THE WORN DOORSTEP

August 25, 1914. At last I have found the very place for our

housekeeping; I have been searching for days: did you know it, dear?

The quest that we began together I had to follow after you went to the

front; and, through the crashes of tragic rumours that have rolled

through England, I have gone on and on, not running away or trying to

escape, but full of need to find the right corner, the right wall

against which I could put my back and stand to face these great

oncoming troubles. I have travelled by slow trains across quiet country

which does not as yet know there is war; I have driven in an

old-fashioned stage or post wagon,--you never told me that there were

such things left in your country,--past yellow harvest fields in calm

August weather; I have even walked for miles by green hedgerows, which

wear here and there a belated blossom, searching for that village of

our dreams where our home should be, quiet enough for the work of the

scholar, green for two lovers of the country, and grey with the touch

of time. I knew that now it could be almost anywhere; that it did not

matter if it were not near Oxford, and it seemed to me that I should

rather have it a bit--but not too far--away from the "dreaming spires."

So I went on and on, with just one thought in my mind, because I was

determined to carry out our plan to the full, and because I did not

dare stay still. There's a great strange pain in my head when I am

quiet, as if all the mountains of the earth were pressing down on it,

and I have to go somewhere, slip out from under them before they crush

me quite.

Often, at a distance, I thought that I had found it; thatched roofs or

red tiles, or a lovely old Norman church tower would make me sure that

my search was done; but again and again I found myself mistaken, I can

hardly tell you why. You know without telling, as you must know all I

am writing before I make the letters, and yet it eases my mind to

write. At no time did you seem very far as I searched hill country and

level lands, watching haystacks and flocks of sheep, sometimes through

sunny showers of English rain.

But now I have discovered our village, the very one that I dreamed in

childhood, that you and I pictured together, and I know that at last I

have come home. I knew it by the rooks, for I arrived late in the

afternoon, and the rooks were flying homeward to the great elms by the

church,--groups of them, here, there, and everywhere, black against the

sunset. Such a chattering and gossiping, as they went to bed in the

treetops! Such joy of home and bedtime! I knew it by the grey church

tower in its shelter of green leaves, and the ancient little stone

church on the top of the gentle hill among its old, old, lichen-covered

tombstones.

The village homes, in a straggling row, looked half familiar; the

grassy meadow that rolls to the village edge, still more so; and the

quaint old Inn, where I spent the night and where I am writing--surely

some of my ancestors, centuries ago, slept at that very Inn, for I half

remember it all,--low ceilings, latticed windows, stone floor, and

great, smothering feather bed. Everywhere, indoors and out, I am aware

of forgotten chords of sympathy. Those small boys in short trousers,

trudging home on tired legs and little bare feet--"did I pass that way

a long time ago?" Did some one back of me in the march of life--my

ancestors came from this East country--grow tired and rebel in a

village like this and run away to America? In some way, by memory, by

prophecy, all seems mine; the worn paths; the hollowed door-stones; the

ruddy faces moving up and down the walled streets, and the quiet under

the grass in the churchyard. And you are everywhere, interpreting,

making me understand, with that insight compounded of silent humour and

silent sympathy. I am too tired to do anything to-night but have my tea

and bit of toast and egg, and warm my fingers at the open fire, for the

evening is chill; but to-morrow I shall go searching for our house, and

I know I shall find it, for I have a curious sense that this is not

only the place for my home with you, but that some far, far back sense

of home broods here.

The grey war-cloud drifts closer and grows darker. Namur has fallen

into German hands; there are rumours--God grant that they are not

true!--that the French and the English troops are retreating. In spite

of the entire confidence of the people here in their island security,

there is fear in my heart for England, this England which seems so

remote from cruel struggle, as if created in some moment of Nature's

relenting, when she was almost ready to take back her fell purpose,--it

is so full of fragrances, of soft colours of flowers, of softer green

of hedgerows and meadows. There is something in you, you Englishmen of

finer type, shaped by this beauty, quiet and self-contained, of hill

and dale and meadow. Surely in you too I know this quietness, this

coolness, the still ways of the streams.

August 26. Past the grey church, and down the hill, at the edge of the

great green meadow, and a bit apart from the village, I found our

house, with its wooden shutters and its white front door closed, a

quaint old brick cottage, waiting for life to come to it again. It has

a brick front walk, and a brick wall stands about it, save at the back,

where the stream that skirts the meadow flows at the very garden edge.

Can you see it, the wistaria, the woodbine, the honeysuckle over the

wee porch, the climbing, drooping, straggling vines that make the whole

little house look oddly like a Skye terrier? It is all unkempt; grass

grows in tufts between the bricks, and weeds in the neglected grass.

The chimney needs repairing; some of the little diamond panes in the

latticed windows are broken, alas! I did not venture inside the

wrought-iron gate, for the encompassing veneration for property rights

is strong upon me; not in the British Isles shall I be caught

trespassing! Can you not imagine, as I can, how a dainty order,

satisfying even your fastidious taste, could grow out of its present

desolation, with a little weeding here, a little trimming there, a

nail, a bit of board, a few bricks,--surely we could find a few old

weathered ones to match. There must be touches of the new, but careful

preservation of all the old, of all the eloquent worn edges that tell

of the coming and going of past life.

Something--anything--to keep away the thoughts I refuse to harbour. I

can not, I can not even yet, think of the misery of this war. It beats

in my ears, like great hard waves; it clangs and clamours, strikes,

comes in imagined horrible shrill whistles and great explosions. There

is nothing in me that understands war; new tracks will have to be

beaten out in my brain before I can grasp any of it. It is a vast,

unmeasured pain beyond my own pain.

I have got to have a place of my own in which to face them both, for a

little while, a little while, where I may stand and think,--perhaps

even pray.

No one was about, except a shaggy pony, grazing in the rich green

meadow, with a rough lock of hair over his eyes. I find a little stone

bridge across the stream and try to make his acquaintance. He lifts his

head and looks at me through his forelock, seems to respond with

cordiality to my overtures, whinnies, and even takes a step or two

toward me as I draw near; then, when I can almost touch him, gives a

queer little toss of his head, kicks up his heels, and dashes off to a

rise of ground, where he stands with a triumphant air, his legs planted

wide apart, seeming to say: "Such be forever the fate of those who try

to catch and harness me!" Then he falls to grazing again, keeping one

eye out to see whether I am coming near.

Presently came an old man with a rake, and I made some inquiries about

the house, but the haymaker's dialect was as hard for me to understand

as mine was for him. I learned only that the little 'ouse belonged to

the 'All; that it had been occupied by one of the functionaries at the

'All;--it will be good for you, you Englishman, to live in a little

house once inhabited by an unimportant person, good for you to forget

caste and class and bend a bit, if need be, at your own front door!

Like yourself, young Master went with the first adventurers to the war,

the old man said, and the 'All was closed. And he added, with

significant gestures with his rake, what he would do to "they Germans",

if he once got hold of them. I judged, by the red satisfaction in his

face, that the wooden rake in a shaking old hand constituted for him a

vision of "preparedness for war."

So there it stands, on the edge of a great estate that sweeps out to

eastward; low-lying lines of green in the west mean forest, and that

soft look of sky and cloud in the east means the sea. It is absolutely

the place for which we looked so long and will satisfy the home sense,

so strong in both of us. I wonder at my good fortune in finding it, as

I carried on the search alone, and I refuse to entertain the idea that

I may not have it for my own. The roof droops low over the windows;

there is a tall poplar by the wrought-iron gateway; the brick wall,

vine-covered in places, will shut us away from all the world, belovèd.

Within we shall plant our garden, and light our fire on the hearth, and

live our life together, you and I, just you and I.

August 27. But can I get it? I am in a prolonged state of suspense.

Nobody in the village seems to know anything, but everybody is of firm

conviction that somebody higher up knows everything, and that all is

well. I appealed to my landlady; she very pleasantly informed me with

an air of great wisdom that it might be I could 'ave it, it might be I

couldn't; nobody could say. No, she could not tell me to whom to apply,

with the 'All closed, as it was, 'm, and the Squire away.

Standing--there was barely standing-place--in her own over-furnished

sitting room, filled to its low ceiling with bric-a-brac, whatnots with

unshapely vases, tall glass cases with artificial flowers or alabaster

vases under them, porcelain figures,--one a genuine purple cow,--she

seemed, as many a more imposing person on this side of the water and

the other seems, a victim of property.

"An' I do 'ave difficulty, Miss, in gettin' about," she said, as her

apron knocked a Dresden china shepherdess and a Spanish guitar player

off an over-crowded table; "but I don't quite know what to do about

it."

"A broom!" I suggested.

"Broom? Oh, it's nicely swept, and everything dusted regularly once a

week, 'm," she assured me. Oh, for one German bomb!

Luncheon time, and no solution of my problem; a futile visit to the

postmistress, who informed me that I should have to wait until the war

was over, and Master came home to the Hall. I was meditating an inquiry

at the vicarage, though that involved more audacity than I can easily

summon, when my landlord came riding home on a big bony steed and had a

conference with his wife in the kitchen. He, it seems, is temporarily

agent for the property; he has the keys to the little red house and to

my future destiny. I try hard to think what will be pleasing to so huge

and so important a personage, as I walk down the village street at his

side, two steps to his one. An unfortunate conjecture about the retreat

of the British brings forth the emphatic statement that the British

never retreat. With a train of thought of which I am, at the time,

unconscious, I tell him that I am an American; he listens

indifferently. I tell him that my uncle is at the head of an important

New York banking house; he at once becomes responsive and respectful.

We go through the little iron gate and up the brick walk; out of a vast

pocket he takes an old wrought-iron key and unlocks the white front

door.

As we entered, I had a curious sense that you were inside; I never draw

near a closed door without a feeling that it may open on your face.

Instead, there was only the blankness and the empty odour of a house

long closed, and yet it seemed hospitable, as if glad to have me come.

I examined every inch of it, peered into each corner, and explored

every nook and cranny. It is just as it should be, with low ceilings,

old brown rafters, and brick fireplaces,--the one in the kitchen has a

crane. The little dining room is panelled, the living room wainscoted;

I like the dull old oak woodwork and the solidity of everything, which

seems to belong to an elder, stable order, not to this earth-quakey

world of to-day. The living room, facing the south, and thus the meadow

and the brook, is sunny, but not over-light, with its window seats and

casement windows, diamond-paned. The stairs are narrow and a bit

cramped, but my landlord of the Inn gives me permission--ah, I forgot

to say that he tells me I may have the house and grounds for fifty

pounds a year; fifty pounds for all this and a running stream

too!--permission to make a few changes which I hesitatingly suggested,

and for which I shall pay, as the rent is low. There must be a

bathroom--perhaps water can be piped from the stream; a partition is to

be knocked down, and the stairs will then go up from the living room,

not in the little box wherein they are at present enclosed. Where can I

find an old stair rail and newel post suitable for the old house? Mine

host will himself attend to the roof and the chimneys; and he says that

there are some discarded diamond-paned windows lying in an outhouse at

the Inn, from which glass may be taken to replace those that are

broken, if any one can be found to set it properly.

He was amused that I wanted them, amused by my pleasure in the old and

quaint. If he had his way, large new panes of glass should go into all

windows wheresoever; he would like everything shiny and varnishy.

Naturally I did not confess, when he apologized for the lack of this

and that, that I was glad of the inconveniences, glad of relief from

the mechanical and tinkling comforts of our modern life; he would never

understand! To speak of an old-fashioned American would be to him a

contradiction in terms; yet in some ways we are one of the most

conservative people on earth, holding certain old ways of thought most

tenaciously. It is only our muscles that are modern! I am very like a

Pilgrim mother in my convictions of right and wrong.

There is some deep reason why many Americans care so profoundly for old

buildings, old furnishings, old habits which we find here; they typify

inner characteristics which we must not forget in a young land where

changes come too swiftly. There is a steadfastness about it all; these

old stone houses wear a look as if they had been built for something

more immutable than human life. Never as in these recent wanderings

have I had this sense of England, innermost England, of that enduring

beauty of spirit best expressed in Westminster and the old Gothic

churches; that England of ancient faiths and old reverences. Delicate

carving and soft tinted glass bear witness to the richness of inherited

spiritual life and make visible the soul of a people grown fine, old,

and wise. Old shields, grey with hoary dust, still hang on the tombs of

those who have fought and conquered, or have been defeated; a sense of

old sacredness lingers at Oxford's heart,--and yours. There is

something here which not all the sins and shortcomings and decadences

of contemporary life can change; not the luxury and the selfishness of

titled folk whose high glass-guarded walls shut miles of green land

away from common people; not the mistakes--and they are many--of the

government. Back of all this, and beyond, is a something which means

keeping, as no other nation keeps, the old and sacred fire,

safeguarding civilization from the over-new, the merely efficient, the

unremembering.

