CHAPTER XV
It was afternoon at Mannering.
Elizabeth was walking home from the village through the park. Still the same dry east-wind weather—very cold in the wind, very warm in the sun. If the German offensive began while these fine days held, they would have the luck of weather as we had never had it. Think of the drenching rains and winds of the Passchendaele attack! In the popular mind the notion of 'a German God' was taking actual concrete shape. A huge and monstrous form, sitting on a German hill, plotting with the Kaiser, and ordering the weather precisely as the Kaiser wished—it was thus that English superstition, aided by Imperial speeches and telegrams, began to be haunted.
Yet the world was still beautiful—the silvery stems of the trees, the flitting of the birds, the violet carpets underfoot. On the fighting line itself there was probably a new crop of poets, hymning the Spring with Death for listener, as Julian Grenfell and Rupert Brooke had hymned it, in that first year of the war that seems now an eternity behind us.
Moving along a path converging on her own, Elizabeth perceived the Squire. For the first time that morning he had put off their joint session, and she had not seen him all day. Her mind was now always uneasily aware of him—aware, too, of some change in him, for which in some painful way she felt herself responsible. He had grown strangely tame and placable, and it was generally noticed that he looked older. Yet he was more absorbed than ever in the details of Greek research and the labour of his catalogue. Only, of an evening, he read the Times for a couple of hours, generally in complete silence, while Elizabeth and Mrs. Gaddesden talked and knitted.
An extraordinary softness—an extraordinary compassion—was steadily invading Elizabeth's mind in regard to him. Something suggested to her that he had come into life maimed of some essential element of being, possessed by his fellow-men, and that he was now conscious of the lack, as a Greek Faun might be conscious of the difference between his life and that of struggling and suffering men. Nothing, indeed, could less suggest the blithe nature-life which Greek imagination embodied in the Faun, than the bizarre and restless aspect of the Squire. This spare white-haired man, with his tempers and irritations, was far indeed from Greek joyousness. And yet the Greek sense of beauty, half intellectual, half sensuous, had always seemed to her the strongest force in him. Was it now besieged by something else?—was the Faun in him, at last, after these three years, beginning to feel the bitter grip of humanity?
'"Deeper"? I don't know what you mean. There is nothing "deep" in me!' She often recalled that saying of his, and the look of perplexity which had accompanied it.
To herself of late he had been always courteous and indulgent; she had hardly had an uncivil word from him! But it seemed to her that he had also begun to avoid her, and the suspicion hurt her amazingly. If indeed it were true, then leave Mannering she must.
He came up with her at a cross-road, and threw her a look of enquiry.
'You have been to the village?'
'To the hospital. Thirty fresh wounded arrived last night.'
'I have just seen Chicksands,' said the Squire abruptly. 'Arthur tells him the German attack must be launched in a week or two, and may come any day. A million men, probably, thrown against us.'
'So—the next few months will decide,' said Elizabeth, shuddering.
'My God!—why did we ever go into this war!' cried the man beside her suddenly, in a low, stifled voice. She glanced at him in astonishment. The new excuses, the new tenderness for him in her heart made themselves heard.
'It was for honour,' she breathed—'for freedom!'
'Words—just words. They don't stop bombs!'
But there was nothing truculent in the tone.
'You had a line from Mr. Desmond this morning?'
'Yes—a post card. He was all right.'
Silence dropped between them. They walked on through the beautiful wooded park. Carpets of primroses ran beside them, and masses of wild cherry blossoms were beginning to show amid the beeches. Elizabeth was vaguely conscious of beauty, of warm air, of heavenly sun. But the veil upon the face of all nations was upon her eyes also.
When they reached the house, the Squire said,
'I looked up the passage in the Persae that occurred to me yesterday. Will you come and take it down?'
They went into the library together. On a special table in front of the Squire's desk there stood a magnificent Greek vase of the early fifth century B.C. A king—Persian, from his dress—was sitting in a chair of state, and before him stood a small man apparently delivering a message. Αγγελος was roughly written over his head.
The Squire walked up and down with a text of the Persae in his hand.
