II
"It's a great noise ye're making, Jumbo," said a voice, and I saw that as once before there was a figure on the milestone. "Quiet, sir! Where are your manners?"
The attitude, voice and very tone of dejection were as I remembered them once, and once only, sixteen years before, when—as now—O'Rane had wandered forth to hide his misery from the world.
"I shan't tell him yet," I whispered to Sonia, instinctively stopping short.
She nodded her approval.
The dog's deep-chested bark had turned to a whimper of joyous welcome.
"Don't be heeding him, madame," O'Rane called out. "He'll not hurt you."
Sonia had walked on a few steps, but at sound of his voice she too stopped. Some time was yet to pass before she appreciated the sightlessness of those vivid, commanding eyes.
"Raney!" I cried.
He slid down from the milestone and faced us.
"George! what brings you here? It was a woman's step!"
"I was walking on the grass," I explained. "Sonia's here. She's taking me home with her to tea."
He pulled off his hat and stood with outstretched hand.
"Why don't you come too?" asked Sonia.
He hesitated. "I must be getting back to school," he said.
"Not yet," I urged. "Saturday afternoon? I came down here to invite you to take me in for the week-end. Come on to Crowley Court, and we'll walk back together."
He was without excuse and forced to accept.
"Well, why not?" he asked after a moment's deliberation and picked up his ash-plant from the roadside. "Not the first time we've met at this milestone, George?"
The wind was blowing from the south, salt and wet.
"You can still smell the sea from here," I said, as we set out.
"I can still see them, two a minute," he cried. "The grimy Cardiff colliers, and the P. & O.'s swaggering down Channel as if they owned the seas. And out of the grey into the blue of the Bay. And the Rock towering over you one morning. And then the roar of the quayside in Marseilles.... And those parching nights and days in the Canal ... Bombay, Colombo, Singapur, Hong-Kong, Shanghai.... The P. & O. sailings are like an ode of Keats. Java Sea, China Sea.... Salt and sunshine and great swampy rivers losing themselves in a midnight jungle.... The rattle of the derricks, and all the cursing, sweating stevedores in their rolling lighters.... The Pacific Coast and the sweepings of God's universe. 'The smell of goats and incense, and the mule-bells tinkling through.' Put me near tar and salt or the throb of an engine."
He stood with his head thrown back and the wind playing through his hair, once more five thousand miles from Melton. Sonia looked at him and turned away with lowered eyes. I slipped my arm through his, and we walked on, idly discussing the latest news of the war.
Crowley Court had been changed out of recognition. The bigger rooms were turned into wards, nurses in uniform were hurrying up and down stairs, and there were groups of wounded soldiers in their blue overalls sitting or limping about the garden. Twenty-five new patients were expected that night from Southampton, and the resources of the house were being strained to breaking point. Lady Dainton with a mourning brassard over her grey dress gave us tea amid alarums and excursions in the old smoking-room.
"Raney and I had better make ourselves scarce," I told Sonia, as her mother was called out of the room for the sixth time.
"Let me just talk to a few of these fellows first," begged O'Rane. "We may have been through the same places."
He jumped up and hurried out of the room with his fingers through Jumbo's collar.
"D'you care to walk back part of the way with us?" I asked Sonia.
She shook her head, and her eyes filled with tears.
"He doesn't like me near him. Didn't you see? He never spoke a word to me the whole way coming here. George—" she hesitated, and played with the hem of her handkerchief—"George, is it true he refused an interpretership on the staff?"
"He could have had one," I said.
"Well, when he went into the ranks ..."
"Sonia, don't try to take all the troubles of the world on your shoulders. Frankly, you don't look as if you could stand much more."
She lingered for a moment at the window, looking out on to the lawn where O'Rane was sitting cross-legged on the grass, surrounded by soldiers. Then she walked to the door.
"Say good-bye to him for me, George," she said. "I have to lie down before dinner."
I smoked half a pipe and went into the garden. The conversation on the lawn was abounding in historic, blood-drenched names—La Bassée, Ypres, Neuve Chapelle, Festhubert; the men talked with bright eyes, and there was a flush on O'Rane's thin cheeks.
"Is it time to go?" he asked, as he felt my hand on his shoulder.
"There's a fresh lot due," I said.
