 23 It was to a priest rather than to a man that he made full confession of his grievous sin. He did not attempt to mitigate it or to throw upon another a share of the blame. From that attitude he did not vary a hair-spread. May a culpa, may a maxima culpa. That was the birthing of his avowal. I, knowing the strange mingling in his nature of brutality and sensitiveness of animal and spiritual, and knowing something of the unstable character of Althea Fenimore, may more justly, I think, than he, sketch out the miserable prologue of the drama. That she was madly, recklessly in love with him, there can be no doubt. Nor can there be doubt that unconsciously she fired the passion in him. The deliberate, cold-blooded seducer of his friend's daughter, such as Boyce, in his confession, made himself out to be, is a rare phenomenon. Almost invariably it is the woman who tempts, tempts innocently and unknowingly, without intent to allure, still less with thought of wrong, but tempts all the same by the attraction which she cannot conceal, by the soft promise which she cannot keep out of her eyes. That was the beginning of it. Betty, whom he loved, and to whom he was engaged, was away from Wellingsford. In those days she was very much the young Diana, walking in search of chaste adventures, quite contented with the love that lay serenely warm in her heart, and thinking little of a passionate man's needs, perhaps starting away from too violent an expression of them, perhaps prohibiting them altogether. The psychology of the pre-war young girl absorbed, even though intellectually and for curiosity's sake in the feminist movement, is yet to be studied. Betty then was away. Althea, Bayata Aposidens, made her artless, innocent appeal for victory. Unconsciously she tempted. The man yielded. A touch of the lips in a moment of folly, the man blazed, the woman helpless was consumed. This happened in January, just before Althea's supposed visit to Scotland. Boyce was due at a country-house party near Carlisle. In the first flush of their madness they agreed upon the wretched plan. She took rooms in the town, and he visited her there. Whether he or she conceived it I do not know. If I could judge coldly I should say that it was of feminine inspiration. A man, particularly one of Boyce's temperament, who was eager for the possession of a passionately loved woman, would have carried her off to a little Eden of their own. A calm consideration of the facts leads to the suggestion of a half-hearted acquiescence on the part of an entangled man in the romantic scheme of an inexperienced girl, to whom he had suddenly become all in all. Such is my plea in extenuation of Boyce's conduct, if plea there can be, seeing that he raised not a shadow of one of his own. You may say that my plea is no excuse for his betrayal, that no man, even if he is tempted, can be pardoned for non-control of his passions. But I am asking for no pardon I am trying to obtain your understanding. Remember what I have told you about Boyce, his great bull-neck, his blood-sodden life-preserver, the physical repulsion I felt when he carried me in his arms. In such men the animal instinct is stronger at times than the trained will. Whether you give him a measure of your sympathy or not, at any rate do not believe that his short-lived liaison with Althea was a matter of deliberate and dastardly seduction. Nor must you think that I am setting down anything in disparagement of a child whom I once loved. Long ago I touched lightly on the anomaly of Althea's character, her mid-Victorian sentimentality and softness, combined with her modern spirit of independence. A fatal anomaly, a perilous balance of qualities. Once the soft sentimentality was warmed into romantic passion, the modern spirit led it recklessly to a modern conclusion. The liaison was short-lived. The man was remorseful. He loved another woman. Very quickly did the poor girl awaken from her dream. I was cruel, said Boyce, fixing me with those awful black spectacles. I know it. I ought to have married her. But if I had married her I should have been more cruel. I should have hated her. It would have been an impossible life for both of us. One day I had to tell her so, not brutally, in a normal state I think I am as kind-hearted and gentle as most men, and I couldn't be brutal, feeling an unutterable cur and craving her forgiveness. But I wanted Betty, and I swore that only one thing should keep me from her. One thing, I asked. The thing that didn't happen, said he. And so it seemed that Althea accepted the inevitable. The placid, fatalistic side of her nature asserted itself. Pride, too, helped her instinctive feminine secretiveness. She lived for months in her father's house without giving those that were dear to her any occasion for suspicion. In order to preserve the secrecy Boyce was bound to continue his visits to Wellings Park. Now and then, when they met alone, she up-braided him bitterly. On the whole, however, he concluded that they had agreed to bury an ugly chapter in their lives. Yes, it was an ugly chapter. From such you cannot get away, bury it, as you