Who would have thought of Mr. Mottram doing so  well? And so many of
his friends, too, that used to stay here? I said to Mr. Wilcox, who comes to
see me regular on the bus from Melstead twice a month, which is very good of
him  and  I appreciate it,  I said:  'We were entertaining angels unawares,'
because  Mr. Wilcox  never liked  Mr. Mottram's friends, which I never saw,,
but used to hear about from  all of  you, nor Julia  didn't  like  them, but
they've done very well, haven't they?"

     At last I asked her: "Have you heard from Julia?"

     "From Cordelia, only last week, and they're together still as they have
been  all the time,  and  Julia sent  me  love  at the bottoni of the  page.
They're both very well, though they couldn't  say where, but Father Membling
said, reading between the  lines, it  was Palestine, which is where Bridey's
yeomanry  is,  so  that's very nice  for  them all. Cordelia said  they were
looking forward  to coming home  after the war, which I am sure  we all are,
though whether I live to see it, is another story."

     I stayed with her for half an hour, and left promising to return often.
When I reached the hall I found no sign of work and Hooper looking guilty.

     "They had to go off to draw the bed-straw. I didn't know till  Sergeant
Block told me. I don't know whether they're coming back."

     "Don't know? What orders did you give?"

     "Well,  I told  Sergeant Block to bring them back  if he thought it was
worth while; I mean if there was time before dinner."

     It was nearly twelve. "You've been hotted again, Hooper. That straw was
to be drawn any time before six to-night."

     "Oh Lor; sorry Ryder. Sergeant Block -- "

     "It's my  own fault  for  going away. . .  .  Fall-in  the  same  party
immediately after dinner, bring them  back here and keep them here till  the
job's done."

     "Rightyoh. I say, did you say you knew this place before?"

     "Yes,  very well.  It belongs to  friends of  mine," and  as I said the
words they sounded as odd in my  ears as Sebastian's had done, when, instead
of saying, "It is my home," he said, "It is where my family live."

     "It doesn't  seem to make any sense--one family  in a place  this size.
What's the use of it?"

     "Well, I suppose Brigade are finding it useful."

     "But that's not what it was built for, is it?"

     "No,"  I  said, "not what it  was built for. Perhaps that's  one of the
pleasures of  building,  like having a  son, wondering  how he'll grow up. I
don't know;  I never  built anything, and I forfeited the  right to watch my
son  grow  up. I'm homeless,  childless, middle-aged, loveless, Hooper."  He
looked to see if I was being funny, decided that I was, and laughed. "Now go
back  to camp, keep out of the C.O.'s way, if he's back from his recce,  and
don't let on to anyone that we've made a nonsense of the morning."

     "Okey, Ryder."

     There was one part of the house I had not yet visited, and I went there
now.  The  chapel showed no ill-effects of its long neglect; the art-nouveau
paint was as fresh and bright as ever; the art-nouveau lamp burned once more
before the altar. I said a prayer, an ancient,  newly learned form of words,
and left, turning towards the camp; and as I walked  back, and the cookhouse
bugle sounded ahead of me, I thought: --

     The builders did not  know the uses to which their  work would descend;
they made  a new  house  with the  stones of the  old castle; year by  year,
generation after generation, they enriched and extended it; year by year the
great harvest  of timber in  the park  grew  to  ripeness; until,  in sudden
frost,  came the -age of  Hooper;  the place was  desolate and the work  all
brought to nothing; <i>Quomodo sedet  sola civitas.</i> Vanity  of vanities, all is
vanity.

     And  yet,  I thought, stepping out more briskly towards the camp, where
the  bugles after  a  pause had taken up the second  call and  were sounding
<i>Pic-em-up, Pic-em-up, hot potatoes</i> -- and yet that is  not the last word; it
is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back.

     Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out
of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played;
something none of us thought about  at the time:  a small  red  flame  --  a
beaten-copper lamp  of  deplorable design,  relit before  the  beaten-copper
doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs,
which they saw put out; that  flame burns again for other soldiers, far from
home, farther, in heart, than Acre  or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit
but for the builders and  the tragedians, and there I found it this morning,
burning anew among the old stones.

     I  quickened my  pace  and reached the  hut  which  served us  for  our
ante-room.

     "You're looking unusually cheerful to-day," said the second-in-command.




     chagford, <i>February-June, 1944</i>


     THE END