Chapter 4

He wants to have a hand in the great big game, I know. But if the time should come, soon or late, when your roads and streets shall resound with the beat of armed and arming men, put the lid on George. Never mind how, but just do it.

It is hell!

*VIII*

I am writing this quite a long way from my base. The Black Watch, to which regiment Himself now belongs, has been sent to the East coast and I am here in a billet with him for a few weeks.

It is the loveliest old city, interwoven with all the ancient history, when Flemings and Danes and all kinds of weird aliens invaded or flocked to these shores. It is beloved by your American tourists; if George and you did not differ from all American tourists whatsoever, you would have been here long ago, and could tell me far more about it than is to be obtained out of the most authenticated guide book. You, however, have always preferred to take your travel in microscopic doses, to make a little bit your intimate and dear possession for all time. I am surprised to find this old Norwich such a noble city, and I should love to show you the ancient landmarks. It is full of treasures, of values which cannot be told, or was, rather, for the powers that be have mysteriously spirited them away, and the priceless stained glass windows have been boarded up--the very most priceless of all has been taken down. The fate of Rheims and Louvain and Ypres has made the city fathers wise. But it is an omen, Cornelia, which keeps me awake o' nights and gives me the jumps when I hear the streets resound with the tramp of armed men in the silent watches--Himself having been summoned with the rest to "stand to" as they call it, with their faces toward the sea.

The boys have an expression which sums up these frequent forced marches--they call it "getting the wind up." The wind is up here more often than I like it, and when I hear quite sober quiet matrons tell what they will do if the dread moment ever comes when the Hun invades these shores, I have no strength in me. I am not brave at all, Cornelia, something has been left out of my composition. This is the most vulnerable part of our far-flung coast, and there is a great watching army right along. Those whose duty it will be to guide the civilian population in case of emergency have what you call the schedule ready, and nothing will be left to chance. I don't want to be here when it happens, my dear; this nameless lurking fear that never sleeps takes the edge off the joy of being with him. He has no belief at all in the landing of German troops in England. You know he is an incurable optimist about the War. He considers that we are invincible and that victory is only a matter of time. It must be a delightful atmosphere to live and move and have your being in; it helps to keep one young. He can sleep through anything and only grumbles when he has not enough of sleep.

My war experiences are widening. Yesterday we had a bombardment from the sea--not of Norwich, of course--if you remember your geography you will know that it is not possible--but of the coast places, Yarmouth and Lowestoft, less than twenty miles away.

I was awakened about four o'clock in the morning by a dull boom and the sharp rattle of the windows. Having lived so much beside naval guns in our own special Kingdom by the Sea, I knew exactly what it was and shook Himself. "That's naval guns," I said. "There's a fight going on quite close by." "Nonsense," he answered. "You're dreaming--go to sleep." I could not, and rose early to hear from the little maid, who had heard it from the milkman, that the coast places had been bombarded and much damage done. You know how rumours fly and how disasters are multiplied and intensified, as they pass from mouth to mouth. Himself came back from the mess with little news beyond the facts, and I was glad when a friend rang me up to ask if I'd like to go down to the coast with her in her car.

Of course I liked it, and we took some of the bigger children with us--it was Easter week and they were all at home from school, round-eyed, eager, fearless about the war, which to them is nothing but the Great Adventure. We hardly expected to get through the military barrier, but we did, and saw what had been done.

It is the same pitiful tale of destruction which follows in the Zeppelin's track, senseless, horrible war on defenceless folk who have little or nothing to protect them. These delightful east-coast watering places are all ruined, because everybody who could afford it has "quit" as you say, and the boarding houses and hotels are empty, and will be for the "duration."

It was very typically British to find the front thronged with spectators, women wheeling babies in perambulators, all gazing upon the scene, but not apparently frightened at the wreckage. The story was soon told. Some battle-cruisers suddenly appeared about six miles out and opened fire for twenty minutes or so, and then ran. There was no patrol to attack them, if it was anybody's business to be on the outside there, they were off guard. The only criticism one is inclined to make is that it could not happen in Germany.

This pleasant East Anglian land is lovely beyond compare in the exquisite spring unfolding, but the blight of war seems over all.

They are getting ready great camps nearer the sea, and the troops will be taken out of their winter billets.

Himself is very busy inspecting and reporting, and generally proving as efficient and thorough in military life as he is in civilian.

