We had a funny time trying to talk; La Fontaine's fables and Racine'sAthalie, as taught in a young ladies' finishing school, are not the best basis for a conversation on the practical needs of life. I wanted to ask her if she liked sugar and cream in her coffee; all I could think of was
"C'était pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit,Ma mère Jézebel devant moi s'est montrée."
"C'était pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit,Ma mère Jézebel devant moi s'est montrée."
"C'était pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit,
Ma mère Jézebel devant moi s'est montrée."
I did succeed in telling her that this was probably not as good as Belgian coffee; she sipped it gratefully and nibbled her toast, putting her hand on mine and saying that it was "delicious, Mademoiselle, but delicious."
My fugitive is still here; she was in bed two days, and then I let her get up. She is wearing one of my gowns, and she spends much of her time in the garden in the grapevine arbour, sitting very still, with the shadow of the leaves upon her face. Don stays with her much of the time, and she seems to like this; and the country smell of the garden comforts her a little, I think,—the odour of the red apples ripening in the sun and of grapes that will not quite ripen. She rarely moves, except when a drifting autumn leaf falls on lap or shoulder; it is as if body, mind, and soul were exhausted by the awful shock of her experience, and she could not gather up her vital forces. I can only dumbly wonder what terrors she has gone through, what unspeakable things she has seen.
Her name is Marie Lepont; father and mother she has not, but she lived with an aunt in a little villa near Brussels,—with a garden like this, onlyplus grand, and she had a lover; oh, yes, for two years she had been betrothed. I could not understand all that she said, but she told of their awful suspense in waiting for the Germans and of their taking refuge in the cellar,—the French for cellar I had never learned, so she showed me my own. Then came the flight, of old men, women, children, and pitiful animals; sickness, and falling by the way. Her aunt died from sheer exhaustion in a peasant's hut and was hastily buried at night. She could hardly tell what had happened, only that she was quite lost and separated from everybody she had ever known. Her lover was not in Brussels when the crisis came, and she had had no tidings from him. Evidently she had been swept over in a great wave of terrified humanity and had found herself on a steamer crowded with refugees. She can remember very little about the voyage, but with many others she reached a receiving camp near London, half ill and quite dazed. She searched vainly for her lover, and, not being able to discover any trace of him, stole away from the camp in a state of mental bewilderment to try to find him. For days she walked, growing more and more spent and hungry, for she was shy about asking for food, and the country people did not understand her, evidently mistook her for a gypsy, and treated her somewhat churlishly. When she reached the forest she was happy, it was so cool and shady there, but she had little to eat save mushrooms. If I had tried to pluck mushrooms for my sustenance, it would have ended all my troubles! When I found her, she had had nothing to eat for more than twenty-four hours.
I watch her as she sits in the sunshine, and I multiply her by hundreds and thousands, innocent people, old folk and babies, old men and women lying down by the roadside to die, and the horror comes like a great tidal wave, sweeping all things before it, drowning all the joy of life and the old sweet ways of living. It breaks on the brick wall of my garden and is driven back; I will not be overwhelmed by any anguish of human fate, my own, or that of any one else. Until some wandering star strikes the earth and shivers it to atoms, there is hope somewhere, and there are things to do! And Marie Lepont shall not be overwhelmed either, in spite of the terrible things she sees, waking or sleeping, for she starts up and cries out in the night; Don gives a little comforting, reassuring bark, and she goes to sleep again. I've got to find her lover for her, and how shall I begin?
I'll go and ask the pony!
October 14. My fugitive fits quietly into our life in the little red house, saying little, trying to do much, and smiling more and more. I do not talk to her, but now and then I sit and sew with her; I know that she is most domestic, and that this will make her feel at home, but I should hate to have her examine my seams and hems, for I am no seamstress. I leave her much alone with the animals, and that seems to help more than anything else; the Atom spends much of its time on her shoulder. She has begged to be allowed to feed the chickens, for Madge has insisted on our having chickens, and Peter has constructed a yard for them, with a little house for winter, a bit down the stream. Sea gulls come sailing on wide beautiful white wings and descend to the chicken yard, walk about and steal food, to the helpless wrath of our fowls. Even Hengist and Horsa retreat; they are two twin stately cocks, and William the Conqueror is a bigger one, with spurs. He is quite the greatest coward in the yard, and entirely in awe of his Matildas. It is thus that I am making history concrete for Madge; my long line of British queens does credit to the dynasty, though they are a bit miscellaneous in ancestry. Boadicea is a dark beauty, wild and fierce; my vainest, long-necked, red-brown hen is Queen Elizabeth; oh, the cackling when she lays an egg! The large, fat, rather stupid one is Queen Anne; I let Madge choose and name Queen Victoria herself, and she selected a plump and comely grey fowl, rather diminutive, with an imperative and yet appealing cluck, who will make, I know, an excellent wife and mother. It is all very well to keep hens and to eat their eggs, but I have given notice to Madge that not one of these companions of my daily life shall be sold to the butcher or served upon my table. The gingerbread baby comes giggling through the gate at least once a day, and it has taken a great fancy to Marie. It proves to be the eleventh and youngest child of my friend the blacksmith, and it has early developed, probably from constant association with so many swift feet, an abnormal talent for running away.
From morning until night I am busy with a thousand and one things, commonplace things mostly, in the house, or the village, or beyond. And wherever I go, you seem near, with your long, thin stride, and your preoccupied face, as if your feet had a bit of difficulty in keeping up with your mind. There is a strange sense always, when I walk in the forest, or along the highway, even when I go to Farmer Wilde's to see about butter and vegetables, that you are walking by my side.
Peter is very solicitous about the welfare of my guest, and I have seen him looking at her with vast pity in his eyes.
"Peter," I reminded him, "you can no longer say that you have not seen a Belgian refugee."
"No, Miss," was his only answer. He digs and prunes, still arguing his country's lack of need of him in this pretence of war.
"There's the British fleet, 'm," he observed, with fine scorn. "It was hordered out at the beginning of this so-called war, and told to sink the henemy's fleet. Wot 'ave we 'eard of it since, 'm? Nothing, nothing at all. It's just bluff, 'm; the fleet is out on the 'igh seas for pleasure, junketing at our expense. Doubtless all the gentlemen enjoy a cruise."
"Peter," I say solemnly, "don't you really know that a German submarine sank three British cruisers on the twenty-second of September, theHague, theCressy, and theAboukir? Do you think that the gallant men upon them went to the bottom for pleasure?"
Peter turned a trifle pale under the red of his forehead and cheeks.
"I heard that rumour," he remarked, with an attempt at airy skepticism, "and I dessay you believe it. I dessay you think it actually happened. But I refuse to believe it; when was the British fleet ever defeated?"
There was a tentative something, a touch of question, in the bravado of his denial.
"Peter," I suggest, "our fall gardening is not a national necessity; there is greater need of you elsewhere. Why not be a bomb-sweeper; you like the sea, I believe?" Madge listens, her broom suspended in mid-air, as if it were listening too. A look of embarrassment crosses Peter's face, as he rubs his cheek.
"The bombs are very explosive, I've 'eard, 'm."
"Peter," I say, "if this is an imaginary war, those are imaginary bombs and do not explode."
"I'm not so sure of that, Miss," says Peter shrewdly.
