An Englishwoman's Home

AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S HOME

MRS. A. BURNETT SMITH
[Annie S. Swan]

The removing of those things that are shaken, ... that
those things which cannot be shaken may remain.

Hebrews xii, 27

Mrs. A. Burnett Smith

AN
ENGLISHWOMAN'S
HOME

BY
MRS. A. BURNETT SMITH
[Annie S. Swan]

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1918,
By George H. Doran Company

Printed in the United States of America

TO

THEODATE POPE RIDDLE

AND THE DEAR AMERICAN WAR WOMEN WHO OPENED TO ME
THEIR HEARTS AND HOMES, THIS RECORD OF TRUE
HAPPENINGS IN THE ENGLISH WAR ZONE
IS AFFECTIONATELY AND
GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED

A PUBLISHER'S PREFACE

It was in "Aldersyde" many years ago that I first met Mrs. Burnett Smith, writing then as during the intervening years under the pen name of Annie S. Swan, beloved of all readers of wholesome books.

Many times since I have met her—acquaintance ripened into friendship—visit succeeded visit, until now upon the occasion of her official visit to the United States it has been the good fortune of myself and my family to entertain her as an honoured guest.

In the course of our quiet talks Mrs. Burnett Smith has told me the story of her life in England, just outside of London, since war began. Her experiences were so varied, yet so typical of what the Englishwoman has been called upon to endure, that I begged of her to make record of them for her friends in America. She demurred until I reminded her that she was in our debt many letters—hence the intimate form of this narrative. Indeed it was only by urging the personal obligation that she has been persuaded to tell her story, which it is my proud privilege to publish in this form.

Signature of George H. Doran

NEW YORK, May 10, 1918.

AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S HOME

I

My Dear: To-day I opened the cedar wood box—I can see the little wrinkle of your level brows over these cryptic words, can almost hear you ask why something so simple should be chronicled as a war time event.

I expect you remember just where the box stood on the little very old table at the left side of my study window. It was often between us, when we had those wonderful talks in the summer of 1913. Once I remember I removed it gently out of your reach, as you thumped its precious lid rather hard to emphasise your indignation over the accumulated injustices of life.

It is far removed now from the delicate setting you so much approved, the red rose of the window hangings no longer accentuates its quaint outline.

It now stands bald and bare on the workman-like writing table in the smoking room of our Kingdom by the Sea. You never achieved acquaintance with this dear place in your extensive yet inadequate travel year, owing to George's feverish desire to transport you to the particular bit of Germany he had so long idealised. I am thinking now of his chastened demeanour when he brought you back. Something had gone out of his early dream; that elusive essence which once gone can never be recaptured. Youth is ours only once—we may go on pretending; but there comes no second spring.

Your letters—and certain of George's—considered by his critic worthy of the privilege, have always been "taken care of" (I love that comforting American phrase) in the cedar wood box. It so happens that it is the one intimate thing I have brought here with me. It was picked up in the garden with part of its contents scattered, after making a hasty exit through the window—Heavens! I hear you say—what can she be talking about—and why is she so far from her base in war time? Here is the bald and awful fact—

There is no more North House. Have you taken it in, Cornelia? You loved its simple dignity, its old-world repose. You had no fault to find because it did not spread itself to any great extent, and lacked all the wonderful conveniences to which you are accustomed in your own home. You allowed it the defects of its quality, nay, I even believe that you loved them. Did you not put your hand over my mouth when I audibly wished that my mauve thistle spare bedroom had been a more spacious chamber, where you could sit or stand at an angle immune from draughts, or from bumping against some aggressive article of furniture.

I often apologised for the one bathroom, small at that, and for the inadequate supply of hot water. Then you would point to the moss-grown terrace at the back, the cedar tree on the lawn, sloping to the winding river, and the delicate vistas beyond. "Oh yes," I said, "it is the only garden in the world, but the house could be improved on." Did I really say that? I know I did, not once, but a thousand times, and now I am the prey of a most unendurable kind of remorse, that which we feel when something we loved is removed permanently from our sight and we know we belittled it.

Now perhaps you will understand, Cornelia,—the home we all loved together—though often belittling it in the grumpy Scotch way—is dead. It will never be ours any more. Its roof can never shelter those we love, nor its walls echo the happy laughter which doeth good like a medicine. I see the bewilderment gathering in your quizzical eyes, and you wonder what it is all about, and whether I have taken leave of the small modicum of sense Himself and you allotted to me the last time we discussed the question together.

The truth is, I am afraid to begin. I do not know how to tell it. The world is full of words—but there do not seem to be any to fit this case. But I must try. I have been sitting ever so long, looking out to the sea, which is no longer a pathway to the sun, but a menacing grey highway across which awful shapes may at any moment race to destroy our peace, and fill us with terror and dismay. To the left, as I turn my eyes, through the window I see the gleaming nozzle of one of the big guns, with the gunners ready beside it. They are there night and day. So even our summer home is in the grip of the war monster from which there is no escape. It is the 16th of October and the skies are very grey, the air heavy with a strange chill, the sea mists are creeping up—and the moan of the breakers against the rocks seems to presage some coming doom.

It was very lovely in Hertfordshire in October—its early weeks gave us a taste of the most beautiful Indian summer I have ever seen. Our chestnut trees were never more glorious, nor more vividly clad. Flame was the keynote of the colour scheme, and it lingered—wonderfully blent with all the undertones of departing summer, till the picture our garden presented was so entrancing, I could not attend to my ordinary tasks, grudging every moment spent away from it. We were clearing the herbaceous borders—and planning a new scheme for enhancing the beauty of the lily pond. I had long serious discussions with the gardener, an understanding creature, about economy in bulbs. The true garden-lover would do without clothes, rather than raiment for her garden; but we had to patriotically compromise, and, with a little ingenuity and extra planning, saw a very promising vista for the spring. You have noticed, indeed, it was, I think, more than once the subject of our talk, that the last summer of a person's life is often the most beautiful. It was so with our boy.

Do you remember how I told you that when our little fishing expedition at Amulree came to an end in 1910, and the children were so loth to leave the old inn and the everlasting hills, I said to him, "Never mind, son, next summer when Dad and I go to America to visit Uncle George and Aunt Cornelia, you and Effie will come here all by yourselves, or with Aunt Jack, and have it all over again."

He turned his big quiet grey eyes on mine and said very simply, "These things don't happen, Mummy." He was very young when he learned that lesson. It all came true, not in my sense, but in his.

Before the next summer came, his dear beautiful body was laid on the cliff side at the Kingdom by the Sea and his soul had stolen "away" to his appointed place in his Father's House.

That was the most beautiful summer in our lives—not in his only, but in our whole family life, of a richness and nearness and dearness, to describe which, there are no words.

Well, and this the last summer of our garden's life, in so far as it concerned us, was the most beautiful we have ever known, in a circle of many summers, all beautiful.

Never had there been such wealth of bloom. The roses! They simply flung themselves in regal magnificence at our feet. The more you cut and gave away the more persistently they insisted upon coming on; not in single spies, but in battalions.

The old walled vegetable garden which you so loved, being invariably found, when missing, between its box hedges, surpassed itself. We could not use the stuff. Our Belgian household over the way, of whose doing and being I as chairman of the Belgian Guest committee have written you so much, had access to the garden to help themselves. It is a royal memory we have; but only a memory. Sometimes it seems as if soon, all life would be only a memory.

Hope seems—for the moment—to have folded her tent like the Arabs, and silently stolen away.

II

On the 12th Effie came home from France in her first leave from active service. You can imagine the excitement in the household, the somewhat tremulous expectancy of Himself and myself.

The one ewe lamb, as you know right well, is a kind of desperate possession. Once or twice I have recalled your warning counsel not to let her leave us; but, my dear, you would have to be here to understand the strange new blood that is firing the veins of both youth and maturity and age, the red blood of patriotism. She was very young to go out to that strange awful sublime place they call the war zone. But she came back to us radiant, quite unchanged; but yes, there is a change. She has the eyes of one who, born in a great time, is striving to live greatly. She was, before the war, one of the lotus flowers to whom the call came opportunely, and now she is blooming for others all unconscious of herself. You who have known and shared my anxieties about her future, will rejoice with me, I know. She is not a good letter writer, she has the very Scotch habit of leaving out all you want to know.

A dear English friend of mine, whose name I must not tell you, speaking of her husband, one day in a moment of exasperation said, "You have to take too much for granted with a Scotch husband." I smiled comprehendingly, having lived so long with Himself.

Effie is a little like that. You never know what is shut up inside of her. The Boy was so different, so easy to know—and so lovely when you did know him. Well I suppose it would not be good for us to be given without effort or seeking the key to every treasure house. Heavens, how I wander! I must come back and tell about the thing to which Effie came home.

We had had a quiet lovely day together. I had managed to worm a little out of her about her beloved camp at Etaples, not half enough—but just enough to know what this wonderful new life of service for others is doing for the child.

Himself was rather busy, and had to go out after dinner to see some patients who required a late visit. The house surgeon from the hospital had just dropped in asking for him and we kept him, expecting that Himself would be back quickly.

At half past nine, tea came up. Do you remember how you, and especially George, jeered at our evening teacups, and how gradually you were drawn into the snare until you acquired the passion, and used to watch the library clock, sure the kitchen one did not correspond?

I had a restless feeling that night. It was very dark, with a close sultry air, and I went upstairs throwing open windows that had been shut. I was standing at the open window of Himself's dressing room when I heard the unmistakable whirr of the Zeppelin engine.

I have tried to describe it to you before. It is a sinister grinding noise, unlike anything on earth. I flew down to tell them that the Zeppelins were out. Effie, eager with the quick longing of youth for every adventure, said, "No such luck," and we immediately went out on the terrace to crane our necks in an endeavour to discover the marauder's silver silhouette against the clear dark sky. Then quite suddenly there was the most terrific bang, and somewhere in the near distance strange lights like shooting stars seemed to descend upon our little inoffensive town—we stood dumb, holding our breath, while the bangs continued getting louder and louder. Presently, we were joined by the terrified servants, who, at their supper in the basement kitchen, unaware that the Zeppelins were in the neighbourhood, came rushing out. The young ones were inclined to scream. I remember laying my hand on somebody's arm, and saying, "Hush, be still!" To me it was a stupendous moment, during which the whole fabric of existence seemed to be tottering—and we on the edge of some unimaginable abyss. I remember Effie's face lit by the weird glare from the incendiary bombs now falling in rapid succession from the upper air.

