Miss Marley found her voice difficult to control, but she did control it; she said:
"I was thinking of his chance. If he does you any harm, he won't forgive himself. You can stop it; he can't possibly stop himself."
"No," said Claire. She didn't cry; she sat very straight and still on her footstool in front of the fire. After a while she said in a curious dragging voice: "Very well, then; I must tell him about the pass. Oh, what shall I do if he minds! It's his minding—" She stopped, as if the words broke something in her.
"Yes," said Miss Marley; "but he'll mind more if he ruins your life. You see, you won't think you're ruined, but Winn will think so. He'll believe he's ruined the woman he loves, and after a little time, when his passion has ceased to ride him blind, he'll never hold up his head again. You'll be responsible for that." It sounded cruel, but it was not cruel. Miss Marley knew that as long as she laid the responsibility at Claire's door, Claire would not think her cruel.
Claire repeated slowly after her:
"I should be responsible for that!" Then she said: "Oh, how silly laws are! How silly! As if any one could be ruined who simply loved!"
"We should probably be sillier without laws," Miss Marley observed. "And you must remember they have their recommendations: they keep silly people comparatively safe."
"Safe!" said Claire. "I think that's the emptiest, poorest word there is! Who wants to be safe?"
"You wouldn't think so if you had a child," said Miss Marley, quietly. "You would need safety then, and you would learn to prize it."
Claire bowed her head into her hands.
"Oh, why can't I have one now! Why can't I?" she whispered brokenly.
Miss Marley bit her lips; she had hoped Claire was too young for this particular stab.
"Because he'd think it wrong," said Miss Marley after a pause, "and because of Peter. He's got that obligation. The two would clash."
Claire rose slowly to her feet.
"I'll just go and tell him about the pass," she said quietly. "When it's over I'll begin to think; but I needn't really think till then, need I? Because I feel as if I couldn't just now; it would stop my going on."
Miss Marley said that she was quite sure that Claire need not begin to think at present and privately she hoped that, when that hour came, something might happen which would deaden thought. She was thankful to remember that the worst of feeling is always over before the worst of thinking can begin. But Claire was too young to comfort herself with the limitations of pain. She only knew that she must tell Winn about the pass and seem for a moment at least, in his eyes, not to trust him. Nevertheless, she smiled at Miss Marley before she left her, because she didn't want Miss Marley to feel upset; and Miss Marley accepted this reassurance with an answering smile until the door was shut.
When Claire found Winn at the bridge-table she saw at a glance that he was not in the mood for renunciations. His eyes had the hard, shining stare that was the danger-signal of the Staines family. He shot a glance at Claire as if she were a hostile force and he was taking her measure. He was putting her outside himself in order to fight her. It was as if he knew instinctively that their wills were about to clash. When the rubber was over, he got up and walked straight to her.
"You put me off my game," he said grimly. "I can see you're up to something; but we can't talk here."
"Let's talk to-morrow," she urged, "not now. I thought perhaps you'd like to come and listen to the music with me; there is music in the hall."
"You did, did you?" he replied in the same hard voice. "Well, you were mistaken. Go up-stairs to my room and wait for me. It's number 28, two or three doors beyond Miss Marley's sitting-room. I'll follow you."
An older woman would have hesitated, and if Claire had hesitated, Winn would never have forgiven her. But her youth was at once her danger and her protection.
She would rather have waited till to-morrow, because she saw that Winn was in a difficult mood; but she had no idea what was behind his mood. She went at once.
She had never been in Winn's room before, and as she sat down to wait for him her eyes took in its neat impressive bareness. It was a narrow hotel room, a bed in one corner, a chest of drawers, washstand, and wardrobe opposite. By the balcony window were a small table and an armchair. A cane chair stood at the foot of the bed.
Nothing was lying about. There were few traces of occupation visible; only a pair of felt slippers under the bed, a large bath sponge on the washstand, and a dressing-gown hanging on the nail behind the door. In his tooth-glass by the bedside was a rose Claire had worn and given him. It was put there with meticulous care; its stalk had been re-cut and its leaves freshened. Beside it lay a small New Testament and a book on saddles.
Winn joined her in exactly five minutes. He shut the door carefully after him, and sat down on the cane chair opposite her.
"I thought you might like to know," he said politely, "that I have made up my mind not to let you go."
Then he waited for Claire to contradict him. But Claire waited, too; Claire waited longest. She was not sure what to say, and, unlike most women, when she was not sure what to say, she said nothing. Winn spoke again, but a little less quietly.
"It's no use your making a fuss," he stated, "or cutting up rough about it and throwing morals at my head. I've got past that." He got up, locked the door, and then came back. "I'm going to keep that door locked until I make sure what you're up to."
"You needn't have done that," Claire said quietly. "Do you think I want to leave you? If I did, I shouldn't be here. You can't make me do anything I don't want to do, because I want exactly what you do."
Winn shot an appreciative glance at her; that was a good stroke, but he wasn't going to be taken in by it. In some ways he would have preferred to see her angry. Hostility is generally the sign of weakness; but Claire looked at him with an unyielding tenderness.
"The question is," he said firmly, "can I make you do what we both want and what you are holding back from? I dare say you've got good reasons for holding back and all that, and I know I'm an out-and-out blackguard to press you, but I've reached a place where I won't stand any more. D'you see my point?"
Claire nodded. She was not angry, because she saw that Winn was fighting her not because he wanted to be victorious over her, but because he was being conquered by pain.
She was not going to let him be conquered by it—that, as Miss Marley had said, was her responsibility—but it wasn't going to be easy to prevent it. She was close against the danger-line, and every nerve in her being had long ago become part of Winn. He was fighting against the best of himself, but all that was not the best of Claire fought on his side. Perhaps there was not very much that was not the best in Claire. She hesitated, then she said:
"I thought you wanted me—to go. I think you really do want it; that's why I'm going."
Winn leaned forward and took hold of both her wrists. "So I did," he agreed; "but it isn't any good. I can't do it. I've thought it all out—just what to do, you know—for both of us. I'll have to leave my regiment, of course, but I can get back into something else all right later on. Estelle will give me a divorce. She'll want to keep the child away from me; besides, she'll like to be a public martyr. As for you and me, you'll have to face rough music for a year or two; that's the worst part of it. I'm sorry. We'll stay abroad till it's over. My mother will help us. I can count on her."
"Winn, come here," said Claire. He came and knelt down beside her. She put her hands on his shoulders and looked deep into his eyes. He tried to keep them hard, but he failed.