Another British cruiser, theHawke, sunk October 16. There is wakening fear in the hearts of the English people, and there is deepening courage. The faces that I see here and in the near-by towns, the letters that I get, have one expression. Party differences have almost ceased to exist in the political world, and in other ways, I think, the nation is being welded into one, as it has never been. Even the voice of the Vicar's lady has lost something of its condescension in speaking to common folk; I saw her at the blacksmith's as I took the gingerbread baby home for the eighth time, and she spoke with less of an air of coming down to the level of her audience than I should have believed possible. The gentry are behaving a bit less as if the earth were their private monopoly, and the subgentry, like our Vicaress, are taking the cue.
A few days ago I went to London, chiefly to get clothing for Marie and to set on foot inquiries about her betrothed. Nothing seemed greatly changed, save that there were fewer people in the streets and the restaurants, and that many uniforms are in evidence. The theatres are open, and people are going about their work and their play in quite usual fashion, but their faces wear a different expression, an impersonal look, and a certain quiet exaltation. Oh, if the real England, that England that I know chiefly through the expression of her inmost self in her matchless literature, and through you, could only win over that other of high, excluding walls and ancient entailed rights of selfishness and of belittling snobbishness! You will admit that something needs righting in a social condition represented by the tale of the two sisters at Oxford,—one married to a tailor, one married to a University professor,—who did not dare speak to each other in the street for fear of consequences. I am hopelessly democratic; the wonderfully good manners of the perfectly trained English servant seem to me vastly higher, as human achievement, than the manner of the superior who speaks brutally to him. The surprised gratitude of many of the maids and scrub-women here when one addresses them as if they really were human beings is piteous.
Yet I know that though these things be true, they reflect but the surface, not the depths. Something in this crisis, something even in Peter's crude attacks, has roused a deep race instinct in me, long dormant. Though my forebears set sail for America in the 1630's, my sense of the identity of our destiny with that of England deepens every day. I am ceasing to say "your", and unconsciously slipping into "our"; perhaps I have been trying to criticize, to point out the things that are wrong, partly as a measure of self-protection, for I am growing sorry that the Revolutionary War ever happened! I long for England's victory in this war, knowing that she is right; I dimly suspect that I should long for it were she right or wrong; and I feel a little thrill of pride that my home is in this England of yours, of ours.
Even I, who am often indignant in watching the Englishman's manner toward those other Englishmen whom he considers his social inferiors, can discern his profound sense of responsibility toward them. Forgetting the mistakes of to-day, and thinking of the long development, one can but be aware in England of a stable, enduring spirituality, a practical idealism, unlike that of the earlier, idealistic Germany,—a something tangential, disassociated with life,—in that it is a constant sense of inner values working out in everyday ways and habits. Those mystical habits of dreaming fine things that are never done will not save the world. In my growing love for England, I am more and more aware of its disciplined, mellow civilization, treasuring the old and sacred in beliefs, in institutions, in buildings; its right, controlling habits; its thousand and one wise departures from the measure of rule and thumb; its uncodified, unformulated truth of action; its conduct far more logically right than its laws. In the very reproach oftenest brought against England I find the deepest reason for trusting her, that she allows human instinct a larger place and mere intellectual theory a smaller place than does any other nation in working out its destiny. I am deeply puzzled by my sense of the Englishman's wrong attitude toward his supposed inferior while I recognize that inner instinctive sense of necessary adjustments, that genius for living that makes them the best colonizers in the world and makes their rule the most lasting anywhere.
I consulted some of the chief authorities in the Belgian relief work in regard to Marie,—your England shows the real humanity at the heart of her in this magnificent hospitality to an outraged nation,—and I put advertisements into several papers. At home all was well, save that William the Conqueror had choked, trying to swallow a piece of English bacon too large for him, and was dead. So perish all who lust for conquest!
October 24. Two days ago came a domestic, not to say a social crisis. Two of the county ladies called on me, accompanied by the Vicaress; they must have been told, I think, of my uncle the banker! Forgive this gibe,—I could not resist making it; we always disputed, you remember, as to whether your countrymen or mine were the more devout worshippers of gold. To say truth, I have met these ladies at one or two committee meetings in our relief work, and I feel duly honoured by the call. I ring for Madge; Madge does not appear; going to the kitchen, I find it empty, the fire out, water dripping forlornly from the faucet. The coal in the sitting room grate I replenish myself and face the horror of the situation: three English ladies and no tea! No one knows better than I what blasphemy it would be to omit the sacred British rite of tea, which is even more established than the Established Church. Rising to the occasion, I heat water in a little copper kettle on the coals in the sitting room,—"So resourceful, as all Americans are," murmurs one lady. I concoct tea, and it proves very good tea indeed, served with appetizing little cakes from yesterday's baking. My guests go away mollified; not so am I! One of them had so many scathing things to say about England's policies at home and abroad, the political friendship with Russia, the desertion of Persia, the treatment of Ireland, the mismanagement of the present war, that I was driven to an attitude of defence. Surely there is something greater for English men and English women to do now than to stand aloof and criticize! When I told her that I thought it was a pity to confuse the soul of the English people with mistakes of contemporary statesmen, she looked at me blankly, nor could I make her understand. It is odd for me, who have so derided our Anglomaniacs and superficial imitators of the English, to come so hotly to the defence of England. I hardly know myself what is going on within me. It is the England-in-the-long-run that I reverence, the England of the great poetry, that soul of England full of "high-erected thoughts", of sunny faiths, and sweet humanities. And of course, through you too, I know its very best,—the breeding that makes no boast; its fine reserve; its self-control; its matchless, silent courage.
It is a chilly day; Don and the Atom cuddle side by side at the hearth; they are great friends now. Marie returns with bright eyes and red cheeks from a walk. Presently home comes Peter, who has been away on some errand of his own, to a fireless hearth and an empty room. Home and garden and adjacent field he searches in vain.
"She will 'ave gone to one of her friends, Miss," says Peter stoutly, proceeding to lay a fire.
I assent, but with misgiving. Madge had never failed before, nor had she even gone away for half an hour without telling me. As Peter helps me prepare a simple meal to serve instead of dinner, I turn the conversation toward military training and matters of war. My own contributions to the conversation, in regard to cavalry, infantry, and manœuvering I should not care to have Lord Kitchener hear. Very casually I remark that, if I were a man, I should like to be a soldier.
"Would you now, Miss?" Peter responds amiably, as he takes up the toasting-fork.
"There's a recruiting station at Shepperton," I suggest, as I cut the bread. "There are five thousand men encamped for training in Wellington Park; and I've been told that there are several hundred in the nearest village,—what is it, Silverlea? I hardly see how you can go about so much without seeing them."
"It is odd, isn't it?" Peter answers wonderingly. I found out afterward that the villain had spent that very day at Wellington Park, watching the recruits drill.
As it grew later, more chilly and darker on that autumn night, I could see the British husband's awful wrath growing within Peter; he evidently thought that his wife had run away with some one. Naturally I had no idea what had happened, but I had my doubts of this. In the first place, she was fundamentally good; in the second place, one Briton was, I felt sure, enough for Madge.
Don and the Atom were the only members of the family who really enjoyed their evening meal that day. They lapped from the same saucer, though not at the same moment, each politely waiting a turn, the closest of allies, and doing a bit after in the way of washing each other up. Marie watched me with big, sympathetic brown eyes, and said nothing. When nine o'clock came, I was as worried as was Peter, though I did not admit it. We had decided that he should go to the Inn for the pony, and that we would begin a systematic search. He went to his room to get ready and presently appeared, alternately red with wrath and pale with anxiety.
