, with not a single redeeming feature. Stay—that is wrong. He still retained the love of his wife, which may perhaps—nay, surely shall—be accounted to him for righteousness. . . .
To her he was never the vain, strutting little bounder, making himself ridiculous and offensive by turn. She never got beyond the picture of him when, as plain John Patterdale, having put up the shutters and locked the door of the shop, he would come through into their little living-room behind for his supper. First he would kiss her, and then taking off his best coat, he would put on the old frayed one that always hung in readiness behind the door. And after supper, they would draw up very close together, and dream wonderful dreams about the future. All sorts of beautiful things danced in the flames; but the most beautiful thing of all was the reality of her John, with his arm round her waist, and his cheek touching hers.
Sometimes now, when the real truth struck her more clearly than usual—for she was a shrewd old woman for all her kindness of heart—sometimes when she saw the sneers of the people who ate his salt and drank his champagne her mind went back with a bitter stab of memory to those early days in Birmingham. What had they got in exchange for their love and dreams over the kitchen fire—what Dead Sea Fruit had they plucked? If only something could happen; if only he could lose all his money, how willingly, how joyfully would she go back with him to the niche where they both fitted. They might even be happy once again. . . .
He had needed her in those days: turned to her for comfort when business was bad, taken her out on the burst—just they two alone—when things looked up and there had been a good day's takings. The excitement over choosing her best hat—the one with the bunches of fruit in it. . . . As long as she lived she would never forget the morning she tried it on, when he deserted the shop and cheered from the bedroom door, thereby losing a prospective customer.
But now, all he cared about was that she should go to the best people and spare no expense.
"We can afford it, my dear," he was wont to remark, "and I want you to keep your end up with the best of 'em. You must remember my position in the county."
Even alone with her he kept up the pretence, and she backed him loyally. Was he not still her man; and if he was happy, what else mattered? And she would call herself a silly old woman. . . .
But there was just once when he came back to her, and she locked away the remembrance of that night in her secret drawer—the drawer that contained amongst other things a little bunch of artificial grapes which had once adorned the hat. . . .
There had been a big dinner of the no-expense-spared type; and to it had been invited most of the County. Quite a percentage had accepted, and it was after dinner, just before the guests were going, that the owner of a neighbouring house had inadvertently put his thoughts into words, not knowing that his host was within hearing.
"It makes me positively sick to see that impossible little bounder strutting about round Rumfold."
"Impossible little bounder." It hit the little man like a blow between the eyes, and that night, in bed, a woman with love welling over in her heart comforted her man.
"It wasn't him that had been meant. . . . Of course not . . . . Why the dinner had been a tremendous success. . . . Lady Sarah Wellerby had told her so herself. . . . Had asked them over in return. . . . And had suggested that they should give a dance, to which she and her six unmarried daughters would be delighted to come."
But she didn't tell him that she had overheard Lady Sarah remark to the wife of Admiral Blake that "the atrocious little cook person had better be cultivated, she supposed. One never knows, my dear. The ballroom is wonderful and men will come anywhere for a good supper. . . ." No, she didn't tell him that: nor mention the misery she had suffered during dinner. She didn't say how terrified she was of the servants—all except old Robert, who looked at her sometimes with his kindly, tired eyes as if he understood. She didn't even take the opportunity of voicing the wish that was dearest to her heart; to give it all up and go right away. She just coaxed him back to self-confidence, and, in the morning, Sir John was Sir John once more—as insufferable as ever. And only a tired old woman knew quite how tired she felt. . ..
One of Sir John's pet weaknesses was having his wife and the staff photographed. Sometimes he appeared in the group himself, but on the whole he preferred impromptu snap-shots of himself chatting with wounded officers in the grounds. For these posed photographs Lady Patterdale arrayed herself in a light grey costume, with large red crosses scattered over it: and as Vane was strolling out into the gardens after lunch, he ran into her in this disguise in the hall.
"We're 'aving a little group taken, Captain Vane," she said as she passed him. "You must come and be in it."
"Why, certainly, Lady Patterdale; I shall be only too delighted. Is that the reason of the war paint?"
She laughed—a jolly, unaffected laugh. "My 'usband always likes me to wear this when we're took. Thinks it looks better in a 'ospital."
As Vane stepped through the door with her he caught a fleeting glimpse of officers disappearing rapidly in all directions. Confronting them was a large camera, and some servants were arranging chairs under the direction of the photographer. Evidently the symptoms were well known, and Vane realised that he had been had.
