CHAPTER I

I

The crowded steamer from Folkestone reached Ostend in the last glow of the sunset as it fell on the straggling Digue, domes, hotels, casinos, verandahed houses, the pleasure haunt standing inviolate on the edge of the plains, that beyond, were now drenched with blood. A fortnight had elapsed, full of irritating delays. There were interviews at the War Office, where every obstacle had been raised, frantic journeys to the Foreign Office, the Belgian Legation, the offices of the Newspaper Proprietors Association. Nobody wanted war correspondents out there, except the papers. Then more delay while John bought a car, a rare thing, for every one had been commandeered by the War Office; and with all this work he had made desperate attempts to get into touch with the _Daily Post_ resident correspondent at Brussels, beseeching him to ask for Muriel at the Convent of the Sacred Heart. But all was chaotic at the other end of the wire and day after day he had to return to poor Mrs. Vernley with no news. Then, the last day, at the last minute, news came from Muriel herself. She had joined the Belgian Red Cross; the convent had been turned into a hospital.

The steamer was warped in at Ostend amid amazing scenes. The harbour was crowded with refugees, pitiable objects, sitting on their small bundles hastily gathered before flight. The moment his car was landed, John pressed on towards Bruges. Again and again he almost told his chauffeur to turn round and pick up the wretched people straggling along the road towards Ostend and England. Tired women trudged the long roads, carrying infants in their arms, while small children clutched at their skirts. There was no crying, no complaining, only dull, voiceless despair on every face. Old men and women went by, pushing their worldly wealth, bedding for the most part, on barrows. Yes, they had seen the war, out there. The German bombardment was terrible. They were destroying everything. The gallant army resisted every inch, but what could they do, little Belgium, against these hordes? John ran into Bruges soon after dusk.

At daylight, he was on the crowded road again, this time towards Ghent, where the other correspondents had established their headquarters. There had been one topic at Bruges. The wonderful English army was over and fighting! It had all been so swift and silent. The Germans were furious and amazed. They had orders to wipe out the contemptible little army. Nearing Ghent there were signs of war. Ambulance vans swept by, in them inert swathed figures, mud-stained and pallid. The environs of Ghent were choked with cars, lorries, refugees, detachments of men on the march.

John found his colleagues at the long low Hotel de la Poste in the Place d'Armes. There was Tompkins of the _Standard_, tall, lean, and depressed with the hopelessness of it all; and V. E. A. Stevenson, the veteran, who had seen ten wars, and hated them all. He was a cynic, a pacifist and a revolutionary. He derived grim satisfaction when ardent Belgians mistook him, with his red, weather-beaten face, trim beard and white hair, and breast blazing with war ribbons, for an English general. He suffered them to embrace him ecstatically, and sighed for his home at Hampstead,--"built out of the blood of the Boers," he explained grimly. Trevor of the _Times_ walked about morose and self-important; the heavy brow of Willing of the _Express_ was seen towering above every group of Belgian generals. He had a miraculous knowledge of the disposition of the armies, and they consulted him as a general staff. Also, genial, and an optimist to the core, Biddings of _Reuter_ walked about the lounge in carpet slippers. He refused to go out. What was the good of running about the highways and the byways? Every general and person who was somebody came to the hotel. He picked their brains--"very poor rubbish heaps"--gathered up the gossip and at tea-time had such a store that the weary, muddy colleagues were glad to barter news. He was more eloquent, despite an impediment, with the poker in his hands, when, with the cinders, he would show why the Germans could not possibly get to Paris.

On the third day after John's arrival, Phipps turned up. He had been in the thick of it, at Termond and Alost. He had had no food, was nervy and on the verge of a breakdown. His eagle features were sharper than ever, and his brain wonderfully alert. His despatches had created something of a sensation in England, not only for their news, but also for the humanity, the tenderness running through his vivid epics of suffering and incredible heroism. He was in Paris when the war broke out, moved up with the French armies, had been with the British Army in its great stand at Mons, had dragged back through that dogged retreat, "a bloody terrible business, Dean--walking on torn flesh all the way,"--and had passed on into Belgium.

"God--how I hate it--it's insensate, blowing all these splendid lads to atoms, for what?" he cried.

