Part 15

A hundred times they had climbed this hill together. He felt as though she moved beside him now. He could see the sleet-drops glistening on her smooth cheek, whipped to a sweet carnation by the chilly wind. The scent of camphor from her furs came back to him, with the light pressure of her gloved hand upon his arm. In his ears were the tones of her nice voice,--the frank glance of her fair eyes seemed to meet his, for him were her gay words and her tender ones--like the sweet smile upon her rather large mouth. A smile that expressed its owner's innate conviction--shared by the majority of her acquaintances--that never under any imaginable circumstances could Miss Forbis be unwelcome or undesirable in the estimation of any being she chose to bless. No wonder her wretched Edward was wrung and tortured. In vision after vision she came and vanished, as he tramped beside the now exhausted Brownie under the thin new February moon.

The iron-hard ringing ground, slippery with cat-ice; whitened with powdery hoar-frost; flowed on unheeded under the footfalls of brute and human, who marched together to a worsting Fate. All Nature seemed to reproduce Yaill's mood--the desolate, wintry hills, the eerie scream of the whaups--frozen out of their feeding-grounds in marsh and bogland,--the wailing cry of the hunting-owls, were in tune with him. The skirl of the north-east wind, honed to a razor-edge on the Jutland coast--tanged with the freezing salt of the wild North Sea; mined, patrolled, netted, guarded,--watched from bleak shore to shore, and from the oozy depths, and from the immeasurable heights of Air, by friends and foes, indomitable in hatred,--echoed through the chambers of his desolate heart....

In the Spring of 1910 they had become engaged, and were to have been married in the Winter of that year,--but her mother had died--and Katharine had been unwilling to leave her father, and there had been delays and delays.... And then the wedding had been arranged to take place in the Autumn of 1914, and the War had prevented it--the damnable War!

He ground his teeth, thinking of what the War had done for him and for many another man as wretched--and the distant hooting of the owls, freezing as they hunted freezing rick-mice--and the shriek of the north-east wind--sounded like Irish Banshees wailing the coming death of beautiful love....

For Katharine's love had always been perfectly beautiful. She had been the ideal mate--the sweetheart who never palls. She had fed her lover's heart with the wholesome bread of tenderness, and never let his soul lack nourishment. She had met him full at every turn and exigency of Life--even as they had moved to meet it side by side. In the purest, most spiritual sense these betrothed lovers were wedded--though their ancient Church had not yet made them one.

And now he was hastening to meet her and pull down his tower of love about his ears. Why hurry? whooped the owls and skirled the curlew. If you are going to tell her as you purpose, will you not reach Kerr's Arbour far too soon? But if you have the wisdom that men boast of--take what Life yet may give ere you lose all....

He topped the crest of the final steep, and halted to let his dumb companion breathe awhile.... Now the sharp tuff-tuff of a motor-cycle came out of the distance behind him, and he wondered who was having so cold a ride upon that road to-night. Even from this point he looked on his journey's ending, with the sensation that a man may have in meeting with a dying friend....

Nothing of beauty characterised Kerr's Arbour, an irregular mass of masonry rising from a walled garden-courtyard shut in by high yew-hedges: a stone wall and a _porte-cochère_ of ancient wrought-iron, beyond a bridged dry moat at the bottom of the private road. It showed as a rambling house of Early Jacobean architecture tacked on to the peel-tower reared by Sir Hew Forbis the Crusader, somewhere about 1147. The ancient battlemented tower was squat and clumsy, the rooms with rare exceptions were low-pitched, the ancient casements small, the stairways narrow, and the stone-flagged passages anything but level to the tread. But set in a fold of the snow-tipped hills and shielded on North and East with plantations of oak and evergreen, with the snow-veiled mirror of a little lake, burn-fed, trouty, haunted with heron and other waterfowl,--lying beyond the wintry gardens to the southward; with chilly moonlight on its frosty battlements and lying in pools upon its stone-flagged terrace; and smoke curling from its clustered chimneys; with mingled firelight and lamplight winking from well known windows--it caught at the wanderer's heart as a vision of Home.

