Lois was present, in a corner, at that last parade at Fortune’s Farm
when the new rifles were given out. And, later on, with misty eyes
and that troublesome choking in the throat, she was watching the long
wavering gray line as it swung gallantly away with skirling pipes and
eager faces--en route for the front.
Then she turned to go quietly home to her mother and Uncle Tony, and to
wait God’s will in the matter.
She was to live at Oakdene as became Ray’s wife, but her time was to
be spent between the old home and the new, and her energies devoted to
cheering them both. For both were lonely now and clouded. Of all the
merry company that had filled them with such joyousness of youth, she
was the only one they could now count upon.
Victoria and Honor were out all day, slaving on Out-of-Work-Girls
and Belgian Refugee Committees, organising crowds of willing but
in many cases incompetent workers,--arranging accommodation and
hostels,--procuring houses, funds, and furniture, and getting them into
something like working order.
Noel was only in for supper, bed, and breakfast, and not always that.
The Colonel was carrying on a recruiting campaign with a patriotic
vehemence much in excess of his years and his bodily powers.
Miss Mitten meekly, and Mrs Dare boldly, did their utmost to keep his
exertions within reasonable limits. But to all their expostulations and
warnings his invariable reply was,--“We need every man we can get, and
since I can’t go out, I must do all I can at home. Better to wear out
than to rust out or go under to those damned barbarians.”
“But you’ll do no good by killing yourself,” Mrs Dare had remonstrated,
one morning when he looked in as usual in passing, and punctuated his
paragraphs with muffled sneezes.
“Oh--killing myself! It’s not got to that yet. (Att-i-cha!)
I’m enjoying it, I assure you, Mrs Mother. We got twenty fine
(Att-i-cha!)--boys at Greendale last night.”
“Well, do keep your hat on when you must speak outside, I beg of you.
The nights are getting cold and you’re not as young as you were, you
know.”
“It’s my one com--att-i-cha!--complaint. And it’s only the outer husk
that feels it. I’m really wonderfully young inside, you know. I tell
you, I was quite put out yesterday when a young fellow insisted on
giving me his seat in the train.”
“It was very nice of him.”
“Hmph! Well, no doubt it was,--att-i-cha!--But, hang it all, I don’t
look as decrepit as all that, do I? However, I got the better of him by
giving it to an old lady--a really old lady--a minute or two later. By
the way, Lois had a post-card from Ray this morning.”
“What does he say? Where have they got to?” she asked eagerly.
“Says nothing except that he’s well and very busy. No word as to where,
of course.”
“And no postmark?”
“Nothing. They’re behind the war-screen now. We shall know nothing
more,--unless through the despatches, maybe. Now we’ve got to live
on--att-i-cha!--on faith and hope,” he said meaningly.
“And keep our hats on when we speak outside,” she retaliated.
“That’s all right,” he laughed. “I’ll begin taking you and Auntie Mitt
with me, one on each side, to hold it down. I want to wave it all the
time nowadays, at thought of having those infernal Huns on the run
at last. More good news again to-day. Russia’s smashed Austria into
little bits in Galicia. Whurr--att-i-cha!--oo!”
“They were retiring somewhere yesterday.”
“In East Prussia. Quick advance there was by way of diversion no doubt,
and now they’ve done their work and are taking up safer positions.”
“When any part of our side retires it’s always a strategic retreat,”
smiled Mrs Dare. “But when the Germans retire it’s always a rout.”
“Well--so ’tis,” he laughed, and shook hands and sneezed himself away.
“You’d be very much the better of a couple of days in your bed,” was
her last piece of advice as he went down the path.
“When the war’s over. Did you ever manage to keep John in bed for a
couple of days?”
“Yes--once,--for about two weeks--when he had pneumonia.”
“Well I’ll stop in bed when I get pneumonia,” and he waved his hand
again and marched away.
At teatime, when Miss Mitten and Mrs Dare, and their respective
body-belt and jersey, were keeping one another company in friendly
silence in the Oakdene parlour, Lois having gone into town to complete
her outfit, the Colonel came in looking no more than a washed-out rag
of his usual cheerful self.