This proved to be one of the occasions on which Sir John did not appear, and so the deed did not take quite as long as usual. To the staff it was just a matter of drill, and they arranged themselves at once. And since they were what really mattered, and the half-dozen patients merely appeared in the nature of a make weight, in a very short time, to everyone's profound relief, the group had been taken. . . . Vane, who had been sitting on the ground, with his legs tucked under him to keep them in focus, silently suffering an acute attack of cramp, rose and stretched himself. On the lawn, tennis had started again; and she could see various officers dotted about the ground in basket chairs. He was turning away, with the idea of a stroll—possibly even of seeking out old John in the village, when from just behind his shoulder came a musical laugh.
"Delightful," said a low, silvery voice; "quite delightful."
Vane swung round in time to catch the glint of a mocking smile—a pair of lazy grey eyes—and then, before he could answer, or even make up his mind if it had been he who was addressed, the girl who had spoken moved past him and greeted Lady Patterdale. . . .
He waited just long enough to hear that worthy woman's, "My dear Joan, 'ow are you?" and then with a faintly amused smile on his lips turned towards the cool, shady drive. Margaret's remark in the sand dunes at Etaples anent leopards and their spots came back to him; and the seasoned war horse scents the battle from afar. . . .
It was under the shade of a great rhododendron bush that Vane was first privileged to meet Sir John. The bush was a blaze of scarlet and purple, which showed up vividly against the green of the grass and the darker green of the shrubs around. Through the trees could be seen glimpses of the distant hills, and Vane, as he stumbled unexpectedly into this sudden bit of fairyland, caught his breath with the glory of it. Then with drastic suddenness he recalled that half-forgotten hymn of childhood, of which the last line runs somewhat to the effect that "only man is vile."
Sir John was in full possession, with an unwilling audience of one bored cavalryman. It was one of his most cherished sentiments that nothing aided convalescence so much as a little bright, breezy conversation on subjects of general interest—just to cheer 'em up, and make 'em feel at home. . . .
At the moment of Vane's arrival he was discoursing fluently on the problem of education. The point is really immaterial, as Sir John discussed all problems with equal fluency, and the necessity for answering was rare. He had a certain shrewd business-like efficiency, and in most of his harangues there was a good deal of what, for want of a better word, might be termed horse sense. But he was so completely self-opinionated and sure of himself that he generally drove his audience to thoughts of poisons that left no trace or even fire-arms. Especially when he was holding forth on strategy. On that subject he considered himself an expert, and regularly twice a week he emptied the smoking-room at Rumfold by showing—with the aid of small flags—what he would have done had he been in charge of the battle of the Somme in 1916. He was only silenced once, and that was by a pessimistic and saturnine Sapper.
"Extraordinary," he murmured. "I congratulate you, Sir John. The plan you have outlined is exactly in every detail the one which the Commander-in-Chief discussed with me when overlooking the charming little village of Gueudecourt. 'Johnson,' he said, 'that is what we will do,' and he turned to the Chief of Staff and ordered him to make a note of it." The Sapper paused for a moment to relight his pipe. Then he turned impressively to Sir John. "There was no Chief of Staff. The Chief of Staff had gone: only a few bubbles welling out of the mud remained to show his fate. And then, before my very eyes, the C.-in-C. himself commenced to sink. To my fevered brain it seemed to be over in a minute. His last words as he went down for the third time were 'Johnson, carry on.' . . . Of course it was kept out of the papers, but if it hadn't been for a Tank going by to get some whisky for the officers' mess, which, owing to its pressure on neighbouring ground squeezed them all out again one by one—you know, just like you squeeze orange pips from your fingers—the affair might have been serious."
"I did hear a rumour about it," said the still small voice of a machine-gunner from behind a paper.
"Of course," continued the Sapper, "the plan had to be given up. The whole of G.H.Q. sat for days in my dug-out with their feet in hot water and mustard. . . . A most homely spectacle—especially towards the end when, to while away the time, they started sneezing in unison. . . ."
A silence settled on the smoking-room, a silence broken at last by the opening and shutting of the door. Sir John had retired for the night. . . .
At the moment that Vane paused at the entrance to his bit of fairylandSir John was in full blast.
"What, sir, is the good of educating these people? Stuffing their heads with a lot of useless nonsense. And then talking about land nationalisation. The two don't go together, sir. If you educate a man he's not going to go and sit down on a bare field and look for worms. . . ." He paused in his peroration as he caught sight of Vane.
