Chapter 5

We had the Holbrooks for the week end--the whole four of them. He is a typical John Bull, and he was much annoyed because a very keen game of bridge was interrupted. He resented the interference with his liberty and personal convenience. Nothing on earth would take him to the cellar, he simply planted himself with a very long pipe and a whiskey and soda in the library, where he sat with a suffering air, what we call the "O Lord, how long?" expression on his face. His women folk, thrilled and interested, for though they live in London their area has so far escaped intimate acquaintance with Zeppelins, could not be brought in from the street.

Mrs. Holbrook is just as amusing in her way as her spouse. Born in England of German parents, she is loyal to the core, and rejoices that she has never even seen Germany. She loathes the war and all it stands for, and she will never give her son until she is obliged to; she is the living personification of the line, "I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier." She can't understand, though she is a dear soul, the thrill and the pride with which we can give and give and give, not money, but our heart's blood till there is nothing left.

It is the waste of war which terrifies her. You see, she has no hope or belief in anything beyond this life. She just shakes her head if you speak to her of the souls that are marching on. "I hope you're right," she says, "but I don't believe it myself, when I am dead there will be an end of me; that's as far as I've got."

How awful to have to live up against such a blank wall--no wonder she clings to the material body of her son with frantic hands that will never let him go.

We got through the night at last, snatched an hour or two's sleep, and in the morning went over to Potter's Bar in the motor to see all that was left of the monster of the air.

The pretty little village swarmed with people "out for to see" just as our town swarmed with them when we got our share of attention from Count Zeppelin.

We tramped through indescribable mud to the sweet meadow where the wreckage lay; partly caught in the branches of a giant oak tree--then trailing away across the sward like the tail of some enormous rattlesnake. We did not see the engines--they had been removed in the small hours on a military truck. What we did see was the retrieval of the bodies from the wreckage--poor charred objects--perfectly unrecognisable. Mothers' sons every one, and somewhere in Germany their homes will be desolate because they do not return. I thought of that, but the temper of the crowd was hostile and bitter, and the feeling uppermost was grim satisfaction that they had met a righteous and deserved doom.

More of the dark fruits of war, the tempering and hardening of a naturally kindly people into a thirst for revenge.

God send it may end soon--before we are all so changed that we shall bear no semblance to our former selves.

*X*

I seem to have reached the end of my letter just about the time I wrote to you last and the doctor, whom in the absence of Himself, I had to call in, ordered me to go away and take a complete rest--you know the formula--but dear God, how can we rest in a world where there is no rest, and with the thunder of the guns in our ears night and day. It is the Somme fighting now, in which we have lost so many of those we love.

I think I gave up the day I got a telegram telling me Dick had been killed at Trones Wood. You remember Dick, and Isabel, that lovely pair for whom I wrote the little book, "Letters to a War Bride."

I don't quite know how to tell you what he was like--a most gallant gentle Knight without fear and without reproach--yet so full of fun, that somehow laughter sang in the heart wherever he came--the laughter that doeth good like a medicine. The last time I saw him, Isabel had come down from Palace Gate to spend a few days and Dick came marching through with his Fusiliers, en route from Colchester to France. He and his Major dined with us--and I never saw him again--nor ever will see him now, till we meet on the other side.

No doubt we are naturally drawn towards those whom nature has richly endowed. He was as handsome as a dream--tall, dark with flashing tender eyes and a smile that was never far away from his lips. A man of peace if ever there was one, yet he was dedicated to war, in order that peace may be established for all time as "one of those things that cannot be shaken."

They were a beautiful pair; she with her slender, delicate charm, her braids of red gold hair, her pathetic eyes. I have never seen such love. It often made me afraid. And now he sleeps there on the Somme where we have already left ninety thousand like him. Great God, and yet there are those who ask when Britain is going to come into the war and why she doesn't bear her share!

I felt I had to go to her, but she was far away at her father's place in Scotland and I was not able to go. My marching orders were drastic. Himself ordered me to Harrogate, where he said he would come the moment he could get forty-eight hours' leave.

So I got me ready, and Janet went part of the way, branching off at York, for Hull. I arrived at Harrogate like a person in a dream, seeking a cure. A cure from what? Inside my heart were wounds for which there never could be any cure this side the grave. I found I was nearer the breaking point than I knew, for when I got to bed there I found I was not able to get up again. The heart had gone clean out of me. I remember Himself arriving from out of some void at six o'clock in the morning, and his face as he stood over me asking me questions, taking temperatures and doing all the things the Doctor has to do when he is up against his job.

