"Who dies, if England lives?"
RUDYARD KIPLING.
The black days of September lay like a cloud over the whole country.
News came of the fall of Namur; the retreat from Mons; the German Army
before the gates of Paris. There was one Sunday evening when the
newspaper boys ran almost gleefully up and down the London streets,
shouting in shrill voices: "The whole of the British Expeditionary Force
cut to pieces." The nation's heart stood still to hear; the faces of the
men and women going about their ordinary work took on a strained, set
expression. The beating of drums, the blowing of trumpets, the cheering
of crowds died away; a new stern feeling entered into the meaning of
war.
Dick felt sometimes as if all were expressed in the one word England.
The name was written across all their minds as they stared into the
future waiting for the news, real news of that handful of men standing
with their backs to the walls of Paris, facing the mighty strength of
the German Army. England! What did it matter if some hearts called it
Scotland, some Ireland, some the greater far-off land of the Dominions?
the meaning was the same. It was the country that was threatened, the
country that stood in danger; as one man the people rallied to the cry
of Motherland. And over in France, with their backs to the walls of
Paris, the soldiers fought well!
"Who dies, if England lives?" Kipling wrote in those early days of the
war, putting into words the meaning which throbbed in the hearts of the
people. Statesmen might say that they fought for the scrap of paper, for
an outraged Belgium, because of an agreement binding Great Britain to
France; the people knew that they fought for England! And to stay at
home and wait with your eyes staring into the darkness was harder
perhaps than to stand with your back to the wall and fight. They were
black days for the watchers, those early days of the War.
The one thought affected everyone in a different way. The look in their
eyes was the same, but they used a different method of expressing it.
Dick threw himself heart and soul into his work; he could not talk about
the War or discuss how things were going on, and he was kept fairly
busy, he had little time for talking. All day he examined men; boys,
lying frankly about their age in order to get in; old men, well beyond
the limit, telling their untruths with wistful, anxious eyes. Men who
tried so hard to hide this or that infirmity, who argued if they were
not considered fit, who whitened under the blow of refusal, and went
from the room with bitten lips. From early morning till late at evening,
Dick sat there, and all day the stream of old men, young men, and boys
passed before him.
Fanny took it in quite a different way. Silence was torture to her; she
had to talk. She was afraid and desperately in earnest. The love in her
heart was poured out at the foot of this new ideal, and to Fanny,
England was typified in the soldiers. The night on which the paper boys
ran abroad shrieking their first casualty list Fanny lay face downwards
on her bed and sobbed her heart out. She visualized the troops she had
watched marching through London, their straight-held figures, their
merry faces, their laughing eyes, the songs they had shouted and
whistled haunted her mind. They had not seemed to be marching to death;
people had stood on the edge of the pavement to cheer them, and
now--"cut to pieces"--that was how the papers put it. It made her more
passionately attached to the ones that were left. It is no exaggeration
to say that quite gladly and freely Fanny would have given her life for
any--not one particular--soldier. Something of the spirit of
mother-love woke in her attitude towards them.
Down in quiet, sleepy little Wrotham the tide of war beat less
furiously. Uncle John would sometimes lose his temper completely because
the place as a whole remained so apathetic. The villagers did not do
much reading of the papers; the fact that the parson had a new prayer
introduced into the service impressed them with a sense of war more than
anything else. But even Wrotham felt the outside fringe of London's
anxiety during the days of that autumn. One by one, rather sheepishly,
the young men came forward. They would like to be soldiers, they would
like to have a whack at them there Germans. No thought of treaties or
broken pledges stirred them, but England was written across their minds
just the same. Uncle John woke to new life; he had been eating out his
heart, knowing himself useless and on the shelf, when every nerve in his
body was straining to be up and doing. He instituted himself as
recruiter-in-chief to the district. He would walk for miles if he heard
there was a likely young man to be found at the end of his tramp; his
face would glow with pride did he but catch one fine, healthy-looking
specimen.
He inaugurated little meetings, too, at which the Vicar presided, and
Uncle John held forth. Bluntly and plainly he showed the people their
duty, speaking to them as he had used to speak in the old days to his
soldiers. And over their beer in the neighbouring public-house the men
would repeat his remarks, weigh up his arguments, agree or disagree with
his sentiments. They had a very strong respect for him, that at least
was certain; before Christmas he had persuaded every available unmarried
man to enlist.
The married men were a problem; Joan felt that perhaps more than Uncle
John did. Winter was coming on; there were the children to clothe and
feed; the women were beginning to be afraid. Sometimes Joan would
accompany Uncle John on his tramps abroad, and she would watch the
wife's face as Uncle John brought all his persuasion to bear on the man;
she would see it wake first to fear, and then to resentment. She was
sorry for them; how could one altogether blame them if they cried, "Let
the unmarried men go first." Yet once their man had gone, they fell back
on odd reserves of pride and acquiescence. There was very little wailing
done in the hundreds of small homes scattered all over England; with
brave faces the women turned to their extra burden of work. Just as much
as in the great ones of the land, "for England" burned across their
hearts.
