"Oh, you poor thing," Fanny whispered again. She did not say much else, because for the present words were useless. Otherwise her own mind was full of consoling reflections. A man, after all, is not so easily turned aside from what must have been a very big purpose in his life. Already Fanny could look into the future and say "Bless you, my children," in her heart. She had been afraid, drawing her conclusions from Dick's face and Joan's silence, that things were very much worse. Joan might, for instance, have told the truth, and Dick, man-like, might have resented it.

She ran downstairs presently and came up again with the breakfast, fussing round Joan till the other made an attempt to eat something, pouring out her tea for her, buttering her toast. "I should very much like to see you have a jolly good cry, honey," she confessed when the pretence at breakfast had finished. "It would do you a world of good. But since you don't seem able to, I shall pull the curtains and you must try and sleep. I'll come and call you again at ten."

Joan lay quite still in the dim and curtained room, but she did not either sleep or cry. She did not even think very much. She could just see the pattern of the wall-paper, and her mind occupied itself in counting the roses and in working out how the line in between made squares or diamonds.

It was like that all day; little things came to her assistance and interested her enormously. The collection of flowers which Fanny had got on her new hat; the map on the wall of the railway carriage; the fact that the station master at Wrotham seemed to have grown very thin, and was brushing his hair a new way. Uncle John met her as once before at the station, and almost without thinking Joan lifted her face. He stooped very gravely to kiss it. "You are welcome home, Joan," he said. "We have been lonely without you."

The sound of his voice brought back to her mind the last time he had spoken to her, and she was suddenly nervous and tongue-tied. A fat Sally still rubbed her sides against the shafts, nothing had been changed. It was just about this time she had come home two years ago, only now nervousness and a confused sense of memories that hurt intolerably swept aside all thoughts of pleasure and relief.

Uncle John made no further remark after his greeting until they were driving down the village street. Then he turned to her suddenly.

"There is going to be war between England and Germany," he said. "Did you see any signs of excitement in London this morning?"

War! Joan realized on the instant that for the past four days she had not even looked at a paper. Daddy Brown had mentioned some such possibility in connection with his Spring tour, and the members of the company had discussed the prospect with varying shades of excitement on their way up to London. But for herself, her own interests, her own griefs had so swamped her that she had not even noticed the greater tragedy which loomed ahead. Yet what a curious thrill lay in the word; it could rouse her to sudden interest as nothing else had been able to do all day; she could feel the nerves in her body tighten, and she sat a little more erect.

"War, with Germany!" she repeated. "I haven't read the papers, Uncle John. Has it come as near as that?"

"They have invaded Belgium," he answered, "on their way through into France. We couldn't stand aside now if we wanted to. To-night, I expect war will be declared. That was why I asked you if you had seen any signs of excitement in the streets; the papers say that the crowds have been clamouring for war for the last three days."

She could not tell him that she had sat in the cab counting the daisies in Fanny's hat. "What will it mean?" she asked.

"Something bigger than we have ever tackled before," he answered. "It will mean millions of money and millions of men. I don't see much down here, grubbing about among my plants and weeds, but I have kept an eye on Germany." A most unusual excitement was shaking him. "In my young days it was a myth, 'one day Germany will declare war on us.' It has come true too late for me. I'd give everything I possess to get back into the regiment, but they wouldn't have me. This will be a world-shaking war, and I am too old to take part in it." The excitement left his voice as they turned in at the gate. "Your aunt is very ill," he said. "I meant to have warned you before, but somehow I can't think of anything but the one thing these days. You must not be shocked at her appearance."

Miss Abercrombie was waiting to receive them where Aunt Janet had waited for their other home-coming. "Did you bring any news from London?" she asked quickly; the same light shone in her eyes as in Uncle John's. "Has anything been settled yet?"

Joan shook her head. "I have been living this last week with my eyes shut," she confessed; "till Uncle John told me, I did not even know that anything was going to happen."

Miss Abercrombie looked beyond her; the blue eyes had narrowed, a strange expression of intentness showed in her face. "I have always tried not to," she said, "and yet I have always hated the Germans. I wish I was a man." She turned abruptly. "But come upstairs, child, your aunt had her couch moved close to the window this morning, she has lain watching the drive all day. You will find her very changed," she added. "Try not to show any signs of fear. She is very sensitive as to the impression she creates. Every week it creeps a little higher, now she cannot even move her hand. From the neck downwards she is like a log of wood."

"And she is dying?" whispered Joan.

"Mercifully," the other answered. "My dear, we could not pray for anything else."

She opened the door and motioned to Joan to go in. "I have brought her to you, Janet," she said. "Now is your heart satisfied?"

Joan waited for a moment in the doorway. A long, low couch stood by the window, the curtains were drawn back and the head of the couch had been raised up, so that a full stream of light fell upon the figure lying on it. But Aunt Janet's face itself was a little in the shadow, and for the moment it looked very much like Joan's old memories. The straight, braided hair, the little touch of white at the throat, the dark, searching eyes. A nurse, a trim upheld figure in blue, stood a little behind the couch out of sight of Aunt Janet's eyes, so that she could frown and beckon to Joan to come forward unseen by the woman on the couch. But Aunt Janet had noticed the slight hesitation, her face broke into the most wistful smile that Joan had ever seen.

"I can't hold out my arms to you, Joan," she said; "but my heart aches for you, all the same."

Joan took a little step forward; "Aunt Janet," she whispered. Then all that had been bitter between them vanished, and much as she had used to do, when as a child she sought the shelter of those dear arms, she ran forward, and, kneeling by the couch, pressed her warm cheek against the lifelessness of the other's hand. "I have come home, Aunt Janet," she said, "I have come home."

The nurse with one glance at her patient's face tiptoed from the room, leaving them alone together, and for a little they stayed silent just close touching like that. Presently Aunt Janet spoke, little whispered words.

"I hardened my heart," she said, "I would not let you creep back; even when God argued with me I would not listen. My life finished when I sent you from me, Joan, but so long as I could hold myself upright and get about, I would not listen. I am a hard, grim old woman, and I took it upon myself to judge, which is after all a thing we should leave to God. This is my punishment—you are so near to me, yet I cannot lift a hand to touch you. I shall never feel your fingers clinging to mine again."

"Oh, hush, hush, Aunt Janet," Joan pleaded. "Why should you talk of punishment?"

"When you were a child," the old voice went on again, "you would run to me at the end of your day's playing. 'Read me a story,' you would say, and then we would sit hand in hand while I read aloud to you something you knew almost by heart. When I dream now I feel your little warm hands in mine, but I can't feel your lips, Joan, not even when you lay them against my hand as you do now. Nor your tears, dear, silly child, I have made you cry with my grumbling. Joan, look up and see the happiness in my eyes to have you back."

And Joan looked. "I never meant to hurt you as I did, Aunt Janet," she said; "do you believe that?"

Just for a second the lids closed down over the dark eyes. "I hurt myself," Aunt Janet answered, "far more than you hurt me. Put your face down close, so that I can kiss you just once, and then you shall draw up a chair and we will talk sensibly. Nurse will be severe to-night if I excite myself."

Miss Abercrombie put her head in at the door presently and suggested taking Joan downstairs to tea. "Nurse is just bringing up yours," she said. "I know from the expression of her face that she thinks it is time that you had a little rest."

"Very well," Aunt Janet agreed, "take her away, Ann, but bring her back again before I go to bed. Has any news come through yet?"

Miss Abercrombie shook her head. "Colonel Rutherford has just gone over to the station to find out," she added.

Uncle John came back with no further information. He was evidently in a strong state of agitation, he confessed that the question which the Government was settling was like a weight on his own conscience. "It is a question of honour," he kept repeating, "England cannot stand aside."

"'Know we not well how seventy times seven Wronging our mighty arms with rust, We dared not do the will of Heaven, Lest Heaven should hurl us in the dust.'"

Miss Abercrombie quoted to him.

He stared at her with puzzled old eyes. "I don't think that can apply to England," he said. "And in this case the people won't let them. We must have war."

A curious, restless spirit seemed to have invaded the household. Joan sat with Aunt Janet for a little after dinner till the nurse said it was time for bed, after that she and Miss Abercrombie, talking only in fits and starts, waited up for Colonel Rutherford, who had once more tramped down to the station in search of news.

