YELLOW ENVELOPES
“London’s smoke hides all the stars from me,
Light from mine eyes and Heaven from my heart.”
DORA WILCOX.
THE lift came gliding on its upward journey in a big London hotel, far
too slowly for the impatience of its only passenger, a tall girl of
sixteen, with a mop of brown curls, and grey eyes alight with
excitement. Ordinarily, Norah Linton was rather pale, especially in
London, where the air is largely composed of smoke, and has been
breathed in and out of a great number of people until it is nearly worn
out; but just now there was a scarlet spot on each cheek, and her mouth
broke into smiles as though it could not help itself. At Floor No. 4, a
fat old lady threatened to stop the lift, but decided at the last moment
that she preferred to walk upstairs. At No. 5, no one was in sight, and
Norah sighed with audible relief, and ejaculated, “Thank goodness!” At
No. 6, two men were seen hurrying along the corridor some distance away,
and shouting, “Lift!” But at this point the lift-boy, to whom Norah’s
impatience had communicated itself, behaved like Nelson when he applied
his telescope to his blind eye, and shot upwards, disregarding the
shouts of his would-be passengers; and, passing by No. 7 as though it
were not there, brought the lift to an abrupt halt at No. 8, flinging
the door open with a rattle and a triumphant, “There y’are, miss!”
“Thank you!” said Norah, flashing at him a grateful smile that sent the
lift-boy earthwards in a state of mind that made him loftily oblivious
of the reproaches of neglected passengers. She was out of the lift with
a quick movement, and in the empty corridor broke into a run. Her flying
feet carried her swiftly to a sitting-room some distance away, and she
burst in like a whirlwind. “Dad! Daddy!”
There was no one there, and with an exclamation of impatience she turned
and ran once more, far too excited now to care whether any Londoners
were there to be shocked at the spectacle of a daughter of Australia
racing along an hotel corridor. She had not far to go; a turn brought
her face to face with a tall man, lean and grizzled, who cast a glance
at her that took in the crumpled yellow envelope in her hand.
No one with a soldier son looked calmly on telegrams in those days, and
David Linton’s face changed abruptly. “What is it, Norah?”
“They’re coming,” said Norah, and suddenly found a huge lump in her
throat that would not go away. She put out a hand and clung to her
father’s coat. “They’re truly coming, daddy!”
Her father’s voice was not as steady as usual.
“They’re all right?”
“Oh, yes, they must be. It says ‘Better—London to-morrow.’”
“Better?” mused Mr. Linton. “I wonder if that means hospital or us,
Norah?”
Norah’s face fell.
“I suppose it may be hospital,” she said. “It was so lovely to think
they were coming that I nearly forgot that part of it. Can we find out,
daddy?”
“We’ll go and try,” Mr. Linton said.
“Now?” said Norah, and jigged on one foot.
“I’ll get my hat,” said her father, departing with a step not so unlike
his daughter’s. Norah waited in the corridor for a few minutes, and
then, impatient beyond the possibility of further waiting in silence,
followed him to his room, there finding him endeavouring to remove
London mud-stains from a trouser-leg.
“You might think when you’ve managed to brush it off that it had
gone—but indeed it hasn’t,” said David Linton, wrathfully regarding
gruesome stains and brushing them with a vigour that should have been
productive of better results.
“It does cling,” remarked Norah, comprehendingly. “I’ll sponge it for
you, daddy; those stains never yield to mild measures. Daddy, do you
think they’ll be long getting better?”
Anyone else might have been excused for thinking she meant the
mud-stains. But David Linton made no such mistake.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “One hears such different stories about
that filthy German gas. It all depends on the size of the dose they got,
I fancy. Jim said it was mild; but then Jim would say a good deal to
avoid frightening us.”
“And he was able to write. But Wally hasn’t written.”
“No; and that doesn’t look well. He’s such a good lad—it’s quite likely
he’d write and let us know all he could about Jim. But I don’t fancy the
doctors would let them travel unless they were pretty well.”
“I suppose not. Oh, doesn’t it seem ages until to-morrow, dad!”
“It’ll come, if you give it time,” said her father. “However—yes, it
does seem a pretty long time, Norah.” They laughed at each other.
“It doesn’t do a bit of good for you to put on that wise air,” Norah
said, “because I know exactly how you feel, and that’s just the same as
I do. And anyone would be the same who had two boys at the Front like
Jim and Wally.”
“I think they would,” said her father, abandoning as untenable the
position of age and wisdom. “Thank goodness they will be back with us
to-morrow, at any rate.” He put his clothes-brush on the table and stood
up, tall and thin and a little grim. “It seems a long while since they
went away.”
“Long!” Norah echoed, expressively. It was in reality only a month since
her brother Jim and his chum had said good-bye on the platform at
Victoria Station; and in some ways it seemed only a few minutes since
the train had moved slowly out, with the laughing boyish faces framed in
the window. But each slow day, with its dragging weight of anxiety, had
been a lifetime. To them had come what the whole world had learned to
know; the shiver of fear on opening the green envelopes from the Front;
the racking longing for the news; the sick dread at the sight of a
telegram—even at the sound of an unusual knock. David Linton had grown
silent and grim; Norah felt an old woman, and the care-free Australian
life which was all she had known seemed a world away—vanished as
completely as the Australian tan had faded from her cheeks.
Now it was all over, and for a while, at any rate, they could forget.
Jim had so managed that no shock came to them—the cheery telegram he
had contrived to send before being taken to hospital had reached them
two days earlier than the curt War Office intimation that both boys were
suffering from gas-poisoning. Jim did not mean that they should ever
know what it had meant to send it. The cavalry subaltern who had helped
him along to the dressing-station had been very kind; he had contrived
to hear the address, even in the choked, strangling whisper, which was
all the voice the gas had left to Jim; had even suggested a wording that
would tell without alarming, and had put aside almost angrily Jim’s
struggle to find his money. “Don’t you worry,” he had said, “it’ll go.
I’ve seen other chaps gassed, and you’ll be all right soon.” He was a
cheery pink and white youngster: Jim was sorry he had not found out his
name. In the hard days and nights that followed, his face hovered round
his half-conscious dreams—curiously like a little lad who had fagged
for him at school in Melbourne.
That was two weeks ago, and of those two weeks Mr. Linton and Norah
fortunately knew little. Wally had been the worst; Jim had been dragged
out of the gassed trench a few minutes earlier than his friend, and
possibly to the younger boy the shock had been greater. When the first
terrible paroxysms passed, he could only lie motionless, endeavouring to
conjure up a faint ghost of his old smile when Jim’s anxious face peered
at him from the next bed. Neither had any idea at all of how they had
reached the hospital at Boulogne; all their definite memories ended
abruptly when that evil-smelling green cloud had rolled like a wave
above them into the trench.
Out of the first dark mist of choking suffering they had passed slowly
into comparative peace, broken now and then by recurring attacks, but,
by contrast, a very haven of tranquillity. They were very tired and
lazy: it was heavenly to lie there, quite still, and watch the blue
French sky through the window and the kind-faced nurses flitting
about—each doing far too much for her strength, but always cheery. They
did not want to talk—their voices had gone somewhere very far off; all
they wanted was just to be quiet; not to move, not to talk, not to
cough. Then, as the clean vigour of their youth reasserted itself, and
strength came back to them, energy woke once more, and with it their
old-time lively hatred of bed. They begged to be allowed to get up; and
as their places were badly needed for men worse than they, the doctors
granted their prayer—after which they would have been extremely glad to
get back again, only that pride forbade their admitting it.
Moreover, there was London; and London, with all that it meant to them,
was worth a struggle. Two months earlier it had bored them exceedingly,
and nothing had seemed worth while, with the call in their blood to be
out in the trenches. Now, after actual experience of the trenches, their
ideas had undergone a violent change. The romance of war had faded
utterly. The Flying Corps might retain it still—those plucky fighting
men who soared and circled overhead, bright specks in the clouds and the
blue sky; but to the men who grubbed underground amid discomfort,
smells, and dirt, to which actual fighting came as a blessed relief, war
had lost all its glamour. They wanted to see the job through. But London
was coming first, and it had blossomed suddenly into a paradise.
Some of which Jim had tried to put into his shaky pencilled notes; and
the certainty of their boys’ gladness to get back lay warm at the hearts
of Norah and her father as they walked along Piccadilly. Spring was in
the air: the Park had been full of people, the Row crowded with happy
children, scurrying up and down the tan on their ponies, with decorous
grooms endeavouring to keep them in sight. The window-boxes in the clubs
were gay with daffodils and hyacinths: the busy, knowing London sparrows
twittered noisily in the budding trees, making hurried arrangements for
setting up housekeeping in the summer. Even though war raged so close to
England, and its shadow lay on every hearth, nothing could quite dim the
gladness of London’s awakening to the Spring.
“Those fellows all look so happy,” said Mr. Linton, indicating a
motor-car crammed with wounded men in their blue hospital suits and
scarlet ties. “One never sees a discontented face among them. I hope our
boys will look as happy, Norah.”
“If there is any chance of looking happy, Jim and Wally will take it!”
said Norah, firmly.
“I think they will,” said her father, laughing. “The difficulty is to
imagine them ill.”
“Yes, isn’t it? Do you remember when those horrid Zulus battered them
about so badly in Durban, how extraordinary it was to see them both in
bed, looking pale?”
“Well, I think it was the first time it had occurred to either of them,”
said Mr. Linton.
“I suppose one could never realize the awful effects of the gas unless
one actually saw it,” Norah said. “But I can’t help feeling glad, if
they had to be hurt, that it was that: not wounds or—crippling.” Her
voice fell on the last word. “I just couldn’t bear the thought of Jim or
Wally being crippled.”
“Don’t!” said her father, sharply. “Please God, they’ll come out of it
without that. And as for the gas—Jim assured us they would be all
right, but I’ll be glad when I talk to a doctor about them myself.”
Inquiries proved disappointing. It was certain that the boys would not
be allowed to return directly to them. They would travel in hospital
trains and a hospital ship; it was difficult to say where men would be
taken, when so many, broken and helpless, were being brought to England
every day. The Victorian Agent-General was sympathetic and helpful; he
promised to find out all that could be found from the overworked
authorities, and to let them know at the earliest possible moment.
“But I fancy that long son of yours will find a way of letting you know
himself, Mr. Linton,” he said. “I’ll do my best—but I wouldn’t mind
betting he gets ahead of me.”
They came out of the building that is a kind of oasis in London to all
homesick Victorians, pausing, as they always did, to look at the
exhibits in the outer office—wool and wheat and timber, big model gold
nuggets, and the shining fruits that spoke of the orchards on the
hillsides at home; with pictures of wide pastures where sleek cattle
stood in the knee-high grass, or reapers and binders whirred through
splendid crops. It was a little patch of Australia, planted in the very
heart of London; hard to realize that just outside the swinging glass
doors the grey city—history suddenly become a live thing—stretched
away eastward, and, to the west, the roaring Strand carried its mighty
burden of traffic.
“I’ll always be glad I had the chance of seeing London,” said Norah.
“But whenever I come here I know how glad I’ll be to go back!”
“I know that without coming here,” said her father, drily. “It would be
jolly if we could take those boys home to get strong, Norah.”
“To Billabong?” said Norah, wistfully. “Oh-h! But we’ll do it some day,
daddy.”
“I trust so. Won’t there be a scene when we get back!”
“Oh, I dream about it!” said Norah. “And I wake up all homesick. Can’t
you picture Brownie, dad!—she’ll have cooked everything any of us ever
liked, and the house will be shining from top to bottom, and there won’t
be a thing different—I know she dusts your old pipes and Jim’s
stockwhips herself every day! And Murty will have the horses jumping out
of their skins with fitness, and Lee Wing’s garden will be something
marvellous.”
“And Billy,” said David Linton, laughing. “Can’t you see his black
face—and his grin!”
“Oh, and the great wide paddocks—the view from the verandah, across the
lagoon and looking right over the plains! I don’t seem to have looked at
anything far away since we came off the ship,” said Norah; “all the
views are shut in by houses, and the air is so thick one couldn’t see
far, in any case!”
“They tell me there’s clear air in Ireland,” said her father.
“Then I want to go there,” responded his daughter, promptly.
“Well—we might do worse than that. I’ve been thinking a good deal,
Norah; if the boys don’t get well quickly—and I believe few of the
gassed men do—we shall have to take them away somewhere for a change.”
“Certainly,” agreed Norah. “We couldn’t keep them in London.”
“No, of course not. Country air and not too many people; that is the
kind of tonic our boys will want. What would you think of going to
Ireland?”
Norah drew a long breath of delight.
“Oh-h!” she said. “You do make the most beautiful plans, daddy! We’ve
always wanted to go there more than anywhere: and war wouldn’t seem so
near to us there, and we could try to make the boys forget gas and
trenches and shells and all sorts of horrors.”
“That’s just it,” said her father. “The wisest doctor I ever knew used
to say that change of environment was worth far more than change of air;
we might try to manage both for them, Norah. Donegal was your mother’s
country: I’ve been meaning to go there. She loved it till the day she
died.”
In the tumult of the Strand Norah slipped a hand into her father’s. Very
seldom did he speak of the one who was always in his memory: the little
mother who had grown tired, and had slipped out of life when Norah was a
baby.
“Let’s go there, daddy,” she begged.
“We’ll consult the boys,” said Mr. Linton. “Eh, but it’s good to think
we shall have them to consult with to-morrow! You know, Norah, since Jim
left school, I’ve become so used to consulting him on all points, that I
feel a lost old man without him.”
“You’ll never be old!” said his daughter, indignantly. “But Jim just
loves you to talk to him the way you do,—I know he does, only, of
course, he’s quite unable to say so.”
“Jim has lots of sense,” said Jim’s father. “So has Wally, for that
matter: there is plenty of shrewdness hidden somewhere in that
feather-pate of his. They’re very reliable boys. I was ‘thinking back’
the other night, and I don’t remember ever having been really angry with
Jim in my life.”
“I should think not!” said Norah, regarding him with wide eyes of
amazement. “Why would you be angry with him?”
“Why, I don’t know,” said her father rather helplessly. “Jim never was a
pattern sort of boy.”
“No, but he had sense,” said Norah. She began to laugh. “Oh, I don’t
know how it is,” she said. “We’ve all been mates always: and mates don’t
get angry with each other, or they wouldn’t be mates.”
“I suppose that’s it,” Mr. Linton said, accepting this comprehensive
description of a bush family standpoint. “There’s a ’bus that will go
our way, Norah: I’ve had enough of elbowing my way through this crowd.”
They climbed on top of the motor-’bus, and found the front seat empty;
and when Norah was on the front seat of a ’bus she always felt that it
was her own private equipage and that she owned London. To their left
was the huge yard of Charing Cross Station, crowded with taxis and cabs
and private motors, with streams of foot passengers pouring in and out
of the gateways. At Charing Cross one may see in five minutes more
foreigners than one meets in many hours in other parts of London, and
this was especially the case since the outbreak of war. Homesick Belgian
refugees were wont to stray there, to watch the stream of passengers
from the incoming Continental trains, hoping against hope that they
might see some familiar face. There were soldiers of many nations;
unfamiliar uniforms were dotted throughout the crowd, besides the khaki
that coloured every London street. Even from the ’bus-top could be heard
snatches of talk in many languages—save only one often heard in former
days: German. A string of recruits, each wearing the King’s ribbon,
swung into the station under a smart recruiting sergeant: a cheery
little band, apparently relieved that the plunge had at last been taken,
and that they were about to shoulder their share of the nation’s work.
“Not a straight pair of shoulders among the lot,” remarked Mr. Linton,
surveying them critically. “It’s pleasant to think that very soon they
will be almost as well set up as that fellow in the lead. War is going
to do a big work in straightening English shoulders—morally and
physically.”
The ’bus gave a violent jerk, after the manner of ’buses in starting,
and moved on through the crowded street, threading its way in and out of
the traffic in the most amazing fashion—finding room to squeeze its
huge bulk through chinks that looked small for a donkey-cart to pass,
and showing an agility in dodging that would have done credit to a hare.
It rocked on its triumphal way westward: past the crouching stone lions
in Trafalgar Square, where the plinth of the Nelson Column blazed with
recruiting posters; past the “Orient” offices, with their big pictures
of Australian-going steamers—which made Norah sigh; and so up to
Piccadilly Circus, where they found themselves packed into a jam of
traffic so tight that it seemed that it could never disentangle. But
presently it melted away, and they went on round the stately curve of
Regent Street, with its glittering shops; and so home to the
hotel—where they had lived so long that it really seemed almost
home—and to their own sitting-room, gay with daffodils and primroses,
and littered with work. Norah’s knitting—khaki socks and mufflers—lay
here and there, and there was a pile of finished articles awaiting
dispatch to the Red Cross headquarters in the morning. Under the window,
a big, workmanlike deal table was littered with scraps of wood,
curiously fashioned, with tools in a neat rack. It was David Linton’s
workshop; all the time he could spare from helping with wounded soldiers
went to the fashioning of splints and crutches for the hospitals, where
so many were needed every day.
A yellow envelope was on the table now, lying across a splint.
“Duke of Clarence Hospital,” it said; “to-morrow afternoon.—JIM.”
[Illustration: “She put out a hand and clung to her father’s coat.”]
_Jim and Wally_] [_Page 31_