Part 6
I told them that we were honouring ourselves in being allowed to care for any members of this stricken, dauntless nation. More than anything that could be done for them had they done for the world; how could we ever repay our debt to this little people with its heroic young King? What I was doing I did, not for them (think of having sufficient French to be able to prevaricate in it already!), but for my country and their country--and for England; it was not a personal but an international matter. They may not have understood all my syntax, but my general meaning they understood perfectly, and Don helped me very greatly by sitting on his hind legs and offering to shake hands, first with one and then with the other. _He_, at least, understands my academic French!
There had to be a wedding dress; I insisted on a white one; it was only China silk, made with a simplicity which, I presume, outraged Marie's grandmother's traditions. As I explained to her, if she goes back to London to help the authorities with the refugees, while Henri returns to Belgium to enter the army, she could doubtless loan this gown for other weddings, for among the fugitives many--I hoped many--another pair of lovers would perhaps be reunited. At this, her eyes filled with tears, and she uttered not another word of remonstrance; she starts on a quest to find others to wear it.
So she wore the white frock at her wedding, and the house was brave in its bridal array! Yellowing ferns, autumn leaves, and great golden chrysanthemums and white decked the living room; outside the dim red and gold of the autumn woods in hazy distance recalled the ancient manuscripts that you showed us in the sacred recesses of the Bodleian. To think that I should live to see a Roman Catholic priest marrying two young folk by my fireplace! Marie and Henri were quite polite but very determined to be married according to the rites of their own Church, and it was done. His Reverence plainly did not want to officiate at my house, but not in vain have I associated with Puck, choosing him for guide, philosopher, and friend, and obstinacy won. Henri wore a new dark tweed business suit which Peter insisted on giving him; he is a fine-looking man when you see him clothed and in his right mind, the torn hat vanished. Both faces have a look of sorrow and of shock that should not be on faces so young, but there is also a look of intense and quiet happiness. Even if they are separated again, they will have had something of the joy of life in these brief hours and days since they found each other.
Our wedding feast was the simplest ever set before mortals, unless possibly our Pilgrim fathers and mothers had a simpler in starvation days in the old colony, with bride cake made perhaps of Indian meal! We had tables in the garden, and a few simple things to eat and drink, centering in that wedding cake upon which Peter had insisted. Had not Madge and I spent a whole morning over it, with its raisins and its currants, its spices and its chopped nuts? "Leave off the frosting, 'm!" Madge had ejaculated in horror. "That would be a heathing thing to do!" When I told her that for most people nowadays the frosting was rubbed off of life, she looked at me as if she thought me mad. So she does, but harmless mad.
Perhaps the mild November air, which harmonizes all things,--sad, soft and sweet,--helped harmonize the diverse elements at that wedding feast. There were the Vicar and the Roman priest peacefully grazing as one; the Vicaress was affably chatting with mine host and hostess as on equal terms; one of my county ladies was entertaining the little dressmaker who cannot sew. I did my best in inviting them to outrage as many conventions as possible; they submitted to the necessities of the occasion, and still the House of Lords stands, or sits, King George is on his throne, and the kingdom has not fallen.
I hope it never will!
It had been hard to induce the Vicar to come, but I reminded him that our Church had been a Roman Catholic Church before Queen Elizabeth's day, and that, in the holy ground of the churchyard, Roman Catholic dust was mingled with Church of England dust. How, at this cruel moment in the world's history, the truth cries out that there should be no struggle between Christian and Christian, only between Christian and Pagan! He came; high and low alike nibbled our little cakes and consumed our ices, and drank the simple beverage made of lemons and other ingredients served from a wonderful old blue punch bowl. Ay, we were all allies that day!
So they were married and fêted, and when it was all over, mine host drove them to the railway station, and I followed with Puck and the pony cart, Don sitting beside me, and the gingerbread baby with two of its brothers sitting on the other side. The village windows and doorways were crowded with friendly faces, for the story of the two re-united lovers had spread far, and many a kindly good-bye was spoken by people who had never met them. I had determined that Puck, who had found Marie, and to whom the happy outcome of the story was due, should have a place of honour at the parting moment, but Marie's last glimpse of him showed him indignantly shaking off the white rosettes that had been fastened to his headstall.
They waved back quite a merry farewell, and then they disappeared, vanishing behind the great cloud of tragedy that hangs so close. I can see only suffering ahead of them. They consented to take a loan from me, not to be repaid until their country is free, and they promised again and again to let me know if they came to want.
* * * * *
It is lonely to-night, belovèd, under my roof.
