And Betty, on the floor by my side, gave way.

The proud will bent. She surrendered herself to a paroxysm of sorrow.

She was not in a fit state to return to the hospital, where, I learned, she shared a bedroom with Phyllis Gedge. I shrank from sending her home to the tactless comforting of her aunts. They were excellent, God-fearing ladies, but they had never understood Betty. All her life they had worried her with genteel admonitions. They had regarded her marriage with disfavour, as an act of foolhardiness—I even think they looked on her attitude as unmaidenly; and now in her frozen widowhood they fretted her past endurance. On the night when the news came they sent for the vicar of their parish—not my good friend who christened Hosea—a very worthy, very serious, very evangelistically religious fellow, to administer spiritual consolation. If Betty had sat devoutly under him on Sundays, there might have been some reason in the summons. But Betty, holding her own religious views, had only once been inside the church—on the occasion of her wedding—and had but the most formal acquaintance with the good man.... No, I could not send Betty home, unexpectedly, to have her wounds mauled about by unskilful fingers. Nothing remained but to telephone to the hospital and put her in Mrs. Marigold's charge for the night. So broken was my dear Betty, that she allowed herself to be carried off without a word.... Once before, years ago, she had behaved with the same piteous docility; and that was when, a short-frocked hoiden, she had fallen from an apple tree and badly hurt herself, and Marigold had carried her into the house and Mrs. Marigold had put her to bed....

In the morning I found her calm and sedate at the breakfast table.

"You've been and gone and done for both of us, Majy dear," she remarked, pouring out tea.

"What do you mean?"

"Our reputations. What a scandal in Wellingsford!"

She looked me clearly in the eyes and smiled, and her hand did not shake as she held my cup. And by these signs I knew that she had taken herself again in grip and forbade reference to the agony through which she had passed.

Quickly she turned the conversation to the Tuftons. What had happened? I told her meagrely. She insisted on fuller details. So, flogged by her, I related what I had gleaned from Marigold's wooden reports. He always conveyed personal information as though he were giving evidence against a defaulter. I had to start all over again. Apparently this had happened: Mrs. Tufton had arrayed herself, not in sackcloth and ashes, for that was apparently her normal attire, but in an equivalent, as far as a symbol of humility was concerned; namely, in decent raiment, and had sought her husband's forgiveness. There had been a touching scene in the scullery which Mrs. Marigold had given up to them for the sake of privacy, in which the lady had made tearful promises of reform and the corporal had magnanimously passed the sponge over the terrible reckoning on her slate. Would he then go home to his penitent wife? But the gallant fellow, with the sturdy common-sense for which the British soldier is renowned, contrasted the clover in which he was living here with the aridness of Flowery End, and declined to budge. High sentiment was one thing, snug lying was another. Next time he came back, if she had re-established the home in its former comfort, he didn't say as how he wouldn't—

"But," she cried—and this bit I didn't tell Betty—"the next time you may come home dead!"

"Then," replied Tufton, "let me see what a nice respectable coffin, with brass handles and lots of slap-up brass nails and a brass plate, you can get ready for me."

Since the first interview, I informed Betty, there had been others daily—most decorous. They were excellent friends. Neither seemed to perceive anything absurd in the situation. Even Marigold looked on it as a matter of course.

"I have an idea," said Betty. "You know we want some help in the servant staff of the hospital?"

I did. The matron had informed the Committee, who had empowered her to act.

"Why not let me tackle Mrs. Tufton while she is in this beautifully chastened and devotional mood? In this way we can get her out of the mills, out of Flowery End, fill her up with noble and patriotic emotions instead of whisky, and when Tufton returns, present her to him as a model wife, sanctified by suffering and ennobled by the consciousness of duty done. It would be splendid!"

For the first time since the black day there came a gleam of fun into Betty's eyes and a touch of colour into her cheeks.

"It would indeed," said I. "The only question is whether Tufton would really like this Red Cross Saint you'll have provided for him."

"In case he does not," said Betty, "you can provide him with a refuge as you are doing now."

She rose from the table, announcing her intention of going straight to the hospital. I realised with a pang that breakfast was over; that I had enjoyed a delectable meal; that, by some sort of dainty miracle, she had bemused me into eating and drinking twice my ordinary ration; that she had inveigled me into talking—a thing I have never done during breakfast for years—it is as much as Marigold's ugly head is worth to address a remark to me during the unsympathetic duty—why, if my poached egg regards me with too aggressive a pinkiness, I want to slap it—and into talking about those confounded Tuftons with a gusto only provoked by a glass or two of impeccable port after a good dinner. One would have thought, considering the anguished scene of the night before, that it would have been one of the most miserably impossible tete-a-tete breakfasts in the whole range of such notoriously ghastly meals. But here was Betty, serene and smiling, as though she had been accustomed to breakfast with me every morning of her life, off to the hospital, with a hard little idea in her humorous head concerning Mrs. Tufton's conversion.

The only sign she gave of last night's storm was when, by way of good-bye, she bent down and kissed my cheek.

"You know," she said, "I love you too much to thank you."

And she went off with her brave little head in the air.

In the afternoon I went to Wellings Park. Sir Anthony was away, but Lady Fenimore was in. She showed me a letter she had received from Betty in reply to her letter of condolence:

"My dears,

"It is good to realise one has such rocks to lean on. You long to help and comfort me. Well, I'll tell you how to do it. You just forget. Leave it to me to do all the remembering.

"Yours, Betty."



CHAPTER XIV

On the first of July there was forwarded to me from the club a letter in an unknown handwriting. I had to turn to the signature to discover the identity of my correspondent. It was Reggie Dacre, Colonel Dacre, whom I had met in London a couple of months before. As it tells its own little story, I transcribe it.

"Dear Major Meredyth:

"I should like to confirm by the following anecdote, which is going the round of the Brigade, what I recently told you about our friend Boyce. I shouldn't worry you, but I feel that if one has cast an unjustifiable slur on a brother-officer's honour—and I can't tell you how the thing has lain on my conscience—one shouldn't leave a stone unturned to rehabilitate him, even in the eyes of one person.

"There has been a good deal of scrapping around Ypres lately—that given away by the communiques; but for reasons which both the Censor and yourself will appreciate, I can't be more explicit as to locality. Enough to say that somewhere in this region—or sector, as we call it nowadays—there was a certain bit of ground that had been taken and retaken over and over again. B.'s Regiment was in this fighting, and at one particular time we were holding a German front trench section. A short distance further on the enemy held a little farm building, forming a sort of redoubt. They sniped all day long. They also had a machine gun. I can't give you accurate details, for I can only tell you what I've heard; but the essentials are true. Well, we got that farmhouse. We got it single-handed. Boyce put up the most amazing bluff that has ever happened in this war. He crawls out by himself, without anybody knowing—it was a pitch-black night—gets through the barbed wire, heaven knows how, up to the house; lays a sentry out with his life-preserver; gives a few commands to an imaginary company; and summons the occupants—two officers and fifteen men—to surrender. Thinking they are surrounded, they obey like lambs, come out unarmed, with their hands up, officers and all, and are comfortably marched off in the dark, as prisoners into our trenches. They say that when the German officers discovered how they had been done, they foamed so hard that we had to use empty sandbags as strait waistcoats.

"Now, it's picturesque, of course, and being picturesque, it has flown from mouth to mouth. But it's true. Verb. sap.

"Hoping some time or other to see you again,

"Yours sincerely, "R. DACRE, "Lt. Col."

I quote this letter here for the sake of chronological sequence. It gave me a curious bit of news. No man could have performed such a feat without a cold brain, soundly beating heart, and nerves of steel. It was not an act of red-hot heroism. It was done in cold blood, a deliberate gamble with death on a thousand to one chance. It was staggeringly brave.

I told the story to Mrs. Boyce. Her comment was characteristic:

"But surely they would have to surrender if called upon by a British Officer."

To the Day of Judgment I don't think she will understand what Leonard did. Leonard himself, coming home slightly wounded two or three weeks afterwards, pooh-poohed the story as one of no account and only further confused the dear lady's ill-conceived notions.

In the meanwhile life at Wellingsford flowed uneventfully. Now and again a regiment or a brigade, having finished its training, disappeared in a night, and the next day fresh troops arrived to fill its place. And this great, silent movement of men went on all over the country. Sometimes our hearts sank. A reserve Howitzer Territorial Brigade turned up in Wellings Park with dummy wooden guns. The officers told us that they had been expecting proper guns daily for the past two months. Marigold shook a sad head. But all things, even six-inch howitzers, come to him who waits.

Little more was heard of Randall Holmes. He corresponded with his mother through a firm of London solicitors, and his address and his doings remained a mystery. He was alive, he professed robust health, and in reply to Mrs. Holmes's frantically expressed hope that he was adopting no course that might discredit his father's name, he twitted her with intellectual volte-face to the views of Philistia, but at the same time assured her that he was doing nothing which the most self-righteous bourgeois would consider discreditable.

"But it IS discreditable for him to go away like this and not let his own mother know where he is," cried the poor woman.

And of course I agreed with her. I find it best always to agree with mothers; also with wives.

After her own lapse from what Mrs. Boyce would have called "Spartianism," Betty kept up her brave face. When Willie Connor's kit came home she told me tearlessly about the heartrending consignment. Now and then she spoke of him—with a proud look in her eyes. She was one of the women of England who had the privilege of being the wife of a hero. In this world one must pay for everything worth having. Her widowhood was the price. All the tears of a lifetime could not bring him back. All the storms of fate could not destroy the glory of those few wonderful months. He was laughing, so she heard, when he met his death. So would she, in honour of him, go on laughing till she met hers.

