On the 25th May a Coalition Government replaced the old Liberal Ministry under which I had served four years. A few people welcomed the change in hope that the direction of the war would be more vigorous and farsighted. Most of the men I met condemned the new departure, and the detached critics at the Club showed endless fertility in the inferences they drew and the tendencies they traced.

O'Rane had gone to Melton at the end of April, and my uncle and I, dropping back into our former mode of life, saw more of each other than when we had had a guest to entertain. The outbreak of war had infused a strong spirit of party loyalty into Bertrand, and, as the clouds of destructive criticism gathered round the doomed head of the Government, there was hardly a theory or rumour too extravagant for him to embrace. I remember his fiery indignation when the Coalition idea was first canvassed. At one moment the Opposition had broken the party truce and was being silenced by having its mouth filled with plunder: at another malcontent Liberal Ministers were clearing a way to the throne with the aid of assassins suborned from the enemy. The conspiracy—and as public nerves wore thin, conspiracies multiplied—in either case was worked out in minute and convincing detail with chapter and verse to support every count in the indictment. I find it unprofitable even to discuss his theory, because a generation must elapse before the essential diaries and memoirs are made public; and there will be enough guesswork and enough errors of recollection to correct even then. Also, I feel there will be a colourable pretext for revolution when the troops come home, if a hundredth part of the charges be proved to be based on truth.

Apart from the rank and file Liberals who felt the ground had been cut from under their feet, the commonest view was that the Coalition was a London journalistic triumph, desired of no man but foisted on the country by large headlines and hard leader-writing. Erckmann took me on one side in the smoking-room at the Club and laid his heart bare for my inspection. (His intricate and far-reaching business interests had somehow stopped short of newspaper proprietorship; and the 'Sentinel,' bantering him on his change of name, had harped with needless insistence on the wisdom of interning naturalized aliens.) In Erckmann's eyes, the Coalition was the latest thrill of a sensation-mongering Press. "These journalists aren't a Mudual Admiration Zociety, hein? They live by addÁg. Liberal Government no use: zed ub a Goalition. Goalition no good; zed ub a digdador, hein? Digdador no good, zed ub a Liberal Government. Always addÁg, addÁg. We're doo long-suffering, we English. If you pud one or doo edidors againsd a wall, pour encourager les audres, hein?"

My own explanation of the change is founded in part on a study of collective psychology, in part on a certain familiarity with the House of Commons. Democracies are volatile and over-susceptible to panic, disappointment and desire for punishment. Erckmann's estimate of the English was so far wrong that the Government's chief difficulty—from the declaration of war, through the strikes and drink problems to the cry for all-round compulsion—lay in its unillumined ignorance how far it could go without arousing uncontrollable opposition.

The Coalition came because Democracy was vaguely restless and desirous of change. The long winter agony of the trenches was borne in the hopes that spring would see a general advance, Germany thrust back to the Rhine, the beginning of the end. Neuve Chapelle showed that, thanks to apathetic organization, the war might be expected to continue at least another year. Democracy showed itself disappointed and angry. What was the good of a soldier at the War Office if this kind of thing happened?

"Something is wanted, there needeth a change." The whisper made itself heard in Whitehall, and, be it through policy, fear or intrigue, the Coalition—desired and loved of none—was brought to birth. "I suppose," said my uncle some months later when his bitterness had abated, "it was the only alternative to shutting down the House of Commons. We've all been brought up on party lines, and it takes more than a war to deafen you to the pleadings of a Whip. More than a Coalition, for that matter," he added gloomily.

So the portfolios were shuffled, salaries pooled and everything went on as before. Erckmann's "sensation-mongers," after attacking everyone else, turned to rend the few remaining figures they had set on pedestals the previous August. The Foreign Office was attacked for failing to counteract the effects of the Press campaign in Europe: the creator of the modern British Army was driven from office for not quintupling the size of that army (I sat in the House through those dreary years when we lisped in terms of small holdings and cheered every penny saved on the Estimates): and that soldier whom the Press had violated constitutional practice to place in charge of the War Office, was given press-notice to go because the war was still unfinished and the stock of victims was running low.

I remember looking back on the first six months of the war with its upheaval of ideals and standards and habits of life: I recalled my feeling in August that nothing would ever be the same again. And in May I was to find that politics and journalism had so eaten their way into our being that even the scalpel of war failed to dislodge them. Unborn To-morrow must curb its Press or educate itself into independence of it.

While the Coalition was still a conjecture and occasion for blaspheming, my uncle announced his intention of retiring from politics and making over to me the reversion of his seat. As I had done no work for the party since my defeat in 1910 it is more than doubtful whether his nomination would have been endorsed in the Whip's Office, but in any case I had neither time nor strength to sit in the Admiralty by day and the House by night. Such leisure as I could find was already double mortgaged. I spent my Sundays at Bertrand's hospital, and my evenings in entertaining officers on leave or trying to keep in touch with friends who seemed to have been caught up into another and busier world since the outbreak of war.

