"I suppose it is only natural you should," f.a.n.n.y admitted, "though to me it seems that when a woman has a baby like that, she pays for all the fun that went before." She threw back her head a little and laughed.
"Oh, I"m not moral, I know that, but Joan is, that"s what I want you to understand. Anyway, Joan left the man, or he left her, which is more likely, and the baby was never born. Joan was run over in the street one day and was ill in hospital for a month. That was what Joan came up against," she went on, "when she fell in love with your brother. Tell him, I said, it won"t make a pin"s worth of difference to his love--and it wouldn"t. But Joan did not believe me, she had learned to be afraid of good people, some of them had been real nasty to her, and she was afraid."
"She need not have been," Mabel said. The girl was so earnest in the defence of her friend that one could not help liking her. "d.i.c.k knew about it all the time."
f.a.n.n.y nodded. "Yes, Joan told me that on the day after he had been here.
It would have been fairer if he had said so from the beginning. You see," she leant forward, most intense in her explanation, "Joan thought, and thought and thought, till she was really silly with thinking. He had told her he was coming here on Monday to ask her to marry him, and she loved him. I should have held my tongue about things, or whispered them to him as I lay in his arms, holding on to him so that he could not push me away, but Joan isn"t my sort. She just couldn"t bear to tell him, I guess she was afraid to see his face alter and grow hard. Do you blame her because she was afraid? I don"t really know the rest of the story," she finished, "because I was away, but I think Joan got hold of the silly notion that the best thing to do was to have another man hanging about here when Dr. Grant called. She thought it would make him angry, and that he would change his mind about wanting to marry her on the spot. And she pretty well succeeded. I had just got back and was standing in the hall, when Dr. Grant got back from her room and went out. He did not notice me, his face was set white and stern like people"s faces are when they have just had to shoot a dog they loved.
The other man meant nothing to her, nothing; why she hasn"t even seen him for months, and she never liked him. Oh, can"t you explain to your brother, he would listen to you." She put her hand on Mabel"s knee in her earnestness and pulled herself a little nearer. "It"s breaking both their hearts, and it"s all such a silly mistake."
"Are you not asking rather a lot from me?" Mabel said quietly; she met the other"s eyes frankly. "Putting aside all ideas, moral or immoral, don"t you understand that it is only natural that I should want my brother to marry some girl who had not been through all that Miss Rutherford has?"
The quick tears sprang to f.a.n.n.y"s eyes. "If he loves her," she claimed, "is not that all that matters?"
"He may love again," Mabel reminded her.
f.a.n.n.y withdrew her hand and stayed quiet, looking down at the ground, blinking back her tears. "You won"t help," she said presently. "I see what you mean, it doesn"t matter to you what happens to her." She lifted her head defiantly and sprang to her feet. "Well, it doesn"t matter, not very much. I believe in love more than you do, it seems, for I do not believe that your brother will love again, and sooner or later he will come back to her." She paused in her declamation and glanced at Mabel.
"Is he going to the War?" she asked quickly.
"Yes," Mabel a.s.sented; she had stood up too and was drawing on her gloves. "He may go at any moment, as soon as they need him. You think I am awfully hard," she went on; "perhaps I am. d.i.c.k means a lot to me; if I find that this is breaking his heart I will tell him, will you believe that? But if he can find happiness elsewhere I shall be glad, that is all."
f.a.n.n.y huddled herself up in the armchair and did a good cry after she had gone. Joan"s thread of happiness seemed more tangled than ever; her efforts to undo the knots had not been very successful. There was only her belief in the strength of d.i.c.k"s love to fall back on, and love--as f.a.n.n.y knew from her own experience--is sometimes only a weatherc.o.c.k in disguise, blown this way and that by the winds of fate.
The night post brought a letter from Joan. It was written on black-edged notepaper:
"DEAR f.a.n.n.y,
"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, f.a.n.n.y; 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" (f.a.n.n.y 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."
f.a.n.n.y 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. d.i.c.k had joined; it did not matter how f.a.n.n.y 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.
CHAPTER XXIX
"Who dies, if England lives?"
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.
d.i.c.k 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 sc.r.a.p of paper, for an outraged Belgium, because of an agreement binding Great 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.
d.i.c.k 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, d.i.c.k sat there, and all day the stream of old men, young men, and boys pa.s.sed before him.
f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y, England was typified in the soldiers. The night on which the paper boys ran abroad shrieking their first casualty list f.a.n.n.y 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 pa.s.sionately attached to the ones that were left. It is no exaggeration to say that quite gladly and freely f.a.n.n.y would have given her life for any--not one particular--soldier. Something of the spirit of mother-love woke in her att.i.tude 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 inst.i.tuted 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 Joan would 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 d.i.c.k and her love for d.i.c.k stood out with any intensity, and since d.i.c.k 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 week Joan 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 G.o.d beyond, her thoughts would turn into prayer as she stood by the grave. "Dear G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. And always the name of England whispers across their prayers.
Just when the battle of the Marne was at its turning-point d.i.c.k got his orders to go. He was given under a week to get ready in, the unit, a field hospital, was to start on Sat.u.r.day 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 d.i.c.k. "Of course I am very bucked to be really going, Mabel. It is not enlivening to sit and pa.s.s 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-m.u.f.flers round his neck to see if they are long enough. Yesterday he talked rather dramatically of enlisting as a stretcher-bearer and going, out with you, but they wouldn"t have him, would they?"
d.i.c.k 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," d.i.c.k 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," d.i.c.k 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."