It was three weeks after Desmond's death. Pamela was sitting in the 'den' writing a letter to Arthur Chicksands at Versailles. The first onslaught on Amiens was over. The struggle between Bethune and Ypres was in full swing.
'DEAREST—This house is so strange—the world is so strange! Oh, if I hadn't my work to do!—how could one bear it? It seems wrong and hateful even, to let one's mind dwell on the wonderful, wonderful thing, that you love me! The British Army retreating—retreating—after these glorious years—that is what burns into me hour after hour! Thank God Desmond didn't know! And if I feel like this, who am just an ignorant, inexperienced girl, what must it be for you who are working there, at the very centre, the news streaming in on you all the time?—you who know how much there is to fear—but also how much there is to be certain of—to be confident of—that we can't know. Our splendid,splendidmen! Every day I watch for the names I know in the death list—and some of them seem to be always there. The boy—the other sub-lieutenant—who was with Desmond when he was wounded, was in the list yesterday. Forest's boy is badly wounded. The old gardener has lost another son. Perley's boy is "missing," and so is the poor Pennington boy. They are heroic—the Penningtons—but whenever I see them I want to cry.... Oh, I can't write this any more. I have been writing letters of sympathy all day.
'Dearest, you would be astonished if you could see me at this moment. I am to-day a full blown group leader. Do you know what that means? I have had a long round among some of our farms to-day—bargaining with the farmers for the land-girls in my group, and looking after their billets. Yesterday I spent half the day in "docking" with six or eight village women to give them a "send off." I don't believe you know what docking means. It is pretty hard work, and at night I have a nightmare—of roots that never come to an end, and won't pull out!
'You were quite right—itismy work. I was born in the country. I know and love it. The farmers are very nice to me. They see I don't try to boss them as the Squire's daughter—that I'm just working as they are. And I can say a good deal to them about the war, because of Desmond. They all knew him and loved him. Some of them tell me stories about his pluck out hunting as a little chap, and though he had been such a short time out in France he had written to two or three of them about their sons in the Brookshires. He had a heavenly disposition—oh, I wish I had!
'At the present moment I am in knee-breeches, gaiters, and tunic, and I have just come in. Six o'clock to five, please sir, with half-an-hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner (I eat it out of a red handkerchief under a hedge). It was wet and nasty, and I am pretty tired. But one does not want to stop—because when one stops one begins to think. And my thoughts, except for that shining centre where you are, are so dark and full of sorrow. I miss Desmond every hour, and some great monstrous demon seems to be clutching at me—at you—at England—everything one loves and would die for—all day long. But don't imagine that I everdoubtfor one moment. Not I—
For right is right, since God is God,And right the day must win;To doubt would be disloyalty,To falter would be sin.
I know that's not good poetry. But I just love it—because it's plain and commonplace, and expresses just what ordinary people feel and think.
'Oh, why was I such a fool about Elizabeth! Now that you are at a safe distance—and of course on the understanding that you never, never say a word to me about it—I positively will and must confess that I was jealous of her about you—yes, about you, Arthur—because you talked to her about Greek—and about ash for aeroplanes—and I couldn't talk about them. There's a nice nature for you! Hadn't you better get rid of me while you can? But the thing that torments me is that I can never have it quite out with Desmond. I told him lies, simply. I didn't know they were lies, I suppose; but I was too angry and too unjust to care whether they were or not. On the journey from France I said a few little words to him—just enough, thank Heaven! He was so sweet to her in those last days—and she to him. You know one side of heristhe managing woman—and the other (I've only found it out since Desmond's death)—well, she seems to be just asking you to creep under her wings and be mothered! She mothered him, and she has mothered me since he shut his dear eyes for ever. Oh, why won't she mother us all—for good and all!—father first and foremost.
'I told you something about him last time I wrote, but there is a great deal more to tell. The horrible thing is that he seems not to care any more for any of his old hobbies. He sits there in the library day after day, or walks about it for hours and hours, without ever opening a book or looking at a thing. Or else he walks about the woods—sometimes quite late at night. Forest believes he sleeps very little. I told you he never came to Desmond's funeral. All business he hands over to Elizabeth, and what she asks him he generally does. But we all have vague, black fears about him. I know Elizabeth has. Yet she is quite clear she can't stay here much longer. Dear Arthur, I don't know exactly what happened, but Ithinkfather asked her to marry him, and she said no. And I am tolerably sure that I counted for a good deal in it—horrid wretch that I am!—that she thought it would make me unhappy.
