It had been hard to induce the Vicar to come, but I reminded him that
our Church had been a Roman Catholic Church before Queen Elizabeth's
day, and that, in the holy ground of the churchyard, Roman Catholic
dust was mingled with Church of England dust. How, at this cruel moment
in the world's history, the truth cries out that there should be no
struggle between Christian and Christian, only between Christian and
Pagan! He came; high and low alike nibbled our little cakes and
consumed our ices, and drank the simple beverage made of lemons and
other ingredients served from a wonderful old blue punch bowl. Ay, we
were all allies that day!
So they were married and fêted, and when it was all over, mine host
drove them to the railway station, and I followed with Puck and the
pony cart, Don sitting beside me, and the gingerbread baby with two of
its brothers sitting on the other side. The village windows and
doorways were crowded with friendly faces, for the story of the two
re-united lovers had spread far, and many a kindly good-bye was spoken
by people who had never met them. I had determined that Puck, who had
found Marie, and to whom the happy outcome of the story was due, should
have a place of honour at the parting moment, but Marie's last glimpse
of him showed him indignantly shaking off the white rosettes that had
been fastened to his headstall.
They waved back quite a merry farewell, and then they disappeared,
vanishing behind the great cloud of tragedy that hangs so close. I can
see only suffering ahead of them. They consented to take a loan from
me, not to be repaid until their country is free, and they promised
again and again to let me know if they came to want.
* * * * *
It is lonely to-night, belovèd, under my roof.
December 27. Winter is gentler here than at home, bringing at times
enfolding grey mist and hours of rain; yet we have had many days of
clear and sunny cold, and snow has fallen on the roof of the little red
house. My royal family of fowls lives a subdued but happy life in the
house of Peter's making; Puck has taken up his residence at the Inn,
for cold has come, and Peter is far away. The English robin stays with
us evidently throughout the winter; the rooks have not deserted; and we
are visited daily by silver-winged gulls which come all the way from
the sea for the food we put out.
My home with the little "h" is seldom empty; for two of these winter
weeks we had here two small Belgian boys, eight and ten years old, very
red of cheek and black of hair, and very much boy. What a two weeks!
The Atom immediately retreated to the loft over the kitchen, coming
down only for its meals. It found a warm corner by the chimney where it
cuddled in safety.
Don clung close to my side; he would not make friends. His dictum was
that he would associate with either the aristocracy or the peasantry,
but that the lower middle class he would not tolerate. Those boys, who
had tried to tie a tin can to his tail, _his_ tail, that organ of fine
expressiveness, equal to English prose style at its best, were not
gentlemen, and he would have nothing to do with them.
I was glad to see that the suffering of the past weeks had not ruined
their young lives, but I admit a failure in managing my guests. Even
Madge could do nothing with them, though her hand is heavy; I do not
approve of corporal punishment, but life in theory and life in practice
seem amazingly different at times, and I looked the other way. They
demanded the tail feathers of Hengist and Horsa for their play of
American Indian, and I discovered as I defeated their purpose that they
thought they were living with an Indian lady and were trying to garb
themselves appropriately. I rose to the challenge as best I could; have
I not vowed, whatever happens, never to be an "old maid"? I romped with
them in the meadow, played "tag," and helped them make boats to sail on
the stream, but I had no control over them. Puck was the only perfectly
successful disciplinarian, and whenever they tried to climb on his
back, or ride by clinging to his tail, his quick little hind
heels--fortunately only his fore feet are shod--accomplished what
neither coaxing, admonition, nor enforced fasting could accomplish.
They were not really bad, only dwelling in that Stone Age through which
so many men-children pass. A neighbouring farmer and his wife wanted to
adopt them, and I thankfully let them go, calling in the village
carpenter to help Madge and me make the necessary repairs.
There was peace, we are told, for a few hours on Christmas day in the
trenches; but Christmas should mean lasting peace! The attack, less
than two weeks ago, on our undefended coast towns, Hartlepool,
Scarborough, Whitby, has enkindled as nothing else has done the dull
glow of English wrath. The recruiting goes more swiftly; a number of
young men have gone from our village in the last few days; the
blacksmith's shop is closed, and the forge fire is out,--he has gone to
work in a munition factory. We who stay are knitting for the trenches
and sewing for the hospitals; I never dreamed that I should live to
know such human anguish and human want,--yet it is good to learn that
one need not stand alone, bearing the pain of life in solitude. I have
joined every possible relief association and have pledged almost my
uttermost penny. We are even selling eggs for the hospital funds; spite
of cold weather, the Matildas, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Anne, and Queen
Victoria are rising magnificently to the crisis. The London people are
using the house occasionally as a temporary shelter for one or two
people at a time before permanent places are found for them. The Inn
also serves for this, and mine hostess and I have many a conference;
fortunately, in the haste and confusion, some of the bric-a-brac is
getting broken; one alabaster vase and one glass case covering
artificial flowers have disappeared.