There was no fear upon it, only a kind of uplifted spirituelle look. I seem to remember that she said, "Do you think it will be this one, Mummy?" but she stoutly denies having uttered any such words. Presently, however, "this one" descended and found its mark. The din was indescribable; conceive of forty-two bombs dropping in a limited area in the space of four minutes, the glare of their bursting, the air full of sulphurous fumes and an awful indescribable sense of evil, imminent, devilish, against which we were absolutely helpless and unarmed. As we stood there in absolute silence, holding on one to another, we had no sort of knowledge or information that our very own house was being destroyed. To you this may seem incredible, when you reflect that the terrace, though wide, is joined to the house.

It was all so quick and so terrible, that we felt it must be the end of the world, the total destruction of everything we had considered stable in our earthly life. Presently, the voice of the man beside us spoke: "I think it's over now, and we're safe." The air-ship, sailing low, so that we saw it distinctly between the cone of the cedar tree and the sky, disappeared rapidly and the noise of explosions ceased—only to be replaced by the cries of excited people, and the moans of the hurt and dying in the street. The darkness was profound, the power station having been destroyed early in the attack.

We pulled ourselves together, and proceeded towards the house with a view of entering. Part of the walls remained standing, but there was no house. There in the middle of the beautiful hall you so much admired the whole fabric seemed to have collapsed. Doors, windows, furniture, pictures, piled in an inextricable heap. We saw right out into the street in the further side, where already there were twinkling lights and moving figures as the work of mercy and assistance began. But where was Himself?

Quickly people began to climb in upon our ruins, seeking presumably for us or for our remains. Presently, among them, very white in the face, and very glassy about the eyes, appeared Himself, wheeling his bicycle. They had told him down the street that his home and every one in it had been destroyed. He counted us,—we clung together for just a moment, then he said, "I must go." "Where?" I asked, still holding on. "To my job," he answered as he unstrapped his emergency bag from his machine and strode away. We did not see him any more till the early morning, he and his colleagues being busy at the hospital. Then the whole population seemed to be crowding us where we stood. We had no lights but a few stray candles. Police and military presently appeared to take possession, and the general public were excluded. The accredited powers climbed across the debris to reach the garden, when a strange sight presented itself. Five incendiary bombs which had been dropped after the explosive ones and were intended to complete the work of destruction, had only sunk in the soft earth, and were burning there like bale fires. The authorities were hunting for unexploded bombs, always a terrific menace until handled by experts and shorn of their hellish power. They said, and say still, that one is at the bottom of the river where it can't do any harm. We tried to go up what remained of the staircase. The secondary staircase which connected the old wing with the more modern part, was blown into space; not a step of it remained. The beds, which had been in the rooms of the old wing, were outside somewhere, their twisted metal work and torn mattresses being afterwards found near the railings of the front garden.

You remember the mysterious little passage with the double doors that led from my bedroom into the old wing; well, it was entirely gone; cut off as clean as if a knife had done it. We were very adventurous, climbing about trying to see by candlelight the full extent of the damage, and with nobody to tell us that we took our lives in our hands every minute where walls were tottering, and ceilings, so to speak, hanging by a thread. My eight-foot old mahogany wardrobe which you admired so much had climbed upon my bed, and half the ceiling was on the top of that. Conceive what would have happened had the attack come without warning, when we were asleep in our beds!

It has happened in other places. The protecting mercy of God was over and round about us—our time had not yet come. I had then no feeling of anguish over my ruined home, none of us had. To Effie, it was a great adventure—the War in concrete visible tangible form! We simply did not realise what it all meant; I suppose we shall realise it right enough later on.

Midnight came—one o'clock in the morning—two o'clock—Himself turned up at last and insisted that I should find a billet somewhere and lie down. He and Effie determined to keep a vigil in the ruins. A fine rain had begun to fall, but there were dry places in the house, a corner of the drawing room queerly almost untouched. The vagaries of the concussion were beyond belief. The gable end of the dining room left standing was stripped inside of every scrap of plaster, leaving the lathes naked and bare. An old Chippendale mirror still stuck heroically to its nail, above the mantel, or rather the place where the mantel had been, not shattered or scratched. But all the lovely old ladder-back chairs are gone and the sideboard. I shan't really know till I go back whether we have anything left.

Effie took me up to my billet in a neighbour's house, and as we groped our way by the railings in the inky darkness I suddenly clutched something soft. The flashlight revealed part of our dining room curtains—heavy silk damask ones, that had evidently been blown clean out up the street, and twisted round the railings by invisible hands.

I did not sleep any, you may be sure. I was the slave of physical fear after the excitement had died down. Shaking in every limb, even to my lips, I lay till about six o'clock, then got up again and dressed to go and seek my treasures.

The sun was shining cheerfully as I wended my way through the gaping crowds which had come from God knows where, getting a sympathetic word and grip here and there from familiar friends.

And presently I came to the North House gate, Oh Cornelia!

It all looked so piteous in the clear sunlight, the shell of the dear home; the inextricable mass of plaster and bricks and broken wood work and all the belongings of a house. The crowds, there seemed to be millions of them, everywhere fell back to let me go in. Himself met me, smiling bravely, but a little grim about the eyes.

"We are going to breakfast at the Odell's," he said, "and after that you and Effie go off to Scotland; it is all arranged."

It was no use protesting—you know how Himself can look, and what it means when he says a thing has got to be done.

We hung about a little, and I had a sort of resentment because the public were all over the place where my house had been. They were not our own townsfolk, but incomers, who had arrived in motors, in horse traps, on bicycles from miles away. The North road was simply black with them. We went off presently in a cab to our kind neighbour's house, where we had a good breakfast and much sympathy, which seemed to put fresh heart into us. When we got back, it was to get ready for our journey to Scotland.

Somebody found my clothes; people I had never seen before seemed to be packing them up in trunks, not ours, which appeared mysteriously from the outside. Kind hands brought us lunch, already prepared, and so we got ready to go away. But before the end I had a hard task. Poor Tubby, the lovely old mother chow, had gone mad, or at least become dangerous through sheer terror. You know how sensitive she was. She had to be shot and nobody could get her out of the kennel but me. I went and dragged her forth and put the collar around her neck and took her to the place of execution, where the man with the gun was waiting.

How did I do it? God knows, Cornelia. But it was absolutely necessary for the safety of human creatures, and I know she has forgiven me in the happy hunting ground where she has gone. She knew I loved her; but when I heard the report of the gun the iron seemed to enter into my soul. Wang has gone too, and Satan, the impish and delicious Persian cat that became an inmate of this animal-loving house after you left, was found stark by the edge of the immense crater made in the front garden by the bursting shell. It wiped out his favorite laurel bush, under which we suppose he had been sleeping when the terror came.

He was not injured in any way—he died of the same concussion which split the old cedar tree and broke it right in two. Soon after eleven we trundled away to the station en route for London and Scotland, leaving Himself to make shift alone. It was his ordination, and we seemed too dazed to stand up against it. We have been here three days, and already Effie and I are both very restless. I expect in a few more days in spite of Himself we shall be speeding back, for there is much to do there. First and foremost we have to find another roof to cover us.

I will write as soon as I get back, and can co-ordinate my thoughts.

You and George will mourn with us, and I have no doubt George's sentiments on the subject of America entering without further parley will be vivified and strengthened. As I write I see the desolate ruins—the broken and desecrated household gods, the crowds of gaping strangers who regarded it as a spectacle without appearing to sense its tragedy. Other houses in the town were destroyed, but I have presently no knowledge or cognisance of them.

All sorrow and loss must be intensive at the first. This certainly is. It is a poor devilish kind of sport, to rain death upon non-combatants and sail away immune from punishment or reprisal. It makes women dumb and men desperate. I know what is in the mind of Himself. Loathing of the age limit, longing to defy the years and be out with the fighting forces in the field. I shall never keep him after this, Cornelia. He will slip through another door.

Is there a light? Yes, I remember kind faces I never saw before looking eloquently into mine, the clasp of strange but friendly hands, the offer of a score of homes. The gleam of brotherhood and sisterhood lightens the dark places of the earth, and defies organised and perfected cruelty to do its worst.

III

It is three weeks since I wrote my last letter—two weeks and three days since I came back—no, not home, only back. We have no home any more—as we used to have it, though we have found a roof to cover us.

I got your cablegram yesterday—it was dear of you to send it, but my spirit quailed at what it must have cost you to send such a lengthy despatch. Of course we knew how George and you would feel about it, and there was a curious softness in Himself's eyes when I showed it to him; we even discussed whether we should launch out into a similar extravagance. We decided, however, that no adequate presentment of what we were doing could be offered in any cablegram, and that we must ask you to wait for another letter. Himself even said, he would write it, but you know how he lives, and what stacks of unanswered ones lie in his pigeon-holes. I heard him say in an exasperated moment, that his private and particular hell would be a place where there were unending streams of letters of no importance, which he would be compelled to answer by return of post. It was he who suggested the one word, "reconstructing," and we both hope you grasped its full significance. It is a big word, and it means a lot. Before there can be reconstruction, there has to be destruction, and the Hun has done it very thoroughly for us.

I had better go back, I think, to where I left off. I told you, I remember, that after three days both Effie and I grew restless, and on the sixth we wired Himself that we were coming back and that he must find a place for us. We knew that he was still sleeping on a shake-down in the corner of the drawing room where the free winds of Heaven blew in upon him—and the rain when it chanced that way.

You know how he loved everything in the house, how much of it was his individual choice, only the grouping left to me. And he was hanging on desperately to the remnant of his treasure house—though forbidden by official orders to touch anything until the representative from the Government Air Raid Insurance should come to inspect the premises, and the damage.

When we arrived we found it arranged for us to stay at the Wrights' house. You remember how you liked them, free, jolly, unconventional people, who understand hospitality in the big sense, which makes you feel at home in their house. I can never forget what they have done for us at this time; and they were only two out of many. Effie remained only long enough to collect her kit and go back to her beloved Camiers—of course the house couldn't mean as much to her; and for the time being she is detached from us and her usual surroundings. She went off gaily and gladly, not aware I am sure of the heartache she left behind. She will be the heroine of a great adventure when she gets back to her comrades. But I am sure she will never tell how fearlessly she carried herself through it.