"For England," said Trevor, with disapproving dignity.

"England! Rubbish!" snapped Phipps. "They're giving the same reason in Germany, Russia, Austria, Serbia--the same fierce old women are brow-beating every timid lad, and the same stupid, red-faced Generals are sitting at mess while their puppets are pulverised with something they can't see, which doesn't give them a dog's chance before bespattering the turf with their brains! If this is civilisation, why--" he broke off as though realising the futility of everything. "I suppose we shall have to go on writing as if it were a football match, and be censored every time we hint at such a thing as spilt blood or a nasty mess."

He walked out, even more pallid, and went up to his bedroom where he hammered out a long despatch on his "Corona." Eight other correspondents were doing the same thing in other bedrooms. For an hour there was a rapid clatter of typewriter keys. At five o'clock the despatch rider left for the Signal Station, whence their despatches crossed the wires overnight, in time for the Englishman's breakfast table. Curiously, those at home knew more than these correspondents. They explored a corner, oblivious of the fate of the world beyond. In England every morning the public watched the ugly black snake marked on the map, as it slowly curled its way towards Paris. In a top left hand corner another black line closed in upon Antwerp and crept along the coast towards Ostend.

"We shall have to move out soon," said Riddings. "The streets are choked to-day with ambulances--that's a sure sign." Every night sleep was broken by the incessant roar of guns, and the night sky flickered and quivered. Those were the days when the name of Liége was on every tongue. Could General Leman hold out? Then came news of a terrible massacre at Malines. The name sang in John's heart like a bell. Muriel--was she there? Had she remained and met the German invasion, or where was she? He wired to the Vernleys' beseeching news. That same day a shell fell into the town. The British had marched through St. Nicolas; the fate of Antwerp hung in the balance, the black snake was closing in on Ghent and curling upwards towards the coast.

"If we don't move soon, we're luggage for Germany," said Biddings. "The generals have all gone and they know when it gets chilly as well as the swallows."

Walking down the Grande Place, John suddenly clutched Phipps' arm. The next moment he had seized a car standing outside a shop and was driving madly down a side street. Phipps watched him go in silent amazement, but John, half-crazed with fear that the car ahead would give him the slip, drove furiously, without heeding the traffic through which he miraculously raced. For in the car ahead, he had caught a glimpse of a face that had made his heart jump. Muriel was in it, a Muriel he knew despite her nurse's hood and cape! He was gaining on it now; it paused in front of a building. He alighted on the pavement simultaneously with the slim nurse.

"Muriel!"

She turned, then rushed into his arms.

"Oh, John!"

Two ragged children lifted their caps and yelled "Vive les Anglais! Vive l'Angleterre!" but the lovers stood there alone in the world.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

She laughed, her fingers playing with the button of his tunic.

"And you?"

"Our headquarters are here--Hotel de la Poste--until to-night," he replied.

Her face shadowed.

"I have just been fetched. Tod--he is here--dying."

"Tod!"

"Yes--he came out with the Antwerp expedition--I am just going in to him--come!"

She clasped his hand and they entered the gloomy porch together. The place had been a school--desks and chairs were piled up in the lobby. A Belgian soldier saluted and conducted them to the matron, a pale little Belgian woman. Lieutenant Vernley? Yes, he was here, but he could not be seen, M'sieur was ill, very ill, "a la morte," she added, raising her hands helplessly. John explained.

"Ah!--his sister?--pardon! We expected her. Yes, come! You shall go in."

They followed down a long ward, with dozens of beds, and groaning shapes beneath blankets, and entered a small room, very dull. In the corner was a bed and on it the figure of a boy. His shirt was open at the neck. His unshaven chin was growing a sandy beard, which contrasted with the green-grey pallor of his face; the hands which lay over the brown blanket, were red and soiled. Muriel slipped to her knees at his side.

"Tod dear!" she whispered, taking his hand in hers. But he lay without response, his leaden head deep in the pillow. John stood in the doorway.

"In the stomach, m'sieur--a shell splinter," explained the matron. "He has been delirious, 'Muriel,' that was all he cried, 'Muriel.' We found a letter from Mademoiselle in his pocket, and sent for her yesterday."

"He doesn't know me," said Muriel, turning pathetically, but a pressure on her hand told her she was wrong.

