Of course, after this (in the words of my young friends) I crocked
up. The confounded shell that had played the fool with my legs had
also done something silly to my heart. Hence these collapses after
physical and emotional strain. I had to stay in bed for some days.
Cliffe told me that as soon as I was fit to travel I must go to
Bournemouth, where it would be warm. I told Cliffe to go to a
place where it would be warmer. As neither of us would obey the
other, we remained where we were.
Cliffe informed me that Lady Fenimore had called him in to see Sir
Anthony, whom she described as being on the obstinate edge of a
nervous breakdown. I was sorry to hear it.
"I suppose you've tried to send him, too, to Bournemouth?"
"I haven't," Cliffe replied gravely. "He has got something on his
mind. I'm sure of it. So is his wife. What's the good of sending
him away?"
"What do you think is on his mind?" I asked.
"How do I know? His wife thinks it must be something to do with
Boyce's reception. He went home dead-beat, is very irritable, off
his food, can't sleep, and swears cantankerously that there's
nothing the matter with him,--the usual symptoms. Can you throw
any light on it?"
"Certainly not," I replied rather sharply.
Cliffe said "Umph!" in his exasperating professional way and
proceeded to feel my pulse.
"I don't quite see how Friday's mild exertion could account for
YOUR breakdown, my friend," he remarked.
"I'm so glad you confess, at last, not to seeing everything," said
I.
I was fearing this physical reaction in Sir Anthony. It was only
the self-assertion of Nature. He had gone splendidly through his
ordeal, having braced himself up for it. He had not braced himself
up, however, sufficiently to go through the other and far longer
ordeal of hiding his secret from his wife. So of course he went to
pieces.
After Cliffe had left me, with his desire for information
unsatisfied, I rang up Wellings Park. It was the Sunday morning
after the reception. To my surprise, Sir Anthony answered me; for
he was an old-fashioned country churchgoer and plague, pestilence,
famine, battle, murder and sudden death had never been known to
keep him out of his accustomed pew on Sunday morning. Edith, he
informed me, had gone to church; he himself, being as nervous as a
cat, had funked it; he was afraid lest he might get up in the
middle of the sermon and curse the Vicar.
"If that's so," said I, "come round here and talk sense. I've
something important to say to you."
He agreed and shortly afterwards he arrived. I was shocked to see
him. His ruddy face had yellowed and the firm flesh had loosened
and sagged. I had never noticed that his stubbly hair was so grey.
He could scarcely sit still on the chair by my bedside.
I told him of Cliffe's suspicions. We were a pair of conspirators
with unavowable things on our minds which were driving us to
nervous catastrophe. Edith, said I, was more suspicious even than
Cliffe. I also told him of our talk about the projected dinner
party.
"That," he declared, "would drive me stark, staring mad."
"So will continuing to hide the truth from Edith," said I. "How do
you suppose you can carry on like this?"
He grew angry. How could he tell Edith? How could he make her
understand his reason for welcoming Boyce? How could he prevent
her from blazing the truth abroad and crying aloud for vengeance?
What kind of a fool's counsel was I giving him?
I let him talk, until, tired with reiteration, he had nothing more
to say. Then I made him listen to me while I expounded that which
was familiar to his obstinate mind--namely, the heroic qualities
of his own wife.
"It comes to this," said I, by way of peroration, "that you're
afraid of Edith letting you down, and you ought to be ashamed of
yourself."
At that he flared out again. How dared I, he asked, eating his
words, suggest that he did not trust the most splendid woman God
had ever made? Didn't I see that he was only trying to shield her
from knowledge that might kill her? I retorted by pointing out
that worry over his insane behaviour--please remember that above
our deep unchangeable mutual affection, a violent surface quarrel
was raging--would more surely and swiftly kill her than unhappy
knowledge. Her quick brain--had already connected Gedge, Boyce,
and his present condition as the main factors of some strange
problem. "Her quick brain!" I cried. "A half idiot child would
have put things together."
