Front matter (continued 2)

It is a chilly day; Don and the Atom cuddle side by side at the hearth; they are great friends now. Marie returns with bright eyes and red cheeks from a walk. Presently home comes Peter, who has been away on some errand of his own, to a fireless hearth and an empty room. Home and garden and adjacent field he searches in vain.

"She will 'ave gone to one of her friends, Miss," says Peter stoutly, proceeding to lay a fire.

I assent, but with misgiving. Madge had never failed before, nor had she even gone away for half an hour without telling me. As Peter helps me prepare a simple meal to serve instead of dinner, I turn the conversation toward military training and matters of war. My own contributions to the conversation, in regard to cavalry, infantry, and manœuvering I should not care to have Lord Kitchener hear. Very casually I remark that, if I were a man, I should like to be a soldier.

"Would you now, Miss?" Peter responds amiably, as he takes up the toasting-fork.

"There's a recruiting station at Shepperton," I suggest, as I cut the bread. "There are five thousand men encamped for training in Wellington Park; and I've been told that there are several hundred in the nearest village,—what is it, Silverlea? I hardly see how you can go about so much without seeing them."

"It is odd, isn't it?" Peter answers wonderingly. I found out afterward that the villain had spent that very day at Wellington Park, watching the recruits drill.

As it grew later, more chilly and darker on that autumn night, I could see the British husband's awful wrath growing within Peter; he evidently thought that his wife had run away with some one. Naturally I had no idea what had happened, but I had my doubts of this. In the first place, she was fundamentally good; in the second place, one Briton was, I felt sure, enough for Madge.

Don and the Atom were the only members of the family who really enjoyed their evening meal that day. They lapped from the same saucer, though not at the same moment, each politely waiting a turn, the closest of allies, and doing a bit after in the way of washing each other up. Marie watched me with big, sympathetic brown eyes, and said nothing. When nine o'clock came, I was as worried as was Peter, though I did not admit it. We had decided that he should go to the Inn for the pony, and that we would begin a systematic search. He went to his room to get ready and presently appeared, alternately red with wrath and pale with anxiety.

"My clothes, 'm, my Sunday clothes are gone. Boots and all, 'm. And my 'at, my Sunday 'at."

Despair could go no further than this intonation of Peter's Sunday 'at; would that any 'at had ever meant so much to me!

"She 'as given them to 'im, Miss."

"To whom?"

"That's just what I don't know, 'm."

What could one think? Had Madge, the admirable, indeed a lover? That was unthinkable; there must have been some accident. At least, there was nothing to do but to notify mine host of the Inn, and to present the case to the local Dogberry.

We were ready to start, when I heard a little click of my garden gate, and soft footsteps came up the brick walk, down which streamed the light of the porch lamp. Red rage mounted to Peter's eyes. "It's that man," he cried, "in my clothes!" I kept a detaining arm on Peter's sleeve,—his second-best sleeve. Where had his best been intriguing?

The kitchen door opened softly, very softly; we stood breathless in the corner. If it were a burglar, we were ready; were not all the massive British kitchen utensils near? The lamplight fell full upon the face and form of a strange man, a very strange man, the strangest I ever saw, plump, round of face, with straggling, irregular locks of hair that had been newly shorn,—a decidedly strange man, in Peter's clothes.

"You—you hussy!" said Peter, but the sorry epithet expressed a world of relief, even, I thought, of endearment.

One would have supposed that Madge could not grow redder; yet her face became even more a flame.

"You, a respectable British female," said Peter, advancing with slow heaviness of tread, as if Madge's end would really come when he reached her and the Sunday clothes; "You, a British female, and the wife of an honest man, out on the highway in a man's clothes, my clothes." He took hold of her arm, but gently; he would not have dared do otherwise. His wife looked at him steadily; he could not meet her glance, and his eyes fell.

"You're little better than a suffragette," he said weakly.

"That may be," said Madge, not without a certain loftiness, touching her hair with a novel feminine gesture, "that may be; but I am better than an able-bodied man that doesn't hoffer himself to his country. The suffragettes are fighting for theirs."

Peter was stricken; he had nothing to say. Don, arriving and unable to understand, barked wildly at Madge, and she seemed to mind his remarks much more than she had Peter's. I could help it no longer, and I burst out laughing.

"Madge," I asked, "where have you been?"

"I've been to the recruiting station at Shepperton, 'm," said Madge, with one look at Peter. "I could bear it no longer; not a finger raised for King or Country."

Peter hung his head.

"Or the 'Ouse of Lords," Madge added witheringly. "I've been a-reading and a-reading, 'm, in those papers of yours about the French women that they find, fighting side by side with the men, for their country, and about the Russian women fighting too; but when I saw yesterday that German women had been found fighting, something gave way in my 'ead. I think you call it brain-storm in America, 'm. Those barbarian women, from God knows where, fighting for King and Country and their 'Ouse of Lords! I said to myself that the Snell family should send one man to the seat of war."

"I've been a-considering," said Peter. "I've been a-thinking it out."

"The present h'our," glared Madge, "is no time to think!"

"That was evidently the exact view of the European statesmen in August," I ventured, but Madge and Peter were too intent to catch my unkind whisper.

"So I put on Peter's clothes," said Madge, "and I went and walked to Shepperton and offered myself. Your Queen Elizabeth would have done as much."

My Queen Elizabeth, indeed!

"What did they say to you?" demanded Peter.

"I shan't tell you," said Madge. And she never did.

October 22. I am so excited that I can hardly write; my fingers tremble and make letters that look like bird-tracks. What do you think has happened? Who do you think stopped this afternoon at my little iron gate? It seems a terrible thing, an incredible thing to say, but I could hardly have been happier about it if it had been you. I have so much to do, to think about, while Marie—? Her little world had all been swept away.

I was weeding this neglected garden; Peter, leaning on his spade, was eyeing me with some disapproval.

"Ladies shouldn't be doing that 'ard work, Miss," he observed.

"That's a queer opinion for a socialist," I remarked, tugging at a burdock root. He let me tug and went on with the exposition of his political opinions, quite unaware of my meaning.

"This need not keep you from working, Peter," I suggested. "I've no intention of spading that bed."

He dug his spade in with a little grunt.

"Everybody ought to work; that should be the first article of your socialist creed."

"It isn't, 'm," said Peter eagerly.

"Wouldn't you respect the House of Lords more if they actually worked, Peter?" This brought him to a full stop.

"They do less 'arm as it is, Miss," he said darkly.

Here we heard the gate creak; the broken latch gives a little unnecessary click. An odd figure was standing there, looking like a tramp, with worn and battered clothing, a Derby hat with holes in it, and dark hair straggling over his forehead. Don, catching sight of him, barked furiously; I never heard him bark that way. It was as if the whole outraged spirit of the British upper classes were crying out upon the poverty and the misery they have helped create; it was a perfect yelp of class-consciousness. This naturally enlisted my sympathy on the side of the tramp, and I scolded Don and even slapped him a little. I've told him often enough that there is really nothing so vulgar as display of a sense of social superiority, and I do not like these relapses from the democratic spirit that I am trying to cultivate in him.

It was the way in which the tramp watched me that made me suspect that he was not a tramp at all; he had big, brown, appealing eyes, like those of a nice dog,—not Don, but a friendly shepherd dog. The way in which he took off his battered hat enlightened me further, as did his little wistful smile. His face was a bit dirty, but my face has been dirty in times past; so, doubtless, has yours, Lord Hamlet. When I greeted him with good afternoon, he took a piece of paper from his pocket, and at first I wondered if he were an Armenian with lace, going about with a letter of introduction from a pastor,—or don't you have them in England? But he did not look like an Armenian, and he very evidently did not have lace, or any other kind of luggage. The paper proved to be the advertisement that I had put in a London paper,—and as I took it, it struck me that those holes in his hat might be bullet holes.

"You're not really Henri Dupré?"

"I am," he said simply. My French is fairly inadequate in my calmest moments; in times of excitement it is non-existent, but he must have understood the joy in my face, and the hand I held out in welcome. He shook his head; his hand was not clean; my own was less so, and I was so proud! As I told Peter, if I had not been weeding, our guest would not have been properly greeted. Don, the wretched little creature, taking his cue from me, was gaily barking a welcome in a wholly different tone of voice from that which he had used at first. You see, he never would have known that the wayfarer was respectable if he had not considered himself properly introduced by my handshake.

