Part 5

"Or the 'Ouse of Lords," Madge added witheringly. "I've been a-reading and a-reading, 'm, in those papers of yours about the French women that they find, fighting side by side with the men, for their country, and about the Russian women fighting too; but when I saw yesterday that German women had been found fighting, something gave way in my 'ead. I think you call it brain-storm in America, 'm. Those barbarian women, from God knows where, fighting for King and Country and their 'Ouse of Lords! I said to myself that the Snell family should send one man to the seat of war."

"I've been a-considering," said Peter. "I've been a-thinking it out."

"The present h'our," glared Madge, "is no time to _think_!"

"That was evidently the exact view of the European statesmen in August," I ventured, but Madge and Peter were too intent to catch my unkind whisper.

"So I put on Peter's clothes," said Madge, "and I went and walked to Shepperton and offered myself. Your Queen Elizabeth would have done as much."

_My_ Queen Elizabeth, indeed!

"What did they say to you?" demanded Peter.

"I shan't tell you," said Madge. And she never did.

October 22. I am so excited that I can hardly write; my fingers tremble and make letters that look like bird-tracks. What do you think has happened? Who do you think stopped this afternoon at my little iron gate? It seems a terrible thing, an incredible thing to say, but I could hardly have been happier about it if it had been you. I have so much to do, to think about, while Marie--? Her little world had all been swept away.

I was weeding this neglected garden; Peter, leaning on his spade, was eyeing me with some disapproval.

"Ladies shouldn't be doing that 'ard work, Miss," he observed.

"That's a queer opinion for a socialist," I remarked, tugging at a burdock root. He let me tug and went on with the exposition of his political opinions, quite unaware of my meaning.

"This need not keep you from working, Peter," I suggested. "I've no intention of spading that bed."

He dug his spade in with a little grunt.

"Everybody ought to work; that should be the first article of your socialist creed."

"It isn't, 'm," said Peter eagerly.

"Wouldn't you respect the House of Lords more if they actually worked, Peter?" This brought him to a full stop.

"They do less 'arm as it is, Miss," he said darkly.

Here we heard the gate creak; the broken latch gives a little unnecessary click. An odd figure was standing there, looking like a tramp, with worn and battered clothing, a Derby hat with holes in it, and dark hair straggling over his forehead. Don, catching sight of him, barked furiously; I never heard him bark that way. It was as if the whole outraged spirit of the British upper classes were crying out upon the poverty and the misery they have helped create; it was a perfect yelp of class-consciousness. This naturally enlisted my sympathy on the side of the tramp, and I scolded Don and even slapped him a little. I've told him often enough that there is really nothing so vulgar as display of a sense of social superiority, and I do not like these relapses from the democratic spirit that I am trying to cultivate in him.

It was the way in which the tramp watched me that made me suspect that he was not a tramp at all; he had big, brown, appealing eyes, like those of a nice dog,--not Don, but a friendly shepherd dog. The way in which he took off his battered hat enlightened me further, as did his little wistful smile. His face was a bit dirty, but my face has been dirty in times past; so, doubtless, has yours, Lord Hamlet. When I greeted him with good afternoon, he took a piece of paper from his pocket, and at first I wondered if he were an Armenian with lace, going about with a letter of introduction from a pastor,--or don't you have them in England? But he did not look like an Armenian, and he very evidently did not have lace, or any other kind of luggage. The paper proved to be the advertisement that I had put in a London paper,--and as I took it, it struck me that those holes in his hat might be bullet holes.

"You're not really Henri Dupré?"

"I am," he said simply. My French is fairly inadequate in my calmest moments; in times of excitement it is non-existent, but he must have understood the joy in my face, and the hand I held out in welcome. He shook his head; his hand was not clean; my own was less so, and I was so proud! As I told Peter, if I had not been weeding, our guest would not have been properly greeted. Don, the wretched little creature, taking his cue from me, was gaily barking a welcome in a wholly different tone of voice from that which he had used at first. You see, he never would have known that the wayfarer was respectable if he had not considered himself properly introduced by my handshake.

"Is Marie Lepont here?"

I told him in my matter-of-fact way that she was, and I said nothing more; they might do their own explaining, I thought, as they understood their own language, not to speak of anything else, far better than I. So I only motioned to him and went on tiptoe to the corner of the house; Marie was sitting in the garden, as she sits so often, in the rocking-chair, knitting, knitting for the soldiers. The air is full of the fragrance of ripening apples, of falling leaves, and fading fern. She is very quiet in the sunshine, and the shadows of the grapevine leaves upon her face hardly change for half an hour at a time. I motioned to him, and then I ran away, back to my weeding,--to anything. If it were really he! I wondered if even they felt an anguish so intense, a joy so intense as my own. It must have lent me greater power than I really have, for I tugged and tugged to relieve my feelings; the burdock came up, root and all, and I sat down rather suddenly, panting. Peter remonstrated mildly, shaking his head.

