1
War. The incredible yet long predicted had come to pass. People woke in
the mornings with a sense of disaster, but these were the old who,
having known war, remembered. The young men of France, of Germany, of
Russia, of the whole world, looked round them amazed and bewildered; yet
with something that stung as it leapt in their veins, filling them with
a strange excitement—the bitter and ruthless potion of war that spurred
and lashed at their manhood.
They hurried through the streets of Paris, these young men; they
collected in bars and cafés; they stood gaping at the ominous government
placards summoning their youth and strength to the colours.
They talked fast, very fast, they gesticulated: ‘C’est la guerre! C’est
la guerre!’ they kept repeating.
Then they answered each other: ‘Oui, c’est la guerre.’
And true to her traditions the beautiful city sought to hide stark
ugliness under beauty, and she decked herself as though for a wedding;
her flags streamed out on the breeze in their thousands. With the
paraphernalia and pageantry of glory she sought to disguise the true
meaning of war.
But where children had been playing a few days before, troops were now
encamped along the Champs Elysées. Their horses nibbled the bark from
the trees and pawed at the earth, making little hollows; they neighed to
each other in the watches of the night, as though in some fearful
anticipation. In bystreets the unreasoning spirit of war broke loose in
angry and futile actions; shops were raided because of their German
names and their wares hurled out to lie in the gutters. Around every
street corner some imaginary spy must be lurking, until people tilted at
shadows.
‘C’est la guerre,’ murmured women, thinking of their sons.
Then they answered each other: ‘Oui, c’est la guerre.’
Pierre said to Stephen: ‘They will not take me because of my heart!’ And
his voice shook with anger, and the anger brought tears which actually
splashed the jaunty stripes of his livery waistcoat.
Pauline said: ‘I gave my father to the sea and my eldest brother. I have
still two young brothers, they alone are left and I give them to France.
Bon Dieu! It is terrible being a woman, one gives all!’ But Stephen knew
from her voice that Pauline felt proud of being a woman.
Adèle said: ‘Jean is certain to get promotion, he says so, he will not
long remain a Poilu. When he comes back he may be a captain—that will
be fine, I shall marry a captain! War, he says, is better than
piano-tuning, though I tell him he has a fine ear for music. But
Mademoiselle should just see him now in his uniform! We all think he
looks splendid.’
Puddle said: ‘Of course England was bound to come in, and thank God we
didn’t take too long about it!’
Stephen said: ‘All the young men from Morton will go—every decent man
in the country will go.’ Then she put away her unfinished novel and sat
staring dumbly at Puddle.
2
England, the land of bountiful pastures, of peace, of mothering hills,
of home. England was fighting for her right to existence. Face to face
with dreadful reality at last, England was pouring her men into battle,
her army was even now marching across France. Tramp, tramp; tramp,
tramp; the tread of England whose men would defend her right to
existence.
Anna wrote from Morton. She wrote to Puddle, but now Stephen took those
letters and read them. The agent had enlisted and so had the bailiff.
Old Mr. Percival, agent in Sir Philip’s lifetime, had come back to help
with Morton. Jim the groom, who had stayed on under the coachman after
Raftery’s death, was now talking of going; he wanted to get into the
cavalry, of course, and Anna was using her influence for him. Six of the
gardeners had joined up already, but Hopkins was past the prescribed age
limit; he must do his small bit by looking after his grape vines—the
grapes would be sent to the wounded in London. There were now no
men-servants left in the house, and the home farm was short of a couple
of hands. Anna wrote that she was proud of her people, and intended to
pay those who had enlisted half wages. They would fight for England, but
she could not help feeling that in a way they would be fighting for
Morton. She had offered Morton to the Red Cross at once, and they had
promised to send her convalescent cases. It was rather isolated for a
hospital, it seemed, but would be just the place for convalescents. The
Vicar was going as an army chaplain; Violet’s husband, Alec, had joined
the Flying Corps; Roger Antrim was somewhere in France already; Colonel
Antrim had a job at the barracks in Worcester.
Came an angry scrawl from Jonathan Brockett, who had rushed back to
England post-haste from the States: ‘Did you ever know anything quite so
_stupid_ as this war? It’s upset my apple-cart completely—can’t write
jingo plays about St. George and the dragon, and I’m sick to death of
“Business as usual!” Ain’t going to be no business, my dear, except
killing, and blood always makes me feel faint.’ Then the postscript:
‘I’ve just been and gone and done it! Please send me tuck-boxes when I’m
sitting in a trench; I like caramel creams and of course mixed
biscuits.’ Yes, even Jonathan Brockett would go—it was fine in a way
that he should have enlisted.