"Ah! ha!" he cried. "Surely a new arrival. Welcome, sir, to my little home."
Restraining with a great effort his inclination to kick him, Vane shook the proffered hand; and for about ten minutes he suffered a torrent of grandiloquence in silence. At the conclusion of the little man's first remark Vane had a fleeting vision of the cavalry-man slinking hurriedly round two bushes and then, having run like a stag across the open, going to ground in some dense undergrowth on the opposite side. And Vane, to his everlasting credit be it said, did not even smile. . . .
After a while the flood more or less spent itself, and Vane seized the occasion of a pause for breath to ask after old John.
"I see you've got a new lodge-keeper, Sir John. Robert tells me that the old man who was here under Lord Forres is in the village."
"Yes. Had to get rid of him. Too slow. I like efficiency, my boy, efficiency. . . . That's my motto." Sir John complacently performed three steps of his celebrated strut. "Did you know the Hearl?" Though fairly sound on the matter, in moments of excitement he was apt to counterbalance his wife with the elusive letter. . . .
Vane replied that he did—fairly well.
"A charming man, sir . . . typical of all that is best in our old English nobility. I am proud, sir, to have had such a predecessor. I number the Hearl, sir, among my most intimate friends. . . ."
Vane, who remembered the graphic description given him by Blervie—the Earl's eldest son—at lunch one day, concerning the transaction at the time of the sale, preserved a discreet silence.
"A horrible-looking little man, old bean," that worthy had remarked. "Quite round, and bounces in his chair. The governor saw him once, and had to leave the room. 'I can't stand it,' he said to me outside, 'the dam fellow keeps hopping up and down, and calling me His Grace. He's either unwell, or his trousers are coming off.'" Lord Blervie had helped himself to some more whisky and sighed. "I've had an awful time," he continued after a while. "The governor sat in one room, and Patterdale bounced in the other, and old Podmore ran backwards and forwards between, with papers and things. And if we hadn't kept the little blighter back by force he was going to make a speech to the old man when it was all fixed up. . . ."
At last Sir John left Vane to himself, and with a sigh of relief he sank into the chair so recently vacated by the cavalryman. In his hand he held a couple of magazines, but, almost unheeded, they slipped out of his fingers on to the grass. He felt supremely and blissfully lazy. The soft thud of tennis balls, and the players' voices calling the score, came faintly through the still air, and Vane half closed his eyes. Then a sudden rustle of a skirt beside him broke into his thoughts, and he looked up into the face of the girl whom Lady Patterdale had greeted as Joan.
"Why it's my bored friend of the photograph!" She stood for a moment looking at him critically, rather as a would-be purchaser looks at a horse. "And have they all run away and left you to play by yourself?" She pulled up another chair and sat down opposite him.
"Yes. Even Sir John has deserted me." As he spoke he was wondering what her age was. Somewhere about twenty-two he decided, and about ten more in experience.
"For which relief much thanks, I suppose?"
"One shouldn't look a gift host in the stockings," returned Vane lightly."I think it's very charming of him and his wife to have us here."
"Do you? It's hopelessly unfashionable not to do war work of some sort, and this suits them down to the ground. . . . Why the Queen visited Rumfold the other day and congratulated Lady Patterdale on her magnificent arrangements." There was a mocking glint in her eyes, otherwise her face was perfectly serious.
"You don't say so." Vane gazed at her in amazement. "And did you dress up as a nurse for the occasion?"
"No, I watched from behind a gooseberry bush. You see, I'm a very busy person, and my work can't be interrupted even for a Royal visit."
"Would it be indiscreet," murmured Vane, "to inquire what your work is?"
"Not a bit." The girl looked solemnly at him. "I amuse the poor wounded officers."
"And do you find that very hard?" asked Vane with becoming gravity.
"Frightfully. You see, they either want to make love to me, or else to confide that they love another. My chief difficulty as I wander from bush to bush is to remember to which class the temporary occupant belongs. I mean it's a dreadful thing to assure a man of your own undying devotion, when the day before you were sympathising with him over Jane not having written. It makes one appear of undecided intellect."
"Why don't you institute a little system of labels?" asked Vane. "Blue for those who passionately adore you—red for those who love someone else. People of large heart might wear several."
