A MOTTO TO STEER BY
The reason for his looking less like a picture was that for two or three
months he had to wear glasses. The beautiful brown velvet eyes, with
their curling dark lashes, were not strong.
I wonder why it is that spectacles spoil the look of ninety-nine faces
out of a hundred, whereas pince-nez give an air of style and importance?
Pince-nez make a poor man look well off, while spectacles, even with
gold rims, can always be thoroughly depended on to make a
multi-millionaire look poor. On the other hand, spectacles are honest,
while eye-glasses suggest sharpness in the ways of the world and much
toughness of conscience. Nothing could ever make me believe that a man
who wears pince-nez has really repented of his sins.
With women, of course, it is not quite the same. No woman, however big a
fool she might be, would ever take even to pince-nez with a view to
improving her personal appearance.
It was partly to comfort Little Yeogh Wough for his mortification at
having to wear spectacles for a time that we yielded to his appeal that
he might be taken with us to Russia.
"He might be left at home. He's sensible enough now to manage the
servants and the house and the dogs and everything for us, instead of
needing to be looked after himself," his father said.
"Yes, in some moods," I agreed. "He is, of course, the best disciplined
and most responsible boy at his school. He seems to be even better
disciplined and more responsible than the all-Scotch boys, which is
saying a good deal. But he has times when he needs holding in. After
that day last week, for instance, you can't say that he is entirely
trustworthy."
This mention of the "day last week" had to do with an unforgettable
incident. The day had been a lovely one of blue sky and blue sea and
high shining sun, and yet all through the long and glorious hours Little
Yeogh Wough had sat in the house copying page after page out of a
history book. For, thirteen years old though he was, he yet had so far
forgotten himself as, in a fit of anger, to shake pepper out of a large
pepper-pot over his sister's head and face at the very great risk of
blinding her.
I had been doubtful at first between the respective advantages of a
whipping and the writing out of these pages of history; but I decided at
last on history because he was backward in this particular subject, and
also because the sitting still for hours would be the greater punishment
to him.
"You know, Roland, this would not have happened if I had been at home,"
I said to him. "Why did it happen because I was out?"
"They aggravate me," he said simply.
I knew how it had been. Old Nurse, devoted though she was, was of no use
whatever for a child with a temperament, and had not perceived the
psychic moment when it was necessary to send him out of the nursery. I
should have felt it in my blood if I had been there, and the whole ugly
affair would not have happened.
"You see the justness of your punishment, don't you, Roland?"
"You're always just, Big Yeogh Wough. I've never known you unjust yet."
So he had set himself to his pages of history, all through the long and
lovely summer day.
He said once, later on, that I had never broken a promise to him,
either. I had always been careful never to make one which I was not
humanly sure of being able to keep. For promises broken to children are
greater crimes than many that are punished at the Old Bailey.
So we had not been sure in any case about leaving Little Yeogh Wough at
home; and when he pleaded to go with us on board the Peninsular and
Oriental liner that was to take us and certain others on her maiden trip
in the Baltic, we gave way far more easily than he might have expected.
"Would you have been very miserable if we had said No to you, Roland?" I
asked him.
"No. I should have been sorry, but I should have remembered that text
that you're always saying."
"Text?" I lifted my eyes in surprise.
"Yes. You know, that one: 'Blessed are they that expect nothing, for
they shall not be disappointed.'"
"That's not a text. It ought to be, but it isn't. But it's a very good
motto to steer through life by. The thing to do is always to expect
nothing, but to try for everything."
And so it came about that on a certain Friday morning in August the
brave little feet of the boy of my heart walked for the first time on
the deck of a big ship.
I am superstitious--nearly as superstitious as Napoleon was. Little
Yeogh Wough has always known this well, for all through his life, from
two years old, he has been careful never to bring any hawthorn, ivy, or
peacock's feathers into the house, and has always made the flower-women
selling snowdrops strip the ivy from the bunches he had bought for me. I
will not sing before breakfast, and I will not have three candles
burning in the room, and I would not, under any pressure, have a new
house built for me or even have an old house considerably altered. For
this I know is true, whatever else in superstition may be nonsense--that
whoever builds a new home for himself and takes a pride in it, shall
have something terrible happen to him which will prevent him from
enjoying his life in that home, even if he should ever get so far as to
live in it. For, even in the days when I had not been stricken to the
earth and did not believe in the Bible, I had always believed in the
truth of the words:
"Fools build houses and wise men live in them."
One only has to read about the lives of the great millionaires to have
proof that this is so.
But I am quite open-minded about Fridays. If anything, I think Friday is
a luckier day for me than any other day. I also have a fixed conviction
that neither I, nor any of those nearest to me, is born to die by the
quite easy and pleasant method of drowning. So we started on a Friday
without a qualm.
And I did not dream that, even as he ran about this deck and began to
live this new life, he was starting on another stage of his training for
a soldier!
"What a lot of portraits of the Kaiser we've seen!" he said to me one
day, when his feet had covered most of the cubic space of Amsterdam,
Christiania, Copenhagen, and Stockholm.
I laughed. "We really have seen a good many, haven't we? But you don't
mind that, do you? I thought you rather liked his personal appearance."
"Well, he did look very fine at the funeral of Queen Victoria. I always
remember that. But I don't see why he should be all over the place in
these countries that don't belong to him."
In a palace in Stockholm his inevitable picture occupied an especially
conspicuous position on the wall of a certain room. At the same time,
the arrangement of the furniture of that room struck us as quite
surprisingly ugly and unsuitable.
"What a pity to have the piano where it is!" I remarked to our guide.
"It would be so much better over at the other side of the room."
"It used to be over at the other side, but the Kaiser came here on a
visit a little while ago and had it moved. He's had nearly all the
furniture in the room altered."
Little Yeogh Wough opened his brown eyes very wide.
"You wouldn't expect a man like him to take such an interest in little
things," he said.
"It's only by taking an interest in little things that you can get big
ones to come right," I told him. "Remember what I told you about
Kitchener and the rails for the new line in the Soudan."
"Do you think we shall ever really have a war with Germany, Big Yeogh
Wough?"
"Yes, dear, very surely. If it comes in my lifetime, I hope it will come
before I am old, because there will be dreadful things happen which old
people will not be able to face. It might mean almost a going back to
savage life--even at home in England."
He looked at me as if he thought I could not mean what I was saying. He
knows better now.
On the ship they called him the "Encyclopædia Britannica," and said he
might be safely referred to when any information on any subject was
required.
"If I'm still in the position I'm in now when that boy gets old enough
to think of making a start in the world, I hope you'll let me be of some
use to him," said a high Government official who was among the
passengers. "You and his father are not thinking of the Army for him, of
course. His eyes not being right puts soldiering out of court."
"His eyes will be all right in a few months," I replied. "But we should
not think of the Army for him, in any case. By the way, there isn't a
single soldier among the people on this ship."
No, there was not a single soldier on board. And yet, since then, I have
shed tears for five of the men who were before me as I talked that day,
and who have given up their lives for their country. Many others whom I
did not know so well have gone over the awful border, too, and the rest
are in khaki; all the rest, that is, who had something of youth still in
their blood.
"Aren't the Russians splendid?" the boy cried to me a few days later.
"They're just right, you see, because they've got the two sorts of men
in them both at the same time--the football-playing, hard-hitting sort,
and the other sort that loves poetry and likes beautiful things."
"Yes, you are right. That is just what makes Russians so fascinating," I
said.
There was cholera in Petrograd--and we had told Little Yeogh Wough that
he would only be allowed to go there once or twice and would have to
spend most of his time waiting on the ship off Cronstadt, while we went
to the capital, and thence on to Moscow.