'"This vase," he dictated, "may be compared with one signed by Xenophantos, in the Paris collection, the subject of which is the Persian king, hunting. Here we have a Persian king, identified by his dress, apparently receiving a message from his army. We may illustrate it by the passage in the Persae of Æschylus, where Atossa receives from a messenger the account of the battle of Salamis—a passage which contains the famous lines describing the Greek onslaught on the Persian fleet:
'"'Then might you hear a mighty shout arise—
'"'Go, ye sons of Hellas!—free your fathers, free your children and your wives, the temples of your gods, and the tombs of your ancestors. For now is all at stake!...'
'"We may recall also the final summing-up by the αγγελος of the Persian defeat—
'"'Never, on a single day, was there so great a slaying of men.'"'
Elizabeth took down the words, first in Greek and then in English. They rang in her ears, long after she had transcribed them. The Squire moved up and down in silence, absorbed apparently in the play which he went on reading.
Outside the light was failing. It was close on six o'clock, and summer time had not yet begun.
Suddenly the Squire raised his head.
'That, I think, was the telephone?'
Elizabeth rose—
'May I go? It is probably Captain Dell.'
She hurried away to her office-room, where the call-bell was insistently ringing.
'Yes—who is that?'
'A telegram please—for Mr. Mannering—from London.'
'Wait a moment—I will tell Mr. Mannering.'
But as she turned to go back to the library she saw the Squire had followed her, and was standing at the door. He came forward at once and took up the receiver.
Elizabeth watched him with a fast beating pulse. He heard the message, took out a pencil and wrote it down on a piece of paper lying near, put up the receiver, and turned to her.
'It is from Aubrey. "Desmond is severely wounded. Please come at once. Permission will be given to you and Pamela to go to France. I hope to go with you. Will meet you King's Cross 8.40. Aubrey."'
He steadied himself a moment by a hand on Elizabeth's table. She went up to him, and took his other hand, which closed an instant on hers.
'I thought so,' he said, under his breath. 'I knew it.... Telephone, please, to Fallerton for the taxi, while I go and speak to Forest.'
She gave the order and then hastened into the hall where Mrs. Gaddesden was busy trimming a hat. The Squire's eldest daughter sprang up at sight of Elizabeth.
'Oh, what is it? I know it's bad news—it's Desmond!'
Elizabeth repeated the telegram. 'Your father is going off at once. I have telephoned for the car.'
'Oh, but I must go too—of course I must!' said Alice, weeping. 'Where is my maid?'
Elizabeth pointed out gently that, in speaking of the permits for France, Major Mannering had only referred to the Squire and Pamela.
'Oh, but he must have meant me too—of course he must! Where is my maid?' She rang the upstairs' bell violently. 'Oh, father, how awful!'—the Squire had just entered the hall—'of course I'm going with you?'
'What does she mean?' said the Squire impatiently to Elizabeth. 'Tell her I'm going alone.'
'But, father, you must take me!' cried Alice, running forward with clasped hands. 'He is my brother! I must see him again!'
'He asks for Pamela,' said the Squire grimly. 'Aubrey shall wire to you. You'd better stay here—if Miss Bremerton will look after you.'
'I don't want to be looked after—I want to look after Desmond and you,' said Alice, with sobs.
The Squire's eyes travelled over the soft elaboration of her dress and hair—all her perfumed and fashionable person.
'It is impossible,' he said sharply. Then turning to Elizabeth he gave her a few directions about his letters. 'I shall get money in town. I will wire directly we arrive.'
Alice was silenced, and sat half sulky, half sobbing, by the fire, while the preparations for departure went forward. She offered help hysterically once or twice, but it was not needed.
The little car from the village arrived in half an hour. The Squire stood at the hall door waiting for it. He had not spoken since the news arrived except to give the most necessary orders. But as he saw the car nearing the house, he turned to Elizabeth.
'I expect we shall cross to-night. I shall wire you to-morrow.' Then to Forest—
'Do your best to help Miss Bremerton. She is in charge of everything.'
'Aye, sir. You'll give our duty to Mr. Desmond, sir. I trust you'll bring him home.'
The Squire made no reply. He stood motionless till the car arrived, stepped into it, and was gone.
Elizabeth went back into the house, and to Alice Gaddesden, still sobbing by the fire. At sight of Elizabeth she broke out into complaints of her father's unkindness, mixed presently, to Elizabeth's dismay, with jealousy of her father's secretary.
