It was afternoon at Mannering.
Elizabeth was walking home from the village through the park. Still
the same dry east-wind weather--very cold in the wind, very warm in
the sun. If the German offensive began while these fine days held,
they would have the luck of weather as we had never had it. Think of
the drenching rains and winds of the Passchendaele attack! In the
popular mind the notion of 'a German God' was taking actual concrete
shape. A huge and monstrous form, sitting on a German hill, plotting
with the Kaiser, and ordering the weather precisely as the Kaiser
wished--it was thus that English superstition, aided by Imperial
speeches and telegrams, began to be haunted.
Yet the world was still beautiful--the silvery stems of the trees,
the flitting of the birds, the violet carpets underfoot. On the
fighting line itself there was probably a new crop of poets, hymning
the Spring with Death for listener, as Julian Grenfell and Rupert
Brooke had hymned it, in that first year of the war that seems now
an eternity behind us.
Moving along a path converging on her own, Elizabeth perceived the
Squire. For the first time that morning he had put off their joint
session, and she had not seen him all day. Her mind was now always
uneasily aware of him--aware, too, of some change in him, for which
in some painful way she felt herself responsible. He had grown
strangely tame and placable, and it was generally noticed that he
looked older. Yet he was more absorbed than ever in the details of
Greek research and the labour of his catalogue. Only, of an evening,
he read the _Times_ for a couple of hours, generally in complete
silence, while Elizabeth and Mrs. Gaddesden talked and knitted.
An extraordinary softness--an extraordinary compassion--was steadily
invading Elizabeth's mind in regard to him. Something suggested to
her that he had come into life maimed of some essential element of
being, possessed by his fellow-men, and that he was now conscious of
the lack, as a Greek Faun might be conscious of the difference
between his life and that of struggling and suffering men. Nothing,
indeed, could less suggest the blithe nature-life which Greek
imagination embodied in the Faun, than the bizarre and restless
aspect of the Squire. This spare white-haired man, with his tempers
and irritations, was far indeed from Greek joyousness. And yet the
Greek sense of beauty, half intellectual, half sensuous, had always
seemed to her the strongest force in him. Was it now besieged by
something else?--was the Faun in him, at last, after these three
years, beginning to feel the bitter grip of humanity?
'"Deeper"? I don't know what you mean. There is nothing "deep" in
me!' She often recalled that saying of his, and the look of
perplexity which had accompanied it.
To herself of late he had been always courteous and indulgent; she
had hardly had an uncivil word from him! But it seemed to her that
he had also begun to avoid her, and the suspicion hurt her
amazingly. If indeed it were true, then leave Mannering she must.
He came up with her at a cross-road, and threw her a look of
enquiry.
'You have been to the village?'
'To the hospital. Thirty fresh wounded arrived last night.'
'I have just seen Chicksands,' said the Squire abruptly. 'Arthur
tells him the German attack must be launched in a week or two, and
may come any day. A million men, probably, thrown against us.'
'So--the next few months will decide,' said Elizabeth, shuddering.
'My God!--why did we ever go into this war!' cried the man beside
her suddenly, in a low, stifled voice. She glanced at him in
astonishment. The new excuses, the new tenderness for him in her
heart made themselves heard.
'It was for honour,' she breathed--'for freedom!'
'Words--just words. They don't stop bombs!'
But there was nothing truculent in the tone.
'You had a line from Mr. Desmond this morning?'
'Yes--a post card. He was all right.'
Silence dropped between them. They walked on through the beautiful
wooded park. Carpets of primroses ran beside them, and masses of
wild cherry blossoms were beginning to show amid the beeches.
Elizabeth was vaguely conscious of beauty, of warm air, of heavenly
sun. But the veil upon the face of all nations was upon her eyes
also.
When they reached the house, the Squire said,
'I looked up the passage in the _Persae_ that occurred to me
yesterday. Will you come and take it down?'
They went into the library together. On a special table in front of
the Squire's desk there stood a magnificent Greek vase of the early
fifth century B.C. A king--Persian, from his dress--was sitting in a
chair of state, and before him stood a small man apparently
delivering a message. [Greek: Aggelos] was roughly written over his
head.