But we had reckoned without Little Yeogh Wough himself.
Coming back from Moscow to Petrograd, we were thunderstruck to see, just
outside the Empress Mother's palace, in the magnificent Nevski Prospect,
a fine-built, boyish figure, that stepped out very gaily and held its
head very high.
"Surely that can't be Roland!" I exclaimed in amazement.
"It certainly is Roland," declared his father grimly.
Little Yeogh Wough--wandering through Petrograd alone!
He was looking at a carriage drawn by four long-tailed, coal-black,
fiery-eyed horses, and at the dazzling uniform of an officer who sat in
the carriage. Then he hurried into a side-street and we got out of the
droshky we were in and followed him on foot.
How much at home he was! how gaily he walked here alone in this city
where the very letters of the alphabet over the shop fronts were strange
and mysterious!
A man and woman who looked like Americans were walking in front of him
and, just as these two passed the door of the largest house in the
street, a man came out and accosted them. He seemed to be making a
mistake as to their identity, and a babel of questions and answers began
in Russian and English, neither side knowing what the other said. Then
Little Yeogh Wough reached the group and stopped and began to talk.
"He must have been spending his time learning Russian!" my husband cried
in astonishment. "He is actually putting the matter right."
We had come near enough to catch the boy's words--halting, jerky words,
and yet clearly decent Russian, since they were understood. We seized
him by the arm.
"What are you doing here alone?" we wanted to know.
"Oh, I'm all right! I've been teaching myself a bit of Russian. I know
now what that word means that you noticed over the shop the other day
and that you said looked like 'photograph.' It's 'restaurant.'"
"You enterprising little wretch!" I said, laughing.
PART II
THE TWO GERMAN GIFTS
CHAPTER VIII
THE FIRST GERMAN GIFT--A ROSE
I went in earlier than he expected one evening in answer to his
never-failing appeal: "Come and see me in bed, mother!" and found him
sitting up in his berth with a scrap of pencil and a crumpled pocket
notebook and his eyes glued on something that he saw through his open
porthole.
He had the top inner berth, on the corridor side of the cabin, and by
looking across the corridor he could get a complete view of nearly the
whole of the dining-room of the liner. He thrust his pencil and paper
out of sight under his blankets as I drew near; but he had done this too
late, and he knew it as he met my look with one of his delightful
smiles.
"Whatever are you doing, Little Yeogh Wough? Show me that notebook."
He drew forth the crumpled little pad of paper, and I found scribbled on
it the following entries:
"Mr. B----, four whiskies and sodas, with the whisky more than half-way
up the glass each time.
"Mrs. Delaplaine Waterton--three glasses of sherry and bitters.
"Mr. Pinkerby--a Kümmel and three whiskies.
"Lord ----, five whiskies and sodas, making eight since two o'clock
this afternoon."
"Oh, Roland! How naughty of you! Whatever put it into your head to spy
on people like this?"
The laugh that was on his lips was now dancing in his big brown eyes.
"It doesn't do them any harm, and it's very funny," he said. "I can hear
a good deal of what they say. I don't want to listen, you know, but I
can't help hearing. Still, it doesn't matter, because I would not tell
anybody for anything in the world.... Just fancy, Big Yeogh Wough, we're
going to be in Kiel to-morrow! I shall see father in a tobacconist's
shop again."
"Is there anything so very wonderful in that?"
"Of course there is. He's a different man directly he gets into a
tobacconist's. You really wouldn't know he was father. It's so funny to
watch him."
"Oh! Men are always like that, dear. You'll be like it yourself when
you're a grown man. No matter how much a man loves a woman he gets free
from her somehow inside a tobacco shop. But I hope you want to see Kiel
for better reasons than that."
He nodded as he patted my hand.
"I know. It's the Kaiser's jewel of a port, where he hugs up the
beginnings of his navy."
"Yes--his navy which he thinks will one day beat ours. I hope we shall
be able to see one or two of his ships--yet I don't expect we shall. He
believes in the old saying that children and fools--especially British
fools--shouldn't see half-done work."
"If you don't mind, Big Yeogh Wough, I'm not going to wear my glasses
when we go ashore there to-morrow. I don't really need them to see with,
you know, and I don't want to look as if I'd got anything wrong with me
when I'm going through a German town."
"All right, you dear boy. And we'll try to get a look at Wilhelm's
ships. But what does it matter what they are like? We'll drum them up
the North Sea as we drummed others before them. We've nothing to fear
from outsiders as long as we don't let any dry rot get into us at home."
"Kitchener and others like him will see to that."
"Kitchener can't see to everything. It would take scores of great men to
make a breakwater against a whole flood of dull stupidity. We've all got
to help. You'll have to help a lot. You'll have to learn to be very
strong--but without being hard. If you are hard you're like a hyacinth
in a March gale as compared with a daffodil. The hyacinth stands up
stiffly and thinks it's strong, but the wind snaps it in a minute, while
the bending daffodil comes out all right. It's always like that with men
who try to kill their softer side, and who don't understand women and
don't trust them. And now you must go to sleep."
"Will you promise to wake me up when you come to bed and want your dress
undone? I'm so much easier to wake than father."
"Yes, I'll wake you. You see, your knowing how to undo my dress will
make you a better magistrate one day, or a better governor of an Indian
province. There are people who wouldn't see how this is so, but it's
true."
Kiel looked quite gay when we opened our eyes upon it next morning. It
would have looked gayer still if the ships in the harbour had not been
of such a hideous dull grey colour--exactly that of an insect that I
have always detested, known as the slater.
The Kaiser's private pleasure yacht, the _Hohenzollern_, was there and
was certainly white; but it was a white that looked as if it ought to
have been grey.
I have no doubt that the _Hohenzollern_ was a miracle of luxury inside,
with her silver bath for the Kaiser's daughter and other sybaritic
appointments; but outside she was not a dream of loveliness. Neither
were the two warships that we saw anything like as handsome to behold as
our own battleships.
"What funny tin-pot things they look!" said Little Yeogh Wough. "Now I
know why all the toy ships we have that are made in Germany never look
a bit like ours. They don't look so professional, somehow. Perhaps it's
because we're not used to them. I hope they'll let us go on board them."
"Perhaps they will, as there are five or six members of Parliament among
us and the head of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland
Yard," I said quite confidently.
But it was notified to us early by the Kiel authorities that the two
warships were, as one might say, in déshabille, and not tidy enough and
trim enough to be inspected. So we had to content ourselves with walking
about the town.
Little Yeogh Wough took a snapshot of the _Hohenzollern_ from the jetty,
and then walked along with pride and satisfaction on his handsome face
because he had managed to do this without attracting anybody's notice.
Then we turned up the long main street and saw a good many pretty villas
that were charming enough to make one feel one could live in them quite
comfortably for two or three months of the summer.
"It is a very nice place," I said, as we passed the last of these
tree-embowered villas and began to walk up the hilly main street where
the shops begin. "Here's your tobacco shop, by the way."
I stayed outside on the pavement while Little Yeogh Wough went in with
his father. When they came out a German officer came out also, treated
me to a long, close look and swung on his way.
"He stared hard at me in the shop and then said: 'You're English, are
you?'" the boy of my heart informed me. "I told him I was, and he looked
hard at me all over again. I felt quite glad that I'd come out without
my glasses on."
I felt glad, too, as I looked at his bright face.
How queerly white his lucky lock showed in the sunshine! Surely nothing
very bad could ever happen to him in life when he had a lock like that!
