it was a summer’s evening; joan had dropped in at the greysons and had found mary alone, francis not having yet returned from a bachelor dinner at his uncle’s, who was some big pot in the navy. they sat in the twilight, facing the open french windows, through which one caught a glimpse of the park. a great stillness seemed to be around them.
the sale and purchase of the evening gazette had been completed a few days before. greyson had been offered the alternative of gradually and gracefully changing his opinions, or getting out; and had, of course, chosen dismissal. he was taking a holiday, as mary explained with a short laugh.
“he had some shares in it himself, hadn’t he?” joan asked.
“oh, just enough to be of no use,” mary answered. “carleton was rather decent, so far as that part of it was concerned, and insisted on paying him a fair price. the market value would have been much less; and he wanted to be out of it.”
joan remained silent. it made her mad, that a man could be suddenly robbed of fifteen years’ labour: the weapon that his heart and brain had made keen wrested from his hand by a legal process, and turned against the very principles for which all his life he had been fighting.
“i’m almost more sorry for myself than for him,” said mary, making a whimsical grimace. “he will start something else, so soon as he’s got over his first soreness; but i’m too old to dream of another child.”
he came in a little later and, seating himself between them, filled and lighted his pipe. looking back, joan remembered that curiously none of them had spoken. mary had turned at the sound of his key in the door. she seemed to be watching him intently; but it was too dark to notice her expression. he pulled at his pipe till it was well alight and then removed it.
“it’s war,” he said.
the words made no immediate impression upon joan. there had been rumours, threatenings and alarms, newspaper talk. but so there had been before. it would come one day: the world war that one felt was gathering in the air; that would burst like a second deluge on the nations. but it would not be in our time: it was too big. a way out would be found.
“is there no hope?” asked mary.
“yes,” he answered. “the hope that a miracle may happen. the navy’s got its orders.”
and suddenly—as years before in a paris music hall—there leapt to life within joan’s brain a little impish creature that took possession of her. she hoped the miracle would not happen. the little impish creature within her brain was marching up and down beating a drum. she wished he would stop a minute. someone was trying to talk to her, telling her she ought to be tremendously shocked and grieved. he—or she, or whatever it was that was trying to talk to her, appeared concerned about reason and pity and universal brotherhood and civilization’s clock—things like that. but the little impish drummer was making such a din, she couldn’t properly hear. later on, perhaps, he would get tired; and then she would be able to listen to this humane and sensible person, whoever it might be.
mary argued that england could and should keep out of it; but greyson was convinced it would be impossible, not to say dishonourable: a sentiment that won the enthusiastic approval of the little drummer in joan’s brain. he played “rule britannia” and “god save the king,” the “marseillaise” and the russian national hymn, all at the same time. he would have included “deutschland über alles,” if joan hadn’t made a supreme effort and stopped him. evidently a sporting little devil. he took himself off into a corner after a time, where he played quietly to himself; and joan was able to join in the conversation.
greyson spoke with an enthusiasm that was unusual to him. so many of our wars had been mean wars—wars for the wrong; sordid wars for territory, for gold mines; wars against the weak at the bidding of our traders, our financiers. “shouldering the white man’s burden,” we called it. wars for the right of selling opium; wars to perpetuate the vile rule of the turk because it happened to serve our commercial interests. this time, we were out to play the knight; to save the smaller peoples; to rescue our once “sweet enemy,” fair france. russia was the disturbing thought. it somewhat discounted the knight-errant idea, riding stirrup to stirrup beside that barbarian horseman. but there were possibilities about russia. idealism lay hid within that sleeping brain. it would be a holy war for the kingdom of the peoples. with germany freed from the monster of blood and iron that was crushing out her soul, with russia awakened to life, we would build the united states of europe. even his voice was changed. joan could almost fancy it was some excited schoolboy that was talking.
mary had been clasping and unclasping her hands, a habit of hers when troubled. could good ever come out of evil? that was her doubt. did war ever do anything but sow the seeds of future violence; substitute one injustice for another; change wrong for wrong. did it ever do anything but add to the world’s sum of evil, making god’s task the heavier?
