"Dear Fanny,"Aunt Janet is dead. She died the night after I got here. The nurse says it was the joy of seeing me again that killed her. She was glad to have me back, I read that in her eyes, and it is the one fact that helps me to face things. Death stands between us now, yet we are closer to each other than we have been these last two years. And she loved me all the time, Fanny; sometimes it seems as if love could be very unforgiving. I must stay on down here for the time being; Uncle John needs someone, and he is content that it should be me. The War overhangs and overshadows everything, and it is going to be a hard winter for us all. I suppose he hasn't been back" (Fanny knew who was meant by "he") "to see me. It's stupid of me to ask, but hope is so horribly hard to kill.
"Dear Fanny,
"Aunt Janet is dead. She died the night after I got here. The nurse says it was the joy of seeing me again that killed her. She was glad to have me back, I read that in her eyes, and it is the one fact that helps me to face things. Death stands between us now, yet we are closer to each other than we have been these last two years. And she loved me all the time, Fanny; sometimes it seems as if love could be very unforgiving. I must stay on down here for the time being; Uncle John needs someone, and he is content that it should be me. The War overhangs and overshadows everything, and it is going to be a hard winter for us all. I suppose he hasn't been back" (Fanny knew who was meant by "he") "to see me. It's stupid of me to ask, but hope is so horribly hard to kill.
"Yours ever,"Joan."
Fanny wrote in answer that evening, but she made no mention of Mabel's visit. "Dr. Grant has joined, I hear," she put rather vaguely. "But of course one knew he would. All the decent men are going. London is just too wonderful, honey, I can't keep out of the streets. All day there are soldiers going past; I love them all, with a sort of love that makes you feel you want to be good, and gives you a lump in your throat. They say we have already sent thousands of men to Belgium, though there has not been a word about it in the papers, but I met a poor woman in the crowd to-day who had just said good-bye to her son. I wish I had got a son, only, of course, he would not be old enough to fight, would he? Write me sometimes, honey, and don't lose heart. Things will come all right for you in the end, I sort of know they will."
To Joan her letter brought very little comfort despite its last sentence. Dick had joined; it did not matter how Fanny had come by the news, Joan never doubted its truth. He would be among the first to go, that she had always known, but would he make no sign, hold out no hand, before he left? The War was shaking down barriers, bringing together families who perhaps had not been on speaking terms for years, knitting up old friendships. Would he not give her some chance to explain, to set herself right in his eyes? That was all she asked for; not that he should love her again, but just that they should be friends, before he went out into the darkness of a war to which so many were to go and so few return.
Rudyard Kipling.
The black days of September lay like a cloud over the whole country. News came of the fall of Namur; the retreat from Mons; the German Army before the gates of Paris. There was one Sunday evening when the newspaper boys ran almost gleefully up and down the London streets, shouting in shrill voices: "The whole of the British Expeditionary Force cut to pieces." The nation's heart stood still to hear; the faces of the men and women going about their ordinary work took on a strained, set expression. The beating of drums, the blowing of trumpets, the cheering of crowds died away; a new stern feeling entered into the meaning of war.
Dick felt sometimes as if all were expressed in the one word England. The name was written across all their minds as they stared into the future waiting for the news, real news of that handful of men standing with their backs to the walls of Paris, facing the mighty strength of the German Army. England! What did it matter if some hearts called it Scotland, some Ireland, some the greater far-off land of the Dominions? the meaning was the same. It was the country that was threatened, the country that stood in danger; as one man the people rallied to the cry of Motherland. And over in France, with their backs to the walls of Paris, the soldiers fought well!
"Who dies, if England lives?" Kipling wrote in those early days of the war, putting into words the meaning which throbbed in the hearts of the people. Statesmen might say that they fought for the scrap of paper, for an outraged Belgium, because of an agreement bindingGreat Britain to France; the people knew that they fought for England! And to stay at home and wait with your eyes staring into the darkness was harder perhaps than to stand with your back to the wall and fight. They were black days for the watchers, those early days of the War.
The one thought affected everyone in a different way. The look in their eyes was the same, but they used a different method of expressing it. Dick threw himself heart and soul into his work; he could not talk about the War or discuss how things were going on, and he was kept fairly busy, he had little time for talking. All day he examined men; boys, lying frankly about their age in order to get in; old men, well beyond the limit, telling their untruths with wistful, anxious eyes. Men who tried so hard to hide this or that infirmity, who argued if they were not considered fit, who whitened under the blow of refusal, and went from the room with bitten lips. From early morning till late at evening, Dick sat there, and all day the stream of old men, young men, and boys passed before him.