"My clothes, 'm, my Sunday clothes are gone. Boots and all, 'm. And my 'at, my Sunday 'at."
Despair could go no further than this intonation of Peter's Sunday 'at; would that any 'at had ever meant so much to me!
"She 'as given them to 'im, Miss."
"To whom?"
"That's just what I don't know, 'm."
What could one think? Had Madge, the admirable, indeed a lover? That was unthinkable; there must have been some accident. At least, there was nothing to do but to notify mine host of the Inn, and to present the case to the local Dogberry.
We were ready to start, when I heard a little click of my garden gate, and soft footsteps came up the brick walk, down which streamed the light of the porch lamp. Red rage mounted to Peter's eyes. "It's that man," he cried, "in my clothes!" I kept a detaining arm on Peter's sleeve,—his second-best sleeve. Where had his best been intriguing?
The kitchen door opened softly, very softly; we stood breathless in the corner. If it were a burglar, we were ready; were not all the massive British kitchen utensils near? The lamplight fell full upon the face and form of a strange man, a very strange man, the strangest I ever saw, plump, round of face, with straggling, irregular locks of hair that had been newly shorn,—a decidedly strange man, in Peter's clothes.
"You—you hussy!" said Peter, but the sorry epithet expressed a world of relief, even, I thought, of endearment.
One would have supposed that Madge could not grow redder; yet her face became even more a flame.
"You, a respectable British female," said Peter, advancing with slow heaviness of tread, as if Madge's end would really come when he reached her and the Sunday clothes; "You, a British female, and the wife of an honest man, out on the highway in a man's clothes,myclothes." He took hold of her arm, but gently; he would not have dared do otherwise. His wife looked at him steadily; he could not meet her glance, and his eyes fell.
"You're little better than a suffragette," he said weakly.
"That may be," said Madge, not without a certain loftiness, touching her hair with a novel feminine gesture, "that may be; but Iambetter than an able-bodied man that doesn't hoffer himself to his country. The suffragettes are fighting for theirs."
Peter was stricken; he had nothing to say. Don, arriving and unable to understand, barked wildly at Madge, and she seemed to mind his remarks much more than she had Peter's. I could help it no longer, and I burst out laughing.
"Madge," I asked, "where have you been?"
"I've been to the recruiting station at Shepperton, 'm," said Madge, with one look at Peter. "I could bear it no longer; not a finger raised for King or Country."
Peter hung his head.
"Or the 'Ouse of Lords," Madge added witheringly. "I've been a-reading and a-reading, 'm, in those papers of yours about the French women that they find, fighting side by side with the men, for their country, and about the Russian women fighting too; but when I saw yesterday that German women had been found fighting, something gave way in my 'ead. I think you call it brain-storm in America, 'm. Those barbarian women, from God knows where, fighting for King and Country and their 'Ouse of Lords! I said to myself that the Snell family should send one man to the seat of war."
"I've been a-considering," said Peter. "I've been a-thinking it out."
"The present h'our," glared Madge, "is no time tothink!"
"That was evidently the exact view of the European statesmen in August," I ventured, but Madge and Peter were too intent to catch my unkind whisper.
"So I put on Peter's clothes," said Madge, "and I went and walked to Shepperton and offered myself. Your Queen Elizabeth would have done as much."
MyQueen Elizabeth, indeed!
"What did they say to you?" demanded Peter.
"I shan't tell you," said Madge. And she never did.
October 22. I am so excited that I can hardly write; my fingers tremble and make letters that look like bird-tracks. What do you think has happened? Who do you think stopped this afternoon at my little iron gate? It seems a terrible thing, an incredible thing to say, but I could hardly have been happier about it if it had been you. I have so much to do, to think about, while Marie—? Her little world had all been swept away.
I was weeding this neglected garden; Peter, leaning on his spade, was eyeing me with some disapproval.
"Ladies shouldn't be doing that 'ard work, Miss," he observed.
"That's a queer opinion for a socialist," I remarked, tugging at a burdock root. He let me tug and went on with the exposition of his political opinions, quite unaware of my meaning.
"This need not keep you from working, Peter," I suggested. "I've no intention of spading that bed."
He dug his spade in with a little grunt.
"Everybody ought to work; that should be the first article of your socialist creed."
"It isn't, 'm," said Peter eagerly.
"Wouldn't you respect the House of Lords more if they actually worked, Peter?" This brought him to a full stop.
"They do less 'arm as it is, Miss," he said darkly.
Here we heard the gate creak; the broken latch gives a little unnecessary click. An odd figure was standing there, looking like a tramp, with worn and battered clothing, a Derby hat with holes in it, and dark hair straggling over his forehead. Don, catching sight of him, barked furiously; I never heard him bark that way. It was as if the whole outraged spirit of the British upper classes were crying out upon the poverty and the misery they have helped create; it was a perfect yelp of class-consciousness. This naturally enlisted my sympathy on the side of the tramp, and I scolded Don and even slapped him a little. I've told him often enough that there is really nothing so vulgar as display of a sense of social superiority, and I do not like these relapses from the democratic spirit that I am trying to cultivate in him.
It was the way in which the tramp watched me that made me suspect that he was not a tramp at all; he had big, brown, appealing eyes, like those of a nice dog,—not Don, but a friendly shepherd dog. The way in which he took off his battered hat enlightened me further, as did his little wistful smile. His face was a bit dirty, but my face has been dirty in times past; so, doubtless, has yours, Lord Hamlet. When I greeted him with good afternoon, he took a piece of paper from his pocket, and at first I wondered if he were an Armenian with lace, going about with a letter of introduction from a pastor,—or don't you have them in England? But he did not look like an Armenian, and he very evidently did not have lace, or any other kind of luggage. The paper proved to be the advertisement that I had put in a London paper,—and as I took it, it struck me that those holes in his hat might be bullet holes.
"You're not really Henri Dupré?"
"I am," he said simply. My French is fairly inadequate in my calmest moments; in times of excitement it is non-existent, but he must have understood the joy in my face, and the hand I held out in welcome. He shook his head; his hand was not clean; my own was less so, and I was so proud! As I told Peter, if I had not been weeding, our guest would not have been properly greeted. Don, the wretched little creature, taking his cue from me, was gaily barking a welcome in a wholly different tone of voice from that which he had used at first. You see, he never would have known that the wayfarer was respectable if he had not considered himself properly introduced by my handshake.
"Is Marie Lepont here?"
I told him in my matter-of-fact way that she was, and I said nothing more; they might do their own explaining, I thought, as they understood their own language, not to speak of anything else, far better than I. So I only motioned to him and went on tiptoe to the corner of the house; Marie was sitting in the garden, as she sits so often, in the rocking-chair, knitting, knitting for the soldiers. The air is full of the fragrance of ripening apples, of falling leaves, and fading fern. She is very quiet in the sunshine, and the shadows of the grapevine leaves upon her face hardly change for half an hour at a time. I motioned to him, and then I ran away, back to my weeding,—to anything. If it were really he! I wondered if even they felt an anguish so intense, a joy so intense as my own. It must have lent me greater power than I really have, for I tugged and tugged to relieve my feelings; the burdock came up, root and all, and I sat down rather suddenly, panting. Peter remonstrated mildly, shaking his head.
"You really shouldn't, Miss!"
"Then why don't you?" I asked. "It was here all the time, and you have a spade."
