How little did either Margaret or Freddy dream that they were gazing for the last time together upon a land of dreams, upon a world of peace! As they sat and marvelled at a world which under a summer sun seemed as fair as heaven and as pure as an angel's dream, they little realized that Europe nursed and flattered a people more steeped in iniquity and eager for licentious cruelty than any nation recorded in the world's darkest story. The primitive barbarities of uncivilized races, and the war-atrocities of ancient Egypt and Assyria, which were familiar to Margaret, and against which Akhnaton had come to preach his mission of peace, were as nothing compared to the acts which were to be committed by a nation which had preached the mission of Jesus for a thousand years, and had carried His doctrines into the farthest corners of the earth.
In the years to come that journey from Alexandria to Marseilles was to be one of the greatest consolations of Margaret's life.
In the days to come, when Margaret, knowing all things and enduring all things, looked back upon the journey, it comforted her to think of how much Freddy had enjoyed his well-earned rest and how eagerly he had looked forward to his holiday in Scotland.
* * * * * *
The war, which has set a date in England from which every event of importance counts and will be counted by her people for generations to come, had not been whispered or dreamed of by ordinary people. Like Ischia, England was still dreaming and trusting. Her ideals of honour forbade that she should doubt the honour of a sister-nation, bound to her by the closest ties of blood and sympathy.
When Freddy and Margaret landed in England they went their separate ways.
Margaret, at the outbreak of the war, at once offered her services as a V.A.D. Three months later she was working as a pantry-maid in a private hospital. Her work was very hard and deadly dull, but she had been promised that after working for a time as pantry-maid, she should be allowed to help in the wards. When Freddy left for the Front she was able to say good-bye during her "two hours off."
Fresh air and sunshine, after the dark basement-pantry in which she worked, seemed to her sufficient enjoyment and all the pleasure she wanted. She seldom did anything in these hours but sit on a bench in the garden-square near her hospital and rest her tired feet. For the first month they were so swollen that she could not get on her walking shoes. By four o'clock she was back in her pantry again, setting out cups and saucers on little trays and laying the tea for the staff. Her work was lonely and unrecognized.
After she had washed up and put away the cups which had been used for afternoon tea and also the cups which had been used for the last meal of the day, which was served at seven o'clock in the wards, she went home to her quiet room, in a house on the other side of the square. It was an old house, which had known better days. The locality always carried Margaret's mind back to the gay world into whose society Becky Sharp so persistently pushed her way.
If Margaret was not happy, she was far too busy to be unhappy. She had, except for those two afternoon hours of rest, no time to think; and as thoughts make our heaven or our hell, Margaret lived in an intermediate state, for she had none. Her physical tiredness dominated all other sensations.