Chapter 35

"But it isn't early, Quinny," she replied. "It's quite late. It must be nearly ten o'clock. We had dinner much later to-night because your train was so long in getting in!"

"Well, they're missing a gorgeous night, all of them," he exclaimed, holding her tightly.

They walked to the fisherman's shelter and stood against the iron rail on top of the low cliff. The moon had made a broad path of golden light across the bay, from the shingle to the pinnacle on the nearer of the two headlands, and they could see the golden water flowing through the hole in the cliff.

"I'd love to bathe now," Mary said. "I'd love to swim all along that splash of moonlight to the caves and back again...."

A belated sea-gull cried wearily overhead and then flew off to its nest in the cliffs.

"The water's awfully black looking outside the moonlight," Henry exclaimed.

"Ummm!" she answered.

They shivered a little in the cold air, and instinctively they drew closer to each other. Beneath them, lying high on the shingle, were the trawlers, lying ready for the morning when the fishermen would push them down into the sea.

"Tom Yeo and Jim Rattenbury are going to have a motor put into their trawler," Mary said. "It'll make a lot of difference to them. They'll be able to go out even when there isn't any wind."

Henry did not answer. He had a strange sense of fear that was inexplicable to him. He seemed to be outside himself, outside his own fear, looking on at it and wondering what had caused it. He felt as if something were pulling at him, trying to force him to look round ... and he was afraid to look round.... He shuddered violently.

"Are you cold, Quinny?" Mary said anxiously, turning to him.

"Yes," he answered quickly, wishing to account for his sudden shivering in a way that would not alarm her. "We'd better go back!..."

What was the matter? Why was he so suddenly afraid and so strangely afraid? If it had been dark, very dark, and he had been alone ... but it was bright moonlight ... so bright that one could almost see to read ... and Mary was with him ... and yet he was afraid to look round at the White Cliff. Something inside him, apart from him, seemed to feel that if he looked up the long steep path over the White Cliff ... _he would see something_.

"Come on, Mary!" he said, turning to go, and turning in such a way that he could not see the Cliff.

They walked rapidly up the street.... "That'll warm me," he explained to Mary ... and as he walked, he was afraid to look back.

"What the devil's the matter with me?" he kept saying to himself until they reached the end of the lane leading to the Manor.

"You're walking too quickly, Quinny!" Mary said, holding back.

"I'm sorry, dear," he exclaimed, slackening his pace reluctantly.

He had never had this sensation before ... as if a fear had been stuck on to him, a fear that was not part of his nature, a thing outside him trying to get inside him.... He forgot that Mary had complained of the rapidity with which he was walking, and he set off again. The pine trees had a black, ominous look, and the sound of the wind blowing through their needles was like continuous moaning.

"Are you trying to win a race, Quinny?" Mary said.

He laughed nervously. "No. I'm ... I'm sorry!..."

As they passed the copse, he shut his eyes, and so he stumbled over the rough ground and almost fell.

"What is it, Quinny?" Mary demanded, catching hold of him.

"It's nothing," he said. "I'm tired, that's all...."

7

He shut the door behind him quickly, and fastened the bolts. Mary had gone into the drawing-room, and when he had secured the door, he followed her.

"Mother's gone to bed," she said, and then, going to him and putting her hands on his shoulder, she added, "What is it, Quinny? Something's upset you. I know it has!"

He looked at her for a few moments without speaking.

"Tell me, please!" she insisted.

He put his arm about her and led her to the armchair by the fire, and when she was seated, he sat down on the floor beside her.

"I didn't want to tell you until we got home," he said. "I didn't want to frighten you...."

"What was it? Was there anything there?..."

"I don't know what it was, Mary, but I suddenly felt frightened ... a queer kind of fright. I was afraid to look round for fear I should see something ... I don't know what ... on the cliff. I felt that something wanted me to look round, and I wouldn't. I didn't dare to look round. All the way up the street, I felt that something wanted me to look round.... I'm not afraid now!"

"How queer," she said in a low voice.

"I've never felt anything like it before ... half afraid and half not afraid!..."

He began to talk about Mullally. "He's a toad, that fellow," he said, "an ... an enlarged toad!"