"I'm sorry to have to say it, but this old watchmaker fellow here has
put my watch right twice as well as an ordinary watchmaker in this sort
of town at home in England would do it, and has done it in half the
time, into the bargain," his father said presently, emerging from
another little shop. "It's astonishing how capable these Germans are.
It's a pity they aren't a little better at sanitation. What awful smells
there are all over this town!"
This was true. We had been worried by stenches ever since we had begun
to walk up the hilly street.
On the way back two small incidents occurred. The first was that Little
Yeogh Wough nearly got into serious trouble by taking a photograph of
half a dozen street urchins, and the second was that we passed a
battalion of soldiers marching with such regularity that the whole mass
of them was like one huge moving machine. We stopped and watched them go
by, never dreaming of what was coming to us and to them in the very near
future.
Ah, Heaven! If we could have foreseen the thing that was coming!
That afternoon the brightness of the day had gone and heavy showers of
rain made me give up the idea of going ashore again. Little Yeogh Wough
went, however, with his father, and when they came back two hours later
he gave me one of the most perfect dark red roses that I have ever seen
in my life.
"A German girl gave it to me," he told me. "I asked her for it, right
straight out. We were sheltering from one of the showers under the wall
of one of those villa gardens, and I saw the rose and it looked so
lovely that I told father that I wished I could get it for you. Then,
just as the rain was leaving off, the girl came out of the villa into
the garden and I asked father to tell me what words to say in German to
ask for the rose. And he told me, and I asked her. I couldn't have done
it for myself. I only did it because I wanted the rose for you so badly.
And she actually said: 'Ja' and gave it to me. Then she smiled and said:
'Auf wiedersehen.' I asked father what that meant, and he said it was
the same as the French _au revoir_, or 'To our next meeting.' But I
don't suppose I shall ever see that German girl again."
"No. I don't suppose you ever will."
And so he got his first German gift.
That night I wore the rose.
We had to wait about in the Kiel Canal because a ship had got stuck
across one of the narrow parts of it. And the boy said:
"The Kaiser must have felt very much shut in before this canal was made.
How funny it is to be on board a ship on a strip of water that's
sometimes so narrow that you could have a talk with the people on the
banks on either side--just as if you were on the Regent's Canal at home
in London!"
It was a joyous occasion for Little Yeogh Wough when he lay in his bed
again for his good-night talk with me, and not in a berth.
"It's nice to come home and be welcomed by the children and the dogs.
What a pity it is that dogs can't welcome us when we go to Heaven! I've
been thinking this ever since Miss Torry told me that Tita didn't eat
anything for four days after we'd gone and was so cross with her puppies
that she gave them smacks with her paw every time they came near
her--all because her heart was breaking. And just because she's got four
legs and fur instead of two legs and a bare skin she isn't supposed to
have a soul."
His eyes were looking full into mine as our faces rested against the
pillow, close to each other.
I had returned to the house an hour in front of him and I knew in what a
wonderful way the place seemed to get richer directly he appeared inside
its walls. Everything took on a new value the moment he got near it. It
is a fine thing not to be an impoverisher, but it is a finer thing still
to be an enricher. It is a particularly valuable quality to young people
starting in life on small incomes. He himself knew it when he saw it in
others.
"I say, Big Yeogh Wough, how is it that you always look quite
expensively dressed in hats and coats that most people would throw away
if they saw them off you?" he asked me one day.
"I don't know, dear. I only know that there are people like that, while
there are other people who could walk through the East End on a Bank
Holiday in a fifty-guinea musical-comedy hat without having a single
person look at them twice. It hasn't anything to do with handsomeness.
Some really beautiful people aren't worth looking at. It has to do with
style. When you grow up you'll never need to envy a field-marshal his
uniform. Just by being yourself you'll have a uniform more dazzling than
any that was ever worn in Europe."
"Is that why you never envy women who can buy their clothes in Paris?"
"I'm too conceited to envy them," I answered him. "A woman who envies
other women their things can't think very much of herself. Now, I think
so much of myself that if I choose to go out with a hole in my stocking,
then holes in stockings are the fashion. You must feel like that,
too--within limits. Only, of course, a well-bred man always needs to be
smarter than a well-bred woman. By the way, I met one of the great
French man-dressmakers at a luncheon at the Mansion House one day and he
taught me a lot of wisdom. It all came to this--that you can't dress the
undressable person and that the dressable person doesn't need dressing.
He said that the struggle to dress royal women and millionaires' wives
who were not dressable had turned his hair prematurely grey."
"I suppose it comes to this, too--that we must cultivate ourselves and
trust to luck for the rest?"
"Of course," I nodded. "Whatever happens to you--I mean, whatever things
you may have to do without--take care that you keep yourself in good
condition, body and mind. You can always get new clothes when you want
them, so long as the figure they're going to be hung on is all right.
Keep your bloom and your graces and your style. Why, even if people went
about naked, like savages, there would still be some among them well
dressed and some not!"
To-night, as I knelt by his bed with my head resting on the pillow
beside his, his mind was on graver things.
"I've been thinking a lot about souls and that sort of thing since Miss
Torry told me just now that the colonel along the road here is supposed
to be dying. I saw the vicar go in there. I don't want that kind of man
coming about me when I'm dying. I couldn't tell my feelings then to a
man I'd been playing tennis with a month or two before. Asking a man
like that to help you in your last minutes would seem more like a joke
than anything else."
"You strange boy! Why, the vicar is a very good man."
"I know he is; but that doesn't make any difference. I'd rather have a
worse man who kept to his own calling more."
This was the first time for a long while that the boy of my heart had
spoken to me about religion. It prepared me for what I came upon
accidentally next day in a private drawer which he had happened to leave
not only unlocked, but yawning open--an ivory crucifix.
I stood and looked at the sacred thing, as it lay partly hidden and
partly revealed among a few boyish treasures that included a few letters
that I had written him at the rare times when we had been separated.
That crucifix hidden away in his drawer meant more, far more, than even
I could guess. It told a story of strange workings in the deeps of his
soul. I knew better than to say a word to him about it. But that night,
when I went to see him in bed, my kiss was warmer and my arm under his
head tenderer even than usual.
"Dear Big Yeogh Wough! Dear Big Yeogh Wough!" he murmured caressingly.
"How is it, Roland, that you never say 'darling'? I don't think I've
ever heard you say it in your life, any more than I've ever heard you
talk slang."
"I don't know. I don't want to say it, somehow. You know, you yourself
say it's cheap."
"It's cheap when a woman says it, because women generally say it too
easily; but it can be a grand word when a man speaks it--or a boy.
Still, I am quite satisfied that you should call me just Big Yeogh
Wough. I know I am dearer to you than anyone else in the world can ever
be--at least, until you grow up and fall in love."
I had spoken with a laugh, but he answered me gravely.
"I shall have to find a very special sort of girl before I leave you for
her."
A few minutes later, when I had risen from beside his bed and was
opening his window, he said:
"Did you see those Territorials coming along just as we turned in at the
gate here? Did you see how well they marched? Of course, they were only
Territorials and people always laugh at them, but there's something so
splendid in the sound of marching feet that I can't get it out of my
head. It made me feel for the first time almost sorry that I'm never
going to be a soldier."
Oh, that splendid sound of marching feet, so grand, so gay, and yet so
heartbreaking! He was to hear it often enough in a very few years to
come!
CHAPTER IX
THE WAY OF A BROTHER
There was one thing which more than any other had power to rouse
whatever demon of Temper lurked far down under the sweetness of Little
Yeogh Wough's nature; and that was Croquet.