"Don't try and get round me!" he said threateningly. "You'll make me dangerous if you do. It isn't the least good!"
"Can you listen to what I say?" Claire asked quietly.
"I suppose so," said Winn, guardedly. "I love every bit of you—I love the ground your chair's on—but I'm not going to give in."
"And that's the way I love you," she said. "I'd go with you to the world's end, Winn, if I didn't love you so much and you'd take me there; but you won't, for just the same reason. We can't do what would be unfair; we shouldn't like it. It's no use, darling; we shouldn't like it."
"That's all you know about it," said Winn, unappeasably. "Anyhow, we're going to do it, whether you like it or not."
Then she took her hands away from his shoulders and leaned back in her chair. He had never seen her look so frail and small, and he knew that she had never been so formidably strong.
"Oh, no, Winn," she whispered; "I'm not. I'm not going to do it. If you wanted it, if you really wanted it with all of you, you wouldn't be rough with me; you'd be gentle. You're not being gentle because you don't think it right, and I'm never going to do what you don't think right."
Winn drew a deep, hard breath. He threw his arms round her and pressed her against his heart.
"I'mnotrough," he muttered, "and you've got to do it! You've got to give in!"
Claire made no answer. She only clung to him, and every now and then she said his name under her breath as if she were calling to something in him to save her.
Whatever it was that she was calling to answered her. He suddenly bowed his head and buried it in her lap. She felt his body shake, and he began to sob, hard, dry sobs that broke him as they came. He held her close, with his face hidden. Claire pressed her hands on each side of his temples, feeling the throbbing of his heart. She felt as if something inside her were being torn to pieces, something that knocked its way against her side in a vain endeavor to escape. She very nearly gave in. Then Winn stopped as suddenly as he had begun.
"Sorry," he said, "but this kind of thing is a bit wearing. I'm not going to unlock that door. Do you intend to stay all night here, or give me your promise?" He spoke steadily now; his moment of weakness was past. She could have gone then, but nothing would have induced her to leave him while he cried.
"I don't intend to do either," Claire said with equal steadiness. "When you think I ought to go, you'll let me out."
It struck Winn that her knowledge of him was positively uncanny.
"I don't believe," he said sharply, "you're only nineteen. I believe you've been in love before!"
Claire didn't say anything, but she looked past him at the door.
Her look maddened him.
"You're playing with me!" he cried. "By Jove! you're playing with me!" He caught her by the shoulders, and for a moment he believed that he was going to kill her; but her eyes never wavered. He was not hurting her, and she knew that he never would. She said:
"O my darling boy!"
Winn got up and walked to the window. When he came back, his expression had completely changed.
"Now cut along to bed," he said quietly. "You're tired. Go—at once, Claire."
This time she knew she ought to go, but something held her back. She was not satisfied with the look in his eyes. He was controlled again, but it was a controlled desperation. She could not leave him with that.
Her mind was intensely alert with pain; she followed his eyes. They rested for a moment on the stand by his bed. He pushed the key across the table toward her, but she did not look at the key; she crossed the room and opened the drawer under the Bible.
She saw what she had expected to see. It was Winn's revolver; upon it lay a snap-shot of Peter. He always kept them together.
Claire took out the revolver. Winn watched her, with his hands in his pockets.
"Be careful," he said; "it's loaded."
She brought it to him and said:
"Now take all the things out of it." Winn laughed, and unloaded it without a word. "Now open the window," she ordered, "and throw them into the snow." Winn obeyed. When he came back she put her arms around his neck and kissed him. "Now I'll go," she said.
"All right," agreed Winn, gently. "Wait for me in the cloak-room, and I'll take you across. But, I say, look here—will you ever forgive me? I'm afraid I've been a most fearful brute."
Then Claire knew she couldn't stand any more. She turned and ran into the passage. Fortunately, the cloak-room was empty. She pressed herself against a fur coat and sobbed as Winn had sobbed up-stairs; but she had not his arms to comfort her. She had not dared to cry in his arms.
They walked hand in hand across the snow from his hotel to the door of hers.
Claire knew that she could say anything she liked to Winn now, so she said what she had made up her mind to say.
"Winn dearest, do you know what I came down for this evening?"
He held her hand tighter and nodded.
"I guessed," he said. "That was, you know, what rather did for me. You mean you aren't going to let me come with you down the pass?"
"We mustn't," Claire whispered; and then she felt she couldn't be good any more. It cost too much. So she added, "But you can if you like." But there wasn't any real need for Claire to be good now; Winn was good instead.
"No," he said; "it's much wiser not. You look thoroughly done up. I'm not going to have any more of this. Let's breakfast together. You come over at eight sharp and arrange with Maurice to take you down at ten. That's quite enough for you."
Claire laughed. Winn stared at her, then in a moment he laughed, too.
"We'd better not take any more chances," he explained. "Next time it might happen to us both together. Then you'd really be had! Thanks awfully for seeing me through. Good night."
She went into the hotel without a word, and all her heart rebelled against her for having seen him through.
The hour of parting crept upon them singularly quietly and slowly. They both pretended to eat breakfast, and then they walked out into Badrutt's Park. They sat in the nearest shelter, hand in hand, looking over the gray, empty expanse of the rink. It was too early for any one to be about. Only a few Swiss peasants were sweeping the ice and Winn hardly looked upon Swiss peasants as human.
He asked Claire exactly how much money she had a year, and told her when she came of age what he should advise her to suggest to her trustees to put it in.
Then he went through all the things he thought she ought to have for driving down the pass. Claire interrupted him once to remind him about going to see Dr. Gurnet. Winn said he remembered quite well and would go. They both assured each other that they had had good nights. Winn said he thought Maurice would be all right in a few years, and that he didn't think he was shaping for trouble. He privately thought that Maurice was not going to have any shape at all, but he omitted this further reflection.
He told her how much he enjoyed his regiment and explained laboriously how Claire was to think of his future, which was to be, apparently, a whirl of pleasure from morning till night.
They talked very disconnectedly; in the middle of recounting his future joys, Winn said:
"And then if anything was to happen to me, you know, I hope you'd think better of it and marry Lionel."
Claire did not promise to marry Lionel, but she implied that even without marriage she, like Winn, was about to pass into an existence studded with resources and amusements; and then she added:
"And if you were to die, or I was, Miss Marley could help us to see each other just at the last. I asked her about it." Despite their future happiness, they seemed to draw more solid satisfaction out of this final privilege.
