In due course Captain Connor's regiment went off to France; not with drums beating and colours flying—I wish to Heaven it had; if there had been more pomp and circumstance in England, the popular imagination would not have remained untouched for so long a time—but in the cold silent hours of the night, like a gang of marauders. Betty did not go to bed after he had left, but sat by the fire till morning. Then she dressed in uniform and resumed her duties at the hospital. Many a soldier's bride was doing much the same. And her days went on just as they did before her marriage. She presented a smiling face to the world; she said:
"If I'm as happy as can be expected in the circumstances, I think it my duty to look happier."
It was a valiant philosophy.
The falling of a chimney-stack brought me up against Daniel Gedge, who before the war did all my little repairs. The chimney I put into the hands of Day & Higgins, another firm of builders.
A day or two afterwards Hosea shied at something and I discovered it was Gedge, who had advanced into the roadway expressing a desire to have a word with me. I quieted the patriotic Hosea and drew up by the kerb. Gedge was a lean foxy-faced man with a long, reddish nose and a long blunt chin from which a grizzled beard sprouted aggressively forwards. He had hard, stupid grey eyes.
"I hope you 'll excuse the liberty I take in stopping you, sir," he said, civilly.
"That's all right," said I. "What's the matter?"
"I thought I had given you satisfaction these last twenty years."
I assented. "Quite correct," said I.
"Then, may I ask, sir, without offence, why you've called in Day & Higgins?"
"You may," said I, "and, with or without offence, I'll answer your question. I've called them in because they're good loyal people. Higgins has joined the army, and so has Day's eldest boy, while you have been going on like a confounded pro-German."
"You've no right to say that, Major Meredyth."
"Not when you go over to Godbury"—the surging metropolis of the County some fifteen miles off—"and tell a pack of fools to strike because this is a capitalists' war? Not when you go round the mills here, and do your best to stop young fellows from fighting for their country? God bless my soul, in whose interests are you acting, if not Germany's?"
He put on his best platform manner. "I'm acting in the best interests of the people of this country. The war is wrong and incredibly foolish and can bring no advantage to the working man. Why should he go and be killed or maimed for life? Will it put an extra penny in his pocket or his widow's? No. Oh!"—he checked my retort—"I know everything you would say. I see the arguments every day in all your great newspapers. But the fact remains that I don't see eye to eye with you, or those you represent. You think one way, I think another. We agree to differ."
"We don't," said I. "I don't agree at all."
"At any rate," he said, "I can't see how a difference of political opinion can affect my ability now to put a new chimney-stack in your house, any more than it has done in the past."
"In the past," said I, "political differences were parochial squabbles in comparison with things nowadays. You're either for England, or against her."
He smiled wryly. "I'm for England. We both are. You think her salvation lies one way. I think another. This is a free country in which every man has a right to his own opinion."
"Exactly so," said I. "Therefore you'll admit that I've a right to the opinion that you ought to be locked up either in a gaol or a lunatic asylum as a danger to the state, and that, having that rightful opinion, I'm justified in not entrusting the safety of my house to one who, in my aforesaid opinion, is either a criminal or a lunatic."
Dialectically, I had him there. It afforded me keen enjoyment. Besides being a John Bull Englishman, I am a cripple and therefore ever so little malicious.
"It's all very well for you to talk, Major Meredyth," said he, "but your opinions cost you nothing—mine are costing me my livelihood. It isn't fair."
"You might as well say," I replied, "that I, who have never dared to steal anything in my life, live in ease and comfort, whereas poor Bill Sykes, who has devoted all his days to burglary, has seven years' penal servitude. No, Gedge," said I, gathering up the reins, "it can't be done. You can't have it both ways."
He put a detaining hand on Hosea's bridle and an evil flash came into his hard grey eyes.
"I'll have it some other way, then," he said. "A way you've no idea of. A way that'll knock all you great people of Wellingsford off your high horses. If you drive me to it, you'll see. I'll bide my time and I don't care whether it breaks me."
He stamped his foot and tugged at the bridle. Two or three passers-by halted wonderingly and Prettilove, the hairdresser, moved across the pavement from his shop door where he had been taking the air.
"My good fellow," said I, "you have lost your temper and are talking drivel. Kindly unhand my donkey."
Prettilove, who has a sycophantic sense of humour, burst into a loud guffaw. Gedge swung angrily away, and Hosea and I continued our interrupted progress down the High Street. Although I had called his dark menaces drivel, I could not help wondering what it meant. Was he going to guide a German Army to Wellingsford? Was he, a modern Guy Fawkes, plotting to blow up the Town Hall while Mayor and Corporation sat in council? He was not the man to utter purely idle threats. What the dickens was he going to do? Something mean and dirty and underhand. I knew his ways, He was always getting the better of somebody. The wise never let him put in a pane of glass without a specification and estimate, and if he had not been by far the most competent builder in the town—perhaps the only one who thoroughly knew his business in all its branches—no one would have employed him.
When I next saw Betty, it was in one of the corridors of the hospital, after a committee meeting; she stopped by my chair to pass the time of day. Through the open doorway of a ward I perceived a well-known figure in nurse's uniform.
"Why," said I, "there's Phyllis Gedge."
Betty nodded. "She has just come in as a probationer."