It is no wonder that a well-known judge said a year or two ago in his
court that from personal experience he knew croquet to be more trying to
the temper than anything else in the world. And the objectionable game
was at the root of a good deal of trouble that arose at this time
between the Boy and me.
He never could bear to be beaten at anything. This feeling has been his
driving power in all his life. Even Old Nurse knew of it, for one day
when I had said to her that he never told a lie, she answered me:
"No. That's true; he don't tell no lies. But that isn't from loving the
truth. It's only because 'e won't be beaten at it. 'E's that full of
pride and vanity, he don't know what to do with himself. All these
children is full of pride and vanity. When they goes out, if you please,
they don't want to go where other people goes, so when we're in the
country we 'ides behind a bush so as we can't see nobody and nobody
can't see us, and when we're up 'ere in London we goes down back streets
where there's nobody else goes but dustmen and cats. And it's all Master
Roland's teaching of 'em. He've been making Miss Clare think she's an
artist now, and you ought to see our Macademy up on the nursery walls.
She've been in a temper all this day because I won't sit with nothing on
for 'er to make a picture of Venus rising from the sea."
Meanwhile, Little Yeogh Wough played croquet desperately on the lawn
between the banks of marguerites.
(Dear marguerites! I remember how, whenever he was near them, they all
took on a Frenchy gaiety and distinction that lent a new charm to their
English prettiness and purity.)
He was not allowed to play with his little sister and brother, because
he thought too much of himself and too little of them. He was then told
off to play with any friends of the family who happened to be on a visit
at the house, and the end of this usually was that when in the evening
he came to say good night and made his unfailing appeal: "Come and see
me in bed, mother," I answered him severely: "No, Roland. You behaved
too badly at croquet to-day."
He stood and looked at me wistfully. He always did this when I rebuked
him. He never asked questions in words, but only with his big brown
eyes.
"I happened to be upstairs at the open nursery window and I saw you and
heard you," I went on. "You were most rude to Mr. ----. If you ever play
croquet with him again you will have the goodness to remember that he is
a married man of fifty-five and not another boy of fourteen, like
yourself, and you will treat him with respect."
"But he got my ball at the beginning of the game and put it through all
the hoops and I couldn't get it back!"
"Don't make excuses. Leave those to weak characters. An excuse is always
worse than the thing it tries to cover up. You lost your temper and
forgot your manners, and you will not play croquet again for a
fortnight."
This meant a fortnight of proud, dignified unhappiness. And it was while
this fit of quiet bitterness was still on him that he did a dreadful
thing.
One day, when I came home after having been out two or three hours, I
found an ominous grimness in the atmosphere of the house, and everybody
I met seemed to have a longer upper lip than usual.
"What's the matter?" I asked Miss Torry, who had a horror-stricken look.
"It's Roland. He has been up in the nursery and knocked his sister down
and trampled on her. It's a wonder that he hasn't broken any of her
ribs."
And I had been out buying pretty clothes in order the better to live up
to this boy's ideal of me!
I found him sitting in the dining-room, waiting for his tea, which he
always had with us.
"Roland, is it true that you have been upstairs and knocked your sister
down and trampled upon her?"
"Yes, mother, it's quite true." His eyes met mine unflinchingly.
"And you have done this unmanly thing ... you, my boy, that I worship so
much!"
"Yes." He answered me very low, but very steadily. "She made me angry
because she hadn't got any imagination. I asked her to imagine the
nursery door was red and she said she couldn't because it was white.
That made me so angry that I couldn't help knocking her down."
"You little coward!" I said to him very quietly. "You little coward!"
I saw his eyes flinch then and fill with tears and his face grow first
very red and then deadly white, while his mouth began to quiver and
twitch.
And I went out in search of a cane.
That was the last whipping he ever had; and the last occasion on which
he could ever be accused of acting unchivalrously towards any feminine
person.
"Little Yeogh Wough, why do you do these things and lower my grand ideas
of you?" I asked him when I went to see him in bed the next night. "And,
apart from that, why do you put it into the power of Old Nurse and other
people to say that I am a fool for worshipping you as I do? You are not
kind to me when you do that. You see, I know in spite of everything that
you are good and great; but they don't know because they are blind, and
so they think me wrong and believe you to be a brutal little coward. Why
do you give them the chance?"
"It's Clare. She aggravates me. She precipitates."
"Precipitates?" I looked at him wonderingly.
"Yes. She always rushes headlong at the wrong thing. Yesterday afternoon
I was beginning to tell Nurse that there was something wrong with my
eiderdown, and I'd just got out the first syllable ei when Clare broke
in: 'Oh, yes, Roland, I knew there was something wrong with your eye. I
saw it directly you came in.' That was what began to get my temper up.
Then I said something sharp to her and she answered me back. She said
that when she grew up she'd take a cottage on Dartmoor to receive me in
when I came out of the convict prison. What do you think of that for a
girl of eleven?"
"Rather bright. And in any case she is a girl and you are bound to
honour girls and women all the days of your life. A sister should be a
very holy and lovely thing to a brother, Little Yeogh Wough, as you will
know some day."
Now that he has grown big and is a soldier, he has in very deed come to
know this, as is shown by something he said in a letter which he sent to
his sister from the Front only a few days ago:
"MY DEAR BYSTANDER,
"I wonder what makes you a Bystander?
"I don't know; but I do know that I haven't got the stuff in me of
which Bystanders are made. I must be the Principal Player or
nothing. I know, too, that a Bystander knows more and understands
more than a Principal Player. I often think that if anyone wanted a
concise description of myself I should do better to send them to
you than to anyone else. It is no longer a case of 'dear little
sister and baby brother,' as it used to be once when I said my
prayers; but for a boy the milestones are whiter and more evident
than for a girl. The Public School and Osborne and Oxford are
landmarks which you have nothing equivalent to set against.
"And yet this big brother ... autocratic, meteoric, inconsiderate
... who writes to you often as if you were the Stores, sees more
and knows more and thinks more than even Bystanders give him
credit for. The three years between us were once a very great deal
of difference, but that time has passed. Let it rather be, as I
once wrote on a photograph for you, _Frater sorori; amicus amico_.
Someone remarked to me the other day: 'All your family are such
dears ... all of them.'
"Yes."
Looking back again, I remember that it was in the time of the coming out
of the almond blossom that Little Yeogh Wough tried for a scholarship at
Winchester and failed, as he had known beforehand that he would fail,
because never once in his life had he succeeded in getting anything at
the first time of trying for it. And it was not very long afterwards
that he came out triumphantly in an even harder examination and so won
his way into another great Public School.
He signalised his triumph by asking that evening with quite unusual
boldness and assurance: "Father, can I have the first hot water in the
bath?"
And his father, who usually defended that first hot water as a tigress
defends her cubs, answered him with almost boisterous goodwill:
"Certainly, my boy, certainly. Tell the cook to pile on the coal and
make it hotter than ever." And this was the dear, delightful man who, if
he saw a light in the bathroom window when he was coming home in the
evening, would take to running along the street like a creature
possessed, and if asked what was the matter, would reply distractedly as
he ran:
"Somebody's in the bathroom! Somebody's having a bath ... taking all the
hot water! I must get home and stop it. I must get home and stop it."
CHAPTER X
THE FEEDING OF LOVE
There was another evening on which the boy of my heart was allowed to
take the first bloom off the hot-water supply in the bathroom, instead
of having to indulge his love of a hot bath at some other and more
inconvenient time of the day; and this was the evening before he set out
for the first time for the Public School on the Tableland.
He was a very shy and nervous boy when he went, though he was to be
prince-like in his pride when he came back.