"Oh Tod, darling, I've come. I'm going to nurse you."

A glimmer of a smile faded across the lad's face.

John left her then, he would be back in an hour.

When he returned, Muriel, very quiet, was sitting in the matron's room. He knew in a moment it was all over. Very gently he took her into his arms, and let her cry, with her head on his shoulder.

They buried Tod the next morning. Phipps was there, and an English Army Chaplain, and two Belgian generals, carrying wreaths from the town authorities. Thus another Englishman was committed to the soil for whose defence he had gladly given his young life.

After the funeral, they had to hurry away. Shells were falling into the town. Melle had been heavily bombarded and the Town Hall was a heap of ruins. Half the inhabitants of Ghent seemed to be streaming along the road to Bruges. The inevitable moment of parting came for John and Muriel. She was rejoining her unit, now at Bruges.

When would they meet again? For a long moment she clung to him in the desperation of love.

"We will get leave together and be married, Muriel," he urged.

"Yes, John but not now--we must go on, these poor things need us. I am almost happy here. I could not sleep in England, knowing what happens day and night!"

"Muriel--promise you will take care, I shall be anxious for you."

"And you--you are running all the risks. Oh, John, we must come through! Life is going to be so wonderful even yet."

He kissed her hungrily, wrapped the rugs round her in the car, and saluted as it carried her away. He waited until the traffic blotted her from view. Then he joined Stevenson who was waiting with his car at the hotel.

It was burdened with their luggage, the precious typewriters precariously balanced on the top. They were going south into the British lines and the welter of blood. Antwerp had fallen; nothing could now stop the Germans reaching the coast. And England perhaps. But that was an incredible thought to John. England could not know ruin like this. He looked up at the moon hanging serenely over the flat Belgian countryside. The same moon peered down on English homes and in silent glades where the birds slept.

II

So ran the drama, act by act, in those epic days. While England waited breathlessly, the terrible tides of war, now sweeping onwards, now refluent, devastated the countryside of Europe. The little fire, lighted in Sarajevo, spread outwards until it lapped countries and capitals and nations in its lurid glow; until the windy plain of Troy, the desert slopes of the Holy Land, the forests of the Caucasian mountains, and the shores of the Tigris and Danube shook with the tramp of men. Month after month, the war spread its leprous hand across the face of splendid courageous manhood. Sometimes, in the agony of his soul, when coming from dressing stations where men held in their entrails, by pools coloured like sunset with the blood and limbs of men and horses, John cried out against the monstrous infliction of pain. Was it not better that the world should crash into another planet, and find the peace of obliteration? And to heighten the useless agony of this drama, came the reports of official squabbles, the blunders of statesmen, the rhetorical recriminations of politicians, hurled from nation to nation with cheap victories of words, while men struggled with mud under a murderous hail of iron.

For fifteen months John rushed about the fringe of war in his great car. They were days of terrible strain, but his efforts seemed as nothing beside the herculean labour of those wonderful boys who tramped along the tree splintered roads of Flanders, singing in defeat as in victory, dropping swiftly by the roadside in a convulsive cough as death fell upon them from the air. He was up every morning at five, astir before daylight in the cold wintry air, with a long motor journey to the lines, there to watch the coloured panorama of a bombardment, the unearthly silence of "zero" when the barrage lifted, to wait in those minutes when youth leapt forward upon death; and then to visit the clearing stations where men who had been splendid to look upon, so full of the vigour of youth, lay torn in ribbons, demented, delirious. Month after month he went through the hideous routine when suddenly, one night, after writing his despatch, he fell forwards upon his typewriter. They found him in a dead faint.

"I've seen this coming," said Biddings. "He's worn himself away--and he'll have company soon," he said, turning to Phipps, "if you don't write and smoke less."