December 27. Winter is gentler here than at home, bringing at times enfolding grey mist and hours of rain; yet we have had many days of clear and sunny cold, and snow has fallen on the roof of the little red house. My royal family of fowls lives a subdued but happy life in the house of Peter's making; Puck has taken up his residence at the Inn, for cold has come, and Peter is far away. The English robin stays with us evidently throughout the winter; the rooks have not deserted; and we are visited daily by silver-winged gulls which come all the way from the sea for the food we put out.
My home with the little "h" is seldom empty; for two of these winter weeks we had here two small Belgian boys, eight and ten years old, very red of cheek and black of hair, and very much boy. What a two weeks! The Atom immediately retreated to the loft over the kitchen, coming down only for its meals. It found a warm corner by the chimney where it cuddled in safety.
Don clung close to my side; he would not make friends. His dictum was that he would associate with either the aristocracy or the peasantry, but that the lower middle class he would not tolerate. Those boys, who had tried to tie a tin can to his tail, _his_ tail, that organ of fine expressiveness, equal to English prose style at its best, were not gentlemen, and he would have nothing to do with them.
I was glad to see that the suffering of the past weeks had not ruined their young lives, but I admit a failure in managing my guests. Even Madge could do nothing with them, though her hand is heavy; I do not approve of corporal punishment, but life in theory and life in practice seem amazingly different at times, and I looked the other way. They demanded the tail feathers of Hengist and Horsa for their play of American Indian, and I discovered as I defeated their purpose that they thought they were living with an Indian lady and were trying to garb themselves appropriately. I rose to the challenge as best I could; have I not vowed, whatever happens, never to be an "old maid"? I romped with them in the meadow, played "tag," and helped them make boats to sail on the stream, but I had no control over them. Puck was the only perfectly successful disciplinarian, and whenever they tried to climb on his back, or ride by clinging to his tail, his quick little hind heels--fortunately only his fore feet are shod--accomplished what neither coaxing, admonition, nor enforced fasting could accomplish. They were not really bad, only dwelling in that Stone Age through which so many men-children pass. A neighbouring farmer and his wife wanted to adopt them, and I thankfully let them go, calling in the village carpenter to help Madge and me make the necessary repairs.
There was peace, we are told, for a few hours on Christmas day in the trenches; but Christmas should mean lasting peace! The attack, less than two weeks ago, on our undefended coast towns, Hartlepool, Scarborough, Whitby, has enkindled as nothing else has done the dull glow of English wrath. The recruiting goes more swiftly; a number of young men have gone from our village in the last few days; the blacksmith's shop is closed, and the forge fire is out,--he has gone to work in a munition factory. We who stay are knitting for the trenches and sewing for the hospitals; I never dreamed that I should live to know such human anguish and human want,--yet it is good to learn that one need not stand alone, bearing the pain of life in solitude. I have joined every possible relief association and have pledged almost my uttermost penny. We are even selling eggs for the hospital funds; spite of cold weather, the Matildas, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Anne, and Queen Victoria are rising magnificently to the crisis. The London people are using the house occasionally as a temporary shelter for one or two people at a time before permanent places are found for them. The Inn also serves for this, and mine hostess and I have many a conference; fortunately, in the haste and confusion, some of the bric-a-brac is getting broken; one alabaster vase and one glass case covering artificial flowers have disappeared.
Madge has amused me by finding a way to express, in rather original fashion, her deepening sympathy with humankind. A courting is going on in our kitchen; every Friday night the lovers come, she from the village, he from a farm lying beyond the Hall; and every Friday night Madge either goes to bed early, or steps out to see her friends. The girl is a country lass rather ill-treated by a mistress who shall be nameless; she has no place to receive her lover, save the stone wall of the bridge across the stream. She steals here in the dusk on her one free evening; why not? The young man is a perfectly suitable wooer, and they are safer in my kitchen than out in the cold. Yet I admit that I feel a bit guilty when I very formally return the very formal greeting of the unconscious mistress.
Just now, no one is staying with us, and there is blessed quiet. Through the silences in the little house, old moods, old laughter, old half-merry tears come back; you blend with all my days. Sometimes I feel, not as at first, that this is the end of things for me, but as if it were a little truce of God while I am waiting. To-day I found my first grey hairs; there were two, one on each temple; have you any to match them, I wonder? Ah, I keep forgetting, forgetting; keep thinking of you as still alive and suffering in this war. Remembering, I envy you; the many years ahead look formidable.
Do you remember the day we took our fifteen-mile walk from Oxford in May, and sat to rest on the flat grey stones in an old, old village churchyard, with a tangle of wild vines at our feet, and primroses and violets blossoming near,--do you remember that we talked of immortality and decided that when one died it was death, that having lived was enough? At least you did; I always had "ma doots o' ma doots." I think it was just May that made us feel that way,--the fragrances, the bird songs, the sun-flecked clouds over the Cumnor Hills; you too were far more influenced by things outside the world of pure thought than you ever knew, my philosopher; have I not seen you mistaking a sunbeam for an optimistic syllogism? We doubted, dear, but we were wrong; you do not die; you are more intensely alive than ever.