He looked up at the black-white sky, and it seemed to his misery, that beyond that inky wrack and livid cumulus--hurrying south like a curse rushing to fulfil itself--dwelt One who in His high austere remoteness looked coldly on the pigmy woes of men. To Whom his pangs were the struggle of the fly in the milk-jug,--the writhings of the worm severed by the gardener's mattock,--the pain of the snail being beaten by the thrush on the stone....

What, O what was it to Him that Katharine's love had always been perfectly beautiful! And that to live beggared of all that wealth of sweetness--perhaps through all the years of life to follow--would be sheer Hell to her lover, Edward Yaill.

Yaill shrieked at the thought, as a man at the stab of the bayonet--and the sweat broke out upon him, despite the cold. His hand went out and gripped the shaft of the dog-cart, so fiercely that the dogskin glove split.... Baulked passion, thwarted desire rent and tore him. Oh, what were Honour and Truth but pithless meanings! He would go down to Kerr's Arbour where she waited, and love and be loved before the ending came. He would drink one draught of the wine his soul and body craved for--before Fate dashed the cup out of his hands.

So said, so it should be done. He took the reins from the hame-spike, and the flare of the wind-blown candle-lamp showed his smile. He sprang to his seat and snatched the whip from the socket, and lashed the mare--who broke into a furious gallop--the cart swinging and lurching perilously behind her as she pounded madly down the steep descent. At the bottom lay the curve of the dry moat, crossed by what had been a wooden drawbridge, converted in the reign of the last Stuart monarch, into an arch of rough-cut granite blocks. Beyond the bridge and a short avenue of beeches rose the rust-red iron gates of Kerr's Arbour, with the arms of the house wrought into their ancient tracery: a wolf's head crest with the motto "FORBYS FOES FA" above a shield with the plain device of three escallops _argent_ on a _fesse_ between two chevrons _sable_ and _gules_.

The gates stood open for the guest of honour. On their cracked stone pillars, topped with grotesque lead effigies of wolves, each supporting the sword of a Crusader, oil lanterns burned, dangling by chains from iron cressets (meant to hold flares of greased or tarry tow). A dog barked within, and the cracked familiar voice of Whishaw, the butler, snapped out angrily:

"Down, Dawtie! Quiet, bitch! Gin ye dinna ken the Colonel, ye daumned eediot, canna ye haud yer tongue like Laddie an' Bran?"

The dog-cart's worn tyres shirred on the gravel of the courtyard. Yaill leaped down. The heavy nailed hall-door stood wide open. Warmth and light rushed together on the exile, and the scent of flowers, the pretty smells of burning peat and apple-wood, lavender, camphor and sandal from the great Japan cabinets ranged in the hall, came to him in a satisfyingly, fragrant whiff. This was home.... Katharine's home.... And Katharine.... He trembled and a mist blurred his vision--and then his sick heart leaped--because she came.

XI

Came with a rush, and a whisper of silken draperies, straight as an arrow to his starving heart. The chastened passion of her embrace of welcome--the guarded flame of ardour in her kisses--the rapture in her pure eyes told her lover that he was loved as dearly as of old. Unchanged, O God! She who must learn to-morrow, perhaps to-night, to loathe the name of Yaill....

She led him in, moving with the elastic step and upright carriage that gave her, amongst other women, the air of an uncrowned queen. As they passed the chapel door he saw through the stained glass that more lights burned there than the ruby star of the Sanctuary Lamp. She caught his puzzled look, and whispered to him:

"Because my father lies there until his Funeral. Presently you shall see him, dearest Edward. He always loved you like another son."

Her father.... So he was dead, the fine old General. It was true that Yaill had been fond of the dear old fellow, in some remote and shadowy long ago.... Now Katharine was saying, in that blessed voice of hers:

"I was quite sure that when you got my cable, you would come to me, if the surgeons said you were fit. Not unless! ... I made that clear! You understood that, Edward? You would not have been so cruel as to come if it hurt you, dear?"