"Is Marie Lepont here?"

I told him in my matter-of-fact way that she was, and I said nothing more; they might do their own explaining, I thought, as they understood their own language, not to speak of anything else, far better than I. So I only motioned to him and went on tiptoe to the corner of the house; Marie was sitting in the garden, as she sits so often, in the rocking-chair, knitting, knitting for the soldiers. The air is full of the fragrance of ripening apples, of falling leaves, and fading fern. She is very quiet in the sunshine, and the shadows of the grapevine leaves upon her face hardly change for half an hour at a time. I motioned to him, and then I ran away, back to my weeding,—to anything. If it were really he! I wondered if even they felt an anguish so intense, a joy so intense as my own. It must have lent me greater power than I really have, for I tugged and tugged to relieve my feelings; the burdock came up, root and all, and I sat down rather suddenly, panting. Peter remonstrated mildly, shaking his head.

"You really shouldn't, Miss!"

"Then why don't you?" I asked. "It was here all the time, and you have a spade."

"I've 'ad no directions, Miss," he said stiffly. "But I don't refer to the weeding; I dessay it is because you are an American and don't understand, but you really shouldn't let disrespectable people in that way. He may be a burglar; he may be robbing the 'ouse at this very minute. But why, if you don't mind me asking, are you crying, Miss?"

"I'm not!" I answered indignantly. "I never cry. Peter, will you lend this man your precious Sunday suit?"

"Never, Miss!" declared Peter, somewhat heated, and mopping his forehead. "A tramp like that!"

"You believe in the brotherhood of man, don't you?"

"Of course I do; certingly I do."

"Madge," I called through the kitchen window, "please start the heater and get water ready for a bath. And please lay out Peter's Sunday suit; he wants to lend it to a brother man."

"Brother man, indeed!" ejaculated Peter, and he went on digging. He is getting a bed ready for next spring's daffodils.

"Peter," I said with some severity, "I want to see if I can respect your social convictions; this is the first chance I have had to test them."

"Yes, Miss," he answered, "but I don't see what that has to do with me Sunday suit."

Not a sound came from the garden; I kept Don with me,—not even he should break that moment. Then I told Peter who had come, how the lovers had lost each other in that mad rush for safety, and how, for days, I had been trying to find this man, for I was very sure that the right man had come. Peter was spellbound, nor could he dig a stroke while I was talking. Then he began to work, and he worked furiously, as I have not seen him since he came.

"It's quite right, 'm, about the suit," he said presently.

I worked for perhaps an hour, while Peter dug like one inspired. Madge heated water and got towels ready, peering out curiously to see why. A touch of evening chill came into the air; the rooks began to go home, and filmy rose-flushed clouds trailed over the sky at sunset. Finally I shook the dirt off my hands, finding myself very stiff as I tried to stand.

"Peter," I asked, "what shall I do next?"

"I think, 'm, I'd start making a wedding cake," he answered, after due reflection.

"For a futile political theorist, you do have perfectly unexpected moments of insight," I told him.

"Yes, Miss," said Peter.

Silence, except for the rooks, the sound of the brook, and a little wayward flutter of the leaves where the wind was moving. I went to the kitchen and added something un-British and digestible to the supper menu, then walked up and down, wondering why a man probably famished did not appear. Finally I decided that I must investigate and tiptoed my way to the corner of the house. Marie was still sitting in her chair; her knitting was on the ground beside her. The shadow of the grapevine was gone, and her face was alive with light from within and without. The level shafts of sunlight that touched it fell too on the red brick wall behind her, where the espaliered pear tree was etched in dark lines, and all the garden was a soft glow of October gold. The stranger was sitting on the ground with his head against Marie's knees, and her little shawl over his shoulders, sleeping like a child that had found its way home.

As I crept near, Marie looked up, and a heavenly smile came over her face. She took my hand and held it, kissing it more than once, and she said over and over: "Mademoiselle; Mademoiselle," and again, "Mademoiselle."

We let her lover stay as long as we dared on the brick walk, covering him warmly with steamer rugs. Later we found that he had just reached England and had hardly slept for a week. The sunset faded, and the stars grew bright, and still he leaned his head against Marie's knee and slept the sleep of exhaustion.

Presently we wakened him; there was a great sound of splashing water; Marie ran up-stairs to do her hair over again and came down flushed like a rose, revitalized, alive as I had not dreamed she could be alive, and at last our guest appeared, clean and smiling. He was evidently amused by the odd fit of Peter's clothes, but too tired and too happy to say much. I sped to the kitchen to make the French omelette; Madge cannot do it,—no Briton could; it has to be manipulated in just the right fashion, turned at the exact fraction of a second, and served in just the right way. You should have seen Don, when he found the stranger in your place, apologizing, snuffing daintily, touching him with a friendly and beseeching paw, pretending that he had always known!

Of course the lovers were holding hands under the table; of course you, as an Englishman, would have thought them effusive, but I should have been terribly hurt if they had not been effusive about that omelette. When I rise to the occasion like this, I like to be appreciated; I had nothing to complain of that night. Tea and toast and jam; a few tears, and much laughter, and a Sultana cake—the very kind that grew in Oxford windows and graced our five o'clock banquets; a Sultana cake calls to my mind the profoundest problems of life and destiny, so many of them we discussed over the crumbs,—this, I am afraid, meant a rather ascetic repast for the young Belgians, but I thought that anything more, with their great draughts of happiness, would be indigestible. Peter took Henri to the Inn and got a room for him. Though he was there more than three weeks, mine host would not let me pay a farthing,—no, indeed! The Belgians are the guests of the English nation, he said, and he was glad to have his chance to shelter one of them.

November 1. War, unceasing war in the trenches, with rumours of a British naval defeat in South American waters, and little encouraging news save that the Germans have failed to reach Dunkirk and Calais. England's best are dying, your kind,—England's noblest sons rushing to the danger places, foolishly, grandly brave. One can feel throughout the country the great purpose shaping itself to the needs of the moment, as it does slowly but surely in this land. That is the secret of this people: they can rise to a challenge, meet any crisis whatever when it comes; and though I know that unpreparedness has cost them much, they are greater and better than if they had devoted their best energy for five and twenty years to getting ready for war. Enthusiasm kindles under the challenge of disaster; the finest have already answered the call; the less fine make the great refusal. You go, but Peter stays, and Peter's kind all over England stays….

November 5. Peter does not stay! Peter is going to the war! For several days he has been very critical of civilization, very severe upon his country and her rulers; at times he seemed to think himself the only real pillar of Church and State. Some struggle was going on within him; I have learned enough of him to know that if he expresses a feeling, it is one he does not have! For him, as for me, the horror of the present moment has been intensified by coming into contact with those who have actually suffered. All that I could understand of Henri Dupré's account I have translated into English for Peter's benefit, and the sight of the bullet-riddled hat has plunged him in deep thought.

He saw your picture, the picture of you in khaki. Madge, unpermitted, had taken it into the kitchen to polish the frame of oak. Peter looked at it uneasily.

"A friend of yours, Miss?"

"Yes, Peter."

"At the front, 'm?"

"At the front, Peter," I answered. I could not have said anything else, and even if I live to be a hundred, I shall not think of you any other way except as at the front, fighting if need be, carrying messages across the danger zone, with no thought of danger.

It was a great advance in Peter to admit the existence of a front; he has persisted in declaring the war a bit of sensational romance, devised by the House of Lords for their own entertainment. It was a brooding Peter who busied himself with rubbing up the knives,—he has been unusually attentive to Madge since her escapade; his mind seemed to be running on troubles greater than his own.

"Do you know where our army is supposed to be now, 'm?" he asked, when I told him that we had no good news from the seat of war.

Our army! We were getting on! I gave him my best information about our hard-pressed line in the west.

"It's astonishing that those Germans are able to fight at all, 'm, when they have once met the British," said Peter gloomily, polishing a huge carving knife as if it were a sword. "Meeting the French, that is different; they are a flighty people and very hexcitable."

"Your knowledge of history needs to be brought up to date, Peter," I ventured. "Anything less flighty than that magnificent people of France at this present moment the world has never seen."