My new abode is lowly and cozy, with a fine simplicity in the antique

furniture, carved chest, and plain chairs. The fundamental things are

here; you should see the walnut table in the living room, with its deep

glow of red-brown colour. There must be some new things, of course,

fresh chintzes, linen, kitchen utensils, but for the most part only oil

and turpentine and a pair of good red sturdy English arms are needed to

remove a certain dinginess.

So I've a home of my own, though earth crashes and kingdoms fall and a

comet strikes against us and puts us out. For a little I have a

fortified spot wherein to defy the worst that time can do. I am a

householder, on my own plot of ground, crossing and re-crossing my own

threshold; and the big wrought-iron key is in my hand. There are ashes

still upon the hearth,--from whose fire? New flame shall go up from the

old grey ashes,--the central spark of home shall be rekindled here; and

that is the whole story of human life.

How fortunate, and how unusual, in so small a house, that the hall

leads all the way through from green to green! We shall get all the

breezes that blow, for the house faces the west, as all houses should

face; and always and forever we shall hear the stream. There's a step

there at the back, down to the garden walk, that you must remember, you

who are so absent-minded.

--I keep forgetting that you are dead.

September 6. I have been away for a week, a week in which I have not

dared leave one moment unoccupied. To keep my sanity, I must be busy

all the time; life cannot be cut short in this way. When great forces

have begun to stir within you, like the gathering of all waters far and

near, you cannot safely stop them all at once; I must have, in the

weeks to come, some outlet for this surging energy.

London is quiet, and awful with the self-control of great tension. The

war-terror mounts, though few speak of it; the Germans have crossed the

Marne; the French government has moved to Bordeaux, and all the world

seems tottering. Back in my charmed village, I wait and listen. They

would not take me at the front; did you know that, the day after you

left, I made an attempt to follow? No training, and physically unfit,

was the verdict. I thought that I could perhaps prove to you in act

that of which I could not convince you by argument in our dispute the

day we walked to Godstow,--that women have the kind of courage

possessed by men.

I live at the Inn during these days while my house is being put in

order. A glazier has been found who can re-set the old diamond panes;

carpenter and plumber are hard at work. The hideous wall-papers in the

chambers have been scraped off; they were so ugly that they actually

hurt. You always told me, you remember, that I minded too much the

things that make for ugliness, that my eye was too sensitive to

evil-coloured and unshapely things, and that I must live more in the

world of thought. The contrast between these, in their wicked purples

and magentas, and the wonderful cottage itself with its dim beauty of

old brick and dusky panelling, makes one wonder at the potential

depravity of the heart of modern man or woman! There's a shop in

London,--I was going to take you there,--where they have reproductions

of quaint old papers, the kind made a hundred years ago, with little

landscapes, and sheep and shepherds, and odd flower designs. I chose

three of these, and they are going on at this minute; I must go to see

that they piece the two bits of the shepherdess together neatly and do

not leave her head and her beribboned hat dangling several inches above

her embroidered bodice. It is a relief to escape from the purple cow

and the hundred and one china abominations in this sitting room.

My landlady, fingering her black alpaca dress apron, assures me as I

go, that the best of news, 'm, has come from the front; that the

Germans are in full retreat, and the French and the British are nearing

Berlin! If only this insular confidence that for Britons there is no

defeat be not too rudely broken!

Don went with me; I went to Oxford to get him during my week away. I am

so glad, so very glad that you let me have him when you went to war. He

potters along behind me or runs ahead, with all his questing little

fox-terrier soul in his eyes, sure, like myself, that around some

corner, or on some blessed rise of ground, we shall meet you. At each

fresh disappointment he turns to me with that look of perfect trust in

his eyes that I, some day when it seems fit, will give you back to him.

Within five minutes, at his first visit to the little red house, he had

sniffed every corner, and he dropped with a deep sigh of content on the

warm brick walk, knowing the place for his own.

The cloistered Oxford gardens, with their incredibly smooth grass, were

unchanged, but the immemorial quiet is broken. Your Oxford is a new

Oxford, awake, struggling, suffering, nursing the wounded, while the

noblest of her sons follow you to the war. Thinking of all these things

as I walk, I decide not to go to the house, after all; there is a sound

of hammering and an air of disquiet. I cross the little stone bridge

and follow the stream; this, like the pony, is a new neighbour with

which I must become acquainted, and it proves more friendly than that

other. There is a touch of September gold everywhere, of autumn

perfectness in things, that belies wrong anywhere upon the earth. And

all the old days float down the stream; something, the way of the water

with the grasses, the ripple of the water, brings back May, and my

first English spring, and you.

Do you remember that my very first glimpse of you was at the Union? You

were debating, very convincingly, on the subject of disarmament, and

proved the possibility, the practicability, of peace among nations. I

was idly interested in you; Gladys had whispered that you were one of

her friends. That night,--but never again,--you were just one of a type

to me, with the fine, lean, English look of race, the fine self-control

of every nerve and emotion and muscle. I noticed that you were already

beginning to have a touch of the scholar stoop, and that you were a

shade, just a shade, too slender. It was quite a surprise, and

something of a blow to me, to find you English men not, on the whole,

so stalwart as the men in America. All our lives we have read of the

hale and hearty John Bull, yet our first glimpse of you makes us think

that John Bull and Uncle Sam will have to change places in the

caricatures if this transformation keeps on.

The hardest thing in the world for me to understand is that the great

things of life may hang on mere trifles. If I had not, acting on a

moment's impulse, promised to go into lodgings with Gladys in Oxford

because she would go there to study Celtic, Icelandic, and Greek, I

should never have known you, never have walked with you in glory

through an English spring, never have picked crocuses in Iffley meadows

and anemones in Bagley wood, never have known that green rippling

beauty of Oxford stream and meadow and the piercing joy of life and

love that came with you. And now----

The vastness of my loss I can not even grasp; my world is swept away

from under my feet, and I am alone, with nothing to stand on, nothing

to reach in space. Dying myself could hardly mean such utter letting

go; I am aware only of a great blankness. I have not even tried to

measure my disaster, to understand. I shall have all the rest of my

life to learn to understand; I come of a long-lived race.

That which comes more often than my sense of loss is the sense of my

part in letting you go, making you go! You remember that August

afternoon when we drifted down the river, for you even forgot to row;

the trailing willow branches ruffled our hair and gently took off my

hat. It was a lazy, sunshiny, misty afternoon, such a happy afternoon,

except for the war-cloud beyond the peace and the exquisite grey and

green calm of Oxford. You were wondering, idly enough, about war; how

was it to be justified? What right had England, with her love of

peaceful enlightenment, to take this swift plunge into the awful

horror? And you went, my Lord Hamlet, with that deepening look which

showed a soul drawn far within, into a long philosophic discussion as

to whether war is ever justifiable; no one could adjust philosophic

niceties of thought better than you. Could a man of ethical conviction,

without outrage to his better self, go into that barbaric hell? All the

time that your intellect was balancing, weighing, and deciding "no!"

old impulses were stirring, old heroic fingers were tugging from their

graves, old simple-minded forebears were alive and awake, impelling

you.

The green, lovely banks grew dim; the shadows lengthened across the

rippling water, and sunset flushed the western sky beyond the

overhanging branches, while you fought it out. When you turned and

asked me squarely, what could I say? It had seemed so piteously,

cruelly simple to me from the first, so simple and so great! Of course,

I come of the practical American race. Back of me lie generations of

ancestors who have had to act and act quickly without exhausting the

ultimate possibilities of thought on any subject. I do not mean that

they have done unjustifiable things, but that they have had to take

life at the quick. When the Indian brandished his tomahawk inside the

door at the baby in the cradle, some one had to shoot and shoot

instantly, without stopping to ask any authority whether shooting was

wrong. That actually happened in my family; it was a little

great-great-great-great-great-grandmother of mine. Her Pilgrim father

was quite right. Even if his mind told him that it was wrong, which I

judge was not the case, there was something in him deeper down and

farther back than mere intellect; he did the right thing and did it

instinctively, Lord Hamlet. Of course, in reality, his intellectual

problem had been settled when he loaded his gun.

All life is transition, and always has been. As I understand it, with

one's ancestor one has to load one's gun with one hand, while reaching

forward with the other to one's descendant for the pipe of peace. One

has to keep collected, centered, ready to do one's utmost in any need;

the luxury of the last shade of reasoning is denied us as yet: our task

is not to fail at the crisis.

What could I say, when you asked me, except the cruelly hard thing

which I did say? Back of me, as back of you, lie the same fighting,

plucky ancestors. The same heroic impulses that stirred their dust stir

mine, and yours,--alas that it has but feminine dust to stir in me! To

me, as to you, there is but one answer in the world to a question like

that. There had never been any real doubt in my mind as to what you

would do; I think that there had never been any real doubt in your own

mind. In the great moments, life seems neither right nor wrong, but

something greater; it seems inevitable.

Poor Belgium and the baby in the cradle come back to my mind together,

the highly "efficient" tomahawk replaced by the highly "efficient"

siege guns. But even apart from the high justice of this issue, England

was in trouble, England was fighting. What was there for you to do but

help? I said only the one word "go," and even now I can recall the

stillness and the wash of the ripples against our boat and through the

grasses. The silence of perfect beauty rested on sky and tree and

water, and the river no longer seemed a little inland stream flowing

softly through grassy meadows with retarding locks, but a flowing

passageway to some great sea.

The days that followed I count off on my fingers as one counts a

rosary; there were not many, not so many as our prayers. Such little

scraps of them, mere fragments, come to me, shining fragments which I

treasure and shall always treasure like bits of priceless jewels: in

all my mental store there is nothing quite so precious. I was busy

every minute, trying to console your mother and your sister, who

thought you ought not to go; trying to make them see. It is as if the

sun were still illuminating those days, making them forever radiant. It

seemed enough to live, to try, to give one's all, not knowing; it was

not hard _then_; nothing could be hard in moments of exaltation like

those.

They were full too of homely toil; such queer things we had to do in

getting you ready, dear. Of course you were not a trained soldier; how

to become a trained soldier in a week of short days is a harder problem

than many a one in philosophy. When you decided that you would be a

despatch bearer and join the motorcycle brigade, because thus you could

go to the front sooner, I am proud that I did not say one word of

protest, though I knew that it was the most dangerous task of all.

Being a despatch bearer seemed a fitting service for an intellectual

leader.

How we laughed as you practised riding! Lord Hamlet on a motorcycle,

with no time for thought, no time for scruple! How we searched out

rough bits of road and watched you try to cross a newly-mown meadow,

where late poppies, I remember, were blossoming in the stubble. Once

you struck a stone and fell, and your mother amazed you by crying out.

I laughed and horrified her; but I kissed its handles before you went.

The motorcycle had been to me the most hateful of modern inventions,

inexcusable, unmentionable. And here it became a symbol of dauntless

courage and highest service; beyond the bravery necessary for a charge

in battle is the bravery needed here; this evil, roaring, puffing thing

might turn into the chariot that would carry you over the borders of

the sun.

That one brief hour that we found to steal away to Bagley wood lingers

yet. The anemones were gone, but all about was the soft midsummer

murmur, and the ripe fulness of August life. What practical things we

talked about! I think that we sent you out fitted up as well as any

German soldier of them all. Who, in the Kaiser's army, had a more

complete or smaller sewing kit? Who had thread wound off on very

diminutive bits of cardboard to save the space that spools would

take,--white linen and black linen and khaki coloured, all very strong?

What Teuton could challenge you on the score of buttons? It was good,

it was very good, in your mother to let me help.

You thought I never wavered; when you were doubting, I was sure; when

you were sure,--you never knew that I wrote you a note that last night

and took back my decision, saying that thinkers had their own separate

task, and that you should stay. I burned it.... I would not have you

back, dear, if it meant giving up that inmost you I knew in those

glorified few days. You have fulfilled yourself.

September 15. Who is going to keep house for me--that is the problem?

Somebody there must be to cook and clean and polish; a staff composed

of one British female is what I need, for I can do many, very many

things myself.