It was half way through May when my cousin Violet crossed from Ireland with her mother and took up her residence in Loring House. Her confinement was expected to take place early in July, and by moving to London she hoped to see more of her husband when his three times deferred leave was granted. Old Lady Loring and Amy come down from Scotland to get the house ready and keep her company, and, as soon as I could find a free evening, I called round to see them and give Violet the message contained in her brother's letter from Melton.

Loring was writing regularly and in good spirits at this time: the life suited him, he was in perfect health, and his company was the finest of any army in the world. He had been given his fair share of fighting, promoted to the rank of captain, and had taken part in the advance to Neuve Chapelle—a circumstance which he never ceased to deplore, as it involved the exchange of a trench "with all the comforts of home" for one for which he looked in vain for a good word to say.

When I got up to go that night, Violet came with me to the head of the stairs and confided to me that she had a favour to ask.

"I want you to go to the War Office," she said. "If Jim's wounded, or ... or anything, they'll send a telegram to me. I want you to arrange to have it sent to you. For the next six weeks I'm simply going to vegetate. I shall write to Jim, of course, and if he writes to me I shall read his letters. If he doesn't, I shall try not to worry." She slipped her arm through mine. "You see, George, it's everything in the world to me now. And to poor dear old Jim. I'm doing it for his sake, too. It's all I can do. So if anything does happen ..."

"Isn't the Dowager the right person to take this on?" I suggested. "She is his mother."

Violet shook her head.

"She'd tell me. Not in so many words, but I should see it. And the same way with Amy. Say you will, George."

"I will, by all means."

"Good boy! You'd better not come again for the present. If you walked in one evening with a long face.... Amy'll ring you up as soon as there's anything to report."

"Whatever you think best, my dear."

I kissed her good-night and started to walk down the stairs. She stopped me with a whisper.

"George, I'm ... I'm not a bit afraid!"

"Best of luck!" I said. "Good night!"

Thereafter for some weeks Loring's letters continued to come with fair regularity, but there were times when he had no opportunity of writing, and I had no difficulty in understanding Violet's self-denying ordinance. We had two or three scares in the course of May and June—unexplained periods of time when no word came. Then a hurried scrawl would tell us that Loring had just come out of the trenches and was resting in billets behind the lines—"no time to write the last day or two, and no news even if the censor let it through. You know much more about the war than we do." And then we could all breathe more freely.

One such interval of suspense came to an end on June the 25th. I remember the date, if for no other reason, because it was my uncle's birthday. He had ordered his will to be sent round from the solicitor's and spent several hours, pencil in hand, drafting alterations and working out elaborate calculations in the margin. After dinner he returned to his task, and I was settling down to letter-writing when he suddenly said:

"Will you feel aggrieved, George, if I leave you out of this thing?"

"Not in the least," I said. "As I never expected——"

"Oh, nonsense! We've lived together for years, and I never could find anyone to do that before. They're all afraid of me, think I'm going to bite their heads off. I had put you down for everything and, if you think you're being shabbily treated, I won't alter the thing."

"I've really got as much as I need," I answered.

He nodded without looking up.

"Then the books and oddments will come to you, and the money will go to David."

"He'll refuse it, Bertrand," I said.

My uncle shrugged his shoulders. "He must please himself—as I am pleasing myself. Other things apart, I couldn't die and leave his father's son.... George, I'm not comfortable about the boy."

"Why not?"

"I always think that blindness is one of the few excuses for suicide," Bertrand answered.

"I'll go down for the week-end and see him, if you like," I said.

Reaching for a telegraph form, I was beginning to write when a maid entered and handed me a buff envelope. I read the contents and passed them over to my uncle.

"There is no answer," I told the maid.

The Secretary of State for War "regretted to inform" me that Captain the Marquess Loring was reported as "missing."

"He's only missing, George," said Bertrand gently, laying his hand over mine on the table.

"Isn't that—rather worse?" I asked, but Bertrand had crept away to leave me undisturbed.

I got away from the Admiralty early on the Saturday afternoon and reached Melton at four. In the disturbance of the previous evening I had forgotten to complete my telegram, and it seemed prudent to leave my luggage at the station until I had found out whether O'Rane could take me in for the week-end. I had won clear of the town and was half-way to the school when I heard my name called and looked up to find Lady Dainton driving with a break-load of convalescent soldiers.

"Are you coming to see us?" she asked.

"Eventually," I said.

"If you can find room inside," said Sonia from the box-seat, "we can drive you home in time for tea."

I wanted a word with Sonia privately, so I suggested that she and I should walk the rest of the way.

"We shall be frightfully late," she said dubiously as she descended from the box. Her rest-cure was doing her little good, to judge from her hollow cheeks and the dark rings round her eyes.

