GOOD DAYS AND GOOD NIGHTS
I know exactly the kind of woman this is.
Even in my indignation, I could not help half-smiling as I remembered
certain angry complaints made by a fashionable mother whom I had met at
a War charity meeting.
"It really is a shame that you can't let your fresh-minded boy go out
into the world without his coming across snare-laying women," she had
burst out confidentially. "The poor silly fellows get quite led astray
by some of these girls that they meet where they're billeted--shoddy
girls with a cheap prettiness and cheap little openwork stockings and
flashy haircombs, and imitation jewellery, and no minds or souls. You
know the sort. They're always hankering after small outings and
excitements, and, of course, they would all like to catch baby second
lieutenants, who may one day be something in the world."
She had been so much upset, this fashionable mother, that I knew she
must have suffered.
"What a pity that this 'Queenie' of Hammersmith doesn't know better when
she's wasting her time!" I thought. "Why couldn't she see that her
'Roly' might love a woman a hundred times worse than she is, but he
wouldn't love her? Anyhow, he ought to have burnt her silly letter. I
will see that he burns it when he comes back. I will not have such stuff
defiling this consecrated room.... And yet--I wonder if it is the same
charm in him that makes both Queenie and me adore him!"
For it was certainly not because he was my son that I was wrapped up in
him.
"Why ever do you think such a heap of me?" he had asked me more than
once. And I had always answered him:
"Because, my boy, you are that strangest and most wonderful thing in all
the world--an interesting young man. As a rule, the masculine person
isn't worth taking the least notice of till he's thirty--except for
athletics. I put that down in a diary once when I was a little girl and
I should put the same thing down now. It quite takes one's breath away
to find a boy who is athletic and fascinating at the same time. One
feels that a drum ought to be beaten through the town. Do you know, you
will even be one of the few persons whose weddings are not dull. And
weddings, as a rule, are the dullest things that ever happen."
I had spoken so lightly and yet I had meant every word that I had said.
No, I need not be afraid that any of the shoddy, mean-souled women of
this world will ever have much chance with a boy of his sort. And if,
indeed, he really and deeply loves Vera Brennan, the dream-figure with
the amethyst eyes, then she is very much to be envied of other girls.
Was it for her that he had written the little poem which came to my hand
at this moment among the letters, and of which he had sent one copy to
her and one to me?
He had written it in Ploegsteert Wood soon after he had gone out to the
Front, and the lines were as sad and as sweet as the little dark blue
flowers that had made them well up out of his heart:
"Violets from Plug Street Wood,
Sweet, I send you oversea.
(It is strange they should be blue,
Blue, when his soaked blood was red;
For they grew around his head.
It is strange they should be blue.)
Violets from Plug Street Wood--
Think what they have meant to me!
Life and Hope and Love and You.
(And you did not see them grow
Where his mangled body lay,
Hiding horror from the day.
Sweetest, it was better so.)
Violets from oversea,
To your dear, far, forgetting land;
These I send in memory,
Knowing You will understand."
"Your dear, far, forgetting land!"
Oh, the reproach in those words! And do we not, most of us, deserve
that reproach?
I took out his sword from the drawer in which I had wrapped it away in
silk, and I very nearly bowed myself before it in my passion of
reverence.
Strange! That one should regard as so sacred a thing that is meant to
kill!
Of all such things, it is only the sword that is held holy. Nobody
reverences a revolver, while a dagger is mean and sly and a rifle is
nothing in particular, like a gardening tool. But a sword is a glory and
a joy, and now, as I handled the sword of the boy of my heart, I could
have laughed for sheer delight in all the splendid things that it stood
for.
What a pity that it should have become a mere show thing, wanted only on
parade and never taken out to the Front!
As I stood holding the sword, my husband came into the room with a
newspaper in his hand. He is a man who can hardly ever be seen without a
newspaper in his hand. But this time his face showed that something new
and grave had happened.
"Gretton is dead," he announced to me. "He was killed by a shell at
Festubert five days ago."
I caught my breath sharply as my eyes met his.
"Gretton?" I exclaimed; and my voice sounded thin in my own ears.
"Yes." My husband nodded jerkily. "I don't really like telling you about
it, but this comes rather strangely on the top of ugly dreams I've had
lately. I dreamt four times last week that I saw Roland and Gretton
coming along arm in arm, laughing together, but looking more like
upright dead men than living flesh and blood. And the queer thing about
it was that, though they were laughing together, Roland was trying to
get away from Gretton, and somehow he couldn't. It was as if something
that was stronger than their own will kept them close to each other.
There was something horrible about it."
I knew that the blood was leaving my cheeks and lips as I looked at him.