"And that silly little fool, Phyllis, is still crying her eyes out over Randall," she said. "Don't I think she was wrong in sending him away? If she had married him she might have influenced him, made him get a commission in the army. I've threatened to beat her if she talks such nonsense. Why can't people take a line and stick to it?"

"This isn't a world of Bettys, my dear," said I.

"Rubbish! The outrageous Mrs. Tufton's doing it."

Apparently she was. She followed Betty about as the lamb followed Mary. Tufton, after a week or two at Wellington Barracks, had been given sergeant's stripes and sent off with a draft to the front. Betty's dramatic announcement of her widowhood seemed to have put the fear of death into the woman's soul. As soon as her husband landed in France she went scrupulously through the closely printed casualty lists of non-commissioned officers and men in The Daily Mail, in awful dread lest she should see her husband's name. Betty vainly assured her that, in the first place, she would hear from the War Office weeks before anything could appear in the papers, and that, in the second, his name would occur under the heading "Grenadier Guards," and not under "Royal Field Artillery," "Royal Engineers," "Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry," "R.A.M.C.," or Australian and Canadian contingents. Mrs. Tufton went through the lot from start to finish. Once, indeed, she came across the name, in big print, and made a bee-line through the wards for Betty—an offence for which the Matron nearly threw her, there and then, into the street. It was that of the gallant Colonel of a New Zealand Regiment at Gallipoli. Betty had to point to the brief biographical note to prove to the distracted woman that the late Colonel Tufton of New Zealand could not be identical with Sergeant Tufton of the Grenadiers. She regarded Mrs. Tufton as a brand she had plucked from the burning and took a great deal of trouble with her. On the other hand, I imagine Mrs. Tufton looked upon herself as a very important person, a sergeant's wife, and the confidential intimate of a leading sister at the Wellingsford Hospital. In fact, Marigold mentioned her notorious vanity.

"What does it matter," cried Betty, when I put this view before her, "how swelled her head may be, so long as it isn't swollen with drink?"

And I could find no adequate reply.

Towards the end of the month comes Boyce to Wellingsford, this time not secretly; for the day after his arrival he drove his mother through the town and incidentally called on me. A neglected bullet graze on the neck had turned septic. An ugly temperature had sent him to hospital. The authorities, as soon as the fever had abated and left him on the high road to recovery, had sent him home. A khaki bandage around his bull-throat alone betokened anything amiss. He would be back, he said, as soon as the Medical Board at the War Office would let him.

On this occasion, for the first time since South African days, I met him without any mistrust. What had passed between Betty and himself, I did not know. Relations between man and woman are so subtle and complicated, that unless you have the full pleadings on both sides in front of you, you cannot arbitrate; and, as often as not, if you deliver the most soul-satisfying of judgments, you are hopelessly wrong, because there are all important, elusive factors of personality, temperament, sex, and what not which all the legal acumen in the world could not set down in black and white. So half unconsciously I ruled out Betty from my contemplation of the man. I had been obsessed by the Vilboek Farm story, and by that alone. Reggie Dacre—to say nothing of personages in high command—had proved it to be a horrible lie. He had Marshal Ney's deserved reputation—le brave des braves—and there is no more coldly critical conferrer of such repute than the British Army in the field. To win it a man not only has to do something heroic once or twice—that is what he is there for—but he has to be doing it all the time. Boyce had piled up for himself an amazing record, one that overwhelmed the possibility of truth in old slanders. When I gripped him by the hand, I felt immeasurable relief at being able to do so without the old haunting suspicion and reservation.

He spoke, like thousands of others of his type—the type of the fine professional English soldier—with diffident modesty of such personal experiences as he deigned to recount. The anecdotes mostly had a humorous side, and were evoked by allusion. Like all of us stay-at-homes, I cursed the censorship for leaving us so much in the dark. He laughed and cursed the censorship for the opposite reason.

"The damned fools—I beg your pardon, Mother, but when a fool is too big a fool even for this world, he must be damned—the damned fools allow all sorts of things to be given away. They were nearly the death of me and were the death of half a dozen of my men."

And he told the story. In a deserted brewery behind the lines the vats were fitted up as baths for men from the trenches, and the furnaces heated ovens in which horrible clothing was baked. This brewery had been immune from attack until an officially sanctioned newspaper article specified its exact position. A few days after the article appeared, in fact, as soon as a copy of the paper reached Germany, a thunderstorm of shells broke on the brewery. Out of it poured a helter-skelter stream of stark-naked men, who ran wherever they could for cover. From one point of view it was vastly comic. In the meanwhile the building containing all their clothes, and all the spare clothing for a brigade, was being scientifically destroyed. That was more comic still. The bather cut off from his garments is a world-wide joke. The German battery, having got the exact range, were having a systematic, Teutonic afternoon's enjoyment. But from another point of view the situation was desperate. There were these poor fellows, hordes of them, in nature's inadequate protection against the weather, shivering in the cold, with the nearest spare rag of clothing some miles away. Boyce got them together, paraded them instantly under the shell fire, and led them at a rush into the blazing building to salve stores. Six never came out alive. Many were burned and wounded. But it had to be done, or the whole crowd would have perished from exposure. Tommy is fairly tough; but he cannot live mother-naked through a March night of driving sleet.

"No," said Boyce, "if you suffered daily from the low cunning of Brother Bosch, you wouldn't cry for things to be published in the newspapers."

At the end of their visit I accompanied my guests to the hall. Marigold escorted Mrs. Boyce to the car. Leonard picked up his cap and cane and turned to shake hands. I noticed that the knob of the cane was neatly cased in wash-leather. Idly I enquired the reason. He smiled grimly as he slipped off the cover and exposed the polished deep vermilion butt of the life-preserver which Reggie Dacre had described.

"It's a sort of fetish I feel I must carry around with me," he explained. "When I've got it in my hand, I don't seem to care a damn what I do. When I haven't, I miss it. Remember the story of Sir Walter Scott's boy with the butter? Something like that, you know. But in its bare state it's not a pretty sight for the mother."

"It ought to have a name," said I. "The poilu calls his bayonet Rosalie."

He looked at it darkly for a moment, before refitting the wash-leather.

"I might call it The Reminder," said he. "Good-bye." And he turned quickly and strode out of the door.

The Reminder of what? He puzzled me. Why, in spite of all my open-heartedness, did he still contrive to leave me with a sense of the enigmatic?

Although he showed himself openly about the town, he held himself aloof from social intercourse with the inhabitants. He called, I know, on Mrs. Holmes, and on one or two others who have no place in this chronicle. But he refused all proposals of entertainment, notably an invitation to dinner from the Fenimores. Sir Anthony met him in the street, upbraided him in his genial manner for neglect of his old friends, and pressingly asked him to dine at Wellings Park. Just a few old friends. The duties of a distinguished soldier, said he, did not begin and end on the field. He must uplift the hearts of those who had to stay at home. Sir Anthony had a nervous trick of rattling off many sentences before his interlocutor could get in a word. When he had finished, Boyce politely declined the invitation.

"And with a damned chilly, stand-offish politeness," cried Sir Anthony furiously, when telling me about it. "Just as if I had been Perkins, the fish-monger, asking him to meet the Prettiloves at high tea. It's swelled head, my dear chap; that's what it is. Just swelled head. None of us are good enough for him and his laurels. He's going to remain the modest mossy violet of a hero blushing unseen. Oh, damn the fellow!"

I did my best to soothe my touchy and choleric friend. No soldier, said I, likes to be made a show of. Why had he suggested a dinner party? A few friends. Anyone in Boyce's position knew what that meant. It meant about thirty gawking, gaping people for whom he didn't care a hang. Why hadn't Anthony asked the Boyces to dine quietly with Edith and himself—with me thrown in, for instance, if they wanted exotic assistance? Let me try, I said, to fix matters up.

So the next day I called on Boyce and told him, with such tact as I have at command, of Sir Anthony's wounded feelings.

"My dear Meredyth," said he. "I can only say to you what I tried to explain to the irascible little man. If I accepted one invitation, I should have to accept all invitations or give terrible offence all over the place. I'm here a sick man and my mother's an invalid. And I merely want to be saved from my friends and have a quiet time with the old lady. Of course if Sir Anthony is offended, I'm only too sorry, and I beg you to assure him that I never intended the slightest discourtesy. The mere idea of it distresses me."

The explanation was reasonable, the apology frank. Sir Anthony received them both grumpily. He had his foibles. He set his invitations to dinner in a separate category from those of the rag-tag and bobtail of Wellingsford society. So for the sake of principle he continued to damn the fellow.

On the other hand, for the sake of principle, reparation for injustice, I continued to like the fellow and found pleasure in his company. For one thing, I hankered after the smoke and smell and din of the front, and Boyce succeeded more than anyone else in satisfying my appetite. While he talked, as he did freely with me alone, I got near to the grim essence of things. Also, with the aid of rough military maps, he made actions and strategical movements of which newspaper accounts had given me but a confused notion, as clear as if I had been a chief of staff. Often he went to considerable trouble in obtaining special information. He appeared to set himself out to win my esteem. Now a cripple is very sensitive to kindness. I could not reject his overtures. What interested motive could he have in seeking out a useless hulk like me? On the first opportunity I told Betty of the new friendship, having a twinge or two of conscience lest it might appear to her disloyal.

"But why in the world shouldn't you see him, dear?" she said, open-eyed. "He brings the breath of battle to you and gives you fresh life. You're looking ever so much better the last few days. The only thing is," she added, turning her head away, "that I don't want to run the risk of meeting him again."

Naturally I took precautions against such an occurrence. The circumstances of their last meeting at my house lingered unpleasantly in my mind. Perhaps, for Betty's sake, I ought to have turned a cold shoulder on Boyce. But when you have done a man a foul injustice for years, you must make him some kind of secret reparation. So, by making him welcome, I did what I could.