The Squire walked up and down with a text of the _Persae_ in his
hand.
'"This vase," he dictated, "may be compared with one signed by
Xenophantos, in the Paris collection, the subject of which is the
Persian king, hunting. Here we have a Persian king, identified by
his dress, apparently receiving a message from his army. We may
illustrate it by the passage in the _Persae_ of Æschylus, where
Atossa receives from a messenger the account of the battle of
Salamis--a passage which contains the famous lines describing the
Greek onslaught on the Persian fleet:
'"'Then might you hear a mighty shout arise--
'"'Go, ye sons of Hellas!--free your fathers, free your children and
your wives, the temples of your gods, and the tombs of your
ancestors. For now is all at stake!...'
'"We may recall also the final summing-up by the [Greek: aggelos] of
the Persian defeat--
'"'_Never, on a single day, was there so great a slaying of men._'"'
Elizabeth took down the words, first in Greek and then in English.
They rang in her ears, long after she had transcribed them. The
Squire moved up and down in silence, absorbed apparently in the play
which he went on reading.
Outside the light was failing. It was close on six o'clock, and
summer time had not yet begun.
Suddenly the Squire raised his head.
'That, I think, was the telephone?'
Elizabeth rose--
'May I go? It is probably Captain Dell.'
She hurried away to her office-room, where the call-bell was
insistently ringing.
'Yes--who is that?'
'A telegram please--for Mr. Mannering--from London.'
'Wait a moment--I will tell Mr. Mannering.'
But as she turned to go back to the library she saw the Squire had
followed her, and was standing at the door. He came forward at once
and took up the receiver.
Elizabeth watched him with a fast beating pulse. He heard the
message, took out a pencil and wrote it down on a piece of paper
lying near, put up the receiver, and turned to her.
'It is from Aubrey. "Desmond is severely wounded. Please come at
once. Permission will be given to you and Pamela to go to France. I
hope to go with you. Will meet you King's Cross 8.40. Aubrey."'
He steadied himself a moment by a hand on Elizabeth's table. She
went up to him, and took his other hand, which closed an instant on
hers.
'I thought so,' he said, under his breath. 'I knew it.... Telephone,
please, to Fallerton for the taxi, while I go and speak to Forest.'
She gave the order and then hastened into the hall where Mrs.
Gaddesden was busy trimming a hat. The Squire's eldest daughter
sprang up at sight of Elizabeth.
'Oh, what is it? I know it's bad news--it's Desmond!'
Elizabeth repeated the telegram. 'Your father is going off at once.
I have telephoned for the car.'
'Oh, but I must go too--of course I must!' said Alice, weeping.
'Where is my maid?'
Elizabeth pointed out gently that, in speaking of the permits for
France, Major Mannering had only referred to the Squire and Pamela.
'Oh, but he must have meant me too--of course he must! Where is my
maid?' She rang the upstairs' bell violently. 'Oh, father, how
_awful_!'--the Squire had just entered the hall--'of course I'm
going with you?'
'What does she mean?' said the Squire impatiently to Elizabeth.
'Tell her I'm going alone.'
'But, father, you must take me!' cried Alice, running forward with
clasped hands. 'He is my brother! I must see him again!'
'He asks for Pamela,' said the Squire grimly. 'Aubrey shall wire to
you. You'd better stay here--if Miss Bremerton will look after you.'
'I don't want to be looked after--I want to look after Desmond and
you,' said Alice, with sobs.
The Squire's eyes travelled over the soft elaboration of her dress
and hair--all her perfumed and fashionable person.
'It is impossible,' he said sharply. Then turning to Elizabeth he
gave her a few directions about his letters. 'I shall get money in
town. I will wire directly we arrive.'
Alice was silenced, and sat half sulky, half sobbing, by the fire,
while the preparations for departure went forward. She offered help
hysterically once or twice, but it was not needed.
The little car from the village arrived in half an hour. The Squire
stood at the hall door waiting for it. He had not spoken since the
news arrived except to give the most necessary orders. But as he saw
the car nearing the house, he turned to Elizabeth.
'I expect we shall cross to-night. I shall wire you to-morrow.' Then
to Forest--
'Do your best to help Miss Bremerton. She is in charge of
everything.'