"You really shouldn't, Miss!"

"Then why don't you?" I asked. "It was here all the time, and you have a spade."

"I've 'ad no directions, Miss," he said stiffly. "But I don't refer to the weeding; I dessay it is because you are an American and don't understand, but you really shouldn't let disrespectable people in that way. He may be a burglar; he may be robbing the 'ouse at this very minute. But why, if you don't mind me asking, are you crying, Miss?"

"I'm not!" I answered indignantly. "I never cry. Peter, will you lend this man your precious Sunday suit?"

"Never, Miss!" declared Peter, somewhat heated, and mopping his forehead. "A tramp like that!"

"You believe in the brotherhood of man, don't you?"

"Of course I do; certingly I do."

"Madge," I called through the kitchen window, "please start the heater and get water ready for a bath. And please lay out Peter's Sunday suit; he wants to lend it to a brother man."

"Brother man, indeed!" ejaculated Peter, and he went on digging. He is getting a bed ready for next spring's daffodils.

"Peter," I said with some severity, "I want to see if I can respect your social convictions; this is the first chance I have had to test them."

"Yes, Miss," he answered, "but I don't see what that has to do with me Sunday suit."

Not a sound came from the garden; I kept Don with me,--not even he should break that moment. Then I told Peter who had come, how the lovers had lost each other in that mad rush for safety, and how, for days, I had been trying to find this man, for I was very sure that the right man had come. Peter was spellbound, nor could he dig a stroke while I was talking. Then he began to work, and he worked furiously, as I have not seen him since he came.

"It's quite right, 'm, about the suit," he said presently.

I worked for perhaps an hour, while Peter dug like one inspired. Madge heated water and got towels ready, peering out curiously to see why. A touch of evening chill came into the air; the rooks began to go home, and filmy rose-flushed clouds trailed over the sky at sunset. Finally I shook the dirt off my hands, finding myself very stiff as I tried to stand.

"Peter," I asked, "what shall I do next?"

"I think, 'm, I'd start making a wedding cake," he answered, after due reflection.

"For a futile political theorist, you do have perfectly unexpected moments of insight," I told him.

"Yes, Miss," said Peter.

Silence, except for the rooks, the sound of the brook, and a little wayward flutter of the leaves where the wind was moving. I went to the kitchen and added something un-British and digestible to the supper menu, then walked up and down, wondering why a man probably famished did not appear. Finally I decided that I must investigate and tiptoed my way to the corner of the house. Marie was still sitting in her chair; her knitting was on the ground beside her. The shadow of the grapevine was gone, and her face was alive with light from within and without. The level shafts of sunlight that touched it fell too on the red brick wall behind her, where the espaliered pear tree was etched in dark lines, and all the garden was a soft glow of October gold. The stranger was sitting on the ground with his head against Marie's knees, and her little shawl over his shoulders, sleeping like a child that had found its way home.

As I crept near, Marie looked up, and a heavenly smile came over her face. She took my hand and held it, kissing it more than once, and she said over and over: "Mademoiselle; Mademoiselle," and again, "Mademoiselle."

We let her lover stay as long as we dared on the brick walk, covering him warmly with steamer rugs. Later we found that he had just reached England and had hardly slept for a week. The sunset faded, and the stars grew bright, and still he leaned his head against Marie's knee and slept the sleep of exhaustion.

Presently we wakened him; there was a great sound of splashing water; Marie ran up-stairs to do her hair over again and came down flushed like a rose, revitalized, alive as I had not dreamed she could be alive, and at last our guest appeared, clean and smiling. He was evidently amused by the odd fit of Peter's clothes, but too tired and too happy to say much. I sped to the kitchen to make the French omelette; Madge cannot do it,--no Briton could; it has to be manipulated in just the right fashion, turned at the exact fraction of a second, and served in just the right way. You should have seen Don, when he found the stranger in your place, apologizing, snuffing daintily, touching him with a friendly and beseeching paw, pretending that he had always known!

Of course the lovers were holding hands under the table; of course you, as an Englishman, would have thought them effusive, but I should have been terribly hurt if they had not been effusive about that omelette. When I rise to the occasion like this, I like to be appreciated; I had nothing to complain of that night. Tea and toast and jam; a few tears, and much laughter, and a Sultana cake--the very kind that grew in Oxford windows and graced our five o'clock banquets; a Sultana cake calls to my mind the profoundest problems of life and destiny, so many of them we discussed over the crumbs,--this, I am afraid, meant a rather ascetic repast for the young Belgians, but I thought that anything more, with their great draughts of happiness, would be indigestible. Peter took Henri to the Inn and got a room for him. Though he was there more than three weeks, mine host would not let me pay a farthing,--no, indeed! The Belgians are the guests of the English nation, he said, and he was glad to have his chance to shelter one of them.