Fanny took it in quite a different way. Silence was torture to her; she had to talk. She was afraid and desperately in earnest. The love in her heart was poured out at the foot of this new ideal, and to Fanny, England was typified in the soldiers. The night on which the paper boys ran abroad shrieking their first casualty list Fanny lay face downwards on her bed and sobbed her heart out. She visualized the troops she had watched marching through London, their straight-held figures, their merry faces, their laughing eyes, the songs they had shouted and whistled haunted her mind. They had not seemed to be marching to death; people had stood on the edge of the pavement to cheer them, and now—"cut to pieces"—that was how the papers put it. It made her more passionately attached to the ones that were left. It is no exaggeration to say that quite gladly and freely Fanny would have given her life for any—not one particular—soldier. Something of the spirit of mother-love woke in her attitude towards them.
Down in quiet, sleepy little Wrotham the tide of war beat less furiously. Uncle John would sometimes lose his temper completely because the place as a whole remained so apathetic. The villagers did not do much reading of the papers; the fact that the parson had a new prayer introduced into the service impressed them with a sense of war more than anything else. But even Wrotham felt the outside fringe of London's anxiety during the days of that autumn. One by one, rather sheepishly, the young men came forward. They would like to be soldiers, they would like to have a whack at them there Germans. No thought of treaties or broken pledges stirred them, but England was written across their minds just the same. Uncle John woke to new life; he had been eating out his heart, knowing himself useless and on the shelf, when every nerve in his body was straining to be up and doing. He instituted himself as recruiter-in-chief to the district. He would walk for miles if he heard there was a likely young man to be found at the end of his tramp; his face would glow with pride did he but catch one fine, healthy-looking specimen.
He inaugurated little meetings, too, at which the Vicar presided, and Uncle John held forth. Bluntly and plainly he showed the people their duty, speaking to them as he had used to speak in the old days to his soldiers. And over their beer in the neighbouring public-house the men would repeat his remarks, weigh up his arguments, agree or disagree with his sentiments. They had a very strong respect for him, that at least was certain; before Christmas he had persuaded every available unmarried man to enlist.
The married men were a problem; Joan felt that perhaps more than Uncle John did. Winter was coming on; there were the children to clothe and feed; the women were beginning to be afraid. Sometimes Joanwould accompany Uncle John on his tramps abroad, and she would watch the wife's face as Uncle John brought all his persuasion to bear on the man; she would see it wake first to fear, and then to resentment. She was sorry for them; how could one altogether blame them if they cried, "Let the unmarried men go first." Yet once their man had gone, they fell back on odd reserves of pride and acquiescence. There was very little wailing done in the hundreds of small homes scattered all over England; with brave faces the women turned to their extra burden of work. Just as much as in the great ones of the land, "for England" burned across their hearts.
Joan's life had settled down, but for the outside clamour of events, into very quiet routine. Her two years' life in London was melting away into a dream; only Dick and her love for Dick stood out with any intensity, and since Dick made no sign to her, held out no hand, she tried as much as possible to shut him from her thoughts. Aunt Janet had died in her sleep the night war was declared; she had never waked to consciousness. When the doctor, hastily fetched by Uncle John, had reached her room, she had been already dead—smiling a little, as if the last dream which had come to haunt her sleep had been a pleasant one.
"Joy killed her," the nurse declared. Certainly she lay as if very content and untroubled.
"I believe," Miss Abercrombie told Joan, "that she was only staying alive to see you. My dear, you must not blame yourself in any way; she is so much better out of it all."
"No, I don't blame myself," Joan answered. "We had made friends before she died; there isn't a wall between us any longer."
The villagers ransacked their gardens to send flowers to the funeral. Aunt Janet's grave was heaped up with them, but in a day or two they withered, and old Jim carried them away on his leaf heap. After that every weekJoan took down just a handful and laid them where she thought the closed hands would be, and, because in so doing she seemed to draw a little closer to Aunt Janet, and through Aunt Janet to the great God beyond, her thoughts would turn into prayer as she stood by the grave. "Dear God, keep him always safe," she would whisper. Then like a formless flash of light the word "England" would steal across her prayer; she did not need to put the feeling into words; just like an offering she laid it before her thought of God and knew its meaning would be understood. So thousands of men and women pray, brought by a sense of their own helplessness in this great struggle near to the throne of God. And always the name of England whispers across their prayers.
Just when the battle of the Marne was at its turning-point Dick got his orders to go. He was given under a week to get ready in, the unit, a field hospital, was to start on Saturday and the order came on Monday. One more day had to be put in at the recruiting depot; he could not leave them in the lurch; Tuesday he spent getting his kit together, Wednesday evening saw him down at Sevenoaks.
As once before, Mabel was at the station to meet him. "It's come, then," she said. "Tom is wild with envy. Age, you know, limits him to a volunteer home defence league."
"Bad luck," answered Dick. "Of course I am very bucked to be really going, Mabel. It is not enlivening to sit and pass recruits all day long."
"No," she agreed. "One wants to be up and doing. I hope I am not awfully disloyal or dreadfully selfish, but I cannot help being glad that my baby is a baby. Mother has knitted countless woollies for you"—she changed the subject abruptly; "it has added to poor Tom's discontent. He has to try on innumerable sleeping-helmets and wind-mufflers round his neck to see if they are long enough. Yesterday he talked rather dramatically of enlisting as astretcher-bearer and going, out with you, but they wouldn't have him, would they?"
