[Illustration: 9047]
HE tread reached the landing and proceeded to mount higher. Then it
hesitated. Another match was struck and it commenced to descend. On
arriving at the landing again, it halted uncertain. The handle of
the door was tried. The door swung open and a man peered across the
threshold. No one spoke. The little lady on the couch drew Joan closer
to her side and held her breath, hoping that the man might not observe
them and that, when he had gone, they might escape. But the man did not
go, he stood there on the alert, listening and searching the darkness.
It was Robbie who spoke first. He had thrust his hands deep into his
knickerbockers' pockets to gain courage. “What do you want? We think you
might speak,” he said.
The man laughed pleasantly. “I'm sorry if I've frightened you. I didn't
know that anyone was here. I thought this was an empty house. Perhaps
you weren't aware of it, but you'd left your front-door open.” Then,
because no one replied, he added, “It's all right now; it's closed.”
He wasn't looking at Robbie any longer. He was trying to probe the
shadows by the fireplace, where he had caught the rustle of a woman's
dress. He had caught something else--the faint sweet fragrance of
Jacqueminot.
“I've alarmed you,” he said. “I'm a stranger in London and I couldn't
find any way out of your square. I strayed into your house for shelter.
I'm sorry I intruded. Good-night to you all, however many there are of
you.”
He was actually going. It was impossible to see what he looked like, but
he was evidently well-mannered and a gentleman. Suddenly to the lady
in the lonely house, from being a creature of dread, he became a
heaven-sent protector. Who could tell how many less desirable visitors
might not call before the raid was ended? The care-taker might return.
Were that to happen, it would be much more comfortable to have this
male trespasser present to help make the explanations. Just as he was
withdrawing, the lady rose from the shabby couch and called him back.
“Oh, please, we'd much rather you didn't go.”
“But who are we?”
“I and Robbie and Joan. We did the same thing as you. The house doesn't
belong to us. We got caught, just as you did. We were terribly scared
and... and it's creepy being in an empty, strange house where you
haven't any right to be.”
Though she could only see the blur of him, she could feel the smile that
was in his eyes when she had finished her appeal. And it was an appeal,
eager and nervous and tremulous. The tears in her voice said much more
than the words. As he turned on his heel, she heard the jingle of his
spurs and guessed that he was a man in khaki.
“I'm on my way to France,” he said, speaking slowly; “I only landed
yesterday. I was lonely too; I didn't know a soul. A queer way to make a
friend!”
As he stepped into the room, the light from the windows fell on him; he
was dressed in the uniform of an American officer.
“Which are you?” he asked. “I've heard only your voice as yet. I'll do
anything I can to help.”
The little lady held out her hand, but her face was still in shadow. It
was a very tiny hand. “It's good of you to be willing to stay with us,”
she said gratefully.
At that point their conversation languished. The circumstances were so
unprecedented that they were at a loss what to say or how to act. It
was he who broke the awkward silence: “We ought to be able to rouse this
fire with a little effort.” He bent over it, trying to pull it together.
“We need more coal. If you'll excuse me and won't be frightened while
I'm gone, I'll run down and see what I can forage.”
It seemed a long time that he was gone--so long that she had begun to be
afraid that he'd taken his chance to slip out. She wouldn't have blamed
him. In the last two years, since she'd been by herself, she'd become
used to men doing things like that. She had ceased to bank overmuch on
masculine chivalry. Few men had leisure to expend on a woman, however
charming and beautiful, whose children had always to be included in the
friendship.
When she had made quite sure that he was no more chivalrous than other
men, she heard him laboriously returning. He came in carrying a scuttle
in one hand and some bundles of wood in the other. “And now we'll pull
down the blinds,” he said, “and make a blaze and get her going.”
On his knees before the hearth he started to work, ramming paper between
the bars, piling sticks criss-cross and using his cheeks as bellows. In
the intervals between his exertions he chatted, “I'm no great shakes
at house-work. You mustn't watch me too closely or laugh at me. I'll do
better than this when I've been at the Front, I guess. Are these your
kiddies?... I suppose your husband's over there, where I'm going?”
“He was.”
“Oh, so you've got him back! You're lucky. Is he wounded or has he got a
staff job in England?”
“He'll never come back.”
He paused in what he was doing and sat gazing into the flames which were
licking at the wood. He hung his head. He ought to have thought of that;
in the last few years so many Englishmen were dead. And then there came
another reflection--the picture of what it must have cost her husband to
say good-bye to his wife and children, and go marching away to anonymous
glory. He wasn't married himself, but if he had been... It took enough
bolstering up of one's courage to go when one was single; but to go when
one was married... And yet selfishly, ever since he had put on khaki his
paramount regret had been that, were he to peg out, he would leave no
one to carry on in his stead. This air-raid was his first remote taste
of warfare; within the next few weeks he was to know it in its full
fury. What had impressed him most was the difference between war as
imagined and witnessed. As imagined it had seemed the most immense of
sports; as witnessed it was merely murder. Just before he had
sought shelter he had seen where a bomb had fallen. People had been
killed--people not so different from the mother and children hiding in
this house. The suddenness of extinction had made him feel that in the
game of life he had somehow “missed out.” There would be no woman to
think of him as “her man” were he to go west. And here was the woman's
price for such caring, “He'll never come back.”
He turned his head slowly; by the light of the crackling wood for the
first time he saw her. The little boy was lying wearied out, with
his head bowed in her lap. The little girl sat drowsing against her
shoulder.