November 1. War, unceasing war in the trenches, with rumours of a British naval defeat in South American waters, and little encouraging news save that the Germans have failed to reach Dunkirk and Calais. England's best are dying, your kind,--England's noblest sons rushing to the danger places, foolishly, grandly brave. One can feel throughout the country the great purpose shaping itself to the needs of the moment, as it does slowly but surely in this land. That is the secret of this people: they can rise to a challenge, meet any crisis whatever when it comes; and though I know that unpreparedness has cost them much, they are greater and better than if they had devoted their best energy for five and twenty years to getting ready for war. Enthusiasm kindles under the challenge of disaster; the finest have already answered the call; the less fine make the great refusal. You go, but Peter stays, and Peter's kind all over England stays....

November 5. Peter does not stay! Peter is going to the war! For several days he has been very critical of civilization, very severe upon his country and her rulers; at times he seemed to think himself the only real pillar of Church and State. Some struggle was going on within him; I have learned enough of him to know that if he expresses a feeling, it is one he does not have! For him, as for me, the horror of the present moment has been intensified by coming into contact with those who have actually suffered. All that I could understand of Henri Dupré's account I have translated into English for Peter's benefit, and the sight of the bullet-riddled hat has plunged him in deep thought.

He saw your picture, the picture of you in khaki. Madge, unpermitted, had taken it into the kitchen to polish the frame of oak. Peter looked at it uneasily.

"A friend of yours, Miss?"

"Yes, Peter."

"At the front, 'm?"

"At the front, Peter," I answered. I could not have said anything else, and even if I live to be a hundred, I shall not think of you any other way except as at the front, fighting if need be, carrying messages across the danger zone, with no thought of danger.

It was a great advance in Peter to admit the existence of a front; he has persisted in declaring the war a bit of sensational romance, devised by the House of Lords for their own entertainment. It was a brooding Peter who busied himself with rubbing up the knives,--he has been unusually attentive to Madge since her escapade; his mind seemed to be running on troubles greater than his own.

"Do you know where our army is supposed to be now, 'm?" he asked, when I told him that we had no good news from the seat of war.

_Our_ army! We were getting on! I gave him my best information about our hard-pressed line in the west.

"It's astonishing that those Germans are able to fight at all, 'm, when they have once met the British," said Peter gloomily, polishing a huge carving knife as if it were a sword. "Meeting the French, that is different; they are a flighty people and very hexcitable."

"Your knowledge of history needs to be brought up to date, Peter," I ventured. "Anything less flighty than that magnificent people of France at this present moment the world has never seen."

"It must be very difficult, 'm, fighting on the Continent, for one who does not speak the foreign tongues. And I couldn't eat frogs, 'm; I'd almost rather 'ave the Germans as allies; sausages aren't as bad as frogs by 'alf."

Later I heard him muttering to himself.

"If the 'Ouse of Lords is really in trouble," said Peter, fighting the great fight with self, "if the 'Ouse of Lords really needs me--Of course, the throne is more or less a figure'ead, but I shouldn't like to see it fall just now, especially if the henemy is coming.... I should like to himpress them as much as possible." It was when he was sweeping the walk that I heard him say: "And I should like to see Bobs once more."

But one day determined Peter's future destiny and his rank as a man and a Briton. Peter had gone to the coast, with Puck and the cart, spending the night at a sister's on the way. He had some business at Yarmouth, he said. I devised some errands for him and encouraged his going. I thought that it would perhaps prove to be his farewell to his sister before going to war.

Those were strange days, the days of Peter's absence,--tense, full of nameless anxiety. That early-morning feeling of suspense, of expectancy, lasted into the afternoon; and one early morning had brought us the unmistakable sound of guns from the sea. Peter came rattling home in the late afternoon, a pale, distraught Peter, who seemed to have lost several pounds. He came into the garden where I was tying up rosebushes for the winter; at first he seemed unable to speak, but at last gasped out, "Those ---- Germans!" and the gasp ended in a little sob. As I watched him, I found myself sharing his trembling indignation.

"German ships, 'm, men-of-war, standing off our coast, bombarding; it has never been attacked before. I saw them with my own eyes; I 'eard them with my own ears!"

The firing, then, had had the significance that we dreaded. It began at about seven o'clock in the morning on November third, terrifying the peaceful folk of the seacoast town, shell after shell, report after report for nearly half an hour. Peter, who was getting an early start for home, had taken Puck and the cart to a house on the outskirts of the town, where he was getting a bag of very superior fertilizer. Then came the great noise and the splashing; little if any actual damage was done to buildings or to people, yet Peter contended that Puck was actually struck on the shoulder by some fragment of splintering wood or flying stone dislodged by a shell. Those shells may have missed their intended mark, but they went home to the heart of the time-expired man, Peter Snell. He knew at last that there was a war, and I knew--what he himself had not yet realized--that he was going to it.

