“I’d like to stop here all night,” Melia said as she rose limply from the bench. “I’d like to stop here forever.”
That was the desire uppermost in the Corporal also, but it would not do to admit it.
Down the road, hand in hand, like two children out late, they trudged in the gathering dusk to Corfield. It was a perfect evening. Just a little ahead was one faint star; over to the left in the noble line of woods that overlooked the river they could hear the nightingale. Once they stopped and held their breaths to listen. They saw the rabbits dart from among the ferns at their feet and run before them along the white road. The evening pressed ever closer upon them as they marched slowly on, until, at a turn in the road, Corfield with its fruit orchards came into view.
It was a long trek home but they were in no hurry to get there. By the time they had come to the old stone bridge which spanned the broad river and united the country with the town it was quite dark and the lamps of the city were shining in the distance.
Midway across the bridge they stopped to take one last look at the Sharrow gleaming down its valley. Since the afternoon this mighty symbol which from earliest childhood had dominated their every recollection seemed to have gained in power, in magic and in mystery.
XXXIII
THE hard and difficult months wore on. Summer passed to autumn; Europe was locked in the most terrible conflict the world had ever seen, but there was no sign of a decision.
Like Britain herself, Blackhampton was in the war to the last man and the last shilling. From the moment the plunge had been taken the conscience and the will of this brotherhood of free peoples had been in grim unison behind the action of its government. The war was no affair of sections or of classes; the issue was so clear that there was no ground for misunderstanding it.