"I thought her father wouldn't let her. I've heard—Heaven knows whether it's true, but it sounds likely—that he said if men were such fools as to get shot he didn't see why his daughter should help to mend them."
"He has consented now," said Betty, "and Phyllis is delighted."
"No doubt it's a bid for popular favour," said I. And I told her of his dwindling business and of my encounter with him. When I came to his threat Betty's brows darkened.
"I don't like that at all," she said.
"Why? What do you think he means?"
"Mischief." She lowered her voice, for, it being visiting day at the hospital, people were passing up and down the corridor. "Suppose he has some of the people here in his power?"
"Blackmail—?" I glanced up at her sharply. "What do you know about it?"
"Nothing," she replied abruptly. Then she looked down and fingered her wedding-ring. "I only said 'suppose.'"
A Sister appeared at the door of the ward and seeing us together paused hoveringly.
"I rather think you're wanted," said I.
I left the hospital somewhat disturbed in mind. Summons to duty had cut our conversation short; but I knew that no matter how long I had cross-questioned Betty I should have got nothing further out of her. She was a remarkably outspoken young woman. What she said she meant, and what she didn't want to say all the cripples in the British Army could not have dragged out of her.
I tried her again a few days later. A slight cold, aided and abetted by a dear exaggerating idiot of a tyrannical doctor, confined me to the house and she came flying in, expecting to find me in extremis. When she saw me clothed and in my right mind and smoking a big cigar, she called me a fraud.
"Look here," said I, after a while. "About Gedge—" again her brow darkened and her lips set stiffly—"do you think he has his knife into young Randall Holmes?"
I had worried about the boy. Naturally, if Gedge found the relations between his daughter and Randall unsatisfactory, no one could blame him for any outbreak of parental indignation. But he ought to break out openly, while there was yet time—before any harm was done—not nurse some diabolical scheme of subterraneous vengeance. Betty's brow cleared, and she laughed. I saw at once that I was on a wrong track.
"Why should he have his knife into Randall? I suppose you've got Phyllis in your mind."
"I have. How did you guess?"
She laughed again.
"What other reason could he have? But how did you come to hear of Randall and Phyllis?"
"Never mind," said I, "I did. And if Gedge is angry, I can to some extent sympathize with him."
"But he's not. Not the least little bit in the world," she declared, lighting a cigarette. "Gedge and Randall are as thick as thieves, and Phyllis won't have anything to do with either of them."
"Now, my dear," said I. "Now that you're married, become a real womanly woman and fill my empty soul with gossip."
"There's no gossip at all about it," she replied serenely. "It's all sordid and romantic fact. The two men hold long discussions together at Gedge's house, Gedge talking anti-patriotism and Randall talking rot which he calls philosophy. You can hear them, can't you? Their meeting-ground is the absurdity of Randall joining the army."
"And Phyllis?"
"She is a loyal little soul and as miserable as can be. She's deplorably in love with Randall. She has told me so. And because she's in love with a man whom she knows to be a slacker she's eaten up with shame. Now she won't speak to him. To avoid meeting him she lives entirely at the hospital—a paying probationer."
"That must be since the last Committee Meeting," I said.
"Yes."
"And Daniel Gedge pays a guinea a week?"
"He doesn't," said Betty. "I do."
I accepted the information with a motion of the head. She went on after a minute or so. "I have always been fond of the child"—there were only three or four years difference between them!—"and so I want to protect her. The time may come when she'll need protection. She has told me things—not now—but long ago—which frightened her. She came to me for advice. Since then I've kept an eye on her—as far as I could. Her coming into the hospital helps me considerably."
"When you say 'things which frightened her,' do you mean in connection with her father?"
Again the dark look in Betty's eyes.
"Yes," she said. "He's an evil, dangerous man."
That was all I could get out of her. If she had meant me to know the character of Gedge's turpitude, she would have told me of her own accord. But in our talk at the hospital she had hinted at blackmail—and blackmailers are evil, dangerous men.
I went to see Sir Anthony about it. Beyond calling him a damned scoundrel, a term which he applied to all pro-Germans, pacifists and half the Cabinet, he did not concern himself about Gedge. Young Randall Holmes's intimacy with the scoundrel seemed to him a matter of far greater importance. He strode up and down his library, choleric and gesticulating.
"A gentleman and a scholar to hob-nob with a traitorous beast like that! I know that he writes for a filthy weekly paper. Somebody sent me a copy a few days ago. It's rot—but not actually poisonous like that he must hear from Gedge. That's the reason, I suppose, he's not in the King's uniform. I've had my eye on him for some time. That's why I've not asked him to the house."
I told Sir Anthony of my interview with the young man. He waxed wroth. In a country with a backbone every Randall Holmes in the land would have been chucked willy-nilly into the army. But the country had spinal disorders. It had locomotor ataxy. The result of sloth and self-indulgence. We had the Government we deserved ... I need not quote further. You can imagine a fine old fox-hunting Tory gentleman, with England filling all the spaces of his soul, blowing off the steam of his indignation.
When he had ended, "What," said I, "is to be done?"
"I'll lay my horsewhip across the young beggar's shoulders the next time I meet him."
"Capital," said I. "If I were you I should never ride abroad except in my mayor's gown and chain, so that you can give an official character to the thrashing."