“I’ve decided to take your advice, Mrs Mother, and lie up for half a
day,” he said depressedly. “I ought to be at Northcote to-night, but
Penberthy has taken it on instead. He’s a good chap, Penberthy, but
unfortunately he can’t speak worth a button. However----”
“The sooner you’re in your bed the better,” said Mrs Dare. “You can’t
afford to neglect a cold such as that.”
“I always obey superior orders, don’t I, Auntie Mitt?”
“I’m sure you did, Sir Anthony,”--at which he chuckled, but less
heartily than usual.
“Just one cup of tea to cheer me up, and then, if you will be so good,
Auntie Mitt, a good big white-wine posset,--one of your very best, and
you’ll send me up a bit of dinner later. Nothing like one of Auntie
Mitt’s big white-wine possets for chasing a cold out of the system.
Talk about grateful and comforting!”
“I know them. Take my advice and put your feet in mustard and water as
well,” said Mrs Dare. “You’ve got a very bad cold on you.”
“I shouldn’t wonder if it’s a touch of influenza,” said Miss Mitten,
when she returned from compounding the posset. “They say there’s a good
deal of it about. I don’t know that a posset is the best thing for him.
He seems hot enough to me. But it’s no good arguing with him. He always
does just as he pleases.”
“I thought you agreed that he always obeyed superior orders,” smiled
Mrs Dare.
“And so he does, but they’re always his own. When he was in the army
I have no doubt he did all he was told and sometimes perhaps a bit
more. That’s how he won his V.C. But since he retired he’s been his own
master entirely.”
“If he seems feverish in the morning I should send for Dr Rhenius, if
I were you. He has been grievously overworking himself of late, and,
since he won’t take care himself, you must be careful for him.”
“Yes, I will,” said Auntie Mitt, with a very decided nod and pursed
lips. “He forgets his age sometimes.”
Next morning the Colonel was so limp and full of pains that he raised
no objection when Miss Mitten suggested the Doctor.
“A stitch in time sometimes saves nine,” quoth she.
“I’ve got ’em already,” grunted the patient.
“Then it’s a touch of pleurisy, I expect,” and she hastened to get
advice on the subject.
Dr Rhenius at once confirmed her speculative diagnosis.
“You’re my prisoner, Colonel, till I say the word, or I won’t answer
for consequences. You’ve been altogether overdoing it, you know.”
“King and Country need you,” grunted the Colonel in extenuation.
“Well, you’ll be more use to them alive than dead, and you’ve got to
knock off now, or you’ll knock out. Besides, they can spare you well
enough for a bit. They’re getting all the men they can handle, aren’t
they? In fact they don’t seem able to handle properly those they’ve
got, according to the papers.”
“Big job, you see, ... machinery hardly in order yet.... Took us
unawares, ... but we’re going to see it through.”
“What have you got up to now?”
“What Kitchener asked for.... Half a million or so.... We’ll need lots
more before we’ve done with it.... Get me right again as quick as you
can.... I’ll go crazy lying here.”
“If you follow my instructions, and keep still, and don’t talk so much,
I’ll get you right again. And when I do, just try and remember that you
can’t stand as much as you could when you were five-and-twenty.”
The Colonel grunted, since talking set the pain in his side stabbing
again. Dr Rhenius wrote out a prescription, gave Miss Mitten very
specific directions as to treatment, shook a warning finger at the
obstreperous one, and promised to call back in the evening.
“He’ll not be easy to manage,” he said to Miss Mitten, as he went
downstairs. “Shall I send you in a nurse?”
“Is it as bad as that?” asked Auntie Mitt, to whom an outside nurse
suggested extremity. “If you think it necessary, Doctor, we must have
one.”
“No need to be alarmed--as yet. But I know him, and he’ll be a handful.
And then there’s the night work, you see.”
“If you think it necessary then.”
But as he went down the path he met Mrs Dare coming up to enquire how
things were. And when he told her, she said at once, “Nurse? We don’t
need any outside nurse. We’ll manage him between us all right. Lois
will be a great assistance.”
“She’s home then? And Ray?”
“They’ve all gone,--to the front, we suppose;--the first Territorials
to go. They consider it a great honour. For myself ... it makes me sick
to think of it all.”
“Very well, then. The three of you ought to be able to manage him among
you. We will leave it so.”
“We’ll manage him all right. Tell us just what you want done and we’ll
do it. It will be good for us all and keep our minds off other things.”