"Nothing has come through," he had to admit on his return; "but I have arranged with the people of the telegraph office to send on a message should it come. We had better get off to bed meanwhile."

Tired as she was, Joan fell asleep almost at once, to dream of Dick—Dick attired, through some connection of her thoughts, in shining armour with a sword in his hand. The ringing of a bell woke her, and then the sound of people whispering in the hall. She was out of bed in a second, and with a dressing-gown half pulled about her, she ran to the top of the stairs. The hall was lit up, the front door open. Uncle John was at it, talking to a man outside; Miss Abercrombie stood a little behind him, a telegram form in her hand. She looked up at the sound of Joan's feet. "It's war," she called softly. "We declared war to-night."

From somewhere further along the passage there was the abrupt sound of a door being thrown open. "Miss Abercrombie, Colonel Rutherford," the nurse's voice called, "quick, quick! I am afraid Miss Rutherford is dying! Someone must run for the doctor at once, please."



CHAPTER XXVII

"Life is good, joy runs high, Between English earth and sky; Death is death, but we shall die To the song on your bugles blown—England, To the stars on your bugles blown."

W. E. HENLEY.

Dick went out into the still night air from the close atmosphere of Joan's room, his mind a seething battleground of emotions—anger, and hurt pride, and a still small sense of pain, which as time passed grew so greatly in proportion that it exceeded both the other sensations. He had said very bitterly to Joan that she had broken his dream, but, because it had been broken, it none the less had the power to hurt intolerably. Each fragment throbbed with a hot sense of injustice and self-pity. He had not the slightest idea what to do with himself: every prospect seemed equally distasteful. He walked, to begin with, furiously and rather aimlessly down in the direction of the Embankment. The exercise, such as it was, dulled his senses and quieted a little the tumult of his mind. He found himself thinking of other things. The men to-day in his Club had been discussing the possibility of war, they had been planning what they would do; instinctively, since the thought of Joan and the scene he had just left were too tender for much probing, his mind turned to that. As he stamped along he resolved, without thinking very deeply about it, that he would volunteer for active service, and speculated on the possibility of his getting taken on at once.

"Doctors will be very needful in this war," one man had said at the Club.

"Yes, by Gad," another had answered. "We have got some devilish contrivances these days for killing our brother men."

Looked at from that point of view, the idea seemed strange, and Dick caught his breath on the thought. What would war mean? Hundreds of men would be killed—hundreds, why it would be more like thousands. He had read descriptions of the South African war, he had talked with men who had been all through it.

"We doctors see the awful side of war, I can tell you," an old doctor had once told him. "To the others it may seem flags flying, drums beating, and a fine uplifting spectacle; but we see the horrors, the shattered bodies, the eyes that pray for death. It's a ghastly affair."

And yet there was something in the thought which flamed at Dick's heart and made him throw his head up. It was the beating of drums, the call of the bugles that he heard as he thought of it; the blood tingled in his veins, he forgot that other pain which had driven him forth so restless a short hour ago.

The great dark waters of the river had some special message to give him this evening. He stood for a little watching them; lights flamed along the Embankment, the bridges lay across the intervening darkness like coloured lanterns fastened on a string. Over on the other side he could see the trees of Battersea Park, and beyond that again the huddled pile of houses and wharfs and warehouses that crowded down to the water's edge. He was suddenly aware, as he stood there, of a passionate love for this old, grey city, this slow-moving mass of dark waters. It symbolized something which the thought of war had stirred awake in his heart. He had a hot sense of love and pride and pity all mingled, he felt somehow as if the city were his, and as if an enemy's hand had been stretched out to spoil it. The drumming, the flag-waving, and the noise of bugles were still astir in his imagination, but the river had called something else to life behind their glamour. It did not occur to him to call it love of country, yet that was what it was.

His walk brought him out in the end by the Houses of Parliament, and he found himself in the midst of a large crowd. It swayed and surged now this way and now that, as is the way of crowds. The outskirts of it reached right up to and around Trafalgar Square. When Dick had fought his way up Parliament Street he could see a mass of people moving about the National Gallery, and right above them Nelson's statue stood out black against the sky.

"If they want war, these bally Germans," someone in the crowd suddenly shouted in a very hoarse and beery voice, "let's give it them."

"Yes, by God!" another answered. "Good old England, let's stand by our word."

"We have got men behind the guns," declaimed a third.

But such words were only as the foam thrown up by a great sea; the multitude did no real shouting, the spirit that moved them was too earnest for that. There were women among the crowd, their eager, excited faces caught Dick's attention. Some were crying hysterically, but most of them faced the matter in the same way that their menkind did. Dick could find no words to describe the curious feeling which gripped him, but he knew himself one of this vast multitude, all thinking the same thoughts, all answering to the same heart-beats. It was as if the meaning of the word citizen had suddenly been made clear to his heart.

He moved with the shifting of the crowd as far as Trafalgar Square, and here some of the intense seriousness of the strain was broken, for round and about the stately lions of Nelson's statue a noisy battle was raging. Several Peace parties, decked with banners inscribed "No War" and "Let us have peace," were coming in for a very rough five minutes at the hands of the crowd. Rather to his own surprise Dick found himself partaking in the battle, with a sense of jubilant pride in his prowess to hit out. He had a German as his opponent, which was a stroke of luck in itself, but in a calmer moment which followed on the arrival of the police, he thought to himself that even that was hardly an excuse for hitting a man who was desirous of keeping the world's peace. Still the incident had exhilarated him, he was more than ever a part of the crowd, and he went with them as far as Buckingham Palace. Some impulse to see the King had come upon the people; they gathered in the square in front of the Palace, and waited in confident patience for him to appear.

Dick was standing at the far end of the Square, pressed up against the railings. In front of him stood two women, they were evidently strangers to each other, yet their excitement had made them friends, and they stood holding hands. One was a tall, eager-faced girl; Dick could not see the other woman's face, but from her voice he imagined her to be a good deal older and rather superior in class to the girl. It was the younger one's spirit, however, that was infectious.

"Isn't it fine?" she was saying. "Aren't you proud to be English? I feel as if my heart was going to jump out of my mouth. They are our men," she went on breathlessly; "it is a most wonderful thought, and of course they will win through, but a lot of them will die first. Oh, I do hate the Germans!" Her whole face flushed with passionate resentment.

"One need not hate a nation because one goes to war with it," the other woman answered. Dick thought her voice sounded very tired.

"Yes, one need," the girl flamed. "We women can't fight, but we can hate. Perhaps we shouldn't hate so much if we could fight," she added as a concession.

"I am married to a German," Dick heard the other woman say bitterly. "I can't hate him."

He saw the girl's quick face of horror and the way she stood away from her companion, but just at that moment some impulse surged the crowd forward and he lost sight of them. Yet the memory of the woman's voice and the words she had said haunted him. War would mean that, then, the tearing apart of families, the wrecking of home life.

"The King, the King!" the crowd yelled and shouted in a million voices. "God save the King."

Dick looked up to the Palace windows; a slight, small figure had come out on to one of the balconies and stood looking down on the faces of the people. Cheer upon cheer rose to greet him, the multitude rocked and swayed with their acclamation, then above the general noise came the sound of measured music, not a band, but just the people singing in unison:

"God save our gracious King, Long live our noble King, God save the King."

The notes rose and swelled and filled the air, the cry of a nation's heart, the loyalty of a people towards their King.

The sheer emotion of it shook Dick out of the sense of revelry which had come upon him during his fight. He pushed his way through the crowd, and climbed over the railings into the darkness of St. James's Park. It was officially closed for the night, but Dick had no doubt that a small bribe at the other side would let him out. The Queen and the little Princes had joined the King on the balcony. Looking back he could see them very faintly, the Prince was standing to the salute, the Queen was waving her handkerchief.

His Club was crowded with men, all equally excited, all talking very fast. Someone had just come back from the House. War was a dead certainty now, mobilization had been ordered, the Fleet was ready.

"Our Army is the problem, there will have to be conscription," was the general vote.

Dick stayed and talked with the rest of them till long after twelve. Morning should see him offering his services to the War Office; if they would not have him as a doctor he could always enlist. One thing was certain, he must by hook or by crook be amongst the first to go.