'I don't know why father didn't let me help him with his packing, and it's I who should have been left in charge! I'm his eldest daughter—it is natural that I should be. I can tell you it's very hard—to see somebody—who's not a relation—doing—doing everything for him!—so that he won't let anybody else advise him—or do anything! It is very—very—wounding for us all. Pamela feels it—I know she does—and Desmond too.'
Elizabeth, very white and distressed, knelt down by her and tried to calm her. But the flood of angry self-pity could not be stayed.
'Oh, I daresay you don't mean it, but you have—yes, you have a way of getting everybody's attention. Of course you're awfully clever—much cleverer than I am—or Pamela. But still it—it isn't pleasant. I know Pamela felt it dreadfully—being cut out with people she likes—people she cares about—and who—who might care for her—like Arthur Chicksands. I believe—yes, I do believe—though she never told me—that's why she went to London.'
Elizabeth rose from her knees. For a moment she was struck dumb. And when at last she spoke it was only to repeat the name Mrs. Gaddesden had mentioned in utter bewilderment.
'Captain Chicksands! What can you mean?'
'Why, of course girls can't hold their own with older women when the older women are so charming and clever—and all that'—cried Mrs. Gaddesden, trying desperately to justify herself—'but I've been awfully sorry for Pamela! Very likely it's not your fault—you couldn't know, I daresay!'
'No, indeed, I didn't know!' said Elizabeth, in a low voice, 'and I can't understand now what you mean.'
'Don't you remember the day Arthur Chicksands spent here just before Desmond went? Don't you remember how he talked to you all the afternoon about the woods? Well, I saw Pamela's face as she was sitting behind you.'
Mrs. Gaddesden raised a triumphant though tear-stained countenance. She was avenging not only her father's latest slight, but a long series of grievances—small and great—connected with Elizabeth's position in the house. And the Squire's farewell to her had turned even her grief to gall.
'If Pamela was hurt, I was a most innocent cause!' said Elizabeth at last, indignantly. 'And if you or any one else had given me the smallest hint—'
'How could we?' was the rather sulky reply. 'Pamela, of course, never said a word—to me. But I rather think she did say something to Desmond.'
'Desmond!' cried Elizabeth under her breath. She turned slowly, and went away, leaving Mrs. Gaddesden panting and a little scared at what she had done.
Elizabeth went back to the library, where there was much to put in order. She forced herself to tidy the Squire's table, and to write a business letter or two. But when that was done she dropped her face in her hands, and shed a few very bitter tears.
She seemed to herself to have failed miserably. In truth, her heart clung to all these people. She soon attached herself to those with whom she lived, and was but little critical of them. The warm, maternal temper which went with her shrewd brain seemed to need perpetually objects on which to spend itself. She could have loved the twins dearly had they let her, and day by day, in the absence of the mother, she had been accustomed to nurse, she had even positively enjoyed 'petting' Mrs. Gaddesden, holding her wool for her, seeing to her hot-water bottles, and her breakfast in bed.
Pamela in love with Arthur Chicksands! And she remembered that a faint idea of it had once crossed her mind, only to be entirely dismissed and forgotten.
'But I ought to have seen—I ought to have known! Am I really a vampire?'
And she remembered how she, in her first youth, had suffered from the dominance and the accomplishment of older women; women who gave a girl no chance, who must have all the admiration, and all the opportunities, who would coolly and cruelly snatch a girl's lover from her.
'And that's how I've appeared to Pamela!' thought Elizabeth between laughing and crying. 'Yet all I did was to talk about ash for aeroplanes! Oh, you poor child—you poor child!'
She seemed to feel Pamela's pain in her own heart—she who had had love and lost it.
'Am I just an odious, clever woman?' She sat down and hated herself. All the passing vanity that had been stirred in her by Sir Henry's compliments, all the natural pleasure she had taken in the success of her great adventure as a business woman, in the ease with which she, the Squire's paid secretary, had lately begun to lead the patriotic effort of an English county—how petty, how despicable even, it seemed, in presence of a boy who had given his all!—even beside a girl in love!
And the Squire—'Was I hard to him too?'
The night came down. All the strange or beautiful shapes in the library wavered and flickered under the firelight—the glorious Nikê—the Erôs—the noble sketch of the boy in his cricketing dress....
