AN OLD FRIEND
I HAVE had a great surprise.
Last Saturday I went over to Aunt Grisel's. And when I got there, she
asked me to arrange some flowers for her wounded soldiers.
I had seen none of them, for they had been kept very quiet. Miss
Fawcett was generally with them.
I love arranging flowers, especially when one is allowed to pick what
one chooses from the greenhouses. And when I had filled all the vases,
Aunt Grisel asked me to come with her and place them in the rooms.
I felt a little bit shy. And as we were going upstairs, she told me
about them. One had been wounded in the head, and, though it wasn't a
very dangerous wound, it had left him partly paralysed all down one
side; another was deaf and dumb from shock, one was suffering from gas
poisoning, and the two others were suffering from nerves. It all seemed
dreadfully sad. The first one we saw was the one who had been poisoned
by gas. He was lying in bed breathing rather heavily. Aunt Grisel spoke
very brightly to him.
"I have brought you some flowers which my little goddaughter here has
arranged. Put them on that table, Grisel!"
In an instant, a smooth dark head raised itself from the pillow.
And, to my amazement and delight, I saw that it was actually Gervas
Carrington!
He smiled all over his face when he saw me.
"I thought there weren't many Grisels in the world," he said, in a weak
husky voice.
"Oh, Gervas," I said, going over to his bed, "how delightful to see
you! And yet I'm sorry too! Are you very ill! Too ill for me to talk
to you? Aunt Grisel, Gervas is a very old friend of ours. He lives in
Lincolnshire."
"Or did," put in Gervas. "My mother is with my father in India now, so
I have no home. Otherwise, I might not be here."
"Don't make him talk too much, child, or Miss Fawcett may forbid our
visits altogether. But you can sit down and talk to him a little if you
like, whilst I take the flowers to the other rooms."
She left us. I took the chair by the bedside, and Gervas put out a very
thin brown hand and took hold of mine.
"Little Grisel!" he said in a low voice. "I would rather see you than
any one else in the world—next to my mother."
And then my eyes suddenly filled with tears. When last I had seen him
he was so strong and well, and now he seemed so frail and feeble!
"It's my lungs," he said, "but I'm better, and longing to be out in
your fresh pure Scotch air. I haven't been out in France a month. It's
hard luck!"
"Isn't it strange your being sent up here?" I said.
"How do you come here? Do you know it was your Empire League that took
me to Sandhurst? I was filled up with enthusiasm to serve. I haven't
done much serving, but I did my best."
He seemed to speak with difficulty.
"Don't talk, Gervas," I said. "Let me tell you what has been happening
to all of us. Our lives have been altered altogether since father's
death."
Then I told him everything. All about father's Charge to me, and how we
are trying to keep it, and about Pat, and grandfather and Aunt Isobel.
And then by the time I had finished about the oil in the caves, Miss
Fawcett came in. Everybody calls her "Sister" now. And she is dressed
in a nurse's cap and apron.
"You're not tiring my patient, Grisel?" she said.
"She's doing me pounds of good," said Gervas.
Miss Fawcett smiled. She brought him a cup of beef-tea on a tray, and
he sat up and took it, but his cough was dreadful, and he moved like a
weary old man. I sat silent till he had taken his beef-tea, and then I
was going to follow Miss Fawcett out of the room, when Gervas asked me
to stay a little longer.
"You're a bit of home," he said. "I won't talk."
So Miss Fawcett left us. I didn't want to go and see any of the other
invalids.
I told Gervas about Denys being at Woolwich.
"He may get leave at Christmas," I said, "but they're working very
hard. He's longing to get out to the front. Somehow or other, the glory
of war is fading away. I used to long that it might come and give us
something to do and dare for our country, but women can dare nothing.
They only read the papers and hear about the awful, things going on."
Gervas looked at me thoughtfully with his great dark eyes.
"You're growing up," he said.
"I suppose I am. I think this war makes one grow. I mean I can't tear
about so wildly as I used to do. I wonder sometimes that we can ever
laugh."
"You must look on to the end," he said.
"I suppose," I said slowly, "it's very awful out at the front, Gervas?"
"It isn't play. But it's time we English woke up. We were taking it too
easy all round."
"Oh, I do hope you will soon be well again," I cried.
"I'd like to do a bit more," said Gervas, "but you and I know that
everything that happens to us is all right, so I shan't worry!"
I remembered how good Gervas used to be, and I felt my heart warm right
up.
"Yes, we do know that, Gervas," I said. "I wish we were all as good as
you. I'm trying to remember that God wants to hold us all fast if we
will let Him. But I often wonder what they must think in heaven about
the war. I should think the angels must weep."