I begin to understand the lure of the life. There is perpetual movement, excitement, expectation. There is a certain kind of social life, lunches and dinners and other entertainment offered by hospitable people to the incomers, the great Highland host that has invaded their stately precincts. There are lots of little war brides here with their young soldier husbands, and maturer matrons, some of them with considerable families, living in furnished houses trying to make a bit of home for the soldier men, and very interested themselves, though it is all so strange and inconvenient and far from home.

We have delightful rooms in a comfortable house; it is quite a rest for me, and I am getting through with my next book.

When they get into camp I shall have to go back home to the loneliness that is only companioned by fear.

We are kept in inky darkness here on account of the frequent air raids. A month's imprisonment without the option of a fine is the sentence for striking a match in the street. The authorities are lynx-eyed and vigilant, their reward is that this beautiful old city in its historic setting has remained immune through more than a score of attacks from the air. It is protected, too, by the trees, which add so much to its beauty.

It has been an experience, Cornelia, it is all part of the strange upheaval men call war, the outward fringes of it only, yet how deeply, inextricably woven in with the whole woof of life!

Every day one hears of the most extraordinary war marriages, rushed into, too often, after a few days' acquaintance, without a thought given to the awful indissolubility of the bond. For whatever the experience of matrimony may be like, you can never be as you were before. Already there has been much repenting at leisure, and when the glamour of the khaki is off, the tragedy will deepen and enfold the helpless creatures who cannot free themselves, and have no basis for a future.

There are scandals, too, and tragedies too deep for tears, broken vows, faithless lovers and husbands, all the cursed things born of abnormal situations, and the kind of feverish false atmosphere created by war.

These things cry as loud to Heaven as the blood and sorrow from the battlefields, and make thoughtful people reiterate the prayer, Oh, Lord! how long?

They are what we call "after the war problems." Some of them will never be tackled--there is no machinery known to the human understanding capable of tackling them--many will just have to be buried deep, and no cross left to mark the burying place.

There stands out for me here the joy of comradeship as men understand it, gripping it to their souls with hooks of steel.

We don't have it, Cornelia--we women, I mean--it is something we do not get, nor perhaps understand. It is not that we are too petty, but rather, I think, because we have to keep ourselves more detached and selfless for all that men need and must have from us, if the Family is to be held together.

I have never seen anything more lovely than the tie between Himself and the young officers, these splendid boys, pictures, every one in their Kilts, and all the panoply of war. Old enough to be father to any one of them, he has kept the boy's heart, so that he is not only with them at the mess, but one of them. He is so wise and tender with them, that they come to him in every trouble. It makes me weep, and yet feel so proud, but not in the least surprised. Did I ever tell you about the bundle of letters, docketed, dated and tied up, I found among the Boy's things after he went away? His father's letters--which revealed to me a side of Himself I had never seen.

They ought to be printed, but I suppose other fathers write the same kind of letters to their sons at schools, letters that help the sensitive young souls to grapple with the mysteries of life. It is all part of their nature--the bit that isn't ours--comradeship between man and man! When found between father and son, it is the most beautiful thing in life.

You will be stunned by the news of Kitchener's passing. It created a panic here among the common folk.

I met a woman in the street, with a crushed copy of the evening paper under her arm, wringing her hands and crying out that "all was lost." It shows what a hold he had upon the popular imagination. His has been, and is, a name to conjure with. The product of his vast personal magnetism is on every fighting front, and in every training camp at home. He was a great man--but his work was done--others will reap where he has sown.

The memorial services in the Cathedral here were fitting and fine, massed and muffled bands, a dense crowd of khaki-colored men. Generals and high military personages galore, all the pride and pomp of war. But Kitchener will live in the hearts of the people--his true memorial is to be found in the serried rows of crosses in France and Flanders where so much of the army he called into being lies in consecrated dust that is "forever England."

I am back again in old Hertford to find letters urging my return to France.

It is sweet to hear, not only from Effie, who says it in almost every letter from Camiers, but from those in authority, that the boys are always asking when I am coming back.

The time-limit is the difficulty--everywhere, but more especially in the war zone, the restrictions are growing in intensity, and permits for foreign service to civilians are now almost impossible to obtain. If I agree to stay three months, I can go to-morrow, but how can I leave home for three months, as long as Himself is still on this side of the water, liable to come on leave any day, or even just to say good-bye before he sails?

I can't do it, so I am compromising by agreeing to go for a spell to the home camps.

The Winchester Command has asked me for a month and I'll try to put in a part of it soon. Effie is due on leave immediately, but she is finding conditions changing too at her base. What has happened is that all the butterflies and the undesirables, out merely for a new sensation, have been weeded out and only the solid workers remain.