"We will have to send an Expeditionary Force right now," the general opinion had been, "if we are to do any good."

Dick thought vaguely of what it would all mean: the excitement, the thrill, an army on the march, camp life, military discipline, and his share of work in hospital. "Roll up your sleeves and get at them," his South African friend had described it to him. "I can tell you, you don't have much time to think when they are bringing in the wounded by the hundred."

Not till just as he was turning into bed did he think again of Joan. Such is the place which love takes in a man's thoughts when war is in the balance. The knowledge of her deceit and his broken dream hurt him less in proportion, for the time he had forgotten it. He had been brutal to her, he realized; he had left her crouched up on the floor crying her heart out. Why had she cried?—she had achieved her purpose, for she could only have had one reason in asking the other man to meet him. He could only suppose that he had frightened her by his evident bad temper, and for that he was sorry. He was not angry with her any longer. She had looked very beautiful in her clinging black dress, with the red rose pinned in at her throat. And even the rose had been a gift from the other man. Well, it was all ended; for two years he had dreamed about love, for one hour he had known its bitterness. He would shut it absolutely outside of his life now, he would never, he need never, thanks to the new interests which were crowding in, think of Joan again.

He opened his window before getting into bed and leaned out. The streets were deserted and quiet, the people had shouted themselves hoarse and gone home. Under the nearest lamp-post a policeman stood, a solid, magnificent figure of law and order, and overhead in a very dark sky countless little stars shone and twinkled. On the verge of war! What would the next still slumbering months bring to the world, and could he forget Joan? Is not love rather a thing which nothing can kill, which no grave can cover, no time ignore?



CHAPTER XXVIII

"Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls must dive below."

ANON.

The wave of enthusiasm caused by the War swept even Fanny into its whirlpool of emotion. For several days she haunted the streets, following now this crowd, now that; buying innumerable papers, singing patriotic songs, cheering the soldiers as they passed. She wanted to dash out into the road, to throw her arms round the young soldiers and to kiss them, she was for the time being passionately in love with them. It was her one pathetic and rather mistaken method of expressing the patriotism which surged up in her. She could not have explained this sensation, she only knew that something was so stirred within her that she wanted to give—to give of her very best to these men who symbolized the spirit of the country to her. Poor, hot-hearted little Fanny; she and a great many like her came in for a good deal of blame during the days that followed, yet the instinct which drove them was the same that prompted the boys to enlist. If Fanny had been a man she would have been one of the first at the recruiting station. So submerged was she in her new excitement that Joan and Dick in their trouble slipped entirely out of her mind, only to come back, with the knowledge that she had failed to do anything to help, when, on coming back one afternoon to Montague Square, she saw Mabel standing on the steps of No. 6. To be correct, Mabel had just finished talking to Mrs. Carew and was turning away. Fanny hastened her walk to a run and caught the other up just as she left the step.

"You were asking to see Joan, Miss Rutherford," she panted. "Won't you come in and let me tell you about her?"

Mabel had hardly recognized her. Fanny, dressed up in her best to meet Joan's possible future relations, and Fanny in her London garments, which consisted of a very tight dress slit up to well within sight of her knee, and a rakish little hat, were two very different people. And whereas the Fanny of Sevenoaks had been a little vulgar but most undeniably pretty, this Fanny was absolutely impossible—the kind of person one hardly liked to be seen talking to. Yet there was something in the girl's face, the frank appeal of her eyes, perhaps, that held Mabel against her will.

"The woman tells me that Miss Rutherford has left," she spoke stiffly. "I was really only going to call upon her."

"Yes, I know she's gone," Fanny nodded, "back to her people. But there is something between her and your brother that awfully badly wants to be explained. Won't you come in and let me tell you? Oh, do, please do."

She had caught hold of the other's sleeve and was practically leading her back up the steps. Mabel had not seen Dick since he had left Sevenoaks. He had written a note to their hotel saying he was most awfully busy, his application for service had been accepted, but pending his being attached to any unit he was putting in the time examining recruits. He had not mentioned Joan, Mabel had noticed that; still she had promised to call and make it up with the girl, and Mabel was a person who always religiously kept her promises. But if there had been any disagreement, as Fanny's anxiety to explain showed, then surely it was so much the better. Here and now she would wash her hands of the affair and start hoping once again for something better for Dick.

Fanny had opened the door by this time and had led the way inside. "My room is three flights up," she said. "Will you mind that? Also it is probably dreadfully untidy. It generally is."

This was where Mabel, following the wise guidance of her head, ought to have said: "I am not coming, I really haven't time," or some excuse of that sort. Instead she stepped meekly inside and followed the girl upstairs. Perhaps some memory of Dick's face as he had spoken of Joan prompted her, or perhaps it was just because she felt that in some small way she owed Joan a reparation.

Fanny's room was certainly untidy. Every chair was occupied by an assortment of clothes, for before she had gone out that morning Fanny had had a rummage for a special pair of silk stockings that were the pride of her heart. She bundled most of the garments on to the bed and wheeled forward the armchair for Mabel to sit in.

"I never can keep tidy," she acknowledged. "It used to make Joan fair sick when we shared rooms on tour. Joan is so different from me." Suddenly she threw aside pretence and dropped down on her knees before the armchair, squatting back on her heels to look at Mabel. "That is what I do want you to understand," she said, earnestly. "Joan is as different to me as soap to dirt. She is a lady, you probably saw that; I am not. She is good; I don't suppose I ever have been. She is clean all through, and she loves your brother so much that she wanted to break her heart to keep him happy." She looked down at her hands for a second, then up again quickly. "I'll tell you, it won't do any harm. Mind you, usually, I say a secret is a secret though I mayn't look the sort that can keep one. Joan told me about it at the beginning when I chaffed her about his loving her; and he does, you know he does. It seems that when she first came to London she had funny ideas in her head—innocent, I should call it, and sort of inclined to trust men—anyway, she lived with some man and there was to have been a baby," she brought the information out with a sort of gasp.

"I knew that," Mabel answered, "and because of it I tried to persuade my brother not to marry her."

"I suppose it is only natural you should," Fanny admitted, "though to me it seems that when a woman has a baby like that, she pays for all the fun that went before." She threw back her head a little and laughed. "Oh, I'm not moral, I know that, but Joan is, that's what I want you to understand. Anyway, Joan left the man, or he left her, which is more likely, and the baby was never born. Joan was run over in the street one day and was ill in hospital for a month. That was what Joan came up against," she went on, "when she fell in love with your brother. Tell him, I said, it won't make a pin's worth of difference to his love—and it wouldn't. But Joan did not believe me, she had learned to be afraid of good people, some of them had been real nasty to her, and she was afraid."

"She need not have been," Mabel said. The girl was so earnest in the defence of her friend that one could not help liking her. "Dick knew about it all the time."

Fanny nodded. "Yes, Joan told me that on the day after he had been here. It would have been fairer if he had said so from the beginning. You see," she leant forward, most intense in her explanation, "Joan thought, and thought and thought, till she was really silly with thinking. He had told her he was coming here on Monday to ask her to marry him, and she loved him. I should have held my tongue about things, or whispered them to him as I lay in his arms, holding on to him so that he could not push me away, but Joan isn't my sort. She just couldn't bear to tell him, I guess she was afraid to see his face alter and grow hard. Do you blame her because she was afraid? I don't really know the rest of the story," she finished, "because I was away, but I think Joan got hold of the silly notion that the best thing to do was to have another man hanging about here when Dr. Grant called. She thought it would make him angry, and that he would change his mind about wanting to marry her on the spot. And she pretty well succeeded. I had just got back and was standing in the hall, when Dr. Grant got back from her room and went out. He did not notice me, his face was set white and stern like people's faces are when they have just had to shoot a dog they loved. The other man meant nothing to her, nothing; why she hasn't even seen him for months, and she never liked him. Oh, can't you explain to your brother, he would listen to you." She put her hand on Mabel's knee in her earnestness and pulled herself a little nearer. "It's breaking both their hearts, and it's all such a silly mistake."