Then there were consultations and telephones and people coming in and out of the room. Strange men asking questions and looking at me, and at one another, with grave faces. I seemed so out of it all, and when I heard them say outside of the door, "We'd better tell her," something flashed through me with a thrill of unexplicable, inconceivable joy. I had come to the end, the door was ajar, and I should get away clean and forever from the fever and the fret--the holding up when you feel yourself wilting, the carrying on when there is nothing to carry on with.

Tired? There is no word that can begin to describe how tired I was. Then they came in and told me I should have to have an operation immediately--within an hour or two. I just smiled and said, "Very well."

The next thing I was being carried down the hotel stairs on a stretcher to the ambulance, where they laid me down rolled in a blanket--a nurse was at the head and Himself sitting like a grim sentinel at the foot--we never spoke to one another, not a single word. You have never seen him look like that, Cornelia--you have only heard his laugh, and seen his dancing eyes, while he tried to tease you and to imitate what he called the Yankee twang.

As for me my eyes were fixed on the tender blue of the sky--flecked with those wonderful delicious little fleecy clouds like foam flakes on an azure sea, and all the time I wondered whether soon I would be up and away beyond them.

It was to a private hospital they took me and I had to lie in a weird kind of bed there till the hour came. I had no fear or apprehension--I had just given up. Himself and I did not talk. When you have been so long together surely everything has been said. But I saw his face hard and set and sharp in the clear light, and understood that the bond had stood the test.

The operation was successful, but when I awoke and found I was still in the land of the living, I wept with sheer disappointment. I had relaxed my hold, given up, wanted to be free. But apparently there is work still to be done, but where, oh where, am I to find strength to do it?

Convalescence in pleasant surroundings is a kind of lotus land and I have a sympathy I had never felt before for the women who acquire what Himself calls the "nursing Home habit." The utter lack of responsibility, submission to the will of others; complete surrender of one's entity has its private and particular lure for the human soul. To eat and sleep and get well is a simple creed enough, but it is apt to have a corroding effect. Sometimes I had the awful feeling that I should never be able to go back to the real world and begin the fight all over again. I read much and was able to give my full attention to "Mr. Britling Sees It Through."

It impressed me so much that I wrote a long letter to H.G. and had a very characteristic reply. He is taking himself as seriously as ever, and all the world is called to witness the evolution of his soul. I have been watching it for quite a long time. To us who are veterans on the road it seems all a little crude and pathetic.

Nevertheless it is one of the finest books of the war that has been written. I expect you have already read it--tell me how it strikes you?

Himself, restored to his normal courage and cheerfulness, came and took me home. His commanding officer has been very decent to him through it all, and has not grudged nor forbidden the necessary leave. I was about a week alone before Effie came and she is going to stay this time till I am quite well. We have all sorts of plans. It all ended in our going to Bournemouth to get out of the air raid zone and enjoy the sunshine of the south coast.

The place was very full and though it was quite safe from the air alarms--everywhere we met wounded and broken men, blinded men, and those wearing on their faces the look of those who have seen and known. And it was there at Bournemouth that we got the glad, the glorious news that you had come in. We did not know how badly we had wanted it, how near we were to the breaking point till the message which has transformed the whole world was flashed across the seas.

We were at Boscombe and the Nicolls at the Bath Hotel at Bournemouth. When we met that night I was struck by the expression on Sir William's face even more than by anything he said. He looked like a man from whom the cloud had been lifted and who could once more breathe freely. He knows all there is to know about the war and when I saw the effect the momentous decision had upon him, I seemed to realise how much had depended on it. All he said was "Thank God, America has come in!"

* * * * *

I wanted to send a cable to George and the only thing I could think of was "Hail Columbia!" Effie remarked, "It will be nice and cheap."

This has narrowed the dividing seas and I am seeing you and George and all the other Georges and Cornelias who care, holding a jubilee. Nothing seems to matter now--however long the war lasts, we can see it out. Though the way may be uphill to the very end, we can climb it to the victory peaks--companioned by your strength and sympathy and substantial help.

I am so glad about it I can't sleep. Effie has just made a little sketch of Uncle George receiving the news; it is a disrespectful sketch, but I'm putting it in.

All that matters now is that we belong to one another and to posterity forever and ever.

*XI*

I got your delightful letter yesterday. It came at the psychological moment when I was right down in the depths. It was a friendly true hand stretched across the dark void.

