Array Sapper - The Complete Works of H. C. McNeile Sapper

The spectators clamoured wildly for an encore, but she rose and came straight up to Vane.

"Where have you been?" she said.

"Unconscious in hospital for ten days," he answered grimly. "I went down in the 'Connaught.' . . . May I congratulate you on your delightful performance?"

For a second or two he thought she was going to faint, and instinctively he put out his arm to hold her. Then the colour came back to her face again, and she put her arm through his.

"I want something to eat. Take me, please. . . . No, no, my dear people, no more," as a throng of guests came round her. "I require food."

Her hand on his arm pushed Vane forward and obediently he led her across the ballroom.

"If there's any champagne get me a glass," she said, sitting down at a table. "And a sandwich. . . ."

Obediently Vane fetched what she desired; then he sat down opposite her.

"The fortnight is up," he said quietly. "I have come for my answer."

"Did you get my letters?" she asked slowly.

"Both. When I came to this morning. And I wasn't going to be called a fool for nothing, my lady—so I got up and came to look for you. What of the excellent Baxter? Is the date for your wedding fixed?"

She looked at him in silence for a moment, and then she began to laugh. "The ceremony in church takes place on his return from France in a week's time."

"Oh! no, it doesn't," said Vane grimly. "However, we will let that pass. May I ask if your entertainment to-night was indicative of the joy you feel at the prospect?"

She started to laugh again, and there was an ugly sound in it. A woman at the next table was looking at her curiously.

"Stop that, Joan," he said in a low, insistent voice. "For God's sake, pull yourself together. . . ."

She stopped at once, and only the ceaseless twisting of her handkerchief between her fingers betrayed her.

"I suppose it wouldn't do to go into a fit of high strikes," she said in a voice she strove vainly to keep steady. "The Mainwarings might think it was their champagne—or the early symptoms of 'flu—or unrequited love. . . . And they are so very respectable aren't they?—the Mainwarings, I mean?"

Vane looked at her gravely. "Don't speak for a bit. I'll get you another glass of champagne. . . ."

But Joan rose. "I don't want it," she said. "Take me somewhere where we can talk." She laid the tips of her fingers on his arm. "Talk, my friend, for the last time. . . ."

"I'm damned if it is," he muttered between his clenched teeth.

She made no answer; and in silence he found two chairs in a secluded corner behind a screen.

"So you went down in the 'Connaught,' did you?" Her voice was quite calm.

"I did. Hence my silence."

"And would you have answered my first letter, had you received it?"

Vane thought for a moment before answering. "Perhaps," he said at length. "I wanted you to decide. . . . But," grimly, "I'd have answered the second before now if I'd had it. . . ."

"I wrote that in your rooms after I'd come up from Blandford," she remarked, with her eyes still fixed on him.

"So I gathered from Mrs. Green. . . . My dear, surely you must have known something had happened." He took one of her hands in his, and it lay there lifeless and inert.

"I thought you were being quixotic," she said. "Trying to do the right thing—And I was tired . . . my God! but I was tired." She swayed towards him, and in her eyes there was despair. "Why did you let me go, my man—why did you let me go?"

"But I haven't, my lady," he answered in a wondering voice. "To-morrow. . . ." She put her hand over his mouth with a little half-stifled groan. "Just take me in your arms and kiss me," she whispered.

And it seemed to Vane that his whole soul went out of him as he felt her lips on his.

Then she leaned back in her chair and looked at him gravely. "I wonder if you'll understand. I wonder still more if you'll forgive. Since you wouldn't settle things for me I had to settle them for myself. . . ."

Vane felt himself growing rigid.

"I settled them for myself," she continued steadily, "or rather they settled me for themselves. I tried to make you see I was afraid, you know . . . and you wouldn't."

"What are you driving at?" he said hoarsely.

"I am marrying Henry Baxter in church in about a week; I married him in a registry office the day he left for France."

Table of Content

A grey mist was blowing up the valley from Cromarty Firth. It hid the low hills that flanked the little branch railway line, slowly and imperceptibly drifting and eddying through the brown trees on their slopes. Down in London a world had gone mad—but the mist took no heed of such foolishness. Lines of men and women, linked arm-in-arm, were promenading Piccadilly to celebrate the End of the Madness; shrieking parties were driving to Wimbledon, or Limehouse, or up and down Bond Street in overweighted taxis, but the mist rolled on silently and inexorably. It took account of none of these things.

Since the beginning a mist such as this one had drifted up the valley from the open sea; until the end it would continue. . . . It was part of the Laws of Nature, and the man who watched it coming turned with a little shudder.

In front of him, the moors stretched brown and rugged till they lost themselves in the snow-capped hills. Here and there the bogland showed a darker tint, and at his feet, cupped out in the smooth greystone, lay a sheet of water. It was dark and evil-looking, and every now and then a puff of wind eddied down from the hills and ruffled the smooth surface.

The colours of the moors were sombre and dark; and below the snows far away in the heart of Ross-shire it seemed to the man who watched with brooding eyes that it was as the blackness of night. A deserted dead world, with a cold grey shroud, to hide its nakedness.

He shivered again, and wiped the moisture from his face, while a terrier beside him crept nearer for comfort.

And then came the change. Swiftly, triumphantly, the sun caught the mist and rolled it away. One by one the rugged lines of hills came into being again—one by one they shouted, "We are free, behold us. . . ."

The first was a delicate brown, and just behind it a little peak of violet loomed up. Away still further the browns grew darker, more rich—the violets became a wondrous purple. And the black underneath the snows seemed to be of the richest velvet.

The pond at the man's feet glinted a turquoise blue; the bogland shone silver in the sunlight. And then, to crown it all, the smooth snow slopes in the distance glowed pink and orange, where before they had been white and cold.

For Life had come to a Land of Death.

Gradually the brooding look on the man's face faded, a gleam of whimsical humour shone in his eyes. He took an old briar out of his pocket and commenced to fill it; and soon the blue smoke was curling lazily upwards into the still air. But he still stood motionless, staring over the moors, his hands deep in the pockets of the old shooting coat he wore.

Suddenly he threw back his head and laughed; then almost unconsciously he stretched out his arms to the setting sun.

"Thank you," he cried, and with a swift whirring of wings two grouse rose near by and shot like brown streaks over the silver tarn. "Sooner or later the mist always goes. . . ."

He tapped out the ashes of his pipe, and put it back in his pocket. And as he straightened himself up, of a sudden it seemed to the man that the mountains and the moors, the tarn and the bogland approved of the change in him, and, finding him worthy, told him their message.

"The Sun will always triumph," they cried in a mighty chorus. "Sooner or later the mist will always go."

For a space the man stood there, while the sun, sinking lower and lower, bathed the world in glory. Then, he whistled. . . .