Mine host and my landlady took counsel; I let them do a great deal of

thinking for me, for their minds are rusty from disuse; you can

actually hear a kind of creaking when they try to make them go. They

finally decided that I was to drive in a pony cart to a village off to

eastward, to consult Madge and Peter Snell, man and wife, both from a

different part of the country, lately employed at the Hall as

under-cook and gardener, now out of work because the Hall is closed. I

readily agreed; yes, I was used to driving, and the directions--first

turn at the left, then a bit of road and a turn at the right, 'm, and

then a long stretch across a dike to a stone bridge and a stream and a

village spire--seemed clear enough.

But when my equipage is drawn up at the Inn door, whom do I see but my

wayward friend of the meadow, harnessed to an absurd little basket-cart

as diminutive as he. I am delighted to see him; is the pleasure mutual?

He gives me one look out of his eyes that seems to say he will be even

with me yet; Don leaps to a place of honour in the cart, and we go

flying down the village street with sparks flashing from the iron-shod

little hoofs. Drive? Yes, I am accustomed to driving _horses_, but

not Pucks, not changelings; I never, never drove a mischievous kitten

fastened to a baby carriage! And that little "trap" was a trap indeed!

What breed my pony is, as mortals reckon things, I do not know; he is

too big for a Shetland, too little for a horse; perhaps he is an Exmoor

pony, or the product of some northern heath. We go gaily to the left,

somewhat perilously near a corner at the right, and we are out racing

over a long dike built across what was once a low-lying sea-meadow. Don

looks up at me with vast enjoyment in his eyes, and that little quiver

of the face that means a fox-terrier smile.

About half-way across we come to a gate; there is nothing to do but for

me to get out to open it, and this I do. Swift as a flash, my Puck

whirls about and goes dashing for home; holding tightly to the reins, I

run also, laughing as I have not laughed for days. Don, with his paws

on the edge of the cart, barks furiously. Pulling and dragging with all

my might, at length I stop the pony. The little wretch looks at me

almost respectfully as I turn him about, and he trots meekly back; he

was only trying me out, to see of what stuff I was made. He stood as

firmly as the Tower of London as I shut the gate and climbed into the

cart. Then came the stream and the stone bridge and the village spire;

and a row of small garden plots with yellow, late summer things

blossoming in them, and Madge and Peter standing by a garden gate.

I knew at first glance that they must both come; now that I think of

it, I have quite a garden, though it will seem little to one who has

worked at the 'All; there are always heavy things to be done about the

kitchen, and Peter knows more than he will admit about the drudgery

necessary to sustain human life. Peter, it seems, has been a soldier,

has served in the South African war, and is a time-expired man who has

beaten his sword into a ploughshare,--or is it a pruning hook? But none

of his accomplishments is my real reason; the half-belligerent

affection on the face of husband and wife shows me that they should not

be separated.

Madge, the look of anxiety already lifting from her smooth and comely

face,--one sees that look here in many of the unemployed,--looks

questioningly at Peter when I extend my invitation. I assure him that I

need a man to look after the garden and the pony; at this Puck pricks

up his ears and gives me a half glance. Yes, I have decided to have

him, if I may, for my very own. There is a remote something in Peter's

gait and bearing that suggests the soldier, but it is the soldier whose

long leisure re-acts against the discipline.

"But perhaps you were thinking of going to the war?" I ask.

"No, Miss," said Peter, "I weren't."

He spoke so emphatically that I may have raised my eyebrows; perhaps I

shook my head. I shall be afraid of borrowing unconsciously some of the

pony's gestures; these strong personalities always leave their impress.

"War," said Peter firmly, "is against my principles. I am a socialist."

"It's a fine way to keep from serving King and Country, being a

socialist," said Madge unkindly. Madge is evidently not progressive.

"My fellow man," said Peter, striking the gate post with a heavy fist,

"is more to me than King or 'Ouse of Lords."

"Or fellow woman, either," murmured Madge, thinking that I did not

hear.

From these advanced radical theories Madge and I turn back, as women

will, to the old and homely needs of human life. She fingers her apron.

"I'm sure, Miss, if the laundry could be put out----"

"Yes."

"And a charwoman for the rough scrubbing----"

"Yes."

"And if you wouldn't mind me knowing little about waiting at table----"

"With but one person in the family, that isn't very complex," I say

reassuringly. Don looks reproachfully at me; was I forgetting him?

I watched Don to see how he would take them; his manner was

perfection,--polite but distant, refusing any intimate advances, but

refraining from growling. There was a certain approving condescension

in his air, as if he thought they were quite well in their way. He

never for a moment forgets that he is a gentleman's dog, and his flair

for social distinctions is as fine as that of any of his fellow Oxford

dons. That delicate snobbery showed to-day in his air of

connoisseurship while he weighed the matter with daintily snuffing nose

and then assumed an air of invitation to these two to come and keep

their place.

I was delighted when they said that they would come, and we trotted

merrily home to the shining companionship of the hearth fire,

flickering on pewter pots and copper pans as on my landlady's red

cheeks; to the comfort--ah, that I, a twentieth-century American, dare

confess it--of a feather bed!

September 29. Here I live in mine own hired house, like the gentleman

in the Bible,--who was it,--Paul? I hope only that he had one half the

sense of entire possession that is mine. I look at Madge and Peter,

busy in kitchen and garden, at Don, guarding the little iron gate, at

the pony grazing beyond the stream, and I feel like a feudal lord.

Especially do I feel so when we rout out the utensils in the

kitchen,--knives, forks, skillets. Some of them surely antedate the

feudal era; they were probably left by the cave men; their prehistoric

shape, in its ancient British clumsiness, looks as if it might have

archæological, if not practical, value. I shall use them for gardening;

the forks will be a great help in wrestling with mother earth.

Wrestle I do, indoors and out; I dare not be idle, and besides, I like

to do these things. The Vicar's lady, passing, is shocked to see me

scraping the putty off of my new-old diamond-paned windows; but

somebody had to get it off; Madge couldn't, so why not I? Madge watches

me working about, torn between her old attitude of maid at the Hall,

with its fixed ideas as to what the gentry should do, and a something

new that is slowly creeping into her mind. Throughout England, I am

told, the gentry are doing things they used not to do,--for economy,

for possible service to the country in its day of need. And it is

slowly dawning on us all that its need is great. The Germans have been

halted on the Marne, and we breathe more easily, but it is rumoured

that they have brought their great siege guns up to Antwerp, and the

poor Belgians are flocking over here in hordes.

Madge, as she sees me toiling over my chintz curtains, and sees the

bothersome things come down to my undoing, wants to know why I wished

to come, quite by myself; why I didn't take lodgings somewhere,--it

would be far less trouble. She doesn't understand in the least when I

tell her that I cannot endure the irrelevance of lodgings, the

antimacassars, the hideous bric-a-brac, the rooms packed full of

horrors, where I cannot collect my mind. A home of your own is worth

while, if only to keep it bare of human clutter; bad pictures

intimidate me; ugly upholstery defeats my soul. Of provincial England I

could say, if it weren't profane, all thy tidies and thy ugly reps have

gone over me. The publicity of hotel or boarding house I cannot endure,

nor the kind of tissue-paper life that one must live there. Not among

gilt cornices but beside meadows and running waters I choose my lot.

Your relatives are kindness itself in inviting me to stay with them,

but just now I cannot bear kindness; I want people to be as cruel as

God! Was I not lonely enough, after my own family had vanished into the

silence; why did you come into my life only to leave me more alone?

This is my _apologia pro domicilio meo_, but why, after all, should I

need to explain a longing for my own rooftree, my own hearth, my own

pathway leading to my own front door? I must have come into the world

with a belief that for every woman born was intended a little nook or

corner or cranny of her own. So here is mine, a quarter of a mile from

the village, not many miles from the sea, seventy odd miles from

London, and how far from that heaven where you are? Can you tell me the

way and the length of the road? Sometimes it seems set on the very edge

of eternity, and I keep expecting to see stray cherubim, seraphim, and

angels stop to ask the rest of the way.

I haven't begun on the garden; in a way I haven't let myself see it,

there has been so much to do in the house; but, if you will believe it,

and of course you will, being an Englishman, a plum tree and a pear

tree are espaliered on the sunny southern wall of the house, branching

out a bit over one of the windows. There are two apple trees, a clump

of holly, ferns in a corner, rosebushes, and climbing roses. I shall

not know all the colours until next summer, though some of them bloom

late; I have discovered white ones, and pale yellow, and one of a deep

and lovely red. The garden is neglected, weedy, and grass-grown, but I

find hollyhocks, foxglove, larkspur, and a forgotten violet bed. A

small kitchen garden borders my lady's garden, and Peter shall till

this. Don walks up and down the paths with a step so exactly fitted to

your old pace in the college gardens that I feel always a little shock

of surprise in not seeing you, as of old, just ahead.

Scraps of conversation drift to me from Madge and Peter when they

happen to work together; upon the invincibility of the British they

agree, and upon the fact that no foe will ever dare set foot upon the

British isles, but in matters of social opinion they are hopelessly at

variance. Madge is a conservative, standing staunchly by the Church,

the 'All, the 'Ouse of Lords; Peter is an extreme radical, a

"hatheist", as he solemnly informed me, eager for anything new in word

or thought, and usually misappropriating both. He reads American

paper-covered novels, and a touch of transatlantic slang creeps now and

then into his conversation, or a queer abstract phrase from some

socialist lecturer whom he doesn't understand but accepts entire. Many

a bit of stubborn debate comes to me through open door or window, as

Peter defends his rights as man and scoffs at the social system.

"Wy _'im_ at the 'All? Wy not me?" was the last I heard.

"You!" said Madge scornfully. "You couldn't even stand up on the

floors, they are that shiny and polished."

With the fragrance of ripening fruit, and the warmth of the brick wall

about me,--September is September everywhere,--I sit here upon my own

threshold, a worn old threshold made wise by the coming and going of

life through unnumbered years. There is something comforting about a

place where many lives have been lived; the windows have a strange air

of wisdom, as if experience itself were looking out. I am tired,

physically tired, with all the work, but I am well content with it: are

you? All within is nearly finished. Your books, for your mother gave me

many of them, are in a set of shelves I had made by the fireplace; my

own in a low case that runs all across one side of the room. The window

seats have chintz cushions; two easy chairs flank the fireplace; the

old walnut table with reading lamp is placed where it can command

either the flame of the hearth or the sunset flame: do you like all

this, I wonder? In the little dining room a stately armchair stands

ready for you always, as befits the master of the house, and your place

at table shall be always set, the cover laid. So begins our divine

housekeeping, you on your side, I on mine--alas!--of the universe and

life and time.

Last night I laid a scarf of yours, which I had been wearing, across

your chair; Don sniffed at it and whimpered, then jumped up into the

chair and whined piteously. No, do not be afraid! I shall not whine,

even if my heart break. I shall come to you smiling, belovèd, and

whatever wrinkles are on my face shall not be worn by tears. Everybody

is _game_ in England now; I will be game too! There are no cowards

among those who go to fight, or those who are left at home: my

battlefield lies here. You need not think I am going to mourn in

loneliness; I shall not let you go, though you are dead; I am going to

live my life in and for you, and every least wish I ever heard you

express shall be carried out. After dinner Don and I sat on the rug in

front of the fire and talked about you; it is sorry comfort for both of

us, but it is all we have. For him, as for me, I think, the sense of

you comes more strongly in favoured nooks and corners, by the fire on

the hearth, or by the living room windows in the sunshine. He knows you

better than anybody else does, except me, and I sometimes feel,--at

least, he remembers farther back than I can, and I am envious of him

and of every one else who knew you first. He has chosen his permanent

abiding-place, for he went close to the right side of the hearth, sat

down, wagged his tail beseechingly, and held up one paw as he does when

he is begging for things.

So I have closed my little iron gate,--Madge, Peter, Don, and I inside,

and all the world shut outside. Perhaps I am moved by the instinct of

the hurt animal to go away by itself and hide. It cannot be wrong--now;

henceforth I must live in the past; the dropping of the latch will be

the signal, and the old days will slip back one by one over the brick

wall. I shall establish a blockade; haven't I a right? The pain, at

times, is more than I can bear, and every face I see recalls the sight

of happy people, the sight of wretched people alike. Safe, with my

sorrow, inside these walls; and outside, the surge of great sorrows,

anguish, perplexity.

October 8. Of course I take long walks day by day, yet nothing more

intensifies my sense of loss, perhaps, because we walked so much

together. The country is as green as it was that July day when we

stopped and helped the haymakers in the Oxford meadows, and they jeered

good-naturedly at our way of raking. I have found relief in watching

the harvesting and the gathering of the fruit; looking resolutely at

field and stream, centering mind and soul there, my grief softens and

grows more kind. Everywhere I see the picturesque and finished charm of

English life.