He glanced swiftly at me in his bird-like fashion, his brow creased into a thousand tiny horizontal lines—it always took him a fraction of a second to get clear of the literal significance of words—and then he laughed. Personal violence was out of the question. Why, the young beggar might summon him for assault. No; he had a better idea. He would put in a word at the proper quarter, so that every recruiting sergeant in the district should have orders to stop him at every opportunity.
"I shouldn't do that," said I.
"Then, I don't know what the deuce I can do," said Sir Anthony.
As I didn't know, either, our colloquy was fruitless. Eventually Sir Anthony said:
"Perhaps it's likely, after all, that Gedge may offend young Oxford's fastidiousness. It can't be long before he discovers Gedge to be nothing but a vulgar, blatant wind-bag; and then he may undergo some reaction."
I agreed. It seemed to be the most sensible thing he had said. Give Gedge enough rope and he would hang himself. So we parted.
I have said before that when I want to shew how independent I am of everybody I drive abroad in my donkey carriage. But there are times when I have to be dependent on Marigold for carrying me into the houses I enter; on these helpless occasions I am driven about by Marigold in a little two-seater car. That is how I visited Wellings Park and that is how I set off a day or two later to call on Mrs. Boyce.
As she took little interest in anything foreign to her own inside, she was not to most people an exhilarating companion. She even discussed the war in terms of her digestion. But we were old friends. Being a bit of a practical philosopher I could always derive some entertainment from her serial romance of a Gastric Juice, and besides, she was the only person in Wellingsford whom I did not shrink from boring with the song of my own ailments. Rather than worry the Fenimores or Betty or Mrs. Holmes with my aches and pains I would have hung on, like the idiot boy of Sparta with the fox, until my vitals were gnawed out—parenthetically, it has always worried me to conjecture why a boy should steal a fox, why it should have been so valuable to the owner, and to what use he put it. In the case of all my other friends I regarded myself as too much of an obvious nuisance, as it was, for me to work on their sympathy for infirmities that I could hide; but with Mrs. Boyce it was different. The more I chanted antistrophe to her strophe of lamentation the more was I welcome in her drawing-room. I had not seen her for some weeks. Perhaps I had been feeling remarkably well with nothing in the world to complain about, and therefore unequipped with a topic of conversation. However, hearty or not, it was time for me to pay her a visit. So I ordered the car.
Mrs. Boyce lived in a comfortable old house half a mile or so beyond the other end of the town, standing in half a dozen well-wooded acres. It was a fair April afternoon, all pale sunshine and tenderness. A dream of fairy green and delicate pink and shy blue sky melting into pearl. The air smelt sweet. It was good to be in it, among the trees and the flowers and the birds.
Others must have also felt the calls of the spring, for as we were driving up to the house, I caught a glimpse of the lawn and of two figures strolling in affectionate attitude. One was that of Mrs. Boyce; the other, khaki-clad and towering above her, had his arm round her waist. The car pulled up at the front door. Before we had time to ring, a trim parlour-maid appeared.
"Mrs. Boyce is not at home, sir."
Marigold, who, when my convenience was in question, swept away social conventions like cobwebs, fixed her with his one eye, and before I could interfere, said:
"I'm afraid you're mistaken. I've just seen Major Boyce and Madam on the lawn."
The maid reddened and looked at me appealingly.
"My orders were to say not at home, sir."
"I quite understand, Mary," said I. "Major Boyce is home on short leave, and they don't want to be disturbed. Isn't that it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Marigold," said I. "Right about turn."
Marigold, who had stopped the car, got out unwillingly and went to the starting-handle. That I should be refused admittance to a house which I had deigned to honour with my presence he regarded as an intolerable insult. He also loved to have tea, as a pampered guest, in other folks' houses. When he got home Mrs. Marigold, as like as not, would give him plain slabs of bread buttered by her economical self. I knew my Marigold. He gave a vicious and ineffectual turn or two and then stuck his head in the bonnet.
The situation was saved by the appearance from the garden of Mrs. Boyce herself, a handsome, erect, elegantly dressed old lady in the late sixties, pink and white like a Dresden figure and in her usual condition of resplendent health. She held out her hand.
"I couldn't let you go without telling you that Leonard is back. I don't want the whole town to know. If it did, I should see nothing of him, his leave is so short. That's why I told Mary to say 'not at home.' But an old friend like you—Would you like to see him?"
Marigold closed the bonnet and stood up with a grimace which passed for a happy smile.
"I should, of course," said I, politely. "But I quite understand. You have everything to say to each other. No. I won't stay"—Marigold's smile faded into woodenness—"I only turned in idly to see how you were getting on. But just tell me. How is Leonard? Fit, I hope?"
"He's wonderful," she said.
I motioned Marigold to start the car.
"Give him my kind regards," said I. "No, indeed. He doesn't want to see an old crock like me." The engine rattled. "I hope he's pleased at finding his mother looking so bonny."
"It's only excitement at having Leonard," she explained earnestly. "In reality I'm far from well. But I wouldn't tell him for worlds."
"What's that you wouldn't tell, mother?" cried a soft, cheery voice, and Leonard, the fine flower of English soldiery, turned the corner of the house.
