"Supposing," he said slowly, "the work in front of me is back to Flanders again, as it probably will be. And supposing I'm not so lucky next time. What then?"

She turned and faced him. "Why then, dear, Fate will have decided for us, won't she?"

"A deuced unsatisfactory decision," grumbled Vane. "Margaret, I don't want to worry you; I don't want to force myself on you . . . but won't you give me some sort of a promise?"

She shook her head. "I'll give you no promise at all, Derek. You've got to find yourself, and I've got to find myself; and when we've both done that we shall know how we stand to one another. Until then . . .

well just give it a miss in baulk, old man."

Vane regarded her curiously. "If last night and this afternoon had happened before the war, I wonder what your decision would have been?"

"Does it matter?" she answered gently. "Before the war is just a different age." For a while she was silent; then she drew a deep breath. "Don't you feel it as I feel it?" she whispered. "The bigness of it, the wonder of it. Underneath all the horror, underlying all the vileness--the splendour of it all. The glory of human endurance. . . .

People wondered that I could stand it--I with my idealism. But it seems to me that out of the sordid brutality an ideal has been born which is almost the greatest the world has ever known. Oh! Derek, we've just got to try to keep it alive."

"It's the devil," said Vane whimsically. "Jove! lady dear, isn't the blue of the sky and the sea and the gold of the sand just crying out to be the setting of a lovers' paradise? Aren't we here alone just hidden from the world, while the very gulls themselves are screaming: 'Kiss her, kiss her?' And then the fairy princess, instead of being the fairy princess to the wounded warrior, orders him to go back and look for work. It's cruel. I had hoped for tender love and pity, and behold I have found a Labour Bureau."

Margaret laughed. "You dear! But you understand?" She knelt beside him on the sand, and her face was very tender.

"I understand," answered Vane gravely. "But, oh! my lady, I hope you're not building fairy castles on what's going to happen after the war. I'm afraid my faith in my brother man is a very, very small flame."

"All the more reason why we should keep it alight," she cried fiercely.

"Derek, we can't let all this hideous mutilation and death go for nothing afterwards."

"You dear optimist," Vane smiled at her eager, glowing face so close to his own. "Do you suppose that we and others like us will have any say in the matter?"

She beat her hands together. "Derek, I hate you when you talk like that. You've got it in you to do big things--I feel it. You mustn't drift like you did before the war. You've got to fight, and others like you have got to fight, for everything that makes life worth living in our glorious, wonderful England."

"Would the staff be a little more explicit in their Operation Orders, please?" murmured Vane. "Whom do you propose I should engage in mortal combat?" He saw the slight frown on her face and leant forward quickly. "My dear, don't misunderstand me. I don't want to be flippant and cynical. But I'm just a plain, ordinary man--and I'm rather tired. When this show is over I want peace and rest and comfort. And I rather feel that it's up to the d.a.m.ned fools who let us in for it to clear up the mess themselves for a change."

"But you won't later, old boy," said the girl; "not after you've found yourself again. You'll have to be up and doing; it will stifle you to sit still and do nothing." She looked thoughtfully out to sea and then, as he kept silent, she went on slowly, "I guess we all sat still before this war; drifted along the line of least resistance. We've got to cut a new way, Derek, find a new path, which will make for the good of the show. And before we can find the path, we've got to find ourselves."

She turned towards him and for a long minute they looked into one another's eyes, while the gulls circled and screamed above them. Then slowly she bent forward and kissed him on the mouth. . . . "Go and find yourself, my dear," she whispered. "Go and make good. And when you have, if you still want me, I'll come to you."

At the touch of her lips Vane closed his eyes. It seemed only a few seconds before he opened them again, but Margaret was gone. And then for a while he sat, idly throwing stones at the overturned bottle.

Just once he laughed, a short, hard laugh with no humour in it, before he turned to follow her. But when he reached the top of the sand dune, Margaret was almost out of sight in the distance.

Next day he crossed to England in the _Guildford Castle_.

CHAPTER IV

Derek Vane did not remain long in hospital. As soon as the dressings for his shoulder had become quite straightforward, the machine, in the shape of two doctors from Millbank who formed the Board, took him in its clutches once more and deposited him at a convalescent home. Not one of the dreary, routine-like places which have been in the past a.s.sociated with convalescence, but a large country house, kindly placed at the disposal of the War Office by its owner.

"Rumfold Hall for you, Vane," said the senior of the two doctors. "A charming house; Lady Patterdale--a charming woman."

"Rumfold Hall!" echoed Vane. "Good Heavens! I know it well. Danced there often during the old _regime_."

"The old regime?" The doctor looked puzzled.

"Yes. It used to belong to the Earl of Forres. He couldn't afford to keep it up and his other places as well, so he sold it to Sir John Patterdale. . . . Made his money in hardware, did Sir John. . . .

Surely you know Patterdale's Patent Plate."