"That there Master Roland 'ull have a bilious attack when he gets to
that there School," Old Nurse declared, as she watched him go. "'E
always feels it in the inside when his nerves is upset. It was just the
same when 'e was learning to ride. He would keep on with that there
dangerous 'orse, just because he wouldn't be beaten, and it was a wonder
to me as he didn't get yellow jaundice. If he don't end up with a
bilious attack to-day, he'll be lucky."
There was a curious weight of gloom upon the house after his cab had
driven away. The little sister moped in a corner and the still smaller
brother sobbed silently behind the door of a room in which he was not
expected to be.
I knew that destiny was working, but I did not know how resolutely or
how pitilessly. I did not know it even when, at the beginning of the
second term, we were asked to give our permission for the boy to join
the Officers' Training Corps.
"Of course he must join it," we agreed. "It will do him all the good in
the world, both in body and in character. He's not likely ever to have
to practise what he will learn there; but every male child born in the
British Empire ought to know how to be a soldier in case of need."
So he took the first step; the step which has led after only a few years
to my being here where I am to-night--waiting for him to come home on
his second leave from the Front, where he has been fighting in the great
war that darkens the whole world.
His first holidays were such amazing days of joy! They were the winter
holidays, too, and that made them better. The house in London had been
in full swing, seeming to brim over with children and dogs and high
spirits; and, within due limits of discipline, Little Yeogh Wough had
been master of it all.
He had had a fairly hard time during the term, though we did not know it
until long afterwards. A secret society of slackers had tried to baulk
his energy and blunt his ability by threatening him with ghastly
penalties if he got to the top of his form. Five of them had met him one
day on his way from his house to his class-room and had thrown him over
a gate into a field. He had got up and dealt with them one after
another, and after that the threatening letters with death heads and
cross-bones drawn in blood had ceased to come and he had had peace.
The bodily strength of him had developed enormously in the three months,
and yet, directly he had come home, the tender, irresistibly fascinating
side of him had sprung to the fore again. The gracious boyish dignity
and charm of him filled the whole atmosphere on those afternoons when
wind and rain and sleet made the London that he loved a bad place to be
out in, and in the comfortable study he made his small toy gramophone
give out a sweeter music than I have ever heard from the large and
expensive instrument that now holds the place of honour in the home.
"But I wonder why everything sounds so sad," Miss Torry asked suddenly
one day. "It's always the same, whatever record he puts on. There's
always a sound of heartbreak in it, even if it's a comic song."
"That's like his character and his eyes," I laughed. "All gaiety and joy
in living, but with throbs of heartbreak underneath."
Then there were happier hours still when I was going out to dinner and
he would superintend my dressing and be particular about the flowers I
was going to wear, or throw himself across the foot of the bed and read
me French books or old French plays while I brushed my hair.
"It's so lovely to get back to London and to you, Big Yeogh Wough. When
I've done with school and Oxford, you'll let me live near you always,
won't you?"
"You won't be able to live near me if you go in for the Indian Civil
Service," I reminded him. "And that's more suited to you than anything
else, you know."
"Then I shall try to be literary and not have anything to do with the
Indian Civil Service," he declared, half angrily. "Oh, by the way, as
soon as I get back to school I'm going to get rooms for you and father
for our Speech Day. They've got to be secured early, or you mayn't get
any. Sometimes people take them a year in advance."
That first Speech Day, when it did arrive, was a marvellous occasion. He
had urged me in half a dozen letters to make great efforts in the
direction of clothes, and most of all in the matter of a hat, and as
soon as I arrived he anxiously inspected my outfit.
"Yes, that's all right," he pronounced, tenderly touching the new lilac
frock which I had lifted out of my trunk, and looking admiringly at the
plumed black hat that was to be worn with it. "You'll look splendid and
I shall be very proud of you."
"But you ought to be just as proud of me if I were a frump," I said.
"You couldn't be a frump and be my mother," he returned. And to this day
I don't know whether this remark was more of a compliment to himself or
to me.
Just as dance music is sadder than any Dead March ever composed, so
youth and gaiety make one think of death more than ever old age does.
Really, most of the old people that one knows, and particularly the old
men, make one think of anything rather than the grave. They are
skittish, frivolous, doing their best to dance upon their crutches and
holding on to the good things of this world with a desperate grip which
youth never has.
That is why youth goes out to fight so readily.
But a great Public School, with its army of eager-faced boys and its
echoing stones and its clamour of gay voices, not only makes me think of
death, but makes even the past ages of the world pass in procession
before my terrified eyes. I can see Death walking in the boyish ranks
always, mocking at their pink youth with the grisly horror of his grey
decay.
I don't know whether I have a special kind of vision for this horror. I
only know that I see it where other people don't seem to see it. In the
same way I always find Paris the saddest city in the world, because it
is the brightest. I love Paris, but I am never able to breathe in it.
When I get back to London the choking feeling goes; for in London, under
superficial gloom, there is peace for the nerves and solid happiness.
The choking feeling was in my throat all through that Speech Day. It
gripped me first early in the morning when I went to the beautiful
chapel and saw recorded on the walls the names of the sons of the School
who had given their lives for their country. There were many of them
even then. (Ah, Heaven! I dread to think how many there are now!) And I
could have kissed the wall where they are recorded in my passion of
gratitude and admiration and reverence.
If it comes to that, I should like to drag myself on my hands and knees
over the stones of such a place as this in that very passion of
reverence. Is it any wonder that these boys died so bravely when they
came from a place where chivalry, knightliness, graciousness and the
truest manliness have come down as a heritage through hundreds of years?
It is strange how the stalking shape of Death seemed to be clanking his
dry bones everywhere for me that day! It seemed to grin at me when I
smiled in pride at seeing Little Yeogh Wough in the khaki of the
Officers' Training Corps. It grinned, too, at the other women, who were
there in hundreds--mothers, sisters, aunts, or cousins of the boys--all
looking like butterflies in frocks of the "confection" kind and hats
from Paris or from the Maison Lewis.
What a mockery clothes are when the great things of life come along!
"Roland, are you satisfied with my dress and hat?" I asked him in a
whisper, when I got a chance.
"Of course I am. They look better than anybody else's here."
"But they wouldn't look half so nice laid out on a bed as most of these
other people's things would."
"No. I don't suppose they would. That's just why they look so much
better on."
"You clever boy! Then you've found out already that there are two
different kinds of love of dress--the false kind, which thinks it's all
right when it buys pretty things and hangs them on itself, and the true
kind, which carefully chooses every shade of colour and every bit of
material to be a frame and set-off for the wearer's particular sort of
good looks. You've got the insight to see that what looks like a bit of
brown holland when laid on a bed or hung on a peg may make a woman
lovely enough to turn men's heads, while a confection that has cost a
hundred guineas may leave everybody cold. You've only got to look around
here to see that it is not the clothes that matter, but the human flesh
and blood inside them. Why, one of our greatest society beauties once
went through a London season with only two frocks to her name--one for
day, one for evening, and both black. And yet she outshone everybody
else."
We were going into the concert hall and there the figure of Death seemed
to me more hideously clear than anywhere else. But I said nothing to
Little Yeogh Wough of this curious oppression that was upon me. He was
shyly proud of having had many prizes, and I went on talking lightly,
very low, as we waited for the concert to begin.