"I've 'ad no directions, Miss," he said stiffly. "But I don't refer to the weeding; I dessay it is because you are an American and don't understand, but you really shouldn't let disrespectable people in that way. He may be a burglar; he may be robbing the 'ouse at this very minute. But why, if you don't mind me asking, are you crying, Miss?"
"I'm not!" I answered indignantly. "I never cry. Peter, will you lend this man your precious Sunday suit?"
"Never, Miss!" declared Peter, somewhat heated, and mopping his forehead. "A tramp like that!"
"You believe in the brotherhood of man, don't you?"
"Of course I do; certingly I do."
"Madge," I called through the kitchen window, "please start the heater and get water ready for a bath. And please lay out Peter's Sunday suit; he wants to lend it to a brother man."
"Brother man, indeed!" ejaculated Peter, and he went on digging. He is getting a bed ready for next spring's daffodils.
"Peter," I said with some severity, "I want to see if I can respect your social convictions; this is the first chance I have had to test them."
"Yes, Miss," he answered, "but I don't see what that has to do with me Sunday suit."
Not a sound came from the garden; I kept Don with me,—not even he should break that moment. Then I told Peter who had come, how the lovers had lost each other in that mad rush for safety, and how, for days, I had been trying to find this man, for I was very sure that the right man had come. Peter was spellbound, nor could he dig a stroke while I was talking. Then he began to work, and he worked furiously, as I have not seen him since he came.
"It's quite right, 'm, about the suit," he said presently.
I worked for perhaps an hour, while Peter dug like one inspired. Madge heated water and got towels ready, peering out curiously to see why. A touch of evening chill came into the air; the rooks began to go home, and filmy rose-flushed clouds trailed over the sky at sunset. Finally I shook the dirt off my hands, finding myself very stiff as I tried to stand.
"Peter," I asked, "what shall I do next?"
"I think, 'm, I'd start making a wedding cake," he answered, after due reflection.
"For a futile political theorist, you do have perfectly unexpected moments of insight," I told him.
"Yes, Miss," said Peter.
Silence, except for the rooks, the sound of the brook, and a little wayward flutter of the leaves where the wind was moving. I went to the kitchen and added something un-British and digestible to the supper menu, then walked up and down, wondering why a man probably famished did not appear. Finally I decided that I must investigate and tiptoed my way to the corner of the house. Marie was still sitting in her chair; her knitting was on the ground beside her. The shadow of the grapevine was gone, and her face was alive with light from within and without. The level shafts of sunlight that touched it fell too on the red brick wall behind her, where the espaliered pear tree was etched in dark lines, and all the garden was a soft glow of October gold. The stranger was sitting on the ground with his head against Marie's knees, and her little shawl over his shoulders, sleeping like a child that had found its way home.
As I crept near, Marie looked up, and a heavenly smile came over her face. She took my hand and held it, kissing it more than once, and she said over and over: "Mademoiselle; Mademoiselle," and again, "Mademoiselle."
We let her lover stay as long as we dared on the brick walk, covering him warmly with steamer rugs. Later we found that he had just reached England and had hardly slept for a week. The sunset faded, and the stars grew bright, and still he leaned his head against Marie's knee and slept the sleep of exhaustion.
Presently we wakened him; there was a great sound of splashing water; Marie ran up-stairs to do her hair over again and came down flushed like a rose, revitalized, alive as I had not dreamed she could be alive, and at last our guest appeared, clean and smiling. He was evidently amused by the odd fit of Peter's clothes, but too tired and too happy to say much. I sped to the kitchen to make the French omelette; Madge cannot do it,—no Briton could; it has to be manipulated in just the right fashion, turned at the exact fraction of a second, and served in just the right way. You should have seen Don, when he found the stranger in your place, apologizing, snuffing daintily, touching him with a friendly and beseeching paw, pretending that he had always known!
Of course the lovers were holding hands under the table; of course you, as an Englishman, would have thought them effusive, but I should have been terribly hurt if they had not been effusive about that omelette. When I rise to the occasion like this, I like to be appreciated; I had nothing to complain of that night. Tea and toast and jam; a few tears, and much laughter, and a Sultana cake—the very kind that grew in Oxford windows and graced our five o'clock banquets; a Sultana cake calls to my mind the profoundest problems of life and destiny, so many of them we discussed over the crumbs,—this, I am afraid, meant a rather ascetic repast for the young Belgians, but I thought that anything more, with their great draughts of happiness, would be indigestible. Peter took Henri to the Inn and got a room for him. Though he was there more than three weeks, mine host would not let me pay a farthing,—no, indeed! The Belgians are the guests of the English nation, he said, and he was glad to have his chance to shelter one of them.
November 1. War, unceasing war in the trenches, with rumours of a British naval defeat in South American waters, and little encouraging news save that the Germans have failed to reach Dunkirk and Calais. England's best are dying, your kind,—England's noblest sons rushing to the danger places, foolishly, grandly brave. One can feel throughout the country the great purpose shaping itself to the needs of the moment, as it does slowly but surely in this land. That is the secret of this people: they can rise to a challenge, meet any crisis whatever when it comes; and though I know that unpreparedness has cost them much, they are greater and better than if they had devoted their best energy for five and twenty years to getting ready for war. Enthusiasm kindles under the challenge of disaster; the finest have already answered the call; the less fine make the great refusal. You go, but Peter stays, and Peter's kind all over England stays….
November 5. Peter does not stay! Peter is going to the war! For several days he has been very critical of civilization, very severe upon his country and her rulers; at times he seemed to think himself the only real pillar of Church and State. Some struggle was going on within him; I have learned enough of him to know that if he expresses a feeling, it is one he does not have! For him, as for me, the horror of the present moment has been intensified by coming into contact with those who have actually suffered. All that I could understand of Henri Dupré's account I have translated into English for Peter's benefit, and the sight of the bullet-riddled hat has plunged him in deep thought.
He saw your picture, the picture of you in khaki. Madge, unpermitted, had taken it into the kitchen to polish the frame of oak. Peter looked at it uneasily.
"A friend of yours, Miss?"
"Yes, Peter."
"At the front, 'm?"
"At the front, Peter," I answered. I could not have said anything else, and even if I live to be a hundred, I shall not think of you any other way except as at the front, fighting if need be, carrying messages across the danger zone, with no thought of danger.
It was a great advance in Peter to admit the existence of a front; he has persisted in declaring the war a bit of sensational romance, devised by the House of Lords for their own entertainment. It was a brooding Peter who busied himself with rubbing up the knives,—he has been unusually attentive to Madge since her escapade; his mind seemed to be running on troubles greater than his own.
"Do you know where our army is supposed to be now, 'm?" he asked, when I told him that we had no good news from the seat of war.
Ourarmy! We were getting on! I gave him my best information about our hard-pressed line in the west.
"It's astonishing that those Germans are able to fight at all, 'm, when they have once met the British," said Peter gloomily, polishing a huge carving knife as if it were a sword. "Meeting the French, that is different; they are a flighty people and very hexcitable."
"Your knowledge of history needs to be brought up to date, Peter," I ventured. "Anything less flighty than that magnificent people of France at this present moment the world has never seen."
"It must be very difficult, 'm, fighting on the Continent, for one who does not speak the foreign tongues. And I couldn't eat frogs, 'm; I'd almost rather 'ave the Germans as allies; sausages aren't as bad as frogs by 'alf."
Later I heard him muttering to himself.