Presently he collapsed, sitting hopelessly, nervelessly in his
chair. At last he lifted a piteously humble face.
"What would you suggest my doing, Duncan?"
There seemed to me to be only one thing he could do in order to
preserve, if not his reason, at any rate his moral equilibrium in
the position which he had contrived for himself. To tell him this
had been my object in seeking the interview, and the blessed
opportunity only came after an hour's hard wrangle--in current
metaphor after an hour's artillery preparation for attack. He
looked so battered, poor old Anthony, that I felt almost ashamed
of the success of my bombardment.
"It's not a question of suggesting," said I. "It's a question of
things that have to be done. You need a holiday. You've been
working here at high pressure for nearly a couple of years. Go
away. Put yourself in the hands of Cliffe, and go to Bournemouth,
or Biarritz, or Bahia, or any beastly place you can fix up with
him to go to. Go frankly For three or four months. Go to-morrow.
As soon as you're well out of the place, tell Edith the whole
story. Then you can take counsel and comfort together."
He was in the state of mind to be impressed by my argument. I
followed up my advantage. I undertook to send a ruthless flaming
angel of a Cliffe to pronounce the inexorable decree of exile.
After a few faint-hearted objections he acquiesced in the scheme.
I fancy he revolted against even this apparent surrender to Gedge,
although he was too proud to confess it. No man likes running
away. Sir Anthony also regarded as pusillanimous the proposal to
leave his wife in ignorance until he had led her into the trap of
holiday. Why not put her into his confidence before they started?
"That," said I, "is a delicate question which only you yourself
can decide. By following my plan you get away at once, which is
the most important thing. Once comfortably away, you can choose
the opportune moment."
"There's something in that," he replied; and, after thanking me
for my advice, he left me.
I do not defend my plan. I admit it was Machiavellian. My one
desire was to remove these two dear people from Wellingsford for a
season. Just think of the horrible impossibility of their
maintaining social relations with the Boyces ....
By publicly honouring Boyce, Sir Anthony had tied his own hands.
It was a pledge to Boyce, although the latter did not know it, of
condonation. Whatever stories Gedge might spread abroad, whatever
proofs he might display, Sir Anthony could take no action. But to
carry on a semblance of friendship with the man responsible for
his daughter's death--for the two of them, mind you, since Lady
Fenimore would sooner or later learn everything--was, as I say,
horribly impossible.
Let them go, then, on their nominal holiday, during which the air
might clear. Boyce might take his mother away from Wellingsford.
She would do far more than uproot herself from her home in order
to gratify a wish of her adored and blinded son. He would employ
his time of darkness in learning to be brave, he had told me. It
took some courage to face the associations of dreadful memories
unflinchingly, for his mother's sake. Should he learn, however,
that the Fenimores had an inkling of the truth, he would recognise
his presence in the place to be an outrage. And such inkling--who
would give it him? Perhaps I, myself. The Boyces would go--the
Fenimores could return. Anything, anything rather than that the
Fenimores and the Boyces should continue to dwell in the same
little town.
And there was Betty--with all the inexplicable feminine whirring
inside her--socially reconciled with Boyce. Where the deuce was
this reconciliation going to lead? I have told you how my lunatic
love for Betty had stood revealed to me. Had she chosen to love
and marry any ordinary gallant gentleman, God knows I should not
have had a word to say. The love that such as I can give a woman
can find its only true expression in desiring and contriving her
happiness. But that she should sway back to Leonard Boyce--no, no.
I could not bear it. All the shuddering pictures of him rose up
before me, the last, that of him standing by the lock gates and
suddenly running like a frightened rabbit, with his jaunty soft
felt hat squashed shapelessly over his ears.
Gedge could not have invented that abominable touch of the
squashed hat.
I have said that possibly I myself might give Boyce an inkling of
the truth. Thinking over the matter in my restless bed, I shrank
from doing so. Should I not be disingenuously serving my own ends?