'Well, I am properly punished. For if or when she goes away—and you and I are married—if there is to be any marrying any more in this awful world!—what will become of my father? He has been a terrifying mystery to me all my life. Now it is not that any longer. I know at least that he worshipped Desmond. But I know also that I mean nothing to him. I don't honestly think it was much my fault—and it can't be helped. And nobody else in the family matters. The only person who does matter is Elizabeth. And I quite see that she can't stay here indefinitely. She told me she promised Desmond she would stay as long as she could. Just at present, of course, she is the mainspring of everything on the estate. And they have actually made her this last week Vice-Chairman of the County War Agricultural Committee. She refused, but theymadeher. Think of that—a woman—with all those wise men! She asked father's leave. He just looked at her, and I saw the tears come into her eyes.
'As to Beryl and Aubrey, he was here last Sunday, and she spent the day with us. He seems to lean upon her in a new way—and she looks different somehow—happier, I think. He told me, the day after Desmond died, that Dezzy had said something to him that had given him courage—"courage to go on," I think he said. I didn't ask him what he meant, and he didn't tell me. But I am sure he has told Beryl, and either that—or something else—has made her more confident in herself—and about him. They are to be married quite soon. Last week father sent him, without a word, a copy of his will. Aubrey says it is very fair. Mannering goes to him, of course. You know that Elizabeth refused to witness the codicil father wrote last October disinheriting Aubrey, when he was so mad with Sir Henry? It was the first thing that made father take real notice of her. She had only been six weeks here!
'Good-night, my dearest, dearest Arthur! Don't be too much disappointed in me. I shall grow up some day.'
A few days later the Squire came back from Fallerton to find nobody in the house, apparently, but himself. He went through the empty hall and the library, and shut himself up there. He carried an evening paper crumpled in his hand. It contained a detailed report of the breaking of the Portuguese centre near Richebourg St. Vaast on April 10, and the consequent retreat, over some seven miles, since that day of the British line, together with the more recent news of the capture of Armentières and Merville. Sitting down at his own table he read the telegrams again, and then in the stop-press Sir Douglas Haig's Order of the Day—
'There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight to the end. The safety of our homes and the freedom of mankind depend alike upon the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment.'
The Squire read and re-read the words. He was sitting close to the tall French window where through some fine spring days Desmond had lain, his half-veiled eyes wandering over the woods and green spaces which had been his childhood's companions. There—submissive for himself, but, for England's sake, and so that his mind might receive as long as possible the impress of her fate, an ardent wrestler with Death through each disputed hour—he had waited; and there, with the wordEnglandon his lips, he had died. The Squire could still see the marks made on the polished floor by the rolling backward of the bed at night. And on the wall near there was a brown mark on the wall-paper. He remembered that it had been made by a splash from a bowl of disinfectant, and that he had stared at it one morning in a dumb torment which seemed endless, because Desmond had woke in pain and the morphia was slow to act.
England! His boy was dead—and his country had its back to the wall. And he—what had he done for England, all these years of her struggle? His carelessness, his indifference returned upon him—his mad and selfish refusal, day by day, to give his mind, or his body, or his goods, to the motherland that bore him.
'Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?'
No—it had been nothing to him. But Desmond, his boy, had given everything. And the death-struggle was still going on. 'Each one of us must fight on to the end.' Before his eyes there passed the spectacle of the Army, as he had actually seen it—a division, for instance, on the march near the Salient, rank after rank of young faces, the brown cheeks and smiling eyes, the swing of the lithe bodies. And while he sat there in the quiet of the April evening, thousands of boys like Desmond were offering those same lithe bodies to the Kaiser's guns without murmur or revolt because England asked it. Now he knew what it meant—now he knew!
There was a knock at the door, and the sound of something heavy descending. The Squire gave a dull 'Come in.' Forest entered, dragging a large bale behind him. He looked nervously at his master.
'These things have just come from France, sir.'
The Squire started. He walked over in silence to look while Forest opened the case. Desmond's kit, his clothes, his few books, a stained uniform, a writing-case, with a number of other miscellaneous things.
Forest spread them out on the floor, his lips trembling. On several nights before the end Desmond had asked for him, and he had shared the Squire's watch.
'That'll do,' said the Squire presently; 'I'll look over them myself!'
Forest went away. After shutting the door he saw Elizabeth coming along the library passage, and stopped to speak to her.
'The things have just come from France, Miss,' he said in a low voice.
Elizabeth hesitated, and was turning back, when the library door opened and the Squire called her.
'Yes, Mr. Mannering.'
'Will you come here, please, a moment?'
