Chapter II

"So hard it seems that one must bleed
Because another needs will bite!
All round we find cold nature slight
The feelings of the totter-knee'd."
MEREDITH.

Lady Forsyth sat in her bedroom window-seat, looking out over the terrace to the restless pine woods tossed and tumbled by the wind. Masses of grey cloud sagged low above the trees. Here and there patches of fragile blue showed fitfully. Then the sun took courage and flashed a pale smile from between two scurrying clouds. Gradually the sky cleared. The wet flags of the terrace gleamed like polished steel. Drenched and dismal trees stood suddenly transfigured. Every leaf and twig flaunted a diamond.

"How Mark would love it!" was the mother's instinctive thought: and closing her eyes a moment she lifted her face to the sun's caress. The clear light revealed lines that had not been there in August. She had passed through deep waters, this bereaved woman, who refused to own herself bereaved: and in some ways the past week had seemed the longest, the hardest of all. While Bel mourned her lover as dead, she, who refused to mourn her son, had been subjected to requests for photographs and details for obituary notices. She had been threatened with a fresh epidemic of condolences; and, finally, in self-defence, had sent a brief notice to the _Times_, and _Morning Post_, announcing that Sir Mark Forsyth's family had not yet given up hope. Let them denounce her for a fool if they chose! The flame within still burned on; tremulous, unquenchable.

When she looked down again, two figures had appeared on the terrace: Sheila and Mr. Seldon, moving very slowly, deep in talk. The man was tall and thin, with a small, aristocratic head. He could not yet walk without crutches; but, by a miracle of surgery, the leg had been saved. He seemed a homeless creature: parents dead; married sister in India; and Sheila had begged that he might spend part of his convalescence at Wynchcombe Friars.

She was quite frankly interested in his new development. Whether that interest went deeper, Lady Forsyth found it hard to tell; the more so, that she felt doubtful how far Sheila had ever let herself go in respect of Mark. That she loved him was certain, and natural enough; but the extent and nature of that love was her own most hidden secret, kept under lock and key.

Lady Forsyth herself had hoped honestly, for Sheila's sake, that the girl's heart was not given irrevocably to Mark. Yet here she was, with her native inconsistency, resenting the least sign that it might have strayed elsewhere. She had the grace to remind herself that Sheila--by temperament and by her own shy confession--was made for marriage, for motherhood. But--it must not be Seldon. On that point Helen was unwavering: though, in spite of drawbacks, she liked the man. She found him clever, interesting, and annoyingly self-conscious. Sheila, it seemed, had complete faith in his remarkable transmutation. Helen privately doubted whether it would outlast the stimulus of the war. She even suspected him of playing up to the girl's new view of him in the hope that so he might win her after all.

Well, Sheila was strong enough and wise enough to work out her own salvation; but there were moments when Helen was half tempted to wish that Mr. Seldon had stuck to his desert station and his whisky.

By now the fugitive gleam had brought two more figures into the garden: Ralph Melrose, with his left arm in a sling, and Mona's young step-brother, Eldred Laurence: an infant of twenty who had been through everything from Mons to Ypres. He limped badly and wore a bandage over one eye. Both boys, Helen perceived, had brought back from their great ordeal an engaging modesty and cheerfulness; a truer perspective of things in general. And they were not rare phenomena. They were average specimens of their kind; standing proofs of the hard paradox that "the senseless, devilish, bestial thing" called War had, even in a few months, done more to lift and enlarge the characters of those who waged it, in a right spirit, than a decade of material prosperity and peace.

These three convalescents, and one other, represented Helen's household of the moment. That other was the Rev. George Wilton, Wynchmere's new curate. In an impulse of kindliness--since regretted--Helen had succumbed to the importunity of Mrs. Clutterbuck on his behalf. With a battalion temporarily billeted on the little town, there were simply no "rooms" to be had; none, at least, that suited the Rev. Wilton's fastidious taste. The one Hotel was over-crowded with officers. Three subalterns had invaded the Vicarage and Mrs. Clutterbuck was in a quiver of anxiety over the possible effect upon her two plain daughters of khaki and frivolous conversation for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If "dear Lady Forsyth" would take pity on Mr. Wilton, it would be an "act of Christian kindness," and who knew but she might find herself entertaining an angel unawares!

She had entertained the angel for a week, now, and was only aware of having stumbled on a specimen of sanctified snobbery, who annoyed her to exasperation. Though she numbered among her friends more than one Scottish Minister, the average English curate had a knack of setting all her bristles on end: and Mr. Wilton was the average curate--with aggravations.

"He is what Americans would call a 'bromide,'" she had written to Keith shortly after his arrival. "He discovers the obvious with enthusiasm. He asks me for the toast or the salt as apologetically as if he were asking for a five pound note; and he says '_Eg_-zactly' to every word I utter--almost before it's out! When I'm in a really wicked mood, I contradict myself wildly just to test his mental and moral agility! I'm convinced I shall catch him out one day, backing up compulsion, or the right of churchmen to defend their country. And he's dead against both. By which you may see that I'm badly needing the two of you to keep me in order...."