"The plague of women" that tormented the military authorities during the Boer War and created endless problems in South Africa has been more drastically dealt with in this war.

I wish I could tell you all the things Effie has told me, but there is a certain reticence to be observed, and amid so much that is fine and noble why insist or dwell upon the flaws?

You asked about Florence in your last letter and I gave her your message. Daily I thank God for my faithful servant and friend who cares for me so tenderly, and is so understanding of all the trials of this changed, unnatural life. She is part of the House of Defence--the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. She has three brothers in the war. One who had been frightfully wounded about the head and face came back convalescent the other day and I saw him here. I was afraid to go into the kitchen, knowing what the nature of his wounds had been, but so cleverly, wonderfully, had he been handled by these heaven-born surgeons who repair the waste and wreckage of war that he looked much as of yore, though with some deep scars where part of a new jaw had been grafted on. He was very quiet, as those are who have been long in the midst of unspeakable things, but when I asked him whether he was willing to go back, he just smiled.

"There is nothing else to be done," he answered. "And there's the regiment and the pals." That is the spirit of Kitchener's Army--the spirit that lives after him, and which will bring the victory. It makes one proud to be alive and to belong to the old flag.

Picture me then, Cornelia, carrying on as bravely and steadily as may be, a little rocky and homesick at times, but yet following, if afar off, in the track the boys have outlined and worn by the tramp of their brave unflinching feet. To be worthy, not only of those who have died to keep us safe and free, but of those who have been maimed and wrecked for us in the summer of their days, and have still to live with their cross upon them--that is the charge laid upon the rest of us, by the God who is watching the conflict from His secret place, biding His hour to strike.

*IX*

The grip of war is tightening in on our little Island, Cornelia. Soon it will be relentless.

As I was standing this morning with Florence in our sadly diminished and attenuated store cupboard she said in her simple direct way, "Do you notice that every day there is a little less, something else we have to do without?" It was apropos of the plum puddings and the mincemeat, now due to be made, but for which there are no ingredients. A good many households in England and Scotland depended upon our Christmas puddings. I hate to have them go short, but diplomatic relations being what they are with Tino of Greece, we have no currants. It is thus we visualise and realise the intimate discomfort of a world at war. It has all to be cheerfully faced, however, and we talked substitutes for a good half hour, and there will be a pudding of some sort to go forth to the waiting households, though it will be minus the plums.

Since I wrote you last I have been to Scotland.

War has shaken the foundations of our Kingdom by the Sea. It has ceased to be a haven and become in very truth a coast defense. The cliffs bristle with guns, they have crept up from the fort, till the nearest one is over the garden wall not fifty yards away. There it stands with its gleaming nozzle to the sea, the gunners unsleeping night and day by its side.

It has become horrible and menacing. Its old-world intimate charm, which belongs to simple places untouched by conventionality, has surely gone, forever sacrificed, as so much else has been, to the monster that has convulsed the world.

When we could not keep the Boy we laid him here in the place he so loved--and it was a crumb of comfort in our sorrow to feel that if he had been given choice he would himself have chosen to sleep on the windy hill above the shore where in his childhood days he used to paddle with his fat brown legs, and his bucket gripped hard in his podgy little hands.

As I sat there by his white cross on the windy hill and listened to the beat of the surf on the rocks below, I wondered what he was thinking of it all, and I felt glad that his dear dust was sleeping sweetly, his soul safe in the Father's House. I think I must tell you here, my soul's friend, of a strange story I have had sent to me from France, a story which affects me and mine. The Boy had his father's genius for friendship, and clung to his chums with all the ardour of his nature. I lost sight of his chief one when Oxford swallowed him. In a busy life like mine there is not time to do all the things one wants to do. The garden of friendship even has to suffer through the lack of cultivation.

This chum was starting what promised to be a brilliant professional career when the war threw him into the vortex. As a young lieutenant of the Engineers he crossed to France and received his death wounds at La Bassée. I was in France at the time and could so easily have found him in the hospital among the sand dunes near Wimereux, only I did not know. I did not even see his name in the _Times_. You know we don't read the lists so carefully now, most of us are afraid. After a time I got a letter from his mother telling me how he had died. He had lingered three weeks, suffering no pain, fully aware that he could not recover, ready to die as he had lived, without fear, bravely, as brave men only can and do die. His mother was with him to the end. I am not sure whether I envy her. Mine went in a flash without pain or warning, or possible shrinking, straight from one home of love to another. It must wring a mother's heart to watch the candle flickering out so slowly. She wanted to be with him night and day, but he always urged her to leave him at night; both because she never slept and he was better alone. She was very sad until he said one night, "Do go mother, I am never lonely you know, for when you go, Ned comes. He is here all the time--and I want you to know he's waiting for me and I'll be all right over there." All right over there! God, how beautiful it is, and how it comforted me to feel that my son is no more lonely in the Father's House.

