"Nicely, what's left of it. They let me out without a keeper now. Had a good leave? When d'you go back?"

"To-morrow," replied the First Lieutenant with a sigh. "Buck up and get well again, Mouldy, and come back to us. We're all going North to-morrow night, Gerrard and Tweedledum, and Pills here ... and all the rest of 'em. You'd better join up with the party!" He spoke in gently chaffing, affectionate tones. "I don't think we can spare you, old Sunny Jim."

"No," said Mouldy Jakes dryly; "but unfortunately that's what the rotten doctors say." He rose to his feet and extended his uninjured hand, "S'long, Number One! I've got to get back to my old nursing home or I'll find myself on the mat.... S'long, Pills. Give 'em all my love, and tell 'em I'm coming back all right when the plumbers have finished with me." He stopped at the doorway and turned, facing the group round the fireplace.

"I guess you couldn't do without your Little Ray of Sunshine!" His wry smile flitted across his solemn countenance and the next moment he was gone.

CHAPTER XIV

INTO THE WAY OF PEACE

The King's Messenger thrust a bundle of sealed envelopes into his black leather despatch-case and closed the lock with a snap.

"Any orders?" he asked. "I go North at eleven to-night."

The civilian clerk seated at the desk in the dusty Whitehall office leaned back in his chair and pa.s.sed his hand over his face. He looked tired and pallid with overwork and lack of exercise.

"Yes," he said, and searched among the papers with which the desk was littered. "There was a telephone message just now----" He found and consulted some pencilled memoranda. "You are to call at Sir William Thorogood's house at nine o'clock. There may be a letter or a message for you to take up to the Commander-in-Chief." The speaker picked up a paper-knife and examined it with the air of one who saw a paper-knife for the first time and found it on the whole disappointing. "The Sea Lords are dining there," he added after a pause.

The King's Messenger was staring through the window into the well of a dingy courtyard. He received his instructions with a rather absent nod of the head.

"The house," continued the civilian in his colourless tones, "is in Queen Anne's Gate, number----"

"I know the house," said the King's Messenger quietly. He turned and looked at the clock. "Is that all?" he asked. "If so, I'll go along there now."

"That's all," replied the other, and busied himself with his papers.

"Good night."

Despatch-case in hand, d'Auvergne, the King's Messenger, emerged from the Admiralty by one of the small doors opening on to the Mall. He paused on the step for a moment, meditating. The policeman on duty touched his helmet.

"Taxi, sir?"

"No, thanks," replied d'Auvergne. "I think I'll walk; I've not far to go."

Dusk was settling down over the city as he turned off into St. James's Park, but the afterglow of the sunset still lingered above the Palace and in the soft half-light the trees and lawns held to their vivid green. A few early lamps shone with steady brilliance beyond the foliage.

On one of the benches sat a khaki-clad soldier and a girl, hand-in-hand; they stared before them unsmiling, in ineffable speechless contentment. The King's Messenger glanced at the pair as he limped past, and for an instant the girl's eyes met his disinterestedly; they were large round eyes of china blue, limpid with happiness.

The pa.s.ser-by smiled a trifle grimly. "Bless 'em!" he said to himself in an undertone. "They don't care if it snows ink.... And all the world's their garden...."

Podgie d'Auvergne had fallen into a habit of talking aloud to himself.

It is a peculiarity of men given to introspective thought who spend much time alone. Since the wound early in the war that cost him the loss of a foot he had found himself very much alone, though the role of "Cat that walked by Itself" was of his own choosing. It is perhaps the inevitable working of the fighting male's instinct, once maimed irrevocably, to walk thenceforward a little apart from his fellows--that gay company of two-eyed, two-legged, two-armed favourites of Fate for whom the world was made.

For a while he pursued the train of thought started by the lovers on the bench. The distant noises of the huge city filled his ears with a murmur like a far-off sea, and abruptly, all unbidden, Hope the Inextinguishable flamed up within him. Winged fancy soared and flitted above the conflagration.

