They Are Not Far

by Henry C. Rowland

They Are Not Far

By Henry C. Rowland

Author of “The Shaming of Andy McGill,” “Utopia,” Etc.

 

Doctor Rowland dips into spiritualism a bit in this story of rivalry in love and the desire of a departed warrior to aid his best friend in earthly affairs. When it comes to the depiction of a contest over a woman, you all know that Rowland has no superior, and in setting forth feminine charm he is likewise at his best. But there are features to this that he has not touched upon in his many other fine contributions to the literature of American life of to-day.

 

(A Novelette)

 

ALTHOUGH deeply grieved, Jim Davies was not surprised to learn that his chum Donald McKinloch had been killed in action. The news came while Jim was in a hospital convalescent from a wound and after the first pang of sorrow had abated it occurred to him that Donald's death had entailed a certain responsibility, though of what character he had not yet the remotest idea.

The two young officers had been war brothers, their intimacy beginning on the transport aboard which the Canadian regiment had embarked. It was rather a curious friendship, that of the wild Highlander who loved his bayonet as a drunkard loves his dram, and the quiet, cynical New Yorker, sportsman, clubman, and idler who fought with a sort of nonchalant ferocity quite equal to Donald's berserk rage.

The odd part about it was that the ties of sympathy which bound them had never evoked personal confidences or the history of their separate pasts, and neither knew or cared particularly what these might have held. The friendship was a by-product of the battlefield and purely of the present. Jim had heard indirectly that Donald was the second son of a Scotch baronet and that a few years before he had emigrated to the Northwest where he had bought a ranch. He had also a vague idea that the Scotsman was engaged to a girl out there, or a girl who had been out there with her father, who was a mining engineer, or something of the sort.

They had made their compact during a monotonous period of repose, partly in fun to pass the time, partly realizing that it had its serious side and that either might any day be called upon to fulfill his part of the obligation. This was that if one of them were to be killed in action, the other would carry out faithfully and to the best of his ability the three behests contained in a letter exchanged. As Jim had seen Donald chuckling over the conclusion of his, he did not take the compact with any great concern.

Well, here was the whole regiment shot to pieces and Jim presently to rejoin it with the rank of major, which from the way things were going he might hope to exercise for a day or so. Donald, he reflected, had probably got a short head start of him for Walhalla, and that was about all. So it was more with the idea of having a few moments' sad amusement than anything else that he took the sealed letter from his port folio, and, limping out on the terrace, sought a quiet place to examine it.

The first thing presented for his inspection was the photograph of a girl. It was a very pretty girl, quite a beauty, in fact, so far as one could tell from the snapshot. She was in riding costume, khaki blouse open at the throat with elbow sleeves, short skirt, and long, buttoned, leather leggings. A pistol swung in its holster from her belt, and she held a short, cavalry carbine. She was bareheaded and smiling, her face principally mouth and eyes with what appeared to be a good deal of dark, curly hair. Jim reflected with a stab of sorrow that here was precisely the sort of full-powered, out-of-door girl that Donald should have lived to marry.

He took out the letter which was closely written in a small, round, regular hand in strange contrast to the writer's large, square, angular person. But Donald, Jim reflected, was a wielder of the pen as well as the sword, an Oxonian, a hard student of philosophic mind, and given at times to the composition of verses, these usually of a spiritual character and possessed of considerable merit. Like many Scotch Highlanders, he had his strongly spiritual side, and in their conversation had often referred casually to occult experiences which, coming from another, Jim would have regarded as pose or mental unstability. Of recent months, however, he had been far less sure about his materialistic findings.

If Jim had been a sensitive person the opening of the letter would have given him a shock: “Well, here I am looking over your shoulder as you read, Jimmy, lad,” it began. Jim looked around and, seeing no form which could in any way be attributed to the shade of his friend, proceeded: “Though you are such a material lump of Yankee, practically, that you couldn't see me if I were offering you Von Hindy's helmet, with his head inside it. I'll bet the auld laird will have seen me by this time, and Jock, the gamekeeper, and a lot of others in the old place. But not Mary Wishart, because she's as material as you, God bless her. God bless you both.

“In time of peace prepare for war, Jimmy, old top, and by the same token, in time of war prepare for peace. That's what we've all been trying our best to do for this jolly old earth and, God help us, will do, if some weak-kneed bunch of meddling politicians don't manage to butt in and spoil it all. That would make some of us missing members of the mess sore, wouldn't it?

“But there's another kind of peace we fighting men ought to think about a little, my boy, and prepare for the best we can. That's an individual peace, so that when we're relieved from duty on this material plane we can chuck it and report for duty higher up. We don't want to leave any more loose ends or interests that need watching, and will keep us hanging around tormented and unhappy because there's no longer anything we can do about it. I reckon a chap that's been a good soldier—or a good civilian for that matter—and played the game won't have to wait long for his promotion, but, all the same, he might want to turn it down and rot around indefinitely if he happened to be worried about somebody that was still limbered up to impedimenta of the flesh.

“That's the way I feel about Mary Wishart, the dear lass whom I am to marry one day, if God so wills. There is no sweeter, warmer-hearted, lovelier girl walks the earth this day, Jimmy lad, and, no doubt, she loves me true. But for all that, my getting in the way of a bit of boche shrapnel or machine gun spray is no reason at all why Mary should go unloving, unloved, and unwed. I cannot see one so rich in all woman's gifts going through the long life which God may grant her a spinster. This would not be good for her evolution, mon chèr, nor would I wish it even if she did, which is not likely, for she is a sensible, sonsy lass and not one to repine beyond the decent interval for a red-blooded lump of brawn and bone like Donald McKinloch that loved her as strong men have loved sweet women since the world began, and not having lived to form the divine partnership of wedlock, pleads no claim to her immortal soul.

“Therefore, Jimmy, dear, since I cannot wed Mary myself and desire that she should be wed and lead her full and natural life, it is my wish that she wed you, my dearest friend, and the bravest, cleanest-hearted gentleman I ever knew.”

Jim stopped reading and let his eyes rest on the shell-torn tower of the church across the square. His eyes felt hot, and there was a lump in his throat. For the moment he did actually seem almost to feel his friend's near presence. This, in an impersonal way, was the kind of philosophy he was accustomed to from Donald and used to laugh at without bothering himself to reflect upon. Well, apparently it had stood the supreme test.

