On the morning of the day when Margaret was to see Freddy off to the Front, she experienced a curious re-birth of personal existence; she was a partner in the world's agony. Since her work had begun she had lived like a machine; she was outside the great multitude of the elect; she had no one belonging to her in immediate danger. She had almost envied the personal anxiety of those who had their dearest at the Front.
Having no right to indulge in personal troubles which were entirely outside the subject of the war and the world's welfare, she had ceased to have any existence at all outside her dull duties as pantry-maid. But on the day of Freddy's departure she had a curious fluttering in her pulses, and a breathless excitement was in the background of all that she did. She found her hands trembling when she placed the cups in their saucers, or poured milk into the jugs.
Freddy's going was to link her to the great brotherhood. The consciousness of his danger would be like the weight of an unborn child under her heart. He was husband and father and lover to her now; he seemed to be taking with him to France the last remnant of her girlhood.
At Charing Cross she found the khaki-clad figure. He was waiting for her below the clock. His men, and hundreds of others, were sitting about at rest, on the few seats which had been provided for soldiers going to the Front, or on the floor. Most of the men were accompanied by proud and tearful relatives or lovers. It was an affecting and typical scene—a peaceful country suddenly torn and driven by the throes and novelty of war.
Margaret had already witnessed such scenes several times. It always left her wondering how any order or method came out of such a bewildering mass of hastily-organized effort.
Freddy looked so handsome in his uniform that Margaret's heart felt bursting with tragic pride. Nothing was too good to die for England, but surely, surely Freddy was too beautiful to be blinded or disfigured by all the hellish contrivances which the brutalized enemy had proved themselves past masters in devising? Even in Egypt he had not been more sunburned, and never had his hair looked so adorably bright and youthful. Margaret could think of nothing but his beauty; it seemed to burst upon her suddenly and unexpectedly.
Freddy was conscious of her pride and admiration, but being true Lamptons, their greeting of one another was characteristically brief. It was the first time that Freddy had seen his sister in her V.A.D. uniform; his eyes took in all her points with one quick glance. She looked clean and slight and attractive, and conspicuously well-bred. Her abundant hair showed to advantage under her blue hat, while her teeth and her eyes seemed to Freddy remarkably beautiful. A V.A.D. uniform is not becoming, but if a girl is striking-looking, it accentuates her good points; frumps and mediocrities it extinguishes altogether.
"Come and have some tea," Freddy said. "I'm frightfully thirsty."
Margaret walked off with him proudly. He was her own brother, the Freddy she had worked with so long and so intimately in the little hut in Egypt, this alert, dignified soldier. The war was in its infancy; women were still thrilled by khaki, and extraordinarily proud of their men who wore it. Margaret felt so proud of Freddy that she was a little awed by him. In her heart she was kneeling at his feet, while in her subconscious mind there was a prayer, that his beauty and youth might not be spoilt, that his splendid manhood might be given back to England—it had other work to do.
Her tea, which Freddy had ordered in the large tea-room at Charing Cross Station, proved very difficult to swallow. Something filled her throat; it almost choked her, something which was a strange mixture of pride and tears and happiness. She had no desire to eat or drink; she was quite content to sit still. All she wanted to do was just to be near Freddy and look at him.