Now I don't know whether I ought to set down a trivial incident mentioned in my diary under the date of the 15th August, the day before Boyce left Wellingsford to join his regiment in France. In writing an account of other people's lives it is difficult to know what to put in and what to leave out. If you bring in your own predilections or prejudices or speculations concerning them, you must convey a distorted impression. You lie about them unconsciously. A fact is a fact, and, if it is important, ought to be recorded. But when you are not sure whether it is a fact or not, what are you to do?

Perhaps I had better narrate what happened and tell you afterwards why I hesitate.

Marigold had driven me over to Godbury, where I had business connected with a County Territorial Association, and we were returning home. It was a moist, horrible, depressing August day. A slimy, sticky day. Clouds hung low over the reeking earth. The honest rain had ceased, but wet drops dribbled from the leaves of the trees and the branches and trunks exuded moisture. The thatched roofs of cottages were dank. In front gardens roses and hollyhocks drooped sodden. The very droves of steers coming from market sweated in the muggy air. The good slush of the once dusty road, broken to bits by military traffic, had stiffened into black grease. Round a bend of the road we skidded alarmingly. Marigold has a theory that in summer time a shirt next the skin is the only wear for humans and square-tread tyres the only wear for motor-cars. With some acerbity I pointed out the futility of his proposition. With the blandness of superior wisdom he assured me that we were perfectly safe. You can't knock into the head of an artilleryman who has been trained to hang on to a limber by the friction of his trousers, that there can be any danger in the luxurious seat of a motor-car.

There is a good straight half mile of the Godbury Road which is known in the locality as "The Gut." It is sunken and very narrow, being flanked on one side by the railway embankment, and on the other by the grounds of Godbury Chase. A most desolate bit of road, half overhung by trees and oozing with all the moisture of the country-side. On this day it was the wettest, slimiest bit of road in England. We had almost reached the end of it, when it entered the head of a stray puppy dog to pause in the act of crossing and sit down in the middle and hunt for fleas. To spare the abominable mongrel, Marigold made a sudden swerve. Of course the car skidded. It skidded all over the place, as if it were drunk, and, aided by Marigold, described a series of ghastly half-circles. At last he performed various convulsive feats of jugglery, with the result that the car, which was nosing steadily for the ditch, came to a stand-still. Then Marigold informed me in unemotional tones that the steering gear had gone.

"It's all the fault of that there dog," said he, twisting his head so as to glare at the little beast, who, after a yelp and a bound, had calmly recaptured his position and resumed his interrupted occupation.

"It's all the fault of that there Marigold," I retorted, "who can't see the sense of using studded tyres on a greasy surface. What's to be done now?"

Marigold thrust his hand beneath his wig and scratched his head. He didn't exactly know. He got out and stared intently at the car. If mind could have triumphed over matter, the steering gear would have become disfractured. But the good Marigold's mind was not powerful enough. He gave up the contest and looked at me and the situation. There we were, broadside on to the narrow road, and only manhandling could bring us round to a position of safety by the side. He was for trying it there and then; but I objected, having no desire to be slithered into the ditch.

"I would just as soon," said I, "ride a giraffe shod with roller skates."

He didn't even smile. He turned his one reproachful eye on me. What was to be done? I told him. We must wait for assistance. When I had been transferred into the vehicle of a passing Samaritan, it was time enough for the manhandling.

Fate brought the Samaritan very quickly. A car coming from Godbury tooted violently, then slowed down, stopped, and from it jumped Leonard Boyce. As he was to rescue me from a position of peculiar helplessness, I regarded his great khaki-clad figure as that of a ministering angel. I beamed on him.

"Hallo! What's the matter?" he asked cheerily.

I explained. Being merciful, I spared Marigold and threw the blame on the dog and on the County Council for allowing the roads to get into such a filthy condition.

"That's all right," said Boyce. "We'll soon fix you up. First we'll get you into my car. Then Marigold and I will slue this one round, and then we'll send him a tow."

Marigold nodded and approached to lift me out.

Then, what happened next, happened in the flash of a few breathless seconds. There was the dull thud of hoofs. A scared bay thoroughbred, coming from Godbury, galloping hell for leather, with a dishevelled boy in khaki on his back. The boy had lost his stirrups; he had lost his reins; he had lost his head. He hung half over the saddle and had a death grip on the horse's mane. And the uncontrolled brute was thundering down on us. There was my infernal car barring the narrow road. I remember bracing myself to meet the shock. An end, thought I, of Duncan Meredyth. I saw Boyce leap aside like a flash and appear to stand stock-still. The next second I saw Marigold semaphore a few yards in front of the car and then swing sickeningly at the horse's bit; and then the whole lot of them, Marigold, horse and rider, come down in a convulsive heap on the greasy road. To my intense relief I saw Marigold pick himself up and go to the head of the plunging, prostrate horse. In a moment or two he had got the beast on his feet, where he stood quivering. It was a fine, smart piece of work on the part of the old artilleryman. I was so intent on his danger that I forgot all about Boyce: but as soon as the three crashed down, I saw him run to assist the young subaltern who had rolled himself clear.

"By Jove, that was a narrow shave!" he cried cordially, giving him a hand.

"It was indeed, sir," said the young man, scraping the mud off his face. "That's the second time the brute has done it. He shies and bucks and kicks like a regular devil. This time he shied at a steam lorry and bucked my feet out of the stirrups. Everybody in the squadron has turned him down, and I'm the junior, I've had to take him." He eyed the animal resentfully. "I'd just like to get him on some grass and knock hell out of him!"

"I'm glad to see you're not hurt," said Boyce with a smile.

"Oh, not a bit, sir," said the boy. He turned to Marigold. "I don't know how to thank you. It was a jolly plucky thing to do. You've saved my life and that of the gentleman in the car. If we had busted into it, there would have been pie." He came to the side of the car. "I think you're Major Meredyth, sir. I must have given you an awful fright. I'm so sorry. My name is Brown. I'm in the South Scottish Horse."

He had a courteous charm of manner in spite of his boyish desire to appear unshaken by the accident. A little bravado is an excellent thing. I laughed and held out my hand.

"I'm glad to meet you—although our meeting might have been contrived less precipitously. This is Sergeant Marigold, late R.F.A., who does me the honour of looking after me. And this is Major Boyce."

Observe the little devil of malice that made me put Marigold first.

"Of the Rifles?"

A quick gleam of admiration showed in the boy's eyes as he saluted. No soldier could be stationed at Wellingsford without hearing of the hero of the neighbourhood. A great hay waggon came lumbering down the road and pulled up, there being no room for it to pass. This put an end to social amenities. Brown mounted his detested charger and trotted off. Marigold transferred me to Boyce's car. Several pairs of brawny arms righted the two-seater and Boyce and I drove off, leaving Marigold waiting with his usual stony patience for the promised tow. On the way Boyce talked gaily of Marigold's gallantry, of the boy's spirit, of the idiotic way in which impossible horses were being foisted on newly formed cavalry units. When we drew up at my front door, it occurred to me that there was no Marigold in attendance.

"How the deuce," said I, "am I going to get out?"

Boyce laughed. "I don't think I'll drop you."

His great arms picked me up with ease. But while he was carrying me I experienced a singular physical revolt. I loathed his grip. I loathed the enforced personal contact. Even after he had deposited me—very skilfully and gently—in my wheel-chair in the hall, I hated the lingering sense of his touch. He owed his whisky and soda to the most elementary instinct of hospitality. Besides, he was off the next day, back to the trenches and the hell of battle, and I had to bid him good-bye and God-speed. But when he went, I felt glad, very glad, as though relieved of some dreadful presence. My old distrust and dislike returned increased a thousandfold.

It was only when he got my frail body in his arms, which I realized were twice as strong as my good Marigold's, that I felt the ghastly and irrational revulsion. The only thing to which I can liken it, although it seems ludicrous, is what I imagine to be the instinctive recoil of a woman who feels on her body the touch of antipathetic hands. I know that my malady has made me a bit supersensitive. But my vanity has prided itself on keeping up a rugged spirit in a fool of a body, so I hated myself for giving way to morbid sensations. All the same, I felt that if I were alone in a burning house, and there were no one but Leonard Boyce to save me, I should prefer incineration to rescue.

And now I will tell you why I have hesitated to give a place in this chronicle to the incident of the broken-down car and the runaway horse.

It all happened so quickly, my mind was so taken up with the sudden peril, that for the life of me I cannot swear to the part played by Leonard Boyce. I saw him leap aside, and had the fragment of an impression of him standing motionless between the radiator of his car and the tail of mine which was at right angles. The next time he thrust himself on my consciousness was when he was lugging young Brown out of reach of the convulsive hoofs. In the meanwhile Marigold, single-handed, had rushed into the jaws of death and stopped the horse. But as it was a matter of seconds, I had no reason for believing that, but for adventitious relative positions on the road, Boyce would not have done the same.... And yet out of the corner of my eye I got an instantaneous photograph of him standing bolt upright between the two cars, while the abominable bay brute, with distended red nostrils and wild eyes, was thundering down on us.

On the other hand, the swift pleasure in the boy's eyes when he realised that he was in the presence of the popular hero, proved him free of doubts such as mine. And when Marigold, having put the car in hospital, came to make his report, and lingered in order to discuss the whole affair, he said, in wooden deprecation of my eulogy:

"If Major Boyce hadn't jumped in, sir, young Mr. Brown's head would have been kicked into pumpkin-squash."

Well, I have known from long experience that there are no more untrustworthy witnesses than a man's own eyes; especially in the lightning dramas of life.