"I think," said Gervas slowly, "that they're very busy out in the
trenches, guarding and guiding and comforting and carrying souls over
the river."
Then he coughed, and I begged him not to talk. It was difficult to keep
to Miss Fawcett's orders.
Very soon Aunt Grisel came back and took me away. Gervas gripped hold
of my hand when he said good-bye.
"I shall see you again?" he asked.
"She comes over every Saturday," said Aunt Grisel. "I hope you'll be
up next week. We're going to make a cure of you here. I must tell
you that you would not be here except for Grisel. She persuaded her
self-indulgent old aunt to turn her house into a hospital."
Gervas looked at me.
"She always inspires!" he said.
I hardly like to write this down. I don't think it is quite true, but
it made me very happy. We always felt that same thing with Gervas when
we knew him in Lincolnshire. He gave us a spurt on—the boys used to say.
But I came away from his room feeling very sad, and downstairs I told
Aunt Grisel all about him.
"He will get well, won't he?" I said.
"We'll hope so, but he won't be fit to go back and fight for a long
long time. We'll do our best for him here. You may be sure of that."
When I got home and told Lynette, she was awfully excited.
"I must go and see him next Saturday. Do ask Aunt Grisel to have me. I
want to ask him about Beatrice and Clarice. If it's only his chest that
is the matter, he'll soon get well. It isn't like having bullets in
you, or smashing your arms and legs. Poor Gervas! What a shame he has
no home! Perhaps, when he gets better, Aunt Isobel would ask him here.
It's a pity he's come back from the war before he had a chance to be a
hero and get a V.C. If Pat doesn't get a V.C. pretty soon, I shall be
disgusted with him. Did you ask Gervas if he had done anything?"
"If you saw him lying there, gasping his life out," I said severely,
"you would think he had done enough!"
Lynette wasn't much impressed. She rattled on:
"Did you tell him what you and I had been doing? I am sure we deserve a
V.C. for finding that oil and braving death when we met that man!"
"I told him about it," I said, "but I hope I didn't brag about it as
you are so fond of doing. We really were too frightened to do much. If
we had caught the man and tied him up, and got nearly killed by him for
doing it, that would have been something to be proud of! You're as bad
as Puff sometimes!"
We always snub Puff, because he is so cocky.
Lynette laughed.
"You're such a prig, Grizzy!"
And then I went out of the room and banged the door behind me, for I
hate being called a prig, and Lynette knows it.
This morning I actually had a letter from Pat. It came from France, and
had the censor's ticket on it. I do love Pat's letters. He writes just
like he talks, only he has never written to me before, but I have seen
his letters to the boys.
"DEAR LITTLE MOTHER GRISEL,
"Here's the top of the morning to you, me darling! And what a morning
for us! Sure 'tis the cart before the horse in this war! We are buried
in our graves first, then we get out to fight. Send along all the
grave-diggers you can find to help us with the pick and shovel, for
them is the boys for us! 'Tis cruel work standing in ice and water up
to your middle, and only lifting your nose and eyes up to the daylight
once in a blue moon to get a squint at your foes. But we've had a dash
on occasions, and then Huroosh for the Oirish boys! We've driven 'em
back no end o' times! Our major is real grand at shouting. He's the
very mischief when there's a real scrimmage, but his language—ahem—'tis
hot enough and no mistake.
"The other morning a starched, stiff British general came by, and our
major was in his best form tackling recruits, and rating them fast and
furiously. The old general asked his name. 'McAndrew,' he was told.
'Make a note that in Major McAndrew's trenches there is no scarcity of
fire or fuel,' he said, and passed on. And our poor major heard it, and
was dumb for a whole day after.
"Well, and how is yourself? I've had two letters only, and letters out
here, I can tell you, are as nectar! I'm trying hard to H.F. you'll
like to know, and my little mascot is taken out and looked at every
blessed day. Say a prayer for your poor Pat! Sure and he knows he wants
it. For the shaves he has had from shot and shell would fill a book!
And we're up against death every minute of the day, and it makes a
fellow think of the world we're blown into, at such short summons. How
is the Puffer! My love to the Scaramouche.
"Your worthless
"PAT."
The Scaramouche is Lynette. I shall write to Pat every week. Miss
Garton says I may. I am so glad he reads his Testament. Oh, I do hope
God will keep him safely!
