During the afternoon Cicely met Grimshaw. Whether by accident or design will never be known. She told her mother, just before Lady Selina was composing herself for a nap, that she intended to pop round the village, but she popped no farther than Mrs. Rockram’s. That excellent woman received her with effusion, congratulating the young lady heartily upon her colour. Cicely’s cheeks certainly exhibited a deeper damask, and her eyes were sparkling. Mrs. Rockram, honest soul, made no attempt to disguise her interest in what might be happening at Wilverley, and her broad hints and innuendoes nearly drove Cicely from a delightfully warm kitchen. She guessed, of course, that Mrs. Rockram voiced the gossip of the village. Tiddy, she reflected, would have been immensely amused. A Chandos merely achieved exasperation tempered by patience. Nevertheless, she was sensible that Wilverley had become immensely remote, and its lord a mere vibrant blur upon the horizon.

“I didn’t come here to talk about Wilverley,” she said.

“No, no, suttingly not. But I’m such an old friend, Miss Cicely, so you’ll forgive me, won’t you? I held you and Master Brian in my arms when you wasn’t two hours born. I mind me how Master Brian yowled when he was bathed, and I says to Rockram, I says: ‘You mark me, Thomas Rockram, that young man’ll never like water’—and he never did.”

Cicely laughed.

“You tell me about Upworthy. Is there much sickness?”

“Nothing to worry about. Mr. Grimshaw sees to that, he do. And now that we’re a-going to lose him——”

“What——?”

“Haven’t you heard, miss?”

“Not a word.”

Mrs. Rockram became interjectional. “Well, I never did!—Maybe, I’ve no call to!—But there!—I did suppose my lady would know!” Boiled down, her tale amounted to no more than this. A certain Dr. Babbington Somebody-or-other had offered Mr. Grimshaw some post in France. Cicely having grasped this as a fact, said:

“And Mr. Grimshaw has accepted the appointment?”

“Well, no, miss. Not to say—accepted. Leastways, he give me to understand only yesterday that he ’adn’t answered the letter, but he’ll go. Me and Rockram is of the same mind about that.”

“But why should he go?”

“Because, dearie, ’e’s wanted here. In my long life, I’ve never known a man to be out o’ the way when ’e wasn’t wanted, or reely in it when he was. Mr. Grimshaw’ll leave us, just because we can’t do without him.”

Cicely couldn’t cope with this. She said, with some tartness:

“Mr. Grimshaw is Dr. Pawley’s partner. From my knowledge of him, he’s the last man to leave a partner in the lurch.”

Whereupon Mrs. Rockram became so interjectional that we cannot attempt to follow her.

Cicely left the cottage, to find Grimshaw snowballing on the Green with some of the village children. He came towards her, laughing, looking, so she thought, like a jolly boy.

“How are you, Miss Chandos?”

Cicely wasted no time.

“What is this story about your leaving us?”

His face became slightly impassive as he replied:

“The good Mrs. Rockram has been indiscreet, I see.”

“But—are you going? And where? Do, please, satisfy my curiosity.”

“Are you curious?”

“Of course I am.”

“That’s very friendly and kind of you. Yes; I have been offered a rather important billet in a French Field Hospital. Between ourselves, the French Medical Staff were caught napping. It mustn’t leak out, but their arrangements have proved wholly inadequate. Doctors and nurses are badly wanted. I happen to speak French fairly well. I took a Paris degree. Babbington-Raikes has written to me——”

“Oh!”

He hesitated, becoming a boy again.

“I—I should really like to know what you think about it.”

“How absurd!”

Irritation betrayed itself. Partly because she found herself in a false position. During the previous vigils she had wished to be left alone. Providence, apparently, had granted that wish, so far as Grimshaw was concerned. He would leave Upworthy, never to return. If he cared——! Already, like Arthur Wilverley, he seemed remote. His voice floated to her as from a distance.

“I am sincere. I have talked the matter over with Dr. Pawley. His health is much improved after his long holiday. He can carry on, so he says.”

Cicely said shortly:

“Of course he says that.”

“Do you mean, Miss Chandos, that in your opinion it’s my duty to stay here?”

Quite unreasonably—as she admitted to herself afterwards—Cicely became conscious of exasperation. At the moment, naturally enough, she was unable to analyse her emotions. Inasmuch as she wanted Grimshaw to stay for her personal motives, inasmuch also as she knew that such men must be sorely needed elsewhere, his grave question kindled civil war in her own heart. Taken at a disadvantage, she temporised:

“My opinion doesn’t count.”

“But it does,” he assured her.

Man and maid looked at each other with troubled eyes, each dismally conscious of spaces to be bridged, of bristling obstacles to be surmounted. In each, moreover, was the somewhat inchoate conviction that this horrible war imposed itself as paramount. Individuals were engulfed. The best leapt, like Curtius, into the abyss. And dominating this paralysing faith in the necessity of personal sacrifice was the instinct to obey without questioning, to scrap self at any cost. Cicely divined that Grimshaw must do his duty, and that he would do it, ultimately, even if she urged him to stay in Upworthy. To test him, to make certain of his quality, she said slowly, almost with defiance:

“And if I believed that, if—if I gave an opinion—which—which I don’t,” she hastened to add, “what weight could it have against your own?” As he remained silent, she continued vehemently: “No, no; you will act for yourself. Nothing else is possible.”

“I suppose not.”

“I venture to guess that you have made up your mind, Mr. Grimshaw.”

“Not quite.”

Torn within, he presented an impassive face to his interlocutress. His voice seemed to Cicely colder. An older woman would have read him easily. Unhappily, too, for both of them, they were standing on the village green within sight of inquisitive eyes. Alone in Mrs. Rockram’s snug parlour, in front of a warming fire, Grimshaw might have spoken and put his fate to the touch. The snow, the grey-white landscape, the approaching shades of evening, chilled speech. But never had Cicely appeared so sweet to him, so desirable. To go from her without a word ravaged him. To speak with entire frankness meant trouble, a burden placed upon slender shoulders. Was it possible to give her a glimpse of his feelings? Could one cold-dispelling ray shoot from his heart to hers before they parted? Physically speaking, hands and feet were growing icy.

She shivered.

Instantly he recognized the inexorable power of environment. He spoke with professional incisiveness:

“I beg your pardon for keeping you here. It is bitterly cold. We are in for a sharp frost.”

She held out her hand.

“I return to Wilverley to-morrow.” Her voice softened delightfully. “This may be—Good-bye. And if it is, good luck to you.”

“Thanks.”

With that Cicely sped homeward, a very unhappy maid, leaving an equally unhappy man to his thoughts. Neither had understood the other; each had trodden the well-worn path of convention and good-breeding, no longer that gentle, pleasant exercise so commended and approved by the past generation. Cicely told herself that he didn’t care; he was more doctor than man. At the very last he had envisaged her as a possible patient laid low by influenza.... Perhaps—her cheeks glowed at the thought—he had guessed something. Deliberately he might be setting the seas between them! Otherwise, surely he would have hinted at a return to Upworthy....

Grimshaw went back to his sitting-room and piled logs upon a dull smouldering heap of cinders. Borrowing Mrs. Rockram’s bellows, he blew these into a roaring fire, sat down, lit his pipe, and glared at the leaping flames. He was sensible of failure to his marrow. He accused himself of cowardice. He cross-questioned himself inexorably. Pride had governed him; he had kow-towed to the code imposed by the lady of the manor; he had missed his chance. Lord Wilverley would not miss his chance.