A week later John was at the Vernleys, lying about in their rooms, and talking as though all those months had been a nightmare. It was not the same house; Kitty was nursing in London, Alice was on a farm. Bobbie was back home with a wound, hoping to be released daily from a luxurious private hospital in Sussex, "where the chambermaid's a countess and the matron a snob." Muriel--the saga of Muriel, they all called it. She had contributed to history. The story of her stand at Lens had made all England ring with her fame. She had been mentioned in despatches for her heroism under fire. John had not seen her since that memorable day in Ghent, but letters came and went. She wrote vividly of her experiences, and he began to be a little in awe of her obvious efficiency. News of one, he could not gain. There was no mention of Marsh among any of his friends. Bobbie had been curtly silent when asked. "Never heard of him--don't expect he's wounded." Was that a sneer? thought John. Even Mr. Fletcher, forwarding parcels from the boys of his House asked, "We can't trace Marsh--do you know his regiment? He does not reply to letters."

With quiet, and Mrs. Vernley's assiduous attention, John quickly recovered. She had aged much since the death of her eldest boy, and sorrow had rendered her more gentle and self-effacing than ever. These were lonely days for her, with Mr. Vernley away as a Director in one of the Ministries, her daughters all on war work. They had long talks at tea time, when John read the pages he had gathered together of a book of despatches. He was a famous man now, and he rather enjoyed the experience. There was nothing elating in being famous, just because every one was glad to shake you by the hand or because your name was a password whenever and wherever it was uttered; it was indeed wearisome to be pestered with petitions for your support of all kinds of fantastic charities, to be expected to speak here, there and everywhere, or to be an afternoon's attraction at an ambitious lady's drawing-room party. What he enjoyed was the freemasonry in which he could now move among the men and women of the earth who did things, and were great, simply because their natures were rich in character and prodigal with varying gifts.

After his sojourn at "The Croft," he spent a fortnight in town looking up old friends. It was a London strangely, terribly changed. It was, in one phase, a London more interesting. Down its pavements in great variety of uniforms, passed the young men of all the earth; youth from the plains, the jungle, the prairie, the veldt, the backwoods and the ranch, youth in splendid careless vigour, snatching hectically at joy, not turning to see the shadowy spectre over their shoulders. It was strange to stand in Piccadilly Circus, dimly lit, and watch the theatres pour out their festive crowds, to sit in the busy restaurants, to see mankind, strained, feverish, but debonair, trying to laugh in the face of ruin and death. It was a London of extremes; the wounded silently borne from Charing Cross, the beautiful living swept out in the deadly maelstrom at Victoria Station; the painted women gaily surrendering to the rabid hunger of youth in arms, full-blooded and reckless; the air of intense expectation of fresh development, the swift rise and fall of national heroes, the craving for a strong man to lead the nation to victory; the silent evidence of the wreckage in those endless hospitals, the fierce old women full of hate, and the beardless boys drilled and transported like sheep under the charge of hard-voiced blasphemous sergeants,--all these things revealed a nation at war, a nation unnatural in its hopes, fears, suspicions, enthusiasms, yet heroically treading the inevitable path through chaos to some kind of ending, either of victory or defeat.

It was while watching the crowd surging into the Piccadilly Tube entrance, that John's heart suddenly leapt up in surprise. Surely--yes, it was the undisguisable Marsh--and yet! John stared a moment. A tall, sun-browned youth in kilts, with the black and red hose of the Black Watch, was laughing down into the face of a girl whose hand rested persuasively on his arm. She was pursuing her profession, the oldest under the sun, with all the usual assets, the flaunting white stole over the shoulders, the large beaded vanity bag, one hand gloved, the other thin, manicured and nervous, glittering with rings, too large to be genuine. There was something pathetically obvious in the loud declaration of her clothes, the challenge of her carriage, the provoking tilt of her hat over large observant eyes. She had found her object of a night's passion and pay--the human agent of bread and rent. Here was another youth, beautiful in his strength, snatching at a brief expression of manhood as a pleasurable anodyne for an approaching ordeal.

She turned and the young officer half hesitated. John moved forward.

"Marsh!" he said quietly. A malevolent look glittered beneath the dark hat, the tall youth peered at the intruder half-resentfully; even then he seemed confused. With a shock, more of pain than disgust, John saw that Marsh was not quite sober.

"What are you--" began John, when Marsh's senses cleared.

"Scissors, by God, this is great!" Then, awkwardly, he grew conscious again of his company, insistently standing by him--

"This lady is--is--"

"That's all right, Marsh--where are you going?" asked John.

"He's coming home with me," said the girl sullenly.

