The Kingdom Round the Corner.

by Coningsby Dawson.

CHAPTER THE FIRST

AN ALTERED WORLD

I

It was on a bl.u.s.tering March morning in 1919 that Tabs regained his freedom. His last five months had been spent among doctors, having sundry bullets extracted from his legs. He walked with a limp which was not too perceptible unless he grew tired. His emotions were similar to those of a man newly released from gaol: he felt dazed, vaguely happy and a little lost. He felt dazed because he hadn't remembered that the world was so wide and so complicated. He felt lost because he was discovering that this wasn't the same old world that he had left in 1914. It hadn't paid him the compliment of marking time during his absence; it had marched impolitely forward. He would have to hurry to overtake it. What made him feel most lost at the moment was the fact that he had only just realized how his bravest years had been escaping.

The reason for this realization was Terry. He had been accustomed to think of himself as in the first flush of manhood, with all life's conquests still lying ahead; it was therefore a little disconcerting to be told, as a matter of course, that he had only four more years to go till he was forty. "I'll be there at the station to meet you," Terry had written him. And then, she had added laughingly, "Father orders me to say that he only gives his permission because you're such an old friend and nearly middle-aged."

Middle-aged! He, Tabs, middle-aged! The thought was appalling. It was a slander so almost true as to be incapable of disproving. He had to-day, to-morrow, and the next day; after that people would have the right to say of him that he was middle-aged. That was the real sacrifice that he had made in the war--he had given to it the last of his youth. And he had not been aware of this until he had received that letter.

Now that he was aware of it, he rebelled against the sacrifice. He refused to be robbed. He would not allow himself to become middle-aged.

Why, he hadn't begun to live yet. He'd only been experimenting up to the point when the war had started. He'd been thirty-one then, a man full of promise, and now he was dubbed middle-aged. He remembered with indignation the theory that men of forty ought to be chloroformed to make room for the younger generation. "But, hang it, one's years have nothing to do with it," he protested; "in my spirit I belong to the younger generation." So, to the rumbling accompaniment of the train, he argued his claims pa.s.sionately. Had he formed them into a pet.i.tion he would have prayed, "G.o.d, make me young again." It would have been because of Terry that he would have prayed.

And yet he was happy--vaguely happy, as any man must be to whom the right to live has been restored. For the past half decade his horizon, and that of all the men with whom he had intimately a.s.sociated, had been dwarfed by the thought of dying. Throughout that period he had dared to hope for nothing personal; he had belonged body and soul to unseen forces which had hurried him without explanation from one h.e.l.l to another. He had had to subdue his pride to their authority and to train his courage to contemplate the shock of annihilation. Now, at the end of almost five years, the will and the body which had been so ruthlessly s.n.a.t.c.hed from him, had been as ruthlessly flung back into his own keeping. All of a sudden, after having been enslaved in every detail, his will and body were set free and no one cared what became of them.

They could be his playthings; he was allowed to do with them what he liked. But what did he like? It was a problem. He could so easily spoil them. When he reminded himself of how easily he could spoil them the fear of death, which would never again trouble him, was replaced by the fear of failure. He was furious to find that he was still capable of fearing. He had so confidently believed that, whatever the past five years had stolen from him, they had at least brought him the reward of never again knowing fear of any sort.

That morning by the earliest train he had shaken off the dust of camps and started in civilian dress as his own master on the new journey. It was characteristic of him to start early and to slip out of his latest phase with so little fuss. For the first two years of his service, while men of his cla.s.s were gaining high promotions, he had served in the ranks. He had done it as a uselessly proud protest. In the ranks one did the real work, faced most of the danger and won the fewest decorations.

He had loved the ranks for their quiet self-effacement and had preferred to be reckoned in their number.

It had been dawn when he had started. From the top of the hill above the camp he had gazed back at the huddled, sleeping rows of hutments. How lacking in individuality they were! How wilfully ugly! You could see their like in the rear of all armies. The military mind seemed incapable of appreciating differences and beauty. How stereotyped the past five years had been; yes, and, while the danger had threatened, how enn.o.bled with duty! So enn.o.bled that there had been times when it had almost seemed that he was on the point of finding his kingdom.

