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
glass 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 Nikê. 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 Nikê 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 passing 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
Nikê 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 noble 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 shell 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 space, naked and alone,
like a wounded man left behind in a shell-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, impassable spaces--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 passed between them. But she had seen in his dark eyes a
sweetness, a passion 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 passed 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 grass 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 shell-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 God--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, glasses, 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 God'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 passed. Then suddenly the
Squire's eyelids fell, and he slept the sleep of a man physically
and mentally undone.
Aubrey Mannering sat by his brother all night. With the first dawn
Desmond awoke, and there was an awful interval of pain. But a fresh
morphia injection eased it, and Aubrey presently saw a smile--a look
of the old Desmond. The nurse washed the boy's hands and face,
brought him a cup of tea, took pulse and temperature.
'He's no worse,' she said in a whisper to Aubrey, as she passed him.
Aubrey went up to the bed.
'Aubrey, old chap!' said the boy, and smiled at him. Then--'It's
daylight. Can't I look out?'
The nurse and Mannering wheeled his bed to the window, which opened
to the ground. A white frost was on the grass, and there was a clear
sky through which the sunrise was fast mounting. Along an eastern
wood ran a fiery rose of dawn, the fine leaf-work of the beeches
showing sharply upon it. There was a thrush singing, and a robin
came close to the window, hopped on the ledge, and looked in.
'Ripping!' said Desmond softly. 'There were jolly mornings in France
too.' Then his clear brow contracted. Aubrey stooped to him.
'Any news?' said the blanched lips.
'None yet, old man. We shan't get the papers till eight.'
'What's the date?'
'March 18th.'
Desmond gave a long sigh.
'I would have liked to be in it!'
'In the big battle?' Aubrey's lip trembled. 'You have done your bit,
old man.'
'But how is it going to _end_?' said the boy, moving his head
restlessly. 'Shall we win?--or they? I shall live as long as ever I
can--just to know. I feel quite jolly now--isn't it strange?--and
yet I made the doctors tell me--'
He turned a bright look on his brother, and his voice grew
stronger. 'I had such a queer dream last night, Aubrey,--about
you--and that friend of yours--do you remember?--you used to bring
him down--to stay here--when Pam and I were little--Freddy Vivian--'
The boy looking out into the woods and the morning did not see the
change--the spasm--in his brother's face. He continued--'We kids
liked him awfully. Well, I saw him! I actually did. He stood
there--by you. He was talking a lot--I didn't understand--but--'
A sudden movement. Aubrey fell on his knees beside the bed. His deep
haggard eyes stared at his brother. There was in them an anguish, an
eagerness, scarcely human.
'Desmond!--can't you remember?'
The words were just breathed--panted.
Desmond, whose eyes had closed again, smiled faintly.
'Why, of course I can't remember. He had his hand on your shoulder.
I just thought he was cheering you up--about something.'
'Desmond!--it was I that killed him--I could have saved him!'
The boy opened his eyes. His startled look expressed the question he
had not strength to put.
Aubrey bent over the bed, speaking hurriedly--under possession. 'It
was at Neuve Chapelle. I had gone back for help--he and ten or
twelve others who had moved on too fast were waiting in a bit of
shelter till I could get some more men from the Colonel. The Germans
were coming on thick. And I went back. There was a barrage on--and
on the way--I shirked--my nerve went. I sat down for twenty minutes
by my watch--I hid--in a shell-hole. Then I went to the Colonel, and
he gave me the men. And when we got up to the post, I was just a
quarter of an hour too late. Vivian was lying there dead--and the
others had been mopped up--prisoners--by a German bombing party. It
was I who killed Vivian. No one knows.'
Aubrey's eyes searched those of the boy.
The next moment Mannering was torn with poignant remorse that, under
the sudden shock of that name, he should have spoken at last--after
three years--to this dying lad. Crime added to crime!
'Don't think of it any more, Desmond,' he said hurriedly, raising
himself and laying his hand on his brother's. 'I oughtn't to have
told you.'
But Desmond showed no answering agitation.
'I did see him!' he whispered. 'He stood there--' His eyes turned
towards the window. He seemed to be trying to remember--but soon
gave up the effort. 'Poor old Aubrey!' His feeble hand gave a faint
pressure to his brother's. 'Why, it wasn't you, old fellow!--it was
your body.'
Aubrey could not reply. He hid his face in his hands. The effort of
his own words had shaken him from top to toe. To no human being had
he ever breathed what he had just told his young brother. Life
seemed broken--disorganized.
Desmond was apparently watching the passage of a flock of white
south-westerly clouds across the morning sky. But his brain was
working, and he said presently--
'After I was struck, I hated my body. I'd--I'd like to commit my
spirit to God--but not my body!'
Then again--very faintly--
'It was only your body, Aubrey--not your soul. Poor old Aubrey!'
Then he dozed off again, with intervals of pain.
At eight o'clock Pamela came in--a vision of girlish beauty in spite
of watching and tears, in her white dressing-gown, the masses of her
hair loosely tied.