"I think that's quite wonderful." She leaned back in her chair and regarded Vane with admiration. "And I see that you're only a Captain. . . . How true it is that the best brains in the Army adorn the lower positions. By the way—I must just make a note of your name." She produced a small pocketbook from her bag and opened it. "My duties are so arduous that I have been compelled to make lists and things."
"Vane," he answered, "Christian—Derek."
She entered both in her book, and then shut it with a snap. "Now I'm ready to begin. Are you going to amuse me, or am I going to amuse you?"
"You have succeeded in doing the latter most thoroughly," Vane assured her.
"No—have I really? I must be in good form to-day. One really never can tell, you know. An opening that is a scream with some people falls as flat as ditch-water with others." She looked at him pensively for a moment or two, tapping her small white teeth with a gold pencil.
Suddenly Vane leaned forward. "May I ask your age, Joan?"
Her eyebrows went up slightly. "Joan!" she said.
"I dislike addressing the unknown," remarked Vane, "and I heard LadyPatterdale call you Joan. But if you prefer it—may I ask your age, MissSnooks?"
She laughed merrily. "I think I prefer Joan, thank you; though I don't generally allow that until the fourth or fifth performance. You see, if one gets on too quickly it's so difficult to fill in the time at the end if the convalescence is a long one."
"I am honoured," remarked Vane. "But you haven't answered my question."
"I really see no reason why I should. It doesn't come into the rules—at least not my rules. . . . Besides I was always told that it was rude to ask personal questions."
"I am delighted to think that something you were taught at your mother's knee has produced a lasting effect on your mind," returned Vane. "However, at this stage we won't press it. . . . I should hate to embarrass you." He looked at her in silence for a while, as if he was trying to answer to his own satisfaction some unspoken question on his mind.
"I think," she said, "that I had better resume my official duties. What do you think of Rumfold Hall?"
"It would be hard in the time at my disposal, my dear young lady, to give a satisfactory answer to that question." Vane lit a cigarette. "I will merely point out to you that it contains a banqueting chamber in which Bloody Mary is reported to have consumed a capon and ordered two more Protestants to be burned—and that the said banqueting hall has been used of recent years by the vulgar for such exercises as the fox trot and the one step. Further, let me draw your attention to the old Elizabethan dormer window from which it is reported that the celebrated Sir Walter Raleigh hung his cloak to dry, after the lady had trodden on it. On the staircase can be seen the identical spot where the dog basket belonging to the aged pug dog of the eighteenth Countess of Forres was nightly placed, to the intense discomfiture of those ill-behaved and rowdy guests who turned the hours of sleep into a time for revolting debauches with soda water syphons and flour. In fact it is commonly thought that the end of the above-mentioned aged pug dog was hastened by the excitable Lord Frederick de Vere Thomson hurling it, in mistake for a footstool, at the head of his still more skittish spouse—the celebrated Tootie Rootles of the Gaiety. This hallowed spot has been roped off, and is shown with becoming pride by the present owner to any unfortunate he can inveigle into listening to him. Finally I would draw your attention. . . ."
"For Heaven's sake, stop," she interrupted weakly. "The answer is adjudged incorrect owing to its length."
"Don't I get the grand piano?" he demanded.
"Not even the bag of nuts," she said firmly. "I want a cigarette.They're not gaspers, are they?"
"They are not," he said, holding out his case. "I am quite ready for the second question."
She looked at him thoughtfully through a cloud of smoke. "Somehow I don't think I will proceed along the regular lines," she remarked at length. "Your standard seems higher."
"Higher than whose?" Vane asked.
"Than most of the others." Her smile was a trifle enigmatic. "There is a cavalryman here and one or two others—but . . . well! you know what I mean."
"I do know what you mean—exactly," he remarked quietly. "And, Joan, it's all wrong."
"It's all natural, anyway. Their ways are not our ways; their thoughts are not our thoughts. . . . I can't help whether I'm being a poisonous snob or not; it's what I feel. Take Sir John. Why, the man's an offence to the eye. He's a complete outsider. What right has he got to be at Rumfold?"
"The right of having invented a patent plate. And if one looks at it from an unbiassed point of view it seems almost as good a claim as that of the descendant of a really successful brigand chief."
"Are you a Socialist?" she demanded suddenly.