There he stood, tall, deep-chested, clear-eyed, bronzed, his heavy chin in the air, his bull-neck not detracting from his physical handsomeness, but giving it a seal of enormous strength.
"My dear fellow," he cried, grasping my hand heartily, "how glad I am to see you. Come along in and let mother give you some tea. Nonsense!" he waved away my protest. "Marigold, stop that engine and bring in the Major. I've got lots of things to tell you. That's right."
He strode boyishly to the front door, which he threw open wide to admit Marigold and myself and followed us with Mrs. Boyce into the drawing-room, talking all the while. I must confess that I was just a little puzzled by his exuberant welcome. And, to judge by the blank expression that flitted momentarily over her face, so was his mother. If he were so delighted by my visit, why had he not crossed the lawn at once as soon as he saw the car? Why had he sent his mother on ahead? I was haunted by an exchange of words overheard in imagination:
"Confound the fellow! What has he come here for?"
"Mary will say 'not at home.'"
"But he has spotted us. Do go and get rid of him."
"Such an old friend, dear."
"We haven't time for old fossils. Tell him to go and bury himself."
And (in my sensitive fancy) she had delivered the import of the message. I had gathered that my visit was ill-timed. I was preparing to cut it short, when Leonard himself came up and whisked me against my will to the tea-table. If my hypothesis were correct he had evidently changed his mind as to the desirability of getting rid, in so summary a fashion, of what he may have considered to be an impertinent and malicious little factor in Wellingsford gossip.
At any rate, if he was playing a part, he played it very well. It was not in the power of man to be more cordial and gracious. He gave me a vivid account of the campaign. He had been through everything, the retreat from Mons, the Battle of the Aisne, the great rush north, and the Battle of Neuve Chapelle on the 17th of March. I listened, fascinated, to his tale, which he told with a true soldier's impersonal modesty.
"I was glad," said I, after a while, "to see you twice mentioned in dispatches."
Mrs. Boyce turned on me triumphantly. "He is going to get his D. S. O."
"By Jove!" said I.
Leonard laughed, threw one gaitered leg over the other and held up his hands at her.
"Oh, you feminine person!" He smiled at me. "I told my dear old mother as a dead and solemn secret."
"But it will be gazetted in a few days, dear."
"One can never be absolutely sure of these things until they're in black and white. A pretty ass I'd look if there was a hitch—say through some fool of a copying clerk—and I didn't get it after all. It's only dear, silly understanding things like mothers that would understand. Other people wouldn't. Don't you think I'm right, Meredyth?"
Of course he was. I have known, in my time, of many disappointments. It is not every recommendation for honours that becomes effective. I congratulated him, however, and swore to secrecy.
"It's all luck," said he. "Just because a man happens to be spotted. If my regiment got its deserts, every Jack man would walk about in a suit of armour made of Victoria Crosses. Give me some more tea, mother."
"The thing I shall never understand, dear," she said, artlessly, looking up at him, while she handed him his cup, "is when you see a lot of murderous Germans rushing at you with guns and shells and bayonets, how you are not afraid."
He threw back his head and laughed in his debonair fashion; but I watched him narrowly and I saw the corners of his mouth twitch for the infinitesimal fraction of a second.
"Oh, sometimes we're in an awful funk, I assure you," he replied gaily. "Ask Meredyth."
"We may be," said I, "but we daren't shew it—I'm speaking of officers. If an officer funks he's generally responsible for the death of goodness knows how many men. And if the men funk they're liable to be shot for cowardice in the face of the enemy."
"And what happens to officers who are afraid?"
"If it's known, they get broke," said I.
Boyce swallowed his tea at a gulp, set down the cup, and strode to the window. There was a short pause. Presently he turned.
"Physical fear is a very curious thing," he said in a voice unnecessarily loud. "I've seen it take hold of men of proved courage and paralyse them. It's just like an epileptic fit—beyond a man's control. I've known a fellow—the most reckless, hare-brained daredevil you can imagine—to stand petrified with fear on the bank of a river, and let a wounded comrade drown before his eyes. And he was a good swimmer too."
"What happened to him?" I asked.
He met my gaze for a moment, looked away, and then met it again—it seemed defiantly.
"What happened to him? Well—" there was the tiniest possible pause—a pause that only an uneasy, suspicious repository of the abominable story of Vilboek's Farm could have noticed—"Well, as he stood there he got plugged—and that was the end of him. But what I—"
"Was he an officer, dear?"
"No, no, mother, a sergeant," he answered abruptly, and in the same breath continued. "What I was going to say is this. No one as far as I know has ever bothered to work out the psychology of fear. Especially the sudden thing that hits a man's heart and makes him stand stock-still like a living corpse—unable to move a muscle—all his willpower out of gear—just as a motor is out of gear. I've seen a lot of it. Those men oughtn't to be called cowards. It's as much a fit, say, as epilepsy. Allowances ought to made for them."
It was a warm day, the windows were closed, my valetudinarian hostess having a horror of draughts, and a cheery fire was blazing up the chimney. Boyce took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead.
"Dear old mother," said he, "you keep this room like an oven."
