Part 18

“It is very curious how things seem to work together at times,” said Lois.

“Always, maybe, if we knew more about it all, dear.”

“Yes, I suppose so. Here have I been so taken up with nursing Uncle Tony that I really have never had time to get anxious about Ray.”

“Ray will be all right, you’ll see. I pin my faith to Uncle Tony’s vision.”

“And yet, when one allows oneself to think about it all, after reading the terrible accounts of the fighting--and he would have me read them all to him--it seems almost impossible that any of them can come back alive.”

“We had forty-nine of them the other day, and it’s amazing how well they stand it. They’re as cheerful as can be, laughing and chaffing and joking. And yet some of them are pretty bad. It’s just as well for all of us to take the cheerful view of things.”

“And then, just when Uncle Tony goes, and we were feeling it so badly, you come in with your good news of Con. I can’t tell you how glad I am, Al.”

“I know, dear. And I’ll be just as glad for you one of these days. Pin your faith to Uncle Tony.”

And through the many dark days when no news came--and in those days no news did not as a rule mean good news--the thought of Uncle Tony’s last words held mighty comfort for them all.

They would have liked to bury him quietly, with no great outward show of the esteem and love in which they held him. Their feelings were too deep for any outward expression and the times hardly seemed suitable for making parade of death. There was sorrow enough abroad without emphasising it.

But Colonel Sir Anthony Luard, V.C., C.B., was a person of consequence. He had died for his country as truly as any man killed at the front. The higher powers decreed him a military funeral, and the quieter-thinking ones at home had to give way. And, after all, they believed it would please him.

So, on a gun-carriage, escorted by a detachment from the reserve battalion of his old regiment, with muffled drums and mournful music, and the Last Post and the crackle of guns, he was laid to rest. And the others picked up the threads of life again and kept his memory sweet by constantly missing him and remembering all his sayings and doings.

His lawyer, Mr. Benfleet of Lincoln’s Inn, came out immediately after the funeral and explained to all concerned--so far as they were available--the remarkably thoughtful provisions of his will.

It had been made--or remade--immediately after the return of Ray and Lois from abroad, and it aimed at the comfort and security of all his little circle, so far as he could provide for these.

There were many wet eyes and brimming hearts as Mr. Benfleet went quietly through the details.

To Miss Amelia Mitten--“my very dear and trusted friend”--he left four hundred pounds a year for life. And Auntie Mitt, with her little black-bordered handkerchief to her eyes, sobbed gratefully.

To Margaret Dare--wife of John Dare of The Red House, Willstead,--“in token of my very great love and esteem,”--he left the sum of £20,000, settled inalienably on herself, with power to will it at her death to whom she chose.

“To my niece, Victoria Luard--who-might-have-been-Balaclava,”--it was down there in the will in black and white, and they came near to smiling at the very characteristic touch,--the sum of £50,000 on attaining the age of twenty-one.

To Dr Connal Dare--if still alive--the sum of £25,000; and to his wife Alma, formerly Alma Luard, an equal sum. In case of Dr Connal Dare’s death the whole £50,000 came at once to Alma.

To Lois Luard, formerly Lois Dare, the sum of £25,000 in her own right.

To Raglan Luard, the residue,--which, said Mr. Benfleet, would amount to probably £100,000 or more when the securities, in which it was all invested, appreciated again after the war.

There were many little minor legacies and gifts to old servants and so on. And Uncle Tony, if he was present in the spirit at the reading of his will, must have been well pleased with the effect of his generous forethought.

XXVII

Mrs Dare, wise woman and excellent housekeeper, had for some time past been doing her best to cut down her proverbial coat to suit the exigencies of the shrunken war-time cloth at her disposal.

In other words, she had been curtailing the running expenses of The Red House so as to bear as lightly as possible on the attenuated income from St Mary Axe. Income, indeed, in actual fact, St Mary Axe had none. Mr Dare was, of necessity, living on such remnants of capital as he had been able to save from the stranded ship.