I was kept awake all night, and towards the dawn I came into thorough agreement with Sir Anthony and I heartily damned the fellow.

What had I to do with him that he should rob me of my sleep?



CHAPTER XV

The next morning he strode in while I was at breakfast, handsome, erect, deep-chested, the incarnation of physical strength, with a glad light in his eyes.

"Congratulate me, old man," he cried, gripping my frail shoulder. "I've three days' extra leave. And more than that, I go out in command of the regiment. No temporary business but permanent rank. Gazetted in due course. Bannatyne—that's our colonel—damned good soldier!—has got a staff appointment. I take his place. I promise you the Fourth King's Rifles are going to make history. Either history or manure. History for choice. As I say, Bannatyne's a damned good soldier, and personally as brave as a lion, but when it comes to the regiment, he's too much on the cautious side. The regiment's only longing to make things hum, and I'm going to let 'em do it."

I congratulated him in politely appropriate terms and went on with my bacon and eggs. He sat on the window-seat and tapped his gaiters with his cane life-preserver. He wore his cap.

"I thought you'd like to know," said he. "You've been so good to the old mother while I've been away and been so charitable, listening to my yarns, while I've been here, that I couldn't resist coming round and telling you."

"I suppose your mother's delighted," said I.

He threw back his head and laughed, as though he had never a black thought or memory in the world.

"Dear old mater! She has the impression that I'm going out to take charge of the blessed campaign. So if she talks about 'my dear son's army,' don't let her down, like a good chap—for she'll think either me a fraud or you a liar."

He rose suddenly, with a change of expression.

"You're the only man in the world I could talk to like this about my mother. You know the sterling goodness and loyalty that lies beneath her funny little ways."

He strode to the window which looks out on to the garden, his back turned on me. And there he stood silent for a considerable time. I helped myself to marmalade and poured out a second cup of tea. There was no call for me to speak. I had long realized that, whatever may have been the man's sins and weaknesses, he had a very deep and tender love for the Dresden china old lady that was his mother. There was London of the clubs and the theatres and the restaurants and the night-clubs, a war London full and alive, not dead as in Augusts of far-off tradition, all ready to give him talk and gaiety and the things that matter to the man who escapes for a brief season from the never-ending hell of the battlefield; ready, too, to pour flattery into his ear, to touch his scars with the softest of its lingers. Yet he chose to stay, a recluse, in our dull little town, avoiding even the kindly folk round about, in order to devote himself to one dear but entirely uninteresting old woman. It is not that he despised London, preferring the life of the country gentleman. On the contrary, before the war Leonard Boyce was very much the man about town. He loved the glitter and the chatter of it. From chance words during this spell of leave, I had divined hankering after its various fleshpots. For the sake of one old woman he made reckless and gallant sacrifice. When he was bored to misery he came round to me. I learned later that in visiting Wellingsford he faced more than boredom. All of this you must put to the credit side of his ledger.

There he stood, his great broad shoulders and bull-neck silhouetted against the window. That broad expanse, a bit fleshy, below the base of the skull indicates brutality. Never before, to my eyes, had the sign asserted itself with so much aggression. I had often wondered why, apart from the Vilboek Farm legend, I had always disliked and distrusted him. Now I seemed to know. It was the neck not of a man, but of a brute. The curious repulsion of the previous evening, when he had carried me into the house, came over me again. From junction of arm and body protruded six inches of the steel-covered life-preserver, the washleather that hid its ghastly knob staring at me blankly. I hated the thing. The gallant English officer—and in my time I have known and loved a many of the most gallant—does not go about in private life fondling a trophy reeking with the blood of his enemies. It is the trait of a savage. That truculent knob and that truculent bull-neck correlated themselves most horribly in my mind. And again, with a shiver, I had the haunting flash of a vision of him, out of the tail of my eye, standing rigid and gaping between the two cars, while my rugged old Marigold, in a businesslike, old-soldier sort of way, without thought of danger or death, was swaying at the head of the runaway horse.

Presently he turned, and his brows were set above unfathomable hard eyes. The short-cropped moustache could not hide the curious twitch of the lips which I had seen once before. It was obvious that these few minutes of silence had been spent in deep thought and had resulted in a decision. A different being from the gay, successful soldier who had come in to announce his honours confronted me. He threw down cap and stick and passed his hand over his crisp brown hair.

"I don't know whether you're a friend of mine or not," he said, hands on hips and gaitered legs slightly apart. "I've never been able to make out. All through our intercourse, in spite of your courtesy and hospitality, there has been some sort of reservation on your part."

"If that is so," said I, diplomatically, "it is because of the defects of my national quality."

"That's possibly what I've felt," said he. "But it doesn't matter a damn with regard to what I want to say. It's a question not of your feelings towards me, but my feelings towards you. I don't want to make polite speeches—but you're a man whom I have every reason to honour and trust. And unlike all my other brother-officers, you have no reason to be jealous—"

"My dear fellow," I interrupted, "what's all this about? Why jealousy?"

"You know what a pot-hunter is in athletics? A chap that is simply out for prizes? Well, that's what a lot of them think of me. That I'm just out to get orders and medals and distinctions and so forth."

"That's nonsense," said I. "I happen to know. Your reputation in the brigade is unassailable."

"In the way of my having done what I'm credited with, it is," he answered. "But all the same, they're right."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"What I say. They're right. I'm out for everything I can get. Now I'm out for a V.C. I see you think it abominable. That's because you don't understand. No one but I myself could understand. I feel I owe it to myself." He looked at me for a second or two and then broke into a sardonic sort of laugh. "I suppose you think me a conceited ass," he continued. "Why should Leonard Boyce be such a vastly important person? It isn't that, I assure you."

I lit a cigarette, having waved an invitation to join me, which with a nod he refused.

"What is it, then?"

"Has it ever struck you that often a man's most merciless creditor is himself?"

Here was a casuistical proposition thrown at my head by the last person I should have suspected of doing so. It was immensely interesting, in view of my long puzzledom. I spoke warily.

"That depends on the man—on the nice balance of his dual nature. On the one side is the power to demand mercilessly; on the other, the instinct to respond. Of course, the criminal—"

"What are you dragging in criminals for?" he said sharply. "I'm talking about honourable men with consciences. Criminals haven't consciences. The devil who has just been hung for murdering three women in their baths hadn't any dual nature, as you call it. Those murders didn't represent to him a mountain of debt to God which his soul was summoned to discharge. He went to his death thinking himself a most unlucky and hardly used fellow."

His fingers went instinctively into the cigarette-box. I passed him the matches.

"Precisely," said I. "That was the point I was about to make."

He puffed at his cigarette and looked rather foolish, as though regretting his outburst.

"We've got away," he said, after a pause, "from what I was meaning to tell you. And I want to tell you because I mayn't have another chance." He turned to the window-seat and picked up his life-preserver. "I'm out for two things. One is to kill Germans—" He patted the covered knob—and there flashed across my mind a boyhood's memory of Martin—wasn't it Martin?—in "Hereward the Wake," who had a deliciously blood-curdling habit of patting his revengeful axe.—"I've done in eighty-five with this and my revolver. That, I consider, is my duty to my country. The other is to get the V.C. That's for payment to my creditor self."

"In full, or on account?" said I.

"There's only one payment in full," he answered grimly, "and that I've been offering for the past twelve months. And it's a thousand chances to one it will be accepted before the end of this year. And that, after all this palaver, is what I've just made up my mind to talk to you about."

"You mean your death?"

"Just that," said he. "A man pot-hunting for Victoria Crosses takes a thousand to one chance." He paused abruptly and shot an eager and curiously wavering glance at me. "Am I boring you with all this?"

"Good Heavens, no." And then as the insistence of his great figure towering over me had begun to fret my nerves—"Sit down, man," said I, with an impatient gesture, "and put that sickening toy away and come to the point."

He tossed the cane on the window-seat and sat near me on a straight-backed chair.

"All right," he said. "I'll come to the point. I shan't see you again. I'm going out in command. Thank God we're in the thick of it. Round about Loos. It's a thousand to one I'll be killed. Life doesn't matter much to me, in spite of what you may think. There are only two people on God's earth I care for. One, of course, is my old mother. The other is Betty Fairfax—I mean Betty Connor. I spoke to you once about her—after I had met her here—and I gave you to understand that I had broken off our engagement from conscientious motives. It was an awkward position and I had to say something. As a matter of fact I acted abominably. But I couldn't help it." The corners of his lips suddenly worked in the odd little twitch. "Sometimes circumstances, especially if a man's own damn foolishness has contrived them, tie him hand and foot. Sometimes physical instincts that he can't control." He narrowed his eyes and bent forward, looking at me intently, and he repeated the phrase slowly—"Physical instincts that he can't control-"

Was he referring to the incident of yesterday? I thought so. I also believed it was the motive power of this strangely intimate conversation.

He rose again as though restless, and once more went to the window and seemed to seek inspiration or decision from the sight of my roses. After a short while he turned and dragged up from his neck a slim chain at the end of which hung a round object in a talc case. This he unfastened and threw on the table in front of me.

"Do you know what that is?"

"Yes," said I. "Your identification disc."

"Look on the other side."

I took it up and found that the reverse contained the head cut out from some photograph of Betty. After I had handed back the locket, he slipped it on the chain and dropped it beneath his collar.

"I'm not a damned fool," said he.

I nodded understandingly. No one would have accused him of mawkish sentiment. The woman whose portrait he wore night and day next his skin was the woman he loved. He had no other way of proving his sincerity than by exhibiting the token.

"I see," said I. "What do you propose to do?"

"I've told you. The V.C. or—" He snapped his fingers.