I am stealing a little time to try to do a portrait of you, though it is long since I have had a brush in my hand; you know that I was something but not much of an artist. What were the half-gifts meant for, I wonder, all the aspiration that goes into them, the denied hope? I used to suffer because I could not create the things I saw and dreamed, but that kind of suffering has vanished utterly,--life flows out in so many ways. There's a bit of attic with a north light near the Atom's lair that I have fitted up as a studio, and I have unpacked there my easel and canvases. To-day I shut myself up and began my portrait of you, merely sketching, for the outlines blurred. I had a curious experience. So clear is my inner vision of you that it blinded my eyes, and that which was in my mind a perfect picture would prove, if I left the room and came back to look at it afresh, a set of meaningless lines.
December 30. For three days I tried and tried in vain; then came sudden success, for your very mouth half smiled at me from the canvas where I had been putting random strokes. As I work, I feel that I never before really knew you; deeper understanding comes to me of your doubts, your resolutions, your long growth, and what you are. Little things long forgotten come drifting back, concerning your boyhood in the old rectory, the hard awakening of an English public school. Chance remarks that you made carelessly long ago waken in memory and reveal you to me anew. The first time I realized the depth of feeling within you was when I caught a glimpse of you listening to music at a concert in the Sheldonian theatre; once, at least, your over-guarded face betrayed the real you. I learned to know your quiet sympathy, your concealed sensitive understanding of the needs of humankind, and to comprehend your difficulty in showing it, making it available. You built up the excluding barrier of an Englishman's expression between you and the world; only animals and children dared break through. I can see them yet rubbing their fuzzy heads against you, from the big Angora at Grey friars, to little Lady Matilda at Witton Hall.
December 31. I cannot finish this portrait, for the eyes baffle me, and each time I try you seem to be looking at me appealingly, as if you wanted me to express something that I but dimly see. My present knowledge of you seems in some strange way to outstrip your remembered face. My sketch--for I shall leave it a mere sketch--suggests all your suffering and all my sorrow, and yet not all is said. What knowledge have you now that I do not share? Tell it very gently in the quiet, and I shall know; am I not always listening? I am hungry for your wisdom of death.
January 12, 1915. Deepening cold drives us all closer to the hearth; perhaps it is only in winter that one gets the full flavour of home. Don curls up by the fire with me, or takes glorious cross-country walks. The little old gingerbread woman of the lych gate has disappeared; I half suspect her of crawling temporarily into one of the graves to keep warm. In snug farmyards, by great sunny ricks of hay, the cattle of the countryside shelter themselves contentedly. Now, even more than in summer, this land seems home from end to end; in every nook and corner is something of the appeal of the fireside; no other country so suggests from shore to shore one great threshold and hearth. Its churchyards, with their dead softly tucked in, the comforting grass above; its low-roofed villages; its individual homes in their great loveliness wear one expression.
There are wonderful sunsets over the brown earth or white snow. This is that England on whose domain the sun never sets, yet it sets most exquisitely day by day, did they but know.
For a week we had with us a little nun, who prayed and prayed, looking about her with big, frightened eyes. Luckily, my acquaintance with His Reverence, who officiated at Marie's wedding, solved the problem, and she went gladly to the shelter of a convent roof. Then for a few days we cared for an old, old man, who swore and swore, softly, constantly, but with an air of question, as if no oaths could quite meet the need of the present moment. It was most incongruous, for he was very evidently a gentleman, and he very evidently thought that he was expressing himself politely, even if inadequately. My knowledge of the French language was greatly extended, but this new vocabulary is, alas! as unavailable for the uses of ordinary life as that which I learned from Corneille! Our fugitive was a most pathetic old creature whose mind had been somewhat unsettled by suffering and exile. Fortunately a relative of his was discovered, a prosperous Belgian merchant living in the outskirts of London, and my guest bade me a profane but grateful farewell. A few days' care seems but little to offer these flitting guests on their sorrowful journey, but it is a great relief to me to do even this little, and as each one goes, I feel like saying "Thank you!" as the well-trained British waiter says when you deign to take something from the offered plate.
