Chapter I

"So shall he read elder truths, grand truths, fearful truths. And so shall our mission be accomplished, that from God we had--to plague his heart till we had unfolded the capacities of his spirit."--OUR LADY OF SORROWS.

Mavins, like Wynchcombe Friars, was set upon a ridge; but the house was comparatively modern and here was no falling and rising sea of pine-tops splashed in dark foam against the sky. Lawns and shrubberies ended in a low brick wall matted with arabis and aubretia. And beyond the wall lay Surrey, and again more Surrey, merging into Sussex: gentle undulations, interlacing ridges and, in the clear weather, the sweeping line of the Downs, mistily blue along the horizon. When the wind was in the south, Sir Howard Meredith would call upon his visitors to note the whiff of sea-salt in the air: and those who were sufficiently imaginative would scent that phantom whiff with enthusiasm.

But there was, now, no host at Mavins, though there were many guests. For Sir Howard had entirely devoted his beautiful place to those that--excepting prisoners--were perhaps the saddest aftermath of war as conceived and waged by modern Germany: men broken in nerve and spirit; strong men, shaken by dreams and delusions, who dreaded the night and cried out in their sleep; men, who sat alone and wept, quietly, hopelessly, because their manhood was gone from them, and with it, their power of self-control. One there was, a mere boy of two and twenty, crazed permanently, the doctors feared, because he had seen a lad of his own platoon crucified with indignity by German soldiers; and--he could not forget. That was the secret torment of so many who came out of the trenches seemingly unscathed:--they could not forget. Mark knew. It had been the chief of his own troubles in that backwater in France.

Yet now, for a time, under the deadening influence of nervous depression, he lived and moved among these tragic fellow-sufferers almost as though they were not. The first few weeks of isolation from all he loved, drifted by like a timeless, colourless dream. He seldom opened a paper or troubled to read his letters. He wrote none, and hardly a trace remained of his keen interest in the war. He learnt with blank indifference, that the Russian "steam-roller" was rolling to some purpose through Galicia, that the first Zeppelins had arrived in England and dropped bombs on the east coast. Even the more personal news of Ralph's gallant death in action scarcely seemed to reach him.

It was the crazed boy and his story that gave him the first sharp twinge of pain--herald of returning life.

He heard it from Honor Lenox, Maurice's elder sister. She was at Mavins that winter, doing V.A.D. work, to which she had devoted herself unremittingly since the outbreak of war. As hospital orderly, she had been through the siege of Antwerp and the retreat upon Ostend. She had ministered to stunned and starving refugees, had earned conspicuous distinction in advance ambulance work, and had lately been decorated by the King. A brief collapse, following on those strenuous months in Flanders, obliged her for the moment, to be content with lighter work at home: and Mark, on arrival, had been practically given into her charge.

She was a tall, plain girl, strikingly plain: with her father's rough-cut features and clear northern eyes. The two were already acquainted: and Mark, in his present mood, found refreshment in her bluntness and dry humour and strong, unbeautiful face. The normal Mark did not suffer plain women gladly. But at the moment it was Honor's chief asset that she was neither fair, fascinating nor conspicuously a woman. The revulsion--as Keith had prophesied--was complete.

There was virtue also in her sane, soldierly attitude towards the war. She neither denounced it as "devilish and senseless," nor harped morbidly on horrors. She had seen both sides of the shield. She knew--as he knew--that from the pains of hell spring the splendours of sacrifice and devotion: that the true peace which passes understanding is not the prerogative of the shirker and the pacifist; that in the trenches and even in the shambles of a modern battlefield, "Death rages but he does not reign." There you have, perhaps, the main distinction between those who have been in the firing line and those who have not: between the soldiers who have resisted unto blood, and the ineffectives--willing and unwilling--obsessed by casualty lists, atrocities and shattered men. That spirit Mark chiefly associated with Bel: and he was the more thankful to find no trace of it in the daughter of Sir Eldred Lenox.

Not that she soothed him with fairy tales. On the contrary, she recounted, purposely and in plain terms, many of her worst experiences; probing him with stiletto pricks of pain sharper than his own; if so be that she might stab his spirit broad awake.