suddenly, while speaking, she fell into a passionate fit of weeping. she went on through her tears:
“it will be terrible,” she said. “it will last longer than you say. every nation will be drawn into it. there will be no voice left to speak for reason. every day we shall grow more brutalized, more pitiless. it will degrade us, crush the soul out of us. blood and iron! it will become our god too: the god of all the world. you say we are going into it with clean hands, this time. how long will they keep clean? the people who only live for making money: how long do you think they will remain silent? what has been all the talk of the last ten years but of capturing german trade. we shall be told that we owe it to our dead to make a profit out of them; that otherwise they will have died in vain. who will care for the people but to use them for killing one another—to hound them on like dogs. in every country nothing but greed and hatred will be preached. horrible men and women will write to the papers crying out for more blood, more cruelty. everything that can make for anger and revenge will be screamed from every newspaper. every plea for humanity will be jeered at as ‘sickly sentimentality.’ every man and woman who remembers the ideals with which we started will be shrieked at as a traitor. the people who are doing well out of it, they will get hold of the press, appeal to the passions of the mob. nobody else will be allowed to speak. it always has been so in war. it always will be. this will be no exception merely because it’s bigger. every country will be given over to savagery. there will be no appeal against it. the whole world will sink back into the beast.”
she ended by rising abruptly and wishing them good-night. her outburst had silenced joan’s impish drummer, for the time. he appeared to be nervous and depressed, but bucked up again on the way to the bus. greyson walked with her as usual. they took the long way round by the outer circle.
“poor mary!” he said. “i should not have talked before her if i had thought. her horror of war is almost physical. she will not even read about them. it has the same effect upon her as stories of cruelty.”
“but there’s truth in a good deal that she says,” he added. “war can bring out all that is best in a people; but also it brings out the worst. we shall have to take care that the ideals are not lost sight of.”
“i wish this wretched business of the paper hadn’t come just at this time,” said joan: “just when your voice is most needed.
“couldn’t you get enough money together to start something quickly,” she continued, the idea suddenly coming to her. “i think i could help you. it wouldn’t matter its being something small to begin with. so long as it was entirely your own, and couldn’t be taken away from you. you’d soon work it up.”
“thanks,” he answered. “i may ask you to later on. but just now—” he paused.
of course. for war you wanted men, to fight. she had been thinking of them in the lump: hurrying masses such as one sees on cinema screens, blurred but picturesque. of course, when you came to think of it, they would have to be made up of individuals—gallant-hearted, boyish sort of men who would pass through doors, one at a time, into little rooms; give their name and address to a soldier man seated at a big deal table. later on, one would say good-bye to them on crowded platforms, wave a handkerchief. not all of them would come back. “you can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs,” she told herself.
it annoyed her, that silly saying having come into her mind. she could see them lying there, with their white faces to the night. surely she might have thought of some remark less idiotic to make to herself, at such a time.
he was explaining to her things about the air service. it seemed he had had experience in flying—some relation of his with whom he had spent a holiday last summer.
it would mean his getting out quickly. he seemed quite eager to be gone.
“isn’t it rather dangerous work?” she asked. she felt it was a footling question even as she asked it. her brain had become stodgy.
“nothing like as dangerous as being in the infantry,” he answered. “and that would be my only other alternative. besides i get out of the drilling.” he laughed. “i should hate being shouted at and ordered about by a husky old sergeant.”
they neither spoke again till they came to the bridge, from the other side of which the busses started.
“i may not see you again before i go,” he said. “look after mary. i shall try to persuade her to go down to her aunt in hampshire. it’s rather a bit of luck, as it turns out, the paper being finished with. i shouldn’t have quite known what to do.”
he had stopped at the corner. they were still beneath the shadow of the trees. quite unconsciously she put her face up; and as if it had always been the custom at their partings, he drew her to him and kissed her; though it really was for the first time.
she walked home instead of taking the bus. she wanted to think. a day or two would decide the question. she determined that if the miracle did not happen, she would go down to liverpool. her father was on the committee of one of the great hospitals; and she knew one or two of the matrons. she would want to be doing something—to get out to the front, if possible. maybe, her desire to serve was not altogether free from curiosity—from the craving for adventure. there’s a spice of the man even in the best of women.