He jumped up and waved a hand round the circle. "Good-bye, you chaps. You've bucked me up no end."
"Good-bye, sir! Good-bye!" The voices rang with cordiality and almost drowned the "Poor devil!" that fell from a man with one arm and no legs. "Come and see us again, sir."
"I'll try to! Now, George, I'm ready."
We went back to the house for our hats, and O'Rane asked if Lady Dainton was to be found. I said I thought she had better not be disturbed.
"Sonia sent 'good-bye' to you," I added.
"Then we may as well start," he said.
"Unless you'd care to speak to her before you go?"
He picked up his hat and whistled for the dog.
"At her present rate of progress it may be your last chance, Raney."
"What the devil d'you mean?" he demanded fiercely.
"She thinks she's responsible for getting you wounded," I told him. "She thinks you went into the ranks and chucked over a comparatively safe job...."
"On her account?"
"Yes. And she's breaking her heart over it. Is it true?"
He stood silent, without a restive face-muscle to give me the key to his thoughts.
"You want me to tell her it's untrue?"
"Yes," I said.
"Where is she?"
I led him upstairs and tapped on Sonia's door.
"May Raney come in and say good-bye?" I asked.
Then I went downstairs again. "I shall smoke a pipe at the milestone," I called up to him from the hall.
A third pipe followed the second, and for the twentieth time I looked impatiently at my watch, jumped down from the milestone and gazed down the dusty road in search of O'Rane. It was past seven when at last I saw him, striding along with the dog at his side, swinging his stick and apparently guiding his feet only by the flat crown to the road.
"Hope I haven't been very long, George," he apologized, as he drew up alongside.
"It's a beautiful evening to be in the country," I said, luxuriously sniffing the warm scents of the evening air.
"The may's good," Raney murmured half to himself. "I'd give something to see the chestnuts and golden rain." Then he linked his arm in mine. "George, you oughtn't to have sent me back."
"Why, what's happened?" I asked.
I could feel him shivering.
"Oh, it was damnable," he said. "I walked in with the words, 'I've come to say good-bye, Sonia.' There I wanted the thing to end, and I held out my hand to signify as much. She took it and—kept hold of it. 'D'you know those are the first words you've spoken to me to-day?' she said. I suppose she was right. I didn't mean to be rude. She asked me why I went into the ranks...." His voice sank, and he walked for fifty yards without speaking. "Well, I was broke, George. Of course I could have started again, but—my God!—was it worth doing?... I told her I wanted to get recruits. It was true, George, the whole thing was real—even that nonsensical meeting at Easterly. The only thing in life then was to get men. Men and more men.... And, good heavens, officers aren't immune from bursting shells.... Then I said good-bye, and she told me Sam was due out of hospital next week, and would I come over and see him."
His head dropped forward so that his face was hidden.
"I told her I couldn't meet her again. Once I'd asked her to marry me and now I thanked God she hadn't.... Then she crumpled up. Literally. And I had to catch hold of her to keep her from falling.... She lay there sobbing ... and I could feel the beat of her heart. 'God in heaven!' I said, 'd'you think I'd see you married to a blind man?'"
It was half-past eight when we reached Melton, and as we were too late to dine in Common Room I sent my suitcase up to the school and carried O'Rane off with me to the "Raven."
"Bertrand told me to ask if you were going to keep on your seat in the House," I said half-way through dinner.
"I'll give up nothing!" he answered defiantly. "You think I'm going to let this make any difference——?"
"Apparently you told Sonia it would. In your place I should certainly stick to it. Four hundred a year——"
O'Rane stopped me suddenly.
"By next January I can let you have three hundred on account," he said.
"You'd better pay it back direct," I suggested. "Two hundred to my uncle, who'll be mortally offended at receiving it——"
"I can't help that," he interrupted obstinately.
"And the next time you go to Crowley Court——"
"I'm not going there again, George."
"My dear Raney, in common decency you must! When a girl sells the pearls her father gave her when she came out——"
"George!"
"And things from her dead brother, and a twopenny wrist-watch——"
"George, please stop!" He sat with his fists pressed to his temples. "I'd have sworn it was Jim. I wrote to him a fortnight ago.... And as he didn't deny it...."
There was a long silence.
"Perhaps he never got your letter," I said.