Madge has amused me by finding a way to express, in rather original
fashion, her deepening sympathy with humankind. A courting is going on
in our kitchen; every Friday night the lovers come, she from the
village, he from a farm lying beyond the Hall; and every Friday night
Madge either goes to bed early, or steps out to see her friends. The
girl is a country lass rather ill-treated by a mistress who shall be
nameless; she has no place to receive her lover, save the stone wall of
the bridge across the stream. She steals here in the dusk on her one
free evening; why not? The young man is a perfectly suitable wooer, and
they are safer in my kitchen than out in the cold. Yet I admit that I
feel a bit guilty when I very formally return the very formal greeting
of the unconscious mistress.
Just now, no one is staying with us, and there is blessed quiet.
Through the silences in the little house, old moods, old laughter, old
half-merry tears come back; you blend with all my days. Sometimes I
feel, not as at first, that this is the end of things for me, but as if
it were a little truce of God while I am waiting. To-day I found my
first grey hairs; there were two, one on each temple; have you any to
match them, I wonder? Ah, I keep forgetting, forgetting; keep thinking
of you as still alive and suffering in this war. Remembering, I envy
you; the many years ahead look formidable.
Do you remember the day we took our fifteen-mile walk from Oxford in
May, and sat to rest on the flat grey stones in an old, old village
churchyard, with a tangle of wild vines at our feet, and primroses and
violets blossoming near,--do you remember that we talked of immortality
and decided that when one died it was death, that having lived was
enough? At least you did; I always had "ma doots o' ma doots." I think
it was just May that made us feel that way,--the fragrances, the bird
songs, the sun-flecked clouds over the Cumnor Hills; you too were far
more influenced by things outside the world of pure thought than you
ever knew, my philosopher; have I not seen you mistaking a sunbeam for
an optimistic syllogism? We doubted, dear, but we were wrong; you do
not die; you are more intensely alive than ever.
I am stealing a little time to try to do a portrait of you, though it
is long since I have had a brush in my hand; you know that I was
something but not much of an artist. What were the half-gifts meant
for, I wonder, all the aspiration that goes into them, the denied hope?
I used to suffer because I could not create the things I saw and
dreamed, but that kind of suffering has vanished utterly,--life flows
out in so many ways. There's a bit of attic with a north light near the
Atom's lair that I have fitted up as a studio, and I have unpacked
there my easel and canvases. To-day I shut myself up and began my
portrait of you, merely sketching, for the outlines blurred. I had a
curious experience. So clear is my inner vision of you that it blinded
my eyes, and that which was in my mind a perfect picture would prove,
if I left the room and came back to look at it afresh, a set of
meaningless lines.
December 30. For three days I tried and tried in vain; then came sudden
success, for your very mouth half smiled at me from the canvas where I
had been putting random strokes. As I work, I feel that I never before
really knew you; deeper understanding comes to me of your doubts, your
resolutions, your long growth, and what you are. Little things long
forgotten come drifting back, concerning your boyhood in the old
rectory, the hard awakening of an English public school. Chance remarks
that you made carelessly long ago waken in memory and reveal you to me
anew. The first time I realized the depth of feeling within you was
when I caught a glimpse of you listening to music at a concert in the
Sheldonian theatre; once, at least, your over-guarded face betrayed the
real you. I learned to know your quiet sympathy, your concealed
sensitive understanding of the needs of humankind, and to comprehend
your difficulty in showing it, making it available. You built up the
excluding barrier of an Englishman's expression between you and the
world; only animals and children dared break through. I can see them
yet rubbing their fuzzy heads against you, from the big Angora at Grey
friars, to little Lady Matilda at Witton Hall.
December 31. I cannot finish this portrait, for the eyes baffle me, and
each time I try you seem to be looking at me appealingly, as if you
wanted me to express something that I but dimly see. My present
knowledge of you seems in some strange way to outstrip your remembered
face. My sketch--for I shall leave it a mere sketch--suggests all your
suffering and all my sorrow, and yet not all is said. What knowledge
have you now that I do not share? Tell it very gently in the quiet, and
I shall know; am I not always listening? I am hungry for your wisdom of
death.
January 12, 1915. Deepening cold drives us all closer to the hearth;
perhaps it is only in winter that one gets the full flavour of home.
Don curls up by the fire with me, or takes glorious cross-country
walks. The little old gingerbread woman of the lych gate has
disappeared; I half suspect her of crawling temporarily into one of the
graves to keep warm. In snug farmyards, by great sunny ricks of hay,
the cattle of the countryside shelter themselves contentedly. Now, even
more than in summer, this land seems home from end to end; in every
nook and corner is something of the appeal of the fireside; no other
country so suggests from shore to shore one great threshold and hearth.
Its churchyards, with their dead softly tucked in, the comforting grass
above; its low-roofed villages; its individual homes in their great
loveliness wear one expression.
There are wonderful sunsets over the brown earth or white snow. This is
that England on whose domain the sun never sets, yet it sets most
exquisitely day by day, did they but know.