Joan's life had settled down, but for the outside clamour of events,
into very quiet routine. Her two years' life in London was melting away
into a dream; only Dick and her love for Dick stood out with any
intensity, and since Dick made no sign to her, held out no hand, she
tried as much as possible to shut him from her thoughts. Aunt Janet had
died in her sleep the night war was declared; she had never waked to
consciousness. When the doctor, hastily fetched by Uncle John, had
reached her room, she had been already dead--smiling a little, as if the
last dream which had come to haunt her sleep had been a pleasant one.
"Joy killed her," the nurse declared. Certainly she lay as if very
content and untroubled.
"I believe," Miss Abercrombie told Joan, "that she was only staying
alive to see you. My dear, you must not blame yourself in any way; she
is so much better out of it all."
"No, I don't blame myself," Joan answered. "We had made friends before
she died; there isn't a wall between us any longer."
The villagers ransacked their gardens to send flowers to the funeral.
Aunt Janet's grave was heaped up with them, but in a day or two they
withered, and old Jim carried them away on his leaf heap. After that
every week Joan took down just a handful and laid them where she
thought the closed hands would be, and, because in so doing she seemed
to draw a little closer to Aunt Janet, and through Aunt Janet to the
great God beyond, her thoughts would turn into prayer as she stood by
the grave. "Dear God, keep him always safe," she would whisper. Then
like a formless flash of light the word "England" would steal across her
prayer; she did not need to put the feeling into words; just like an
offering she laid it before her thought of God and knew its meaning
would be understood. So thousands of men and women pray, brought by a
sense of their own helplessness in this great struggle near to the
throne of God. And always the name of England whispers across their
prayers.
Just when the battle of the Marne was at its turning-point Dick got his
orders to go. He was given under a week to get ready in, the unit, a
field hospital, was to start on Saturday and the order came on Monday.
One more day had to be put in at the recruiting depot; he could not
leave them in the lurch; Tuesday he spent getting his kit together,
Wednesday evening saw him down at Sevenoaks.
As once before, Mabel was at the station to meet him. "It's come, then,"
she said. "Tom is wild with envy. Age, you know, limits him to a
volunteer home defence league."
"Bad luck," answered Dick. "Of course I am very bucked to be really
going, Mabel. It is not enlivening to sit and pass recruits all day
long."
"No," she agreed. "One wants to be up and doing. I hope I am not awfully
disloyal or dreadfully selfish, but I cannot help being glad that my
baby is a baby. Mother has knitted countless woollies for you"--she
changed the subject abruptly; "it has added to poor Tom's discontent. He
has to try on innumerable sleeping-helmets and wind-mufflers round his
neck to see if they are long enough. Yesterday he talked rather
dramatically of enlisting as a stretcher-bearer and going, out with
you, but they wouldn't have him, would they?"
Dick laughed, but he could realize the bitterness of the other man's
position when Tom spoke to him that night over their port wine.
"Mabel is so pleased at keeping both her men under her wing," he
confided, "that she doesn't at all realize how galling it is to be out
of things. I would give most things, except Mabel and the boy, to be ten
years younger."
"Still, you have Mabel and the boy," Dick reminded him. "It comes
awfully hard on the women having to give up their men."
"That's beyond the point," Tom answered. "And bless you, don't you know
the women are proud to do it?"
"But pride doesn't mend a broken life," Dick tried to argue against his
own conviction.
Tom shook his head. "It helps somehow," he said. "Mabel was talking to
some woman in the village yesterday, who has sent three sons to the war,
and whose eldest, who is a married man and did not go, died last week.
'I am almost ashamed of him, Mum,' the woman told Mabel; 'It is not as
if he had been killed at the war.' Oh, well, what's the use of grousing;
here I am, and here I stick; but if the Germans come over, I'll have a
shot at them whatever regulations a grandmotherly Government may take
for our protection. And you're all right, my lad, you are not leaving a
woman behind you."
That night, after he had gone up to his own room, the thought of Joan
came to haunt Dick. For two months he had not let himself think of her;
work and other interests had more or less crowded her out of his heart.
But the sudden, though long expected, call to action brought him, so to
speak, to the verge of his own feeling. Other things fell away; he was
face to face once again with the knowledge that he loved her, and that
one cannot even starve love to death. He wanted her, he needed her; what
did other things, such as anger and hurt pride, count against that. He
had only kissed her once in his life, and the sudden, passionate hunger
for the touch of her lips shook his heart to a prompt knowledge of the
truth. He must see her again before he left, for it might be that death
would find him out there. War had seemed more of a game to begin with;
that first evening when he had shouted with the others round Trafalgar
Square he had not connected War with Death, but now it seemed as if they
walked hand in hand. He could not die without first seeing Joan again.
He thought of writing her a short note asking her to be in when he
called, but the post from Jarvis Hall did not go out till after twelve;
he could get to London quicker himself. After breakfast he told Mabel
that he found he had to go away for the day.
"Something you have forgotten--couldn't you write for it, Dick?" she
asked. "It seems such a shame, because we shall only have one more day
of you."
"No," he answered; he did not lift his eyes to look at her. "As a matter
of fact it is somebody that I must see."