'Aye, sir. You'll give our duty to Mr. Desmond, sir. I trust you'll
bring him home.'
The Squire made no reply. He stood motionless till the car arrived,
stepped into it, and was gone.
Elizabeth went back into the house, and to Alice Gaddesden, still
sobbing by the fire. At sight of Elizabeth she broke out into
complaints of her father's unkindness, mixed presently, to
Elizabeth's dismay, with jealousy of her father's secretary.
'I don't know why father didn't let me help him with his packing,
and it's I who should have been left in charge! I'm his eldest
daughter--it is natural that I should be. I can tell you it's very
hard--to see somebody--who's not a relation--doing--doing everything
for him!--so that he won't let anybody else advise him--or do
anything! It is very--very--wounding for us all. Pamela feels it--I
know she does--and Desmond too.'
Elizabeth, very white and distressed, knelt down by her and tried to
calm her. But the flood of angry self-pity could not be stayed.
'Oh, I daresay you don't mean it, but you have--yes, you have a way
of getting everybody's attention. Of course you're awfully
clever--much cleverer than I am--or Pamela. But still it--it isn't
pleasant. I know Pamela felt it dreadfully--being cut out with
people she likes--people she cares about--and who--who might
care for her--like Arthur Chicksands. I believe--yes, I do
believe--though she never told me--that's why she went to London.'
Elizabeth rose from her knees. For a moment she was struck dumb. And
when at last she spoke it was only to repeat the name Mrs. Gaddesden
had mentioned in utter bewilderment.
'Captain Chicksands! What can you mean?'
'Why, of course girls can't hold their own with older women when the
older women are so charming and clever--and all that'--cried Mrs.
Gaddesden, trying desperately to justify herself--'but I've been
awfully sorry for Pamela! Very likely it's not your fault--you
couldn't know, I daresay!'
'No, indeed, I didn't know!' said Elizabeth, in a low voice, 'and I
can't understand now what you mean.'
'Don't you remember the day Arthur Chicksands spent here just before
Desmond went? Don't you remember how he talked to you all the
afternoon about the woods? Well, _I_ saw Pamela's face as she was
sitting behind you.'
Mrs. Gaddesden raised a triumphant though tear-stained countenance.
She was avenging not only her father's latest slight, but a long
series of grievances--small and great--connected with Elizabeth's
position in the house. And the Squire's farewell to her had turned
even her grief to gall.
'If Pamela was hurt, I was a most innocent cause!' said Elizabeth at
last, indignantly. 'And if you or any one else had given me the
smallest hint--'
'How could we?' was the rather sulky reply. 'Pamela, of course,
never said a word--to me. But I rather think she did say something
to Desmond.'
'Desmond!' cried Elizabeth under her breath. She turned slowly, and
went away, leaving Mrs. Gaddesden panting and a little scared at
what she had done.
Elizabeth went back to the library, where there was much to put in
order. She forced herself to tidy the Squire's table, and to write a
business letter or two. But when that was done she dropped her face
in her hands, and shed a few very bitter tears.
She seemed to herself to have failed miserably. In truth, her heart
clung to all these people. She soon attached herself to those with
whom she lived, and was but little critical of them. The warm,
maternal temper which went with her shrewd brain seemed to need
perpetually objects on which to spend itself. She could have loved
the twins dearly had they let her, and day by day, in the absence of
the mother, she had been accustomed to nurse, she had even
positively enjoyed 'petting' Mrs. Gaddesden, holding her wool for
her, seeing to her hot-water bottles, and her breakfast in bed.
Pamela in love with Arthur Chicksands! And she remembered that a
faint idea of it had once crossed her mind, only to be entirely
dismissed and forgotten.
'But I ought to have seen--I ought to have known! Am I really a
vampire?'
And she remembered how she, in her first youth, had suffered from
the dominance and the accomplishment of older women; women who gave
a girl no chance, who must have all the admiration, and all the
opportunities, who would coolly and cruelly snatch a girl's lover
from her.
'And that's how I've appeared to Pamela!' thought Elizabeth between
laughing and crying. 'Yet all I did was to talk about ash for
aeroplanes! Oh, you poor child--you poor child!'