It was his unnatural indifference to Ralph's death that had prompted her to tell him in full the pitiful tale of that crazed subaltern: a brilliant Oxford scholar, whose brain had been unhinged not by the normal rigours of war but by the abnormal cruelty of scientifically dehumanised German soldiers. The telling of it pained her horribly; and the hearing of it hurt Mark as nothing had hurt him yet since that night when the sword of realisation pierced his soul.

Manlike, pain vented itself in anger. Why the dickens did she talk about such beastliness? he demanded irritably: and she knew she had touched a vulnerable spot.

"I don't--as a rule," she said without apology. "But, now and then, something goads me to remind myself and others that this isn't an ordinary war. It's a crusade against organised powers of evil. It makes vengeance almost a sacred duty. And we've got to realise things like that--however much we shrink from them--in order to crush out, absolutely, the spirit that makes them possible."

There was no fervour, no touch of the didactic in her quiet, rather flat voice. It spoke, with deep conviction, the very thoughts that had burned in his own brain after hearing the story of "la petite Pauline"; and for the first time the real Mark looked with real interest at Maurice's sister.

"That's so," he agreed gruffly. "Not much use though for the poor crocked-up devils who can't help any more."

She looked back at him in her direct, masculine fashion. A smile hovered in her eyes. "There are crocks _and_ crocks!" she said. "And there are other ways besides fighting. Think them over. You'll find it as good as a tonic."

He did think them over: and it was as good as a tonic. He reverted more than once to the subject of young Carmichael. Was there no hope? A shadow of hope, Honor told him. His mother--who came at intervals--was heart-broken.

That last bit of information took effect, as intended. Mark began to talk of his own mother. He also began to think about Ralph and Sheila. He wondered.... He wanted to know....

By slow degrees, light was breaking through the fog that shrouded his spirit. Then came Sheila's letter about Ralph, that let in quite a painful flood of sensation.

"I wonder, have they told you," she wrote, "that my Ralph has had the honour of dying for his country? It was an honour he coveted with all his heart; and they say he came by it splendidly. I promised him long ago that, if this happened, I would not grieve nor wear mourning. But, oh Mark (if you are really waking up again), you will know, better than any one but Mums, how blank everything feels some days when pride seems no prop at all and there is simply the emptiness--the longing----.

"He was the one bit of home that seemed really to belong. I know to the outside world he seemed just a very ordinary subaltern overburdened with brains. But I'm sure England need think no shame of her very ordinary subalterns judging from their record in war.

'To sacrifice she prompts her best,
She reaps them as the sower reaps.'

That's Meredith, isn't it? It has the sound of him. Mother has really been wonderful in refusing to let our private sorrow interfere with her work. She says we are all dedicated--with an extra big D. You know her way. But it is not all talk. She's proved that these last few weeks. Dear Mark, forgive if my letter makes you sad. It's only to you two I can say a little of what I feel--on the bad days. In between, I can go quietly on and be grateful for my gift, such as it is, and pray that you may soon be home again to cheer the brave Mums in her great loneliness! I go to her whenever I can. Mr. Macnair is ambulance driver in France again. I do wish he would come back. And oh--a fresh trouble. My dear Mona is very ill with typhoid at Boulogne. I long to go to her. But I'm badly wanted here. Isn't your right arm well enough yet to manage a letter? Mums tells me she hasn't heard. Half a dozen lines, the merest scrawl even, would cheer her ever so. Do try. Yours always, Sheila."

That letter gave him a sudden blessed sense of enlargement; as if a window had been opened in his brain. It also pricked his awakening conscience: and he did try, with very fair success.

Surely and steadily his right hand regained its cunning: and even the tentative return of power feelingly persuaded him that this skilled servant of his brain, was worth all the rest of his body put together. After all, he had willed to risk everything; to give everything. He had recognised that the price of patriotism might be a very long price: but he had never dreamed of paying it in this form.

He tried to express some of these thoughts in a long outpouring to that brave lonely mother he had treated so ill. He also attempted a letter to Sheila: but the only thing he really wanted to tell her was the one thing that must never be told.