As I climb the hill past the church, the old, old woman who lives in

the little house by the lych gate,--the churchyard gate, the gate of

the dead,--and sells gingerbread, biscuit, and ginger ale, is putting

out her wares. She is so old, so much a part of the other world, she

lives so near the edge of this, that I half suspect her, as I catch a

glimpse of the green mounds through the rusted wrought-iron bars, of

ministering to those we cannot see. None but the English would think of

selling gingerbread at heaven's gate! Over the soft gurgle of ale from

the stone jars we exchange greetings; she is only another of your

daring and delightful incongruities, seen in the gargoyles on your

cathedrals, the jokes in your tragedies, and the licensed mischief of

your Oxford students on Commemoration Day.

The practical necessities of life take me, perforce, beyond my own

domain. I have made the acquaintance of butcher and baker; that of the

candlestick maker is still to come. The passing faces of people in the

village street, even of farmers stopping at the Inn, I begin to

recognize; the latter look little more concerned about the present

crisis than do their stout nags. Life goes quietly on here, as it has

always done, I fancy; steps are scrubbed, and brasses of knocker and

door latch are polished until you can see your face there. Is this

encompassing calm mere apathy, or is it conscious strength? In his

little shop the sleepy chemist wakens unwillingly to deal out his

wares; the sleepy service goes on as of old in the little church. It is

grey with dust; perhaps the caretaker does not think it worth while to

dust in war-time, yet I doubt whether he knows there is war. In the

bakeshop window day by day are displayed the great clumsy loaves of

bread with the foolish little loaf tucked on at one side. Why? There's

neither rhyme nor reason nor symmetry in it; the force of custom may be

wise and may be merely stupid. Here one gets constantly an impression

of the overwhelming power of old habit and has a feeling that unless

these people are shocked out of some of their ancient ways, disaster

will follow. As I collect my wares, I fall to wondering whether either

this nation, which worships its past, or we, who worship our future, is

wholly right.

If, at times, a doubt intrudes in regard to this British clinging to

the past, it is when the door of the one village shop tinkles at my

entrance, and I ask in vain for the common necessities which it is

supposed to supply. Here are pictures of Queen Victoria and all the

royal family, but no tapes, no trustworthy thread, no pins, at least no

pins with points. I brought home a paper of these soft little British

crowbars, but alas! fingers cannot drive them in; they but crumple if,

in desperation, you urge them too vigorously. How can a nation rule the

sea; above all, how can it conquer in a mechanical war when it cannot

even make decent _pins_?

My mood softens as I stroll toward home; the glow of the blacksmith's

forge fascinates me; there at least is tremendous strength, which is

also skill, welding in this most ancient art, blow upon blow,

old-fashioned horseshoes, which I am told are the best. Past quaint old

doorways my path leads; the sight of these, and of fine old-fashioned

faces behind the windowpanes, revives my normal mood of affection. What

other people would, in reverence to wishes of those long dead, give out

the dole of widows' bread at Westminster, the daily dole at Winchester,

or administer the Leicester charity at Warwick in the spirit in which

it was meant? What other people would be honest enough to do it? There

is a basic honesty here which recalls the old tale of Lincoln and the

money he saved for many years, in order to give back the identical

coins with which he had been entrusted.

As I enter my own domain, I observe once more that my gate does not

latch properly; all this time, when I have found it left open, I have

reproached Peter.

"Peter, you did not shut the gate."

"No, Miss," rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand.

"You must be more careful."

"Yes, Miss."

This has happened several times; today I found that no power could make

it really latch, and I confided the fact to Peter.

"Yes, Miss, I knew it all along, Miss."

"But why--" there I stopped; I should rather never know why than to try

to penetrate the wooden impenetrability of mind of the British

serving-man. There are no "whys" in their vocabularies, no "whys" in

their minds, only "thus and so." Things are as they are; it has always

been so; theirs to stand under the atlas weight of caste and class,

prejudice and custom, not theirs to reason why, when they are blamed by

their masters for things not their fault; theirs to go on digging, very

respectfully digging.

"Peter, will you get some one to fix it, please?"

"Fix it, Miss?" He does not understand Americanese unless he chooses.

"Put it in order." I am quite red and haughty now, and as dignified as

Queen Alexandra.

"I'll try, Miss. I expect that was broken a long time ago." Peter half

salutes and goes on spading the earth for next year's flowers.

"Peter," I say severely, "the most lamentable thing about you English

is that you are always 'expecting' things that have already happened.

It's both grammatically and politically wrong to expect things in the

past." He has not the slightest idea of my meaning, but of course he

assents.

"You were a soldier once, weren't you?"

"Yes, Miss. It's a nasty business."

"Slavery," I venture, "would be worse."

"I can't say, really," answers Peter.

"Sometimes I wonder that you do not volunteer for this war, Peter," I

suggest.

Stolid Peter goes on digging.

"There h'isn't any war, Miss!"

"But Peter, what do you mean?"

A fine look of cunning incredulity over-spreads Peter's broad face, as

he stops and wipes his forehead, for this October day is warm.

"No, Miss; it is just a scare got up by the 'Ouse of Lords to frighting

the common people."

"What for?" I ask stupidly.

"To take their minds off the 'Ouse of Lords; we had threatened their

power, 'm, and they wish to keep their seats. It is what you call a

roose."

"Peter," I say severely, "day by day we hear through the newspapers of

terrible fighting going on all the time; how can you say such a foolish

thing?"

"The newspapers, 'm," said Peter, with frightful audacity, "are

corrupted, bought by the 'Ouse of Lords. They say what they are

hordered to."

"The poor Belgians are pouring into this country," I say in wrath.

"Beg parding, Miss, but I haven't seen a Belgian," answers doubting

Peter.

"Day by day we hear of recruits going by hundreds to the recruiting

stations----"

"I'm not denying that they may be making up the army, 'm, and that

there may be war some day; but that a war is on, I deny, 'm."

So this is what happens when the British lower classes begin to think!

There really ought to be some better way of bridging the gulf between

their old, automatic habits and the new working of their minds.

"They are carrying soldiers across the Channel by thousands," I say

indignantly.

"All bunkum, if you'll kindly excuse the word, Miss. Did Robinson

Crusoe really happen? We 'ear of these things going on, but do

_you_ know of anybody who has actually been killed, 'm?" asks

Peter.

I looked at him, but I could not speak. Where are you lying, dear, in

that awful field of death?

October 11. I was pruning and tying up rose vines, by my wrought-iron

gate that stands ajar, when I heard a noise,--first, a skurrying of

feet, and a shout, then a rush of something small and swift. The

tiniest grey kitten imaginable had dashed in through the opening and

was trembling in a corner under my rosebush. I picked it up and went

quickly to the gate; there was a red-faced urchin waiting, his mouth

open, a stone in one hand ready to throw at the kitten if it came out,

but shy of entering,--the British respect for a gate! Neither my pleas

nor my scolding brought a shade of expression to his face; it was as

guileless, as soulless, as a jack-o'-lantern. I give the boy tuppence,

and tell him to go away, and to be kind to animals; the kitten curls

itself about my neck and purrs, as I work in the earth. Of course I

shall keep it; I am glad that the latch will not hold, and I shall not

even try to have it repaired. Perhaps my garden may serve as a refuge

for small hunted things, suffering things. I might have a ring put on

my gate; you remember the ring upon the cathedral door at Durham to

which a fugitive could cling? All the village criminals--I wonder who

the village criminals are? Probably the ones who look least so!--could

cling to it, and Peter could rescue them, and Madge and I could give

them tea.

And now to help on the millennium a bit by establishing an intimacy

between the refugee kitten and snobbish little Don. In his heart I

think he wants to make friends; but when a common kitten, with no

pedigree and no Oxford training, spits at him, what is he to do? He

looks piteously at me as I bid him be gentle; sniffs in half friendly

fashion, and keeps his delicate nose well away from the claws.

Meanwhile, how can I teach the kitten _noblesse oblige_? I shall

name it the Atom, because, it being (so much of the time) invisible,

like the scientists I am unable to tell whether or not it exists; and

because at moments it seems only a "mode of motion."

Not long after came a little squeal, as of a tiny pig; my flower beds!

I hurry down; the gate is farther open, and there is a huge baby, a

gingerbread baby,--no, it is alive, but it has the shape of gingerbread

babies in the shops, and it has the motions of a gingerbread baby,--not

a joint in its body; "moving all together if it move at all." Its round

blue eyes, its round red mouth look frightened in Don's presence and

mine; then, with another little squeal, it flings itself upon Don, who

draws away, looks at me inquiringly, with that questioning paw

uplifted, shivering a little, all his class-consciousness astir: must

he make friends with _this_?

It is a solid British lump, but friendly beyond belief. In feeling that

it would further the _entente cordiale_ between the two peoples, I find

myself making a playhouse, with tiny pebbles. The infant Briton is not

so phlegmatic, after all; it shouts with delight, flings itself upon my

knees, and embraces them so suddenly and so lustily that I nearly fall

over.... I must find out its name and send to London for a Teddy bear

and some toys. My gate is wide open, ever since Peter started to escort

home my uninvited guest....

It proves quite a day for adventure, and yet I have not been beyond my

garden wall. As I sit on my threshold to watch the sunset, I see,

pausing at that open gate, a tired-looking woman, with her baby in her

arms. She starts to move away, but I speak to her, and she enters; at

first glance I know that she is neither tramp nor beggar and half

divine her errand. Yes, she is a soldier's wife; he is going in a few

days to the front, and she is walking a good part of the way from the

north of England to his training camp at Salisbury Plain, to let him

see and say good-bye to the baby on whom he has never set his eyes; it

is only seven weeks old and was born after he volunteered. She had

money enough to come only a certain distance by train.

The mother is a north-country woman, with a touch of Scotch about her,

clean and sweet, though a bit dusty with the long road. Of course I

take her in for the night; we have a wee guest-chamber. Don and the

kitten and I try to make friends with the baby, but it merely howls.

Madge wanted to keep the travellers in the kitchen, but I would not

permit this and said that my soldier's wife must dine with me. I forgot

to say, I took it for granted that Madge would know enough to lay

another cover at table and was not prepared to see the stranger in your

place. Naturally, though I winced, I could not make any change, and

there she sat, a bit awed; probably she would have been happier in the

kitchen with the baby; but she brightened up and told me some of the

border legends, when she found that I already knew some. My desire to

take her out of your chair lasted through the soup and half-way through

the modest roast; when we reached the salad, there was a hurt sense

somewhere within me that it was right. I had become a Christian by the

time the dessert came on, and in the afterglow by the fire, while she

sang her baby to sleep most enchantingly with an old north-country

song, I resolved to do just this: keep your chair for wandering guests,

fugitives from these highways and hedges. Your intense present life

with me, your subtle nearness needs, after all, no help from outer

object or material thing. Alas for my blockade!... Forts are proving

useless, the war news says.

It sets me to thinking, and I sit by the fire long after my guests have

gone to sleep. After all, it seems a pity to work so hard over a house

and to get it ready, unless you get it ready for something. I don't

know how it could be managed in a maiden lady's home, but what if I

resolved that all the things that should happen in a house should

happen here? In my heart of hearts I know, in spite of this blinding

sorrow, that I do not want to be shut off from the main streams of

human life. They used to tell me that I have a genius for home; suppose

I establish this as a wee home in a warring universe for the use of

whomsoever? Not a Home with a large H, but a little home, with a dog

and a cat and a singing teakettle. The Lord did not make me for great

causes,--not for a philanthropist, nor a leader of men, nor a

suffragette. I have no understanding of masses of mankind, and so am

lost in this era, and hopelessly behind the times. Life seems to me, as

it did to my grandfather, primarily as the conscientious fulfilment of

individual obligation, which inevitably reaches out to other lives. The

troubles of individual men and women and children I used to understand,

to try to help; perhaps I can again. Though it means confessing that I

belong to a type of woman rapidly becoming extinct, all my life long I

have felt that I should be content with a hearthstone and threshold of

my own, with natural relationships and real neighbours. If I can

understand and pity and try to help, why am I not doing it now, pig

that I am? Birth, and death, and marriage, and hours of common life!

Ah, if the little red house could only lend itself once more to all

human need!

October 15. My Jeannie Deans is gone; she was in such haste that she

could hardly wait for her breakfast. I got mine host to drive her to

the station, for I shall not let her walk the rest of the way, and I

gave her all the money I could find in the house, including all I could

extract from Madge's and Peter's pockets, and from Madge's broken

teapot. Unfortunately, it was not so much as I could have wished, but

it will provide for a few days. Now we haven't ha'pence in the house;

so much the better, if the burglar with whom I am threatened by the

boding village gossips should call; but I must drive over to

Shepperton, the market town, and call at the Outland and County Bank,

and get some of those clean, crisp, dainty notes that are a delight to

touch.