Dick laughed, but he could realize the bitterness of the other man's position when Tom spoke to him that night over their port wine.
"Mabel is so pleased at keeping both her men under her wing," he confided, "that she doesn't at all realize how galling it is to be out of things. I would give most things, except Mabel and the boy, to be ten years younger."
"Still, you have Mabel and the boy," Dick reminded him. "It comes awfully hard on the women having to give up their men."
"That's beyond the point," Tom answered. "And bless you, don't you know the women are proud to do it?"
"But pride doesn't mend a broken life," Dick tried to argue against his own conviction.
Tom shook his head. "It helps somehow," he said. "Mabel was talking to some woman in the village yesterday, who has sent three sons to the war, and whose eldest, who is a married man and did not go, died last week. 'I am almost ashamed of him, Mum,' the woman told Mabel; 'It is not as if he had been killed at the war.' Oh, well, what's the use of grousing; here I am, and here I stick; but if the Germans come over, I'll have a shot at them whatever regulations a grandmotherly Government may take for our protection. And you're all right, my lad, you are not leaving a woman behind you."
That night, after he had gone up to his own room, the thought of Joan came to haunt Dick. For two months he had not let himself think of her; work and other interests had more or less crowded her out of his heart. But the sudden, though long expected, call to action brought him, so to speak, to the verge of his own feeling. Other things fell away; he was face to face once again with the knowledge that he loved her, and that one cannot even starve love to death. He wanted her, he needed her; what did other things, such as anger and hurt pride, count againstthat. He had only kissed her once in his life, and the sudden, passionate hunger for the touch of her lips shook his heart to a prompt knowledge of the truth. He must see her again before he left, for it might be that death would find him out there. War had seemed more of a game to begin with; that first evening when he had shouted with the others round Trafalgar Square he had not connected War with Death, but now it seemed as if they walked hand in hand. He could not die without first seeing Joan again.
He thought of writing her a short note asking her to be in when he called, but the post from Jarvis Hall did not go out till after twelve; he could get to London quicker himself. After breakfast he told Mabel that he found he had to go away for the day.
"Something you have forgotten—couldn't you write for it, Dick?" she asked. "It seems such a shame, because we shall only have one more day of you."
"No," he answered; he did not lift his eyes to look at her. "As a matter of fact it is somebody that I must see."
He had not written about or mentioned Joan since he had gone away from Sevenoaks last; Mabel had hoped the episode was forgotten. It came to her suddenly that it was Joan he was speaking of, and she remembered Fanny's long, breathless explanation and the girl's rather pathetic belief that she would do something to help. She could not, however, say anything to him before the others.
"Will the eleven-thirty do for you?" Tom was asking. "Because I have got to take the car in then."
"It seems a little unreasonable, Dick," Mrs. Grant put in. She had not been the best of friends with him since their violent scene together; her voice took on a querulous tone when she spoke to him. "Who can there be in London, that you suddenly find you must see?" She, too, for the moment, was thinking of the outrageous girl.
"I am sorry," Dick answered. "It is my own fault for not having gone before. I'll try and get back to-morrow."
Mabel caught him afterwards alone on his way out to thegarden to smoke a pipe. She slipped a hand through his arm and went with him.
"Mother is upset," she confided. "I don't think she can be awfully well; just lately she cries very easily."
"She always used to"—Dick's voice was not very sympathetic. "Do you remember how angry I was at the way she cried when father died?"
"Yes," Mabel nodded. "All the same, she does love you, Dick; it is a funny sort of love, perhaps, but as she gets older it seems to me that she gets softer, less selfish. And, Dick, I think she feels—as indeed I do, too—that you have grown away from us. It is not the War, though that takes men from us women, too; it is more just as if we were out of sympathy with one another. Are we?"
"What a funny thought." Dick smiled down at her. "There has never been, as you know, much sympathy between mother and myself. But for you, Mabel, things will always be the same between us. I trust you with everything I have."
"And yet you aren't quite trusting me now," she answered. "You are going up to London to see this girl, aren't you, Dick?—and all this time you have never written or spoken to me about her."
"I have been trying to forget," he confessed. "I thought, because of something she did to me, that I was strong enough to shut her outside my life. But last night the old battle began again in my mind, and I know that I must see her before I go out. It is more than probable, Mabel, that I shall not come back. I can't go out into the darkness without seeing her again."
Mabel's hand tightened on his arm. "You mustn't say that, Dick," she whispered. "You have got to come back."
They walked in silence and still Mabel debated the question in her mind. Should she stand out of events, and let them, shape themselves? If Dick went to London and found Joan gone, what would he do then? Perhapshe would not see Fanny and the landlady would not be able to tell him where Joan was. Wrotham would be the last place in which he would look for her, and on Saturday he was leaving for the front. It was only just for a second that her mind wavered; she had initially too straight a nature for deceit.