For a week we had with us a little nun, who prayed and prayed, looking
about her with big, frightened eyes. Luckily, my acquaintance with His
Reverence, who officiated at Marie's wedding, solved the problem, and
she went gladly to the shelter of a convent roof. Then for a few days
we cared for an old, old man, who swore and swore, softly, constantly,
but with an air of question, as if no oaths could quite meet the need
of the present moment. It was most incongruous, for he was very
evidently a gentleman, and he very evidently thought that he was
expressing himself politely, even if inadequately. My knowledge of the
French language was greatly extended, but this new vocabulary is, alas!
as unavailable for the uses of ordinary life as that which I learned
from Corneille! Our fugitive was a most pathetic old creature whose
mind had been somewhat unsettled by suffering and exile. Fortunately a
relative of his was discovered, a prosperous Belgian merchant living in
the outskirts of London, and my guest bade me a profane but grateful
farewell. A few days' care seems but little to offer these flitting
guests on their sorrowful journey, but it is a great relief to me to do
even this little, and as each one goes, I feel like saying "Thank you!"
as the well-trained British waiter says when you deign to take
something from the offered plate.
We really need Peter's advice,--think of that: Peter's advice, which I
have scorned to take! In our zeal we became victims of one bit of
imposture, which, however, did not involve us in irretrievable
loss,--only spoons! Two dark-skinned folk presented themselves one
cold, wintry day when all the desolation of the earth seemed dripping
down in icy rain. They asked for food, telling us that they were
Belgian refugees in need of help; evidently the habits of this
household have been rumoured abroad. We were a bit suspicious, but
resolved to err upon the right side. While Madge was cooking and I had
gone to order fresh supplies, they decamped with my spoons and my
purse, luckily a very lean purse. Don had simply absented himself; he
no longer trusts his instincts, finding himself in a world whose
standards he does not comprehend. The old order changes, giving place
to new; old caste distinctions are ignored, and he has not as yet had
time to learn new mental habits. He has found for himself a little
agnostic den in a corner behind the kitchen range, and he goes there
when he cannot make up his mind. When we discovered our loss and began
our search, he came out wagging his tail with a self-congratulatory air
to say, "I told you so!" But he had not told us so; he had only
deserted us when we needed him most. Our light-fingered guests have
been found in a gypsy tribe passing through to the north, but my spoons
have not been found. Must I lap my supper from a saucer with Don and
the Atom?
January 19. As I sit by the fire and toast my toes in my few minutes of
blessed idleness, I cannot help living over old days and hours, and I
see again the dusk of that evening when you and your family escorted me
to Hinksey to hear the nightingales; the sunshine of that afternoon
when you and I searched in vain the meadows beyond Iffley for
pink-tipped English daisies. Often I find myself again arguing things
out with you, even getting a bit angry now and then, forgetting that
you cannot answer. Many and many a dispute we had, many and many a
disagreement, with the invariable outcome of deeper understanding.
Sometimes the unshared jests hurt most of all; what has become of your
humour, dear, that rare, dry humour that betrayed itself most plainly
in your eyes? When first I knew you, I thought that you had no sense of
humour; I soon found that it was deeper than my own, because of your
insight into the irony of the human predicament. At times it touched
the tragic. I learned to understand your quiet enjoyment in watching
people, your wordless jests, and the silent drollery of your half
smile. How you loved to tease me about the foibles of my countrymen.
"No other people," you would say, "would come dashing into the
courtyard of a French hotel, with flags flying from the carriage,
singing their national hymn at the top of their voices; no other people
would motor swiftly to the entrance of a French cathedral, crying out:
'You do the inside, and we'll do the outside, and it won't take us more
than five minutes!' And there is always the pleasing memory of the lady
from Montana who deplored the inadequacy of the Louvre because the
pictures couldn't compare with the exhibition that they had had in the
winter at Wilkins Bluff. But of course this represents a class of
Americans that you would not know."
That was the day we had tea by the river; I was hot with helping you
get the boat past the lock, hot with making the tea, and I grew hotter
still.
"I admit that we are vulgar, and loud-voiced, and ostentatious," I told
you; "but we aren't selfish, and we aren't insolent. On the contrary,
we are usually quixotically good-natured and generous. We do not look
in blank surprise as the British do if any one questions their right to
be served before all other people with the choicest of everything. You
have little idea of what we suffer who meet many of the travelling
English of to-day, with their quiet and total selfishness in securing
and sitting upon all that is best. Of course, this represents a class
of the English that you would not know." This you forgave, but you
never quite forgave, I fear, my wicked suggestion that the moat about
the Bishop's palace was preserved in order to keep out the poor and
needy.
But the things about which we quarrelled were only surface things; I
knew and loved my England more than I ever admitted to you; and you,
for all your criticism of my countrymen (much of it was abundantly
justified), had divined the spirit of idealism in our democracy. The
development of the individual in righteous freedom for you, as for us,
was the great hope of the world. Under all the crudeness of America,
under the arrogance of England, lives, and has lived from earliest
days, a something great and fine, shared by republican France,--a
passion for liberty. The little things do not matter if the great
convictions at the heart of nations are akin; have not people of late
cared too much about little things? If our two peoples become aware of
the greatness of their common destiny, will they not stop fussing about
the American accent and English incivility? As I walk alone nowadays, I
try to drive this haunting, insistent world-suffering from my mind by
dreams of a great future wherein your country and mine go hand in hand,
helping secure for all time liberty for the human race.
Each has something to contribute that the other lacks. I really think
that we, in our sense of the dignity of the individual man, in
willingness to forego shades and differences of taste for the sake of
something greater, have outgrown you. You, with your keen insight, had
divined the need of democracy, had accepted it in theory, but found the
inevitable consequences hard to accept. Nothing is more agreeable than
good taste; perhaps there are things more profoundly important. Dare I
say that I think we have out-stripped you in generosity of act and of
thought?