her conscience plagued her when she thought of mrs. denton. for some time now, they had been very close together; and the old lady had come to depend upon her. she waited till all doubt was ended before calling to say good-bye. mrs. denton was seated before an old bureau that had long stood locked in a corner of the library. the drawers were open and books and papers were scattered about.
joan told her plans. “you’ll be able to get along without me for a little while?” she asked doubtfully.
mrs. denton laughed. “i haven’t much more to do,” she answered. “just tidying up, as you see; and two or three half-finished things i shall try to complete. after that, i’ll perhaps take a rest.”
she took from among the litter a faded photograph and handed it to joan. “odd,” she said. “i’ve just turned it out.”
it represented a long, thin line of eminently respectable ladies and gentlemen in early victorian costume. the men in peg-top trousers and silk stocks, the women in crinolines and poke bonnets. among them, holding the hand of a benevolent-looking, stoutish gentleman, was a mere girl. the terminating frills of a white unmentionable garment showed beneath her skirts. she wore a porkpie hat with a feather in it.
“my first public appearance,” explained mrs. denton. “i teased my father into taking me with him. we represented great britain and ireland. i suppose i’m the only one left.”
“i shouldn’t have recognized you,” laughed joan. “what was the occasion?”
“the great international peace congress at paris,” explained mrs. denton; “just after the crimean war. it made quite a stir at the time. the emperor opened our proceedings in person, and the pope and the archbishop of canterbury both sent us their blessing. we had a copy of the speeches presented to us on leaving, in every known language in europe, bound in vellum. i’m hoping to find it. and the press was enthusiastic. there were to be acts of parliament, courts of arbitration, international laws, diplomatic treaties. a sub-committee was appointed to prepare a special set of prayers and a palace of peace was to be erected. there was only one thing we forgot, and that was the foundation.”
“i may not be here,” she continued, “when the new plans are submitted. tell them not to forget the foundation this time. tell them to teach the children.”
joan dined at a popular restaurant that evening. she fancied it might cheer her up. but the noisy patriotism of the over-fed crowd only irritated her. these elderly, flabby men, these fleshy women, who would form the spectators, who would loll on their cushioned seats protected from the sun, munching contentedly from their well-provided baskets while listening to the dying groans rising upwards from the drenched arena. she glanced from one podgy thumb to another and a feeling of nausea crept over her.
suddenly the band struck up “god save the king.” three commonplace enough young men, seated at a table near to her, laid down their napkins and stood up. yes, there was something to be said for war, she felt, as she looked at their boyish faces, transfigured. not for them business as usual, the capture of german trade. other visions those young eyes were seeing. the little imp within her brain had seized his drum again. “follow me”—so he seemed to beat—“i teach men courage, duty, the laying down of self. i open the gates of honour. i make heroes out of dust. isn’t it worth my price?”
a figure was loitering the other side of the street when she reached home. she thought she somehow recognized it, and crossed over. it was mckean, smoking his everlasting pipe. success having demanded some such change, he had migrated to “the albany,” and she had not seen him for some time. he had come to have a last look at the house—in case it might happen to be the last. he was off to scotland the next morning, where he intended to “join up.”
“but are you sure it’s your particular duty?” suggested joan. “i’m told you’ve become a household word both in germany and france. if we really are out to end war and establish the brotherhood of nations, the work you are doing is of more importance than even the killing of germans. it isn’t as if there wouldn’t be enough without you.”
“to tell the truth,” he answered, “that’s exactly what i’ve been saying to myself. i shan’t be any good. i don’t see myself sticking a bayonet into even a german. unless he happened to be abnormally clumsy. i tried to shoot a rabbit once. i might have done it if the little beggar, instead of running away, hadn’t turned and looked at me.”
“i should keep out of it if i were you,” laughed joan.
“i can’t,” he answered. “i’m too great a coward.”
“an odd reason for enlisting,” thought joan.
“i couldn’t face it,” he went on; “the way people would be looking at me in trains and omnibuses; the things people would say of me, the things i should imagine they were saying; what my valet would be thinking of me. oh, i’m ashamed enough of myself. it’s the artistic temperament, i suppose. we must always be admired, praised. we’re not the stuff that martyrs are made of. we must for ever be kow-towing to the cackling geese around us. we’re so terrified lest they should hiss us.”
the street was empty. they were pacing it slowly, up and down.
