AUGUST, 1914
"No," said Jan, "it would be like marrying a widow ... with
encumbrances."
"But you don't happen to be a widow--besides, if you were, and had a
dozen encumbrances, if we want to get married it's nobody's business but
our own."
Peter spoke testily. He wanted Jan to marry him before he went back to
India in October, and if he got the billet he hoped for, to follow him,
taking the two children out, early in November.
But Jan saw a thousand lions in the way. She was pulled in this
direction and that, and though she knew she had got to depend on Peter
to--as she put it--"a dreadful extent," yet she hesitated to saddle him
with her decidedly explosive affairs, without a great deal more
consideration than he seemed disposed to allow her.
Hugo, for the present, was quiet. He was in Guernsey with his people,
and beyond a letter in which he directly accused Peter Ledgard of
abducting Tony when his father was taking him to visit his grandparents,
Jan had heard nothing.
By Peter's advice she did not answer this letter. But they both knew
that Hugo was only waiting to make some other and more unpleasant
demonstration than the last.
"You see," Jan began again, "I've got so many people to think of. The
children and Meg and the house and all the old servants.... You mustn't
hustle me, dear."
"Yes, I see all that; but I've got _you_ to think of, and if we're
married and anything happens to me you'll get your pension, and I want
you to have that."
"And if anything happened to me, you'd be saddled with the care of two
little children who've got a thoroughly unsatisfactory father, who can
always make life hateful for them and for you. No, Peter, it wouldn't be
fair--we must wait and see how things work out."
"At present," Peter said gloomily, "it looks as if things were working
out to a fair bust-up all round."
This was on the 30th of July.
Peter went up to London, intending to return on the first to stay over
the Bank Holiday, but he did not come. He wanted to be within easy reach
of recalling cablegram.
Meg got a wire from Miles on Saturday: "Try to come up for to-morrow and
Monday I can't leave town must see you."
And half an hour after it, came a note from Squire Walcote, asking her
to accept his escort, as he and Lady Mary were going up to the
Grosvenor, and hoped Meg would be their guest.
It was during their stay in London that Lady Mary and the Squire got the
greatest surprise of their whole lives.
Miles, looking bigger than ever in uniform, rushed in and demanded an
interview with Meg alone in their private room. He showed her a special
licence, and ordered, rather than requested, that she should marry him
at once.
"I can't," she said, "it's no use asking me ... I _can't_."
"Listen; have you any objection to me?"
Meg pulled a little away from him and pretended to look him up and down.
"No ... in fact ... I love every bit of you--especially your boots."
"Have you thought how likely it is that I may not come back ... if
there's war?"
"Don't!" said Meg. "Don't put it into words."
"Then why won't you marry me, and let me feel that, whether I'm killed
or not, I've had the thing I wanted most in this world?"
"Dear, I can't help it, but I feel if I married you now ... you would
never come back ... but if I wait ... if I don't try to grasp this
wonderful thing too greedily ... it will come to us both. I _daren't_
marry you, Miles."
"Suppose I'm all smashed up ... I couldn't ask you then ... suppose I
come back minus an arm or a leg, or blind or something?"
"If the least little bit of you comes back, I'll marry that; not you or
anyone else could stop me then."
"You'd make it easier all round if you'd marry me now...."
"That's it ... I don't want it to be easier. If I was your wife, how
could I go on being nurse to those children?"
"I wouldn't stop you--you could go back to Miss Ross and do just
exactly what you're doing. I agree with you--the children are
cheery----"
Meg shook her head. "No; if I was your wife, it wouldn't do. As it is
... the nursemaid has got her soldier, and that's as it should be."
"Will you marry me the first leave I get, if I live to get any?"
"I'll think about that."
He gave her the ring she had refused before. Such an absurd little ring,
with its one big sapphire set with diamonds, and "no backing to it,"
Miles said.
And he gave her a very heavy brass-studded collar for William, and on
the plate was engraved her name and address.
"You see," he explained, "Miss Ross would never really have him, and I'd
like to think he was your dog. And here's his licence."
Then Miles took her right up in his arms and hugged her close, and set
her gently down and left her.
That night he asked his uncle and a brother-officer to witness his will.
