Changing Winds Part 96

He glanced through the war bulletins, with their terrible iteration of trenches taken and trenches lost. People read the war news carelessly now, almost wearily, so accustomed had they become to the daily report of positions evacuated and positions retrieved, forgetting almost that at the taking or the losing of a trench, men lost their lives.

"There isn't much in the paper this morning," he said, and then he turned to a page of lesser news, and almost as he did so, his eye caught sight of Gilbert's name. His grip on the paper was so tight that he tore it. He stared at the paragraph with startling eyes, reading and re-reading it, as if he were unable to comprehend the meaning of the thing he read.... Then, as understanding came to him, he gaped about with vacant eyes.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" he cried, "Gilbert's been killed!"

9

He got up, half choking, and scrambled out of the field. A labourer greeted him, but he made no answer. He ran up the road, and as he ran, he cried to himself, "Gilbert's dead ... it isn't true ... it isn't true!..."

He thrust open the gate and ran swiftly up to the door.

"Mary!" he shouted. "Mary! Mary!!..."

She came running to him, followed by her mother.

"What is it?" she cried, and her heart was full of fear.

Mrs. Graham clutched at him. "It isn't ... it isn't...."

He sank down into a chair and buried his head in his hands. "Gilbert's dead," he said. "He's been killed!..."

Mary knelt beside him, and drew his head on to her shoulder. She did not speak. There was nothing that could be said. She knew that Gilbert and Henry had cared for each other as men seldom care ... and no one, not even she, could bring comfort to the one who was left. So she just held him....

10

Mrs. Graham had left them alone. Her fear had been for Ninian, and when she heard Gilbert's name, her relief was such that she had hurried from the room lest Henry, stricken by the death of his friend, should see her face.

"I know now," he said when he was calmer, "what it was on the White Cliff. He wanted to tell me, Mary. He wanted to tell me ... and I wouldn't look round. Oh, my G.o.d, I wouldn't look round!"

THE NINTH CHAPTER

1

It was unbelievable that Gilbert was dead. In his mind, Henry could see him, careless, extravagant, always good-tempered and sometimes strangely wise and understanding ... and he could not believe that he would never see him again, that all that youth and generosity and promise should be turned so untimely to corruption. Gilbert's friends would not even know where his grave was ... they would not have the poor consolation of finding a place that was his, marked out from all the other places....

He had been seen, running forward ... and then he was seen no more....

"Perhaps," Henry said to comfort himself, "he's been taken prisoner. We shall hear later on that he's been taken prisoner!..."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed at any hope. Men had been posted among the dead ... and then, after a time of mourning, had come the news that they still lived.

Perhaps Gilbert was lying somewhere ... wounded ... and after a while, news of him would come. Other men might die, but it was incredible that Gilbert should be killed....

He became obsessed with the belief that Gilbert still lived. He went about expecting to see him suddenly turning a corner and shouting, "Hilloa, Quinny!" At any moment, a door might open, and Gilbert would walk in and say, "Well, coves!" There was a printed copy of "The Magic Cas.e.m.e.nt" in the house, and Henry would pick it up, and turn over the pages.... "But he can't be dead," he would say to himself, as he fingered the book. "It's absurd!..." Even when hope died, there came times when the belief in Gilbert's survival thrust itself into his mind. When the _Lusitania_ was torpedoed, he said to himself, "Why, we saw her just after the war began, Gilbert and I, and we cheered!..."

The brutality of the war smote him hard. In less than a year from the day when they had stood on the rocks at Tre'Arrdur Bay, l.u.s.tily cheering as the great Atlantic liner sailed up the sea to the Mersey, Gilbert was dead and the proud s.h.i.+p was a wreck, sneakily destroyed....

Gilbert had left the beginning of a play behind him. He had regretted that he could not finish it before going out to the peninsula ... had believed that in it he would create something finer and deeper than he had yet done ... and now it would never reach completion. The mind that imagined it was no more than the rubbish of the fields when the harvest is gathered....

His own work became tasteless to him. He turned with disrelish from his ma.n.u.script. "What's the good of it," he said to himself, whenever he looked at it. He tried to put himself into communication with Gilbert's spirit, remembering that night below the White Cliff, when, he now believed, Gilbert had tried to tell him of his death. A month before, he would have ridiculed any one who suggested to him that he should attempt to speak to the dead. "Spookery!" he would have said. But now, in his eagerness to atone, as he said, for his failure to respond when Gilbert had tried to speak to him, he put faith in things that, before, would have seemed contemptible to him. But with all his will to believe, he could not call Gilbert to him. There was a blankness, a condemning silence....

"I failed my friend," he groaned to himself once, "When he felt for me most, I ... I failed him!"

2

He had gone up to the Common with Mary, and had lain there, talking of Gilbert ... of what Gilbert had been doing this time a year ago ... of something that Gilbert had said once ... of an escapade at Rumpell's ...

and then Mary and he had gone home across the fields. As they walked up the lane to the house, they saw a telegraph messenger ahead of them.

They quickened their pace. There was an anxious, strained look on Mary's face, and as the messenger, hearing them behind him, turned and stopped, she made a clutching movement with her hands. "Oh, Quinny!" she said, turning to him with frightened eyes. The boy waited until Henry went up to him, regarding them both with curiosity.

"Is it for us?" Henry asked, knowing that it was, and the boy nodded his head. "I'll take it," he went on. "It'll save you the trouble of going up to the house!"

"Thank you, sir!" the messenger said, and then he handed the telegram to Henry. "Is there any answer, sir?" he asked.

"I don't know," Henry replied. "We'll ... we'll bring it down to the post-office, if there is!"

He knew that there would not be any answer....

The boy went off, looking back at them now and then, over his shoulder.

"Shall I open it, Mary!" Henry said.

"Do you think?..." She did not complete her sentence for she was afraid to utter the thought that was in her mind.

"If it should be bad news," Henry said, "we'd ... we'd better prepare her for it!"

They stood there, holding the telegram still unopened, as if they could not make a decision....

"Open it, Quinny!" Mary said at last, and he opened the buff envelope and took out the form.

_The Secretary for War regretted!..._

He looked up from the telegram, and saw that Mary was standing in a strained att.i.tude, waiting for him to speak.

"Is it ... is it _that_?" she said, almost in a whisper.

He bowed his head. "Yes," he said.

She did not speak. She stood quite still, looking at him as if she were trying to find something, but did not know where to look for it. He moved nearer to her, and took hold of her hand and drew her close to him, and she lay quietly in his arms.... There was a bird singing very clearly over their heads, and suddenly, while they stood there, silently consoling each other, two wood pigeons flew out of the highest tree, making a great beating of wings as they flew off across the fields.

There was a robin in the hedge, turning its head this way and that, and regarding them with curiosity....

She stirred, and then withdrew herself from his arms.

"We must go home," she said, "and tell mother!"