Part 10 (2/2)

”I should like to make some sort of amends.”

”Too late: these things can never be undone.”

”No, of course not. Undone? no, nothing once done can be undone.

”But one needn't follow a wrong path to the bitter end. You made me give you that promise for the sake of discipline and morale.

But of the men who were in the trenches with us that night how many are left? Your battalion were pretty badly cut up at Cambrai, weren't they? And the survivors are all back in civil life like ourselves. If it were to come out now there aren't twenty men who would remember anything about it: except of course here in Chilmark, where they know my people so well.”

”But you surely don't contemplate writing to the War Office?

I've no idea what course they would take, but they'd be safe to make themselves unpleasant. I might even come in for a reprimand myself! That's a fate I could support with equanimity, but what about you? If I were you I shouldn't care to be hauled up for an interview!”

”Really, if you'll forgive my saying so, I don't want to enter into contingencies at all. Give me my promise back, Hyde, there's a good fellow, it's worth nothing now to anyone but the owner.”

”What about your own people?” said Lawrence, his hands in his pockets, and falling unawares into the tone of the orderly room.

”You'll do nothing while your father's alive: I'm glad you've sense enough for that: but what about your brother and sister?

You're suffering under some unpractical attack of remorse, Val, and like most penitent souls you think of nothing but yourself.”

”On the contrary, I shrink very much from bringing distress on other people. I'm well aware,” said Val slowly, ”that a man who does what I've done forfeits his right to take an easy way out.”

”An easy way?”

”Believe me, I haven't found the way you imposed on me an easy one.”

”Poor wretch!” said Lawrence under his breath. Stafford heard, perhaps he was meant to hear: and he glanced out over the dark turf on which the windows traced a golden oblong, over the trees, dark and mysterious except where the same light caught and bronzed the tips of their branches. In its glow every leaf stood out separate and defined, clearer than by day through the contrast of the immense surrounding darkness: and so it had been in that bit of French forest years ago, when the wild bright searchlights lit up its plague-spotted glades. Civilians talk glibly of courage and cowardice who have never smelt the odour of corruption. . . .

”What's your motive? Some misbegotten sense of duty?”

”Partly,” said Val, turning from the window. How like his eyes were to his young sister's! The impression was unwelcome, and Lawrence flung it off. ”I ought never to have given way to you.

I ought to have faced Wynn-West and let him deal with me as he thought fit. After all, I was of no standing in the regiment.

A boy of nineteen--what on earth would it have signified? I was so very young.”

Nineteen! yes, one called a lad young at nineteen even in those pitiless days. Under normal conditions he would have had two or three years' more training before he was required to shoulder the responsibilities and develop the braced muscles of manhood.

”Anyhow it's all over now--”

”No, you forget.” A wave of colour swept over Val's face but his voice was steady. ”Through me the regiment holds a distinction it hasn't earned, and the distinction is in hands that don't deserve to hold it. That isn't consonant with the traditions of the service.”

”Oh, when it comes to the honour of the Army--!” Lawrence jeered at him. ”There speaks the soldier born and bred. But I was only a 'temporary.' Give me a personal reason.”

”Well, I can do that too! I hate sailing under false colours.

The good folk of Chilmark; my own people; Bernard, Laura . . . .”

Lawrence's eyes began to sparkle: when a man's voice deepens over a woman's name--! ”Oh, I dare say nothing will ever come of it,”

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