There was another evening on which the boy of my heart was allowed to take the first bloom off the hot-water supply in the bathroom, instead of having to indulge his love of a hot bath at some other and more inconvenient time of the day; and this was the evening before he set out for the first time for the Public School on the Tableland.

He was a very shy and nervous boy when he went, though he was to be prince-like in his pride when he came back.

"That there Master Roland 'ull have a bilious attack when he gets to that there School," Old Nurse declared, as she watched him go. "'E always feels it in the inside when his nerves is upset. It was just the same when 'e was learning to ride. He would keep on with that there dangerous 'orse, just because he wouldn't be beaten, and it was a wonder to me as he didn't get yellow jaundice. If he don't end up with a bilious attack to-day, he'll be lucky."

There was a curious weight of gloom upon the house after his cab had driven away. The little sister moped in a corner and the still smaller brother sobbed silently behind the door of a room in which he was not expected to be.

I knew that destiny was working, but I did not know how resolutely or how pitilessly. I did not know it even when, at the beginning of the second term, we were asked to give our permission for the boy to join the Officers' Training Corps.

"Of course he must join it," we agreed. "It will do him all the good in the world, both in body and in character. He's not likely ever to have to practise what he will learn there; but every male child born in the British Empire ought to know how to be a soldier in case of need."

So he took the first step; the step which has led after only a few years to my being here where I am to-night—waiting for him to come home on his second leave from the Front, where he has been fighting in the great war that darkens the whole world.

His first holidays were such amazing days of joy! They were the winter holidays, too, and that made them better. The house in London had been in full swing, seeming to brim over with children and dogs and high spirits; and, within due limits of discipline, Little Yeogh Wough had been master of it all.

He had had a fairly hard time during the term, though we did not know it until long afterwards. A secret society of slackers had tried to baulk his energy and blunt his ability by threatening him with ghastly penalties if he got to the top of his form. Five of them had met him one day on his way from his house to his class-room and had thrown him over a gate into a field. He had got up and dealt with them one after another, and after that the threatening letters with death heads and cross-bones drawn in blood had ceased to come and he had had peace.

The bodily strength of him had developed enormously in the three months, and yet, directly he had come home, the tender, irresistibly fascinating side of him had sprung to the fore again. The gracious boyish dignity and charm of him filled the whole atmosphere on those afternoons when wind and rain and sleet made the London that he loved a bad place to be out in, and in the comfortable study he made his small toy gramophone give out a sweeter music than I have ever heard from the large and expensive instrument that now holds the place of honour in the home.

"But I wonder why everything sounds so sad," Miss Torry asked suddenly one day. "It's always the same, whatever record he puts on. There's always a sound of heartbreak in it, even if it's a comic song."

"That's like his character and his eyes," I laughed. "All gaiety and joy in living, but with throbs of heartbreak underneath."

Then there were happier hours still when I was going out to dinner and he would superintend my dressing and be particular about the flowers I was going to wear, or throw himself across the foot of the bed and read me French books or old French plays while I brushed my hair.

"It's so lovely to get back to London and to you, Big Yeogh Wough. When I've done with school and Oxford, you'll let me live near you always, won't you?"

"You won't be able to live near me if you go in for the Indian Civil Service," I reminded him. "And that's more suited to you than anything else, you know."

"Then I shall try to be literary and not have anything to do with the Indian Civil Service," he declared, half angrily. "Oh, by the way, as soon as I get back to school I'm going to get rooms for you and father for our Speech Day. They've got to be secured early, or you mayn't get any. Sometimes people take them a year in advance."

That first Speech Day, when it did arrive, was a marvellous occasion. He had urged me in half a dozen letters to make great efforts in the direction of clothes, and most of all in the matter of a hat, and as soon as I arrived he anxiously inspected my outfit.