To us—that is to me, principally, is left the work of reconstruction.

We have got the loan of a house from a kind neighbour who volunteered to find his family other quarters. They all felt that Himself must have quarters as near as possible to the old place, so that his patients could easily find him, and his professional work be carried on.

You will remember the house, a wide red brick many-windowed structure, standing sheer on the street just opposite St. Andrew's Church. You will particularly remember it because you asked me what style of architecture its porch was supposed to represent. I replied that I had been told it was Chinese Chippendale.

You said, "Whatever is that, anyway?" And we both laughed. Behold us then, installed in the house of the Chinese Chippendale porch. It's just round the corner from the North House, less than two minutes' walk. It is very strange and rather awful, I find, to live with other people's things. They don't belong to you. There is no intimate touch, and you don't in the least want to arrange them or show them to the best advantage.

There are more chairs in this house than in any house I have ever seen or heard tell of—the sort you don't want to sit on.

It is too full of everything for comfort, but the beds are beautiful, and it is such a relief to have a shelter, that we never can be grateful enough.

Cornelia, I wonder if you will understand that I was two whole days here, nearly three, indeed, before I dared to go round the corner. I simply couldn't; but at last, quite early one morning before many people were about, and Himself was safely out of the way, I stole round. There was a policeman at the gate, for there were heaps of things that could easily be removed by predatory hands. Wooden barricades had been erected everywhere, and what windows were left were boarded over. The man touched his hat to me, but did not open his mouth. He was an understanding creature, who saw how it was with me.

Before I went inside I took a bird's-eye view of what had happened outside. There was a great gap in the wall of the kitchen garden which flanked the street, a gap big enough to let a horse and cart through. In this street just by the kerb you could see where the crater made by a shell explosion had been filled up. I forget whether I mentioned in my first letter how that particular shell had broken the water main, causing a small deluge to add to the general horror of that night of desolation. I went into the garden through the gap, and round about, to the river's brim, thankful to find little damage, except much trampling of the lawns. The gardeners, I think, had gone to their breakfast—at least, I did not see either of them. All the time I kept my eyes averted from the house; but when I came behind the cedar tree, half of which was torn away, showing a hideous scar all over its beautiful body, I could not help seeing. I gripped myself tight, and ran, just ran up the sloping lawn across the terrace, and right in. I don't know how I can describe it. I feel as if I must not even try. Nothing had been touched. It was sealed, so to speak, by Government orders. A few things had been covered up to prevent the rain damaging them. It was just awful, indescribable, heartrending. The dining room was pitch dark, but a candle standing on the seat of a broken chair with matches beside it invited me to inspection. I can't describe what I saw, and there seemed to be a faint odour of sulphur and brimstone redolent of the bottomless pit. The drawing room had suffered least, though part of the ceiling had fallen on the piano, marring its beautiful top. The shake-down on which Himself had slept all the time we were away, stood in what looked like the safest corner. He had set up a screen to keep the night winds off his dear head. I just sat down there and after a minute tears came. They were the first I had shed and they were blessed. They relieved the tightness of my heart, the band across my brain. Afterwards I was able to climb in and about, taking stock and inventory of what had happened. I thought that with luck a few sticks might be retrieved, and mended up, but knew that all my cupboards must be bare of the glass and china which every housewife holds most dear. You remember the cupboard in the dining room with its priceless store of Waterford and old English glass? There is not so much as a salt cellar left.

A cup here and there, with the handle off, or a gash in its side is all that is left of my Crown Derby, my old Worcester, my Lowestoft. It is all very awful. But these are only things. They don't at this moment matter. What does matter is that the monster of war has laid its foul desecrating hand on the sanctuary of my home.

In a flash of lightning, the suffering of France, of Belgium and all the invaded countries stood revealed. I understand, and I know why our sweet dignified old Belgian refugee guest, Madame Savarin, spat upon the remnants of the bomb I showed her yesterday.

IV

Himself got George's second cable this morning. When I read it the words of the old hymn flashed back, "Death like a narrow sea divides that happy land from ours."

I wonder if you just quite know how safe and free and happy you are on the other side of the Atlantic. I see you knit your brows, and hear George's language, occasionally,—I regret to say, not quite fit to grace any very genteel chronicle. I hope this is going to be a little more than that anyway. I will take back the last adjective, and beg you to thank God that you are safe and free for a little while longer. Happy I know you and your kind will never be until you are standing shoulder to shoulder with us in this awful but glorious fight. I don't know how George's cable ever got through, really, on your side or ours. Conceive what would have happened had he presented it at any telegraph office in Germany. His head would have paid the forfeit. I am going to set it down here just to see how it looks in real writing with the cold official script.

There, what do you think of it? I only hope you are properly proud of George.

All the Georges are nice. There is something comforting about them. Shall I ever forget the other George, whom you too liked, who flew to us when the Heavens darkened in 1910. He was here again at this time, the moment he could be of any use. When we are in trouble, his own affairs, however urgent, have to stand by. It is wonderful to have friends like that. They are a shield and buckler in the day of trouble.

Well, I laughed out loud when I read George's cablegram and it did me so much good that I wish he would think up a new one every day, each one more violent than the other. It would never exceed or even fit the crime. Perhaps you wonder how I can joke and play about with words in the midst of what is happening. I have to, Cornelia. Don't you understand? If I didn't I should never be able to carry on? And when I sit down in obedience to George's express command by cable to tell you every single solitary thing—though how he ever expects it to be allowed out of the country I don't know, my spirit positively quails.

It is very awful, my dear—much more awful than it seemed at first. I am now spending all my days in the ruins, mostly quite alone, trying to retrieve what remains of our household gods. I am allowed to do this since the day the Government Insurance Inspector came, and, having inspected, pronounced and assessed the damage, unsealed the debris, and went away—I don't doubt, quite satisfied with himself. I suppose there is some kind of a system for the appointment of such officials, perhaps the less they know about their job the better. This one had no sort of conception of values. I tried to explain some of them, but soon gave out, and let him carry on. Let me try to give you some idea of the tragic comedy. He was elderly, quiet and polite, not in the least sympathetic, because I am only one of many similarly placed, and sentiment interferes with business. His job was to minimise our loss. What was mine, I wonder? I'm not sure, but this I do know, that it hurt, hurt desperately, to have to stand by, and hear this well-meaning person make light of what had happened. Once or twice I longed to see Wang come bounding out of the unknown with his lovely face distorted, his bristles standing up and his growls like distant thunder in the air, but alas, I have to go through this thing quite alone. Himself couldn't do it—even if he weren't too busy. He would just have a stand-up fight with the government representative, and that would be an end of compensation, though no doubt Himself would enjoy the tussle immensely. We didn't know quite where to begin. A table was erected in what is left of the library, and he spread out his inventory sheets and we started in. I had made an inventory too, and the contents of the dining room came under discussion first. He had a copy of this which had been previously submitted to him through our lawyer. His business was now to assess the amount they would pay. He put down the entire contents of the glass cupboard at ten pounds. Fifty dollars of your money. I gently but firmly pointed out that there were single pieces in it that had cost that. He shook his head, and explained that in that case each piece should have been insured separately, as in the case of articles of jewellery. That was the platform from which he never departed, and I quickly realised that our cause was lost. Six dollars he allowed for that priceless old Chamberlain Worcester tea service over which you raved so often, warning me that it should not be used every day. But you know we have never kept anything just for ornament; or lived in a house as a mere show place. The other George, of whom I've just been speaking, once told me I could make a home out of a cave, supposing I had only a handful of twigs to start with. Well, that is how we have lived. The Insurance gentleman was more reasonable about large solid articles of furniture, with which he seemed to be quite familiar. I don't suppose he observed at what an early stage I gave up the ghost and simply allowed him to carry on, and put down what figures he liked. He visibly brightened, however, as the ghastly inspection proceeded, and became more and more friendly every minute, but not any more understanding.

I got even with him over Effie's clothes. You know she wears only uniform in France, with one simple silk or crêpe-de-chine frock for the rare occasions when she goes out to dine, or to some informal hospital dance. So all her clothes were down in the wardrobe room, and they had been pulled out of the debris, and laid, a melancholy array, on the only bed left standing, which happened to be her own. You can imagine what last year's frocks look like, especially when they have been a good deal worn, and finally come through an air raid. A torn and crumpled mass of satin and lace and chiffon, stained with lime and water. The sight seemed to affect the official mind profoundly; though my shattered treasures had left him cold. He asked their values, touching them rather pitifully; perhaps he visualised the radiant youth they had once enfolded, and I may have been misjudging him all along.

He then asked bluntly what they had cost. I replied vaguely about ten pounds each. He put down fifty pounds without a murmur, and hurried out of the room as if he had had enough.

It took the whole long, long day, Cornelia, and when he went out for his lunch I sat among the ruins, and ate the dry sandwich Florence had put up for me. I fear I watered it with my tears. I never knew there could be so many tears in the world. I had none to shed when the Boy went away; but somehow this has unsealed the fount. It is a different kind of grief; it tears you a thousand ways; sometimes you are shaken with an impotent rage. Of course it means that it will be more evanescent.

The heart can only stand a certain number of vital, staggering blows. After the assessing business was over I was free, so to speak, of what remained of my own possessions, and I have been going round every day immediately after breakfast and stopping until dusk drove me away. Lots of people wanted to help. I didn't want them—I had to be alone with my ghosts. Florence would come round now and again when her work was done, or between whiles, and then we just stood together thinking unutterable things. She is not quite a servant, as you know, but a dear faithful, understanding friend who lives in the heart of us, and loves us every one. But mostly I was alone, my job to gather up the fragments—the little things, and try to gauge and co-ordinate the whole before the removal men came to take everything away. I found quite a lot of things and carried them one by one to one of the pantries where a shelf remained intact. My greatest find, in a place with which they had no connection whatever, was four cut crystal baskets belonging to the old Sheffield plate epergne, we used as a centrepiece in the days when table decoration was of the heavy ornate type.

How pleased I was to get them, you can't think! I held them tight quite a long time, gave them a little polish with the corner of my apron, and then took them to the pantry shelf aforesaid, where I regarded them with a species of adoration as the nucleus of some future glass cupboard collection, when war has ceased to be.