It has happened, Cornelia; Himself has gone beyond my ken in the troop train and the troop ship, across the seas. It came, as all the marching orders do, without warning or preparation. He was simply told to be ready for embarkation in forty-eight hours--destination Egypt--not France or Flanders, but away to the Orient, from whence come no leave trains. How often have I stood on the platform at Victoria or Charing Cross to bid some comrade good-bye; and been thrilled by the poignant tenseness of the hour, the glory and the humour and the pathos of it. Saying good-bye to a pal, however good he may be, is not the same as saying good-bye to your very own, every hair of whose head is dear. There was no glory nor humour for me that day at Waterloo, though Ronald Robertson of the gallant Gordons did his best to provide both, with his crutches and his merry smile.

I told you how he had lost his leg at Loos; a boy to whom legs meant so much. All he says is that he would give the other one, too, if it would do them any good. How are you to even _think_ of your own sorrow in the face of a devotion so invincible, so divine?

We were a little company of close friends to see Himself go off; no woman dare go through that ordeal quite alone. It was an officers' train, some of them so very, very young, and so pathetically proud to be really going at last in all the panoply of war, with the addition of brand new pith helmets which extinguished their features when they put them on, and made them look like overgrown mushrooms.

There was the usual hustle and delay, but at last the signal blew and the snorting engine dragged them away to the tunnel which swallowed the hearts of half the women left behind. It was an awful moment, just black darkness that could be felt. There is something wrong, Cornelia, something terribly wrong with a world in which such things are possible. People can't have been meant to suffer so much, yet somehow I feel that we have not come to the end of the pain yet. It is Calvary we are coming to, and this is only getting us ready.

Himself said very little. He just looked wrung and asked some one in a very quick, hoarse voice to take care of me.

So he is away out into the void, the biggest void of all, and I am left to fill up and carry on as best I can.

Your dear letter has turned my thoughts into an entirely new direction. George's summing up of your feverish war activities in America as "getting restless in your sleep" is really fine. Tell him with my love that I did not think he could have evolved it from his gay inner consciousness. What I am absolutely sure about, is that there is nothing feverish or casual about _his_ war activities. I shall expect to receive a photograph of him in uniform. Age? What is Age? It doesn't count in this war. The uniform took ten years off Himself's age and he will see that they are kept off.

I know a man, one of our County magnates, who has given four sons to the war. Two have been killed, one still fights and the last has been invalided out and given a military post at home.

The old man, seventy, if he is a day, has got himself taken on somehow, and in ranker's uniform acts as his Colonel Son's orderly and is very particular about the salutes!

Love of country is ageless, thank God; Himself thinks before we are through every veteran will have to take his stand.

Don't get worried, because you seem to be going slow. Of course, what you tell me in confidence is a little disappointing. We did think you were quietly getting ready before the clarion call was sounded.

Well, never mind, you will soon get a move on. You are such a tremendous big brother. When you really get into fighting trim the earth, to say nothing of the Kaiser, must tremble.

Tell George to write to me without fail whenever he gets back from Washington.

I should love to come out to you now, but there is so much to do here and so few to do it.

I am now strong enough to get into harness again and have been doing quite a lot of talking at the camps and ammunition works.

The other night, I had rather a curious experience. They asked me if I would go down to a big shell factory, almost entirely manned by women, and speak to the squad on the night shift. I ought to explain a little about the women working in Munitions.

They are not ordinary factory hands nor even all working girls.

When the urgent call went out that thousands of women were needed to make the implements of war and stand as a rampart behind the fighting men, the response came from all classes.

I know hundreds of women who formerly only knew work as something they paid other people to do, who are now cheerfully standing on their feet twelve hours a day with intervals for meals; living side by side in horrid little communal villages with girls from the East End and the slums, and who give all they earn to the war funds.

Further, they are happier than they have ever been in their lives. They have found the key to one of the finest paradises available to humanity, and are proving work to be a panacea for almost every sorrow. I don't think they are going to lose that key any more.

But though it is all very fine, the first time I was in real big munition works and saw these heads--some of them such pretty heads--bent over the machines, I rebelled, just as I sometimes rebel over Effie's youth being spent in the drudgery of the French war zone.

For we are only young once, and for youth there is no substitute. You have to grip yourself hard sometimes when you are overwhelmed by the sight of womanhood dedicated to the work of destruction and ask what it all means. God made us creators, builders, conservers, and the waste and cruelty of war is opposed to the very basic principles of our being. Then why?

Just because there is one thing worse than war, a dishonourable peace based on selfishness, and love of ease, and shirking of responsibility.

I had the same feeling always when I had to stand up in the huts in France before the units of the First Hundred Thousand and it was only by gripping myself tight and holding on to the great ideals they stood for, that I had the courage to say anything to them at all.