He had not written about or mentioned Joan since he had gone away from
Sevenoaks last; Mabel had hoped the episode was forgotten. It came to
her suddenly that it was Joan he was speaking of, and she remembered
Fanny's long, breathless explanation and the girl's rather pathetic
belief that she would do something to help. She could not, however, say
anything to him before the others.
"Will the eleven-thirty do for you?" Tom was asking. "Because I have got
to take the car in then."
"It seems a little unreasonable, Dick," Mrs. Grant put in. She had not
been the best of friends with him since their violent scene together;
her voice took on a querulous tone when she spoke to him. "Who can there
be in London, that you suddenly find you must see?" She, too, for the
moment, was thinking of the outrageous girl.
"I am sorry," Dick answered. "It is my own fault for not having gone
before. I'll try and get back to-morrow."
Mabel caught him afterwards alone on his way out to the garden to smoke
a pipe. She slipped a hand through his arm and went with him.
"Mother is upset," she confided. "I don't think she can be awfully well;
just lately she cries very easily."
"She always used to"--Dick's voice was not very sympathetic. "Do you
remember how angry I was at the way she cried when father died?"
"Yes," Mabel nodded. "All the same, she does love you, Dick; it is a
funny sort of love, perhaps, but as she gets older it seems to me that
she gets softer, less selfish. And, Dick, I think she feels--as indeed I
do, too--that you have grown away from us. It is not the War, though
that takes men from us women, too; it is more just as if we were out of
sympathy with one another. Are we?"
"What a funny thought." Dick smiled down at her. "There has never been,
as you know, much sympathy between mother and myself. But for you,
Mabel, things will always be the same between us. I trust you with
everything I have."
"And yet you aren't quite trusting me now," she answered. "You are going
up to London to see this girl, aren't you, Dick?--and all this time you
have never written or spoken to me about her."
"I have been trying to forget," he confessed. "I thought, because of
something she did to me, that I was strong enough to shut her outside my
life. But last night the old battle began again in my mind, and I know
that I must see her before I go out. It is more than probable, Mabel,
that I shall not come back. I can't go out into the darkness without
seeing her again."
Mabel's hand tightened on his arm. "You mustn't say that, Dick," she
whispered. "You have got to come back."
They walked in silence and still Mabel debated the question in her mind.
Should she stand out of events, and let them, shape themselves? If Dick
went to London and found Joan gone, what would he do then? Perhaps he
would not see Fanny and the landlady would not be able to tell him where
Joan was. Wrotham would be the last place in which he would look for
her, and on Saturday he was leaving for the front. It was only just for
a second that her mind wavered; she had initially too straight a nature
for deceit.
"Dick," she said, coming to a standstill and looking up at him, "you
needn't go to London. Miss Rutherford"--she hesitated on the
word--"Joan, is back at Wrotham."
"At Wrotham?" he repeated, staring at her.
"Yes," she answered, "Old Miss Rutherford died two months ago. They had
sent for Joan; I believe she arrived the day her aunt died, and she has
stayed there ever since. Once or twice I have met her out with Colonel
Rutherford. No, wait"--she hurried on, once she had begun. "There is
something else I must tell you. I went, you know, to see her in London,
but I found that she had left. As I was coming away I met the other
girl--I cannot remember her name, but she came here to tea--she insisted
on my going back with her; she had something she wanted to tell me about
Joan. It was a long, rather jumbled story, Dick; only two facts stand
out of it. One was that the baby was never born; Joan was in some sort
of accident when she first went back to London; and the other thing was
that this girl wanted me to use my influence to persuade you that Joan
really loved you; that what had angered you that night was all a
mistake." She broke off short, and began again quickly. "I did not
promise, Dick; in fact I told the girl I would do nothing to interfere.
'If he can find his happiness anywhere else I shall be glad,' I said.
And that is what I felt. I don't try and excuse myself; I never wanted
you to marry her if you could forget her, and, Dick, I almost hoped you
had--I was not going to remind you."
"I see," said Dick. His pipe had gone out. He lit it again slowly and
methodically. "Mabel," he said suddenly, "if I can persuade Joan to
marry me before I go out, will you be nice to her as my wife?"
"You can't marry her, Dick," Mabel remonstrated, "there isn't time. But
if you will trust me again beyond this, I promise to be as nice to her
as you would like me to be."
"But I can, and what's more, I will," Dick answered. "I've
shilly-shallied long enough. If she'll have me, and it would serve me
jolly well right if she turned me down--it shall be a special licence at
a registry office on Saturday morning. My train doesn't leave till
two-thirty." He stood up very tall and straight. Mabel thought she had
never seen him look so glad to be alive. "And now," he added, "I am
going straight across to ask her. Wish me luck, Mabel."
She stood up, too, and put both her hands on his. "You aren't angry with
me?" she whispered. "Dick, from the bottom of my heart, I do wish you
luck, as you call it."
"Angry? Lord bless you, no!" he said, and suddenly he bent and kissed
her. "You've argued about it, Mabel, but then I always knew you would
argue. I trust you to be good to her after I'm gone; what more can I
say?"