"It is you who have got so excited talking, dear," said Mrs. Boyce. "I'm sure it can't be good for your heart. It is just the same with me. I remember I had to speak quite severely to Mary a week—no, to-day's Tuesday—ten days ago, and I had dreadful palpitations afterwards and broke out into a profuse perspiration and had to send for Doctor Miles."
"Now, that's funny," said I. "When I'm excited about anything I grow quite cold."
Boyce lit a cigarette and laughed. "I don't see where the excitement in the present case comes in. Mother started an interesting hare, and I followed it up. Anyhow—" he threw himself on the sofa, blew a kiss to his mother in the most charming way in the world, and smiled on me—"anyhow, to see you two in this dearest bit of dear old England is like a dream. And I'm not going to think of the waking up. I want all the cushions and the lavender and the neat maid's caps and aprons—I said to Mary this morning when she drew my curtains: 'Stay just there and let me look at you so that I can realise I'm at home and not in my little grey trench in West Flanders'—she got red and no doubt thought me a lunatic and felt inclined to squawk—but she stayed and looked jolly pretty and refreshing—only for a minute or two, after which I dismissed her—yes, my dears, I want everything that the old life means, the white table linen, the spring flowers, the scent of the air which has never known the taint of death, and all that this beautiful mother of England, with her knitting needles, stands for. I want to have a debauch of sweet and beautiful things."
"As far as I can give them you shall have them. My dear—" she dropped her knitting in her lap and looked over at him tragically—"I quite forgot to ask. Did Mary put bath-salts, as I ordered, into your bath this morning?"
Leonard threw away his cigarette and slapped his leg.
"By George!" he cried. "That explains it. I was wondering where the Dickens that smell of ammonia came from."
"If you use it every day it makes your skin so nice and soft," remarked Mrs. Boyce.
He laughed, and made the obvious jest on the use of bath-salts in the trenches.
"I wonder, mother, whether you have any idea of what trenches and dug-outs look like."
He told her, very picturesquely, and went on to a general sketch of life at the front. He entertained me with interesting talk for the rest of my visit. I have already said that he was a man of great personal charm.
He accompanied me to the car and saw me comfortably tucked in.
"You won't give me away, will you?" he said, shaking hands.
"How?" I asked.
"By telling any one I'm here."
I promised and drove off. Marigold, full of the tea that is given to a guest, strove cheerfully to engage me in conversation. I hate to snub Marigold, excellent and devoted fellow, so I let him talk; but my mind was occupied with worrying problems.
Leonard Boyce had received me on sufferance. I had come upon him while he was imprudently exposing himself to view. There had been no way out of it. But he made it clear that he desired no other Wellingsfordian to invade his privacy. Secretly he had come to see his mother and secretly he intended to go. I remembered that before he went to the front he had not come home, but his mother had met him in London. He had asked me for no local news. He had inquired after the welfare of none of his old friends. Never an allusion to poor Oswald Fenimore's gallant death—he used to run in and out of Wellings Park as if it were his own house. What had he against the place which for so many years had been his home?
With regard to Betty Fairfax, he had loved and ridden away, it is true, leaving her disconsolate. But though everyone knew of the engagement, no one had suspected the defection. Betty was a young woman who could keep her own counsel and baffle any curiosity-monger or purveyor of gossip in the country. So when she married Captain Connor, a little gasp went round the neighbourhood, which for the first time remembered Leonard Boyce. There were some who blamed her for callous treatment of Boyce, away and forgotten at the front. The majority, however, took the matter calmly, as we have had to take far more amazing social convulsions. The fact remained that Betty was married, and there was no reason whatever, on the score of the old engagement, for Boyce to manifest such exaggerated shyness with regard to Wellingsford society.
If it had been any other man than Boyce, I should not have worried about the matter at all. Save that I was deeply attached to Betty, what had her discarded lover's attitude to do with me? But Boyce was Boyce, the man of the damnable story of Vilboek's Farm. And he, of his own accord, had revived in my mind that story in all its intensity. A chance foolish question, such as thousands of gentle, sheltered women have put to their suddenly uncomprehended, suddenly deified sons and husbands, had obviously disturbed his nervous equilibrium. That little reflex twitch at the corner of his lips—I have seen it often in the old times. I should like to have had him stripped to the waist so that I could have seen his heart—the infallible test. At moments of mighty moral strain men can keep steady eyes and nostrils and mouth and speech; but they cannot control that tell-tale diaphragm of flesh over the heart. I have known it to cause the death of many a Kaffir spy.... But, at any rate, there was the twitch of the lips ... I deliberately threw weight into the scale of Mrs. Boyce's foolish question. If he had not lost his balance, why should he have launched into an almost passionate defence of the physical coward?
My memory went back to the narrative of the poor devil in the Cape Town hospital. Boyce's description of the general phenomenon was a deadly corroboration of Somers's account of the individual case. They had used the same word—"paralysed." Boyce had made a fierce and definite apologia for the very act of which Somers had accused him. He put it down to the sudden epilepsy of fear for which a man was irresponsible. Somers's story had never seemed so convincing—the first part of it, at least—the part relating to the paralysis of terror. But the second part—the account of the diabolical ingenuity by means of which Boyce rehabilitated himself—instead of blowing his brains out like a gentleman—still hammered at the gates of my credulity.