“Some legacy,” said Jim to himself, and smiled. “Got Liberty Bonds beat off the earth, and they take a bit of beating.”

But though touched and even amused in a melancholy way, he did not take the behest very seriously. For one thing, he doubted but that he would be relieved of all responsibility in regard to it a little later when the morass of battlefields dried out a little. For another, even supposing that he were to carry it out in making a formal request for the hand of his dead friend's fiancée, the chances were about one in a thousand of her consenting to consider herself in the light of a legacy. This, at least, is about the way the bet looked to Jim. Those who knew him, or even a stranger examining his personality as he sat there on the terrace, would have felt safe in offering far better odds.

After a moment of reflection on the fantasy, he picked up the letter and continued its perusal:

“Now, why then, laddie, am I so set that you and Mary should make a match of it? Well, then, I may as well 'fess up that my wish is not so noble and high-souled as at first sight it might appear. To be frank, it would save me a power of jealousy and bitter hate which might work ill for Mary and would be sure to react against my own peace and ghostly happiness. You know, lad, I have and share the ideas of many a wiser man than myself about the continued consciousness of those relieved from the stuffy quarters of their bodies, and I know that it would be the worst kind of impotent hell for me to see Mary in the arms of another. But were she to lie safely in yours, I would be happy at heart and, giving you both my blessing, get on about interesting myself in the rank above. And the worst of it is, Jimmy, lad, I am convinced that as sure as our own straight shooting if you do not marry her yourself she will marry the worst swine, slacker, and all-round rotter that ever claimed exemption for agricultural production; my own cousin Colin McClellan McKinloch.

“I could see the danger before ever I enlisted, Jimmy, boy, and I promised Colin the licking of his life if he so much as made eyes at Mary while I was gone, and this brings me to the second term of our agreement. If so be that he has, do you look him up and take him out and beat him into a pulp. Put a mug on him that not even the best face restorer of the army medical corps could plastic surger into the faintest semblance of a human phiz. I will be near by enjoying the fulfillment of my second behest. 'Twill be no easy job, as Colin is physically a man of my own build and has it over you by some two stone, and enjoys the use of his fists, but you will manage it. It was avarice, not cowardice, that kept him out of the war, and he is in constant training from his outdoor life, but I know the bunch of barbed wire and toluol you are inside, Jimmy, and I have no fears.

I wish I could be half as sure about the first.

“Mind you now, Jimmy, in requiring these two services of you I consider myself rather as conferring a benefaction than asking one.

“And so to the third and last request which is a slight matter and concerns only that part of me which may still retain a lingering carnal appetite. You will remember my telling you how in civil life I was fond of my drop of auld peat-reek, and, on receiving my commission, swore to remain T.T. for the duration of the war which oath, though often sorely tried, I have kept to its dismal letters. I had promised myself a wee drop or two at the end of the war, and I do not like to be bilked of it.

“Now as my investigations have seemed to indicate that a man of strong, earthly appetites does not lose them all at once on being torn roughly from his mortal envelope, and as it may be that I shall have to rot around here for some while, I would request, old top, that when you are by way of taking a drink in private you might put a little in an atomizer and spray the circumambient ether, thinking of me the time. I do not know that this will work, but it is worth the trying.”

Jim understood suddenly why Donald had chuckled in writing the peculiar testament. He laughed himself, albeit with a bit of a choke. Poor old Donny! Jim had more than once observed the gleam in his eye when some of the other chaps were taking a drink after a night of freezing mud.

“There may be something in it, and again there may be not,” he continued, “but the ancients poured libations to their dead and at any rate it is a cheerful thought. Do you mind the whisky advertisement of the young laird about to take his noggin while sitting in his ancestral hall and his kilted forbears stepping down from their frames upon the wall to reach for the bottle? Now, it seems to me that an atomizer might do the trick, the volatile vapor being more within the reach of a wraith. I wish to be as cheerful a ghost as may be while waiting for promotion.

“So there you are, Jim of my heart, Captain Donald McKinloch, his last living requests: to marry Mary Wishart and make her a loving and faithful husband; to punch the head of my cousin Colin, and from time to time to give my poor old ghost a ghostly drink.

“You may show this letter to Mary if you like. She is a sensible girl and will see the reasonableness of it. And so, dear lad, God bless and keep you and grant you many years of the happiness denied me through harrying the Hun.

“Donald Stuart McKinloch.”

Jim scarcely knew whether laughter or tears was the proper tribute to this singular document so, to make sure, he gave a cackle of the former accompanied by the secretion of a drop or two of the latter.

One rather singular effect it had, however, and that was to make his chum seem astonishingly near. He leaned back in his chair and wondered if, after all, there might not be something in it all. Jim had never believed in such stuff, but of recent months he had stopped scoffing at it. This was becoming true of the fighting body as a whole, especially those who had been at Mons. He himself had talked with a number of sane and intelligent men whom nothing would convince that they had not seen a spirit host, though whether composed of angels or fallen warriors or the ghostly army of Jeanne d'Arc they were not prepared to say. all agreed, however, that, wherever hastily recruited, it had saved France and the allied cause.

From his brief consideration of the possible relations between the quick and the dead, Jim turned to that of the letter itself, puzzled at how much of the bizarre mixture of sense and nonsense Donald might have expected him to take seriously. There were many parts where the flippancy seemed to mask a strong and deep desire while others, such as spraying the air with alcohol on the off chance that the ethereal or astral body of his friend might find means of absorbing some of it, struck Jim as being not only fantastic, but a bit profane. Even supposing Donald's ghost to have a strong and unslaked alcoholic affinity which might be soothed in this way, it did not seem ethical to pander to it. The result might be merely to keep the restless shade hanging about like a barroom deadhead and seriously interfere with its higher evolution.

