Fanny took it in quite a different way. Silence was torture to her; she had to talk. She was afraid and desperately in earnest. The love in her heart was poured out at the foot of this new ideal, and to Fanny, England was typified in the soldiers. The night on which the paper boys ran abroad shrieking their first casualty list Fanny lay face downwards on her bed and sobbed her heart out. She visualized the troops she had watched marching through London, their straight-held figures, their merry faces, their laughing eyes, the songs they had shouted and whistled haunted her mind. They had not seemed to be marching to death; people had stood on the edge of the pavement to cheer them, and now—"cut to pieces"—that was how the papers put it. It made her more passionately attached to the ones that were left. It is no exaggeration to say that quite gladly and freely Fanny would have given her life for any—not one particular—soldier. Something of the spirit of mother-love woke in her attitude towards them.
Down in quiet, sleepy little Wrotham the tide of war beat less furiously. Uncle John would sometimes lose his temper completely because the place as a whole remained so apathetic. The villagers did not do much reading of the papers; the fact that the parson had a new prayer introduced into the service impressed them with a sense of war more than anything else. But even Wrotham felt the outside fringe of London's anxiety during the days of that autumn. One by one, rather sheepishly, the young men came forward. They would like to be soldiers, they would like to have a whack at them there Germans. No thought of treaties or broken pledges stirred them, but England was written across their minds just the same. Uncle John woke to new life; he had been eating out his heart, knowing himself useless and on the shelf, when every nerve in his body was straining to be up and doing. He instituted himself as recruiter-in-chief to the district. He would walk for miles if he heard there was a likely young man to be found at the end of his tramp; his face would glow with pride did he but catch one fine, healthy-looking specimen.
He inaugurated little meetings, too, at which the Vicar presided, and Uncle John held forth. Bluntly and plainly he showed the people their duty, speaking to them as he had used to speak in the old days to his soldiers. And over their beer in the neighbouring public-house the men would repeat his remarks, weigh up his arguments, agree or disagree with his sentiments. They had a very strong respect for him, that at least was certain; before Christmas he had persuaded every available unmarried man to enlist.
The married men were a problem; Joan felt that perhaps more than Uncle John did. Winter was coming on; there were the children to clothe and feed; the women were beginning to be afraid. Sometimes Joan would accompany Uncle John on his tramps abroad, and she would watch the wife's face as Uncle John brought all his persuasion to bear on the man; she would see it wake first to fear, and then to resentment. She was sorry for them; how could one altogether blame them if they cried, "Let the unmarried men go first." Yet once their man had gone, they fell back on odd reserves of pride and acquiescence. There was very little wailing done in the hundreds of small homes scattered all over England; with brave faces the women turned to their extra burden of work. Just as much as in the great ones of the land, "for England" burned across their hearts.
Joan's life had settled down, but for the outside clamour of events, into very quiet routine. Her two years' life in London was melting away into a dream; only Dick and her love for Dick stood out with any intensity, and since Dick made no sign to her, held out no hand, she tried as much as possible to shut him from her thoughts. Aunt Janet had died in her sleep the night war was declared; she had never waked to consciousness. When the doctor, hastily fetched by Uncle John, had reached her room, she had been already dead—smiling a little, as if the last dream which had come to haunt her sleep had been a pleasant one.
"Joy killed her," the nurse declared. Certainly she lay as if very content and untroubled.
"I believe," Miss Abercrombie told Joan, "that she was only staying alive to see you. My dear, you must not blame yourself in any way; she is so much better out of it all."
"No, I don't blame myself," Joan answered. "We had made friends before she died; there isn't a wall between us any longer."
The villagers ransacked their gardens to send flowers to the funeral. Aunt Janet's grave was heaped up with them, but in a day or two they withered, and old Jim carried them away on his leaf heap. After that every week Joan took down just a handful and laid them where she thought the closed hands would be, and, because in so doing she seemed to draw a little closer to Aunt Janet, and through Aunt Janet to the great God beyond, her thoughts would turn into prayer as she stood by the grave. "Dear God, keep him always safe," she would whisper. Then like a formless flash of light the word "England" would steal across her prayer; she did not need to put the feeling into words; just like an offering she laid it before her thought of God and knew its meaning would be understood. So thousands of men and women pray, brought by a sense of their own helplessness in this great struggle near to the throne of God. And always the name of England whispers across their prayers.
Just when the battle of the Marne was at its turning-point Dick got his orders to go. He was given under a week to get ready in, the unit, a field hospital, was to start on Saturday and the order came on Monday. One more day had to be put in at the recruiting depot; he could not leave them in the lurch; Tuesday he spent getting his kit together, Wednesday evening saw him down at Sevenoaks.