will, never so deep. And all the time remember, he said, that I was mad for Betty. The more shy she was, the madder I grew. I could not rest in Wellingsford without her. When she came here, I came. When she went to town, I went to town. She was as elusive as a dream. Finally I pinned her down to a date for our marriage in August. It was the last time I saw her. She went away to stay with friends. That was the beginning of June. She was to be away two months. I knew, if I had clamoured, she would have made it three. It was the shyness of the exquisite bird in her that fascinated me. I could never touch Betty in those days without dreading lest I might soil her feathers. You may laugh at a hulking brute like me saying such things, but that's the way I saw Betty. That's the way I felt towards her. I could no more have taken her into my bear's hug and kissed her roughly than I could have smashed a child down with my fist. And yet, my God-man, how I ached for her! Long as I had loved Betty in a fatherly way, deeply as I loved her now, the man's unexpected picture of her was a revelation. You see, it was only after her marriage, when she had softened and grown a woman, and come so near me, that I felt the great comfort of her presence when she was by, the need of it when she was away. How could I have known anything of the elusiveness in her maidenhood before which he knelt so reverently? What he so knelt is the keynote of the man's soul, untainted by the flesh. It made clear to me the tenderness that lay beneath that which was brutal, the reason of that personal charm which had captivated me against my will, his defencelessness against the Furies. So far the narrative has reached the latter part of June. He had spent the month with his mother. As Betty had ordained that July should be blank, a month during which the moon should know no changes, but only the crescent of Diana should shine supreme in the heavens, he had made his mundane arrangements for his fishing excursion to Norway. On the afternoon of the twenty-third he paid a farewell call at Wellings Park. Althea, in the final settlement of their relations, had laid it down as a definite condition that he should maintain his usual social intercourse with the family. A few young people were playing tennis. T. was served on the lawn near by the court. Althea gave no sign of agitation. She played her game, laughed with her young men, and took casual leave of boys, wishing him good sport. He drew her apace aside and murmured, God bless you for forgiving me. She laughed a reply out loud, Oh, that's all right. When he told me that, I recalled vividly the picture of her in my garden on the last afternoon of her life, eating the strawberries which she had brought me for tea. I remembered the little slangy tone in her voice when she had asked me whether I didn't think life was rather rotten. That was the tone in which she had said to him, Oh, that's all right. During the early afternoon on the twenty-fifth she rang him up on the telephone. Chance willed that he should receive the call at first hand. She must see him before he left Wellingsford. She had something of the utmost importance to tell him, a matter of life and death. With one awful thought in his mind, he placed his time at her disposal. For what romantic, desperate, or tragic reason she appointed the night meeting at the end of the Chestnut Avenue where the towing path turns into regions of desolate quietude he could not tell. He agreed without argument, dreading the possible lack of privacy in their talk over the wires. On that afternoon she came to me, as I have told you, with her strawberries and her declaration of the rottenness of life. They met and walked along the towing path. It was bright moonlight, but she could not have chosen a lonelier spot, more free from curious eyes or ears. And then took place a scene which it is beyond my power to describe. I can only picture it to myself from boys' broken, self-accusing talk. He was going away. She would never see him again until he returned to marry another woman. She was making her last frantic bid for happiness. She wept and sobbed, and cajoled and upbraided. You know what women at the end of their tether can do. He strove to pacify her by the old arguments which hitherto she had accepted. Suddenly she cried, If you don't marry me, I am disgraced for ever. And this brought them to a dead halt. When he came to this point I remembered the diabolical accuracy of Gage's story. Boys said, There is one usual reason why a man should marry a woman to save her from disgrace. Is that the reason? She said, Yes. The light went out of the man's life. In that case said he, There can be no question about it, I will marry you, but why didn't you tell me before? She said she did not know. She made the faltering excuses of the driven girl. They walked on together and sat on the great bar of the lock gates. Until then, said he, I had never known what it was to have death in my heart. But I swear to God, Meredith, I played my part like a man. I had done a dastardly thing. There was nothing left for me but to make reparation. In