She sat down by him, and the nurse allowed her to give him milk and
brandy. Paralysis in the lower limbs was increasing, but the brain
was clear, and the suffering less.
He smiled at her, after the painful swallowing was over.
'Why!--you're so like mother, Pamela!'
He was thinking of the picture in the 'den.' She raised his hand,
and kissed it--determined to be brave, not to break down.
'Where's Broomie?' he whispered.
'She'd like to come and see you, Dezzy. Dezzy, darling!--I was all
wrong. She's been so good--good to father--good to all of us.'
The boy's eyes shone.
'I thought so!' he said triumphantly. 'Is she up?'
'Long ago. Shall I tell her? I'll ask Nurse.'
And in a few more minutes Elizabeth was there.
Desmond had been raised a little on his pillows, and flushed at
sight of her. Timidly, he moved his hand, and she laid hers on it.
Then, stirred by an impulse that seemed outside her will, she
stooped over him, and kissed his forehead.
'That was nice!' he murmured, smiling, and lay for a little with his
eyes shut. When he opened them again, he said--
'May I call you Elizabeth?'
Elizabeth's tender look and gesture answered. He gazed at her in
silence, gathering strength for some effort that was evidently on
his mind.
'Father minds awfully,' he said at last, his look clouding. 'And
there's no one--to--to cheer him up.'
'He loves you so,' said Elizabeth, with difficulty, 'he always has
loved you so.'
The furrow on his brow grew a little deeper.
'But that doesn't matter now--nothing matters but--'
After a minute he resumed, in a rather stronger voice--'Tell me
about the woods--and the ash trees. I did laugh over that--old Hull
telling you there were none--and you--Why, I could have shown him
scores.'
She told him all the story of the woods, holding his hot hand in her
cool ones, damping his brow with the eau-de-cologne the nurses gave
her, and smiling at him. Her voice soothed him. It was so clear and
yet soft, like a song,--not a song of romance or passion, but like
the cheerful crooning songs that mothers sing. And her face reminded
him even more of his mother than Pamela's. She was not the least
like his mother, but there was something in her expression that
first youth cannot have--something comforting, profound, sustaining.
He wanted her always to sit there. But his mind wandered from what
she was saying after a little, and returned to his father.
'Is father there?' he asked, trying to turn his head, and failing.
'Not yet.'
'Poor father! Elizabeth!' he spoke the name with a boyish shyness.
'Yes!' She stooped over him.
'You won't go away?'
Elizabeth hesitated a moment, and he looked distressed.
'From Mannering, I mean. Do stay, Broomie!'--the name slipped out,
and in his weakness he did not notice it--'Pamela knows--that she
was horrid!'
'Dear Desmond, I will do everything I can for Pamela.'
'And for father?'
'Yes, indeed--I will be all the help I can,' repeated Elizabeth.
Desmond relapsed into silence and apparent sleep. But Elizabeth's
heart smote her. She felt she had not satisfied him.
* * * * *
But before long by the mere natural force of her personality, she
seemed to be the leading spirit in the sick-room. Only she could
lead or influence the Squire, whose state of sullen despair
terrified the household. The nurses and doctors depended on her for
all those lesser aids that intelligence and love can bring to
hospital service. The servants of the house would have worked all
night and all day for her and Mr. Desmond. Yet all this was scarcely
seen--it was only felt--'a life, a presence like the air.' Most of
us have known the same experience--how, when human beings come to
the testing, the values of a house change, and how men and women,
who have been in it as those who serve, become naturally and
noiselessly its rulers, and those who once ruled, their dependents.
It was so at Mannering. A tender, unconscious sovereignty
established itself; and both the weak and the strong grouped
themselves round it.
Especially did Elizabeth seem to understand the tragic fact that as
death drew nearer the boy struggled more painfully to live, that he
might know what was happening on the battlefield. He would have the
telegrams read to him night and morning. And he would lie brooding
over them for long afterwards. The Rector came to see him, and
Desmond accepted gratefully his readings and his prayers. But they
were scarcely done before he would turn to Elizabeth, and his eager
feverish look would send her to the telephone to ask Arthur
Chicksands at the War Office if Haig's mid-day telegram was in--or
any fresh news.
On the 20th of March, Chicksands, who had been obliged to go back to
his work, came down again for the night. Desmond lay waiting for
him, and Arthur saw at once that death was much nearer. But the boy
had himself insisted on strychnine and morphia before the visit, and
talked a great deal.
The military news, however, that Chicksands brought him disappointed
him greatly.
'Not _yet_?'--he said miserably--'_not yet_?'--breathing his life
into the words, when Chicksands read him a letter from a staff
officer in the Intelligence Department describing the enormous
German preparations for the offensive, but expressing the view--'It
may be some days more before they risk it!'
'I shall be gone before they begin!' he said, and lay sombre and
frowning on his pillows, till Chicksands had beguiled him by some
letters from men in Desmond's own division which he had taken
special trouble to collect for him.