He had left most of his money among his relations, but twenty thousand
pounds he had left to Meg absolutely, in the event of his being killed
before they were married.
His uncle pointed out that there was nothing said about her possible
marriage. "She'll be all the better for a little money of her own if she
does marry," Miles said simply. "I don't want her to go mourning all her
days, but I do want the capital tied up on her so that he couldn't
waste it ... if he was an unfortunate sort of chap over money."
The Squire blew his nose.
"You see," Miles went on, "she's a queer little thing. If I left her too
much, she'd refuse it altogether. Now I trust to you, Uncle Edward, to
see that she takes this."
"I'll do my best, my boy, I'll do my best," said the Squire; "but I hope
with all my soul you'll make settlements on her yourself before long."
"So do I, but you never can tell in war, you know. And we must always
remember," Miles added with his broad, cheerful smile, "there's a good
deal of target about me."
Miles wrote to the little Major, a very manly, straightforward letter,
telling him what he had done, but swearing him to secrecy as regarded
Meg.
He also wrote to Jan, and at the end, he said, "I am glad she is to be
with you, because you really apreciate her."
The one "p" in "appreciate" fairly broke Jan down. It was so like Miles.
Meg, white-faced and taciturn, went back to Wren's End on Tuesday night.
The Squire and Lady Mary remained in town.
In answer to Jan's affectionate inquiries, Meg was brief and
business-like. Yes; she had seen Miles several times. He was very busy.
No, she did not expect to see him again before ... he left. Yes; he was
going with the First Army.
Jan asked no more questions, but was quietly, consistently kind. Meg
was adorable with her children and surpassed herself in the telling of
stories.
The First Army left England for Flanders with the silence of a shadow.
But Meg knew when it left.
That night, Jan woke about one o'clock, conscious of a queer sound that
she could neither define nor locate.
She sat up in bed to listen, and arrived at the conclusion that it came
from the day-nursery, which was below her room.
Tony was sleeping peacefully. Jan put on her dressing-gown and went
downstairs. The nursery door was not shut, and a shaft of light shone
through it into the dark hall. She pushed it open a little way and
looked in.
Meg was sitting at the table, making muslin curtains as if her life
depended on it. She wore her nightgown, and over it a queer little
Japanese kimono of the green she loved. Her bare feet were pillowed upon
William, who lay snoring peacefully under the table.
Her face was set and absorbed. A grave, almost stern, little face. And
her rumpled hair, pushed back from her forehead, gave her the look of a
Botticelli boy angel. It seemed to merge into tongues of flame where the
lamplight caught it.
The window was wide open and the sudden opening of the door caused a
draught, though the night was singularly still.
The lamp flickered.
Meg rested her hand on the handle of the sewing-machine, and the
whirring noise stopped. She saw Jan in the doorway.
"Dear," said Jan gently, standing where she was, half in and half out of
the door, "are you obliged to do this?"
Meg looked at her, and the dumb pain in that look went to Jan's heart.
Jan came towards her and drew the flaming head against her breast.
"I'm sorry I disturbed you," Meg murmured, "but I was _obliged_ to do
something."
William stirred at the voices, and turning his head tried to lick the
little bare feet resting on his back.
"Dearest, I really think you should go back to bed."
"Very well," said Meg meekly. "I'll go now."
"He," Jan continued, "would be very angry if he thought you were making
curtains in the middle of the night."
"He," Meg retorted, "is absurd--and dear beyond all human belief."
"You see, he left you in my charge ... what will he say if--when he
comes back--he finds a haggard Meg with a face like a threepenny-bit
that has seen much service?"
"All right, I'm coming."
When Meg got back to her room, she went and leaned over little Fay
sleeping in the cot beside her bed. Rosy and beautiful, warm and
fragrant, the healthy baby brought comfort to Meg's stricken heart.
Perhaps--who knows--the tramp of that silent army sounded in little
Fay's ears, for she stretched out her dimpled arms and caught Meg round
the neck.
"Deah Med!" she sighed, and was still.
William stood at attention.
Presently Meg knelt down by her bed, and according to the established
ritual he thrust his head into her encircling arm.
"Pray for your master, William," Meg whispered. "Oh, William, pray for
your master as you never prayed before."