“i’ve always been a coward,” he continued. “i fell in love with you the first day i met you on the stairs. but i dared not tell you.”
“you didn’t give me that impression,” answered joan.
she had always found it difficult to know when to take him seriously and when not.
“i was so afraid you would find it out,” he explained.
“you thought i would take advantage of it,” she suggested.
“one can never be sure of a woman,” he answered. “and it would have been so difficult. there was a girl down in scotland, one of the village girls. it wasn’t anything really. we had just been children together. but they all thought i had gone away to make my fortune so as to come back and marry her—even my mother. it would have looked so mean if after getting on i had married a fine london lady. i could never have gone home again.”
“but you haven’t married her—or have you?” asked joan.
“no,” he answered. “she wrote me a beautiful letter that i shall always keep, begging me to forgive her, and hoping i might be happy. she had married a young farmer, and was going out to canada. my mother will never allow her name to be mentioned in our house.”
they had reached the end of the street again. joan held out her hand with a laugh.
“thanks for the compliment,” she said. “though i notice you wait till you’re going away before telling me.”
“but quite seriously,” she added, “give it a little more thought—the enlisting, i mean. the world isn’t too rich in kind influences. it needs men like you. come, pull yourself together and show a little pluck.” she laughed.
“i’ll try,” he promised, “but it won’t be any use; i shall drift about the streets, seeking to put heart into myself, but all the while my footsteps will be bearing me nearer and nearer to the recruiting office; and outside the door some girl in the crowd will smile approval or some old fool will pat me on the shoulder and i shall sneak in and it will close behind me. it must be fine to have courage.”
he wrote her two days later from ayr, giving her the name of his regiment, and again some six months later from flanders. but there would have been no sense in her replying to that last.
she lingered in the street by herself, a little time, after he had turned the corner. it had been a house of sorrow and disappointment to her; but so also she had dreamed her dreams there, seen her visions. she had never made much headway with her landlord and her landlady: a worthy couple, who had proved most excellent servants, but who prided themselves, to use their own expression, on knowing their place and keeping themselves to themselves. joan had given them notice that morning, and had been surprised at the woman’s bursting into tears.
“i felt it just the same when young mr. mckean left us,” she explained with apologies. “he had been with us five years. he was like you, miss, so unpracticable. i’d got used to looking after him.”
mary greyson called on her in the morning, while she was still at breakfast. she had come from seeing francis off by an early train from euston. he had sent joan a ring.
“he is so afraid you may not be able to wear it—that it will not fit you,” said mary, “but i told him i was sure it would.”
joan held our her hand for the letter. “i was afraid he had forgotten it,” she answered, with a smile.
she placed the ring on her finger and held out her hand. “i might have been measured for it,” she said. “i wonder how he knew.”
“you left a glove behind you, the first day you ever came to our house,” mary explained. “and i kept it.”
she was following his wishes and going down into the country. they did not meet again until after the war.
madge dropped in on her during the week and brought flossie with her. flossie’s husband, sam, had departed for the navy; and niel singleton, who had offered and been rejected for the army, had joined a red cross unit. madge herself was taking up canteen work. joan rather expected flossie to be in favour of the war, and madge against it. instead of which, it turned out the other way round. it seemed difficult to forecast opinion in this matter.
madge thought that england, in particular, had been too much given up to luxury and pleasure. there had been too much idleness and empty laughter: hitchicoo dances and women undressing themselves upon the stage. even the working classes seemed to think of nothing else but cinemas and beer. she dreamed of a united kingdom purified by suffering, cleansed by tears; its people drawn together by memory of common sacrifice; class antagonism buried in the grave where duke’s son and cook’s son would lie side by side: of a new-born europe rising from the ashes of the old. with germany beaten, her lust of war burnt out, her hideous doctrine of force proved to be false, the world would breathe a freer air. passion and hatred would fall from man’s eyes. the people would see one another and join hands.
flossie was sceptical. “why hasn’t it done it before?” she wanted to know. “good lord! there’s been enough of it.”
“why didn’t we all kiss and be friends after the napoleonic wars?” she demanded, “instead of getting up peterloo massacres, and anti-corn law riots, and breaking the duke of wellington’s windows?”
