“If I were not a farmer, I would like to be a master mason,” said Ruth
Seer very firmly.
She was sitting by the roadside, watching the workmen lay the foundation
for her first cottage. The process interested her enormously. The master
mason at intervals paused in his work and instructed her as to its
purport. She was learning the use and meaning of the square, the level,
and the plumb-rule. She was also enjoying herself quite a lot.
Across her knees lay Bertram Aurelius. He guggled cheerfully in answer,
and bit her forefinger vigorously with such teeth as he possessed.
Bertram Aurelius had come into the world without benefit of clergy. His
father belonged to the B.E.F., his mother was a between-maid, and in the
ordinary course of events he should have gone to his own place. But
values had shifted considerably during the years of the Great War, and
in the year of Peace both male babies, even though unauthorized, and
between-maids, had come to be recognized as very distinctly valuable
assets.
Gladys Bone, Bertram Aurelius’s mother, aged eighteen, was pathetically
anxious to please, a trait which had probably assisted in her undoing,
and took the good advice meekly, except where Bertram Aurelius was
concerned. Here the good ladies, who had with great difficulty scraped
together the money to start a rescue home for unmarried mothers in
Fairbridge, reasoned with her in vain. She insisted on his certainly
somewhat startling combination of names and persisted in calling him by
both. She was perfectly unashamed of the fact that he had no authentic
father.
“Ain’t he beautiful?” seemed to appear to her quite a sufficient answer
to those who endeavoured to present the subject in its proper light.
And, worst of all, she absolutely refused to be separated from him.
The little grey-haired, pink-cheeked spinster, who practically settled
such matters, was in despair. In her inmost heart she sympathized with
Gladys, Bertram Aurelius being an infant of considerable charm. At the
same time she realized that it was almost impossible to find anyone mad
enough to engage a housemaid, or even a between-maid, with a baby thrown
in.
One day, however, when Bertram Aurelius had reached the adorable age of
ten months, the unexpected happened. Little Miss Luce travelled from
London in the same carriage with Ruth Seer, and getting into
conversation, told her the story of Gladys and Bertram Aurelius Bone. At
the moment Ruth was meditating the possibility of getting a girl to help
Miss McCox without permanently destroying the peace of Thorpe Farm.
Gladys Bone seemed the possibility. Never having lived, save for her
brief three months’ companionship, in a well-regulated family, the
accompanying baby did not strike her as an impossibility, but rather as
a solution.
Then and there on arriving at Fairbridge did Miss Luce carry her off to
see them both.
Bertram Aurelius had eyes the colour of a delphinium, a head of red
down, and a skin like strawberries and cream. He had little hands that
held you tight and pink toes which he curled and uncurled. He crowed at
Ruth and promptly put her finger in his mouth.
“Ain’t he beautiful?” said his small mother.
“She is really an excellent worker,” said little Miss Luce, when Gladys
and Bertram Aurelius had been dismissed. “And she will do anything for
anyone who is good to the baby. If you think you _could_ manage with
him, possibly——?”
She looked at Ruth anxiously.
Ruth laughed. “My dear lady,” she said, “I have just discovered that the
one thing wanted to make Thorpe perfect is a baby.”
“But you have other servants,” suggested Miss Luce. “I fear you may find
them a difficulty.”
Certainly Miss McCox’s attitude towards the situation was more than
doubtful, but Ruth had learnt that a distinctly soft kernel existed
somewhere under the hard shell of an unattractive personality. She
thought of Bertram Aurelius’s blue eyes and soft red head.
“I think you must send Gladys out to Thorpe to apply for the situation
_with_ Bertram Aurelius,” she said.
They looked at each other, and Miss Luce nodded comprehensively. “He is
a very attractive baby,” she murmured.
It was the next morning, while Ruth was revelling in the arrival of
delicious fluffy yellow things in her fifty-egg incubator, that Miss
McCox emerged from the house, evidently the bearer of news of
importance.
As always, she was spotlessly clean and almost unbearably neat, and her
clothes appeared to be uncomfortably tight. Her collar was fastened by a
huge amber brooch, her waist-belt by a still larger glittering metal
buckle, both presents from the young man to whom she had been engaged in
her distant youth, and who had died of what Miss McCox described as a
declining consumption. Out of the corner of Ruth’s eye she looked
distinctly uncompromising.
“There’s a young woman come to apply for the situation,” she announced.
“Does she seem likely to be any good?” asked Ruth, still busy with the
incubator.
“She’s got a baby,” said Miss McCox, who always came to the point. “And
she wants to keep it.”