John put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a note.

"This is an old friend I've not seen for a long time--I want to talk to him," he said quietly, putting the note in her hand. Defiantly she thrust it back, and her mouth, hard and unpleasant, curled malevolently; she was baulked of her prey.

"Keep yer bl---- money, I'm not depending on missionaries," she snarled.

John looked at her calmly.

"I'm sorry, I did not mean to offend you. Then you will join me at supper with my friend?"

There was something so kind and disarming in his voice, that she suddenly melted. Her eyes assumed a tenderness surprising and almost pathetic.

"I'll go--he's your pal I see, and you poor boys may not meet again." .She turned away, but John put a detaining hand on her arm.

"I really meant my invitation," he said quietly.

Then (God! the horror of it!), she momentarily misinterpreted his insistence, and involuntarily her professional air returned, only to be dispelled again by the kind cleanliness of the young man's eyes.

"No--kid, thanks, I guess I'll pick up a boy."

John put his hand in hers.

"No--in memory of our meeting, have a--holiday," he added lamely. This time she let the note rest in her hand. He thought she was going to cry, but suddenly she turned and was lost in the passing crowd. Marsh stood there, silent, bemused. John said not a word, but called a taxi, and pushed his friend into it. In the darkness Marsh sat huddled up. They were speeding down Piccadilly and turning by Hyde Park Gate when he seemed conscious that he was being carried away.

"Where are you taking me, Scissors," he asked in a dull voice. (Could this be Marsh, the debonair, the irrepressible?)

"Home," John replied laconically.

"I'm leaving Victoria at four a.m.--for France."

John started.

"But you--you were--" he began.

"Going to spend the night with a gay woman, like the filthy cad I am. Oh, I know what you're thinking! Well, I was--I'd have been one of those deserters you see under escort."

"You're drunk, Teddie," said John.

"That's no excuse--in a court martial."

There was silence again. It was now half-past eleven. He would get him home and make him rest for the few intervening hours.

Mrs. Perdie was up when they arrived. Fortunately Marsh pulled himself together, and was his graceful self, but when he gained John's room, he collapsed on the bed. John went below to ask for coffee, a little apologetically. But Mrs. Perdie was in a delightful fluster.

"The bonnie laddie--oh, I want to cry when I see a kiltie. His mother must be proud of him. An' the Black Watch! Many's the time in Edinburgh I've seen--"

John left her in ecstasies. He wanted to pull the bonnie laddie round, for the credit of his dear mother and himself. But Marsh had recovered and was sitting upright in a chair. He had been brushing his hair and straightening the thin khaki tie.

"I suppose you're thinking--" started Marsh, bitterly.

"What a stroke of luck it was--Jove, Teddie, it does me good to see you! But where have you been?" cried John. And the other, seeing he had no intention of alluding to the circumstances of their meeting, took the hint.

"This is the end of two years' resistance to the folly of mankind," said Marsh in a laugh that had no mirth, as he stroked the sporran over his knees. "It's been a long disagreeable story! Let's see, we parted at Boston in August 1914--Lord, it seems ages ago. I went home, and then the battle began. I didn't believe in war--I don't believe in the war," he added with emphasis, "and I've gone through hell for my belief. I'm not going to give you a recital of it all. The badgering of one's relatives, the sneers, the fierce old ladies who asked if I didn't think I ought to go. And the mater's had it too. They made it so unpleasant for her that she never goes out now. Well, I've stuck it out for two years, and hell every minute of it. Scissors, I'm just nowhere at all. I went to some of the meetings held by the conscientious objectors, but they made me ill. Most of 'em are long-haired fanatics, living on vegetables and cram full of isms. They've got courage, there's no denying that; it takes more courage to stay out of this war in face of public opinion and calumny, than to go into it--but they seem to enjoy their persecution and welcome it. I can't--it's misery not to be along with all the boys, but I've stuck to my belief until--until--oh, Scissors!"

He bent his head forward, burying his face in his hands, and cried like a child. John moved, and sat beside him on the arm of the lounge chair, placing an arm across his shoulders.

"Teddie, old man--I know it must have been awful--you needn't tell me."

Marsh lifted his head again, and blew his nose very hard.