Morton was pouring out its young men, who in their turn might pour out
their life-blood for Morton. The agent, the bailiff, in training
already. Jim the groom, inarticulate, rather stupid, but wanting to join
the cavalry—Jim who had been at Morton since boyhood. The gardeners,
kindly men smelling of soil, men of peace with a peaceful occupation;
six of these gardeners had gone already, together with a couple of lads
from the home farm. There were no men servants left in the house. It
seemed that the old traditions still held, the traditions of England,
the traditions of Morton.
The Vicar would soon play a sterner game than cricket, while Alec must
put away his law books and take unto himself a pair of wings—funny to
associate wings with Alec. Colonel Antrim had hastily got into khaki and
was cursing and swearing, no doubt, at the barracks. And Roger—Roger
was somewhere in France already, justifying his manhood. Roger Antrim,
who had been so intolerably proud of that manhood—well, now he would
get a chance to prove it!
But Jonathan Brockett, with the soft white hands, and the foolish
gestures, and the high little laugh—even he could justify his
existence, for they had not refused him when he went to enlist. Stephen
had never thought to feel envious of a man like Jonathan Brockett.
She sat smoking, with his letter spread out before her on the desk, his
absurd yet courageous letter, and somehow it humbled her pride to the
dust, for she could not so justify her existence. Every instinct handed
down by the men of her race, every decent instinct of courage, now rose
to mock her so that all that was male in her make-up seemed to grow more
aggressive, aggressive perhaps as never before, because of this new
frustration. She felt appalled at the realization of her own
grotesqueness; she was nothing but a freak abandoned on a kind of
no-man’s-land at this moment of splendid national endeavour. England was
calling her men into battle, her women to the bedsides of the wounded
and dying, and between these two chivalrous, surging forces she,
Stephen, might well be crushed out of existence—of less use to her
country, she was, than Brockett. She stared at her bony masculine hands,
they had never been skilful when it came to illness; strong they might
be, but rather inept; not hands wherewith to succour the wounded. No,
assuredly her job, if job she could find, would not lie at the bedsides
of the wounded. And yet, good God, one must do something!
Going to the door she called in the servants: ‘I’m leaving for England
in a few days,’ she told them, ‘and while I’m away you’ll take care of
this house. I have absolute confidence in you.’
Pierre said: ‘All things shall be done as you would wish, Mademoiselle.’
And she knew that it would be so.
That evening she told Puddle of her decision, and Puddle’s face
brightened: ‘I’m so glad, my dear, when war comes one ought to stand by
one’s country.’
‘I’m afraid they won’t want my sort . . .’ Stephen muttered.
Puddle put a firm little hand over hers: ‘I wouldn’t be too sure of
that, this war may give your sort of woman her chance. I think you may
find that they’ll need you, Stephen.’
3
There were no farewells to be said in Paris except those to Buisson and
Mademoiselle Duphot.
Mademoiselle Duphot shed a few tears: ‘I find you only to lose you,
Stévenne. Ah, but how many friends will be parted, perhaps for ever, by
this terrible war—and yet what else could we do? We are blameless!’
In Berlin people were also saying: ‘What else could we do? We are
blameless!’
Julie’s hand lingered on Stephen’s arm: ‘You feel so strong,’ she said,
sighing a little, ‘it is good to be strong and courageous these days,
and to have one’s eyes—alas, I am quite useless.’
‘No one is useless who can pray, my sister,’ reproved Mademoiselle
almost sternly.
And indeed there were many who thought as she did, the churches were
crowded all over France. A great wave of piety swept through Paris,
filling the dark confessional boxes, so that the priests had now some
ado to cope with such shoals of penitent people—the more so as every
priest fit to fight had been summoned to join the army. Up at Montmartre
the church of the Sacré Cœur echoed and re-echoed with the prayers of
the faithful, while those prayers that were whispered with tears in
secret, hung like invisible clouds round its altars.
‘Save us, most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Have pity upon us, have pity upon
France. Save us, oh, Heart of Jesus!’
So all day long must the priests sit and hear the time-honoured sins of
body and spirit; a monotonous hearing because of its sameness, since
nothing is really new under the sun, least of all our manner of sinning.
Men who had not been to Mass for years, now began to remember their
first Communion; thus it was that many a hardy blasphemer, grown
suddenly tongue-tied and rather sheepish, clumped up to the altar in his
new army boots, having made an embarrassed confession.