a few moments I tore my life asunder. The girl I had wronged was to be the mother of my child. I accepted the situation. I was as kind to her as I could be. She laid her head on my shoulder and cried, and I put my arm around her. I felt my heart going out to her in remorse and pity and tenderness. A man must be a devil who could feel otherwise. Our lives were bound up together. I kissed her and she clung to me. Then we talked for a while, ways and means. It was time to go back. We rose, and then, Meredith, this is what she said. You swear to marry me? I swear it, said I. In spite of anything? I gave my promise. She put her arms round my neck. What I've told you is not wholly true, but the moral disgrace is there all the time. I took her wrists and disengaged myself and held her and looked at her. What do you mean, not wholly true, I asked? My God, I shall never forget it. He stuck both his elbows on the bed and clutched his hair and turned his black glasses wide of me. The child crumpled up. She seemed to shrivel like a leaf in the fire. She said, I've tried to lie to you, but I can't. I can't. Pity me and forgive me. I started back from her in a sudden fury. I could not forgive her. Think of the awful revulsion of feeling, foolishly tricked. I was mad with anger. I walked away and left her. I must have walked ten or fifteen yards. Then I heard a splash in the water. I turned. She was no longer on the bank. I ran up. I heard a cry. I just saw her sinking, and I couldn't move. As God hears me, it is true. I knew I must dive in and rescue her. I had run up with every impulse to do so. But I could not move. I stood shivering with the paralysis of fear. Fear of the deep black water, the steep brick sides of the canal that seemed to stretch away forever. Fear of death, I suppose that was it. I don't know. Fear, irresistible, unconquerable gripped me as it had gripped me before as it has gripped me since. And she drowned before my eyes while I stood like a stone. There was an awful pause. He had told me the end of the tragedy so swiftly and in a voice so keyed to the terror of the scene that I lay horror-stricken, unable to speak. He buried his face in his hands, and between the fleshy part of the palms I saw the muscles of his lips twitch horribly. I remembered with a shiver how I had first seen them twitch in his mother's house when he had made his strange, almost passionate apology for fear. And he had all but described this very incident, the reckless hair-brained devil standing on the bank of a river and letting a wounded comrade drown. I remember how he had to find it. The sudden thing that hits a man's heart and makes him stand stock still like a living corpse, unable to move a muscle, all his willpower out of gear, just as a motor is out of gear, it is as much of a fit as epilepsy. The span of stillness was unbearable. The watch on the little table by my bedside ticked maddeningly. Marigold put his head in at the door, apparently to warn me that it was getting late. I waved him imperiously away. Boyce did not notice his entrance. Presently he raised his head. I don't know how long I stood there, but I know that when I moved she was long since passed help. Suddenly there was a sharp crashing noise on the road below. I looked round and saw no one, but it gave me a shock, and I ran. I ran like a madman, and I thought as I ran that if I were discovered I should be hanged for murder, for who would believe my story? Who would believe it now? I believe it, Boyce, I said. Yes, you. You know something of the hell my life has been, but who else? He had every motive for the crime the lawyers would say. They could prove it, but, my God, what motive had I for sending all my gallant fellows to their deaths at Vilbuck's Farm? The two things are on all fours, and many other things with them. My one sane thought through the horror of it all was to get home and into the house unobserved. Then I came upon the man Gedge, who had spied on me. I know about that, said I, wishing to spare him from saying more than was necessary. He told Fenimore and me about it. What was his version, he asked in a low tone. I had better hear it. Fenimore had told him he shook his head. He lied. He was saving his skin. I was not such a fool, mad as I was, as to leave him like that. He had seen us together. He had seen me alone. Tomorrow there would be a discovery. I offered him a thousand pounds to say nothing. He haggled. Oh, the ghastly business! Eventually I suggested that he should come up to London with me by the first train in the morning and discuss the money. I was dreading lest someone should come along the avenue and see me. He agreed. I think I drank a bottle of whisky that night. It kept me alive. We met in my chambers in London. I had sent my man up the day before to do some odds and ends for me. I made a clear breast of it to Gedge. He believed the worst. I don't blame him. I bought his silence for a thousand a year. I made arrangements for payment through my bankers. I went to Norway. But I went alone. I didn't fish. I put off the two men I was to join. I spent over a month all by