She seemed to feel Pamela's pain in her own heart--she who had had
love and lost it.
'Am I just an odious, clever woman?' She sat down and hated herself.
All the passing vanity that had been stirred in her by Sir Henry's
compliments, all the natural pleasure she had taken in the success
of her great adventure as a business woman, in the ease with which
she, the Squire's paid secretary, had lately begun to lead the
patriotic effort of an English county--how petty, how despicable
even, it seemed, in presence of a boy who had given his all!--even
beside a girl in love!
And the Squire--'Was I hard to him too?'
The night came down. All the strange or beautiful shapes in the
library wavered and flickered under the firelight--the glorious
Nikê--the Erôs--the noble sketch of the boy in his cricketing
dress....
* * * * *
The following morning came a telegram from Aubrey Mannering to Mrs.
Gaddesden. Elizabeth had done her best to propitiate her but she
remained cold and thorny, and when the telegram came she was pleased
that the news came to her first, and--tragic as it was--that
Elizabeth had to ask her for it!
'Terrible wounds. Fear no hope. We shall bring him home as soon as
possible.'
But an hour later arrived another--from the Squire to Elizabeth.
'Have a bed got ready in the library. Desmond's wish. Also
accommodation near for surgeon and nurses. May be able to cross
to-morrow. Will wire.'
But it was nearly two days before the final message arrived--from
Pamela to her sister. 'Expect us 7.20 to-night.'
By that time the ground-floor of the west wing had been transformed
into a temporary ward with its adjuncts, under the direction of a
Fallerton doctor, who had brought Desmond into the world and pulled
him through his childish illnesses. Elizabeth had moved most of the
statues, transferred the Sargent sketch to the drawing-room, and put
all the small archæological litter out of sight. But the Nikê was
too big and heavy to be moved, and Elizabeth remembered that Desmond
had always admired 'the jolly old thing' with its eager outstretched
wings and splendid brow. Doctor Renshaw shook his head over the
library as a hospital ward, and ordered a vast amount of meticulous
cleaning and disinfection.
'No hope?' he said, frowning. 'How do we know? Anyway there shall be
no poison I can help.' But the boy's wish was law.
On the afternoon before the arrival, Elizabeth was seized with
restlessness. When there was nothing more to be done in the way of
hospital provision (for which a list of everything needed had been
sent ahead to Doctor Renshaw)--of flowers, of fair linen--and when,
in spite of the spring sun shining in through all the open windows
on the bare spotless boards, she could hardly bear the sight and
meaning of the transformation which had come over the room, she
found herself aimlessly wandering about the big house, filled with a
ghostly sense of past and future. What was to be the real meaning of
her life at Mannering? She could not have deserted the Squire in the
present crisis. She had indeed no false modesty as to what her help
would mean, practically, to this household under the shadow of
death. At least she could run the cook and the servants, wrestle
with the food difficulties, and keep the Squire's most essential
business going.
But afterwards? She shivered at the word. Yes, afterwards she would
go! And Pamela should reign.
Suddenly, in a back passage, leading from her office to the
housekeeper's room, she came upon a boy of fourteen, Forest's
hall-boy, really a drudge-of-all-work, on whom essential things
depended. He was sitting on a chair beside the luggage lift absorbed
in some work, over which his head was bent, while an eager tip of
tongue showed through his tightened lips.
'What are you doing, Jim?' Elizabeth paused beside the boy, who had
always appeared to her as a simple, docile creature, not very likely
to make much way in a jostling world.
'Please, Miss, I'm knitting,' said Jim, raising a flushed face.
'Knitting! Knitting what?'
'Knitting a sock for my big brother. He's in France, Miss. Mother
learnt me.'
Elizabeth was silent a moment, watching the clumsy fingers as they
struggled with the needles.
'Are you very fond of your brother, Jim?' she asked at last.
'Yes, Miss,' said the boy, stooping a little lower over his work.
Then he added, 'There's only him and me--and mother. Father was
killed last year.'
'Do you know where he is?'
'No, Miss. But Mr. Desmond told me when he was here he might perhaps
see him. And I had a letter from Mr. Desmond ten days ago. He'd come
across Bob, and he wrote me a letter.'