The last ten minutes they hardly talked at all. Every now and then Winn wanted to know if Claire's feet were warm, and Claire asked him to let her have a photograph of Peter.
Then Maurice came out of the hotel, and a tailing party stood in the open doorway and wondered if it was going to snow. The sleigh drove up to the hotel, jingling in the gayest manner, with pawing horses. Winn walked across the courtyard with her and nodded to Maurice; and Maurice allowed Winn to tuck Claire up, because, after he'd looked at Winn's eyes, it occurred to him that he couldn't do anything else.
Winn reduced the hall porter, a magnificent person in gold lace, with an immense sense of dignity, to gibbering terror before the lift-boy and the boots because he had failed to supply the sleigh with a sufficiently hot foot-warmer.
Finally even Winn was satisfied that there was nothing more to eat or to wear which the sleigh could be induced to hold or Claire agree to want. He stood aside then, and told the man briefly to be off. The driver, who did not understand English, understood perfectly what Winn meant, and hastened to crack his whip.
Claire looked back and saw Winn, bare-headed, looking after her. His eyes were like a mother's eyes when she fights in naked absorption against the pain of her child.
He went on looking like that for a long while after the sleigh had disappeared. Then he put on his cap and started off up the valley toward Pontresina.
It had already begun to snow. The walk to Pontresina is the coldest and darkest of winter walks, and the snow made it heavy going. Winn got very much out of breath, and his chest hurt him. Every now and then he stopped and said to himself, "By Jove! I wonder if I'm going to be ill?" But as he always pushed on afterward with renewed vigor, as if a good idea had just occurred to him, it hardly seemed as if he cared very much whether he was going to be ill or not. He got as far as the Mortratsch Glacier before he stopped.
He couldn't get any farther because when he got into the inn for lunch, something or other happened to him. A fool of a porter had the impertinence to tell him afterward that he had fainted. Winn knocked the porter down for daring to make such a suggestion; but feeling remarkably queer despite this relaxation, he decided to drive back to the Kulm.
He wound up the day with bridge and a prolonged wrangle with Miss Marley on the subject of the Liberal Government.
Miss Marley lent herself to the fray and became extremely heated. Winn had her rather badly once or twice, and as he never subsequently heard her argue on the same subject with others, he was spared the knowledge that she shared his political views precisely, and had tenderly provided him with the flaws in her opponent's case.
When he went to bed he began a letter to Claire. He told her that he had had a jolly walk, a good game of bridge, and that he thought he'd succeeded in knocking some radical nonsense out of Miss Marley's head. Then he inclosed his favorite snap-shot of Peter, the one that he kept with his revolver, and said he would get taken properly with him when he went back to England.
Winn stopped for a long time after that, staring straight in front of him; then he wrote:
"I hope you'll never be sorry for having come across me, because you've given me everything I ever wanted. I hope you'll not mind my having been rather rough the other night. I didn't mean anything by it. I wouldn't hurt a hair of your head; but I think you know that I wouldn't, only I thought I'd just mention it. Please be careful about the damp when you get back to England."
He stopped for half an hour when he had got as far as "England," and as the heating was off, the room grew very cold; then he wrote, "I didn't know men loved women like this."
After that he decided to finish the letter in the morning; but when the morning came he crossed the last sentence out because he thought it might upset her.
He had been afraid that Davos would be beautiful, but the thaw had successfully dissipated its immaculate loveliness. Half of the snow slopes were already bare, the roads were a sea of mud, and the valley was as dingy as if a careless washerwoman had upset a basket of dirty linen on her way to the laundry. All the sport people had gone, the streets were half empty, and most of the tourist shops were shut. Only the very ill had reappeared; they crept aimlessly about in the sunshine with wonder in their eyes that they were still alive.
Winn had put up at the nearest hotel and made the earliest possible appointment with Dr. Gurnet. Dr. Gurnet was obviously pleased to see him, but the pleasure faded rapidly from his face after a glance or two at Winn. The twinkle remained in his eyes, but it had become perceptibly grimmer.
"Perhaps you would be so kind as to take off your things," he suggested. "After I have examined you we can talk more at our ease."
It seemed to Winn as if he had never been so knocked about before. Dr. Gurnet pounced upon him and went over him inch by inch; he reminded Winn of nothing so much as of an excited terrier hunting up and down a bank for a rat-hole. Eventually Dr. Gurnet found his rat. He went back to his chair, sat down heavily, and looked at Winn. For rather an ominous moment he was silent; then he said politely:
"Of course I suppose you are aware, Major Staines, of what you have done with your very excellent chances?"
Winn shook his head doubtfully. He hadn't, as a matter of fact, thought much lately about these particular chances.
"Ah," said Dr. Gurnet, "then I regret to inform you that you have simply walked through them—or, in your case, I should be inclined to imagine, tobogganed—and you have come out the other side. You haven't got any chances now."
Winn did not say anything for a moment or two; then he observed:
"I'm afraid I've rather wasted your time."
"Pray don't mention it," said Dr. Gurnet. "It is so small a thing compared with what you have done with your own."
Winn laughed.
"You rather have me there," he admitted; "I suppose I have been rather an ass."
"My dear fellow," said Dr. Gurnet, more kindly, "I'm really annoyed about this, extremely annoyed. I had booked you to get well. I expected it. What have you been doing with yourself? You've broken down that right lung badly; the infection has spread to the left. It was not the natural progress of the disease, which was in process of being checked; it is owing to a very great and undue physical strain, and absolutely no attempt to take precautions after it. Also you have, I should say, complicated this by a great nervous shock."
"Nonsense!" said Winn, briefly. "I don't go in for nerves."
"You must allow me to correct you," said Dr. Gurnet, gently. "You are a human being, and all human beings are open to the effects of shock."
"I'm afraid I haven't quite played the game," Winn confessed, after a short pause. "I hadn't meant to let you down like this, Doctor Gurnet. I think it is due to me to tell you that I shouldn't have come to you for orders if I had intended at the time to shirk them. You're quite right about the tobogganing: I had a go at the Cresta. I know it shook me up a bit, but I didn't spill. Perhaps something went wrong then."
"And why, may I ask, did you do it?" Dr. Gurnet asked ironically. "You did not act solely, I presume, from an idea of thwarting my suggestions?"
Winn's eyes moved away from the gimlets opposite them.
"I found time dragging on my hands, rather," he explained a trifle lamely.
"Ah," said Dr. Gurnet, "you should have done what I told you—you should have flirted; then you wouldn't have found time hanging on your hands."