It seems lonely without Jeannie; Peter has gone away over hill and dale

to get fertilizer for my garden; my house is empty, swept, and

garnished--I have been dreading the moment when everything would be

done. I carry on Madge's education, for I am trying to teach her

English history. Yesterday it was William the Conqueror; she did not

believe a word of it, but she very politely said: "Just fancy!" Most of

these people know so little of their own history that they scorn the

idea that anything unfortunate ever happened to England and scoff at a

statement that she has ever been worsted in a fight. It has always been

as it is, the King on the throne, the Vicar in the pulpit, the Squire

at the Hall, and the island secure from all attack. To butcher and

baker and candlestick maker in the village, danger or threatened change

is inconceivable; England's past defeats sound to them like fairy

stories devised by enemies, though they lend a willing ear to the tale

of England's triumphs. Going back to ancient times, I told Madge about

the Danes and their landing on this coast, about the burning and

pillaging done by these wild folk: all that she remarked was: "How

awkward!" I could not get her to entertain for a moment the idea,

though we are only a few miles from the North Sea, that the enemy could

ever land on English shores. "Hengland rules the seas," and that is all

there is to it. Antwerp has fallen, but even this does not shake the

prevailing sense of security. Antwerp is not England!

In contemporary matters Madge is quite interested; she thinks great

scorn of the suffragettes: "Breaking the windows, 'm, and biting Mr.

Hasquith, 'm; it's not for ladies to be taking part in public matters;

they 'aven't it in them!" I reminded her of Queen Elizabeth, but she

had never heard of Queen Elizabeth, and refused to entertain the idea

that any such woman had ever ruled England. Even the tale of the Virgin

Queen boxing the courtiers' ears she disbelieved with the rest. She

admitted Queen Victoria, but said that it was "so different, 'm, and

she a mother and a grandmother."

Some of this went on while Madge was doing up the guest room; she

wanted simply to spread the coverlid over the bed, as it probably would

not be used again for a long time. I insisted, however, that the bed be

made ready with fresh sheets; some one might stop at any minute, I

explained. Madge looked at me with question in her eye; her impression

of me up to this point is that I am an amiable lunatic who may at any

minute change to violence.

After luncheon I made Peter go and get the pony for me; yes, the pony

is now exclusively my own, for as long a time as I wish. He is almost

the most interesting personality I have ever known,--wilful,

conscientious, full of conviction in regard to what he considers his

duty and what he looks upon as his privileges. There are spurts,

attended by dashing heels and swishing tail, of strict and spirited

performance of his allotted tasks; there is peasant stubbornness,

attended by stiffened legs and tenacious hoofs, of resistance to evil.

He is British, or Scotch, to the core. Evidently he feels that his

ancestors had a hand, a hoof, I mean, in the Magna Charta, and all the

liberty that is coming to him he means to have, and all the obligations

resting upon him he means to fufil, in his own way, at his own time.

Sometimes he will do far more than he is asked, scornful of other

people's ideas; has he not his own? He is full of punctiliousness,

decency, order, when he feels like it; of utmost freedom, even license

also, when he feels like it. Now and then he runs away, purely, I

think, on the principle of: "British ponies never shall be slaves."

Gentle when you would least expect it, fractious when you are most

unprepared, he looks upon whizzing motor cars with calm tolerance, so

unlike my own feeling that I may well cultivate his acquaintance in

order to learn that wise indifference. It is as if he were disdainful

of anything the modern world could invent to frighten him or get in his

way; here is an ancient British self-possession, a sense of ownership

in the soil. His ancestors were here hundreds of years before these

trifling modernisms appeared; William the Conqueror and his Norman

steeds were but parvenus and upstarts to them. He will shy at a

floating feather, but I doubt if he would shy at a Zeppelin. Like many

another staunch character, he takes gallantly the real troubles of

life, balking only at the trifles.

"I should like to know," I said meekly, as we started, "whether it is

one of my days for obeying you, or one of your days for obeying me?

When I find out, I shall conduct myself accordingly." I got no answer,

yet I soon discovered. There is really something uncanny about him; he

seems to know more than horse or human should know; to have

foreknowledge of events. I must not tell his master, or the charges

will be raised from five shillings a week perhaps to eight; after all,

eight shillings for supernatural wisdom would not be unreasonable! On

the other hand, if it was just plain British contrariness, eight

shillings would be too much, as there is such an over-supply of the

commodity.

I was driving out in the forest to westward, and it is very beautiful

with its great oaks and birches, and its loveliness of yellowing fern.

In spite of the mellow Octoberness everywhere, I was thinking sad

thoughts; all day you can drive here and yet hardly cross one man's

possessions; much of the land lies idle, while people starve in

England; much of it is preserved,--the poor tame pheasants are as

friendly as domestic hens. The tax for charity here is one shilling

four pence a pound; as I read this, I thought of London with its

starving poor, its ribald poor, and I wondered if this great kingdom

will vanish because the people do not pull together better. The blind

selfishness of the upper class with their glass-guarded walls is a

greater menace than the German siege guns.

I came to a cross road, or cross path, grassy paths both, with creeping

green moss among the roots of the trees on either side. It was hard to

decide which way to go; I chose the right and pulled the rein; Puck

chose the left and started. I tugged at the right and told him to go

on; he said he wouldn't; again I told him, and he shook his head, shook

himself all over with his head down, until his harness rattled. When I

told him a third time, he stamped, kicked, and pulled with all his

might to the left. Of course he got his way; some people passed; I was

not going to be convicted of inadequate horsemanship, being only an

American, so I assumed a calm and masterful British look, as if that

were the way I had all along meant to go, and we jogged on. The

self-satisfaction in that little creature's air! He turned his head

around now and then, trying to see how I was taking it; having had his

own way, he went at a jolly pace; he loves to start rabbits and make

the pheasants fly up. Presently, at a turn in the road, he shied; he

did it quite theatrically, as if he had worked it all out in his mind

and had achieved the intended effect. He expected me to be startled and

to rein him in, fighting to control him, but I did nothing of the kind.

I merely let the reins lie loose and watched him; he subsided very

suddenly and dejectedly at having lost his fun.

Then I saw what he was shying at and stopped him; I think that he had

known all along what he was going to find! There, under a great oak

tree, partly hidden by tall bracken, lay a girl with her eyes closed,

her hat partly off her head, looking like one who was very tired and

had fallen in her tracks to go to sleep. In a minute I was at her side,

holding tightly to the reins, for fear of what that little wretch might

do, but he was as immovable as Stonehenge.

She was quite young, very wan and pale, fairly well dressed but

crumpled looking. Her hair was dark, and her eyes, when she slowly

opened them, proved to be dark also.

I do not know yet whether she had fainted, or whether she was asleep

from exhaustion; her poor feet showed that she had walked many miles,

for the soles of her shoes were worn through. At sight of me she sat

up, looking frightened, but, evidently finding that I was not so

terrible, at length smiled back,--a faint little smile. I knew enough

to be silent at first; this is something that I have learned from

animals: there are sympathies, understandings, that antedate words.

When I asked her very softly if she were ill, she shook her head, not

understanding. I tried French, and, though my French is odd, I know,

she brightened, clasped her hands together, giving a great sigh, and

then tears began to roll down her face. That villain of a pony looked

around now and then as if to say: "_Who_ was right about the road?

You would never have found her if I had not had my way."

If he had been commissioned by the government to help in giving first

aid, he could not have acted with more sense of responsibility than he

did in helping me take her home, standing motionless while she climbed

into the cart, so weak with hunger, she confessed, that she could

hardly move,--then speeding fast where the road was smooth, and going

very slowly where the carters' wheels have left deep ruts in the mossy

soil. He really has more than human sense at times! Don, of his own

accord, leaped in beside the fugitive; at times I think that his spirit

is really becoming more catholic, and that he demands less in the way

of credentials and introductions than of old. The girl's pluck

interested me, for, though she could hardly hold herself upright, she

refused my help. Suddenly, from nowhere, a phrase flashed into my mind,

"L'Independence Beige", and I knew--what afterward proved to be

true--that she was one of the many Belgian refugees in England, though

why she was wandering about by herself in this remote corner of England

I did not know until afterward. As we jogged on, over the meadows and

through the village street, she held herself so bravely that nobody

stared, though she was white to the lips. She even managed to walk into

the house, but, once inside, sank down on the couch and fainted quite

away. Madge and I worked over her, giving her drops of warm milk with a

wee bit of brandy, taking the shoes from her poor blistered feet, and

bathing them. You should have heard Madge when I told her that I

thought the girl was one of the fugitive Belgians; to take a red-hot

poker to the Kaiser seemed to be her lightest wish for vengeance.

When our guest was in bed, all fresh and clean, with her hair brushed

smoothly from her forehead, I could see that she was a sweet and

wholesome maiden, with a comely, housewifely air, and my heart ached

for her sufferings. She ate a little, then lay with her eyes full of

tears that she would not let fall; she kept winking her long lashes to

keep them back. Don jumped up beside her and snuggled close; she

smiled, lifted her hand to his head for a minute, then she went to

sleep. Such sleep I never saw,--deep, long, dreamless; hour by hour she

lay there, not moving all night long, for I crept in now and then: I

could not sleep. Don kept watch until morning.

She did not waken until after ten; there was a flush in her cheeks, and

her eyes were starry, but in her face, young as she seemed, was a

foreshadowing of the worn look of age and sorrow that the years should

bring, not the German army! She wore an air of wistful questioning to

which there is no answer, as she lay twisting weakly a simple ring

about her third finger.

We had a funny time trying to talk; La Fontaine's fables and Racine's

_Athalie_, as taught in a young ladies' finishing school, are not

the best basis for a conversation on the practical needs of life. I

wanted to ask her if she liked sugar and cream in her coffee; all I

could think of was

"C'était pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit,

Ma mère Jézebel devant moi s'est montrée."

I did succeed in telling her that this was probably not as good as

Belgian coffee; she sipped it gratefully and nibbled her toast, putting

her hand on mine and saying that it was "delicious, Mademoiselle, but

delicious."

My fugitive is still here; she was in bed two days, and then I let her

get up. She is wearing one of my gowns, and she spends much of her time

in the garden in the grapevine arbour, sitting very still, with the

shadow of the leaves upon her face. Don stays with her much of the

time, and she seems to like this; and the country smell of the garden

comforts her a little, I think,--the odour of the red apples ripening

in the sun and of grapes that will not quite ripen. She rarely moves,

except when a drifting autumn leaf falls on lap or shoulder; it is as

if body, mind, and soul were exhausted by the awful shock of her

experience, and she could not gather up her vital forces. I can only

dumbly wonder what terrors she has gone through, what unspeakable

things she has seen.

Her name is Marie Lepont; father and mother she has not, but she lived

with an aunt in a little villa near Brussels,--with a garden like this,

only _plus grand_, and she had a lover; oh, yes, for two years she

had been betrothed. I could not understand all that she said, but she

told of their awful suspense in waiting for the Germans and of their

taking refuge in the cellar,--the French for cellar I had never

learned, so she showed me my own. Then came the flight, of old men,

women, children, and pitiful animals; sickness, and falling by the way.

Her aunt died from sheer exhaustion in a peasant's hut and was hastily

buried at night. She could hardly tell what had happened, only that she

was quite lost and separated from everybody she had ever known. Her

lover was not in Brussels when the crisis came, and she had had no

tidings from him. Evidently she had been swept over in a great wave of

terrified humanity and had found herself on a steamer crowded with

refugees. She can remember very little about the voyage, but with many

others she reached a receiving camp near London, half ill and quite

dazed. She searched vainly for her lover, and, not being able to

discover any trace of him, stole away from the camp in a state of

mental bewilderment to try to find him. For days she walked, growing

more and more spent and hungry, for she was shy about asking for food,

and the country people did not understand her, evidently mistook her

for a gypsy, and treated her somewhat churlishly. When she reached the

forest she was happy, it was so cool and shady there, but she had

little to eat save mushrooms. If I had tried to pluck mushrooms for my

sustenance, it would have ended all my troubles! When I found her, she

had had nothing to eat for more than twenty-four hours.

