The Complete Works of H. C. McNeile "Sapper". Sapper
malice. . . ."
"We seem," remarked Vane, taking advantage of a temporary lull in the flood, "to have arrived at rather a personal discussion."
"Of course we have," she took him up. "Isn't it I—I—I everywhere? Only a lot of people aren't sufficiently truthful to admit it. It's Number One first all the way through, right from the people up at the top down to the poor brutes in the slums. All the wonderful schemes of reform are for the glory of the schemer first, with the happy recipients amongst the also rans." She paused a moment, and a sudden tender look came into her eyes. "Of course there are exceptions. There's a boy I know—he's a cousin of mine—with weak lungs. Rejected for the Army three times as totally unfit. For the last four years he's been living in a slum off Whitechapel and the people there love him. . . . He just walks in and planks down a pork chop in the back room; or a bottle of Basa, or something and has a talk to the woman . . . he's dying . . . but he's dying happy. . . . I couldn't do that; no more could you. . . . We should loathe it, and so we should be fools to attempt it. . . ."
"I wonder," said Vane slowly. . . . "I wonder."
"No, you don't," she cried. "You don't wonder. . . . You know I'm right. . . . If you loved such a life you'd just do it. . . . And you'd succeed. The people who fail are the people who do things from a sense of duty."
"What a very dangerous doctrine," smiled Vane.
"Perhaps it is," she answered. "Perhaps in my own way I'm groping too; perhaps," and she laughed a little apologetically, "I've fitted my religion to my life. At any rate it's better than fitting other peoples' lives to one's religion. But it seems to me that God," she hesitated, as if at a loss for words to express herself—"that God—and one's surroundings—make one what one is. . . . And unless one is very certain that either God or the surroundings are wrong, it's asking for trouble to go on one's own beaten track. . . . I suppose you think I'm talking out of my turn." She turned and faced him with a slight smile.
"On the contrary," answered Vane, "you have interested me immensely. But you've dodged the one vital question—for me, at any rate. What is the beaten track? Just at present I can't find it?"
"You'll not find it any easier by looking for it too hard," she said thoughtfully. "I'm certain of that. . . . It'll come in a flash to you, when you least expect it, and you'll see it as clear as daylight."
For a while they sat in silence, both busy with their own thoughts.
Then the girl laughed musically.
"To think of me," she gurgled, "holding forth like this. . . . Why, I've never done such a thing before that I can remember." Then of a sudden she became serious. The big grey eyes looked steadily, almost curiously, at the face of the man beside her. "I wonder why," she whispered almost below her breath. "You've been most poisonously rude to me, and yet . . . and yet here am I talking to you as I've never talked to any other man in my life."
Vane stared at the pool for a few moments before he answered. He was becoming uncomfortably aware that grey eyes with a certain type of chin were attractive—very attractive. But his tone was light when he spoke.
"A quarrel is always a sound foundation." He looked up at her with a smile, but her eyes still held that half speculative look. . . .
"I wonder what you would have thought of me," she continued after a moment, "if you'd met me before the war. . . ."
"Why, that children of fifteen should be in bed by ten," he mocked.
"Yes, but supposing I was what I am now, and you were what you were then—and you weren't filled with all these ideas about duty and futures and things. . . ."
"You would have added another scalp to the collection, I expect," said
Vane drily.
They both laughed, then she bent slightly towards him. "Will you forgive me for what I said about—about that woman you were going to see?"
"Why—sure," answered Vane. "I guess you owed me one."
Joan laughed. "We'll wash the first lesson out. Except, of course, for that one thing you said. I mean about—the other. . . . I'd just hate to forget that there's a wedding coming on, and do anything that would make it awkward for me to be asked to the church. . . ."
"You little devil, Joan," said Vane softly, "you little devil."
She laughed lightly and sprang to her feet. "I must be going," she said. "At least three Colonials are waiting for my ministrations." She stood looking down at him. . . . "Are you going to walk back with me, or to resume your study of rodents?"
Vane slipped the book in his pocket. "I'm afraid," he remarked, "that I should not be able to bring that undivided attention to bear on the subject which is so essential for my education. Besides—perhaps you'll have a few minutes to spare after you have dealt with the Colonials. . . ." He parted the branches for her.
"My dear man," she retorted, "You've had far more than your fair official share already. . . ." She scrambled on to the path and Vane fell into step beside her. "And don't forget that you've only just been forgiven. . . ."
"Which makes it all the more essential for me to have continual evidence of the fact," retorted Vane.
"It strikes me," she looked at him suddenly, "that you're not quite as serious as you make out. You've got all the makings of a very pretty frivoller in you anyway."
"I bow to your superior judgment," said Vane gravely. "But I've been commissioned to—er—go and find myself, so to speak, by one who must be obeyed. And in the intervals between periods of cold asceticism when I deal with the highbrows, and other periods when I tackle subjects of national importance first hand, I feel that I shall want relaxation. . . ."
"And so you think you'd like me to fill the role of comic relief," she said sweetly. "Thanks a thousand times for the charming compliment."
"It doesn't sound very flattering put that way, I must admit," conceded Vane with a grin. "And yet the pleasures of life fill a very important part. I want to find myself in them too. . . ."
"I'm glad to see traces of comparative sanity returning," she said, as they turned into the Lodge Gates. "Do you think it's safe to trust yourself to such an abandoned character as I am? What would She who must be obeyed say?"
She looked at him mockingly, and involuntarily Vane frowned slightly. At the moment he felt singularly unwilling to be reminded of Margaret. And he was far too old a stager not to realise that he was heading directly for waters which, though they ran amongst charming scenery, contained quite a number of hidden rocks.
She saw the sudden frown, and laughed very gently. "Poor young man," she murmured; "poor serious young man. Dare you risk it?"
Then Vane laughed too. They had come to the lawn, and her three Colonial patients were approaching. "Put that way," he said, "I feel that it is my bounden duty to take a prolonged course of those pleasures."
"Splendid," she cried, and her eyes were dancing merrily. "Come over and lunch to-morrow. You can have Father and Aunt Jane first. You'll like Aunt Jane, she's as deaf as a post and very bloodthirsty—and then you can begin the course afterwards. One o'clock, and it's about half an hour's walk. . . ."
With a nod she turned and left him. And if those of her friends who knew Joan Devereux well had seen the look in her eyes as she turned to her three Canadians, they would have hazarded a guess that there was trouble brewing. They would further have hazarded a second guess as to the form it was likely to take. And both guesses would have been right. A young man, remarked Joan to herself, who would be all the better for a fall; a young man who seemed very much too sure of himself. Joan Devereux was quite capable of dealing with such cases as they deserved, and she was a young woman of much experience.
CHAPTER VIII
It was the following morning that Vane