Well—granted the whole thing was true—why revive it after fifteen years' dead silence, and all of a sudden, just on account of an idle question? Even in South Africa, his "mention" had proved his courage. Now, with the D. S. O. a mere matter of gazetting, it was established beyond dispute.
On the other hand, if the Vilboek story, more especially the second part, was true, what reparation could he make in the eyes of honourable men?—in his own eyes, if he himself had succeeded to the status of an honourable man? Would not any decent soldier smite him across the face instead of grasping him by the hand? I was profoundly worried.
Moreover Betty, level-headed Betty, had called him a devil. Why?
If the second part of Somers's story were true, he had acted like a devil. There is no other word for it. Now, what concrete diabolical facts did Betty know? Or had her instinctive feminine insight pierced through the man's outer charm and merely perceived horns, tail, and cloven hoof cast like a shadow over his soul?
How was I to know?
She came to dine with me the next evening: a dear way she had of coming uninvited, and God knows how a lonely cripple valued it. She was in uniform, being too busy to change, and looked remarkably pretty. She brought with her a cheery letter from her husband, received that morning, and read me such bits as the profane might hear, her eyes brightening as she glanced over the sections that she skipped. Beyond doubt her marriage had brought her pleasure and pride. The pride she would have felt to some extent, I think, if she had married a grampus; for when a woman has a husband at the front she feels that she is taking her part in the campaign and exposing herself vicariously to hardship and shrapnel; and in the eyes of the world she gains thereby a little in stature, a thing dear to every right-minded woman. But Betty's husband was not a grampus, but a very fine fellow, a mate to be wholly proud of: and he loved her devotedly and expressed his love beautifully loverwise, as her tell-tale face informed me. Gratefully and sturdily she had set herself out to be happy. She was succeeding.... Lord bless you! Millions of women who have married, not the wretch they loved, but the other man, have lived happy ever after. No: I had no fear for Betty now. I could not see that she had any fear for herself.
After dinner she sat on the floor by my side and smoked cigarettes in great content. She had done a hard day's work at the hospital; her husband had done a hard day's work—probably was still doing it—in Flanders. Both deserved well of their country and their consciences. She was giving a poor lonely paralytic, who had given his legs years ago to the aforesaid country, a delightful evening. ... No, I'm quite sure such a patronising thought never entered my Betty's head. After all, my upper half is sound, and I can talk sense or nonsense with anybody. What have one's legs to do with a pleasant after-dinner conversation? Years ago I swore a great oath that I would see them damned before they got in the way of my intelligence.
We were getting on famously. We had put both war and Wellingsford behind us, and talked of books. I found to my dismay that this fair and fearless high product of modernity had far less acquaintance with Matthew Arnold than with the Evangelist of the same praenomen. She had never heard of "The Forsaken Merman," one of the most haunting romantic poems in the English language. I pointed to a bookcase and bade her fetch the volume. She brought it and settled down again by my chair, and, as a punishment of ignorance, and for the good of her soul, I began to read aloud. She is an impressionable young person and yet one of remarkable candour. If she had not been held by the sea-music of the poem, she would not have kept her deep, steady brown eyes fixed on me. I have no hesitation in repeating that we were getting on famously and enjoying ourselves immensely. I got nearly to the end:
"... Here came a mortal, But faithless was she, And alone dwell forever The Kings of the sea. But, children at midnight—"
The door opened wide. Topping his long stiff body, Marigold's ugly one-eyed head appeared, and, as if he was tremendously proud of himself, he announced:
"Major Boyce."
Boyce strode quickly past him and, suddenly aware of Betty by my side, stopped short, like a private suddenly summoned to attention. Marigold, unconscious of the blackest curses that had ever fallen upon him during his long and blundering life, made a perfect and self-satisfied exit. Betty sprang to her feet, held her tall figure very erect, and faced the untimely visitor, her cheeks flushing deep red. For an appreciable time, say, thirty seconds, Boyce stood stock still, looking at her from under heavy contracted brows. Then he recovered himself, smiled, and advanced to her with outstretched hand, But, on his movement, she had been quick to turn and bend down in order to pick up the book that had fallen from my fingers on the further side of my chair. So, swiftly he wheeled to me with his handshake. It was very deft manoeuvring on both sides.
"The faithful Marigold didn't tell me that you weren't alone, Meredyth," he said in his cordial, charming way. "Otherwise I shouldn't have intruded. But my dear old mother had an attack of something and went to bed immediately after dinner, and I thought I'd come round and have a smoke and a drink in your company."
Betty, who had occupied herself by replacing Matthew Arnold's poems in the bookcase, caught up the box of cigars that lay on the brass tray table by my side, and offered it to him.
"Here is the smoke," she said.
And when, after a swift, covert glance at her, he had selected a cigar, she went to the bell-push by the mantelpiece.
"The drinks will be here in a minute."
In order to do something to save this absurd situation, I drew from my waistcoat pocket a little cigar-cutter attached to my watch-chain, and clipped the end of his cigar. I also lit a match from my box and handed it up to him. When he had finished with the match he threw it into the fireplace and turned to Betty.
"My congratulations are a bit late, but I hope I may offer them."
She said, "Thank you." Waved a hand. "Won't you sit down?"
"Wasn't it rather sudden?" he asked.
"Everything in war time is sudden—except the action of the British Government. Your own appearance to-night is sudden."
