The Worn Doorstep

by Margaret Pollock Sherwood

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.

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.