But you are greater than we, and your life runs in deeper channels than
our own, in that you keep faith with the past, refusing to let the
hard-won spiritual achievement of the race be swept away by the
externalism of the present. To you, as to no other people, we look to
save the world from the terrible material forces, without conscience,
without insight, which threaten to dominate the whole of life. You who
refuse to give up fine standards of an elder day are the influence that
we of America greatly need, for in matters intellectual, we are all too
prone to be led, and have been too much cowed by this later
Germany--who forgets.
February 1. We are living on, as best we may, through cold and thaw and
cold again. The horror of that January night, when human beings and
birds wakened, with fear dropping from the sky, when innocent women and
children were killed by bombs from German Zeppelins, lingers and grows
deeper. The tension was greatest for those who could not hear what the
birds heard, but listened to the great outcry of blackbirds, pheasants,
and other winged things, to the loud cawing of the rooks, and wondered
and waited in nameless anguish. There seems to be no refuge in earth or
sky or sea. Can this world of shot and shell and conquering chemicals
be that world that was so beautiful, and that suddenly seemed so
strangely _safe_ when you came into my life?
March 10. Such days of excitement and of strain! My little house has
performed its supreme service,--has sheltered a body, while the soul
was going out.
It began three days ago; I was walking down the village street with Don
at my heels, when I noticed a large touring car at the Inn, with a
group of people very much excited, gesticulating and talking with a
vehemence that usually means Latin blood. Mine hostess of the Inn was
running to and from the car with bottles and flannel cloths; turpentine
on warm flannel is her cure for every human ailment. Then I saw in the
car an old, old lady--quite ill, evidently--leaning heavily on the
shoulder of a younger woman. I shall not soon forget the look of that
grey-white face under the snow-white hair and black widow's bonnet, set
in a group of strange faces, among which I remember one of a little
boy, watching breathlessly with his mouth wide open, and a smaller
girl, staring apathetically with her eyes full of tears that looked as
if they had long been there. I did not need to be told that this
oddly-assorted set of people were refugees. I had seen too many utter
strangers, from diverse surroundings, hastily gathered together, clad
in velvet, clad in rags, to share one suffering.
I found that they were being taken from London, where they had been
cared z many weeks, to different destinations in the northern
counties, but the man in charge had evidently lost his way and was
making an unnecessary detour toward the coast. He could not speak their
language, nor they his, and he seemed entirely at a loss in this
dilemma. Oh, the loneliness, and the desolation, and the bitter shame
of it all!
"The old lady's took ill, of a sudden, 'm," said the landlady, stopping
her little trot near me.
I asked the younger woman, whose face was very kindly, if this was her
mother, but she shook her head.
"I don't know who she is; I never saw her until we started."
Then I begged and pleaded; the chauffeur looked greatly relieved, and
so did mine hostess, though she remonstrated that it would be quite too
much for me.
"Are you sure, Miss, that you want her? We don't know what it is; it
may be contagious."
"I don't care what it is!" I said so suddenly that Don barked out;
there was a little feeling of joy within me at the thought that there
might be danger; it is hard to be shut out from the great danger that
circles the world.
So the big touring car was turned about, with much puffing and panting;
my little iron gate was opened wide to let two men carry the poor old
creature to my guest room, and I sent the others on, with such comforts
as I could supply. The small boy went nibbling a cookie, the little
girl with hers in her hand, too dazed to eat it. Haven't you ever seen
a frightened little bird holding something in its mouth, not daring to
swallow?
The village doctor and Madge and I worked for hours over the fugitive.
She only looked at us with eyes that had in them all the weariness of
the world since the dawn of time. There was evidently no malady; actual
physical pain did not seem to be there; only overwhelming mental pain
or shock that means destruction of the very forces of life. She was not
unconscious, nor was she fully conscious of what was going on around
her. The comfort of warm water on her body, the comfort of soothing
drink she hardly realized, nor could she swallow, except with great
difficulty and reluctance. Just once she stretched herself out at full
length with a look of relief, and lay motionless.
I shall never know what weary ways she had trodden in her escape from
the swift ruin of war, nor how in her tottering age she had escaped at
all. She seemed to be one who, her life long, had walked the same
peaceful paths over and over, as her forefathers had done before. Was
she one of those who, driven from home and fireside, had lain down in
the dust of the road, longing to die? Contagious! Heartbreak does seem
contagious in these days; who shall escape? Who can wish to, when other
hearts break?
Life can never bring me anything so strange, perhaps it can never bring
me anything so wonderful, as this silent companionship with a soul that
had almost passed. She did not understand the words I used, but she did
understand that we were trying to help her; though her lips were still,
her eyes followed us,--eyes full of knowledge that can not come before
the last. She did not try to thank us, dwelling in some world of
instinctive understanding, making one feel that the long ages of much
speaking were folly. She had let go of all tangible things and was no
longer aware of time or circumstance; there was no look of fear in her
eyes, no look of sorrow; she was done with earth and with feeling,
having neither reproaches nor regrets. She had gone beyond pain, beyond
joy, beyond those simple human affections that linger to the last, to
some region of ultimate peace, or of quiet beyond peace.
