And then the old man, pulling out the letter from the Colonel, and trying to read it through his blinding tears: "He did well, my boy," he whispered, "he did well, and died well. But, Jerry, the Colonel says in his letter," and he wiped his eyes and tried to read, "he says in his letter that Jack must have been right into their trenches almost, as he was killed at point-blank range with a revolver. One of those swine of German officers, I suppose." He shook his fist in the air. "Still he was but doing his duty. I must not complain. But you say he was forty yards away?"

"It's difficult to say, sir, in the dark," answered Jerry, still in the voice of an automatic machine. "It may have been less than forty."

And then he told them all over again; and while they, the two old dears, whispered and cried together, never noticing anything amiss, being only concerned with the telling, and caring no whit for the method thereof, Pat sat silently in the window, gazing at him with tearless eyes, with the wonder and amazement of her soul writ clear on her face for all to see. And I--I lay motionless in bed, and there was something I could not understand, for he would not look at me, nor yet at her, but kept his eyes fixed on the fire, while he talked like a child repeating a lesson.

At last it was over; their last questions were asked, and slowly, arm-in-arm, they left the room, to dwell alone upon the story of their idolised boy. And in the room the silence was only broken by the crackling of the logs.

How long we sat there I know not, with the firelight flickering on the stern set face of the man in the chair. He seemed unconscious of our existence, and we two dared not speak to him, we who loved him best, for there was something we could not understand. Suddenly he got up, and held out his arms to Pat. And when she crept into them, he kissed her, straining her close, as if he could never stop. Then, without a word, he led her to the door, and, putting her gently through, shut it behind her. Still without a word he came back to the chair, and turned it so that the firelight no longer played on his face. And then he spoke.

"I have a story to tell you, Winkle, which I venture to think will entertain you for a time." His voice was the most terrible thing I have ever listened to.... "Nearly four weeks ago the battalion was in the trenches a bit south of Ypres. It was bad in the retreat, as you know; it was bad on the Aisne; but they were neither of them in the same county as the doing we had up north. One night--they'd sh.e.l.led us off and on for three days and three nights--we were driven out of our trenches. The regiment on our right gave, and we had to go too. The next morning we were ordered to counter attack, and get back the ground we had lost. It was the attack in which we lost so heavily."

He stopped speaking for a while, and I did not interrupt.

"When I got that order overnight Jack was with me, in a hole that pa.s.sed as a dugout. At the moment everything was quiet; the Germans were patching up their new position; only a maxim spluttered away a bit to one flank. To add to the general desolation a steady downpour of rain drenched us, into which, without cessation the German flares went shooting up. I think they were expecting a counter attack at once...."

Again he paused, and I waited.

"You know the condition one gets into sometimes when one is heavy for sleep. We had it during the retreat if you remember--a sort of coma, the outcome of utter bodily exhaustion. One used to go on walking, and all the while one was asleep--or practically so. Sounds came to us dimly as from a great distance; they made no impression on us--they were just a jumbled phantasmagoria of outside matters, which failed to reach one's brain, except as a dim dream. I was in that condition on the night I am speaking of; I was utterly cooked--beat to the world; I was finished for the time. I've told you this, because I want you to understand the physical condition I was in."

He leaned forward and stared at the fire, resting his head on his hands.

"How long I'd dozed heavily in that wet-sodden hole I don't know, but after a while above the crackle of the maxim, separate and distinct from the soft splash of the rain, and the hiss of the flares, and the hundred and one other noises that came dimly to me out of the night, I heard Jack's voice--at least I think it was Jack's voice."

Of a sudden he sat up in the chair, and rising quickly he came and leant over the foot of the bed.

"Devil take it," he cried bitterly, "I know it was Jack's voice--_now_.

I knew it the next day when it was too late. What he said exactly I shall never know--at the time it made no impression on me; but at this moment, almost like a spirit voice in my brain, I can hear him. I can hear him asking me to watch him. I can hear him pleading--I can hear his dreadful fear of being found afraid. As a whisper from a great distance I can hear one short sentence--'Jerry, my G.o.d, Jerry--I'm frightened!'

"Winkle, he turned to me in his weakness--that boy who had never failed before, that boy who had reached the breaking-point--and I heeded him not. I was too dead beat; my brain couldn't grasp it."

"But, Jerry," I cried, "it turned out all right the next day; he..."

The words died away on my lips as I met the look in his eyes.