By this time it was four o'clock. The strollers had gone in for tea: and as Helen rose to join them, the "angel unawares" came flapping down the path through the rose-garden, a neatly folded mackintosh and an unrolled umbrella hanging over his left arm.

There had been a partial movement of troops. He had been out to "try his luck": and in that one respect, at least, she was his fervent well-wisher.

She found them all in the drawing-room and Sheila making tea.

"Couldn't wait for you, Mums," she apologised. "The kettle was having a fit!"

The two subalterns rose at her entrance. But it was Wilton who secured her favourite chair and pushed it a couple of inches nearer the table.

"I hope you didn't have your long wet walk in vain?" she said; and he turned an eloquent eye upon her as he sank back among his cushions.

"I think not. But even if I had, I cannot pretend I should have suffered serious disappointment." His gaze wandered appreciatively round the firelit room. "It has been such a pleasure--such a privilege... Muffins? Sandwiches?"

He proffered them with eager empressement; and proceeded to recount, in minutest detail, the happy chance by which he believed he had at last secured the good cooking, the south aspect and the unlimited supply of hot water indispensable to his well-being.

Lady Forsyth, it must be admitted, listened with only one ear. The other was attentively following a discussion between Ralph and Laurence as to the best means of making a sheltered, complacent people "sit up and begin to take notice of the scrap across the water."

Laurence was for compulsion; Ralph for a vigorous revival of his Majesty's Opposition; and Helen was a keen advocate of both. Skilfully and politely, she slipped away from the vexed question of curtains and pictures to the more congenial occupation of reconstructing the Government, and "rounding up" the slackers who were obviously "waiting to be fetched."

"Nothing short of _that_," she concluded in her emphatic fashion, "will disturb their casual conviction that England can beat Germany with one hand tied behind her back."

It was a subject on which she was apt to wax hot, even a trifle caustic; but never, since Wilton's arrival, had she spoken with such vehemence as she felt suddenly moved to do by sheer irritation at his womanish fiddle-faddling. For a while he listened in mute amazement, with the bird-like tilt of his head and eyes riveted on her face. Then, as she paused to empty her cup, he leaned a little towards her.

"But _dear_ Lady Forsyth," he asked in his slowest, silkiest tones, "how, precisely, would you define that somewhat loose term of disparagement--a slacker?"

"A self-regarding, spiritual sluggard," she answered him with a straight look. "Is that precise enough? The 'slacker'--so far as I understand the breed--would rather _not_ see England share the fate of Belgium; but would very _much_ rather not risk his life or limbs, to avert the calamity. At best, he is afflicted with a disease called 'humanitarianism,' that would have men save their skins at the cost of everything that makes their skins worth saving. At worst, he simply shirks his obvious duty for the sake of his own peace and comfort."

"Hear, hear!" from the three convalescents and from Wilton a faint gasp of dismay.

"_Eg_-zactly," he murmured automatically, fingering his remnant of cake. "But that sounds ... _just_ a little sweeping; not to say severe."

With a sigh of impatience, Lady Forsyth rose and went over to the fire. Her cheeks were flushed; but her hands and feet were cold.

"Certain sorts of people _require_ a dash of severity," she remarked to the room at large. "Browning was right. There are some souls 'terror must burn the truth into'... A good many in these islands, high and low."

Wilton nervously cleared his throat. "Ah--Browning," he struck in, evading the issue. "A stimulating writer. Rather too rough and obscure for my taste."

"That's not the point." She dismissed his taste impatiently. Interruption annoyed her when she was well under way. "The point is terror burning the truth into people, who have a positive genius for shutting their eyes to it--if it's likely to make them uncomfortable. One wonders, will even these unmasked Germans convince our intellectuals that evil in all its forms is a deadly reality, to be fought and conquered; not a sort of moral indigestion to be cured with sugar-coated tabloids! Between science and civilisation, we've exploded hell and chloroformed the devil. And if we're properly advanced, we can't even commit sin. We are merely the victims of environment or inherited tendencies. Nothing like the polysyllable steam-roller for flattening out awkward facts! Take the case of the slacker. What does his argument amount to in Saxon English? 'I don't see the force of risking my life for my country.' But deck it out in polysyllables, and you can conjure it into quite a lofty sentiment. You try, Mr. Wilton, in your next sermon----"

"Hullo, here comes Sheila's scarlet spider." Ralph's voice from the window-seat broke the thread of her monologue and saved the slightly staggered curate from further discomfiture. "A wire for one of us!"

Lady Forsyth started. "Keith!" was her instant thought. "Ralph, dear, run and get it," she said. "Hester's out."