myself. I don't think I could tell you a thing about the place. I walked and walked all day until I was exhausted and got sleep that way. I'm sure I was going mad. I should have gone mad if it hadn't been for the war. I suppose I'm the only Englishman living or dead who whooped and danced from exultation when he heard of it. I think my brain must have been a bit touched, for I laughed and cried and jumped about in a pine wood with a weak old newspaper in my hands. I came home. You know the rest. Yes, I knew the rest. The woman he had left to drown had been ever before his eyes, the avenging furies in pursuit. This was the torture in his soul that had led him to many a mad challenge of death, who always scorned his defiance. Yes, I knew all that he could tell me. But we went on talking. There were a few points I wanted cleared up. Why should he have kept up a correspondence with Gage? I only wrote one foolish angry letter, he replied. And I told him how Sir Anthony had thrown it unread into the fire. Gage's nocturnal way-laying of him in my front garden was another unsuccessful attempt to tighten the screw. Like Randall and myself he had no fear of Gage. Of Sir Anthony he could not speak. He seemed to be crushed by the heroic achievement. It was the only phase of our interview during which, by voice and manner and attitude, he appeared to me like a beaten man. His own bravery at the reception had gone for naught. He was overwhelmed by the hideous insolence of it. I shall never get that man's voice out of my ears as long as I live," he said hoarsely. After a while he added, I wonder whether there is any rest or purification for me this side of the grave. I said tentatively, for we had never discussed matters of religion. If you believe in Christ you must believe in the promise regarding the sins that be as scarlet. But he turned it aside. In the olden days men like me turned monk and found salvation in fasting and penance. The times in which we live have changed and we with them, my friend. Nos moul amour in illice as the tag goes. We went on talking, or rather he talked, and I listened. Now and again he would help himself to a drink or a cigarette and I marveled at the clear assurance with which he performed the various little operations. I, lying in bed, lost all sense of pain, almost of personality. My little ailments, my little selfish love of Betty, my little humdrum life itself dwindled insignificant before the tragic intensity of this strange, curse-ridden being. And all the time we had not spoken of Betty, except the Betty of long ago. It was I, finally, who gave him the lead. And Betty, said I. He held out his hand in a gesture that was almost piteous. I could tear her from my life. I had no alternative. In the tearing I hurt her cruelly. To know it was not the least of the burning hell I lit for myself, but I couldn't tear her from my heart. When a brute beast like me does love a woman purely and ideally, it's a desperate business. It means God's heaven to him, while it means only an earthly paradise to the ordinary man. It clutches hold of the one bit of immortal soul he has left, and nothing in this world can make it let go. That's why I say it's a desperate business. Yes, I can understand, said I. I schooled myself to the loss of her. It was part of my punishment. But now she has come back into my life. Fate has willed it so. Does it mean that I am forgiven? By whom, I asked, by God? By whom else? How dare man, said I, speak for the Almighty? How is man to know? That's a hard question, said I. I can only think of answering it by saying that a man knows of God's forgiveness by the measure of the peace of God in his soul. There is none of it in mind, my dear chap, and never will be, said Boyce. I strove to help him. For what other purpose had he come to me? You think, then, that the sending of Betty is a sign and a promise? Yes, perhaps it is. What, then? I must accept it, as such, said he. If there is a God, he would not give me back the woman I love only to take her away again. What shall I do? In what way, I asked. She offered to marry me. I am to give her my answer tomorrow. If I were the callous, murdering brute that everyone would have the right to believe I am, I shouldn't have hesitated. If I hadn't been a tortured, damned soul, he cried, bringing his great fist down on the bed. I shouldn't have come here to ask you what my answer can be. My whole being is infected with horror. He rose and stood over the bed and, with clenched hands, gesticulated to the wall in front of him. I am incapable of judging. I only know that I crave her with everything in me. I've got it in my brain that she is my soul's salvation. Is my brain right? I don't know. I come to you, a clean, sweet man who knows everything. I don't think there's a crime on my conscience or a foulness in my nature which I haven't confessed to you. You can judge straight, as I can't. What answer shall I give tomorrow? Did ever man, in a case of conscience, have a greater responsibility? God forgive me if I solved it wrongly. At any rate he knows that I was uninfluenced by mean personal