The falling of March rain upon the roof; sunshine, with the notes of
the returning birds; the cawing of the rooks, and the soft ripple of
the brook--even Madge was subdued by the majesty of it all and forgot
to rail at the Kaiser, or to storm in misplaced aspirates at the
Germans. A world beyond hate was with us, where it was good to be.
The end was hardly different from the days that went before; there was
no motion, no outburst, only a quiet ceasing of that which had hardly
been breathing. Our departing guest folded her wrinkled hands upon her
breast herself, as if to save us trouble, and so I found her. Who was
she? Who belonged to her? Where are the children and grandchildren who
should have been gathered about her bed?
The doctor and the village nurse took charge of her; when she was ready
for burial, more quiet than earth itself,--one never knows quiet until
one sees it so,--I put roses beside her; one of the county ladies keeps
me supplied from her conservatory. Yet I hesitated; it seemed wrong to
recall in this presence any mere tangible and visible beauty, or aught
from the world of things. The lovely contours and outlines, the perfume
of the roses reproached me, as if I were pursuing her to bring her back
to mere self, hampering her escape. With her we seemed to be swept away
into some great consciousness that meant relief from individual
sorrow,--sharing her rest, a repose so deep that it rested us for all
the days to come.
Madge mourned over her as if it were her own mother,--I hardly know
why: could it have been merely the three days of trying to care for
her? Or was she touched, in some depth of her nature never reached
before, by the grandeur of that loneliness?
There was a brief service in the little church on the hill, a sound of
song, of praying; but nothing in the burial service could quite express
the pathos of that moment when we buried some one's mother, not even
knowing her name. We left her in the churchyard, within hearing of the
stream, where deep shadows fall on grave after grave. This cold winter
grass which grows above the other graves will soon, with the quickening
of spring, cover hers also; already it is freshening, and crocuses peep
out here and there.
There is no name to put on a stone at her head. It is perhaps at best
folly to mark the resting-places of the dead, yet I had a feeling that
no token of respect must be lacking, and I begged that an old grey
tombstone, standing by the churchyard wall, a stone so old that all
that was carved on it has been worn away, might be placed at her head.
It has told the passing of one human soul, and shall tell that of
another; in its grey, fine-worn beauty it symbolizes the vast
impersonality of the end.
I come here now even oftener than I used. Surely death has never
appeared so gentle, so much a member of the family, as in these English
churchyards with their sweet hominess. It seems fitting that we meet
"My sister, the Death of the Body" on these grass-grown paths which
wear a look of every day and common happenings. The little river, the
lichen-grown stones, the sense of long continuance, give one a feeling
that there are no gaps, no fissures between life and death, that the
sight of the eyes slips inevitably into the vision of the soul. The sky
seems near in England, with the crumbling grey of old Norman tower and
churchyard wall touching its veiled blue, and the low white clouds
almost within reach; the old home-like look of the flat stones makes
one feel as if the sleepers are still, as it were, sitting on the
threshold, or on the old bench by the door. There is no sense of
distance or separation, no feeling of far away.
It is not sad to leave her here, now when the whole earth seems one
great family of the sorrowing, where the children and the grandchildren
of many other folk are so near.
May 20. Spring, with the thawing of the icicles, and the sunshine
growing warmer on the southern wall of the house,--spring comes back in
the old and lovely way to a world never in such anguish before. What an
April, to bring the cowardly murder of soldiers in the trenches by
volumes of poisonous gas! What a May, to bring the _Lusitania_
massacre of hundreds of innocent men, women, and children at sea! What
a Germany, quite, quite mad:
"O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown,
The soldier's, scholar's----"
but I am not quoting correctly and am too busy to look up the lines. I
dare not even try to speak of my sense of these things; words are
lacking to express it, but surely this marks the parting of the ways.
To me it seems that the time has come for the nations of the
earth--would that my own would join them--to band together once more in
a holy crusade and do battle with the Pagan, not for the tomb of our
Lord, but for the faith He taught.
As time goes on, I see more clearly what the real England stands for.
My mind works slowly, for I am but a practical American; it isn't as if
I were a thinker like yourself, who could reason things out on purely
intellectual grounds. The war between my great love of England and my
indignant sense of things that are wrong gives way to something more
impersonal, as I have more chance to see the way in which her customs
serve humanity. Complete fulfillment of her great purposes has not yet
been achieved, yet surely the human race has got no further: liberty
for the individual, fair play,--these watchwords of England are the
hope of the human race. What other land could rule many alien peoples
and make them so proudly content? As England has kept faith with the
past, she has, barring some great mistakes, kept faith with humanity.
The recent magnificent bravery of the Canadians in the battles with
flaming gas only intensifies the splendour of the voluntary tribute of
England's colonies to England in distress. Earth has not seen the like
of this empire resting on the will of man; from the four quarters of
the globe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, they come sailing
swiftly home, counting it great gain to die for that for which she
stands. It means that at the heart of England is something too precious
to lose, a faith in the working possibility of human freedom. Crude
races, races old and outworn, need to learn at her feet the practical
way of making good this immemorial hope of the race. Under her rule,
the individual has his chance of self-government; if he fails to take
it, falling into the net of sloth and old habit as he often does in
England, the fault is his own. His individual conscience is left him;
he is not compelled to become a soulless cog in a gigantic
conscienceless mechanism.