And yet this boy Gretton was a person whom I had never spoken to in my
life!
For the first time for nearly three months, I felt a deadly chill run
through me again, just as when Little Yeogh Wough had first gone out to
the Front.
"Do you know, I can't help feeling troubled about this?" I heard myself
saying in a strange whisper. "It is very silly of me, but I can't help
feeling that--that Gretton may be calling to him to follow."
It was not so mad a thing as it seemed, this fear that had just come to
me that the boy Gretton, killed five days ago, might be calling to the
boy of my heart.
Their lives had been linked together in a most curious way. They had
never had any particular liking for each other--indeed, it must have
been almost the other way about, for Little Yeogh Wough had never
brought him to us or gone to his home--and yet in their careers they had
been as brother spirits.
They had both opened their eyes on life in the same year and month, and
within a stone's throw of each other in London. They had both been given
the Christian name of Roland, spelt without a "w."
They met by going to the same preparatory school, and from the hour of
this first meeting their lives had run side by side. They had not run
quite neck and neck, for Little Yeogh Wough was always ahead. He got a
seventy-pound scholarship for a certain great Public School, when
Gretton won a fifty-pound one.
It was the same with Oxford, for which they both gained classical
scholarships. Little Yeogh Wough was always well ahead. Yet, still, they
were always together.
When the war had come, they had got their commissions at the same time.
But Gretton had got out to the Front first.
"I shall get out soon now that Gretton's out there," Little Yeogh Wough
had said to me confidently.
And he had gone soon, and they had fought the Germans side by side, as
they had fought for honours at school. And now Gretton had been killed,
and my husband had dreamed that he saw him walking with our Roland, arm
linked in arm, holding on to him closely and refusing to let him go.
"I am a fool to think anything of a dream," I told myself angrily,
trying to thrust away from me the grey spectre of Fear that had risen up
before me suddenly in the pale winter sunlight. "After all, what is a
dream? It's a thing that never comes to a person in perfect
health--except once in a way, when one happens to be awakened about half
an hour before one's proper time and then goes off into a doze. And
then, there is Little Yeogh Wough's lucky white lock. That will keep him
from being killed. He will get badly wounded, I dare say, but not
killed--no, certainly, not killed."
I have not mentioned the boy's lucky white lock of hair before. It was a
queer little white patch in among the gold, just over his left ear.
It was Gretton who, when they went to school first, had called Little
Yeogh Wough a sixpenny-halfpenny Golliwog.
"That comes of doin' things by 'alves with Master Roland's 'air," Old
Nurse had ventured to air her opinions. "What I do say is, if you've
got to cut a boy's curls off, why, you'd better cut 'em off, and not
'ave bits of 'em left 'anging. Of course, it's a shame, but boys 'as got
to be boys, and you can't 'ave 'em goin' to school lookin' like them
little Cupids in the pictures."
"It's true that an aureole of golden curls doesn't look very well coming
out from under a bowler hat," I said to myself. Have you ever noticed
that there's hardly one grown-up man in a hundred that can ever look
decent in a bowler? A man has either to be very neat-featured or else
very ugly to carry off that sort of hat.
"Them there bowlers is all the go for little boys of Master Roland's
age, and 'is suits 'im right enough, only 'e chooses to think as it
don't, and you listens to 'im," went on the worthy old woman. "'Pon my
word, that there boy's vanity do beat anything I ever come across in all
my life. Every time that I makes 'im put that bowler on, 'e gets into
such a temper as you never saw. 'E thinks as people laughs at 'im for
it, but if they does laugh, it's at 'is fatness, not at his 'at."
"That's because all the rest of them are such skeletons," I rejoined.
"Any boy with any flesh on his bones at all would look fat compared with
them. People are so silly about thinness and fatness. They always think
of what they look like dressed, and never of what they look like
undressed. Why, half the women who go about with a reputation for
slimness and elegance would give one a start if one saw their blade
bones uncovered! And it's the same with children."
"That may be, ma'am, but it don't do away with the fact that these
children is all so enormous that people opens their eyes wide whenever
they sees 'em a-comin'. As for Master Roland, I've given 'im up. 'E 'ad
the coolness to say to me to-day as my 'air was going greyer. I told 'im
that at my time of life people 'as either to 'ave their 'air go grey or
else come off, and they aren't given their choice."
"I suppose you'd rather have your hair absent and black than present and
grey," I answered her without thinking what I was saying.
"Little Yeogh Wough, you're a very small child still; but I think you'll
understand me when I tell you that you've got to a time in your life
when you'll have to be very careful about holding on to beauty," I said
to the Boy that night when I went in to see him and to have the talk
which was as regular as the coming of the night itself. "A girl can keep
her ideas of beauty always, but a boy is supposed to drop his when he
begins going to school. It's not only the cutting off of yellow curls
that I'm thinking of, but other things, too. You'll have to hide your
great love for flowers and colour and poetry."