He moved his head after a non-committing fashion. He had to hide his ignorance of this cable, sent to the Convalescent Camp at the B---- Base, announcing the death of which he now first learned. He realised that he brought with him into this honourable dwelling, subterfuge, pretence, concealment and evasion.... By use of these he must make his way, warily, as over duckboards laid on quaking mud. Presently one would be lying.... Lying to Katharine, the crystal soul of candour and honesty....

Now he was sitting upon her right at the dinner-table, wondering at the keen appetite provoked in him by the savour and sight of well-prepared, well-cooked food. A pink-eyed, silver-haired, Shetland-shawl-enveloped elderly lady, a Mrs. Bell--once nursery governess to the Forbis children, and now occupying an indefinable position in the household,--opposed him upon Katharine's left hand; the carved oak arm-chair usually occupied by the master of the house, remaining in its place at the head of the table; a Persian cat, the dead man's favourite, curled up asleep upon its faded seat.... Nor did the dogs,--a collie, an old pointer-bitch, and a Scotch deer-hound--desert their accustomed posts upon the threadbare patches of the Turkey carpet; though uneasy whimpers testified to their sense of strangeness, and their wistful eyes were always on the door.... Once their tails drubbed and their jaws slavered a welcome, when a thin elderly priest came in, and bowing with the formal grace of the seminary--as Miss Forbis introduced Colonel Yaill to Father Inghame--made a remark about the bitter weather, and took the cover evidently laid for him--upon the right of the master's empty chair.

He was fasting, for a dish of spinach with eggs was brought to him, though Friday's dishes figured on the board. He looked fagged and ate with evident lack of appetite; admitting in reply to Katharine's inquiries that the road to Peelston Bridge was uncommonly trying--even for a cyclist inured to conditions in France. It transpired presently--for the priestly reserve yielded to the charm of Yaill's voice, his courtesy and soldierly frankness--that Father Inghame was not a Secular priest but a Religious of the Order of St. Gerard; who had served as chaplain attached to a Division of the First British Expeditionary Force; received a shrapnel-wound in the First Battle of the Aisne, and had come home in charge of a Hospital convoy. Further, that he was discharging the easy duties incumbent on the resident chaplain at Kerr's Arbour, until his health should be sufficiently re-established, in the opinion of his Superior--to warrant his return to the Front.

"Which I hope may be soon, very soon!" he ended. "For I think that Miss Forbis will not misunderstand me, when I say that I want to get back to real work. To eat the bread of idleness in comfort and safety while brave men are dying hourly in muddy trenches, is not--for a priest who is able-bodied and hardy enough--"

"To subsist upon the rocky biscuit, and munch the iron ration of War!" said Yaill's deep, soft voice with the under-note of melancholy; "Men who have done far less than yourself, Father," he went on, "are content with ordinary War-conditions at home. Would not the charge of a crowded Mission in the East or West End of London--or possibly in a Hertfordshire village, with the certainty of--say two bomb-raids per week, be sufficient to satisfy your thirst for risks?"

Father Inghame returned with a queer hot light burning in each of his hollow eyes, and a flush rising under his sallow skin:

"Indeed, Colonel, you overrate the small part that I have been permitted to play in the opening acts of this unfinished drama of Armageddon." He went on, prompted to pay a genuine tribute of admiration to the distinguished soldier whose heroism was as proverbial in the mouths of men as the record of his misfortunes: "Compared with the experiences that you have passed through, such as have fallen to my lot are, to say the least of them, trivial. Except with regard to the conduct of those Catholic soldiers whom it has been my privilege to confess and communicate. How often when I have passed through the trenches under heavy shell-fire, carrying the Blessed Sacrament,--I have seen them take off their shrapnel-helmets--though shell-splinters were flying about, and machine-gun bullets whistling overhead. And with what childlike simplicity and faith they would kneel in the stinking mud to receive their Saviour! And with what sublime endurance and resignation they have rendered up their souls to God.... All my life long, I shall be rich in such memories: bequeathed to me, not only by Catholics, but by Protestants, Presbyterians, Dissenters, and members of the Church of England,--whom I have seen die with the light of Faith upon their blackened faces--whispering the prayer that was made by God for men!"

"The splendid men!" said Katharine's full warm voice. "Oh! how can we ever be proud enough of these men of ours! Haven't I _hugged_ myself whenever I remembered--'I am your countrywoman, you great dears!'"