"Yes, that's all right," he pronounced, tenderly touching the new lilac frock which I had lifted out of my trunk, and looking admiringly at the plumed black hat that was to be worn with it. "You'll look splendid and I shall be very proud of you."

"But you ought to be just as proud of me if I were a frump," I said.

"You couldn't be a frump and be my mother," he returned. And to this day I don't know whether this remark was more of a compliment to himself or to me.

Just as dance music is sadder than any Dead March ever composed, so youth and gaiety make one think of death more than ever old age does.

Really, most of the old people that one knows, and particularly the old men, make one think of anything rather than the grave. They are skittish, frivolous, doing their best to dance upon their crutches and holding on to the good things of this world with a desperate grip which youth never has.

That is why youth goes out to fight so readily.

But a great Public School, with its army of eager-faced boys and its echoing stones and its clamour of gay voices, not only makes me think of death, but makes even the past ages of the world pass in procession before my terrified eyes. I can see Death walking in the boyish ranks always, mocking at their pink youth with the grisly horror of his grey decay.

I don't know whether I have a special kind of vision for this horror. I only know that I see it where other people don't seem to see it. In the same way I always find Paris the saddest city in the world, because it is the brightest. I love Paris, but I am never able to breathe in it. When I get back to London the choking feeling goes; for in London, under superficial gloom, there is peace for the nerves and solid happiness.

The choking feeling was in my throat all through that Speech Day. It gripped me first early in the morning when I went to the beautiful chapel and saw recorded on the walls the names of the sons of the School who had given their lives for their country. There were many of them even then. (Ah, Heaven! I dread to think how many there are now!) And I could have kissed the wall where they are recorded in my passion of gratitude and admiration and reverence.

If it comes to that, I should like to drag myself on my hands and knees over the stones of such a place as this in that very passion of reverence. Is it any wonder that these boys died so bravely when they came from a place where chivalry, knightliness, graciousness and the truest manliness have come down as a heritage through hundreds of years?

It is strange how the stalking shape of Death seemed to be clanking his dry bones everywhere for me that day! It seemed to grin at me when I smiled in pride at seeing Little Yeogh Wough in the khaki of the Officers' Training Corps. It grinned, too, at the other women, who were there in hundreds—mothers, sisters, aunts, or cousins of the boys—all looking like butterflies in frocks of the "confection" kind and hats from Paris or from the Maison Lewis.

What a mockery clothes are when the great things of life come along!

"Roland, are you satisfied with my dress and hat?" I asked him in a whisper, when I got a chance.

"Of course I am. They look better than anybody else's here."

"But they wouldn't look half so nice laid out on a bed as most of these other people's things would."

"No. I don't suppose they would. That's just why they look so much better on."

"You clever boy! Then you've found out already that there are two different kinds of love of dress—the false kind, which thinks it's all right when it buys pretty things and hangs them on itself, and the true kind, which carefully chooses every shade of colour and every bit of material to be a frame and set-off for the wearer's particular sort of good looks. You've got the insight to see that what looks like a bit of brown holland when laid on a bed or hung on a peg may make a woman lovely enough to turn men's heads, while a confection that has cost a hundred guineas may leave everybody cold. You've only got to look around here to see that it is not the clothes that matter, but the human flesh and blood inside them. Why, one of our greatest society beauties once went through a London season with only two frocks to her name—one for day, one for evening, and both black. And yet she outshone everybody else."

We were going into the concert hall and there the figure of Death seemed to me more hideously clear than anywhere else. But I said nothing to Little Yeogh Wough of this curious oppression that was upon me. He was shyly proud of having had many prizes, and I went on talking lightly, very low, as we waited for the concert to begin.