* * * * *
Our Christmas holidays have come and Aylwin is home, and Denys is
coming for a week next Tuesday. Scotch people don't make anything of
Christmas. It seems so strange; only New Year's Day. That is the most
important season to them. Gervas is much better. He walks about, but he
has still got an awful cough, and says he is as weak as a chicken. He
was awfully pleased to see Aylwin, and Lynette has been over several
Saturdays with me. Aunt Isobel is going to ask Gervas over to dine and
sleep with us on New Year's Day, for Denys will be with us then.
We had great excitement yesterday. An aeroplane came over the house,
and alighted in one of grandfather's fields.
A Captain Hugh Gordon was in it. Aunt Isobel knew him, and, as there
was something the matter with his machine, she asked him to come into
the house. He stayed to lunch, and after lunch we were allowed to go
out to the field and see him start again. His man had been repairing
it, and it was all right again. He told us he was going to patrol the
East Coast of England, where the Zeppelins are coming over. Aylwin
begged him to take him up for a ride, and Lynette and I were wild to
go too. I think it must be too lovely for words to go sailing through
the sky, with the world at your feet. Captain Gordon said he would take
Aylwin up for a few minutes, but not us girls.
"You are too precious!" he said, laughing.
"But," I cried, "that is just what we are not. It is boys and men who
are precious now, because they can fight, and girls cannot. Our country
might be the worse for want of Aylwin in a year or two, but not for us.
Lynette and I could easily be spared!"
He only laughed at us.
"Our soldiers will want you to nurse them or marry them," he said. "No,
you can't be spared."
And then Aylwin got into the car, and we watched them start the engine
and run right along the field like a motor, and then suddenly rise, and
rise, till they looked like some big bird. We caught our breath as we
watched them.
Puff was with us.
"Why," he said, with big awed eyes, "they might be able to find their
way into heaven if they flew high enough. What would happen then?"
We laughed at him, and I said:
"Nobody can find heaven, Puff."
"But we find it quick when we die," he said; "and it would be very nice
to find it when we're alive."
We said no more to him, we were so busy watching the aeroplane, and
then swiftly it came down and down and got bigger and bigger, until
we saw the car and two little heads peeping out, and then in another
minute it had come to the ground again.
Aylwin got out. He looked rather pale, and we thought it was with
excitement, and we felt he was almost a hero.
Puff dashed forward to Captain Gordon. "Can you fly up out of sight,"
he asked, "through the clouds?"
"Yes, and very wet and cold they are."
Then Puff said in an eager whisper, for he did not want us to hear:
"Do try and find out heaven when you're up there. Even if you don't
want to go inside just yet. Do you know if any flying man has found the
way there yet?"
Captain Gordon did not smile; he looked at him long and seriously.
"Yes, little chap, some find their way there, we'll hope!"
"When they're flying?"
"When they have a tumble."
And then Captain Gordon waved his hand to us, and got into his car
again, and his man got in with him, and away they went, and we watched
them with craning necks and strained eyes till they were out of sight.
Then we asked Aylwin to describe his feelings. But he's stupid at that
kind of thing.
"It was A1," he said. "At first you feel rather as you do when you try
to smoke. I've quite made up my mind that when I leave school, I'll go
into the Flying Corps."
"That will be ripping!" said Lynette. "And then you can bring your
machine home and take us flying trips. I don't see why we shouldn't
learn to fly."
"You!" said Aylwin contemptuously. "You're only good for nursing or
marrying!"
And he laughed.
I felt angry.
"That's just like men," I said; "they're so small-minded."
"Well, what do you think you will do when you grow up?" Aylwin demanded.
"I shan't be a nurse," cried Lynette; "nothing so tame! I couldn't
walk round beds and shake pillows and give medicine all day long. And
I shan't marry any man if he wants me to stay at home all day, and
keep the house, and order his dinners, and mend his socks for him. I
shall earn some money first, and then I shall travel all over the world
with a faithful native servant who is ready to die for me. And when
I've seen every corner of the world, I shall come home, and choose the
very handsomest man I can find for a husband. He must be a V.C. at the
tip-top of the Army, and must have a coat covered with bars and medals
and glory! That's going to be my life!"
"I should be willing to marry," I said, "if my husband was a soldier
and would let me share his camp life and all his hardships. I should
love to make him comfortable, and cheer him up when he was downhearted."
"You've no ambition at all!" said Lynette scornfully.
And sometimes I wonder if I have. I know I have, great ambition for
the boys, and for Gervas and for Pat. I want them to do noble great
things before they die, and I believe they will. Both Denys and Pat
have a splendid chance of doing something. But as to myself—lately I'm
beginning to see that women are at great disadvantage.
I don't like the noisy women in the world. When I look at mother's
picture, I feel all I want is to live and die as she did. And I ask God
that I may, and that He will hold my hand fast to the very end.