“A baby?”
“A baby,” repeated Miss McCox firmly. “A baby as didn’t ought to have
come, but it’s there.”
“Oh!” said Ruth weakly. “Well, what do you think about it?”
Miss McCox fingered the amber brooch. This Ruth knew to be a distinct
sign of weakness.
“The young woman’s civil spoken, and I reckon there’s worse about _with_
their ring on,” she said darkly. “I’m willin’ to try her, if you are.”
Ruth hid a smile among the yellow chicks. The charm of Bertram Aurelius
had worked.
“But the baby?” she asked. “Can we possibly manage with the baby?”
“Why not?” returned Miss McCox sharply. “Babies aren’t much trouble, God
knows! It’s the grown-ups make _me_ sick!”
So Bertram Aurelius came to live at Thorpe, and was rapidly absorbed
into the life on the farm. He was a good and cheerful infant, and anyone
could take charge of him. He was equally contented, whether viewing the
world over Ruth’s shoulder while she inspected the farm, or in his
cradle in the corner of the kitchen listening to curious noises called
singing, which Miss McCox, to the amazement of the whole establishment,
produced for his benefit. He would lie among the hay in a manger, even
as the Babe of all time, while Ruth and the cowman milked, or on his
crawler on the terrace, guarded by Sarah and Selina, who took to him
much as if he had been one of those weird black and white puppies of
Sarah’s youthful indiscretion. And Gladys, his mother, worked cheerfully
and indefatigably to please, sitting at Miss McCox’s feet for
instructions, and the peace and comfort of Thorpe deepened and broadened
day by day.
It was now near mid-June, and the fine weather still held. Day after day
broke to unclouded sunshine, a world full of flowers and the rhythmic
life of growing things. The seeds and baby plants cried for rain, the
hay and fruit crops would suffer, but Ruth, her heart torn both ways,
could not regret. It was all so beautiful, and when the rain came, who
could tell? It might be all the real summer weather of the year, this
wonderful May and June.
To-day, little ever-so-soft white clouds broke the clear blue of the
sky, but there was still no sign of change. The wild roses and the broom
were in perfection, and everywhere was the honey and almond scent of
gorse; the buttercup glory was over but the ox-eyed daisies were all
out, turning their sweet moon faces to the sun.
From where she sat Ruth could see the rose-red roofs of Thorpe with the
white pigeons drowsing in the heat. Her cottages were to be equally
beautiful on a smaller scale. She dreamt, as she sat in the warmth and
the sweetness, with Bertram Aurelius cooing softly in her lap,
visualizing pictures such as were growing in the minds of many in the
great year of Peace, seeing beautiful homes where the strong man and the
mother, with sturdy round-limbed children, should live, where the big
sons and comely daughters should come in and out, in the peace of plenty
and to the sound of laughter. It might all be so wonderful, for the
wherewithal is ours, is here with us. The good brown earth, the sun and
the rain, fire and water, all the teeming life of nature, all ours to
mould into a life of beauty for ourselves and our children.
Dreams? Yes. But such dreams are the seeds of the beautiful, which
shall, if they find soil, blossom into beauty in the time to come, for
the little children lying on our knees, clutching at our hearts.
Presently there intruded into Ruth’s dreams the large presence of Mr.
Pithey, and she discovered him standing in the white dust of the road in
front of her. Disapproval and curiosity both appeared together in his
little sharp eyes. According to Mr. Pithey’s ideas it was distinctly
unseemly for a person in Ruth’s position to sit by the roadside “like a
common tramp,” as he expressed it to Mrs. Pithey later on. To his mind,
somehow, the baby in her lap accentuated the unseemliness, and it made
the thing worse that she was both hatless and gloveless. Had she been
properly dressed for the roads, the rest might have been an accident.
“I should think you’d get a sunstroke, sitting by the road like that
without your hat,” he said.
Mr. Pithey himself was expensively dressed in pale grey with a white
waistcoat and spats. On his head he wore a five-guinea panama, and his
general appearance forcibly reminded Ruth of an immaculately groomed
large, pale yellow pig. Her grey eyes smiled at him out of her
sun-browned face. She had a disarming smile.
“I believe I was nearly asleep,” she said, and dug her knuckles into her
eyes much as a child does.
Mr. Pithey softened. “What on earth are you sitting there for?” he
asked.
“Just dreaming. But you mustn’t think I’m an idler, Mr. Pithey. Even Pan
sleeps at this hour.”
Her smile deepened, and Mr. Pithey softened still more. He stepped out
of the dust into the grass, passing as he did so into a more friendly
attitude.