The Board opined that it did not, and departed to the next case. It even seemed to regard such flippancy with a certain amount of suspicion; but then Medical Boards are things of some solemnity. . . .

And so in the course of two or three days Vane drove up to the historic gates of Rumfold Hall in an ambulance. The house, situated in the heart of Surrey, was surrounded by extensive grounds. The view from it was magnificent, stretching away for miles and miles to the south, and terminating in the purple downs: and Vane, as the car waited for the gates to be opened, felt that indefinable thrill of pride that comes to every man when he looks on some glorious stretch of his own country.

He noticed that the lodge-keeper had changed since he was there last, and not, it struck him, for the better. How well he remembered old John, with his sweet old wife, and their perfectly kept patch of garden and spotless little kitchen. . . . He had had two sons, both in the Grenadiers, magnificent, strapping fellows--and Vane wondered what had become of them. . . .

Somehow he couldn't quite imagine old John not touching his hat as the ambulance came in; whereas his successor merely gazed curiously at the occupants, and then slouched back into the lodge. . . . Of course hat-touching is a relic of feudalism, and, as such, too hideous to contemplate in this age of democracy; but still--like a smile--it costs little and gives much pleasure.

From the condition of the grounds it did not seem that the present owner had been very greatly troubled by the labour shortage. The flower beds were a riot of colour; the gra.s.s was short and beautifully kept. And as the ambulance rounded a corner of the drive and the house opened up in front Vane saw that tennis was in full swing on the lawns.

"Say--what sort of a guy is this fellow?" asked a New Zealander opposite him suddenly. "It seems to me to be some house."

Vane looked at him thoughtfully for a moment before replying, and the car was already slowing down before he finally spoke. "He's a subst.i.tute for the old order of things. And according to the labels of all subst.i.tutes, they are the last word in modern efficiency."

The car pulled up at that moment, and they stepped out to find Lady Patterdale standing on the steps to welcome them.

Let it be said at once that Lady Patterdale was a perfect dear. One lost sight of her incredible vulgarity in view of the charming kindliness of her heart. And, after all, vulgarity is only comparative. In the sanct.i.ty of the little shop in Birmingham where Sir John had first laid the foundations of his fortune, aspirates could drop unheeded. What mattered then, as always, was whether the heart was in the right place. With Lady Patterdale it was. . . .

And because _au fond_, she was such a dear, it made it all the more pathetic to see her in such surroundings. One felt, and one felt that in the bottom of her heart she felt, that she would have been far more happy in the kitchen. Except that in the kitchen her lost aspirates would probably have been handed back to her on a salver, whereas in the drawing-room they were ground into the carpet. . . . The spread of education has made the kitchen a very dangerous place.

In appearance Lady Patterdale was short and stout; eminently the type of woman who, if clothed according to the dictates of common sense, would be called a "comfortable old party." One could imagine her in a cotton dress, with her sleeves rolled up above her elbows, displaying a pair of plump forearms and wielding a rolling pin in front of a good hot fire. Covered with flour--her face very red--she would have been in her element. . . . As it was, the dictates of fashion had cast their blight over the proceedings.

The name of her dressmaker is immaterial. Originally Smith & Co. in all probability, it had now become Smythe et Cie, and advertised in all the most exclusive papers. Unfortunately, in the case of Lady Patterdale they did not stop at advertising. They carried out their dreadful threats and clothed her. The result was incredible. She resembled nothing so much as a bursting melon. Onlookers shuddered at times when they thought of the trust reposed by Providence and Lady Patterdale in a few paltry hooks and eyes. The strain appeared so terrific--the consequences of a disaster so appalling.

As Vane stepped out of the ambulance Lady Patterdale, supported on either side by one of the nursing staff, advanced to meet him. Her jolly old face was wreathed in smiles; cordiality and kindliness oozed from her.

"Welcome, both of you," she cried. "Welcome to Rumfold 'all."

The Sister on her left started as if a serpent had stung her, and Vane decided that he did not like her. Then he turned to the kindly old woman, and smiled.

"Thank you, Lady Patterdale," he said, taking her outstretched hand.

"I'm sure it's going to be topping."

"You're just in nice time for luncheon," she continued, as she turned to welcome the New Zealander. "And after that you'll be able to find your way about the 'ouse."

Lunch was the only meal where all the convalescents met, as, generally, some of them had retired before dinner. It was served in the old banqueting hall, which, when Vane remembered it, had been used for dancing. The officers had it to themselves, the nursing staff feeding elsewhere. . . .

The contrast struck Vane forcibly as he sat down at the long table.

The last time he had been in the room he and three or four kindred spirits had emptied a fruit salad into a large wind instrument just before the band played the final gallop. . . .

"Beer, sir, or cider?" He half turned to answer, when suddenly the voice continued, "Why, but surely, sir, it's Mr. Vane?"

He looked up and saw the same butler who had been at the Hall in the old days.