I do not care what Mr. Asquith has done wrong; what Mr. Joseph
Chamberlain did wrong; what King George the Third and all the Georges
have done or failed to do: I trust this people as I trust no other.
Guilty of sins and blunders they may be and are, but the blunder is
followed by the honest effort to find again and do the right; you come
down always to a groundwork of character, sincerity, integrity. England
has been in a way the conscience of the world. What other race-name is
a word to conjure with? All over the earth where confusion comes, it is
whispered: "The troubles are dying down; the English are drawing near."
And in the councils of the world, her voice has been the great arbiter
of right and wrong.
No one here now can doubt that England is going through that great
anguish wherein the soul of a people is re-born. The unity, the calm,
the quickening determination are part of a great spring-time that will
lead, God grant, to harvest days of peace. There is slow knitting up of
the sinews of war; more and more her sons respond to the call which
still leaves them free to choose; old England is getting ready as ever,
resolved, incredulous of defeat; the spring knows it; the rooks know
it, busy in their elm tree parliament. The great sorrow and the great
endeavour have turned the very soil of the country into holy ground.
Among my bonfires of spring,--for I like to keep that old, religious
rite of purification,--I burned half a dozen volumes of recent English
fiction, decadent, erotic; a volume or two of flippant and sensational
criticism; and one of affected futurist poetry, or some brand like unto
it. They belong to the England whose follies and foibles are being
burned in a great fire of affliction; they are not worthy of this great
England that is emerging from the flame.
As I write, the tinkle of the English sheep bells from afar comes like
the very sound of peace.
February, with the vanishing of the icicles, brought snowdrops and
crocuses. All kinds of growing things of which I had not dreamed came
peeping up in this old garden: crocuses, purple and gold, grow in a
little clump where the wind just fails to reach them; royal daffodils
nod and sway, or stand erect and golden, those from new planting
outshining the rest. In March the violets were out, and primroses
followed; the pony's meadow is full of them, deep in the grass; and
these are only a part of the lovely procession of flowers,--bluebells,
anemones, and unnumbered others.
To me it seemed that the birds came very early,--birds that are
strangers to me, birds that I know; and we were glad once more in the
companionship of wings. I was thankful when the swallows came,
circling, flying high, flying low; wrens, old friends of mine, are
building under my porch roof; a merry little blue tit, a friend quite
new, disports himself among the leaves. I have heard the cuckoo
calling, calling beyond the stream; you were the first to tell me that
this was the cuckoo's note. English larks are very near neighbours;
every day I can hear them singing at "heaven's gate."
We have all been as busy as bees since the melting of the snow, humans
and animals alike. Back with the first suggestion of warmer sunshine
Hengist and Horsa began to crow; alas for William the Conqueror, who
will never crow again! and my many queens of the hen-yard began to lay
and cackle as boastfully as in times of peace. Every living thing came
crawling out of hole and hiding-place and took up its task; the little
gingerbread woman came back to the lych gate to sit in the sun; Puck,
once more one of the family, as he grazes beyond the stream, trotted
merrily to Shepperton again and again to bring seeds and young plants,
for I intend to have a garden that will astonish Peter when Peter comes
back from the war. It seems to me that there is an added touch of
determination in the pony's gait and in the toss of his shaggy head
since he became a hero of the war, an upholder of the kingdom, a
defender of the faith.
Madge is the busiest of all living things and will not be idle for a
moment for fear of "thinking long." Never was there such a be-scrubbed,
be-polished, shining house as the little red house! I tremble for my
own face when I see her with the soap and sand, the brass polish, the
silver polish, the long-handled mop, and the wooden pail. It is Madge
with a changed face, with deepening lines between the eyes, a worrying,
anxious Madge, who steals the newspaper and reads it in the kitchen
before she brings it to me. I cannot help noticing that she talks less
and less of the glory of England and more and more about Peter. Laconic
post cards with peculiar spelling tell us that Peter is alive and well
in the trenches. Peter, because of his old experience as soldier, was
allowed to go speedily to the front, and is now at close quarters with
the enemy.
In earliest April, the little red house sheltered the grand adventure,
the greatest adventure, for death seems safe and easy by the side of
the great adventure of being born. I had a whole family quartered here,
father, mother, and two small winsome children, boy and girl; we tucked
them away where we could. And a wee man-child came into the world
during their stay here, with much pomp and circumstance and attendance
of mine hostess from the Inn, and of the village doctor, whose lot in
life has evidently been to stand helpless and aghast, watching mortals
who will venture into a world which seems to be no safe place for them.
If it had rested with him, small Jean would have had no chance at all;
but Madge and mine hostess came to the rescue, and all went well, on to
that first little weird lonely cry.