“Pan?—that’s a queer name for a baby!” he said.
The smile became just the softest thing in laughs. “Well, his proper
name is Bertram Aurelius. But Pan——” She held Bertram Aurelius up the
while he chuckled at her, striving to fit his hand into his mouth. “Look
at his blue eyes, and his little pointed ears, and his head of red down.
Really Pan suits him much better.”
“Um,” said Mr. Pithey. “Bertram is a good sensible name for a boy, like
my own, and not too common. Better stick to that. So you’ve started your
cottages. Well, you remember what I told you. Don’t you think they’re
going to pay, because they won’t.”
“Oh yes, they’ll pay,” said Ruth. “Why, of course they’ll pay!” There
was mischief in her eye.
“Now look here,” said Mr. Pithey heavily. “It’s no good talking to a
woman; it’s in at one ear and out of the other. But if you’ll walk up to
the house with me, I’ll put it down in black and white. The return
you’ll get for your money——”
“Oh, money!” interrupted Ruth. “I wasn’t thinking of money.”
Mr. Pithey heeled over, as it were, like a ship brought up when sailing
full before the wind.
“If it’s damned rotten sentiment you’re after,” he exclaimed, “well you
can take my word for it _that_ doesn’t pay either!”
Ruth looked up at him as he stood over her, a very wrathfully indignant
immaculate, pale yellow pig indeed. She thought of his millions, and the
power they wielded and then of the power they might wield if backed by
any imagination.
“Mr. Pithey,” she said, and her voice was very low, and it had in it the
sound of many waters which had gone over her soul, “I have seen our dead
men lie in rows, many hundreds, through the dark night, waiting till the
dawn for burial; they did not ask if it paid.”
Mr. Pithey shuffled with his big feet in the grass. “That’s different,”
he said, but his little sharp eyes fell. “I should have gone myself, but
my business was of national importance, as of course you know. Yes,
that’s different. That’s different.” He seemed to find satisfaction in
the words. He eyed Ruth again with equanimity. “Of course you ladies
don’t understand, but you can’t bring sentiment into business.”
He puffed himself out. Again the phrase pleased.
Ruth rose to her feet. Even to her broad charity he had become
oppressively obnoxious.
“How much did you offer me for Thorpe?” she asked suddenly.
Mr. Pithey’s eyes snapped. “Twenty-five per cent. on your money,” he
said, “or I might even go a bit higher as you’re a lady.”
Ruth tossed Bertram Aurelius over her shoulder, laughing.
“Do you know what has made Thorpe the gem it is?” she asked. “Why,
sentiment! Unless you have some to spend on it, it wouldn’t pay you to
buy.”
She nodded a farewell and left him with a strangled “damn” on his lips.
He yearned after Thorpe. As a pleasure farm for himself it left little
to be desired.
He expressed his feelings to Mrs. Pithey, who, coming along presently in
her Rolls-Royce, with the two elder children in their best clothes,
picked him out of the dust and took him home to tea.
“Why, it must have been her I passed just now!” she exclaimed. “There
now, if I didn’t think it was just a common woman, and never bowed!”
“A good thing too!” said Mr. Pithey majestically. And he said to Mrs.
Pithey all the things he would have said to Miss Seer if she had given
him a chance.
Undisturbed by the omission, Ruth went home across the flowered fields,
but Mr. Pithey himself oppressed her. It seemed grossly unfit, somehow,
that the life sacrifice of those dead boys should result in benefit,
material benefit at any rate, to the Pitheys of the world; it shocked
even one’s sense of decency.
But Bertram Aurelius’s head was very soft against her throat as he
dropped into sleep. The sun was very warm, the almond and honey scent of
gorse was very sweet. Presently she unruffled, and began to sing the
song which seemed to her to belong especially to Thorpe:
“When I have reached my journey’s end
And I am dead and free,
I pray that God will let me go
Along the flowered fields I know
That look towards the sea.”
So she came to the stile which led to the buttercup field, crimson and
white now with sorrel and ox-eyed daisies. And standing among the
flowers was a slim figure, the figure of a woman dressed all in white.
Ruth stopped on the stile to look. It was so beautiful in poise and
outline, it gave her that little delightful shock of joy which only
beauty gives. Backed by the blue sky, bathed in the broad afternoon
sunlight, it was worthy even of her flower fields. Very still the figure
stood, gazing across those fields that “looked towards the sea,” and
just as still, in a breathless pause, Ruth stood and watched and
wondered.
