Part 4

"You should have left it to me," repeated Graeme. He put out his hand and took the sugar basin from her. She laid the butter-knife with precision beside the cabbage leaf containing the butter. Their actions were mechanical and inconsequent, as if the kneeling figures were two automata actuated by wires.

"I thought I'd left enough to you," she said. "You laughed it over the first time, as if it were a joke. Perhaps it was a joke. One would rather look at it in that light. But at least you could have made sure there would have been no second misunderstanding. No possibility of my being--being insulted." The colour flamed back into her cheeks. "And you did nothing--nothing." She bit her lower lip to control its trembling.

Graeme forced a wan smile. "There wasn't time, then.... But I will do something--and anyhow, it doesn't matter, really."

"Doesn't matter!" she echoed in frozen tones. "_Doesn't matter_! You put me in odiously false positions, you expose me to an outrageous insult ... and you--you laugh and say it doesn't matter! Oh, this is intolerable!" Angry tears forced themselves to her eyelashes.

Graeme groped for the hand that fumbled for a preposterous handkerchief (with what care had that little scrap of cambric been selected a few short hours before, and with what unconsciousness of the purpose it would serve!) "Claire! Claire! don't you understand, I want you to marry me."

She whipped to her feet. "Oh, don't be absurd!" she cried. "Do you imagine--is this your idea of doing something? Of rep--reparation for dragging my name--my brother's----" She was weeping now.

From somewhere on the sands below came the voices of the children returning from their bathe. With a wrung heart Graeme realised his chance had gone; the children could see them. Miss Mayne turned her face from the sea. "I'm going for a walk for a few minutes," she said; "will you all start tea?"

"But won't you give me a chance to speak to you later on?" gasped Graeme, "just for a second. It isn't anything to do with this wretched business. I mean I don't want you to marry me just because----"

Miss Mayne turned a tear-wet face towards him for one instant. "If you are what I once thought you were--if you even remotely resemble what I've always heard of Naval officers, you'll never, never broach this odious topic again, by word or letter or implication."

And with that she went off along the cliff, walking very fast with her head bent.

Mouldy Jakes fell to buttering a slice of bread.

_Dies irae_! And the night that followed, little better for most of the participators in that memorable picnic. Tears wetted two pillows at least; a third remained uncreased until the dawn by the head that ought to have lain there.

Cornelius James awoke on the morrow to manifold perplexities.

To Jane, his confidante in most tribulations, he unburdened himself after an early breakfast, what time Miss Mayne and Georgina, the former heavy-lidded and both uncommunicative, were putting finishing touches to the packing. The two children were taking a valedictory stroll round the farm.

"Miss Mayne's been crying," he observed gloomily. He abhorred tears.

Jane confirmed this with a nod that set her curls bobbing. "So's Georgie."

"I know." Cornelius James's tone was one of exasperation. "I'm sorry to be leaving Glebe Farm, but I don't cry about it. You're sorry, too, aren't you, Jane?"

Jane nodded again, but hesitated before disclosing the maiden secret of another's breast. "'Tisn't that, Georgie wasn't crying 'cos we're leaving, 'xactly."

"Then _why_?" demanded her brother. He scrambled on to the wall of the pigsty, and sat moodily dropping bits of stone on the porker's back.

"You see," explained Jane, not without diffidence, "she's in love."

"What next!" gasped her outraged brother. "Who's she in love with?"

"Mr. Jakes."

Cornelius James could find no words applicable to the situation.

"But--but," he finally exclaimed, "even if she is, what's she got to cry about?"

Jane clambered up beside her brother. "Well, you see," she began, "it was that picnic."

"It was a jolly picnic," maintained the other.

"Yes, but Georgie counted on having Mr. Jakes all to herself on the way back."

"So she jolly well did!" commented her brother wrathfully.

"Yes, but he never opened his mouth 'cept once, and then he only said something about selling a farm and going to sea, and Georgie thinks he hates her."

Cornelius James pondered over this insight into the enigma of the feminine heart.

"She's an ass!" was his final comment. "And what about Miss Mayne? Don't tell me she's in love!" Assuredly the queen could do no wrong nor stoop to such folly.

"I don't know," replied Jane, "but last night I went to her room to borrow a ribbon to tie my hair up with 'cos I'd lost mine, an' she was lying on her bed with her face in her hands. I thought she had a headache, and I was going out again when she jumped up. Her face was all smeary and her eyes were red, like when her brother was killed. 'Member? I per-tended I didn't notice anything, and asked for the ribbon and she got it from a drawer and gave it to me without a word, and suddenly she sat down on the window seat and put her arms round me and held me against her so tight I could hardly breathe."

The mystified eyes of the brother and sister met. "But didn't she _say_ anything?" demanded the former. "Has anybody been killed she's fond of?"