Peter lacks descriptive powers; I got from him little idea of the actual scene in all the fright and confusion. When he had found that there was nothing he could do to help, he had sped toward home, intent on carrying out his unavowed purpose. Asking how Puck, now standing with drooping head at the gate, had behaved at the crisis, I got the account that I expected, and, as we petted this veteran of the war and dressed a small hurt on his shoulder, I heard how he, the most antic pony in the British Isles, had held his ground, had jumped only moderately, had endured the crashing and the splashing, standing with his four legs braced in the sand, trembling all over, while Peter, dazed a bit at first, came to his senses.

"And I will say, 'm, that he showed more 'ead than I 'ad myself, for the reins were loose on his back, I 'aving dropped them to put in the bag of fertilizer. 'E never offered to run, 'm!"

Puck, the war veteran, took our praises modestly, making no claim to be recognized as a hero; he helps me understand the British temper, not to say the British constitution. No paper theories for him! The unwritten law of common sense available when needed is admirably embodied in him. That power of keeping your head while others lose theirs is what wins in the long run, and despite the discouragement of this present moment, I feel confident that the English will win in the end. The Germans plan, theorize, show great forethought, but are lost without a programme. Life does not go by plans and charts; no known precautions can foresee its emergencies. Unless some chemical or electric invention of the Teutons can remove the element of uncertainty from existence, surely victory will go to the people who can meet the unforeseen; pull themselves together and know, without forethought, what to do in an instant's danger. All these meditations passed through my head as Puck shook his mane, making light of his adventure, and trotted away down the street to his stable with an unmistakable air of "England expects every pony to do his duty."

The country thrills with indignation, surprise, and increasing resolution; the impossible has happened, and these inviolate shores have been desecrated by attack.

Peter is away, Peter in khaki, with something already gone from his laggard step, with firmer and more self-respecting tread, recalling the old training which he was beginning to forget. Surely, because of his experience as a soldier, they will let him go soon to the front. The sympathy and the admiration in the eyes of our fugitives have nerved him, as nothing else has done, for the great adventure. I heard Henri giving him some French lessons, strictly along the line of requests for food and drink; the French will make up in swiftness of understanding what he lacks in pronunciation. His last days with Madge have been funny and tragic too. Her first remark, on hearing of the Yarmouth incident, was along the old line of urging him to war.

"Some minds," she remarked firmly, "need shot and shell to open 'em." But I could not help noticing that when he began to talk about going, she stopped talking about it. Her face has been tragically comic as she has watched him, in a Falstaff "He-that-died-o'-Wednesday" mood, packing his belongings. I heard the sound of loud sobbing in the kitchen as she made herself a cup of tea the afternoon he went away. Could it be Madge who was muttering questions as to why the King didn't go to war himself if he wanted war?

November 25. A wedding, actually a wedding, in the little red house, which wakens gladly to its ancient responsibilities! Weddings enough have I seen, but this is the first that I ever managed from start to finish; it was much more my own than if I had been married myself, for I had to do all the planning, coach the actors, superintend the catering, and do the decorating with my own hands. The only thing I did not attempt was performing the ceremony.

We had such joyous weeks, after the banns were published! Marie, I am sure, quite forgot her sorrow; I quite forgot you, most of the time,--I mean in my upper and superficial mind. Down under, of course, in the vital part of my soul, you are I, I am you: there is no remembering or forgetting, for I am living your life and mine in a fashion profound and strange. We were busy every minute, busy with the outer things of life that ride on the surface of the deep currents,--bobbing up and down in the sunshine.

First, there was Marie's trousseau. She begged me with tears to get her nothing more; but a girl must have clothing, be she married or single, so we purchased much muslin,--"calico," they call it, oh, horrors! What can one think of a nation that calls cotton flannel "swan's-down calico"? We found a little sewing woman in the village, and she did her inefficient best on an ancient sewing machine. Much of the finishing we had to do ourselves, so afternoons we sat in the garden and stitched. My buttonholes would not call forth commendations from any ladies' journal, but what they lacked in delicacy they made up in strength. Buttonholes for war, I consoled myself, as I saw the barricades that I had erected round the little gashes, are a different matter from buttonholes for peace.

Marie's ready-made travelling suit, for which I sent to London, fitted fairly well; as did the boots for both of them. When they overwhelmed me with thanks, I had to talk very earnestly with them; at least I am growing more fluent, and they never laugh, only once or twice I have seen the corners of their mouths twitching uncontrollably, and once tears came into Marie's eyes as she tried to keep from laughing. They are exquisitely courteous, and would die rather than be rude. I summoned all my resources from grammar, dictionary, and heroic plays; at last the world has faced an occasion that justifies the grandiloquence of French tragedy.