considerations. All my life I have tried to live an honourable gentleman and a Christian man. According to my lights I saw only one clear course. Sit down, old man, said I, you're a bit too big for me like that. He felt for his chair, sat down, and leaned back. You've done almost everything, I continued, that a man can do in expiation of offences, but there is one thing more that you must do in order to find peace. You couldn't find peace if you married Betty and left her in ignorance. You must tell Betty everything, everything that you have told me. Otherwise you would still be hag-ridden. If she learned the horror of the thing afterwards, what would be your position? Equit your conscience now, before God, and a splendid woman, and I stake my faith in each that neither will fail you. After a few minutes, during which the man's face was like a mask, he said, That's what I wanted to know. That's what I wanted to be sure of. Do you mind ringing your bell for marigold to take me away? I've kept you up abominably. He rose and held out his hand, and I had to direct him how it could reach mine. When it did, he gripped it firmly. It's impossible, said he, for you to realize what you've done for me tonight. You've made my way absolutely clear to me, for the first time for two years. You're the truest comrade I've ever had, Meredith. God bless you. Marigold appeared, answering my summons, and led boys away. Suddenly he returned. Do you know what time it is, sir? he asked serenely. No, said I. It's half past one. He busied himself with my arrangements for the night and administered what I learned afterwards was a double dose of a sleeping draught which Cliff had prescribed for special occasions. I just remember surprise at feeling so drowsy after the intense excitement of the evening, and then I fell asleep. When I awoke in the morning I gathered my wits together and recalled what had taken place. Marigold entered on tiptoe and found me already aroused. I'm sorry to tell you, sir, said he, that an accident happened to Colonel Boyce after he left last night. An accident? I suppose so, sir, said Marigold. That's what his chauffeur says. He got out of the car in order to sit by the side of the canal, by the lock gates. He fell in, sir. CHAPTER XXIII. THE RED PLANET. by William J. Locke. CHAPTER XXIV. It is Christmas morning, 1916, the third Christmas of the war. The tragedy of Boyce's death happened six months ago. Since then I have been very ill. The shock, too great for my silly heart, nearly killed me. By all the rules of the game I ought to have died. But I suppose, like a brother officer long since defunct, also a major, one Joe Bagstock, I am devilish tough. Cliff told me this morning that, apart from a direct hit by a forty-two centimetre shell, he saw no reason, after what I had gone through, why I should not live for another hundred years. I wash my hands of you, said he. Which, indeed, is pleasant hearing. I don't mind dying a bit, if it is my maker's pleasure, if it would serve any useful purpose, if it would help my country a myriadth part of a millimetre on towards victory. But, if it would not matter to the world any more than the demise of a Daddy Long Legs, I prefer to live. In fact, I want to live. I have never wanted to live more, in all my life. I want to see this fight out. I want to see the light that is coming after the darkness. For, by God, it will come. And I want to live, too, for personal and private reasons. If I could regard myself merely as a helpless encumbrance, a useless jellyfish, absorbing for my maintenance human effort that should be beneficially exerted elsewhere, I think I should be the first to bid them take me out and bury me. But it is my wonderful privilege to look around and see great and beautiful human souls coming to me for guidance and consolation. Why this should be I do not rightly know. Perhaps my very infirmity has taught me many lessons. You see, in the years past my life was not without its lonelinesses. It was so natural for the lusty and joyous to disregard, through mere thoughtlessness, the little weather-beaten cripple in his wheelchair. But when one of these sacrificed an hour's glad life in order to sit by the dull chair in a corner, the cripple did not forget it. He learned, in its terrible intensity, the meaning of human kindness. And in his course through the years, or as the years coursed by him, he realized that a pair of golly-wag legs was not the worst disability which a human being might suffer. There were golly-wag hearts, brains, nerves, temperaments, destinies. Perhaps in this way he came to the knowledge that in every human being lies the spark of immortal beauty, to be fanned into flame by one little rightly directed breath. At any rate he learned to love his kind. It is Christmas Day. I am as happy as a man has a right to be in these fierce times in England. Love is all around me. I must tell you little by little. Various things have happened during the last six months. At the inquest on the body of Leonard Boyce the jury gave a verdict of death by misadventure. The story of the chauffeur, an old soldier