"You'd better let me finish," he interrupted wearily. "Let me get the whole hideous tragedy off my mind for the first and the last time. Early next morning we attacked. In the dim dirty light of dawn I saw the boy's face as he moved off to his platoon; and even then I didn't remember those halting sentences that had come to me out of the night. So instead of ordering him to the rear on some pretext or other as I should have done, I let him go to his platoon.

"As we went across the ground that morning through a fire like nothing I had ever imagined, a man wavered in front of me. I felt it clean through me. I knew fear had come. I shouted and cheered--but the wavering was spreading; I knew that too. So I shot him through the heart from behind at point-blank range as I had trained myself to do--in that eternity ago--before the war. The counter attack was successful."

"Great Heavens, Jerry!" I muttered, "who did you shoot?" though I knew the answer already.

"The man I shot was Jack Delawnay. Whether at the time I was actively conscious of it, I cannot say. Certainly my training enabled me to act before any glimmering of the aftermath came into my mind. _This_ is the aftermath."

I shuddered at the utter hopelessness of his tone, though the full result of his action had not dawned on me yet; my mind was dazed.

"But surely Jack was no coward," I said at length.

"He was not; but on that particular morning he gave out. He had reached the limit of his endurance."

"The Colonel's letter," I reminded him; "it praised the lad."

"Lies," he answered wearily, "all lies, engineered by me. Not because I am ashamed of what I did, but for the lad's sake, and hers, and the old people. I loved the boy, as you know, but he failed, and _there was no other way_. And where the fiend himself is gloating over it is that he knows it was the only time Jack did fail. If only I hadn't been so beat the night before; if only his words had reached my brain before it was too late. If only ... I think," he added, after a pause, "I think I shall go mad. Sometimes I wish I could."

"And what of Pat?" I asked, at length breaking the silence.

The hands grasping the bed tightened, and grew white.

"I said 'Good-bye' to her before your eyes, ten minutes ago. I shall never see her again."

"But, Great Heavens, Jerry!" I cried, "you can't give her up like that.

She idolises the ground you walk on, she worships you, and she need never know. You were only doing your duty after all."

"Stop!" he cried, and his voice was a command. "As you love me, old friend, don't tempt me. For three weeks those arguments have been flooding everything else from my mind. Do you remember at Henley, when she said, 'He might have answered to your voice?' Winkle, it's true, Jack might have. And I killed him. Just think if I married her, and she did find out. Her brother's murderer--in her eyes. The man who has wrecked her home, and broken her father and mother. It's inconceivable, it's hideous. Ah! don't you see how utterly final it all is? She may have been right; and if she was, then I, who loved her better than the world, have murdered her brother, and broken the old people's hearts for the sake of a theory. The fact that my theory has been put into practice, at the expense of everything I have to live for, is full of humour, isn't it?" And his laugh was wild.

"Steady, Jerry," I said sternly. "What do you mean to do?"

"You'll see, old man, in time," he answered. "First and foremost, get back to the regiment, arm or no arm. I would not have come home, but I had to see her once more."

"You talk as if it was the end." I looked at him squarely.

"It is," he answered. "It's easy out there."

"Your mind is made up?"

"Absolutely." He gave a short laugh. "Good-bye, old friend. Ease it to her as well as you can. Say I'm unstrung by the trenches, anything you like; but don't let her guess the truth."

For a long minute he held my hand. Then he turned away. He walked to the mantelpiece, and there was a photograph of her there. For a long time he looked at it, and it seemed to me he whispered something. A sudden dimness blinded my eyes, and when I looked again he had gone--through the window into the night.

I did not see Pat until I left Drayton Hall after that ghastly night, save only once or twice with her mother in the room.

But an hour before I left she came to me, and her face was that of a woman who has pa.s.sed through the fires.

"Tell me, Winkle, shall I ever see him again? You know what I mean."

"You will never see him again, Pat," and the look in her eyes made me choke.

"Will you tell me what it was he told you before he went through the window? You see, I was in the hall waiting for him," and she smiled wearily.

"I can't, Pat dear; I promised him," I muttered. "But it was nothing disgraceful."

"Disgraceful!" she cried proudly. "Jerry, and anything disgraceful. Oh, my G.o.d! Winkle dear," and she broke down utterly, "do you remember the waltz they were playing that day--'Destiny'?"

And then I went. Whether that wonderful woman's intuition has told her something of what happened, I know not. But yesterday morning I got a letter from the Colonel saying that Jerry had chucked his life away, saving a wounded man. And this morning she will have seen it in the papers.

G.o.d help you, Pat, my dear.