No man could have had three more devoted and indefatigable nurses. They
spared themselves nothing and put up with the safety-valve growlings of
their patient like angels.
The Colonel had had so little illness in his life--apart from
wounds, which were quite a different matter--and felt so keenly his
country’s need for him to be up and doing, that he took his shelving
with anything but a good grace. Auntie Mitt and Lois alone would
never have been able to manage him. But to Mrs Dare he submitted--a
little grumpily, at times--but still submitted, and exploded all his
objurgations on things in general under cover of the bed-clothes.
He insisted on Lois reading all the latest news to him from the morning
and evening papers, and forbade her to say a word in her letters to Ray
about his illness. “No good worrying him,” he said. “He’ll have his
hands full out there without having me on his mind.”
But presently he developed pneumonia in addition to the pleurisy,
and the Doctor put a peremptory embargo on all war news, since it
invariably sent his temperature up. Absolute lack of news, however, had
just as bad an effect, and finally he was permitted to hear from day to
day that things were going well, and all the papers were kept for him
to read when he got better.
They made much of the fresh loyal offers of help from India, and of the
successful aeroplane raid on the Dusseldorf Zeppelin sheds, carefully
withheld any hint of the sinking of the Aboukir, Cressy, and Hogue, and
the impudent quarter-of-an-hour’s bombardment of Madras by the lively
Emden, and soothed him with assurances that France and Britain were
splendidly holding their own along the Aisne, that Russia was forging
ahead in Galicia, and that recruiting was quite up to expectations. In
fact they played motherly censor to him with the already over-heavily
censored news, and permitted nothing whatever of an upsetting nature to
reach him; and of course they overdid it,--just as the other censor did.
He grew suspicious of all this cotton-woolling, and at last insisted on
Lois holding the paper before him each morning so that he might scan
the head-lines. Then he indicated what he wanted read and there was no
getting out of it.
Dr Rhenius, appealed to, did his best to break him off it, but the
result was disastrous. The Colonel’s temperature went up a degree and a
half through suppressed indignation, and he had to be allowed his news.
“Not a da-asht infant,” he murmured. “Can stand it--good or bad. Must
know.”
But the fever sapped his strength to such an extent that at times he
lay so listless and apparently careless even of news that Auntie Mitt
grew apprehensive.
“I don’t like it,” she confined to Mrs Dare. “It’s so very unlike him.
I would really be thankful to hear him swear a little.”
“The fever has weakened him. Once the crisis is past he’ll begin to
pick up again, and then we’ll tell him you want to hear him swear
again.”
“It’s not really that I want to hear him swear, you understand, my
dear,” Auntie Mitt superfluously explained, “but that I wish he were
well enough to do so.”
“I know. I would like to hear him too.”
To keep the house quiet Victoria was stopping with Honor at The Red
House, which was quite to Noel and Gregor’s taste.
They were still doing heavy route-marching almost every day, and
on the off-days and Friday, which was pay-day, they mouched about
Head-Quarters or put in a bit of drill in Hyde Park.
The pay of three shillings a day--to cover travelling expenses and
daily rations--was to Gregor a negligible matter. But to Noel, who had
never earned a farthing in his life, it was uplifting. He was actually
keeping himself--in cigarettes and amusements,--and in conjunction with
Gregor even took the girls to a theatre now and again. It was a grand
thing not to be dependent on anyone for his pocket-money, and it made
him feel excessively manly.
He and Gregor--who, like a good chum, did his best to keep his purse to
the level of his friend’s--made many quaint discoveries in the matter
of restaurants where they got a cut off the joint and two vegetables
and bread, and choice of cheese or sweets, for the all-round sum of one
shilling.
Marching days, however, were lean days with them, when they were
dependent on the none-too-filling sandwiches and biscuits, and apples
and ginger-beer, of the travelling canteen. And those nights they
took home tremendous appetites and were unjovial till they had been
satisfied,--a task which they divided about equally between The Red
House and the White.
Mrs MacLean rejoiced whenever they went to her, and would have liked
them to come every night, and she was never caught short. The girls did
their best. But the boys’ movements were as a rule so unforeseeable,
and at all times subject to such unexpected alteration on the spur of
the moment, that providing for them was no easy matter.