* * * * * * * *
The strange tense days went on in August weather serene and lovely as
had not been seen for years. Young men vanished from the country-side
and older men wistfully wondered what they could do to help.
Peter came down from Saturday to Monday, telling them that every officer
and every civilian serving in India was recalled, but he had not yet
learned when he was to sail.
They were sitting in the wrens' garden with the children.
"Earley's going," Tony said importantly.
"Earley!" Jan exclaimed. "Going where?"
"To fight, of course," little Fay chimed in.
"Oh, poor dear Earley!" Jan sighed.
"Happy, fortunate Earley," said Peter. "I wish I stood in his shoes."
Earley joined the Gloucesters because, he said, "he couldn't abear to
think of them there Germans comin' anigh Mother and them childring and
the ladies; and he'd better go and see as they didn't."
Mr. Withells called the men on his place together and told them that
every man who joined would have his wages paid to his wife, and his wife
or his mother, as the case might be, could stop on in her cottage. And
Mr. Withells became a special constable, with a badge and a truncheon.
But he worried every soldier that he knew with inquiries as to whether
there wasn't a chance for him in _some_ battalion: "I've taken great
care of my health," he said. "I do exercises every day after my bath;
I'm young-looking for my age, don't you think? And anyway, a bullet
might find me instead of a more useful man."
No one laughed then at Mr. Withells and his exercises.
Five days after the declaration of war Jan got a letter from Hugo
Tancred. He was in London and was already a private in a rather famous
cavalry regiment.
"They didn't ask many questions," he wrote, "so I hadn't to tell many
lies. You see, I can ride well and understand horses. If I get knocked
out, it won't be much loss, and I know you'll look after Fay's kiddies.
If I come through, perhaps I can make a fresh start somewhere. I've
always been fond of a gamble, and this is the biggest gamble I've ever
struck."
Jan showed the letter to Peter, who gave it back to her with something
like a groan: "Even the wrong 'uns get their chance, and yet I have to
go back and do a deadly dull job, just because it _is_ my job."
Peter went up to town and two days after came down again to "The Green
Hart" to say good-bye. He had got his marching orders and was to sail in
the _Somali_ from Southampton. Some fifteen hundred civilians and
officers serving in India were sailing by that boat and the _Dongola_.
By every argument he could bring forward he tried to get Jan to marry
him before he sailed. Yet just because she wanted to do it so much, she
held back. She, too, she kept telling herself, had her job, and she knew
that if she was Peter's wife, nothing, not even her dear Fay's children,
could be of equal importance with Peter.
The children and Meg and the household had by much thinking grown into a
sort of Frankenstein's monster of duty.
Her attitude was incomprehensible to Peter. It seemed to him to be
wrong-headed and absurd, and he began to lose patience with her.
On his last morning he sought and found her beside the sun-dial in the
wrens' garden.
Meg had taken little Fay to see Lady Mary's Persian kittens, but Tony
preferred to potter about the garden with the aged man who was trying to
replace Earley. William was not allowed to call upon the kittens, as
Fatima, their mother, objected to him vehemently, and Tony cared to go
nowhere if William might not be of the party.
Peter came to Jan and took both her hands and held them.
"It's the last time I shall ask you, my dear. If you care enough, we
can have these last days together. If you don't I must go, for I can't
bear any more of this. Either you love me enough to marry me before I
sail or you don't love me at all. Which is it?"
"I do love you, you know I do."
"Well, which is it to be?"
"Peter, dear, you must give me more time. I haven't really faced it all.
I can't do anything in such a hurry as that."
Peter looked at her and shook his head.
"You don't know what caring is," he said. "I can't stand any more of
this. Do you see that motto on the sun-dial: 'I bide my time'--I've read
it and read it, and I've said it over to myself and waited and hoped to
move you. Now I can't wait any more."
He kissed her, dropped her hand, and turning from her went out through
the iron gate and down the drive. For a moment Jan stood by the sun-dial
as though she, too, were stone.
Then blindly she went up the steps into the empty nursery and sat down
on an old sofa far back in the room. She leaned face-downward against
the cushions, and great, tearing sobs broke from her.
Peter was gone. He would never come back. She had driven him from her.
And having done so she realised that he was the one person in the world
she could not possibly do without.