"I'm going to bed," she interrupted. "Good-night, Quinny!"

She bent her face to his.

"Good-night, my dear!" he said, kissing her fondly.

8

Three days later, when he had almost forgotten his fright on the cliffs, he went down to the village to get the morning papers.

"What's the news," he said to one of the villagers whom he met on the way.

"'Bout the same, sir. Don't seem to be much 'appenin' at present," the man replied.

He went on to the news agency and got the papers, and then, hastily glancing at the headlines for the more obvious news, he tucked the papers under his arm and went slowly back to the Manor by another road than the one by which he had come into the village. There was a field with a hollow where one could lie in shelter and see the whole of the bay and the eastern cliffs in one direction, and the Axe Valley in another, and here he sat for a while, smoking and reading and now and then trying to follow the tortuous windings of the Axe as it came down the marsh to the sea.

"If Ninian were here," he said to himself, "he'd start making plans to straighten it out!..."

He glanced through the war bulletins, with their terrible iteration of trenches taken and trenches lost. People read the war news carelessly now, almost wearily, so accustomed had they become to the daily report of positions evacuated and positions retrieved, forgetting almost that at the taking or the losing of a trench, men lost their lives.

"There isn't much in the paper this morning," he said, and then he turned to a page of lesser news, and almost as he did so, his eye caught sight of Gilbert's name. His grip on the paper was so tight that he tore it. He stared at the paragraph with startling eyes, reading and re-reading it, as if he were unable to comprehend the meaning of the thing he read.... Then, as understanding came to him, he gaped about with vacant eyes.

"Oh, my God!" he cried, "Gilbert's been killed!"

9

He got up, half choking, and scrambled out of the field. A labourer greeted him, but he made no answer. He ran up the road, and as he ran, he cried to himself, "Gilbert's dead ... it isn't true ... it isn't true!..."

He thrust open the gate and ran swiftly up to the door.

"Mary!" he shouted. "Mary! Mary!!..."

She came running to him, followed by her mother.

"What is it?" she cried, and her heart was full of fear.

Mrs. Graham clutched at him. "It isn't ... it isn't...."

He sank down into a chair and buried his head in his hands. "Gilbert's dead," he said. "He's been killed!..."

Mary knelt beside him, and drew his head on to her shoulder. She did not speak. There was nothing that could be said. She knew that Gilbert and Henry had cared for each other as men seldom care ... and no one, not even she, could bring comfort to the one who was left. So she just held him....

10

Mrs. Graham had left them alone. Her fear had been for Ninian, and when she heard Gilbert's name, her relief was such that she had hurried from the room lest Henry, stricken by the death of his friend, should see her face.

"I know now," he said when he was calmer, "what it was on the White Cliff. He wanted to tell me, Mary. He wanted to tell me ... and I wouldn't look round. Oh, my God, I wouldn't look round!"

THE NINTH CHAPTER

1

It was unbelievable that Gilbert was dead. In his mind, Henry could see him, careless, extravagant, always good-tempered and sometimes strangely wise and understanding ... and he could not believe that he would never see him again, that all that youth and generosity and promise should be turned so untimely to corruption. Gilbert's friends would not even know where his grave was ... they would not have the poor consolation of finding a place that was his, marked out from all the other places.... He had been seen, running forward ... and then he was seen no more....

"Perhaps," Henry said to comfort himself, "he's been taken prisoner. We shall hear later on that he's been taken prisoner!..."

He snatched at any hope. Men had been posted among the dead ... and then, after a time of mourning, had come the news that they still lived. Perhaps Gilbert was lying somewhere ... wounded ... and after a while, news of him would come. Other men might die, but it was incredible that Gilbert should be killed....

He became obsessed with the belief that Gilbert still lived. He went about expecting to see him suddenly turning a corner and shouting, "Hilloa, Quinny!" At any moment, a door might open, and Gilbert would walk in and say, "Well, coves!" There was a printed copy of "The Magic Casement" in the house, and Henry would pick it up, and turn over the pages.... "But he can't be dead," he would say to himself, as he fingered the book. "It's absurd!..." Even when hope died, there came times when the belief in Gilbert's survival thrust itself into his mind. When the _Lusitania_ was torpedoed, he said to himself, "Why, we saw her just after the war began, Gilbert and I, and we cheered!..."

