III
We walked up to the school after dinner and joined the staff at dessert. I had gone to Melton to break the news of Loring's disappearance and not to spy the incongruity of O'Rane's self-sought surroundings, but I left without touching on the subject of my visit. O'Rane seemed to be carrying as much sail as he could stand. Being a Saturday night the masters had all dined in Common Room, with the exception, of course, of Burgess. I found them profiting by his absence to compare the ideal way of running a great public school with the way actually adopted at Melton.
So long as a regimental mess devotes every moment of its spare time to discussing regimental politics, so long as three barristers at a dinner-party of twenty-four segregate themselves to discuss the last appointment, so long as Members of Parliament refight in the Smoking-Room the battle they have just left in the Chamber, I suppose it is not surprising that schoolmasters should widen their outlook and refresh their minds for the morrow by returning to the chalk dust and ink of their classrooms.
The criticism of Burgess hung on a peg provided by one Vickers. (I shall never forget his name and some day perhaps I shall meet him.) It seems that Vickers, in the opinion of his form-master Matheson, was ripe for super-annuation on the ground that he knew nothing, learned nothing and was only being injured in health by having to spend his leisure hours in detention-school. Ponsonby, in whose house Vickers spun out his unprofitable existence, disagreed in toto with his good friend Matheson. Vickers was slow, without a doubt; a little patience, however ... And the boy was admirably behaved. And there must be something in the son of a man who had captained Somerset. I was given to understand that the chose Vickers had been under discussion for some while and that the antagonists only agreed in condemning the Head.
Burgess, it seemed, had admitted the boy five years before on the strength of a chance conversation on early Church music. He took the weak line that Melton might do Vickers good and that Vickers could not possibly harm Melton; finally he was believed to attach less than no importance to Matheson's reiterated complaints to the senior Vickers that their son admittedly spent evening preparation in reading oratorio scores. On this last point Ponsonby ventured to say that he paid a personal visit to prep. room every night and could only say that he had never discovered Vickers so employed. Had anyone described to me the conversation of that Common Room, I should have dismissed his account as a cruel parody.
Raney had walked up from the hotel in unbroken silence, but I saw him gradually awakening to the sound of the Common-Room talk, where four conversations were always in progress at once and no one waited to hear what his neighbour had to say.
"Send him to O'Rane," suggested Ponsonby. "If he can't make anything of him ... Hallo, Oakleigh, where have you sprung from?"
"O'Rane is welcome to him," returned Matheson. "But you may remember my contention was that this is a school and not an asylum."
The term was two-thirds over, and I will make all allowances for rawed nerves. But there was still a note of pathos running through the acrid conversation. Sixteen years had passed since I last entered the smoky Common Room over Big Gateway, and I was then being entertained to a farewell dinner by men who seemed to shed their mannerisms with their gowns and become suddenly human. In the interval I had wandered about the world and tried my hand at many things; O'Rane had wandered farther and made more experiments. Yet the Common Room was hardly changed: there was the same round hole in the carpet by the fireplace; the horsehair was still bursting through the scorched part of the largest chair; the tongs, still in two pieces, were still used as pokers.
The men, too, were hardly changed. Only the younger ones came and went—some to headmasterships, some far away from scholasticism. There were a few science men, imported grudgingly by Burgess to tend the growing but still suspect Modern Side; and each one knew his neighbour too well. They knew their work too well and had corrected the same mistakes too long. I wondered what they made of O'Rane and he of them.
As Headmaster, Burgess stood in a different position; with his enormous range of knowledge he would always be differentiated from his fellows. I tried to see him that night before going, but he was engaged with the Bishop of Minehead, who was preaching in chapel next day. We met, however, in the Cloisters after Roll Call while I was waiting for O'Rane to come out of Early School.
"Behold, I have prepared my dinner," he said, as we shook hands. "My oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready."
I interpreted his words as an invitation to breakfast and asked whether I might bring O'Rane.
"Priests and Levites sit at meat with me this day," he answered, with a warning glance to the end of the Cloisters where the Bishop was reading the inscription on the South African memorial. "An he be not afraid.... Laddie, doth thy memory hold the day when David O'Rane came first among us?"
"I went in fear of my life, sir, for the first term."
"I, too, laddie," said Burgess, stroking his long beard. "Cloven tongues, like as of fire, sat upon him, and he prophesied with strange utterance, saying, 'See here, Dr. Burgess, I propose to come to your old school for a piece. There's my money, every last dime. When that's petered out, I guess I'll have to find more. When do you start anyway, and what are the rules?' Laddie, I spake a word here and a word there. It was not good for a babe to know what he knew. Yet I would not fling him into outer darkness, for he was not without valour."
We left the Cloisters and walked into the sunlight of Great Court.
"You saw him when he came back from France, sir?" I asked.
Burgess struggled out of his gown and threw it over one shoulder.
"Not for long did we commune together," he said, as we walked towards Little End. "A word here and a word there. I knew little but that one of my young men was come back to me with eyes that saw not. The laddies call him the 'Black Panther,'" he added.
"So my cousin tells me. How did you find that out, sir?"
He shook his head vaguely.
"I am an old man, broken with the cares and sorrows of this life, yet—all things are revealed unto me. There was turbulence in the Under Sixth when Plancus was Consul."
"I believe there was, sir," I admitted.
Burgess beckoned with one finger.
"Come and see," he said.
