"Don't go back . . . not to that life again. How can you? Shut up in
a sort of convent. . . . You can't be a school-marm all your life; you
were meant for other things. . . . I suppose you have to sleep on a
hard bed, and get up in the dark when a bell rings. There aren't any
carpets, and they don't give you enough to eat, as likely as not.
Margaret, why should you? It's the sort of work anyone can do-teaching
kids to mangle."
"But . . . what do you think I am going to do with the remainder of my
days--crochet? embroider slippers for the curate? Trevor, you wouldn't
like me to come to that in my old age, would you?" She spoke with
gentle banter, as if to fend off something she feared. Had Torps known
it, she was fencing for the happiness of them both.
He shook his head gravely.
"I hoped--because you had written to me--that you weren't going
back. . . ." His thin, strong hand closed over hers, resting on the
turf between them. He bent his head as if considering their fingers.
"Margaret, dear----"
"Ah, Trevor, don't--please don't. . . . Not again. I thought all that
was dead and buried years ago. And do you really think"--she smiled a
little sadly--"if I--if things were different--that I should have
written to ask you to meet me to-day? Have you learned so little of
women in all these years?" There was something besides sadness in her
eyes now: a wistful, half-maternal tenderness. He raised his head.
"I've learned nothing about women, Margaret, but what I learned from
you."
She gently withdrew her hand. "Trevor, we're not children any longer.
We're older and wiser. We----"
"We're older--yes. But I don't see what that has to do with it, except
that my need is greater. . . . I'm a little lonelier. There's never
been anyone but you. I've never looked across the road at a woman in
my life--except you. I know we're not children, and for that reason we
ought to know our own minds. Do you know yours, Margaret?"
Margaret bowed her head, collecting her thoughts and setting them in
order, before she answered:
"It isn't easy to say what I have to say. You must be
patient--generous, as you can be, Trevor, of all the men I know." She
hesitated and coloured again a little. "You say you want me. If there
were no one else who I thought had a greater claim, you should--no,
hush! listen, dear--I would give you--what you want . . . gladly--oh,
gladly! But the children need me--my influence. . . . Miss Dacre said
it is doing the highest service one could for the Empire . . . theirs
is the higher claim. Can you understand? Oh, can you?"
Torps made no reply, staring out to sea with sombre eyes.
Gaining confidence with his silence, she continued the shy unfolding of
her ideals. "Nothing is too good for boys; no training is high enough,
because they are to be the builders and upholders of our Empire. Don't
you think that little girls, who are destined some day to be the mates
of these boys, should be prepared in a way that will make them worthy
of their share of the inheritance? They have to be taught ideals of
honour and courage and intelligent patriotism, so that they can help
and encourage their men in years to come. They must learn to cook and
sew, learn the laws of Nature and hygiene, so that they can make the
home not 'an habitation enforced'--as it is for so many women--but a
place where they may with all honour bring into the world other little
girls and boys. . . ." She drew her breath quickly. "Ah, that is not
a thing anyone can do, teaching all that! It must be someone who gives
all--and who gives herself gladly . . . as I have."
Torps turned his head as if to speak, but checked himself.
"Don't think I am setting myself upon a pedestal. Don't think my heart
is too anaemic to--to care for you, and that I am trying to shelter
myself behind talk of a life's mission. Oh!" she cried, "be generous.
Don't try to make it harder."
She leaned towards him a little as he sat with lowered eyes. "This is
a time of grave anxiety, isn't it?" she continued gently, as if
explaining something to an impatient child. "You naval men ought to
know. There is talk of war everywhere--of war with Germany. They say
we are on the brink of it to-day." Torps nodded. "Supposing it came
now . . . and you were recalled. How do they recall you? Sound a
bugle--beat a drum?"
Torps smiled faintly. "Something of the sort--no, not a drum; a bugle,
perhaps."
"Well, we'll suppose it is a drum. One somehow associates it with war
and alarms. Would you hesitate to obey?" Torps refrained from the
obvious answer and plucked a grass-stem to put between his teeth. "You
would obey, wouldn't you, because it is your duty--however much you'd
like to sit here with me? Will you try to realise that I shall be only
answering the drum, too, when--I go back."
The breeze that strayed about the floor of the Channel fanned their
faces and set the bright sea-poppies nodding all along the edge of the
cliffs. The sun was low in the west, and a snake-like flotilla of
destroyers crept out across the quiet sea from the harbour hidden by a
fold in the hills. Torps watched them with absent eyes, and there was
a long silence. The wind had loosened a strand of his companion's
hair, and she was busy replacing it with deft fingers.
"Margaret," he replied at last, "you said just now that I understood
very little about women. I think you are right. Perhaps if I
understood more I might know how to muffle the drum so that you
wouldn't hear it. I might have learned to pipe a tune that would make
you not want to hear it. . . . I don't know. . . . But I accept all
you say--although deep down in my heart I know you are wrong. There
will come a day when you, too, will know you are wrong. I shall come
back then. And till then, since I must"--he smiled in a whimsical, sad
way that somehow relaxed the tension--"I lend you to the children."
She returned his smile quite naturally, with relief in her eyes. "Dear
Trevor, yes . . . because they need me so. . . . Believe me, I am not
wrong: and we keep our friendship still, sweet and sane----" She broke
off suddenly and raised a slim forefinger, holding her head sideways to
listen, the way women and birds and children seem to hear better.
"Hark! Did you hear? How odd! Listen, Trevor!"