"If the 'Ouse of Lords is really in trouble," said Peter, fighting the great fight with self, "if the 'Ouse of Lords really needs me—Of course, the throne is more or less a figure'ead, but I shouldn't like to see it fall just now, especially if the henemy is coming…. I should like to himpress them as much as possible." It was when he was sweeping the walk that I heard him say: "And I should like to see Bobs once more."
But one day determined Peter's future destiny and his rank as a man and a Briton. Peter had gone to the coast, with Puck and the cart, spending the night at a sister's on the way. He had some business at Yarmouth, he said. I devised some errands for him and encouraged his going. I thought that it would perhaps prove to be his farewell to his sister before going to war.
Those were strange days, the days of Peter's absence,—tense, full of nameless anxiety. That early-morning feeling of suspense, of expectancy, lasted into the afternoon; and one early morning had brought us the unmistakable sound of guns from the sea. Peter came rattling home in the late afternoon, a pale, distraught Peter, who seemed to have lost several pounds. He came into the garden where I was tying up rosebushes for the winter; at first he seemed unable to speak, but at last gasped out, "Those —— Germans!" and the gasp ended in a little sob. As I watched him, I found myself sharing his trembling indignation.
"German ships, 'm, men-of-war, standing off our coast, bombarding; it has never been attacked before. I saw them with my own eyes; I 'eard them with my own ears!"
The firing, then, had had the significance that we dreaded. It began at about seven o'clock in the morning on November third, terrifying the peaceful folk of the seacoast town, shell after shell, report after report for nearly half an hour. Peter, who was getting an early start for home, had taken Puck and the cart to a house on the outskirts of the town, where he was getting a bag of very superior fertilizer. Then came the great noise and the splashing; little if any actual damage was done to buildings or to people, yet Peter contended that Puck was actually struck on the shoulder by some fragment of splintering wood or flying stone dislodged by a shell. Those shells may have missed their intended mark, but they went home to the heart of the time-expired man, Peter Snell. He knew at last that there was a war, and I knew—what he himself had not yet realized—that he was going to it.
Peter lacks descriptive powers; I got from him little idea of the actual scene in all the fright and confusion. When he had found that there was nothing he could do to help, he had sped toward home, intent on carrying out his unavowed purpose. Asking how Puck, now standing with drooping head at the gate, had behaved at the crisis, I got the account that I expected, and, as we petted this veteran of the war and dressed a small hurt on his shoulder, I heard how he, the most antic pony in the British Isles, had held his ground, had jumped only moderately, had endured the crashing and the splashing, standing with his four legs braced in the sand, trembling all over, while Peter, dazed a bit at first, came to his senses.
"And I will say, 'm, that he showed more 'ead than I 'ad myself, for the reins were loose on his back, I 'aving dropped them to put in the bag of fertilizer. 'E never offered to run, 'm!"
Puck, the war veteran, took our praises modestly, making no claim to be recognized as a hero; he helps me understand the British temper, not to say the British constitution. No paper theories for him! The unwritten law of common sense available when needed is admirably embodied in him. That power of keeping your head while others lose theirs is what wins in the long run, and despite the discouragement of this present moment, I feel confident that the English will win in the end. The Germans plan, theorize, show great forethought, but are lost without a programme. Life does not go by plans and charts; no known precautions can foresee its emergencies. Unless some chemical or electric invention of the Teutons can remove the element of uncertainty from existence, surely victory will go to the people who can meet the unforeseen; pull themselves together and know, without forethought, what to do in an instant's danger. All these meditations passed through my head as Puck shook his mane, making light of his adventure, and trotted away down the street to his stable with an unmistakable air of "England expects every pony to do his duty."
The country thrills with indignation, surprise, and increasing resolution; the impossible has happened, and these inviolate shores have been desecrated by attack.
Peter is away, Peter in khaki, with something already gone from his laggard step, with firmer and more self-respecting tread, recalling the old training which he was beginning to forget. Surely, because of his experience as a soldier, they will let him go soon to the front. The sympathy and the admiration in the eyes of our fugitives have nerved him, as nothing else has done, for the great adventure. I heard Henri giving him some French lessons, strictly along the line of requests for food and drink; the French will make up in swiftness of understanding what he lacks in pronunciation. His last days with Madge have been funny and tragic too. Her first remark, on hearing of the Yarmouth incident, was along the old line of urging him to war.
"Some minds," she remarked firmly, "need shot and shell to open 'em." But I could not help noticing that when he began to talk about going, she stopped talking about it. Her face has been tragically comic as she has watched him, in a Falstaff "He-that-died-o'-Wednesday" mood, packing his belongings. I heard the sound of loud sobbing in the kitchen as she made herself a cup of tea the afternoon he went away. Could it be Madge who was muttering questions as to why the King didn't go to war himself if he wanted war?
November 25. A wedding, actually a wedding, in the little red house, which wakens gladly to its ancient responsibilities! Weddings enough have I seen, but this is the first that I ever managed from start to finish; it was much more my own than if I had been married myself, for I had to do all the planning, coach the actors, superintend the catering, and do the decorating with my own hands. The only thing I did not attempt was performing the ceremony.
We had such joyous weeks, after the banns were published! Marie, I am sure, quite forgot her sorrow; I quite forgot you, most of the time,—I mean in my upper and superficial mind. Down under, of course, in the vital part of my soul, you are I, I am you: there is no remembering or forgetting, for I am living your life and mine in a fashion profound and strange. We were busy every minute, busy with the outer things of life that ride on the surface of the deep currents,—bobbing up and down in the sunshine.
First, there was Marie's trousseau. She begged me with tears to get her nothing more; but a girl must have clothing, be she married or single, so we purchased much muslin,—"calico," they call it, oh, horrors! What can one think of a nation that calls cotton flannel "swan's-down calico"? We found a little sewing woman in the village, and she did her inefficient best on an ancient sewing machine. Much of the finishing we had to do ourselves, so afternoons we sat in the garden and stitched. My buttonholes would not call forth commendations from any ladies' journal, but what they lacked in delicacy they made up in strength. Buttonholes for war, I consoled myself, as I saw the barricades that I had erected round the little gashes, are a different matter from buttonholes for peace.
Marie's ready-made travelling suit, for which I sent to London, fitted fairly well; as did the boots for both of them. When they overwhelmed me with thanks, I had to talk very earnestly with them; at least I am growing more fluent, and they never laugh, only once or twice I have seen the corners of their mouths twitching uncontrollably, and once tears came into Marie's eyes as she tried to keep from laughing. They are exquisitely courteous, and would die rather than be rude. I summoned all my resources from grammar, dictionary, and heroic plays; at last the world has faced an occasion that justifies the grandiloquence of French tragedy.
I told them that we were honouring ourselves in being allowed to care for any members of this stricken, dauntless nation. More than anything that could be done for them had they done for the world; how could we ever repay our debt to this little people with its heroic young King? What I was doing I did, not for them (think of having sufficient French to be able to prevaricate in it already!), but for my country and their country—and for England; it was not a personal but an international matter. They may not have understood all my syntax, but my general meaning they understood perfectly, and Don helped me very greatly by sitting on his hind legs and offering to shake hands, first with one and then with the other.He, at least, understands my academic French!
