The Amazing Years

by W. Pett Ridge

It was August again, and the Bank Holiday, a circumstance that jogged the memory, forcing one to think of the opening of the war two years before. (The banks were not closed, and few people took holiday, because we were still in the thick of the fighting, with good news from the British Headquarters, an excellent report from the Suez Canal, a splendid telegram from Petrograd.) The Croft looked just as it did then, and the countryside, which I once pictured as being over-run by the enemy, was peaceful, but for intermittent booming of guns that were being tested at Woolwich. The stationmaster told me cheap tickets had not yet been re-introduced, and I snatched at the excuse for not going down to Seaford, and there finding my Quartermaster-Sergeant, and, somehow or other, offering an apology to him; a card had reached me in July announcing the wedding of Walter Cartwright of Lincoln's Inn Fields to Lily Cartwright of Haywards Heath, and the last traces of suspicion had been forced to vanish. I might have written a long and explanatory letter, and I did try to do so, but the essays made appeared either too cringing or too haughty, and I persuaded myself that the first step ought to come from him.

Muriel had a week of leave from Gracechurch Street, and my nephew Herbert was staying at the cottage I had taken in Lower Camden, not ten minutes from The Croft; they were out together for the afternoon, with a tea basket for chaperone. Katherine no longer went to the City. She gave up the work reluctantly, but when the money came to her from the dear old Wintertons of Gloucester Place, I persuaded her, and Mr. Hillier assured her, there was no longer any excuse for attendance at the bank; I pointed out that she ought to make way there for some girl who was in need of the salary. So Katherine became the tenant in name, and in fact, of The Croft, and I went in and out of the house, and gave her a word of advice when there happened to be any difficulty with maids. "Why on earth," I overheard one of the servants say, "doesn't Mattie look about, and find a chap, and have the banns put up? She isn't too old, and there's plenty of tradesmen around here ready to wink at her, if she didn't give 'em the frozen face." When one is alluded to as Mattie, the adjective of Meddlesome is understood.

Katherine, and the baby, and I on the first Monday in August had tea on the lawn, and I carried the little fellow about, and picked daisies, and made them into a chain. A note had come from Katherine's husband; she read parts of it aloud to me, and I assured her it could not be long ere he came back, and she counted up once more the number of months he had been away. It occurred to me, in thinking of the space occupied by the war, that the one occasion I had felt annoyed with poor Lord Kitchener was when, quite at the beginning, he prophesied the war would last three years.

"I suppose, Aunt Weston," she said, "you are like Muriel. You intend to do nothing until peace comes. I mean in regard to getting married. Your Quartermaster-Sergeant. The one in the Guards. The tall, broad—"

"Oh," I remarked, indifferently, "that's all off. Didn't I mention it before? Yes, we found that we couldn't agree, and we decided it was of no use going on."

"But this is such a pity," she cried, anxiously. "Can't something be done? Surely, if there's been a misunderstanding it ought not to be a difficult matter to put it right."

"We're both of us obstinate, my dear, and I suppose we'd got too much accustomed to having our own way to be willing to give in to each other. He was in the habit of ordering people about, and I'd got hold of the trick of expecting everyone to obey me, and—and—"

Here, at a moment when I was talking cheerfully and light-heartedly, what must I do but break down. The maid, coming out to take away the tea-things, looked at me sympathetically, and, at my request, ran back to the house to find a handkerchief; Katherine patted my hand, and directed the boy to upbraid me, mainly by gesture, calling attention to an incident of the day before when he had been hurt by a naughty safety pin, and refrained from tears. He was told to urge me to be a soldier, and laugh it off. Mr. Hillier called from the workshop, asking me whether I had seen anything of a small screw-driver; the handkerchief came in time to enable me to offer, in replying, a composed and ordinary appearance. Edward and John arrived from some practice with convalescent soldiers near the West Kent Cricket Club ground, where the first had been playing, and the second—never more any games of the kind for him!—looked on. I slipped away to the tradesmen's gate, to avoid meeting them.

I had locked the front door of my small house in Lower Camden because, as it was a sort of a holiday, strangers might be about. The back looked up at the railway, and I always found it interesting to watch troop trains racing along the down lines with bunches of cheery faces at every window; it was less exhilarating to see the Red Cross trains going to London. There had come a long spell of hot weather, and in opening my gate I noticed that signs of melted tar had been brought from the roadway to the sill. With an exclamation of annoyance at the carelessness of folk, I opened the door, found a damp cloth, and returning, knelt on the mat to repair the damage. Absorbed in the task, I did not glance up when footsteps came.

"Fair maiden," said a deep voice. "Pray rise, and accept the pardon that is willingly granted."