We really need Peter's advice,--think of that: Peter's advice, which I have scorned to take! In our zeal we became victims of one bit of imposture, which, however, did not involve us in irretrievable loss,--only spoons! Two dark-skinned folk presented themselves one cold, wintry day when all the desolation of the earth seemed dripping down in icy rain. They asked for food, telling us that they were Belgian refugees in need of help; evidently the habits of this household have been rumoured abroad. We were a bit suspicious, but resolved to err upon the right side. While Madge was cooking and I had gone to order fresh supplies, they decamped with my spoons and my purse, luckily a very lean purse. Don had simply absented himself; he no longer trusts his instincts, finding himself in a world whose standards he does not comprehend. The old order changes, giving place to new; old caste distinctions are ignored, and he has not as yet had time to learn new mental habits. He has found for himself a little agnostic den in a corner behind the kitchen range, and he goes there when he cannot make up his mind. When we discovered our loss and began our search, he came out wagging his tail with a self-congratulatory air to say, "I told you so!" But he had not told us so; he had only deserted us when we needed him most. Our light-fingered guests have been found in a gypsy tribe passing through to the north, but my spoons have not been found. Must I lap my supper from a saucer with Don and the Atom?
January 19. As I sit by the fire and toast my toes in my few minutes of blessed idleness, I cannot help living over old days and hours, and I see again the dusk of that evening when you and your family escorted me to Hinksey to hear the nightingales; the sunshine of that afternoon when you and I searched in vain the meadows beyond Iffley for pink-tipped English daisies. Often I find myself again arguing things out with you, even getting a bit angry now and then, forgetting that you cannot answer. Many and many a dispute we had, many and many a disagreement, with the invariable outcome of deeper understanding.
Sometimes the unshared jests hurt most of all; what has become of your humour, dear, that rare, dry humour that betrayed itself most plainly in your eyes? When first I knew you, I thought that you had no sense of humour; I soon found that it was deeper than my own, because of your insight into the irony of the human predicament. At times it touched the tragic. I learned to understand your quiet enjoyment in watching people, your wordless jests, and the silent drollery of your half smile. How you loved to tease me about the foibles of my countrymen.
"No other people," you would say, "would come dashing into the courtyard of a French hotel, with flags flying from the carriage, singing their national hymn at the top of their voices; no other people would motor swiftly to the entrance of a French cathedral, crying out: 'You do the inside, and we'll do the outside, and it won't take us more than five minutes!' And there is always the pleasing memory of the lady from Montana who deplored the inadequacy of the Louvre because the pictures couldn't compare with the exhibition that they had had in the winter at Wilkins Bluff. But of course this represents a class of Americans that you would not know."
That was the day we had tea by the river; I was hot with helping you get the boat past the lock, hot with making the tea, and I grew hotter still.
"I admit that we are vulgar, and loud-voiced, and ostentatious," I told you; "but we aren't selfish, and we aren't insolent. On the contrary, we are usually quixotically good-natured and generous. We do not look in blank surprise as the British do if any one questions their right to be served before all other people with the choicest of everything. You have little idea of what we suffer who meet many of the travelling English of to-day, with their quiet and total selfishness in securing and sitting upon all that is best. Of course, this represents a class of the English that you would not know." This you forgave, but you never quite forgave, I fear, my wicked suggestion that the moat about the Bishop's palace was preserved in order to keep out the poor and needy.
But the things about which we quarrelled were only surface things; I knew and loved my England more than I ever admitted to you; and you, for all your criticism of my countrymen (much of it was abundantly justified), had divined the spirit of idealism in our democracy. The development of the individual in righteous freedom for you, as for us, was the great hope of the world. Under all the crudeness of America, under the arrogance of England, lives, and has lived from earliest days, a something great and fine, shared by republican France,--a passion for liberty. The little things do not matter if the great convictions at the heart of nations are akin; have not people of late cared too much about little things? If our two peoples become aware of the greatness of their common destiny, will they not stop fussing about the American accent and English incivility? As I walk alone nowadays, I try to drive this haunting, insistent world-suffering from my mind by dreams of a great future wherein your country and mine go hand in hand, helping secure for all time liberty for the human race.
Each has something to contribute that the other lacks. I really think that we, in our sense of the dignity of the individual man, in willingness to forego shades and differences of taste for the sake of something greater, have outgrown you. You, with your keen insight, had divined the need of democracy, had accepted it in theory, but found the inevitable consequences hard to accept. Nothing is more agreeable than good taste; perhaps there are things more profoundly important. Dare I say that I think we have out-stripped you in generosity of act and of thought?
But you are greater than we, and your life runs in deeper channels than our own, in that you keep faith with the past, refusing to let the hard-won spiritual achievement of the race be swept away by the externalism of the present. To you, as to no other people, we look to save the world from the terrible material forces, without conscience, without insight, which threaten to dominate the whole of life. You who refuse to give up fine standards of an elder day are the influence that we of America greatly need, for in matters intellectual, we are all too prone to be led, and have been too much cowed by this later Germany--who forgets.