Winn held his peace. He thought Dr. Gurnet had a right to be annoyed, so he gave him his head; but he had an uncomfortable feeling that Dr. Gurnet would make a very thorough use of this concession.
Dr. Gurnet watched Winn silently for a few moments, then he said:
"People who don't wish to get well don't get well; but, on the other hand, it is very rare that people who wish to die die. They merely get very ill and give everybody a great deal of highly unnecessary trouble."
"I'm not really seedy yet," Winn said apologetically. "I suppose you couldn't give me any idea of how things are going to go—I mean how long I've—" he hesitated for a few seconds; he felt as if he'd been brought up curiously short—"I've got to live," he finished firmly.
"I can give you some idea, of course," said Dr. Gurnet; "but if you take any more violent or irregular plunges, you may very greatly shorten your time. Should you insist on remaining in your regiment and doing your work, you have, I fancy, about two years more before a complete breakdown. You are a very strong man, and your lung-tissue is tough. Should you remain here under my care, you will live indefinitely, but I can hold out no hope of an ultimate recovery. If you return to England as an invalid, you will most undoubtedly kill yourself from boredom, though I have a suggestion to make to you which I hope may prevent this termination to your career. On the whole, though I fear advice is wasted upon you, I should recommend you to remain in the army. It is what I should do myself if I were unfortunate enough to have your temperament while retaining my own brains."
"Oh, yes," said Winn, rising to go; "of course I sha'n't chuck the army. I quite see that's the only sensible thing to do."
"Pray sit down again," said Dr. Gurnet, blandly, "and do not run away with the idea that I think any course you are likely to pursue sensible in itself. If you were a sensible man, you would not take personal disappointment as if it were prussic acid."
Winn started.
"It isn't disappointment," he said quickly; "it was the only thing to do."
"Ah, well," said Dr. Gurnet, "Heaven forbid that I should enter into a controversy with any one who believes in moral finality! Sensible people compromise, Major Staines; but do not be offended, for I have every reason to believe that sensible people do not make the best soldiers. I am asking you to remain for a few minutes further because there is one other point to which I wish to draw your attention should you be able to spare me the time?"
"All right," said Winn, with a short laugh; "I've got time enough, according to you; I've got two years."
"Well, yes," said Dr. Gurnet, drawing the tips of his fingers carefully together. "And, Major Staines, according to me you will—er—need them."
Winn sat up.
"What d' you mean?" he asked quickly.
"Men in my position," replied Dr. Gurnet, guardedly, "have very interesting little side-lights into the mentality of other nations. I don't know whether you remember my asking you if you knew German?"
"Yes," said Winn. "It went out of head; but now you speak of it, I do remember."
"I am delighted," said Dr. Gurnet, blandly, "to have reconstructed your brain-tissue up to that point. I had a certain reason for asking you this question. I have a good many German patients, some French ones, and a most excellent Belgian professor has placed himself under my care."
"Well, what about it?" asked Winn with some sharpness. He had an idea that this queer fellow before him meant something.
"The Germans are an interesting nation," Dr. Gurnet proceeded without hurrying, "and they have a universal hobby. I don't know whether you have noticed, Major Staines, but a universal hobby is a very powerful thing. I am sometimes rather sorry that with us it has wholly taken the form of athletic sports. I dare say you are going to tell me that with you it is not golf, but polo; even this enlarged idea does not wholly alter my depression.
"With the Germans, you see, the hobby happens to be man[oe]uvers—military man[oe]uvers. I understand that this spring Alsace and Lorraine have taken on the aspect of one gigantic camp. Now, Belgium," Dr. Gurnet proceeded, tapping Winn's knee with his fore-finger, "is a small, flat, undefended country, and one of my French patients informs me that the French Government have culpably neglected their northern line of forts.
"I hear from my other friend, the Belgian professor, that three years ago the Belgian Government ordered big fortress guns from Krupp. They have not got them yet; but I do not believe Krupp is incapable of turning out guns. On the contrary, I hear that Krupp has, in a still shorter time, entirely renovated the artillery of the Austrian army."
Winn leaned forward excitedly.
"I say, sir," he exclaimed, "you ought to be in the intelligence office."
"God forbid!" said Dr. Gurnet, piously. "Not that I believe in God," he added; "but I cling to the formulated expletives.
"I should be extremely uncomfortable in any office. Besides, I have my doubts as to the value of intelligence in England. It is so very rare and so un-English. One suspects occasional un-English qualities drawn together for government purposes.
"I merely mentioned these interesting national traits because I had an idea, partly that you would respond to them, and partly that they are going in an exceedingly short time to become manifest to the world at large."
"You think we are going to have war?" asked Winn, his eyes sparkling. "War!" He said the word as if he loved it.
Dr. Gurnet shrugged his shoulders and sighed, and spread out his rather fat little hands.
"Yes, Major Staines," he said dryly, "I quite think we are going to have war."
"Then I must get back to my regiment as quickly as possible," said Winn, getting up.
"I shouldn't do that if I were you," said Dr. Gurnet. "I should advise your remaining in England for three months, I think you will be used quicker if you do that. War is unlikely to begin in India, and the climate is deleterious in the summer months. And might I suggest the carrying out of a few minor precautions? If you are to live efficiently for two years, it will be highly necessary for you to carry them out."
Winn turned toward him eagerly.
"I'll do any bally thing you tell me to now," he said quickly.
Dr. Gurnet laughed, then he said:
"Go back to England, study German, and await your chance. Don't play any more heavy games, don't lose your temper or try your heart, don't drink or smoke or play billiards or sit in a room with a shut window. Take plenty of good plain food and a certain amount of exercise. You are going to be needed."
Winn drew a deep breath.
"It's a funny thing," he said, turning toward the door, "but somehow I believe in you."
Dr. Gurnet shook hands with him cordially.
"In a sense, I may say," he observed, "in spite of your extremely disappointing behavior, that I return the compliment. I believe in you, Major Staines, only—" Dr. Gurnet finished the rest of the sentence after the door had shut behind his patient. "Unfortunately, I am not sure if there are quite enough of you."
When the Staineses gave an entertainment it was to mark their contempt for what more sensitive people might have considered a family catastrophe.
They had given a ball a week from the day on which Dolores ran away with the groom. A boat-race had been inaugurated upon the occasion on which Winn lost his lawsuit; and some difficulty (ultimately overcome) between James and the Admiralty had resulted in a dinner followed by fireworks on the lawn.
When Winn returned from Davos, Lady Staines decided upon a garden party.