The spirit is fine among the women munitioners but sometimes they get tired and discouraged and long for the old sweet peace of home, and the cheerful comradeship of the fireside. It is then that the welfare superintendents, watching with unsleeping vigilance, call to the helpers outside to come and do their bit. I was to speak to them at the lunch hour, half past two in the morning, just to remind them that they are in the trenches too and that they must stand solid and unflinching behind the men who are laying down their lives for us.

I was walking to and fro on the great floor of the factory and had just paused to ask a rather white, sad-faced girl what was worrying her, when suddenly the lights went out. We knew what that meant, all of us, and it really was one of the most awful moments I have ever experienced. As we listened through a silence that could be felt, the machinery having stopped as if by magic, we could hear the sinister grinding of the Zeppelin engine overhead. We all knew that if a bomb crashed through the frail roof very few of the four thousand would see another dawn.

Presently nerves began to break a little; a sob sounded here and there, and once there was a little scream. Then some angel in a far corner, guided from above, no doubt, began to sing low and softly, "Jesus lover of my soul."

I have heard many lovely heart-breaking things, Cornelia, but never anything that thrilled like that. It reminded me a little of your Jubilee singers who came over with Moody, the Evangelist, so long ago from your country. When they sang "Steal away to Jesus," it had the same grip and thrill as it came stealing across the vast arena, taken up by almost every voice. The effect was instantaneous; it fell like Balm of Gilead on our terrified hearts.

We suddenly felt that God was over all, and that unless He permitted, nothing could happen. Nothing did happen. After a time the menace passed, lights went up again and work was quite quickly and cheerfully resumed. We did not speak about it at all afterwards. It is just part of the day's work.

I saw something quite as fine when I went to Gretna for a five-day visit to the workers there. You know Gretna Green? Every good American does. It is one of the shrines at which you worship. The sweet old world village has been swept away, or rather become quite unrecognisable. A great new city like those to which you are so accustomed "out West" has sprung up. When I saw all the signs and symbols of organised industry on a gigantic scale, I looked away across the shifting Solway sands and wondered whether the ghost of Ravenswood, riding to his doom, ever comes back to marvel at the thing that has happened.

Great crowds of women and girls are employed there and the welfare superintendents have their hands full. The problems and grave menace to youth segregated in such numbers far away from home influences are big enough to keep some of us awake at nights. We are fully alive to them and tackle them with all the wisdom and foresight we can muster for the gigantic task.

The spirit is fine--patriotism is a holy fire indeed which can purge the human heart clean of the dross itself.

I spoke a big incontrovertible truth in answer to a woman who was condoling rather profusely on the loss of our dear home. "You can get another house, but there is only _one_ country."

There are several rows of danger shops at Gretna, where the most inflammable of all the high explosives is handled.

To minimise the loss in case of accident these shops have been made to accommodate only ten or twelve workers. There was an explosion when I was there, and some of the workers were killed. The girls behaved with such quiet courage and endurance that one can hardly speak about it without tears.

And every one of them insisted on being sent at once into another shop to take the same risks all over again. The true war spirit which danger and death only deepens and intensifies.

But oh, Cornelia, more and more I feel that it is all wrong.

If only all this splendid force could be dedicated to construction, instead of to destruction, why then our social vices and problems would melt like mist before the morning sun. But perhaps my vision is limited, so that I do not see far enough. Perhaps we are building better than we know in the midst of this mighty débâcle.

Perhaps, who knows,--the work of national reconstruction through the discipline, the sorrow and the pain of its individual units has already begun.

*XII*

Your last letter gave me so much to think about, that I have had to put off answering it day after day. Have you observed that those who wait for the convenient season, never, somehow come up with it? The time to answer letters is when you get them, though there may be some danger lurking in that admirable habit.

For instance, if you get one which causes your dander to be "riz," it is better to wait for the cooling process. Disasters have been averted, especially in business, by the counsel of patience. How often have I had to get surreptitious hold of letters written by Himself and keep them over till he said, "I wish I hadn't sent that. Why did you let me?" Then I produce it and all is well. But sometimes I have been too late, or he wouldn't let me intervene.

Then sometimes it was the right thing for the bomb to be thrown.

Peace at any price is not the best always; it can be the very worst. And now he is away where there are no letters to answer, not even mine. I haven't had a message of any kind for six weeks--I don't even know where he is.

We live through these things. Thousands of women are eating their hearts out all over the world, just as I am. It is the price of war.

What you tell me about your Anne fills me, not with your disquiet, but with an understanding sympathy. You are feeling a little as I felt when I realised that for a time I had lost the Boy. The period extended over quite a few years from the second year of his school life. The first year he was nothing but a homesick little chap, needing his mother dreadfully. Then he began to stiffen up, his father standing like a comrade by his side.