He looked puzzled.
"Mustn't I bring you flowers any more, Big Yeogh Wough?" he laughed
then.
"Oh, yes, of course! You can show your love for beautiful things just as
much at home as ever. That's the best side of you. But you must not talk
about it to the boys, because they wouldn't understand. I'll show you
what I mean by telling you of something that your father and I saw when
we were in Paris last. We happened to go into a fashionable tea-shop,
and there we saw, sitting with his mother, a boy who must have been
eleven or twelve years old, in a white satin suit complete and with hair
as long as a girl's hanging down his back, tied in with white satin
ribbon. Now, you know, we English believe that a boy had better be dead
than be like that. Even I think so. Of course, he was like a little
prince in a fairy tale, but everyday life isn't a fairy tale, and we
don't consider white satin and long hair manly. So it's in order to
prevent anybody from thinking that you've got any taint of unmanliness
about you that you must make up your mind now to give up pretty things
for yourself and go in for boyish plainness, and cricket and football.
No one must ever think you soft and flabby."
"I don't think anybody will ever do that," he laughed again. "I knocked
one of the boys down to-day for being impudent to me. He was a good deal
bigger than I am; so it's done me a lot of good with the others."
I took one of his small, strong hands and clasped it in mine and held
it against my breast.
"Was this the little hand that did it?" I laughed. "Because, if so, that
is splendid. Those boys must have seen that golden curls and big soft
brown eyes can have a good deal of manly strength behind them; and
people will always respect your brains, and even your longings for the
pretty things of life, as long as they know you're strong enough to
knock them down if you want to. But you must only use your strength
against others who are just as strong. You must never use it against
your little sister and brother. Nurse says you have been behaving badly
in the nursery this evening--interfering with the others instead of
doing your home-work. Why haven't you done your preparation?"
"Why, because the master that's got to see my home-work won't be at
school to-morrow, so it would have been all a waste. The other boys said
they weren't going to do theirs."
"And what difference does it make to you whether they do theirs or not?
How does it alter your duty? Why should you cheat yourself because they
are silly enough to cheat themselves?"
The big brown eyes looked at me blankly. I went on:
"Don't you see, Little Yeogh Wough, that it's only yourself that you
cheat when you don't do your work? It's not your master. It doesn't
matter to him. He doesn't lose anything. It's you who lose. You've
cheated yourself this evening of something that you might have had. And
you haven't been thorough. If you neglect your work often like this,
you'll get to slurring it over when you do it, so long as you think
nobody will notice the slurring; and that won't do. That will make you
grow up just like most of the other men you see around you, and not the
great, strong, wonderful man that I want you to be."
He patted my face and neck with the hand that I had left free, as I
knelt by the bedside.
"You funny Big Yeogh Wough! Nobody would expect anyone who looks like
you to talk like that," he said mischievously.
"You wise little boy!" I laughed. "No, I suppose they wouldn't. People
always make mistakes like that, you know. One day the world will come to
see that preachers may look very bright and easy-going--just as motherly
women with mob caps and three chins are not necessarily the best persons
to trust to for seeing that sheets are properly aired. Now, good night.
You must go to sleep."
I went to the window and opened it, placed the screen by his bed just
where it would shield him from the draught and from the light, and went
towards the door. As I reached it, he called me back.
"Mother, do you think we shall ever have a war with Germany?"
"A war with Germany? Why, yes, I suppose we are pretty sure to have one
some day. But whatever makes you ask that now?"
"Oh, it was only because I heard one of the masters talking about it!"
"Well, I don't think you need trouble about it just yet, anyhow. The
best thing you can do is to sleep well and eat well and work well, so as
to grow up a fine man and be able to do something worth doing in that
war when it comes--if it ever does come."
When I had left him I stood for some minutes shaking the door gently to
make sure that it was properly shut and that he would not be in a
draught all night.
I've always had this curious difficulty in realising actual things, such
as whether I have shut a door or not, or whether I have put a jewel away
in its case properly. It has always been quite easy for me to realise
unseen things--such as a death or a fire that has not yet occurred, or
any sort of scene at which I have not been present. I am sure that I
sometimes see these more vividly than people who have actually witnessed
them with their bodily eyes. But when it comes to ordinary everyday
facts--why, I have stood irresolutely by a trunk ten or fifteen minutes
many and many a time, lifting the lid up and down in order to make
absolutely sure that something that I had put away in under the lid was
actually there and had not jumped out again.
It was in this pernickety way (the word is beautifully expressive) that
I always guarded Little Yeogh Wough.