"Never mind," I said. "Right away! I say, Sonia, I'm a bird of ill-omen."

"What's the matter?" she asked anxiously.

"A friend of mine is missing—a friend of Raney and of us all. I was on my way to the school when you overtook me."

Sonia had stopped in the middle of the road and was looking at me with her big, beseeching eyes.

"You don't mean—Jim?" she said.

I nodded.

She gave a half sob. "Oh, poor, poor Violet!" And then, with the calmness that everyone seemed to acquire in the terrible first months of the war, "When did you hear about it?"

"Last night. Violet's not to be told till after the child's born. I felt Raney ought to know—he was our greatest friend."

We walked the best part of a mile in silence. Then Sonia said, "You were coming to tell me too?"

"Certainly."

"Thank you." Her head was bowed and her eyes turned to the ground. "I don't suppose you understand, George.... A man can't.... Oh, there was so much I wanted to say!"

"I think he understood everything," I said, taking her hand. "From the time when you offered him your good wishes on his marriage."

She seemed startled. "He told you about that?"

We were walking through country that to me was steeped in Loring's personality—the School Cricket Ground where he and I fielded at the nets as fags—the big Brynash Pond where we skated in the long frost of '94, the pavilion in the Southampton Road that marked the southernmost limit of Junior Bounds and skirting the forest the ribbon of white road along which seniors were privileged to tramp on their winter walks.

"You haven't been to the school yet, have you?" asked Sonia.

"Not yet. But I was thinking of it when you spoke. I remember walking along here with Jim one afternoon in autumn. It was Raney's first term. We tramped through the forest and up the hill till we came in sight of the milestone round the next corner. I recollect there was a figure seated on it, swinging his legs; and as we got nearer, we saw it was Raney. We'd thrashed him that term as many times as school rules permitted, and here he was calmly defying two monitors of his own house by dawdling a good two miles out of bounds. Poor boy!—there were tears shining on his eyelashes. Yes, he knew it was out of bounds, but it was the only place hereabouts where you could smell the English Channel, and sometimes, if you were lucky, you'd see smoke from a passing ship, and that gladdened the heart of him. I remember him saying it, with a brogue that he'd heard in his cradle and hardly since. Then without warning he became a sardonic little spitfire, oozing insubordination at every pore and drawling in hideous hybrid American. 'Guess I'm up against another of your everlasting rules, Loring.'"

"What did you say?" asked Sonia.

"I left it to Jim. They seemed to understand each other, and Jim never lost his temper, though I must say Raney was the most consummate little fiend in his first term that I've ever met. All Jim ever said was, 'Lonely little devil!' He certainly looked it, sitting on the milestone."

We walked on, turning over old memories, until we were out of the sweet, heavy pine forest, and the road curved sharply and ran downhill to Crowley.

As we rounded the corner a giant St. Bernard turned his head lazily in our direction, gathered himself together as though for a spring and raced towards us.

II

"It's a great noise ye're making, Jumbo," said a voice, and I saw that as once before there was a figure on the milestone. "Quiet, sir! Where are your manners?"

The attitude, voice and very tone of dejection were as I remembered them once, and once only, sixteen years before, when—as now—O'Rane had wandered forth to hide his misery from the world.

"I shan't tell him yet," I whispered to Sonia, instinctively stopping short.

She nodded her approval.

The dog's deep-chested bark had turned to a whimper of joyous welcome.

"Don't be heeding him, madame," O'Rane called out. "He'll not hurt you."

Sonia had walked on a few steps, but at sound of his voice she too stopped. Some time was yet to pass before she appreciated the sightlessness of those vivid, commanding eyes.

"Raney!" I cried.

He slid down from the milestone and faced us.

"George! what brings you here? It was a woman's step!"

"I was walking on the grass," I explained. "Sonia's here. She's taking me home with her to tea."

He pulled off his hat and stood with outstretched hand.

"Why don't you come too?" asked Sonia.

He hesitated. "I must be getting back to school," he said.

"Not yet," I urged. "Saturday afternoon? I came down here to invite you to take me in for the week-end. Come on to Crowley Court, and we'll walk back together."

He was without excuse and forced to accept.

"Well, why not?" he asked after a moment's deliberation and picked up his ash-plant from the roadside. "Not the first time we've met at this milestone, George?"

The wind was blowing from the south, salt and wet.

"You can still smell the sea from here," I said, as we set out.

"I can still see them, two a minute," he cried. "The grimy Cardiff colliers, and the P. & O.'s swaggering down Channel as if they owned the seas. And out of the grey into the blue of the Bay. And the Rock towering over you one morning. And then the roar of the quayside in Marseilles.... And those parching nights and days in the Canal ... Bombay, Colombo, Singapur, Hong-Kong, Shanghai.... The P. & O. sailings are like an ode of Keats. Java Sea, China Sea.... Salt and sunshine and great swampy rivers losing themselves in a midnight jungle.... The rattle of the derricks, and all the cursing, sweating stevedores in their rolling lighters.... The Pacific Coast and the sweepings of God's universe. 'The smell of goats and incense, and the mule-bells tinkling through.' Put me near tar and salt or the throb of an engine."