But I think it is ordained that for me there shall be no new glass cupboard. When I got back next day, two of them had gone. I pinched myself, wondering whether, like some of the college boys after a night out, I had been seeing double.

Then my friend, the big policeman, told me he had turned out some well-dressed people wandering through the ruins after I had left. It was no common thief who took these little things. There were articles of more value beside them. No, it was some horrible woman who coveted a souvenir from the Zeppelined house, and took what she fancied most. I rather wish she had taken the four, then I might have amused myself by dreaming that they had been found.

It was a mean cold-blooded unsisterly kind of theft. It almost deserves to have the adjective Hunnish attached as a label.

Every day this sad task of mine has been going on, for more than a week, and now, tomorrow, this being Sunday, the workmen are coming in and the removal men, and the few sticks, at least such as are worth removing, will be taken away to a furniture hospital for repair.

Your housewifely soul, already rent, I am sure, by this recital of my woes will be still further exercised by a brief description of what happened to my store cupboard. It was very full this autumn, owing to the garden abundance aforesaid, and our conspicuous industry and success in bottling, preserving and pickling,—the shelves simply groaned with good things, and now it is all one inextricable sticky mass of jam, and fruit, and broken glass, and lathe and plaster. You could not imagine anything more disgusting. It is part of the needless waste of war—a little bit, however, that just comes right home.

Just one more straw, surely the last. Friend Government Assessor valued the stock of my store cupboard at ten shillings, two dollars and a half. And I just let him, because it was so funny, and there didn't seem to be any use telling him any more about anything.

When I write again I expect it will be all over and the lid shut down on the place that was once a home.

I sat a little while to-day on the mossy wall beside the lily pond, one of your numerous garden thrones.

Do you remember the day they cleaned it out, and your excitement over the queer little black fresh water cray fish the men took out with their hands and laid on the grass while they swept and scoured the concrete bottom of the pond? They crawled about so painfully, poor things, and if they thought at all, I suppose they must have imagined it the end of the world. Then how pleased you were, and they too, I expect, when they were put back, and the lovely clean water from the upper river ran in on them. It is very clear to-day, and there is a crooning sound in the voice of the waterfall—it sounds almost like a dirge. Summer is quite gone, and the yellowing leaves are drifting down everywhere. Some of them have camouflaged the horrid burned places the incendiary bombs made in the grass. A few late roses hang about rather wistfully, but there doesn't seem to be any hope anywhere. We don't quite know what is going to happen, whether this house is going to be rebuilt, and we come back to it.

There are immense legal and technical difficulties in a situation for which no precedent or legislation exists. We do not own, but only lease the property, and at the moment don't know where our responsibility begins or ends.

Himself is wrestling with the problem, and the little lines are gathering about his eyes and mouth.

He does not say very much at all, and he won't go near the North House any more. I know he can't bear it.

You and I have often talked of how dear they are, and how they never, never grow up, but are just boys all their days.

They can do the fighting, but they can't do the enduring. That is our bit.

I am trying to do mine, all I know how, but I am hard hit this time, Cornelia. I am on my knees.

V

Such a lot has happened since I wrote last. I am beginning to regard these letters as a real and faithful record of this strange phase of our life. I know how faithfully you will keep them as I do yours. They may come in handy one day to the person who may gather up the fragments of my achievement—when Finis has been written across the last page.

You see, Cornelia, here we have to keep rather quiet and lift a gallant head—Noblesse oblige has to be the watchword. This for two reasons, that so many people require bolstering, who if they detected any weakening in this direction would feel that the front line had broken.

Then it is necessary for our inward life. You know how much I have been through, and unless I had held my head high right along why then, it would just have meant the end of all things. But oh, how we can be misunderstood!

In the dark days of 1910 I met a woman in the street about three months after the Boy had passed, and after we had exchanged greetings she remarked with a charming smile, "How nice that you have got over it so easily." My smile was a little sickly as I replied steadily, "Yes, isn't it very nice?"

I did not see anything very clearly for quite a while after I had passed on.

Just for a moment, I wondered whether it had been all wrong to bury that irreparable loss so deep that nobody suspected its existence, as a loss. I had been rather proud because I had been able to "carry on," but these careless words suddenly awoke in me a passion of remorse lest I had been disloyal to his precious memory. Then I just laughed weakly as I wiped my nose and eyes. Am I not his mother, and do mothers ever forget or prove disloyal? Another of "that sort of person" said to me on the morning of the raid as I was hurrying to the bank to get some money, "So sorry; you have had bad luck, haven't you, since you came here?" Have we, I wonder? And what is luck anyway? You and I both know there is no such thing.

There have been developments since I wrote you, chiefly regarding our tenancy of the North House. It happens that under the terms of our English lease we are responsible for this damage, and will have to rebuild for the proprietor at our own expense. Preposterous, you exclaim! So do we, and Himself has got his mind firmly made up that he will fight it out. Some of our advisers would like us to take it to the law courts and make a test case of it, but our adviser-in-chief—that dear friend and great law lord who made such fun of your Nipigon fishing story at our big dinner party, is strongly against it. He says, "Pay up whatever it costs. The case simply bristles with litigious points and I see it going on indefinitely and finally coming up before me at the House of Lords." Himself is in fighting trim, however, and the decision will rest with him.

Meanwhile we have got to do something about our future, as we can't go on living in this furnished house, which gives me the queer unhappy feeling of not belonging anywhere in particular. The kind neighbour who offered us the shelter had another proposition, that he should vacate altogether and have us take over his lease. We are going to do it, but will have to wait some time before the transaction is completed, because we have no furniture except the broken stuff which is being mended up at the furniture dealer's in the town.

I have to go down almost daily to consult and decide whether this or that article is worth repairing. It usually resolves itself into an argument with the expert. The more he says it can't be done, the more I want it done. Of course, it is our dearest treasures that have received the deadliest damage. Meanwhile, my dear, all these matters merely fade into insignificance beside the one great tremendous yet glorious fact. Himself is going to the war.

You know how hard and often he has hammered on the War Office doors, and how his age was hurled at him, and he was bidden go and carry on the good work he was doing in his own town. Well, he has got a commission at last through the intervention of an old college friend who occupies the exalted position of A.D.M.S. to a part of the Northern Army. That means that he is the Director of Medical Service. Himself will be attached to the Black Watch and report himself first to the Headquarters in Perthshire.

Is he pleased about it? He does not say much, but he has been far more restless since the raid. Am I pleased? Cornelia, honestly I don't know. Every woman wants her man to be in this tremendous fight, but I think I am a little afraid.

Our household is sadly reduced. Two have gone to munitions from indoor service, and the gardeners have been called up. We don't need them mercifully, as we have no garden now; only a backyard. Life is being gradually shorn of some of its more dignified material attributes. No doubt they are the things that don't matter, but some of them we loved, and parting from them hurts.

This morning I read a wonderful verse in Hebrews. Every bit of the Bible takes on new meanings these days. I can't recall the chapter at this moment. I daresay, you will remember it at once. "Yet once more, signifieth the removal of these things that are shaken—as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain." What do these words mean quite? Have I been clinging too frankly to the things that are made, and must they all go one by one, so that I may realise and grip the things that cannot be shaken?

Perhaps that is the war in a nut-shell. It is a poignant, almost a terrifying thought.

He went this morning, Cornelia, New Year's morning, "in a blast of Januar wind that blew hansel in on Robin." He looked so dear and splendid in his perfect-fitting uniform (you know he never leaves anything of that kind to chance and would go without food any day if the fit of his clothes depended on it). I was worshipping all the time and Cook, our faithful chauffeur, left the car at the door to come and see whether he could help with the leggings which were rather stiff and new—and just to take a general view. He was the picture of desolation and woe. Old servants don't like those cataclysms. They have no reserve weapons to deal with them. They are conservative to the innermost fibre of their being.

At last they drove away to catch the north-going train at the junction.

I have often envied other women when I heard them speak with conscious pride of their men at the front—but oh, Cornelia, when the door was shut and the toot of the horn echoed faintly in my ears, I forgot to be proud—and was nothing at all but a lone woman, left desolate in the house of her dreams.

VI

Reconstruction is now my job. Everything that could be removed from the wreckage at the North House has been removed and the ruins left to the owls and the bats. The retrieval was conducted during days of pitiless rain which accentuated the desolation. But it is all accomplished now, and I don't go around there any more.

We had twenty tons of coal buried in the debris of the old stabling, where it was housed, and the police came to tell me it would have to be removed, if I wanted to get the benefit of any, as a steady pilfering was going on. It was a tremendous job but with coal at its present price an effort had to be made to get it out. It has just been put down in the cellar of this house and the transfer cost four pounds.

In the absence of Himself, I have concluded the arrangements for an actual possession of this house, which we have taken for a term of three years. No more leaseholds for me in this country, and though a casually rented house gives one an odd feeling of insecurity—anything may happen in three years. There will have to be a little papering and painting done, just to make it clean and wholesome, and then I will bring back my poor sticks from the repairing shops, and group them in this strange new setting. It is really quite a nice house, with some points the other lacked. A great advantage when one has a depleted staff is a kitchen on the ground floor. It is a thoroughly bad kitchen, dark and gloomy, and the hot water arrangements, and facilities for cooking are positively the worst I, an experienced housewife, have ever encountered. If I had not two specimens of the salt of the earth in these regions beyond, the situation would be impossible. They are quite selfless, as far as their own comfort and accommodations are concerned. They think only of us. Such personal devotion takes the edge off many sorrows.

Already I have a scheme which perhaps in the far future will convert this house into a real home. How ineradicable is the instinct to reconstruct in the human breast! That it cannot be killed has been incontestably proved by the persistence with which our poor French and Belgian confrères creep back to their ravaged fatherland and begin again.

Himself builded better than he knew when he began to talk of reconstructing the moment the shock was over. He is always distressingly right in the fundamentals, and our small internal wars have invariably been caused by my refusal to admit it. But life is not all fundamental, Cornelia, it needs camouflage, needs it desperately. All women know it.

There are gleams of glory. The finest is the love of the people for my lover. A poor woman rushed up to me to-day to ask the latest news of him. From her I learned that they call him "The Friend of the Poor." If I were to die to-morrow, Cornelia, I could ask no sweeter epitaph.