"Are you not asking rather a lot from me?" Mabel said quietly; she met the other's eyes frankly. "Putting aside all ideas, moral or immoral, don't you understand that it is only natural that I should want my brother to marry some girl who had not been through all that Miss Rutherford has?"

The quick tears sprang to Fanny's eyes. "If he loves her," she claimed, "is not that all that matters?"

"He may love again," Mabel reminded her.

Fanny withdrew her hand and stayed quiet, looking down at the ground, blinking back her tears. "You won't help," she said presently. "I see what you mean, it doesn't matter to you what happens to her." She lifted her head defiantly and sprang to her feet. "Well, it doesn't matter, not very much. I believe in love more than you do, it seems, for I do not believe that your brother will love again, and sooner or later he will come back to her." She paused in her declamation and glanced at Mabel. "Is he going to the War?" she asked quickly.

"Yes," Mabel assented; she had stood up too and was drawing on her gloves. "He may go at any moment, as soon as they need him. You think I am awfully hard," she went on; "perhaps I am. Dick means a lot to me; if I find that this is breaking his heart I will tell him, will you believe that? But if he can find happiness elsewhere I shall be glad, that is all."

Fanny huddled herself up in the armchair and did a good cry after she had gone. Joan's thread of happiness seemed more tangled than ever; her efforts to undo the knots had not been very successful. There was only her belief in the strength of Dick's love to fall back on, and love—as Fanny knew from her own experience—is sometimes only a weathercock in disguise, blown this way and that by the winds of fate.

The night post brought a letter from Joan. It was written on black-edged notepaper:

"DEAR FANNY,

"Aunt Janet is dead. She died the night after I got here. The nurse says it was the joy of seeing me again that killed her. She was glad to have me back, I read that in her eyes, and it is the one fact that helps me to face things. Death stands between us now, yet we are closer to each other than we have been these last two years. And she loved me all the time, Fanny; sometimes it seems as if love could be very unforgiving. I must stay on down here for the time being; Uncle John needs someone, and he is content that it should be me. The War overhangs and overshadows everything, and it is going to be a hard winter for us all. I suppose he hasn't been back" (Fanny knew who was meant by "he") "to see me. It's stupid of me to ask, but hope is so horribly hard to kill.

"Yours ever,

"JOAN."

Fanny wrote in answer that evening, but she made no mention of Mabel's visit. "Dr. Grant has joined, I hear," she put rather vaguely. "But of course one knew he would. All the decent men are going. London is just too wonderful, honey, I can't keep out of the streets. All day there are soldiers going past; I love them all, with a sort of love that makes you feel you want to be good, and gives you a lump in your throat. They say we have already sent thousands of men to Belgium, though there has not been a word about it in the papers, but I met a poor woman in the crowd to-day who had just said good-bye to her son. I wish I had got a son, only, of course, he would not be old enough to fight, would he? Write me sometimes, honey, and don't lose heart. Things will come all right for you in the end, I sort of know they will."

To Joan her letter brought very little comfort despite its last sentence. Dick had joined; it did not matter how Fanny had come by the news, Joan never doubted its truth. He would be among the first to go, that she had always known, but would he make no sign, hold out no hand, before he left? The War was shaking down barriers, bringing together families who perhaps had not been on speaking terms for years, knitting up old friendships. Would he not give her some chance to explain, to set herself right in his eyes? That was all she asked for; not that he should love her again, but just that they should be friends, before he went out into the darkness of a war to which so many were to go and so few return.



CHAPTER XXIX

"Who dies, if England lives?"

RUDYARD KIPLING.

The black days of September lay like a cloud over the whole country. News came of the fall of Namur; the retreat from Mons; the German Army before the gates of Paris. There was one Sunday evening when the newspaper boys ran almost gleefully up and down the London streets, shouting in shrill voices: "The whole of the British Expeditionary Force cut to pieces." The nation's heart stood still to hear; the faces of the men and women going about their ordinary work took on a strained, set expression. The beating of drums, the blowing of trumpets, the cheering of crowds died away; a new stern feeling entered into the meaning of war.

Dick felt sometimes as if all were expressed in the one word England. The name was written across all their minds as they stared into the future waiting for the news, real news of that handful of men standing with their backs to the walls of Paris, facing the mighty strength of the German Army. England! What did it matter if some hearts called it Scotland, some Ireland, some the greater far-off land of the Dominions? the meaning was the same. It was the country that was threatened, the country that stood in danger; as one man the people rallied to the cry of Motherland. And over in France, with their backs to the walls of Paris, the soldiers fought well!

"Who dies, if England lives?" Kipling wrote in those early days of the war, putting into words the meaning which throbbed in the hearts of the people. Statesmen might say that they fought for the scrap of paper, for an outraged Belgium, because of an agreement binding Great Britain to France; the people knew that they fought for England! And to stay at home and wait with your eyes staring into the darkness was harder perhaps than to stand with your back to the wall and fight. They were black days for the watchers, those early days of the War.

The one thought affected everyone in a different way. The look in their eyes was the same, but they used a different method of expressing it. Dick threw himself heart and soul into his work; he could not talk about the War or discuss how things were going on, and he was kept fairly busy, he had little time for talking. All day he examined men; boys, lying frankly about their age in order to get in; old men, well beyond the limit, telling their untruths with wistful, anxious eyes. Men who tried so hard to hide this or that infirmity, who argued if they were not considered fit, who whitened under the blow of refusal, and went from the room with bitten lips. From early morning till late at evening, Dick sat there, and all day the stream of old men, young men, and boys passed before him.

Fanny took it in quite a different way. Silence was torture to her; she had to talk. She was afraid and desperately in earnest. The love in her heart was poured out at the foot of this new ideal, and to Fanny, England was typified in the soldiers. The night on which the paper boys ran abroad shrieking their first casualty list Fanny lay face downwards on her bed and sobbed her heart out. She visualized the troops she had watched marching through London, their straight-held figures, their merry faces, their laughing eyes, the songs they had shouted and whistled haunted her mind. They had not seemed to be marching to death; people had stood on the edge of the pavement to cheer them, and now—"cut to pieces"—that was how the papers put it. It made her more passionately attached to the ones that were left. It is no exaggeration to say that quite gladly and freely Fanny would have given her life for any—not one particular—soldier. Something of the spirit of mother-love woke in her attitude towards them.

Down in quiet, sleepy little Wrotham the tide of war beat less furiously. Uncle John would sometimes lose his temper completely because the place as a whole remained so apathetic. The villagers did not do much reading of the papers; the fact that the parson had a new prayer introduced into the service impressed them with a sense of war more than anything else. But even Wrotham felt the outside fringe of London's anxiety during the days of that autumn. One by one, rather sheepishly, the young men came forward. They would like to be soldiers, they would like to have a whack at them there Germans. No thought of treaties or broken pledges stirred them, but England was written across their minds just the same. Uncle John woke to new life; he had been eating out his heart, knowing himself useless and on the shelf, when every nerve in his body was straining to be up and doing. He instituted himself as recruiter-in-chief to the district. He would walk for miles if he heard there was a likely young man to be found at the end of his tramp; his face would glow with pride did he but catch one fine, healthy-looking specimen.

He inaugurated little meetings, too, at which the Vicar presided, and Uncle John held forth. Bluntly and plainly he showed the people their duty, speaking to them as he had used to speak in the old days to his soldiers. And over their beer in the neighbouring public-house the men would repeat his remarks, weigh up his arguments, agree or disagree with his sentiments. They had a very strong respect for him, that at least was certain; before Christmas he had persuaded every available unmarried man to enlist.

The married men were a problem; Joan felt that perhaps more than Uncle John did. Winter was coming on; there were the children to clothe and feed; the women were beginning to be afraid. Sometimes Joan would accompany Uncle John on his tramps abroad, and she would watch the wife's face as Uncle John brought all his persuasion to bear on the man; she would see it wake first to fear, and then to resentment. She was sorry for them; how could one altogether blame them if they cried, "Let the unmarried men go first." Yet once their man had gone, they fell back on odd reserves of pride and acquiescence. There was very little wailing done in the hundreds of small homes scattered all over England; with brave faces the women turned to their extra burden of work. Just as much as in the great ones of the land, "for England" burned across their hearts.