“all this talk of downing militarism,” she continued. “it’s like trying to do away with the other sort of disorderly house. you don’t stamp out a vice by chivying it round the corner. when men and women have become decent there will be no more disorderly houses. but it won’t come before. suppose we do knock militarism out of germany, like we did out of france, not so very long ago? it will only slip round the corner into russia or japan. come and settle over here, as likely as not, especially if we have a few victories and get to fancy ourselves.”
madge was of opinion that the world would have had enough of war. not armies but whole peoples would be involved this time. the lesson would be driven home.
“oh, yes, we shall have had enough of it,” agreed flossie, “by the time we’ve paid up. there’s no doubt of that. what about our children? i’ve just left young frank strutting all over the house and flourishing a paper knife. and the servants have had to bar the kitchen door to prevent his bursting in every five minutes and attacking them. what’s he going to say when i tell him, later on, that his father and myself have had all the war we want, and have decided there shall be no more? the old folks have had their fun. why shouldn’t i have mine? that will be his argument.”
“you can’t do it,” she concluded, “unless you are prepared to keep half the world’s literature away from the children, scrap half your music, edit your museums and your picture galleries; bowdlerize your old testament and rewrite your histories. and then you’ll have to be careful for twenty-four hours a day that they never see a dog-fight.”
madge still held to her hope. god would make a wind of reason to pass over the earth. he would not smite again his people.
“i wish poor dear sam could have been kept out of it,” said flossie. she wiped her eyes and finished her tea.
joan had arranged to leave on the monday. she ran down to see mary stopperton on the saturday afternoon. mr. stopperton had died the year before, and mary had been a little hurt, divining insincerity in the condolences offered to her by most of her friends.
“you didn’t know him, dear,” she had said to joan. “all his faults were on the outside.”
she did not want to talk about the war.
“perhaps it’s wrong of me,” she said. “but it makes me so sad. and i can do nothing.”
she had been busy at her machine when joan had entered; and a pile of delicate white work lay folded on a chair beside her.
“what are you making?” asked joan.
the little withered face lighted up. “guess,” she said, as she unfolded and displayed a tiny garment.
“i so love making them,” she said. “i say to myself, ‘it will all come right. god will send more and more of his christ babies; till at last there will be thousands and thousands of them everywhere; and their love will change the world!’”
her bright eyes had caught sight of the ring upon joan’s hand. she touched it with her little fragile fingers.
“you will let me make one for you, dearie, won’t you?” she said. “i feel sure it will be a little christ baby.”
arthur was still away when she arrived home. he had gone to norway on business. her father was afraid he would find it difficult to get back. telegraphic communication had been stopped, and they had had no news of him. her father was worried. a big government contract had come in, while many of his best men had left to enlist.
“i’ve fixed you up all right at the hospital,” he said. “it was good of you to think of coming home. don’t go away, for a bit.” it was the first time he had asked anything of her.
another fortnight passed before they heard from arthur, and then he wrote them both from hull. he would be somewhere in the north sea, mine sweeping, when they read his letters. he had hoped to get a day or two to run across and say good-bye; but the need for men was pressing and he had not liked to plead excuses. the boat by which he had managed to leave bergen had gone down. he and a few others had been picked up, but the sights that he had seen were haunting him. he felt sure his uncle would agree that he ought to be helping, and this was work for england he could do with all his heart. he hoped he was not leaving his uncle in the lurch; but he did not think the war would last long, and he would soon be back.
“dear lad,” said her father, “he would take the most dangerous work that he could find. but i wish he hadn’t been quite so impulsive. he could have been of more use helping me with this war office contract. i suppose he never got my letter, telling him about it.”
in his letter to joan he went further. he had received his uncle’s letter, so he confided to her. perhaps she would think him a crank, but he couldn’t help it. he hated this killing business, this making of machinery for slaughtering men in bulk, like they killed pigs in chicago. out on the free, sweet sea, helping to keep it clean from man’s abominations, he would be away from it all.
she saw the vision of him that night, as, leaning from her window, she looked out beyond the pines: the little lonely ship amid the waste of waters; his beautiful, almost womanish, face, and the gentle dreamy eyes with their haunting suggestion of a shadow.