The desire for the chastisement of his cousin Colin seemed also unworthy a brave man who had just laid down his life for the cause of humanity. Carrying out such a behest would be embarrassing, also. Jim had never objected to a fight of any kind when this became incumbent, but he reflected that he would feel no end of a fool in going up to a harmless stranger and saying: “I beg your pardon, but your cousin Donald, who was killed while leading his company over the top, instructed me before his death to poke you in the jaw the first thing on my return——”

Still, these conditions could be carried out to the letter with a little personal effort. But that of marrying Miss Mary Wishart was quite a different matter, both in motive and achievement. Here again, however, Donald's object appeared to be inspired less by a desire for the lady's, or even Jim's happiness than to save his own post-mortem feelings impotent passions of jealousy and hate. Jim did not believe it possible that the two could have been very much in love. Donald's emotion must have been no more than a very powerful physical and to some extent mental attraction, otherwise he would not have relinquished so cheerfully all spiritual claims. Donald himself was only spiritual with his mind, or, to be more concise, with his reason. As for Mary, her sentiment was, no doubt, of about the same order. Jim thought it probable that her inclination might have been vacillating between Donald and Colin, but that Donald had won out by joining the colors. Donald's expressed conviction that she would marry Colin if not prevented seemed to argue this.

Much perplexed, then, as to the actual weight of his obligation, Jim read the letter through again, this time to arrive at an entirely different conclusion. Certain sincere paragraphs of the texts troubled him greatly. It read just as Donald talked; a superficial mockery covering a deeper serious intention. There could be no doubt but that Donald really believed himself destined to frequent the objects of his greatest attachments and wanted that for which he asked. And the worst of it was that, for all Jim knew, he might be right.

This thought was very disturbing, and presently it was supplemented by another which both simplified and complicated the business. Right or wrong, was not Jim as Donald's closest friend and by virtue of their agreement in duty bound to carry out his instructions to the best of his ability? If Donald had required him to clamber to the top of the pyramid of Cheops and hoot three times like an owl, Jim's blind promise would have ordained that the silly business be performed.

Wherefore with a sigh he decided that the only way to be sure would be to follow out the injunctions to the letter, and upon this he passed a resolution which was lightened by the reflection that, by the time he was in a position to act upon it, Mary would, no doubt, be married to Colin and Donald ordered to some higher plane. Jim did not believe that so fine a man and good a soldier as his chum would be left very long to wander unassigned. Such a wretched state, as he had always understood, was rather the fate of selfish, evil souls or those of infidels.

This determination to see the thing through if still alive was a great relief to Jim's mind, and his nurse appearing at that moment with a medicine glass containing the two ounces of brandy ordered for him thrice daily, he asked her kindly to set it down for him to sip at his leisure. When the girl had gone he limped to his locker and obtained a small atomizer which he had been wont to use after a gas attack. Pouring the contents of the medicine glass into the empty flask, he said: “Well, here's looking at you, Donny, old cock-o'-the-hills,” and vigorously sprayed the enveloping atmosphere.

II.

In the year which followed Jim found himself so busily engaged in contingents of the enemy with which he was in touch from the material to the astral plane that he found little time to contemplate his responsibilities to a friend who might still be sojourning there. He had, however, read that part of Donald's letter to three of their mutual friends and fellow officers and, considerably to his surprise after considering the matter rather thoughtfully, one of them affirmed that there might be something in it as he had once read in a treatise on theosophy that entities of the astral plane were still to some extent material and able to absorb certain physical emanations. He advised, therefore, that Jim be cautious with the atomizer lest it interfere with Donald's promotion.

Then, in the early spring of 1918, Jim got his disabling wound, and the D.S.C. Three months of blighty followed, but it did not matter much as the heel of his right foot and the elbow of his left arm had been shorn away and his fighting days were over.

In due time Jim was honorably discharged and resumed civilian habits and apparel. Proceeding then to New York to attend to some matters of business, he found himself presently back in his old haunts but with a curious sense of detachment and nervous restlessness. It seemed impossible that he could ever resume his former purposeless existence. For one thing it belonged to conditions which no longer appeared to exist, and, even if they had, he would not have wanted them. Most of his old associates were scattered, the great majority of them in some form of war service, several dead, and all extremely busy. Jim cursed the bad luck which had almost put him hors de combat and wondered what he was going to do with himself.

The war appeared to be tottering on its last legs. It was still painful for him to walk, and his left arm was ankylosed at a right angle, useful enough for the ordinary things, as he could flex though not extend it. Otherwise he was in splendid physical shape, but mentally in a most unaccustomed State of nervous depression and irritability. There seemed to be absolutely nothing in sight which was in the slightest degree worth while.

It was then that, for the first time, he began to think seriously of his agreement with Donald and to see in it instead of a farcical and perfunctory duty a possibly interesting adventure. He had not the slightest fear in the world that Mary Wishart, if still unmarried, would take seriously his formal offer of matrimony, but he decided to make it if only to satisfy his conscience, which was exacting about some things. And then, picking up the morning paper, he was startled to read that Miss Mary Wishart, of the Canadian Red Cross, had just arrived from France on four months' sick leave to recover from wounds and shell shock received in the bombing of a base hospital where she was serving as a nurse. “Miss Wishart,” read the paragraph, “expects to spend a part of the summer at the country home of Mr. and Mrs. Doremus Gibbons, at Roslyn, L.I.”

Acting on the impulse of the moment, Jim went to the telephone and called up Mrs. Gibbons, a lifelong friend, and asked if he might run out in his car for luncheon. He received in reply a summary command to run out for the week's end and as much longer as he might be free to manage. It seemed to Jim, as he told the club valet to pack his things, that the shades of Donald must still be active on the astral plane. He had long since discontinued the atomized libations, but now, seized by the whim of the moment, he took his flask, poured some brandy into an atomizer, and sprayed it vigorously in front of the electric fan which was doing its best to whip the humid heat into some activity. The only appreciable reaction from this kind thought was on the valet who, entering at this moment with some clothes, showed symptoms of being gassed as he struck the tainted gale.

Jim had his car brought around from the garage, then dismissed the chauffeur and drove out alone. He had formed the habit of doing everything for himself which he could decently accomplish, and, although a bit awkward for him to drive a car, which he had bought shortly before the war and had scarcely made acquaintance with, he managed fairly well. Immediately on starting he found that his brakes were working badly, the hand brake gripping and that of the foot too loose, making its control particularly difficult and even painful owing to his damaged heel. The big car was by no means under perfect control, and ordinarily Jim would have driven directly to the garage and had the brakes adjusted, but he had been late in starting, and the low barometer and sweltering heat threatened some sort of violent eruption, so he held on his way without stopping and with the exercise of greater care than made driving a pleasure.