I have decided that the house is not bad at all, and I am beginning to sit up and take a little notice. Only I must not look out of the back windows.

You remember the enchanting vistas spread before the green bedroom, and the study window around the corner. There was no fret of the spirit that could not be healed and comforted, always there was beauty to lift you up, and a message, no matter how bleak the prospect elsewhere. It was that dear intimate kind of a garden where there was something for every mood.

Doctor Horton once came to dine and sleep when speaking at a meeting here, and at six next morning he was out roaming about, to the disquiet of the staff. He had visions of a hermit's study cell in the ruined tower by the waterfall, and wondered why I did not establish a writing room out of doors.

I explained that my writing was a stern business which would admit of no distractions. I have found that even a very comfortable study is a bad place for the cultivation of thought. A wooden bench and bare walls, or the "fender end" of my childhood and a block on my knee produced the best results.

But to return to the only thing that matters at the moment. I am reduced to a cabbage patch. Even that is a misnomer, for there is not even a "Kailyaird runt" i.e. remnant, on that little ugly bit of mother earth.

It is a slice of No Man's Land that has never grown anything but weeds. It is relieved by a background of trees, our own chestnuts, Cornelia, whose glory of pink-and-white cones we used to watch till they were mirrored in all their majesty in the clean depths of the backwater above the fall.

When I want positively to revel in heartbreak, to be homesick and unashamedly miserable (which I fear I am most of the time, since Himself retired from the scene), I go to the uttermost edge of my No Man's Land, where I can hear the rush and tumble of the waterfall, though I cannot see its foaming tears.

To descend to mundane things, let me explain that this house belonged to a master-builder who once upon a time had his workshop and all the paraphernalia of his business in the backyard. After a while he secured more ambitious premises, and carried away all the plant, leaving us the legacy of a concrete floor in the very middle of the patch.

So before we can obey the Food Administrator's order to plant potatoes, the concrete will have to be broken up and removed by the hand of George Cook.

His face was a study when I explained that as the young doctor preferred to drive the car himself, his, George's, job would be to make the desert blossom like the rose. He looked at me, and then at it, queerly, with his one active eye; pulled his forelock with rather a grim smile, and went forth for a pick. Inside of an hour he had started on that task and now the thud of the pick is the music to which I waken of a morning. Sometimes consulting together (I am beginning to be interested, though I try not to be), we doubt very much whether the concrete plus the ineradicable root of an obnoxious weed called horseradish, will ever be gotten out in time for a spring crop. But Cook is very dogged; and the joy of the creator is beginning to lay hold on him. I find it is a better day's work when I potter round the patch, sympathising and anathematising turn about. Anyhow, the work of reconstruction, as ordained by Himself, is going forward cheerfully. The workmen are in possession of most of the rooms, and I am just about as uncomfortable and as busy as the most active housewife could desire to be.

My war-work has had to call a halt till I get through with this business of home making; that being the duty that lies nearest. You think I'm not saying so much as usual about Himself? I can't, because, oh, Cornelia, he seems to have passed out of my life! I get his dear letters, but they are all about people I have never seen and don't want to see, because they are there with him, seeing him every day, and I am not. He is loving the life—you know how he would—and the boys with whom he lives in the mess, himself the biggest boy of all.

In every letter I can sense the buoyancy of spirit that comes with the laying down of responsibility. Here he had so much, and now he is only a nut in the great machine of war, and so long as he does his duty and obeys orders he can have an easy and comfortable mind.

He is stationed at the moment up in what is the frozen north, but they are the hills of home, and he is assuredly content. He is not even homesick, though always asking when I am coming. I am waiting for Effie's next leave, when we will go up together. Meanwhile I must hold the fort here, or all the wrong wall papers will go up, and there might even be structural undoing if the workmen were left to their own sweet wills. But it is an empty life, Cornelia, out of which the soul has gone. Even the picture in uniform, on my desk, the man of the house at war, fails to afford the uplift or the comfort once imagined. I must get through with this reconstruction job as it affects material things, and start the reconstruction of my own inner life. I, too, must go to the war.

VII

I had your dear letter yesterday and have every word of it by heart, even George's postscript. I always knew him to be an understanding creature, but his knowledge of human beings, more especially the heart of woman, is a wee bit uncanny.

Is he your product, Cornelia, or is he just the American husband at his best? It is long since you told me (it was on that wonderful testing first visit which we essayed fearfully—not sure whether it would grapple us to one another with hooks of steel or merely end in a polite parting with regrets on either side) that English husbands are not properly brought up. You imagined, or really perceived, in them a lordly air of superiority—and even said that some of our households bear the impress of the feudal age in which our race was cradled.

I remember wanting to say that the criticism did not, and could not, apply to Scotch husbands. But perhaps wisely I held my peace.

We left it, what is called in Scotland "a moot point"—and a moot point, I guess, it must remain. Anyway, wherever George got his knowledge, whether natural or acquired, he has gripped the essence of this thing when he calls separation the supreme test of the bond. I am going to write to him when I am through with this, and you are not to see that letter, nor yet ask to see it—I need him—I want the man's point of view.

What is this all about anyway? I think I hear you say with the uplift of the brows which is your very own.

You, in America, with your semi-detached ideas of marriage, which enable you to bear six months' or a year's separation without any sinking of heart, or vague questionings, must naturally find it difficult to realise our point of view. With us marriage is "for keeps," as you say, and when upheaval comes, it seems always to spell disaster.

Perhaps our theory is all wrong, and an unwarrantable interference with the freedom of the individual. But I can't be happy thinking of Himself with a whole lot of new interests I can't share, making shoals of friends, which is as easy to him as breathing the air, friends whom probably I shall never see. He can guess pretty well what I am about, but I can't visualise him. Just think of the hundreds of wives, and of other women who are feeling like this, and who are at war with the war, that has brought it about.

There is another side to the picture, the side that proves the part truth of your assertion that we don't bring up our husbands properly. Let me present a little cameo of the times in which we live. I was at a war tea at a women's club in London the other day, and there met an old acquaintance I had not seen for some time. She was quite middle-aged—and had been rather dowdy, not paying much attention to her clothes. Before I spoke to her, I was arrested by a subtle change in her outward appearance. She had a smart suit on, and wore a distinctly youthful hat with a rakish air.

The thing interested me, and I had to find out its meaning.

When we exchanged greetings she informed me that her husband, retired, had gone back to professional work, which meant that he could not live at home, but at a military Headquarters.

I sympathised and asked how she got through the lonely days which I was feeling so desperately. She looked at me queerly through her shrewd candid grey eyes.

"Oh, I'm not lonely," she assured me. "In fact, entre nous, I'm having the time of my life."

"Tell me about it," I asked breathlessly, and she told——

"Well, I go out and in as I like, do all the things I have always wanted to do, but could not. Nobody now asks me where I've been or what I've spent. In fact, I don't really think I have any more use for Dan."

There, Cornelia—it will make you smile, perhaps, but there is a tragedy behind it. Poor old Dan! comfortable, complacent, no doubt inflated by a new sense of his own importance because his country still needs him, to what strange and hostile atmosphere will he return! I can imagine him rubbing his eyes and wiping his pince nez and saying, "Tut, tut, this will never do!"

But he won't be able to put back the clock. He'll have to march to the new marching tune.

I foresee ructions in the household of Dan.

Meanwhile, she is having the time of her life!

It makes no appeal to me, because I have always been able to have the time of my life, as she understands it. I have gone in and out without let or hindrance, none daring to make me afraid. And now, I am just a lonely creature like a bit of drift on the shore.

There is another side to which George calls the supreme test—a horrible sordid side. Hear it now. When I went to France first in 1915, to talk to the boys, I was asked whether I would go to a small forage camp in a God-forsaken place away up near Abbeville, beyond the British Headquarters. It was a kind of No Man's Land which nobody ever visited. Lectures and concert parties passed it by. I said, "Of course I'll go, it is what I've come out for."

So Effie and I got up at four o'clock in the morning to catch the only available civilian train leaving Rouen for "up the line." The distance could not be far, according to the map, but it took us till three o'clock in the afternoon to get there. We were shunted into sidings to let troop trains and ammunition trains and hospital trains go by, and there were no passengers in ours except French officers and other people connected with the war.

No women, but we two. I was so thankful to have Effie. Her gay inconsequence, her complete disregard of everything but the great adventure, helped us over every stony bit of the ground. Gendarmes, sentries with fixed bayonets, grumpy passport and permit officials—she captured them all. Youth is quite invincible, and when its smile is sweet like hers obstacles melt like mist before the rising sun. If I had even attempted that wonderful journey through the war zone without her I should either have been shot as a spy, or interned for the duration. It is short shrift for the middle-aged and the ordinary beings who can't explain their business in the area where death and destiny walk side by side. Well, in course of time, through several minor adventures, we reached our destination.

A sturdy little divinity student from Aberdeen was holding the fort there for the Y.M.C.A. and holding it well. When he went first to give them a bit of humanizing Christian comradeship, he had to sleep with a revolver under his pillow, fully aware that any night he might get his throat cut. These men were not soldiers, though they wore khaki, but rough east-enders, dock laborers, most of them, with lawless anarchic blood in their veins. They had spent the major part of their lives rebelling against law and order. They were the husbands of some of the women whose faces broke your heart when I took you to my big mothers' meeting "down east" two years ago. The fortunes of war had cut them off from the grime and glory of the Barking Road, and those in authority found them a tough proposition in that sweet valley in the pleasant land of France.

We pottered about the camp till nightfall, when the men gathered into the tent to hear the woman who had brought them a message from home.

I knew when I stood up in front of them and saw their faces, looking grim and unrelenting through the haze of tobacco smoke and the reek of the oil lamp, that I was up against something, and would need not only all my art, but the grace of God to help me through.

But I got them after a bit, got them in the hollow of my hand—playing on their hearts with memories of home, though all the time I knew the kind of homes they had left, and how hard most of them had made it there for the women they had vowed to love, honour and cherish.

When the talk was over they crowded round and one particularly unattractive person with a scowling eye inquired whether he could have a word with me privately. We managed it later on in a remote corner, hard by one of the evil-smelling lamps.

"'Ere, missus," he began. "Do yer 'appen to know the Barkin' Road?"

