by W. F. Morris
It was now light enough for objects to be seen at some distance, and they approached the inn warily; but the building stood silent and with curtains drawn, a little forlorn looking in the cold dawn light. They crossed the little terrace unseen, climbed the palings beyond, and passed from foothold to foothold along the steep slope at the foot of the wall; Pagan the while keeping a protective hand upon Clare’s arm.
The red knotted rope, swaying slightly in the breeze, looked forlornly tawdry in the cold grey light, like paper caps or coloured streamers on the morning after a party. Baron went up first, and he went slowly, for he was tired, and he had to struggle to drag himself over the sill. Pagan put a small loop in the end of the rope for Clare, who he insisted was too tired to climb; then he too went up and was helped through the window by Baron. Clare put her foot in the loop and was hauled slowly upward.
“Well here we are all present and correct,” said Pagan as they stood together in the shadowy room. He glanced at the luminous watch upon his wrist. “Just over two hours to go before the beauteous Bertha calls us to the troubles of another day! Bed, I think, what? And I hope you will really sleep this time,” he added to Clare.
“I am sure I shall,” she answered. “Good night—or rather good morning.”
She passed through the door into her own room. The two men swung back the press into position, dismantled the rope and put everything back into its proper place. Pagan took a final glance round before passing through the connecting door to his own room. He smothered a yawn. “All quiet on the western front it seems,” he murmured. “And so to bed.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I
TO Pagan it seemed but a moment after he had closed his eyes that he opened them again to find Bertha in the room with a can of hot water. He got out of bed reluctantly. And Baron, too, when he came through the connecting door, in his pyjamas, yawning and rubbing his eyes, looked touselled and heavy-eyed. “No rest for the wicked,” he growled. “And my shirt is about the most disgusting thing you ever saw.”
“Have a look at mine then, and you will feel better,” Pagan advised.
They succeeded in brushing most of the dried earth from their trousers, but their shirts, and particularly the shoulders could not be cleaned in this way. Fortunately they had each brought a clean collar.
“Well, what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve for,” philosophized Pagan as he put on his coat over the soiled shirt. “We may be full of dead men’s bones, but at least outwardly the sepulchre is whited.”
“The sepulchre will feel better when it has some coffee and rolls inside it,” Baron remarked.
But Clare came down the stairs looking as neat and clean and fresh as a flower. Baron regarded her with amused envy. “Behold, the weaker sex, Charles! There she is after a night out, looking as fresh as a daisy, and positively flaunting her freshness in our teeth!”
Pagan nodded his head gloomily. “If ladies be but young and fair they have the gift to know it,” he quoted sadly.
“You poor dears,” cried Clare sympathetically. “What is it, do you think—liver?”
Pagan took the cup of coffee she handed him. “Worse than that,” he affirmed. “There was a time when after one hour’s sleep in forty-eight I arose like a giant refreshed with wine or a young unicorn full of—er—the unicorn equivalent of beans.” He shook his head with mock sadness. “You see this sunken eye; this palsied hand! If you have tears prepare to shed them now. I am growing old!”
Clare laughed, but the expression of her eyes was almost tender. “Old!” she exclaimed. “Why, by the time you are seventy you will just be beginning to grow up.”
Griffin arrived soon after they had finished breakfast and took them back to Munster in the car. They parted on the big balustraded landing of the hotel. “Well, that’s the end of one chapter,” said Baron. “And now bath for me.”
“Me too,” agreed Clare.
“And I am going to finish that beauty sleep Bertha so prematurely interrupted,” declared Pagan.
Pagan slept till half-past-three. He bathed, dressed and felt again, in his own words, fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.
Downstairs he found the hotel almost deserted. He passed through the French doors on to the terrace and leaned upon the stone balustrade. Before him stretched the garden in which gravel paths meandered between bushes, flower-beds and trees. Beyond it rose the green mountain side, its lower slopes dotted with cherry trees and two or three homesteads.
Presently among the bushes in the garden he caught sight of Clare walking slowly towards the hotel. He watched her for a moment, and then turned back indoors. Three rooms gave on to the terrace by French doors: the long dining-room and two small drawing-rooms. Both the smaller rooms were unoccupied at the moment, and he went into one of these and ordered tea.
Clare came slowly along the sunny terrace. He saw her reflected in the glass of the open door. She looked in at the other small room, and then passed slowly the six long windows of the dining-room beneath the gay striped awning. A moment later she stood upon the threshold of the room in which he sat.
“Hullo, there you are—Rip Van Winkle,” she drawled.
“Hullo,” said Pagan. “I’ve ordered tea for two.”
She came slowly into the room. “For two! You and Dicky?”
He shook his head. “No—you and me. And I have managed to get crumpets—in summer and in France. What do you think of that! I hope you like them.”
She sat down. “I adore them,” she said with a smile.
“Good.”
She pulled off her hat and smoothed her shingled hair. “Sugar?” she asked.
“Two please,” said Pagan.
As she poured tea into her own cup she looked up at him with a grave little smile. “It sounds rather silly and ridiculously inadequate to say ‘thank you for saving my life last night,’ but—well, what else can I do!” she asked whimsically.