"I don't think so," replied Jane; "she hardly said anything. Just whispered little soft words like 'darling.'"

"She did that when we tried to cheer her up 'cos her brother died," said the boy, as if condoning a lapse on Miss Mayne's part.

"Oh, there was one thing," added Jane after reflection; "she said, 'Oh, Janie, Janie, don't grow up!'"

Which left Cornelius James not much the wiser.

To a more sophisticated mind the utterance might have meant much or little. For my part I look for my clue to the riddle in a later remark Miss Mayne made aloud to the darkness, from off a crumpled tear-wet pillow.

"He never said he loved me," she pleaded. The darkness held no answer.

PART TWO

THE NARRATIVE OF COMMANDER WILLIAM DALRYMPLE HORNBY, ROYAL NAVY

1

The ship was doing her annual refit at a Dockyard Port in the south, and the Captain and I shared what leave there was going; in my case it amounted to eight days, and I spent them trout fishing in Breconshire. I have tried a good many experiments in the way of how to make the most of a week's leave, and I have come to the conclusion that few things take the taste of war out of a man's mouth as effectively as whipping a "mountainy" trout stream.

It was a long and tedious railway journey back; I suppose I am as fond of my ship as most Commanders: she probably means more to me than a ship does to a man with a wife and bairn of his own, but I can't say I looked forward to slipping into harness again after the week's freedom from routine and responsibility, and the contemplation of returning to another nine months' exile in the North Sea didn't add any gaiety to the train journey. I was uncommonly glad, therefore, when I changed at Bristol and walked into Frank Milsom on the platform.

He was a "Red" Marine and an old shipmate of mine in the Mediterranean Flagship 'way back in the dark ages: one of those born leaders of men, possessing (although I believe it doesn't always follow) a curiously magnetic fascination for women. Yet I believe women bored him; I remember he once told me he would as soon kiss a dog as a woman, unless he was drunk. He was full of "parlour-tricks," too--the things that make a man sought after as a messmate; he could vamp a comic song and do sleight of hand conjuring tricks, and he had the most infectious laugh that ever kept a mouldy wardroom alive. The only vice I ever observed in him was a passion for gambling, but he had a peculiarity which is unusual in the Navy: we used to say he was "fey." He had queer dreams sometimes that used to come true--the date for paying off and things like that--and on one occasion I recollect drawing back the curtain of his cabin on my way down from the middle watch, because I heard him laughing and wondered who was with him at that hour. He was sitting up in his bunk with the moonlight pouring through the open scuttle, and his hand stretched out in gesticulation (a way he had when animated); otherwise the cabin was empty. He was wide awake, told me he was talking to his mother, and cursed me for interrupting. She was at the time about 2,800 miles away as the crow flies.

He came towards me wheeling a ramshackle motor-bicycle, with a cocker spaniel on a chain, and a porter following with his bags and golf clubs. "Bill Hornby!" he said, and the years between us and our last meeting seemed to close up like a telescope. We climbed into an empty carriage and settled down in two corners facing each other, lugging out our pipes and 'baccy pouches preparatory to a long yarn when, just as the train was starting, there was a bit of a commotion outside. A porter jerked open the door, pitched a woman's dressing-case on to the seat (we were sitting at the end furthest from the door), and fumbled for his tip as the owner of the dressing-case followed. She was a long-legged, graceful girl, dressed in tweeds and rather neatly shod. Milsom swore softly under his breath when the dressing-case appeared and stopped filling his pipe. But presently, when the train had started and our fellow-passenger had settled down in the corner facing the engine next to the door and opened a novel, Milsom leaned forward in his seat and asked her permission to smoke.

Until she was addressed the girl had not shown that she was aware of our presence in the carriage. She had not even glanced in our direction, and now, hearing herself spoken to, she turned a rather pale face and two almost startled grey eyes towards each of us in turn.

"D'you mind this?" enquired Milsom, in the kindly tolerant voice in which he spoke to women, and held out his iniquitous looking briar for her inspection.

The girl shook her head unsmiling. "Not at all. I--I----" she glanced swiftly from us to the window and the obvious

[Illustration: (mirror-image SMOKING)]

on the glass panel. "I beg your pardon," she said. "I didn't notice. I was late and the porter hustled me in----" She turned her eyes on me; she had well marked, delicate brows, and a firm chin. Altogether I thought her a remarkable-looking young woman (I was sitting with my back to the engine, facing her diagonally), and had it not been for a certain touch of diffidence in her rather shy manner, I should have written her down as decidedly strong-minded.

For a moment she looked as if she were contemplating flight to the corridors in search of another carriage.

"Train's very full," said Milsom, "but if you like I'll go and see if there's room in a non-smoker."

