When William Came | Page 5

and turn down Gorla and the rest of us."
It was certainly true that the supper already seemed a more difficult
proposition in Cicely's eyes than it had a moment or two ago.
"'You'll not forget my only daughter, E'en though Saphia has crossed
the sea,'"
quoted Tony, with mocking laughter in his voice and eyes.
Cicely went down to greet her husband. She felt that she was probably
very glad that he was home once more; she was angry with herself for
not feeling greater certainty on the point. Even the well-beloved,
however, can select the wrong moment for return. If Cicely Yeovil's
heart was like a singing-bird, it was of a kind that has frequent lapses
into silence.

CHAPTER II
: THE HOMECOMING
Murrey Yeovil got out of the boat-train at Victoria Station, and stood
waiting, in an attitude something between listlessness and impatience,
while a porter dragged his light travelling kit out of the railway carriage
and went in search of his heavier baggage with a hand-truck. Yeovil
was a grey-faced young man, with restless eyes, and a rather wistful

mouth, and an air of lassitude that was evidently only a temporary
characteristic. The hot dusty station, with its blended crowds of
dawdling and scurrying people, its little streams of suburban passengers
pouring out every now and then from this or that platform, like ants
swarming across a garden path, made a wearisome climax to what had
been a rather wearisome journey. Yeovil glanced quickly, almost
furtively, around him in all directions, with the air of a man who is
constrained by morbid curiosity to look for things that he would rather
not see. The announcements placed in German alternatively with
English over the booking office, left-luggage office, refreshment
buffets, and so forth, the crowned eagle and monogram displayed on
the post boxes, caught his eye in quick succession.
He turned to help the porter to shepherd his belongings on to the truck,
and followed him to the outer yard of the station, where a string of taxi-
cabs was being slowly absorbed by an outpouring crowd of travellers.
Portmanteaux, wraps, and a trunk or two, much be-labelled and
travel-worn, were stowed into a taxi, and Yeovil turned to give the
direction to the driver.
"Twenty-eight, Berkshire Street."
"Berkschirestrasse, acht-und-zwanzig," echoed the man, a bulky
spectacled individual of unmistakable Teuton type.
"Twenty-eight, Berkshire Street," repeated Yeovil, and got into the cab,
leaving the driver to re-translate the direction into his own language.
A succession of cabs leaving the station blocked the roadway for a
moment or two, and Yeovil had leisure to observe the fact that Viktoria
Strasse was lettered side by side with the familiar English name of the
street. A notice directing the public to the neighbouring swimming
baths was also written up in both languages. London had become a
bi-lingual city, even as Warsaw.
The cab threaded its way swiftly along Buckingham Palace Road
towards the Mall. As they passed the long front of the Palace the
traveller turned his head resolutely away, that he might not see the alien
uniforms at the gates and the eagle standard flapping in the sunlight.
The taxi driver, who seemed to have combative instincts, slowed down
as he was turning into the Mall, and pointed to the white pile of
memorial statuary in front of the palace gates.
"Grossmutter Denkmal, yes," he announced, and resumed his journey.

Arrived at his destination, Yeovil stood on the steps of his house and
pressed the bell with an odd sense of forlornness, as though he were a
stranger drifting from nowhere into a land that had no cognisance of
him; a moment later he was standing in his own hall, the object of
respectful solicitude and attention. Sprucely garbed and groomed
lackeys busied themselves with his battered travel-soiled baggage; the
door closed on the guttural-voiced taxi driver, and the glaring July
sunshine. The wearisome journey was over.
"Poor dear, how dreadfully pulled-down you look," said Cicely, when
the first greetings had been exchanged.
"It's been a slow business, getting well," said Yeovil. "I'm only three-
quarter way there yet."
He looked at his reflection in a mirror and laughed ruefully.
"You should have seen what I looked like five or six weeks ago," he
added.
"You ought to have let me come out and nurse you," said Cicely; "you
know I wanted to."
"Oh, they nursed me well enough," said Yeovil, "and it would have
been a shame dragging you out there; a small Finnish health resort, out
of the season, is not a very amusing place, and it would have been
worse for any one who didn't talk Russian."
"You must have been buried alive there," said Cicely, with
commiseration in her voice.
"I wanted to be buried alive," said