Young clericals changed into uniform and marched side by side with the
roughest Poilus, to share in their hardships, their hopes, their
terrors, their deeds of supremest valour. Old men bowed their heads and
gave of the strength which no longer animated their bodies, gave of that
strength through the bodies of their sons who would charge into battle
shouting and singing. Women of all ages knelt down and prayed, since
prayer has long been the refuge of women. ‘No one is useless who can
pray, my sister.’ The women of France had spoken through the lips of the
humble Mademoiselle Duphot.
Stephen and Puddle said good-bye to the sisters, then went on to
Buisson’s Academy of Fencing, where they found him engaged upon greasing
his foils.
He looked up, ‘Ah, it’s you. I must go on greasing. God knows when I
shall use these again, to-morrow I join my regiment.’ But he wiped his
hands on a stained overall and sat down, after clearing a chair for
Puddle. ‘An ungentlemanly war it will be,’ he grumbled. ‘Will I lead my
men with a sword? Ah, but no! I will lead my men with a dirty revolver
in my hand. Parbleu! Such is modern warfare! A machine could do the
whole cursèd thing better—we shall all be nothing but machines in this
war. However, I pray that we may kill many Germans.’
Stephen lit a cigarette while the master glared, he was evidently in a
very vile temper: ‘Go on, go on, smoke your heart to the devil, then
come here and ask me to teach you fencing! You smoke in lighting one
from the other, you remind me of your horrible Birmingham chimneys—but
of course a woman exaggerates always,’ he concluded, with an evident
wish to annoy her.
Then he made a few really enlightening remarks about Germans in general,
their appearance, their morals, above all their personal habits—which
remarks were more seemly in French than they would be in English. For,
like Valérie Seymour, this man was filled with a loathing for the
ugliness of his epoch, an ugliness to which he felt the Germans were
just now doing their best to contribute. Buisson’s heart was not buried
in Mitylene, but rather in the glories of a bygone Paris, where a
gentleman lived by the skill of his rapier and the graceful courage that
lay behind it.
‘In the old days we killed very beautifully,’ sighed Buisson, ‘now we
merely slaughter or else do not kill at all, no matter how gross the
insult.’
However, when they got up to go, he relented: ‘War is surely a very
necessary evil, it thins down the imbecile populations who have murdered
their most efficacious microbes. People will not die, very well, here
comes war to mow them down in their tens of thousands. At least for
those of us who survive, there will be more breathing space, thanks to
the Germans—perhaps they too are a necessary evil.’
Arrived at the door Stephen turned to look back. Buisson was once more
greasing his foils, and his fingers moved slowly yet with great
precision—he might almost have been a beauty doctor engaged upon
massaging ladies’ faces.
Preparations for departure did not take very long, and in less than a
week’s time Stephen and Puddle had shaken hands with their Breton
servants, and were driving at top speed en route for Havre, from whence
they would cross to England.
4
Puddle’s prophecy proved to have been correct, work was very soon
forthcoming for Stephen. She joined The London Ambulance Column, which
was well under way by that autumn; and presently Puddle herself got a
job in one of the Government departments. She and Stephen had taken a
small service flat in Victoria, and here they would meet when released
from their hours of duty. But Stephen was obsessed by her one idea,
which was, willy-nilly, to get out to the front, and many and varied
were the plans and discussions that were listened to by the sympathetic
Puddle. An ambulance had managed to slip over to Belgium for a while and
had done some very fine service. Stephen had hit on a similar idea, but
in her case the influence required had been lacking. In vain did she
offer to form a Unit at her own expense; the reply was polite but always
the same, a monotonous reply: England did not send women to the front
line trenches. She disliked the idea of joining the throng who tormented
the patient passport officials with demands to be sent out to France at
once, on no matter how insufficient a pretext. What was the use of her
going to France unless she could find there the work that she wanted?
She preferred to stick to her job in England.
And now quite often while she waited at the stations for the wounded,
she would see unmistakable figures—unmistakable to her they would be at
first sight, she would single them out of the crowd as by instinct. For
as though gaining courage from the terror that is war, many a one who
was even as Stephen, had crept out of her hole and come into the
daylight, come into the daylight and faced her country: ‘Well, here I
am, will you take me or leave me?’ And England had taken her, asking no
questions—she was strong and efficient, she could fill a man’s place,
she could organize too, given scope for her talent. England had said:
‘Thank you very much. You’re just what we happen to want . . . at the
moment.’
