"Is everything ready?"
"Everything. Will you come and see?"
"Yes. They won"t want us here."
For the lobby was small; and surgeon and nurses were already standing beside the open door of the ambulance, the surgeon giving directions to the stretcher-bearers of the estate who had been waiting.
Pamela looked at the bed, the nurses" table, the bare boards, the flowers. Her face worked pitifully. She turned to Elizabeth, who caught her in her arms.
"Oh, I am glad you have put the picture away!"
One deep sob, and she recovered herself.
"He"s not much disfigured," she murmured, "only a cut on the forehead. Most of the journey he has been quite cheerful. That was the morphia. But he"s tired now. They"re coming in."
But it was the Squire who entered--asking peremptorily for Miss Bremerton.
The well-known voice struck some profound response in Elizabeth. She turned to him. How changed, how haggard, was the aspect!
"Martin--that"s the surgeon we"ve brought with us--wants something from Fallerton at once. Renshaw"s here, but he can"t be spared for telephoning. Come, please!"
But before she could pa.s.s through the door, it was filled by a procession. The stretcher came through, followed by the surgeon and nurses who had come from France. Elizabeth caught a glimpse of a white face and closed eyes. It was as though something royal and sacred entered the hushed room. She could have fallen on her knees, as in a Breton "pardon" when the Host goes by.
CHAPTER XVI
The bustle of the arrival was over. The doctors had given their orders, the nurses were at their posts for the night, and, under morphia, Desmond was sleeping. In the shaded library there were only hushed voices and movements. By the light of the one lamp, which was screened from the bed, one saw dimly the fantastic shapes in the gla.s.s cases which lined the walls--the little Tanagra figures with their sun-hats and flowing dress--bronzes of Apollo or Hermes--a bronze bull--an ibex--a cup wreathed with acanthus. And in the shadow at the far end rose the great Nike. She seemed to be asking what the white bed and the shrouded figure upon it might mean--protesting that these were not her symbols, or a language that she knew.
Yet at times, as the light varied, she seemed to take another aspect. To Aubrey, sitting beside his brother, the Nike more than once suggested the recollection of a broken Virgin hanging from a fragment of a ruined church which he remembered on a bit of road near Mametz, at which he had seen pa.s.sing soldiers look stealthily and long. Her piteous arms, empty of the babe, suggested motherhood to boys fresh from home; and there were moments when this hovering Nike seemed to breathe a mysterious tenderness like hers--became a proud and splendid angel of consolation--only, indeed, to resume, with some fresh change in the shadows, its pagan indifference, its exultant loneliness.
The Squire sat by the fire, staring into the redness of the logs.
Occasionally nurse or doctor would come and whisper to him. He scarcely seemed to hear them. What was the good of talking? He knew that Desmond was doomed--that his boy"s n.o.ble body was shattered--and the end could only be a question of days--possibly a week. During the first nights of Desmond"s sufferings, the Squire had lived through what had seemed an eternity of torment.
Now there was no more agony. Morphia could be freely given--and would be given till all was over. The boy"s young strength was resisting splendidly, a vitality so superb was hard to beat; but beaten it would be, by the brutality of the bullet which had inflicted an internal injury past repair, against which the energy of the boy"s youth might hold out for a few days--not more. That was why he had been allowed to bring his son home--to die. If there had been a ray, a possibility of hope, every resource of science would have been brought to bear on saving him, there in that casualty clearing-station, itself a large hospital, where the Squire had found him.