"I think you'll know enough about women to be able to judge them well for yourself when you grow up. Look at that girl in the front row of seats with all sorts of bits of chiffon and odd ribbons about her. She has changed her position five times since we came in, trying to put herself so that everybody coming up the middle of the hall shall take notice of her. And do you see how she keeps on touching her bits of ribbon and chiffon—pulling them out or patting them down? Well, that's the kind of girl you must avoid when you're grown up. She's a prinker, and a prinker is horrible. You see, you can be quite sure even before looking at her face that she isn't very pretty, because a very pretty woman doesn't need to prink in order to try to attract notice. She attracts it too much. She would rather escape it if she could. So, when you grow up, Little Yeogh Wough, you must find a girl whose lovely head and full throat rise best from out a plain linen collar. You must avoid prinkers, just as a woman looking for a husband ought to avoid a doxer."

"Whatever is a doxer?"

"A doxer's generally a man—a man who smiles too agreeably and moves his head and body about in a funny way directly he gets among strangers. But never mind the doxers or the prinkers, either. I want to listen to this piece by Sibelius."

The strange fear of the future clutched at my throat more and more. It got to be almost more than I could bear when a little later the most spirited of the school songs swelled into the air, sung by scores of voices:

A sob rose up within me and it was only with difficulty that I forced it back.

"What's the matter, Big Yeogh Wough?" whispered the boy beside me.

"It's that song. It's a lovely school song, but it's the saddest thing I've ever heard in my life. It seems to me that I can see generation after generation of boys rising and passing along—passing along to doom."

Under cover of the music Little Yeogh Wough spoke in a whisper again:

"It's a grand doom, anyhow—if you mean dying for one's country. Don't you think it's better to have your name on the walls of that chapel as having died fighting than to live a long, smooth life at home?"

"Yes, of course it is." I pulled myself together and spoke the truth as I knew it. "They've got the best of it, all right—those boys who died. But still—it's doom."

"No! No! It's glory."

The boy used to say that the only hard thing for him in his life at the big Public School was the doing without my half-hours by his bedside at night.

We were never quite so completely in touch with each other when we did not get these talks.

This may seem a strange thing to say, but it is the truth.

It is astonishing how much sympathy the right of entrance into another's sleeping-room means. It is all very well for people like George Bernard Shaw to declare that the custom of married persons sleeping together is an outrageous one and interferes with the liberty of the individual, but if in days to come people of his sort get their way there will be far fewer happy marriages. In the sitting-rooms of the home, as well as in the outside world, there are always things happening and influences at work that interfere with the smooth flowing of the magical current of love and sweetness between husband and wife; and if there is no privacy of the same bedroom to put this disturbance right every evening, what is to become of their happiness?

Some people seem to think that between a husband and a wife, or a mother and son, tenderness and devotion are a matter of course. But this is not so.

Nothing is got in this world without trouble. You cannot get a plant to thrive in your window unless you give it attention and show it plainly that you want it to thrive. Then do you suppose people are going to love you tenderly unless you cultivate that love as if it were a tomato in a greenhouse?

Not a bit of it; not even if you are the most perfect man or woman in the world.

I have an aunt who is devoted to me when we occupy the same bedroom, as we did nearly all through my childhood, but thinks me a hateful person when we only see each other casually. And I used to think of her when, owing to Little Yeogh Wough's absence at school, my nightly visits to his room to see him in bed, as he called it, were interrupted for long weeks at a time.

I knew that these breaks in our sacred and sweet night talks would have been dangerous if our love had been less strong. For in both of us, just as the electric current is tremendously strong when it flows, so it is entirely cut off and dead if anything interferes with it at all. When I am not burning hot with people that I love I am usually icily cold, even to the point of wondering whether I really love them at all. I have no dribblings of mild affection. So, knowing that Little Yeogh Wough had this same peculiarity, I used to be afraid when he had been away from me for a whole term.

But I need not have been afraid.

I have come to know since that there are loves which are strong enough to stand any test. And the love between him and me is one of these. Yet he had so much worship when he came home for his holidays that he ought to have been able to do without mine.

His father quickened up. The children quickened up. Miss Torry quickened up. The servants quickened up. The very dogs understood and showed a new energy.