He laughed at her jest and explained, much as he had done to me, his reasons for wishing to keep his visit to Wellingsford a secret. Meanwhile Marigold had brought in decanters and syphons. Betty attended to Boyce's needs with a provoking air of nonchalance. If a notorious German imbrued in the blood of babes had chanced to be in her hospital, she would have given him his medicine with just the same air. Although no one could have specified a lack of courtesy towards a guest—for in my house she played hostess—there was an indefinable touch of cold contumely in her attitude. Whether he felt the hostility as acutely as I did, I cannot say; but he carried it off with a swaggering grace. He bowed to her over his glass.
"Here's to the fortunate and gallant fellow over there."
I saw her knuckles whiten as, with an inclination of the head, she acknowledged the toast.
"By the way," said he, "what's his regiment? My good mother told me his name. Captain Connor, isn't it? But for the rest she is vague. She's the vaguest old dear in the world. I found out to-day that she thought there was a long row of cannons, hundreds of them, all in a line, in front of the English Army, and a long row in front of the German Army, and, when there was a battle, that they all blazed away. So when I asked her whether your husband was in the Life Guards or the Army Service Corps, she said cheerfully that it was either one or the other but she wasn't quite sure. So do give me some reliable information."
"My husband is in the 10th Wessex Fusiliers, a Territorial battalion," she replied coldly.
"I hope some day to have the pleasure of making his acquaintance."
"Stranger things have happened," said Betty. She glanced at the clock and rose abruptly. "It's time I was getting back to the hospital."
Boyce rose too. "How are you going?" he asked.
"I'm walking."
He advanced a step towards her. "Won't you let me run you round in the car?"
"I prefer to walk."
Her tone was final. She took affectionate leave of me and went to the door, which Boyce held open.
"Good-night," she said, without proffering her hand.
He followed her out into the hall.
"Betty," he said in a low voice, "won't you ever forgive me?"
"I have no feelings towards you either of forgiveness or resentment," she replied.
They did not mean to be overheard, but my hearing is unusually acute, and I could not help catching their conversation.
"I know I seem to have behaved badly to you."
"You have behaved worse to others," said Betty. "I don't wonder at your shrinking from showing your face here." Then, louder, for my benefit. "Good-night, Major Boyce. I really can walk up to the hospital by myself."
Evidently she walked away and Boyce after her, for I heard him say:
"You shan't go till you've told me what you mean."
What she replied I don't know. To judge by the slam of the front door it must have been something defiant. Presently he entered debonair, with a smile on his lips.
"I'm afraid I've left you in a draught," he said, shutting the door. "I couldn't resist having a word with her and wishing her happiness and the rest of it. We were engaged once upon a time."
"I know," said I.
"I hope you don't think I did wrong in releasing her from the engagement. I don't consider a man has a right to go on active service—especially on such service as the present war—and keep a girl bound at home. Still less has he a right to marry her. What happens in so many cases? A fortnight's married life. The man goes to the front. Then ping! or whizz-bang! and that's the end of him, and so the girl is left."
"On the other hand," said I, "you must remember that the girl may hold very strong opinions and take pings and whizz-bangs very deliberately into account."
Boyce helped himself to another whisky and soda. "It's a matter for the individual conscience. I decided one way. Connor obviously decided another, and, like a lucky fellow, found Betty of his way of thinking. Perhaps I have old-fashioned notions." He took a long pull at his drink. "Well, it can't be helped," he said with a smile. "The other fellow has won, and I must take it gracefully. ... By George! wasn't she looking stunning to-night—in that kit? ... I hope you didn't mind my bursting in on you—"
"Of course not," said I, politely.
He drained his glass. "The fact is," said he, "this war is a nerve-racking business. I never dreamed I was so jumpy until I came home. I hate being by myself. I've kept my poor devoted mother up till one o'clock in the morning. To-night she struck, small blame to her; but, after five minutes on my lones, I felt as if I should go off my head. So I routed out the car and came along. But of course I didn't expect to see Betty. The sight of Betty in the flesh as a married woman nearly bowled me over. May I help myself again?" He poured out a very much stiffer drink than before, and poured half of it down his throat. "It's not a joyous thing to see the woman one has been crazy over the wife of another fellow."
"I suppose it isn't," said I.
Of course I might have made some subtle and cunning remark, suavely put a leading question which would have led him on, in his unbalanced mood, to confidential revelations. But the man was a distinguished soldier and my guest. To what he chose to tell me voluntarily I could listen. I could do no more. He did not reply to my last unimportant remark, but lay back in his armchair watching the blue spirals of smoke from the end of his cigar. There was a fairly long silence.
I was worried by the talk I had overheard through the open door. "You have behaved worse to others. I don't wonder at your shrinking from showing your face here." Betty had, weeks ago, called him a devil. She had treated him to-night in a manner which, if not justified, was abominable. I was forced to the conclusion that Betty was fully aware of some discreditable chapter in the man's life which had nothing to do with the affair at Vilboek's Farm, which, indeed, had to do with another woman and this humdrum little town of Wellingsford. Otherwise why did she taunt him with hiding from the light of Wellingsfordian day?