"It must be very difficult, 'm, fighting on the Continent, for one who does not speak the foreign tongues. And I couldn't eat frogs, 'm; I'd almost rather 'ave the Germans as allies; sausages aren't as bad as frogs by 'alf."

Later I heard him muttering to himself.

"If the 'Ouse of Lords is really in trouble," said Peter, fighting the great fight with self, "if the 'Ouse of Lords really needs me—Of course, the throne is more or less a figure'ead, but I shouldn't like to see it fall just now, especially if the henemy is coming…. I should like to himpress them as much as possible." It was when he was sweeping the walk that I heard him say: "And I should like to see Bobs once more."

But one day determined Peter's future destiny and his rank as a man and a Briton. Peter had gone to the coast, with Puck and the cart, spending the night at a sister's on the way. He had some business at Yarmouth, he said. I devised some errands for him and encouraged his going. I thought that it would perhaps prove to be his farewell to his sister before going to war.

Those were strange days, the days of Peter's absence,—tense, full of nameless anxiety. That early-morning feeling of suspense, of expectancy, lasted into the afternoon; and one early morning had brought us the unmistakable sound of guns from the sea. Peter came rattling home in the late afternoon, a pale, distraught Peter, who seemed to have lost several pounds. He came into the garden where I was tying up rosebushes for the winter; at first he seemed unable to speak, but at last gasped out, "Those —— Germans!" and the gasp ended in a little sob. As I watched him, I found myself sharing his trembling indignation.

"German ships, 'm, men-of-war, standing off our coast, bombarding; it has never been attacked before. I saw them with my own eyes; I 'eard them with my own ears!"

The firing, then, had had the significance that we dreaded. It began at about seven o'clock in the morning on November third, terrifying the peaceful folk of the seacoast town, shell after shell, report after report for nearly half an hour. Peter, who was getting an early start for home, had taken Puck and the cart to a house on the outskirts of the town, where he was getting a bag of very superior fertilizer. Then came the great noise and the splashing; little if any actual damage was done to buildings or to people, yet Peter contended that Puck was actually struck on the shoulder by some fragment of splintering wood or flying stone dislodged by a shell. Those shells may have missed their intended mark, but they went home to the heart of the time-expired man, Peter Snell. He knew at last that there was a war, and I knew—what he himself had not yet realized—that he was going to it.

Peter lacks descriptive powers; I got from him little idea of the actual scene in all the fright and confusion. When he had found that there was nothing he could do to help, he had sped toward home, intent on carrying out his unavowed purpose. Asking how Puck, now standing with drooping head at the gate, had behaved at the crisis, I got the account that I expected, and, as we petted this veteran of the war and dressed a small hurt on his shoulder, I heard how he, the most antic pony in the British Isles, had held his ground, had jumped only moderately, had endured the crashing and the splashing, standing with his four legs braced in the sand, trembling all over, while Peter, dazed a bit at first, came to his senses.

"And I will say, 'm, that he showed more 'ead than I 'ad myself, for the reins were loose on his back, I 'aving dropped them to put in the bag of fertilizer. 'E never offered to run, 'm!"

Puck, the war veteran, took our praises modestly, making no claim to be recognized as a hero; he helps me understand the British temper, not to say the British constitution. No paper theories for him! The unwritten law of common sense available when needed is admirably embodied in him. That power of keeping your head while others lose theirs is what wins in the long run, and despite the discouragement of this present moment, I feel confident that the English will win in the end. The Germans plan, theorize, show great forethought, but are lost without a programme. Life does not go by plans and charts; no known precautions can foresee its emergencies. Unless some chemical or electric invention of the Teutons can remove the element of uncertainty from existence, surely victory will go to the people who can meet the unforeseen; pull themselves together and know, without forethought, what to do in an instant's danger. All these meditations passed through my head as Puck shook his mane, making light of his adventure, and trotted away down the street to his stable with an unmistakable air of "England expects every pony to do his duty."

The country thrills with indignation, surprise, and increasing resolution; the impossible has happened, and these inviolate shores have been desecrated by attack.

Peter is away, Peter in khaki, with something already gone from his laggard step, with firmer and more self-respecting tread, recalling the old training which he was beginning to forget. Surely, because of his experience as a soldier, they will let him go soon to the front. The sympathy and the admiration in the eyes of our fugitives have nerved him, as nothing else has done, for the great adventure. I heard Henri giving him some French lessons, strictly along the line of requests for food and drink; the French will make up in swiftness of understanding what he lacks in pronunciation. His last days with Madge have been funny and tragic too. Her first remark, on hearing of the Yarmouth incident, was along the old line of urging him to war.

"Some minds," she remarked firmly, "need shot and shell to open 'em." But I could not help noticing that when he began to talk about going, she stopped talking about it. Her face has been tragically comic as she has watched him, in a Falstaff "He-that-died-o'-Wednesday" mood, packing his belongings. I heard the sound of loud sobbing in the kitchen as she made herself a cup of tea the afternoon he went away. Could it be Madge who was muttering questions as to why the King didn't go to war himself if he wanted war?

November 25. A wedding, actually a wedding, in the little red house, which wakens gladly to its ancient responsibilities! Weddings enough have I seen, but this is the first that I ever managed from start to finish; it was much more my own than if I had been married myself, for I had to do all the planning, coach the actors, superintend the catering, and do the decorating with my own hands. The only thing I did not attempt was performing the ceremony.

We had such joyous weeks, after the banns were published! Marie, I am sure, quite forgot her sorrow; I quite forgot you, most of the time,—I mean in my upper and superficial mind. Down under, of course, in the vital part of my soul, you are I, I am you: there is no remembering or forgetting, for I am living your life and mine in a fashion profound and strange. We were busy every minute, busy with the outer things of life that ride on the surface of the deep currents,—bobbing up and down in the sunshine.

First, there was Marie's trousseau. She begged me with tears to get her nothing more; but a girl must have clothing, be she married or single, so we purchased much muslin,—"calico," they call it, oh, horrors! What can one think of a nation that calls cotton flannel "swan's-down calico"? We found a little sewing woman in the village, and she did her inefficient best on an ancient sewing machine. Much of the finishing we had to do ourselves, so afternoons we sat in the garden and stitched. My buttonholes would not call forth commendations from any ladies' journal, but what they lacked in delicacy they made up in strength. Buttonholes for war, I consoled myself, as I saw the barricades that I had erected round the little gashes, are a different matter from buttonholes for peace.

Marie's ready-made travelling suit, for which I sent to London, fitted fairly well; as did the boots for both of them. When they overwhelmed me with thanks, I had to talk very earnestly with them; at least I am growing more fluent, and they never laugh, only once or twice I have seen the corners of their mouths twitching uncontrollably, and once tears came into Marie's eyes as she tried to keep from laughing. They are exquisitely courteous, and would die rather than be rude. I summoned all my resources from grammar, dictionary, and heroic plays; at last the world has faced an occasion that justifies the grandiloquence of French tragedy.

I told them that we were honouring ourselves in being allowed to care for any members of this stricken, dauntless nation. More than anything that could be done for them had they done for the world; how could we ever repay our debt to this little people with its heroic young King? What I was doing I did, not for them (think of having sufficient French to be able to prevaricate in it already!), but for my country and their country—and for England; it was not a personal but an international matter. They may not have understood all my syntax, but my general meaning they understood perfectly, and Don helped me very greatly by sitting on his hind legs and offering to shake hands, first with one and then with the other. He, at least, understands my academic French!

There had to be a wedding dress; I insisted on a white one; it was only China silk, made with a simplicity which, I presume, outraged Marie's grandmother's traditions. As I explained to her, if she goes back to London to help the authorities with the refugees, while Henri returns to Belgium to enter the army, she could doubtless loan this gown for other weddings, for among the fugitives many—I hoped many—another pair of lovers would perhaps be reunited. At this, her eyes filled with tears, and she uttered not another word of remonstrance; she starts on a quest to find others to wear it.