Having written the words: "My dear Sheila," he sat there, pen in hand, cursing the fate that forbade him to add, "I love you--I love you--I love you." Simply that. The sheer relief of it!

Suppose he did--what would her answer be?

Oh--coward and fool! Apart from every other disability how could he account for Bel?

In the end he wrote to her at some length of Ralph and Mona and Mums. It frightened him afterwards to realise how near he had come to the cliff's edge.

Sheila's mention of Mona set him thinking of Maurice. Queer that Miss Lenox had never mentioned him. Next time they were alone together he spoke of Mona's illness and asked after her brother.

Honor's face clouded a little.

"My poor Maurice," she said, "was not made for great days or terrible events. He has had a bitter bad time. It has broken him to pieces. And Father, who is always rather down on him, takes it very hard. There are the Desmond boys winning decorations--and his own eldest son----"

"How about his eldest daughter?" Mark asked smiling.

"Oh--she's a faint consolation! But not quite the same thing. Dick's doing good work in the Flying Corps, which is much more to the point."

"But Maurice--where is he, poor chap? There's good stuff in him if he isn't a fighter. I'd like to hear more."

So she told him more; glad of his increasing concern for others; though it went hard with her to speak freely of anything so near her heart. Maurice, it seemed, had returned to the Front after a fortnight in the hospital where Mona worked and a week at home.

"In love with her--is he?" Mark asked.

"Yes. Very much so. That made a fresh jar with Father. He's devoted to Colonel and Mrs. Laurence. But he could not bear the idea of Dr. Videlle's daughter marrying his son; though he wouldn't have Mrs. Laurence know that for the world. It was a most awkward tangle. Father objected and Maurice insisted; and it quite spoilt the poor boy's crumb of leave. Then he had an awful spell in the trenches. His letters to me--" she paused to steady her lips. "I think--he was thankful when he got hit. But it's his right hand--badly damaged----"

"Oh Lord! D'you mean--he may lose it?"

"I'm not sure. They still hope to save it--partially. He's back at Boulogne. The same hospital. His poor nerves worse than ever. Mother's out there too."

"And Mona?"

Honor was silent a moment; then she said in a quiet, toneless voice: "Mona ... is dead. I only heard yesterday!"

"Good God!" Mark's voice was hushed also. He wanted to say more. Miss Lenox was evidently upset. But before he found the adequate word, she was speaking again in the same level tone.

"It is sometimes difficult, in these days, to go on believing that God is good. Maurice knew--she cared. He spoke to her a few days before she fell ill. It gave him such a lift. And now--he's half crazed, Mother says. They talk of sending him here. I hope they will. Professor Langton is working marvels."

They did send him to Mavins, with the remains of his right hand in a sling. The bulk of it had been saved. Only the little finger and half the forefinger were gone: so that eventually, with practice, he would draw and paint again. But at present no word of comfort could reach his half-distracted brain. All day long he talked wildly and rapidly of Mona; and at night he could not sleep for dreams. A troublesome case; not an obstinate one, the friendly Professor of Psychology told Honor; but it was not advisable at present to let him see much of his sister or his friend.

Meanwhile the girl devoted herself to Sir Mark, and found no small comfort in his gradual progress toward a saner, happier mood of mind.

Keith--definitely back from France--came to see him oftener now, and they talked of Sheila. To Mark the mere sound of her name was like the music of running water in a barren land. It struck him that Keith seemed to be a good deal at Westover Court; and he fell to wondering about "Mums." Because he, Mark, had not been knocked out, did the queer fellow mean to keep silence for ever?

It also struck him as strange that his mother had never been to see him. At last he asked for her; and she came, straightway, on the wings of the first available express. Resolutely she had held to her hard resolve not to go near him till he needed her; and now she had her reward. He said little, but his hand clutched hers; and his eyes, that had a gleam of the old light in them, followed her wherever she moved.

"Come again soon," he said at parting; and she came again soon....