Joan's life had settled down, but for the outside clamour of events, into very quiet routine. Her two years' life in London was melting away into a dream; only Dick and her love for Dick stood out with any intensity, and since Dick made no sign to her, held out no hand, she tried as much as possible to shut him from her thoughts. Aunt Janet had died in her sleep the night war was declared; she had never waked to consciousness. When the doctor, hastily fetched by Uncle John, had reached her room, she had been already dead—smiling a little, as if the last dream which had come to haunt her sleep had been a pleasant one.

"Joy killed her," the nurse declared. Certainly she lay as if very content and untroubled.

"I believe," Miss Abercrombie told Joan, "that she was only staying alive to see you. My dear, you must not blame yourself in any way; she is so much better out of it all."

"No, I don't blame myself," Joan answered. "We had made friends before she died; there isn't a wall between us any longer."

The villagers ransacked their gardens to send flowers to the funeral. Aunt Janet's grave was heaped up with them, but in a day or two they withered, and old Jim carried them away on his leaf heap. After that every week Joan took down just a handful and laid them where she thought the closed hands would be, and, because in so doing she seemed to draw a little closer to Aunt Janet, and through Aunt Janet to the great God beyond, her thoughts would turn into prayer as she stood by the grave. "Dear God, keep him always safe," she would whisper. Then like a formless flash of light the word "England" would steal across her prayer; she did not need to put the feeling into words; just like an offering she laid it before her thought of God and knew its meaning would be understood. So thousands of men and women pray, brought by a sense of their own helplessness in this great struggle near to the throne of God. And always the name of England whispers across their prayers.

Just when the battle of the Marne was at its turning-point Dick got his orders to go. He was given under a week to get ready in, the unit, a field hospital, was to start on Saturday and the order came on Monday. One more day had to be put in at the recruiting depot; he could not leave them in the lurch; Tuesday he spent getting his kit together, Wednesday evening saw him down at Sevenoaks.

As once before, Mabel was at the station to meet him. "It's come, then," she said. "Tom is wild with envy. Age, you know, limits him to a volunteer home defence league."

"Bad luck," answered Dick. "Of course I am very bucked to be really going, Mabel. It is not enlivening to sit and pass recruits all day long."

"No," she agreed. "One wants to be up and doing. I hope I am not awfully disloyal or dreadfully selfish, but I cannot help being glad that my baby is a baby. Mother has knitted countless woollies for you"—she changed the subject abruptly; "it has added to poor Tom's discontent. He has to try on innumerable sleeping-helmets and wind-mufflers round his neck to see if they are long enough. Yesterday he talked rather dramatically of enlisting as a stretcher-bearer and going, out with you, but they wouldn't have him, would they?"

Dick laughed, but he could realize the bitterness of the other man's position when Tom spoke to him that night over their port wine.

"Mabel is so pleased at keeping both her men under her wing," he confided, "that she doesn't at all realize how galling it is to be out of things. I would give most things, except Mabel and the boy, to be ten years younger."

"Still, you have Mabel and the boy," Dick reminded him. "It comes awfully hard on the women having to give up their men."

"That's beyond the point," Tom answered. "And bless you, don't you know the women are proud to do it?"

"But pride doesn't mend a broken life," Dick tried to argue against his own conviction.

Tom shook his head. "It helps somehow," he said. "Mabel was talking to some woman in the village yesterday, who has sent three sons to the war, and whose eldest, who is a married man and did not go, died last week. 'I am almost ashamed of him, Mum,' the woman told Mabel; 'It is not as if he had been killed at the war.' Oh, well, what's the use of grousing; here I am, and here I stick; but if the Germans come over, I'll have a shot at them whatever regulations a grandmotherly Government may take for our protection. And you're all right, my lad, you are not leaving a woman behind you."

That night, after he had gone up to his own room, the thought of Joan came to haunt Dick. For two months he had not let himself think of her; work and other interests had more or less crowded her out of his heart. But the sudden, though long expected, call to action brought him, so to speak, to the verge of his own feeling. Other things fell away; he was face to face once again with the knowledge that he loved her, and that one cannot even starve love to death. He wanted her, he needed her; what did other things, such as anger and hurt pride, count against that. He had only kissed her once in his life, and the sudden, passionate hunger for the touch of her lips shook his heart to a prompt knowledge of the truth. He must see her again before he left, for it might be that death would find him out there. War had seemed more of a game to begin with; that first evening when he had shouted with the others round Trafalgar Square he had not connected War with Death, but now it seemed as if they walked hand in hand. He could not die without first seeing Joan again.

He thought of writing her a short note asking her to be in when he called, but the post from Jarvis Hall did not go out till after twelve; he could get to London quicker himself. After breakfast he told Mabel that he found he had to go away for the day.

"Something you have forgotten—couldn't you write for it, Dick?" she asked. "It seems such a shame, because we shall only have one more day of you."

"No," he answered; he did not lift his eyes to look at her. "As a matter of fact it is somebody that I must see."

He had not written about or mentioned Joan since he had gone away from Sevenoaks last; Mabel had hoped the episode was forgotten. It came to her suddenly that it was Joan he was speaking of, and she remembered Fanny's long, breathless explanation and the girl's rather pathetic belief that she would do something to help. She could not, however, say anything to him before the others.

"Will the eleven-thirty do for you?" Tom was asking. "Because I have got to take the car in then."

"It seems a little unreasonable, Dick," Mrs. Grant put in. She had not been the best of friends with him since their violent scene together; her voice took on a querulous tone when she spoke to him. "Who can there be in London, that you suddenly find you must see?" She, too, for the moment, was thinking of the outrageous girl.

"I am sorry," Dick answered. "It is my own fault for not having gone before. I'll try and get back to-morrow."

Mabel caught him afterwards alone on his way out to the garden to smoke a pipe. She slipped a hand through his arm and went with him.

"Mother is upset," she confided. "I don't think she can be awfully well; just lately she cries very easily."

"She always used to"—Dick's voice was not very sympathetic. "Do you remember how angry I was at the way she cried when father died?"

"Yes," Mabel nodded. "All the same, she does love you, Dick; it is a funny sort of love, perhaps, but as she gets older it seems to me that she gets softer, less selfish. And, Dick, I think she feels—as indeed I do, too—that you have grown away from us. It is not the War, though that takes men from us women, too; it is more just as if we were out of sympathy with one another. Are we?"

"What a funny thought." Dick smiled down at her. "There has never been, as you know, much sympathy between mother and myself. But for you, Mabel, things will always be the same between us. I trust you with everything I have."

"And yet you aren't quite trusting me now," she answered. "You are going up to London to see this girl, aren't you, Dick?—and all this time you have never written or spoken to me about her."

"I have been trying to forget," he confessed. "I thought, because of something she did to me, that I was strong enough to shut her outside my life. But last night the old battle began again in my mind, and I know that I must see her before I go out. It is more than probable, Mabel, that I shall not come back. I can't go out into the darkness without seeing her again."

Mabel's hand tightened on his arm. "You mustn't say that, Dick," she whispered. "You have got to come back."

They walked in silence and still Mabel debated the question in her mind. Should she stand out of events, and let them, shape themselves? If Dick went to London and found Joan gone, what would he do then? Perhaps he would not see Fanny and the landlady would not be able to tell him where Joan was. Wrotham would be the last place in which he would look for her, and on Saturday he was leaving for the front. It was only just for a second that her mind wavered; she had initially too straight a nature for deceit.

"Dick," she said, coming to a standstill and looking up at him, "you needn't go to London. Miss Rutherford"—she hesitated on the word—"Joan, is back at Wrotham."

"At Wrotham?" he repeated, staring at her.

"Yes," she answered, "Old Miss Rutherford died two months ago. They had sent for Joan; I believe she arrived the day her aunt died, and she has stayed there ever since. Once or twice I have met her out with Colonel Rutherford. No, wait"—she hurried on, once she had begun. "There is something else I must tell you. I went, you know, to see her in London, but I found that she had left. As I was coming away I met the other girl—I cannot remember her name, but she came here to tea—she insisted on my going back with her; she had something she wanted to tell me about Joan. It was a long, rather jumbled story, Dick; only two facts stand out of it. One was that the baby was never born; Joan was in some sort of accident when she first went back to London; and the other thing was that this girl wanted me to use my influence to persuade you that Joan really loved you; that what had angered you that night was all a mistake." She broke off short, and began again quickly. "I did not promise, Dick; in fact I told the girl I would do nothing to interfere. 'If he can find his happiness anywhere else I shall be glad,' I said. And that is what I felt. I don't try and excuse myself; I never wanted you to marry her if you could forget her, and, Dick, I almost hoped you had—I was not going to remind you."