He stood with his head thrown back and the wind playing through his hair, once more five thousand miles from Melton. Sonia looked at him and turned away with lowered eyes. I slipped my arm through his, and we walked on, idly discussing the latest news of the war.

Crowley Court had been changed out of recognition. The bigger rooms were turned into wards, nurses in uniform were hurrying up and down stairs, and there were groups of wounded soldiers in their blue overalls sitting or limping about the garden. Twenty-five new patients were expected that night from Southampton, and the resources of the house were being strained to breaking point. Lady Dainton with a mourning brassard over her grey dress gave us tea amid alarums and excursions in the old smoking-room.

"Raney and I had better make ourselves scarce," I told Sonia, as her mother was called out of the room for the sixth time.

"Let me just talk to a few of these fellows first," begged O'Rane. "We may have been through the same places."

He jumped up and hurried out of the room with his fingers through Jumbo's collar.

"D'you care to walk back part of the way with us?" I asked Sonia.

She shook her head, and her eyes filled with tears.

"He doesn't like me near him. Didn't you see? He never spoke a word to me the whole way coming here. George—" she hesitated, and played with the hem of her handkerchief—"George, is it true he refused an interpretership on the staff?"

"He could have had one," I said.

"Well, when he went into the ranks ..."

"Sonia, don't try to take all the troubles of the world on your shoulders. Frankly, you don't look as if you could stand much more."

She lingered for a moment at the window, looking out on to the lawn where O'Rane was sitting cross-legged on the grass, surrounded by soldiers. Then she walked to the door.

"Say good-bye to him for me, George," she said. "I have to lie down before dinner."

I smoked half a pipe and went into the garden. The conversation on the lawn was abounding in historic, blood-drenched names—La BassÉe, Ypres, Neuve Chapelle, Festhubert; the men talked with bright eyes, and there was a flush on O'Rane's thin cheeks.

"Is it time to go?" he asked, as he felt my hand on his shoulder.

"There's a fresh lot due," I said.

He jumped up and waved a hand round the circle. "Good-bye, you chaps. You've bucked me up no end."

"Good-bye, sir! Good-bye!" The voices rang with cordiality and almost drowned the "Poor devil!" that fell from a man with one arm and no legs. "Come and see us again, sir."

"I'll try to! Now, George, I'm ready."

We went back to the house for our hats, and O'Rane asked if Lady Dainton was to be found. I said I thought she had better not be disturbed.

"Sonia sent 'good-bye' to you," I added.

"Then we may as well start," he said.

"Unless you'd care to speak to her before you go?"

He picked up his hat and whistled for the dog.

"At her present rate of progress it may be your last chance, Raney."

"What the devil d'you mean?" he demanded fiercely.

"She thinks she's responsible for getting you wounded," I told him. "She thinks you went into the ranks and chucked over a comparatively safe job...."

"On her account?"

"Yes. And she's breaking her heart over it. Is it true?"

He stood silent, without a restive face-muscle to give me the key to his thoughts.

"You want me to tell her it's untrue?"

"Yes," I said.

"Where is she?"

I led him upstairs and tapped on Sonia's door.

"May Raney come in and say good-bye?" I asked.

Then I went downstairs again. "I shall smoke a pipe at the milestone," I called up to him from the hall.

A third pipe followed the second, and for the twentieth time I looked impatiently at my watch, jumped down from the milestone and gazed down the dusty road in search of O'Rane. It was past seven when at last I saw him, striding along with the dog at his side, swinging his stick and apparently guiding his feet only by the flat crown to the road.

"Hope I haven't been very long, George," he apologized, as he drew up alongside.

"It's a beautiful evening to be in the country," I said, luxuriously sniffing the warm scents of the evening air.

"The may's good," Raney murmured half to himself. "I'd give something to see the chestnuts and golden rain." Then he linked his arm in mine. "George, you oughtn't to have sent me back."

"Why, what's happened?" I asked.

I could feel him shivering.

"Oh, it was damnable," he said. "I walked in with the words, 'I've come to say good-bye, Sonia.' There I wanted the thing to end, and I held out my hand to signify as much. She took it and—kept hold of it. 'D'you know those are the first words you've spoken to me to-day?' she said. I suppose she was right. I didn't mean to be rude. She asked me why I went into the ranks...." His voice sank, and he walked for fifty yards without speaking. "Well, I was broke, George. Of course I could have started again, but—my God!—was it worth doing?... I told her I wanted to get recruits. It was true, George, the whole thing was real—even that nonsensical meeting at Easterly. The only thing in life then was to get men. Men and more men.... And, good heavens, officers aren't immune from bursting shells.... Then I said good-bye, and she told me Sam was due out of hospital next week, and would I come over and see him."

