XXXIV
Itwas on a bleak afternoon in the middle of January that the quiet little circle at The Red House was surprised by the sudden irruption of Alma in a state of intensest excitement.
She had come down at once when their sorrowful news about the boys reached her, but that had had to be a short visit as they were terribly busy at St Barnabas’s and shorter-handed than ever.
“He’s coming home. He’s in England,” and she showed them a telegram she had received an hour before, whichsaid—
“Just landed. Will go straight to Willstead. Hope find you all well.Con.”
“Just landed. Will go straight to Willstead. Hope find you all well.Con.”
“It’s from Folkestone and he may be here any time,” she cried, radiant with hopeful excitement. “Isn’t it delightful to see his own name again, even at the end of a telegram. The dear boy! He must be better or he couldn’t have come. I wonder how he got released. Anyway it’s splendid to have him back,” and she looked at her watch every second minute to make the time go quicker.
“I wonder which house he will try first?” said Mrs Dare.
“We’ll soon settle that,” said Alma. “A sheet of paper, Lo, and a couple of drawing-pins!”—and she hauled out her fountain-pen and printed in big letters—“THIS WAY, CON!” and ran out in the rain and fixed it on The Red House gate-post, and opened the gate wide.
“He’s bound to see that, coming from the station,” she panted. “I’d go there and wait for him, but it’s such a bitterly cold place and I’d hate for his first sight ofme to be chiefly red nose and watery eyes. That wouldn’t make for a cheerful welcome to the returned exile.”
“He would sooner find you here, my dear. The Dares are never very effusive in public, and it has been a very trying time for you both,” said Mrs Dare quietly.
Never did minutes drag so slowly. They could none of them settle down even to soothing knitting, except Auntie Mitt, who went quietly on with a body-belt which was child’s play that she could have done in her sleep.
“The trains are very much out of order, you know, with the passage of troops,” said Mrs Dare, as Alma prowled restlessly about but turned up at the window at least once each minute.
“If he had wired from Boulogne I’d have been afraid of submarines or mines. But surely nothing could go wrong just between Folkestone and here! That would be too cruel.”
“He’ll be all right, Al,” said Lois. “There’s hardly been time for him to get here yet since he sent off the telegram. I wish Ray was coming too, but he says there is no chance of leave again for a good while yet.”
“His news is good?”
“Wonderfully good. He seems to be living in mud and water all the time. It makes one shiver to think of it this weather. But he says he’s keeping very well so far, in spite of it all.”
“It’s amazing to me how they stand it. One of our men was telling me—— Here he is!”—as the peremptory hoot of a motor was heard in the road, and she dashed out just in time to see a long gray car, driven by a man in khaki, and bearing O.H.M.S. in big red letters on its wind-screen, sweep up the Oakdene drive.
It had come the other way, down the road, and so had missed the notice on the gate. She was just about to rush after it when it came scudding back down the drive, backed up the road towards the station, and then leaped forward, missed the gate-post by half an inch and camewhirling up to the door, and she saw Con’s face looking out from under the hood.
“Oh, my dear! How thankful I am to see you again!” she cried ecstatically, and wrenched open the door.
A lean-faced young man, with bright eyes and a quiet face, had got out at the other side and come quickly round to assist. He gave his arm to Con and helped him out, and Con put both his arms on Alma’s shoulders and kissed her warmly again and again.
His face showed something of what he had gone through. It was thinner and older looking. There were none of the old laughter-creases in it. Instead—a soberness—almost sombreness—as of one still haunted by the shock of untellable things, and in his once-merry eyes memories of honors and a curious almost imperceptible sense of doubt and recoil. It was very slight, but Alma’s eager eyes, as she took him all in at a glance, discerned it in a moment as something quite new in him.
And as his arms rested on her shoulders she was conscious of a strange lack in the feel of them. His hands should have clasped her to him. Her whole being should have leaped to the thrilling touch of them as their two beings came into contact once more.
But these things were lacking. His arms indeed lay on her shoulders, and it was good to feel them there again. He had not had time to take off his gloves, but one can clasp one’s wife to one’s heart even with gloves on, though it was not like Con to do so.
But there was something more than that,—something undefinable, something in the unresponsiveness of the arms on her shoulders akin to that other new something in him, of which her first quick glance had apprised her, and a throb of fear tapped at her heart.
Con lifted his arms from her shoulders and turned to the khaki-clad chauffeur.
“You’ll have time for a cup of tea and a bite of something to eat before you go back?” he asked quietly, and the man saluted and intimated his readiness, and thenCon and Alma went up to the others who stood waiting in the doorway.
He kissed his mother warmly, and Lois, and Vic, and Auntie Mitt, and introduced the lean-faced young man who was lagging quietly behind.
“This is my very good friend, Robert Grant. If it hadn’t been for him I should never have seen any of you again.” And they turned on Robert Grant and put him to confusion with the volume and warmth of their welcome, and then they all went on into the parlour.
Grant was for eliminating himself again, but they would not have it. Mrs Dare took him by the arm and led him in, murmuring her gratitude again for his care of their boy. Auntie Mitt went off to see the chauffeur properly provided for.
And when they were inside the room Con turned quietly and said, with a little break in his voice, which was deeper than they had known it, and that new strange look in his eyes, “It’s good to be home again, but ... Alma dear, they’ve sent me back a cripple. They cut off my hands.”
And if there had been some lurking fear, born of the long months of suffering and brooding, that that would make any difference in her love for him, it fled on the instant.
She understood it all in a moment,—his doubts as to the wisdom of their hasty marriage,—his fears for the future,—all the black clouds that had weighed on him during these bitter months of pain and exile.
But if there had been in him one smallest doubt as to her love for him, she scattered it and all the rest by the feel of her arms about his neck and the cry that came right out of her heart.
