Chapter 6

I never got him back, Cornelia, not as I had him once. He went out very soon into the world of men, and the things he met there I could not share. No woman can. When a man fails his young son during those moulding years of destiny, there is no retrieval. It is the greatest failure in history or in life.

Mine did not fail his son, and I stood by a little wistfully sometimes, bolstering my heart with a vision of the days to be, when the grown man, a child at heart, would creep back to his mother's arms.

But the day never came. I don't mind now, for he belongs to me so utterly. Himself gave him up the day we laid him on the windy hill above the sea; a chapter of his life that was the most radiant had _Finis_ written across the page.

But I got my baby back, and can never lose him again.

You must not worry too much about Anne. Girls pass through quite as many phases as their brothers and some of them are more tiresome. The only child is an object for commiseration rather than for envy. Growth can be retarded, sometimes even stopped, by over cultivation. Anne has had too much waiting on, too much anxiety and sheltering care lavished on her. She is the product of intensive culture.

But her nature is so sweet and wholesome that she'll come out on top yet.

Of course the very best thing that could happen to her, would be to marry a comparatively poor man and have a lot of children, certainly not less than six.

I think I see you gasp, but Cornelia, in these words lie hidden one of the first elemental truths of existence and of happiness. It is what we were made for--to be mothers of men, and when for one reason or another we miss, or shirk that high destiny, we have got to pay the price. What can match the flowers of the field for beauty and strength? Their sweetness is flung ungrudgingly on a desert world; no man prunes, or trains or troubles about them; they are the children of mother earth and greatly do her credit. We shall have to get back to old primeval simple things where the big issues are concerned. The family, not the solitary child, but the healthy, sturdy row, "steps and stairs," as we used to call them, will have to become, as of yore, the basic column of our national life.

The war which has torn at the very roots of our vaunted civilisation has revealed to us the canker.

Anne is being as tiresome as a self-willed girl of seventeen can be, and that is saying much. You see they know everything at that age, and nobody else knows anything. Parents are back numbers, their only function to provide the setting for the soaring ambitions, through which seventeen aims at self-realisation.

I don't think there is much you can do at this juncture. If she had been but two years older, I should have asked you to ship her over here and I would have taken her to France. I expect to go there next month. If she could be beside Effie and do a bit of honest work, the more sordid and unattractive work the better, she would get something of a perspective. When my girl went out first and I was very anxious, a wise man and true friend said:

"Now you must leave Effie alone. You have done all you can. Let Destiny do the rest."

It comforted me mightily and I have honestly tried to follow his advice. It isn't easy. I am one of the candid outspoken kind of people, and I never see any reason for not talking about what interests me.

But Himself and Effie don't talk. Half the time you never know what they are thinking or meaning to do. I suppose they know themselves, only they don't feel the need of sharing things. Once when particularly exasperated, I informed Himself he ought never to have been married, as he would have been a success as a Swiss Family Robinson, without the family, quartered on a desert island. He just smiled and made no comment.

A friend of mine, married to a very distinguished man, whose name I daren't mention, said to me once: "It is quite possible to love your husband dearly and yet to want frequently to throw him out of the window."

I have just had an interruption from a woman who runs one of the camp tents here--an awful kind of woman, who never stops talking about herself for a moment. When she went away she thanked me for our pleasant talk. I very nearly said: "Thank yourself, Ma'am--I had no talk."

It took me back quite a long time to a Bohemian night in Douglas Sladen's flat, at Kensington, which was filled to overflowing with a motley crew of what are popularly termed "leading lights" of the stage, literature, and art. The party overflowed itself out to the stairs. I was caught in the passage beside Hall Caine; he did not know me, though I knew him. How he talked! I was grateful to him, for it made me forget the weariness and discomfort of the moment. A day or two later I got a letter from him, written at Greeba Castle, Isle of Man, telling me that the only thing he carried away from that party was the memory of our interesting conversation. There was no conversation that I could recall. What _I_ had carried away was a very interesting, one-man talk. It was mostly about himself, but one forgets that when it is an interesting self.

To return to Anne, I should not discourage that early love affair if I were you. Some girls need such for their education.

From what you tell me about the boy, the experience is not likely to seriously endanger her future settlement in life.

Don't worry, because she doesn't talk to you about it. You are the very last person in the world she will make a confidant of in such an affair. You are too near of an age, yet not near enough. Besides, you are her mother. Don't bully poor George. He can't help it. Fathers can't bring up girl-children; they only make it more difficult for the mother. He can't do anything; and that he isn't worrying should reassure you, I think. We have to admit that a man sees further and gets a grip of the whole, while we are handling sections. Leave it at that. I mustn't close without explaining why I am here in the midst of the great camps stretching right through the heart of Surrey to the sea.