There had to be a wedding dress; I insisted on a white one; it was only China silk, made with a simplicity which, I presume, outraged Marie's grandmother's traditions. As I explained to her, if she goes back to London to help the authorities with the refugees, while Henri returns to Belgium to enter the army, she could doubtless loan this gown for other weddings, for among the fugitives many—I hoped many—another pair of lovers would perhaps be reunited. At this, her eyes filled with tears, and she uttered not another word of remonstrance; she starts on a quest to find others to wear it.
So she wore the white frock at her wedding, and the house was brave in its bridal array! Yellowing ferns, autumn leaves, and great golden chrysanthemums and white decked the living room; outside the dim red and gold of the autumn woods in hazy distance recalled the ancient manuscripts that you showed us in the sacred recesses of the Bodleian. To think that I should live to see a Roman Catholic priest marrying two young folk by my fireplace! Marie and Henri were quite polite but very determined to be married according to the rites of their own Church, and it was done. His Reverence plainly did not want to officiate at my house, but not in vain have I associated with Puck, choosing him for guide, philosopher, and friend, and obstinacy won. Henri wore a new dark tweed business suit which Peter insisted on giving him; he is a fine-looking man when you see him clothed and in his right mind, the torn hat vanished. Both faces have a look of sorrow and of shock that should not be on faces so young, but there is also a look of intense and quiet happiness. Even if they are separated again, they will have had something of the joy of life in these brief hours and days since they found each other.
Our wedding feast was the simplest ever set before mortals, unless possibly our Pilgrim fathers and mothers had a simpler in starvation days in the old colony, with bride cake made perhaps of Indian meal! We had tables in the garden, and a few simple things to eat and drink, centering in that wedding cake upon which Peter had insisted. Had not Madge and I spent a whole morning over it, with its raisins and its currants, its spices and its chopped nuts? "Leave off the frosting, 'm!" Madge had ejaculated in horror. "That would be a heathing thing to do!" When I told her that for most people nowadays the frosting was rubbed off of life, she looked at me as if she thought me mad. So she does, but harmless mad.
Perhaps the mild November air, which harmonizes all things,—sad, soft and sweet,—helped harmonize the diverse elements at that wedding feast. There were the Vicar and the Roman priest peacefully grazing as one; the Vicaress was affably chatting with mine host and hostess as on equal terms; one of my county ladies was entertaining the little dressmaker who cannot sew. I did my best in inviting them to outrage as many conventions as possible; they submitted to the necessities of the occasion, and still the House of Lords stands, or sits, King George is on his throne, and the kingdom has not fallen.
I hope it never will!
It had been hard to induce the Vicar to come, but I reminded him that our Church had been a Roman Catholic Church before Queen Elizabeth's day, and that, in the holy ground of the churchyard, Roman Catholic dust was mingled with Church of England dust. How, at this cruel moment in the world's history, the truth cries out that there should be no struggle between Christian and Christian, only between Christian and Pagan! He came; high and low alike nibbled our little cakes and consumed our ices, and drank the simple beverage made of lemons and other ingredients served from a wonderful old blue punch bowl. Ay, we were all allies that day!
So they were married and fêted, and when it was all over, mine host drove them to the railway station, and I followed with Puck and the pony cart, Don sitting beside me, and the gingerbread baby with two of its brothers sitting on the other side. The village windows and doorways were crowded with friendly faces, for the story of the two re-united lovers had spread far, and many a kindly good-bye was spoken by people who had never met them. I had determined that Puck, who had found Marie, and to whom the happy outcome of the story was due, should have a place of honour at the parting moment, but Marie's last glimpse of him showed him indignantly shaking off the white rosettes that had been fastened to his headstall.
They waved back quite a merry farewell, and then they disappeared, vanishing behind the great cloud of tragedy that hangs so close. I can see only suffering ahead of them. They consented to take a loan from me, not to be repaid until their country is free, and they promised again and again to let me know if they came to want.
It is lonely to-night, belovèd, under my roof.
December 27. Winter is gentler here than at home, bringing at times enfolding grey mist and hours of rain; yet we have had many days of clear and sunny cold, and snow has fallen on the roof of the little red house. My royal family of fowls lives a subdued but happy life in the house of Peter's making; Puck has taken up his residence at the Inn, for cold has come, and Peter is far away. The English robin stays with us evidently throughout the winter; the rooks have not deserted; and we are visited daily by silver-winged gulls which come all the way from the sea for the food we put out.
My home with the little "h" is seldom empty; for two of these winter weeks we had here two small Belgian boys, eight and ten years old, very red of cheek and black of hair, and very much boy. What a two weeks! The Atom immediately retreated to the loft over the kitchen, coming down only for its meals. It found a warm corner by the chimney where it cuddled in safety.
Don clung close to my side; he would not make friends. His dictum was that he would associate with either the aristocracy or the peasantry, but that the lower middle class he would not tolerate. Those boys, who had tried to tie a tin can to his tail,histail, that organ of fine expressiveness, equal to English prose style at its best, were not gentlemen, and he would have nothing to do with them.
I was glad to see that the suffering of the past weeks had not ruined their young lives, but I admit a failure in managing my guests. Even Madge could do nothing with them, though her hand is heavy; I do not approve of corporal punishment, but life in theory and life in practice seem amazingly different at times, and I looked the other way. They demanded the tail feathers of Hengist and Horsa for their play of American Indian, and I discovered as I defeated their purpose that they thought they were living with an Indian lady and were trying to garb themselves appropriately. I rose to the challenge as best I could; have I not vowed, whatever happens, never to be an "old maid"? I romped with them in the meadow, played "tag," and helped them make boats to sail on the stream, but I had no control over them. Puck was the only perfectly successful disciplinarian, and whenever they tried to climb on his back, or ride by clinging to his tail, his quick little hind heels—fortunately only his fore feet are shod—accomplished what neither coaxing, admonition, nor enforced fasting could accomplish. They were not really bad, only dwelling in that Stone Age through which so many men-children pass. A neighbouring farmer and his wife wanted to adopt them, and I thankfully let them go, calling in the village carpenter to help Madge and me make the necessary repairs.
There was peace, we are told, for a few hours on Christmas day in the trenches; but Christmas should mean lasting peace! The attack, less than two weeks ago, on our undefended coast towns, Hartlepool, Scarborough, Whitby, has enkindled as nothing else has done the dull glow of English wrath. The recruiting goes more swiftly; a number of young men have gone from our village in the last few days; the blacksmith's shop is closed, and the forge fire is out,—he has gone to work in a munition factory. We who stay are knitting for the trenches and sewing for the hospitals; I never dreamed that I should live to know such human anguish and human want,—yet it is good to learn that one need not stand alone, bearing the pain of life in solitude. I have joined every possible relief association and have pledged almost my uttermost penny. We are even selling eggs for the hospital funds; spite of cold weather, the Matildas, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Anne, and Queen Victoria are rising magnificently to the crisis. The London people are using the house occasionally as a temporary shelter for one or two people at a time before permanent places are found for them. The Inn also serves for this, and mine hostess and I have many a conference; fortunately, in the haste and confusion, some of the bric-a-brac is getting broken; one alabaster vase and one glass case covering artificial flowers have disappeared.
Madge has amused me by finding a way to express, in rather original fashion, her deepening sympathy with humankind. A courting is going on in our kitchen; every Friday night the lovers come, she from the village, he from a farm lying beyond the Hall; and every Friday night Madge either goes to bed early, or steps out to see her friends. The girl is a country lass rather ill-treated by a mistress who shall be nameless; she has no place to receive her lover, save the stone wall of the bridge across the stream. She steals here in the dusk on her one free evening; why not? The young man is a perfectly suitable wooer, and they are safer in my kitchen than out in the cold. Yet I admit that I feel a bit guilty when I very formally return the very formal greeting of the unconscious mistress.