People accused me of only loving him so desperately because he was
good-looking. I dare say his looks went some little way with me. I have
never pretended that I should devote myself to a person with a hare lip
as well as to a person without one; and certainly the boy of my heart,
besides being glorious to look at, had a knack of making people surround
him with attractive things that added to his own attractiveness.
Whenever he went into a shop to have some plain and practical article
bought for him, he managed to choose for himself an idealised example of
the same thing, at quite double the suggested price, and have it sent
in. Prices meant nothing to him, and at the age of seven he was not half
so good a financier as his sister of four.
"That there boy 'ull never 'ave a penny in 'is pocket in all 'is life,
not even if he gets thousands a year," Old Nurse was accustomed to say
to my secretary, who was a willing listener. "Money burns 'oles with
'im, wherever he carries it."
"Oh yes, Nurse. But he always spends it on his mother. Look at the
flowers he buys her--violets and carnations, all through the winter,
and even roses! That's really wonderful, you know, Nurse, in the
present day, when children are so selfish."
"M'yes," rejoined Old Nurse doubtfully. "But what do 'e do it for? It's
just jealousy; that's what it is, just jealousy, so as nobody else
shan't give 'is mother anything. Why, there was Miss Clare yesterday,
she spent 'er week's pocket money buyin' some roses for 'er mother, and
'e 'appened to meet us comin' home with 'em when he was walkin' up the
road with a schoolboy, and what did he do, d'you think? Why, he ran as
'ard as he could and bought some carnations and got 'ome with them first
and gave them to 'is mother; and when the poor little girl got in with
'er roses, she was thanked for 'em, of course, but they wasn't worn or
put on the study table. They was just put away in the back drawing-room,
where nobody never goes."
"Ah, that's it, you see!" said Miss Torry. "But, of course, Nurse, the
little girl ought to have told exactly what had happened."
"That's what I said to 'er, but she wouldn't do it. She's shy. And that
there Master Roland, 'e do override everything and everybody. He's that
spoiled that there's no----"
"Oh, come now, Nurse, you're as bad as everybody else with him! You
always say he's charming."
"Well, so 'e is. I will say this for 'im--that he never gives me a back
answer. That there Miss Clare, she could 'old 'er own so far as tongue
goes with an East-End street child. Master Roland, 'e corrects her for
it. 'E says: 'Now, Clare, you mustn't speak like that to Nurse.' Then he
told 'er as somebody called George Meredith, that their mother thinks a
lot of, said he wanted 'em all to be polite above all things."
"That's it, you see," said Miss Torry again. She was a delightful
creature, but she always felt rather uncomfortable under Old Nurse's
severe eye.
It has always been a mystery to me why I am supposed to have spoiled
Little Yeogh Wough. My hand was always over him, invisibly keeping him
down. He had more punishments than the others had. But he had a charm
that took the sternness out of discipline and a wonderful knack of
knowing the right thing to say, and when to say it. And he knew how to
give way with a quite princely grace.
"Roland," I said to him one day, rejoining him in the car in which he
had been waiting for me outside a house where I had been paying a formal
call. "I have just heard someone say a very silly thing. She--it was a
woman--said how much more right and proper it would be if the words
under the Prince of Wales's feathers were: '_I rule_,' instead of '_I
serve_.' You can see the silliness of that, can't you?"
He nodded. "You told me one day that 'I serve' is much grander."
"Of course it is. Any empty-headed cock on a dirt heap can crow out 'I
rule,' and it doesn't mean anything much; but it takes a great man to
say 'I serve,' and when a great man does say it you feel that he's a
king. You know, Little Yeogh Wough, empty show doesn't mean much. We're
very fond of beautiful things, you and I, but----"
"Oh, yes!" he put in. "That's why I asked you to let me come with you
to-day, because it was the first time you were wearing your new hat."
"Yes. Beautiful things are very nice indeed, but they don't mean much.
You don't remember, do you, when we took you to the South of France and
we saw Queen Victoria arrive at Nice? We were in a crowd of French
people and they were talking about the Queen and saying what a mighty
woman she was--Empress of India, and all the rest of it. And then she
came--a little figure in a plain, ugly black dress, and with what you
would have called a plain, ugly old black bonnet on. She wasn't helped
by her clothes a bit; and yet there was something about her that was so
great and so masterful that a hush went through that French crowd, and I
knew that every man and woman in it felt what I felt myself--that here
was a human creature so truly queenly and so truly grand, that laces
and furs and jewels would have spoiled her."
I saw the big brown eyes that were fronting mine suddenly soften and
glow.
"I like a queen better than a king," he said now. "I should like to
fight for you if you were a queen."