For gradually she became aware of a strange appearance as of fire
surrounding the slim figure. It was of oval shape, vivid scarlet in
colour, deepening at the base. Other colours there were in the oval, but
the fiery glow of the red drowned them into insignificance. Ruth shaded
her eyes with her disengaged hand, suspecting some illusion of light,
but the oval held its shape under the steady scrutiny, and with a little
gasp she realized that she was looking at that which the ordinary
physical sight does not reveal. Vague memories of things read in old
books out of Raphael Goltz’s library, descriptions of the coloured auric
egg which, invisible to the human eye, surrounds all living forms, raced
hurriedly through her mind, but she had read of them more with curiosity
than with any thought that they would ever come within the boundary of
her own consciousness. As she realized what the phenomenon was, a
growing shrinking from it, a sense of horror, a feeling that there was
something sinister, threatening, in the fiery implacable red of the
appearance, came over her like a wave. She was glad of Bertram
Aurelius’s warm little body against her own, and found she was fighting
a desire to turn back and retrace her steps. A desire so wholly absurd
on the face of it, that she shook herself together and resolutely moved
forward. As she did so, the white figure moved too, coming down the
slope of the field to meet her, and as it came the scarlet oval faded,
flickered, and, so far as Ruth was concerned, seemed to go out. The
ordinary everyday things of life came back with a curious dislocating
jerk, and she found herself looking into a very wonderful pair of
golden-brown eyes set in short, but oddly thick, black lashes, and a
light high voice spoke, a voice with sudden bell-like cadences in it, so
often heard in the voice of French women. It was as attractive as all
the rest of Violet Riversley’s physical equipment.
“Is it Miss Seer? May I introduce myself? I expect as Roger North’s
daughter will be simplest,” she said, holding out her hand “Father
dropped me here on his way to Fairbridge with Lady Condor. They are both
calling here later to see you and pick me up, also hoping for tea,
father told me to say. Your maid told me I should find you if I came
down this way. Do you mind that I have picked some of your moon daisies?
There are none fine as grow in this field.”
“No, no, of course not,” Ruth half stammered, realizing for the first
time that she carried a sheaf of daisies in the bend of her arm. Why,
everything would have been hers but for the chance of war. This was the
woman who was to have married Dick Carey. And somehow, all at once, Ruth
knew that this meeting was not the ordinary everyday occurrence such
meetings mostly are. It had a meaning, a purpose of its own. She felt a
sudden shrinking of some inner sense, even as she had just now felt a
physical shrinking. She wanted to back out of something, she knew not
what, just as she had had that ridiculous desire just now to turn round
and go the other way. And yet, standing staring at her in this stupid
dumb way, she did not dislike Violet Riversley; far from it. She was
distinctly attracted by her, and her beauty drew Ruth like a charm.
It seemed quite a long time before she heard her own voice saying,
“Please pick—take—anything you like.”
“Thanks ever so much,” said Mrs. Riversley. She had turned to walk up
the path. “I’m just like a child. I always want to pick flowers when I
see them, and they seem to grow here better than anywhere else I know.
Mr. Carey used to say he had squared the Flower Elementals.”
She spoke the name quite simply and casually, while Ruth was conscious
of a ridiculous feeling of shyness.
“I think it quite likely,” she answered. “Look at the wisteria.” They
had reached the ridge of the slope and could see where the flowered
fields merged into the garden proper. “All along the top of the wall,
against the blue. I have never seen any so wonderful.”
It was amazingly wonderful, but Mrs. Riversley looked at it without any
apparent pleasure.
“It is ever so good of you to let me come and invade you in this
informal way,” she said, with her little gracious social manner. “Father
said he was sure you would not mind. And you won’t let me interrupt you,
will you? You work on the farm yourself, don’t you? It is not just a
pretence of farming with you.”
“I was just going to milk,” said Ruth, smiling. “We are one hand short
to-day, so if you won’t mind my leaving you till teatime, and you will
just do exactly what you like, and pick anything you like——”
Then Violet Riversley did, for her, an unusual thing. She slipped her
hand into Ruth’s, as a shy, rather lonely child might have done. It was
one of the moments when she was irresistible.
“Let me come with you and watch,” she said. “And why do you carry that
big baby about? Is it a good work?”
“He’s the farm baby,” said Ruth, her eyes twinkling. “And we found him
under a gooseberry-bush.”
They had reached the terrace, and the pigeons, just awake from their
midday slumber on the sun-baked roof, came tumbling down, fluttering
round Ruth, searching the big pockets of her overall for corn, while
Bertram Aurelius vainly strove to catch a wing or tail.