It was little bigger than the Atom. It slept, during all its first
days, a troubled, puckered sleep. Don worshipped it, and whenever it
cried, gave an anxious whine or a sharp short bark. In the Atom's loft
I unearthed a prehistoric cradle that may have been left by the Danes
or the Saxons. Of course I know that rocking is most unhygienic, but I
thought that if this little, frightened fugitive mother found any
comfort in rocking her baby by the fireside, rock it she should. It
isn't, I believe, supposed to injure anything except the brain, and the
brain counts for so little nowadays in the contemporary ideal of
development that I am sure small Jean will have enough left to play his
part in the civilization of the future. He had, I noticed, square and
sturdy little fists, and he may be some day one of the many who will
fight for England, when England's guests defend the door so generously
opened to shelter them. The Atom insisted upon sharing the cradle; why
not? It had discovered the cradle in the first place and had a certain
right to it. So it curled up in a corner, and Jean gurgled and grew fat
and rosy in its companionship. It was a joy to have a real baby in the
house while the birds were building, and the spring flowers budding,
and the young ferns uncurling in the forest.
The father of the family was a farmer whose house and barns had been
wiped out of existence within ten minutes one cruel winter day. Mine
host has found a place for him; another man is needed on one of the
farms belonging to the estate; a small house there was vacant, and
thither they have moved, bag and baggage, baby and baby's cradle. They
wanted the Atom, but the Atom and I have lived through such hard days
together, cheek to cheek, that I could not let it go. The new house is
not far, quite within Puck distance, and Don and I make frequent calls.
May 30. May, with its young leaves, its radiance of blossoming fruit
trees, its spring greenness,--never have I known such green,--lingers
yet, with its sweet spring chill and its ripple of slow English streams
among the grasses. Such a world of beauty, and a world of sorrow!
Petals of apple blossom drift even through the open doorway, and
everywhere is the murmur of the little wind among the leaves. I sit in
my garden, under my apple trees, or walk where the sunshine filters
down, clear and still, through the lime trees in the lane, thinking of
many things. Close by the stream, at my garden's edge, grow palest
purple irises, and at times they seem spirit lilies, delicate as light,
growing beside you in your far place.
A few days ago Don dug one of your books out of the case,--he loves to
touch them with his faithful paw. It was Dante's _Paradiso_ and as
it fell open I saw that you had marked certain words with my name:
"dolce guida e cara," "sweet guide and dear." That was too beautiful a
thing to say of a mere mortal woman.
I find myself thinking consciously less about you as the days go on; a
touch in the darkness, a gleam across the stars, a whisper by the
river,--so you come back to me; but the different things we said and
did do not return with quite such sharp distinctness and sharp pain.
Yet I exist more and more in you, living your life and mine too, spirit
to spirit.
Loneliness seems forever impossible since you went out and left the
gate ajar, and all the world came in, and all its sorrows. The griefs
that enter, in some strange way solace my own, and this increasing
sense of the anguish of the world is lightened and lifted by sharing it
with other folk. It is good to feel so passionately and so utterly a
part of all that lives and throbs and suffers. Though the life that
goes on in the little red house must inevitably lack something of the
human warmth and joy that we should have known together, more life and
greater enters, I think, than would have been ours if our old dream of
happiness had come true. One can bear whatever happens, so long as it
makes one understand.
I started out in loneliness to tell my story, to you and to myself, for
comfort in the long silences, and lo! I have no story; I do not seem to
be merely I; I have gone out of myself and cannot find my way back. In
this relieving greatness is, perhaps, dim foreknowledge of what is to
come. I have nothing left to ask of life, no demands to make: a little
service, work, and sleep,--and then?
June 15. Peter, can it be Peter, with that expression upon his face? He
is really here, and a transfiguring look of suffering has worn away
forever a something of earth and of stubbornness,--a Peter who seems to
have gained greatly in strength and in stature, although one arm is
gone, and an empty sleeve hangs by his side. If I had known how to
salute I should have saluted Peter when I saw him home from the war;
mentally I do it whenever I see him working with his one poor hand in
my garden beds. One of the first things he said to me when he came home
was that he was going to Shepperton to try to get work that a one-armed
man could do, selling papers or something of the kind. But Peter, who
has faced the enemy and the poisonous gases, flinched before my
countenance when I heard this. Peter knows now that the little red
house and the garden can never get on without him.
It is odd to see the animals with him; Don cannot be attentive enough,
but you would expect a dog to understand. Puck is a wonder, standing as
meekly as a lamb to let himself be harnessed by a one-armed man, though
he used to dance an ancient British war-dance as the straps went on.
The old racial love of fair fighting shines out in him; man to man it
used to be, or man to pony, when both were able-bodied, but he will
take no advantage of a handicap. He seldom shies now, even at a feather
or a floating leaf, but he watches constantly in every direction,
waiting for some great danger in which he can comport himself with
perfect self-control for the sake of a one-armed man; defying the whole
modern era to invent a mechanism that can frighten him. I should like
an equestrian statue of Puck _not_ shying at a Zeppelin!
Madge is pathetic; she has lost her old moorings of prejudice and
conviction and sails in an uncharted sea of life. Church and State are
to her only a shade less reprehensible than the Germans, since Peter
came home without an arm. While Peter, completely changed, and loyal to
the government, for the country he has served so well is his country
indeed, sits with her on the bench by the kitchen door in the twilight,
full of affectionate talk of "Kitchener" and "Bobs"--his grief over
Lord Roberts' death was both sincere and personal--Madge mutters
fiercely against the 'Ouse of Lords for its selfishness and its
incompetence. If women ruled, all would be different! Her condemnation
of the government would suggest that she is in a fair way to become
both an anarchist and a suffragette. She never would have let Peter go
a step to war if she had supposed that he would be wounded.