"Dick," she said, coming to a standstill and looking up at him, "you needn't go to London. Miss Rutherford"—she hesitated on the word—"Joan, is back at Wrotham."
"At Wrotham?" he repeated, staring at her.
"Yes," she answered, "Old Miss Rutherford died two months ago. They had sent for Joan; I believe she arrived the day her aunt died, and she has stayed there ever since. Once or twice I have met her out with Colonel Rutherford. No, wait"—she hurried on, once she had begun. "There is something else I must tell you. I went, you know, to see her in London, but I found that she had left. As I was coming away I met the other girl—I cannot remember her name, but she came here to tea—she insisted on my going back with her; she had something she wanted to tell me about Joan. It was a long, rather jumbled story, Dick; only two facts stand out of it. One was that the baby was never born; Joan was in some sort of accident when she first went back to London; and the other thing was that this girl wanted me to use my influence to persuade you that Joan really loved you; that what had angered you that night was all a mistake." She broke off short, and began again quickly. "I did not promise, Dick; in fact I told the girl I would do nothing to interfere. 'If he can find his happiness anywhere else I shall be glad,' I said. And that is what I felt. I don't try and excuse myself; I never wanted you to marry her if you could forget her, and, Dick, I almost hoped you had—I was not going to remind you."
"I see," said Dick. His pipe had gone out. He lit it again slowly and methodically. "Mabel," he said suddenly,"if I can persuade Joan to marry me before I go out, will you be nice to her as my wife?"
"You can't marry her, Dick," Mabel remonstrated, "there isn't time. But if you will trust me again beyond this, I promise to be as nice to her as you would like me to be."
"But I can, and what's more, I will," Dick answered. "I've shilly-shallied long enough. If she'll have me, and it would serve me jolly well right if she turned me down—it shall be a special licence at a registry office on Saturday morning. My train doesn't leave till two-thirty." He stood up very tall and straight. Mabel thought she had never seen him look so glad to be alive. "And now," he added, "I am going straight across to ask her. Wish me luck, Mabel."
She stood up, too, and put both her hands on his. "You aren't angry with me?" she whispered. "Dick, from the bottom of my heart, I do wish you luck, as you call it."
"Angry? Lord bless you, no!" he said, and suddenly he bent and kissed her. "You've argued about it, Mabel, but then I always knew you would argue. I trust you to be good to her after I'm gone; what more can I say?"
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Colonel Rutherford and Joan had had breakfast early that morning, for Uncle John was going to London to attend some big meeting, at which, much to his own secret gratification, he had been asked to speak. He rehearsed the greater part of what he was going to say to Joan during breakfast, and on their way down to the station. He had long ago forgiven, or forgotten, which was more probable still, Joan's exile from his good graces. After Aunt Janet'sfuneral, when Joan had spoken to him rather nervously, suggesting her return to London, he had stared at her with unfeigned astonishment.
"Back to London," he had said, "whatever for?"
"To get some more work to do," Joan suggested.
His shaggy eyebrows drew together in a frown. "Preposterous notion," he answered. "I never did agree with it. So long as a girl has a home, what does she want to work for? Besides, now your aunt is not here, who is going to look after the house and things?"
The question seemed unanswerable, and since he had apparently forgiven the past, why should she remind him? She realized, too, that he needed her. She wrote asking Fanny to send on her things, and settled down to try and fill her mind and heart, as much as possible, with the daily round of small duties which are involved in the keeping of a house.
This morning on her way back from the station, having seen Uncle John into his train for London, she let fat Sally walk a lot of the way. The country seemed to be asleep; for miles all round she could see across field after field, not a creature moving, not a soul in sight, only a little dust round a bend of the road showed where a motor-car had just passed. It occurred to her that her life had been just like that; the quiet, seeming, non-existence of the country; a flashing past of life which left its cloud of dust behind, and then the quiet closing round her again.
"The daily round, the common task,Shall furnish all we need to ask."
She hummed it under her breath.
"Room to deny ourselves—"
Perhaps that was the lesson that she had needed to learn, for in the old days her watchword had been:
"Room to fulfil myself."
If it was not for Uncle John now she would have liked to have gone back to London and thrown herself into some sort of work. Women would be needed before long, the papers said, to do the work of the men who must be sent to the firing-line. But Uncle John was surely the work to her hand; she would do it with what heart she had, even though the long hours of sewing or knitting gave her too much time to think.
Sally having been handed over to the stable-boy, Joan betook herself into the dining-room. Thursday was the day on which the flowers were done; Mary had already spread the table with newspaper, and collected the vases from all over the house. They had been cleaned and fresh water put in them; she was allowed to do as little work as possible, but the empty flower-basket and the scissors stood waiting at her hand. The gardener would really have preferred to have done the flower-cutting himself, but Aunt Janet had always insisted upon doing it, and Joan carried on the custom. There were only a few late roses left, but she gathered an armful of big white daisies.