His head dropped forward so that his face was hidden.

"I told her I couldn't meet her again. Once I'd asked her to marry me and now I thanked God she hadn't.... Then she crumpled up. Literally. And I had to catch hold of her to keep her from falling.... She lay there sobbing ... and I could feel the beat of her heart. 'God in heaven!' I said, 'd'you think I'd see you married to a blind man?'"

It was half-past eight when we reached Melton, and as we were too late to dine in Common Room I sent my suitcase up to the school and carried O'Rane off with me to the "Raven."

"Bertrand told me to ask if you were going to keep on your seat in the House," I said half-way through dinner.

"I'll give up nothing!" he answered defiantly. "You think I'm going to let this make any difference——?"

"Apparently you told Sonia it would. In your place I should certainly stick to it. Four hundred a year——"

O'Rane stopped me suddenly.

"By next January I can let you have three hundred on account," he said.

"You'd better pay it back direct," I suggested. "Two hundred to my uncle, who'll be mortally offended at receiving it——"

"I can't help that," he interrupted obstinately.

"And the next time you go to Crowley Court——"

"I'm not going there again, George."

"My dear Raney, in common decency you must! When a girl sells the pearls her father gave her when she came out——"

"George!"

"And things from her dead brother, and a twopenny wrist-watch——"

"George, please stop!" He sat with his fists pressed to his temples. "I'd have sworn it was Jim. I wrote to him a fortnight ago.... And as he didn't deny it...."

There was a long silence.

"Perhaps he never got your letter," I said.

III

We walked up to the school after dinner and joined the staff at dessert. I had gone to Melton to break the news of Loring's disappearance and not to spy the incongruity of O'Rane's self-sought surroundings, but I left without touching on the subject of my visit. O'Rane seemed to be carrying as much sail as he could stand. Being a Saturday night the masters had all dined in Common Room, with the exception, of course, of Burgess. I found them profiting by his absence to compare the ideal way of running a great public school with the way actually adopted at Melton.

So long as a regimental mess devotes every moment of its spare time to discussing regimental politics, so long as three barristers at a dinner-party of twenty-four segregate themselves to discuss the last appointment, so long as Members of Parliament refight in the Smoking-Room the battle they have just left in the Chamber, I suppose it is not surprising that schoolmasters should widen their outlook and refresh their minds for the morrow by returning to the chalk dust and ink of their classrooms.

The criticism of Burgess hung on a peg provided by one Vickers. (I shall never forget his name and some day perhaps I shall meet him.) It seems that Vickers, in the opinion of his form-master Matheson, was ripe for super-annuation on the ground that he knew nothing, learned nothing and was only being injured in health by having to spend his leisure hours in detention-school. Ponsonby, in whose house Vickers spun out his unprofitable existence, disagreed in toto with his good friend Matheson. Vickers was slow, without a doubt; a little patience, however ... And the boy was admirably behaved. And there must be something in the son of a man who had captained Somerset. I was given to understand that the chose Vickers had been under discussion for some while and that the antagonists only agreed in condemning the Head.

Burgess, it seemed, had admitted the boy five years before on the strength of a chance conversation on early Church music. He took the weak line that Melton might do Vickers good and that Vickers could not possibly harm Melton; finally he was believed to attach less than no importance to Matheson's reiterated complaints to the senior Vickers that their son admittedly spent evening preparation in reading oratorio scores. On this last point Ponsonby ventured to say that he paid a personal visit to prep. room every night and could only say that he had never discovered Vickers so employed. Had anyone described to me the conversation of that Common Room, I should have dismissed his account as a cruel parody.

Raney had walked up from the hotel in unbroken silence, but I saw him gradually awakening to the sound of the Common-Room talk, where four conversations were always in progress at once and no one waited to hear what his neighbour had to say.

"Send him to O'Rane," suggested Ponsonby. "If he can't make anything of him ... Hallo, Oakleigh, where have you sprung from?"

"O'Rane is welcome to him," returned Matheson. "But you may remember my contention was that this is a school and not an asylum."

The term was two-thirds over, and I will make all allowances for rawed nerves. But there was still a note of pathos running through the acrid conversation. Sixteen years had passed since I last entered the smoky Common Room over Big Gateway, and I was then being entertained to a farewell dinner by men who seemed to shed their mannerisms with their gowns and become suddenly human. In the interval I had wandered about the world and tried my hand at many things; O'Rane had wandered farther and made more experiments. Yet the Common Room was hardly changed: there was the same round hole in the carpet by the fireplace; the horsehair was still bursting through the scorched part of the largest chair; the tongs, still in two pieces, were still used as pokers.

The men, too, were hardly changed. Only the younger ones came and went—some to headmasterships, some far away from scholasticism. There were a few science men, imported grudgingly by Burgess to tend the growing but still suspect Modern Side; and each one knew his neighbour too well. They knew their work too well and had corrected the same mistakes too long. I wondered what they made of O'Rane and he of them.