It was an intensely disagreeable day, not only because of the high temperature and humidity, but owing to the low pressure which seemed to leave one's nerves unsustained; one of those days when lovers squabble and good dogs snap and it is necessary to double the guard in the insane asylums. Jim, whose nerves had been irritable enough recently, felt the low tension even in the strong, artificial draft which he created, and his wounds were tender, especially the remnant of heel on the foot controlling the brake.

Both brakes had been steadily getting worse and likewise Jim's nerves, what with the strain of constant watchfulness and the increasing soreness of his heel. He had been driving fast, for the pervading murk was growing blacker in the west and promised some sort of atmospheric explosion before very long. He could not tell how soon it might burst, and was in a hurry to arrive and have the disagreeable run over with. All of the traffic seemed imbued with the same idea, and it had been unpleasant going through towns. Even his gas engine seemed to have a grouch, and was firing fitfully owing to poor carburetion.

The Gibbons estate was a large one and, after skirting Roslyn, Jim, who had been out there several times before, happened to remember a short cut which would cut out a hill and take him in the back way. This was scarcely more than a lane winding between a thick growth of scrub pines and, coming to it presently, Jim turned in regardless of a small sign which said, “Private Way. Motor Cars Forbidden.” He considered himself a privileged character and that the peculiar circumstances warranted an infraction of proprietary rules. But when one disobeys one should exercise a certain caution, and Jim did not, so that, as he coasted down a steep little dip with a curve at the bottom, he pitched suddenly on a pair of equestrians walking their horses in the same direction.

Jim horned and did his best to brake without taking a skid, observing, as he did so, that the pair, a man and a girl, were riding very close together and that the man, a broad-shouldered chap in shirtwaist and loud checked riding breeches, was about to venture some sort of amorous tentative. His arm was, in fact, half raised as Jim burst in upon them.

And then came trouble. The girl, who was smartly costumed and riding astride, reined her horse off the lane, which was at this point very narrow. The man on the contrary pulled up short, squarely in the middle and looked back over his shoulder with a scowl. His face was long and rather narrow and struck Jim as being familiar. There was no room to pass, the foot brake was slipping, and Jim, in desperation, threw in the hand one which promptly gripped, locking both wheels. The track was sandy, and the heavy car slid along a few feet and came to a stop but not quite soon enough, as the radiator, which was hot, touched the fretting horse's rump.

None but a masterly horseman could have kept his seat as the startled, high-strung hunter bounded into the air. Even then it was touch and go for a moment, and Jim rather expected to see the rider in a treetop before he got his mount in hand. The girl, a little ahead, drew rein and turned when Jim saw, to his surprise, that she wore a tulle veil which, though the day was stifling, entirely hid her face. She was a straight, full-bosomed girl with dark, wavy hair, but Jim was for the moment more interested in her escort, who had got control of his horse and turned on Jim white to the ears with fury.

“Ye damned idiot——” he rasped, in a harsh, strident voice. “Can ye not read? What right have ye bucketin' through a forbidden way in your filthy gas wagon?”

“I'm sorry,” Jim answered. “My brakes have gone bad. all the same, I would not have touched you if you hadn't reined back into me.”

“Y're a dirty liar. Ye thought to get me off, ye blighter,” he spurred to the side off the car. “This will teach ye to mind your step,” and before Jim could realize the vicious intention the bamboo riding crop whistled through the air and came down with a savage cut which glanced from the side of his head and struck him on the shoulder.

“Colin!” cried a muffled voice, and the girl spurred forward. The man might have struck again, but his horse flung up its head and backed away.

Jim snapped off the current and slid out from under the wheel. The gathering murk seemed suddenly to change its hue from venous blue to a lurid, throbbing red. His cap had been knocked-off by the blow and his lean, square face was white to the roots of his curly, chestnut hair. Standing in the road beside the car he tried twice before able to speak, and then his voice was like the croak of a raven.

“Get down, you mucker, and take your licking,” he managed to say.

The gleam in the pale eyes was almost exultant. “Now I will just oblige ye, me lad.” Colin' slipped from his horse and handed the rein to the girl. “'Tis not often one has the pleasure of thrashin' a road hog.” He pushed back his cuffs and advanced on Jim, and he was a formidable figure of a man with his broad shoulders, deep chest, and long, powerful arms. They were not so badly matched to the casual eye; about of a height and weight and approximately the same age, which was thirty-one or two. Both had the look of hard, out-of-door men in the full flush of their strength. Their faces were widely different in feature and expression, that of the horseman being rather long and narrow though with a heavy-angled jaw and pointed chin while Jim's was more square, with straight nose, widely spaced eyes, prominent cheek bones, and a more generous mouth. Colin's expression was one of exultant ferocity. He looked like some wild Pict from the hills about to fall upon an hereditary foe with claymore and skene dhu.

But for all his savagery the man's face was vacant as compared to the peculiar deathly, expressionless mask which confronted him and the significance of which he failed to understand. It was that face which comes only to men who for a lapse have laid aside their soul to slay until slain in a vortex of horrors. It is the cosmic war face, and the intelligence behind it is for the time devoid of all emotion, perhaps even that of hate or blood lust. It is the trained killer's face, and it does not react to any consciousness of ruth or fear or mercy or even glut, merely because these qualities are in abeyance. This terrible war face would not be recognized by most; its fearsome abstraction would escape or deceive even an enemy until he gazed upon it for a brief instant with the bayonet through his breast.

So now it deceived Colin, who was wont to battle with normal-looking folk and mistook this for a sort of apathy of shock. But the mounted girl saw it differently.

“Don't, Colin—don't!” she cried sharply. “Can't you see? He means to kill you!”