Betty stepped in, whom I wanted for myself. Neither could I go to
Boyce and challenge him for a villain and summon him to quit the
town and leave those dear to me at peace. I could not condemn him.
I had unshaken faith in the man's noble qualities. That he drowned
Althea Fenimore I did not, could not, believe. After all that had
passed between us, I felt my loyalty to him irrevocably pledged.
More than ever was I enmeshed in the net of the man's destiny.
As yet, however, I could not bear to see him. I could not bear to
see Betty, who called now and then. For the first time in my life
I took refuge in my invalidity, whereby I earned the commendation
of Cliffe. Betty sent me flowers. Mrs. Boyce sent me grapes and an
infallible prescription for heart attacks which, owing to the
hopeless mess she had made in trying to copy the wriggles
indicating the quantities of the various drugs, was of no
practical use. Phyllis Gedge sent me a few bunches of violets with
a shy little note. Lady Fenimore wrote me an affectionate letter
bidding me farewell. They were going to Bude in Cornwall, Anthony
having put himself under Dr. Cliffe's orders like a wonderful
lamb. When she came back, she hoped that her two sick men would be
restored to health and able to look more favourably upon her
projected dinner party. Marigold also brought into my bedroom a
precious old Waterford claret jug which I had loved and secretly
coveted for twenty years, with a card attached bearing the
inscription "With love from Anthony." That was his dumb, British
way of informing me that he was taking my advice.
When my self-respect would allow me no longer to remain in bed, I
got up; but I still shrank from publishing the news of my
recovery, in which reluctance I met with the hearty encouragement
both of Cliffe and Marigold. The doctor then informed me that my
attack of illness had been very much more serious than I realised,
and that unless I made up my mind to lead the most unruffled of
cabbage-like existences, he would not answer for what might
befall me. If he could have his way, he would carry me off and put
me into solitary confinement for a couple of months on a sunny
island, where I should hold no communication with the outside
world. Marigold heard this announcement with smug satisfaction.
Nothing would please him more than to play gaoler over me.
At last, one morning, I said to him: "I'm not going to submit to
tyranny any longer. I resume my normal life. I'm at home to
anybody who calls. I'm at home to the devil himself."
"Very good, sir," said Marigold.
An hour or two afterwards the door was thrown open and there stood
on the threshold the most amazing apparition that ever sought
admittance into a gentleman's library; an apparition, however,
very familiar during these days to English eyes. From the
shapeless Tam-o'-Shanter to the huge boots it was caked in mud.
Over a filthy sheepskin were slung all kinds of paraphernalia,
covered with dirty canvas which made it look a thing of mighty
bulges among which a rifle was poked away. It wore a kilt covered
by a khaki apron. It also had a dirty and unshaven face. A muddy
warrior fresh from the trenches, of course. But what was he doing
here?
"I see, sir, you don't recognise me," he said with a smile.
"Good Lord!" I cried, with a start, "it's Randall."
"Yes, sir. May I come in?"
"Come in? What infernal nonsense are you talking?" I held out my
hand, and, after greeting him, made him sit down.
"Now," said I, "what the deuce are you doing in that kit?"
"That's what I've been asking myself for the last ten months.
Anyhow I shan't wear it much longer."
"How's that?"
"Commission, sir," he answered.
"Oh!" said I.
His entrance had been so abrupt and unexpected that I hardly knew
as yet what to make of him. Speculation as to his doings had led
me to imagine him engaged in some elegant fancy occupation on the
fringe of the army, if indeed he were serving his country so
creditably. I found it hard to reconcile my conception of Master
Randall Holmes with this businesslike Tommy who called me "Sir"
every minute.
"I'll tell you about it, sir, if you're interested. But first--how
is my mother?"
"Your mother? You haven't seen her yet?"
Here, at least, was a bit of the old casual Randall. He shook his
head.
"I've only just this minute arrived. Left the trenches yesterday.
Walked from the station. Not a soul recognised me. I thought I had
better come here first and report, just as I was, and not wait
until I had washed and shaved and put on Christian clothes again.