She shook her head. "I don't mind smoking--unless you mind my staying where I am?"

We both mumbled polite reassurances, and she returned to her book, obviously dismissing us completely from her consciousness.

For all our protestations, neither of us was much at ease after that; we kept up a desultory conversation for a bit, but we were unaccustomed to having women near us, and a man can't talk squarely to another man with a woman in hearing. So after a bit we gave it up and retired behind our papers. I even dozed for a bit, and must have slept for nearly an hour when I was awakened by my pipe dropping out of the corner of my mouth.

My eyes, as they opened, rested first on the girl. She appeared to be sleeping; at all events she was leaning back with her eyes closed and her book lying unheeded on her lap. I glanced at Milsom in front of me, and found him leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, staring across the carriage at the window beside the only vacant corner--that is to say, the one opposite the girl. There was a faintly puzzled expression on his face, and he kept glancing from the window to the girl. Then he looked at me with a queer enigmatic smile. We neither of us spoke, I suppose with the idea of not waking our fellow-passenger, but Milsom presently drew a pencil-case from the pocket of his waistcoat and scribbled something on the margin of his newspaper. This he handed to me:

"Come and sit beside me; don't make a noise."

I obeyed rather curiously, and he continued to study the window. We had just emerged from a short tunnel when he wrote again on his paper:

"Watch that window and tell me if you can see anyone's reflection in it." He indicated with a nod the window alongside the vacant seat opposite the girl.

I stared and could see nothing but the landscape and the telegraph poles flicking by. Then we plunged into a cutting, and for a moment the sheet of glass became a mirror. I felt Milsom grip my arm hard above the elbow. "Well?" he breathed.

I shook my head, and for the third time he drew the paper on to his knee and scribbled hard.

"Don't tell me you couldn't see that bloke's reflection?"

I frowned at him in hopeless bewilderment. "What bloke?" I mouthed.

He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head with raised eyebrows, and at that moment the train began to slow and shudder as the brakes were applied.

"Get back," he whispered, and I resumed my seat opposite him as the third occupant of the carriage began to stir her limbs like one awaking from sleep.

For the life of me I don't know why, but I had the feeling that it would be wrong to see her face as she opened her eyes. I somehow felt it would be like listening if she had talked in her sleep.

Milsom was collecting his impedimenta. "Change here," he said, yawning, and hauled the reluctant spaniel from under the seat. "This train goes on to London. Heigh-ho! Who wouldn't sell his little farm and go to sea?"

I was turning to get my rod down from the rack when I saw the girl give a little start and shoot a swift interrogatory glance at Milsom over her shoulder. It was the first symptom of interest she had shown in either of us. But after Milsom and I had disembarked on to the platform, and the train began slowly to resume its journey Londonwards, I saw her knit her handsome brows and stare rather curiously at Milsom from the window of the moving train.

We stood beside our luggage in silence, watching the train pass from sight round a distant curve in the line.

Then I turned to Milsom. "Now," I said, "what did all those billets doux you wrote me mean?"

He looked at me quizzically. "Sure you saw no one there?"

"What d'you mean--reflected in the window?"

He nodded, with a smile hovering about the corners of his mouth.

"No, of course I didn't. There were only three of us in the carriage, and from where we were sitting--all facing the engine--that window couldn't catch the reflection of any of us. I've forgotten most of the optics I ever learned, but I remember enough to be sure of that."

Milsom fingered his moustache. "I might have realised----" he said musingly. He gave an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders and laughed softly.

I got rather irritated. "Come on, Soldier," I said. "For heaven's sake explain, and don't keep on with this Maskelyne and Devant business." But he shook his head, still laughing. "No," he said, "it's too good to waste here. Come and have dinner up at the Mess to-night and we'll exchange theories. And now," he continued, hauling in the slack of the spaniel's chain, "let's buy a pack of cards and play picquet. Our train's due already."

The carriage was too full for me to broach the subject again, and Milsom took thirty shillings out of me instead. At our destination we parted: he to go to the Marine Depôt, where he was Adjutant; I in a musty four wheeler to the dockyard where the ship was lying.

2

Milsom greeted me a couple of hours later in the big oak-panelled hall of the Officers' Mess at the Marine Headquarters. I had been on board the ship, had half an hour's yarn with the Skipper (who was full of the ways of Dockyard Officials and the tale of our Defect List), shifted, and got up to the Marines' Mess as the first dinner bugles were sounding.

Every time I enter that hall, with its tattered Colours hanging from the walls and the portraits of bygone Commandants staring down over their gorgets, I am struck afresh by the reminders, cherished here on all sides, of the proud past of the Corps. Greenwich Hospital excepted, the Navy has no shrines where the emblems of its traditions are preserved, but the Marine Headquarters always seem to echo with whispers of the Marines' history. In the seconds that it took me to cross the wide floor, I had a blurred vision of the Rock, taken by storm and held against odds; of haggard, fever-stricken detachments in rotting pith helmets, fighting their way through swamp and jungle, of the African sun catching the reddened bayonets of a desert square....