"God knows what I am," he answered cynically. "I'm trying to find out. You see something has happened over the water which alters one's point of view. It hasn't happened over here. And just at the moment I feel rather like a stranger in a strange land." He stared thoughtfully at a thrush which was dealing with a large and fat worm. Then he continued—"You were talking about outsiders. Lord! my dear girl, don't think I don't know what you mean. I had a peerless one in my company—one of the first and purest water—judged by our standards. He was addicted to cleaning his nails, amongst other things, with a prong of his fork at meals. . . . But one morning down in the Hulluch sector—it was stand to. Dawn was just spreading over the sky—grey and sombre; and lying at the bottom of the trench just where a boyau joined the front line, was this officer. His face was whiter than the chalk around him, but every now and then he grinned feebly. What was left of his body had been covered with his coat: because you see a bit of a flying pig had taken away most of his stomach."
The girl bit her lip—but her eyes did not leave Vane's face.
"He died, still lying in the wet chalky sludge, still grinning, and thanking the stretcher bearers who had carried him." He paused for a moment—his mind back in the Land over the Water. "There are thousands like him," he went on thoughtfully, "and over there, you see, nothing much matters. A man, whether he's a duke or a dustman, is judged on his merits in the regimental family. Everyone is equally happy, or equally unhappy—because everyone's goal is the same."
"And over here," put in the girl, "everyone's goal is different. How could it be otherwise? It's when you get a man trying to kick the ball through the wrong goal—and succeeding—that the trouble comes."
"Quite right," agreed Vane. "Personally I'm trying to find out what my own goal is."
"What was it before the war?"
"Soda water syphons and flour; hunting, cricket and making love."
"And you don't think that would still fill the bill?"
"The Lord knows!" laughed Vane. "In the fulness of time probably I shall too."
"And how do you propose to find out?" persistedthe girl.
Once again Vane laughed. "By the simple process of doing nothing," he answered. "I shall—as far as my arduous military duties allow me—carry on. . . . I believe everyone is carrying on. . . . It's the phase, isn't it? And in the process, as far as it progresses before I have to return to France—I may get some idea as to whether I am really a pronounced Pacifist or a Last Ditcher."
For a while she looked at him curiously without speaking. "You're somewhat different from most of my patients," she announced at last.
He bowed ironically. "I trust that in spite of that, I may find favour in your sight. It's something, at any rate, not to be labelled G.S., as we say in the Army."
"Frankly and honestly, you despise me a little?"
Vane considered her dispassionately. "Frankly and honestly, I do. And yet . . . I don't know. Don't you see, lady, that I'm looking at your life through my spectacles; you look at it through your own. For all I know you may be right, and I may be wrong. In fact," he continued after a short pause, "it's more than likely it is so. You at any rate have not been qualifying for a lunatic asylum during the past four years."
She rose from her chair, and together they strolled towards the lawn. Tennis was still in full swing, and for a time they watched the game in silence.
"Do those men think as you think?" she asked him suddenly. "Are they all asking the why and the wherefore—or is it enough for them to be just out of it?"
"It's enough for us all for the time," he answered gravely. "And then it tugs and it pulls and we go back to it again. . . . It's made everyone a bit more thoughtful; it's made everyone ask the why and the wherefore, insistently or casually, according to the manner of the brute. But Hell will come if we don't—as a whole—find the same answer. . . ."
She idly twisted her parasol, and at that moment the cavalryman lounged up. "Thought you'd deserted us, Miss Devereux." He glanced at Vane and grinned. "I appeal to you," he cried, "as an infantry soldier to state publicly whether you have ever seen a more masterly bit of scouting than mine when the old man buttonholed you. Jove! you should have seen it. Purple face caught him by the rhododendron bush, where he'd been inflicting himself on me for a quarter of an hour; and in one minute by the clock I'd got to ground in the parsley bed."
They all laughed, and for a few minutes the two men chatted with her; then Vane disappeared into the house to write letters. It was a slow and laborious process, and, as a rule, he wrote as few as possible. But there was one he had to get off his conscience, though he dreaded doing so. A promise to a dead pal is sacred. . . .
At length the scrawl was finished, and looking up from the writing table he saw Joan Devereux passing through the hall. He got up and hurried after her. "Would you mind addressing this for me?" He held out the envelope. "I've managed to spoil the paper inside, but I don't want to tax the postman too highly."
With a smile she took the letter from him, and picked up a pen. "Well," she said after a moment, "I'm waiting."
She looked up into his face as he stood beside her at the table, and a glint of mischief came into her eyes as they met his. He was staring at her with a thoughtful expression, and, at any rate for the moment he seemed to find it a pleasant occupation.