"I see," said Dick. His pipe had gone out. He lit it again slowly and methodically. "Mabel," he said suddenly, "if I can persuade Joan to marry me before I go out, will you be nice to her as my wife?"

"You can't marry her, Dick," Mabel remonstrated, "there isn't time. But if you will trust me again beyond this, I promise to be as nice to her as you would like me to be."

"But I can, and what's more, I will," Dick answered. "I've shilly-shallied long enough. If she'll have me, and it would serve me jolly well right if she turned me down—it shall be a special licence at a registry office on Saturday morning. My train doesn't leave till two-thirty." He stood up very tall and straight. Mabel thought she had never seen him look so glad to be alive. "And now," he added, "I am going straight across to ask her. Wish me luck, Mabel."

She stood up, too, and put both her hands on his. "You aren't angry with me?" she whispered. "Dick, from the bottom of my heart, I do wish you luck, as you call it."

"Angry? Lord bless you, no!" he said, and suddenly he bent and kissed her. "You've argued about it, Mabel, but then I always knew you would argue. I trust you to be good to her after I'm gone; what more can I say?"



CHAPTER XXX

"But love is the great amulet which makes the World a Garden."

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Colonel Rutherford and Joan had had breakfast early that morning, for Uncle John was going to London to attend some big meeting, at which, much to his own secret gratification, he had been asked to speak. He rehearsed the greater part of what he was going to say to Joan during breakfast, and on their way down to the station. He had long ago forgiven, or forgotten, which was more probable still, Joan's exile from his good graces. After Aunt Janet's funeral, when Joan had spoken to him rather nervously, suggesting her return to London, he had stared at her with unfeigned astonishment.

"Back to London," he had said, "whatever for?"

"To get some more work to do," Joan suggested.

His shaggy eyebrows drew together in a frown. "Preposterous notion," he answered. "I never did agree with it. So long as a girl has a home, what does she want to work for? Besides, now your aunt is not here, who is going to look after the house and things?"

The question seemed unanswerable, and since he had apparently forgiven the past, why should she remind him? She realized, too, that he needed her. She wrote asking Fanny to send on her things, and settled down to try and fill her mind and heart, as much as possible, with the daily round of small duties which are involved in the keeping of a house.

This morning on her way back from the station, having seen Uncle John into his train for London, she let fat Sally walk a lot of the way. The country seemed to be asleep; for miles all round she could see across field after field, not a creature moving, not a soul in sight, only a little dust round a bend of the road showed where a motor-car had just passed. It occurred to her that her life had been just like that; the quiet, seeming, non-existence of the country; a flashing past of life which left its cloud of dust behind, and then the quiet closing round her again.

"The daily round, the common task, Shall furnish all we need to ask."

She hummed it under her breath.

"Room to deny ourselves—"

Perhaps that was the lesson that she had needed to learn, for in the old days her watchword had been:

"Room to fulfil myself."

If it was not for Uncle John now she would have liked to have gone back to London and thrown herself into some sort of work. Women would be needed before long, the papers said, to do the work of the men who must be sent to the firing-line. But Uncle John was surely the work to her hand; she would do it with what heart she had, even though the long hours of sewing or knitting gave her too much time to think.

Sally having been handed over to the stable-boy, Joan betook herself into the dining-room. Thursday was the day on which the flowers were done; Mary had already spread the table with newspaper, and collected the vases from all over the house. They had been cleaned and fresh water put in them; she was allowed to do as little work as possible, but the empty flower-basket and the scissors stood waiting at her hand. The gardener would really have preferred to have done the flower-cutting himself, but Aunt Janet had always insisted upon doing it, and Joan carried on the custom. There were only a few late roses left, but she gathered an armful of big white daisies.

As she came back from the hall Joan saw Dick waiting for her. The maid had let him in and gone to find "Miss Joan." Strangely enough the first thought that came into her mind was not a memory of the last time that they had met or a wonder as to why he was here; she could see that he was in khaki, and to her it meant only one thing. He was going to the front, he had come to say good-bye to her before he went. All the colour left her face, she stared at him, the basket swinging on her arm, the daisies clutched against her black dress.

"Joan," Dick said quickly; he came towards her. "Joan, didn't the maid find you, didn't they tell you I was here? What's the matter, dear; why are you frightened?"

He took the flowers and the basket from her and laid them down on the hall table. Mary coming back at the moment, saw them standing hand in hand, and ran to the kitchen to tell the others that Miss Joan's young man had come at last.

"Isn't there somewhere you can take me where we can talk?" Dick was saying. "I have such an awful lot to say to you."

"You have come to say good-bye," Joan answered. She looked up at him, her lips quivered a little. "You are going out there."

Then he knew why she had been afraid, and behind his pity he was glad.

"Joan," he whispered again, and quite simply she drew closer to him and laid her cheek against his coat, "does it really matter to you, dear?"

His arms were round her, yet they did not hold her as tightly as she clung to him. "Must you go?" she said breathlessly. "There are such hundreds of others; must you go?"

Dick could not find any words to put the great beating of his heart into, so he just held her close and laid his lips, against her hair.

"Take me into that little room where I first saw you," he said presently. "I have remembered it often, Joan; I have always wanted to come back to it, and have you explain things to me there."

She drew a little away and looked up at him. "What you thought of me the other night"—she spoke of it is yesterday, the months in between had slipped awry—"wasn't true, Dick. I——"

He drew her to him quickly again, and this time he kissed her lips. "Let's forget it," he said softly. "I have only got to-day and to-morrow, I don't want to remember what a self-satisfied prig I was."

"Is it to be as soon as that?" she asked. "And I shall only have had you for so short a time."

"It is a short time," Dick assented. "But I am going to make the best of it; you wait till you have heard my plans."

He laughed at her because she pointed out that the flowers could not be left to die, but he helped her to arrange them in the tall, clean vases. They won back to a brief, almost childish, happiness over the work, but when the last vase had been finished and carried back to its proper place, he caught hold of her hands again.

"Now," he said, "let's talk real hard, honest sense; but first, where's my room?"

She led him silently to the little room behind the drawing-room. She had taken it over again since her return; the pictures she liked best were on the walls, her books lay about on the table. The same armchair stood by the window; he could almost see her as he had seen her that first morning, her great brown eyes, wakened to newfound fear, staring into the garden.

"You shall sit here," he said, leading her to the chair. It rather worried him to see the dumb misery in her eyes. "And I shall sit down on the floor at your feet. I can hold your hands and I can see your face, and your whole adorable self is near to me, that's what my heart has been hungering for. Now—will you marry me the day after to-morrow, before I go?"

"Dick," she said quickly; she was speaking out of the pain in her heart, "why do you ask me? Why have you come back? Haven't you been fighting against it all this time because you knew that I—because some part of you doesn't want to marry me?"

His eyes never wavered from hers, but he lifted the hands he held to his lips and kissed them. "When I saw you again in that theatre in Sevenoaks," he said, "it is perfectly true, one side of me argued with the other. When I came to your rooms and found that other man there, green jealousy just made me blind, and pride—which was distinctly jarred, Joan"—he tried to wake an answering smile in her eyes—"kept me away all this time."

"Then why have you come back?" she repeated.

"Because I love you," he answered. "It is a very hackneyed word, dear, but it means a lot."

"But it doesn't always stay—love," she said. "Supposing if afterwards those thoughts came back to worry you. What would it mean to me if I saw them in your eyes?"