her little drummer played less and less frequently to her as the months passed by. it didn’t seem to be the war he had looked forward to. the illustrated papers continued to picture it as a sort of glorified picnic where smiling young men lolled luxuriously in cosy dug-outs, reading their favourite paper. by curious coincidence, it generally happened to be the journal publishing the photograph. occasionally, it appeared, they came across the enemy, who then put up both hands and shouted “kamerad.” but the weary, wounded men she talked to told another story.
she grew impatient of the fighters with their mouths; the savage old baldheads heroically prepared to sacrifice the last young man; the sleek, purring women who talked childish nonsense about killing every man, woman and child in germany, but quite meant it; the shrieking journalists who had decided that their place was the home front; the press-spurred mobs, the spy hunters, chasing terrified old men and sobbing children through the streets. it was a relief to enter the quiet ward and close the door behind her. the camp-followers: the traders and pedlars, the balladmongers, and the mountebanks, the ghoulish sightseers! war brought out all that was worst in them. but the givers of their blood, the lads who suffered, who had made the sacrifice: war had taught them chivalry, manhood. she heard no revilings of hatred and revenge from those drawn lips. patience, humour, forgiveness, they had learnt from war. they told her kindly stories even of hans and fritz.
the little drummer in her brain would creep out of his corner, play to her softly while she moved about among them.
one day she received a letter from folk. he had come to london at the request of the french government to consult with english artists on a matter he must not mention. he would not have the time, he told her, to run down to liverpool. could she get a couple of days’ leave and dine with him in london.
she found him in the uniform of a french colonel. he had quite a military bearing and seemed pleased with himself. he kissed her hand, and then held her out at arms’ length.
“it’s wonderful how like you are to your mother,” he said, “i wish i were as young as i feel.”
she had written him at the beginning of the war, telling him of her wish to get out to the front, and he thought that now he might be able to help her.
“but perhaps you’ve changed your mind,” he said. “it isn’t quite as pretty as it’s painted.”
“i want to,” she answered. “it isn’t all curiosity. i think it’s time for women to insist on seeing war with their own eyes, not trust any longer to the pictures you men paint.” she smiled.
“but i’ve got to give it up,” she added. “i can’t leave dad.”
they were sitting in the hall of the hotel. it was the dressing hour and the place was almost empty. he shot a swift glance at her.
“arthur is still away,” she explained, “and i feel that he wants me. i should be worrying myself, thinking of him all alone with no one to look after him. it’s the mother instinct i suppose. it always has hampered woman.” she laughed.
“dear old boy,” he said. he was watching her with a little smile. “i’m glad he’s got some luck at last.”
they dined in the great restaurant belonging to the hotel. he was still vastly pleased with himself as he marched up the crowded room with joan upon his arm. he held himself upright and talked and laughed perhaps louder than an elderly gentleman should. “swaggering old beggar,” he must have overheard a young sub. mutter as they passed. but he did not seem to mind it.
they lingered over the meal. folk was a brilliant talker. most of the men whose names were filling the newspapers had sat to him at one time or another. he made them seem quite human. joan was surprised at the time.
“come up to my rooms, will you?” he asked. “there’s something i want to say to you. and then i’ll walk back with you.” she was staying at a small hotel off jermyn street.
he sat her down by the fire and went into the next room. he had a letter in his hand when he returned. joan noticed that the envelope was written upon across the corner, but she was not near enough to distinguish the handwriting. he placed it on the mantelpiece and sat down opposite her.
“so you have come to love the dear old chap,” he said.
“i have always loved him,” joan answered. “it was he didn’t love me, for a time, as i thought. but i know now that he does.”
he was silent for a few moments, and then he leant across and took her hands in his.
“i am going,” he said, “where there is just the possibility of an accident: one never knows. i wanted to be sure that all was well with you.”
he was looking at the ring upon her hand.
“a soldier boy?” he asked.
“yes,” she answered. “if he comes back.” there was a little catch in her voice.
“i know he’ll come back,” he said. “i won’t tell you why i am so sure. perhaps you wouldn’t believe.” he was still holding her hands, looking into her eyes.
“tell me,” he said, “did you see your mother before she died. did she speak to you?”
“no,” joan answered. “i was too late. she had died the night before. i hardly recognized her when i saw her. she looked so sweet and young.”