All the scenes, incidents, persons of the preceding days were flowing in one continuous medley through the Squire"s mind--the great spectacle of the back of the Army, with all its endless movement, its crowded roads and marching men, the hovering aeroplanes, the _camouflaged_ guns, the long trains of artillery waggons and motor-lorries, strange faces of Kaffir boys and Chinese, grey lines of German prisoners. And then, the hospital. Nothing very much doing, so he was told. Yet hour after hour the wounded came in, men shattered by bomb and sh.e.l.l and rifle-bullet, in the daily raids that went on throughout the line. And scarcely a moan, scarcely a word of complaint!--men giving up their turn with the surgeon to a comrade--"Never mind me, sir--he"s worse nor me!"--or the elder cheering the younger--"Stick it, young"un--this"ll get you to Blighty right enough!"--or, in the midst of mortal pain, signing a field postcard for the people at home, or giving a message to a _padre_ for mother or wife. Like some monstrous hand, the grip of the war had finally closed upon the Squire"s volatile, recalcitrant soul. It was now crushing the moral and intellectual energy in himself, as it had crushed the physical life of his son. For it was as though he were crouching on some bare s.p.a.ce, naked and alone, like a wounded man left behind in a sh.e.l.l-hole by his comrades"
advance. He was aware, indeed, of a mysterious current of spiritual force--patriotism, or religion, or both in one--which seemed to be the support of other men. He had seen incredible, superhuman proofs of it in those few hospital days. But it was of no use to him.
There was only one dim glimmer in his mind--towards which at intervals he seemed to be reaching out. A woman"s face--a woman"s voice--in which there seemed to be some offer of help or comfort. He had seen her--she was somewhere in the house. But there seemed to be insuperable barriers--closed doors, impa.s.sable s.p.a.ces--between himself and her. It was a nightmare, partly the result of fatigue and want of sleep.
When he had first seen his son, Desmond was unconscious, and the end was hourly expected. He remembered telegraphing to a famous surgeon at home to come over; he recalled the faces of the consultants round Desmond"s bed, and the bald man with the keen eyes, who had brought him the final verdict:
"Awfully sorry!--but we can do nothing! He may live a little while--and he has been begging and praying us to send him home.
Better take him--the authorities will give leave. I"ll see to that--it can"t do much harm. The morphia will keep down the pain--and the poor lad will die happy." And then there was much talk of plaster bandages, and some new mechanical appliance to prevent jolting--of the surgeon going home on leave who would take charge of the journey--of the nurses to be sent--and other matters of which he only retained a blurred remembrance.
The journey had been one long and bitter endurance. And now Desmond was here--his son Desmond--lying for a few days in that white bed--under the old roof. And afterwards a fresh grave in Fallerton churchyard--a flood of letters which would be burnt unread--and a world without Desmond.
Meanwhile, in a corner of the hall, Chicksands and Pamela were sitting together--hand in hand. From the moment when he had gone down to Folkestone to meet them, and had seen Pamela"s piteous and beautiful face, as she followed the stretcher on which Desmond lay, across the landing-stage of the boat, Chicksands" mind had been suddenly clear. No words, indeed, except about the journey and Desmond had pa.s.sed between them. But she had seen in his dark eyes a sweetness, a pa.s.sion of protection and help which had thawed all the ice in her heart, and freed the waters of life. She was ashamed of herself, but only for a little while! For in Desmond"s presence all that concerned herself pa.s.sed clean out of sight and mind. It was not till she saw Elizabeth that remorse lifted its head again; and whatever was delicate and sensitive in the girl"s nature revived, like scorched gra.s.s after rain.
Since the hurried, miserable meal, in which Elizabeth had watched over them all, Pamela had followed Elizabeth about, humbly trying to help her in the various household tasks. Then when at last Elizabeth had gone off to telephone some final orders to Captain Dell at Fallerton for the morning Pamela and Arthur were left alone.
He came over to where she sat, and drew a chair beside her.
"Poor child!" he said, under his breath--"poor child!"
She lifted her eyes, swimming in tears.
"Isn"t it marvellous, how she"s thought of everything--done everything?"
Elizabeth had not been in his mind, but he understood the _amende_ offered and was deeply touched.
"Yes, she"s a wonderful creature. Let her care for you, Pamela, dear Pamela!"
He lifted her hand to his lips, and put his arm round her. She leant against him, and he gently kissed her cheek. So Love came to them, but in its most tragic dress, veiled and dumb, with haggard eyes of grief.