As she came back from the hall Joan saw Dick waiting for her. The maid had let him in and gone to find "Miss Joan." Strangely enough the first thought that came into her mind was not a memory of the last time that they had met or a wonder as to why he was here; she could see that he was in khaki, and to her it meant only one thing. He was going to the front, he had come to say good-bye to her before he went. All the colour left her face, she stared at him, the basket swinging on her arm, the daisies clutched against her black dress.
"Joan," Dick said quickly; he came towards her. "Joan, didn't the maid find you, didn't they tell you I was here? What's the matter, dear; why are you frightened?"
He took the flowers and the basket from her and laidthem down on the hall table. Mary coming back at the moment, saw them standing hand in hand, and ran to the kitchen to tell the others that Miss Joan's young man had come at last.
"Isn't there somewhere you can take me where we can talk?" Dick was saying. "I have such an awful lot to say to you."
"You have come to say good-bye," Joan answered. She looked up at him, her lips quivered a little. "You are going out there."
Then he knew why she had been afraid, and behind his pity he was glad.
"Joan," he whispered again, and quite simply she drew closer to him and laid her cheek against his coat, "does it really matter to you, dear?"
His arms were round her, yet they did not hold her as tightly as she clung to him. "Must you go?" she said breathlessly. "There are such hundreds of others; must you go?"
Dick could not find any words to put the great beating of his heart into, so he just held her close and laid his lips, against her hair.
"Take me into that little room where I first saw you," he said presently. "I have remembered it often, Joan; I have always wanted to come back to it, and have you explain things to me there."
She drew a little away and looked up at him. "What you thought of me the other night"—she spoke of it is yesterday, the months in between had slipped awry—"wasn't true, Dick. I——"
He drew her to him quickly again, and this time he kissed her lips. "Let's forget it," he said softly. "I have only got to-day and to-morrow, I don't want to remember what a self-satisfied prig I was."
"Is it to be as soon as that?" she asked. "And I shall only have had you for so short a time."
"It is a short time," Dick assented. "But I am goingto make the best of it; you wait till you have heard my plans."
He laughed at her because she pointed out that the flowers could not be left to die, but he helped her to arrange them in the tall, clean vases. They won back to a brief, almost childish, happiness over the work, but when the last vase had been finished and carried back to its proper place, he caught hold of her hands again.
"Now," he said, "let's talk real hard, honest sense; but first, where's my room?"
She led him silently to the little room behind the drawing-room. She had taken it over again since her return; the pictures she liked best were on the walls, her books lay about on the table. The same armchair stood by the window; he could almost see her as he had seen her that first morning, her great brown eyes, wakened to newfound fear, staring into the garden.
"You shall sit here," he said, leading her to the chair. It rather worried him to see the dumb misery in her eyes. "And I shall sit down on the floor at your feet. I can hold your hands and I can see your face, and your whole adorable self is near to me, that's what my heart has been hungering for. Now—will you marry me the day after to-morrow, before I go?"
"Dick," she said quickly; she was speaking out of the pain in her heart, "why do you ask me? Why have you come back? Haven't you been fighting against it all this time because you knew that I—because some part of you doesn't want to marry me?"
His eyes never wavered from hers, but he lifted the hands he held to his lips and kissed them. "When I saw you again in that theatre in Sevenoaks," he said, "it is perfectly true, one side of me argued with the other. When I came to your rooms and found that other man there, green jealousy just made me blind, and pride—which was distinctly jarred, Joan"—he tried to wake ananswering smile in her eyes—"kept me away all this time."
"Then why have you come back?" she repeated.
"Because I love you," he answered. "It is a very hackneyed word, dear, but it means a lot."
"But it doesn't always stay—love," she said. "Supposing if afterwards those thoughts came back to worry you. What would it mean to me if I saw them in your eyes?"
"There isn't any reason why they should. Listen, dear"—he let go her hands and sat up very straight. "Let's go over it carefully and sensibly, and lay this bugbear of pain once and for all. Before you knew me or I knew you, you loved somebody else. Perhaps you only thought you loved him; anyway, I hope so; I am jealous enough of him as it is. Dear, I don't ask you to explain why you gave yourself to this man, whether it was impulse, or ignorance, or curiosity. So many things go to make up our lives; it is only to ourselves that we are really accountable. After to-day we won't dig over the past again. At the time it did not prevent me falling in love with you; for two years I thought about you sometimes, dreamed of you often. I made love to a good many other women in between; don't think that I show up radiantly white in comparison to you; but I loved just you all the time. I saw you in London once, the day after I landed, and I made up my mind then to find out where you lived, and to try and persuade you to marry me."
He waited a minute or two; his eyes had gone out to the garden; he could see the tall daisies of which Joan had carried an armful waving against the dark wall behind them. Then he looked back at her very frankly.