"He looked at me and grinned. "Seeing is believing."
"Your mother is quite well," said I. "Haven't you given her any
warning of your arrival?"
"Oh, no!" he answered. "I didn't want any brass bands. Besides, as
I say, I wanted to see you first. Then to look in at the hospital.
I suppose Phyllis Gedge is still at the hospital?"
"She is. But I think, my dear chap, your mother has the first call
on you."
"She wouldn't enjoy my present abominable appearance as much as
Phyllis," he replied, coolly. "You see, Phyllis is responsible for
it. I told you she refused to marry me, didn't I, sir? After that,
she called me a coward. I had to show her that I wasn't one. It
was an awful nuisance, I admit, for I had intended to do something
quite different. Oh! not Gedging or anything of that sort--but--"
he dived beneath his sheepskin and brought out a tattered letter
case and from a mass of greasy documents (shades of superior
Oxford!) selected a dirty, ragged bit of newspaper--"but," said
he, handing me the fragment, "I think I've succeeded. I don't
suppose this caught your eye, but if you look closely into it,
you'll see that 11003 Private R. Holmes, 1st Gordon Highlanders, a
couple of months ago was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal.
I may be any kind of a fool or knave she likes to call me, but she
can't call me a coward."
I congratulated him with all my heart, which, after the first
shock, was warming towards him rapidly.
"But why," I asked, still somewhat bewildered, "didn't you apply
for a commission? A year ago you could have got one easily. Why
enlist? And the 1st Gordons--that's the regular army."
He laughed and asked permission to help himself to a cigarette.
"By George, that's good," he exclaimed after a few puffs. "That's
good after months of Woodbines. I found I could stand everything
except Tommy's cigarettes. Everything about me has got as hard as
nails, except my palate for tobacco .... Why didn't I apply for a
commission? Any fool could get a commission. It's different now.
Men are picked and must have seen active service, and then they're
sent off to cadet training corps. But last year I could have got
one easily. And I might have been kicking my heels about England
now."
"Yet, at the sight of a Sam Browne belt, Phyllis would have surely
recanted," said I.
"I didn't want the girl I intended to marry and pass my life with
to have her head turned by such trappings as a Sam Browne belt.
She has had to be taught that she is going to marry a man. I'm not
such a fool as you may have thought me, Major," he said, forgetful
of his humble rank. "Suppose I had got a commission and married
her. Suppose I had been kept at home and never gone out and never
seen a shot fired, like heaps of other fellows, or suppose I had
taken the line I had marked out--do you think we should have been
assured a happy life? Not a bit of it. We might have been happy
for twenty years. And then--women are women and can't help
themselves--the old word--by George, sir, she spat it at me from
a festering sore in her very soul--the old word would have rankled
all the time, and some stupid quarrel having arisen, she would
have spat it at me again. I wasn't taking any chances of that
kind."
"My dear boy," said I, subridently, "you seem to be very wise."
And he did. So far as I knew anything about humans, male and
female, his proposition was incontrovertible. "But where did you
gather your wisdom?"
"I suppose," he replied seriously, "that my mind is not entirely
unaffected by a very expensive education."
I looked at the extraordinary figure in sheepskin, bundles and
mud, and laughed out loud. The hands of Esau and the voice of
Jacob. The garb of Thomas Atkins and the voice of Balliol. Still,
as I say, the fellow was perfectly right. His highly trained
intelligence had led him to an exact conclusion. The festering
sore demanded drastic treatment,--the surgeon's knife. As we
talked I saw how coldly his brain had worked. And side by side
with that working I saw, to my amusement, the insistent claims of
his vanity. The quickest way to the front, where alone he could
re-establish his impugned honour was by enlistment in the regular
army. For the first time in his life he took a grip on essentials.