Scenes of unimagined beauty have either disappeared or become so horribly disfigured as to be unrecognisable. As I ride through the wind and rain between the long lines of tin and wooden huts, see the felled timber, the burned heather, all the ugly features of the military camp, I chalk up more and more against the makers of war.

I feel sorry for all the people who have built lovely homes and lordly dwelling places among these matchless hills and downs. They have been so good about it, never grumbling or standing in the way.

I am talking every day to the boys. Last night I was at Bramshott. But, oh, my dear, it is not the same; the glow and the glory have departed. Those who radiated that white heat of splendour are sleeping in quiet graves in France, or Flanders, or on Eastern sands.

I am not suggesting that the stuff here is not as good--in some respects, it might even be better.

But youth has gone--these men have the deep eyes of seeing men, and their mouths are grimly set. They are here because they have no choice. I think your draft bill is splendid, but oh, I hoped great America would come in on the volunteer basis. There is something different about it, something more finely subtle. I am conscious of the mighty difference every time I stand up to speak to them. They are not less determined that the fight shall be to a finish, but they question more.

They are asking some explanation at the hands of those who claim the sacrifice of their homes and lives and all men hold dear. Who is to answer their righteous questioning?

Sometimes in my dreams I see a great Judgment seat where Kings and Emperors, and diplomats, and politicians, and wire pullers and profiteers will have to answer to the blood stained hosts they summoned to fight and die, for what?

I am due back in the French camps in about ten days' time and I am half afraid to go. I can't answer all the questions they will put to me. I don't know enough.

In the early days you could play upon their mobile hearts as on a harp of ten strings; tears and laughter and smiles we had then, all side by side, with the most glorious courage the world has ever seen.

In some of the battalions now you find the fathers of the boys who sleep in Flanders and in France.

Oh, Cornelia, the waste, the wanton waste and cruelty of war. Where is it tending? Where shall we be brought before it is over? Sometimes my brain reels at the thought.

Meanwhile the band is slowly tightening.

We have not had any butter at home for over a week.

*XIII*

The awful suspense about Himself I was enduring when I wrote last was broken at last by a cable from France. It came from Effie at Camiers and it took me some time to grasp its meaning. "Safe, unhurt; tell your mother," was every word it said.

Florence and I, poring distractedly over it together, could only arrive at the conclusion that there had been a disaster at sea, in which our troopship was involved. We did not even know its name, from what port it had sailed, or whither bound; in fact we did not know he had sailed at all from the French base.

It is the black darkness in which one has to live which makes it so hard to be a soldier's wife in war times. A few more awful days had to be lived through--whole ten of them, then a long, closely written letter from Himself, arrived from a port in France, whose very name was not given.

But the story was wonderfully vivid and full; in fact I didn't know how it had passed the Censor, till I saw his own signature on the envelope, indicating that he had censored it himself.

I must not enclose the letter, nor yet tell you all it contained, because I want you to get what I am writing. These are the facts:

They set sail from Marseilles after long, dreary waiting in a particularly unpleasant camp, and next morning at ten o'clock were torpedoed off the Italian coast, not far from Genoa. Do you remember Genoa and its terraces where we met first, so long ago that it seems as if it must have been in some other existence?

You know how Himself writes, very simply and directly, without any embroideries, but his narrative was far more impressive than if he had tried to make it effective. It simply just makes you see it all, realise the horror of it.

The first torpedo disabled the ship, but if the enemy had left it at that, she could have been taken into port under her own steam.

There was, of course, a good deal of excitement and the boats were difficult to handle, apparently they had never been inspected or tested for any emergency. Can you conceive it, Cornelia, we have been three years at war and yet such elementary precautions are left to chance?

Priceless time was lost grappling with them, and before they could be lowered, priceless lives were lost. Himself waiting calmly, ready for the emergency,--or for the end, for which he needed no preparation, saw the second shell launched from the submarine. Many of the boats had got clear. One had the sixty nurses who comprised the hospital unit; sitting up to their middles in water, they sang hymns to cheer those drifting helpless in the sea.

The second torpedo found its mark amidships and the gallant boat went down in eight minutes.

The only chance for those still remaining on her decks was to jump into the sea. But that takes a special kind of courage; only those who had it were saved; the rest went down in the awful swirl of the sinking ship. Himself was picked up by a Japanese destroyer, filled with wonder that he who had done his day's work should have been saved, while so many of his boys, with all their lives in front, should have gone down. It is a great mystery.