So Mrs Dare found another place for her housemaid, prevailed on her cook, who was a treasure and had been with her over five years, to remain as ‘general,’ with promise of loss of title and reinstatement of position as soon as times mended, and with Honor’s assistance and an occasional helping hand from Mrs Skirrow, managed to get along very well.

Mrs Skirrow had always been a source of amusement at The Red House. She had a point of view of her own and a sense of humour, and an almost unfailing cheerfulness amid circumstances which drove many of her neighbours to drink.

Mrs. Skirrow did not drink. She had too much hard-earned common-sense, and she could not afford it. With three men more or less on her hands, and mostly more, it took every half-crown she could earn at her charing to keep the home together.

But the war had marvellously altered all that. Not only had she no men to keep but the boot was on the other leg. Her men were actually helping to keep her. She woke up of a night now and then and lay blissfully wondering if it was all a dream, or if she had died and gone to heaven. To be kept by her lazy ones! It seemed altogether too good to be true. And yet every Friday, when she drew her money, proved that true it was. No wonder she hoped with all her heart that it might go on for long enough,--so long, of course, as none of them went and got themselves killed. But men were as a rule so contrary that she lived in daily expectation of one or other doing that same.

For the first two months,--due possibly to some default on her part in filling up and sending in the necessary but bewildering papers,--or it might be to the general muddle at Head-Quarters--she received no money at all. So she kept steadily on with her own work, and having only herself to keep, got along very nicely, meanwhile never ceasing to push her claims with all her powers, and few were better equipped in that way. And Mrs Dare was kept fully informed of everything with racy comments on all and sundry.

Then at last, to Mrs. Skirrow’s great satisfaction, the matter was arranged, and by some extraordinary method of calculation, promoted without doubt by herself and argued with characteristic vehemence and possibly just a trifle of exaggeration here and there, her money began to come in.

She received nearly ten pounds of arrears in a lump sum, and was to get twenty-three shillings a week.

She had never had ten pounds all at once in her life before, nor an assured income of over a pound a week without needing to lift her hand. And, strange to say--yet not so very strange, seeing that she was Mrs Skirrow,--she did not lose her head and go on the ramp as some she knew had done.

In the first place she bought herself a new dress and coat and hat, such as she had vainly imagined herself in, any time this ten years, and fancied herself exceedingly in them.

The choosing and buying of that dress and coat and hat, the going from shop to shop and from window to window, comparing styles and prices, with the delicious knowledge that the money was in her pocket and she was in a position to pick and choose to her heart’s content, was in itself one of the greatest treats she had ever known, and she spread it over quite a considerable period.

And when she turned up one night in her new rig-out, to explain to Mrs Dare that she would not be able to come to her next week as she was going to the seaside, Mrs Dare did not at first recognise her.

When she did she complimented her on her taste and good sense in taking a holiday and hoped she would come back all the better for it.

“I will that. You bet your life, mum! Fust reel holiday I’ve had for twenty years an’ I’m going to enjoy it. Seaside and decently dressed--that’s my idee of a reel holiday. It’s not some folk’s though. There’s me neighbour, Mrs Clemmens, now. She had no money for a while, same as meself. Then she got twenty pound all in one lump. She’s got a heap o’ boys at the war. And what did she do with it? She gathered all her old cronies--an’ a fine hot lot some of ’em are, I can tell you, mum!--and she took ’em all up to London, and fed ’em, and drank ’em, and music-halled ’em, till they was all blind and th’ hull lot of ’em was run in at last, and in the mornin’ she hadn’t enough left to pay the fines. A fair scandal, I calls it!”

“Disgraceful!” assented Mrs Dare. “I’m rejoiced to know that your common-sense condemns that kind of thing, and I hope you’ll have a real good time and come back all the better for it.”

“I will, mum. You bet your boots on that!”