He knew that by going straight into the heart of the old army his
brains, provided they remained in his head, would enable him to
accomplish his purpose. As for his choice of regiment, there his
vanity guided. You may remember that after his disappearance we
first heard of him at Aberdeen. Now Aberdeen is the depot of the
Gordon Highlanders.
"What on earth made you go there?" I asked.
"I wanted to get among a crowd where I wasn't known, and wasn't
ever likely to be known," he replied. "And my instinct was right.
I was among farmers from Skye and butchers from Inverness and
drunken scallywags from the slums of Aberdeen, and a leaven of old
soldiers from all over Scotland. I had no idea that such people
existed. At first I thought I shouldn't be able to stick it. They
gave me a bad time for being an Englishman. But soon, I think,
they rather liked me. I set my brains to work and made 'em like
me. I knew there was everything to learn about these fellows and I
went scientifically to work to learn it. And, by Heaven, sir, when
once they accepted me, I found I had never been in such splendid
company in my life."
"My dear boy," I cried in a burst of enthusiasm, "have you had
breakfast?"
"Of course I have. At the Union Jack Club--the Tommies' place the
other side of the river--bacon and eggs and sausages. I thought
I'd never stop eating."
"Have some more?"
He laughed. "Couldn't think of it."
"Then," said I, "get yourself a cigar." I pointed to a stack of
boxes. "You'll find the Corona--Coronas the best."
As I am not a millionaire I don't offer these Coronas to
everybody. I myself can only afford to smoke one or two a week.
When he had lit it he said: "I was led away from what I wanted to
tell you,--my going to Aberdeen and plunging into the obscurity of
a Scottish regiment. I was absolutely determined that none of my
friends, none of you good people, should know what an ass I had
made of myself. That's why I kept it from my mother. She would
have blabbed it all over the place."
"But, my good fellow," said I, "why the dickens shouldn't we have
known?"
"That I was making an ass of myself?"
"No, you young idiot!" I cried. "That you were making a man of
yourself."
"I preferred to wait," said he, coolly, "until I had a reasonable
certainty that I had achieved that consummation--or, rather,
something that might stand for it in the prejudiced eyes of my
dear friends. I knew that you all, ultimately, you and mother and
Phyllis, would judge by results. Well, here they are. I've lived
the life of a Tommy for ten months. I've been five in the thick of
it over there. I've refused stripes over and over again. I've got
my D.C.M. I've got my commission through the ranks, practically on
the field. And of the draft of two hundred who went out with me
only one other and myself remain."
"It's a splendid record, my boy," said I.
He rose. "Don't misunderstand me, Major. I'm not bragging. God
forbid. I'm only wanting to explain why I kept dark all the time,
and why I'm springing smugly and complacently on you now."
"I quite understand," said I.
"In that case," he laughed, "I can proceed on my rounds." But he
did not proceed. He lingered. "There's another matter I should
like to mention," he said. "In her last letter my mother told me
that the Mayor and Town Council were on the point of giving a
civic reception to Colonel Boyce. Has it taken place yet?"
"Yes," said I. "And did it go off all right?"
In spite of wisdom learned at Balliol and shell craters, he was
still an ingenuous youth.
"Gedge was perfectly quiet," I answered.
He started, as he had for months learned not to start, and into
his eyes sprang an alarm that was usually foreign to them.
"Gedge? How do you know anything about Gedge and Colonel Boyce?
Good Lord! He hasn't been spreading that poisonous stuff over the
town?"
"That's what you were afraid of when you asked about the
reception?"
"Of course," said he.
"And you wanted to have your mind clear on the point before
interviewing Phyllis."
"You're quite right, sir," he replied, a bit shamefacedly. "But if
he hasn't been spreading it, how do you know? And," he looked at
me sharply, "what do you know?"
"You gave your word of honour not to repeat what Gedge told you. I
think you may be absolved of your promise. Gedge came to Sir
Anthony and myself with a lying story about the death of Althea
Fenimore."
"Yes," said he. "That was it."
"Sit down for another minute or two," said I, "and let us compare
notes."