"I think you'll know enough about women to be able to judge them well
for yourself when you grow up. Look at that girl in the front row of
seats with all sorts of bits of chiffon and odd ribbons about her. She
has changed her position five times since we came in, trying to put
herself so that everybody coming up the middle of the hall shall take
notice of her. And do you see how she keeps on touching her bits of
ribbon and chiffon--pulling them out or patting them down? Well, that's
the kind of girl you must avoid when you're grown up. She's a prinker,
and a prinker is horrible. You see, you can be quite sure even before
looking at her face that she isn't very pretty, because a very pretty
woman doesn't need to prink in order to try to attract notice. She
attracts it too much. She would rather escape it if she could. So, when
you grow up, Little Yeogh Wough, you must find a girl whose lovely head
and full throat rise best from out a plain linen collar. You must avoid
prinkers, just as a woman looking for a husband ought to avoid a doxer."
"Whatever is a doxer?"
"A doxer's generally a man--a man who smiles too agreeably and moves his
head and body about in a funny way directly he gets among strangers. But
never mind the doxers or the prinkers, either. I want to listen to this
piece by Sibelius."
The strange fear of the future clutched at my throat more and more. It
got to be almost more than I could bear when a little later the most
spirited of the school songs swelled into the air, sung by scores of
voices:
"Jolly, oh, jolly at eve...."
A sob rose up within me and it was only with difficulty that I forced it
back.
"What's the matter, Big Yeogh Wough?" whispered the boy beside me.
"It's that song. It's a lovely school song, but it's the saddest thing
I've ever heard in my life. It seems to me that I can see generation
after generation of boys rising and passing along--passing along to
doom."
Under cover of the music Little Yeogh Wough spoke in a whisper again:
"It's a grand doom, anyhow--if you mean dying for one's country. Don't
you think it's better to have your name on the walls of that chapel as
having died fighting than to live a long, smooth life at home?"
"Yes, of course it is." I pulled myself together and spoke the truth as
I knew it. "They've got the best of it, all right--those boys who died.
But still--it's doom."
"No! No! It's glory."
The boy used to say that the only hard thing for him in his life at the
big Public School was the doing without my half-hours by his bedside at
night.
We were never quite so completely in touch with each other when we did
not get these talks.
This may seem a strange thing to say, but it is the truth.
It is astonishing how much sympathy the right of entrance into another's
sleeping-room means. It is all very well for people like George Bernard
Shaw to declare that the custom of married persons sleeping together is
an outrageous one and interferes with the liberty of the individual, but
if in days to come people of his sort get their way there will be far
fewer happy marriages. In the sitting-rooms of the home, as well as in
the outside world, there are always things happening and influences at
work that interfere with the smooth flowing of the magical current of
love and sweetness between husband and wife; and if there is no privacy
of the same bedroom to put this disturbance right every evening, what is
to become of their happiness?
Some people seem to think that between a husband and a wife, or a mother
and son, tenderness and devotion are a matter of course. But this is not
so.
Nothing is got in this world without trouble. You cannot get a plant to
thrive in your window unless you give it attention and show it plainly
that you want it to thrive. Then do you suppose people are going to love
you tenderly unless you cultivate that love as if it were a tomato in a
greenhouse?
Not a bit of it; not even if you are the most perfect man or woman in
the world.
I have an aunt who is devoted to me when we occupy the same bedroom, as
we did nearly all through my childhood, but thinks me a hateful person
when we only see each other casually. And I used to think of her when,
owing to Little Yeogh Wough's absence at school, my nightly visits to
his room to see him in bed, as he called it, were interrupted for long
weeks at a time.
I knew that these breaks in our sacred and sweet night talks would have
been dangerous if our love had been less strong. For in both of us, just
as the electric current is tremendously strong when it flows, so it is
entirely cut off and dead if anything interferes with it at all. When I
am not burning hot with people that I love I am usually icily cold, even
to the point of wondering whether I really love them at all. I have no
dribblings of mild affection. So, knowing that Little Yeogh Wough had
this same peculiarity, I used to be afraid when he had been away from me
for a whole term.
But I need not have been afraid.
I have come to know since that there are loves which are strong enough
to stand any test. And the love between him and me is one of these. Yet
he had so much worship when he came home for his holidays that he ought
to have been able to do without mine.
His father quickened up. The children quickened up. Miss Torry quickened
up. The servants quickened up. The very dogs understood and showed a new
energy.
But he got a good deal of blame, too, when Old Nurse came to deal with
his things.
"Now I just asks you, mum, if you thinks as these 'ere myganas are the
sort of thing that a schoolboy ought to get for hisself," said she
indignantly. "'E've never got a thought except for getting what 'e wants
and when 'e wants it, cost what it may. And you that devoted to 'im as
you sits up till past two o'clock every morning a thinkin' about 'im and
a writin' of 'im letters as would cover miles, as m'say!"
She was holding out the most bewitching suit of pyjamas that I have
ever seen in my life: cream-coloured ones, soft and delicate, with
cherry-coloured turned-out collar and cuffs and frogs. Really, I quite
coveted the jacket to wear as a coat over a cream linen skirt.
"And there's another one in light and dark blue, just as bad," went on
the worthy old creature confronting me, more indignant still. "I calls
it disgraceful extravagance. I can't think what they've got such things
in boys' shops for. Myganas made of sacking would be good enough for any
boy living while he was in his teens, even if he was the Prince of
Wales. And his socks! 'E've got dozens of pairs more than he took away
with 'im--mauve and blue and green and all with clogs."
"Clogs?"
"Yes." Then, seeing that my face still looked blank, she lifted her own
short white piqué skirt and exhibited one of her sturdy pillar-box legs,
while she pointed to the clock up the side of her black stocking.
"Oh, clocks? Oh, I see! Oh, well, Nurse, never mind! There are so many
worse things he might do than go in for a few extravagances."
"Extravagances! 'E've got no more idea of money than that there dog
have."
She nodded towards the black Skye terrier. And I laughed to myself as I
thought how true had been an opinion passed on him by his sharp little
sister when she had said, a few days earlier:
"If I had to depend on either of my brothers, I would rather it were
Evelyn. He would only take a very tiny cottage for me to live in, but he
would pay for it always; whereas Roland would find me a palace, saying
nothing else was good enough for me, and then would forget to give me
any money to keep it up."
That was Little Yeogh Wough all over.
We did not always talk at the times when I went in to see him in bed.
Sometimes we stayed quite quiet all the time that I was there, having
only our hands clasped. Sometimes we sang songs together, English and
French, very softly, so that people passing on the landing outside might
not think us lunatics. He, who was often so shy with others, was as free
from self-consciousness with me as if he had been alone. I had taught
him to be so, ever since he was two years old. The wonderful chord of
love and sympathy between us was so strong that in these precious
half-hours at the end of the day he could not feel any constraint with
me, but only a double freedom.
Once we were even so childish as to try who could do the better
cat-calling. But whether we talked or sang or cat-called, we got to love
each other more with every moment that we passed there in the darkness,
he in the bed with his big lion-cub head on the pillow and I kneeling
beside it, with my face close to his.
Whenever he came back from school it was with honours. He was learning,
growing, developing in every way. He was learning to govern himself and
through this to govern others. And to this end, and this end only, he
had become a good cricketer and footballer.
"You see, Big Yeogh Wough, I had to do it," he explained. "Boys at a
public school don't respect brains unless the boy that's got the brains
is good at games. That's why a letter was written to you asking you to
encourage me to put my heart in cricket and football."
"Well, I did encourage you," I laughed. "For, though I can't endure the
man who's a cricketer or football player and nothing more, yet, on the
other hand, I don't like the man who can't play games at all. There's
always something wrong about him, as there is about a man who never
smokes. Cricket and football are manure for the character just as Greek
and Latin are manure for the mind. Only one doesn't want all manure and
nothing else."
