"I have an old exercise book," said Ann, "in which Davie made his first efforts at keeping accounts—David Douglas in account with self. It is very much ornamented with funny faces and not very accurate, for sums are frequently noted as 'lost.' It stops suddenly, and underneath is scrawled, 'The war here intervened.' We didn't need to worry about his work in the world. That was decided for him when—
'God chose His squires, and trained their hands
For those stern lists of liberty.'"
Mrs. Douglas caught her breath with a sob. "At once he clamoured to go, but he was so young, only eighteen, and I said he must only offer for home defence; and he said, 'All right, wee body, that'll do to start with,' but in a very short time he was away to train with Kitchener's first army."
"He was miserable, Mother, until he got away. Jim was refused permission from the first, and had to settle down to his job, but for most of us the bottom seemed to have fallen out of the world, and one could settle to nothing. In the crashing of empires the one stable thing was that fact that the Scotsman continued its 'Nature Notes.' That amused Davie.... He began an album of war poetry, cutting out and pasting in verses that appeared in the Times and Spectator and Punch and other papers. 'Carmina Belli' he printed on the outside. He charged me to go on with it when he went away, and I finished it with Mark's poem on himself:
'You left the line with jest and smile
And heart that would not bow to pain—
I'll lay me downe and bleed awhile,
And then I'll rise and fight again.'"
Ann got up and leaned her brow on the mantel-shelf, and looking into the fire, said:
"D'you know, Mother, I think that first going away was the worst of all, though he was only going to England to train. Nothing afterwards so broke me down as seeing the fresh-faced boy in his grey tweed suit going off with such a high heart. I don't know what you felt about it, but the sword pierced my heart then. You remember it was the Fair at Priorsford! and the merry-go-rounds on the Green buzzed round to a tune he had often sung, some ridiculous words about 'Hold your hand out, you naughty boy.' As I stood in my little swallow's-nest of a room and looked out over the Green, and saw the glare of the naphtha lamps reflected in the water, and the swing-boats passing backwards and forwards, through light into darkness, and from darkness into light, and realised that Davie had been born for the Great War, every chord seemed to strike at my heart."
"Oh, Ann," Mrs. Douglas cried, "I never let myself think. It was my only chance to go on working as hard as ever I was able at whatever came to my hand. I left him in God's hands. I was helpless."
The tears were running down her face as she spoke, and Ann said, "Poor Mother, it was hardest for you. Your cry was the old, old cry: 'Joseph is not, Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away....' But our Benjamin was so glad to go. And he never found anything to grumble at, not even at Bramshott, where there was nothing fit to eat, and the huts leaked, and the mud was unspeakable, and his uniform consisted of a red tunic made for a very large man, and a pair of exceedingly bad blue breeks. When he came at Christmas—he made me think of one of Prince Charlie's men with his shabby uniform and yellow hair—how glad he was to have a real wallowing hot bath, with bath salts and warm towels, and get into his own tweeds. He was just beginning to get clean when he had to go again! In a few weeks he got his commission, and in the autumn of 1915 he went to France—'as gentle and as jocund as to jest went he to fight.'"
There was a silence in the pleasant room as the two women thought their own thoughts, and the fire crackled and the winter wind beat upon the house.