I eagerly asserted my complete familiarity with the Barking Road, the Kings' Highway to Dockland! I was even ready to proclaim it the finest thoroughfare in the world.

"See here, then, Lidy, thet was good talk, but it don't go far enough. Maybe I weren't all I should a bin w'en I was back there, but my missus she ain't played the game, she's played it low down on me since I've been in this 'ere war. I ain't had no letters from 'er for over four months, and I carnt 'ear nuthink about the four kids nah, but a bloke wot lives dahn our street sends me word that she's sold up the whole bloomin' shoot and nobody knows where she is, and the kids is in the Union. An' I carnt git out of this blarsted 'ole to see to the kids and give 'er wot for. Wot are ye goin' to do about it, Lidy?" That was what people call a tough proposition, Cornelia, the whole tragedy of one-half of the war in a nutshell.

I did what I could. I tried to comfort him and took down all the particulars in the note book already bulging with behests, which it will probably take me the rest of my natural life to fulfil.

When I got back to England I made the inquiries, put the Salvation Army angel on the track, and found it all just as he described. His missus has never been found—she has gone down in the underworld, urged there by the very same temptations which made Dan's wife say she had no more use for Dan. Tasting independence of action and of purse for the first time, she lost her sense of proportion. With the well-to-do, it is the sweets of independence that is testing them—with the other sort, the lure of the separation allowances, which means more money in hand than they had ever dreamed of before in their poor, narrow, sordid lives.

There's something all wrong with life, Cornelia. It will have to be straightened out and evened up, and the poor and the oppressed will have to taste a little of the glory and the beauty and the dignity of life.

Perhaps that is what the war is for.

Meanwhile the poor bond!

It will have to be recast in the new world we are coming to.

How many of us will stand the test?

Himself has been back on his first leave. It is Sunday night, he has just gone, and the door is shut again; leaving me inside while he is speeding away back to the unknown. It has been a lovely heartbreaking time. But he is detached, Cornelia, he doesn't belong any more. I had made superhuman efforts to get the whole house in order, sitting up late at night to cover cushions and put in all the fixings that make the real home. He was very polite, looking industriously at everything, and all the time his eyes were not seeing my poor little attempts at home-making—but something else far away. All he said was, "It's very nice, but I have all I want in a tent," He didn't mean to be cruel; he was only gripped by his new life, saw the mess table with his comrades round about him—the route march—the sham attack, all the pomp and preparation for the real war they are going out to presently. The things no woman can share; or can be asked to share!

It is the man's life, the big grey splendid thing which we are outside of, not once in a while, but forever and ever.

He has changed, Cornelia—not to me, but he has gotten the vision of the fierce arena where men are fighting and dying that Liberty may live; has not only gotten the vision, but has become part of it.

And I am only the woman left by the fireside. I don't see the glory of the war as I used. The envy I felt towards the women who spoke proudly of their men at the front has died utterly. I don't want him at the front. I want him here desperately, every minute of the time. He doesn't feel like that. He can do without me.

You said somewhere that since George heard that Himself has gone, he is, like Carlyle, "gey ill to live with," cursing the waiting policy of the President, the everlasting framing of notes full of dignified protest about nothing in particular.

He wants to have a hand in the great big game, I know. But if the time should come, soon or late, when your roads and streets shall resound with the beat of armed and arming men, put the lid on George. Never mind how, but just do it.

It is hell!

VIII

I am writing this quite a long way from my base. The Black Watch, to which regiment Himself now belongs, has been sent to the East coast and I am here in a billet with him for a few weeks.

It is the loveliest old city, interwoven with all the ancient history, when Flemings and Danes and all kinds of weird aliens invaded or flocked to these shores. It is beloved by your American tourists; if George and you did not differ from all American tourists whatsoever, you would have been here long ago, and could tell me far more about it than is to be obtained out of the most authenticated guide book. You, however, have always preferred to take your travel in microscopic doses, to make a little bit your intimate and dear possession for all time. I am surprised to find this old Norwich such a noble city, and I should love to show you the ancient landmarks. It is full of treasures, of values which cannot be told, or was, rather, for the powers that be have mysteriously spirited them away, and the priceless stained glass windows have been boarded up—the very most priceless of all has been taken down. The fate of Rheims and Louvain and Ypres has made the city fathers wise. But it is an omen, Cornelia, which keeps me awake o' nights and gives me the jumps when I hear the streets resound with the tramp of armed men in the silent watches—Himself having been summoned with the rest to "stand to" as they call it, with their faces toward the sea.

The boys have an expression which sums up these frequent forced marches—they call it "getting the wind up." The wind is up here more often than I like it, and when I hear quite sober quiet matrons tell what they will do if the dread moment ever comes when the Hun invades these shores, I have no strength in me. I am not brave at all, Cornelia, something has been left out of my composition. This is the most vulnerable part of our far-flung coast, and there is a great watching army right along. Those whose duty it will be to guide the civilian population in case of emergency have what you call the schedule ready, and nothing will be left to chance. I don't want to be here when it happens, my dear; this nameless lurking fear that never sleeps takes the edge off the joy of being with him. He has no belief at all in the landing of German troops in England. You know he is an incurable optimist about the War. He considers that we are invincible and that victory is only a matter of time. It must be a delightful atmosphere to live and move and have your being in; it helps to keep one young. He can sleep through anything and only grumbles when he has not enough of sleep.

My war experiences are widening. Yesterday we had a bombardment from the sea—not of Norwich, of course—if you remember your geography you will know that it is not possible—but of the coast places, Yarmouth and Lowestoft, less than twenty miles away.

I was awakened about four o'clock in the morning by a dull boom and the sharp rattle of the windows. Having lived so much beside naval guns in our own special Kingdom by the Sea, I knew exactly what it was and shook Himself. "That's naval guns," I said. "There's a fight going on quite close by." "Nonsense," he answered. "You're dreaming—go to sleep." I could not, and rose early to hear from the little maid, who had heard it from the milkman, that the coast places had been bombarded and much damage done. You know how rumours fly and how disasters are multiplied and intensified, as they pass from mouth to mouth. Himself came back from the mess with little news beyond the facts, and I was glad when a friend rang me up to ask if I'd like to go down to the coast with her in her car.

Of course I liked it, and we took some of the bigger children with us—it was Easter week and they were all at home from school, round-eyed, eager, fearless about the war, which to them is nothing but the Great Adventure. We hardly expected to get through the military barrier, but we did, and saw what had been done.

It is the same pitiful tale of destruction which follows in the Zeppelin's track, senseless, horrible war on defenceless folk who have little or nothing to protect them. These delightful east-coast watering places are all ruined, because everybody who could afford it has "quit" as you say, and the boarding houses and hotels are empty, and will be for the "duration."

It was very typically British to find the front thronged with spectators, women wheeling babies in perambulators, all gazing upon the scene, but not apparently frightened at the wreckage. The story was soon told. Some battle-cruisers suddenly appeared about six miles out and opened fire for twenty minutes or so, and then ran. There was no patrol to attack them, if it was anybody's business to be on the outside there, they were off guard. The only criticism one is inclined to make is that it could not happen in Germany.

This pleasant East Anglian land is lovely beyond compare in the exquisite spring unfolding, but the blight of war seems over all.

They are getting ready great camps nearer the sea, and the troops will be taken out of their winter billets.

Himself is very busy inspecting and reporting, and generally proving as efficient and thorough in military life as he is in civilian.

I begin to understand the lure of the life. There is perpetual movement, excitement, expectation. There is a certain kind of social life, lunches and dinners and other entertainment offered by hospitable people to the incomers, the great Highland host that has invaded their stately precincts. There are lots of little war brides here with their young soldier husbands, and maturer matrons, some of them with considerable families, living in furnished houses trying to make a bit of home for the soldier men, and very interested themselves, though it is all so strange and inconvenient and far from home.

We have delightful rooms in a comfortable house; it is quite a rest for me, and I am getting through with my next book.

When they get into camp I shall have to go back home to the loneliness that is only companioned by fear.

We are kept in inky darkness here on account of the frequent air raids. A month's imprisonment without the option of a fine is the sentence for striking a match in the street. The authorities are lynx-eyed and vigilant, their reward is that this beautiful old city in its historic setting has remained immune through more than a score of attacks from the air. It is protected, too, by the trees, which add so much to its beauty.

It has been an experience, Cornelia, it is all part of the strange upheaval men call war, the outward fringes of it only, yet how deeply, inextricably woven in with the whole woof of life!

Every day one hears of the most extraordinary war marriages, rushed into, too often, after a few days' acquaintance, without a thought given to the awful indissolubility of the bond. For whatever the experience of matrimony may be like, you can never be as you were before. Already there has been much repenting at leisure, and when the glamour of the khaki is off, the tragedy will deepen and enfold the helpless creatures who cannot free themselves, and have no basis for a future.

There are scandals, too, and tragedies too deep for tears, broken vows, faithless lovers and husbands, all the cursed things born of abnormal situations, and the kind of feverish false atmosphere created by war.

These things cry as loud to Heaven as the blood and sorrow from the battlefields, and make thoughtful people reiterate the prayer, Oh, Lord! how long?

They are what we call "after the war problems." Some of them will never be tackled—there is no machinery known to the human understanding capable of tackling them—many will just have to be buried deep, and no cross left to mark the burying place.

There stands out for me here the joy of comradeship as men understand it, gripping it to their souls with hooks of steel.

We don't have it, Cornelia—we women, I mean—it is something we do not get, nor perhaps understand. It is not that we are too petty, but rather, I think, because we have to keep ourselves more detached and selfless for all that men need and must have from us, if the Family is to be held together.

I have never seen anything more lovely than the tie between Himself and the young officers, these splendid boys, pictures, every one in their Kilts, and all the panoply of war. Old enough to be father to any one of them, he has kept the boy's heart, so that he is not only with them at the mess, but one of them. He is so wise and tender with them, that they come to him in every trouble. It makes me weep, and yet feel so proud, but not in the least surprised. Did I ever tell you about the bundle of letters, docketed, dated and tied up, I found among the Boy's things after he went away? His father's letters—which revealed to me a side of Himself I had never seen.

They ought to be printed, but I suppose other fathers write the same kind of letters to their sons at schools, letters that help the sensitive young souls to grapple with the mysteries of life. It is all part of their nature—the bit that isn't ours—comradeship between man and man! When found between father and son, it is the most beautiful thing in life.

