CHAPTER III

I

They were very patient with him at the office of the _Daily Post_. He delayed his return to the Grand Fleet again and again. Merritt, with an observant eye saw that the young man was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but he could not disguise his surprise, when, after fourteen days' absence, during which they had no word from him, Dean entered his room and said he could not go back to Scapa Flow again, and wished to resign.

Merritt stared for a moment and poured out a flood of reasons against such preposterous folly. There was his duty to the paper, which had given him his chance and helped him to fame. Would he let Walsh down in this manner? What of the public that read his despatches so avidly? It was base ingratitude, sheer folly. The gods had poured all the good gifts into his lap.

John laughed bitterly at this.

"What's come over you, Dean? I've never seen you like this before; you've been going about with a green hue on your face for the last two weeks. Are you crossed in love?"

"That's no business of yours!" flared John.

The suddenness and intensity of the reply startled him.

Merritt veiled his surprise: he had touched a secret spring somewhere.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Dean--but you're getting a little difficult to deal with."

"I'm sick of life!" said John, dropping into a chair and beating a tattoo upon the table with his hands. Merritt let him brood awhile.

"What's the matter?" he asked, "are you tired of the Navy?"

"No--but I want to go away, right away!"

"Well--go back to France. I'll speak to Walsh."

"No--that's too near--right away, if I go anywhere."

Merritt looked at him, but said nothing. John rose.

"Come in to-morrow--Walsh may want to see you."

"Right--and I want to see him. Merritt, I've decided to throw it all up--this correspondent work--I'm going to join up."

If Merritt felt like falling, he did not show it. He was sure now that the strain had affected the boy's reason.

"Oh--well, you'll be a quitter if you do."

"How?"

"With a pen like yours, you've a duty to perform. Haven't you thought of all the people who read newspapers for a gleam of comfort? You've a sympathetic note in your work--and many a worried mother's had a little more hope to hold out with, after she's finished your column."

It was the first time Merritt had praised him.

"If you want to go--you'll go, of course, and we can't stop you--but you fall in my estimation. If it's England you want to got out of--well, we want a man in Mesopotamia."

Mesopotamia, the East! Again and again John's thoughts had travelled eastwards. In the last few weeks a deep longing for the skies of his boyhood had possessed him; he wanted to throw off all the Western civilisation now curbing and fretting him.

"If you'll send me there," he replied quietly, "I'll carry on--but I want to get right away."

Merritt had won his point. John promised to return and see Walsh in the afternoon.

The subsequent interview was short and satisfactory. He was to sail from Plymouth in a fortnight, his ultimate destination being Basra.

"It's strange, Dean, but I didn't care to propose this when I first thought of it some time ago," said Walsh, as he bade him good-bye. "I thought you'd dislike being so far from your home-base."

Downstairs again, John, with the words "home-base" echoing in his ears, laughed to himself. What home-base had he here in England, with friends dying in every trench and the world tumbling in ruin about his ears? The East--that was, after all, his true home-base. He should never have left it. To this hour it called him; its witchery was in his blood; almost he could smell the distinctive odour, hear the jingle of camel bells as the caravans wound out along the old highways.

And then a pang of regret smote him. He had friends here, good friends. Ever since that terrible night when his whole future had collapsed like a pack of cards, Vernley had been assiduous in his attention. They had passed the ensuing days together, doing nothing in particular, strolling here, eating there, talking of everything but the one thing that obsessed them both. Once only had they faced reality.

"I can't think why she did it, Scissors, I can't really. She must have been deranged with all she'd seen, and her pity overcame her--women are at the mercy of moods. I've not spoken to her yet about it--I daren't trust myself at present, but when I do, I--"

John put a detaining hand on his arm.

"Bobbie--please don't. It can make no difference now. Perhaps we are all wrong--the whole world's upside down somehow. I don't want to feel bitter--I'm not going to feel anything again, I think, and if she's happy--"

"She can't be, Scissors!" interrupted Vernley vehemently.

"Then she is suffering too--don't make it harder."

"It's her fault--no, it's his, I think--he's played upon her sympathy--he caught her with a--"

"Bobbie--don't!--We--we can't hit him--now, as he is."

Vernley whisked his stick through the air, as though beating his way through a tangle. They walked on in silence. Suddenly he stopped, and confronted his friend, his face quivering, his voice ringing with suppressed emotion.

"Scissors--you're a wonderful chap to take it like this! God! if it had been me--I'd have--I'd have--"

"Faced it, Bobbie," said John simply, "but why talk about it any more?"

But his calm belied him. To the wondering Vernley, it was marvellous self-control and astounding resignation. Even Vernley did not realise that his friend had sunk so low in the waters of despair, that a numbness was upon him; that light and air were no longer the craving of life. He was drowning, and the first fearful struggle had given place to a benumbed acquiescence in Fate. Yes, light and air had gone, that was certain.

They never mentioned the subject again, not even when they shook hands for the last time, before John travelled down to the Marshs', prior to sailing. Vernley wanted to take him to "The Croft," but that would have been too much for him, and Vernley realised the artificial naturalness they would all assume, and dropped the project.

The sun had set, and the livid upper sky tinged the sullen waters of the Thames, as in the final minutes, they paused at the bottom of Mariton Street. Vernley was walking back along the Embankment to the hospital where he was still a patient, with a shell-splintered leg now healing, two inches permanently short.

He grew philosophical in those speeding minutes, as the light died, and the lamps began to glow dimly along the curve of the embankment, running from the darkened East into the fiery West.