"Good God!" cried Sir Peter. "Do you mean to tell me I've wasted that three hundred pounds, Sarah?" Sir Peter preferred this form of the question to "Is my boy going to die?" He meant precisely the same thing.
"As far as I know," Lady Staines replied, "nobody ever diesbeforecausing trouble; they die after it, and add their funeral expenses to the other inconveniences they have previously arranged for. Can't you see the boy's marriage has gone to pot?"
"I wish you wouldn't pick up slang expressions from your sons," growled Sir Peter. "You never hear me speaking in that loose way. Why haven't they got a home of their own? You would ask them here—nurse, bottles, and baby like a traveling Barnum's—and Winn glares in one corner—and that little piece of dandelion fluff lies down and grizzles on the nearest cushion—and now you want to have a garden party on the top of 'em! Anybody'd suppose this was a Seamen's Home from the use you put it to! And of all damned silly ways of entertaining people, a garden party's the worse! Who wants to look at other people's gardens except to find fault with 'em?
"Besides, unless you want rain (which we don't with the hay half down) it's tempting Providence. Nothing'll keep rain off a garden party except prayers in church during a drought.
"What the hell do you expect to gain by it? I know what it all means—Buns! Bands! high-heeled kick-shaws cutting up my turf! Why the devil don't you get a Punch and Judy show down and be done with it?"
"Of course you don't like a garden party," said Lady Staines, smoothly, "nor do I. Do you suppose I care to be strapped tight into smart stays at my age, and walk about my own gravel paths in purple satin, listening to drivel about other people's children? We must do something for the neighborhood sometimes, whether they like it or not. That's what we're here for—it's the responsibility of our position. Quite absurd, I know, but then, most people's responsibilities are quite absurd. You have a son and he behaves like a fool. You can leave him to take the consequences of course if you like—only as some of them will devolve on us, it is worth a slight effort to evade them."
"For God's sake, spit it out, and have done with it!" shouted Sir Peter. "What's the boy done?"
Lady Staines sat down opposite her husband and folded her hands in her lap. She was a woman who always sat perfectly still on the rare occasions when she was not too busy to sit down at all.
"What I hoped would happen," she said, "hasn't happened. He's presumably picked up with some respectable woman."
"What do you mean by that?" asked Sir Peter. "I never knew any one as cold-bloodedly immoral as you are, Sarah. Did you want the boy to pick up with a baggage?"
"Certainly," said Lady Staines. "Why not? I have always understood that the Social Evil was for our protection, but I never believed it. No woman worth her salt has ever wanted protection. It's men that want it. They need a class of creature that won't involve them beyond a certain point, and quite right too. Winn seemed to see this before he went off—but he didn't keep it in mind—he ran his head into a noose."
"Has he talked to you about it?" asked Sir Peter, incredulously.
"I don't need talk," said Lady Staines. "I judge by facts. Winn goes to church regularly, his temper is execrable, and he takes long walks by himself. A satisfied man is neither irate nor religious—and has nothing to walk off. Consequently it's a virtuous attachment. That's serious, because it will lead to the divorce court. Virtues generally lead to somebody trying to get out of something."
"Pooh!" Sir Peter grunted. "You've got that out of some damned French novel. You must have virtue, the place has got to be kept up somehow, hasn't it? If what you say is true—and I don't for a moment admit a word of it—I don't see how you're going to sugar things over with a couple of hundred people trampling up my lawn?"
"Estelle likes people," Lady Staines replied. "My idea is to make her a success. I will introduce her to everybody worth knowing. I'll get some of our people down from town. They'll hate it, of course; but they'll be curious to see what's up. Of course they won't see anything. At the end of the day, if it's all gone off well—I'll have a little talk with Estelle. I shall tell her first what I think of her; and then I shall offer to back her if she'll turn over a new leaf. Winn'll do his part for the sake of the boy, if she meets him half way. I give religion its due—he wants to do his duty, only he doesn't see what it is. He must live with his wife. His prayers will come in nicely afterwards."
Sir Peter chuckled. "There's something in your idea, Sarah," he admitted. "But it's a damned expensive process. All my strawberries will go. And if it rains, everybody'll come into the house and scuttle over my library like so many rabbits."
"I'll keep them out of the library," said Lady Staines, rising, "and I shall want a hundred pounds."
She left the library after a short series of explosions, with a check for seventy-five. She had only expected fifty.
The garden party was, if not a great success, at least a great crowd.
The village was entertained by sports in a field, backed by beer in tents, and overseen by Winn with the delighted assistance of the younger Peter.
Lady Staines, in stiff purple satin, strode uncomfortably up and down herbaceous borders, exposing the ignorance of her fellow gardeners by a series of ruthless questions.
Charles and James, who had put in an intermittent appearance in the hope of a loan from Sir Peter, did their best to make things go. Charles had brought down a bull terrier, and the bull terrier brought down, first one of the donkeys that was to take part in the sports, but was permanently incapacitated from any further participation either in sport or labor, then two pet lap dogs, in a couple of sharp shakes on the lawn, and crowned his career of murder with the stable cat, in an outhouse where Charles had at last incontinently and a little inconsiderately, as far as the cat was concerned, flung him.
Isabel and her husband had driven over from a neighboring parish.
Isabel liked garden parties. She made her way at once to a group of clergy, her husband dangling meekly in her rear; and then told them in her quarter deck style exactly what she thought ought to be done with their parishes. Sir Peter remained in the library with the windows open and his eye upon passing clouds.
Several of his friends joined him, and they talked about Ulster.
Everybody was at this time talking about Ulster.
Most of them spoke of it as people talk of a tidal wave in China. They did not exactly wish the wave to destroy the whole of China, but they would all have felt a little annoyed if it had withdrawn without drowning anybody.
"The Government has been weak," said Sir Peter sternly; "as weak as a soft-boiled egg! What Ireland wants is a firm hand, and if that's not enough, a swift kick after it! Concession! Who wants concessions? A sensible man doesn't make concessions unless he's trying to bluff you into thinking he's got what he hasn't got, or is getting out of you what he hasn't right to get!
"But people oughtn't to import arms. I'll go as far as that! It's against discipline. Whether it's one side or the other, it ought to be stopped.