So she wore the white frock at her wedding, and the house was brave in its bridal array! Yellowing ferns, autumn leaves, and great golden chrysanthemums and white decked the living room; outside the dim red and gold of the autumn woods in hazy distance recalled the ancient manuscripts that you showed us in the sacred recesses of the Bodleian. To think that I should live to see a Roman Catholic priest marrying two young folk by my fireplace! Marie and Henri were quite polite but very determined to be married according to the rites of their own Church, and it was done. His Reverence plainly did not want to officiate at my house, but not in vain have I associated with Puck, choosing him for guide, philosopher, and friend, and obstinacy won. Henri wore a new dark tweed business suit which Peter insisted on giving him; he is a fine-looking man when you see him clothed and in his right mind, the torn hat vanished. Both faces have a look of sorrow and of shock that should not be on faces so young, but there is also a look of intense and quiet happiness. Even if they are separated again, they will have had something of the joy of life in these brief hours and days since they found each other.

Our wedding feast was the simplest ever set before mortals, unless possibly our Pilgrim fathers and mothers had a simpler in starvation days in the old colony, with bride cake made perhaps of Indian meal! We had tables in the garden, and a few simple things to eat and drink, centering in that wedding cake upon which Peter had insisted. Had not Madge and I spent a whole morning over it, with its raisins and its currants, its spices and its chopped nuts? "Leave off the frosting, 'm!" Madge had ejaculated in horror. "That would be a heathing thing to do!" When I told her that for most people nowadays the frosting was rubbed off of life, she looked at me as if she thought me mad. So she does, but harmless mad.

Perhaps the mild November air, which harmonizes all things,—sad, soft and sweet,—helped harmonize the diverse elements at that wedding feast. There were the Vicar and the Roman priest peacefully grazing as one; the Vicaress was affably chatting with mine host and hostess as on equal terms; one of my county ladies was entertaining the little dressmaker who cannot sew. I did my best in inviting them to outrage as many conventions as possible; they submitted to the necessities of the occasion, and still the House of Lords stands, or sits, King George is on his throne, and the kingdom has not fallen.

I hope it never will!

It had been hard to induce the Vicar to come, but I reminded him that our Church had been a Roman Catholic Church before Queen Elizabeth's day, and that, in the holy ground of the churchyard, Roman Catholic dust was mingled with Church of England dust. How, at this cruel moment in the world's history, the truth cries out that there should be no struggle between Christian and Christian, only between Christian and Pagan! He came; high and low alike nibbled our little cakes and consumed our ices, and drank the simple beverage made of lemons and other ingredients served from a wonderful old blue punch bowl. Ay, we were all allies that day!

So they were married and fêted, and when it was all over, mine host drove them to the railway station, and I followed with Puck and the pony cart, Don sitting beside me, and the gingerbread baby with two of its brothers sitting on the other side. The village windows and doorways were crowded with friendly faces, for the story of the two re-united lovers had spread far, and many a kindly good-bye was spoken by people who had never met them. I had determined that Puck, who had found Marie, and to whom the happy outcome of the story was due, should have a place of honour at the parting moment, but Marie's last glimpse of him showed him indignantly shaking off the white rosettes that had been fastened to his headstall.

They waved back quite a merry farewell, and then they disappeared, vanishing behind the great cloud of tragedy that hangs so close. I can see only suffering ahead of them. They consented to take a loan from me, not to be repaid until their country is free, and they promised again and again to let me know if they came to want.

It is lonely to-night, belovèd, under my roof.

December 27. Winter is gentler here than at home, bringing at times enfolding grey mist and hours of rain; yet we have had many days of clear and sunny cold, and snow has fallen on the roof of the little red house. My royal family of fowls lives a subdued but happy life in the house of Peter's making; Puck has taken up his residence at the Inn, for cold has come, and Peter is far away. The English robin stays with us evidently throughout the winter; the rooks have not deserted; and we are visited daily by silver-winged gulls which come all the way from the sea for the food we put out.

My home with the little "h" is seldom empty; for two of these winter weeks we had here two small Belgian boys, eight and ten years old, very red of cheek and black of hair, and very much boy. What a two weeks! The Atom immediately retreated to the loft over the kitchen, coming down only for its meals. It found a warm corner by the chimney where it cuddled in safety.

Don clung close to my side; he would not make friends. His dictum was that he would associate with either the aristocracy or the peasantry, but that the lower middle class he would not tolerate. Those boys, who had tried to tie a tin can to his tail, his tail, that organ of fine expressiveness, equal to English prose style at its best, were not gentlemen, and he would have nothing to do with them.

I was glad to see that the suffering of the past weeks had not ruined their young lives, but I admit a failure in managing my guests. Even Madge could do nothing with them, though her hand is heavy; I do not approve of corporal punishment, but life in theory and life in practice seem amazingly different at times, and I looked the other way. They demanded the tail feathers of Hengist and Horsa for their play of American Indian, and I discovered as I defeated their purpose that they thought they were living with an Indian lady and were trying to garb themselves appropriately. I rose to the challenge as best I could; have I not vowed, whatever happens, never to be an "old maid"? I romped with them in the meadow, played "tag," and helped them make boats to sail on the stream, but I had no control over them. Puck was the only perfectly successful disciplinarian, and whenever they tried to climb on his back, or ride by clinging to his tail, his quick little hind heels—fortunately only his fore feet are shod—accomplished what neither coaxing, admonition, nor enforced fasting could accomplish. They were not really bad, only dwelling in that Stone Age through which so many men-children pass. A neighbouring farmer and his wife wanted to adopt them, and I thankfully let them go, calling in the village carpenter to help Madge and me make the necessary repairs.

There was peace, we are told, for a few hours on Christmas day in the trenches; but Christmas should mean lasting peace! The attack, less than two weeks ago, on our undefended coast towns, Hartlepool, Scarborough, Whitby, has enkindled as nothing else has done the dull glow of English wrath. The recruiting goes more swiftly; a number of young men have gone from our village in the last few days; the blacksmith's shop is closed, and the forge fire is out,—he has gone to work in a munition factory. We who stay are knitting for the trenches and sewing for the hospitals; I never dreamed that I should live to know such human anguish and human want,—yet it is good to learn that one need not stand alone, bearing the pain of life in solitude. I have joined every possible relief association and have pledged almost my uttermost penny. We are even selling eggs for the hospital funds; spite of cold weather, the Matildas, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Anne, and Queen Victoria are rising magnificently to the crisis. The London people are using the house occasionally as a temporary shelter for one or two people at a time before permanent places are found for them. The Inn also serves for this, and mine hostess and I have many a conference; fortunately, in the haste and confusion, some of the bric-a-brac is getting broken; one alabaster vase and one glass case covering artificial flowers have disappeared.

Madge has amused me by finding a way to express, in rather original fashion, her deepening sympathy with humankind. A courting is going on in our kitchen; every Friday night the lovers come, she from the village, he from a farm lying beyond the Hall; and every Friday night Madge either goes to bed early, or steps out to see her friends. The girl is a country lass rather ill-treated by a mistress who shall be nameless; she has no place to receive her lover, save the stone wall of the bridge across the stream. She steals here in the dusk on her one free evening; why not? The young man is a perfectly suitable wooer, and they are safer in my kitchen than out in the cold. Yet I admit that I feel a bit guilty when I very formally return the very formal greeting of the unconscious mistress.

Just now, no one is staying with us, and there is blessed quiet. Through the silences in the little house, old moods, old laughter, old half-merry tears come back; you blend with all my days. Sometimes I feel, not as at first, that this is the end of things for me, but as if it were a little truce of God while I am waiting. To-day I found my first grey hairs; there were two, one on each temple; have you any to match them, I wonder? Ah, I keep forgetting, forgetting; keep thinking of you as still alive and suffering in this war. Remembering, I envy you; the many years ahead look formidable.

Do you remember the day we took our fifteen-mile walk from Oxford in May, and sat to rest on the flat grey stones in an old, old village churchyard, with a tangle of wild vines at our feet, and primroses and violets blossoming near,—do you remember that we talked of immortality and decided that when one died it was death, that having lived was enough? At least you did; I always had "ma doots o' ma doots." I think it was just May that made us feel that way,—the fragrances, the bird songs, the sun-flecked clouds over the Cumnor Hills; you too were far more influenced by things outside the world of pure thought than you ever knew, my philosopher; have I not seen you mistaking a sunbeam for an optimistic syllogism? We doubted, dear, but we were wrong; you do not die; you are more intensely alive than ever.