"It is no use trying to pretend," he said, "that I was not shocked when I first saw you dancing. You see, we men have got into a habit of dividing women into two classes, and you had suddenly, so it seemed to me, gotinto the wrong one. Dear little girl, I don't want to hurt you"—he put his hand on her knee and drew a little closer, so that she could feel him leaning against her. "I am just telling you all the stupid thoughts that were in me, so that you can at last understand that I love you. It only took me half a night to realize the mistake I had made, and then I set about—you may have noticed it—to make you love me. When I came up to London I had made up my mind that you did love me; I was walking as it were on air. It was a very nasty shock that afternoon in your room, Joan; I went away from it feeling as if the end of the world had come."
"Oh, I know, I know," she said quickly. "And I had meant it to hurt you. I wanted to shake you out of what I thought was only a dream. I had not the courage to tell you, and yet, that is not quite true. I was afraid if I told you, and if you saw that I loved you at the same time, you would not let it make any difference. I did not want you to spoil your life, Dick."
"You dear girl!" he answered. "On Monday," he went on slowly, "I got my orders for France. They are what I had been wanting and hoping for ever since the War started, and yet, till they came, funnily enough, I never realized what they meant. It seems strange to talk of death, or even to think of it, when one is young and so horribly full of life as I am—yet somehow this brings it near to me. It is not a question of facing it with the courage of which the papers write such a lot; the truth is, that one looks at it just for a moment, and then ordinary things push it aside. Next to death, Joan, there is only one big thing in the world, and that is Love. I had to see you again before I went; I had to find out if you loved me. I wanted to hold you, so that the feel of you should go with me in my dreams; to kiss you, so that the touch of your lips should stay on mine, even if death did put a cold hand across them. He is not going to"—he laughed suddenly and stood up, drawing her into his arms—"yourface shall go before me, dear, and in the end I shall come home to you."
"What can I say?" Joan whispered, "You know I love you. Take me then, Dick, and do as you wish with me."
They talked over the problem of his people and her people after they had won back to a certain degree of sense, and Dick told Joan of how Mabel had wished him luck just as he started out.
"You are going to be great friends," he said, "and Mother will come round too, she always does."
"I am less afraid of your Mother than I am of Mabel," Joan confessed. "I don't believe Mabel will ever like me."
Dick stayed to lunch and waited on afterwards to see Colonel Rutherford. He had extracted a promise from Joan to marry him on Saturday by special licence. He would have to go up to town to see about it himself the next day; he wanted to leave everything arranged and settled for her first. He and Joan walked down to the woods after lunch, and Joan tried to tell him of her first year in London, and of some of the motives that had driven her. He listened in silence; he was conscious more of jealousy than anything else; he was glad when she passed on to talk of her later struggles in London; of Shamrock House, of Rose Brent and Fanny.
"And that man I met at your place," he asked. "You did not even think you loved him, did you, Joan?"
"No," she answered quickly, "never, Dick, and he had never been to my room before. He just pretended he had been to annoy you because I suppose he saw it would hurt me."
Colonel Rutherford arrived for tea very tired, but jubilant at the success of the meeting, which had brought in a hundred recruits. He did not remember anything about Dick, but was delighted to see him because he was in uniform. The news of the other's early departure to the front filled Colonel Rutherford with envy.
"What wouldn't I give to be your age, young man," he grunted.
Joan slipped away and left them after tea, and it was then that Dick broached the subject of their marriage.
"I have loved her for two years," he said simply, "and I have persuaded her to marry me before I leave on Saturday. There is no reason why I should not marry, and if I die she will get my small amount of money, and a pension."
Colonel Rutherford went rather an uncomfortable shade of red. "You said just now," he said, "that you were the doctor here two years ago. Did you know my niece in those days?"
"I only saw her once," Dick admitted. "I was called in professionally, but I loved her from the moment I saw her, sir."
"God bless my soul!" murmured Colonel Rutherford. A faint fragrance from his own romance seemed to come to him from out the past. "Then you know all about what I was considering it would be my painful duty to tell you."
"Yes," Dick answered, "I know."
The other man came suddenly to him and held out his hand. "I don't know you," he said, "but I like you. We were very hard on Joan two years ago; I have often thought of it since; I should like to see a little happiness come into her life and I believe you will be able to give it her. I am glad."
"Thank you," Dick said. They shook hands quite gravely as men will. "Then I may marry her on Saturday?"
"Why, certainly, boy," the other answered; "And she shall live with me till you come back."
"You are very lucky, Joan," he said to his niece after Dick had gone away. "He is an extremely nice chap, that. I hope you realize how lucky you are."
Joan did not answer him in so many words. She just kissed him good-night and ran out of the room. To-nightof all nights she needed Aunt Janet; she threw a shawl round her shoulders presently and stole out. The cemetery lay just across the road, she could slip into it without attracting any attention. This time she brought no gift of flowers, only she knelt by the grave, and whispered her happiness in the prayer she prayed.