Just now, no one is staying with us, and there is blessed quiet. Through the silences in the little house, old moods, old laughter, old half-merry tears come back; you blend with all my days. Sometimes I feel, not as at first, that this is the end of things for me, but as if it were a little truce of God while I am waiting. To-day I found my first grey hairs; there were two, one on each temple; have you any to match them, I wonder? Ah, I keep forgetting, forgetting; keep thinking of you as still alive and suffering in this war. Remembering, I envy you; the many years ahead look formidable.
Do you remember the day we took our fifteen-mile walk from Oxford in May, and sat to rest on the flat grey stones in an old, old village churchyard, with a tangle of wild vines at our feet, and primroses and violets blossoming near,—do you remember that we talked of immortality and decided that when one died it was death, that having lived was enough? At least you did; I always had "ma doots o' ma doots." I think it was just May that made us feel that way,—the fragrances, the bird songs, the sun-flecked clouds over the Cumnor Hills; you too were far more influenced by things outside the world of pure thought than you ever knew, my philosopher; have I not seen you mistaking a sunbeam for an optimistic syllogism? We doubted, dear, but we were wrong; you do not die; you are more intensely alive than ever.
I am stealing a little time to try to do a portrait of you, though it is long since I have had a brush in my hand; you know that I was something but not much of an artist. What were the half-gifts meant for, I wonder, all the aspiration that goes into them, the denied hope? I used to suffer because I could not create the things I saw and dreamed, but that kind of suffering has vanished utterly,—life flows out in so many ways. There's a bit of attic with a north light near the Atom's lair that I have fitted up as a studio, and I have unpacked there my easel and canvases. To-day I shut myself up and began my portrait of you, merely sketching, for the outlines blurred. I had a curious experience. So clear is my inner vision of you that it blinded my eyes, and that which was in my mind a perfect picture would prove, if I left the room and came back to look at it afresh, a set of meaningless lines.
December 30. For three days I tried and tried in vain; then came sudden success, for your very mouth half smiled at me from the canvas where I had been putting random strokes. As I work, I feel that I never before really knew you; deeper understanding comes to me of your doubts, your resolutions, your long growth, and what you are. Little things long forgotten come drifting back, concerning your boyhood in the old rectory, the hard awakening of an English public school. Chance remarks that you made carelessly long ago waken in memory and reveal you to me anew. The first time I realized the depth of feeling within you was when I caught a glimpse of you listening to music at a concert in the Sheldonian theatre; once, at least, your over-guarded face betrayed the real you. I learned to know your quiet sympathy, your concealed sensitive understanding of the needs of humankind, and to comprehend your difficulty in showing it, making it available. You built up the excluding barrier of an Englishman's expression between you and the world; only animals and children dared break through. I can see them yet rubbing their fuzzy heads against you, from the big Angora at Grey friars, to little Lady Matilda at Witton Hall.
December 31. I cannot finish this portrait, for the eyes baffle me, and each time I try you seem to be looking at me appealingly, as if you wanted me to express something that I but dimly see. My present knowledge of you seems in some strange way to outstrip your remembered face. My sketch—for I shall leave it a mere sketch—suggests all your suffering and all my sorrow, and yet not all is said. What knowledge have you now that I do not share? Tell it very gently in the quiet, and I shall know; am I not always listening? I am hungry for your wisdom of death.
January 12, 1915. Deepening cold drives us all closer to the hearth; perhaps it is only in winter that one gets the full flavour of home. Don curls up by the fire with me, or takes glorious cross-country walks. The little old gingerbread woman of the lych gate has disappeared; I half suspect her of crawling temporarily into one of the graves to keep warm. In snug farmyards, by great sunny ricks of hay, the cattle of the countryside shelter themselves contentedly. Now, even more than in summer, this land seems home from end to end; in every nook and corner is something of the appeal of the fireside; no other country so suggests from shore to shore one great threshold and hearth. Its churchyards, with their dead softly tucked in, the comforting grass above; its low-roofed villages; its individual homes in their great loveliness wear one expression.
There are wonderful sunsets over the brown earth or white snow. This is that England on whose domain the sun never sets, yet it sets most exquisitely day by day, did they but know.
For a week we had with us a little nun, who prayed and prayed, looking about her with big, frightened eyes. Luckily, my acquaintance with His Reverence, who officiated at Marie's wedding, solved the problem, and she went gladly to the shelter of a convent roof. Then for a few days we cared for an old, old man, who swore and swore, softly, constantly, but with an air of question, as if no oaths could quite meet the need of the present moment. It was most incongruous, for he was very evidently a gentleman, and he very evidently thought that he was expressing himself politely, even if inadequately. My knowledge of the French language was greatly extended, but this new vocabulary is, alas! as unavailable for the uses of ordinary life as that which I learned from Corneille! Our fugitive was a most pathetic old creature whose mind had been somewhat unsettled by suffering and exile. Fortunately a relative of his was discovered, a prosperous Belgian merchant living in the outskirts of London, and my guest bade me a profane but grateful farewell. A few days' care seems but little to offer these flitting guests on their sorrowful journey, but it is a great relief to me to do even this little, and as each one goes, I feel like saying "Thank you!" as the well-trained British waiter says when you deign to take something from the offered plate.
We really need Peter's advice,—think of that: Peter's advice, which I have scorned to take! In our zeal we became victims of one bit of imposture, which, however, did not involve us in irretrievable loss,—only spoons! Two dark-skinned folk presented themselves one cold, wintry day when all the desolation of the earth seemed dripping down in icy rain. They asked for food, telling us that they were Belgian refugees in need of help; evidently the habits of this household have been rumoured abroad. We were a bit suspicious, but resolved to err upon the right side. While Madge was cooking and I had gone to order fresh supplies, they decamped with my spoons and my purse, luckily a very lean purse. Don had simply absented himself; he no longer trusts his instincts, finding himself in a world whose standards he does not comprehend. The old order changes, giving place to new; old caste distinctions are ignored, and he has not as yet had time to learn new mental habits. He has found for himself a little agnostic den in a corner behind the kitchen range, and he goes there when he cannot make up his mind. When we discovered our loss and began our search, he came out wagging his tail with a self-congratulatory air to say, "I told you so!" But he had not told us so; he had only deserted us when we needed him most. Our light-fingered guests have been found in a gypsy tribe passing through to the north, but my spoons have not been found. Must I lap my supper from a saucer with Don and the Atom?
January 19. As I sit by the fire and toast my toes in my few minutes of blessed idleness, I cannot help living over old days and hours, and I see again the dusk of that evening when you and your family escorted me to Hinksey to hear the nightingales; the sunshine of that afternoon when you and I searched in vain the meadows beyond Iffley for pink-tipped English daisies. Often I find myself again arguing things out with you, even getting a bit angry now and then, forgetting that you cannot answer. Many and many a dispute we had, many and many a disagreement, with the invariable outcome of deeper understanding.
Sometimes the unshared jests hurt most of all; what has become of your humour, dear, that rare, dry humour that betrayed itself most plainly in your eyes? When first I knew you, I thought that you had no sense of humour; I soon found that it was deeper than my own, because of your insight into the irony of the human predicament. At times it touched the tragic. I learned to understand your quiet enjoyment in watching people, your wordless jests, and the silent drollery of your half smile. How you loved to tease me about the foibles of my countrymen.