We had walked round from Little End to the front of his house, and he now led the way back through Big Gateway, across Great Court and up the steps into Great School. The folding doors of Under Sixth room stood open, and as we approached, a boy was standing up reading a passage of Greek Testament; O'Rane stopped him at the end of the chapter, and the construe began.
"How does he manage about the written work?" I whispered to Burgess.
"It is read aloud to him and he does not forget. Boy is a noble savage, laddie," he remarked reflectively, looking at the still, orderly form. "They wot not that the High Priest is even now at hand."
We walked down School and waited in Great Court for the bell to ring.
"It was hardly the end I pictured for Raney," I said.
"The end, laddie?" Burgess echoed.
The bell rang, and almost immediately a wave of boys poured headlong down the steps and separated to their houses. In their rear came O'Rane, with his hand on the shoulder of my cousin Laurence.
"Thus grows mankind's ritual," Burgess commented. "The self-appointed guardian guards still, though his services be no longer required." He called my cousin to him. "Laddie, if thine house-master grant thee leave, I pray thee to a place at my board."
On the evening of my return from Melton I called at the War Office to inquire for news of Loring. It was a fruitless mission that I had to repeat every day that week. Sometimes I varied the procedure by calling at Cox's Bank as well, but the result was always the same. On the Saturday I determined to call at Loring House and prepare its inmates for the official notice that I had not been able to intercept on its way to the Press.
I was met in the hall by Amy, tremulous with excitement.
"You got my message?" she inquired.
"I've not been home."
"My dear, it's a boy! At six o'clock this morning. I couldn't get hold of you at the Admiralty, so I sent a message to Queen Anne's Mansions."
"How's Violet?" I asked.
"Splendid. They both are. Everything went beautifully. She's sleeping at present, but she wants to see you."
"Isn't it—rather soon?" I asked.
"It's only for a minute, and of course you mustn't excite her. I mentioned in my message——"
"Amy," I interrupted, "how long is it since you heard from Jim?"
Her eyes grew apprehensive.
"You've not got bad news of him?"
"I've no news at all."
She reflected for a moment.
"It was ten days ago. We haven't heard since then, but so often we get no letter for a week or so, and then three or four come together."
"I haven't heard either." I took her arm and walked to a settee. "It's possible that he's missing, Amy."
"Missing?" She did not yet take the word in its specialized sense.
"It doesn't necessarily mean anything," I said. "Thousands of 'missing' men turn up again. You see, if you get separated from your company——"
Amy covered her face with her hands, and I put my arm round her shoulders.
"You mustn't meet trouble half-way," I said. "He may be as right as I am——"
"You don't think that, or you wouldn't have told me," she whispered.
"I told you because you may see his name in the papers any day."
Her hands dropped into her lap, and she gazed across the hall to the staircase as if she expected to see her brother's tall form descending.
"Jim—Jim—Jim!" she repeated with twitching lips.
"Nothing's known yet, Amy," I said. "I told you because I wanted you to help me."
Slowly her eyes turned and met mine in a dazed and tearless stare.
"What am I to do?" she murmured.
"We must think of Jim's son," I said. "Keep Violet utterly in the dark at present. Lie to her—anything you like—invent news of Jim. She mustn't see the papers, she mustn't see her letters. As soon as he's reported missing in the papers people will write and sympathize. You and your mother must keep up the play till she's strong enough to be told. And then you must laugh at her fears as I've laughed at yours. Missing? What of it? With millions of men stretching over hundreds of miles——"
The dazed expression left her eyes, and her steadiness of voice and touch as she laid her hand on mine showed me that all the courage of her soul had gone forth to battle and returned triumphant.
"What do you think yourself, George?" she demanded.
"It's long odds against any man now out there returning with a whole skin," I said.
She stood up and looked slowly round the great hall, instinct with the personality of its owner. No word passed her lips, but it was the most eloquent silence I have experienced.
"Come upstairs and see if Violet's awake," she suggested. "He's a beautiful boy."
I found my cousin in a darkened room, leaning back on her pillows, weak-voiced but radiant. She pointed one hand to the far side of the bed, where a nurse stood with a new-born child in her arms.
"James Alexander Erskine Claverhouse-Moray," she whispered. "Poor mite! it isn't fair on him. Jim wouldn't miss any of them out, though."
"If I'm to be one of his godfathers, I shan't allow it," I said. "He shall be Sandy, plain and unadorned. How are you feeling, Vi?"
"So tired, George!" she answered, with a sigh. "I oughtn't to be seeing you, but I want you to do something for me. Will you"—she paused, as though the effort of speaking hurt her—"will you tell Jim you've seen Sandy—plain and unadorned?"
I bent down and kissed her forehead. "Seen him and approved of him," I said. "I'll write to-night."
"Oh, send him a wire."
"I'll wire," I said. "Good night, Violet."
She had dropped asleep before I reached the door. As I walked downstairs, Lady Loring came out of the drawing-room and stood waiting for me by the stairhead. Her round face was as placid as ever, but her eyes were restless.
"Amy has told me everything," she said.
I bowed without speaking.
"Would you prefer to tell Violet, or shall I?" she asked.
"Perhaps, as Jim's mother——"
"I should prefer you to do it," I said, "as soon as you think it's safe."
"Very well. As regards the boy—I've not sent any announcement to the papers."
"I will see to that," I said.
After calling at the offices of "The Times" and "Morning Post," I wrote letters to ten or twelve people including O'Rane and Laurence. Thinking over the events of the day as I walked home from the Club, I could not help feeling that one of the hardest things to bear in all the war was the courage of the women.