"But if it's the V.C. and a Brigade, and perhaps a Division—if it's everything else imaginable except—" I snapped my fingers in imitation—"What then?"

Again the hateful twitch of the lips, which he quickly dissimulated in a smile.

"I'll begin to try to be a brave man." He lit another cigarette. "But all that, my dear Meredyth," he continued, "is away from the point. If I live, I'll ask you to forget this rotten palaver. But I have a feeling that I shan't come back. Something tells me that my particular form of extermination will be a head knocked into slush. I'm absolutely certain that I shall never see you again. Oh, I'm not morbid," he said, as I raised a protesting hand. "You're an old soldier and know what these premonitions are. When I came in—before I had finally made up my mind to pan out to you like this—I felt like a boy who has been made captain of the school. But all the same, I know I shan't see you again. So I want you to promise me two things—quite honourable and easy."

"Of course, my dear fellow," said I rather tartly, for I did not like the wind-up of his sentence. It was unthinkable that an officer and a gentleman should inveigle a brother-officer into a solemn promise to do anything dishonourable. "Of course. Anything you like."

"One is to look after the old mother—"

"That goes without promising," said I.

"The other is to—what shall I say?—to rehabilitate my memory in the eyes of Betty Connor. She may hear all kinds of things about me—some true, others false—I have my enemies. She has heard things already. I didn't know it till our last meeting here. There's no one else on God's earth can do what I want but you. Do you think I'm putting you into an impossible position?"

"I don't think so," said I. "Go on."

"Well—there's not much more to be said. Try to make her realise that, whatever may be my faults—my crimes, if it comes to that—I've done my damndest out there to make reparation. By God! I have," he cried, in a sudden flash of passion. "See that she realises it. And—" he thumped the hidden identification disc, "tell her that she is the only woman that has ever really mattered in the whole of my blasted life."

He threw his half-smoked cigarette into the fire-place and walked over to the sideboard, where stood decanters and syphon.

"May I help myself to a drink?"

"Certainly," said I.

He gulped down half a whisky and soda and turned on me.

"You promise?"

"Of course," said I.

"She may have reasons to think the worst of me. But whatever I am there is some good in me. I'm not altogether a worthless hound. If you promise to make her think the best of me, I'll go away happy. I don't care a damn whether I die or live. That's the truth. As long as I'm alive I can take care of myself. I'm not dreaming of asking you to say a word to win her favour. That would be outrageous impudence. You clearly understand. I don't want you ever to mention my name unless I'm dead. If I feel that I've an advocate in you—advocatus diaboli, if you like—I'll go away happy. You've got your brief. You know my life at home. You know my record."

"My dear fellow," said I, "I promise to do everything in my power to carry out your wishes. But as to your record—are you quite certain that I know it?"

You must realise that there was a curious tension in the situation, at any rate as far as it affected myself. Here was a man with whom, for reasons you know, I had studiously cultivated the most formal social relations, claiming my active participation in the secret motives of his heart. Since his first return from the front a bluff friendliness had been the keynote of our intercourse. Nothing more. Now he came and without warning enmeshed me in this intimate net of love and death. I promised to do his bidding—I could not do otherwise. I was in the position of an executor according to the terms of a last will and testament. Our comradeship in arms—those of our old Army who survive will understand—forbade refusal. Besides, his intensity of purpose won my sympathy and admiration. But I loved him none the more. To my cripple's detested sensitiveness, as he stood over me, he loomed more than ever the hulking brute. His semi-confessions and innuendoes exacerbated my feelings of distrust and repulsion. And yet, at the same tune, I could not—nor did I try to—repress an immense pity for the man; perhaps less for the man than for the soul in pain. At the back of his words some torment burned at red heat, remorselessly. He sought relief. Perhaps he sought it from me because I was as apart as a woman from his physical splendour, a kind of bodiless creature with just a brain and a human heart, the ghost of an old soldier, far away from the sphere of poor passions and little jealousies.

I felt the tentacles of the man's nature blindly and convulsively groping after something within me that eluded them. That is the best way in which I can describe the psychology of these strange moments. The morning sun streamed into my little oak-panelled dining-room and caught the silver and fruit on the breakfast table and made my frieze of old Delft glow blue like the responsive western sky. With his back to the vivid window, Leonard Boyce stood cut out black like a silhouette. That he, too, felt the tension, I know; for a wasp crawled over his face, from cheek-bone, across his temples, to his hair, and he did not notice it.

Instinctively I said the words: "Your record. Are you quite certain that I know it?"

With what intensity, with what significance in my eyes, I may have said them, I know not. I repeat that I had a subconsciousness, almost uncanny, that we were souls rather than men, talking to each other. He sat down once more, drawing the chair to the table and resting his elbow on it.

"My record," said he. "What about it?"

Again please understand that I felt I had the man's soul naked before me. An imponderable hand plucked away my garments of convention.

"Some time ago," said I, "you spoke of my attitude towards you being marked by a certain reserve. That is quite true. It dates back many years. It dates back from the South African War. From an affair at Vilboek's Farm."

Again his lips twitched; but otherwise he did not move.

"I remember," he answered. "My men saw me run away. I came out of it quite clean."

I said: "I saw the man afterwards in hospital at Cape Town. His name was Somers. He told me quite a different story."

His face grew grey. He glanced at me for a fraction of a second. "What did he tell you?" he asked quietly.

In the fewest possible words I repeated what I have set down already in this book. When I had ended, he said in the same toneless way:

"You have believed that all these years?"

"I have done my best not to believe it. The last twelve months have disproved it."

He shook his head. "They haven't. Nothing I can do in this world can disprove it. What that man said was true."

"True?"

I drew a deep breath and stared at him hard. His eyes met mine. They were very sad and behind them lay great pain. Although I expressed astonishment, it proceeded rather from some reflex action than from any realised shock to my consciousness. I say the whole thing was uncanny. I knew, as soon as he sat down by the table, that he would confess to the Vilboek story. And yet, at last, when he did confess and there were no doubts lingering in my mind, I gasped and stared at him.

"I was a bloody coward," he said. "That's frank enough. When they rode away and left me, I tried to shoot myself—and I couldn't. If the man Somers hadn't returned, I think I should have waited until they sent to arrest me. But he did come back and the instinct of self-preservation was too strong. I know my story about the men's desertion and my forcing him to back me up was vile and despicable. But I clung to life and it was my only chance. Afterwards, with the horror of the thing hanging over me, I didn't care so much about life. In the little fighting that was left for me I deliberately tried to throw it away. I ask you to believe that."

"I do," I said. "You were mentioned in dispatches for gallantry in action."

He passed his hand over his eyes. Looking up, he said:

"It is strange that you of all men, my neighbour here, should have heard of this. Not a whisper of its being known has ever reached me. How many people do you think have any idea of it?"

I told him all that I knew and concluded by showing him Reggie Dacre's letter, which I had kept in the letter-case in my pocket. He returned it to me without a word. Presently he broke a spell of silence. All this time he had sat fixed in the one attitude—only shifted once, when Marigold entered to clear away the breakfast things and was dismissed by me with a glance and a gesture.

"Do you remember," he said, "a talk we had about fear, in April, the first time I was over? I described what I knew. The paralysis of fear. Since we are talking as I never thought to talk with a human being, I may as well make my confession. I'm a man of strong animal passions. When I see red, I daresay I'm just a brute beast. But I'm a physical coward. Owing to this paralysis of fear, this ghastly inhibition of muscular or nervous action, I have gone through things even worse than that South-African business. I go about like a man under a curse. Even out there, when I don't care a damn whether I live or die, the blasted thing gets hold of me." He swung himself away from the table and shook his great clenched firsts. "By the grace of God, no one yet has seemed to notice it. I suppose I have a swift brain and as soon as the thing is over I can cover it up. It's my awful terror that one day I shall be found out and everything I've gained shall be stripped away from me."

"But what about a thing like this?" said I, tapping Colonel Dacre's letter.

"That's all right," he answered grimly. "That's when I know what I'm facing. That's deliberate pot-hunting. It's saving face as the Chinese say. It's doing any damned thing that will put me right with myself."

He got up and swung about the room. I envied him, I would have given a thousand pounds to do the same just for a few moments. But I was stuck in my confounded chair, deprived of physical outlet. Suddenly he came to a halt and stood once more over me.

"Now you know what kind of a fellow I am, what do you think of me?"

It was a brutal question to fling at my head. It gave me no time to co-ordinate my ideas. What was one to make of a man avowedly subject to fits of the most despicable cowardice from the consequences of which he used any unscrupulous craftiness to extricate himself, and yet was notorious in his achievement of deeds of the most reckless courage? It is a problem to which I have devoted all the months occupied in waiting this book. How the dickens could I solve it at a minute's notice? The situation was too blatant, too raw, too near bedrock, too naked and unashamed, for me to take refuge in platitudinous generalities of excuse. The bravest of men know Fear. They know him pretty intimately. But they manage to kick him to Hades by the very reason of their being brave men. I had to take Leonard Boyce as I found him. And I must admit that I found him a tragically miserable man. That is how I answered his question—in so many words.

"You're not far wrong," said he.

He picked up cap and stick.

"When I get up to town I shall make my will. I've never worried about it before. Can I appoint you my executor?"

"Certainly," said I.

"I'm very grateful. I'll assure you a fireworks sort of finish, so that you shan't be ashamed. And—I don't ask impossibilities—I can't hold you to your previous promise—but what about Betty Connor?"

"You may count," said I, "on my acting like an officer and a gentleman, and, if I may say so, like a Christian."

He said: "Thank you, Meredyth. Good-bye." Then he stuck on his cap, brought his fingers to the peak in salute and marched to the door.

"Boyce!" I cried sharply.