"And what may the seeker after truth be thinking of now?" she remarked flippantly. "Condemning me a second time just as I'm trying to be useful as well as ornamental?"
"I was thinking. . . ." he began slowly, and then he seemed to change his mind. "I don't think it matters exactly what I was thinking," he continued, "except that it concerned you. Indirectly, perhaps—possibly even directly . . . you and another. . . ."
"So you belong to the second of my two classes, do you?" said the girl."Somehow I thought you were in the first. . . ."
"The class you embrace?" asked Vane drily.
With a quick frown she turned once more to the table. "Supposing you give me the address."
"I beg your pardon," said Vane quietly. "The remark was vulgar, and quite uncalled for. After four years in the Army, one should be able to differentiate between official and unofficial conversation."
"May I ask what on earth you mean?" said the girl coldly.
"I take it that your preliminary remarks to me in the garden were in the nature of official patter—used in your professional capacity. . . . When off duty, so to speak, you're quite a normal individual. . . . Possibly even proper to the point of dulness." He was staring idly out of the window. "In the States, you know, they carry it even further. . . . I believe there one can hire a professional female co-respondent—a woman of unassailable virtue and repulsive aspect—who will keep the man company in compromising circumstances long enough for the wife to establish her case."
The girl sprang up and confronted him with her eyes blazing, but Vane continued dreamily. "There was one I heard of who was the wife of the Dissenting Minister, and did it to bolster up her husband's charities. . . ."
"I think," she said in a low, furious voice, "that you are the most loathsome man I ever met."
Vane looked at her in surprise. "But I thought we were getting on so nicely. I was just going to ask you to have lunch with me one day in town—in your official capacity, of course. . . ."
"If you were the last man in the world, and I was starving, I wouldn't lunch with you in any capacity." Her breast was rising and falling stormily.
"At any rate, it's something to know where we stand," said Vane pleasantly.
"If I'd realised that you were merely a cad—and an outsider of the worst type—do you suppose that I would have talked—would have allowed. . . ." The words died away in her throat, and her shoulders shook. She turned away, biting furiously at her handkerchief with her teeth. "Go away—oh! go away; I hate you."
But Vane did not go away; he merely stood there looking at her with a faint, half-quizzical smile on his lips.
"Joan," he said, after a moment, "I'm thinking I have played the deuce with your general routine. All the earlier performances will be in the nature of an anti-climax after this. But—perhaps, later on, when my abominable remarks are not quite so fresh in your mind, you won't regard them as quite such an insult as you do now. Dreadful outsider though I am—unpardonably caddish though it is to have criticised your war work—especially when I have appreciated it so much—will you try to remember that it would have been far easier and pleasanter to have done the other thing?"
Slowly her eyes came round to his face, and he saw that they were dangerously bright. "What other thing?" she demanded.
"Carried on with the game; the game that both you and I know so well.Hunting, cricket and making love. . . . Is it not written in 'Who'sWho'—unless that interesting publication is temporarily out of print?"
"It strikes me," the girl remarked ominously, "that to your caddishness you add a very sublime conceit."
Vane grinned. "Mother always told me I suffered from swelled head. . . ." He pointed to the envelope still unaddressed, lying between them on the writing table. "After which slight digression—do you mind?"
She picked up the pen, and sat down once again. "I notice your tone changes when you want me to help you."
Vane made no answer. "The address is Mrs. Vernon, 14, Culman Terrace,Balham," he remarked quietly.
"I trust she is doing war work that pleases you," sneered the girl. She handed him the envelope, and then, as she saw the blaze in his eyes, she caught her breath in a little quick gasp.
"As far as I know," he answered grimly, "Mrs. Vernon is endeavouring to support herself and three children on the large sum of one hundred and fifty pounds a year. Her husband died in my arms while we were consolidating some ground we had won." He took the envelope from her hand. "Thank you; I am sorry to have had to trouble you."
He walked towards the door, and when he got to it, he paused and looked back. Joan Devereux was standing motionless, staring out of the window. Vane dropped his letter into the box in the hall, and went up the stairs to his room.
There was no objection to Vane going to London, it transpired. He had merely to write his name in a book, and he was then issued a half-fare voucher. No one even asked him his religion, which seemed to point to slackness somewhere.