"There'll be a row, of course—a healthy, blood-letting hell of a row, and we shall all be the better for it! But I don't approve of firearms being let loose all over the place—it's un-English. It only shows what the poor devils at Ulster must have suffered, and be afraid of suffering, to resort to it! That sort of thing is all very well in the Balkans. My son Winn's been talking about the Balkans lately—kind of thing the army's always getting gas off about! What I say is—let 'em fight! They got the Turk down once, all of 'em together, and he was the only person that could keep 'em in hand. Now I hear Austria wants to start trouble in Serbia because of that assassination in June. What they want to make a fuss about assassination in that family for I can't think! I should look upon it as an hereditary disease and leave it at that! But don't tell me it's anything to worry about compared to Ulster. What's the danger of a country that talks thirteen languages, has no non-commissioned officers, and always gets beat when it fights? Sarah! Sarah! Get the people in for tea. Can't you see there's a shower coming? Damn it all! And my second crop of hay's not in yet! That's what comes of giving garden parties. Of course I'm very glad to see you all, but you know what I mean. No shilly-shallying with the English climate's my motto—it's the only dangerous thing we've got!"
Lady Staines disregarded this admonition. The light clouds above the elms puffed idly in the heavy air. It was a hot bright day, murmurous with bees and the idle, half notes of midsummer birds.
Estelle, in the most diaphanous of blue muslins, held a little court under a gigantic mulberry tree. She had always intended marriage with a Staines to be like this.
Winn was nowhere to be seen, and his mother plodded patiently to and fro across the lawn, bringing a line of distinguished visitors to be introduced to her.
They were kind, curt people who looked at Estelle rather hard, and asked her absurd questions about Winn's regiment, Sir Peter's ships, and her baby. They had no general ideas, but however difficult they were to talk to, Estelle knew they were the right people to meet—she had seen their names in magazines. None of her own family were there; they had all been invited, but Estelle had preferred their remaining at home. She had once heard Sir Peter refer to her father as "Old Moneybags." He had apologized afterwards, but he might do it again.
Lady Staines was the only person who noticed the arrival of two telegrams—they were taken to Charles and James, who were at that moment in the refreshment tent opposite the claret cup. The telegrams arrived simultaneously, and Charles said, "Good Lord!" and James said, "My hat!" when they read the contents, with every symptom of surprise and pleasure.
"I shouldn't have supposed," Lady Staines thought to herself, "that two of my boys would have backed the same horse. It must be a coincidence."
They put the telegrams rather carefully away, and shortly afterwards she observed that they had set off together in the direction of the village sports.
The long golden twilight drew to a close, the swallows swooped and circled above the heavy, darkened elms. The flowers in the long herbaceous borders had a fragile look in the colorless soft air.
The garden party drifted slowly away.
Lady Staines stopped her daughter-in-law going into the house; but she was destined never to tell her what she thought of her. Estelle escaped Nemesis by the turn of a hair.
Sir Peter came out of the library prepared to inspect the lawn. "What's up with those boys?" he demanded, struck by the unusual sight of his three sons advancing towards him from the river, their heads bent in talk, and not apparently quarreling.
Lady Staines followed the direction of his eyes; then she said to Estelle, "You'd better go in now, my dear; I'll talk to you later."
Sir Peter shouted in his stentorian voice an appeal to his sons to join him. Lady Staines, while she waited, took off her white kid gloves and her purple bonnet, and deposited them upon the balustrades.
"What are you up to," demanded Sir Peter when they came within earshot, "sticking down there by the river with your heads glued together like a set of damned Guy Fawkeses—instead of saying good-by to your mother's guests—who haven't had the sense to get under way before seven o'clock—though I gave 'em a hint to be off an hour ago?"
"Helping villagers to climb greasy poles, and finishing a sack race," Charles explained. "Lively time Winn's been having down there—I had no idea our second housemaid was so pretty."
"None of that! None of that!" said Sir Peter, sharply. "You keep to bar-maids, young Charles—and manicure girls, though there ought to be an act of Parliament against 'em! Still, I'll admit you can't do much harm here—three of you together, and your mother on the front doorstep!"
"Harm," said James, winking in the direction of his mother; "what can poor chaps like us do—here to-day and gone to-morrow—Mother'd better keep her eye on those near home!"
"Off to-night you might as well say!" remarked Charles, glancing at James with a certain intentness.
"Why off to-night?" asked Lady Staines. "I thought you were staying over the week-end?"
"Winn's put us on to something," explained Charles. "Awfully good show, he says—on at the Oxford. Pretty hot stuff and the censor hasn't smelt it out yet—we rather thought we'd run up to-night and have a look at it."
Winn stuck his hands in his pockets, set his jaw, and looked at his mother. Lady Staines was regarding him with steady eyes.
"You didn't get a telegram, too?" she asked.
"No," said Winn. "Why should I?"
"Not likely," said James, genially. "Always behindhand in the—"
"Damn these midges!" said Charles, hurriedly. James stopped with his mouth open.
"Army, you were going to say, weren't you?" asked his mother, suavely. "If you are my sons I must say you make uncommonly poor liars."
Sir Peter, whose attention had wandered to tender places in the lawn, looked up sharply.
"What's that? What's that?" he asked. "Been telling lies, have they? A nice way you've brought 'em up, Sarah! What have they been lying about? A woman? Because if they have, I won't hear a word about it! Lies about a woman are perfectly correct, though I'm hanged if I can see how they can all three be lying about one woman. That seems a bit thick, I must say."
To Sir Peter's surprise, nobody made any reply. Charles yawned, James whistled, and Winn kept his eyes steadily fixed on Lady Staines.
"Those were orders then," Lady Staines observed in a dry quiet voice. "I thought it very likely. I suppose it's Germany. I felt sure we should have trouble with that excitable young man sooner or later. He had too good an opinion of himself to be an emperor."
"Not Ulster!" exclaimed Sir Peter. "God bless my soul—not Ulster!"
"Oh, we can take on Ulster afterwards," said James reassuringly. "Now we'll see what submarines can do; 'member the Japs?"
"Winn," said Lady Staines, "before you're off, say good-by to your wife."
Winn frowned, and then he said, "All right, Mother," and left them.
It was a very still evening, the scent of new mown hay and the mysterious sweetness of the starry white tobacco plant haunted the delicate air.
Winn found Estelle lying down by the open window. He had not been in her room for some time. He sat down by the sofa, and fingered the tassels at her waist.
"Is anything the matter?" she asked coldly.
He had only himself to thank that she was cold—he knew that. He saw so plainly now, all the mistakes he'd made, that the ones Estelle had made, receded into the distance. He'd never been gentle to her. Even when he thought he loved her, he wasn't really gentle.