When I went away from him and left him to go to sleep I always felt as
if a piece of living radium had had its activities turned off for a few
hours. And then, night after night, my superstition would get hold of me
and my strong belief in the law of Compensation would make me ask
myself the question over and over again:
"Am I paying enough to Providence for the joy of having him? Am I
suffering enough to deserve him? If not, where is the payment to come
in? Because it's got to come in somewhere. He's so much more alive than
most other people. Will anything happen to him? Will he be taken away
from me?"
CHAPTER XI
THE ANGER OF LOVE
Only once in all his life has Little Yeogh Wough's love ever seemed to
fail me, and that was at just about the time when his Public School
career was coming to a close.
I had done a thing that I hardly ever do. I had defied one of my
superstitions. And I had been punished for doing it.
My husband had asked me to let him paint my portrait. He had been asking
me the same thing for years past, and I had always refused, remembering
the injunction that: "Thou shalt not make to thyself the likeness of
anything that is in the heavens above or the earth beneath or in the
waters under the earth."
Of course I know there are sophistical people who make a point of mixing
this commandment up with the sentence that follows it and pretending
that it's only the bowing down and worshipping that are forbidden. But I
know better. I have seen times without number the fate that has followed
the person who, not being a royal personage or an actor or an actress,
or a Lord Mayor, has indulged in the arrogant joy of having his
portrait painted.
These exceptions that I have made are safe enough, because it is, as it
were, a part of their business in life to have their portraits painted,
as well as their photographs taken.
"It is really such an absurd idea of yours," my husband said to me.
"It's all the purest nonsense. Of course a lot of people die directly
they have had their portraits painted, but that's mainly because they're
usually getting on for a hundred before they can afford to pay anybody
to do them."
"There may certainly be something in that," I agreed. "And I will admit
this much--that I don't think this superstition applies completely to
people who don't believe in it. But unluckily I do believe in it. Still,
your not being a professional artist may make a difference. If you'll
promise to do the thing very badly, so that fate may not know it's meant
for me, I'll let you do it."
I don't think there was any particular reason why fate should have known
that the picture was meant for me. Indeed, one of our friends, a
well-known novelist, cried out directly he caught sight of the first
sketch and before he knew whom it was meant to be, that it was the best
portrait he'd ever seen of his dear and lifelong companion the late
Henry Irving. Anyhow, as the painting progressed, I did what was for me
an extraordinary thing--I caught influenza. And, as the picture grew
and grew, I got worse and worse, until I very nearly died of oedema of
the lungs.
Little Yeogh Wough was written to and told all about it. His reply was a
telegram to his father in the following words:
"Pray convey my deepest sympathy.--ROLAND."
"Pray convey my deepest sympathy.--ROLAND!"
He has never forgotten that telegram from that day to this. He has
prayed to forget it, and has never been able to.
It did me more good than twenty doctors could have done. I sat up in bed
and threw a dressing-gown round my shoulders and surveyed the blank
faces of the other occupants of the room.
"Well, Miss Torry, I should like to know what you think of that?"
"What I think?" answered Miss Torry, shaking her head hopelessly. "What
I think is--well, he must be mad."
"I'll tell you what _I_ think," ventured Old Nurse, not looking at me
but hurling her words like bombs at my secretary. "And that is that
he've forgot for once to play his part and 'e's showing the selfishness
that's all through and through him. When you come to think of all that
his mother have done for 'im--and 'ow she've made a god of him and knelt
down and worshipped 'im, as m'say, and put everything and everybody
else to one side for 'im--well, if I was 'er I'd never take the trouble
to turn my head to look at him again. No, that I wouldn't. I'm only glad
as she can see him in 'is true light at last."
"That telegram is like a message from a Mayor and Corporation to condole
with royalty on the death of a distant cousin," I said bitterly. "Miss
Torry, will you go downstairs and tell them to get me a mutton chop and
to send it up as soon as possible? I see it doesn't pay me to be ill.
I'm going to get well, portrait or no portrait, and stand up against
that boy."
"I don't really think he can know how very ill you've been," said Miss
Torry gently. "If he does know, I'm ashamed of him for a heartless
wretch. But, you must remember, he's not accustomed to your ever having
anything the matter with you and he may think the news sent him was
exaggerated. But, anyhow, I'm cancelling the order I was sending to the
Stores for him. He shall have no cake, no biscuits and no meat
tabloids--and I only hope he's got no pocket money to get them on the
spot for himself."
After this, for the first time since he had been born, I fought against
my great and too-forgiving love for him and tried to cast it down. And
when he came home for the holidays and on the first evening said to me,
as always:
"Come and see me in bed, mother."
I answered him very coldly:
"No."
There is no anger in the world like the anger of a great love that is
hurt.
I saw a shadow come into his deep and very sad eyes.
"I shan't be able to sleep unless you come and see me in bed," he said,
with something very like a break in his voice.
I did not speak. I felt as if I were choking. He slid one hand to a bowl
of flowers, took a piece of pink hyacinth and held it out to me.
"Come--and wear that."
Still I did not answer. Then a knock came at the door and Old Nurse
walked into the room.
"If you please, 'm, when I asked you if I might go out for two hours
this afternoon, it was so as I might go and see the doctor. I 'aven't
been feeling at all well lately. So I went and 'e kept me an hour in 'is
insulting-room, making an examination. An' 'e says I must leave here and
go into 'ospital and 'ave an operation."
The Boy and I looked at each other with laughter in our eyes, in spite
of the gravity of her announcement. It was her phrase "insulting-room"
that had done it.
He knew now that I should come and see him in bed. And his glad, rich
voice rang out with a gladder, richer tone than ever as he called to his
father from the other side of a locked door:
"Father, can I have a bath?"
"I don't think as you'll 'ave much chance of one this evening, Master
Roland, unless you wants a cold one," broke in Old Nurse, speaking from
the nursery. "Your father 'ave put his visiting-card on the 'ot-water
tap and I can't venture to take a drop of the 'ot, not even for the
children."
"It will be all right, Roland," I said, running upstairs and proceeding
to smooth matters for him.
For a long while that evening I knelt by his bed without either of us
saying a word. Then at last he spoke:
"It won't matter much what things go wrong with me in life if only I can
always have you to say good night to me."
"You might easily never have had me to say good night to you again,
Little Yeogh Wough. I very nearly died about a month ago. You didn't
believe it, of course, because I am so strong. But it was very cruel of
you to send that telegram."
"I didn't send it. Another boy sent it. That doesn't make things any
better, I know, but it happened that something went wrong at the house
just then and I couldn't leave, and yet I wanted to send the telegram at
once, and so I asked a boy who was going into the town to send it. He
said he could remember it and didn't want it written out, and then he
forgot it and put words of his own. There, now you know how it was."
"Why didn't you tell me this before, Little Yeogh Wough? It would have
saved me so much suffering. You see, when a selfish woman, such as I've
always been, loves unselfishly, it isn't a joy but a pain--one long
aching pain all the time----"
I broke off and he patted my cheek with one of his hands that were now
so big and strong.
"This doesn't look very promising for my going into the Indian Civil
Service," he said, half playfully. "Oh, by the way, a week before I came
away from school a fellow who had been studying up palmistry looked at
my hands and told me I'm going to die a violent death by a bullet or the
explosion of a shell. So that looks like India, doesn't it?"
"Yes. It looks like sedition. If you gave your life like that for your
country, it would be terrible, but I should be proud. Oh, if only I
could one day see you another John Nicholson!"
"I believe you'd rather have me another Nicholson or Rhodes than another
Shakespeare."