I am stealing a little time to try to do a portrait of you, though it is long since I have had a brush in my hand; you know that I was something but not much of an artist. What were the half-gifts meant for, I wonder, all the aspiration that goes into them, the denied hope? I used to suffer because I could not create the things I saw and dreamed, but that kind of suffering has vanished utterly,—life flows out in so many ways. There's a bit of attic with a north light near the Atom's lair that I have fitted up as a studio, and I have unpacked there my easel and canvases. To-day I shut myself up and began my portrait of you, merely sketching, for the outlines blurred. I had a curious experience. So clear is my inner vision of you that it blinded my eyes, and that which was in my mind a perfect picture would prove, if I left the room and came back to look at it afresh, a set of meaningless lines.

December 30. For three days I tried and tried in vain; then came sudden success, for your very mouth half smiled at me from the canvas where I had been putting random strokes. As I work, I feel that I never before really knew you; deeper understanding comes to me of your doubts, your resolutions, your long growth, and what you are. Little things long forgotten come drifting back, concerning your boyhood in the old rectory, the hard awakening of an English public school. Chance remarks that you made carelessly long ago waken in memory and reveal you to me anew. The first time I realized the depth of feeling within you was when I caught a glimpse of you listening to music at a concert in the Sheldonian theatre; once, at least, your over-guarded face betrayed the real you. I learned to know your quiet sympathy, your concealed sensitive understanding of the needs of humankind, and to comprehend your difficulty in showing it, making it available. You built up the excluding barrier of an Englishman's expression between you and the world; only animals and children dared break through. I can see them yet rubbing their fuzzy heads against you, from the big Angora at Grey friars, to little Lady Matilda at Witton Hall.

December 31. I cannot finish this portrait, for the eyes baffle me, and each time I try you seem to be looking at me appealingly, as if you wanted me to express something that I but dimly see. My present knowledge of you seems in some strange way to outstrip your remembered face. My sketch—for I shall leave it a mere sketch—suggests all your suffering and all my sorrow, and yet not all is said. What knowledge have you now that I do not share? Tell it very gently in the quiet, and I shall know; am I not always listening? I am hungry for your wisdom of death.

January 12, 1915. Deepening cold drives us all closer to the hearth; perhaps it is only in winter that one gets the full flavour of home. Don curls up by the fire with me, or takes glorious cross-country walks. The little old gingerbread woman of the lych gate has disappeared; I half suspect her of crawling temporarily into one of the graves to keep warm. In snug farmyards, by great sunny ricks of hay, the cattle of the countryside shelter themselves contentedly. Now, even more than in summer, this land seems home from end to end; in every nook and corner is something of the appeal of the fireside; no other country so suggests from shore to shore one great threshold and hearth. Its churchyards, with their dead softly tucked in, the comforting grass above; its low-roofed villages; its individual homes in their great loveliness wear one expression.

There are wonderful sunsets over the brown earth or white snow. This is that England on whose domain the sun never sets, yet it sets most exquisitely day by day, did they but know.

For a week we had with us a little nun, who prayed and prayed, looking about her with big, frightened eyes. Luckily, my acquaintance with His Reverence, who officiated at Marie's wedding, solved the problem, and she went gladly to the shelter of a convent roof. Then for a few days we cared for an old, old man, who swore and swore, softly, constantly, but with an air of question, as if no oaths could quite meet the need of the present moment. It was most incongruous, for he was very evidently a gentleman, and he very evidently thought that he was expressing himself politely, even if inadequately. My knowledge of the French language was greatly extended, but this new vocabulary is, alas! as unavailable for the uses of ordinary life as that which I learned from Corneille! Our fugitive was a most pathetic old creature whose mind had been somewhat unsettled by suffering and exile. Fortunately a relative of his was discovered, a prosperous Belgian merchant living in the outskirts of London, and my guest bade me a profane but grateful farewell. A few days' care seems but little to offer these flitting guests on their sorrowful journey, but it is a great relief to me to do even this little, and as each one goes, I feel like saying "Thank you!" as the well-trained British waiter says when you deign to take something from the offered plate.

We really need Peter's advice,—think of that: Peter's advice, which I have scorned to take! In our zeal we became victims of one bit of imposture, which, however, did not involve us in irretrievable loss,—only spoons! Two dark-skinned folk presented themselves one cold, wintry day when all the desolation of the earth seemed dripping down in icy rain. They asked for food, telling us that they were Belgian refugees in need of help; evidently the habits of this household have been rumoured abroad. We were a bit suspicious, but resolved to err upon the right side. While Madge was cooking and I had gone to order fresh supplies, they decamped with my spoons and my purse, luckily a very lean purse. Don had simply absented himself; he no longer trusts his instincts, finding himself in a world whose standards he does not comprehend. The old order changes, giving place to new; old caste distinctions are ignored, and he has not as yet had time to learn new mental habits. He has found for himself a little agnostic den in a corner behind the kitchen range, and he goes there when he cannot make up his mind. When we discovered our loss and began our search, he came out wagging his tail with a self-congratulatory air to say, "I told you so!" But he had not told us so; he had only deserted us when we needed him most. Our light-fingered guests have been found in a gypsy tribe passing through to the north, but my spoons have not been found. Must I lap my supper from a saucer with Don and the Atom?

January 19. As I sit by the fire and toast my toes in my few minutes of blessed idleness, I cannot help living over old days and hours, and I see again the dusk of that evening when you and your family escorted me to Hinksey to hear the nightingales; the sunshine of that afternoon when you and I searched in vain the meadows beyond Iffley for pink-tipped English daisies. Often I find myself again arguing things out with you, even getting a bit angry now and then, forgetting that you cannot answer. Many and many a dispute we had, many and many a disagreement, with the invariable outcome of deeper understanding.

Sometimes the unshared jests hurt most of all; what has become of your humour, dear, that rare, dry humour that betrayed itself most plainly in your eyes? When first I knew you, I thought that you had no sense of humour; I soon found that it was deeper than my own, because of your insight into the irony of the human predicament. At times it touched the tragic. I learned to understand your quiet enjoyment in watching people, your wordless jests, and the silent drollery of your half smile. How you loved to tease me about the foibles of my countrymen.

"No other people," you would say, "would come dashing into the courtyard of a French hotel, with flags flying from the carriage, singing their national hymn at the top of their voices; no other people would motor swiftly to the entrance of a French cathedral, crying out: 'You do the inside, and we'll do the outside, and it won't take us more than five minutes!' And there is always the pleasing memory of the lady from Montana who deplored the inadequacy of the Louvre because the pictures couldn't compare with the exhibition that they had had in the winter at Wilkins Bluff. But of course this represents a class of Americans that you would not know."

That was the day we had tea by the river; I was hot with helping you get the boat past the lock, hot with making the tea, and I grew hotter still.

"I admit that we are vulgar, and loud-voiced, and ostentatious," I told you; "but we aren't selfish, and we aren't insolent. On the contrary, we are usually quixotically good-natured and generous. We do not look in blank surprise as the British do if any one questions their right to be served before all other people with the choicest of everything. You have little idea of what we suffer who meet many of the travelling English of to-day, with their quiet and total selfishness in securing and sitting upon all that is best. Of course, this represents a class of the English that you would not know." This you forgave, but you never quite forgave, I fear, my wicked suggestion that the moat about the Bishop's palace was preserved in order to keep out the poor and needy.

But the things about which we quarrelled were only surface things; I knew and loved my England more than I ever admitted to you; and you, for all your criticism of my countrymen (much of it was abundantly justified), had divined the spirit of idealism in our democracy. The development of the individual in righteous freedom for you, as for us, was the great hope of the world. Under all the crudeness of America, under the arrogance of England, lives, and has lived from earliest days, a something great and fine, shared by republican France,—a passion for liberty. The little things do not matter if the great convictions at the heart of nations are akin; have not people of late cared too much about little things? If our two peoples become aware of the greatness of their common destiny, will they not stop fussing about the American accent and English incivility? As I walk alone nowadays, I try to drive this haunting, insistent world-suffering from my mind by dreams of a great future wherein your country and mine go hand in hand, helping secure for all time liberty for the human race.

Each has something to contribute that the other lacks. I really think that we, in our sense of the dignity of the individual man, in willingness to forego shades and differences of taste for the sake of something greater, have outgrown you. You, with your keen insight, had divined the need of democracy, had accepted it in theory, but found the inevitable consequences hard to accept. Nothing is more agreeable than good taste; perhaps there are things more profoundly important. Dare I say that I think we have out-stripped you in generosity of act and of thought?

