CHAPTER LXXXI

THE RETURN

I

A mile from shore, under the lee of the land, the wind fell away.

The lugger, with lolling mainsail, flowed down a path of gold. The shore was dark and still before them, and the sun poised above the Downs, blue at the back.

As they neared the land, the calm grew. Save for the lap of waters at the bow, all was hushed in the gracious evening.

Kit, steering, peered under the swaying boom at the shore.

The Parson, Polly in hand, stood in the bows, viking-like.

The lugger was about to beach at the very spot where they had started twelve hours since.

The tide was much as then; but otherwise what a change!

Then in the cold sunshine men had been busy with each other's lives; now all was sunset peace and waters kissing the shore.

But for one grim reminder of what had been, they might have been returning from a pleasure trip.

The Grenadier Kit had stabbed lay on the slope of the shingle, ghastly to greet them. Just out of reach of the tide he sprawled as he had fallen. No man had touched him. He lay then as now spread-eagled on his face, with wide gaitered legs, and hands flung before him. His chin dug into the shingle; and his shako had fallen askew over staring eyes. It was almost as though he was making faces at them.

Kit saw it and sickened.

Beside the dead man there was none to greet them.

A wood-pigeon crooned itself to sleep among the sycamores on the knoll; the sea fell with a lazy swish upon the shore; behind the orange-lichened roof of the cottage, the Downs loomed black in the glow of sunset The rest was silence and terror.

The lugger grounded, and crashed to a halt in the white fringe of the tide.

The Parson leaped ashore, Polly twinkling in his hand.

"Stand by the boat, Blob!" he ordered, feeling the land with his feet. "Kit, got your dirk? Then follow me."

II

Light and alert, he ran up the slope.

Kit followed with lagging feet.

Never a greedy fighter, for the time the lad had drunk his fill of battle. He tired of hearing his own heart; and that heart tired of its thumping. After twelve hours of the sea's large peace, here he was back again on the evil earth, where the soul is always sick, amid dangers and darkness, beastly men lurking to murder him.

Is it always so on land? he wondered. Is there no heaven on earth except at sea?--where God is because man is not.

He longed to have the waters wide about him again.

Not so the Parson. The feel of the land, firm beneath his feet, thrilled him to new life. He was on his element once more and in it: earth on earth, the warrior at war. A natural fighter, loving it whole-heartedly for its own sake, he was ready for a thousand, almost hoping for them.

Keen of eye, tight-curled, he took the slope at a brisk trot.

A path of stepping-stones led across the green towards the house; each stepping-stone a dead man sprawling face down in a swirl of green.

Kit saw it all as he had seen it then: the tail of Grenadiers, the pursuing Parson, the hounding Gentleman.

Then it had possessed him; now he only wanted to get away. Home, mother, Gwen, and an apple in the loft; soft cheeks, kind eyes, the voices of women loving him, chaffing him--these he longed for. He was tired of being a man for the time being: he wanted to be a little boy again, to be cuddled, to be loved.

And for him it was no new experience, this battle-sickness on the return to the field at evening. He had been there before. When? Where? He could not recall, yet somehow he remembered.

"One--two--three--four--five!" counted the Parson. "I thought I should never catch the last. How he ran! When I was on him he snarled back like a beaten wolf. Then he got it--whish-h-h!"

Kit trailed blindly at his heels.

That stink of dead men, would he never again get it out of his nostrils?

III

The cottage lay before them, just as they had left it. It was barricaded still, and curiously dark.

"Ha!" muttered the Parson. "I don't like the look of this. Left incline, Kit. Make for cover."

The old soldier, wary as a fox, sheered off for the sycamore knoll.

There was a touch of death and of autumn in the air. Already the leaves on the sycamores were shrivelled; and a rusting chestnut was hung with nuts prickly as sea-urchins. As they passed among the trees a robin lifted its winter-sweet song.

The Parson peered out.

The cottage faced them, grey and grinning. There was no sign or stir of life about it; but manifold evidence of death. On the greensward, all about dead men lay crumpled, faces downwards, killed clearly in flight.

Kit's heart turned white.

Dead men as dung upon the grass here in the holiness of evening, and a robin singing in the sycamores overhead.

Song and slaughter! God's work and man's! O, would the day never come when men would _understand_?

"Pretty work," said the Parson, with the zeal of a professional, as he stepped off the knoll. "Cavalry! See here!--a beautiful stroke. A big man on a big horse, I should say, and putting _lots_ o beef into it Yes, yes, yes," with the gusto of an expert. "They've used the edge--see! Got em on the run, then cut em in collops--and all over my bowling-green, tool" treading at the offending horse-hooves.

Kit gave a little cough.

He had seen the lower deck of the _Tremendous_ awash with blood; he had dirked men, and shot them. But this was different. That was death in battle: this was death in life.

The Parson looked up and saw the lad white as a woman in such circumstance. He remembered himself.

"I forgot," he muttered. "You're not used to it. War ain't beautiful as seen in the after-glow."

"It's the quiet," whispered Kit, ghastly. "Like a churchyard--the dead unburied."

"Shut your eyes," said the Parson in steadying voice. "Take my arm. Don't think. Repeat a hymn to yourself."

He walked delicately among the dead, Kit stumbling on his arm.

At the garden-gate they stayed.

The Parson hailed, and Kit started dreadfully.

A wood-pigeon with loud wings splashed out of the sycamores. The kitchen clock within ticked. Other answer there was none.

"I must try the door," whispered the Parson. "Will you come?--or stop here?"

"Come."

The Parson walked down the tiny path between trampled beds, Kit shivering on his arm, and Polly leading him.

The cottage was blind; the windows shuttered; the glass in them shattered.

It seemed more like a mortuary than a human habitation.

The Parson tried the door--in vain.

He laid his ear to it, and listened.

"There's some one there, I'll swear," he whispered, and knocked.

A chair rolled and rolled.

"Piper!"

"No," muttered Kit, with his truer instincts.

Somebody groaned. Broken feet dragged to the door.

The Parson edged off along the wall, hugging it with his shoulder.

"This'll do," he whispered. "Keep behind me. If it's a trick we shall do very well here--flank covered, play for Polly, and the attack with us."

"I don't want any more fighting," whimpered Kit. "I--I want mother."

Bolts groaned, somebody groaning with them.

"Who's there?" husked a ghostly voice.

"Friend," called the Parson.

##