Mrs. Riversley stood at a little distance. “My goodness, they are tame,”
she exclaimed, as the pretty chase for the hidden food went on. “Just as
tame as they were with——” She stopped and looked round her. “It is
extraordinary how little the place has changed—and it’s not pretending
either—it really is just the same here. The same old comfortable at-home
feeling. Did you know Mr. Carey by any chance? No, I suppose not. But
it’s funny—I have something the same feeling with you I always had with
him, and with no one else ever in the world. You rest me—you do me
good—you are something cool on a hot day. You know, father felt it too,
and he is not given to feelings. Do get rid of that great fat lump. Put
him back under his gooseberry-tree. Then we will go milking.” She
advanced on Bertram Aurelius threateningly. “Where _does_ he go?”
Ruth broke into laughter. “He will go in the manger on the hay, or
anywhere else that comes handy. Or—but wait a minute—here come the
dogs.”
Sarah and Selina were proceeding decorously up the path from the front
gate. To all appearances they had been taking a little gentle exercise.
There was an air of meekness, an engaging innocence, about them which,
to those who knew them, told its own tale. They had undoubtedly been up
to mischief.
“The dogs?” queried Mrs. Riversley.
“They will look after him,” explained Ruth.
She went into the house and brought out a small wooden cradle on
rockers. In this she arranged Bertram Aurelius, who took the change with
his usual philosophy, waved his bare pink legs with vigour, and strove
to catch the sunbeams flickering through the jasmine leaves. The little
dogs sat side by side, very alert and full of responsibility.
It was a picture full of charm, but Mrs. Riversley held herself aloof,
though she watched the swift neat movement of Ruth’s work-worn hands
with interest until she joined her.
Then she became for the next half-hour an entirely delightful companion,
talking gaily in her pretty cadenced voice, flitting here and there like
some white bird about the big fragrant cowshed, eager with the impulsive
eagerness of a child to show that she too knew how to milk. Dick had
taught her. She spoke of him frequently and without self-consciousness.
She told Ruth many things that interested her to know. And gradually the
curious shell of hardness, that apparent want of sympathy with all the
beautiful teeming life of the farm disappeared. She milked, to Ruth’s
astonishment, well and deftly. She understood much about chicken and
pigs. She held the down-soft yellow ducklings in her shapely hands, and
broke into open enthusiasm over the little white kid who ran with the
herd.
“I wonder,” she said, when the milking was over and Ruth suggested tea,
“I wonder if by any chance our ‘house on the wall’ is still there?”
“You mean where the kitchen garden wall is built out to meet the
beech-tree, and the branches are like three seats, the highest one in
the middle, and there are some shelves?”
“Yes—yes! and you can see all round and no one can see you. Dick built
it for us when we were children—Fred, and I, and the Condor boys. We
were always here. We played at keeping house up there, and Dick used to
tell us stories about all the animals—there was one about a mouse family
too—and about the Elementals. The Water Elementals, who took care of the
river, and who brought the rain, and the dew in the early summer
mornings; they were all like silver gossamer and white foam. And the
Earth Elementals, who looked after the flowers’ food; and the Elementals
of Fire.”
She stopped suddenly and shivered. They were crossing a corner of the
orchard on their way to the kitchen garden, and, to Ruth’s astonishment,
she looked round her with something like fear in her eyes.
“Did you feel it get colder, quite cold,” she said, “as we crossed the
footpath just there?”
“I believe it did, now you say so,” said Ruth. “You get those funny
bands of colder air sometimes. The ground dips too, under those
apple-trees.”
Violet shivered again. She looked at the apple trees and the odd look of
fear in her eyes deepened. “Has anyone ever spoken to you of a man
called von Schäde, a German, who used to stay here?” she asked.
“No,” said Ruth, and wondered.
“He asked me to marry him, just over there, under that biggest tree. It
was covered with blossom then, and there were white butterflies about.
Oh, he frightened me!” Her voice rose in a little cry. “He frightened
me. I hate to think of it even now. I felt as if he could make me do it,
whether I wanted to or no. He kissed me—like no one had ever kissed me
before—I could have killed him, I hated him so. But even then I was
afraid he might make me do it. I was afraid. I would not see him again
alone, and I never felt really safe till I was engaged to Dick, and even
then”—her voice dropped very low—“I was glad when Karl was killed. Do
you think it was very horrid of me? I couldn’t help it. Sometimes, even
now, I dream in the night that he has never died, that he has come back
and can make me do what he likes.” She shuddered. “I have to shake
myself quite wide awake before I know it is only a beastly dream. And I
haven’t Dick now any more.”