He laughed. “Don’t do anything,” he advised. “It was the least I could do after having dragged you into it.”
“Dragged!” she echoed.
“Well, I didn’t stop you as I ought to have done,” he explained. “A battlefield was no place to take a girl at night.”
She put down her cup. “But believe me I am very glad I went,” she said earnestly. “Particularly at night. To you, no doubt, it was a familiar enough sight; but to me it was—a revelation.” She knit her brows and stared at the tea tray. “Before, I had only a vague picture: now—I know.”
Pagan nodded and stirred his teacup thoughtfully. “Um, pretty ghastly mess, I agree,” he murmured. He toyed with the handle of the spoon for a moment or two, and then without looking up asked gently, “But in the circumstances are you sure it was either wise or—desirable to have that knowledge?”
She shot a swift glance at him and gave an almost imperceptible shrug of her shoulders. “Perhaps not,” she admitted at last. She stirred her cup thoughtfully. “Then you know about—Roger?” she said quietly.
Pagan nodded. “Baron told me.” He examined the tips of his fingers. “And may I say—how sorry I am?”
“Thank you,” she answered simply. There was silence for a moment. Then she looked at him suddenly, and there was a challenge in her eyes. “You think my attitude is morbid?”
He met her eyes frankly. “It would be impertinent for me—” he began.
She shook her head a trifle impatiently. “Not if I ask you; and I do ask you—you think it morbid?”
He regarded his teacup for a moment. “No,” he answered slowly. “I don’t think reverence for a—a sacred memory is morbid—any more than I think reverence for holy things is morbid.”
She glanced at him gratefully and then down at her lap. “It was very sweet of you to say that,” she murmured.
“But one must keep one’s sense of proportion,” he added gently.
She looked out at the sun-washed terrace. “Then you think I am in danger of losing mine?” she as
ked.
He made a little French movement of his hands. “Who am I to judge …!”
“But you think: tell me what you think. I—value your opinion.”
He acknowledged the compliment with a little inclination of his head. “It does not distress you to talk about him?” he queried.
She shook her head.
Pagan put down his cup. “I never met Vigers,” he began. “I wish I had.”
“You would have liked him,” she said.
“I am sure of that.”
“And he would have liked you.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I am glad that you think that.” He picked up the teaspoon and stirred his cup absent-mindedly. “I never met him, but from his army record and the accounts of his friends, I know he was a very fine and gallant fellow. He would, I am sure, like everyone else, myself included, find your loyalty admirable. But—I speak bluntly but, believe me, not unsympathetically.”
She nodded her head. “I am sure of that. Please go on.”
“But I don’t think that any decent fellow, and least of all such a splendid man as Vigers must have been, would expect or wish his—his betrothed to renounce her just and natural fulfilment because it was denied to him. We have only one earthly life, and when it is finished it is finished. What we miss here, we miss for good and all. In the next we cannot carry on where we left off. They neither marry nor are given in marriage.”
She stared in silence at the sunlit garden.
“I am sorry,” he said gently. “But you asked me. You are not angry?”
She shook her head without looking at him. He took his cup again from the table. A long silence followed, and then suddenly she turned her head again towards him; and he saw that her mood had changed. “Did Dicky tell you that I had sworn to remain single to the end of my days?” she asked.
Pagan put down the cup. “Well, not quite that,” he protested.
She took his cup and refilled it. “But words to that effect?” she suggested.
“Well he did say that you had turned down any number of good fellows,” he admitted.
She nodded her head slowly and handed him his cup. “Perhaps it was because I did not like any of them well enough,” she said with a smile.
Pagan made an expressive gesture with his hands. “In that case I solemnly foreswear, abjure and utterly recant all that I have said previously,” he smiled. He raised his cup and looked at her across the top of it with sudden seriousness. “But, if somebody does come along,” he said slowly, “are you quite sure that you will give yourself a fair chance of liking him well enough?”
She glanced at him quickly and then looked thoughtfully away.
A sudden shadow darkened the doorway and Baron’s voice broke the silence. “Oh, there you are. And hogging it too—as usual!” He came slowly into the room. “Crumpets, by gosh!” he exclaimed. “Trust old Charles!”
“Here you leave those alone,” cried Pagan. “If you want any, you jolly well order some for yourself.”
“I will,” declared Baron making for the bell with fierce determination. “It’s the pore what ’elps the pore—every time.”
“And it’s the Barons what helps themselves—every time,” asserted Pagan grimly with his hands held protectingly above the crumpets.
II
“The great advantage of a boiled shirt,” remarked Pagan that night at dinner, “is that it shows the dirt.”
Baron ruefully regarded the big smear of cigarette ash which he had just made across his shirt front. “It does,” he agreed. “And I wish you had had one on last night when you crawled through that damned drain,” he added viciously.
Pagan drank his coffee and smiled tolerantly. “Why so bitter?”
“You are so damned sympathetic, aren’t you!” growled Baron.
“I am merely trying to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of another’s adversity,” retorted Pagan with dignity.
Baron snorted and gulped down his benedictine.
“I miss the little Baronial ray of sunshine,” remarked Pagan blandly.