You will be stunned by the news of Kitchener's passing. It created a panic here among the common folk.

I met a woman in the street, with a crushed copy of the evening paper under her arm, wringing her hands and crying out that "all was lost." It shows what a hold he had upon the popular imagination. His has been, and is, a name to conjure with. The product of his vast personal magnetism is on every fighting front, and in every training camp at home. He was a great man—but his work was done—others will reap where he has sown.

The memorial services in the Cathedral here were fitting and fine, massed and muffled bands, a dense crowd of khaki-colored men. Generals and high military personages galore, all the pride and pomp of war. But Kitchener will live in the hearts of the people—his true memorial is to be found in the serried rows of crosses in France and Flanders where so much of the army he called into being lies in consecrated dust that is "forever England."

I am back again in old Hertford to find letters urging my return to France.

It is sweet to hear, not only from Effie, who says it in almost every letter from Camiers, but from those in authority, that the boys are always asking when I am coming back.

The time-limit is the difficulty—everywhere, but more especially in the war zone, the restrictions are growing in intensity, and permits for foreign service to civilians are now almost impossible to obtain. If I agree to stay three months, I can go to-morrow, but how can I leave home for three months, as long as Himself is still on this side of the water, liable to come on leave any day, or even just to say good-bye before he sails?

I can't do it, so I am compromising by agreeing to go for a spell to the home camps.

The Winchester Command has asked me for a month and I'll try to put in a part of it soon. Effie is due on leave immediately, but she is finding conditions changing too at her base. What has happened is that all the butterflies and the undesirables, out merely for a new sensation, have been weeded out and only the solid workers remain.

"The plague of women" that tormented the military authorities during the Boer War and created endless problems in South Africa has been more drastically dealt with in this war.

I wish I could tell you all the things Effie has told me, but there is a certain reticence to be observed, and amid so much that is fine and noble why insist or dwell upon the flaws?

You asked about Florence in your last letter and I gave her your message. Daily I thank God for my faithful servant and friend who cares for me so tenderly, and is so understanding of all the trials of this changed, unnatural life. She is part of the House of Defence—the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. She has three brothers in the war. One who had been frightfully wounded about the head and face came back convalescent the other day and I saw him here. I was afraid to go into the kitchen, knowing what the nature of his wounds had been, but so cleverly, wonderfully, had he been handled by these heaven-born surgeons who repair the waste and wreckage of war that he looked much as of yore, though with some deep scars where part of a new jaw had been grafted on. He was very quiet, as those are who have been long in the midst of unspeakable things, but when I asked him whether he was willing to go back, he just smiled.

"There is nothing else to be done," he answered. "And there's the regiment and the pals." That is the spirit of Kitchener's Army—the spirit that lives after him, and which will bring the victory. It makes one proud to be alive and to belong to the old flag.

Picture me then, Cornelia, carrying on as bravely and steadily as may be, a little rocky and homesick at times, but yet following, if afar off, in the track the boys have outlined and worn by the tramp of their brave unflinching feet. To be worthy, not only of those who have died to keep us safe and free, but of those who have been maimed and wrecked for us in the summer of their days, and have still to live with their cross upon them—that is the charge laid upon the rest of us, by the God who is watching the conflict from His secret place, biding His hour to strike.

IX

The grip of war is tightening in on our little Island, Cornelia. Soon it will be relentless.

As I was standing this morning with Florence in our sadly diminished and attenuated store cupboard she said in her simple direct way, "Do you notice that every day there is a little less, something else we have to do without?" It was apropos of the plum puddings and the mincemeat, now due to be made, but for which there are no ingredients. A good many households in England and Scotland depended upon our Christmas puddings. I hate to have them go short, but diplomatic relations being what they are with Tino of Greece, we have no currants. It is thus we visualise and realise the intimate discomfort of a world at war. It has all to be cheerfully faced, however, and we talked substitutes for a good half hour, and there will be a pudding of some sort to go forth to the waiting households, though it will be minus the plums.

Since I wrote you last I have been to Scotland.

War has shaken the foundations of our Kingdom by the Sea. It has ceased to be a haven and become in very truth a coast defense. The cliffs bristle with guns, they have crept up from the fort, till the nearest one is over the garden wall not fifty yards away. There it stands with its gleaming nozzle to the sea, the gunners unsleeping night and day by its side.

It has become horrible and menacing. Its old-world intimate charm, which belongs to simple places untouched by conventionality, has surely gone, forever sacrificed, as so much else has been, to the monster that has convulsed the world.

When we could not keep the Boy we laid him here in the place he so loved—and it was a crumb of comfort in our sorrow to feel that if he had been given choice he would himself have chosen to sleep on the windy hill above the shore where in his childhood days he used to paddle with his fat brown legs, and his bucket gripped hard in his podgy little hands.

As I sat there by his white cross on the windy hill and listened to the beat of the surf on the rocks below, I wondered what he was thinking of it all, and I felt glad that his dear dust was sleeping sweetly, his soul safe in the Father's House. I think I must tell you here, my soul's friend, of a strange story I have had sent to me from France, a story which affects me and mine. The Boy had his father's genius for friendship, and clung to his chums with all the ardour of his nature. I lost sight of his chief one when Oxford swallowed him. In a busy life like mine there is not time to do all the things one wants to do. The garden of friendship even has to suffer through the lack of cultivation.

This chum was starting what promised to be a brilliant professional career when the war threw him into the vortex. As a young lieutenant of the Engineers he crossed to France and received his death wounds at La Bassée. I was in France at the time and could so easily have found him in the hospital among the sand dunes near Wimereux, only I did not know. I did not even see his name in the Times. You know we don't read the lists so carefully now, most of us are afraid. After a time I got a letter from his mother telling me how he had died. He had lingered three weeks, suffering no pain, fully aware that he could not recover, ready to die as he had lived, without fear, bravely, as brave men only can and do die. His mother was with him to the end. I am not sure whether I envy her. Mine went in a flash without pain or warning, or possible shrinking, straight from one home of love to another. It must wring a mother's heart to watch the candle flickering out so slowly. She wanted to be with him night and day, but he always urged her to leave him at night; both because she never slept and he was better alone. She was very sad until he said one night, "Do go mother, I am never lonely you know, for when you go, Ned comes. He is here all the time—and I want you to know he's waiting for me and I'll be all right over there." All right over there! God, how beautiful it is, and how it comforted me to feel that my son is no more lonely in the Father's House.

Those things are not figments of the imagination, Cornelia—the veil is very thin, and the Lord Christ Himself walks with these dear lads and shows them the way home.

I am glad they are both out of it now—safe forevermore.

My sister, Janet, whom you never met, and who has so long cared for our summer home, is no longer able. She has never really recovered the shock of the Boy's passing—and though she stoutly denies it, the strain of the war had told on her very much. She must have a rest and get away for a while from the guns of the coast defence. So we have let the house. Conceive it, Cornelia, if you can—strangers living and sleeping and possessing our Kingdom by the Sea!

The house the children loved best of all the houses in the world is now in military possession! How truly Florence touched the spring when she said, "Every day there is something to be given up."

If it means helping to win the war, if it can be won no other way than by giving up all we are and have, why then let us in the name of God do it gladly, with high heads and shining eyes in which there are no tears.

It is liberty and love we fight for. If they are slain, what will be left?

My sister has come here to be with me for some months. I am disquieted about her. She looks frail, and she has lost the old buoyancy and wit. Now that she can rest for the first time in her life, the desire to rest has passed. It is all so pathetic and so typical of the stern discipline we call life. We really are in the fighting line from the cradle to the grave. I smiled this morning looking back to when I said it was necessary to take her out of the strain of the Coast Defence. Because she has come into the real war zone here, and last night got a taste of invasion from the air. I must tell you about it because, though we have had many attacks from the air during the last year, this one stands out. We brought one of the raiders down—a mass of flaming wreckage—an awful but a glorious sight.

I have sometimes wished I could have you come here to share one of our Zeppelin nights, to feel the thrill of tense fear which seizes the bravest when the warning sounds, to run with us to shelter, and live the long hours of strain and terror through.

I forget whether I told you that we have very good cellarage in our Chinese Chippendale house and that we accommodate about 20 or 30 less fortunate neighbours while the danger is most imminent. Florence takes special pride in the cellar; she keeps it very clean and snug, spreads old rugs and sets out the garden chairs. Then there is an oil stove and various wraps for the cold nights. It can be very cold in a cellar about 3 A.M. when one's vitality is at its lowest ebb, and fear lurks in every corner.

Some of the women bring their knitting and the mechanical exercise helps to allay nervous distress. A woman I met one morning after a raid said she had been out buying dusters for her Zeppelin guests to hem in their forced seclusion. Of course it is the gregarious instinct which brings them together; danger seems less awful somehow when it is shared.

I don't know whether they notice how short a time I spend under ground—I never sit down there. I want to be up and out if possible, facing the danger, of which I am yet mortally afraid. I don't fancy death in a cellar and I fear I am like the tommies, a fatalist as regards bullets and bombs.

But I'm digressing shamefully. The warning came about seven, and just before nine, we heard the grating of the engines up aloft. It was so loud we thought there must be two or three, but we could not see anything. They went straight over London, approaching as usual from the North, and just missing us. They dropped a good many bombs, and the air was full of the noise of bursting shells, and the clatter of our anti-aircraft guns. Shrapnel was flying from them, even over our little town, and safety was only to be found indoors.

About midnight the marauders began to retrace their steps, if I may put it so, and came right overhead.

Then we beheld a wonderful and glorious sight. Our intrepid airmen, just like great gadflies winging through the night, were searching the sky for the enemy and presently one got above the stationary Zeppelin and found the range. It looked as if they were directly above the church opposite to us, but the actual conflict took place in the air about 8 miles away.

When he got the range he showed a green light, a signal to the anti-aircraft guns below to cease firing. We could not hear the shot that made an end of the monster, but presently we saw vivid streaks like forked lightning run along the side of the giant airship. The next moment, a mass of white flame, it toppled over and began slowly to descend. The cage became detached first and those who were near enough saw the body of its unfortunate occupant fall from it. It descended in a field behind the doctor's house at Potter's Bar, and such a cheer rent the air, ringing hoarse from a million throats, from London to the sea, that one felt positively thrilled, and forgot the night of fear. Some wept and some sang "God Save the King." The great solid satisfying fact that the death-dealing monster had been utterly destroyed sent us thankful to our beds. These awful happenings have their comic as well as their tragic side, and even with nerves strung to the highest pitch we are able to laugh.