As Headmaster, Burgess stood in a different position; with his enormous range of knowledge he would always be differentiated from his fellows. I tried to see him that night before going, but he was engaged with the Bishop of Minehead, who was preaching in chapel next day. We met, however, in the Cloisters after Roll Call while I was waiting for O'Rane to come out of Early School.

"Behold, I have prepared my dinner," he said, as we shook hands. "My oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready."

I interpreted his words as an invitation to breakfast and asked whether I might bring O'Rane.

"Priests and Levites sit at meat with me this day," he answered, with a warning glance to the end of the Cloisters where the Bishop was reading the inscription on the South African memorial. "An he be not afraid.... Laddie, doth thy memory hold the day when David O'Rane came first among us?"

"I went in fear of my life, sir, for the first term."

"I, too, laddie," said Burgess, stroking his long beard. "Cloven tongues, like as of fire, sat upon him, and he prophesied with strange utterance, saying, 'See here, Dr. Burgess, I propose to come to your old school for a piece. There's my money, every last dime. When that's petered out, I guess I'll have to find more. When do you start anyway, and what are the rules?' Laddie, I spake a word here and a word there. It was not good for a babe to know what he knew. Yet I would not fling him into outer darkness, for he was not without valour."

We left the Cloisters and walked into the sunlight of Great Court.

"You saw him when he came back from France, sir?" I asked.

Burgess struggled out of his gown and threw it over one shoulder.

"Not for long did we commune together," he said, as we walked towards Little End. "A word here and a word there. I knew little but that one of my young men was come back to me with eyes that saw not. The laddies call him the 'Black Panther,'" he added.

"So my cousin tells me. How did you find that out, sir?"

He shook his head vaguely.

"I am an old man, broken with the cares and sorrows of this life, yet—all things are revealed unto me. There was turbulence in the Under Sixth when Plancus was Consul."

"I believe there was, sir," I admitted.

Burgess beckoned with one finger.

"Come and see," he said.

We had walked round from Little End to the front of his house, and he now led the way back through Big Gateway, across Great Court and up the steps into Great School. The folding doors of Under Sixth room stood open, and as we approached, a boy was standing up reading a passage of Greek Testament; O'Rane stopped him at the end of the chapter, and the construe began.

"How does he manage about the written work?" I whispered to Burgess.

"It is read aloud to him and he does not forget. Boy is a noble savage, laddie," he remarked reflectively, looking at the still, orderly form. "They wot not that the High Priest is even now at hand."

We walked down School and waited in Great Court for the bell to ring.

"It was hardly the end I pictured for Raney," I said.

"The end, laddie?" Burgess echoed.

The bell rang, and almost immediately a wave of boys poured headlong down the steps and separated to their houses. In their rear came O'Rane, with his hand on the shoulder of my cousin Laurence.

"Thus grows mankind's ritual," Burgess commented. "The self-appointed guardian guards still, though his services be no longer required." He called my cousin to him. "Laddie, if thine house-master grant thee leave, I pray thee to a place at my board."

On the evening of my return from Melton I called at the War Office to inquire for news of Loring. It was a fruitless mission that I had to repeat every day that week. Sometimes I varied the procedure by calling at Cox's Bank as well, but the result was always the same. On the Saturday I determined to call at Loring House and prepare its inmates for the official notice that I had not been able to intercept on its way to the Press.

I was met in the hall by Amy, tremulous with excitement.

"You got my message?" she inquired.

"I've not been home."

"My dear, it's a boy! At six o'clock this morning. I couldn't get hold of you at the Admiralty, so I sent a message to Queen Anne's Mansions."

"How's Violet?" I asked.

"Splendid. They both are. Everything went beautifully. She's sleeping at present, but she wants to see you."

"Isn't it—rather soon?" I asked.

"It's only for a minute, and of course you mustn't excite her. I mentioned in my message——"

"Amy," I interrupted, "how long is it since you heard from Jim?"

Her eyes grew apprehensive.

"You've not got bad news of him?"

"I've no news at all."

She reflected for a moment.

"It was ten days ago. We haven't heard since then, but so often we get no letter for a week or so, and then three or four come together."

"I haven't heard either." I took her arm and walked to a settee. "It's possible that he's missing, Amy."

"Missing?" She did not yet take the word in its specialized sense.

"It doesn't necessarily mean anything," I said. "Thousands of 'missing' men turn up again. You see, if you get separated from your company——"

Amy covered her face with her hands, and I put my arm round her shoulders.

"You mustn't meet trouble half-way," I said. "He may be as right as I am——"

"You don't think that, or you wouldn't have told me," she whispered.

"I told you because you may see his name in the papers any day."

Her hands dropped into her lap, and she gazed across the hall to the staircase as if she expected to see her brother's tall form descending.