So, side by side with more fortunate women, worked Miss Smith who had
been breeding dogs in the country; or Miss Oliphant who had been
breeding nothing since birth but a litter of hefty complexes; or Miss
Tring who had lived with a very dear friend in the humbler purlieus of
Chelsea. One great weakness they all had, it must be admitted, and this
was for uniforms—yet why not? The good workman is worthy of his Sam
Browne belt. And then too, their nerves were not at all weak, their
pulses beat placidly through the worst air raids, for bombs do not
trouble the nerves of the invert, but rather that terrible silent
bombardment from the batteries of God’s good people.
Yet now even really nice women with hairpins often found their less
orthodox sisters quite useful. It would be: ‘Miss Smith, do just start
up my motor—the engine’s so cold I can’t get the thing going;’ or:
‘Miss Oliphant, do glance through these accounts, I’ve got such a rotten
bad head for figures;’ or: ‘Miss Tring, may I borrow your British Warm?
The office is simply arctic this morning!’
Not that those purely feminine women were less worthy of praise, perhaps
they were more so, giving as they did of their best without stint—for
they had no stigma to live down in the war, no need to defend their
right to respect. They rallied to the call of their country superbly,
and may it not be forgotten by England. But the others—since they too
gave of their best, may they also not be forgotten. They might look a
bit odd, indeed some of them did, and yet in the streets they were
seldom stared at, though they strode a little, perhaps from shyness, or
perhaps from a slightly self-conscious desire to show off, which is
often the same thing as shyness. They were part of the universal
convulsion and were being accepted as such, on their merits. And
although their Sam Browne belts remained swordless, their hats and their
caps without regimental badges, a battalion was formed in those terrible
years that would never again be completely disbanded. War and death had
given them a right to life, and life tasted sweet, very sweet to their
palates. Later on would come bitterness, disillusion, but never again
would such women submit to being driven back to their holes and corners.
They had found themselves—thus the whirligig of war brings in its
abrupt revenges.
5
Time passed; the first year of hostilities became the second while
Stephen still hoped, though no nearer to her ambition. Try as she might
she could not get to the front; no work at the actual front seemed to be
forthcoming for women.
Brockett wrote wonderfully cheerful letters. In every letter was a neat
little list telling Stephen what he wished her to send him; but the
sweets he loved were getting quite scarce, they were no longer always so
easy to come by. And now he was asking for Houbigant soap to be included
in his tuck-box.
‘Don’t let it get near the coffee fondants or it may make them taste
like it smells,’ he cautioned, ‘and do try to send me two bottles of
hair-wash, “Eau Athénienne,” I used to buy it at Truefitt’s.’ He was on
a perfectly damnable front, they had sent him to Mesopotamia.
Violet Peacock, who was now a V.A.D. with a very imposing Red Cross on
her apron, occasionally managed to catch Stephen at home, and then would
come reams of tiresome gossip. Sometimes she would bring her over-fed
children along, she was stuffing them up like capons. By fair means or
foul Violet always managed to obtain illicit cream for her nursery—she
was one of those mothers who reacted to the war by wishing to kill off
the useless aged.
‘What’s the good of them? Eating up the food of the nation!’ she would
say, ‘I’m going all out on the young, they’ll be needed to breed from.’
She was very extreme, her perspective had been upset by the air raids.
Raids frightened her as did the thought of starvation, and when
frightened she was apt to grow rather sadistic, so that now she would
want to rush off and inspect every ruin left by the German marauders.
She had also been the first to applaud the dreadful descent of a burning
Zeppelin.
She bored Stephen intensely with her ceaseless prattle about Alec, who
was one of London’s defenders, about Roger, who had got the Military
Cross and was just on the eve of becoming a major, about the wounded
whose faces she sponged every morning, and who seemed so pathetically
grateful.
From Morton came occasional letters for Puddle; they were more in the
nature of reports now these letters. Anna had such and such a number of
cases; the gardeners had been replaced by young women; Mr. Percival was
proving very devoted, he and Anna were holding the estate well together;
Williams had been seriously ill with pneumonia. Then a long list of
humble names from the farms, from among Anna’s staff or from cottage
homesteads, together with those from such houses as Morton—for the rich
and the poor were in death united. Stephen would read that long list of
names, so many of which she had known since her childhood, and would
realize that the stark arm of war had struck deep at the quiet heart of
the Midlands.
BOOK FOUR