And she did. She journeyed down to Margate in a ‘Ladies Only’ third-class carriage, and bore herself with such dignity that her fellow-travellers were divided as to whether she kept a stylish public somewhere in the West End or a Superior Servants’ Registry Office. She picked out a cheap but adequate lodging, she revelled in all the joys of Margate, ate many winkles, and went to ‘the pictures’ at least once each day, and the whole grand excursion, fares included, totalled up to no more than thirty shillings,--“an’ the best investment ever I made in me life,” she told Mrs Dare over her scrubbing brush, the following week, “an’ I’m thinkin’ I’ll run down for th’ week end now and again, if so be’s this blessed war keeps on a bit.”

Mrs Dare found it really refreshing, amid the abounding troubles of the times, to come across someone who had not only no fault to find with them, but was actually, by reason of them, enjoying quite unexpected prosperity.

For her own heart had been heavy enough in those days, what with the Colonel’s illness and her husband’s very natural depression as to the future outlook.

He had come in one night, some time before, in a state of most justifiable exasperation. And yet the whole thing was so amazingly impudent that in telling his wife of it he could scarce forbear a grim smile. At the same time it was an eye-opener as to the truculent immorality of the firms he had been dealing with for years past in the most perfect good faith, and he vowed he would never forget it.

Two of his best customers, one at Hamburg and the other at Frankfort, owing him between them close on £5000 had coolly sent him word that, as no money could be sent out of the country, they had invested the amounts due to him in the German War Loan and would hold the scrip, and the interest as it accrued, in his name. Both principal and interest would be paid in due course, that is to say--when victory crowned the German arms.

It took Mrs Dare some time to realise that it was not merely a distorted German form of practical joke. But her husband assured her that it was not.

“I had heard of it being done,” he said bitterly. “But I never expected either Stein or Rheinberg would play so low a game on me. I’ve turned over hundreds of thousands of pounds with both of them, and now--this! It’s damnable!”

“Perhaps the Government forced them to it.”

“It’s dirty low business anyway, and it won’t make for German credit when things settle down again.”

But presently there came to him a bit of good fortune which made him feel almost himself again.

Business men who travel daily to and from town by train fall almost inevitably into sets, who occupy always the same compartment and the same seats in it, and among whom exists a certain good-fellowship and friendliness.

In John Dare’s set was a certain John Christianssen, of Norwegian extraction, long established in London in the timber business, which his father had founded sixty years before.

Christianssen was British born, his father having been naturalised. He had two sons with him in the business, and both had got commissions through the Officers’ Training Corps, and were heart and soul in their work and eager for the front.

More than once he had lamented to Mr Dare his loss in them just at this juncture. Not that he grudged them to the service of his adopted country but that their going made him feel, as he said, as if he had lost his right hand and one of his feet.

Mr Dare sympathised with him but assured him it was better to have a healthy body even with only one hand and one foot than to have no body left. And Christianssen, knowing the nature of the business in St Mary Axe, understood, and thought the matter out.

And so it came to pass, one morning when they got out at Cannon Street, that he said to Mr Dare, “I will walk your way, if you don’t mind. I want to talk to you.”

And when they reached the office, where one small office-boy now represented the busy staff of old, he sat down in the second chair and lit a cigar, and said, “I know pretty well, from what I have heard and from what you have told me, Dare, how you are situated here. I have a proposal. I can’t go on without help. I want to be across in Norway and I want to be here at the same time. Now that Jack and Eric are away my hands are tied. There is huge business to be done with all this hutting going on, and I’m going to miss my share unless I make proper provision. And that is you! What do you say?”

“It’s killing to be out of work, which I never have been before for over thirty years. My business is gone, as you know, and most of my capital. Some of it’s invested in the German War Loan----”

“No!”

“Yes! The low-scaled rascals, instead of remitting what they owe me, write to say they have loaned my money to their infernal government and it will be repaid with interest when the war is over--meaning, of course, over in the way they would like it.”

“That is low business!”

“Business! I call it simple dirty robbery. But it’s not only the fact that they’ve done this, but--well, I just feel that I would be glad never to have any dealings with any German again as long as I live.”