It was with feelings the reverse of pleasant that Vane got into the first-class carriage one morning four days after he had written to Mrs. Vernon. She would be glad to see him, she had written in reply, and she was grateful to him for taking the trouble to come. Thursday afternoon would be most convenient; she was out the other days, and on Sundays she had to look after the children. . . .
Vane opened the magazine on his knees and stared idly at the pictures. In the far corner of the carriage two expansive looking gentlemen were engaged in an animated conversation, interrupted momentarily by his entrance. In fact they had seemed to regard his intrusion rather in the light of a personal affront. Their general appearance was not prepossessing, and Vane having paused in the doorway, and stared them both in turn out of countenance, had been amply rewarded by hearing himself described as an impertinent young puppy.
He felt in his blackest and most pugilistic mood that morning. As a general rule he was the most peaceful of men; but at times, some strain inherited from a remote ancestor who, if he disliked a man's face hit it hard with a club, resurrected itself in him. There had been the celebrated occasion in the Promenade at the Empire, a few months before the war, when a man standing in front of him had failed to remove his hat during the playing of "The King." It was an opera hat, and Vane removed it for him and shut it up. The owner turned round just in time to see it hit the curtain, whence it fell with a thud into the orchestra. . . . Quite inexcusable, but the fight that followed was all that man could wish for. The two of them, with a large chucker-out, had finally landed in a heap in Leicester Square—with the hatless gentleman underneath. And Vane—being fleet of foot, had finally had the supreme joy of watching from afar his disloyal opponent being escorted to Vine Street, in a winded condition, by a very big policeman. . . .
Sometimes he wondered if other people ever felt like that; if they were ever overcome with an irresistible desire to be offensive. It struck him that the war had not cured this failing; if anything it had made it stronger. And the sight of these two fat, oily specimens complacently discussing business, while a woman—in some poky house in Balham—was waiting to hear the last message from her dead, made him gnash his teeth.
Of course it was all quite wrong. No well-brought-up and decorous Englishman had any right to feel so annoyed with another man's face that he longed to hit it with a stick. But Vane was beginning to doubt whether he had been well brought up; he was quite certain that he was not decorous. He was merely far more natural than he had ever been before; he had ceased to worry over the small things.
And surely the two other occupants of the carriage were very small. At least they seemed so to him. For all he knew, or cared, they might each of them be in control of a Government Department; that failed to alter their littleness.
Fragments of their conversation came to him over the rattle of the wheels, and he became more and more irate. The high price of whisky was one source of complaint—it appeared, according to one of them, that it was all going to France, which caused a shortage for those at home. Then the military situation. . . . Impossible, grotesque. . . . Somebody ought to be hanged for having allowed such a thing to happen. After four years to be forced back—inexcusable. What was wanted was somebody with a business brain to run the Army. . . . In the meantime their money was being wasted, squandered, frittered away. . . .
Vane grew rampant in his corner as he listened; his mental language became impossibly lurid. He felt that he would willingly have given a thousand or two to plant them both into that bit of the outpost line, where a month before he had crawled round on his belly at dawn to see his company. Grey-faced and grey-coated with the mud, their eyes had been clear and steady and cheerful, even if their chins were covered with two days' growth. And their pay was round about a shilling a day. . . .
It was just as the train was slowing down to enter Victoria that he felt he could contain himself no longer. The larger and fatter of the two, having concluded an exhaustive harangue on the unprecedented wealth at present being enjoyed by some of the soldiers' wives in the neighbourhood—and unmarried ones, too, mark you!—stood up to get his despatch case.
"It seems a pity, gentlemen, you bother to remain in the country," remarked Vane casually. "You must be suffering dreadfully."
Two gentlemen inferred icily that they would like to know what he meant.
"Why not return to your own?" he continued, still more casually. "Doubtless the Egyptian Expeditionary Force will soon have it swept and garnished for you."
The train stopped; and Vane got out. He was accompanied to the barrier by his two late travelling companions, and from their remarks he gathered that they considered he had insulted them; but it was only when he arrived at the gate that he stopped and spoke. He spoke at some length, and the traffic was unavoidably hung up during the peroration.
"I have listened," said Vane in a clear voice, "to your duologue on the way up, and if I thought there were many like you in the country I'd take to drink. As it is, I am hopeful, as I told you, that Jerusalem will soon be vacant. Good morning. . . ."
And the fact that two soldiers on leave from France standing close by burst into laughter did not clear the air. . . .