Tony's own hen had laid an egg. Carrying it very carefully in a
cabbage-leaf, he went, accompanied by the faithful William, to show it
to Auntie Jan, and was just in time to see Peter going down the drive.
He went through the wrens' garden and in by the window. For a moment he
didn't see his aunt; and was turning to go again when a strange sound
arrested him, and he saw her all huddled up at the head of the sofa,
with hidden face and heaving shoulders.
He laid his egg on the table and went and pulled at her arm.
"What is the matter?" he asked anxiously. "And why has Peter gone?"
Jan raised her head; pride and shame and self-consciousness were dead in
her: "He's gone," she sobbed. "He won't come back, and I shall never be
happy any more," and down went her head again on her locked arms.
Tony did not attempt to console her. He ran from the room, and Jan felt
that this was only an added pang of abandonment.
Down the drive ran Tony, with William galumphing beside him. But William
was not happy, and squealed softly from time to time. He felt it unkind
to leave a poor lady crying like that, and yet was constrained to go
with Tony because Meg had left him in William's charge.
Tony turned out of the gate and into the road.
Far away in the distance was a man's figure striding along with
incredible swiftness. Tony started to run all he knew. Now, seldom as
William barked, he barked when people ran, and William's bark was so
deep and sonorous and distinctive that it caused the swiftly striding
man to turn his head. He turned his body, too, and came back to meet
Tony and William.
Tony was puffed and almost breathless, but he managed to jerk out: "You
must go back; she's ... crying dreadful. You _must_ go back. Go quick;
don't wait for us."
Peter went.
* * * * *
Jan very rarely cried. When she did it hurt fiercely and absorbed all
her attention. She was crying now as if she would never stop. If people
seldom cry it has a devastating effect on their appearance when they do.
Jan's eyelids were swollen, her nose scarlet and shiny, her features all
bleared and blurred and almost scarred by tears.
Someone touched her gently on the shoulder, and she looked up.
"My dear," said Peter, "you must not cry like this. I was losing my
temper--that's why I went off."
Jan sprang to her feet and flung her arms round his neck. She pressed
her ravaged face against his: "I'll do anything you like," she
whispered, "if you'll only like it. I can't stand by myself any more."
This was true, for as she spoke her knees gave under her.
Peter held her close. Never had Jan looked less attractive and never had
Peter loved her more, or realised so clearly how dear and foolish and
wise and womanly she was.
"You see," she sobbed, "you said yourself everyone _must_ do his job,
and I thought----"
"But surely," said Peter, "I _am_ your job--part of it, anyway."
Jan sobbed now more quietly, with her head against his shoulder.
Tony and William came and looked in at the window.
His aunt was still crying, crying hard, though Peter was there close
beside her, very close indeed.
Surely this was most unreasonable.
"She said," Tony remarked accusingly to Peter, "she was crying because
you had gone, so I ran to fetch you back. And now I _have_ fetched you,
she's crying worse nor ever."
But William Bloomsbury knew better. William had cause to know the
solitary bitter tears that hurt. These tears were different.
So William wagged his tail and ran into the room, jumping joyously on
Peter and Jan.
[Transcriber's Note:
The following corrections were made:
p. 44: Daddy to Daddie, to match all other occurrences (Daddie was very
daylight.)
p. 113: log to long (long grey dust-cloak)
p. 113: froward to forward (Anthony came forward)
p. 118: bread-an-butter to bread-and-butter (several pieces of
bread-and-butter)
p. 152: minunte to minute (pondered this for a minute)
p. 284: quit to quick ("I came as quick as I could,")
p. 318: fluttered to flattered (rather flattered)
In the Latin-1 plain text version, an a-macron and an o-breve have been
removed from the word Jao! (p. 196).
Inconsistencies in hyphenation (e.g. country-side vs. countryside) have
not been changed. All dialect and "baby talk" has been left as in the
original. Two different types of thought breaks were used in the
original: extra whitespace between paragraphs (represented by 5 spaced
asterisks in this text) and a line of 8 spaced asterisks (left as in the
original.) Ellipses match the original, even when inconsistent. The
exception is when they occur at the end of a paragraph, where they are
always accompanied by a period.]