"Jim—Jim—Jim!" she repeated with twitching lips.

"Nothing's known yet, Amy," I said. "I told you because I wanted you to help me."

Slowly her eyes turned and met mine in a dazed and tearless stare.

"What am I to do?" she murmured.

"We must think of Jim's son," I said. "Keep Violet utterly in the dark at present. Lie to her—anything you like—invent news of Jim. She mustn't see the papers, she mustn't see her letters. As soon as he's reported missing in the papers people will write and sympathize. You and your mother must keep up the play till she's strong enough to be told. And then you must laugh at her fears as I've laughed at yours. Missing? What of it? With millions of men stretching over hundreds of miles——"

The dazed expression left her eyes, and her steadiness of voice and touch as she laid her hand on mine showed me that all the courage of her soul had gone forth to battle and returned triumphant.

"What do you think yourself, George?" she demanded.

"It's long odds against any man now out there returning with a whole skin," I said.

She stood up and looked slowly round the great hall, instinct with the personality of its owner. No word passed her lips, but it was the most eloquent silence I have experienced.

"Come upstairs and see if Violet's awake," she suggested. "He's a beautiful boy."

I found my cousin in a darkened room, leaning back on her pillows, weak-voiced but radiant. She pointed one hand to the far side of the bed, where a nurse stood with a new-born child in her arms.

"James Alexander Erskine Claverhouse-Moray," she whispered. "Poor mite! it isn't fair on him. Jim wouldn't miss any of them out, though."

"If I'm to be one of his godfathers, I shan't allow it," I said. "He shall be Sandy, plain and unadorned. How are you feeling, Vi?"

"So tired, George!" she answered, with a sigh. "I oughtn't to be seeing you, but I want you to do something for me. Will you"—she paused, as though the effort of speaking hurt her—"will you tell Jim you've seen Sandy—plain and unadorned?"

I bent down and kissed her forehead. "Seen him and approved of him," I said. "I'll write to-night."

"Oh, send him a wire."

"I'll wire," I said. "Good night, Violet."

She had dropped asleep before I reached the door. As I walked downstairs, Lady Loring came out of the drawing-room and stood waiting for me by the stairhead. Her round face was as placid as ever, but her eyes were restless.

"Amy has told me everything," she said.

I bowed without speaking.

"Would you prefer to tell Violet, or shall I?" she asked.

"Perhaps, as Jim's mother——"

"I should prefer you to do it," I said, "as soon as you think it's safe."

"Very well. As regards the boy—I've not sent any announcement to the papers."

"I will see to that," I said.

After calling at the offices of "The Times" and "Morning Post," I wrote letters to ten or twelve people including O'Rane and Laurence. Thinking over the events of the day as I walked home from the Club, I could not help feeling that one of the hardest things to bear in all the war was the courage of the women.

IV

A week or two elapsed before I received any acknowledgement from Melton. Then my cousin wrote a letter designed to release both myself and O'Rane from obligations, to convey an invitation for Speech Day and as long afterwards as I could spare for Raney's tried and approved spare room, and finally to impart a great deal of such miscellaneous information as my cousin thought would interest me or seemed suitable for treatment by an epistolary method in which he took considerable pride.

"This is awful news about Jim," he wrote. "Though I really hardly knew him, he seemed an awful good sort—white all through. The Panther says I haven't gone half far enough. It was an awful shock for him, poor chap. I usually roll round after Early School on my way to breakfast, just to read him his letters and the headlines in the paper. I found your fist staring at me, so I told the Panther and read out the letter. If I'd had time to read my own first, I might have let him down easier: as it was, I was frightfully abrupt.

"Well, as you say, there's always hope until they definitely write him off. It does seem rotten luck on Vi, though. She writes a fairly cheery letter in spite of all: I heard from her this morning, asking me to be godfather to the kid.

"I've had a most astonishing time here since last I wrote. I was coming out of the racquet court the other day and haring along through the rain when I bumped up against a girl in Big Archway. I apologized with my usual pretty grace and was hurrying on when she asked me the way to the Panther's rooms. As I happened to be going there myself on the chance of tea, I volunteered to show her the way. With any luck the Panther might be out, and then my theory was to invite her to the 'Raven.' It would have been worth getting sacked just for the fun of it, George. She was some beauty—like the picture of Lady Hamilton dressed as a Bacchante. (If you happen to remember it, and if I'm thinking of the right one, the thing in the dining-room in Dublin.) She'd been walking through the rain and wind and her hair was shining with the wet, and there was little baby diamonds on her eyelashes. (Said he poetically.) I—George, my life is blighted: I fell in love at first sight of her eyes (colour dark brown and an 'out' size) and at the sound of her voice. I feel I could write reams of bad poetry about her. You should have seen me doing the Walter Raleigh stunt and bagging our Mr. Matheson's green brolly from Common Room passage.