She herself was leaning forward, gazing at and beyond him with a
curious air of resigned intensity. She seemed to him to be listening
for someone, whom she knew in her heart was never coming. He noticed the
white half-moon of her shoulders faintly showing beneath her chinchilla
wrap. He noticed her string of perfect pearls, the single ring on
her hand and the expensive simplicity of her velvet gown. He was
sufficiently a man of the world to make a guess at her social station.
But it wasn't her beauty or elegance that struck him, though they were
strangely in contrast to the empty room in which she sat; it was her
gentleness and expression of patient courage. He knew, as surely as if
she had told him, that this empty room, in which he had found her, was
the symbol of her days. It was with her as it was with himself; there
was no man to whom she was “his woman.”
“I've hurt you by the impertinence of my questions.”
She smiled and shook her head. “You've not hurt me. Don't think that.
I shouldn't like you to think that you'd hurt me or anything that would
make you sad. Are you going to France soon?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Then you won't be here for Christmas. I wonder where you'll spend it.
Perhaps next Christmas the war will be ended and you'll...” She caught
the instant change in his expression. She had seen that look too often
in soldiers' eyes when the future was mentioned not to know what it
meant. She laid her hand on his arm impulsively. “But everyone who goes
doesn't stay there. You'll be one of the lucky ones. You'll come back.
I have that feeling about you. I know what's in your mind; you're a long
way from home, you're going to face a great danger and you believe that
everything is ended. You can only think of war now, but there are so
many better things to do with life than fighting. All the better things
will be here to welcome you, when you return.”
He found himself talking to her in a way in which he had never spoken to
any woman. Afterwards, when he recalled their conversation, he wondered
why. Was it because she had filled him with so complete a sense of rest?
One didn't have to explain things to her; she understood. He asked her
how it was that she understood and she replied, “You don't have to go
to war to learn how to endure. You can stay at home and yet beat off
attacks in the front-line trench. We women defeat despair by keeping on
smiling when there's nothing left to smile about, and by wearing pretty
dresses when there's no one to take a pride in what we wear.”
He retorted unguardedly, as he felt. “But there must be heaps of people
who take a pride in you.”
“You think so? You're unspoilt and generous. Life's a wonderful dream
that lies all before you. You haven't known sorrow. Do you know what you
seemed to be saying when you spoke to me through the shadows? 'Everybody
has always loved and trusted me, so you love and trust me, too.' If it
hadn't been for that, that I saw that you'd always been loved and were
lonely for the moment, I shouldn't have sat here talking with you for
the last hour. You'll get everything you want from life, if you'll only
wait for it. You'll come back.”
While he sat at her feet in the firelight, she had the knack of making
him feel like a little boy who was being comforted. She kept aloof from
him, but she mothered him with words. He found himself glancing up at
her furtively to make sure that she wasn't as old as she pretended. She
wasn't old at all--not a single day older than himself. He turned over
in his mind what she had said about having no one to be proud of her. He
would have given a lot for the chance to be proud of her himself. But he
was going to France tomorrow--there was no time left for that. With
so much fighting and dying to be done, it seemed as though there would
never again be time for anything that was personal.
The clamour in the skies had died down.
The crash of guns had been growing infrequent; now it had subsided.
The drone of planes could be no more heard. The invader had been driven
back; hard on his heels our aerial cavalry were following across the
Channel, awaiting their moment to exact revenge when he tried to land.
[Illustration: 0059]
The restored normality seemed to rouse her reserve. Lifting the sleeping
head from her lap, she whispered, “Wake up, Robbie; we can go home now.
It's all over.”
The officer had risen and stood leaning against the mantel, “So it's
good-bye?”
“I'm afraid so.”
“You've made me happy when I least expected to be happy. Shall we meet
again, I wonder?”
She smiled at his seriousness. “Perhaps. One never knows what the good
God will allow. We didn't expect to meet tonight.”
He was sensitive to her evasion and laughed, pretending to make light
of it. “We don't want them to think they've had burglars. We had better
leave something for the coals we've burned.” He placed a pound note on
the mantel.
Taking Joan in his arms and going first, he led the way down the stairs.
When they were out of the hall and the front-door had closed behind
them, he left the little group on the steps and went in search of a
taxi. After a lengthy expedition he found one and, by promising an
excessive fare, induced the driver to accompany him back. He knew
neither the name of the square nor the number of the house, so he had
to keep his head out of the window and shout directions. On entering the
square he searched the pavement ahead, but could catch no sign of his
recent companions. He halted the cab against the curb at the point where
he thought he had left them; he was made certain that it was the point
when he saw the notice TO LET. Perhaps the caretaker had come back and
invited them to enter till he returned. He rang the bell and knocked
vigorously. The driver was eyeing him with suspicion. When his repeated
knockings were unanswered, he got into the taxi and ordered him to move
slowly round the square.
She had completely vanished. Either she had picked up a conveyance for
herself, while he had been engaged in his search, or else she had lost
faith in him and had taken it for granted that he had deserted her. He
did not know her name. She had given him no address. Tomorrow night
he would be in France. He had neither the time nor the necessary
information to hunt for her.
In reply to the driver's request for further instructions, he growled
the name of his hotel. Then he spread himself out on the cushions and
gave way to disconsolate reflections. The night was full of smoke and
heavy with the smell of a bonfire burnt out. Things had become again
uninteresting. He told himself that the most wonderful hour of his life
was ended.