"Yes, I would. I don't know why. I don't understand it myself. But I
believe that every woman, even the brainiest, carries a man of Action
hidden away somewhere within her. I can't help feeling that it's a
greater thing to have given your name to Rhodesia than to have written
'Hamlet.' But what I love in you is that you've got the book brain and
the other brain, too. You've learnt all that the University fogies know
without letting yourself become a fogy in doing it. Do you know, your
classical master told somebody the other day that you were meteoric and
that nobody could be compared with you? And he didn't know that the
remark would ever be repeated to me."
"I don't like Latin and Greek a bit, really," he smiled. "I'm only good
at them because I made up my mind that I would be. But I shouldn't like
a life of mere bodily exercise only, like a soldier's. I don't know yet
what I want. You know, Big Yeogh Wough, old proverbs are very silly.
There's that one about a contented mind being a continual feast. It
ought to be altered to 'A contented mind is a continual beast,' because
nobody that's got one can ever do anything in the world, either for
himself or anybody else. But, of course, the discontent must be
good-tempered. I don't mean that silly people ought to say they won't
sweep the roads because they're waiting to get up some day to the
throne. But I think everybody ought to do a little striving after
something higher."
After a few minutes I said:
"It will be a dreadful thing for me to have to say good-bye to you if
you ever do go out to India, Little Yeogh Wough."
His arm stole round my neck. And as he held me like this I found myself
saying over, half to him and half to myself, some lines that I had
taught him long before from the 'Children's Song':
"'Land of our Birth, we pledge to thee
Our love and toil in the years to be;
When we are grown and take our place,
As men and women with our race.
Father in Heaven who lovest all,
Oh, help Thy children when they call!
Teach us to bear the yoke in youth,
With steadfastness and careful truth;
That, in our time, Thy Grace may give
The Truth whereby the Nations live.
Teach us to rule ourselves alway,
Controlled and cleanly night and day;
That we may bring, if need arise,
No maimed and worthless sacrifice.'
"Good night, boy of my heart!"
"Good night, Big Yeogh Wough."
At his room door I looked back to say lightly:
"Anyhow, even if there is any truth in your friend's prophecy, I daresay
I shall be dead and buried before that bullet or that shell hits you in
India."
"Oh, it's not to happen till I'm sixty! So, you see, whatever I may do,
I shall be quite safe till then."
CHAPTER XII
IN THE DANGER ZONE
"Dew on the pink-flushed petals;
Roseate wings unfurled:
What can, I thought, be fairer
In all the world?
Steps that were fain, but faltered,
(What could she else have done?)
Passed from the arbour's shadow
Into the sun.
Noon and a scented glory,
Golden and pink and red:
What, after all, are roses
To me? I said."
Little Yeogh Wough.
He was at Aldershot with the Officers' Training Corps of his school on
that Fourth of August on which the world looked in the face of the fact
that Great Britain had declared war against Germany.
One never knows one has been living through happy days until they have
gone. Then, looking back, one sees that the way of life that one had
thought quite grey and ordinary was all aglow with heavenly light.
A good many things had happened since the night when the Boy and I had
patched up the little trouble between us over his telegram. And one of
these things was that he had finished his last term at his school in a
blaze of honours.
He had been, perhaps, rather too brilliant a meteor there, so that the
sky was likely to seem grey after he had vanished from it. He had won a
scholarship for a great Oxford college, and he looked into a future so
gloriously golden that he himself had almost turned his eyes from it,
dazzled and half afraid.
Some months before this he had brought home once on a week's visit one
of his two best friends, a very tall and straight and serious boy called
Edward Brennan. My first ideas of Edward were that he did not greatly
care for womankind and that, considering that he was so young, he had an
astonishing worship of the music of Beethoven.
"I can't understand it," I had said to him once. "Oh, of course I
recognise that Beethoven is very great, and all that, and I like his
music about twice a year when I feel ecclesiastical; but on the whole he
always strikes me as a composer who was born an old man and who made
music for old men."
"Why, mother always worships old men!" put in Little Yeogh Wough
mischievously.
"Yes, but not as musical composers," I retorted. "You see, I've got a
mind that always has what you may call the apple-blossom feeling in it,
and anything fusty always repels me. I would run miles bare-foot to
avoid seeing Stonehenge or any ruins. It's good that those things should
be in the world in order to give the dry-as-dust people something to do
to write about them; but in general I agree with Emerson that it's not
the business of the rose that blooms to-day to worry itself into
wrinkles about the roses that bloomed even yesterday--much less two
thousand years ago."
And then the rather cold Edward had quite warmed up and had done a thing
that I liked. He had actually had the boldness to hold back my arm when
I was putting a modern French serenade record on the gramophone, and
insist on substituting for it a part of "Leonora."
"All right, Edward. I'll make a bargain with you. If you'll try to talk
French a little every day and to read George Meredith, I'll try to like
Beethoven."
But the most important fact about Edward, so far as I personally was
concerned, was one which I did not take properly into account till
afterwards. And that was the fact that he had a sister.
I had heard that he had one, of course. I knew that already, before
Roland went to Edward's people on a visit. But then--so many boys have
sisters!
My first suspicions had been aroused when the Boy had come back, and
began writing letters.
It seems a funny thing to say, but I can always tell what is in
people's minds when I see them write letters.
To begin with, I never feel quite comfortable when people are writing
letters in the same room with me. Of course, this is really laughably
childish and quite unjustifiable, but I am not by any means the only
person who has the feeling. There are some people who have to get up and
go out of rooms where their relatives are writing letters, lest they
should deal them mortal blows over the head.
This doesn't apply to offices, of course, or to people who write
business letters. I myself feel quite unperturbed when a business letter
is getting written; and I always know that it's a business letter,
though a guest in our house may be writing it at the opposite end of the
room to where I am sitting. There is something in the air of the writer
which seems to say: "I'm only writing this because I've got to. I
wouldn't do it else."
But when a lot of ordinary persons sit down to write futile screeds that
are not wanted, to other ordinary people who, in nine cases out of ten,
couldn't tell you if they tried how the postal system is worked, they do
it with an air of defiant importance which says as plainly as possible:
"Of course, you think _you're_ the only person in the world whose
correspondence matters. But you're quite mistaken. We have friends,
too--most valuable friends--who absolutely insist on getting letters
from us as frequently as possible. Miss Violet Smithers wrote to me
yesterday--we were at a boarding-school together in Lower Norwood for
three years--and I must answer her to-day. I can't help it if you want
the only stamp in the house for a legal document which will become
invalid if not sent to-day, and every post office within ten miles is
shut under some new closing regulation. Miss Violet Smithers must have
her letter."
I knew an old gentleman once who went absolutely off his head because of
the immense volume of his servants' correspondence. He danced with fury
on his gouty feet when he met his domestics "just going to the post,
sir," and in the end he announced to me his intention of retiring to a
cottage where only one servant would be necessary and he was going to
advertise for her, offering fancy wages if she answered the following
description:
"Orphan who has lost both parents; absolutely friendless; no sweetheart
and totally unable either to read or to write."
I never knew whether he found his treasure or not.
After which, I will go back to Little Yeogh Wough and to the fact that
when I saw him spending two or three hours sitting quite still at a
table with his fine shoulders and his lion-cub head bent over a lengthy
epistle, I began to think that there must be something a little wrong
somewhere.
And when he followed this up by spending an entire morning, from
breakfast to luncheon, making up one small parcel, my doubts became
certainties.
"Is that parcel intended for the King or Queen, Roland?" I asked him
when he had finished and had carefully conveyed the package away to his
own room, in order, I guessed, that nobody might see the address on it.
He looked at me and laughed.
"What do you mean, Big Yeogh Wough?"