"It took us some time to get to the Cloisters, as I led her round Big School by a lucus a non short cut through Chapel and by the Baths. However, we got there eventually, and I knocked at the Panther's door.

"'That you, Oakleigh?' he asked.

"'Yes, sir,' I said.

"'You're just in time to make tea. The water's boiling. Come along in and shut the rain out.'

"'A lady's called to see you, sir,' I said; and waited for him to hand out hush-money.

"The Panther hardly raised an eyebrow. 'Get a move on with the tea, then,' he said. 'What have you done with her?'

"'I'm here, David,' answered My Dream. Curse him! she called by his Christian name!

"The Panther held out his hand. 'I didn't expect you so soon,' he said.

"'I got your letter this morning,' she answered.

"Well, George, the whole thing seemed a put-up job, and I quite made up my mind to warn Burgess how his young men were carrying on. I poured the tea out and handed round the food and was just making for the door when the Panther called me back.

"'Sonia,' he said, 'I want to introduce a young cousin of George's.'

"'George is one of my oldest friends,' she said. (You old devil, you never told me. Never mind, she called me 'Laurie' before we'd finished.)

"'And Miss Dainton is one of my oldest friends,' said the Panther. 'Sit down and continue to preside over the meal. I've not made tea since the days when I was your brother-in-law's fag—eighteen years ago, nearly.'

"We talked a bit, and I poured out more tea and handed more food and then I made another attempt to go.

"'You're in a great hurry, Oakleigh,' said the Panther. 'We've bored you, I'm afraid.'

"'No, sir,' I said, 'but I thought you and Miss Dainton might want to talk.'

"'I should like you to stay,' he said, 'Miss Dainton has called to see these rooms, and I want you to show her round. There is a question whether she would care to live here.'

"You could have counted me out over that, George. He said it in the most matter-of-fact way, standing by the fireplace with his hands in his pockets. I didn't know what to say. I looked at her. She was leaning forward with her hands round her knees and her head bent. Her eyes were full of tears, and I couldn't make out if she was frightfully happy or frightfully miserable.

"'What's your view, Oakleigh?' he asked.

"'I ... I don't know yet, sir,' I stammered. It was a damned unfair question, George.

"'We were engaged when I was sixteen,' said Miss Dainton.

"'Well, what have you been waiting for?' I asked. It was awful cheek, but it slipped out. The Panther simply yelled with laughter.

"'Then—in my place, Oakleigh?' he asked.

"'Rather, sir!' I said. I was warming to the job. I had a look at her, but she didn't seem to mind.

"The Panther thought it over for a minute. Then he sobered down and said very quietly:

"'If you were blind?'

"'It doesn't seem to make any difference to you, sir,' I said.

"George wasn't that a perfectly innocent remark? The Panther's simply amazing, the things he does. However, I seemed to have said the wrong thing. He clapped his hands to his eyes as though he'd been stung, and I could hear him whisper under his breath, 'Oh, my God!'

"I weighed in with the most abject of apologies, and he was all right again in a minute and turned to Miss Dainton.

"'Am I to take this young man as representative of the world at large, Sonia?' he asked.

"She said 'Yes' very quietly.

"'Oakleigh hasn't shown you round the rooms yet,' he said. 'They're nothing very much. I left my money behind in London, and a slice of my youth the far side of the Atlantic, and my sight in Flanders. If you care about what's left Sonia.... I'm not half-way through my life yet.'

"She got up and whispered something that I couldn't hear, then the Panther turned to me and held out his hand. 'Will you be the first to congratulate me, Oakleigh? I shall want you to write a lot of letters to-night. One to George, and another to your sister, and any number more. You can tell George to desert from the Admiralty and come down here for Speech Day—and as long as he can stay afterwards. You can tell the school, too, if you think it'll amuse them.'

"I shook hands with the two of them for about five minutes. They were simply bursting with cheer. I wanted to shout or make a speech or something, but all I could do was to pump-handle their arms up and down and burble 'Best of luck!' and on my honour I slapped the Panther on the back and told him to buck up!

"Never in my life did I feel such a fool as when it was all over. I got away as soon as I could and wandered down to the baths. About an hour later as I was coming up to prep. with Majoribanks we caught sight of the Panther and Miss Dainton starting up the Crowley Road. I mentioned casually that the Panther was getting married and that I'd been having tea with them and that she struck me as being a decent sort of girl. I didn't go into details. It was all such an extraordinary business that I knew that if I didn't quite get the hang of it, it was useless to look to a chuckle-head like Margy for light and leading.

"You know, George, I don't believe they'd have done it if it hadn't been for me.

"And now to the fascinating task of turning Marc Antony's funeral oration into Latin Hexameters for the benefit of our Mr. O'Rane. If he gives me any lip about them, I shall tell him that she called me 'Laurie.'

"The cost of living has gone up again since I thanked you for that fiver."