But you are greater than we, and your life runs in deeper channels than our own, in that you keep faith with the past, refusing to let the hard-won spiritual achievement of the race be swept away by the externalism of the present. To you, as to no other people, we look to save the world from the terrible material forces, without conscience, without insight, which threaten to dominate the whole of life. You who refuse to give up fine standards of an elder day are the influence that we of America greatly need, for in matters intellectual, we are all too prone to be led, and have been too much cowed by this later Germany—who forgets.

February 1. We are living on, as best we may, through cold and thaw and cold again. The horror of that January night, when human beings and birds wakened, with fear dropping from the sky, when innocent women and children were killed by bombs from German Zeppelins, lingers and grows deeper. The tension was greatest for those who could not hear what the birds heard, but listened to the great outcry of blackbirds, pheasants, and other winged things, to the loud cawing of the rooks, and wondered and waited in nameless anguish. There seems to be no refuge in earth or sky or sea. Can this world of shot and shell and conquering chemicals be that world that was so beautiful, and that suddenly seemed so strangely safe when you came into my life?

March 10. Such days of excitement and of strain! My little house has performed its supreme service,—has sheltered a body, while the soul was going out.

It began three days ago; I was walking down the village street with Don at my heels, when I noticed a large touring car at the Inn, with a group of people very much excited, gesticulating and talking with a vehemence that usually means Latin blood. Mine hostess of the Inn was running to and from the car with bottles and flannel cloths; turpentine on warm flannel is her cure for every human ailment. Then I saw in the car an old, old lady—quite ill, evidently—leaning heavily on the shoulder of a younger woman. I shall not soon forget the look of that grey-white face under the snow-white hair and black widow's bonnet, set in a group of strange faces, among which I remember one of a little boy, watching breathlessly with his mouth wide open, and a smaller girl, staring apathetically with her eyes full of tears that looked as if they had long been there. I did not need to be told that this oddly-assorted set of people were refugees. I had seen too many utter strangers, from diverse surroundings, hastily gathered together, clad in velvet, clad in rags, to share one suffering.

I found that they were being taken from London, where they had been cared z many weeks, to different destinations in the northern counties, but the man in charge had evidently lost his way and was making an unnecessary detour toward the coast. He could not speak their language, nor they his, and he seemed entirely at a loss in this dilemma. Oh, the loneliness, and the desolation, and the bitter shame of it all!

"The old lady's took ill, of a sudden, 'm," said the landlady, stopping her little trot near me.

I asked the younger woman, whose face was very kindly, if this was her mother, but she shook her head.

"I don't know who she is; I never saw her until we started."

Then I begged and pleaded; the chauffeur looked greatly relieved, and so did mine hostess, though she remonstrated that it would be quite too much for me.

"Are you sure, Miss, that you want her? We don't know what it is; it may be contagious."

"I don't care what it is!" I said so suddenly that Don barked out; there was a little feeling of joy within me at the thought that there might be danger; it is hard to be shut out from the great danger that circles the world.

So the big touring car was turned about, with much puffing and panting; my little iron gate was opened wide to let two men carry the poor old creature to my guest room, and I sent the others on, with such comforts as I could supply. The small boy went nibbling a cookie, the little girl with hers in her hand, too dazed to eat it. Haven't you ever seen a frightened little bird holding something in its mouth, not daring to swallow?

The village doctor and Madge and I worked for hours over the fugitive. She only looked at us with eyes that had in them all the weariness of the world since the dawn of time. There was evidently no malady; actual physical pain did not seem to be there; only overwhelming mental pain or shock that means destruction of the very forces of life. She was not unconscious, nor was she fully conscious of what was going on around her. The comfort of warm water on her body, the comfort of soothing drink she hardly realized, nor could she swallow, except with great difficulty and reluctance. Just once she stretched herself out at full length with a look of relief, and lay motionless.

I shall never know what weary ways she had trodden in her escape from the swift ruin of war, nor how in her tottering age she had escaped at all. She seemed to be one who, her life long, had walked the same peaceful paths over and over, as her forefathers had done before. Was she one of those who, driven from home and fireside, had lain down in the dust of the road, longing to die? Contagious! Heartbreak does seem contagious in these days; who shall escape? Who can wish to, when other hearts break?

Life can never bring me anything so strange, perhaps it can never bring me anything so wonderful, as this silent companionship with a soul that had almost passed. She did not understand the words I used, but she did understand that we were trying to help her; though her lips were still, her eyes followed us,—eyes full of knowledge that can not come before the last. She did not try to thank us, dwelling in some world of instinctive understanding, making one feel that the long ages of much speaking were folly. She had let go of all tangible things and was no longer aware of time or circumstance; there was no look of fear in her eyes, no look of sorrow; she was done with earth and with feeling, having neither reproaches nor regrets. She had gone beyond pain, beyond joy, beyond those simple human affections that linger to the last, to some region of ultimate peace, or of quiet beyond peace.

The falling of March rain upon the roof; sunshine, with the notes of the returning birds; the cawing of the rooks, and the soft ripple of the brook—even Madge was subdued by the majesty of it all and forgot to rail at the Kaiser, or to storm in misplaced aspirates at the Germans. A world beyond hate was with us, where it was good to be.

The end was hardly different from the days that went before; there was no motion, no outburst, only a quiet ceasing of that which had hardly been breathing. Our departing guest folded her wrinkled hands upon her breast herself, as if to save us trouble, and so I found her. Who was she? Who belonged to her? Where are the children and grandchildren who should have been gathered about her bed?

The doctor and the village nurse took charge of her; when she was ready for burial, more quiet than earth itself,—one never knows quiet until one sees it so,—I put roses beside her; one of the county ladies keeps me supplied from her conservatory. Yet I hesitated; it seemed wrong to recall in this presence any mere tangible and visible beauty, or aught from the world of things. The lovely contours and outlines, the perfume of the roses reproached me, as if I were pursuing her to bring her back to mere self, hampering her escape. With her we seemed to be swept away into some great consciousness that meant relief from individual sorrow,—sharing her rest, a repose so deep that it rested us for all the days to come.

Madge mourned over her as if it were her own mother,—I hardly know why: could it have been merely the three days of trying to care for her? Or was she touched, in some depth of her nature never reached before, by the grandeur of that loneliness?

There was a brief service in the little church on the hill, a sound of song, of praying; but nothing in the burial service could quite express the pathos of that moment when we buried some one's mother, not even knowing her name. We left her in the churchyard, within hearing of the stream, where deep shadows fall on grave after grave. This cold winter grass which grows above the other graves will soon, with the quickening of spring, cover hers also; already it is freshening, and crocuses peep out here and there.

There is no name to put on a stone at her head. It is perhaps at best folly to mark the resting-places of the dead, yet I had a feeling that no token of respect must be lacking, and I begged that an old grey tombstone, standing by the churchyard wall, a stone so old that all that was carved on it has been worn away, might be placed at her head. It has told the passing of one human soul, and shall tell that of another; in its grey, fine-worn beauty it symbolizes the vast impersonality of the end.

I come here now even oftener than I used. Surely death has never appeared so gentle, so much a member of the family, as in these English churchyards with their sweet hominess. It seems fitting that we meet "My sister, the Death of the Body" on these grass-grown paths which wear a look of every day and common happenings. The little river, the lichen-grown stones, the sense of long continuance, give one a feeling that there are no gaps, no fissures between life and death, that the sight of the eyes slips inevitably into the vision of the soul. The sky seems near in England, with the crumbling grey of old Norman tower and churchyard wall touching its veiled blue, and the low white clouds almost within reach; the old home-like look of the flat stones makes one feel as if the sleepers are still, as it were, sitting on the threshold, or on the old bench by the door. There is no sense of distance or separation, no feeling of far away.

It is not sad to leave her here, now when the whole earth seems one great family of the sorrowing, where the children and the grandchildren of many other folk are so near.