Then Pamela tried to tell him all that she herself had understood of the gallant deed, the bit of "observation work" in the course of which Desmond had received his wound. He had gone out with another subaltern, a sergeant, and a telephonist, creeping by night over No Man"s Land to a large sh.e.l.l-hole, close upon an old crater where a German outpost of some thirty men had found shelter. They had remained there for forty-eight hours--unrelieved--listening and telephoning. Then having given all necessary information to the artillery Headquarters which had sent them out, they started on the return journey. But they were seen and fired on. Desmond might have escaped but for his determined endeavours to bring in the Sergeant, who was the first of them to fall. A German sniper hidden in a fragment of ruin caught the boy just outside the British line; he fell actually upon the trench.
Desmond had been the leader all through, said Pamela; his Colonel said he was "the pluckiest, dearest fellow"--he failed "in nothing you ever asked him for."
Just such a story as comes home, night after night, and week after week, from the fighting line! Nothing remarkable in it, except, perhaps, the personal quality of the boy who had sacrificed his life. Arthur Chicksands, with three years of the war behind him, felt that he knew it by heart--could have repeated it, almost in his sleep, and each time with a different name.
"The other lieutenant who was with him," said Pamela, "told us he was in splendid spirits the day before; and then at night, just before they started, Desmond was very quiet, and they said to each other that whatever happened that night they never expected to see England again; and each promised the other that the one who survived, if either did, would take messages home. Desmond told him he was to tell me, if he was killed--that he"d "had a splendid life"--and lived it "_all out_." "She"s not to think of it as cut short. I"ve had it _all_. One lives here a year in a day." And he"d only been seven weeks at the front! He said it was the things he"d seen--not the horrible things--but the glorious things that made him feel like that. Now he did believe there was a G.o.d--and I must believe it too."
The tears ran down her face. Arthur held the quivering hands close in his; and through his soldier"s mind, alive with the latest and innermost knowledge of the war, there flashed a terrible pre-vision of the weeks to come, the weeks of the great offensive, the storm of which might break any day--was certain, indeed, to break soon, and would leave behind it, trampled like leaves into a mire of blood, thousands of lives like Desmond"s--Britain"s best and rarest.
An hour later the hall was deserted, except for Elizabeth, who, after seeing Pamela to bed, came down to write some household letters by the only fire. Presently the surgeon who was sitting up with Desmond appeared, looking worried. His countenance brightened at sight of Elizabeth, with whom he had already had much practical consultation.
"Could you persuade Mr. Mannering to go to bed?"
Elizabeth rose with some hesitation and followed him into the library. The great room, once so familiar, now so strange, the nurses in their white uniforms, moving silently, one standing by the bed, watch in hand--Major Mannering on the farther side, motionless--the smell of antiseptics, the table by the bed with all its paraphernalia of bandages, cups, gla.s.ses, medicine bottles--the stillness of brooding death which held it all--seemed to dash from her any last, blind, unreasonable hope that she might have cherished.
The Squire standing by the fire, where he had been opposing a silent but impatient opposition to the attempt of doctor and nurses to make him take some rest, saw Elizabeth enter. His eyes clung to her as she approached him. So she _was_ near him--and he was not cut off from her.
Then the surgeon watched with astonishment the sudden docility of a man who had already seemed to him one of the most unmanageable of persons. What spell had this woman exercised? At any rate, after a few whispered words from her, the Squire bowed his white head and followed her out of the room.
In the hall Elizabeth offered him a candle, and begged him to go to bed. He shook his head, and pointed to a chair by the dying fire.
"That will do. Then I shall hear--"
He threw himself into it. She brought him a rug, for the night was chilly, and he submitted.
Then she was going away, for it was past midnight, but something in his fixed look, his dull suffering, checked her. She took an old stool and sat down near him. Neither spoke, but his eyes gradually turned to hers, and a strange communion arose between them. Though there were no words, he seemed to be saying to her--"My boy!--my boy!"--over and over again--and then--"Stay there!--for G.o.d"s sake, stay!"
And she stayed. The failing lamp showed her upturned face, with its silent intensity of pity, her hands clasped round her knees, and the brightness of her hair. The long minutes pa.s.sed. Then suddenly the Squire"s eyelids fell, and he slept the sleep of a man physically and mentally undone.