He turned. "Yes?"

"Aren't you going to shake hands with me?"

He retraced the few steps to my chair.

"I didn't know whether it would be—" he paused, seeking for a word—"whether it would be agreeable."

Then I broke down. The strain had been too great for my sick man's nerves. I forgot all about the brutality of his bull-neck, for he faced me in all his gallant manhood and there was a damnable expression in his eyes like that of a rated dog. I stretched out my hand.

"My dear good fellow," I cried, "what the hell are you talking about?"



CHAPTER XVI

Boyce left Wellingsford that afternoon, and for many months I heard little about him. His astonishing avowal had once more turned topsy-turvy my conception of his real nature. I had to reconstruct the man, a very complicated task. I had to reconcile in him all kinds of opposites—the lusty brute and the sentimental lover; the physical coward and the baresark hero; the man with hell in his soul and the debonair gentleman. After a vast deal of pondering, I arrived not very much nearer a solution of the problem. The fact remained, however, that I found myself in far closer sympathy with him than ever before. After all that he had said, I should have had a heart of stone if it had not been stirred to profound pity. I had seen an instance both of his spell-bound cowardice and of his almost degrading craft in extrication. That in itself repelled me. But it lost its value in the light that he had cast on the never-ceasing torment that consumed him. At any rate he was at death-grips with himself, strangling the devils of fear and dishonour with a hand relentlessly certain. He appeared to me a tragic figure warring against a doom.

At first I expected every day to receive an agonised message from Mrs. Boyce announcing his death. Then, as is the way of humans, the keenness of my apprehension grew blunted, until, at last, I took his continued existence as a matter of course. I wrote him a few friendly letters, to which he replied in the same strain. And so the months went on.

Looking over my diary I find that these months were singularly uneventful as far as the lives of those dealt with in this chronicle were concerned. In the depths of our souls we felt the long-drawn-out agony of the war, with its bitter humiliations, its heartrending disappointments. In our daily meetings one with another we cried aloud for a great voice to awaken the little folk in Great Britain from their selfish lethargy—the little folk in high office, in smug burgessdom, in seditious factory and shipyard. They were months of sordid bargaining between all sections of our national life, in the murk of which the glow of patriotism seemed to be eclipsed. And in the meantime, the heroic millions from all corners of our far-flung Empire were giving their lives on land and sea, gaily and gallantly, too often in tragic futility, for the ideals to which the damnable little folk at home were blind. The little traitorous folk who gambled for their own hands in politics, the little traitorous folk who put the outworn shibboleths of a party before the war-cry of an Empire, the little traitorous folk who strove with all their power to starve our navy of ships, our ships of coal, our men in the trenches of munitions, our armies of men, our country of honour—all these will one day be mercilessly arraigned at the bar of history. The plains of France, the steeps of Gallipoli, the swamps of Mesopotamia, the Seven Seas will give up their dead as witnesses.

We spoke bitterly of all these things and thought of them with raging impotence; but the even tenor of our life went on. We continued to do our obscure and undistinguished work for the country. It became a habit, part of the day's routine. We almost forgot why we were doing it. The war seemed to make little real difference in our social life. The small town was pitch black at night. Prices rose. Small economies were practised. Labour was scarce. Fewer young men out of uniform were seen in the streets and neighbouring roads and lanes. Groups of wounded from the hospital in their uniform of deep blue jean with red ties and khaki caps gave a note of actuality to the streets. Otherwise, there were few signs of war. Even the troops who hitherto swarmed about the town had gradually been removed from billets to a vast camp of huts some miles away, and appeared only sporadically about the place. I missed them and the stimulus of their presence. They brought me into closer touch with things. Marigold, too, pined for more occupation for his one critical eye than was afforded by the local volunteers. He grew morose, sick of a surfeit of newspapers. If he could have gone to France and got through to the firing-line, I am sure he would have dug a little trench all to himself and defied the Germans on his own account.

In November Colonel Dacre was brought home gravely wounded, to a hospital for officers in London. A nurse gave me the news in a letter in which she said that he had asked to see me before an impending hazardous operation. I went up to town and found him wrecked almost beyond recognition. As we were the merest of acquaintances with nothing between us save our common link with Boyce, I feared lest he should desire to tell me of some shameful discovery. But his gay greeting and the brave smile, pathetically grotesque through the bandages in which his head was wrapped, reassured me. Only his eyes and mouth were visible.

"It's worth while being done in," said he. "It makes one feel like a Sultan. You have just to clap your hands and say 'I want this,' and you've got it. I've a good mind to say to this dear lady, 'Fetch their gracious Majesties from Buckingham Palace,' and I'm sure they'd be here in a tick. It's awfully good of you to come, Meredyth."

I signed to Marigold, who had carried me into the ward and set me down on a chair, and to the Sister, the "dear lady" of Dacre's reference, to withdraw, and after a few sympathetic words I asked him why he had sent for me.

"I'm broken to bits all over," he replied. "The doctors here say they never saw such a blooming mess-up of flesh pretending to be alive. And as for talking, they'd just as soon expect speech from a jellyfish squashed by a steam-roller. If I do get through, I'll be a helpless crock all my days. I funked it till I thought of you. I thought the sight of another fellow who has gone through it and stuck it out might give me courage. I've had my wife here. We're rather fond of one another, you know ... My God! what brave things women are! If she had broken down all over me I could have risen to the occasion. But she didn't, and I felt a cowardly worm."

"I had a brave wife, too," said I, and for a few moments we talked shyly about the women who had played sacred parts in our lives. Whether he was comforted by what I said I don't know. Probably he only listened politely. But I think he found comfort in a sympathetic ear.

Presently he turned on to Boyce, the real motive of his summons. He repented much that he had told and written to me. His long defamation of the character of a brother-officer had lain on his conscience. And lately he had, at last, met Boyce personally, and his generous heart had gone out to the man's soldierly charm.

"I never felt such a slanderous brute in my life as when I shook him by the hand. You know the feeling—how one wants to get behind a hedge and kick oneself. Kick oneself," he repeated faintly. Then he closed his eyes and his lips contracted in pain.

The Sister, who had been watching him from a distance, came up. He had talked enough. It was time to go. But at the announcement he opened his eyes again and with an effort recovered his gaiety.

"The whole gist of the matter lies in the postscript. Like a woman's letter. I must have my postscript."

"Very well. Two more minutes."

"Merciless dragon," said he.

She smiled and left us.

"The dearest angel, bar one, in the world." said he. "What were we talking about?"

"Colonel Boyce."

"Oh, yes. Forgive me. My head goes FUT now and then. It's idiotic not to be able to control one's brain.... The point is this. I may peg out. I know this operation they're going to perform is just touch and go. I want to face things with a clear conscience. I've convinced you, haven't I, that there wasn't a word of truth in that South-African story? If ever it crops up you'll scotch it like a venomous snake?"

The ethics of my answer I leave to the casuist. I am an old-fashioned Church of England person. As I am so mentally constituted that I am unable to believe cheerfully in nothing. I believe in God and Jesus Christ, and accept the details of doctrine as laid down in the Thirty-nine Articles. For liars I have the Apocryphal condemnation. Yet I lied without the faintest rippling qualm of conscience.

"My dear fellow," said I, stoutly, "there's not the remotest speck of truth in it. You haven't a second's occasion to worry."

"That's all right," he said.

The Sister approached again. Instinctively I stretched out my hand. He laughed.

"No good. You must take it as gripped. Goodbye, old chap."

I bade him good-bye and Marigold wheeled me away.

A few days afterwards they told me that this gay, gallant, honourable, sensitive gentleman was dead. Although I had known him so little, it seemed that I knew him very intimately, and I deeply mourned his loss.

I think this episode was the most striking of what I may term personal events during those autumn months.

Of Randall Holmes we continued to hear in the same mysterious manner. His mother visited the firm of solicitors in London through whom his correspondence passed. They pleaded ignorance of his doings and professional secrecy as to the disclosure of his whereabouts. In December he ceased writing altogether, and twice a week Mrs. Holmes received a formal communication from the lawyers to the effect that they had been instructed by her son to inform her that he was in perfect health and sent her his affectionate greetings. Such news of this kind as I received I gave to Betty, who passed it on to Phyllis Gedge.

Of course my intimacy with my dear Betty continued unbroken. If the unmarried Betty had a fault, it was a certain sweet truculence, a pretty self-assertiveness which sometimes betrayed intolerance of human foibles. Her widowhood had, in a subtle way, softened these little angularities of her spiritual contour. And bodily, the curves of her slim figure had become more rounded. She was no longer the young Diana of a year ago. The change into the gracious woman who had passed through the joy and the sorrow of life was obvious even to me, to whom it had been all but imperceptibly gradual. After a while she rarely spoke of her husband. The name of Leonard Boyce was never mentioned between us. With her as with me, the weeks ate up the uneventful days and the months the uneventful weeks. In her humdrum life the falling away of Mrs. Tufton loomed catastrophic.

For four months Mrs. Tufton shone splendid as the wife of the British warrior. The Wellingsford Hospital rang with her praises and glistened with her scrubbing brush. She was the Admirable Crichton of the institution. What with men going off to the war and women going off to make munitions, there were never-ending temporary gaps in the staff. And there was never a gap that Mrs. Tufton did not triumphantly fill. The pride of Betty, who had wrought this reformation, was simply monstrous. If she had created a real live angel, wings and all, out of the dust-bin, she could not have boasted more arrogantly. Being a member of the Hospital Committee, I must confess to a bemused share in the popular enthusiasm. And was I not one of the original discoverers of Mrs. Tufton? When Marigold, inspired doubtless by his wife, from time to time suggested disparagement of the incomparable woman, I rebuked him for an arrant scandal-monger. There had been a case or two of drunkenness at the hospital. Wounded soldiers had returned the worse for liquor, an almost unforgivable offence.... Not that the poor fellows desired to get drunk. A couple of pints of ale or a couple of glasses of whisky will set swimming the head of any man who has not tasted alcohol for months. But to a man with a septic wound or trench nephritis or smashed up skull, alcohol is poison and poison is death, and so it is sternly forbidden to our wounded soldiers. They cannot be served in public houses. Where, then, did the hospital defaulters get their drink?