"What a mess it all is, Scissors--and some old blighters are making speeches about the England that is to be after the war, the era of reconstruction, of glory and peace; and here we are blasting each other off the earth, many of us dead, half of us limping, and none of us quite knowing ourselves as we were. Jove! Sedley seems like a dream--poor old Marsh and Tod, and--my God, what a mess, what a mess, I'm not sure that I care about seeing the end of it! Scissors, it has been wonderful though--we can't be robbed of that by all the damned politicians and the butchering generals. And to have had you for a friend--why it's--"

He could not finish--with a silent handshake he suddenly turned, and limped away in the gathering darkness.

When he had gained his room John sat down and thought. He sat silently there until the last gleam faded in the sky, until the room grew totally dark, and outside a large moon climbed up from the chimney stacks. Mrs. Perdie found him there when she came in to light the gas, preparatory to retiring for the night. She thought how worn he looked, and suggested a cup of cocoa, but he declined it with a faint smile of thanks. On her way to the top attic, she reflected that only youth could plumb the full misery of these tragic days.

II

In the train to Renstone, John wondered how he would find Mr. and Mrs. Marsh. He had had two letters from them since their son's death, letters written by Mrs. Marsh, full of quiet grief and patiently uncomplaining. Somehow this journey to Renstone brought Marsh's vivacious personality more vividly before him. Their days together had been without an open confession of friendship, but their attachment was deep, and Vernley's part in it equal, so that the old adage, "two's company, three's none," was proved utterly foolish.

At the station a trap met him, driven by the old gardener at the Vicarage. The sun beat down fiercely upon them on the slow drive along the country road. The regal splendour of June blazed on each side, in the woodlands and on the hills. Then the trap turned in at the familiar gates, past the central holly bush in the drive, and halted at the door. It opened as he alighted, and Mrs. Marsh stood there, hatless and smiling.

"You are just in time for tea," she said, as he moved towards her. So she had remembered his love of the tea hour and their talks! She had not altered in any way, as he had feared. Perhaps her hair was a little greyer, but of that he could not be sure; as for signs of the grief she had suffered, there was none upon that face of almost childlike grace. Far different with Mr. Marsh, however. John met him in the hall, and was shocked at the change in him. His hair was now wholly white, and the characteristic rectitude of his bearing had gone. He stooped slightly, and John felt, as he took the welcoming hand, it was a little feeble; but the irradiating kindness of his smile was there as ever, and the gentle humorous way of talking.

They had tea on the lawn, under the copper beech, with an arrogant peacock attempting to disguise its interest in their proceedings. The old cat came out from under the rose bush where it had slept in the shadow; a few birds lazily twittered in the screen of elms at the far end of the garden, audibly tremulous in their tops as the wind passed through them. The loudest noise was made by the wasps crowding about the jam-dish. They talked of a dozen things, with never a mention of Teddie's name, until after half an hour, just before Mr. Marsh went in to his study, he said--

"I'm afraid you'll find it very quiet here, my boy. You see, we've not marked the tennis lawn this summer--Teddie always did that, and there's no young people call now, they're all away. So you'll have to amuse yourself."

He went indoors, sadly, thought John. Mrs. Marsh watched him go.

"Poor father," she said at last. "It has hurt him terribly."

John turned to her.

"And you?" he asked quietly.

She smiled at him.

"Perhaps I am less rebellious, John--I don't know. But I feel, always I have felt, he has not gone, Teddie's here all the time."

"Here?"

"Yes--in this garden. Sometimes I sit here in the afternoon with my sewing and listen to the wind in these trees. Sometimes there's not a murmur of sound, and yet I feel that Teddie's here, just behind my chair, or pulling the lawn roller down there, or lying in the sun with a cushion under his head, 'basking' as he called it. I'm not what you call psychic, John,--I've never given any thought to these things, but I know he is not dead, that he moves with us here, perhaps hears all we say. You know how he loved to talk. This is foolish, perhaps,--but oh John, I am so sure I am right!"

He said nothing, but sat beside her. It was beautiful in this old vicarage garden. Generations of vicars had tended it, and June came year by year, with its profusion of roses, its climbing honeysuckle and night-scented verbena. Was it too much to believe that any one who had loved this spot, whose boyhood had passed in its peace, whose love still lingered here, should come back, unseen? This was a thought of faith, of love that would not countenance surrender; was it a thought any the less reasonable because it sprang from abiding love? He was a child in such experience, it was not for him to judge; happy for her if Faith's bright star shone in the darkness of these days.

He did not speak, he could not; any words of his would have seemed desecration. He just sat there by her side, in the flower-scented glow of the garden, while the sun dropped to the horizon and the shadow of the elms lengthened along the lawn. The birds were now twittering before sleep overtook them; the rookery over by the hall grew noisy as the sky changed from rose-red to translucent green, with an adventurous star here and there in the silver grey of the east. The dinner bell tolled at the Hall. Mrs. Marsh broke the silence.

"There, it is time we dressed. I have given you Teddie's room, I thought you would like it," she said.

Under the pergola they paused and looked back over the gardens towards the yew hedge, behind which the fading light of the horizon flamed in the heart of the sunset. Softly she repeated,

"_Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns And the round ocean and the living air._"

"Oh, John, I know I am right--the living air! I can't think of Teddie as dead, he loved life too much for that; he was too joyous to end in mere nothingness."

Her eyes shone with love as she spoke, and, that moment, her faith became his.