Now, please don't think me little-minded. Or, if you do think so, please remember the conditions under which I have lived for so many years and grant me your kind indulgence for a confession I have to make. Besides being worried, I felt annoyed. Wellingsford was my little world. I knew everybody in it. I had grown to regard myself as the repository of all its gossip. The fraction of it that I retailed was a matter of calculated discretion. I made a little hobby—it was a foible, a vanity, what you will—of my omniscience. I knew months ahead the dates of the arrivals of young Wellingsfordians in this world of pain and plenitude. I knew of maidens who were wronged and youths who were jilted; of wives who led their husbands a deuce of a dance, and of wives who kept their husbands out of the bankruptcy court. When young Trexham, the son of the Lord Lieutenant of the county, married a minor light of musical comedy at a registrar's office, I was the first person in the place to be told; and I flatter myself that I was instrumental in inducing a pig-headed old idiot to receive an exceedingly charming daughter-in-law. I loved to look upon Wellingsford as an open book. Can you blame me for my resentment at coming across, so to speak, a couple of pages glued together? The only logical inference from Betty's remark was that Boyce had behaved abominably and even notoriously to a woman in Wellingsford. To do him justice, I declare I had never heard his name associated with any woman or girl in the place save Betty herself. I felt that, in some crooked fashion, or the other, I had been done out of my rights.
And there, placidly smoking his cigar and watching the wreaths of blue smoke with the air of an idle seraph contemplating a wisp of cirrus in Heaven's firmament, sat the man who could have given me the word of the enigma.
He broke the silence by saying:
"Have you ever seriously considered the real problems of the Balkans?"
Now what on earth had the Balkans to do with the thoughts that must have been rolling at the back of the man's mind? I was both disappointed and relieved. I expected him to resume the personal talk, and I dreaded lest he should entrust me with embarrassing confidences. After three strong whiskies and sodas a man is apt to relax hold of his discretion.... Anyhow, he jerked me back to my position of host. I made some sort of polite reply. He smiled.
"You, my dear Meredyth, like the rest of the country, are half asleep. In a few months' time you'll get the awakening of your life."
He began to discourse on the diplomatic situation. Months afterwards I remembered what he had said that night and how accurate had been his forecast. He talked brilliantly for over an hour, during which, keenly interested in his arguments, I lost the puzzle of the man in admiration of the fine soldier and clear and daring thinker. It was only when he had gone that I began to worry again.
And before I went to sleep I had fresh cause for anxious speculation.
"Marigold," said I, when he came in as usual to carry me to bed, "didn't I tell you that Major Boyce particularly wanted no one to know that he was in the town?"
"Yes, sir," said Marigold. "I've told nobody."
"And yet you showed him in without informing him that Mrs. Connor was here. Really you ought to have had more tact."
Marigold received his reprimand with the stolidity of the old soldier. I have known men who have been informed that they would be court-martialled and most certainly shot, make the same reply.
"Very good, sir," said he.
I softened. I was not Marigold's commanding officer, but his very grateful friend. "You see," said I, "they were engaged before Mrs. Connor married—I needn't tell you that; it was common knowledge—and so their sudden meeting was awkward."
"Mrs. Marigold has already explained, sir," said he.
I chuckled inwardly all the way to my bedroom.
"All the same, sir," said he, aiding me in my toilet, which he did with stiff military precision, "I don't think the Major is as incognighto" (the spelling is phonetic) "as he would like. Prettilove was shaving me this morning and told me the Major was here. As I considered it my duty, I told him he was a liar, and he was so upset that he nicked my Adam's apple and I was that covered with blood that I accused him of trying to cut my throat, and I went out and finished shaving myself at home, which is unsatisfactory when you only have a thumb on your right hand to work the razor."
I laughed, picturing the scene. Prettilove is an inoffensive little rabbit of a man. Marigold might sit for the model of a war-scarred mercenary of the middle ages, and when he called a man a liar he did it with accentuaton and vehemence. No wonder Prettilove jumped.
"And then again this evening, sir," continued Marigold, slipping me into my pyjama jacket, "as I was starting the Major's car, who should be waiting there for him but Mr. Gedge."
"Gedge?" I cried.
"Yes, sir. Waiting by the side of the car. 'Can I have a word with you, Major Boyce?' says he. 'No, you can't,' says the Major. 'I think it's advisable,' says he. 'Those repairs are very pressing.' 'All right,' says the Major, 'jump in.' Then he says: 'That'll do, Marigold. Good-night.' And he drives off with Mr. Gedge. Well, if Mr. Gedge and Prettilove know he's here, then everyone knows it."
"Was Gedge inside the drive?" I asked. The drive was a small semicircular sort of affair, between gate and gate.
"He was standing by the car waiting," said Marigold. "Now, sir." He lifted me with his usual cast-iron tenderness into bed and pulled the coverings over me. "It's a funny time to talk about house repairs at eleven o'clock, at night," he remarked.
"Nothing is funny in war-time," said I.
"Either nothing or everything," said Marigold. He fussed methodically about the room, picked up an armful of clothes, and paused by the door, his hand on the switch.
"Anything more, sir?"
"Nothing, thank you, Marigold."
"Good-night, sir."
The room was in darkness. Marigold shut the door. I was alone.
What the deuce was the meaning of this waylaying of Boyce by Daniel Gedge?