“Does he, now?” cried Colin mockingly. “Then the white-jowled blighter had best get right about it,” and he sprang in with a quick, jabbing feint. A withering straight punch of the left was behind it. Jim blocked this with the heavy bony callous of his ankylosed elbow and Colin gasped with pain. It numbed his fist for a moment, and Jim, pivoting, drove his right into the mouth, gashing his knuckles and rocking the man's strong, even teeth. He might have followed it with the left in a swing at the jaw which, if it had landed, would have finished the fight then and there, but the reach was lacking in his bent arm.

Then for a moment the fighting was close and vicious, both men scorning to spar and satisfied with give and take. Neither attempted to clinch. Jim was trying with a cold and unemotional doggedness to maneuver an uppercut to the chin which might let in all the force of his big subscapular muscles, and presently he achieved it, though with too short a hook to more than jar his adversary. Both were cut and bleeding, both breathing in labored gasps, but both were men of heavy bony frame able to support the cruel battering.

Jim's lack of heel was no appreciable handicap. It may, perhaps, have been even an advantage, its absence having given greater strength and spring to the muscular calf. Colin's rage was beginning to abate under the punishment and the growing knowledge that he had got to use his head. He was an experienced boxer, and Jim's persistent refusal to use a straight jab of the left began to bother him. Two or three times he had ducked in expectation of it, and now began to think that there was some deep guile behind it; something which was being saved up for him. He grew a little wary, and Jim taunted him in cold, contemptuous tones.

“Better get your crop, slacker,” he croaked through his gashed lips. “Try the loaded end.”

The girl spurred forward, but her horse refused to thrust itself against the striking figures. Perhaps it was frightened by the scent of fresh blood. “Stop it!” she cried “That's enough—stop it!”

Suddenly she brought her own crop down on the horse's quivering flank and it sprang forward, striking Jim with its shoulder. The girl's intention was not unfair. She wanted only to separate these two stubborn battlers. But the shove spoiled Jim's balance, and Colin was quick to profit by it in a full swing at the right jaw. Jim dropped his head and caught it on the side of the forehead which Colin's seal ring gashed to the bone. Jim was sent reeling by the sheer weight of the blow and, as he recovered himself, dazed and nearly stunned, he seemed to see the broad back of a man in khaki who stepped between Colin and himself. Colin must have seen it, too, for he stooped and stood for a brief instant, staring wildly.

“Wha—what——” he cried, then drew his bleeding knuckles across his eyes. Jim did the same. His own eyes were nearly closed, but when he looked again he saw only Colin facing him with a bewildered look. The girl's horse snorted, sprang violently backward, and stood shivering and sweating. There came a sudden heavy crash of thunder and a cold draft of air swept through the pines.

“Seein' things, are you?” Jim taunted. “Come to it, swine. I'll show you something with flesh and bone.”

“You saw—saw——”

“I see something yellow. Here's where you get it——”

He clenched his teeth which were loosened in their sockets, and lurched forward. Colin snarled in his throat and struck a heavy blow which reached Jim's cheek. Another struck him on the mouth, but glanced downward. And then, seeing that he rocked unsteadily with no effort to strike back, Colin sprang in to finish it, and gave Jim the chance for which he had been waiting. He dropped his left shoulder, the stiffened elbow far back, the left fist almost to his knee. Then up it came in a terrific swinging jab, the rotation from the waist and all the power of loin and back to drive it. With the precision of a calculation in gunnery it landed squarely under Colin's jaw between its angle and the point of the chin, and that was the end of the world for Colin. It is extremely doubtful if he ever felt the blow at all.

III.

Jim sat on the step of his car and peered at the girl through the slits in his billowing eyelids. She had slipped from the saddle, and, throwing the reins of the two bridles over a branch, was now examining the pulpy mass of what had so few minutes before been her haughty cavalier.

Jim knew, of course, that she was Mary Wishart. He had guessed that even before he had brought his car to a stop. Watching her now, he was also able to guess why she wore the tulle veil, and it sent a little shiver through him. Something had happened her face in the bombing by the Hun of that hospital. Perhaps it had been blown away.

It struck him now that her examination of Colin's unconscious body, or corpse, whichever it might be, was hardly of the sort which a girl would tender that of a fiancé. There was no indication of shock or shrinking, which in a nurse one naturally would not expect, but neither was there the slightest hint of personal solicitude, or even that touch of gentle sympathy which Jim had so often observed in the most experienced of war nurses when caring for the wounded. She seemed to Jim to be overhauling the prostrate Colin a good deal as a person might rake over a rubbish heap to see if there was anything worth saving.

There came a terrific crash of thunder and another sudden puff of cool wind. Jim saw that the storm might burst upon them at any moment. It did not concern him in the least for himself. He had fought with hand grenade and bayonet straight through the course of similar ones, scarcely remarking their existence. Neither did it matter about his late adversary, whether he happened to be still alive or not. Jim had seen thousands of better men than Colin, both living and dead, exposed to the fury not only of heaven, but of hell and for days on end instead of hours.

No, the storm was of purely minor importance to himself and even less to Colin, because if the brute were dead he could not feel it and if alive it might fetch him round. But his sense of chivalry dictated that Mary Wishart must be got in out of it. Such a thunderstorm as promised to burst upon them at any moment could not possibly be good for a nurse convalescing from wounds and shell shock. The Gibbon's house was only about a mile distant, and it seemed to Jim that the best thing to do under the circumstances would be to put up the hood and side curtains, take the two of them aboard and drive in, sending a groom after the horses, which were sheltered by the pines to some extent. It was awkward, though, the car being a runabout.

His head was rocking drunkenly, and he could scarcely see through the swollen pouches around his eyes while his hands were frightfully gashed and bruised, but he got up and set about rigging out the hood and curtains. Mary Wishart rose from the ground at Colin's side and stared at him for a moment from behind the ambush of her veil, then, observing his fumbling efforts, she walked slowly over to the car.

“Is he dead?” Jim asked indifferently.

“No, but he's not far from it. I don't think that he ought to be moved. Can't you move the car ahead a little so as to shelter him?”

“Yes,” Jim answered shortly. He felt a cold anger for the girl, because he thought that she had tried to ride him down. “You might help me with the top.”

A sudden violent gust of wind threatened to wrench it away as they secured it. The wind was coming before the rain. Then, just as they had got all fast, a blinding thunderbolt hissed down out of the blackness overhead and struck somewhere close by. The horses neighed and reared, then bolted off down the lane in the direction of their stable.