“she loved you very dearly,” he said. “better than herself. all those years of sorrow: they came to her because of that. i thought it foolish of her at the time, but now i know she was wise. i want you always to love and honour her. i wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t right.”
she looked at him and smiled. “it’s quite easy,” she answered. “i always see her as she lay there with all the sorrow gone from her. she looked so beautiful and kind.”
he rose and took the letter from where he had placed it on the mantelpiece. he stooped and held it out above the fire and a little flame leaped up and seemed to take it from his hand.
they neither spoke during the short walk between the two hotels. but at the door she turned and held out her hands to him.
“thank you,” she said, “for being so kind—and wise. i shall always love and honour her.”
he kissed her, promising to take care of himself.
she ran against phillips, the next day, at one of the big stores where she was shopping. he had obtained a commission early in the war and was now a captain. he had just come back from the front on leave. the alternative had not appealed to him, of being one of those responsible for sending other men to death while remaining himself in security and comfort.
“it’s a matter of temperament,” he said. “somebody’s got to stop behind and do the patriotic speechifying. i’m glad i didn’t. especially after what i’ve seen.”
he had lost interest in politics.
“there’s something bigger coming,” he said. “here everything seems to be going on much the same, but over there you feel it. something growing silently out of all this blood and mud. i find myself wondering what the men are staring at, but when i look there’s nothing as far as my field-glasses will reach but waste and desolation. and it isn’t only on the faces of our own men. it’s in the eyes of the prisoners too. as if they saw something. a funny ending to the war, if the people began to think.”
mrs. phillips was running a convalescent home in folkestone, he told her; and had even made a speech. hilda was doing relief work among the ruined villages of france.
“it’s a new world we shall be called upon to build,” he said. “we must pay more heed to the foundation this time.”
she seldom discussed the war with her father. at the beginning, he had dreamed with greyson of a short and glorious campaign that should weld all classes together, and after which we should forgive our enemies and shape with them a better world. but as the months went by, he appeared to grow indifferent; and joan, who got about twelve hours a day of it outside, welcomed other subjects.
it surprised her when one evening after dinner he introduced it himself.
“what are you going to do when it’s over?” he asked her. “you won’t give up the fight, will you, whatever happens?” she had not known till then that he had been taking any interest in her work.
“no,” she answered with a laugh, “no matter what happens, i shall always want to be in it.”
“good lad,” he said, patting her on the shoulder. “it will be an ugly world that will come out of all this hate and anger. the lord will want all the help that he can get.”
“and you don’t forget our compact, do you?” he continued, “that i am to be your backer. i want to be in it too.”
she shot a glance at him. he was looking at the portrait of that old ironside allway who had fought and died to make a nobler england, as he had dreamed. a grim, unprepossessing gentleman, unless the artist had done him much injustice, with high, narrow forehead, and puzzled, staring eyes.
she took the cigarette from her lips and her voice trembled a little.
“i want you to be something more to me than that, sir,” she said. “i want to feel that i’m an allway, fighting for the things we’ve always had at heart. i’ll try and be worthy of the name.”
her hand stole out to him across the table, but she kept her face away from him. until she felt his grasp grow tight, and then she turned and their eyes met.
“you’ll be the last of the name,” he said. “something tells me that. i’m glad you’re a fighter. i always prayed my child might be a fighter.”
arthur had not been home since the beginning of the war. twice he had written them to expect him, but the little fleet of mine sweepers had been hard pressed, and on both occasions his leave had been stopped at the last moment. one afternoon he turned up unexpectedly at the hospital. it was a few weeks after the conscription act had been passed.
joan took him into her room at the end of the ward, from where, through the open door, she could still keep watch. they spoke in low tones.
“it’s done you good,” said joan. “you look every inch the jolly jack tar.” he was hard and tanned, and his eyes were marvellously bright.
“yes,” he said, “i love the sea. it’s clean and strong.”
a fear was creeping over her. “why have you come back?” she asked.
he hesitated, keeping his eyes upon the ground.