"If I was you, sir," said Marigold, "I'd keep an eye on that there Mrs. Tufton."

I instantly annihilated him—or should have done so had his expressionless face not been made of non-inflammable timber. He said: "Very good, sir." But there was a damnably ironical and insubordinate look in his one eye.

Gradually the lady lapsed from grace. She got up late and complained of spasms. She left dustpan and brush on a patient's bed. She wrongfully interfered with the cook, insisting, until she was forcibly ejected from the kitchen, on throwing lettuces into the Irish stew. Finally, one Sunday afternoon, a policeman wandering through some waste ground, a deserted brickfield behind Flowery End, came upon an unedifying spectacle. There were madam and an elderly Irish soldier sprawling blissfully comatose with an empty flask of gin and an empty bottle of whisky lying between them. They were taken to the hospital and put to bed. The next morning, the lady, being sober, was summarily dismissed by the matron. Late at night she rang and battered at the door, clamouring for admittance, which was refused. Then she went away, apparently composed herself to slumber in the roadway of the pitch-black High Street, and was killed by a motor-car. And that, bar the funeral, was the end of Mrs. Tufton.

From her bereaved husband, with whom I at once communicated, I received the following reply:

"Dear Sir,

"Yours to hand announcing the accidental death of my wife, which I need not say I deeply regret. You will be interested to hear that I have been offered a commission in the Royal Fusiliers, which I am now able to accept. In view of the same, any expense to which you may be put to give my late wife honourable burial, I shall be most ready to defray.

"With many thanks for your kindness in informing me of this unfortunate circumstance,

"I am,

"Yours faithfully, "JOHN P. TUFTON."

"I think he's a horrid, callous, cold-blooded fellow!" cried Betty when I showed her this epistle.

"After all," said I, "she wasn't a model wife. If the fatal motor-car hadn't come along, the probability is that she would have received poor Tufton on his next leave with something even more deadly than a poker. Now and again the Fates have brilliant inspirations. This was one of them. Now, you see the virago-clogged Tufton is a free man, able to accept a commission and start a new life as an officer and a gentleman."

"I think you're perfectly odious. Odious and cynical," she exclaimed wrathfully.

"I think," said I, "that a living warrior is better than a dead— Disappointment."

"You don't understand," she stormed. "If I didn't love you, I could rend you to pieces."

"It is because I do understand, my dear," said I, enjoying the flashing beauty of her return to Artemisian attitudes, "that I particularly characterised the dear lady as a disappointment."

"I think," she said, in dejected generalisation, "the working out of the whole scheme of the universe is a disappointment."

"The High Originators of the scheme seem to bear it pretty philosophically," I rejoined; "so why shouldn't we?"

"They're gods and we're human," said Betty.

"Precisely," said I. "And oughtn't it to be our ideal to approximate to the divine attitude?"

Again Betty declared that I was odious. From her point of view—No. That is an abuse of language. There are mental states in which a woman has no point of view at all. She wanders over an ill-defined circular area of vision. That is why, in such conditions, you can never pin a woman down with a shaft of logic and compel her surrender, as you can compel that of a mere man. We went on arguing, and after a time I really did not know what I was arguing about. I advanced and tried to support the theory that on the whole the progress of humanity as represented by the British Empire in general and the about-to-be Lieutenant Tufton in particular, was advanced by the opportune demise of an unfortunately balanced lady. From her point—or rather her circular area of vision—perhaps my dear Betty was right in declaring me odious. She hated to be reminded of the intolerable goosiness of her swan. She longed for comforting, corroborative evidence of essential swaniness for her own justification. In a word, the poor dear girl was sore all over with mortification, and wherever one touched her, no matter with how gentle a finger, one hurt.

"I would have trusted that woman," she cried tragically, "with a gold-mine or a distillery."

"We trusted her with something more valuable, my dear," said I. "Our guileless faith in human nature. Anyhow we'll keep the faith undamaged."

She smiled. "That's considerably less odious."

Nothing more could be said. We let the unfortunate subject rest in peace for ever after.

These two episodes, the death of poor Reggie Dacre and the Tufton catastrophe, are the only incidents in my diary that are worth recording here. Christmas came and went and we entered on the new year of 1916. It was only at a date in the middle of February, a year since I had driven to Wellings Park to hear the tragic news of Oswald Fenimore's death, that I find an important entry in my diary.



CHAPTER XVII

Mrs. Boyce was shown into my study, her comely Dresden china face very white and her hands shaking. She held a telegram. I had seen faces like that before. Every day in England there are hundreds thus stricken. I feared the worst. It was a relief to read the telegram and find that Boyce was only wounded. The message said seriously wounded, but gave consolation by adding that his life was not in immediate danger. Mrs. Boyce was for setting out for France forthwith. I dissuaded her from a project so embarrassing to the hospital authorities and so fatiguing to herself. In spite of the chivalry and humanity of our medical staff, old ladies of seventy are not welcome at a busy base hospital. As soon as he was fit to be moved, I assured her, he would be sent home, before she could even obtain her permits and passes and passport and make other general arrangements for her journey. There was nothing for it but her Englishwoman's courage. She held up her hand at that, and went away to live, like many another, patiently through the long hours of suspense.

For two or three days no news came. I spent as much time as I could with my old friend, seeking to comfort her.

On the third morning it was announced in the papers that the King had been graciously pleased to confer the Victoria Cross on Lt. Colonel Leonard Boyce for conspicuous gallantry in action. It did not occur in a list of honours. It had a special paragraph all to itself. Such isolated announcements generally indicate immediate recognition of some splendid feat. I was thrilled by the news. It was a grand achievement to win through death to the greatest of all military rewards deliberately coveted. Here, as I had strange reason for knowing, was no sudden act of sublime valour. The final achievement was the result of months of heroic, almost suicidal daring. And it was repayment of a terrible debt, the whole extent of which I knew not, owed by the man to his tormented soul.

I rang up Mrs. Boyce, who replied tremulously to my congratulations. Would I come over and lunch?

I found a very proud and tearful old lady. She may not have known the difference between a platoon and a howitzer, and have conceived the woolliest notions of the nature of her son's command, but the Victoria Cross was a matter on which her ideas were both definite and correct. She had spent the morning at the telephone receiving calls of congratulation. A great sheaf of telegrams had arrived. Two or three of them were from the High and Mighty of the Military Hierarchy. She was in such a twitter of joy that she almost forgot her anxiety as to his wounds.

"Do you think he knows? I telegraphed to him at once."

"So did I."

She glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece.

"How long would it take for a telegram to reach him?"

"You may be sure he has it by now," said I, "and it has given him a prodigious appetite for lunch."

Her face clouded over. "That horrid tinned stuff. It's so dangerous. I remember once Mary's aunt—or was it Cook's aunt—one of them any way—nearly died of eating tinned lobster—ptomaine poisoning. I've always told Leonard not to touch it.

"They don't give Colonels and V.C.s tinned lobster at Boulogne," I answered cheerfully. "He's living now on the fat of the land."

"Let us hope so," she sighed dubiously. "It's no use my sending out things for him, as they always go wrong. Some time ago I sent him three brace of grouse and three brace of partridges. He didn't acknowledge them for weeks, and then he said they were most handy things to kill Germans with, but were an expensive form of ammunition. I don't quite know what he meant—but at any rate they were not eatable when they arrived. Poor fellow!" She sighed again. "If only I knew what was the matter with him."

"It can't be much," I reassured her, "or you would have heard again. And this news will act like a sovereign remedy."

She patted the back of my hand with her plump palm. "You're always so sympathetic and comforting."

"I'm an old soldier, like Leonard," said I, "and never meet trouble halfway."

At lunch, the old lady insisted on opening a bottle of champagne, a Veuve Clicquot which Leonard loved, in honour of the glorious occasion. We could not drink to the hero's health in any meaner vintage, although she swore that a teaspoonful meant death to her, and I protested that a confession of champagne to my medical adviser meant a dog's rating. We each, conscience-bound, put up the tips of our fingers to the glasses as soon as Mary had filled them with froth, and solemnly drank the toast in the eighth of an inch residuum. But by some freakish chance or the other, there was nothing left in that quart bottle by the time Mary cleared the table for dessert. And to tell the honest truth, I don't think the health of either my hostess or myself was a penny the worse. Let no man despise generous wine. Treated with due reverence it is a great loosener of human sympathy.

Generous ale similarly treated produces the same effect. Marigold, driving me home, cocked a luminous eye on me and said:

"Begging your pardon, sir, would you mind very much if I broke the neck of that there Gedge?"

"You would be aiding the good cause," said I, "but I should deplore the hanging of an old friend. What has Gedge been doing?"

Marigold sounded his horn and slowed down round a bend, and, as soon as he got into a straight road, he replied.

"I'm not going to say, sir, if I may take the liberty, that I was ever sweet on Colonel Boyce. People affect you in different ways. You either like 'em or you don't like 'em. You can't tell why. And a Sergeant, being, as you may say, a human being, has as much right to his private feelings regarding a Colonel as any officer."

"Undoubtedly," said I.

"Well, sir, I never thought Colonel Boyce was true metal. But I take it all back—every bit of it."