“That will fetch somebody from the house,” Mary said.

Jim did not answer. He secured the curtains on the weather side, then got aboard, started the motor and moved ahead a few feet, placing the car in such a manner as to shelter the unconscious man.

“Cover him with the spare curtains and get in,” said Jim. “Here comes the rain.”

Mary Wishart did as he directed. With a fury which threatened to uproot the straggling pines and tear away the hood the small, local cyclone burst upon them to the accompaniment of deafening and almost continuous thunder while the lightning blazed and crackled and seemed literally to play about the car. Conversation would have been almost impossible, even if they had desired it, which was far from the wish of either. Jim held his handkerchief between the curtains and, when it was soaked, sponged the blood from his battered face. Colin's ring had left some ugly gashes which would have been better for a stitch here and there, but the bleeding quickly ceased.

On the ground at the side and partially protected by the running board, Colin remained plunged in oblivion. Jim suffered no anxiety. For one thing he did not greatly care what might come of it, and for another he felt that whatever did was fully deserved. The man had invited accident. Jim knew also that after such a fearful knock-out blow near the base of the jaw the brain concussion might render a man unconscious for hours.

He himself, hardened by over three years of terrific campaign, was now feeling not much the worse for the encounter. Then, as his brain began to work more freely, he was suddenly struck by the bizarre element of the encounter and the curious way in which fate had worked out the fulfillment of his promise. Reflecting on this, he thought of his confused impression of a man in khaki stepping in front of him while reeling and ready to go down under the impact of Colin's blows delivered before he could regain his balance destroyed by Mary's horse. Could Donald have managed to materialize for the fraction of a second needed to save him from defeat?

Colin certainly appeared to have seen something in the nature of a prodigy. Jim wondered if Mary Wishart had seen it, too, and decided to ask. The storm was now less violent and talk was possible.

“Tell me something, Miss Wishart,” said he. “When McKinloch jumped in to finish it just after you tried to ride me down——”

“I did not try to ride you down,” she interrupted hotly. “I tried to ride between you. What do you think I am?”

“I beg your pardon.” Jim turned and tried to see her face but could not in the gloom. “I'm afraid I did you an injustice.”

“You certainly did, if that is what you thought. I wanted to stop the fight, because I saw that there was something wrong with your arm and I was afraid you were going to get the worst of it. Who are you? How do you happen to know my name?”

“I was coming down here principally to meet you,” Jim answered. “Lucy Gibbons is an old friend——”

Mary Wishart gripped his bruised arm so that it hurt. “You are not Jim Davies—Donald's chum!” she cried.

“I am, though.”

“But they told me that you had been badly wounded—all shot to pieces!”

“So I was. That's why I couldn't put up a better fight. all the same, I think I'd have managed to muddle through, even without Donald's help.”

“Donald's help?” Her voice was breathless.

“Yes. At least, I don't see who else it could have been. Somebody stepped between us for a second—just long enough to let me get myself together. Colin saw him, I think. Didn't you?”

“I—I don't know.” Her voice was faint. “It seemed to me that there was—something—a shadow—ah—he's coming round.”

There came a sigh from the ground, followed by a choking cough. The electric storm had thundered past with its cyclonic squall, and there was a clear, golden streak low in the western sky, but it was still raining hard. Mary and Jim looked down and saw Colin's face, if face it could be called, turned vacantly up at them.

“Well, how do you feel now?” Jim asked curtly.

Colin struggled to his feet and stood swaying. He gripped the edge of the car. His eyes were worse than Jim's and nose and lips an awful sight. He thrust forward his head and peered at Jim, then looked around.

“Y'are useful with your fists,” he mumbled, “and ye can stand the punishment. But ye had help.”

“Help from whom?” Mary asked.

He lowered his voice. “Donald. Did ye not see him?”

“I did,” said Jim, “but you lie when you say he helped—or, if he did, it was only for a second to let me get set and keep you from profiting by a foul. If you've got any doubt you can try again two weeks from now.”

Colin shook his head. “You are Davies,” he said, “Donald's chum; and you have shamed me between the two of ye. I would have been shamed if I had beat, because y'are not a sound man. I did wrong to lose my temper. It serves me right.”

From close by came the sound of a Klaxon and a big limousine pushed out between the pines. It came to a stop, and the chauffeur stared at them with wonder.

“Will you drive me to the house, Major Davies?” Mary asked.

“I was about to ask the privilege. There is something very important which I have come down here to say to you and, the sooner it is said, the better.” He started the motor and the car began to move away. Neither of them so much as looked at Colin, who was walking unsteadily toward the limousine.

“I think that I know what it is,” Mary said. “A promise to Donald. A mutual benefit pact made between you two—and Donald has won.”

“That depends upon your answer. If it is 'yes,' then I have won. If it is 'no,' then you have won. But I do not quite see how Donald can win in either case, unless it is by proxy, and that was not at all his idea.”

“Hadn't you better reflect a little?” Mary asked.

“I have already done so. Miss Wishart, this bruised, maimed, and quarrelsome ex-soldier has the honor to ask your hand in marriage.”

Mary bowed. “Major Davies,” said she, “I beg to express my sincere appreciation of the honor done me and to accept it with respect and gratitude.”

For some reason this answer was precisely what Jim had expected, though for the life of him he could not have said why. And then suddenly the solution occurred to him, and he felt a wild desire to shout with laughter. Beside him Mary's shoulders were moving slightly and Jim glanced at her with suspicion.

“Miss Wishart,” said he severely, “your acceptance of my offer fills me with the most profound emotions of joy and—and——”

“Astonishment, not unmixed with apprehension,” Mary supplied.

“Precisely. Astonishment that you should deign so to honor such a useless member of society and apprehension lest he should prove unworthy. But I should very much like to know when the dickens you made your pact with sly old Donald. God bless him and give him his promotion soon.”

"So you've guessed, major? Well, it was soon after I got up to the front. I'd let him know that I was somewhere thereabouts, and we were getting shelled all the time, and gassed and air-raided to say nothing of the danger from infection in our work, so when he suggested that we each agree to carry out three wishes of the other if that one got killed, I agreed. It seemed to me a perfect good bet. You see, major, Donald and I were awfully fond of each other and, no doubt, would have married some time after the war. But we were never actually in love with each other, as in that case neither of us would have left the other as a sort of legacy.”