"Jimmy," said Vane half an hour later, throwing himself into a chair in his club next to an old pal in the smoking-room, "I've just been a thorough paced bounder; a glorious and wonderful cad. And, Jimmy! I feel so much the better for it."
Jimmy regarded him sleepily from the depths of his chair. Then his eyes wandered to the clock, and he sat up with an effort. "Splendid, dear old top," he remarked. "And since it is now one minute past twelve, let's have a spot to celebrate your lapse from virtue."
With the conclusion of lunch, the approaching ordeal at Balham began to loom large on his horizon. In a vain effort to put off the evil hour, he decided that he would first go round to his rooms in Half Moon Street. He had kept them on during the war, only opening them up during his periods of leave. The keys were in the safe possession of Mrs. Green, who, with her husband, looked after him and the other occupants of the house generally. As always, the worthy old lady was delighted to see him. . . .
"Just cleaned them out two days ago, Mr. Vane, sir," she remarked. New-fangled Army ranks meant nothing to her: Mr. Vane he had started—Mr. Vane he would remain to the end of the chapter.
"And, Binks, Mrs. Green?" But there was no need for her to answer that question. There was a sudden scurry of feet, and a wire-haired fox-terrier was jumping all over him in ecstasy.
"My son, my son," said Vane, picking the dog up. "Are you glad to see your master again? One lick, you little rascal, as it's a special occasion. And incidentally, mind my arm, young fellow-me-lad."
He put Binks down, and turned with a smile to Mrs. Green. "Has he been good, Mrs. Green?"
"Good as good, sir," she answered. "I'm sure he's a dear little dog. Just for the first week after you went—the same as the other times—he'd hardly touch a thing. Just lay outside your door and whined and whined his poor little heart out. . . ."
The motherly old woman stooped to pat the dog's head, and Binks licked her fingers once to show that he was grateful for what she'd done. But—and this was a big but—she was only a stop-gap. Now—and with another scurry of feet, he was once again jumping round the only one who really mattered. A series of short staccato yelps of joy too great to be controlled; a stumpy tail wagging so fast that the eye could scarcely follow it; a dog. . . .
"I believe, Mrs. Green," said Vane quietly, "that quite a number of people in England have lately been considering whether it wouldn't be a good thing to kill off the dogs. . . ."
"Kill off the dogs, sir!" Mrs. Green's tone was full of shrill amazement. "Kill Binks? I'd like to see anyone try." . . . Vane had a momentary vision of his stalwart old landlady armed with a poker and a carving knife, but he did not smile.
"So would I, Mrs. Green. . . . So would I. . . ." And with a short laugh he took the key from her and went upstairs.
The room into which he went first was such as one would have expected to find in the abode of a young bachelor. Into the frame of the mirror over the fireplace a score of ancient invitations were stuck. Some heavy silver photo frames stood on the mantel-piece, while in the corner a bag of golf clubs and two or three pairs of boxing gloves gave an indication of their owner's tastes. The room was spotlessly clean, and with the sun shining cheerfully in at the window it seemed impossible to believe that it had been empty for six months. A few good prints—chiefly sporting—adorned the walls; and the books in the heavy oak revolving bookcase which stood beside one of the big leather chairs were of the type generally described as light. . . .
For a time Vane stood by the mantelpiece thoughtfully staring out of the window; while Binks, delirious with joy, explored each well-remembered corner, and blew heavily down the old accustomed cracks in the floor. Suddenly with a wild scurry, he fled after his principal joy—the one that never tired. He had seen Vane throw it into the corner, and now he trotted sedately towards this wonderful master of his, who had so miraculously returned, with his enemy in his mouth. He lay down at Vane's feet; evidently the game was about to begin.
The enemy was an indiarubber dog which emitted a mournful whistling noise through a hole in its tummy. It was really intended for the use of the very young in their baths—to enable them to squirt a jet of water into the nurse's eye; but it worried Binks badly. The harder he bit, the harder it whistled. It seemed impossible to kill the damn thing. . . .
For a while he bit the whistling atrocity to his heart's content; then with it still between his fore paws he looked up into Vane's face. Surely his master had not forgotten the rules of the game. Really—it was a little steep if it was so. But Vane, as far as Binks could see, was looking at one of the photographs on the mantelpiece with a slight smile on his face. One or two mournful whistles produced no apparent result. So Binks decided it was time for desperate measures. He stood up; and, with his head on one side, he contemplated his hated adversary, prone on the carpet. Then he gave a short sharp bark—just as a reminder. . . .