What he hadn't expected was that he would be alive to-day. With that thought grat.i.tude had bubbled up and he had limped away, whistling, through dim lanes and budding hedgerows to the little wayside country station.

But once on board the train to London, he began to feel more like a fugitive escaping than a hero returning. This wasn't the end of soldiering that imagination had painted. There had been strident bands and hysteric shouting to start him on his way to the conflict. There had been pictorial challenges to his courage pasted on every h.o.a.rding.

There had been extravagant promises of the welcome which would await him if he survived. Who remembered them to-day? He hummed over the words of the latest promise, "If you come back, and you will come back, the whole world's waiting for you." Was it? He doubted. There was something unpleasantly furtive about the way in which men were being stripped of their outward signs of valor and dribbled back into civilian life. It almost seemed that statesmen had discovered something to be ashamed of in the unforeseen heroism by which the world had been rescued.

What did it matter? The world had been saved, and he had helped to save it. No one could deprive him of that knowledge. His joy leapt up. What did it matter if other people considered him nearly middle-aged? He and Terry must prove to them the contrary. He was free; that was what counted. Free to reckon his life by more than stretches of twenty-four hours. Free to rise or go to bed when he liked. Free to travel to the ends of the earth. Free to speak his mind without the dread of a court-martial. Never again would he be compelled to issue orders which he knew to be unwise; never again would he be compelled to obey them. He was free. And there was Terry----

II

Across the carriage-windows landscapes went leaping: the bleak clearness of brisk March skies; the shining grayness of meadows from which mists were slowly rising; the faint flush of greenness which was gathering in hedges; the shy pageant of spring unfolding, with the promised certainty of new summers which are never ending. The world looked young. As the train dashed by, new-born lambs, unused to such disturbances, tottered, bleating, after their mothers. Buds were bursting. Sap was rising. The chapped scars of winter were vanishing. Things which had seemed dead were being convulsed with life. He watched it all gladly and yet impatiently; it was for the end of the journey that he was waiting.

On nearing London the train slowed down as though reluctant to leave the country. Twice it halted and he consulted his wrist-watch with a frown.

Then it crept through Battersea, wound snake-like across the gleaming Thames, and came to rest in Victoria Station. Despite his lameness, he was the first pa.s.senger to alight. He had no luggage to attend to, save the newly-purchased bag which he carried. He lost no time in hurrying down the platform; when he hurried his limp became more p.r.o.nounced. As he pa.s.sed through the barrier he slackened his pace. By reason of his greater height he could glance above the heads of the crowd; his eyes went questing in all directions. They failed to find what they sought.

He delayed until nearly all the people from the incoming trains had scuttled into the holes of the Underground; then, masking his disappointment, he wandered out into the station-yard to hail a taxi. An Army Staff car was drawn up against the curb. A thrill of hostility shot through him. How often, in the old days, when marching up to an attack, had he and his comrades huddled to the side of the road like sheep that these khaki-colored collies of the shepherds, who had driven them up to die, might splash arrogantly past them! He eyed it casually and was pa.s.sing on, when a girl in the back seat stood up frantically waving. She was dressed in the latest whim of fashion; but it was her that he saw rather than her appointments. Her gold bobbed hair was like a Botticelli angel's. Her eyes were clear and deep as violets. She was exquisitely vibrant and alive--scarcely beautiful; her nose turned up and was too short for that. One sought for the right words to express her attraction. Perhaps it was due to her light-hearted health and girlish freshness.

As he came up eagerly, limping with the effort, she reached out her hand. "Tabs, fancy you not knowing me! I don't need to call you Lord Taborley, do I? Between us it's still Tabs."

"Terry dear! My dear Terry, at last!" He spoke queerly as though he had been running. Then, seeing how his intensity startled her, he let go her hand and laughed. "You can't blame me for not having spotted you.

Where's all your beautiful hair that was so blowy?"