The brutality of the war smote him hard. In less than a year from the day when they had stood on the rocks at Tre'Arrdur Bay, lustily cheering as the great Atlantic liner sailed up the sea to the Mersey, Gilbert was dead and the proud ship was a wreck, sneakily destroyed....

Gilbert had left the beginning of a play behind him. He had regretted that he could not finish it before going out to the peninsula ... had believed that in it he would create something finer and deeper than he had yet done ... and now it would never reach completion. The mind that imagined it was no more than the rubbish of the fields when the harvest is gathered....

His own work became tasteless to him. He turned with disrelish from his manuscript. "What's the good of it," he said to himself, whenever he looked at it. He tried to put himself into communication with Gilbert's spirit, remembering that night below the White Cliff, when, he now believed, Gilbert had tried to tell him of his death. A month before, he would have ridiculed any one who suggested to him that he should attempt to speak to the dead. "Spookery!" he would have said. But now, in his eagerness to atone, as he said, for his failure to respond when Gilbert had tried to speak to him, he put faith in things that, before, would have seemed contemptible to him. But with all his will to believe, he could not call Gilbert to him. There was a blankness, a condemning silence....

"I failed my friend," he groaned to himself once, "When he felt for me most, I ... I failed him!"

2

He had gone up to the Common with Mary, and had lain there, talking of Gilbert ... of what Gilbert had been doing this time a year ago ... of something that Gilbert had said once ... of an escapade at Rumpell's ... and then Mary and he had gone home across the fields. As they walked up the lane to the house, they saw a telegraph messenger ahead of them. They quickened their pace. There was an anxious, strained look on Mary's face, and as the messenger, hearing them behind him, turned and stopped, she made a clutching movement with her hands. "Oh, Quinny!" she said, turning to him with frightened eyes. The boy waited until Henry went up to him, regarding them both with curiosity.

"Is it for us?" Henry asked, knowing that it was, and the boy nodded his head. "I'll take it," he went on. "It'll save you the trouble of going up to the house!"

"Thank you, sir!" the messenger said, and then he handed the telegram to Henry. "Is there any answer, sir?" he asked.

"I don't know," Henry replied. "We'll ... we'll bring it down to the post-office, if there is!"

He knew that there would not be any answer....

The boy went off, looking back at them now and then, over his shoulder.

"Shall I open it, Mary!" Henry said.

"Do you think?..." She did not complete her sentence for she was afraid to utter the thought that was in her mind.

"If it should be bad news," Henry said, "we'd ... we'd better prepare her for it!"

They stood there, holding the telegram still unopened, as if they could not make a decision....

"Open it, Quinny!" Mary said at last, and he opened the buff envelope and took out the form.

_The Secretary for War regretted!..._

He looked up from the telegram, and saw that Mary was standing in a strained attitude, waiting for him to speak.

"Is it ... is it _that_?" she said, almost in a whisper.

He bowed his head. "Yes," he said.

She did not speak. She stood quite still, looking at him as if she were trying to find something, but did not know where to look for it. He moved nearer to her, and took hold of her hand and drew her close to him, and she lay quietly in his arms.... There was a bird singing very clearly over their heads, and suddenly, while they stood there, silently consoling each other, two wood pigeons flew out of the highest tree, making a great beating of wings as they flew off across the fields. There was a robin in the hedge, turning its head this way and that, and regarding them with curiosity....

She stirred, and then withdrew herself from his arms.

"We must go home," she said, "and tell mother!"

3

Mrs. Graham was in the garden, and she came to the gate as she saw them approaching, waving her hand and smiling at them.

"Will you tell her, Quinny," Mary said, and she slackened her pace slightly and dropped behind him.

He turned to look for her. "Come with me," he said. "I can't tell her ... alone!"