"There isn't any reason why they should. Listen, dear"—he let go her hands and sat up very straight. "Let's go over it carefully and sensibly, and lay this bugbear of pain once and for all. Before you knew me or I knew you, you loved somebody else. Perhaps you only thought you loved him; anyway, I hope so; I am jealous enough of him as it is. Dear, I don't ask you to explain why you gave yourself to this man, whether it was impulse, or ignorance, or curiosity. So many things go to make up our lives; it is only to ourselves that we are really accountable. After to-day we won't dig over the past again. At the time it did not prevent me falling in love with you; for two years I thought about you sometimes, dreamed of you often. I made love to a good many other women in between; don't think that I show up radiantly white in comparison to you; but I loved just you all the time. I saw you in London once, the day after I landed, and I made up my mind then to find out where you lived, and to try and persuade you to marry me."

He waited a minute or two; his eyes had gone out to the garden; he could see the tall daisies of which Joan had carried an armful waving against the dark wall behind them. Then he looked back at her very frankly.

"It is no use trying to pretend," he said, "that I was not shocked when I first saw you dancing. You see, we men have got into a habit of dividing women into two classes, and you had suddenly, so it seemed to me, got into the wrong one. Dear little girl, I don't want to hurt you"—he put his hand on her knee and drew a little closer, so that she could feel him leaning against her. "I am just telling you all the stupid thoughts that were in me, so that you can at last understand that I love you. It only took me half a night to realize the mistake I had made, and then I set about—you may have noticed it—to make you love me. When I came up to London I had made up my mind that you did love me; I was walking as it were on air. It was a very nasty shock that afternoon in your room, Joan; I went away from it feeling as if the end of the world had come."

"Oh, I know, I know," she said quickly. "And I had meant it to hurt you. I wanted to shake you out of what I thought was only a dream. I had not the courage to tell you, and yet, that is not quite true. I was afraid if I told you, and if you saw that I loved you at the same time, you would not let it make any difference. I did not want you to spoil your life, Dick."

"You dear girl!" he answered. "On Monday," he went on slowly, "I got my orders for France. They are what I had been wanting and hoping for ever since the War started, and yet, till they came, funnily enough, I never realized what they meant. It seems strange to talk of death, or even to think of it, when one is young and so horribly full of life as I am—yet somehow this brings it near to me. It is not a question of facing it with the courage of which the papers write such a lot; the truth is, that one looks at it just for a moment, and then ordinary things push it aside. Next to death, Joan, there is only one big thing in the world, and that is Love. I had to see you again before I went; I had to find out if you loved me. I wanted to hold you, so that the feel of you should go with me in my dreams; to kiss you, so that the touch of your lips should stay on mine, even if death did put a cold hand across them. He is not going to"—he laughed suddenly and stood up, drawing her into his arms—"your face shall go before me, dear, and in the end I shall come home to you."

"What can I say?" Joan whispered, "You know I love you. Take me then, Dick, and do as you wish with me."

They talked over the problem of his people and her people after they had won back to a certain degree of sense, and Dick told Joan of how Mabel had wished him luck just as he started out.

"You are going to be great friends," he said, "and Mother will come round too, she always does."

"I am less afraid of your Mother than I am of Mabel," Joan confessed. "I don't believe Mabel will ever like me."

Dick stayed to lunch and waited on afterwards to see Colonel Rutherford. He had extracted a promise from Joan to marry him on Saturday by special licence. He would have to go up to town to see about it himself the next day; he wanted to leave everything arranged and settled for her first. He and Joan walked down to the woods after lunch, and Joan tried to tell him of her first year in London, and of some of the motives that had driven her. He listened in silence; he was conscious more of jealousy than anything else; he was glad when she passed on to talk of her later struggles in London; of Shamrock House, of Rose Brent and Fanny.

"And that man I met at your place," he asked. "You did not even think you loved him, did you, Joan?"

"No," she answered quickly, "never, Dick, and he had never been to my room before. He just pretended he had been to annoy you because I suppose he saw it would hurt me."

Colonel Rutherford arrived for tea very tired, but jubilant at the success of the meeting, which had brought in a hundred recruits. He did not remember anything about Dick, but was delighted to see him because he was in uniform. The news of the other's early departure to the front filled Colonel Rutherford with envy.

"What wouldn't I give to be your age, young man," he grunted.

Joan slipped away and left them after tea, and it was then that Dick broached the subject of their marriage.

"I have loved her for two years," he said simply, "and I have persuaded her to marry me before I leave on Saturday. There is no reason why I should not marry, and if I die she will get my small amount of money, and a pension."

Colonel Rutherford went rather an uncomfortable shade of red. "You said just now," he said, "that you were the doctor here two years ago. Did you know my niece in those days?"

"I only saw her once," Dick admitted. "I was called in professionally, but I loved her from the moment I saw her, sir."

"God bless my soul!" murmured Colonel Rutherford. A faint fragrance from his own romance seemed to come to him from out the past. "Then you know all about what I was considering it would be my painful duty to tell you."

"Yes," Dick answered, "I know."

The other man came suddenly to him and held out his hand. "I don't know you," he said, "but I like you. We were very hard on Joan two years ago; I have often thought of it since; I should like to see a little happiness come into her life and I believe you will be able to give it her. I am glad."

"Thank you," Dick said. They shook hands quite gravely as men will. "Then I may marry her on Saturday?"

"Why, certainly, boy," the other answered; "And she shall live with me till you come back."

"You are very lucky, Joan," he said to his niece after Dick had gone away. "He is an extremely nice chap, that. I hope you realize how lucky you are."

Joan did not answer him in so many words. She just kissed him good-night and ran out of the room. To-night of all nights she needed Aunt Janet; she threw a shawl round her shoulders presently and stole out. The cemetery lay just across the road, she could slip into it without attracting any attention. This time she brought no gift of flowers, only she knelt by the grave, and whispered her happiness in the prayer she prayed.

"God keep him always, and bring him back to me."



CHAPTER XXXI

"God gave us grace to love you Men whom our hearts hold dear; We too have faced the battle Striving to hide our fear.

"God gave us strength to send you, Courage to let you go; All that it meant to lose you Only our sad hearts know.

"Yet by your very manhood Hold we your honour fast. God shall give joy to England When you come home at last."

Not till she felt Mabel's soft warm lips on her cheek and knew herself held in the other's arms, did Joan wake to the fact that the marriage was finished and that she was Dick's wife. All the morning she had moved and answered questions and smiled, when other people smiled, in a sort of trance, out of which she was afraid to waken. The only fact that stood out very clear was that Dick was going away in the afternoon; every time she saw a clock it showed that the afternoon was so many minutes nearer.

"You have got to help me to be brave," she had said to Dick the night before. "Other women let their men go, and make no outward fuss. I don't want to be different to them."

"And you won't be," he had answered, kissing her. "If you feel like crying, just look at me, and as your lord and master, I'll frown at you to show that I don't approve."

He himself was in the wildest, most hilarious of spirits. As he had said to Joan, the thought of death had only touched upon his mind for a second; now the mere idea of it seemed ridiculous. He was going out to help in a great fight, and he was going to marry Joan. She would be waiting for him when he came back; what could a man want more?

The Rutherfords came up on Friday to spend the night before the wedding in town, and in the evening Joan and Dick went to a theatre. It was, needless to say, his idea, but he did it with a notion that it would cheer Joan up. If you want to know real misery, sit through a musical comedy with someone you love more than the whole world next to you, and with the knowledge that he is going to the War the next day in your heart. Joan thought of it every moment. When the curtain was up and the audience in darkness, Dick would slip his hand into hers and hold it, but his eyes followed the events on the stage, and he could laugh quite cheerfully at the funny man's antics. Joan never even looked at them; she sat with her eyes on Dick, just watching him all the time. When they had driven back to the hotel at which the Rutherfords were staying, and in the taxi Dick had taken her into his arms and rather fiercely made her swear that she loved him, that she was glad to be marrying him, some shadow from her anguish had touched on him, it seemed he could not let her go. "Damn to-morrow!" he said hoarsely, and held her so close that the pressure hurt, yet she was glad of the pain as it came from him.

She could not ask him into the hotel, for they had no private sitting-room, so they said good-night to each other on the steps, with the taxi driver and the hotel porter watching them.

"To-morrow, then, at twelve," Dick had whispered. "But I am going to bring Mabel round before then; she gets up at about eleven, I think."

"To-morrow," Joan answered; her eyes would not let him go.

They stood staring at each other for a minute or two while the taxi-cab driver busied himself with the engine of his car, and the hall porter walked discreetly out of sight. Then Dick lifted his hand quickly to the salute and turned away.