An odd silence fell till he reappeared. "For you," he said, "and the imp's waiting."

With a sudden leap of conviction, she tore it open and read: "Sir Mark Forsyth is alive and wounded but safe. I have letter from France. Posting to-night."

It was signed by Mark's bootmaker at Winchester. But, at the moment, her brain took in nothing beyond the incredible fact. Mark was there--across the Channel. She could go to him....

"Any answer?" Ralph asked.

She shook her head. Then, suddenly, she looked up, with a strange, uncertain smile. "Mark is alive--safe!" she said, an uncontrollable note of triumph in her low voice.

She saw Sheila rise; heard disjointed sounds from the four men: then a rush of tears blinded her, and she hurried out of the room.

It was some time before Sheila joined her. She, who had shared all, knew that the mother's first ecstasy of reprieve was a matter between her own soul and God. And Sheila herself found it hard to speak calmly of this great news. The blaze of it made one realise what a shadowy thing hope had been at best.

She found Lady Forsyth sitting over her fire drowned fathoms deep in the wonder of it all. Undried tears gleamed on her cheeks and the precious telegram lay unheeded on the floor.

Sheila knelt down by her and they clung together in silence. Then, casually, Sheila picked up the telegram. "I want--to see it written," she murmured with a sudden stab of recollection. "But--why Jevons?"

"That's the mystery. Why should he get a letter about my boy? And what's wrong with Mark that he didn't write himself? Oh my dear, what marvels of perversity we are! Here have I kept myself going for weeks by the firm belief that we must get him back: and now it's come, I'm a shivering sceptic. I have almost to pinch myself to make sure it's not a dream."

But Sheila standing by her was reading the telegram over and over. "It's no dream," she said. "It's--a miracle. I suppose we can't wire to Mr. Macnair or Colonel Munro till you get that letter. But--there's Bel."

"Yes--there's Bel." A pause. "I hope the shock of joy will unfreeze her. She'd better come here, if she can. Get me a form, darling, and see if the men are happy. I'd like to sit here peacefully till dinner--and think about my boy."

Sheila dropped a kiss on her hair and vanished: not for long.

"Quite happy, are they? _All_ of them?" Lady Forsyth asked when the wire had been despatched. "I'm pricked with faint compunction over the curate man. He roused the devil in me with his hot bath and his art curtains. But I didn't mean to hit quite so hard...."

Sheila's eyes twinkled. "I'm afraid we all loved it! And you needn't be pricked with compunction, Dearest. I found him on the drawing-room sofa, quite audibly asleep, with his mouth open!"

"There are _some_ souls...!" Helen confided to the blazing logs.

That evening was the liveliest that the convalescents had experienced at Wynchcombe Friars. After dinner Lady Forsyth played to them for the first time. Music was the one adequate outlet for her pent-up emotion. She chose only triumphal themes and she played them triumphantly. Let her audience understand if they chose.

Seldon, ensconced in an armchair by the fire, listened with rapt attention, his neat profile cut like a cameo on the oak panelling beyond. Sheila sat near him on the wide fender-stool, absorbed in her own thoughts.

Suddenly when the music was loudest he leaned towards her over the arm of his chair.

"Miss Melrose," he said in a low voice. "Do tell me, who is--Bel? Is she a connection? What's her other name?"

Sheila started and looked round.

"Alison," she said, "Bel Alison. She's engaged--to Sir Mark. Why? D'you know her?"

"I seem to remember the name," he answered evasively. "A tall, striking-looking girl?"

"Yes." His manner pricked Sheila's curiosity; but she did not repeat her question.

"Coming to-morrow, is she?"

"Yes," Sheila said again; and this time a wild possibility darted through her brain.

Seldon, frowning and biting his lip, still scrutinised the fire. "Sounds like a girl--I met one summer," he remarked casually. "Odd if it is the same.--And she's to be mistress of all this? She's in luck. Sir Mark, I take it, is a very fine fellow?"

"A very fine fellow," the girl answered; and for a few minutes Seldon seemed to ponder her statement. Then, with an odd jerk of his head, he abruptly changed the subject.

"A treat to hear playing like that. What with gramaphones and things, people won't be bothered nowadays. And she's got such a ripping touch."

"She's inspired to-night," Sheila said, glancing towards the slender upright figure in the dull blue teagown, shot through with gold, woven for her by Mark's people and designed by Mark himself.

Seldon, it was evident, would say no more about Bel. That in itself lent colour to the wild possibility that Sheila hoped, for Mark's sake, was too wild to be true. The bare chance of it so troubled her that long after she had soothed Lady Forsyth into a deep sleep, she lay wide-eyed, in her own little room, wondering and dreading and piecing things together; wishing fervently that Seldon had held his tongue.

Well, to-morrow she would see them together; and Bel, ignorant of Mr. Seldon's anonymous confidences, would almost certainly give herself away.