She looked back over her shoulder and shivered again.
“You are sure that cold feeling was just quite ordinary?”
“Why, yes,” said Ruth. “What should it be?”
“I don’t know. Let us get to the house on the wall.”
She hurried on, and her slender feet in white went up the rough steps as
one at home. She stood for a few moments and looked round, while the old
memories of what seemed like another life came thronging back. Then she
climbed up into the middle seat, and sat there, gathering herself
together as a child does when it is concentrating deeply. In the
flickering shadow of the leaves above and around, her face looked wan,
mysterious almost, her strange golden eyes curiously alive, yet gazing,
it seemed, into another world.
Her seat in the circle looked out across the great endless valley
stretching away to the west. Immediately below was the big hay field,
ready now for cutting. It fell in a gentle slope to the river, which,
diving under the roadway by the front gate, curved round the garden, and
broke out into a miniature pond at the bottom of the field, before it
vanished among the bracken where the territory of Thorpe ended and the
great beautiful forest of the Condor estate commenced. In the pond were
water-lilies, rose-coloured and white, and tall brown bulrushes, all in
their season of perfection. Most noticeable in the noble stretch of
landscape beyond was a clump of beech-trees on the ridge of the near
side of the valley, lifted up sheer against the height of the sky. They
had caught for many years the full blast of the winds coming up from the
north-east, and only the topmost branches survived, leaving their
straight exquisite trunks bare. To-day, standing high above the blue
distances, in the shimmering light and heat, they had about them more
than usual of majesty and mystery.
Violet Riversley sat very still. The myriads of summer leaves rustled
softly; here and there a bird sang. Presently she began to speak, even
as another bird might have begun to sing.
“And it takes a long time to get the water-lilies to grow, because they
won’t come anywhere until they are sure you really love them, not just
want them for show. It’s the same with the Madonna lilies. And they
never make mistakes. You’ve got really to love them. And the
water-lilies like bulrushes close at hand for a bodyguard, because the
water-lilies are of royal birth. The Water Elementals told Dick all
this. And so the lilies grew, and I loved the pink ones best, but he
loved the white. And the tops of the beech-trees with the long trunks
are where the Earth Elementals say their prayers; they choose trees like
that so that the Earth children cannot climb up and disturb them. If you
disturb them when they are saying their prayers they get cross, and then
the flowers come all wrong. Red roses with a green spike in their
hearts, and the lime flowers covered with black. And all that shimmery
heat is like it is in the desert, all like that and no green. Only here
and there water in a grove of palm-trees. And there is the wood where
the Winds live. They will all be at home to-day, resting.”
Ruth held her breath while she listened, and then the voice fell very
softly into silence. And quite suddenly there came a sudden shower of
big soft tears. They made blurred marks on the lustrous white skin, and
she looked at Ruth with dim wet eyes like a child who had been naughty.
Presently she got up and came and sat down on the top of the wall facing
the garden.
“Come and sit here too,” she said, patting the bricks beside her. “It’s
quite comfy if you put your heels back into the steps. There’s just room
for two. We used to watch for Dick coming home from here—I and Fred and
the eldest Condor boy. He was killed at Messines—and little Teddy
Rawson, the Vicar’s son—he was afraid of almost everything—mice and
ferrets—just like a girl—and he died a hero’s death at Gallipoli. And
Sybil Rawson—she went as a nurse to Salonica, and was torpedoed coming
home, and drowned. Only Fred and I left, and the two youngest Condors.”
Again she fell on silence, and again Ruth held her breath. She feared
that any word of hers might break the spell of this return to the past
days which were like another life.
“The flowers grow for you too. They are just as wonderful as ever,” Mrs.
Riversley went on again, after a little while. “And you have got a blue
border. Delphinium, anchusa, love-in-the-mist, and the nemophila—all of
them. I wonder how you came to think of that?”
“There were some of the plants still left, and I—somehow I think I
guessed.”
“And the birds? Are they still as tame?”
“They were shy at first, but they are beginning to come back.”
“The robins used to fly in and out of the house. And even the swallow
and kingfishers used to come quite close to Dick. If I was with him I
had to be quite still for a long time before they would come.”
Ruth’s face lighted with a sudden thought. “The kingfishers?” she said.
“They are the shyest of all birds. I suppose we humans have always tried
to catch and kill them for their plumage. Dick hated that sort of
thing.” Her face grew hard and the strange fire burnt up again in her
eyes. “And then he was shot down himself—shot down as we shoot any bird
or beast.”