"Drive like hell!" he said to the man. "Anywhere you please, but end me up at the Junior Conservative Club."

"Couldn't even kiss her," communed the man to himself. "That's the worst of being a toff. Can't kiss your girl if anyone else happens to be about."

Mabel had been very nice to Joan the next morning. She had buried all thoughts of jealousy and dismay, and when she looked into the other girl's eyes she forgave her everything and was only intensely sorry for her. Mrs. Grant had, very fortunately, as Dick said, stuck to her opinion and refused to have anything to do with the wedding. She had said good-bye to Dick on Friday morning with a wild outburst of tears, but he could not really feel that it meant very much to her.

"Mother will have forgotten in a week that she disapproved," Mabel told Joan. "You must very often come and spend the day with us."

Then they had driven down to the registry office, all four of them, and in a dark, rather dingy little room, a man with a curiously irritating voice had read aloud something to them from a book. Now they stood outside in the sunshine again, Mabel had kissed Joan, and Uncle John was blinking at her out of old eyes that showed a suspicion of tears in them. A big clock opposite told her the time was a quarter to one; in an hour and three-quarters Dick would be gone.

They had lunch in a little private room at a restaurant close to Victoria Station. Joan tried to eat, and tried to laugh and talk with the others, because Mabel had whispered to her on the way in: "You've got to help Dick through the next hour, it isn't going to be easy for him." And that had made Joan look at him with new eyes, and she could see that his face was very white, and that he seemed almost afraid to look at her.

After lunch Mabel and Colonel Rutherford went on ahead and left the two young people to say their good-bye alone. When they had gone Dick pushed the things in front of him on the table aside, and laid his head down on his hands. "My God!" she heard him say, "I wish I had not got to go."

He had been so pleased before, so excited over his different preparations, so wildly keen to be really on the move at last. Joan ran to him quickly; kneeling on the floor by his side, throwing her arms around him. Her own fears were forgotten in her desire to make him brave again.

"It won't be for long, Dick," she whispered. "I know something right inside my heart tells me that you will come back. It is only like putting aside our happiness for a little. Dear, you would be wretched if you could not go. Just having me would not make up to you for that."

He turned and caught her to him quickly. "If I had had you," he said harshly, "it would be different. It would make going so much easier."

"You will come back," she answered softly. Her eyes held his, their hearts beat close and fast against each other.

"It seems," he said a minute or two later, "that it is you who are helping me not to make a fuss, and not the other way about as we arranged." He stood up, slowly lifting her with him. "It is time we were off, Joan," he said. "And upon my soul, I need some courage, little girl. What can you do for me?"

"Well, if I cry," suggested Joan, her head a little on one side—she must be cheerful, she realized; it was funny, but in this she could be stronger than he, and she must be for his sake—"I am sure you would get so annoyed that the rest would be forgotten."

"If I see you cry," he threatened, "I shall get out even after the train has started, and that will mean all sorts of slurs on my reputation."

They walked across to Victoria Station and came in at once to a scene of indescribable noise and confusion. Besides Dick's unit there was a regiment going. The men stood lined up in the big square yard of the station. Some had women with them, wives and mothers and sweethearts; children clung to the women's skirts, unnoticed and frightened into quietness by the sight and sound of their mothers' grief. Railway officials, looking very important and frightfully overworked, ran in and out of the crowd. The train was standing at the platform, part of it already full, nearly every window had its little group of anxious-faced women, trying to say good-bye to their respective relatives in the carriage.

Dick and Joan walked the length of the train, and found that Dick's man had stowed away his things and reserved a place for his master in one of the front carriages. Then Colonel Rutherford and Mabel joined them and they all talked, trying to keep up an animated conversation as to the weather; would the Channel crossing be very rough; what chance was there of his going to Boulogne instead of to Havre; Joan stood close to Dick, just touching him; there was something rather pathetic in the way she did not attempt to close her hand upon the roughness of his coat, but was content to feel it brushing against her. The regimental band had struck up "Tipperary"; the men were being marshalled to take their places in the train. Joan wondered if the band played so loud and so persistently to drown the noise of the women's crying. One young wife had hysterics, and had to be carried away screaming. They saw the husband, he had fallen out of the ranks to try and hold the girl when the crying first began, now he stood and stared after her as they carried her away. Quite a boy, very white about the face, and with misery in his eyes. Joan felt a wave of resentment against the woman; she had no right, because she loved him, to make his going so much the harder to bear.

A porter ran along the platform calling out, "Take your seats, please, take your seats." Uncle John was shaking hands and saying good-bye to Dick, "I'll look after her for you," Joan heard him say. Then Mabel moved between them for a second, and pulling down Dick's head, kissed him. After that, it seemed, she was left alone with Dick; Colonel Rutherford and Mabel had gone away. How desperately her hand for the second clutched on to the piece of his coat that was near to her! She could not let him go, could not, could not. The engine whistle emitted a long thin squeak, the soldiers at the back of the train had started singing the refrain of "Tipperary." Just for a second his arms were round her, his lips had brushed against hers. That was all it amounted to, but she had looked up at him and she had seen the need in his eyes.

"Good-bye," she whispered. There was not a vestige of tears or fright in her voice. "You will be back soon, Dick. It is never good-bye."

"No," he agreed. "Never good-bye."

Then he had gone; not a minute too soon, for the train had already started. She could not even see his face at the window, a great blackness had come over her eyes, but she stood very straight held, waving and smiling.

A crowd of the soldiers' wives ran past her up the platform, trying to catch on to the hands held out to them from the windows. The men cheered and sang and sang again. It could only have been one or two seconds that she stood there, then slowly the blackness lifted from her eyes. A word had risen in her heart, she said it almost aloud; the sound of it pushed aside her tears and brought her a strange comfort. "England." It was the name that had floated at the back of her prayers always when she prayed for Dick. She was glad that he had gone, even the misery in her heart could not flood out that gladness: "Who dies, if England lives?"

Mabel was standing near her and slipped her hand into hers. "Come away, dear," she heard Mabel say; "Colonel Rutherford has got a taxi for us."

Joan was grateful to Mabel. She realized suddenly that the other woman, who had also loved Dick, had been content to stand aside at the last and leave them alone. She turned to her like a child turns for comfort to someone whom instinctively it knows it can trust.

"I have been good," she said, "haven't I? I haven't shed a tear. Dick said I wasn't to, and, Mabel, you know, I am glad that he has gone. There are some things that matter more than just loving a person, aren't there?"

"Honour, and duty, and the soul of man," Mabel answered. She laughed, a little strange sound that held tears within it. "Oh, yes, Joan, you are right to be glad that he has gone. It will make the future so much more worth having."

"Yes," Joan whispered. Her eyes looked out over the crowded station; the little groups of weeping women; the sadder faces of those who did not weep and yet were hopeless. Her own eyes were full of great faith and a radiant promise. "He will come back, I know he will come back," she said.

Outside the band played ceaselessly and untiringly to drown the sound of the women's tears:

"It's a long way to Tipperary, It's a long way to go; It's a long way to Tipperary To the dearest girl I know.

"Farewell, Piccadilly, farewell, Leicester Square, It's a long, long way to Tipperary But my heart's right there."

* * * * *

THE END

Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note

Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without notice. The following words were spelled in two different ways and were not changed:

arm-chair, armchair ball-room, ballroom over-worked, overworked

A few obvious typographical errors have been corrected and are listed below.

Page 11: "older women were belating" changed to "older women were debating".

Page 22: "settled the had sat" changed to "settled she had sat".

Page 32: "at firs thought was love" changed to "at first thought was love".

Page 51: "must be ome explanation" changed to "must be some explanation".

Page 53: "ushered in M Jarr.vis" changed to "ushered in Mr. Jarvis".

Page 59: "talking to each other in whsipers" changed to "talking to each other in whispers"

Page 81: "Half-olay out," changed to "Half-way out,".

Page 107: "the crowded steeets" changed to "the crowded streets".

Page 140: "ladies to go ground" changed to "ladies to go around".

Page 151: "found her downstars" changed to "found her downstairs".

Page 162: "s not to be believed" changed to "was not to be believed".

THE END