Peter came home, not with a Victoria Cross, but with an Iron Cross, and
I can never tell whether he is joking or in earnest when he explains
his possession of it. When I asked him how he got it, he replied: "I
bestowed it upon meself, Miss." It seems that he had taken it from a
German with whom he had fought in a terrible bayonet charge.
"He was a man, he was," Peter says admiringly. "If I got the better of
the man who had earned it, it stands to reason that I'm a better man
than him and fit to wear it." So Peter wears his Iron Cross, to the
wonder and admiration of the farmers baiting their horses at the Inn,
the blacksmith's eleven children, and the inhabitants in general of our
village. How much he tells those eager listeners of the horrors he has
seen I do not know, but sometimes from that bench by the kitchen door,
I hear fragments of his tales of suffering that make me sick and faint.
Yet he is very reticent in regard to it, having evidently a feeling
that he must protect others from knowing what he has known. As I make
his acquaintance anew I realize that his great loss is truly exceeding
gain; there is more of his real self in his wakened mind and soul than
he lost in his arm.
But Peter, invalided home, returned not alone. It seemed to me, as he
came up the walk, that he was over-heavily weighed down by luggage,
though he had a brother soldier to help him.
"If you please, 'm," said Peter diffidently, when our first greetings
were over, "I've taken the liberty of bringing some one 'ome."
"Nothing could please me better," I said, holding out a welcoming hand
to the tall soldier at his side.
"If you please, 'm," said Peter, grinning,--if heroes can be said to
grin,--"she's inside."
He opened the big old-fashioned basket he was carrying, made of osier,
a kind that I remember seeing in my grandmother's attic many years ago,
and there--O Pharaoh's daughter, how I understand you now!--was a
little child of perhaps ten months, asleep. She had soft dark hair,
hands a bit too thin for a baby, eyes that proved to be, when she
wakened and opened them, big and brown; and a mouth that had learned
and not forgotten, like so many sorrowful mouths to-day, how to smile.
"Where did you find her?" Madge and I cried out in one breath.
"She was in the village where I was taken when I was wounded; you will
hexcuse me, 'm, but I cannot say its name, I really cannot. A woman had
taken charge of her for weeks; she had been found quite deserted by the
roadside, I believe, 'm, earlier in the war, when people were trying to
escape from the henemy. The nurse used to bring her into the 'ospital
just to let the soldiers see her."
Peter was disappointed that I could not speak, but speak I could not.
"She's a French baby, 'm," he added. "I took a great fancy to her, and
when I came away I told them----"
"What did you tell them, Peter?" I asked sternly. The little thing had
grasped my finger and was trying to pull herself up. It was the first
touch from any of my fugitives that seemed to come from my very own,
and I knew that the French baby had come into my life to stay.
"Knowing your 'abits, Miss, I told them I thought I knew a good 'ome
for her, so they sent her on with a nurse who was coming back, reserved
for me, as it were. They kindly allowed me to bring her down from
London meself, but I 'ad difficulty in 'olding her, so I took out me
clothes and put them in a paper, and she fitted very nicely in the
basket."
Peter still mistook my silence for hesitation.
"I thought if you didn't care to adopt her, I would, 'm; but from what
they told me about her clothing and all and from the look of her, I
fancy she's rather your class than mine, 'm."
"I couldn't aspire to your class, Peter," I said; "you belong among the
heroes. We will all adopt her, you and Madge and I and Don and Puck and
the Atom and our English queens. Among us all she will get a
well-rounded training."
* * * * *
The stream is rippling past with its old music; the pony is grazing in
the meadow; my June roses glow within my garden, yellow, white, and
deep red; and still the vast sea of human sorrow breaks, breaks against
my garden wall, and no one knows whither its tides may draw. Is it thus
that the whole earth must gain the finer knowledge that comes alone
through suffering and learn how false are the gods it has been
following with swift feet?
I hardly dare confess my foolishness, but when I saw Peter that day of
his return come down the village street with a tall khaki-clad figure
beside him, I thought for one whole blissful, awful moment that he had
found you, living, and had brought you home. Through many such moments
I could not live; all the joy and the anguish of time and of eternity
were crowded into it. Yet even in that flash I knew that no mere human
contact could ever bring you so close as you are now to me. Separated
by walls of mere flesh and bone, there could no longer be this entire
one-ness of soul with soul. You, belovèd, are forever too near to
touch. What death may be I know not, but it is something far different
from what we mortals think.
Then I saw that Peter's companion was only another British Tommy, who
needed my hospitality; and I helped make ready his beef and beer with
great gladness in my heart.
... Content for you. Men from old time have died for the faith they
held, and men have died for dreams. I know no faith, no dream better
worth dying for than this for which you gave your life, the dream of
human freedom. It is our race pride that a passion for liberty was
kindled early in our remotest forebears; there is no nobler task than
keeping this divine spark alive upon the human hearth. In my moments of
insight I know that life has no greater boon than a chance to die for
one's faith, and you have died for this. I would not take from you,
even if I could, your hour of glory, your great hour of death.