I watch her as she sits in the sunshine, and I multiply her by hundreds

and thousands, innocent people, old folk and babies, old men and women

lying down by the roadside to die, and the horror comes like a great

tidal wave, sweeping all things before it, drowning all the joy of life

and the old sweet ways of living. It breaks on the brick wall of my

garden and is driven back; I will not be overwhelmed by any anguish of

human fate, my own, or that of any one else. Until some wandering star

strikes the earth and shivers it to atoms, there is hope somewhere, and

there are things to do! And Marie Lepont shall not be overwhelmed

either, in spite of the terrible things she sees, waking or sleeping,

for she starts up and cries out in the night; Don gives a little

comforting, reassuring bark, and she goes to sleep again. I've got to

find her lover for her, and how shall I begin?

I'll go and ask the pony!

October 14. My fugitive fits quietly into our life in the little red

house, saying little, trying to do much, and smiling more and more. I

do not talk to her, but now and then I sit and sew with her; I know

that she is most domestic, and that this will make her feel at home,

but I should hate to have her examine my seams and hems, for I am no

seamstress. I leave her much alone with the animals, and that seems to

help more than anything else; the Atom spends much of its time on her

shoulder. She has begged to be allowed to feed the chickens, for Madge

has insisted on our having chickens, and Peter has constructed a yard

for them, with a little house for winter, a bit down the stream. Sea

gulls come sailing on wide beautiful white wings and descend to the

chicken yard, walk about and steal food, to the helpless wrath of our

fowls. Even Hengist and Horsa retreat; they are two twin stately cocks,

and William the Conqueror is a bigger one, with spurs. He is quite the

greatest coward in the yard, and entirely in awe of his Matildas. It is

thus that I am making history concrete for Madge; my long line of

British queens does credit to the dynasty, though they are a bit

miscellaneous in ancestry. Boadicea is a dark beauty, wild and fierce;

my vainest, long-necked, red-brown hen is Queen Elizabeth; oh, the

cackling when she lays an egg! The large, fat, rather stupid one is

Queen Anne; I let Madge choose and name Queen Victoria herself, and she

selected a plump and comely grey fowl, rather diminutive, with an

imperative and yet appealing cluck, who will make, I know, an excellent

wife and mother. It is all very well to keep hens and to eat their

eggs, but I have given notice to Madge that not one of these companions

of my daily life shall be sold to the butcher or served upon my table.

The gingerbread baby comes giggling through the gate at least once a

day, and it has taken a great fancy to Marie. It proves to be the

eleventh and youngest child of my friend the blacksmith, and it has

early developed, probably from constant association with so many swift

feet, an abnormal talent for running away.

From morning until night I am busy with a thousand and one things,

commonplace things mostly, in the house, or the village, or beyond. And

wherever I go, you seem near, with your long, thin stride, and your

preoccupied face, as if your feet had a bit of difficulty in keeping up

with your mind. There is a strange sense always, when I walk in the

forest, or along the highway, even when I go to Farmer Wilde's to see

about butter and vegetables, that you are walking by my side.

Peter is very solicitous about the welfare of my guest, and I have seen

him looking at her with vast pity in his eyes.

"Peter," I reminded him, "you can no longer say that you have not seen

a Belgian refugee."

"No, Miss," was his only answer. He digs and prunes, still arguing his

country's lack of need of him in this pretence of war.

"There's the British fleet, 'm," he observed, with fine scorn. "It was

hordered out at the beginning of this so-called war, and told to sink

the henemy's fleet. Wot 'ave we 'eard of it since, 'm? Nothing, nothing

at all. It's just bluff, 'm; the fleet is out on the 'igh seas for

pleasure, junketing at our expense. Doubtless all the gentlemen enjoy a

cruise."

"Peter," I say solemnly, "don't you really know that a German submarine

sank three British cruisers on the twenty-second of September, the

_Hague_, the _Cressy_, and the _Aboukir_? Do you think that the gallant

men upon them went to the bottom for pleasure?"

Peter turned a trifle pale under the red of his forehead and cheeks.

"I heard that rumour," he remarked, with an attempt at airy skepticism,

"and I dessay you believe it. I dessay you think it actually happened.

But I refuse to believe it; when was the British fleet ever defeated?"

There was a tentative something, a touch of question, in the bravado of

his denial.

"Peter," I suggest, "our fall gardening is not a national necessity;

there is greater need of you elsewhere. Why not be a bomb-sweeper; you

like the sea, I believe?" Madge listens, her broom suspended in

mid-air, as if it were listening too. A look of embarrassment crosses

Peter's face, as he rubs his cheek.

"The bombs are very explosive, I've 'eard, 'm."

"Peter," I say, "if this is an imaginary war, those are imaginary

bombs and do not explode."

"I'm not so sure of that, Miss," says Peter shrewdly.

Another British cruiser, the _Hawke_, sunk October 16. There is

wakening fear in the hearts of the English people, and there is

deepening courage. The faces that I see here and in the near-by towns,

the letters that I get, have one expression. Party differences have

almost ceased to exist in the political world, and in other ways, I

think, the nation is being welded into one, as it has never been. Even

the voice of the Vicar's lady has lost something of its condescension

in speaking to common folk; I saw her at the blacksmith's as I took the

gingerbread baby home for the eighth time, and she spoke with less of

an air of coming down to the level of her audience than I should have

believed possible. The gentry are behaving a bit less as if the earth

were their private monopoly, and the subgentry, like our Vicaress, are

taking the cue.

A few days ago I went to London, chiefly to get clothing for Marie and

to set on foot inquiries about her betrothed. Nothing seemed greatly

changed, save that there were fewer people in the streets and the

restaurants, and that many uniforms are in evidence. The theatres are

open, and people are going about their work and their play in quite

usual fashion, but their faces wear a different expression, an

impersonal look, and a certain quiet exaltation. Oh, if the real

England, that England that I know chiefly through the expression of her

inmost self in her matchless literature, and through you, could only

win over that other of high, excluding walls and ancient entailed

rights of selfishness and of belittling snobbishness! You will admit

that something needs righting in a social condition represented by the

tale of the two sisters at Oxford,--one married to a tailor, one

married to a University professor,--who did not dare speak to each

other in the street for fear of consequences. I am hopelessly

democratic; the wonderfully good manners of the perfectly trained

English servant seem to me vastly higher, as human achievement, than

the manner of the superior who speaks brutally to him. The surprised

gratitude of many of the maids and scrub-women here when one addresses

them as if they really were human beings is piteous.

Yet I know that though these things be true, they reflect but the

surface, not the depths. Something in this crisis, something even in

Peter's crude attacks, has roused a deep race instinct in me, long

dormant. Though my forebears set sail for America in the 1630's, my

sense of the identity of our destiny with that of England deepens every

day. I am ceasing to say "your", and unconsciously slipping into "our";

perhaps I have been trying to criticize, to point out the things that

are wrong, partly as a measure of self-protection, for I am growing

sorry that the Revolutionary War ever happened! I long for England's

victory in this war, knowing that she is right; I dimly suspect that I

should long for it were she right or wrong; and I feel a little thrill

of pride that my home is in this England of yours, of ours.

Even I, who am often indignant in watching the Englishman's manner

toward those other Englishmen whom he considers his social inferiors,

can discern his profound sense of responsibility toward them.

Forgetting the mistakes of to-day, and thinking of the long

development, one can but be aware in England of a stable, enduring

spirituality, a practical idealism, unlike that of the earlier,

idealistic Germany,--a something tangential, disassociated with

life,--in that it is a constant sense of inner values working out in

everyday ways and habits. Those mystical habits of dreaming fine things

that are never done will not save the world. In my growing love for

England, I am more and more aware of its disciplined, mellow

civilization, treasuring the old and sacred in beliefs, in

institutions, in buildings; its right, controlling habits; its thousand

and one wise departures from the measure of rule and thumb; its

uncodified, unformulated truth of action; its conduct far more

logically right than its laws. In the very reproach oftenest brought

against England I find the deepest reason for trusting her, that she

allows human instinct a larger place and mere intellectual theory a

smaller place than does any other nation in working out its destiny. I

am deeply puzzled by my sense of the Englishman's wrong attitude toward

his supposed inferior while I recognize that inner instinctive sense of

necessary adjustments, that genius for living that makes them the best

colonizers in the world and makes their rule the most lasting anywhere.

I consulted some of the chief authorities in the Belgian relief work in

regard to Marie,--your England shows the real humanity at the heart of

her in this magnificent hospitality to an outraged nation,--and I put

advertisements into several papers. At home all was well, save that

William the Conqueror had choked, trying to swallow a piece of English

bacon too large for him, and was dead. So perish all who lust for

conquest!

October 24. Two days ago came a domestic, not to say a social crisis.

Two of the county ladies called on me, accompanied by the Vicaress;

they must have been told, I think, of my uncle the banker! Forgive this

gibe,--I could not resist making it; we always disputed, you remember,

as to whether your countrymen or mine were the more devout worshippers

of gold. To say truth, I have met these ladies at one or two committee

meetings in our relief work, and I feel duly honoured by the call. I

ring for Madge; Madge does not appear; going to the kitchen, I find it

empty, the fire out, water dripping forlornly from the faucet. The coal

in the sitting room grate I replenish myself and face the horror of the

situation: three English ladies and no tea! No one knows better than I

what blasphemy it would be to omit the sacred British rite of tea,

which is even more established than the Established Church. Rising to

the occasion, I heat water in a little copper kettle on the coals in

the sitting room,--"So resourceful, as all Americans are," murmurs one

lady. I concoct tea, and it proves very good tea indeed, served with

appetizing little cakes from yesterday's baking. My guests go away

mollified; not so am I! One of them had so many scathing things to say

about England's policies at home and abroad, the political friendship

with Russia, the desertion of Persia, the treatment of Ireland, the

mismanagement of the present war, that I was driven to an attitude of

defence. Surely there is something greater for English men and English

women to do now than to stand aloof and criticize! When I told her that

I thought it was a pity to confuse the soul of the English people with

mistakes of contemporary statesmen, she looked at me blankly, nor could

I make her understand. It is odd for me, who have so derided our

Anglomaniacs and superficial imitators of the English, to come so hotly

to the defence of England. I hardly know myself what is going on within

me. It is the England-in-the-long-run that I reverence, the England of

the great poetry, that soul of England full of "high-erected thoughts",

of sunny faiths, and sweet humanities. And of course, through you too,

I know its very best,--the breeding that makes no boast; its fine

reserve; its self-control; its matchless, silent courage.

It is a chilly day; Don and the Atom cuddle side by side at the hearth;

they are great friends now. Marie returns with bright eyes and red

cheeks from a walk. Presently home comes Peter, who has been away on

some errand of his own, to a fireless hearth and an empty room. Home

and garden and adjacent field he searches in vain.

"She will 'ave gone to one of her friends, Miss," says Peter stoutly,

proceeding to lay a fire.

I assent, but with misgiving. Madge had never failed before, nor had

she even gone away for half an hour without telling me. As Peter helps

me prepare a simple meal to serve instead of dinner, I turn the

conversation toward military training and matters of war. My own

contributions to the conversation, in regard to cavalry, infantry, and

manoeuvering I should not care to have Lord Kitchener hear. Very

casually I remark that, if I were a man, I should like to be a soldier.

"Would you now, Miss?" Peter responds amiably, as he takes up the

toasting-fork.

"There's a recruiting station at Shepperton," I suggest, as I cut the

bread. "There are five thousand men encamped for training in Wellington

Park; and I've been told that there are several hundred in the nearest

village,--what is it, Silverlea? I hardly see how you can go about so

much without seeing them."

"It is odd, isn't it?" Peter answers wonderingly. I found out afterward

that the villain had spent that very day at Wellington Park, watching

the recruits drill.

As it grew later, more chilly and darker on that autumn night, I could

see the British husband's awful wrath growing within Peter; he

evidently thought that his wife had run away with some one. Naturally I

had no idea what had happened, but I had my doubts of this. In the

first place, she was fundamentally good; in the second place, one

Briton was, I felt sure, enough for Madge.

Don and the Atom were the only members of the family who really enjoyed

their evening meal that day. They lapped from the same saucer, though

not at the same moment, each politely waiting a turn, the closest of

allies, and doing a bit after in the way of washing each other up.

Marie watched me with big, sympathetic brown eyes, and said nothing.

When nine o'clock came, I was as worried as was Peter, though I did not

admit it. We had decided that he should go to the Inn for the pony, and

that we would begin a systematic search. He went to his room to get

ready and presently appeared, alternately red with wrath and pale with

anxiety.

"My clothes, 'm, my Sunday clothes are gone. Boots and all, 'm. And my

'at, my Sunday 'at."