He obeyed. We compared notes. I found that in most essentials the
two stories were identical, although Gedge had been maudlin drunk
when he admitted Randall into his confidence.
"But in pitching you his yarn," cried Randall, "he left out the
blackmail. He bragged in his beastly way that Colonel Boyce was
worth a thousand a year to him. All he had to live upon now that
the blood-suckers had ruined his business. Then he began to weep
and slobber--he was a disgusting sight--and he said he would give
it all up and beg with his daughter in the streets as soon as he
had an opportunity of unmasking 'that shocking wicked fellow.'"
"What did you say then?" I asked.
"I told him if ever I heard of him spreading such infernal lies
abroad, I'd wring his neck."
"Very good, my boy," said I. "That's practically what Sir Anthony
told him."
"Sir Anthony doesn't believe there's any truth in it?"
"Sir Anthony," said I, boldly, "knows there's not a particle of
truth in it. The man's malignancy has taken the form of a fixed
idea. He's crack-brained. Between us we put the fear of God into
him, and I don't think he'll give any more trouble."
Randall got to his feet again. "I'm very much relieved to hear you
say so. I must confess I've been horribly uneasy about the whole
thing." He drew a deep breath. "Thank goodness I can go to
Phyllis, as you say, with a clear mind. The last time I saw her I
was half crazy."
He held out his hand, a dirty, knubbly, ragged-nailed hand--the
hand that was once so irritatingly manicured.
"Good-bye, Major. You won't shut the door on me now, will you?"
I wrung his hand hard and bade him not be silly, and, looking up
at him, said:
"What was the other thing quite different you were intending to do
before you, let us say, quarreled with Phyllis?"
He hesitated, his forehead knit in a little web of perplexity.
"Whatever it was," I continued, "let us have it. I'm your oldest
friend, a sort of father. Be frank with me and you won't regret
it. The splendid work you've done has wiped out everything."
"I'm afraid it has," said he ruefully. "Wiped it out clean." With
a hitch of the shoulders he settled his pack more comfortably.
"Well, I'll tell you, Major. I thought I had brains. I still think
I have. I was on the point of getting a job in the Secret Service
--Intelligence Department. I had the whole thing cut and dried--to
get at the ramifications of German espionage in socialistic and
so-called intellectual circles in neutral and other countries. It
would have been ticklish work, for I should have been carrying my
life in my hands. I could have done it well. I started out by
being a sort of 'intellectual' myself. All along I wanted to put
my brains at the service of my country. I took some time to hit
upon the real way. I hit upon it. I learned lots of things from
Gedge. If he weren't an arrant coward, he might be dangerous. He
would be taking German money long ago, but that he's frightened to
death of it." He laughed. "It never occurred to you, I suppose, a
year ago," he continued, "that I spent most of my days in London
working like a horse."
"But," I cried--I felt myself flushing purple--and, when I flush
purple, the unregenerate old soldier in me uses language of a
corresponding hue--"But," I cried--and in this language I asked
him why he had told me nothing about it.
"The essence of the Secret Service, sir," replied this maddening
young man, "is--well--secrecy."
"You had a billet offered to you, of the kind you describe?"
"The offer reached me, very much belated, one day when I was half
dead, after having performed some humiliating fatigue duty. I
think I had persisted in trying to scratch an itching back on
parade. Military discipline, I need not tell you, Major, doesn't
take into account the sensitiveness of a recruit's back. It flatly
denies such a phenomenon. Now I think I can defy anything in God's
quaint universe to make me itch. But that's by the way. I tore the
letter up and never answered it. You do these things, sir, when
the whole universe seems to be a stumbling-block and an offence.
Phyllis was the stumbling-block and the rest of the cosmos was the
other thing. That's why I have reason on my side when I say that,
all through Phyllis Gedge, I made an ass of myself."
He clutched his rude coat with both hands. "An ass in sheep's
clothing."
He drew himself up, saluted, and marched out.
He marched out, the young scoundrel, with all the honours of war.