The following morning came a telegram from Aubrey Mannering to Mrs. Gaddesden. Elizabeth had done her best to propitiate her but she remained cold and thorny, and when the telegram came she was pleased that the news came to her first, and—tragic as it was—that Elizabeth had to ask her for it!
'Terrible wounds. Fear no hope. We shall bring him home as soon as possible.'
But an hour later arrived another—from the Squire to Elizabeth.
'Have a bed got ready in the library. Desmond's wish. Also accommodation near for surgeon and nurses. May be able to cross to-morrow. Will wire.'
But it was nearly two days before the final message arrived—from Pamela to her sister. 'Expect us 7.20 to-night.'
By that time the ground-floor of the west wing had been transformed into a temporary ward with its adjuncts, under the direction of a Fallerton doctor, who had brought Desmond into the world and pulled him through his childish illnesses. Elizabeth had moved most of the statues, transferred the Sargent sketch to the drawing-room, and put all the small archæological litter out of sight. But the Nikê was too big and heavy to be moved, and Elizabeth remembered that Desmond had always admired 'the jolly old thing' with its eager outstretched wings and splendid brow. Doctor Renshaw shook his head over the library as a hospital ward, and ordered a vast amount of meticulous cleaning and disinfection.
'No hope?' he said, frowning. 'How do we know? Anyway there shall be no poison I can help.' But the boy's wish was law.
On the afternoon before the arrival, Elizabeth was seized with restlessness. When there was nothing more to be done in the way of hospital provision (for which a list of everything needed had been sent ahead to Doctor Renshaw)—of flowers, of fair linen—and when, in spite of the spring sun shining in through all the open windows on the bare spotless boards, she could hardly bear the sight and meaning of the transformation which had come over the room, she found herself aimlessly wandering about the big house, filled with a ghostly sense of past and future. What was to be the real meaning of her life at Mannering? She could not have deserted the Squire in the present crisis. She had indeed no false modesty as to what her help would mean, practically, to this household under the shadow of death. At least she could run the cook and the servants, wrestle with the food difficulties, and keep the Squire's most essential business going.
But afterwards? She shivered at the word. Yes, afterwards she would go! And Pamela should reign.
Suddenly, in a back passage, leading from her office to the housekeeper's room, she came upon a boy of fourteen, Forest's hall-boy, really a drudge-of-all-work, on whom essential things depended. He was sitting on a chair beside the luggage lift absorbed in some work, over which his head was bent, while an eager tip of tongue showed through his tightened lips.
'What are you doing, Jim?' Elizabeth paused beside the boy, who had always appeared to her as a simple, docile creature, not very likely to make much way in a jostling world.
'Please, Miss, I'm knitting,' said Jim, raising a flushed face.
'Knitting! Knitting what?'
'Knitting a sock for my big brother. He's in France, Miss. Mother learnt me.'
Elizabeth was silent a moment, watching the clumsy fingers as they struggled with the needles.
'Are you very fond of your brother, Jim?' she asked at last.
'Yes, Miss,' said the boy, stooping a little lower over his work. Then he added, 'There's only him and me—and mother. Father was killed last year.'
'Do you know where he is?'
'No, Miss. But Mr. Desmond told me when he was here he might perhaps see him. And I had a letter from Mr. Desmond ten days ago. He'd come across Bob, and he wrote me a letter.'
And out of his pocket he pulled a grimy envelope, and put it into Elizabeth's hands.
'Do you want me to read it, Jim?'
'Please, Miss.' But she was hardly able to read the letters for the dimness in her eyes. Just a boyish letter—from a boy to a boy. But it had in it, quite unconsciously, the sacred touch that 'makes us men.'
A little later she was in the village, where a woman she knew—one Mary Wilson—was dying, a woman who had been used to come up to do charing work at the Hall, before the last illness of a bed-ridden father kept her at home. Mary was still under fifty, plain, clumsy, and the hardest worker in the village. She lived at the outbreak of war with her father and mother. Her brother had been killed at Passchendaele, and Mary's interest in life had vanished with him. But all through the winter she had nursed her father night and day through a horrible illness. Often, as Elizabeth had now discovered, in the bitterest cold of the winter, she had had no bed but the flagstones of the kitchen. Not a word of complaint—and a few shillings for both of them to live upon!
