Elizabeth's Campaign

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

Then with the March twilight she was again at Mannering. She changed her bicycling dress, and six o'clock found her at her desk, obediently writing from the Squire's dictation.

He put her through a stiff series of geographical notes, including a number of quotations from Homer and Herodotus, bearing on the spread of Greek culture in the Aegean. During the course of them he broke out once or twice into his characteristic sayings and illustrations, racy or poetic, as usual, and Elizabeth would lift her blue eyes, with the responsive look in them, on which he had begun to think all his real power of work depended. But not a word passed between them on any other subject; and when it was over she rose, said a quiet good-night, and went away. After she had gone, the Squire sat over the fire, brooding and motionless, for most of the evening.

One March afternoon, a few days later, the following letter reached Pamela, who was still with her sister. It was addressed in Desmond Mannering's large and boyish handwriting.

'B.E.F., March.

'MY DEAR PAMELA—I am kicking my heels here at an engineer's store, waiting for an engineer officer who is wanted to plan some new dug-outs for our battery, and as there is no one to talk to inside except the most inarticulate Hielander I ever struck, I shall at last make use of one of your little oddments, my dear, which are mostly too good to use out here—and write you a letter on a brand new pocket-pad, with a brand new stylo.

'I expect you know from Arthur about where we are. It's a pretty nasty bit of the line. The snipers here are the cleverest beasts out. There isn't a night they don't get some of us, though our fellows are as sharp as needles too. I went over a sniping school last week with a jolly fellow who used to hunt lions in Africa. My hat!—we have learnt a thing or two from the Huns since we started. But you have to keep a steady look-out, I can tell you. There was a man here last night in a sniper's post, shooting through a trench loophole, you understand, which had an iron panel. Well, he actually went to sleep with his rifle in his hand, having had a dog's life for two or three nights. But for a mercy, he had pulled down his panel—didn't know he had!—and the next thing he knew was a bullet spattering on it—just where his eye should have been. He was jolly quick in backing out and into a dug-out, and an hour later he got the man.

'But there was an awful thing here last night. An officer was directing one of our snipers—stooping down just behind him, when a Hun got him—right in the eyes. I was down at the dressing-station visiting one of our men who had been knocked over—and I saw him led in. He was quite blind,—and as calm as anything—telling people what to do, and dictating a post card to the padre, who was much more cut up than he was. I can tell you, Pamela, our Army is fine! Well, thank God, I'm in it—and not a year too late. That's what I keep saying to myself. And the great show can't be far off now. I wouldn't miss it for anything, so I don't give the Hun any more chances of knocking me over than I can help.

'You always want to know what things look like, old Pam, so I'll try and tell you. In the first place, it's just a glorious spring day. At the back of the cranky bit of a ruined farm where we have our diggings (by the way, you may always go back at night and find half your bedroom shot away—that happened to me the other night—there was a tunic of mine still hanging on the door, and when you opened the door, nothing but a hole ten feet deep full of rubble—jolly luck, it didn't happen at night-time!) there are actually some lilac trees, and the buds on them are quite big. And somehow or other the birds manage to sing in spite of the hell the Huns have made of things.

'I'm looking out now due east. There's a tangled mass of trenches not far off, where there's been some hot raiding lately. I see an engineer officer with a fatigue party working away at them—he's showing the men how to lay down a new trench with tapes and pegs. Just to my left some men are filling up a crater. Then there's a lorry full of bits of an old corduroy road they're going to lay down somewhere over a marshy place. There are two sausage balloons sitting up aloft, and some aeroplanes coming and going. Our front line is not more than a mile away, and the German line is about a mile and a quarter. Far off to my right I can just see a field with tanks in it. Ah—there goes a shell on the Hun line—another! Can't think why we're tuning up at this time of day. We shall be getting some of their heavy stuff over directly, if we don't look out. It's rot!

'And the sun is shining like blazes on it all. As I came up I saw some of our men resting on the grass by the wayside. They were going up to the trenches—but it was too early—the sun was too high—they don't send them in till dusk. Awfully good fellows they looked! And I passed a company of Bantams, little Welsh chaps, as fit as mustard. Also a poor mad woman, with a basket of cakes and chocolate. She used to live in the village where I'm sitting now—on a few bricks of it, I mean. Then her farm was shelled to bits and her old husband and her daughter killed. And nothing will persuade her to go. Our people have moved her away several times—but she always comes back—and now they let her alone. Our soldiers indeed are awfully good to her, and she looks after the graves in the little cemetery. But when you speak to her, she never seems to understand, and her eyes—well, they haunt one.