There was a chilly fear over both of them. They felt that this blow would strike her down, that she would not survive it. Ninian was the beginning and the end of her life. If Ninian were gone, everything was gone. This house, the farm, the fields were without purpose if Ninian were not there to own them.... They went slowly forward, and as they approached they saw her smile vanish, and a puzzled look come in its place. She had waved her hand and smiled at them, but they had not waved back to her, they had not answered her smile ... and then she saw the telegram in Henry's hand. She made a quick movement, opening the gate and coming rapidly to them.

"What is it?" she said, hoarsely.

He could not think of anything to say....

"It's from the War Office, mother," Mary said.

He stood ready to put his arms about her and support her....

"Give it to me," she said, holding out her hand for the telegram, and he passed it to her.

They stood silently before her while she read it. Then Mary went close to her. "Mother!..." she said.

Mrs. Graham did not make any answer to Mary. She still held the telegram in her hands, and gazed at it, reading it over and over....

"Mother, dear!" Mary reached up, and put her arms about her mother's neck.

"Yes, Mary," she answered very calmly.

But Mary could not say any more. She buried her head on her mother's shoulder, and the tears that she had been holding back, would not be held back any longer, and sobs burst from her that seemed as if they would choke her.

"My dear," said Mrs. Graham, raising Mary's face to hers, "we must ... we must be brave!"

She turned to Henry. "Take her in," she said, "and ... and comfort her!"

He went to them, and put his arm about Mary, and led her to the house. "Won't you come in, too?" he said, turning to Mrs. Graham.

"No, Henry," she answered. "Not yet. I want to be out here. I ... I want to be alone!"

She moved away, going slowly down the avenue of trees until she reached the orchard, and then she went into it, and was hidden by the apple trees....

He led Mary into the house. "We can't do anything, Mary," he said. "We're ... we're all caught in this thing ... and we can't do anything...."

She went to her room, and when he had seen the door close behind her, he turned to go back to the drawing-room. He would have to write to Roger. "First it was Gilbert ... then it was Ninian ... presently, it will be!..."

He shuddered, and tried to shut the thought out of his mind.

There was a servant in the hall. "Tell the others," he said in a cold, toneless voice, "that Mr. Ninian ... has been killed in France!"

"Oh, sir!..." the girl cried, clasping her hands together.

He did not wait to hear, and she hurried down the passage to the kitchens.

"Two of us gone now," he said to himself.

He searched for writing materials, wandering round and round the room until he forgot what it was he wanted. "I'm looking for something," he said aloud, "I'm looking for something, but I don't know what it is!..."

Then he remembered.

"I mustn't let myself go," he said to himself. "I must keep a hold of myself. I've got to look after them ... they'll want some one to ... to lean on!"

He began the letter to Roger. "_Dear Roger_," he wrote, and then he dropped his pen. He sat with his elbows resting on the table, staring in front of him, but seeing nothing. "First there was Gilbert," he was saying to himself, "then there was Ninian ... and presently there will be ... _me_!"

One could not believe it. One could not believe it. Why it was only a little while ago that Ninian was here, in this very room, telling them how clever the Engineers were. They were to win the war, these Engineers, unless stupid people, like the "dug-out," prevented them from doing so. There, in that corner there, over by the fire, that was where he had sat, and told them of the Engineers. He had lain back in his chair, carelessly throwing his leg over the arm of it.... And when Mrs. Graham had risen and left the room, unable to stay any longer, and had called to him to come to her room and say "Good-night!" he had looked anxiously after her, and then, after a little while of fidgetting and poor effort to talk lightly, had gone to her....

How could one believe it! How could any one believe that this hideous nightmare was true!... that this horrible thing which devoured young men was not a creature of a fevered mind.... Presently the blood would cool and the eyes would see clearly ... and Ninian's great shouting voice would roar through the house, and Gilbert would stroll in, and say "Hilloa, coves!..."

There was a sound of steps in the passage, and he sat up and listened. Then the door opened and Mrs. Graham came in. There was a bright look in her tearless eyes. Her lips were firmly closed, and he saw that her hands were clenched. He stood up as she entered, and looked at her as she came towards him. She came close to him and laid her hand on his.

"Poor Mary," she said, softly, "we ... we must comfort poor Mary!"