And out of his pocket he pulled a grimy envelope, and put it into
Elizabeth's hands.
'Do you want me to read it, Jim?'
'Please, Miss.' But she was hardly able to read the letters for the
dimness in her eyes. Just a boyish letter--from a boy to a boy. But
it had in it, quite unconsciously, the sacred touch that 'makes us
men.'
A little later she was in the village, where a woman she knew--one
Mary Wilson--was dying, a woman who had been used to come up to do
charing work at the Hall, before the last illness of a bed-ridden
father kept her at home. Mary was still under fifty, plain, clumsy,
and the hardest worker in the village. She lived at the outbreak of
war with her father and mother. Her brother had been killed at
Passchendaele, and Mary's interest in life had vanished with him.
But all through the winter she had nursed her father night and day
through a horrible illness. Often, as Elizabeth had now discovered,
in the bitterest cold of the winter, she had had no bed but the
flagstones of the kitchen. Not a word of complaint--and a few
shillings for both of them to live upon!
At last the father died. And the night he died Mary staggered across
to the wretched cottage of a couple of old-age pensioners opposite.
'I must rest a bit,' she said, and sitting down in a chair by the
fire she fainted. Influenza had been on her for some days, and now
pneumonia had set in. The old people would not hear of her being
taken back to her deserted cottage. They gave up their own room to
her; they did everything for her their feeble strength allowed. But
the fierce disease beat down her small remaining strength.
Elizabeth, since the story came to her knowledge, had done her best
to help. But it was too late.
She went now to kneel at the beside of the dying woman. Mary's weary
eyes lifted, and she smiled faintly at the lady who had been kind to
her. Then unconsciousness returned, and the village nurse gave it as
her opinion that the end was near.
Elizabeth looked round the room. Thank God the cottage did not
belong to the Squire! The bedroom was about ten feet by seven, with
a sloping thatched roof, supported by beams three centuries old. The
one window was about two feet square. The nurse pointed to it.
'The doctor said no pneumonia case could possibly recover in a room
like this. And there are dozens of them, Miss, in this village. Oh,
Mary is glad to go. She nursed her mother for years, and then her
father for years. She never had a day's pleasure, and she was as
good as gold.'
Elizabeth held the clammy, misshapen hand, pressing her lips to it
when she rose to go, as to the garment of a saint.
Then she walked quickly back through the fading spring day, her
heart torn with prayer and remorse--remorse that such a life as Mary
Wilson's should have been possible within reach of her own life and
she not know it; and passionate praying for a better world, through
and after the long anguish of the war.
'Else for what will these boys have given their lives!--what meaning
in the suffering and the agony!--or in the world which permits and
begets them?'
Then, at last, it was past seven o'clock. The dusk had fallen, and
the stars were coming out in a pure pale blue, over the leafless
trees. Elizabeth and Alice Gaddesden stood waiting at the open door
of the hall. A motor ambulance was meeting the train. They would
soon be here now.
Elizabeth turned to Mrs. Gaddesden.
'Won't you give a last look and see if it is all right?'
Alice's weak, pretty face cleared, as she went off to give a final
survey to Desmond's room. She admitted that Elizabeth had been
'nice' that day, and all the days before. Perhaps she had been
hasty.
Lights among the distant trees! Elizabeth thought of the boy who had
gone out from that door, two months before, in the charm and beauty
of his young manhood. What wreck was it they were bringing back?
Then the remembrance stabbed her of that curt note from France--of
what Mrs. Gaddesden had said. She withdrew into the background. With
all the rest to help, she would not be wanted. Yes, she had been too
masterful, too prominent.
Two motors appeared, the ambulance motor behind another. They drew
up at the side door leading direct through a small lobby to the
library, and the Squire, his eldest son, and Captain Chicksands
stepped out--then Pamela.
Pamela ran up to her sister. The girl's eyes were red with crying,
but she was composed.
'On the whole, he has borne the journey well. Where is Miss
Bremerton?'
Elizabeth, hearing her name, emerged from the shadow in which she
was standing. To her astonishment Pamela threw an arm round her neck
and kissed her.
'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 pass 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.