"Until, Scissors--" he continued determinedly, "one day, a year ago, I was at Paddington Station, and saw Bobbie coming down the platform. He was in khaki, looking very fit. I hadn't seen him since our holiday. You can guess what a joy it was. I just rushed up to him--and--"

Marsh's knuckles whitened as he gripped his handkerchief.

"Scissors, he cut me dead--he didn't even acknowledge that he heard me--but he _saw_ me--he looked right through me, and went on, leaving me like Lot's wife. I'd had a hellish time--that just finished me. A fellow can't go on fighting the world when his best friends quit him. I just went home and buried myself. I didn't write to you--or to any one; I wasn't going to risk a second incident like that. I kept in,--but--I've been in the war every minute. I've gone up and down those casualty lists, Scissors. They're all going; there's hardly any of the old set left. Fletcher's House has been wiped out--a whole bunch at Neuve Chapelle, and I'm going now. I don't believe in the damn war. It's mad, it can't bring anything but indemnities, starvation, hatred. Every day I am more convinced of the insanity--the beastly, selfish filthiness of it, with all these horrible old politicians making speeches out of it, the business man 'doing his bit,' as he calls his plundering, the fierce old women lapping up German blood like vampires. I've deserted, Scissors, I've funked the battle against it--I can't carry on this lone fight any longer. I enlisted a few months ago--been training at Salisbury and here I am, a tailored product of Scott Adie, Highland outfitters, and one of our 'darling brave lads' ready to die for his country."

He laughed bitterly at the wry humour of his position.

"I'm going to disembowel some mother's son I've never seen. They have been working us up to blood fury on stuffed sacks. I've learned how to draw out my bayonet with a twist, and when I've blotted out the light of life in half-a-dozen mother's hearts, a more expert pig-sticker than I am will blot out my mother's happiness. And it'll go on and on for years, till there's hardly a sane, able-bodied fellow left, and then one side will crack, and the political and financial ghouls will gather over Europe's corpse and exact terms and wave flags of victory."

Marsh stood up and paced the room.

"Where's the sense of it?" he cried, stretching out his hands. "What has victory to do with justice--the strongest wins!--but it doesn't follow the strongest is right!"

His eyes softened.

"And, Scissors, those kids in my platoon--there's not one of them eighteen yet; they're just babies and I mother 'em night and day. You know how puppies are, with clumsy paws and trusting eyes?---well, they're just like that, Scissors--and when they're--they're sent into the line--"

Here his words choked him. Mrs. Perdie entered with the coffee, and with further exclamations of delight offered all kinds of service. With many thanks and refusals, John got her out of the room again, but not before she had asked to give the young gentleman a kiss, "as if I was your ain mother, bless her--and God keep you safe," she said, retreating to the door with tearful eyes. Marsh seemed better for having unburdened himself. John wanted him to have a nap, but he would not.

"Let's talk, Scissors, till it's time. We've such a lot to say and you never know, we may--"

"Oh, rubbish, Teddie."

So they talked, and the old days with their golden careless hours all came back again. Remorselessly the clock crept on. At three, Marsh said he would have to go. He had his kit to get at the luggage office. John went with him. They walked along the silent unlit streets. At Victoria there were signs of life. Figures in khaki loomed out of the darkness; for a moment they halted, the sound of marching feet came down the Buckingham Palace Road. Ghostly they sounded in the night hush; a little group under the flare of the coffee stall watched them pass a thousand strong, burdened with kit, obscurely leaving the homeland many would never see again. Marsh and John watched them pass, grim faces, pallid in the dim light, a few whistling out of bravado, but apathetically silent, most of them. They followed the detachment into the lighted station, passed the barrier at the departure bay. Marsh found a carriage full of other officers, some half-sleepy after long night journeys, two saying farewells to their lovers, one very drunk, alternately blasphemous and maudlin, kept in control by a friend. The doors slammed, a shrill whistle cut off the useless scrappy conversation.

Their hands met in a firm farewell clasp. They could not trust themselves to speak. The train moved. Marsh with a final forced smile looked at Scissors, equally mechanical in response. A yard now apart--two yards--the train diminished, the carriage faded--then two red lights receded in the girdered darkness; after that a mist and the heart's desolation.

