The Complete Works of H. C. McNeile "Sapper". Sapper
over the short, angular writing, picking up a phrase here and there. "Gordon to be considered. . . . It means practical penury at Blandford, comparative affluence if we go. . . .
"If I could lay my hand on a hundred thousand it might pull things through till the country is more or less settled once again; that is if it ever does get settled. If labour goes on as it is at present, I suppose we shall have to be grateful for being allowed to live at all. . . ."
Vane looked at Joan, who was still staring at the floor in front of her, and almost mechanically he returned her the letter. . . .
"You've known this was coming, Joan," he said at last. . . .
"Of course," she answered. "But it doesn't make it any better now it has. One always hopes." She shrugged her shoulders, and looked up at him. "Give me a cigarette, Derek, I don't think I'd have minded quite so much if it hadn't come to-day. . . ."
He held out the match for her, and then with his elbow on the mantelpiece he stood watching her. She seemed inert, lifeless, and the contrast with the laughing, happy girl at dinner hit him like a blow. If only he could help—do something; but a hundred thousand was an absurdity. His total income was only about fifteen hundred a year. And as if to torment him still more there rose before his mind the cold, confident face of Henry Baxter. . . .
"Joan—does it matter so frightfully much giving up Blandford?"
She looked at him for a moment, with a sort of amazement on her face.
"My dear," she said, "I simply can't imagine life without Blandford.
It's just part of me. . . ."
"But when you marry you wouldn't live there yourself," he argued.
She raised her eyebrows. "Pride of place belongs to women as much as to men," she answered simply. "Why, Derek, don't try to pretend that you don't understand that." She gave a little tired laugh. "Besides, it's Dad—and Gordon. . . ."
"And you'd sacrifice yourself for them," he cried. "Not to keep them from want, don't forget—but to keep them at Blandford!" She made no answer, and after a while he went on. "I said I'd come to-morrow, Joan, and ask you to decide; but this letter alters things a bit, my dear. I guess we've got to have things out now. . . ."
The girl moved restlessly and rested her head on her hand.
"You've said it once, lady; I want to hear you say it again. 'Do you love me?'"
"Yes; I love you," she said without the slightest hesitation.
"And would you marry me if there was no Blandford?"
"To-morrow," she answered simply, "if you wanted it."
With a sudden ungovernable rush of feeling Vane swept her out of the chair into his arms, and she clung to him panting and breathless.
"My dear," he said exultantly, "do you suppose that after that I'd let you go? Not for fifty Blandfords. Don't you understand, my grey girl? You've got your sense of proportion all wrong. You're mine—and nothing else on God's green earth matters."
So for a while they stood there, while he smoothed her hair with hands that trembled a little and murmured incoherent words of love. And then at last they died away, and he fell silent—while she looked at him with tired eyes. The madness was past, and with almost a groan Vane let his arms fall to his side.
"Dear man," she said, "I want you to go; I can't think when you're with me. I've just got to worry this thing out for myself. I don't want you to come and see me, Derek, until I send for you; I don't want you even to write to me. I don't know how long it will take. . . . but I'll let you know, as soon as I know myself."
For a while he argued with her—but it was useless. In the bottom of his heart he knew it would be even as he pleaded and stormed. And, because he recognised what lay behind her decision, he loved her all the more for her refusal. There was a certain sweet wistfulness on her face that tore at his heart, and at last he realised that he was failing her, and failing her badly. It was a monstrous thing from one point of view that such a sacrifice should be possible—but it came to Vane with cynical abruptness that life abounds in monstrous things.
And so, very gently, he kissed her. "It shall be as you say, dear," he said gravely. "But try not to make it too long. . . ."
At the door he stopped and looked back. She was standing as he had left her, staring out into the darkness, and as he paused she turned and looked at him. And her eyes were very bright with unshed tears. . . .
Mechanically he picked up his hat and gloves, and drove back to his rooms. He helped himself to a whisky and soda of such strength that Binks looked at him with an apprehensive eye, and then he laughed.
"Hell, Binks," he remarked savagely—"just Hell!"
CHAPTER XIV
During the weeks that followed Vane did his best to put Joan out of his mind. He had given her his promise not to write, and as far as in him lay he tried his hardest not to think. A Medical Board passed him fit for light duty, and he joined up at the regimental depot in the cathedral city of Murchester. Once before he had been there, on a course, before he went overseas for the first time, and the night he arrived he could not help contrasting the two occasions. On the first he, and everyone else, had had but one thought—the overmastering desire to get across the water. The glamour of the unknown was calling them—the glory which the ignorant associate with war. Shop was discussed openly and without shame. They were just a band of wild enthusiasts, only longing to make good.
And then they had found what war really was—had sampled the reality of the thing. One by one the band had dwindled, and the gaps had been filled by strangers. Vane was sitting that night in the chair where Jimmy Benton had always sat. . . . He remembered Jimmy lying across the road near Dickebush staring up at him with sightless eyes. So had they gone, one after another, and now, how many were left? And the ones that had paid the big price—did they think it had been worth while . . . now? . . . They had been so willing to give their all without counting the cost. With the Englishman's horror of sentimentality or blatant patriotism, they would have regarded with the deepest mistrust anyone who had told them so. But deep down in each man's heart—it was England—his England—that held him, and the glory of it. Did they think their sacrifice had been worth while . . . now? Or did they, as they passed by on the night wind, look down at the seething bitterness in the country they had died for, and whisper sadly, "It was in vain—You are pulling to pieces what we fought to keep standing; you have nothing but envy and strife to put in its place. . . . Have you not found the truth—yet? . . ."
Unconsciously, perhaps, but no less certainly for that, Vane was drifting back into the same mood that had swayed him when he left France. If what Ramage had said to him was the truth; if, at the bottom of all the ceaseless bickering around, there was, indeed, a vital conflict between two fundamentally opposite ideas, on the settlement of which depended the final issue—it seemed to him that nothing could avert the catastrophe sooner or later. It was against human nature for any class to commit suicide—least of all the class which for generations had regarded itself and been regarded as the leading one. And yet, unless this thing did happen; unless voluntarily, the men of property agreed to relinquish their private rights, and sink their own interests for the good of the others, Ramage had quite calmly and straightforwardly prophesied force. Apparently the choice lay between suicide and murder. . . .
It all seemed so hopelessly futile to Vane. He began to feel that only over the water lay Reality; that here, at home, he had discovered a Land of Wild Imaginings. . . .
Though he refused to admit it to himself, there was another, even more potent, factor to account for his restlessness. Like most Englishmen, however black the outlook, however delirious the Imagining, he had, deep down in his mind, the ingrained conviction that the country would muddle through somehow. But the other factor—the personal factor—Joan, was very different. Try as he would he could not dismiss her from