Gentleness was superlative kindness, and no woman who had not had just that sort of kindness from the man she married, could help being rather nasty. He had owed it to Estelle—no matter whether she told him the truth or not.
"Look here, Estelle," he began. "I want our boy to go to Charterhouse."
It wasn't exactly what he meant to say, but it was something; he had never called Peter "our boy" before. Estelle did not notice it.
"Of course, I should prefer Eton," she said, "but I suppose you will do as you like—as usual!"
Winn dropped the piece of tassel, but he persevered.
"I say," he began, "don't you think we've got rather off the track? I know it's not your fault, but your being ill and my being away and all that? I don't want you to feel sore about it, you know. I want you to realize that I know I've been rather a beast to you. I don't think I'm fitted somehow for domestic life—what?"
"Fitted for it!" said Estelle, tragically. "I have never known one happy moment with you! You seem incapable of any kind of chivalry! I never would have believed a man could exist who knewlesshow to make a woman happy! It's too late to talk of it all now! I've made my supreme sacrifice. I've offered up my broken heart! I am living upon a higher plane! You would never understand anything that wasn't coarse, brutal, and low! So I shan't explain it to you. I know my duty, but I don't think after the way you have behaved I really need consider myself under any obligation to live with you again. Father Anselm agrees with me."
Winn laughed. "Don't you worry about that," he hastened to assure her, "or Father Anselm either; there isn't the least necessity—and it wasn't what I meant."
Estelle looked annoyed. It plainly should have been what Winn meant.
"Have as much of the higher plane as you like," he went on, "only look after the boy. I'm off to London to-night, there's probably going to be some work of a kind that I can do. I mayn't be back directly. Hope you'll be all right. We can write about plans."
He stood up, hesitating a little. He had an idea that it would make him feel less strange if she kissed him. Of course it was absurd, because just to have a woman's arms round his neck wasn't going to be the least like Claire. But he had a curious feeling that perhaps he might never be alone with a woman again, and he wanted to part friends with Estelle.
"I wonder," he said, leaning towards her, "would you mind very much if I kissed you?"
Estelle turned her head away with a little gesture of aversion.
"I am sorry," she said. "I shall not willingly allow you to kiss me, but of course you are my husband—I am in your power."
"By Jove," said Winn, unexpectedly, "what a little cat you are!"
They were the last words he ever said to her.
For a time he could do nothing but think of his luck—it was astounding how obstacles had been swept aside for him.
The best he had expected was that in the hurry of things he might get back to India without a medical examination, in the hope that his regiment would be used later. But his work at the Staff College had brought him into notice, a man conveniently died, and Winn appeared at the right moment.
Within twenty-four hours of his visit to the War Office, he was attached for staff duty to a British division.
Then work closed over his head. He became a railway time-table, a lost-luggage office, a registrar, and a store commissioner.
He had the duties of a special Providence thrust upon him, with all the disadvantages of being readily held accountable, so skilfully evaded by the higher powers.
Junior officers flew to him for orders as belated ladies fly to their pin cushions for pins.
He ate when it was distinctly necessary, and slept two hours out of the twenty-four.
He left nothing undone which he could do himself; his mind was unfavorable to chance. The heads of departments listened when he made suggestions, and found it convenient to answer with accuracy his sudden questions.
Subordinates hurried to obey his infrequent but final orders; and when Winn said, "I think you'd find it better," people found it better.
The division slipped off like cream, without impediment or hitch.
There were no delays, the men acquired their kit, and found their railway carriages.
The trains swept in velvet softness out of the darkened London station through the sweet, quiet, summer night into a sleepless Folkestone. The division went straight onto the right transports; there wasn't a man, a horse, or a gun out of place.
Winn heaved a sigh of relief as he stepped on board; his troubles as a staff officer had only just begun, but they had begun as troubles should always begin, by being adequately met. There were no arrears.
He did not think of Claire until he stood on deck and saw the lights receding and the shadow that was England passing out of his sight.
He remembered her then with a little pang of joy—for suddenly he knew that he was free to think of her.
He had thought of her before as a man registers a fact that is always present to him, but in the interval since he had seen her his consciousness of her had been increasingly troubled.
Now the trouble was fading, as England faded, as his old life was fading.
He had a sense that he was finally freed. It was not like seeing Claire again, but it was like not having to see anything else.
"Until I'm dead I'm hers, and after I'm dead I'm hers, so that's all right," he said to himself. "I haven't got to muddle things up any more."
The sea lay around them at dawn like a sheet of pearl—it was very empty but for the gulls' wings beating to and fro out of the mist.
Winn had lived through many campaigns. He had known rough jungle tussles in mud swamps, maddened by insects, thirst, and fever; he had fought in colder, cleaner dangers down the Khyber Pass, and he had gone through the episodic scientific flurries of South Africa; but France disconcerted him; he had never started a campaign before in a country like a garden, met by welcoming populations, with flowers and fruit.
It made him feel sick. The other places were the proper ones for war.
It was not his way to think of what lay before him. It would, like all great emergencies, like all great calamities, keep to its moment, and settle itself. Nevertheless he could not free his mind from the presence of the villages—the pleasant, smiling villages, the little church towers in the middle, the cobbled streets, the steep-pitched, gray roofs and the white sunny walls.
Carnations and geraniums filled the windows, and all the inhabitants, the solid, bright-faced people, had a greeting for their khaki guests.
"Voilà quelque choses des solides, ces Anglais!" the women called to each other.
Winn found himself shrinking from their welcoming eyes. He thought he hadn't had enough sleep, because as a rule a Staines did not shrink; but when he slept in the corner of the hot jolting railway train, he dreamed of the villages.
They were to attack directly they arrived at their destination. By the time they reached there, Winn knew more. He had gathered up the hastily flung messages by telegram and telephone, by flying cars and from breathless despatch riders, and he knew what they meant.
They had no chance, from the first, not a ghost of a chance. They were to hold on as long as they could, and then retreat. Part of the line had gone already. The French had gone. No reinforcements were coming up. There were no reinforcements.
They were to retreat turn and turn about; meantime they must hold.
They could hear the guns now, the bright harvest fields trembled a little under the impact of these alien presences.
They came nearer and the sky filled with white puffs of smoke that looked like glittering sunset clouds, and were not clouds. Overhead the birds sang incessantly, undisturbed even by the occasional drilling of an aëroplane.
In the plains that lay beneath them, they could see the dim blue lines of the enemy debouching.
They made Winn think of locusts. He had seen a plague once in Egypt. They came on like the Germans, a gray mass that never broke—that could not break, because behind it there were more, and still more locusts, thick as clouds, impenetrable as clouds.