Gregor, at all events, showed no sign of complaint, and doubtless the
presence of the girls more than made up for any little defects in the
commissariat. Noel expressed himself freely on the subject if occasion
offered.
“Wait till we go into camp,” grinned Gregor. “You’ll learn things, my
boy. Bully beef and hard potatoes, and mouldy cheese, and jam that’s
all the same whatever it calls itself!”
“Rotten! They might at all events feed us properly.”
“It’s a shame,” said Honor. “I should strike, or mutiny, or whatever’s
the proper thing to do in such a case.”
“Proper thing is to grin and bear it and buy some extra grub outside to
fill up with. If you kicked you’d be taken out and shot at dawn,” said
Gregor gravely.
“I don’t think soldiering’s as nice as I thought it was.”
“It’s not,--not all of it. But it’s got to be done since the Kaiser’s
said so.”
“The wretch! I wish he would die.”
“Not yet. He’ll suffer a lot more if he lives. At least I hope so.”
“He can never suffer as he deserves to,” said Vic. “I would have all
the pain and misery he has brought about visited on his own head, but
that’s not humanly possible.”
“He’ll suffer,” said Gregor weightily.
“If we lick him all to pieces, as we shall do,” said Noel, “he’ll
surrender to England and be given a palace to live in and a nice little
pension. We’re altogether too soft-hearted. When a man’s down we’re
always sorry for him, no matter what he’s done, and we sentimentalise
over him like a lot of silly schoolgirls.”
“That all you know?” said Honor.
“What about those kilts?” asked Vic.
“Next week, please the powers! Things are turning up by degrees. A lot
of sporrans and spats came in this afternoon. I saw them myself.”
“We’ll be getting clothed bit by bit,” said Gregor. “You’ll see us
swanking it in one spat and a sporran maybe. There’s no kilts come yet,
and as for tunics!--you see there’s more khaki wanted than they can
turn out, though the mills are working night and day, they say.”
“And pretty poor stuff it is, from all accounts,” said Noel. “You
should hear a song the fellows have about the rotten time they’re
taking to give us our uniforms. How does it go now? They roar it at
top of their voice whenever the Colonel comes along,--
‘There’s a matter here to which we call attention,
Concerning which we feel a trifle warm,--
The days are getting cold, and we’re slowly growing old,
And here we are without our uniform.’
“Chorus, Greg!”
‘Sunday we pray we soon may get ’em;
Monday, our spirits rise a bit;
Tuesday is the day they say they’re on the way, but not a bit of it!
Wednesday, we grow a shade mistrustful,
Thursday our hopes begin to fall;
On Friday we’re despairing,
On Saturday we’re swearing,
We’ll never get the--er--ruddy things--at all.’”
“Bravo!” cried the girls. “Encore!”
But just at that point Mr Dare came in, with a tired nod to them all,
and Noel’s high spirits seemed to lower at once by several degrees.
“How is the Colonel to-night?” Mr Dare asked Vic.
“He’s just about the same, Mr Dare. The stabbing pain has gone, they
say. But he’s very limp. Even good news of the war hardly bucks him up.
He seems to want just to lie quiet, and I’ve never in my life known him
do that before. It shows how pulled down he is.”
“It’s the crisis to-night, I think, and it’s going to be a wild
night,”--as the wind shook the windows as though trying to force its
way in. “A bad night for the trenches and a worse on the sea,” and he
subsided into the evening paper.
“Lois had another post-card from Ray this morning, father,” said Honor.
“That’s good. He’s all right so far then. Doesn’t say where, I suppose?”
“Gives no clue. Not allowed. Simply says he’s quite all right and
awfully busy.”
“Well, we must be thankful for that much. The losses all round are
terrible to think of. If it goes on much longer at this rate----” but
consideration for the boys cut his Cassandra ruminations short.
“Has the City any views as to how long it’ll last, sir?” asked Gregor.
“Any amount of views but no knowledge. Some are sure it’ll be all over
by Christmas----”
“Rotten! I jolly well hope not,” jerked Noel.
“--And some say it will last two years or even three.”
“There’ll be a lot of wastage if it goes on that long,” said Gregor.
“And all the countries would be bankrupt, I should say.”
“It’s too ghastly to think of. We’ll hope for better things,” and he
took to his papers again.