"Cocktail, I think." Milsom beckoned to a waiter, and, slipping his arm through mine, drew me down beside him on to the high-padded fender of the old fireplace that is a miracle of carving. He had had a game of squash, he explained, and a tub since his arrival, and felt that he had decidedly earned a drink. "Plenty of time," he added as he lit a cigarette. "Guest night, and the Colonel's waiting for a guest!" We sipped our cocktails, and while we yarned I studied the gathering all round us on the look-out for old shipmates and familiar faces. The Commandant I knew well, a grizzled veteran, whose skin had been so baked by tropic suns that it had the appearance of ancient parchment. He came towards us for a few minutes' chat, limping slightly from the effects (so it was said) of a mauling by a lion in Somaliland, and sat rolling his cigarette round and round between his fingers and thumb, his keen old eyes watching the door for his guest. Markham was there, upright and groomed to the last hair, and the sight of his face instantly recalled the vision I always cherish of him astride the wall of a Chinese fort, plying his sword like a swashbuckler, and endeavouring to shield the body of an unconscious N.C.O. from the pikes of the Boxer rabble below. Ye gods! And we called that war!

The hall was full, and the guests included a fair sprinkling of soldiers from neighbouring camps and a good many N.O.'s from ships in harbour. At one end of the room clustered a dozen freshly joined subalterns: they whispered constrainedly amongst themselves and eyed the assembly with furtive interest. "Straight out of the egg," observed Milsom. "Mammy's darlings, every one of 'em. They shall sing us Songs of Araby after dinner or I'll eat my hat." I had my own ideas how Milsom should amuse himself after dinner, but I said nothing. "Watch them gloating over Markham and his V.C." Markham, according to his kindly nature, had gone over and was talking to the new-comers. They clustered round him in the unabashed hero-worship of youth, their shyness perceptibly evaporating: clean, robust striplings with down on their upper lips and the stamp of the Public School plain upon them.

The swing doors opened and the Commandant tossed away his cigarette and rose as the guest of the Mess entered. He was a youthful Colonel of Marines on leave from the Western Front, a tall, lean man with a scar across his forehead and the look of wearied habitual alertness you always see in the faces of men fresh from the trenches, and also of our patrol Destroyer Officers. I had never seen him in the flesh, though the illustrated papers have by now made him a familiar figure enough. For this was Henry Havelock, destined to wear before he died every gallantry award in the gift of England and France. He was a contemporary of Milsom's, and when presently we adjourned to the vast arched messroom, I found myself sitting between them at the Commandant's end of the table. The talk was war, of course, because war made up every man's experience of life for the past three years and a half. But the range and variety of the fields which were being discussed down the shining length of the mahogany table made it unique. In one sector it was Antwerp and the raging inferno that had once been Lierre held for a live-long night against the headlong onslaught of the Hun. In another, Gallipoli held sway, and as the wine circulated and tongues were loosened, tales of that splendid failure were told that assuredly will never find their way into any printed history of the Great War. The hum of voices under the old beams of the vaulted roof was the echo of strife carried from Serbia to the Cameroons, with Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf thrown in. The only man who appeared disinclined to talk war was Havelock; he and Milsom were exchanging pre-war reminiscences of a visit paid by the Mediterranean Fleet to Monte Carlo; how a certain lady with an impulsive temperament lost her heart to the embarrassed Milsom, who was challenged to a duel by an indignant husband; this worthy Havelock plied with absinthe until he (the husband) was all for Havelock running off with the lady and thus easing a complicated situation; and as the evening wore on and the assiduous Corporal of Marines--brooding behind us with a gold-topped bottle gripped in one white cotton gloved fist--redoubled his attentions, Havelock's eyes lost their weary strained expression, and the stern lines round his mouth relaxed.

We had finished dinner and the port had gone round for the King, and following the second circulation the Commandant rose, and after a neat little speech, proposed Havelock's health, which we drank with musical honours. Havelock replied, and in a few brief sentences he sketched the part played, not by himself but by the Royal Marine Units at the front under his command. Listening to his pithy descriptive rendering into prose of the epic of Beaumont Hamel, it was not difficult to understand the magnetic command of men with which he has been credited, nor the devotion of their willingness to follow him to the gates of Hell.

The Commandant was for snooker after that. "Are you and your guest going to take a cue?" he asked Milsom, but Milsom shook his head. "No. They'll want me at the piano presently. Take Havelock along and some of the others." So Havelock and his host departed to gather in a party and Milsom beckoned for the cigars.