She entered the room, and the Squire closed the door behind her, pointing mutely to the things on the floor.
The tears sprang to her eyes. She knelt down to look at them.
'Do you remember anything about this?' he said, holding out a little book. It was the pocket Anthology she had found for Desmond on the day of his going into camp. As she looked through it she saw a turned-down leaf, and seemed still to hear the boy's voice, as he hung over her shoulder translating the epigram—
'Shame on you, mountains and seas!'
With a swelling throat she told the story. The Squire listened, and when afterwards she offered the book to him again, he put it back into her hand, with some muttered words which she interpreted as bidding her keep it.
She put it away in the drawer of her writing-table, which had been brought back to its old place only that morning. The Squire himself went to his own desk.
'Will you sit there?' He pointed to her chair. 'I want to speak to you.'
Then after a pause he added slowly, 'Will you tell me—what you think I can now do with my time?'
His voice had a curious monotony—unlike its usual tone. But Elizabeth divined a coming crisis. She went very white.
'Dear Mr. Mannering—I don't know what to say—except that the country seems to want everything that each one of us can do.'
'Have you read Haig's Order of the Day?'
'Yes, I have just read it.'
The Squire's eyes, fixed upon her, had a strange intensity.
'You and I have never known—never dreamt—of anything like this.'
'No—never. But England has had her back to the wall before!'
She sat proudly erect, her hands quietly crossed. But he seemed to hear the beating of her heart.
'You mean when Pitt said, "Roll up the map of Europe"? Yes—that too was vital. But the people at home scarcely knew it—and it was not a war of machines.'
'No matter! England will never yield.'
'Till Germany is on her knees?' His long bony face, more lined, more emaciated than ever, seemed to catch a sombre glow from hers.
'Yes—though it last ten years! But the Americans are hurrying.'
'Are all women like you?'
Her mouth trembled into scorn.
'Oh, think of the women whose shoe-strings I am not worthy to unloose!—the nurses, the French peasant-women, the women who have given their husbands—their sons.'
His look showed his agitation.
'So we are to be saved—by boys like Desmond—and women like you?'
'Oh, I am a cypher—a nothing!' There was a passionate humiliation in her voice. 'I should be nursing in France—'
'If it weren't for your mother and your sister?'
She nodded. There was a pause. Then the Squire said, in a different tone,
'But you have not answered my question. I should be obliged if you would answer it. How am I, being I—how is a man of my kind to fill his time—and live his life? If the country is in deadly peril—if the ground is shaking beneath our feet—if we are to go on fighting for years, with "our backs to the wall," even I can't go on cataloguing Greek vases. I acknowledge that now. So much I grant you. But what else am I good for?'
The colour flushed in her fair skin, and her eyes filled again with tears.
'Come and help!' she said simply. 'There is so much to do. And for you—a large landowner—there is everything to do.'
His face darkened.
'Yes, if I had the courage for it. But morally I am a weakling—you know it. Do you remember that I once said to you if Desmond fell, I should go with him—or after him?'
She waited a moment before replying, and then said with energy, 'That would be just desertion!—hewould tell you so.'
Their eyes met, and the passion in hers subdued him. It was a strange dialogue, as though between two souls bared and stripped of everything but the realities of feeling.
'Would it be? That might be argued. But anyway I should have done it—the very night Desmond died—but for you!'
'For me?' she said, shading her eyes with a hand that trembled. 'No, Mr. Mannering, you could not have done such a thing!—for your honour's sake—for your children's sake.'
'Neither would have restrained me. I was held to life by one thread—one hope only—'
She was silent.
'—the hope that if I was to put my whole life to school again—to burn what I had adored, and adore what I had burned—the one human being in the world who could teach me such a lesson—who had begun to teach it me—would stand by me—would put her hand in mine—and lead me.'
His voice broke down. Elizabeth, shaken from head to foot, could only hide her face and wait. Even the strength to protest—'Not now!—not yet!' seemed to have gone from her. He went on vehemently:
'Oh, don't imagine that I am making you an ordinary proposal—or that I am going to repeat to you the things I said to you—like a fool—in Cross Wood. Then I offered you a bargain—and I see now that you despised me as a huckster! You were to help my hobby; I was to help yours. That was all I could find to say. I didn't know how to tell you that all the happiness of my life depended on your staying at Mannering. I was unwilling to acknowledge it even to myself. I have been accustomed to put sentiment aside—to try and ignore it. Tofeelas I did was itself so strange a thing to me, that I struggled to express it as prosaically as possible. Well, then, you were astonished—and repelled. That I saw—I realized it indeed more and more. I saw that I had perhaps done a fatal thing, and I spent much time brooding and thinking. I felt an acute distress, such as I had never felt in my life before—so much so that I began even to avoid you, because I used to say to myself—"She will go away some day—perhaps soon—and I must accustom myself to it." And yet—'
He lifted the hand that shaded his eyes, and gave her a long touching look.
