Part 38 (2/2)

He stopped. He said, ”Give me your handkerchief to keep, Nona. Something of your own to keep. There will be strength in it for me--to help me hold on to the rest--to believe it--'If Winter comes--Can Spring be far behind?'”

She touched her handkerchief to her lips and gave it to him.

V

After October, especially, he spent never less than two evenings a week with old Mrs. Perch. In October Young Perch went to France and on his draft-leave took from Sabre the easy promise to ”keep an eye on my mother.” Military training, which to most gave robustness, gave to Young Perch, Sabre thought, a striking enhancement of the fine-drawn expression that always had been his. About his eyes and forehead Sabre apprehended something suggestive of the mystic, spiritually-occupied look that paintings of the Huguenots and the old Crusaders had; and looking at him when he came to say good-by, and while he spoke solely and only of his mother, Sabre remembered that long-ago thought of Young Perch's aspect,--of his spirit being alighted in his body as a bird on a twig, not engrossed in his body; a thing death would need no more than to pluck off between finger and thumb.

But unthinkable, that. Not Young Perch....

Old Mrs. Perch was very broken and very querulous. She blamed Sabre and she blamed Effie that Freddie had gone to the war. She said they had leagued with him to send him off. ”Freddie I could have managed,” she used to say; ”but you I cannot manage, Mr. Sabre; and as for Effie, you might think I was a child and she was mistress the way she treats me.”

Bright Effie used to laugh and say, ”Now, you know, Mrs. Perch, you will insist on coming and tucking me up at night. Now does that look as if she's the child, Mr. Sabre?”

Mrs. Perch in her dogged way, ”If Mr. Sabre doesn't know that you only permit me to tuck you up one night because I permit you to tuck me up the next night, the sooner he does know how I'm treated in my own establishment the better for me.”

Thus the initial cause of querulousness would b.u.mp off into something else; and in an astonis.h.i.+ng short number of moves Bright Effie would lead Mrs. Perch to some happy subject and the querulousness would give place to little rays of animation; and presently Mrs. Perch would doze comfortably in her chair while Sabre talked to Effie in whispers; and when she woke Sabre would be ready with some reminiscence of Freddie carefully chosen and carefully carried along to keep it hedged with smiles. But all the roads where Freddie was to be found were sunken roads, the smiling hedges very low about them, the ditches overcharged with water, and tears soon would come.

She used to doze and murmur to herself, ”My boy's gone to fight for his country. I'm very proud of my boy gone to fight for his country.”

Effie said Young Perch had taught her that before he went away.

While they were talking she used to doze and say, ”Good morning, Mrs.

So-and-So. My boy's gone to fight for his country. I'm very proud of my boy gone to fight for his country. Good morning, Mr. So-and-So. My boy's gone to--He didn't want to go, but I said he must go to fight for his country.... But that's not true, Freddie.... Oh, very well, dear. Good morning, Mrs. So-and-So.--”

She used to wake up with a start and say, ”Eh, Freddie? Oh, I thought Freddie was in the room.” Tears.

She said she always looked forward to the evenings when Sabre came. She liked him to sit and talk to Effie and to smoke all the time and knock out his pipe on the fender. She said it made her think Freddie was there. Effie said that every night she went into Young Perch's room and tucked up the bed and set the alarm clock and put the candle and the matches and one cigarette and the ash-tray by the bed; and every night in this performance said, ”He said he's certain to come in quite unexpectedly one night, and he will smoke his one cigarette before he goes to sleep. It's no good my telling him he'll set the house on fire one night. He never listens to anything I tell him.” And every morning, when Effie took her in a cup of tea very early (as Freddie used to), she always said, ”Has Freddie come home in the night, Effie, dear? Now just go and knock on his door very quietly and then just peep your head in.”

VI

Sabre had always thought Bright Effie would be wonderful with old Mrs.

Perch. He wrote long letters to Young Perch, telling him how much more than wonderful Bright Effie was. Effie mothered Mrs. Perch and managed her and humoured her in a way that not even Young Perch himself could have bettered. In that astounding fund of humour of hers, reflected in those sparkling eyes, even Mrs. Perch's most querulously violent attacks were transformed into matter for whimsical appreciation, delightfully and most lovingly dealt with. When the full, irritable, inconsequent flood of one of Mrs. Perch's moods would be launched upon her in Sabre's presence, she would turn a dancing eye towards him and immediately she could step into the torrent and would begin, ”Now, look here, Mrs.

Perch, you know perfectly well--”; and in two minutes the old lady would be mollified and happy.

Marvellous Effie! Sabre used to think; and of course it was because her astounding fund of humour was based upon her all-embracing capacity for love. That was why it was so astounding in its depth and breadth and compa.s.s. Sabre liked immensely the half-whispered talks with her while Mrs. Perch dozed in her chair. Effie was always happy. Nothing of that wanting something look was ever to be seen in Effie's s.h.i.+ning eyes. She had the secret of life. Watching her face while they talked, he came to believe that the secret, the thing missing in half the faces one saw, was love. But--the old difficulty--many had love; himself and Nona; and yet were troubled.

One evening he asked her a most extraordinary question, shot out of him without intending it, discharged out of his questing thoughts as by a hidden spring suddenly touched by groping fingers.

”Effie, do you love G.o.d?”

Her surprise seemed to him to be more at the thing he had asked than at its amazing unexpectedness and amazing irrelevancy. ”Why, of course I do, Mr. Sabre.”

”Why do you?”

She was utterly at a loss. ”Well, of course I do.”

He said rather sharply, ”Yes, but _why_? Have you ever asked yourself why? Respecting, fearing, trusting, that's understandable. But love, _love_, you know what love is, don't you? What's love got to do with G.o.d?”

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