You killed and killed and killed, and yet there were more clouds.
Every now and then it ran through his mind like a flame, that they would spread this loathsome, defiling cloud over the smiling little villages of France.
Fortunately there was no time for pity; there were merely the different ways of meeting the question of holding on.
It was like an attempt to keep back a tide with a teaspoon.
Their guns did what they could, they did more than it seemed possible guns could do. The men in control of them worked like maniacs.
It was not a time to think of what people could do. The men were falling like leaves off a tree.
The skylarks and the swallows vanished before the villainous occupation of the air. The infantry in the loosely built trenches held on, breathless, broken, like a battered boat in a hurricane, stout against the oncoming waves.
The stars came out and night fell—night rent and tortured, darkness assaulted and broken by a myriad new lights of death, but still merciful, reassuring darkness. The moment for the retreat had come.
It was a never-ending business, a stumbling, bewildering business. The guns roared on, holding open indefatigably, without cessation, the way of their escape.
Much later they got away themselves, dashing blindly in the wake of their exhausted little army, ready to turn at command and hold again, and escape again, and once more hold the unending blue lines, with their unnumbered guns, unwinding like an endless serpent in their rear.
The morning showed them still retreating. Sometimes they were miles ahead and could see nothing but the strangely different barred and shivering villages, small settlements of terror, in an untroubled land.
There were no flowers flung upon them now, only hurried gasping questions, "Are they coming?" "How far are they behind you?"
Sometimes they were halted for half an hour at a time, and sat in hedges and ate, or meant to eat, and slept between the bites.
Occasionally they surprised small bands of wandering Uhlans, and if there was time took them prisoners, and if there was no time, shot them in rows against white walls.
Once they met a troop out of one of their own divisions, led by a solitary subaltern of nineteen, with queer fixed eyes, who didn't know who he was. All he could say, "I brought them out."
Despatch riders hurled themselves upon the Staff with orders; very often they had conflicting orders; and they always had dust, trouble with horses, trouble with motor ambulances, trouble with transport. Enraged heroic surgeons achieving hourly physical miracles, implored with tears to be given impossible things like time. Of course they couldn't have time.
Then in the midst of chaos, orders would come to hold. The guns unlimbered, the transports tore madly ahead. Everything that could be cleared off down the road was cleared off, more rough trenches were dug, more hot and sullen hours of waiting followed, and then once more the noise, the helpless slaughter, the steady dogged line gripping the shallow earth, and the unnumbered horde of locusts came on again, eating up the fields of France.
Sometimes whole regiments entrained under the care of fatherly French railway officials, curiously liable to hysteria on ordinary excursion days, but now as calm as Egyptian Pyramids in the face of national disaster. They pieced together with marvelous ingenuity the broken thread of speech presented to them by the occasional French scholars upon the British Staff; but more often still they shook polite and emphatic heads, and explained that there quite simply were no trains. The possible, yes; but the impossible, no. One could not create trains. So the men went on marching. They did not like retreating, but they moved as if they were on parade in front of Buckingham Palace, and when they held, they fought as winners fight.
It was not until they reached the Marne that Winn found time to write to Claire. "We are getting on very nicely," he wrote. "I hope you are not worrying about us. We have plenty to eat, though we have to take our meals a little hurriedly.
"There is a good deal of work to do.
"This war is the best thing that ever happened to me—bar one. Before I came out I thought I should go to pieces. I feel quite free to write to you now. I do not think there can be any harm in it, so I hope you won't mind. If things do not seem to be going very well with us at first, remember that they never do.
"Every campaign I ever went in for, we were short-handed to start with, and had to fight against odds, which doesn't matter really if you have the right men, but always takes longer and looks discouraging to outsiders. The men are very good and I am glad the War Office let me commandeer the boots I wanted—the kind they offered me at first wouldn't have done at all for this sort of work. It is rather hard not being with the men more, but the work is very absorbing, so I do not mind as much as I did.
"I think the regiment will come out later, and they have promised to let me go back into it. I am sorry about the villages. It's a pity the Germans slopped over into France at all. I found two Uhlans yesterday in a farmyard; they had been behaving badly, so I did them both in.
"One very seldom sees any of them, worse luck.
"I hope you are taking great care of yourself and not worrying. Your loving Winn."
In the weeks that followed, Claire got many letters. They were short letters, written in flying motors, in trains, in outhouses, in romantic châteaux; but they all began in the same reassuring way. "I am very well, and we are getting on quite nicely."
The Allied line was being flung out in wild curves and swoops like the flight of a dove before a hawk; from Soissons up toward Calais they fenced and circled.
They retook Rheims, they seized Amiens. Lille fell from them and Laon.
The battle of the Aisne passed by slow degrees out of their hands, and the English found themselves fighting their extraordinary first fight for Ypres. They stood between the Germans and the Channel ports as thinly as a Japanese screen, between England and the Atlantic. The very camp cooks were in the trenches.
Time fled like a long thunderous hour. It was a storm that flashed and fell and returned again.
Winn was beginning to feel tired now. He hardly slept at night, and by day his brain moved as if it were made of red-hot steel, flying rapidly from expedient to expedient, facing the hourly problems of that wild and wet October, how to keep men alive who never rested, who were too few, who took the place of guns. He wrote more seldom now, and once he said, "We are having rather a hard time, but we shall get through with it."
Fortunately all Englishmen are born with a curious pioneer instinct, and being the least adaptable people in the world, they have learned the more readily to adapt the changes of the hour.
They remade their external world, out of this new warfare.
They remade it at the cost of their lives in Flanders, in the face of incredulous enemies and criticizing neutrals, painstakingly, without science, doggedly out of their own wills. They held Ypres by a thread, and when it seemed that nothing could keep it, one cold and dreadful day along the Menin road came up their reinforcements.
First one group and then another of tall, dark people, silent footed as falling leaves, turbaned black faces, eyes of appalling and unearthly gravity, hearts half like a rock and half like a child, alien captive people of another blood, took their place silently, regiment by regiment blocking up the dreadful gaps with their guns, their rifles, and the free gift of their lives.
"Lionel has come," Winn wrote, "and all my men. I never was so glad of anything, but you. Send me all the warm things you can. The winter will be quite jolly now when the men get used to the trenches. It's a funny thing, but they've given me command of the regiment. I hadn't expected it, but I've always liked handling Sikhs. Whatever happens, you'll remember that I've been an awfully lucky chap, won't you?"