“Then you did that with Donald?”

“Yes. I left him to my dearest friend; an English nurse in the hospital. He'd have married her. And almost any girl would have been glad to marry Donald.”

“Then you have been expecting me for some time?”

“Of course, major, dear—and awfully afraid you might be killed. It is splendid of you to be so loyal and true to your promise and ask in marriage a girl whose face you have never seen and may find not at all to your taste, sir.”

“Don't talk about faces. I hope you got a good look at mine and can fix it in your memory for a few days. What happened yours? Wounds?”

“The wounds were nothing much. It was the mustard gas that did the business—there, now are you not sorry that you spoke so quickly, sir?”

“No. I'm glad. Donald and other things aside there is something about you which attracts me tremendously. I think that we belong to the same guild, you and I. We have 'drunk the fire,' as the French say.”

“That is true, major. One is rather different from other folk when one has walked around with Death for days on end and seen him take his heavy toll on every side. We take things more rationally and, instead of being shocked and startled by fights and ghosts and sudden proposals of marriage, we find them interesting. You see, major, we have come to crave the violent and unexpected.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “The limousine is not following. It is likely that Colin has told the driver to take him back to town. He has just come East on business, and Lucy asked him out for the week's end. He is a proud man and would not wish to face the folk in such a state. Donald would have made a joke of it.” She sighed.

“Donald would never have done such a beastly thing,” Jim said.

The stables appeared ahead, for they were entering the place from the rear. Jim drove around to the front of the house and, as he drew up under the porte-cochère, a pretty woman ran out and greeted them in a breathless manner which told of intense anxiety.

“Jim——” she cried, “what's happened you? Have you had an accident? Oh, my dear—your face—is there anything broken?” she turned to an elderly English butler who had followed her out. “Saunders, telephone for Doctor Sutton. Where is Mr. McKinloch?”

“Gone back to town, I think,” Mary answered. “It's all right, Lucy, dear. There is nothing to be in the least excited about. All that happened was that Jim brushed Colin's horse with his car, and Colin slashed Jim over the head with his crop, so they both got down and fought it out, and I rode into Jim and Colin tried to take advantage of it, but Donald's ghost stepped in between, and Jim knocked Colin senseless for half an hour, and Colin came to and went back to town in the car you sent, and Jim has asked me to marry him and I've accepted, so we're open to congratulations——”

IV.

The elderly butler had served for a span of years in an English family in which were five young sons with sportsmanlike tastes, and he proved himself so expert as a face restorer that the doctor was dispensed with. Much can be done with a face when the raw material is good, and Jim's was both raw and good.

To Parker, Jim explained the nature of the conflict, leaving out Donald's part of it, and the butler's gratification was extreme. “Mr. McKinloch appeared a ver'ry 'aughty man, sir,” said he, “and a good grueling can do 'im no 'arm. You s'y you got 'im with a left 'ook from the knee, sir? Ah, that never f'ils to do the job, sir, when it lands.”

“Speaking of faces, Parker,” said Jim, “is Miss Wishart very badly disfigured?”

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“Is Miss Wishart much disfigured? She told me that she was badly burned with mustard gas. Have you seen her face, or does she always wear her veil?”

Parker turned suddenly to cough. “Oh, Miss Wishart's fyce, sir. Well, it's 'ardly what one would call disfigured, sir—though from what I've 'eard say it must 'ave been shocking bad for a bit. No, sir, she only wears her v'il when she goes h'out, 'er eyes being still sensitive, like. If there's nothing more, sir, I'll go see about the dinner. The bell is on the head of the bed, sir.”

He went out with his tray of first-aid paraphernalia, and Jim flung himself down in a morris chair to reflect on the singular events of the afternoon. So here he was engaged to be married to a girl whom he scarcely knew and could not make out at all, yet to whom he felt already most curiously and strongly drawn.

What puzzled him most was her prompt readiness to accept an offer of marriage from an absolute stranger whom she knew to be making it solely in fulfillment of a pledge. That she was herself similarly pledged to accept was not sufficient explanation. The whole thing was unreasonable and absurd. He wondered if she could be one of those practical persons in whom what appeared to be material advantage dictated to sentiment and such emotions as lead to individual selection of a mate.

Jim had more modesty and far less vanity than the average man, but his sense of proportion was too well balanced for him to belittle what he had to offer. He knew that his social rating as an eligible parti would be high. He was of excellent family connections, rich, with no dependencies and a splendid war record, young, well-liked and—as Mary Wishart had seen recent proof—physically able-bodied. Almost anybody would say that an unattached girl must be a fool to refuse him.

And yet, although he would not admit it, for a girl to catch a man “right off the bat” and hang on to him in such an unembarrassed way seemed to him indelicate. Possibly her circumstances might be such that it was highly desirable for her to marry a man so situated as he; perhaps she was ambitious or tired of spinsterhood or her facial disfigurement might be of a sort to interfere with matrimony, or all of these things. He did not believe that her farcical agreement with Donald had much to do with it, except possibly as a romantic excuse.

Well, anyhow, he had made his offer and was determined to see the business through, come what might of it. He wished that Lucy Gibbons would come up to see how he was getting on, so that he might quiz her a little. For a moment he was tempted to ring and ask for her, but pride forbade. He decided to insist upon an early, if not an immediate date for their nuptials and see what Mary Wishart would say to that. At any rate, he reflected rather grimly, she had three strong assets about which there could be no question; strong, fearless good sense, a fine war record of her own and, barring possibly her facial disfigurement, as superb a feminine physical being as he had ever seen. Jim most admired the female type which could not by any possible effort disguise its sex in male attire. And there was also Donald's unqualified praise.

Parker had laid out his things, and when it was almost dinner time Jim dressed and went down. There were only Mrs. Gibbons, her mother, Mary Wishart, and himself, Mr. Gibbons having gone recently to France on an errand of the Red Cross while the seventeen and nineteen-year-old boys were in the service of the coast-patrol fleet. There was nobody about, so Jim took a solid stick from the rack and stepped out into the sunken gardens which were fresh and sweet after the shower.