At last the father died. And the night he died Mary staggered across to the wretched cottage of a couple of old-age pensioners opposite. 'I must rest a bit,' she said, and sitting down in a chair by the fire she fainted. Influenza had been on her for some days, and now pneumonia had set in. The old people would not hear of her being taken back to her deserted cottage. They gave up their own room to her; they did everything for her their feeble strength allowed. But the fierce disease beat down her small remaining strength. Elizabeth, since the story came to her knowledge, had done her best to help. But it was too late.
She went now to kneel at the beside of the dying woman. Mary's weary eyes lifted, and she smiled faintly at the lady who had been kind to her. Then unconsciousness returned, and the village nurse gave it as her opinion that the end was near.
Elizabeth looked round the room. Thank God the cottage did not belong to the Squire! The bedroom was about ten feet by seven, with a sloping thatched roof, supported by beams three centuries old. The one window was about two feet square. The nurse pointed to it.
'The doctor said no pneumonia case could possibly recover in a room like this. And there are dozens of them, Miss, in this village. Oh, Mary is glad to go. She nursed her mother for years, and then her father for years. She never had a day's pleasure, and she was as good as gold.'
Elizabeth held the clammy, misshapen hand, pressing her lips to it when she rose to go, as to the garment of a saint.
Then she walked quickly back through the fading spring day, her heart torn with prayer and remorse—remorse that such a life as Mary Wilson's should have been possible within reach of her own life and she not know it; and passionate praying for a better world, through and after the long anguish of the war.
'Else for what will these boys have given their lives!—what meaning in the suffering and the agony!—or in the world which permits and begets them?'
Then, at last, it was past seven o'clock. The dusk had fallen, and the stars were coming out in a pure pale blue, over the leafless trees. Elizabeth and Alice Gaddesden stood waiting at the open door of the hall. A motor ambulance was meeting the train. They would soon be here now.
Elizabeth turned to Mrs. Gaddesden.
'Won't you give a last look and see if it is all right?'
Alice's weak, pretty face cleared, as she went off to give a final survey to Desmond's room. She admitted that Elizabeth had been 'nice' that day, and all the days before. Perhaps she had been hasty.
Lights among the distant trees! Elizabeth thought of the boy who had gone out from that door, two months before, in the charm and beauty of his young manhood. What wreck was it they were bringing back?
Then the remembrance stabbed her of that curt note from France—of what Mrs. Gaddesden had said. She withdrew into the background. With all the rest to help, she would not be wanted. Yes, she had been too masterful, too prominent.
Two motors appeared, the ambulance motor behind another. They drew up at the side door leading direct through a small lobby to the library, and the Squire, his eldest son, and Captain Chicksands stepped out—then Pamela.
Pamela ran up to her sister. The girl's eyes were red with crying, but she was composed.
'On the whole, he has borne the journey well. Where is Miss Bremerton?'
Elizabeth, hearing her name, emerged from the shadow in which she was standing. To her astonishment Pamela threw an arm round her neck and kissed her.
'Is everything ready?'
'Everything. Will you come and see?'
'Yes. They won't want us here.'
For the lobby was small; and surgeon and nurses were already standing beside the open door of the ambulance, the surgeon giving directions to the stretcher-bearers of the estate who had been waiting.
Pamela looked at the bed, the nurses' table, the bare boards, the flowers. Her face worked pitifully. She turned to Elizabeth, who caught her in her arms.
'Oh, I am glad you have put the picture away!'
One deep sob, and she recovered herself.
'He's not much disfigured,' she murmured, 'only a cut on the forehead. Most of the journey he has been quite cheerful. That was the morphia. But he's tired now. They're coming in.'
But it was the Squire who entered—asking peremptorily for Miss Bremerton.
The well-known voice struck some profound response in Elizabeth. She turned to him. How changed, how haggard, was the aspect!
'Martin—that's the surgeon we've brought with us—wants something from Fallerton at once. Renshaw's here, but he can't be spared for telephoning. Come, please!'
But before she could pass through the door, it was filled by a procession. The stretcher came through, followed by the surgeon and nurses who had come from France. Elizabeth caught a glimpse of a white face and closed eyes. It was as though something royal and sacred entered the hushed room. She could have fallen on her knees, as in a Breton 'pardon' when the Host goes by.