Despair could go no further than this intonation of Peter's Sunday 'at;

would that any 'at had ever meant so much to me!

"She 'as given them to 'im, Miss."

"To whom?"

"That's just what I don't know, 'm."

What could one think? Had Madge, the admirable, indeed a lover? That

was unthinkable; there must have been some accident. At least, there

was nothing to do but to notify mine host of the Inn, and to present

the case to the local Dogberry.

We were ready to start, when I heard a little click of my garden gate,

and soft footsteps came up the brick walk, down which streamed the

light of the porch lamp. Red rage mounted to Peter's eyes. "It's that

man," he cried, "in my clothes!" I kept a detaining arm on Peter's

sleeve,--his second-best sleeve. Where had his best been intriguing?

The kitchen door opened softly, very softly; we stood breathless in the

corner. If it were a burglar, we were ready; were not all the massive

British kitchen utensils near? The lamplight fell full upon the face

and form of a strange man, a very strange man, the strangest I ever

saw, plump, round of face, with straggling, irregular locks of hair

that had been newly shorn,--a decidedly strange man, in Peter's

clothes.

"You--you hussy!" said Peter, but the sorry epithet expressed a world

of relief, even, I thought, of endearment.

One would have supposed that Madge could not grow redder; yet her face

became even more a flame.

"You, a respectable British female," said Peter, advancing with slow

heaviness of tread, as if Madge's end would really come when he reached

her and the Sunday clothes; "You, a British female, and the wife of an

honest man, out on the highway in a man's clothes, _my_ clothes." He

took hold of her arm, but gently; he would not have dared do otherwise.

His wife looked at him steadily; he could not meet her glance, and his

eyes fell.

"You're little better than a suffragette," he said weakly.

"That may be," said Madge, not without a certain loftiness, touching

her hair with a novel feminine gesture, "that may be; but I _am_

better than an able-bodied man that doesn't hoffer himself to his

country. The suffragettes are fighting for theirs."

Peter was stricken; he had nothing to say. Don, arriving and unable to

understand, barked wildly at Madge, and she seemed to mind his remarks

much more than she had Peter's. I could help it no longer, and I burst

out laughing.

"Madge," I asked, "where have you been?"

"I've been to the recruiting station at Shepperton, 'm," said Madge,

with one look at Peter. "I could bear it no longer; not a finger raised

for King or Country."

Peter hung his head.

"Or the 'Ouse of Lords," Madge added witheringly. "I've been a-reading

and a-reading, 'm, in those papers of yours about the French women that

they find, fighting side by side with the men, for their country, and

about the Russian women fighting too; but when I saw yesterday that

German women had been found fighting, something gave way in my 'ead. I

think you call it brain-storm in America, 'm. Those barbarian women,

from God knows where, fighting for King and Country and their 'Ouse of

Lords! I said to myself that the Snell family should send one man to

the seat of war."

"I've been a-considering," said Peter. "I've been a-thinking it out."

"The present h'our," glared Madge, "is no time to _think_!"

"That was evidently the exact view of the European statesmen in

August," I ventured, but Madge and Peter were too intent to catch my

unkind whisper.

"So I put on Peter's clothes," said Madge, "and I went and walked to

Shepperton and offered myself. Your Queen Elizabeth would have done as

much."

_My_ Queen Elizabeth, indeed!

"What did they say to you?" demanded Peter.

"I shan't tell you," said Madge. And she never did.

October 22. I am so excited that I can hardly write; my fingers tremble

and make letters that look like bird-tracks. What do you think has

happened? Who do you think stopped this afternoon at my little iron

gate? It seems a terrible thing, an incredible thing to say, but I

could hardly have been happier about it if it had been you. I have so

much to do, to think about, while Marie--? Her little world had all

been swept away.

I was weeding this neglected garden; Peter, leaning on his spade, was

eyeing me with some disapproval.

"Ladies shouldn't be doing that 'ard work, Miss," he observed.

"That's a queer opinion for a socialist," I remarked, tugging at a

burdock root. He let me tug and went on with the exposition of his

political opinions, quite unaware of my meaning.

"This need not keep you from working, Peter," I suggested. "I've no

intention of spading that bed."

He dug his spade in with a little grunt.

"Everybody ought to work; that should be the first article of your

socialist creed."

"It isn't, 'm," said Peter eagerly.

"Wouldn't you respect the House of Lords more if they actually worked,

Peter?" This brought him to a full stop.

"They do less 'arm as it is, Miss," he said darkly.

Here we heard the gate creak; the broken latch gives a little

unnecessary click. An odd figure was standing there, looking like a

tramp, with worn and battered clothing, a Derby hat with holes in it,

and dark hair straggling over his forehead. Don, catching sight of him,

barked furiously; I never heard him bark that way. It was as if the

whole outraged spirit of the British upper classes were crying out upon

the poverty and the misery they have helped create; it was a perfect

yelp of class-consciousness. This naturally enlisted my sympathy on the

side of the tramp, and I scolded Don and even slapped him a little.

I've told him often enough that there is really nothing so vulgar as

display of a sense of social superiority, and I do not like these

relapses from the democratic spirit that I am trying to cultivate in

him.

It was the way in which the tramp watched me that made me suspect that

he was not a tramp at all; he had big, brown, appealing eyes, like

those of a nice dog,--not Don, but a friendly shepherd dog. The way in

which he took off his battered hat enlightened me further, as did his

little wistful smile. His face was a bit dirty, but my face has been

dirty in times past; so, doubtless, has yours, Lord Hamlet. When I

greeted him with good afternoon, he took a piece of paper from his

pocket, and at first I wondered if he were an Armenian with lace, going

about with a letter of introduction from a pastor,--or don't you have

them in England? But he did not look like an Armenian, and he very

evidently did not have lace, or any other kind of luggage. The paper

proved to be the advertisement that I had put in a London paper,--and

as I took it, it struck me that those holes in his hat might be bullet

holes.

"You're not really Henri Dupré?"

"I am," he said simply. My French is fairly inadequate in my calmest

moments; in times of excitement it is non-existent, but he must have

understood the joy in my face, and the hand I held out in welcome. He

shook his head; his hand was not clean; my own was less so, and I was

so proud! As I told Peter, if I had not been weeding, our guest would

not have been properly greeted. Don, the wretched little creature,

taking his cue from me, was gaily barking a welcome in a wholly

different tone of voice from that which he had used at first. You see,

he never would have known that the wayfarer was respectable if he had

not considered himself properly introduced by my handshake.

"Is Marie Lepont here?"

I told him in my matter-of-fact way that she was, and I said nothing

more; they might do their own explaining, I thought, as they understood

their own language, not to speak of anything else, far better than I.

So I only motioned to him and went on tiptoe to the corner of the

house; Marie was sitting in the garden, as she sits so often, in the

rocking-chair, knitting, knitting for the soldiers. The air is full of

the fragrance of ripening apples, of falling leaves, and fading fern.

She is very quiet in the sunshine, and the shadows of the grapevine

leaves upon her face hardly change for half an hour at a time. I

motioned to him, and then I ran away, back to my weeding,--to anything.

If it were really he! I wondered if even they felt an anguish so

intense, a joy so intense as my own. It must have lent me greater power

than I really have, for I tugged and tugged to relieve my feelings; the

burdock came up, root and all, and I sat down rather suddenly, panting.

Peter remonstrated mildly, shaking his head.

"You really shouldn't, Miss!"

"Then why don't you?" I asked. "It was here all the time, and you have

a spade."

"I've 'ad no directions, Miss," he said stiffly. "But I don't refer to

the weeding; I dessay it is because you are an American and don't

understand, but you really shouldn't let disrespectable people in that

way. He may be a burglar; he may be robbing the 'ouse at this very

minute. But why, if you don't mind me asking, are you crying, Miss?"

"I'm not!" I answered indignantly. "I never cry. Peter, will you lend

this man your precious Sunday suit?"

"Never, Miss!" declared Peter, somewhat heated, and mopping his

forehead. "A tramp like that!"

"You believe in the brotherhood of man, don't you?"

"Of course I do; certingly I do."

"Madge," I called through the kitchen window, "please start the heater

and get water ready for a bath. And please lay out Peter's Sunday suit;

he wants to lend it to a brother man."

"Brother man, indeed!" ejaculated Peter, and he went on digging. He is

getting a bed ready for next spring's daffodils.

"Peter," I said with some severity, "I want to see if I can respect

your social convictions; this is the first chance I have had to test

them."

"Yes, Miss," he answered, "but I don't see what that has to do with me

Sunday suit."

Not a sound came from the garden; I kept Don with me,--not even he

should break that moment. Then I told Peter who had come, how the

lovers had lost each other in that mad rush for safety, and how, for

days, I had been trying to find this man, for I was very sure that the

right man had come. Peter was spellbound, nor could he dig a stroke

while I was talking. Then he began to work, and he worked furiously, as

I have not seen him since he came.

"It's quite right, 'm, about the suit," he said presently.

I worked for perhaps an hour, while Peter dug like one inspired. Madge

heated water and got towels ready, peering out curiously to see why. A

touch of evening chill came into the air; the rooks began to go home,

and filmy rose-flushed clouds trailed over the sky at sunset. Finally I

shook the dirt off my hands, finding myself very stiff as I tried to

stand.

"Peter," I asked, "what shall I do next?"

"I think, 'm, I'd start making a wedding cake," he answered, after due

reflection.

"For a futile political theorist, you do have perfectly unexpected

moments of insight," I told him.

"Yes, Miss," said Peter.

Silence, except for the rooks, the sound of the brook, and a little

wayward flutter of the leaves where the wind was moving. I went to the

kitchen and added something un-British and digestible to the supper

menu, then walked up and down, wondering why a man probably famished

did not appear. Finally I decided that I must investigate and tiptoed

my way to the corner of the house. Marie was still sitting in her

chair; her knitting was on the ground beside her. The shadow of the

grapevine was gone, and her face was alive with light from within and

without. The level shafts of sunlight that touched it fell too on the

red brick wall behind her, where the espaliered pear tree was etched in

dark lines, and all the garden was a soft glow of October gold. The

stranger was sitting on the ground with his head against Marie's knees,

and her little shawl over his shoulders, sleeping like a child that had

found its way home.

As I crept near, Marie looked up, and a heavenly smile came over her

face. She took my hand and held it, kissing it more than once, and she

said over and over: "Mademoiselle; Mademoiselle," and again,

"Mademoiselle."

We let her lover stay as long as we dared on the brick walk, covering

him warmly with steamer rugs. Later we found that he had just reached

England and had hardly slept for a week. The sunset faded, and the

stars grew bright, and still he leaned his head against Marie's knee

and slept the sleep of exhaustion.

Presently we wakened him; there was a great sound of splashing water;

Marie ran up-stairs to do her hair over again and came down flushed

like a rose, revitalized, alive as I had not dreamed she could be

alive, and at last our guest appeared, clean and smiling. He was

evidently amused by the odd fit of Peter's clothes, but too tired and

too happy to say much. I sped to the kitchen to make the French

omelette; Madge cannot do it,--no Briton could; it has to be

manipulated in just the right fashion, turned at the exact fraction of

a second, and served in just the right way. You should have seen Don,

when he found the stranger in your place, apologizing, snuffing

daintily, touching him with a friendly and beseeching paw, pretending

that he had always known!

Of course the lovers were holding hands under the table; of course you,

as an Englishman, would have thought them effusive, but I should have

been terribly hurt if they had not been effusive about that omelette.

When I rise to the occasion like this, I like to be appreciated; I had

nothing to complain of that night. Tea and toast and jam; a few tears,

and much laughter, and a Sultana cake--the very kind that grew in

Oxford windows and graced our five o'clock banquets; a Sultana cake

calls to my mind the profoundest problems of life and destiny, so many

of them we discussed over the crumbs,--this, I am afraid, meant a

rather ascetic repast for the young Belgians, but I thought that

anything more, with their great draughts of happiness, would be

indigestible. Peter took Henri to the Inn and got a room for him.

Though he was there more than three weeks, mine host would not let me

pay a farthing,--no, indeed! The Belgians are the guests of the English

nation, he said, and he was glad to have his chance to shelter one of

them.

November 1. War, unceasing war in the trenches, with rumours of a

British naval defeat in South American waters, and little encouraging

news save that the Germans have failed to reach Dunkirk and Calais.