She looked about the room. "Where is she?" she asked, turning to him again.

"Upstairs," he answered.

She went towards the door. "I must go and comfort her," she said. "She was ... very fond of ... of Ninian!"

He followed her to the door, afraid that she might break down, but she did not break down. She gathered her skirts about her, and went up the stairs to Mary's room, and her steps were firm and proud. He could hear the rustle of her skirt on the landing as she passed along it out of his sight, and then he heard her knocking on Mary's door.

"Can I come in, Mary?" she asked in a clear voice.

He could hear the door opening ... and then he heard it being closed again.

He stood at the foot of the stairs, listening, but there was no need of him. He turned away, and as he did so, Widger came into the hall. The old man stood for a moment or two without speaking. Then he made a suppliant movement with his trembling hands.

"It b'ain't true!..." he mumbled thickly.

"Yes, Widger," Henry answered, "it is."

The old man turned away. "I knowed 'un ever since 'e were a baby," he said, and his lips were quivering. "Praper li'l chap 'e were, too!

"It b'ain't right," he went on, looking helplessly about him. Then his voice took a firmer, more definite note, "Where's missus to?" he asked.

"She's upstairs, Widger," Henry answered. "I don't think I'd say anything to her at present, if I were you!"

"Very well, sir!"

He moved away. The vitality seemed to have gone out of him, and suddenly he had become old ... senile ... shuffling.

"They'm wisht times, sir!" he said, as he left the hall.

4

Henry wrote to Roger, telling him of Ninian's death, and when he had finished the letter, he went out to post it. He could not sit still in the house ... he felt that he must move about until he was worn and exhausted. Mrs. Graham was still with Mary, but perhaps by the time he returned, they would be able to come downstairs again. The pride with which Mrs. Graham had supported herself in her grief seemed to him almost god-like. Once, in the South of Ireland, he had seen a peasant woman bidding good-bye to her husband. As the train steamed out of the station, she howled like a wounded animal, spinning round like a teetotum, and waving her hands and arms wildly. Her hair had tumbled down her back, and her eyes seemed to be melting, so freely did she weep ... and then when the train had disappeared round a bend of the track, she dried her eyes and went home. Her grief, that had seemed utterly inconsolable, had been no more than a summer shower.... He had had difficulty in preventing himself from laughing, and he could not restrain a feeling of contempt for her. "They write plays about that kind of silly howling at the Abbey Theatre, and call it 'the Celtic twilight.' No dignity, no decency!..."

He had heard sentimental Englishmen prating about "the tragic soul" of Ireland because they had listened to hired women _keening_ over the dead. "But that isn't grief," he had said to them. "They're paid to do that!" The Irish liked to splash about in their emotions ... they wallowed in them....

But Mrs. Graham's grief was more than a summer shower. Henry knew instinctively that Ninian's death had killed her. She might live for many years, but she would be a dead woman. She would show very little, nothing, to those who looked to see the signs of woe, but in her heart she would hoard her desolation, keeping it to herself, obtruding her sorrow on no one ... waiting patiently and silently for her day of release, when, as her faith told her, she and her son would come together again....

"It's unfair," he told himself, "to compare the grief of an illiterate Irishwoman with the grief of an English lady!"

But then he had seen the grief of poor Englishwomen. Four of the Boveyhayne men had been drowned in a naval battle. He had gone to the memorial service in Boveyhayne Church, and had seen the friends of those men mingling their tears ... but there had been none of this emotional savagery, this howling like women in kraals, this medicine-man grief....

5

They were both in the drawing-room when he returned.

"I've written to Roger," he said, to explain his absence. "Perhaps," he went on, "there are other letters you'd like me to write?"

"Yes," she said, "it would be kind of you, Henry!..."

There was Ninian's uncle, the Dean of Exebury, and Mr. Hare, with whom he had worked ... they must be told at once ... and there were other relatives, other friends. He spent the evening in doing the little services that must be done when there is death, and found relief for his mind in doing them.

"I told the servants," he said, looking up from a letter he was writing. "Old Widger wanted to see you!..."

"Poor Widger," she said. "He and Ninian were so fond of each other!"