servant devoted to Boyce, received implicit belief. He had faithfully carried out his master's orders, to conduct him from the road, across the field, and seat him on the boom of the lock gates, where he wanted to remain alone in order to enjoy the quiet of the night and listen to the lap of the water, to return and fetch him in a quarter of an hour. This he did, dreaming of no danger. When he came back he realized what had happened. His master had got up and fallen into the canal. What had really happened? Only a few of us knew. Well, I have told you the man's story. I am not his judge. Whether his act was the Supreme Amend, the Supreme Act of Courage, or the Supreme Act of Cowardice, it is not for me to say. I heard nothing of the matter for many weeks, for they took me off to a nursing home and kept me in the deathly stillness of a sepulcher. When I resumed my life in Wellingsford I found smiling faces to welcome me. My first public action was to give away Phyllis Gedge in marriage to Randall Holmes. Randall Holmes in the decent kit of an officer and a gentleman. He made this proposition to me on the first evening of my return. The bride's father, said I, somewhat ironically, is surely the proper person. The bride's father said he is miles away and, like a wise and horny villain, is likely to remain there. This was news. Gedge has left Wellingsford, I cried. How did that come about? He stuck his hands on his hips and looked down on me pittingly. I'm afraid, sir, said he, you'll never do adequate justice to my intelligence and my capacity for affairs. Then he laughed, and I guessed what had occurred. My young friend must have paid a stiff price, but Phyllis and peace were worth it, and I have said that Randall is a young man of fortune. My dear boy, said I, if you have exercised this devil of a father in law of yours out of Wellingsford, I'll do any mortal thing you ask. I was almost ecstatic, for think what it meant to those whom I held dear. The man's evil menace was removed from the midst of us. The man's evil voice was silenced. The tragic secrets of the canal would be kept. I looked up at my young friend. There was a grim humour around the corners of his mouth, and in his eyes the quiet masterfulness of those who have looked scornfully at death. I realised that he had reached a splendid manhood. I realised that Gedge had realised it, too. Woe be to him if he played Randall false. I stuck out my hand. Any mortal thing, I repeated. He regarded me steadily. Anything? Do you really mean it? You dashed young idiot, I cried. Do you think I'm in the habit of talking through my hat? Well, said he, will you look after Phyllis when I'm gone? Gone? Gone where? Eternity? No, no, I've only a fortnight's leave. Then I'm off. Wherever they send me. Secret service, you know. It's no use planking Phyllis in a dugout of her own. Shades of Oxford and the Abermoral review. She'd die of loneliness, and she'd die of culture in the Mater's high-brow establishment. Whereas, if you would take her in, give her a shake down here, she wouldn't give much trouble. He stammered as even the most audacious young warrior must do when making so astounding a proposal. But I bad him not be an ass, but send her along when he had to finish with her, with the result that for some months my pretty little Phyllis has been an inmate of my house. Marigold keeps a sort of non-commissioned parent's eye on her. To him she seems to be still the child whom he fed solicitously, but unemotionally, with Mrs. Marigold's cakes at tea-parties years ago. She gives me a daughter's dainty affection. Thank God for it! There have been other little changes in Wellingsford. Mrs. Boyce left the town soon after Leonard's death, and lives with her sister in London. I had a letter from her this morning, a brave woman's letter. She has no suspicion of the truth. God still tempereth the wind. Out of the innocent generosity of her heart she sent me also, as a keepsake, a little heavy cane of which Leonard was extraordinarily fond. She will never know that I put it into the fire, and with what strange and solemn thoughts I watched it burn. It is Christmas Day. Dr. Cliff, although he has washed his hands of me, tyrannically keeps me indoors of winter nights, so that I cannot, as usual, dine at Wellings Park. To counter the fellow's machinations, however, I have prepared a modest feast, to which I have bidden Sir Anthony and Lady Fenimore and my dearest Betty. As to Betty. Phyllis comes in radiant, her pretty face pink above an absurd panoply of furs. She has had a long letter from Randall from the Lord knows where. He will be home on leave in the middle of January. In her excitement she drops prayer-books and hymn-books all over me, then picking them up reminds me it is time to go to church. I am an old fashioned phogy, and I go to church on Christmas Day. I hope our admirable and conscientious vicar won't feel at his duty to tell us to love Germans. I simply can't do it. New Year's Day, 1917 I must finish off this jumble of a chronicle. Before us lies the most eventful year in all the old world's history. Thank God my beloved