"When will you be back, my boy?" his father asked him.
"April, if I can work it," Alan replied. "After two hot weathers in India I simply pine to see the larches out at Etterick, and hear the blackbirds shouting. Scotland owes it to me. Don't you think so, Father?"
The motor was at the door, the luggage was in, and the partings said—those wordless partings. Alan jumped into the car and grinned cheerily at them.
"Till April," he said. "Remember—Toujours Smiley-face, as we Parisians say——" and he was gone.
They turned to go in, and Marget said fiercely:
"Eh, I wull tak' it ill oot if thae Germans kill that bonnie laddie."
"I almost wish," said Buff, sitting before his porridge with The Frontiersman's Pocket-Book clutched close to comfort his sad heart—"I almost wish that he hadn't come home. I had forgotten how nice he was!"
It was in April that he fell, and at Etterick the blackbirds were "shouting" as the telegraph boy—innocent messenger of woe—wheeled his way among the larches.
CHAPTER XX
"The Poet says dear City of Cecrops,
wilt thou not say dear City of God?"
Marcus Aurelius.
Our story ends where it began, in the Thomsons' parlour in Jeanieville, Pollokshields.
It was November then, now it is May, and light long after tea, and in happier circumstances Mr. Thomson would have been out in his shirt-sleeves in the garden, putting in plants and sowing seeds, with Mrs. Thomson (a white shawl round her shoulders) standing beside him admiring, and Alick running the mower, and Jessie offering advice, and Robert sitting with his books by an open window exchanging a remark with them now and again. They had enjoyed many such spring evenings. But this remorseless war had drawn the little Thomsons into the net, and they sat huddled in the parlour, with no thought for the gay green world outside.
This was Robert's last evening at home. He had been training ever since the war broke out, and was now about to sail for the East. They feared that Gallipoli was his destination, that ill-omened place on whose alien shores thousands and thousands of our best and bravest were to "drink death like wine," while their country looked on in anguished pride.
Mr. Chalmers, their new minister, had been in to tea. He had clapped Robert on the back and told him he was proud of him, and proud of the great Cause he was going to fight for. "I envy you, my boy," he said.
Robert had said nothing, but his face wore the expression "Huch! Away!" and when the well-meaning parson had gone he expressed a desire to know what the man thought he was talking about.
"But, man Rubbert," his father said anxiously, "surely you're glad to fight for the Right?"
"If Mr. Chalmers thinks it such a fine thing to fight," said Robert, "why doesn't he go and do it? He's not much more than thirty."
"He's married, Robert," his mother reminded him, "and three wee ones. You could hardly expect it. Besides, he was telling me that if many more ministers go away to be chaplains they'll have to shut some of the churches."
"And high time, too," said Robert.
"Aw, Rubbert," wailed poor Mrs. Thomson, "what harm do the churches do you?"
"Never heed him, Mamma," Mr. Thomson said. "He's just sayin' it."
Mrs. Thomson sat on her low chair by the fireside—the nursing chair where she had sat and played with her babies in the long past happy days, her kind face disfigured by much crying, her hands idle in her lap, looking at her first-born as if she grudged every moment her eyes were away from him. It seemed as if she were learning every line of his face by heart to help her in a future that would hold no Robert.
Jessie, freed for the night from her nursing, sat silently doing a last bit of sewing for her brother.
Alick was playing idly with the buckle of Robert's haversack, and relating at intervals small items of news culled from the evening papers, by way of cheering his family. Robert, always quiet, was almost speechless this last evening.
"I saw Taylor to-day," Mr. Thomson remarked, after a silence. "He asked to be remembered to you, Rubbert. In fact, he kinda hinted he would look in to-night—but I discouraged him."
"Wee Taylor! Oh, help!" ejaculated Alick.
"You were quite right, Papa," said his wife. "We're not wanting anybody the night, not even old friends like the Taylors."
Silence fell again, and Alick hummed a tune.
"Rubbert," said Mrs. Thomson, leaning forward and touching her son's arm, "Rubbert, promise me that you'll not do anything brave."
Robert's infrequent smile broke over his face, making it oddly attractive.
"You're not much of a Roman matron, wee body," he said, patting her hand.
"I am not," said Mrs. Thomson. "I niver was meant for a soldier's mother. I niver liked soldiers. I niver thought it was a very respectable job."
"It's the only respectable job just now, anyway, Mother," said Jessie.
"That's so," said her father.
"There's the bell," cried Alick. "I hear Annie letting somebody in."
"Dash!" said Robert, rising to fly. But he was too late; the door opened, and Annie announced "Mr. Seton."
At the sight of the tall familiar figure everybody rose to their feet and hastened to greet their old minister.
"Well, I niver," said Mrs. Thomson, "and me just saying we couldn't put up with visitors the night."
"You see we don't count you a visitor," Mr. Thomson explained. "Rubbert's off to-morrow."
"I know," said Mr. Seton. "That is why I came. We are in Glasgow for a few days. I left Elizabeth and Buff at the Central Hotel. Elizabeth said you wouldn't want her to-night, but she will come before we leave."
"How is she?" asked Mrs. Thomson. "Poor thing! She'll not laugh so much now."
"Lizbeth," said her father, "is a gallant creature. I think she will always laugh, and like Charles Lamb she will always find this world a pretty world."
This state of mind made no appeal to Mrs. Thomson, and she changed the subject by asking about Mr. Seton's health. His face, she noticed, was lined and worn, he stooped more than he used to do, but his eyes were the same—a hopeful boy's eyes.
"Oh, I'm wonderfully well. You don't grudge me an hour of Robert's last evening? I baptized the boy."
"Ye did that, Mr. Seton"—the tears beginning to flow at the thought—"and little did any of us think that this is what he was to come to."
"No," said Mr. Seton, "we little thought what a privilege was to be his. Robert, when I heard you had enlisted I said, 'Well done,' for I knew what it meant to you to leave your books. And I hear you wouldn't take a commission, but preferred to go with the men you had trained with."
Robert blushed, but his face did not wear the "affronted" look that it generally wore when people praised him as a patriot.
"Ah but, Mr. Seton," Alick broke in eagerly, "Robert's a sergeant! See his stripes! That's just about as good as an officer."
Robert made a grab at his young brother to silence him; but Alick was not to be suppressed.
"I shouldn't wonder," he said in a loud, boastful voice (he had never been so miserable in all his fifteen years)—"I shouldn't wonder if he got the V.C. That would be