How often have we asked ourselves that kind of question during these dreadful years. So many of us would have gone so gladly in their place.

They were landed at the port of Savonna. The Italians were extraordinarily kind to them, furnishing them with food and wine and clothing of every kind. He enclosed some snapshots--one actually taken of the sinking ship. There will be people, I am sure, ready with the camera on the Judgment Day. One of these snapshots depicts Himself in his riding breeches and leggings and an Italian military cloak, which makes him look like a bandit.

He lost everything except that which he happened to have on at the moment. All the lovely new Eastern kit, to say nothing of his photographs, letters, and dear intimate possessions, are at the bottom of the sea.

Nothing matters except that he is safe. He has no idea what will happen to him now--he supposes they will just have to wait for another ship. Meanwhile he is getting a little respite from the Spartan rigours of one of the worst cantonments he has ever struck, by being a voluntary patient in a hospital.

What he says about that is very amusing. He has been accustomed to boss a hospital, and now he is being very effectively and vigorously bossed. I fear he is not chastened yet, but only rebellious.

I can smile at it all because my heart is lightened of its load. God means him to come back to me, or he would have gone down in the Mediterranean.

It is odd how in this war, you have convictions about this one and that; the sort of presentiment who will get safely through, and who will never come back. But they are not always true. I felt so sure about Dick, of whom I wrote in my last letter. I felt that his kind, the very highest type of fearless soldier and a fine Christian gentleman, was so much needed here, that God would care for him specially. When one thinks of how many like him lie on the blood-soaked fields, one is staggered, and uncertain about the future of the race.

But we must leave it, leave it all and just hold blindly on. It has gotten clear beyond us. It is so big and awful, we can just not grasp it at all.

I am now a little like a Jack of all trades, master of none. Food is beginning to be spelled with a very large capital and they tell me I must talk about food. I went to Scotland for that purpose and to speak at a great meeting in Glasgow Cathedral to commemorate on the 4th of August those who had fallen in the war.

It is the first time a woman has ever lifted up her voice in the Cathedral, and the occasion caused some searching of heart. The noble edifice was absolutely packed and directly I got up, standing at a specially selected spot in the Nave, I forgot everything but the faces in front, the great sorrowing heart of my own country and its bitter need. She is a very little country, but none have more nobly done their bit. Do you know, Cornelia, that there are villages in the north and west of Scotland where the young men are all wiped out--where there is no link between one generation and another except the babies in arms. There are no sons left, no husbands for the girls. It was with these things my heart broke as I tried to speak.

Nowhere is there any grudging or holding back. At the overflow meeting that had to be held in an adjoining church a woman came up at the close, a little plain country woman in mourning with a bag on her arm. From it she took three photographs of soldiers in Highland dress and a war office telegram which she laid against one of the lads. "That came yesterday," she said. "It's Jamie--he's the last----"

All gone and she a widow. What is one to say to a woe like that? Where is compensation to be found? There will have to be something very satisfying over there beside the river of God to make up for the roll of the whelming billows here.

I went on from Glasgow to Dundee to speak to two thousand women about the necessity for saving food. The situation is becoming acute and it has to be explained to the people. I have come to the conclusion that food is the supreme test. They'll give almost anything more cheerfully, go into small houses, wear old clothes, economise anywhere but on what is vulgarly called their "inwards."

Then you see our industrial population was never better off. In the shipbuilding districts, the munition areas--the great textile neighbourhoods, they are simply piling it up. Of course they want all the things money can buy. I am sure I should, if I had been cheated out of them for a whole section of my life.

So you can't blame these people for buying salmon at four shillings per pound, the best beefsteaks and prime cuts from the joints, when they can get them. But the trouble is they can't now get them, so there is grumbling and unrest. They have got it into their heads that the government is hoarding the stuff and that favour is being shown. So labour has said that it will go short if capital goes short with them.

It is a perfectly reasonable proposition and the sooner the card ration scheme comes into operation, the better. It will not solve the whole problem, of course, nor yet increase incredulously or automatically the available stores. What it will do is to ensure equal distribution.

I, for one, hope Lord Rhondda won't lose any more time. I am afraid my letters are getting less and less interesting.

What you asked for was a plain, unvarnished record of war conditions here, which you want to keep, and I am setting them down as simply and faithfully as I know how. We are getting bit by bit down to the sordid bedrock where we are face to face with the hideous nakedness of war. There are things that the glow and glory of our Pentecostal sacrifice can hardly illumine.

In my deep heart I feel that we are coming to them soon, and that we shall need more different kinds of courage than at any time during those searching, aging, interminable years.