“i don’t suppose you will agree with me,” he said. “somehow i felt i had to.”
a conscientious objector. she might have guessed it. a “conchy,” as they would call him in the press: all the spiteful screamers who had never risked a scratch, themselves, denouncing him as a coward. the local dogberrys of the tribunals would fire off their little stock of gibes and platitudes upon him, propound with owlish solemnity the new christianity, abuse him and condemn him, without listening to him. jeering mobs would follow him through the streets. more than once, of late, she had encountered such crowds made up of shrieking girls and foul-mouthed men, surging round some white-faced youngster while the well-dressed passers-by looked on and grinned.
she came to him and stood over him with her hands upon his shoulders.
“must you, dear?” she said. “can’t you reconcile it to yourself—to go on with your work of mercy, of saving poor folks’ lives?”
he raised his eyes to hers. the shadow that, to her fancy, had always rested there seemed to have departed. a light had come to them.
“there are more important things than saving men’s bodies. you think that, don’t you?” he asked.
“yes,” she answered. “i won’t try to hold you back, dear, if you think you can do that.”
he caught her hands and held them.
“i wanted to be a coward,” he said, “to keep out of the fight. i thought of the shame, of the petty persecutions—that even you might despise me. but i couldn’t. i was always seeing his face before me with his beautiful tender eyes, and the blood drops on his brow. it is he alone can save the world. it is perishing for want of love; and by a little suffering i might be able to help him. and then one night—i suppose it was a piece of driftwood—there rose up out of the sea a little cross that seemed to call to me to stretch out my hand and grasp it, and gird it to my side.”
he had risen. “don’t you see,” he said. “it is only by suffering that one can help him. it is the sword that he has chosen—by which one day he will conquer the world. and this is such a splendid opportunity to fight for him. it would be like deserting him on the eve of a great battle.”
she looked into his eager, hopeful eyes. yes, it had always been so—it always would be, to the end. not priests and prophets, but ever that little scattered band of glad sufferers for his sake would be his army. his weapon still the cross, till the victory should be won.
she glanced through the open door to where the poor, broken fellows she always thought of as “her boys” lay so patient, and then held out her hand to him with a smile, though the tears were in her eyes.
“so you’re like all the rest of them, lad,” she said. “it’s for king and country. good luck to you.”
after the war was over and the men, released from their long terms of solitary confinement, came back to life injured in mind and body, she was almost glad he had escaped. but at the time it filled her soul with darkness.
it was one noonday. he had been down to the tribunal and his case had been again adjourned. she was returning from a lecture, and, crossing a street in the neighbourhood of the docks, found herself suddenly faced by an oncoming crowd. it was yelping and snarling, curiously suggestive of a pack of hungry wolves. a couple of young soldiers were standing back against a wall.
“better not go on, nurse,” said one of them. “it’s some poor devil of a conchy, i expect. must have a damned sight more pluck than i should.”
it was the fear that had been haunting her. she did not know how white she had turned.
“i think it is someone i know,” she said. “won’t you help me?”
the crowd gave way to them, and they had all but reached him. he was hatless and bespattered, but his tender eyes had neither fear nor anger in them. she reached out her arms and called to him. another step and she would have been beside him, but at the moment a slim, laughing girl darted in front of him and slipped her foot between his legs and he went down.
she heard the joyous yell and the shrill laughter as she struggled wildly to force her way to him. and then for a moment there was a space and a man with bent body and clenched hands was rushing forward as if upon a football field, and there came a little sickening thud and then the crowd closed in again.
her strength was gone and she could only wait. more soldiers had come up and were using their fists freely, and gradually the crowd retired, still snarling; and they lifted him up and brought him to her.
“there’s a chemist’s shop in the next street. we’d better take him there,” suggested the one who had first spoken to her. and she thanked them and followed them.
they made a bed for him with their coats upon the floor, and some of them kept guard outside the shop, while one, putting aside the frightened, useless little chemist, waited upon her, bringing things needful, while she cleansed the foulness from his smooth young face, and washed the matted blood from his fair hair, and closed the lids upon his tender eyes, and, stooping, kissed the cold, quiet lips.
there had been whispered talk among the men, and when she rose the one who had first spoken to her came forward. he was nervous and stood stiffly.
“beg pardon, nurse,” he said, “but we’ve sent for a stretcher, as the police don’t seem in any hurry. would you like us to take him. or would it upset him, do you think, if he knew?”
“thank you,” she answered. “he would think it kind of you, i know.”
she had the feeling that he was being borne by comrades.