“I do not wonder. But that is all the better for me. We have known one another now, what is it--ten, fifteen years? Come in with me. We can arrange satisfactory terms. You see, my lads may come back, or they may not. My wonder, when I read the papers, is that any man of them all ever comes out of it alive. But even if they are not killed I am doubting much if they will find office-stools agreeable sitting for the rest of their lives. If they do come back it will be the overseas part they will want. So there it is. What do you say?”

“I can’t tell you what I feel, Christianssen. The very thought of it makes a new man of me. But--I don’t know the first thing about timber.”

“If you will relieve me of the office work and financing, it will be good business all round. Details as to woods, etc., you can pick up by degrees. I have a good staff here, but the best staff in the world is the better for being looked after. If I can be free to get across to Norway and feel quite safe in going, it will mean much to me and to the business. You will say yes?”

“I’ll say yes with more in my heart than I can put into words,” and they shook hands on it.

So John Dare took up a new lease of life and hope, and was himself again and twenty years younger than he had been any time this last three months.

And presently, for his still greater comfort and relief of mind, came Uncle Tony’s unexpected legacy to Mrs Dare. It was a veritable Godsend. For the heaviest part of his burden, during these late months of no income and vanishing capital, had been the fear of what might befall his home-folks when the worst came to the worst.

The thought of it had kept him awake of a night and plunged him into the depths. He had racked his tired brain to find some way out of his difficulties. But it was like trying to climb a huge black wall whose top shut out even the sight of heaven. For always the grim fact remained that his business was utterly gone and he saw no prospect of its revival.

By the grace of God and Uncle Tony and John Christianssen he was delivered from torment. The home-folk were safe whatever happened, and he took up his new duties with all the enthusiastic energy of a heart retrieved from despair.

XXVIII

Upon none of them did the burden of these weighty times lie so heavily as on Lois Luard and Alma Dare.

They both received occasional letters indeed, but Ray’s, though always full of cheery hopefulness, were very irregular and subject to lack of continuity through one and another occasionally getting lost on the way. And, great as was Lois’s joy and thankfulness when one arrived, telling of his safety and good health eight or ten days before, she could never lose sight of the terrible fact that five minutes after he had written it the end might have come.

With what agonising anxiety she scanned each long, fateful casualty list as it came out, only those who have done that same can know. Sore, sore on wives and mothers, and on all whose men were at the front, were those days when the desperate German rush on Calais and the coast was stayed by the still greater and more desperate valour of our little army, fighting odds as David fought Goliath of Gath. The mighty deeds done in those days will never be told in full, for in full by one Eyewitness only were they seen, and He speaks not.

But doings so Homeric are of necessity costly. Britain and the world at large were delivered from the Menace, but Sorrow swept through the land.

Alma continued to receive word of Con, but at irregular intervals and always by the hand of Robert Grant, R.A.M.C., Con himself being still unable to put pen to paper.

Mr. Grant, however, wrote with a clerkly hand, and Alma came to know it well and to like it. The words were Con’s own for the most part, but the writer occasionally appended as postscript a few remarks of his own, always hopeful and encouraging, but neither of them at any time gave any clue to the nature of these troublesome wounds which prevented the sufferer using his pen.

And this worried Alma not a little. She enquired as to them more than once but received no explicit answers, and the matter began to get somewhat on her nerves.

Fortunately they were almost run off their feet at the hospital, and with the certainty that Con was at all events alive she devoted herself heart and soul to her patients, and that left her small time for her own personal anxieties.

Lois missed Uncle Tony dreadfully. Her assiduous care of him had occupied her mind and kept her thoughts off her own troubles. Her eyes were opened to the strange guise in which blessings are sometimes vouchsafed to us.

But now that Uncle Tony was gone her fears for Ray loomed larger and larger. She envied Alma her over-hard work and her knowledge of the worst. For herself--in spite of herself--she lived in constant fear, and cast about for some engrossing work that should constrain her mind in other directions.