May 20. Spring, with the thawing of the icicles, and the sunshine growing warmer on the southern wall of the house,—spring comes back in the old and lovely way to a world never in such anguish before. What an April, to bring the cowardly murder of soldiers in the trenches by volumes of poisonous gas! What a May, to bring the Lusitania massacre of hundreds of innocent men, women, and children at sea! What a Germany, quite, quite mad:

but I am not quoting correctly and am too busy to look up the lines. I dare not even try to speak of my sense of these things; words are lacking to express it, but surely this marks the parting of the ways. To me it seems that the time has come for the nations of the earth—would that my own would join them—to band together once more in a holy crusade and do battle with the Pagan, not for the tomb of our Lord, but for the faith He taught.

As time goes on, I see more clearly what the real England stands for. My mind works slowly, for I am but a practical American; it isn't as if I were a thinker like yourself, who could reason things out on purely intellectual grounds. The war between my great love of England and my indignant sense of things that are wrong gives way to something more impersonal, as I have more chance to see the way in which her customs serve humanity. Complete fulfillment of her great purposes has not yet been achieved, yet surely the human race has got no further: liberty for the individual, fair play,—these watchwords of England are the hope of the human race. What other land could rule many alien peoples and make them so proudly content? As England has kept faith with the past, she has, barring some great mistakes, kept faith with humanity. The recent magnificent bravery of the Canadians in the battles with flaming gas only intensifies the splendour of the voluntary tribute of England's colonies to England in distress. Earth has not seen the like of this empire resting on the will of man; from the four quarters of the globe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, they come sailing swiftly home, counting it great gain to die for that for which she stands. It means that at the heart of England is something too precious to lose, a faith in the working possibility of human freedom. Crude races, races old and outworn, need to learn at her feet the practical way of making good this immemorial hope of the race. Under her rule, the individual has his chance of self-government; if he fails to take it, falling into the net of sloth and old habit as he often does in England, the fault is his own. His individual conscience is left him; he is not compelled to become a soulless cog in a gigantic conscienceless mechanism.

I do not care what Mr. Asquith has done wrong; what Mr. Joseph Chamberlain did wrong; what King George the Third and all the Georges have done or failed to do: I trust this people as I trust no other. Guilty of sins and blunders they may be and are, but the blunder is followed by the honest effort to find again and do the right; you come down always to a groundwork of character, sincerity, integrity. England has been in a way the conscience of the world. What other race-name is a word to conjure with? All over the earth where confusion comes, it is whispered: "The troubles are dying down; the English are drawing near." And in the councils of the world, her voice has been the great arbiter of right and wrong.

No one here now can doubt that England is going through that great anguish wherein the soul of a people is re-born. The unity, the calm, the quickening determination are part of a great spring-time that will lead, God grant, to harvest days of peace. There is slow knitting up of the sinews of war; more and more her sons respond to the call which still leaves them free to choose; old England is getting ready as ever, resolved, incredulous of defeat; the spring knows it; the rooks know it, busy in their elm tree parliament. The great sorrow and the great endeavour have turned the very soil of the country into holy ground. Among my bonfires of spring,—for I like to keep that old, religious rite of purification,—I burned half a dozen volumes of recent English fiction, decadent, erotic; a volume or two of flippant and sensational criticism; and one of affected futurist poetry, or some brand like unto it. They belong to the England whose follies and foibles are being burned in a great fire of affliction; they are not worthy of this great England that is emerging from the flame.

As I write, the tinkle of the English sheep bells from afar comes like the very sound of peace.

February, with the vanishing of the icicles, brought snowdrops and crocuses. All kinds of growing things of which I had not dreamed came peeping up in this old garden: crocuses, purple and gold, grow in a little clump where the wind just fails to reach them; royal daffodils nod and sway, or stand erect and golden, those from new planting outshining the rest. In March the violets were out, and primroses followed; the pony's meadow is full of them, deep in the grass; and these are only a part of the lovely procession of flowers,—bluebells, anemones, and unnumbered others.

To me it seemed that the birds came very early,—birds that are strangers to me, birds that I know; and we were glad once more in the companionship of wings. I was thankful when the swallows came, circling, flying high, flying low; wrens, old friends of mine, are building under my porch roof; a merry little blue tit, a friend quite new, disports himself among the leaves. I have heard the cuckoo calling, calling beyond the stream; you were the first to tell me that this was the cuckoo's note. English larks are very near neighbours; every day I can hear them singing at "heaven's gate."

We have all been as busy as bees since the melting of the snow, humans and animals alike. Back with the first suggestion of warmer sunshine Hengist and Horsa began to crow; alas for William the Conqueror, who will never crow again! and my many queens of the hen-yard began to lay and cackle as boastfully as in times of peace. Every living thing came crawling out of hole and hiding-place and took up its task; the little gingerbread woman came back to the lych gate to sit in the sun; Puck, once more one of the family, as he grazes beyond the stream, trotted merrily to Shepperton again and again to bring seeds and young plants, for I intend to have a garden that will astonish Peter when Peter comes back from the war. It seems to me that there is an added touch of determination in the pony's gait and in the toss of his shaggy head since he became a hero of the war, an upholder of the kingdom, a defender of the faith.

Madge is the busiest of all living things and will not be idle for a moment for fear of "thinking long." Never was there such a be-scrubbed, be-polished, shining house as the little red house! I tremble for my own face when I see her with the soap and sand, the brass polish, the silver polish, the long-handled mop, and the wooden pail. It is Madge with a changed face, with deepening lines between the eyes, a worrying, anxious Madge, who steals the newspaper and reads it in the kitchen before she brings it to me. I cannot help noticing that she talks less and less of the glory of England and more and more about Peter. Laconic post cards with peculiar spelling tell us that Peter is alive and well in the trenches. Peter, because of his old experience as soldier, was allowed to go speedily to the front, and is now at close quarters with the enemy.

In earliest April, the little red house sheltered the grand adventure, the greatest adventure, for death seems safe and easy by the side of the great adventure of being born. I had a whole family quartered here, father, mother, and two small winsome children, boy and girl; we tucked them away where we could. And a wee man-child came into the world during their stay here, with much pomp and circumstance and attendance of mine hostess from the Inn, and of the village doctor, whose lot in life has evidently been to stand helpless and aghast, watching mortals who will venture into a world which seems to be no safe place for them. If it had rested with him, small Jean would have had no chance at all; but Madge and mine hostess came to the rescue, and all went well, on to that first little weird lonely cry.

It was little bigger than the Atom. It slept, during all its first days, a troubled, puckered sleep. Don worshipped it, and whenever it cried, gave an anxious whine or a sharp short bark. In the Atom's loft I unearthed a prehistoric cradle that may have been left by the Danes or the Saxons. Of course I know that rocking is most unhygienic, but I thought that if this little, frightened fugitive mother found any comfort in rocking her baby by the fireside, rock it she should. It isn't, I believe, supposed to injure anything except the brain, and the brain counts for so little nowadays in the contemporary ideal of development that I am sure small Jean will have enough left to play his part in the civilization of the future. He had, I noticed, square and sturdy little fists, and he may be some day one of the many who will fight for England, when England's guests defend the door so generously opened to shelter them. The Atom insisted upon sharing the cradle; why not? It had discovered the cradle in the first place and had a certain right to it. So it curled up in a corner, and Jean gurgled and grew fat and rosy in its companionship. It was a joy to have a real baby in the house while the birds were building, and the spring flowers budding, and the young ferns uncurling in the forest.

The father of the family was a farmer whose house and barns had been wiped out of existence within ten minutes one cruel winter day. Mine host has found a place for him; another man is needed on one of the farms belonging to the estate; a small house there was vacant, and thither they have moved, bag and baggage, baby and baby's cradle. They wanted the Atom, but the Atom and I have lived through such hard days together, cheek to cheek, that I could not let it go. The new house is not far, quite within Puck distance, and Don and I make frequent calls.

May 30. May, with its young leaves, its radiance of blossoming fruit trees, its spring greenness,—never have I known such green,—lingers yet, with its sweet spring chill and its ripple of slow English streams among the grasses. Such a world of beauty, and a world of sorrow! Petals of apple blossom drift even through the open doorway, and everywhere is the murmur of the little wind among the leaves. I sit in my garden, under my apple trees, or walk where the sunshine filters down, clear and still, through the lime trees in the lane, thinking of many things. Close by the stream, at my garden's edge, grow palest purple irises, and at times they seem spirit lilies, delicate as light, growing beside you in your far place.