I got back to find that the war office has commandeered our "substitute" for active service. There is no one else to be got, so the door will have to be shut. It means that our living is all gone except what Cook calls "the Capting's pay." Cook himself is working at munitions now after having successfully planted the potato patch. So there is only Florence and me left, and we don't eat much.

Life truly is shorn for me of much of its dignity, and the amazing thing is that one doesn't mind--we are not our own any more, but bought with a price.

A woman condoled with me not long ago over the house being destroyed. All I could think of was to say as cheerfully as possible, "You can get another house, but there is only one country." I must just keep on saying it to myself over and over, but sometimes when there is nobody looking, I am afraid I don't hold my diminished head so high.

*XIV*

Food is the question of the hour. The people who have read with uncomprehending eyes the imploring official appeals "Eat less bread," "Save the Wheat," "Food will win the War," are now face to face with real shortage. The psychology of this war, in so far as it operates in human consciousness, is a very remarkable thing. I had to sit down to think it over this morning after a very exhausting argument with a food waster and hoarder. These two words don't sort together, do they, but they are apt to the hour. He or she who hoards food at this moment of national stress, wastes it, because he is preserving it for his own wretched body, which is of no value to his country. A few minutes' silent contemplation brought me into a clearer light. The absolute refusal of those people to admit the need for conservation and self-denial, is a form of national pride. They simply can't admit the humiliating fact that Great Britain, proud mistress of the seas, is no longer self-supporting or sufficient to her own needs. They never knew, of course, that in our most prosperous years we could produce only forty per cent. of what we consumed. And if they had known it, would it have made any difference? It is all so very English, so dogged, so unchanged and unchangeable.

But even this partially comforting reflection, that the grumblers and obstructionists are really patriots in disguise doesn't ease the situation or fill the empty store cupboards.

And I am in it now, Cornelia, up to the neck in it. Having filled many rôles, I have now become a food expert, from whose lips calories and proteids and other heathen words ought to flow glibly. Only they don't. I am a plain woman and most people are plain in the same sense. They hate camouflage; it worries and wearies them. I am trying to tell as simply as I can, how they may make up with other things, for the things that are not there.

It does not read very clearly or convincingly, does it? But that is my job.

It is not easy. Food is not an inspiring theme. You cannot wax eloquent over it; the only dramatic moments are those when you flame red with indignation over the breaking down of the voluntary system. It has failed all along the line, and card rationing is bound to come. There have been several distressing instances from sources where we had every reason to look for better things--ay, even for leadership in high ethics. But alas! the temptation to be secure against more troublous times was too great for resistance. All this causes a searching of heart lest there should be very weak points left in my armour. I am determined that in this particular respect I shall do rather more than my share. I am kept up to high-water-mark by Florence. She really ought to have a medal for allegiance to the Government under the most trying conditions. She has weighed everything, done all the things I might not have done, stood firm between me and every temptation.

If food doesn't actually win the war, at least its shortage is searching the hearts and trying the reins of the children of men.

All the time wrestling with those sordid details, trying to interest people in oatmeal and bones, and the superiority of casserole cooking over the waste of roast and frying, I have to keep thinking of the glory and travail which is bound up in it all. If you haven't something to illumine with, if only a farthing dip, you just can't go on.

Although some people have complimented me on my housekeeping, a lot of it doesn't really interest me much. It is no credit to me that I happened to be born determined to do my job well. Even in the great old dinner-giving days, long before the deluge, when we vied with one another in frantic endeavours to discover something entirely new, with which to decorate our menu cards, and fill other women with hopeless envy, the game never seemed worth the candle. After all, it takes very little to keep us alive.

The things that interested me most in those great dinner contests was the eager look in the eyes of the women as they sampled the unknown and sometimes fearsome looking dish.

The men usually showed their discrimination by leaving the entrées severely alone.

Where in Heaven's name am I wandering to? We housekeepers have at last got something really testing to whet our axes upon. We have got to invent and concoct appetising dishes minus most of the ingredients we once thought necessary to them.

This is going to be the testing fight. I am learning great new lessons every day. I only wish I could pass them on. A woman came up to me in the street the other day and said: "Please, I've tried to do what you said wi' them substitoots (oh, the scorn in her voice!). But 'Arry, 'e won't look at 'em. Calls 'em messes, 'e does; wants 'is 'onest beefsteak, 'e does, an' I don't blime 'im, either."

Neither do I, nevertheless it will be my mournful duty to try and impress on him and all the other Harrys who are making the lives of their helpmeets a burden over this food conservation business, that the true patriot is the man who eats his imitation steak with a smile, assuring the woman who has laboured over its preparation that it is quite equal to the real thing.

Nobody would be deceived, but life would be easier.