Lorraine's notions of military discipline were hazy, but she knew that the keeping back of important papers was an offence of the utmost seriousness, and that if they had fallen into the hands of a spy it might mean a charge of treason. Wild visions of saving Morland at any cost floated through her mind. She felt almost prepared to give herself up to the police and make a confession. Yet how could she do so without involving her friends? She would certainly be asked if she had picked up the case herself, and why she had not returned it immediately to its owner. What would she answer?
"They'd have it all out of me in five minutes when they began cross-questioning, and I should only land Morland in a worse mess than ever," she decided gloomily. "Could Uncle Barton help, I wonder? No, as a special constable he'd be bound to give information. He's no more use than Detective Scott!"
Lorraine sighed, and moved farther along the seat into the shade. It was a broiling afternoon. The sun was pouring down on the grey tower of the little church, and on the mildewed grave stones and the bushes of rosemary and lavender, and the box edging that led to the Norman doorway. A rambler rose rioted over the railings of a monument; its crimson trusses of blossom veiled the broken urn inside. Over the wall the green cliff-side stood out against the gleaming sea. Bees were humming under the archway of the roof. Some swallows scintillated by with gleaming wings. Not a soul was near. She was alone with the sunshine and the birds and the flowers. There flashed across her a strong memory of the day when she and Claudia and Morland had taken their first walk to the cave, and had stopped to look at the church—the Forsaken Merman Church, as Claudia always called it. How happy they had been then, with no terrible shadow hanging over them! She could almost hear Claudia's voice quoting the poem:—
"From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,
But we stood without in the cold blowing airs."
It was just the opposite now, for she sat without in the heat, and there was nobody inside saying prayers. The door stood open—not shut. Something urged her to enter—some impulse so strong and so overpowering that instinctively she rose and walked up the little path between the lines of box edging. It was almost as if an invisible hand led her on, under the groined porch and through the carved Norman doorway. How cool and peaceful it was inside, in the soft, diffused golden light falling on the sandstone pillars through the saint-filled windows.
Though no service was in progress, she had a sense that the prayers of many generations lingered in the place, and made it holy. The haloed saints in the east window smiled down at her with calm eyes. Had they ever been in trouble as she was to-day? In their white robes and with palms in their hands, they looked so infinitely removed from the twentieth century. Yet their own times must have seemed absolutely modern to them. There was nothing in their lives which could not be also in ours. The same All-Father who gave them that perfect peace could give it surely to us.
In the dim shadow of the chancel she dropped on her knees and prayed—not a stilted, formal prayer, but a sort of intense, white-hot, wordless passion of entreaty for that bright-haired boy whose life was going so wrong.
As she rose to her feet again her eyes fell on the carved oak balustrade of the gallery at the west end. It was the place where Landry had been wont to sit and listen when Morland played the organ. She could almost see him now, with his parted lips and far-away blue eyes, and the sunlight from the window behind making a halo of his hair. She wondered how the church looked from his vantage point. She had never been into the gallery. She walked slowly down the nave and up the dusty, worm-eaten flight of stairs into the cobwebby regions above. There was a low bench facing the balustrade. She moved along it, and sat down in Landry's seat. There was no dreamy, haunting music to-day from the organ, filling the church like the murmur of the sea. Morland had sterner work to do in the world now than to improvise nocturnes. How rapt his face had been as the grand harmonies came thrilling from his fingers! Was this the exact angle from which Landry had viewed him? She moved slightly farther along, and in doing so kicked some object with her foot. She stooped to pick it up. It was something quite small, and covered with dust. She held it up to look at it by the light from the window. Then, with a little gasping sob, she fell back on to the seat.
It was nothing more nor less than the lost pocket-case.
Landry! They had never thought of Landry! He had been with them in the cave when they hid it inside the cupboard. Lorraine remembered now how he had made confused reference to papers and Morland going to the war, and how Claudia had soothed him, and told him to pick shells on the beach. Without doubt he must have taken the case with some dazed belief that by so doing he was hindering the authorities from sending his brother to the front. Perhaps that was the mysterious secret he was babbling about in bed to-day. The case might have lain for months in the dust, if Lorraine had not chanced to come into the gallery this afternoon. Chanced! There was no such thing as chance! Surely it was the answer to that intense, voiceless thought-wave of prayer, in which her groping spirit had for a moment soared into a higher plane and touched the fringes of the eternal world.