A few days ago Don dug one of your books out of the case,—he loves to touch them with his faithful paw. It was Dante's Paradiso and as it fell open I saw that you had marked certain words with my name: "dolce guida e cara," "sweet guide and dear." That was too beautiful a thing to say of a mere mortal woman.

I find myself thinking consciously less about you as the days go on; a touch in the darkness, a gleam across the stars, a whisper by the river,—so you come back to me; but the different things we said and did do not return with quite such sharp distinctness and sharp pain. Yet I exist more and more in you, living your life and mine too, spirit to spirit.

Loneliness seems forever impossible since you went out and left the gate ajar, and all the world came in, and all its sorrows. The griefs that enter, in some strange way solace my own, and this increasing sense of the anguish of the world is lightened and lifted by sharing it with other folk. It is good to feel so passionately and so utterly a part of all that lives and throbs and suffers. Though the life that goes on in the little red house must inevitably lack something of the human warmth and joy that we should have known together, more life and greater enters, I think, than would have been ours if our old dream of happiness had come true. One can bear whatever happens, so long as it makes one understand.

I started out in loneliness to tell my story, to you and to myself, for comfort in the long silences, and lo! I have no story; I do not seem to be merely I; I have gone out of myself and cannot find my way back. In this relieving greatness is, perhaps, dim foreknowledge of what is to come. I have nothing left to ask of life, no demands to make: a little service, work, and sleep,—and then?

June 15. Peter, can it be Peter, with that expression upon his face? He is really here, and a transfiguring look of suffering has worn away forever a something of earth and of stubbornness,—a Peter who seems to have gained greatly in strength and in stature, although one arm is gone, and an empty sleeve hangs by his side. If I had known how to salute I should have saluted Peter when I saw him home from the war; mentally I do it whenever I see him working with his one poor hand in my garden beds. One of the first things he said to me when he came home was that he was going to Shepperton to try to get work that a one-armed man could do, selling papers or something of the kind. But Peter, who has faced the enemy and the poisonous gases, flinched before my countenance when I heard this. Peter knows now that the little red house and the garden can never get on without him.

It is odd to see the animals with him; Don cannot be attentive enough, but you would expect a dog to understand. Puck is a wonder, standing as meekly as a lamb to let himself be harnessed by a one-armed man, though he used to dance an ancient British war-dance as the straps went on. The old racial love of fair fighting shines out in him; man to man it used to be, or man to pony, when both were able-bodied, but he will take no advantage of a handicap. He seldom shies now, even at a feather or a floating leaf, but he watches constantly in every direction, waiting for some great danger in which he can comport himself with perfect self-control for the sake of a one-armed man; defying the whole modern era to invent a mechanism that can frighten him. I should like an equestrian statue of Puck not shying at a Zeppelin!

Madge is pathetic; she has lost her old moorings of prejudice and conviction and sails in an uncharted sea of life. Church and State are to her only a shade less reprehensible than the Germans, since Peter came home without an arm. While Peter, completely changed, and loyal to the government, for the country he has served so well is his country indeed, sits with her on the bench by the kitchen door in the twilight, full of affectionate talk of "Kitchener" and "Bobs"—his grief over Lord Roberts' death was both sincere and personal—Madge mutters fiercely against the 'Ouse of Lords for its selfishness and its incompetence. If women ruled, all would be different! Her condemnation of the government would suggest that she is in a fair way to become both an anarchist and a suffragette. She never would have let Peter go a step to war if she had supposed that he would be wounded.

Peter came home, not with a Victoria Cross, but with an Iron Cross, and I can never tell whether he is joking or in earnest when he explains his possession of it. When I asked him how he got it, he replied: "I bestowed it upon meself, Miss." It seems that he had taken it from a German with whom he had fought in a terrible bayonet charge.

"He was a man, he was," Peter says admiringly. "If I got the better of the man who had earned it, it stands to reason that I'm a better man than him and fit to wear it." So Peter wears his Iron Cross, to the wonder and admiration of the farmers baiting their horses at the Inn, the blacksmith's eleven children, and the inhabitants in general of our village. How much he tells those eager listeners of the horrors he has seen I do not know, but sometimes from that bench by the kitchen door, I hear fragments of his tales of suffering that make me sick and faint. Yet he is very reticent in regard to it, having evidently a feeling that he must protect others from knowing what he has known. As I make his acquaintance anew I realize that his great loss is truly exceeding gain; there is more of his real self in his wakened mind and soul than he lost in his arm.

But Peter, invalided home, returned not alone. It seemed to me, as he came up the walk, that he was over-heavily weighed down by luggage, though he had a brother soldier to help him.

"If you please, 'm," said Peter diffidently, when our first greetings were over, "I've taken the liberty of bringing some one 'ome."

"Nothing could please me better," I said, holding out a welcoming hand to the tall soldier at his side.

"If you please, 'm," said Peter, grinning,—if heroes can be said to grin,—"she's inside."

He opened the big old-fashioned basket he was carrying, made of osier, a kind that I remember seeing in my grandmother's attic many years ago, and there—O Pharaoh's daughter, how I understand you now!—was a little child of perhaps ten months, asleep. She had soft dark hair, hands a bit too thin for a baby, eyes that proved to be, when she wakened and opened them, big and brown; and a mouth that had learned and not forgotten, like so many sorrowful mouths to-day, how to smile.

"Where did you find her?" Madge and I cried out in one breath.

"She was in the village where I was taken when I was wounded; you will hexcuse me, 'm, but I cannot say its name, I really cannot. A woman had taken charge of her for weeks; she had been found quite deserted by the roadside, I believe, 'm, earlier in the war, when people were trying to escape from the henemy. The nurse used to bring her into the 'ospital just to let the soldiers see her."

Peter was disappointed that I could not speak, but speak I could not.

"She's a French baby, 'm," he added. "I took a great fancy to her, and when I came away I told them——"

"What did you tell them, Peter?" I asked sternly. The little thing had grasped my finger and was trying to pull herself up. It was the first touch from any of my fugitives that seemed to come from my very own, and I knew that the French baby had come into my life to stay.

"Knowing your 'abits, Miss, I told them I thought I knew a good 'ome for her, so they sent her on with a nurse who was coming back, reserved for me, as it were. They kindly allowed me to bring her down from London meself, but I 'ad difficulty in 'olding her, so I took out me clothes and put them in a paper, and she fitted very nicely in the basket."

Peter still mistook my silence for hesitation.

"I thought if you didn't care to adopt her, I would, 'm; but from what they told me about her clothing and all and from the look of her, I fancy she's rather your class than mine, 'm."

"I couldn't aspire to your class, Peter," I said; "you belong among the heroes. We will all adopt her, you and Madge and I and Don and Puck and the Atom and our English queens. Among us all she will get a well-rounded training."

The stream is rippling past with its old music; the pony is grazing in the meadow; my June roses glow within my garden, yellow, white, and deep red; and still the vast sea of human sorrow breaks, breaks against my garden wall, and no one knows whither its tides may draw. Is it thus that the whole earth must gain the finer knowledge that comes alone through suffering and learn how false are the gods it has been following with swift feet?

I hardly dare confess my foolishness, but when I saw Peter that day of his return come down the village street with a tall khaki-clad figure beside him, I thought for one whole blissful, awful moment that he had found you, living, and had brought you home. Through many such moments I could not live; all the joy and the anguish of time and of eternity were crowded into it. Yet even in that flash I knew that no mere human contact could ever bring you so close as you are now to me. Separated by walls of mere flesh and bone, there could no longer be this entire one-ness of soul with soul. You, belovèd, are forever too near to touch. What death may be I know not, but it is something far different from what we mortals think.

Then I saw that Peter's companion was only another British Tommy, who needed my hospitality; and I helped make ready his beef and beer with great gladness in my heart.

… Content for you. Men from old time have died for the faith they held, and men have died for dreams. I know no faith, no dream better worth dying for than this for which you gave your life, the dream of human freedom. It is our race pride that a passion for liberty was kindled early in our remotest forebears; there is no nobler task than keeping this divine spark alive upon the human hearth. In my moments of insight I know that life has no greater boon than a chance to die for one's faith, and you have died for this. I would not take from you, even if I could, your hour of glory, your great hour of death.

THE END