But he got a good deal of blame, too, when Old Nurse came to deal with his things.

"Now I just asks you, mum, if you thinks as these 'ere myganas are the sort of thing that a schoolboy ought to get for hisself," said she indignantly. "'E've never got a thought except for getting what 'e wants and when 'e wants it, cost what it may. And you that devoted to 'im as you sits up till past two o'clock every morning a thinkin' about 'im and a writin' of 'im letters as would cover miles, as m'say!"

She was holding out the most bewitching suit of pyjamas that I have ever seen in my life: cream-coloured ones, soft and delicate, with cherry-coloured turned-out collar and cuffs and frogs. Really, I quite coveted the jacket to wear as a coat over a cream linen skirt.

"And there's another one in light and dark blue, just as bad," went on the worthy old creature confronting me, more indignant still. "I calls it disgraceful extravagance. I can't think what they've got such things in boys' shops for. Myganas made of sacking would be good enough for any boy living while he was in his teens, even if he was the Prince of Wales. And his socks! 'E've got dozens of pairs more than he took away with 'im—mauve and blue and green and all with clogs."

"Clogs?"

"Yes." Then, seeing that my face still looked blank, she lifted her own short white piquÉ skirt and exhibited one of her sturdy pillar-box legs, while she pointed to the clock up the side of her black stocking.

"Oh, clocks? Oh, I see! Oh, well, Nurse, never mind! There are so many worse things he might do than go in for a few extravagances."

"Extravagances! 'E've got no more idea of money than that there dog have."

She nodded towards the black Skye terrier. And I laughed to myself as I thought how true had been an opinion passed on him by his sharp little sister when she had said, a few days earlier:

"If I had to depend on either of my brothers, I would rather it were Evelyn. He would only take a very tiny cottage for me to live in, but he would pay for it always; whereas Roland would find me a palace, saying nothing else was good enough for me, and then would forget to give me any money to keep it up."

That was Little Yeogh Wough all over.

We did not always talk at the times when I went in to see him in bed. Sometimes we stayed quite quiet all the time that I was there, having only our hands clasped. Sometimes we sang songs together, English and French, very softly, so that people passing on the landing outside might not think us lunatics. He, who was often so shy with others, was as free from self-consciousness with me as if he had been alone. I had taught him to be so, ever since he was two years old. The wonderful chord of love and sympathy between us was so strong that in these precious half-hours at the end of the day he could not feel any constraint with me, but only a double freedom.

Once we were even so childish as to try who could do the better cat-calling. But whether we talked or sang or cat-called, we got to love each other more with every moment that we passed there in the darkness, he in the bed with his big lion-cub head on the pillow and I kneeling beside it, with my face close to his.

Whenever he came back from school it was with honours. He was learning, growing, developing in every way. He was learning to govern himself and through this to govern others. And to this end, and this end only, he had become a good cricketer and footballer.

"You see, Big Yeogh Wough, I had to do it," he explained. "Boys at a public school don't respect brains unless the boy that's got the brains is good at games. That's why a letter was written to you asking you to encourage me to put my heart in cricket and football."

"Well, I did encourage you," I laughed. "For, though I can't endure the man who's a cricketer or football player and nothing more, yet, on the other hand, I don't like the man who can't play games at all. There's always something wrong about him, as there is about a man who never smokes. Cricket and football are manure for the character just as Greek and Latin are manure for the mind. Only one doesn't want all manure and nothing else."

When I went away from him and left him to go to sleep I always felt as if a piece of living radium had had its activities turned off for a few hours. And then, night after night, my superstition would get hold of me and my strong belief in the law of Compensation would make me ask myself the question over and over again:

"Am I paying enough to Providence for the joy of having him? Am I suffering enough to deserve him? If not, where is the payment to come in? Because it's got to come in somewhere. He's so much more alive than most other people. Will anything happen to him? Will he be taken away from me?"