England's best are dying, your kind,--England's noblest sons rushing to

the danger places, foolishly, grandly brave. One can feel throughout

the country the great purpose shaping itself to the needs of the

moment, as it does slowly but surely in this land. That is the secret

of this people: they can rise to a challenge, meet any crisis whatever

when it comes; and though I know that unpreparedness has cost them

much, they are greater and better than if they had devoted their best

energy for five and twenty years to getting ready for war. Enthusiasm

kindles under the challenge of disaster; the finest have already

answered the call; the less fine make the great refusal. You go, but

Peter stays, and Peter's kind all over England stays....

November 5. Peter does not stay! Peter is going to the war! For several

days he has been very critical of civilization, very severe upon his

country and her rulers; at times he seemed to think himself the only

real pillar of Church and State. Some struggle was going on within him;

I have learned enough of him to know that if he expresses a feeling, it

is one he does not have! For him, as for me, the horror of the present

moment has been intensified by coming into contact with those who have

actually suffered. All that I could understand of Henri Dupré's account

I have translated into English for Peter's benefit, and the sight of

the bullet-riddled hat has plunged him in deep thought.

He saw your picture, the picture of you in khaki. Madge, unpermitted,

had taken it into the kitchen to polish the frame of oak. Peter looked

at it uneasily.

"A friend of yours, Miss?"

"Yes, Peter."

"At the front, 'm?"

"At the front, Peter," I answered. I could not have said anything else,

and even if I live to be a hundred, I shall not think of you any other

way except as at the front, fighting if need be, carrying messages

across the danger zone, with no thought of danger.

It was a great advance in Peter to admit the existence of a front; he

has persisted in declaring the war a bit of sensational romance,

devised by the House of Lords for their own entertainment. It was a

brooding Peter who busied himself with rubbing up the knives,--he has

been unusually attentive to Madge since her escapade; his mind seemed

to be running on troubles greater than his own.

"Do you know where our army is supposed to be now, 'm?" he asked, when

I told him that we had no good news from the seat of war.

_Our_ army! We were getting on! I gave him my best information about

our hard-pressed line in the west.

"It's astonishing that those Germans are able to fight at all, 'm, when

they have once met the British," said Peter gloomily, polishing a huge

carving knife as if it were a sword. "Meeting the French, that is

different; they are a flighty people and very hexcitable."

"Your knowledge of history needs to be brought up to date, Peter," I

ventured. "Anything less flighty than that magnificent people of France

at this present moment the world has never seen."

"It must be very difficult, 'm, fighting on the Continent, for one who

does not speak the foreign tongues. And I couldn't eat frogs, 'm; I'd

almost rather 'ave the Germans as allies; sausages aren't as bad as

frogs by 'alf."

Later I heard him muttering to himself.

"If the 'Ouse of Lords is really in trouble," said Peter, fighting the

great fight with self, "if the 'Ouse of Lords really needs me--Of

course, the throne is more or less a figure'ead, but I shouldn't like

to see it fall just now, especially if the henemy is coming.... I

should like to himpress them as much as possible." It was when he was

sweeping the walk that I heard him say: "And I should like to see Bobs

once more."

But one day determined Peter's future destiny and his rank as a man and

a Briton. Peter had gone to the coast, with Puck and the cart, spending

the night at a sister's on the way. He had some business at Yarmouth,

he said. I devised some errands for him and encouraged his going. I

thought that it would perhaps prove to be his farewell to his sister

before going to war.

Those were strange days, the days of Peter's absence,--tense, full of

nameless anxiety. That early-morning feeling of suspense, of

expectancy, lasted into the afternoon; and one early morning had

brought us the unmistakable sound of guns from the sea. Peter came

rattling home in the late afternoon, a pale, distraught Peter, who

seemed to have lost several pounds. He came into the garden where I was

tying up rosebushes for the winter; at first he seemed unable to speak,

but at last gasped out, "Those ---- Germans!" and the gasp ended in a

little sob. As I watched him, I found myself sharing his trembling

indignation.

"German ships, 'm, men-of-war, standing off our coast, bombarding; it

has never been attacked before. I saw them with my own eyes; I 'eard

them with my own ears!"

The firing, then, had had the significance that we dreaded. It began at

about seven o'clock in the morning on November third, terrifying the

peaceful folk of the seacoast town, shell after shell, report after

report for nearly half an hour. Peter, who was getting an early start

for home, had taken Puck and the cart to a house on the outskirts of

the town, where he was getting a bag of very superior fertilizer. Then

came the great noise and the splashing; little if any actual damage was

done to buildings or to people, yet Peter contended that Puck was

actually struck on the shoulder by some fragment of splintering wood or

flying stone dislodged by a shell. Those shells may have missed their

intended mark, but they went home to the heart of the time-expired man,

Peter Snell. He knew at last that there was a war, and I knew--what he

himself had not yet realized--that he was going to it.

Peter lacks descriptive powers; I got from him little idea of the

actual scene in all the fright and confusion. When he had found that

there was nothing he could do to help, he had sped toward home, intent

on carrying out his unavowed purpose. Asking how Puck, now standing

with drooping head at the gate, had behaved at the crisis, I got the

account that I expected, and, as we petted this veteran of the war and

dressed a small hurt on his shoulder, I heard how he, the most antic

pony in the British Isles, had held his ground, had jumped only

moderately, had endured the crashing and the splashing, standing with

his four legs braced in the sand, trembling all over, while Peter,

dazed a bit at first, came to his senses.

"And I will say, 'm, that he showed more 'ead than I 'ad myself, for

the reins were loose on his back, I 'aving dropped them to put in the

bag of fertilizer. 'E never offered to run, 'm!"

Puck, the war veteran, took our praises modestly, making no claim to be

recognized as a hero; he helps me understand the British temper, not to

say the British constitution. No paper theories for him! The unwritten

law of common sense available when needed is admirably embodied in him.

That power of keeping your head while others lose theirs is what wins

in the long run, and despite the discouragement of this present moment,

I feel confident that the English will win in the end. The Germans

plan, theorize, show great forethought, but are lost without a

programme. Life does not go by plans and charts; no known precautions

can foresee its emergencies. Unless some chemical or electric invention

of the Teutons can remove the element of uncertainty from existence,

surely victory will go to the people who can meet the unforeseen; pull

themselves together and know, without forethought, what to do in an

instant's danger. All these meditations passed through my head as Puck

shook his mane, making light of his adventure, and trotted away down

the street to his stable with an unmistakable air of "England expects

every pony to do his duty."

The country thrills with indignation, surprise, and increasing

resolution; the impossible has happened, and these inviolate shores

have been desecrated by attack.

Peter is away, Peter in khaki, with something already gone from his

laggard step, with firmer and more self-respecting tread, recalling the

old training which he was beginning to forget. Surely, because of his

experience as a soldier, they will let him go soon to the front. The

sympathy and the admiration in the eyes of our fugitives have nerved

him, as nothing else has done, for the great adventure. I heard Henri

giving him some French lessons, strictly along the line of requests for

food and drink; the French will make up in swiftness of understanding

what he lacks in pronunciation. His last days with Madge have been

funny and tragic too. Her first remark, on hearing of the Yarmouth

incident, was along the old line of urging him to war.

"Some minds," she remarked firmly, "need shot and shell to open 'em."

But I could not help noticing that when he began to talk about going,

she stopped talking about it. Her face has been tragically comic as she

has watched him, in a Falstaff "He-that-died-o'-Wednesday" mood,

packing his belongings. I heard the sound of loud sobbing in the

kitchen as she made herself a cup of tea the afternoon he went away.

Could it be Madge who was muttering questions as to why the King didn't

go to war himself if he wanted war?

November 25. A wedding, actually a wedding, in the little red house,

which wakens gladly to its ancient responsibilities! Weddings enough

have I seen, but this is the first that I ever managed from start to

finish; it was much more my own than if I had been married myself, for

I had to do all the planning, coach the actors, superintend the

catering, and do the decorating with my own hands. The only thing I did

not attempt was performing the ceremony.

We had such joyous weeks, after the banns were published! Marie, I am

sure, quite forgot her sorrow; I quite forgot you, most of the time,--I

mean in my upper and superficial mind. Down under, of course, in the

vital part of my soul, you are I, I am you: there is no remembering or

forgetting, for I am living your life and mine in a fashion profound

and strange. We were busy every minute, busy with the outer things of

life that ride on the surface of the deep currents,--bobbing up and

down in the sunshine.

First, there was Marie's trousseau. She begged me with tears to get her

nothing more; but a girl must have clothing, be she married or single,

so we purchased much muslin,--"calico," they call it, oh, horrors! What

can one think of a nation that calls cotton flannel "swan's-down

calico"? We found a little sewing woman in the village, and she did her

inefficient best on an ancient sewing machine. Much of the finishing we

had to do ourselves, so afternoons we sat in the garden and stitched.

My buttonholes would not call forth commendations from any ladies'

journal, but what they lacked in delicacy they made up in strength.

Buttonholes for war, I consoled myself, as I saw the barricades that I

had erected round the little gashes, are a different matter from

buttonholes for peace.

Marie's ready-made travelling suit, for which I sent to London, fitted

fairly well; as did the boots for both of them. When they overwhelmed

me with thanks, I had to talk very earnestly with them; at least I am

growing more fluent, and they never laugh, only once or twice I have

seen the corners of their mouths twitching uncontrollably, and once

tears came into Marie's eyes as she tried to keep from laughing. They

are exquisitely courteous, and would die rather than be rude. I

summoned all my resources from grammar, dictionary, and heroic plays;

at last the world has faced an occasion that justifies the

grandiloquence of French tragedy.

I told them that we were honouring ourselves in being allowed to care

for any members of this stricken, dauntless nation. More than anything

that could be done for them had they done for the world; how could we

ever repay our debt to this little people with its heroic young King?

What I was doing I did, not for them (think of having sufficient French

to be able to prevaricate in it already!), but for my country and their

country--and for England; it was not a personal but an international

matter. They may not have understood all my syntax, but my general

meaning they understood perfectly, and Don helped me very greatly by

sitting on his hind legs and offering to shake hands, first with one

and then with the other. _He_, at least, understands my academic

French!

There had to be a wedding dress; I insisted on a white one; it was only

China silk, made with a simplicity which, I presume, outraged Marie's

grandmother's traditions. As I explained to her, if she goes back to

London to help the authorities with the refugees, while Henri returns

to Belgium to enter the army, she could doubtless loan this gown for

other weddings, for among the fugitives many--I hoped many--another

pair of lovers would perhaps be reunited. At this, her eyes filled with

tears, and she uttered not another word of remonstrance; she starts on

a quest to find others to wear it.

So she wore the white frock at her wedding, and the house was brave in

its bridal array! Yellowing ferns, autumn leaves, and great golden

chrysanthemums and white decked the living room; outside the dim red

and gold of the autumn woods in hazy distance recalled the ancient

manuscripts that you showed us in the sacred recesses of the Bodleian.

To think that I should live to see a Roman Catholic priest marrying two

young folk by my fireplace! Marie and Henri were quite polite but very

determined to be married according to the rites of their own Church,

and it was done. His Reverence plainly did not want to officiate at my

house, but not in vain have I associated with Puck, choosing him for

guide, philosopher, and friend, and obstinacy won. Henri wore a new

dark tweed business suit which Peter insisted on giving him; he is a

fine-looking man when you see him clothed and in his right mind, the

torn hat vanished. Both faces have a look of sorrow and of shock that

should not be on faces so young, but there is also a look of intense

and quiet happiness. Even if they are separated again, they will have

had something of the joy of life in these brief hours and days since

they found each other.

Our wedding feast was the simplest ever set before mortals, unless

possibly our Pilgrim fathers and mothers had a simpler in starvation

days in the old colony, with bride cake made perhaps of Indian meal! We

had tables in the garden, and a few simple things to eat and drink,

centering in that wedding cake upon which Peter had insisted. Had not

Madge and I spent a whole morning over it, with its raisins and its

currants, its spices and its chopped nuts? "Leave off the frosting,

'm!" Madge had ejaculated in horror. "That would be a heathing thing to

do!" When I told her that for most people nowadays the frosting was

rubbed off of life, she looked at me as if she thought me mad. So she

does, but harmless mad.

Perhaps the mild November air, which harmonizes all things,--sad, soft

and sweet,--helped harmonize the diverse elements at that wedding

feast. There were the Vicar and the Roman priest peacefully grazing as

one; the Vicaress was affably chatting with mine host and hostess as on

equal terms; one of my county ladies was entertaining the little

dressmaker who cannot sew. I did my best in inviting them to outrage as

many conventions as possible; they submitted to the necessities of the

occasion, and still the House of Lords stands, or sits, King George is

on his throne, and the kingdom has not fallen.