We had the Holbrooks for the week end—the whole four of them. He is a typical John Bull, and he was much annoyed because a very keen game of bridge was interrupted. He resented the interference with his liberty and personal convenience. Nothing on earth would take him to the cellar, he simply planted himself with a very long pipe and a whiskey and soda in the library, where he sat with a suffering air, what we call the "O Lord, how long?" expression on his face. His women folk, thrilled and interested, for though they live in London their area has so far escaped intimate acquaintance with Zeppelins, could not be brought in from the street.

Mrs. Holbrook is just as amusing in her way as her spouse. Born in England of German parents, she is loyal to the core, and rejoices that she has never even seen Germany. She loathes the war and all it stands for, and she will never give her son until she is obliged to; she is the living personification of the line, "I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier." She can't understand, though she is a dear soul, the thrill and the pride with which we can give and give and give, not money, but our heart's blood till there is nothing left.

It is the waste of war which terrifies her. You see, she has no hope or belief in anything beyond this life. She just shakes her head if you speak to her of the souls that are marching on. "I hope you're right," she says, "but I don't believe it myself, when I am dead there will be an end of me; that's as far as I've got."

How awful to have to live up against such a blank wall—no wonder she clings to the material body of her son with frantic hands that will never let him go.

We got through the night at last, snatched an hour or two's sleep, and in the morning went over to Potter's Bar in the motor to see all that was left of the monster of the air.

The pretty little village swarmed with people "out for to see" just as our town swarmed with them when we got our share of attention from Count Zeppelin.

We tramped through indescribable mud to the sweet meadow where the wreckage lay; partly caught in the branches of a giant oak tree—then trailing away across the sward like the tail of some enormous rattlesnake. We did not see the engines—they had been removed in the small hours on a military truck. What we did see was the retrieval of the bodies from the wreckage—poor charred objects—perfectly unrecognisable. Mothers' sons every one, and somewhere in Germany their homes will be desolate because they do not return. I thought of that, but the temper of the crowd was hostile and bitter, and the feeling uppermost was grim satisfaction that they had met a righteous and deserved doom.

More of the dark fruits of war, the tempering and hardening of a naturally kindly people into a thirst for revenge.

God send it may end soon—before we are all so changed that we shall bear no semblance to our former selves.

X

I seem to have reached the end of my letter just about the time I wrote to you last and the doctor, whom in the absence of Himself, I had to call in, ordered me to go away and take a complete rest—you know the formula—but dear God, how can we rest in a world where there is no rest, and with the thunder of the guns in our ears night and day. It is the Somme fighting now, in which we have lost so many of those we love.

I think I gave up the day I got a telegram telling me Dick had been killed at Trones Wood. You remember Dick, and Isabel, that lovely pair for whom I wrote the little book, "Letters to a War Bride."

I don't quite know how to tell you what he was like—a most gallant gentle Knight without fear and without reproach—yet so full of fun, that somehow laughter sang in the heart wherever he came—the laughter that doeth good like a medicine. The last time I saw him, Isabel had come down from Palace Gate to spend a few days and Dick came marching through with his Fusiliers, en route from Colchester to France. He and his Major dined with us—and I never saw him again—nor ever will see him now, till we meet on the other side.

No doubt we are naturally drawn towards those whom nature has richly endowed. He was as handsome as a dream—tall, dark with flashing tender eyes and a smile that was never far away from his lips. A man of peace if ever there was one, yet he was dedicated to war, in order that peace may be established for all time as "one of those things that cannot be shaken."

They were a beautiful pair; she with her slender, delicate charm, her braids of red gold hair, her pathetic eyes. I have never seen such love. It often made me afraid. And now he sleeps there on the Somme where we have already left ninety thousand like him. Great God, and yet there are those who ask when Britain is going to come into the war and why she doesn't bear her share!

I felt I had to go to her, but she was far away at her father's place in Scotland and I was not able to go. My marching orders were drastic. Himself ordered me to Harrogate, where he said he would come the moment he could get forty-eight hours' leave.

So I got me ready, and Janet went part of the way, branching off at York, for Hull. I arrived at Harrogate like a person in a dream, seeking a cure. A cure from what? Inside my heart were wounds for which there never could be any cure this side the grave. I found I was nearer the breaking point than I knew, for when I got to bed there I found I was not able to get up again. The heart had gone clean out of me. I remember Himself arriving from out of some void at six o'clock in the morning, and his face as he stood over me asking me questions, taking temperatures and doing all the things the Doctor has to do when he is up against his job.

Then there were consultations and telephones and people coming in and out of the room. Strange men asking questions and looking at me, and at one another, with grave faces. I seemed so out of it all, and when I heard them say outside of the door, "We'd better tell her," something flashed through me with a thrill of unexplicable, inconceivable joy. I had come to the end, the door was ajar, and I should get away clean and forever from the fever and the fret—the holding up when you feel yourself wilting, the carrying on when there is nothing to carry on with.

Tired? There is no word that can begin to describe how tired I was. Then they came in and told me I should have to have an operation immediately—within an hour or two. I just smiled and said, "Very well."

The next thing I was being carried down the hotel stairs on a stretcher to the ambulance, where they laid me down rolled in a blanket—a nurse was at the head and Himself sitting like a grim sentinel at the foot—we never spoke to one another, not a single word. You have never seen him look like that, Cornelia—you have only heard his laugh, and seen his dancing eyes, while he tried to tease you and to imitate what he called the Yankee twang.

As for me my eyes were fixed on the tender blue of the sky—flecked with those wonderful delicious little fleecy clouds like foam flakes on an azure sea, and all the time I wondered whether soon I would be up and away beyond them.

It was to a private hospital they took me and I had to lie in a weird kind of bed there till the hour came. I had no fear or apprehension—I had just given up. Himself and I did not talk. When you have been so long together surely everything has been said. But I saw his face hard and set and sharp in the clear light, and understood that the bond had stood the test.

The operation was successful, but when I awoke and found I was still in the land of the living, I wept with sheer disappointment. I had relaxed my hold, given up, wanted to be free. But apparently there is work still to be done, but where, oh where, am I to find strength to do it?

Convalescence in pleasant surroundings is a kind of lotus land and I have a sympathy I had never felt before for the women who acquire what Himself calls the "nursing Home habit." The utter lack of responsibility, submission to the will of others; complete surrender of one's entity has its private and particular lure for the human soul. To eat and sleep and get well is a simple creed enough, but it is apt to have a corroding effect. Sometimes I had the awful feeling that I should never be able to go back to the real world and begin the fight all over again. I read much and was able to give my full attention to "Mr. Britling Sees It Through."

It impressed me so much that I wrote a long letter to H.G. and had a very characteristic reply. He is taking himself as seriously as ever, and all the world is called to witness the evolution of his soul. I have been watching it for quite a long time. To us who are veterans on the road it seems all a little crude and pathetic.

Nevertheless it is one of the finest books of the war that has been written. I expect you have already read it—tell me how it strikes you?

Himself, restored to his normal courage and cheerfulness, came and took me home. His commanding officer has been very decent to him through it all, and has not grudged nor forbidden the necessary leave. I was about a week alone before Effie came and she is going to stay this time till I am quite well. We have all sorts of plans. It all ended in our going to Bournemouth to get out of the air raid zone and enjoy the sunshine of the south coast.

The place was very full and though it was quite safe from the air alarms—everywhere we met wounded and broken men, blinded men, and those wearing on their faces the look of those who have seen and known. And it was there at Bournemouth that we got the glad, the glorious news that you had come in. We did not know how badly we had wanted it, how near we were to the breaking point till the message which has transformed the whole world was flashed across the seas.

We were at Boscombe and the Nicolls at the Bath Hotel at Bournemouth. When we met that night I was struck by the expression on Sir William's face even more than by anything he said. He looked like a man from whom the cloud had been lifted and who could once more breathe freely. He knows all there is to know about the war and when I saw the effect the momentous decision had upon him, I seemed to realise how much had depended on it. All he said was "Thank God, America has come in!"

* * * * *

I wanted to send a cable to George and the only thing I could think of was "Hail Columbia!" Effie remarked, "It will be nice and cheap."

This has narrowed the dividing seas and I am seeing you and George and all the other Georges and Cornelias who care, holding a jubilee. Nothing seems to matter now—however long the war lasts, we can see it out. Though the way may be uphill to the very end, we can climb it to the victory peaks—companioned by your strength and sympathy and substantial help.

I am so glad about it I can't sleep. Effie has just made a little sketch of Uncle George receiving the news; it is a disrespectful sketch, but I'm putting it in.

All that matters now is that we belong to one another and to posterity forever and ever.

XI

I got your delightful letter yesterday. It came at the psychological moment when I was right down in the depths. It was a friendly true hand stretched across the dark void.

It has happened, Cornelia; Himself has gone beyond my ken in the troop train and the troop ship, across the seas. It came, as all the marching orders do, without warning or preparation. He was simply told to be ready for embarkation in forty-eight hours—destination Egypt—not France or Flanders, but away to the Orient, from whence come no leave trains. How often have I stood on the platform at Victoria or Charing Cross to bid some comrade good-bye; and been thrilled by the poignant tenseness of the hour, the glory and the humour and the pathos of it. Saying good-bye to a pal, however good he may be, is not the same as saying good-bye to your very own, every hair of whose head is dear. There was no glory nor humour for me that day at Waterloo, though Ronald Robertson of the gallant Gordons did his best to provide both, with his crutches and his merry smile.

I told you how he had lost his leg at Loos; a boy to whom legs meant so much. All he says is that he would give the other one, too, if it would do them any good. How are you to even think of your own sorrow in the face of a devotion so invincible, so divine?

We were a little company of close friends to see Himself go off; no woman dare go through that ordeal quite alone. It was an officers' train, some of them so very, very young, and so pathetically proud to be really going at last in all the panoply of war, with the addition of brand new pith helmets which extinguished their features when they put them on, and made them look like overgrown mushrooms.