“Oh, my love! My love! You are dearer to me than ever. I thank God for His great goodness in giving you back to me!”
And Con, who had suffered more than most, both in mind and body, without wincing, though he could not hide the effects, hid his face on her breast and shook with sobs that he could not choke down.
Their faces all showed the shock and strain of the distressing news, except Robert Grant’s. His shock had come five months before and he had had time to get over it.
“Tell them how it was, Bob,” said Con, in a muffled voice, as he lifted himself again. “You know more about it than I do. And give me a cigarette before you begin.”
Grant pulled out a cigarette-case and put a cigarette into his lips and lit it, and started on his story.
“Well, it was like this. We were up near Landrecies—in the retirement from Mons, you know,”—his north-country speech, with its sympathetic inflections and ringing r’s, admitted him right into Mrs Dare’s heart.—“It was bad times for our men and our hands were overfull, trying to pick up the wounded, for the Germans were rolling along after us ten to our one. It was said they were behaving very badly to any who fell into their hands. But, you must remember, things were moving so quickly that they really hadn’t much time for anything but the fighting. It was life and death all round, and a man who went down was out of it and not of much account.
“We were at the corner of a wood and our men were fighting splendidly and seemed to be holding them for a bit. But casualties were very heavy and we could not pick them up fast enough. Then, on a sudden, there came a great rush of Germans in close formation. It was like a bore going up a river. They simply swept over our men and rolled them back, and we were left in a kind of backwater.
“Dr Dare told us to stick to business, and we went on with our work. Then an officer who was running past caught sight of us. I cannot say he knew what we were. There was great confusion. Anyway, he saw the Doctor’s uniform and levelled a revolver at him and shouted in English, ‘Hands up!’ and we put our hands up above our heads.
“And just then, as evil luck would have it, a squadron of cavalry—hussars—came galloping round the wood to take our men in flank. And one of them, on our near side, as he passed behind us, just slashed at the Doctor’s liftedhands with his sword, as he would have done at a turnip on a pole in the practice field. It was sheer devilment and without reason. And when he saw the Doctor’s hands fall to the ground he turned up his face and laughed, and they all laughed. The wicked devils!—if you’ll pardon me.”
The faces of all his hearers were pale as they pictured the horror in their own minds.
“What utter fiends!” jerked Alma, white with anger at thought of the ruthless savagery of it.
“It is just the German war-spirit at its worst,” said Con quietly. His lips had puckered on the cigarette as Grant told the story. But he had recovered himself. “The spirit of absolute selfishness and indifference to others. I really felt very little at the moment. Just the sharp cut, then a numbness, and I saw my hands lying on the ground. They looked awfully queer. I just remember thinking, ‘Good God! Those are my hands!’ Then everything began to go round and I fell. Proceed, Robert!”
“The officer who had actually caused the mischief by holding us up had been staring very hard at Dr Dare. When he saw what happened he went white in the face and swore hard in German at the hussars. Then he turned to me and said, in English, ‘Bind him up quickly! Will he die?’ I told him I did not know. But with another fellow’s help I bound the Doctor’s wrists very tightly to stop the bleeding, and put on tourniquets above each elbow and twisted them as tight as I could. Then he handed us over to a sergeant and half-a-dozen men,—there were eight of us altogether;—he gave him some very particular orders and then went on after the battle. The sergeant presently collared a stretcher and bearers, and marched us to the rear of their advance, and the numbers of men we saw there, pressing on to the pursuit, was an eye-opener. They seemed endless,—moving torrents of gray. I never saw so many men in my life. The sergeant found a doctor, and the doctor looked very grave over the matter. But hewas clever. Dr Dare was coming round. He anæsthetised him and sent him off again and made a very good job of the wrists. If he’d been a bungler we would not be here. We were sent off to the rear and eventually into Germany.”
“The man who held us up, and so was the real cause of the trouble, was Von Helse——” said Con.
“Ludwig?—Oh, Con!” gasped Lois, horrified.
“He was not to blame for the rest. In fact he was dreadfully cut up about it, and took to himself blame which did not really lie. He has done all he could to make amends. He got permission for me to keep Bob with me all the time, and most of the time we have been on parole at Frau von Helse’s house in Leipsic, and she and Luise have done everything they could for me. And it is von Helse who arranged for our release;—how, I cannot imagine, but here we are and it’s thanks to him. That’s the whole story. As to what I’ve felt about it all—well, perhaps the less said the better. At first, the only thing I wanted was to die and have done with it all. The thought of going through life handless was too awful. But Bob here won me back to a braver mind. It’s really due to him, in a dozen different ways, that I pulled through. Andnow——”
“We can never thank you properly, Mr Grant,” said Alma, reaching for his hand and shaking it warmly in both hers.
“We’ll do our best, however,” said Mrs Dare, patting him on the shoulder in motherly fashion.
“He’s been just absolutely everything to me,” said Con, “and he’s going to stop on with me and continue his good work. He was studying for a medical, you see, up in Edinburgh, so we get on fine together. But it would be a queer sort that couldn’t get on with Bob Grant. He’s a white man all through.”
Robert Grant’s lean cheek responded briefly to the genial warmth of the atmosphere which enveloped him.
“That is very good hearing, Mr Grant,” said Mrs Dareheartily. “We could wish nothing better. It will be a joy to have you among us.”
The maid came to the door with word that the chauffeur was ready to go.
“Give him half a sovereign, Bob, and my best thanks.—No, I’ll thank him myself. He brought us up from Folkestone in fine style. He was driving a motor-bus before the war and he’s having the time of his life now with no speed limit,” and he and Grant went out together to start their jovial Jehu back to Folkestone in the highest of spirits.