She spent much time on her knees these days,--when not bodily, still in heart. And she came to recognise, as never before, the wonderful applicability of the Psalms to all the affairs of human life, especially to those who are in trouble and fearful of the future. She could hardly open her Bible at the Psalms without coming straight on some verse that might have been written for herself and the times. Even the damnatory passages satisfactorily fulfilled her desires, since they obviously applied to the Germans, against whom, as the causers of all the trouble and the imperillers of what she held dearest, her feelings grew ever more bitter.

The terrible waste of humanity’s best, this all-superfluous sorrow thrust upon a world which never lacked for sorrows, the inhuman savagery of this new German warfare, the impossibility, as it seemed to her, of any single man coming out alive, from the inferno of shot and shell described by the papers, and those awful casualty lists,--all these lay heavy on her soul in spite of all her utmost efforts after hope and faith.

“Alma was right. I must get to work or I shall go mad,” she said to herself.

And after consultation with Auntie Mitt and her mother, they decided, with an eye to Uncle Tony’s wishes in the matter, to offer the hospitality of Oakdene to the War Office for any wounded they chose to send, either officers or privates.

In due course an official came down, inspected the premises, indicated the necessary preparations, and presently the house was as busy as a hive with the ordered doings of ten wounded officers and four nurses in charge. And in face of the actual and urgent necessities of these warmly-welcomed guests, neither Lois nor Auntie Mitt nor Mrs Dare had a spare moment to waste on their own anxieties and fears.

XXIX

Ray Luard was sitting on a barrel in a little station in the north-west of France, watching his men unload railway trucks, when he received the news of Uncle Tony’s death.

An escort just returned from Head-Quarters had brought up the belated mail, and glancing quickly at the envelopes, he hurriedly opened the one in Lois’s handwriting, with a tightening of the lips at its narrow black edging.

He was not altogether unprepared. In spite of the Colonel’s desire that word of his illness should not add to his nephew’s already mighty anxieties, they had not judged it right to keep him entirely in the dark.

“Dear old chap!” murmured Ray to himself, as the news broke on him. “Well ... he did his duty and died for his country as surely as any of the rest of us.... (Steady there, boys, or some of you will be getting smashed!)... But they’ll miss him terribly.... I wish this cursed business was all over.... Lois is Lady Luard ... I wonder how she feels about it. I’ll bet she nearly had a fit when the first person called her that. And I bet that would be Auntie Mitt. She’s the one for giving folks their proper titles. (“Knock off for a quarter-of-an-hour, Mac!”--to his Sergeant. “That’s heavy work.”) Well, well!--Lady Luard!--and a sweeter one there never could be. Damn this business! It _would_ be rough luck to be knocked out right on top of this. However, Lois is all right. That’s one comfort.”

He looked lean and fit. Since Lois watched them swing away to the skirling of the pipes at Watford, they had travelled far, though at the present moment they were nearer home than they had been any time this month or more.

They had had a triumphal passage down the Solent, greeted by cheers and whistles from all the neighbouring boats, which at once blunted the edge of the parting from England and put a still finer point to their patriotic zeal. Some of them, they knew,--perhaps many of them--would never see the green cliffs of Wight again. But they were there on highest service, and their hearts were strong and their spirits above normal. They had gone first to Le Mans, then to Villeneuve St Georges, and finally to Paris--such a different Paris from all Ray’s recollections of it!--and yet in some ways a greater Paris than he had ever known it. It was no longer the city of gaiety and light, but the heart of a nation travailing in the birth of a new soul.

France and Britain had had to fall back before the tumultuous rush of the better-prepared German hosts,--from Mons to Le Cateau,--to St Quentin,--to La Fère,--to Compiégne,--to Chantilly,--very near Paris now. But there the quarry turned and hurled itself at its pursuers. The hunters became the hunted and were forced back to the Marne, across the Ourcq, to the Aisne. And it was while this was going on that the Scottish came to Paris for the cheer and satisfaction of its citizens.