She stopped suddenly, the words choked back in her throat, as the Condor
car came over the bridge and pulled up at the gate.
Then she slipped down from the wall and stood looking up at Ruth. “Thank
you for letting me go round with you—and talk. It’s been good.” She
pushed up the heavy wave of hair from her forehead under her
wide-brimmed hat. “It’s taken me back for a little, to what life used to
be, from what I am to what I was. And now let us go and pick up all the
things Lady Condor will drop.”
Lady Condor’s cheerful chatter was already with them.
“Now have I got everything? Yes—no—where is my handkerchief? Did I put
it into the pocket? The parcels can all stay. No one will touch them.
Oh, there it is! Thank you, Roger.”
She began to ascend the path, shedding a blue chiffon scarf, which North
retrieved as he followed her.
“Oh, there you are, Violet! And this is Seer? An unpardonably late call,
but I have been taking the chair at a meeting to discuss the Women’s
Victory Memorial. We discussed for hours—the weirdest ideas! And the
heat! At the Town Hall? Yes. Why are town halls and hospitals always
hideous? There can’t be any necessity for it. Tea indoors, out of the
sun? How nice! I never do like tea out-of-doors myself really, though
sometimes I pretend to. And the dear old room—almost just like it used
to be. I am glad, though it makes me want to cry. Yes. But where was I?
Oh yes, the weirdest ideas. Even a crematorium was suggested. No, I am
not inventing, dear Violet. The good lady had lost her husband and was
obliged to take him all the way to Woking. Most trying, of course! I was
really sorry for her. But seemed so odd for a Victory Memorial. So we
settled on a maternity home, a quite excellent idea. Trenching on the
improper, of course. It brought the fact of babies coming into the world
into such a very concrete form as it were. But so necessary just now—and
that they should have every chance. So even the dear ladies who attend
St. Christopher’s Church agreed. We parted in the utmost harmony. So
pleasant—and so unusual!”
“And have you settled on a War Memorial?” asked North, rescuing her
handkerchief from Selina’s clutches.
“Not yet! And I see no prospect—we are still talking. We _shall_ until
some adventurous spirit among us says, ‘Well, something must be _done_.’
Then we shall go the way of least resistance—always so safe and so
unoriginal. Another of those delightful sandwiches, please. Your own
Devonshire cream, of course. Why can’t my cook make Devonshire cream?
But where was I? Oh yes—the War Memorial. Then we shall erect an
artistically offensive monument. Who invented that word, I wonder. And
did the word come from the monstrosity, or after? But it is so
descriptive of what it is. Yes. And what is your idea of a good
memorial, Miss Seer?”
“I have only one idea at present,” said Ruth, smiling. “And that is
cottages.”
“Quite a good one too,” said North. “Why hasn’t anyone thought of it?”
“Much too obvious, my dear,” exclaimed Lady Condor. “The people are
shrieking to be housed, so we shall build them a library—yes.”
“And the Pithians will build themselves winter gardens and
billiard-rooms and marble swimming-baths,” said Mrs. Riversley.
“Pithians!” exclaimed Lady Condor. “Who was it thanked someone else for
a word! Thank you, dear Violet. Did I invent it myself the other day?
How clever of me! Pithians—yes. Democracy will kill privilege as it did
in France, but the Pithians arise on our ashes—or should it be Phœnix? I
am getting dreadfully muddled—it comes from talking too much. Roger, why
don’t you talk, instead of letting me monopolize Miss Seer and all the
conversation?”
“My dear lady, the Pithian glory is but for a moment. We are all
converging to the same heap of ashes with amazing velocity, and what
will arise from those ashes you must ask a wiser man than I.”
“You think seriously of the outlook?” asked Ruth.
North helped himself to more bread-and-butter. “I don’t think,” he said.
“It won’t bear thinking of—when you can do nothing.”
Then Lady Condor, for once, put a straight question without
continuation.
“What do you think of things?” she asked, looking at Ruth.
The silence grew, in some odd way, tense, while they all waited for the
answer. It surprised North to find that he was waiting for it with
something which distinctly approached interest.
Ruth Seer’s face looked troubled for a moment, and the colour came
sweeping into it like a flood, and left her very white. When she spoke
she felt as if the words came, dragged with difficulty, from some
unknown consciousness. And though the words she spoke, undoubtedly she
felt to be true, were a testimony of her own faith, yet she had only
that moment known the truth she was stating.