“Confound you, Charles,” exploded Baron. “Why can’t you shut up? You know I’m damned bad tempered to-night.”
“Strange!” murmured Pagan sweetly. “I’m feeling particularly cheerful.”
“No wonder,” retorted Baron. “You have been hogging it in bed half the day while I have had only one hour’s sleep since the night before last.”
Pagan nodded his head and hummed the tune which the dance orchestra was playing in the next room. “Then you don’t feel like going up to Bertha’s pub again to-night, I suppose?” he asked suddenly.
“Good Lord, no!” exclaimed Baron. “I thought we all had enough of that last night. It was hardly a successful bit of detecting from any point of view, was it!” he added caustically.
“Not as successful as it might have been,” conceded Pagan. He swung round in his chair and leaned his elbows on the table. “But look here, Old Baron, I’m damned keen to get to the bottom of this. Kleber roams about that old battlefield at night, and I want to find out why.”
“How do you know he does?” demanded Baron. “He went out last night certainly, but we don’t know where he went to.”
“He went to the battlefield, I tell you,” said Pagan. “And I know he did because I saw him. He walked down that road past me when I was in the drain. I was having a breather and only my head was sticking out. He didn’t see me, but I saw him all right.”
“You are a funny fellow, Charles,” said Baron. “If I had been lying in that confounded drain and somebody had come along, I should have sung out for help at the top of my voice.”
Pagan held a match to his cigarette. “As a matter of fact I did think of it,” he confessed, “but on second thoughts it seemed better not to. I knew I should be able to dig you out all right, and it seemed a pity to let Kleber know I had seen him. I was dead keen on finding out what he was up to.”
“When I was in that drain,” remarked Baron dryly, “the only thing I was dead keen on was getting out of it. However… . So friend Kleber was strolling down that road in the middle of the night, was he! That’s intriguing certainly.”
“It must have been pretty late,” said Pagan. “After midnight, I should think. He may go out again to-night, and I thought that if we went up there later on this evening and hung about outside the inn, we might find out where he goes.”
Baron laughed and shook his head. “Not to-night, Old Charles, thank you! To-morrow perhaps, but not to-night. I’m as sleepy as an owl. I’m going to bed.” He glanced at his watch. “And pretty soon at that. You go and dance with Clare; I’m off to by-byes toute suite.”
Pagan found Clare and her brother having coffee in the lounge. “Are we going to dance?” he asked.
She looked up at him and nodded. “Not more than two though. I am getting so sleepy.”
He looked at her severely. “Do you mean to tell me that you have not had a sleep since you came back this morning!” he scolded.
She shook her head with comic docility. “Please, I had half an hour after lunch,” she answered.
“It seems that I am the only one who has any sense,” he said virtuously.
He took her empty cup, and she rose to her feet. “My dancing is on a par with my other attainments,” he said as they walked into the other room. “So you must be charitable.”
They glided round the room in silence. Pagan had no desire to break it; and she seemed content. The cheerful rhythm of the music suited his mood, and he was very conscious of her hand upon his shoulder and the gentle pressure of her body against his. When the music stopped he led her to a settee in a corner of the lounge. “Come let us sit upon this mossy bank and tell sad stories of the death of kings,” he laughed.
She regarded him critically. “At the worst of times you are not a lugubrious person,” she told him. “But to-night you positively ooze cheerfulness. I felt it all the time we were dancing. Have you come into a fortune?”
<
br /> “No—not yet,” he answered smiling cryptically.
“Is one then allowed to ask the cause of this insuppressible glee?” she said. “Or is it too secret?”
He looked at her with a whimsical smile. “Oh no. It concerns you. But if I told you, you probably would not like it.” He spoke lightly, but there was an undercurrent of seriousness in his voice.
“Now of course you have thoroughly aroused my feminine curiosity,” she smiled.
“No doubt,” he said with a thoughtfully appraising look. “But all the same I am not sure that it would be wise to tell you.”
“I am simply dying to know,” she coaxed.
He did not answer for a moment. He tucked the white silk handkerchief down into the pocket of his dinner jacket with rather elaborate care; then suddenly he looked up. “It concerns your—memory,” he said soberly.
She turned a serious and puzzled face towards him. “My memory,” she echoed.
He nodded his head emphatically. “Yes. I have been bothered about it.”
She watched him in silence, waiting for him to continue.
“You remember what we—or rather what I said this afternoon?” he asked presently.
She nodded her small head.
He clasped his hands about one knee and went on with his eyes fixed upon the opposite wall of the room. “Well, it seemed to me that if somebody else did come along, he would not stand much of a chance. He would not be able to compete with—the memory. And that seemed a pity, both from your point of view and from his.” He turned his head and glanced at her with appraising eyes. “You are not liking it,” he asserted.
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “Go on.”
“At your own risk,” he warned her. “Well, as I was saying, I thought that he would never stand a chance. But I don’t think that now, because I see that the two things are different. The one affection does not necessarily preclude the other. They can carry on side by side. As a—as a man, for example, might reverence the saints and yet love his wife. The two things don’t clash a bit really. They are on different planes—this somebody else and the memory.”