Those things are not figments of the imagination, Cornelia--the veil is very thin, and the Lord Christ Himself walks with these dear lads and shows them the way home.

I am glad they are both out of it now--safe forevermore.

My sister, Janet, whom you never met, and who has so long cared for our summer home, is no longer able. She has never really recovered the shock of the Boy's passing--and though she stoutly denies it, the strain of the war had told on her very much. She must have a rest and get away for a while from the guns of the coast defence. So we have let the house. Conceive it, Cornelia, if you can--strangers living and sleeping and possessing our Kingdom by the Sea!

The house the children loved best of all the houses in the world is now in military possession! How truly Florence touched the spring when she said, "Every day there is something to be given up."

If it means helping to win the war, if it can be won no other way than by giving up all we are and have, why then let us in the name of God do it gladly, with high heads and shining eyes in which there are no tears.

It is liberty and love we fight for. If they are slain, what will be left?

My sister has come here to be with me for some months. I am disquieted about her. She looks frail, and she has lost the old buoyancy and wit. Now that she can rest for the first time in her life, the desire to rest has passed. It is all so pathetic and so typical of the stern discipline we call life. We really are in the fighting line from the cradle to the grave. I smiled this morning looking back to when I said it was necessary to take her out of the strain of the Coast Defence. Because she has come into the real war zone here, and last night got a taste of invasion from the air. I must tell you about it because, though we have had many attacks from the air during the last year, this one stands out. We brought one of the raiders down--a mass of flaming wreckage--an awful but a glorious sight.

I have sometimes wished I could have you come here to share one of our Zeppelin nights, to feel the thrill of tense fear which seizes the bravest when the warning sounds, to run with us to shelter, and live the long hours of strain and terror through.

I forget whether I told you that we have very good cellarage in our Chinese Chippendale house and that we accommodate about 20 or 30 less fortunate neighbours while the danger is most imminent. Florence takes special pride in the cellar; she keeps it very clean and snug, spreads old rugs and sets out the garden chairs. Then there is an oil stove and various wraps for the cold nights. It can be very cold in a cellar about 3 A.M. when one's vitality is at its lowest ebb, and fear lurks in every corner.

Some of the women bring their knitting and the mechanical exercise helps to allay nervous distress. A woman I met one morning after a raid said she had been out buying dusters for her Zeppelin guests to hem in their forced seclusion. Of course it is the gregarious instinct which brings them together; danger seems less awful somehow when it is shared.

I don't know whether they notice how short a time I spend under ground--I never sit down there. I want to be up and out if possible, facing the danger, of which I am yet mortally afraid. I don't fancy death in a cellar and I fear I am like the tommies, a fatalist as regards bullets and bombs.

But I'm digressing shamefully. The warning came about seven, and just before nine, we heard the grating of the engines up aloft. It was so loud we thought there must be two or three, but we could not see anything. They went straight over London, approaching as usual from the North, and just missing us. They dropped a good many bombs, and the air was full of the noise of bursting shells, and the clatter of our anti-aircraft guns. Shrapnel was flying from them, even over our little town, and safety was only to be found indoors.

About midnight the marauders began to retrace their steps, if I may put it so, and came right overhead.

Then we beheld a wonderful and glorious sight. Our intrepid airmen, just like great gadflies winging through the night, were searching the sky for the enemy and presently one got above the stationary Zeppelin and found the range. It looked as if they were directly above the church opposite to us, but the actual conflict took place in the air about 8 miles away.

When he got the range he showed a green light, a signal to the anti-aircraft guns below to cease firing. We could not hear the shot that made an end of the monster, but presently we saw vivid streaks like forked lightning run along the side of the giant airship. The next moment, a mass of white flame, it toppled over and began slowly to descend. The cage became detached first and those who were near enough saw the body of its unfortunate occupant fall from it. It descended in a field behind the doctor's house at Potter's Bar, and such a cheer rent the air, ringing hoarse from a million throats, from London to the sea, that one felt positively thrilled, and forgot the night of fear. Some wept and some sang "God Save the King." The great solid satisfying fact that the death-dealing monster had been utterly destroyed sent us thankful to our beds. These awful happenings have their comic as well as their tragic side, and even with nerves strung to the highest pitch we are able to laugh.