England is strong, and Great Britain and our great Empire and immortal France. There is exhilaration in the air, a consciousness of high ideals, an unwavering resolution to attain them, a thrilling faith in their ultimate attainment. No one has died or lost sight or limbs in vain. I look around my own little circle. Oswald Fenimore, Willie Conner, Reggie Daker, Leonard Boyce. How many more could I not add to the list? All those little burial grounds in France, which France, with her exquisite sense of beauty, has assigned as British soil for all time. All those burial grounds, each bearing its modest, leaden inscription, some indeed heart-rendingly inscribed, sacred to the memory of six unknown British soldiers killed in action, are monuments not to be bedewed with tears of lamentation. From the young lives that have gone there springs imperishable love and strength and wisdom, and the vast determination to use that love and strength and wisdom for the great good of mankind. If there is a god of battles, guiding in his inscrutable omniscience, the hosts that fight for the eternal verities, for all that man in his straining towards the godhead has striven for since the world began, the men who have died will come into their glory, and those who have mourned will share exultant in the victory. From the beginning of time Mithra has ever been triumphant, and his foot on the throat of Araman. It was in February 1915 that I began to expand my diary into this narrative nearly two years ago. We have passed through the darkness. The dawn is breaking. Sursum corda. I was going to tell you about Betty when Phyllis, with her furs and happiness and hymn-books, interrupted me. I should like to tell you now, but who am I to speak of the mysteries in the soul of a great woman? But I must try, and I can tell you more now than I could on Christmas Day. Last night she insisted on seeing the New Year in with me. If I had told Marigold that I proposed to sit up after midnight he would have come in at ten o'clock, picked me up with finger and thumb as any brobding naggian might have picked up gulliver, and put me straight away to bed. But Betty made the announcement in her eerily imperious way, and Marigold, craven before Betty and Mrs. Marigold, said, very good, madam, as if Dr. Cliff and his orders had never existed. At half-past ten she packed off the happy and, I must confess, the somewhat sleepy Phyllis, and sat down, in her old attitude by the side of my chair, in front of the fire, and opened her dear heart to me. I had guessed what her proud soul had suffered during the last six months. One who loved her as I did could see it in her face, in her eyes, in the little hardening of her voice, in odd little betrayals of feverishness in her manner. But the outside world saw nothing. The steel in her nature carried her through. She left no duty unaccomplished. She gave her confidence to know human being. I, to whom she might have come, was carried off to the sepulcher above mentioned. Letters were forbidden. But every day, for all her bleak despair, Betty sent me a box of fresh flowers. They would not tell me it was Betty who sent them, but I knew. My wonderful Betty. When they took off my Sarah-cloths and sent me back to Wellingsford, Betty was the first to smile her dear welcome. We resumed our old relations, but Betty, treating me as an invalid, forebore to speak of Leonard Boyce. Any approach on my part came up against that iron wall of reserve of which I spoke to you long ago. But last night she told me all. What she said I cannot repeat, but she had divined the essential secret of the double tragedy of the canal. It had become obvious to her that he had made the final reparation for a wrong far deeper than she had imagined. She was very clear-eyed and clear-sold. During her long companionship with pain and sorrow and death she had learned many things. She had been purged by the fire of the war of all resentments, jealousies, harsh judgements, and came forth pure gold. Leonard had been the great love of her life. If you cannot see now why she married Willie Conner gave him all that her generous heart could give, and after his death was irresistibly drawn back to Boyce, I have written these pages in vain. A few minutes before midnight Marigold entered with a tray bearing a cake or two, a pint of champagne and a couple of glasses. While he was preparing to uncork the bottle, Betty slipped from the room and returned with another glass. For Sergeant Marigold, she said. She opened the French window behind the drawn curtains and listened. It was a still clear night. Presently the clock of the parish church struck twelve. She came down to the little table by my side and filled the glasses, and the three of us drank the new year in. Then Betty kissed me, and we both shook hands with Marigold, who stood very stiff and determined, and cleared his throat and swallowed something as though he were expected to make a speech. But Betty anticipated him. She put both her hands on his gaunt shoulders and looked up into his ugly face. You've just wished me a happy new year, Sergeant. I have, said