'Yet I felt sometimes that you knew what was happening in me—and were sorry for me. Then came the news of Desmond. Of those days while he lay here—of the days since—I seem to know now hardly anything in detail. One of the officers at the front said to me that on the Somme he often lost all count of time, of the days of the week, of the sequence of things. It seemed to be all one present—one awful and torturingnow. So it is with me. Desmond is always here'—he pointed to the vacant space by the window—'and you are always sitting by him. And I know that if you go away—and I am left alone with my poor boy—though I shall never cease to hear the things he said to me—the things he asked me to do—I shall have no strength to do them. I cannot rise and walk—unless you help me.'
Elizabeth could hardly speak. She was in presence of that tremendous thing in human experience—the emergence of a man's inmost self. That the Squire could speak so—could feel so—that the man whose pupil and bond-slave she had been in those early weeks should be making this piteous claim upon her, throwing upon her the weight of his whole future life, of his sorrow, of his reaction against himself, overwhelmed her. It appealed to that instinctive, that boundless tenderness which lies so deep in the true woman.
But her will seemed paralysed. She did not know how to act—she could find no words that pleased her. The Squire saw it, and began to speak again in the same low measured voice, as though he groped his way along, from point to point. He sat with his eyes on the floor, his hands loosely clasped before him.
'I don't, of course, dare to ask you to say—at once—if you will be my wife. I dread to ask it—for I am tolerably certain that you would still say no. But if only now you would say, "I will go on with my work here—I will help a man who is weak where I am strong—I will show him new points of view—give him new reasons for living—"'
Elizabeth could only just check the sobs in her throat. The sad humility of the words pierced her heart.
The Squire raised himself a little, and spoke more firmly.
'Why should there be any change yet awhile? Only stay with us. Use my land—use me and all I possess—for the country—for what Desmond would have helped in—and done. Show me what to do. I shall do it ill. But what matter? Every little helps. "We have our backs to the wall." I have the power to giveyoupower. Teach me.'
Then reaching out, he took her hand in his. His voice deepened and strengthened.
'Elizabeth!—be my friend—my children's friend. Bring your poor mother here—and your sister—till Pamela goes. Then tell me—what you decide. You shall give me no pledge—no promise. You shall be absolutely free. But together let us do a bit of work, a bit of service.'
She looked up. The emotion, the sweetness in her face dazzled him.
'Yes,' she said gravely—'I will stay.'
He drew a long breath, and stooping over the hands she had given him, he kissed them.
Then he released her and, rising, walked away. The portrait of Desmond had been brought back, but it stood with its face to the wall. He went to it and turned it. It shone out into the room, under the westering sun. He looked at it a little—while Elizabeth with trembling fingers began to re-arrange her table in the old way.
Then he returned to her, speaking in the dry, slightly peremptory voice she knew well.
'I hear the new buildings at the Holme Hill Farm are nearly ready. Come and look at them to-morrow. And there are some woods over there that would be worth examining. The Air Board is still clamouring for more ash.'
Elizabeth agreed. Her smile was a gleam through the mist.
'And, on the way back, Pamela and I must go and talk to the village—about pigs and potatoes!'
'Do you really know anything about either?' he asked, incredulously.
'Come and hear us!'
There was silence. The Squire threw the window open to the April sunset. The low light was shining through the woods, and on the reddening tops of the beeches. There was a sparkle of leaf here and there, and already a 'livelier emerald' showed in the grass. Suddenly a low booming sound—repeated—and repeated.
'Guns?' said the Squire, listening.
Elizabeth reminded him of the new artillery camp beyond Fallerton.
But the sounds had transformed the April evening. The woods, the grass, the wood-pigeons in the park had disappeared. The thoughts of both the on-lookers had gone across the sea to that hell of smoke and fire, in which their race—in which England!—stood at bay. A few days—or weeks—or months, would decide.
The vastness of the issue, as it came flooding in upon the soul of Elizabeth, seemed to strain her very life—to make suspense unbearable.
An anguish seized her, and unconsciously her lips framed the passionate words of an older patriotism—
'Oh! pray—pray for the peace of Jerusalem! They shall prosper that love thee!'