And when the boy's mood and look were calmer, Arthur bent over him
and gave him, with a voice that must shake, the news of his Military
Cross--for 'brilliant leadership and conspicuous courage' in the
bit of 'observation work' that had cost him his life.
Desmond listened with utter incredulity and astonishment.
'It's not me!'--he protested faintly--'it's a mistake!'
Chicksands produced the General's letter--the Cross itself. Desmond
looked at it with unwilling eyes.
'I call it silly--perfectly silly! Why, there were fellows that
deserved it ten times more than I did!'
And he asked that it should be put away, and did not speak of it
again.
In all his talk with him that night, the elder officer was
tragically struck by the boy's growth in intelligence. Just as death
was claiming it, the young mind had broadened and deepened--had
become the mind of a man. And in the vigil which he kept during part
of that night with Martin, the able young surgeon who had brought
Desmond home, and was spending his own hard-earned leave in easing
the boy's death, Chicksands found that Martin's impression was the
same as his own.
'It's wonderful how he's grown and _thought_ since he's been out
there. But do we ever consider--do we ever realize--enough!--what a
marvellous thing it is that young men--boys--like Desmond--should be
able to live, day after day, face to face with death--consciously
and voluntarily--and get quite used to it? Which of us before
the war had ever been in real physical danger--danger of
violent death?--and that not for a few minutes--but for days,
hours, weeks? It seems to make men over again--to create a
new type--by the hundred thousand. And to some men it is an
extraordinary intoxication--this conscious and deliberate
acceptance--defiance!--of death--for a cause--for their country. It
sets them free from themselves. It matures them, all in a moment--as
though the bud and the flower came together. Oh, of course, there
are those it brutalizes--and there are those it stuns. But Desmond
was one of the chosen.'
The night passed. The Squire came in after midnight, and took his
place by the bed.
Desmond was then restless and suffering, and the nurse in charge
whispered to the Squire that the pulse was growing weaker. But the
boy opened his eyes on his father, and tried to smile. The Squire
sat bowed and bent beside him, and nurses and doctors withdrew from
them a little--out of sight and hearing.
'Desmond!' said the Squire in a low voice.
'Yes.'
'Is there anything I could do--to please you?' It was a humble and a
piteous prayer. Desmond's eyes travelled over his father's face.
'Only--love me!' he said, with difficulty. The Squire grew very
white. Kneeling down he kissed his son--for the first time since
Desmond was a child.
Desmond's beautiful mouth smiled a little.
'Thank you,' he said, so feebly that it could scarcely be heard.
When the light began to come in he moved impatiently, asking for the
newspapers. Elizabeth told him that old Perley had gone to meet them
at the morning train at Fallerton, and would be out with them at the
earliest possible moment.
But when they came the boy turned almost angrily from them. 'The
Shipping Problem--Attacks on British Ports--Raids on the French
Front--Bombardment of German Towns--Curfew Regulations'--Pamela's
faltering voice read out the headings.
'Oh, what rot!' he said wearily--'what rot!'
After that his strength ebbed visibly through the morning.
Chicksands, who must return to town in the afternoon, sat with him,
Pamela and Elizabeth opposite--Alice and Margaret not far away. The
two doctors watched their patient, and Martin whispered to Aubrey
Mannering, who had come down by a night train, that the struggle for
life could not last much longer.
Presently about one o'clock, Aubrey, who had been called out of the
room, came back and whispered something to Chicksands, who at once
went away. Elizabeth, looking up, saw agitation and expectancy in
the Major's look. But he said nothing.
In a few minutes Chicksands reappeared. He went straight to Desmond,
and knelt down by him.
'Desmond!' he said in a clear voice, 'the offensive's begun. The
Chief in my room at the War Office has just been telephoning me. It
began at eight this morning--on a front of fifty miles. Can you hear
me?' The boy opened his eyes--straining them on Arthur.
'It's begun!' he said eagerly--'begun! What have they done?'
'The bombardment opened at dawn--about five--the German infantry
attacked about eight. It's been going on the whole morning--and down
the whole front from Arras to the Scarpe.'
'And we've held?--we've _held_?'
'So far magnificently. Our outpost troops have been withdrawn to the
battle-zone--that's all. The line has held everywhere. The Germans
have lost heavily.'
'Outpost troops!' whispered the boy--'why, that's nothing! We always
expected--to lose the first line. Good old Army!'
A pause, and then--so faintly breathed as to be scarcely audible,
and yet in ecstasy--'England!--England!'
His joy was wonderful--heart-breaking--while all those around him
wept.
He lay murmuring to himself a little while, his hand in Pamela's.
Then for a last time he looked at his father, but was now too weak
to speak. His eyes, intently fixed on the Squire, kept their
marvellous brightness--no one knew how long. Then gently, as though
an unseen hand put out a light, the brilliance died away--the lids
fell--and with a few breaths Desmond's young life was past.