III

The next morning, the _Daily Post_ rang up, asking him to call at once, and the same voice told him that news had just come of the death of Ronald Stream. It was difficult for John to realise that the death of one so exuberantly young was possible. He had a vision of a night in a room at Cambridge when he had talked there, so radiant and intensely interested in anything, and so much the young god in his beauty and zest, that John had felt shy of approaching him. And now he was dead, in the far away Dardanelles. Fame too had touched him by his legacy of a few immortal sonnets, in which beat the heart of young England. Death seemed impossible to that pard-like spirit, swift and beautiful. For a space, John thought of his friend Freddie Pond. He had encountered him only two nights ago as he leaned against the box office in the vestibule of the Court Theatre, during an interval. John thought he had aged and looked sad and tired, perhaps the act of watching the swift passing of so many of the brilliant spirits he had herded, was wearing him. In some respects, waiting at home was worse than the struggle at the front.

He saw Merritt at the _Daily Post_, busy and tireless as ever.

"Don't know what the Chief wants--are you better? You're looking fit. Just heard young Bewley's won the Distinguished Service Cross for bombing Bruges docks--a bright kid always."

Walsh rang for John and he went in.

"You're fit, I see," said Walsh. "Would you care to tackle a naval job?"

"Anything," said John, "rather than be out of it."

"I'm sending you to the Dover Patrol. I know little more, how you'll live, on board or ashore. I'll give you a note to Blackrigg at the Admiralty, he'll tell you. Good luck to you, Dean."

He was outside again. This time the sea!

John called, in the afternoon, on Blackrigg and got his orders, then he made his way to Gieve's in Bond Street for a ready-made uniform; he was leaving for Dover the next day. Outside the Admiralty Arch he heard his name and turned.

A girlish figure in grey was calling him.

"Tilly!" he exclaimed in glad surprise, "wherever have you sprung from?"

"I think I must ask that!" she laughed softly.

She was looking very beautiful and he wished he was not in such a hurry; he had much to ask her and she came out of a happy past.

"Are you in the same studio?" he asked, in a string of questions. She was thinking how big and strong he had grown, the boy had disappeared in this rather stern looking young man. But he had seen things and was a name in the world.

"Oh--no--I'm at our flat," she replied. Then, seeing the enquiry in his face--"Oh, of course, you don't know--we were married a month ago--I'm Mrs. Lindon now."

She saw his face brighten with sudden pleasure, and as he expressed his wishes, she could not restrain the tears that gathered in her eyes.

"You are--are not unhappy?" he asked, suddenly. "Lindon's all right?--where is he?" he added anxiously, as the tears trickled down her face. She choked, and he took hold of her arm to draw her aside from the inquisitive glances directed to them.

"He's--he's not killed?" whispered John hoarsely, apprehensive of the common answer of these days.

"No--no," she replied, in a quiet nerveless voice--

"worse."

"Worse?" he queried.

"He was wounded four months ago--his right hand shot away."

They stood still, while the traffic roared about them. Strangely detached from the scene, John watched the confluence of the traffic around King Charles' statue, as it poured out of the Strand, Northumberland Avenue and Whitehall. He saw the pigeons fluttering down upon the placarded base of the Nelson plinth in Trafalgar Square, and over it all, his brain was repeating an awful echo, "His right hand shot away," the hand that had threaded those swift passages of Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy on many memorable nights, one of the hands on which rested his future fame.

"Tilly, my poor girl!" he said quietly, as she stood there, frail and tearful. "Let's walk down the Mall--I want to hear all." He took her arm, and led her away from the traffic's vortex. For a space she did not speak, then she smiled wanly.

"Oh, I have him with me--he is so brave, and pretends he never misses it--ties his own tie and is so proud when he gets it straight--but I know all he's suffering. Sometimes I have seen him looking at the closed piano as if his heart would break." She said no more, and they walked on. Then abruptly John stopped and looked down into her face.

"Tilly--you have been married a month--then his--"

Her eyes met his and answered him simply.

"Oh, you poor brave child!" he cried, his own voice trembling this time.

"He needed me so, Scissors--and it makes no difference to me; at least I have him safe now. But for him--"

They walked on in silence. At the Marlborough Gate he left her, with a promise to call on his next leave.