"God keep him always, and bring him back to me."
Not till she felt Mabel's soft warm lips on her cheek and knew herself held in the other's arms, did Joan wake to the fact that the marriage was finished and that she was Dick's wife. All the morning she had moved and answered questions and smiled, when other people smiled, in a sort of trance, out of which she was afraid to waken. The only fact that stood out very clear was that Dick was going away in the afternoon; every time she saw a clock it showed that the afternoon was so many minutes nearer.
"You have got to help me to be brave," she had said to Dick the night before. "Other women let their men go, and make no outward fuss. I don't want to be different to them."
"And you won't be," he had answered, kissing her."If you feel like crying, just look at me, and as your lord and master, I'll frown at you to show that I don't approve."
He himself was in the wildest, most hilarious of spirits. As he had said to Joan, the thought of death had only touched upon his mind for a second; now the mere idea of it seemed ridiculous. He was going out to help in a great fight, and he was going to marry Joan. She would be waiting for him when he came back; what could a man want more?
The Rutherfords came up on Friday to spend the night before the wedding in town, and in the evening Joan and Dick went to a theatre. It was, needless to say, his idea, but he did it with a notion that it would cheer Joan up. If you want to know real misery, sit through a musical comedy with someone you love more than the whole world next to you, and with the knowledge that he is going to the War the next day in your heart. Joan thought of it every moment. When the curtain was up and the audience in darkness, Dick would slip his hand into hers and hold it, but his eyes followed the events on the stage, and he could laugh quite cheerfully at the funny man's antics. Joan never even looked at them; she sat with her eyes on Dick, just watching him all the time. When they had driven back to the hotel at which the Rutherfords were staying, and in the taxi Dick had taken her into his arms and rather fiercely made her swear that she loved him, that she was glad to be marrying him, some shadow from her anguish had touched on him, it seemed he could not let her go. "Damn to-morrow!" he said hoarsely, and held her so close that the pressure hurt, yet she was glad of the pain as it came from him.
She could not ask him into the hotel, for they had no private sitting-room, so they said good-night to each other on the steps, with the taxi driver and the hotel porter watching them.
"To-morrow, then, at twelve," Dick had whispered."But I am going to bring Mabel round before then; she gets up at about eleven, I think."
"To-morrow," Joan answered; her eyes would not let him go.
They stood staring at each other for a minute or two while the taxi-cab driver busied himself with the engine of his car, and the hall porter walked discreetly out of sight. Then Dick lifted his hand quickly to the salute and turned away.
"Drive like hell!" he said to the man. "Anywhere you please, but end me up at the Junior Conservative Club."
"Couldn't even kiss her," communed the man to himself. "That's the worst of being a toff. Can't kiss your girl if anyone else happens to be about."
Mabel had been very nice to Joan the next morning. She had buried all thoughts of jealousy and dismay, and when she looked into the other girl's eyes she forgave her everything and was only intensely sorry for her. Mrs. Grant had, very fortunately, as Dick said, stuck to her opinion and refused to have anything to do with the wedding. She had said good-bye to Dick on Friday morning with a wild outburst of tears, but he could not really feel that it meant very much to her.
"Mother will have forgotten in a week that she disapproved," Mabel told Joan. "You must very often come and spend the day with us."
Then they had driven down to the registry office, all four of them, and in a dark, rather dingy little room, a man with a curiously irritating voice had read aloud something to them from a book. Now they stood outside in the sunshine again, Mabel had kissed Joan, and Uncle John was blinking at her out of old eyes that showed a suspicion of tears in them. A big clock opposite told her the time was a quarter to one; in an hour and three-quarters Dick would be gone.
They had lunch in a little private room at a restaurant close to Victoria Station. Joan tried to eat, and tried to laugh and talk with the others, because Mabel had whispered to her on the way in: "You've got to help Dick through the next hour, it isn't going to be easy for him." And that had made Joan look at him with new eyes, and she could see that his face was very white, and that he seemed almost afraid to look at her.
After lunch Mabel and Colonel Rutherford went on ahead and left the two young people to say their good-bye alone. When they had gone Dick pushed the things in front of him on the table aside, and laid his head down on his hands. "My God!" she heard him say, "I wish I had not got to go."
He had been so pleased before, so excited over his different preparations, so wildly keen to be really on the move at last. Joan ran to him quickly; kneeling on the floor by his side, throwing her arms around him. Her own fears were forgotten in her desire to make him brave again.
"It won't be for long, Dick," she whispered. "I know something right inside my heart tells me that you will come back. It is only like putting aside our happiness for a little. Dear, you would be wretched if you could not go. Just having me would not make up to you for that."
He turned and caught her to him quickly. "If I had had you," he said harshly, "it would be different. It would make going so much easier."
"You will come back," she answered softly. Her eyes held his, their hearts beat close and fast against each other.
