Robin Linnet

by E. F. Benson

There were no spoken words between them after that, just a whisper passed between them, and in a couple of minutes he had left her. Presently there came the sound of his motor-wheels crunching the gravel.

From that hour there began in Helen Grote a change, vital and immense, in the spirit in which she devoted herself to the hospital. Her pride had hitherto demanded of her that she should do her work as perfectly and conscientiously as she was able, and there was no actual difference now in the quality of her performance of it. But now love began to inspire it, in that the men she looked after had been injured in the cause for which Robin was now in France. They and he were fellow-workers, she was looking after members of his brotherhood; more than that, she even at times seemed to herself to be directly serving him, for all those who fought were part of a corporate body, individuals who could not be dissevered from each other. Faintly at first, but with increasing splendour, even as dawn floods the sky and heralds the day, dimming the stars and turning the moon to ashes, so the New Spirit permeated her, extinguishing the lesser lights of self-respect which demanded of her an efficient performance, and filling the inter-stellar darkness with the glory of the sun not yet risen upon the earth.

She walked as in clear shadow, with the brightness still high and far above her, for often her heart was faint, and her soul was utterly lonely and quivered with apprehensions that she would not of her best will give a home to; but visible above her, brightening as it descended the stair of heaven, dawn stepped down towards the earth with luminous feet. And if sometimes her pulses were feeble with fear, there were other moments when they beat strong with the impulse of some new perception....

Often the light of this new dawn was hidden, so thickly clouded over that the emptiness and rebellion of those autumn months seemed to have returned, with this added, that Robin was now out in the peril of the storm, and any day or hour might bring some news which would drive dawn altogether from the sky. But she no longer sought relief from that thought in running away from it, but in plunging herself into all that could most intimately bring home to her the horror of war. Her soul’s escape lay not in trying to hide her eyes and screen herself from it, but by going with open vision into the very thick of it. Constantly her work bored, discouraged and disgusted her: she would feel for whole days together that the stupidest woman in the world could do all she was doing with no less efficiency than she, and that a finer sympathy than hers would have gilded routine with splendour.

Here was the discouragement: that she was doing the best she could, but that anybody else would have easily done better; but that served, thanks to the spirit which was now beginning to inspire her devotion, not as a hindrance to her labours, but as a spur to their complete performance, and her humility exalted her. So too with the boredom and disgust that at times assailed her over menial and repeated tasks: she did not slur over them or delegate them to others, but only struggled with her own littleness in thinking anything little. Her life, which once she had consecrated, as with vows, to her own amusement, vows that, when the war broke out, she sacrificed everything to keep, had slid from under her own hands, and shook itself free of the benumbing touch of her own self-centred aims.

To-day she made no fresh vows, she did not even trouble to repudiate the former ones, or register a new intention. She simply went straight forward with industry and simplicity. She had never been the least inclined to introspection, and did not waste time or energy in dwelling with regret on the years she had so devoted to her own satisfaction; indeed, if she had stopped to examine herself, she would have found no shred of regret hidden away in the cupboards of her mind. The past was over and done with, and, after all, she had enjoyed her years enormously. It was foreign to her nature to regret what had yielded her so much pleasure.

But the past was over and done with in this sense also, that she felt there was no going back to it. Already, even though but a few months had passed since August, for her the cleavage seemed complete, and if she looked forward to the day when the war was over, and leisure and security returned, she could not think herself back into the spirit of the days when Grote was a temple consecrated to the splendour and extravagance and desires of herself and her world. Perhaps it would be so; but she did not busy herself with such speculations, for in the conditions and with the occupations in which she now lived, she came to regard the old life as something phantasmal. All that was truly real, so far as reality concerned her, was comprised in the wards and workrooms of the hospital, and in a certain unlocated trench in France.

Robin was there somewhere: that was never wholly out of her mind. Whatever her occupation was, that fact stayed and regarded her. Sometimes it gave her strength and resolution, sometimes it made her hand falter and her knees fail, but in one aspect or another it was always there. She had moments in which she forgot everything else, when among her letters she would find the thin envelope, with its Army Post Office stamp and its rather faint pencilled inscriptions: she had moments of sick suspense when a telegram was brought her. On one such occasion she felt herself unable to open it, and, giving it to the matron, waited, feeling sure that it brought some intolerable message, until that not unsympathetic person asked her whether the consignment of cigarettes, to which it referred, had arrived. Miss Hawker had clearly guessed the cause of her being asked to open it, for she said, “It’s a mere waste of good anxiety to anticipate trouble, Sister.”

But as constant as the consciousness that Robin was away in France, and much more real, was the consciousness that Robin was here and was hers, and could not be parted from her. He partook of an immortal quality, and though for herself she had always looked forward, without fear and without any further expectation, to the moment when the great fish would gulp her down, as she floated all water-logged on the surface of spent life, she could not apply the same image to him, or to her relations with him. The image of her thought was at first vague and veiled, but it began to assume a firmer outline, as of a conviction in process of crystallization.

In front of this background, the life full of boredoms, and discouragements and disgusts went on its busy way. Independent of that which worked behind them, turning them to something that was in its essence gold, there were encouragements and surprises as well. Among these were the events of the evening of the New Year. The men had asked if they might give an entertainment to the staff, doctors and nurses, and housemaids and servants, and Helen had expressed her cordial assent. Thereafter for three days the lives of the staff, especially the female portion of it, had been rendered quite intolerable from sheer overwork.