“I believe,” she said slowly, haltingly, but with a strange intensity of
conviction, “I believe we are not alone. Things are in the hands of the
men who have given their lives so that things should be
different—better. Their influence is here—all about us. They, with added
knowledge—guide—through our darkness. It is their great reward.”
There was another silence, and Ruth flushed again painfully, under the
scrutiny of three pairs of eyes. “Where did you get that idea from?”
asked Lady Condor.
“I don’t know,” she answered, then amended her statement. “At least, I
am not sure. But I believe it is true.”
“I like it,” announced her Ladyship. “I like it enormously—yes—quite
enormously. My poor dear Hartley! He was so keen on everything, so
interested in _this_ old world. He didn’t want rest in heaven—at
twenty-four. No—is it likely? And _les choses ne vont pas si vite_. It
isn’t in the nature of things they should. Nature hasn’t great big gaps
like that with no sense in them. I don’t know, my dear, if _I’m_ talking
sense, but I know what I mean, and I’m sure it’s right. Yes—I like your
idea.”
“But that does not make it true. Some people can believe anything they
want to. I can’t.” Mrs. Riversley moved impatiently from her seat. “All
we know is, they are gone, so far as we are concerned; we cannot see or
touch or hold them any more. Why do you discuss and imagine? They are
gone.”
Lady Condor shrank together at the words. The wonderful vitality which
enabled her to defy age and satiety failed for the moment. She looked
old and piteous.
“Yes,” she said, “they are gone.” She looked at North. “And you can tell
us nothing—with all your learning—with all your discoveries. And the
parsons talk of faith and hope. Yes. But we have lost our first-borns.”
North did not answer. He gathered her various belongings and put them in
her lap. “There are one or two things I have to do to the car,” he said.
The door opened on to a clamour of dogs. Sarah and Selina, shrill with
welcome, barked in chorus around Larry, who appeared to have just
arrived. “Now what the devil——” muttered North to himself, while Larry
smote him with a feathered paw, and begged with wistful eyes for pardon.
Ruth sat very late out on her terrace that night. The heavens were dark,
but full of stars. Their radiance filled all space. Who and what was it
had spoken those words this afternoon, for neither the thought nor the
words had been her own? She believed it was a true thought; something
deeper than brain or understanding knew it was true. And Ruth Seer sat
and prayed. Was she on the threshold of that Open Doorway, which in all
ages men have sought and sought in vain? Had she somehow stumbled on
something vast and beyond all measure valuable? She knew how valuable,
she had seen the dead men lie in thousands waiting burial, and heard
with her soul the tears of their women. Gone, as Violet Riversley said,
out of sight, or touch, or sound. And yet surely a communion deeper and
fuller than sight, or touch, or hold, had sprung up, was growing,
between herself and one of those dead men. A man unknown to her on this
physical plane. That was the crowning wonder of this wonderful thing
which was happening. How had it come about? What did it mean? And it was
no thing apart from this earthly life, from the little daily round. It
was no other world.
The night deepened. A magic of starlight lay on the farm, on the dull
silver of the stream, over the violet distances. The little farm she
loved, with all its sleeping creatures, belonged to the wonderful whole,
the great space, the immensity of light, the glory and the mystery.
The beauty of it all was like a draught of wine, was like a silver
sword, was like a harp of gold.
And suddenly a nightingale began to sing. A small brown-feathered thing
with that wonder of sound in its tiny throat. And then it came.
Faith—Hope—they cannot pass the open door—only Love. And love not of one
to another, however deep, however true, but love of the universal whole,
that love which she and Dick Carey had in common, focused as it were on
Thorpe. That was the password, that the key, that the communion between
the living and the dead which she had found.
And Larry, lying at her feet, for North had let him stay, waved a
slow-moving tail, and dreamed, content.
Up above, on the hill, the lights of the great Pithian mansion, with all
it symbolized, went out one by one, and Ruth, who loved her England, was
not afraid.
A deep sense of great responsibility remained. If that which she had
sensed was really so, and she had neither then nor at any later time any
doubt of it, what had They, with their wider knowledge, the great
advance in evolution which they who had made the supreme gift of all
they had on this physical plane must surely have attained, what had They
to build the new order with save those who were left? Living stones for
the Great New Temple never made with hands.
The glory of it touched Ruth as with a sudden blaze of light. The
thought was like a bugle call. To work with for them still. She had only
herself to offer. One small stone to shape for use, to make as perfect
as might be. She offered it under the starlit heavens with all her
heart. Life took on a new and more beautiful meaning, any work of
service a deeper, fuller joy. It was still for, and with, Them.