"But supposing," said Podgie d'Auvergne to the pebbles underfoot, returning to his hurt like a sow to her wallow, "supposing I was sitting there with her on that seat and some fellow came along and insulted her!" He considered unhinging possibilities with a brow of thunder. "d.a.m.n it!" said the King's Messenger, "I couldn't even thrash the blighter."

He made a fierce pa.s.s in the air with his walking-stick, dispelling imaginary Apaches, and brought himself under the observation of a policeman in Birdcage Walk.

"Any way, I'm not likely to find myself sitting on a bench with her in St. James's Park, or anywhere else," concluded the soliloquist. High Fancy, with scorched wings, fluttered down to mundane levels.

He turned into Queen Anne's Gate, but on the steps leading up to the once familiar door he paused and looked up at the front of the old house.

"That's her window," said the King's Messenger, and added sternly, "but I'm here on duty, and even if she----" He rang the bell and stood listening to the preposterous thumping of his heart.

The door opened while he was framing an imaginary sentence that had nothing to do with the duty in hand.

"Hullo, Haines!" he said. "Where's Sir William?"

The old butler peered at the visitor irresolutely for an instant.

"Why," he said, "Mr. d'Auvergne, sir, you're a stranger! For a moment I didn't recognise you standing out on the doorstep----"

The visitor crossed the threshold and was relieved of cap and stick.

"Sir William said an officer from the Admiralty would call at nine, sir; but he didn't mention no name, and I was to show you into the library. Sir William is still up in the laboratory, sir"--the butler lowered his voice to a confidential undertone--"with all the Naval gentlemen that was dining here--their Lordships, sir." He turned as he spoke and led the way across the hall. "It's a long time since you was last here, sir, if I may say so----" There was the faintest tone of reproach in the old servitor's tones. "I dare say you'll be forgetting your way about the house." The butler stopped at a door. "This way, sir--Miss Cecily's in here----"

The King's Messenger halted abruptly, as panic-stricken a young gentleman as ever wore the King's uniform.

"Haines!" he said. "No! Not--not that room. I'll wait--I----" But the old man had opened the door and stood aside to allow the visitor to enter.

D'Auvergne drew a deep breath and stepped forward. As he did so, the butler spoke again.

"Lieutenant d'Auvergne, Miss," he said, and quietly closed the door.

Save for the light from a shaded electric reading-lamp by the fireplace the big room was in shadow. A handful of peat smouldered on the wide brick hearth and mingled its faint aroma with the scent of roses.

An instant's silence was followed by the rustle of silk, and a white-clad form rose from a low arm-chair beside the reading-lamp.

"I seem to remember the name," said Cecily in her clear, sweet tones, "but you're in the shadow. Can you find the switch ... by the door..."

An odd, breathless note had caught up in her voice.

The King's Messenger laid the black despatch bag he still carried on a chair by the door and limped towards her across the carpet.

"I don't think the light would help matters much," he said quietly.

"I'm generally grateful for the dark."

"Ah, Tony ..." said the girl, as if he had countered with a weapon that somehow wasn't quite fair. "Come and sit down. We'll leave the lights for a bit, and then we needn't draw the curtains: it's such a perfect evening." She spoke quite naturally now, standing by the side of the wide fireplace with one hand resting on the mantel. The soft evening air strayed in at the open windows, and the little pile of aromatic embers on the hearth glowed suddenly.

The King's Messenger sat down on the arm of the vacant chair, and looked up at her as she stood in all her fair loveliness against the dark panelling. He opened his lips as if to speak, and then apparently thought better of it. The girl met his gaze a little curiously, as if waiting for some explanation; none apparently being forthcoming she shouldered the responsibility for the conversation.

"I'm all alone," she explained, "because Uncle Bill is up in the laboratory. The air's full of mystery, too; there are five Admirals up there, and one's a perfect dear..." Cecily paused for breath. "His eyes go all crinkley when he smiles," she continued.

"Lots of people's do," conceded the visitor.