The sun was very low and its crimson rays swept the place with fiat waves of pulsing color through which the individual notes of bright, old-fashioned flowers gleamed out wet and sparkling like strewn jewels. The lawns were sewn with diamond dust and even the pebbly paths seemed made of semi-precious stones. In the center of the sunken quadrangle was a little temple d'amour, slightly raised and with white and red rose ramblers spraying its columns. Jim strolled toward this, limping rather more than usual, and, as he went up the three marble steps, saw Mary at the farther end of the path beyond. She looked up and waved the bouquet she was gathering, then came toward him.

Jim's heart, heretofore steady enough before going over the top, whirrëd off like an airplane motor. Mary was still wearing the blue tulle veil, but as she approached he saw that it was of a lighter shade, and hoped that he might be able to see through it. But this proved a vain ambition, for it was twice folded and impenetrable as a Turkish yashmak.

As she came up the steps and paused at the top she reminded Jim of some allegoric figure in a pageant. There was a symbolic quality in the poise of her beautiful body with its small head held high with ruddy bronze hair which was rippled like the water in a fountain, and in the sweep of her full bosom and wide, womanly hips. She presented the sort of heroic figure which might have depicted the woman of an era; the new France, still veiled of face from recent scars.

But there was no consciousness of this in her manner, for she gave a little laugh, and said: “I think you could do with a veil yourself, sir. And how are you feeling, now that you have had a chance to think it all over?”

“I am feeling better,” Jim answered. “How soon will you marry me, Mary Wishart?”

“Oh, dear.” She tilted her head a little to the side, then looked back over her shoulder at the sun. Its lower edge was just kissing the hilltops. “And the man has not yet seen my face. Now there is real chivalry—and courage.”

Jim stepped forward, took her hand, and raised it to his bruised lips. “I am a soldier, lady mine, and honorable scars have no terrors for me. Will you marry me a month from to-day?”

The bouquet slipped from her hands and fell on the flags. Mary looked down at it, her beautiful arms hanging straight at her sides.

“I take off my veil at sunset,” said she. “That will be in about thirty seconds. Had you not better wait, sir? Think how dreadful it would be to spend your life looking at a face which was not to your liking.”

“I have your promise, Mary Wishart,” said Jim, “and I mean to hold you to it. I am not asking if you will marry me, but when.”

“Look, sir,” said Mary. “The sun has set.”

Still holding the veil with its edge stretched on a level with the top of her forehead, Mary Wishart turned slowly and faced him. She hesitated, as if afraid to let it fall. Jim drew a quick breath and braced himself to meet the shock. His dread had not the slightest taint of selfishness. It was not the fear of having linked his life to a spectacle of daily shuddering contemplation. The anguish of that moment was all for Mary; the passionate resentment against this thing of beauty having suffered defacement, if only for folk of shallow vision. Her body as she came up the path with her chiffon costume whipped back by the fresh west wind had reminded him of the Winged Victory, headless, but filled with the rush of strong air, and now his soul protested at the mutilation of such a perfect creature.

So, as the veil fell, he could scarcely see for an instant what had been disclosed. And then, for a moment, he could see only her eyes which were dark and tender and screened by a double fringe of long, dark lashes. He was prepared for almost anything but the exquisite loveliness of the ravishing face with its faint, delicate flush and of a texture which seemed impalpable, like the flower face of a very young child. Not only was there not the slightest blemish of any sort but in feature and complexion it was ethereal, a dream face, saved only from spiritual impossibility by its endearing seduction.

One's idea of angel faces is of a classic sort, spiritual and fine but not with any appeal to the material senses. But this was not the case in that of Mary's. The low, wide brow, mischievous eyes, straight, low-bridged nose with its retroussé tip, wide mouth with its full, pink lips set at the slightest suspicion of a slant, all would have tempted a prophet, an archangel, a demigod—though these last we fear required no great amount of tempting—a soldier with a vigil which honor compels that he shall not quit.

It was all too much for poor Jim, and the greatest moral strength he ever showed, perhaps, was in not showing its employment at that moment. He turned rather pale, but the sunset glow was against his face. Mary may have got a little of what he was feeling. She leaned forward with a smile.

“Poor Jim, you look dreadfully done in. Don't stand.” She seated herself on the marble bench and drew him down at her side. “Does my new face please you?”

“Your new face—— I don't believe I understand. That veil—why do you wear it? I thought you must be disfigured.”

“It was a close call. I was frightfully burned with mustard gas. We were getting the wounded out and there was no time to hunt for my mask. They thought I was going to be blind. My whole face was one horrible sore. But it turned out to be superficial and healed without leaving so much as a crinkle and the skin is all new, even the conjunctiva of my eyes.”

“I see. That is what makes it so soft and fine, like a baby's.”

“Yes. And it has been frightfully tender, and my eyes sensitive to light and a draft of air. That is why I have had to wear the veil when I go out.”

Jim drew a deep breath and stole a shy glance at her lovely profile. “I'm glad I didn't know,” he muttered. “I would not have dared——”

“But I would. You see, Jim, it wasn't as though you had been a stranger. I had been thinking of you a lot since Donald was killed and hearing a great deal about you, and everything that I heard was so splendid. Then Lucy has told me more. Then, there was my promise to Donald, and I knew that he had yours, too. Something seemed to keep suggesting you to my mind—Donald, perhaps. And Colin was threatening to be such a dominant pest! He had always ridden roughshod over my will. Everybody was afraid of him—and when you knocked him senseless with your terrible, wounded arm I felt as though I had been rescued and was your prize.”

“You are. It would have made no difference if your sweet face had been one ghastly wreck.”

Mary looked at him with glowing eyes. “Don't you suppose I felt that, sir? It went through me almost like a pain. It made me feel afraid. Oh, my dear, I understand—that I am going to—— I—I want to kiss your poor swollen lips——”

 

Presently, with her head against his chest and his arms holding her close, he felt her body vibrate. She gasped and gripped his shoulder.

“Jim—oh, Jim——”

“Sweetheart——”

“He—he is standing there. Look—he is smiling. His lips are moving. He seems to say 'Good-by—God bless you.' There—he has gone——”