She glanced up through her lashes at the tall man. "'I'm growing such a big girl now'--you remember the refrain from the song at the Gaiety?

That's why. When you were a young man, girls put their hair up to show they were of age; nowadays they bob it."

"So that's the explanation!" He climbed in and took his seat beside her.

"That's another thing that disguised you. How was I to guess that you'd w.a.n.gle a Staff car to meet an ex-lieutenant?"

"It belongs to a friend at the War Office." She nodded her permission to the trim girl-soldier at the wheel to start. "He lent it to me when he heard that I was to meet you this morning. Taxis are so scarce, and I didn't know how well you could walk, so----" She turned from the subject abruptly. "You're so changed. I scarcely recognized you at first. I was expecting that you'd still be in uniform."

"I was demobbed yesterday. So you find me changed! For better or for worse? Confess, Terry."

She was aware that beneath his a.s.sumption of gayety he was hiding something--something that pained. He had been hurt too much already.

With impulsive sympathy she laid her hand on his arm. "It isn't a case of better or worse. Between people like ourselves appearances don't matter. I think to me you were handsomest of all as a Tommy. How proud I was of you, Tabs, when you first joined up! Do you remember how I used to strut along beside you---- And that last night, when you went for the first time to the Front?"

He remembered, and waited with boyish expectancy. She had stopped suddenly and glanced away from him. For the second time his intensity had frightened her. He said nothing--did nothing to help her. She mustered her courage to turn back with a smile. "It's long ago, isn't it. Tabs? I've grown such a big girl now."

He brushed aside her attempt to divert him. "But you find a difference in me?"

"A difference! You mean the difference between a man in uniform and in mufti? Why, yes. A uniform made you look younger. It did that for most men."

"But more for me than for most." He was pitiless towards himself now that he had forced her to answer. "I've aged more than the five years since you slipped your arm into mine as we marched through the darkness to the troop-train. You never shed a tear, Terry. You kept your promise.

Often and often when I was afraid in the trenches I remembered you, a white and gold slip of a girl with dry eyes, waving and waving. And then, somehow, because you'd kept your promise not to cry----"

"Don't," she whispered. "Please don't. It's all ended. Everything's new and beginning afresh."

"Beginning with you," he questioned, "where it left off?"

If she heard him, she ignored the interrogation in his voice.

III

The girl-soldier at the wheel relieved the situation. Since leaving the station she had been running slower and slower, glancing back across her shoulder and trying to catch their attention. Just short of the great cross-roads at Hyde Park Corner she brought the car to a halt.

"What's the matter, Prentys?" Terry asked. "Anything wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, miss; but you've not told me where to go."

The girl spoke so reproachfully that Terry laughed. "Awfully sorry, Prentys. It's Lord Taborley's fault. He didn't tell either of us. What are your plans, Tabs? Where do you want to go?"

"To go?"

He caught at her question and examined it. To go--where did he want to go? He had been so certain when he had boarded the train to London early that morning. Ever since he had said good-by to her, nearly five years ago, he had known quite definitely. Each time that he had had a glimpse of her on those brief leaves from the Front, he had been more and more sure of the desired direction. Her letters coming up to him under sh.e.l.l-fire had made him even more certain--those letters compa.s.sionate with unashamed sincerity, written with a girl's admiration for a man who was jeopardizing his all that she might live in safety.

And now, when he was free at last to go where he chose and she herself asked him, he could find no answer to her question. Why couldn't he? He looked at her thoughtfully with the frown of his problem in his eyes.

What change had come over her? Or was it he who was altered? She had seemed so absolutely his while the terror of battle had kept them apart.

She had written and acted as though she was his right up to---- Yes, right up to the point when he had been in a position to claim her.

Between him and Terry there had been no engagement--only a wealth of interchanged affection; interchanged for the most part on paper. Once and only once had marriage been mentioned--on the night that he had set out for the first time for the Front. "You won't ask me, Tabs; I know that. You're too honorable. So I've got to say it. When you come back I'm going to marry you."

"_If_ I come back, little Terry," he had corrected.