Yaill's eyes met hers, and an exquisite thrill was interchanged between them. When they were once more conscious of the outer world, the Father was saying--with some lack of tactful prevision:

"It is said there were a good many Catholics in the rank and file of your regiment. In the First and Second Battalions of 'The Tweedburghs,' in 1914--as in those battalions reconstituted," he hesitated, "after the disasters of Le Cateau-Cambrésis and Loos--I have heard the percentage estimated at twenty-five."

"The estimate is correct," Yaill answered, speaking with admirable composure, though a tell-tale muscle fluttered in his lean brown cheek, and Katharine drew a quick breath of painful sympathy. He added, with a curious intonation: "Yet, despite scapulars, medals, rosaries, badges and other practical life-assurances--the Catholic men you speak of lie under stinking mud with other fellows now. Ha, ha, ha!"

And he laughed with such unnaturally loud and mirthless violence, that Whishaw at the sideboard jumped and dropped a dish-cover, and Katharine's sweet eyes went to him in grave surprise.

Those eyes of Katharine's, "of gold and bramble-dew," never strayed long from the face of her dear one. She was nurse as well as lover, and that strange laughter had filled her with dismay. She wished that the Father had been wise enough to shun the agonising subject. Why had it not occurred to her to warn him not to refer to Edward's terrible experiences, she asked herself, aching in sympathy with Edward's pain. But thin ice is a lure to some skaters,--these not the most brilliant performers. Father Inghame pursued, in a tone that was not untinged with rebuke:

"You would not suggest, I feel sure, Colonel, that the Catholic men of your own or any other regiment regarded rosaries, scapulars and medals as charms and mascots--and not as legitimate aids to faith?"

Yaill's face hardened to a mask of pale brown granite. His fine dark brows drew sternly into line. His grey eyes gleamed, and below the clipped moustache a faint smile hovered. He played with the stem of an antique wine-glass of cut green crystal; twirling it in the long sensitive fingers of a hand as beautifully shaped as strong. And he returned, while feigning to admire the delicate workmanship of the long-dead engraver:

"You are right. I intended to convey no such suggestion." He changed the trend of the conversation by asking the little pink-eyed Mrs. Bell when she had last heard from her son in India. And his agreeable, well-bred tones gave no hint of the frenzy of impotent resentment raging within him against the Supreme Power Who set the pellet Earth with her sister planets, to follow their orbits round the white-hot Sun--and modelled the lord of the world--Man, in the form of the Creator; and set in his breast a spark of Divine Intelligence; and bade him live, and love, and be loved again--O anguish!--a finite being with immortal yearnings--condemned to dwell in the upas-shadow of Death.

To house an immortal Soul in the breast of a pigmy, in the blood of whose veins armies of microbes make War. Whose tiny gullet can be blocked by a swallowed fish-bone; whose seeing eye, that miracle of miracles, by a thorn-prick or a blow can be rendered blind! Whose brain, that has solved the secrets of Creation; reduced the Universe to its chemical constituents; made an ally of the once tameless lightning; abolished Time, and annihilated Distance; set bounds which Plague and Pestilence may not overpass; made ships to fly in Air and sail below water--may by a blow be mashed in its eggshell skull. Or by the detonation of a shell packed with High Explosive, be churned to merest pap of grey matter, dead to sensation, incapable of Thought. Or be so thrown out of gear as to order the body to speech, impulses, acts, in opposition to the Will. Seemingly sane, O horrible, horrible mockery! until the awakening from trance or stupor, or whatever the vile bedevilment may be. From the condition of No. 40, Shell Shock Ward 8, General Casualty Hospital 70--and the state of No. 80, Convalescent British Officers Camp, B---- Base--to the present plight of the complainant; captive within the enclosure of a sacramental vow!