he, and I mean it. Then will you let me have great happiness in staying here and helping you to look after the Major? He gasped for a moment, as did I, and clutched her arms for an instant in an iron grip. Indeed I will, my dear, said he. Then he stepped back a pace and stood rigid, his one eye staring, his weather-beaten face the colour of beetroot. He was blushing. The beads of perspiration appeared below his awful wig. He stammered out something about ma'am and madam. He had never so far forgotten himself in his life. But Betty sprang forward and gripped his hand. It is you who are the dear, she said, you, the greatest and loyalist friend a man has ever known, and I'll be loyal to you, never fear. By what process of enchantment she got an emotion-filled Marigold to the door and shut it behind him I shall never discover. On it slam she laughed, a queer high note. In one swift movement she was by my knees, and she broke into a passion of tears. For me I was the most mystified man under heaven. Soon she began to speak, her head bowed. I've come to the end of the tether, ma'ji dear. They've driven me from the hospital. I didn't know how to tell you before. I've been doing all sorts of idiotic things. The doctors say it's a nervous break-down. I've had rather a bad time, but I thought it contemptible to let one's own wretched little miseries interfere with one's work for the country. So I fought as hard as I could. Indeed I did, ma'ji dear. But it seems I've been playing the fool without knowing it. I haven't slept properly for months, and they've sent me away. Oh, they've been all that's kind, of course. I must have at least six months' rest, they say. They talk about nursing homes. I've thought and thought and thought about it until I'm certain. There's only one rest for me, ma'ji dear. She raised a tear-stained, tense and beautiful face, and drew herself up so that one arm leaned on my chair and the other on my shoulder. And that is to be with the one human being that is left for me to love. Oh, really love! You know what I mean, in the world. I could only put my hand on her fair young head and say, My dear, my dear, you know I love you. That is why I'm not afraid to speak. Perfect love casts without fear. I pushed back her hair. What is it that you want me to do, Betty? I asked. My life, such as it is, is at your command. She looked me full, unflinchingly, in the eyes. If you would give me the privilege of bearing your name, I should be a proud and happy woman. We remained there. I don't know how long. She with her hand on my shoulder, I caressing her dear hair. It was a tremendous temptation to have my beloved Betty in all her exquisite warm loyalty bound to me for the rest of my crippled life. But I found the courage to say, My dear, you are young still, with the wonderful future that no one alive can foretell before you, and I am old. You're not fifty? Still, I am old. I belong to the past, to a sort of affray behind an anthill which they call the war. I'm dead, my dear, you are gloriously alive. I'm of the past, as I say. You're of the future. You, my dearest, are the embodiment of the woman of the great war. I smiled. The woman of the great war, in capital letters. What your destiny is, God knows, but it isn't to be tied to a prehistoric man like me. She rose and stood with her beautiful bare arms behind her, sweet, magnificent. I am a woman of the great war. You are quite right. But in a year or so I shall be like other women of the war who have suffered and spent their lives, a woman of the past, not of the future. All sorts of things have been burned up in it. In a quick gesture she stretched out her hands to me. Oh, can't you understand? I cannot set down the rest of the tender argument. If she had loved me less she could have lived in my house like Phyllis without a thought of the conventions. But loving me dearly she had got it into her feminine head that the sacredness of the marriage tie would crown with dignity and beauty the part she had resolved to play for my happiness. Well, if I have yielded I pray it may not be set down to me for selfish exploitation of a woman's exhausted hour. When I said something of the sort she laughed and cried, Hoy, I'm bullying you into it! The first of January, 1917, the dawn to me, a broken derelict of the Annas Mirabilis. Somehow, foolishly, illogically, I feel that it will be the Annas Mirabilis for my beloved country. And come, after all, I am, in spite of my legs, a man too of the great war. I have lived in it and worked in it and suffered in it, and in it I have won a great thing. So long as one's soul is sound, that is the great matter. Just before we parted last night I said to Betty, The beginning and end of all this business is that you're afraid of Marigold. She started back indignantly. I'm not, I'm not. I laughed. The lady protests too much, said I. The clock struck two. Marigold appeared at the door. He approached Betty. I think, madam, we ought to let the major go to bed. I think, Marigold, said Betty serenely, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves, for keeping him up so late.