"For God's sake," I cried, stretching out a foolish but instinctive hand to the wheel, "for God's sake, control your emotions, or you'll be landing us in the ditch."

"That's all right, sir," he replied, steering a straight course. "She's a bit skittish at times. I was saying as how I did the Colonel an injustice. I'm very sorry. No man who wasn't steel all through ever got the V.C. They don't chuck it around on blighters."

"That's all very interesting and commendable," said I, "but what has it to do with Gedge?"

"He has been slandering the Colonel something dreadful the last few months, sneering at him, saying nothing definite, but insinuatingly taking away his character."

"In what way?" I asked.

"Well, he tells one man that the Colonel's a drunkard, another that it's women, another that he gambles and doesn't pay, another that he pays the newspapers to put in all these things about him, while all the time in France he's in a blue funk hiding in his dugout."

"That's moonshine," said I. And as regards the drinking, drabbing, and gaming of course it was. But the suggestion of cowardice gave me a sharp stab of surprise and dismay.

"I know it is," said Marigold. "But the people hereabouts are so ignorant, you can make them believe anything." Marigold was a man of Kent and had a poor opinion of those born and bred in other counties. "I met Gedge this morning," he continued, and thereupon gave me the substance of the conversation. I hardly think the adjectives of the report were those that were really used.

"So your precious Colonel has got the V.C.," sneered Gedge.

"He has," said Marigold. "And it's too great an honour for your inconsiderable town."

"If this inconsiderable town knew as much about him as I do, it would give him the order of the precious boot."

"And what do you know?" asked Marigold.

"That's what all you downtrodden slaves of militarism would like to find out," replied Gedge. "The time will come when I, and such as I, will tear the veils away and expose them, and say 'These be thy gods, O Israel.'"

"The time will come," retorted Marigold, "when if you don't hold your precious jaw, I and such as I will smash it into a thousand pieces. For twopence I'd knock your ugly head off this present minute."

Whereupon Gedge apparently wilted before the indignant eye of Sergeant Marigold and faded away down the High Street.

All this in itself seemed very trivial, but for the past year the attitude of Gedge had been mysterious. Could it be possible that Gedge thought himself the sole repository of the secret which Boyce had so desperately confided to me? But when had the life of Gedge and the military life of Leonard Boyce crossed? It was puzzling.

Well, to tell the truth, I thought no more about the matter. The glow of Mrs. Boyce's happiness remained with me all the evening. Rarely had I seen her so animated, so forgetful of her own ailments. She had taken the rosiest view of Leonard's physical condition and sunned herself in the honour conferred on him by the King. I had never spent a pleasanter afternoon at her house. We had comfortably criticised our neighbours, and, laudatores temporis acti, had extolled the days of our youth. I went to bed as well pleased with life as a man can be in this convulsion of the world.

The next morning she sent me a letter to read. It was written at Boyce's dictation. It ran:

"Dear Mother:

"I'm sorry to say I am knocked out pro tem. I was fooling about where a C.O. didn't ought to, and a Bosch bullet got me so that I can't write. But don't worry at all about me. I'm too tough for anything the Bosches can do. To show how little serious it is, they tell me that I'll be conveyed to England in a day or two. So get hot-water bottles and bath salts ready.

"Your ever loving Leonard."

This was good news. Over the telephone wire we agreed that the letter was a justification of our yesterday's little merrymaking. Obviously, I told her, he would live to fight another day. She was of opinion that he had done enough fighting already. If he went on much longer, the poor boy would get quite tired out, to say nothing of the danger of being wounded again. The King ought to let him rest on his laurels and make others who hadn't worked a quarter as hard do the remainder of the war.

"Perhaps," I said light-heartedly, "Leonard will drop the hint when he writes to thank the King for the nice cross."

She said that I was laughing at her, and rang off in the best of spirits.

In the evening came Betty, inviting herself to dinner. She had been on night duty at the hospital, and I had not seen her for some days. The sight of her, bright-eyed and brave, fresh and young, always filled me with happiness. I felt her presence like wine and the sea wind and the sunshine. So greatly did her vitality enrich me, that sometimes I called myself a horrid old vampire.

As soon as she had greeted me, she said in her downright way:

"So Leonard Boyce has got his V.C."

"Yes," said I. "What do you think of it?"

A spot of colour rose to her cheek. "I'm very glad. It's no use, Majy, pretending that I ignore his existence. I don't and I can't. Because I loved and married someone else doesn't alter the fact that I once cared for him, does it?"

"Many people," said I, judicially, "find out that they have been mistaken as to the extent and nature of their own sentiments."

"I wasn't mistaken," she replied, sitting down on the piano stool, her hands on the leathern seat, her neatly shod feet stretched out in front of her, just as she had sat on her wedding eve talking nonsense to Willie Connor. "I wasn't mistaken. I was never addicted to silly school-girl fancies. I know my own mind. I cared a lot for Leonard Boyce."

"Eh bien?" said I.

"Well, don't you see what I'm driving at?"

"I don't a bit."

She sighed. "Oh, dear! How dull some people are! Don't you see that, when an affair like that is over, a woman likes to get some evidence of the man's fine qualities, in order to justify her for having once cared for him?"

"Quite so. Yet—" I felt argumentative. The breach, as you know, between Betty and Boyce was wrapped in exasperating obscurity. "Yet, on the other hand," said I, "she might welcome evidence of his worthlessness, so as to justify her for having thrown him over."

"If a woman isn't a dam-fool already," said Betty, "and I don't think I'm one, she doesn't like to feel that she ever made a dam-fool of herself. She is proud of her instincts and her judgments and the sensitive, emotional intelligence that is hers. When all these seem to have gone wrong, it's pleasing to realise that originally they went right. It soothes one's self-respect, one's pride. I know now that all these blind perceptions in me went straight to certain magnificent essentials—those that make the great, strong, fearless fighting man. That's attractive to a woman, you know. At any rate, to an independent barbarian like myself—"

"My dear Betty," I interrupted with a laugh. "You a barbarian? You whom I regard as the last word, the last charming and delightful word, in modern womanhood?"

"Of course I'm the child of my century," she cried, flushing. "I want votes, freedom, opportunity for expansion, power—everything that can develop Betty Connor into a human product worthy of the God who made her. But how she could fulfil herself without the collaboration of a man, has baffled her ever since she was a girl of sixteen, when she began to awake to the modern movement. On one side I saw women perfectly happy in the mere savage state of wifehood and motherhood, and not caring a hang for anything else, and on the other side women who threw babies back into limbo and preached of nothing but intellectual and political and economic independence. Oh, I worried terribly about it, Majy, when I was a girl. Each side seemed to have such a lot to say for itself. Then it dawned upon me that the only way out of the dilemma was to combine both ideals—that of the savage woman in skins and the lady professor in spectacles. That is what, allowing for the difference of sex, a man does. Why shouldn't a woman? The woman, of course, has to droop a bit more to the savage, because she has to produce the babies and suckle them, and so forth, and a man hasn't. That was my philosophy of life when I entered the world as a young woman. Love came into it, of course. It was a sanctification of the savagery. I've gone on like this," she laughed, "because I don't want you to protest in your dear old-fashioned way against my calling myself an independent barbarian. I am, and I glory in it. That's why, as I was saying, I'm deeply glad that Leonard Boyce has made good. His honour means a good deal to me—to my self-esteem. I hope," she added, rising and coming to me with a caressing touch. "I hope you've got the hang of the thing now."

Within myself I sincerely hoped I had. If her sentiments were just as she analysed them, all was well. If, on the other hand, the little demon of love for Boyce still lurked in her heart, in spite of the marriage and widowhood, there might be trouble ahead. I remembered how once she had called him a devil. I remembered, too, uncomfortably, the scrap of conversation I had overheard between Boyce and herself in the hall. She had lashed him with her scorn, and he had taken his whipping without much show of fight. Still, a woman's love, especially that of a lady barbarian, was a curiously complex affair, and had been known to impel her to trample on a man one minute and the next to fall at his feet. Now the worm she had trampled on had turned; stood erect as a properly authenticated hero. I felt dubious as to the ensuing situation.

"I wrote to old Mrs. Boyce," she added after a while. "I thought it only decent. I wrote yesterday, but only posted the letter to-day, so as to be sure I wasn't acting on impulse."

The latter part of the remark was by way of apology. The breach of the engagement had occasioned a cessation of social relations between Betty and Mrs. Boyce. Betty's aunts had ceased calling on Mrs. Boyce and Mrs. Boyce had ceased calling on Betty's aunts. Whenever the estranged parties met, which now and then was inevitable in a little town, they bowed with distant politeness, but exchanged no words. Everything was conducted with complete propriety. The old lady, knowing how beloved an intimate of mine was Betty, alluded but once to the broken engagement. That was when Betty got married.

"It has been a great unhappiness to me, Major," she said. "In spite of her daring ways, which an old woman like myself can't quite understand, I was very fond of her. She was just the girl for Leonard. They made such a handsome couple. I have never known why it was broken off. Leonard won't tell me. It's out of the question that it could be his fault, and I can't believe it is all Betty Fairfax's. She's a girl of too much character to be a mere jilt."

I remember that I couldn't help smiling at the application of the old-fashioned word to my Betty.

"You may be quite certain she isn't that," said I.

"Then what was the reason? Do you know?"

I didn't. I was as mystified as herself. I told her so. I didn't mention that a few days before she had implied that Leonard was a devil and she wished that he was dead, thereby proving to me, who knew Betty's uprightness, that Boyce and Boyce only was to blame in the matter. It would have been a breach of confidence, and it would not have made my old friend any the happier. It would have fired her with flaming indignation against Betty.