So February slipped by; and light increased without and within. Far away, in the Mediterranean, by way of prelude to the splendid and terrible Gallipoli adventure, British warships were lobbing shells into the forts along the Narrows: and cheerful prophets predicted the fall of Constantinople within a month. And still, across the Channel, the interminable underground war dragged on. And still a sanguine Government did its casual best to defeat the frankly malignant German with the maximum of polite consideration; to which end, Ministers temporised, fatally, over conscription and enemy aliens and high explosives and other awkward trifles that involved the removal of kid gloves. And the voice of criticism and division--hushed in the inaugural days of 1914--was once more heard in the land.

And still, week after week, War--that is no respecter of Governments--exacted its inexorable toll of the young and the incomparably brave; and the fearful also: and from Germany came the cry of the prisoners--starved, tortured, yet unbroken--"How long, O Lord, how long!"

Each dawn brought some new shock of grief to hundreds of hearts; brought also its golden grain of healing to those already stricken----

At Mavins, as the days grew longer and milder, healing came gradually both to Maurice and Mark.

Maurice's mercurial nature had responded more rapidly to both atmosphere and treatment than the doctors had dared to hope. He talked less and slept more. The strange, unseeing stare went out of his eyes; and there came a day when Langton--who looked favourably on Miss Lenox--declared that it rested with her to complete his cure.

Events justified him; and Mark found a new interest not untinged with envy, in watching the two together. The very qualities that made for discord between Maurice and his father, seemed to link the brother and sister in a bond closer than common. It set Mark thinking of Ailsa and wondering--would he eventually arrive at accepting Sheila in that relation, the only one now possible between them. Increasingly he longed to see her. But she did not come and he would not ask.

In this fashion February drew to an end and Dr. Norton came down to inspect his former patient. In his old guarded manner, he expressed himself satisfied with Mark's general condition; and confirmed the opinion of his colleague at Mavins that improvement, slight yet unmistakable, had already begun. But how far it might ultimately go, not a doctor among them would venture to prophesy yet. Mark's nerves, at all events, were obviously on the mend. For a time, they told him, he must "go softly" and keep clear of worry or strain. The more normal his life and surroundings, the better his chance of complete mental readjustment; and there was talk of going home before long.

That, unquestionably, was a move in the right direction: and yet--he felt half afraid. Coward selfishness whispered that, in this peaceful backwater, "things" were easier to bear. Manhood urged that he had been long enough on the shelf. It was high time to rouse himself and give his country such service as he could; to conquer a certain morbid dread of facing his own world--in a wheeled chair.

He did some hard and wholesome thinking on the subject while Maurice, in the transition stage, claimed the chief part of Honor's attention; and he discovered that here was the secret of his faint reluctance to go home, though well he knew that his mother was counting the days to his return.

He made that unheroic discovery on the last day of February, a day of fugitive, appealing beauty.

With the help of the despised wheeled chair--that gave him a small measure of freedom--he had established himself in his special corner of the grounds, at the far end of the long low wall looking southward across Surrey and Sussex to the sea. The February sun was warm as April. Close to him loomed a wide-spreading yew, centuries old. In the shadow of its blackness snowdrops gleamed; and on its uppermost branch sat a thrush, pouring out a torrent of song. Almost, in response to that brave music, Mark could feel the earth stirring in her sleep, even as his own benumbed spirit was stirring within him after the darkest winter he had ever known. A light breeze blew from the south. Stately masses of cloud drifted across the heavens; the Downs--grey-blue, against a toneless horizon--seemed astonishingly near....

Mark, brooding on them, recalled Meredith's phrase: "The Downs have swiftness." They set a man longing for a winged horse or for the Seven-League boots. At first he had hardly been able to bear the sight of them. He was learning to bear it now; even as he was learning to accept cheerfully, almost gratefully, quite a number of things that in the beginning had seemed unendurable. He was discovering, at first hand, the amazing adaptability of the human organism and the native resilience of his own spirit. There were black moods still, when the curses came. But these were increasingly offset by moods of high-hearted resolve to fling into his art all the energy and passion of his stultified life: moods far truer to his essential self; likelier therefore to endure.

And on this February day of drifting cloud and snowdrops and a jubilant thrush, the more normal Mark held the field.

For an hour and a half, to his great satisfaction, he had been left alone with his sketch-book and Meredith's _Nature Poems_--a favourite, illustrated edition--and his own resurgent thoughts. He knew now, definitely, that his time at Mavins was nearing an end. Dr. Carstairs had spoken yesterday of a week or ten days. That fact alone served to stiffen his manlier resolves.

And there was also another fact; quite unlooked-for, decidedly stimulating. Miss Lenox had discovered it in the _Times_ that morning under the heading of "Army Honours." It notified the award of the Distinguished Service Order to Lieut. Sir Mark Stuart Forsyth: and, from the bone-dry record appended, Mark made the surprising discovery that on two occasions he had "exhibited conspicuous coolness and courage." Once, by his intrepid leading, he had carried a full trench against overwhelming odds: an unpleasant business, he remembered it very well. Another time during a retreat, when one flank of the battalion had been left in the air, he had, it seemed, held on tenaciously to a critical position and saved the regiment from annihilation. That must have been on the terrible last day of his recollection, when he had himself been annihilated for his pains.

Baldly set down, it struck him as very ordinary average behaviour in the circumstances. Quite likely poor old Maurice had been just as sporting now and then. Only no one happened to notice. It was all a matter of luck and partiality. A war that rained shells, rained decorations--naturally enough. It was very gratifying all the same, to have "stopped one": to possess a lasting memento of his own brief strenuous flash of effort.

And what did it amount to after all? For sixty days--whether in billets or trenches, or in the stress of actual fighting--he had lived at the full stretch of his being. He had quailed and suffered and exulted. He had seen with his eyes that, in nature and in human nature, beauty shines out undimmed, though all the devils of hell are leagued for its extinction. He had proved, in his own body and soul, that "in war man values the power which it affords to life of rising above life."

And now--this!

He glanced ruefully at the fur rug over his knees. Well, it was just a question whether those sixty days were not worth a lifetime of limitation. But--the loss of Sheila! There was the rub....

With a deliberate wrench he shifted his thoughts back to their starting-point--those three proud letters after his name. He must write to the Colonel--and to "Mums." No doubt she had been secretly watching that list for weeks! And now there would be no holding her. A wonder she had not wired already. She would need repressing badly; or goodness knew what manner of fool she would make of him. He had been a beast to her all these weeks. He would atone for it when he got home. Then days seemed suddenly an intolerable time to wait. Impatience stirred in him: the best possible sign. He shook himself mentally--he had been mooning long enough;--and picked up his book again.

It was open at "The Thrush in February." Nothing like Meredith for tuning up the strings of a man's spirit: and this particular poem vibrates with the morning quality of his genius; his sane loyalty to Earth--Mother and Slayer in one.

He read on, now, from the point at which his personal affairs had intruded on the poet's thought.

"She, judged of shrinking nerves, appears,
A Mother whom no cry can melt;--
A slayer, yea, as when she pressed
Her savage to the slaughter-heaps.
To sacrifice she prompts her best;
She reaps them as the sower reaps.
But read her thought; to speed the race--
And stars rush forth of blackest night...."

Again Mark paused, pondering those vigorous lines that might well have been written in this year of turmoil; of evil, self-exposed and rampant, that it may be the more squarely smitten. "To speed the race," at no matter what cost of individual life, individual pain: there you have the hard paradox of Nature, underlying every form of human activity; but focused, intensified, and poignantly realised when "God holds his assizes and hurls the nations on one another."

If a cog in the machinery is broken, what matter? There are scores of others available. It has given its mite of service toward the progress of the whole. But this particular cog was not altogether useless even now; for the which compensation God be praised.

To that mountain-top of philosophy Mark had clambered painfully enough: and to-day he caught an echo of it, clear and heartening, in the song of the poet and the song of the thrush----

At this point he became aware of approaching footsteps and voices. The thrush became aware of them also and took flight.

They drew nearer; and their owners came into view: Keith, Mums, Sheila,--all three of them, with Maurice and his sister. Now he knew why there had been no telegram. Just like her. He might have guessed.

Closing his book, he waved a welcome and his mother hurried forward.

"A surprise visit of congratulation, darling," she explained superfluously. "Well done!"

And she kissed him, unashamedly, before them all. There were moments when the Irish streak in her carried the day. There were also moments when even a son could not find it in his heart to be repressive.

Mark had enough ado to repress himself, when Sheila stood before him, her soft, cool hand in his; and Keith demanded gravely what the dickens he meant by giving his family such a shock: and Maurice, the born talker, looked on enviously and said nothing.

The happy event, the sunshine and the smell of spring in the air went to their heads like wine. It was as if some tension within had snapped. They talked nonsense once again with zeal and fluency; and Mark himself was as foolish as any of them. It was a vast relief, after those endless grey weeks when humour--the star of life--had dwindled to a farthing dip in the outer dark. Now it sparkled again, clear as ever: and Mark found it very good....

Then, quite casually, in the middle of it all, Keith slipped in his own surprise contribution, that had been kept a profound secret during its incubation. It consisted of a small motor car, specially designed, light and easy to handle, in which--Mark with Keith's help--could drive about his beloved country, and regain a measure of the independent movement so dear to his heart. Keith himself was responsible for the thought, but the car was to be a combined gift from all three; the outward and visible sign of their joy in his return.

Mark--too overwhelmed for mere thanks--could only evince the liveliest interest in the "little beauty" and her manifold perfections. From car talk they drifted naturally to ambulance driving and an exchange of experiences between Honor and Keith. Even Maurice revived considerably under Lady Forsyth's sympathetic handling.

And through it all, Mark's inner self was chiefly aware of Sheila's voice, too seldom heard, and Sheila's eyes--their twilight colour intensified by the grey-violet hat and gown that she wore in place of conventional mourning.

She sat on the low wall, a little apart from the group round his chair; her sweet, serious face shadowed by the double loss of brother and friend. The shadow lifted a little at sight of Mark's sketch-book. With a glance at him for permission, she opened it and went through it slowly, lingering a long while over each page.

He wanted her to himself so urgently that he wished the others at Jericho. Now and again he contrived an exchange of glances. Then he would hold her gaze a minute and reluctantly let her go. He had no business whatever to do this: and he knew it. But to-day he felt like a schoolboy out of bounds. He refused to look beyond the sunshine into the waiting dark.

Honor Lenox, he found, had planned a semi-secluded tea-party in a corner of the wide verandah,--the real Indian article; added by Sir Howard, who declared he would as soon live without shaving-soap as without a verandah. And Mark enjoyed it all consumedly, though not five minutes' talk did he get with Sheila alone. Suddenly and surprisingly, life had righted itself in defiance of tragic limitations. The good minute would pass; but the fact that it had come at all was of hopeful augury. And while it lasted, Mark could forget everything except that he had not lost his art; and that Sheila, however unattainable, was part of the vital fabric of his life.

"Will you still be at home when I come?" he asked her at parting; and she shook her head.

"'Fraid not. I go back on Friday, when 'Mums' goes to Lady John. But I'm to get leave for a visit soon, she says----"

"_I_ say--" he corrected, under his breath; and again there passed between them that flash of understanding; a direct contact of spirit with spirit, never achieved in all his passionate courtship of Bel.

Oh, that he could banish her from his memory as though she had never been!

But Bel would not let herself be so easily forgotten. Though disenchantment was complete, she could still reassert herself, at inopportune moments, to tarnish a love so different in quality that there was need of some other name to call it by.

These thoughts visited him much later on that same evening, as he sat beside his fire reviewing the events of a day that marked a definite step towards the recovery of his spiritual balance; of a normal, if tempered, thankfulness for all that still remained to him of joy in life.

Lately Maurice had taken to looking in at this time for a talk; and he very soon appeared, with the inevitable cigarette and a rather doleful countenance.

For a while he sat smoking moodily, staring at the fire. Then, to Mark's surprise, he said in a constrained voice: "I suppose Honor told you--about Mona."

"Yes." Mark did his best to convey his own dumb depth of fellow-feeling in that one word. Maurice let out a great sigh.

"She--cared. She'd have married me, Father or no. Seeing Miss Melrose brought it all back again. She ... Mona ... understood. _She_ didn't think me a hopeless rotter because I've been a bit broken up by this cursed, inhuman war."

That tone towards the world's greatest crusade against machine-made tyranny and brutality jarred Mark always. And it savoured too much of Bel.

"Not a bit of use cursing the war, old chap," he said kindly. "Nearer the mark to curse the apostles of cheapness for cheapness' sake, who thwarted Joe Chamberlain, killed our economic independence, and delivered the Empire into the tentacles of the German octopus. But it's all done now; and we've just got to put our backs into it and pull things through. You've done your level best, Maurice, and no one thinks you a hopeless rotter. _I_ don't. Your sister doesn't. Your mother----?"

Maurice frowned. "I'm hanged if I know what Mother thinks. She's awfully fond of me. But she's not the soft kind. And she hugely admires the genuine man of action; which accounts for my splendid but rather formidable father. _He_ thinks me the out and outest rotter that ever stepped. If it wasn't for Honor, God knows where I'd be at this moment. And, as for going home--I believe a week of it would simply smash me up again.'

"'M. I know what you mean. Why not come along to my place when you're quit of this? We've both got to make a fresh start somehow; and I've still to complete your conversion to Beauty and the Classics!"

"D'you _mean_ that?" Maurice asked in genuine delight.

"Rather. It would give me a spurt. And your sister could come for weekends. She's a rare good sort."

"Wish I had half her pluck. She ought to have been the soldier. I believe she'd give her eyes to take my place; and here am I--wondering if they've lopped and chopped my precious hand enough to keep me out of those unholy trenches for good."

Mark, scanning his friend's rueful profile, decided that mere sympathy was not the tonic for his complaint.

"You can't shoot without your trigger finger," he remarked in practical tones. "But that's no matter, now they've given you a commission."

Maurice grimaced.

"You don't want to go back--in any capacity, eh?" Mark asked casually.

"No. I'm damned if I do. Honestly, d'you suppose any man does who has a grain of sensibility in his composition?"

Mark was silent a moment, considering.

"I don't know. Hard to say. In either case, they wouldn't shout it from the housetops. Personally, I was keen to get back. Sheer perversity, perhaps: but it's true. God knows, killing and getting killed, the way it's done now, is a pretty gruesome business. But exterminating Prussianised Germans is a service to the civilised world; not to mention a man's first duty to his country. And to me there's beauty everywhere, Maurice, even on a battle-field. And, oh Lord, it's big. It's _real_--overpoweringly real." He paused and set his teeth hard. "I simply hate being out of it all--shelved. Wish to God I was in your case! And you can't have the face to pretend you'd sooner be--as I am."

Maurice was lighting a fresh cigarette.

"Honour bright," he said, "I was thinking out there, this afternoon, what a lucky devil you were!"

Mark flashed round on him. "Lucky--_me_?"

"Yes: as things go these days. You're through with the worst of it. You've done jolly well. Your people think no end of you and you'll probably do thundering big things once you get started again. As for me----"

"As for _you_," Mark's friendly tone had a touch of sternness, "you're a graceless ingrate. Your hand's been saved. You've everything before you and your spurs still to win. Strikes me, the sooner I get on with your conversion, all round, the better!"

But later, when Maurice had gone, those astonishing words "lucky devil" returned and walked to and fro in his brain and flashed light into dark corners, where for weeks no light had been. His own tragedy had seemed to him a thing so absolute that he had forgotten in his misery, the relative nature of all sensation: and he frankly admitted, now, that "as these times go" a worse fate might have befallen him. On the wings of imagination, he had explored the long unchanging road ahead of him--and had found it too hard to travel. And again he had forgotten that the actual journey must be taken day by day, mile by mile; that, imperceptibly, the face of that road would change, in response to his own unconquered spirit and the healing influence of time.

Life, that is more inexorable than death, cannot away with that crowning mercy. The veiled hours come to us single file. Were it not so, which of us would find courage to face them at all? In war, and in the anguish of blows that shatter faith and courage, it is perhaps this crowning mercy that withholds tortured humanity from running headlong down a steep place into the sea----

Mark sat late that night over the red embers of his fire, smoking ... pondering....