This was the rankling grievance nursed by Edward Yaill against his Maker. The son of a Catholic house, reared in the Faith, loyal to the Church, scrupulous in the discharge of religious duties, he had never for one instant imagined himself at variance with his God. That he could quit the fold of Catholic Christianity on the grounds of intellectual doubt, he knew to be impossible. Like the devils, he believed--even while he revolted. His was the pain of the child who, loving the father, has discovered him to be unjust. The muscle twitched in his lean cheek, and a quiver passed over his stern features as a ripple will traverse the surface of still water. And to Katharine's tender, watching eyes, it seemed that all was not well with Edward. She breathed a little silent prayer to Our Lady for him, and unconsciously her large white hands folded together on the tablecloth. They were beautifully-modelled hands, with tapering fingers, and nails that had been exquisite in pre-War days. The damaged nails that gallant British women were not at all ashamed to show.

Yaill knew that those fair hands had done distasteful, rough, laborious tasks with glorious goodwill and cheerfulness. He loved them and admired them all the more. He could picture them holding up the drooping head of a wounded man--or offering cool drink to the parching lips of the dying. He had sipped sparkling burn-water from their cupped palms many a time on a hot day up yonder on the moors. He had seen them folded in prayer, he had covered them with kisses by her sweet permission. When he had bidden her good-bye upon leaving for the Front--she had taken his head between those hands, and kissed him solemnly upon the forehead--and traced the sign of the Cross there--as his mother might have done, had she been alive. And God, Whom he had served and trusted--had for no fault of his, taken from Yaill who worshipped her--this pearl and paragon among women. And upon this count he held himself betrayed.

There would never be "_Nil_" upon Yaill's disc, but he had finished with prayer, and the Sacraments, and Mass-going for ever.... Unless--by some marvellous--miraculous happening, the Great Wrong should be set right.

XII

Dinner ended. Little, pink-eyed Mrs. Bell enveloped herself in her Shetland shawls and discreetly vanished, with a plaintive murmur of good-night. Yaill, with set, formal courtesy, giving precedence to the Church--followed Father Inghame and Katharine through a curtained archway communicating with the adjoining drawing-room.

"Thank you, Miss Forbis, but I will not stay for coffee. I have to make a visit to the chapel--and write some letters, and after night-prayers I shall go to bed, for I am beat out. I only wanted to say that Father Haildon, the priest in charge of your Parish Church at Birkleas, will celebrate the Requiem Mass on Monday; and that the Father Superior of the Monastery at Scraeside," he named a place some miles distant from Birkleas,--"will esteem it an honour to be permitted to assist. He will bring a Jesuit priest from London who is staying at the Monastery (Father Bevan, of Farm Place, Grosvenor Crescent)--and all are agreed that ten o'clock will be the most suitable hour. The boys of the Birkleas choir will drive over in the break with Father Haildon; and the lady who acts as organist will take the place of Mrs. Bell. That is all, except to wish you a very good night!" He shook hands with Miss Forbis and moved in the direction of the door opening on the hall, adding: "Mass will be at half-past seven as usual to-morrow. Perhaps--" his eyes went doubtfully to the tall khaki figure and downward-bent, thoughtful face of Yaill, who stood upon the worn tiger-skin hearthrug with a hand gripping the ledge of the mantelshelf: "perhaps as Whishaw's grandson has influenza, Colonel Yaill would like to serve Mass?"

There was an instant's pause before Yaill answered. He stared into the wood and peat fire blazing in the antique bowed steel grate, and seemed as though he had not heard. A log hissed; spurted brilliant flame; broke and fell--scattering sparks upon the old Dutch hearth-tiles. Two or three lodged upon the tiger-skin, mingling the fragrance of the charring apple-wood with the ugly acrid tang of frizzling hair. Then Yaill said, punctuating the sentence with stamps of his boot-heel:

"I fear I must--ask--to be excused, sir."

The priest's response was the gentle opening and closing of the door. Then with her long light step and a whisper of silken draperies, Katharine crossed over and stood on the hearth at her lover's side. He did not move or lift his head, but his starved heart answered the call of her nearness with a leap of fierce delight. His arm went out and round her, and she leaned lightly against him, and whispered against his cheek, close to his ear:

"If you knew what joy it is to me, to have you! ... Dear Edward! I am not much good at words--but you understand?"

He said, stiffening his lips against his teeth to check their trembling: