_Park Lane._
Dearest Daphne,--The situation here is unchanged, though we have made
some progress in knitting. Forgive me, _m'amie_, but one does get so
much into the _despatch_ habit! The other day I'd a letter from Babs, in
which she told me she'd "nothing fresh to report on her right wing"
before she pulled herself together.
Norty's at the front as a flying-man. He's finding out all sorts of
things, dropping bombs on Zeppelins and covering himself with glory. I
had a few lines from him last week. He dated from "A place in Europe"
(they have to be _enormously_ cautious!), and said he was having the
time of his life. He was immensely pleased with the last letter I
managed to get through to him, and was particularly struck, he says,
with my advice to him: "Find out all you can, and above all don't get
caught;" he considers it simply _invaluable_ advice and says all airmen
ought to have it written up in letters of gold somewhere or other.
Stella Clackmannan's had a fortnight's training as a nurse and is off. I
ran in to see the dear thing the night before she left. She'd been
posing to a photographer in her Red Cross uniform for _hours_ and
_hours_ and was almost in a state of _collapse_; but the heroic darling
said she was ready to do even _more than that_ for her country. In one
photo she's sitting by a cot with her hands folded, looking sad but
_very_ sweet. In another she's standing up, singing, "It's a long way to
Tipperary;" and in a third she's bandaging someone (she had one of the
foot-men in for this photo), and, _à mon avis_, it's the least
successful of all. She appears to be _choking_ the poor man! However,
they're immensely charming, and will all be seen in the "Aristocratic
Angels of Mercy" page of next week's _People of Position_.
Dear Professor Dimsdale has only just got back to England from his
eclipse expedition. I'm not sure now whether it was an eclipse or an
occultation, but anyhow the only place where it could be properly seen
was a mountain in the Austrian Tyrol. It was due in the middle of
August, and the last week in July the Professor set off with his big
telescope and his lenses and his assistants and his note-books and
everything that was his. He lived a week or two on the mountain, to get
used to the atmosphere and prepare all his things, so he didn't know
what was going on in the world below. And then, just as the eclipse or
whatever it was _began_, and the Professor was looking up at the sky for
all he was worth, a lot of fearful creatures came rushing up the
mountain and said there was a war and that he was an alien enemy and
that he was making signals and that his big telescope was a new sort of
howitzer; and they pushed him down the mountain, and broke his telescope
and all his lenses, and tore up his note-books, and shook their fists at
him and used such language that he said for the first time in his life
he was sorry he was such a good linguist!
They finished by shutting him up in a fortress, and there he's been ever
since. He hardly knows how it was he got away, but he believes the whole
garrison was marched off to meet the Russians, and that they're all
prisoners now--which is his only drop of comfort. I've tried to console
him for having missed what he went to see. I said, "Perhaps the eclipse
or whatever it was will happen again soon--or one like it." He groaned
out, "My dear lady, that particular conjunction of the heavenly bodies
will not occur again for 2,645 years, 9 months, 3 weeks and 2 days." So
there it is, my dearest!
Would it cheer you up to hear a small romance of war and knitting? Here
it is, then. Some time ago Monica Jermyn brought round some terrific
mitts she'd knitted to go in one of my parcels for the troops. She's
easily the worst knitter who ever held needles! "My _dear_ child," I
said, "what simply ghastly mitts! They're full of mistakes." "What's it
matter?" Monica answered. "Mistakes will keep them quite as warm as the
right stitches. Besides, they're all right. I knit ever so much better
now than when I used to make socks for the Deep Sea Fisherman last
year." "That's not saying much," I said. "I remember those socks for the
Deep Sea Fishermen, and I doubt whether even the _deepest_ sea fishermen
would know how to put them on! What's this?" "It's a message to go with
the mitts," replied Monica. This was the message:--"The girl who made
these mitts hopes they will be a comfort to some dear brave hands
fighting for her and her sisters in England." "Oh, my _dear_!" I
remonstrated. "It's very _young_ and _romantic_ of you, but don't you
think it's _just_ a little----" "No, I don't!" she cried. "And if it is,
I don't care. Please, please let it go!" So it went.
Soon after that the Jermyns went down to their place in Sussex, and
later I heard they'd some convalescent war heroes as guests. Monica
wrote me: "All six of them are dear brave darlings, of course, but _one_
of them is _darlinger_ than the others. Tell it not in Gath, dear
Blanche, but I think I've met my fate!" Later she wrote: "He's getting
on splendidly. He turns out to be a cousin of the Flummerys. He
performed _prodigies_ of valour, but won't say a _word_ about it. When
he leaves us my heart will quite, _quite_ break--and I sometimes hope
_his_ will too!"
Yesterday came the following:--"Claude and I belong to each other. And
what, oh _what_ do you think helped to lead up to the dear, delicious
finale? But wait. My hero is almost quite well now, and this morning,
when we took what would have been our _last_ little walk in the grounds,
it happened! He walks _beautifully_ now, though he still needs an arm at
about the level of _mine_ to lean on. It was a chilly morning and, as I
was looking down and trying to think of something to say, I gave a
sudden shriek, for on his dear heroic wrists I recognised--_My Mitts_!
And when he heard I'd made them he was just as _confondu_ as I was.
'They were in a bale of comfies sent to my company,' he said, 'and I had
the ladling out of them to the men. But when I came to these mitts, with
the sweet little message pinned to them, I simply couldn't part with
them! And to think _you_ made them--and wrote the little message! It
makes one believe in all those psychic what-d'-you-call-'ems.'
"I felt a crisis was coming and so I said hurriedly, 'Oh, I only wish
they were worthier of--of--brave hands and wrists. I'm a wretched
knitter--they're full of mistakes--I kept forgetting to keep to the
pattern--it ought to have been, "_knit_ two together and _make_
one"--but of course you don't understand knitting.' 'I understand it
right enough if _that's_ all there is to it,' he said. "Knit two
together and make one." Monica--no, you mustn't run away----' And
that's all you're going to be told, Blanche, except that the powers that
be have given their consent and I'm too happy for words!"
_Et voilà mon petit roman de guerre et de tricotage._
My poor Josiah is still at the uttermost edge of beyond. He began to
come home, and the boat was chased and ran to an island for shelter, and
then the island was taken by one of our enemies and he was a prisoner.
Then it was retaken by one of the Allies and he was free again. Since
then more things have happened and he's been a prisoner again, and free
again. And now he's lost count, and says he doesn't know _what_ he is or
_who's_ got the island!
Ever thine,