"No other people," you would say, "would come dashing into the courtyard of a French hotel, with flags flying from the carriage, singing their national hymn at the top of their voices; no other people would motor swiftly to the entrance of a French cathedral, crying out: 'You do the inside, and we'll do the outside, and it won't take us more than five minutes!' And there is always the pleasing memory of the lady from Montana who deplored the inadequacy of the Louvre because the pictures couldn't compare with the exhibition that they had had in the winter at Wilkins Bluff. But of course this represents a class of Americans that you would not know."
That was the day we had tea by the river; I was hot with helping you get the boat past the lock, hot with making the tea, and I grew hotter still.
"I admit that we are vulgar, and loud-voiced, and ostentatious," I told you; "but we aren't selfish, and we aren't insolent. On the contrary, we are usually quixotically good-natured and generous. We do not look in blank surprise as the British do if any one questions their right to be served before all other people with the choicest of everything. You have little idea of what we suffer who meet many of the travelling English of to-day, with their quiet and total selfishness in securing and sitting upon all that is best. Of course, this represents a class of the English that you would not know." This you forgave, but you never quite forgave, I fear, my wicked suggestion that the moat about the Bishop's palace was preserved in order to keep out the poor and needy.
But the things about which we quarrelled were only surface things; I knew and loved my England more than I ever admitted to you; and you, for all your criticism of my countrymen (much of it was abundantly justified), had divined the spirit of idealism in our democracy. The development of the individual in righteous freedom for you, as for us, was the great hope of the world. Under all the crudeness of America, under the arrogance of England, lives, and has lived from earliest days, a something great and fine, shared by republican France,—a passion for liberty. The little things do not matter if the great convictions at the heart of nations are akin; have not people of late cared too much about little things? If our two peoples become aware of the greatness of their common destiny, will they not stop fussing about the American accent and English incivility? As I walk alone nowadays, I try to drive this haunting, insistent world-suffering from my mind by dreams of a great future wherein your country and mine go hand in hand, helping secure for all time liberty for the human race.
Each has something to contribute that the other lacks. I really think that we, in our sense of the dignity of the individual man, in willingness to forego shades and differences of taste for the sake of something greater, have outgrown you. You, with your keen insight, had divined the need of democracy, had accepted it in theory, but found the inevitable consequences hard to accept. Nothing is more agreeable than good taste; perhaps there are things more profoundly important. Dare I say that I think we have out-stripped you in generosity of act and of thought?
But you are greater than we, and your life runs in deeper channels than our own, in that you keep faith with the past, refusing to let the hard-won spiritual achievement of the race be swept away by the externalism of the present. To you, as to no other people, we look to save the world from the terrible material forces, without conscience, without insight, which threaten to dominate the whole of life. You who refuse to give up fine standards of an elder day are the influence that we of America greatly need, for in matters intellectual, we are all too prone to be led, and have been too much cowed by this later Germany—who forgets.
February 1. We are living on, as best we may, through cold and thaw and cold again. The horror of that January night, when human beings and birds wakened, with fear dropping from the sky, when innocent women and children were killed by bombs from German Zeppelins, lingers and grows deeper. The tension was greatest for those who could not hear what the birds heard, but listened to the great outcry of blackbirds, pheasants, and other winged things, to the loud cawing of the rooks, and wondered and waited in nameless anguish. There seems to be no refuge in earth or sky or sea. Can this world of shot and shell and conquering chemicals be that world that was so beautiful, and that suddenly seemed so strangelysafewhen you came into my life?
March 10. Such days of excitement and of strain! My little house has performed its supreme service,—has sheltered a body, while the soul was going out.
It began three days ago; I was walking down the village street with Don at my heels, when I noticed a large touring car at the Inn, with a group of people very much excited, gesticulating and talking with a vehemence that usually means Latin blood. Mine hostess of the Inn was running to and from the car with bottles and flannel cloths; turpentine on warm flannel is her cure for every human ailment. Then I saw in the car an old, old lady—quite ill, evidently—leaning heavily on the shoulder of a younger woman. I shall not soon forget the look of that grey-white face under the snow-white hair and black widow's bonnet, set in a group of strange faces, among which I remember one of a little boy, watching breathlessly with his mouth wide open, and a smaller girl, staring apathetically with her eyes full of tears that looked as if they had long been there. I did not need to be told that this oddly-assorted set of people were refugees. I had seen too many utter strangers, from diverse surroundings, hastily gathered together, clad in velvet, clad in rags, to share one suffering.
I found that they were being taken from London, where they had been cared z many weeks, to different destinations in the northern counties, but the man in charge had evidently lost his way and was making an unnecessary detour toward the coast. He could not speak their language, nor they his, and he seemed entirely at a loss in this dilemma. Oh, the loneliness, and the desolation, and the bitter shame of it all!
"The old lady's took ill, of a sudden, 'm," said the landlady, stopping her little trot near me.
I asked the younger woman, whose face was very kindly, if this was her mother, but she shook her head.
"I don't know who she is; I never saw her until we started."
Then I begged and pleaded; the chauffeur looked greatly relieved, and so did mine hostess, though she remonstrated that it would be quite too much for me.
"Are you sure, Miss, that you want her? We don't know what it is; it may be contagious."
"I don't care what it is!" I said so suddenly that Don barked out; there was a little feeling of joy within me at the thought that there might be danger; it is hard to be shut out from the great danger that circles the world.
So the big touring car was turned about, with much puffing and panting; my little iron gate was opened wide to let two men carry the poor old creature to my guest room, and I sent the others on, with such comforts as I could supply. The small boy went nibbling a cookie, the little girl with hers in her hand, too dazed to eat it. Haven't you ever seen a frightened little bird holding something in its mouth, not daring to swallow?
The village doctor and Madge and I worked for hours over the fugitive. She only looked at us with eyes that had in them all the weariness of the world since the dawn of time. There was evidently no malady; actual physical pain did not seem to be there; only overwhelming mental pain or shock that means destruction of the very forces of life. She was not unconscious, nor was she fully conscious of what was going on around her. The comfort of warm water on her body, the comfort of soothing drink she hardly realized, nor could she swallow, except with great difficulty and reluctance. Just once she stretched herself out at full length with a look of relief, and lay motionless.
I shall never know what weary ways she had trodden in her escape from the swift ruin of war, nor how in her tottering age she had escaped at all. She seemed to be one who, her life long, had walked the same peaceful paths over and over, as her forefathers had done before. Was she one of those who, driven from home and fireside, had lain down in the dust of the road, longing to die? Contagious! Heartbreak does seem contagious in these days; who shall escape? Who can wish to, when other hearts break?
Life can never bring me anything so strange, perhaps it can never bring me anything so wonderful, as this silent companionship with a soul that had almost passed. She did not understand the words I used, but she did understand that we were trying to help her; though her lips were still, her eyes followed us,—eyes full of knowledge that can not come before the last. She did not try to thank us, dwelling in some world of instinctive understanding, making one feel that the long ages of much speaking were folly. She had let go of all tangible things and was no longer aware of time or circumstance; there was no look of fear in her eyes, no look of sorrow; she was done with earth and with feeling, having neither reproaches nor regrets. She had gone beyond pain, beyond joy, beyond those simple human affections that linger to the last, to some region of ultimate peace, or of quiet beyond peace.