"It seems," he said a minute or two later, "that it is you who are helping me not to make a fuss, and not the other way about as we arranged." He stood up, slowly lifting her with him. "It is time we were off, Joan," he said. "And upon my soul, I need some courage, little girl. What can you do for me?"
"Well, if I cry," suggested Joan, her head a little on one side—she must be cheerful, she realized; it was funny, but in this she could be stronger than he, and she must be for his sake—"I am sure you would get so annoyed that the rest would be forgotten."
"If I see you cry," he threatened, "I shall get out even after the train has started, and that will mean all sorts of slurs on my reputation."
They walked across to Victoria Station and came in at once to a scene of indescribable noise and confusion. Besides Dick's unit there was a regiment going. The men stood lined up in the big square yard of the station. Some had women with them, wives and mothers and sweethearts; children clung to the women's skirts, unnoticed and frightened into quietness by the sight and sound of their mothers' grief. Railway officials, looking very important and frightfully overworked, ran in and out of the crowd. The train was standing at the platform, part of it already full, nearly every window had its little group of anxious-faced women, trying to say good-bye to their respective relatives in the carriage.
Dick and Joan walked the length of the train, and found that Dick's man had stowed away his things and reserved a place for his master in one of the front carriages. Then Colonel Rutherford and Mabel joined them and they all talked, trying to keep up an animated conversation as to the weather; would the Channel crossing be very rough; what chance was there of his going to Boulogne instead of to Havre; Joan stood close to Dick, just touching him; there was something rather pathetic in the way she did not attempt to close her hand upon the roughness of his coat, but was content to feel it brushing against her. The regimental band had struck up "Tipperary"; the men were being marshalled to take their places in the train. Joan wondered if the band played so loud and so persistently to drown the noise of the women's crying. One young wife had hysterics, and had to be carried away screaming. They saw the husband, he had fallen out of the ranks to try and hold the girl when the crying first began, now he stood and stared after her as they carried her away. Quite a boy, very white about the face, and with misery in his eyes. Joan felt a wave of resentment against the woman; shehad no right, because she loved him, to make his going so much the harder to bear.
A porter ran along the platform calling out, "Take your seats, please, take your seats." Uncle John was shaking hands and saying good-bye to Dick, "I'll look after her for you," Joan heard him say. Then Mabel moved between them for a second, and pulling down Dick's head, kissed him. After that, it seemed, she was left alone with Dick; Colonel Rutherford and Mabel had gone away. How desperately her hand for the second clutched on to the piece of his coat that was near to her! She could not let him go, could not, could not. The engine whistle emitted a long thin squeak, the soldiers at the back of the train had started singing the refrain of "Tipperary." Just for a second his arms were round her, his lips had brushed against hers. That was all it amounted to, but she had looked up at him and she had seen the need in his eyes.
"Good-bye," she whispered. There was not a vestige of tears or fright in her voice. "You will be back soon, Dick. It is never good-bye."
"No," he agreed. "Never good-bye."
Then he had gone; not a minute too soon, for the train had already started. She could not even see his face at the window, a great blackness had come over her eyes, but she stood very straight held, waving and smiling.
A crowd of the soldiers' wives ran past her up the platform, trying to catch on to the hands held out to them from the windows. The men cheered and sang and sang again. It could only have been one or two seconds that she stood there, then slowly the blackness lifted from her eyes. A word had risen in her heart, she said it almost aloud; the sound of it pushed aside her tears and brought her a strange comfort. "England." It was the name that had floated at the back of her prayers always when she prayed for Dick. She was glad that he had gone, even the misery in her heart could not flood out that gladness: "Who dies, if England lives?"
Mabel was standing near her and slipped her hand into hers. "Come away, dear," she heard Mabel say; "Colonel Rutherford has got a taxi for us."
Joan was grateful to Mabel. She realized suddenly that the other woman, who had also loved Dick, had been content to stand aside at the last and leave them alone. She turned to her like a child turns for comfort to someone whom instinctively it knows it can trust.
"I have been good," she said, "haven't I? I haven't shed a tear. Dick said I wasn't to, and, Mabel, you know, I am glad that he has gone. There are some things that matter more than just loving a person, aren't there?"
"Honour, and duty, and the soul of man," Mabel answered. She laughed, a little strange sound that held tears within it. "Oh, yes, Joan, you are right to be glad that he has gone. It will make the future so much more worth having."
"Yes," Joan whispered. Her eyes looked out over the crowded station; the little groups of weeping women; the sadder faces of those who did not weep and yet were hopeless. Her own eyes were full of great faith and a radiant promise. "He will come back, I know he will come back," she said.
Outside the band played ceaselessly and untiringly to drown the sound of the women's tears:
"It's a long way to Tipperary,It's a long way to go;It's a long way to TipperaryTo the dearest girl I know."Farewell, Piccadilly, farewell, Leicester Square,It's a long, long way to TipperaryBut my heart's right there."